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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Recent Comments

Comments 49101 to 49150:

Tom Curtis at 00:54 AM on 8 February 2013

There is no consensus

Kevin, to reiterate; the article above points out that several studies have found 97% of climate scientists accept the evidence that the Earth has warmed, and that human emissions of greenhouse gases is the primary cause of that warming.

Now, you wish to present as counter evidence that less than 0.2% of people in the US with a scientific qualification of any sort disagree. In essence your argument boils down to the claim that:

Less than 0.2% of people with a scientific qualification have expressed an opinion contrary to the consensus on climate change;

Therefore,

It is false that 97% of the scientists best qualified to assess the subject accept the concensus.

Your argument needs only to be stated for it to be seen that it is false.

KR at 00:52 AM on 8 February 2013

Climate science peer review is pal review

MartinG - Compare and contrast:

You first stated: "I actually have no problem with what de Freitas did - he got his papers peer reviewed and published."

and then: "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."

You will pardon me if I point out the contradiction displayed in those statements. The papers were not subjected to a proper review, have been found to be junk under examination, and de Freitas did not do his job.

"For good measure I must state that I haven’t read the papers involved so I can’t comment on their quality." - Enough said.

Dikran Marsupial at 00:52 AM on 8 February 2013

Temp record is unreliable

Kevin, climate4you is run by Ole Humlum, who has written a number of deeply flawed papers on climate science, so pointing out that the plot originates from climate4you rather than WUWT does not make it any more authoritative. This doesn't mean that the plot is incorrect, but it is good cause to be skeptical.

Composer99 at 00:38 AM on 8 February 2013

Temp record is unreliable

Kevin:

Thank you for returning to follow up. It has been my experience that commenters who post on multiple threads in short order with what appear to be leading questions or comments are engaging in "drive-by" commenting. One rarely sees them again (except, perhaps, for further drive-bys some months in the future). Since you have returned, I apologize for my viscerally hostile reaction.

Further to the graph, posted on WUWT, that you have shared here, I guess my follow-up questions are:

To what NASA GISS product are the shown adjustments applicable? NASA GISS model or the temperature dataset?
What makes the adjustments illegitimate? Do WUWT or Climate4You provide any references to the literature suggesting NASA GISS has committed any serious methodological errors in making the adjustments?

That adjustments have been made does not make them prima facie suspicious. Organizations and people re-evaluate past data using improved methods and make revisions as required (one example might be casualty figures from past conflicts, which are subject to occasional re-assessment - e.g. casualties suffered by the polities of the former Soviet Union during the Second World War). As far as I can see this is normally unremarkable behaviour.

With regards to Hansen's beliefs vs his conclusions, the question is, what evidence is there that any of Hansen's personal convictions (such as those described in, say, his recent book) are inappropriately reflected in his published work? Certainly such a thing is possible, but it doesn't follow that it is occurring without some sort of substantiation.

Dikran Marsupial at 00:37 AM on 8 February 2013

Temp record is unreliable

Kevin, to put that diagram into perspective, if you look at GISS LOTI, there has been abou 0.9 degrees of warming since 1911 (the lowest point on the WUWT plot), so the difference between GISS products accounts for less than 10% of the observed warming. There is also the point that the adjustements made since 2008 are likely to have been made for good reasons. If you want to know why "Hansen" (GISS != Hansen) keeps changing the temperature record, then I suggest reading the technical reports and papers might be a good start.

DSL at 00:33 AM on 8 February 2013

Temp record is unreliable

Kevin, assuming that the methodology of the graph is honest, what makes you think that the adjustments are dishonest? If they were exactly reversed, would you still be complaining?

And what is the method for determining statistical significance in this case? And is that the anomaly? Or is that the absolute temp?

