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Comments 49001 to 49050:
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Philip Shehan at 21:26 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
This item was recently covered on WattsUp With That?
I submitted a comment pointing out that there was not much difference between what Annan was saying and the IPCC position. My post appeared as the following:
[oh, shut up with your whining - mod]
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Jesús Rosino at 21:09 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
JasonB,
There are some discrpenacy among probability distribution functions on Figure 2 based on the instrumental record, but all of them tend to point to the lower end of the sensitivity spectrum. I'm prone to trust sensitivity based on instrumental record rather than paleo, as there are significantly less uncertainties regarding both temp and forcing changes.
It's true that there's no change in the warming trend, but, as Annan says in the comments, high-end sensitivities should show a gradual acceleration. He adds that "quite a sustained steadying, with the limited ocean warming and changes to forcing estimates all points in the same direction".
I don't say that Annan is right, my point is that I don't think he's saying just the same as mainstream climate blogs, and that he is indeed suggesting a (slight) change in the way climate sensitivity is portrayed in scientific reviews. In fact, I think he is suggesting that the IPCC authors have a more critical approach when reporting about papers, but this is a different war.
It's true that his statement is prone to controversy, but the denialist point that he is suggesting a sensitivity lower than 2 is easily debunked, and I think that this controversy may have the positive effect of attracting more climate scientists to the discussion put forward by Annan. :) Constraining sensitivity is an interesting issue.
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Kevin C at 20:00 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
I also find Annan's post-2000 comment surprising.
My 2-box+enso model (which has a number of limitations which I won't go in to here, but can at least address the question) using GISS forcings gives a TCR of 1.67 with the data to 2010/12, and 1.60 with data to 2000/12. That's a long way from being proof but does suggest that Annan's claim should not be accepted without significant supporting evidence.
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JasonB at 19:51 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
Jesús Rosino,
I have a lot of respect for James Annan's statistical acumen and often read his blog, but the comment "the additional decade of temperature data from 2000 onwards [...] can only work to reduce estimates of sensitivity" puzzled me also.
If the current instrumental record is a very poor constraint on climate sensitivity — which Figure 2 suggests is the case — then it's entirely possible for the additional decade of temperature data to have no effect whatsoever on estimates of sensitivity. Indeed, given the magnitude of the internal variability, how could it? There are plenty of ways of looking at the surface air temperature record that all show no statistically significant change in trend from earlier decades, so any study that concludes sensitivity is different just with the addition of the past decade must be automatically suspect, and that's not even taking into account the heat going into the oceans.
As I said, it's puzzling.
As for "...a high climate sensitivity [is] increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5", it would be hard to craft a statement that would be guaranteed to excite the denialati even more. :-) It's practically begging to be taken out of context and misinterpreted. If I was a well known so-called "team member", I might be tempted to make such statements now and then just so I could point at all the idiots who misunderstood it afterwards.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 19:47 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
The following from Rohling et al 2012 also strongly suggests CS is around 3+
Over 30 studies, looking at paleo climate from the last 10,000 years back to 420 million years ago. CS between 3.1 to 3.7
An S value of 1 corresponds to a CS of 3.7. Not much tail there. And not much to suggest low CS either.
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Dikran Marsupial at 19:34 PM on 7 February 2013Climate science peer review is pal review
MartinG if you don't think that a published refutation is evidence that a paper shouldn't have been published, then you have a rather odd idea about what is considered evidence. Note the problem isn't that "because many people disagree with the conclusions" (your downplaying of the criticism did not escape me) but that fundamental methodological flaws were identified with the work. That is clear evidence of a failure of the review process as the reviewers should have picked up on them.
Similarly if you think that the resignation of the EIC and five other editors, explicitly because of a failure in the review process is not evidence of a problem in the review process, then you have rather stringent views on what you consider "evidence"! Editors (plural) do not resign without good cause.
Nobody is claiming that peer reviews supports the validity of a paper, that is a straw man. The claim is that a group of skeptics were exploiting a friendly editor to get work published that was not of a sufficiently high quality to get through the usual peer review for that journal.
"It all depends if you are interested in using the literature to convince everybody out there that your ideas and conclusions are correct,"
You mean like Soon being invited to testify before congress? This is another straw man, and is just evading the issue of whether the paper was sufficiently sound to justify publication.
So tell me, exactly what would you consider to be evidence that the paper should not have made it through peer review?
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Tom Curtis at 18:34 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
shoyemore @12, I would say it is entirely the role of the science journalists to convey the science to the public. It took me half an hour on googlescholar to determine that recent publications on climate sensitivity bracket a range between 2.5 and 3.5 C per doubling of CO2, with some outliers; and that portrayal of recent results as being predominantly in favour of low outcomes represents cherry picking. If Revkin cannot spend that half hour before writting on the topic, what is he being paid for?
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shoyemore at 18:26 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
Rob Painting #6,
You are right. There was a lot of sense in what Annan wrote, but also a lot of drivel as well. He seems to have been stung somewhere along the way. I thought gavin Schmidt comment to Andy Revkin summed up matters:
Indeed, the consensus statements in the IPCC reports have remained within the 1.5 – 4.5 range first set by Charney in 1979. James’ work has helped improve the quantifications of the paleo constraints (particular for the LGM), but these have been supported by work from Lorius et al (1991), Kohler et al (2010), etc. and therefore are not particularly radical.
By not reflecting that, you are implying that the wishful thinking of people like Ridley and Lindzen for a climate sensitivity of around 1 deg C is tenable. It is not, and James’ statement was simply alluding to that. For reference, James stated that his favored number was around 2.5 deg C, Jim Hansen in a recent letter to the WSJ quote 2.5-3.5 (based on the recent Palaeosens paper), and for what it’s worth the CMIP5 GISS models have sensitivities of 2.4 to 2.7 deg C. None of this is out of the mainstream.
Revkin complains the scientists have not "adequately conveyed the reality." Isn't that your job too, Andy?
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MartinG at 18:21 PM on 7 February 2013Climate science peer review is pal review
What more evidence do I want??. Well, for a start I want some evidence. Come on guys – you are not going to convince anyone with a critical mind of anything with phrases like “pal review” is “no review” , and “ I consider junk”. If those papers were not subjected to a proper review then they shouldn’t have been there – no question - and the reviewers, and especially the editor did not do their jobs.
But the papers are not “junk” just because you say they are, or because many people disagree with the conclusions. As far as I am aware de Freitas still considers them legitimate, and we don’t have any evidence from the reviewers that they didn’t do a proper review. That the contents are attacked in subsequent papers by providing new (or old) scientific arguments proving that the original authors were in error – why that’s just great – that’s how the literature is supposed to work – an interchange of ideas until we reach a consensus. As long as there are well founded scientific questions to the subject – or to the established consensus we should welcome them and deal with them based on the science.
That was the original point I made in this thread. A peer review cannot be used as support for the validity of a paper any more than the absence of a peer review proves that an article is bad. But I agree that all published papers should be subject to a peer review for the purposes of weeding out unsupported or unserious papers. Nor is a peer review by people in your own technical field that you know (pal review) necessarily bad. I would get my "pals" to peer review my next article without any bad conscience - just because I know they have my best interests at heart and will help me to improve the quality and validity of the paper. (but I would also invite a couple who had different ideas to pitch in.) It all depends if you are interested in using the literature to convince everybody out there that your ideas and conclusions are correct, or if you use it in a common search for the truth. I feel we should be looking at content and not get hung up with superficial jargon.
For good measure I must state that I haven’t read the papers involved so I can’t comment on their quality.
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Jesús Rosino at 18:19 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
It's not a big deal, but I think that mainstream climate blogs have failed to convey the idea put forward by James Annan. In his own words, that:
"the additional decade of temperature data from 2000 onwards [...] can only work to reduce estimates of sensitivity"
I think that climate blogs have rather argued that recent data are just natural variability, and thus don't have any effect on long-term trends nor sensitivity.
However, regarding the lower temp change since LGM (4K instead of 6K), an important fact is that the changes observed in deglaciation are anyway the same. So a warming of 4K caused impacts that we previously thought requiered a 6K-warming. In other words: impacts should be considered higher than before for any given sensitivity. Ken Hedlin puts it in a nice way over at Annan's blog:"Given that in your Dec. 21 2013 post, "How cold was the last glacial maximum", your conclusion was 4C colder, and that in your comment here ,you estimate a sensitivity of 2.5 - 3C, then with a doubling of CO2, we can expect a temperature increase of about 2/3 of the warming since the LGM."
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Composer99 at 17:47 PM on 7 February 2013Dueling Scientists in The Oregonian, Settled by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
Richard:
Further to your comment #76, you still appear to be missing the point by insisting that "This is a fundamentally different process Stefan [Rahmstorf] is describing as compared to the cool-skin phenomenon".