Tom Curtis at 00:29 AM on 8 February 2013

Temp record is unreliable
Update: I accidentally took the 2008 figures from the land only dataset rather than the LOTI. The change in dataset completely undermines my earlier conclusions, and I apologize for the error. The actual adjustments differ in detail from those in the Figure displayed by Kevin, but not by a large amount. The table and links are now for the correct figures, but the comments should be ignored. Kevin @243, merely mentioning that the figure is from WUWT does not help us determine its accuracy. You need to list the source data. When I check the source data that I can access for 22nd July, 2008 and for 8th Feb, 2013 (today), I note that the annual temperatures for the twenty first century are as follows: ______2008___Current___Alteration 2001 48 52 0.04 2002 56 60 0.04 2003 55 59 0.04 2004 48 52 0.04 2005 62 65 0.03 2006 54 59 0.05 2007 56 62 0.06 Now, every one of those adjustments makes the first seven years of the twenty first century cooler than they were reported to be in 2008, yet your table shows every one of those years as have been adjusted to make them warmer. For convenience, I have only checked the years above, but at the moment every claimed adjustment on the graph does not even get the direction of the adjustment right. I see no reason, then, to trust it.

I also note that, if there is in fact some version of Gistemp which does adjust those years as per the chart, then there the adjustments between that chart and 2013 at most merely restore the values to those of the July 2008 version, and in some years still represent an overall net cooling adjustment.

DSL at 00:22 AM on 8 February 2013

There is no consensus

Kevin, it would be delicious if you marked out the words of others with quotation marks.

You say: "To say that the science is over because of 97% agreement is a pretty arrogant statement to make."

I agree. Now, whoever said "the science is over" is wrong. To say that the basics of the theory of AGW are "settled," though, is right. Settled doesn't mean concretized. It just means that nothing is stirring it up. The basics of AGW were settled over the last century. There hasn't been a serious challenge to the greenhouse effect since Angstrom. The effect has been demonstrated in lab, from satellite, and directly via ground-based instrumentation. Working products have been made that rely on the same principles. The other settled part of AGW is the "A" part. There are no alternative theories where the source of the rise in atmospheric CO2 is concerned. None. And there is abundant evidence that it's us. If you have an alternative that works, you'll be famous.

You say: "I'm sure that there was greater than 97% consensus that Newton was 100% accurate prior to Einstein "proving" that there was more to it."

This is a false analogy. You're suggesting that the levels of evidence for the compared are the same. Not even close. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people working in atmospheric and oceanic sciences. The 97% figure was for a small group of regularly-publishing climate scientists. How many people were working on gravity in Newton's day? Even Einstein's day? How robustly were the theories being tested? If you want to see the weight of evidence--the consensus of evidence--see it here. Or see it in the tens of thousands of publications that fill the reference sections of the IPCC ARs.

You say: "All it takes is one falsification to make a theory wrong, to think that "WE" know everything about everything that goes into making our climate what it is is pretty ignorant."

Who said we did? Again, you build this strawman that says, "Climate scientists say they know everything!" No one has ever said that. It's funny: I argue with people regularly who condemn the IPCC for using words like "likely" and "high probability" and "medium confidence." They want science to be absolute. Science refuses to be absolute.

Until you understand the evidence, it will be all too easy to read words like "settled" and "know" uncritically and mistakenly. It is extraordinarily difficult to communicate the science to the public. Everything is interconnected, and so everything needs to be properly contextualized. The "16-year no warming" meme is just the latest great example of that. The denial industry--and it is an industry, from Heartland to GWPF to SPPI and beyond--knows the difficulty, and they take advantage of it. The focus on the words scientists use, ignoring the content of the message. They take words like "consensus" and "settled" and spin them to make them look dishonest or anti-scientific.

And then the public, Kevin, unaware of the game playing, does the heavy lifting by accusing the science and its defenders of being dishonest. Most of the people I discuss the issue with are not in the pay of the oil industry or one of the free market opinion-making organizations. However, some are. There are face-bots, or ideo-bots, created by these institutions solely for the purpose of engaging comment streams with a set of well-oiled memes. These bots never come back to defend their comments. There is nothing to hold them accountable for their misinformation and misrepresentation. Yet there it is, and the public has no basis for deciding what's misinformation and what isn't.