Please provide a cite in the literature where he does as you claim. If you are extracting the quote you are going on about from a blog comment, the parsimonious explanation is that Rahmstorf is writing in a more colloquial manner (which happens from time to time on a blog, oddly enough).
In addition, you & Steven Sadlow appear to make an error of scaling. The oceans are ~70% of the Earth's surface area and the lion's share of Earth's overall heat capacity (*). An "insignificant" change in cool skin temperatures, causing a slight energy imbalance (such that the ocean cannot shed energy as easily, therefore retaining it), can easily result in an enormous change in ocean energy content, especiallly if the energy imbalance occurs over, say, a 40+ year period.
By way of example, NASA indicates the radiative imbalance at top-of-atmosphere is 0.8 W m-2 across the entire surface area of the Earth. It's not a big number in and of itself, but it means that the Earth retains (approximately) an additional 408 million Joules more than it radiates out to space, each and every second.
(*) From the abstract of Schwartz 2007 ("Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth's Climate System"):
The heat capacity of the global ocean, obtained from regression of ocean heat content vs. global mean surface temperature, GMST, is 14 ± 6 W yr m-2 K-1, equivalent to 110 m of ocean water; other sinks raise the effective planetary heat capacity to 17 ± 7 W yr m-2 K-1 (all uncertainties are 1-sigma estimates).
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YubeDude at 16:44 PM on 7 February 2013Icy contenders weigh in
Tom @6 and DSL @7
Goddard is saying that curently global sea ice area is above average by 30,000 km2. If I was inclined I would spin this to show that NH-SI is gaining rapidly as well as show that SH-SI is not being lost as fast usual...both would discount AGW trends; that is if I was so inclined.
Now obviously anything above an average would be of considerable interest but he is only looking at area and not volume/thickness or the multi year quality of SI. He is also, by making it a global SI metirc, equating SH-SI with NH-SI as though they had equal input into the system.
One part of what Tom mentioned that has me wondering is how the SI area can fluctuate so wildly on a day to day basis?
Sorry to wander away from the topic but I really didn't know where else to ask for some input on Goddard's Gish.
Why does they new posting box not redline spelling errors??...trust me I need the editor help.
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jyyh at 16:13 PM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
(sarc) The correct answer to all political questions about TCR global sun-induced ozone recovery sensitivity (50% undefined or rather obscurely neglecting the modelling of bark beetles and their modelled 'black carbon' on ice sheets.) here. :-). I'm rather surprised noone has proposed π since it would make calculations easier on this flat earth. (/Otherwise nice editor still missing the sarc tag)
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DSL at 14:58 PM on 7 February 2013Icy contenders weigh in
YubeDude, what is Goddard trying to claim? That sea ice is recovering? (Actually, it is re-covering in the Arctic, ha ha ha) He'd do better to cherry-pick days 89-115 of the Arctic sea ice area, when, gasp!, the 10-year linear trend is positive! (ignore the beast getting ready to walk in the door at day 158. Keep combing over it, Steve! There will be little rhetorically valuable gems from time to time -- just show em quick and sell em hard.
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jmsully at 14:32 PM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
Jeff is complaining about a reference to a "conspiratorial" minded post on his website. I checked out the link listed in the preprint and the post is accurately characterized. Just another denialist attempt to throw a spanner in the wheels of science....
I suspect the paper will be published as is when all is said and done.
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Tom Curtis at 14:27 PM on 7 February 2013Icy contenders weigh in
YubeDude @4, if you look at the figures you will find the claim is legitimate, sort of. On 2013.0867 (ie, February 2nd), the global Sea Ice Area anomaly is 0.0004967 million square kilometers. Of course, on Feb 1st, it was -0.075174 million square kilometers; while on February 4th it was -0.0718191 million square kilometers. In fact, he has managed to pick out the only two days (February 3rd was 0.0194787 million square kilometers) with a positive global anomaly since April of last year. The desperation of the cherry pick shows the paucity of evidence in support of denier views.
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hank_ at 13:45 PM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
FYI, the web blog "The Air Vent" is reporting that the Lewandowsky paper has been pulled off of the journal website. Is this true?
Moderator Response: [DB] The full paper is still available here. -
scaddenp at 13:32 PM on 7 February 2013Dueling Scientists in The Oregonian, Settled by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
My take: Sun's shortwave penetrates several meters into the ocean warming the subsurface layer. Increasing the GHG in atmosphere has result of increasing LW, heating the surface layer, restricting the heat transfer from warmer layers through the surface layer. This results in warmer lower layers in the ocean. Furthermore, convection moves heat deeper into the ocean. By contrast on land, you dont have much convection so surface just increases in temperature.
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william5331 at 13:26 PM on 7 February 2013Icy contenders weigh in
There may be another factor that will accelerate the melting of Greenland. When the floating ice is gone, hurricanes, such as the one in Aug 2012 will be able to sidle up close to the coast of Greenland. Such low pressure areas induce katabatic winds down the slopes of Greenland. Downflowing wind heats up 9.80C per km fall. This heat is lost to the ice and at the same time, the hurricane is pumping energy up into the atmosphere from the ever more open arctic ocean. A Walker cell?? Gaia may have another little surprise in store for us. By the way, is it known if the Arctic ocean was ice free, even in September during the Eemian?
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YubeDude at 12:21 PM on 7 February 2013Icy contenders weigh in
Slightly off topic but I really don't know who else to turn to...
Steven Goodard posted (Feb 5) 2 sets of time series and came up with 30,000 km2 above average of global sea ice area...one interesting part of the data series is the title goes to 2008 but the inputs have 34 measurements in 2013.
I am inclined to believe his findings about as far as I trust Goodard to be his real name. Jason (or anyone) please comment on this suspiciously false factoid.
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Albatross at 09:59 AM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
Fy @8,
You are projecting and taking this thread off topic.As for your analogy and question....you may rise sir.
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AndyS at 09:37 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
The key issue that stands out for me is Annan's crticism of using a uniform prior in the Bayesian models.
This has been criticised by statistician Steve Jewson in comments at RealClimate, who claims that the IPCC should not use sensitivity studies that use uniform priors. This happens to include quite a lot of them.
The use of a uniform prior has the effect of shifting the modal or median values of sensitivity higher, and also fattens the tail of the pdf.
Nic Lewis made this point about Forster and Gregory, which the IPCC subsequently applied a uniform prior assumption that S had equal probabilities of lying between 0 and 18.5 deg C, thus skewing the original data.
There's a lot of discussion here that is outside my comfort zone, but for me this is the key issue, not that CS is necessarily lower. -
Composer99 at 08:08 AM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
robert: The OP notes that the version available online at the journal's website was a preliminary (possibly pre-publication?) version.
It may well be that the publisher has taken down that version if the final, published version is set to go online (at which point, sadly, it will most likely be behind a paywall).
Response: [JC] Happy to say the final version of the paper will be open-access - no paywall at Frontiers. -
Composer99 at 08:04 AM on 7 February 2013There is no consensus
OK, make that three threads where Kevin has dropped short, content-free comments in the "gotcha"/smear style.
This kind of drive-by commenting reflects badly on you, Kevin.
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Composer99 at 08:01 AM on 7 February 2013Temp record is unreliable
Kevin:
The point being made is that, without regard for the accuracy or precision of the instrumental record, you can still replicate the 20th-century global warming signal using only a subset of the data. That is how powerful global warming is.
It would be nice if you could provide a reference to any change to 1930s instrumental data. But based on this thread and the "It's the Sun" thread I don't think we're going to see it.
I should also like to echo Sphaerica's irritation at your peculiar reference to Hansen. As Sphaerica notes, it is done in a style all too remniscent of behaviour characteristic of deniers & cranks.
I should also like to add some irritation at what appears to be another behaviour in the same style: popping on multiple threads with small, largely content-free, smear-like or "gotcha"-style comments. We're at two now. Will there be more?
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Tom Curtis at 07:53 AM on 7 February 2013There is no consensus
Keven @535, some people like to quote raw numbers because they impress the gullible with their magnitude. Less gullible as the question, "31,487 out of how many?"
If it were 31,487 out of 50,000, that would indeed be evidence that there is no concensus among scientists that the late twentieth century warming was man made. As it turns out, there were 56,335,654 residents of the United States in 2009 who held a bachelors degree, or higher. Over the period, 1966-2008, 30.8% of all degrees issued have been science and engineering degrees, so at a reasonable estimate, there were 16.9 million holders of degrees in science or engineering. Or in other words, of those qualified to sign the petition in 2009, at most 0.19% signed it, or had signed it. At most, because signature of the petition are not restricted to US residents, and have been open for many years so that not all petitioners where still living in 2009.