This may explain why you get a strong reaction when you post an evidence-free accusation. It's in the standard playbook for paid denialists. My advice to you is to use questions and refrain from accusations, unless you have the evidence to support them and you're willing to defend that evidence (or change your mind if other evidence is brought to bear).

Kevin8233 at 23:56 PM on 7 February 2013

Temp record is unreliable

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.

Actually, this is the "accuracy in the data" thread, not the Sun thread, so it is appropriate to discuss this.

This is from WUWT,

Just because it is from there don't discount it out of hand. It shows temp change since 2008 made to the record, it was originally from Climate4You.

Hopefully the chart comes through, but anyway, it shows significant adjustments, so that should satisfy your need for showing what I was talking about.

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.

I disagree. When it comes to Hansen, who has publically stated his beliefs, and his position, and done so in a manor that can not be confused with stating scientific knowledge or facts. Otherwise, I would agree with you.

See my other posts about appology regarding my smear/gothca impression - not intended.

Tristan at 23:41 PM on 7 February 2013

For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Terranova, labels work better for groups than individuals. If you are accurately reporting your views, then you are just someone who rejects the weight of evidence and expert opinion.

Dikran Marsupial at 23:41 PM on 7 February 2013

For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

@Terranova, I'm not sure why labels are important, it is the behaviour that is interesting. Perhaps you could post on an appropriate thread the reasons why you consider the GHG contibution to be overstated, I'm sure there are many here who would be happy to discuss the science.

Kevin8233 at 23:38 PM on 7 February 2013

There 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.This wasn't a drive by, smear comment. The gist of this thread is that there is a 97% "consensus", implying that 97% of Climate scientists believe the AGW theory. I was pointing out a piece of evidence, one that has more participants than some of the papers that came up with the 97% figure, that disputes that. To say that the science is over because of 97% agreement is a pretty arrogant statement to make. I'm sure that there was greater than 97% consensus that Newton was 100% accurate prior to Einstein "proving" that there was more to it.
All it takes is one falsification to make a theory wrong, to think that "WE" know everything about everything that goes into making our climate what it is is pretty ignorant.

No gotcha/smear intended. I do appologize that I came/come across as a gotcha smear type. I do want to understand more about this, but dealing with people who think they have all the answers, and that if you disagree with them you are either
1. in denial,
2. in the employ of "big oil" or
3. Ignorant
gets old pretty quick.

leedsjon1 at 22:52 PM on 7 February 2013

For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Albatross: you make some v interesting comments here which I agree with entirely. Speaking as on old Psychology graduate, I was fascinated to read this research and find it gels with my own personal experience of the skeptics/denialists/contrarian (whatever label you want to use here). Ironically, my interest in whole field of climate change, since it was pretty much outside field of my own expertise, was sparked off by a friend who turned out to be one of the skeptics. At first, I found his views interesting if not unusual - at the time (around about 2008 or thereabouts when the first big climate change conference @ Copenhagen was going on), there was a lot of media activity in UK about subject - which the BBC usefully synthesised into a kind of rough 'beginners' guide' for non-scientists if you like-which put people like me in the picture. Even then the science that was being reported seemed pretty comprehensive and, most importantly, settled. So, following the links in this guide to various scientific journals & publications, I tried to pass these on to my friend - only to be greeted by the ugly head of the conspiracy theory. eg you can't believe a word of the article in ..New Scientist, Nature, National Geographic - or any of a thousand other scientific peer reviewed journals or popular science magazines, websites, reports from learned scientific research institutes etc - because the scientists are all part of the global conspiracy which Climategate proved to be true..etc etc etc. Further attempts followed to try to persuade my friend of the merits of the science - only to be dashed by reference to the same conspiracy theory. In the early stages of this 'debate', while I was fascinated by the volumes of scientific 'data' which my friend reproduced, there was 1 nagging doubt I had which became impossible to reconcile - for as a social science graduate trained in some of the basic philosophical schools of thought I was familiar and had some sympathy for the 'skeptical' approach - and the doubt was this. All other things being equal, and following the application of even the most basic law of averages, it is possible that a particular scientist or group of scientists, especially when grappling with a discipline as complex as climate change science which, on some levels, is still evolving and developing, may, in relation to a particular question or problem, reach a conclusion which is later found, in the light of newer research, to be incorrect. It may also be possible, in the extreme, that such scientists may simply have got the science wrong. Both of these potential outcomes are possible through the application of the skeptical approach. But how do we move, if we are being rational, objective investigators, from the position of 'scientist X got the science wrong' to 'scientist X is systematically lying to the world and fabricating his data in order to make vast sums of money and get rich very quickly by redirecting the focus of international research into the renewables industry' which is a basic precis of the Climategate 'scandal'? This is not a possible outcome of the genuine skeptical approach. At this point I started to consider, as this research shows, that there may well be a psychological dimension to all of this focused more on ideology than the rigorous evauation of empirical data (a.k.a. science).