So, in essence, you are claiming that there is no consensus in favour of climate change because less than 0.2% of people with a (any) scientific qualification disagree.
I'm not impressed.
Alternatively, there were 2,348,318 residents of the US with Doctorates (Phds) in the United States in 2009. Over the period 1966-2008, 61.8% of all doctorates have been in science or engineering. Ergo, the pool of candidate signors exceeds 1.4 million, of which only 9,029, or 0.64% have signed.
I am impressed by the chutzpah of your logic, that because 0.64% of all scientists holding a Phd have signed a petition denying the science, that therefore it is not true that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans have caused the late twentieth century warming. But, as I said. It may take in the gullible, but not those with the full facts and figures before them.
Further reading: Meet the Denominator
Data: 2009 Census
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robert test at 07:50 AM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
I read or skimmed through the pdf of the paper last night at the Frontiers of Psychology website.
Now, I can't find the link to the paper. As I've aged, my eyesight has worsened but I didn't have any trouble last night.
Heck, I even did a search for 'pdf' -- nothing came up.
What am I doing wrong?
Response: [JC] The full paper is still available here. -
Composer99 at 07:48 AM on 7 February 2013It's the sun
Kevin:
It seems to me that it would be hard for NASA or anyone else to admit that the Sun plays a much larger role in influencing Earth's climate than has already been known since... well probably since we had a concept of Earth-system climate.
Close to 100% of the incoming energy flux that affects the Earth climate comes from the Sun. However, this energy flux is close to constant at decade-to-century timescales, with limited variation (the solar cycle) at annual-to-decade timescales and slow but consistent increase over millions of years. Do you have references to anyone at NASA or any IPCC documentation seriously contesting this?
The concern with climate change has to do with greenhouse gases involves their effect on the Earth's outgoing energy flux. Which, to my knowledge, the Sun has very little to do with.
The important thing to remember is that both the incoming and outgoing energy fluxes affect Earth climate.
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Composer99 at 07:22 AM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
Maybe the next Lewandowsky-Cook offering on the psychological & sociological research on climate denial can look into the extent that pseudoskeptics engage in projection.
Case in point, fydijkstra tries to throw back Albatross' comments at him - while engaging in a fair amount of "unable to help self" activity by resorting to a stale, reheated cabbage of easily-debunked false claims.
Allow me to add some tasteful, classy commentary by pointing to an obvious analogue.
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Bob Lacatena at 07:12 AM on 7 February 2013Temp record is unreliable
Kevin,
Do you have no clue how this works?
First, "Hansen" doesn't personally go changing things. This habit of deniers of first personalizing the science (it's "Al Gore's" or it's "Hansen's") and then villifying that person is just foolishness.
That said, the data is continually improved because it always helps to make it better... except that the validity and accuracy of the data is already good enough for our purposes.
As far as changes in a direction that "support his belief," scientists don't have beliefs, they have conclusions. It's deniers whose positions are founded entirely on beliefs.
How much cooler are the 30s going to get? LOL. 2013 is going to be a "wake up and smell the thermometer" year for you and your ilk.
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DSL at 07:08 AM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
Who has "denied the existence" of the MWP? Are you now going to claim that it was global? Good grief, your post is Wegman-like in its irony.
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Bob Lacatena at 07:08 AM on 7 February 2013It's the sun
Kevin,
"Admitted"? What, as if they've been caught trying to Global Swindle people?
I have an idea... actually read and learn, instead of throwing lame denier slogans around.
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Bob Lacatena at 07:07 AM on 7 February 2013There is no consensus
Kevin,
Are you as gullible as you seem? Perhaps you should look into those signatures.
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DSL at 07:03 AM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
What lack of warming, fy? Question: is the troposphere a good representative of the climate system's energy storage?
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Tom Curtis at 07:03 AM on 7 February 2013Was 2012 the Hottest La Niña Year on Record?
Kevin C @20, it is worth quoting NOAA's retraction (in an update at the top of the page) in full:
"Note: On January 15, 2012, NCDC announced as part of its 2012 Global Climate Report that 2012 was the warmest La Niña year on record. While there are a variety of approaches for defining a La Niña or El Niño year, NCDC's criteria is defined as when the first three months of a calendar year meet the La Niña or El Niño threshold as defined by NOAA Climate Prediction Center's (CPC) Oceanic Niño Index (ONI). The list of historical La Niña years released on January 15 was based on an ONI dataset in force in early 2012 and used a 1971–2000 base period. During the course of the year, CPC introduced an ONI dataset using different base periods for determining anomalies for each year, with the most recent years (1995 to date) utilizing the 1981–2010 base period. Because of long-term warming trends in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, applying this more recent base period allows for better discernment of the temperature patterns needed to identify El Niño and La Niña years. In the most recent version of the dataset, using the newer base period methodology, 2006 and 2009 are now classified as La Niña years. The global average temperature in both 2006 and 2009 was 0.02°C (0.04°F) higher than 2012, making these two years the warmest La Niña years on record. NCDC has updated (via strikeout) our Annual Global Climate report to reflect the most current CPC ONI dataset.
With binary definitions of El Niño or La Niña, small changes in processing the data can affect the classification of weak El Niños or La Niñas. Despite these reclassifications, the general conclusions are similar from previous work: (1) global temperature anomalies for each phase (El Niño, La Niña, and neutral) have been increasing over time and (2) on average, global temperatures during El Niño years are higher than neutral years, which in turn, are higher than La Niña years.
NCDC continually examines its practices and definitions as science, datasets, and the understanding they bring improve. Thus, given the nature of our current method of classifying years as El Niño or La Niña, NCDC plans to re-examine and employ the best available definitions and datasets to robustly characterize the influence of El Niño and LaNiña on annual global temperatures."
(My emphasis)
It should be noted that, even with the updated list, 2012 is still the third warmest La Nina year on record. Also of interest, the two years, now considered La Nina years by NOAA, but previously considered neutral years are 2006 and 2009. Of these, 2009, but not 2006, is considered a La Nina year using Dana's methodology in figure 2 above. It should further be noted that both 2006 and 2009 are above the trend for La Nina years, and below the trend for neutral years. It follows that reclassifying them will increase the trend for both neutral and La Nina years. Naturally this last point recieves no attention from AGW deniers.
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DSL at 07:00 AM on 7 February 2013It's the sun
Kevin, while the regular commenters on this site will be more than happy to address your concerns, they do expect you to read the main articles (basic, intermediate, and advanced). The people at NASA are among those who have contributed to the studies upon which the main articles are based. Further, if you have a specific piece of information--a quote, for example--that is driving your questioning, please link to it so that we don't have to rely on a vague reference in a single sentence.
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Kevin8233 at 06:57 AM on 7 February 2013Temp record is unreliable
The various datasets (not just GISS) have been checked & rechecked, both internally and independently. Even amateur "scientists" have replicated the global rise in temperatures using as little as 10% of the station data because there is a global warming signal in the data.
If the data is/was so accurate, why does Hansen keep changing it? And why are ALL changes in the direction that support his belief? You would think that at least some "mistakes" were made in the other direction, no? How much cooler are the 30's going to get?
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DSL at 06:57 AM on 7 February 2013There is no consensus
Kevin, you wouldn't ask your dentists to perform heart surgery. There is an overwhelming consensus in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences. But why look at a consensus of people? Why not look at a consensus of evidence.
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Kevin8233 at 06:51 AM on 7 February 2013There is no consensus
The signature project has 31,487 signatures, of which 9029 have PHDs, all saying that it is not man made. Makes it hard to believe that there is a 97% consensus.
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Kevin8233 at 06:36 AM on 7 February 2013It's the sun
I thought that both the IPCC and NASA have admitted that the Sun plays a much more major role then previously thought.
Is this true?
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fydijkstra at 06:32 AM on 7 February 2013For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
Albatross: you make a very interesting remark!: "The psychology of those in denial and fake skeptics is fascinating. What is even more fascinating (and perhaps sad too) is that they seem wholly incapable of being aware of their extreme bias and propensity to enage and perpetuate conspiracies. They seem unabe to help themselves."
Don't you see, that this statement exactly fits to those who are in denial of the recent lack of warming for 17 years, and to those who call themselves 'skeptic about skeptic arguments'? And to those who still deny the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, contrary to historic facts? Or to those who insist that the sea level rise is accelerating, contrary to satellite measurements?
In the Netherlands we have an interesting TV game, in which three men all state that they have a special profession, but for only one of them it is true. The others are actors. They are interrogated by a panel. At the end of the game all panel members have to decide who is the real professional. And then the leader of the game asks: 'Will the real profssional now stand up?'
We can ask the same question in the climate debate: 'will the real denialist now stand up?'