Terranova at 22:36 PM on 7 February 2013

For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

I am certainly not a conspiracy theorist. The smoking-cancer, and HIV-AIDS links are obvious. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and humans have caused the levels in the atmosphere to rise. That and other human activities have contributed to an increase in temperature. I disagree with most of you on here on the amount of that contribution and what the future may hold.

What label do I get?

CBDunkerson at 22:14 PM on 7 February 2013

For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Marco wrote: "...see WUWT with its guest post of Tom Fuller (who clearly hasn't read the papers, as neither claims most pseudoskeptics are conspiracy theorists)."

Oi! Tom Fuller used to write AGW articles for Examiner.com... with the 'evil climate scientist cabal' (aka "the Team") playing a major role in suppressing the Truth with their Fake science. He is, himself, heavily invested in conspiracy thinking despite his endless claims of 'neutrality' and 'reason'. On one occasion I actually got him to admit that the 'climate scientists claimed that sea level would rise 20 meters in 30 years' myth was false by tracking down the supposed source and showing that it stated no time frame. Yet only a few months later he was back to repeating the same myth... having completely blocked his memory of acknowledging that it wasn't true.

Philip Shehan at 21:26 PM on 7 February 2013

A Climate Sensitivity Tail

This item was recently covered on WattsUp With That?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/01/encouraging-admission-of-lower-climate-sensitivity-by-a-hockey-team-scientist/#comment-1214311

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:

Philip Shehan says:

February 1, 2013 at 3:29 pm

[oh, shut up with your whining - mod]

Jesús Rosino at 21:09 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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.

Kevin C at 20:00 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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.

JasonB at 19:51 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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.

Glenn Tamblyn at 19:47 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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.

Dikran Marsupial at 19:34 PM on 7 February 2013

Climate 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?

Tom Curtis at 18:34 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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?

shoyemore at 18:26 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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?

MartinG at 18:21 PM on 7 February 2013

Climate 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.

Jesús Rosino at 18:19 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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."

Composer99 at 17:47 PM on 7 February 2013

Dueling 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).

YubeDude at 16:44 PM on 7 February 2013

Icy 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.

jyyh at 16:13 PM on 7 February 2013

A 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)

DSL at 14:58 PM on 7 February 2013

Icy 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.

jmsully at 14:32 PM on 7 February 2013

For 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.

Tom Curtis at 14:27 PM on 7 February 2013

Icy 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.

hank_ at 13:45 PM on 7 February 2013

For 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 2013

Dueling 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.

william5331 at 13:26 PM on 7 February 2013

Icy 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?

YubeDude at 12:21 PM on 7 February 2013

Icy 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.

Albatross at 09:59 AM on 7 February 2013

For 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.

AndyS at 09:37 AM on 7 February 2013

A 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 2013

For 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 2013

There 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.

Composer99 at 08:01 AM on 7 February 2013

Temp 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?

Tom Curtis at 07:53 AM on 7 February 2013

There 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.

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