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dana1981 at 06:25 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
Rob P @6 - yes, the quote from Trenberth in the OP is in response to Annan saying that warming has slowed over the past decade. That's just not true if you include ocean heat content data to 2000 meters.
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curiousd at 05:17 AM on 7 February 2013It's too hard
I work with green action groups. In my mind, there are pervasive forms of denial common amongst such groups that almost approach the level of dangerous attitude as in those who deny global warming;
1. Acting locally (My friends and I all have sustainable homes, we eat locally, we recycle, and drive hybrids) will be enough. Not even close to being right. What about folks living in high rises in Chicago in the wintertime?
2. The Hubbard's Peak driven scarcity of fossil fuels will force reform. Old fashioned point of view. We now know we have enough readily available fossil fuels to fry the planet.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:16 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
I think part of the contrarian reaction is based in the psychology of Going Down the Up Escalator. Just as any sort-term drop in temperatures becomes a claim that global warming has "stopped", any study that mentions a decrease in climate sensitivity is grabbed as if it is evidence that everything about climate sensitivity is decreasing. As part of the uncertainty monster, it confirms the contrarians' belief that mainstream science is wrong, and that all the errors are accumulating in one direction. To the contrarian, it is just a matter of time before other uncertainties will yield even lower estimates of sensitivity, until eventually it will fall to the point that it is nothing significant.
That Annan's statements do nothing to support the low sensitivity favoured by the Spencers and Lindzens is irrelevant: i just another "nail in the coffin" for a confirmation-biased view that the sensitivity just has to be lower than what the proper science is saying.
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Rob Painting at 04:47 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
One doesn't need to misinterpret James Annan's comment, he's writing some unsupported nonsense all on his own. For example this comment over at the Dot Earth blog:
"combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable"
Over the last 50 years around 93% of global warming has gone into heating the ocean. Compare the "noughties" decade to the 1990's and you find that the ocean heating rate increased. In other words the observations contradict what Annan claims.
Then there's all his strange rants about the IPCC. He seems peeved that he's being ignored by those involved in preparing the latest IPCC assessment. Given that he is making claims contrary to the evidence, I'm not surprised his protestations may be falling on deaf ears.
By the way, what is the basis for claiming that the negative aerosol forcing estimate has been reduced?
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Roger D at 04:46 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
As illustrated in this OP and noted in comments above, "skeptics" seem to be expert at mental cut-and-paste to build their understanding. Maybe they all grew up eating out at smorgasborgs where their parents allowed them to choose the ice cream for the main course and for desert. If only the world really did work that way....
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dhogaza at 04:36 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
"Annan has also made the case that the most likely equilibrium climate sensitivity value may be closer to 2.5°C than 3°C."
It's worth noting that the current estimate from NASA's GISS Model E, to be used in the upcoming IPCC model ensemble, is 2.5C. The version used for the previous IPCC report was about 2.7C. "About 3C" includes the possibility of "a bit less than 3C" ... contrarians seem to have missed just how mainstream Annan's view is that it might be closer to 2.5C than 3C.
Not to mention just how uncomforting this mainstream (though slightly on the low side) view is to anyone who cares about the future.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:32 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
My sense was the (fake) skeptics homed in on only this part: "A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible..."
And that's all the wanted, all they needed. Everything else didn't fit their notions of CS and so they excluded it.
I've had exchanges with a bunch of them this week on various websites and they were completely unaware that Annan had also made statements regarding the central estimate still being 2.5C to 3C. It totally flew by them without notice.
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dana1981 at 04:24 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
Composer @1 - yes, it appears that contrarians interpreted Annan's comments as "climate sensitivity is not very high, therefore it's low". Hence the 'memo to contrarians' section in the OP. I saw several contrarians saying that Annan's comments were confirming what 'skeptics' have believed all along. Unless they think Lindzen and Spencer are extremists, that is simply untrue.
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Composer99 at 03:49 AM on 7 February 2013A Climate Sensitivity Tail
As the Oregonian thread here demonstrated, people can easily read what they want instead of reading what is actually written.
So instead of what Annan & Hargreaves are actually saying, which (if I am reading their paper correctly) is that we can more confidently (though still not completely) rule out possible climate sensitivity greater than 4°C, pseudoskeptics & contrarians appear to be reading it as supporting their notions of climate sensitivity (which vary, but as far as I can see a sensitivity of 1.5°C appears to be the ceiling).
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