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Elmo at 12:34 PM on 1 February 2013Glaciers still shrinking in 2011, how have contrarians claimed the opposite?
Contrarians don't need no stinkin' facts. -
skywatcher at 12:00 PM on 1 February 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Ranyl, I have my doubts about your renewables paragraph above:Not to mention of course the large environmental impacts of renewables as well, bats, birds, warming the atmosphere, toxic waste, rare earth metals, batteries, mining, and so on and so on..
I wonder if you have reliable information to support these claims in relation to renewables? To take a couple of your examples: birds?! As opposed to the impact of domestic cats (orders of magnitude bigger impact). Toxic waste? As opposed to coal/nuclear. Mining? You're kidding, right? Fossil fuel extraction is done how? Warming the atmosphere? How? You might have a point about rare earths, but it depends on the specific technology - it's a much bigger issue for computing/telecommunications. And certainly on batteries - energy storage is the single biggest challenge... Solve that and we can produce all the renewable energy we ever need in favourable spots on the planet! I would much prefer to use carbon budget now to help transfer energy generation away from merely burning carbon - a vastly better use of that bit of CO2 release... -
Tom Curtis at 11:07 AM on 1 February 2013New Research Finds that Most Monthly Heat Records Today are Due to Global Warming
rab @6 I apologize for my imputation. Never-the-less, Skeptical Science should not second guess the presentation of data from scientific papers. If the scientists themselves, along with the editor (and presumably the reviewers) are happy with the presentation of data, we, as amateurs, should not be changing that presentation except in the face of a compelling reason to do so. And indeed, as changing the presentation requires obtaining the data either from the authors, or by digitizing, and then reprocessing it; time constraints provide a compelling reason to not do so. In this case there is no compelling reason. The ratio of warm records to cold records only falls to 0.5 or below in six out of 131 years of data; the last time being in 1922. It only falls to around 0.33 once, in 1907, and never falls to 0.25. The last time it was 1, or below was 1965, following the Mount Agung volcanic eruption. The last time it was below 2 was at the time of the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption. The five year mean has never fallen to 0.5, not fallen below 1 since 1922, and bit fallen below 2 since 1967. Given how little of the data falls below a ratio of 1, and how little below that ratio it falls, there is no gain in complicating the interpretation of the data by adopting any but a linear scale. -
jimb at 10:49 AM on 1 February 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
re Jim Baird @ 24- I don't think that 10 million square kilometres is approximately 3 square miles. -
curiousd at 10:35 AM on 1 February 201316 ^ more years of global warming
Another thought about the effect of the AMO on C.S.....There is the article by Booth,et al in Nature Letter, vol 484, April 2012, pp 228 - 232. (Probably already appeared on SKS, though not sure..) They do a simulation which attributes about 70 % of that peak in the global temperature record in 1940s to the effect of Aerosols. For sure, if they are right, then the transient C.S. goes back up considerable. -
rab at 09:54 AM on 1 February 2013New Research Finds that Most Monthly Heat Records Today are Due to Global Warming
@Tom "But I guess that would be the point, wouldn't it!" No it's absolutely not the point! You apparently don't know me, so please do not jump to conclusions. I'm one of Skeptical Science's biggest fans. Just trying to help. One fair way is to have a linear scale above 1 and the reciprocal, but also linear below 1. But that's mathematically ugly. Is it better if I give my complete name? Let's be civil, OK? --rick baartman -
ranyl at 08:15 AM on 1 February 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
"It almost certainly wouldn't work anyway because it's too late - but people who know this, and who know about amplifying feedbacks, have a moral obligation to state the truth - only by drastically lowering our consumption and population could we hope to stave off utterly disastrous and calamitous climate disruption." Tend to agree. Also we have no carbon budget so not sure where all the carbon to build all these renewables is coming from, blow this carbon budget and it is blown! Not to mention of course the large environmental impacts of renewables as well, bats, birds, warming the atmosphere, toxic waste, rare earth metals, batteries, mining, and so on and so on.. Power down massively or kill off humanity and lots of the biosphere to boot? Stop using fossil fuesl now or kill of humanity? Stop exploiting and over indulging in everything or kill off humanity? Stop having cars or kill off humanity? Stop waging war or kill off humanity? Stop manufacturing arms or kill of humanity? The carbon budget really is this tight. 350ppm still gives a 50:50% chance of 2C and look what 0.7C is doing. Permafrost tipped, Arctic tipped, Amazon getting dryer, carbon sinks are reducing, waters are warming, ice is melting rapidly, albedo affect is strong, and yet some are saying spend loads of carbon to build loads and loads of renewables despite the very large environmental and carbon costs they have? The choice really is power down or kill of humanity? Anyway it seems most feel that killing off humanity is the best choice or that is what their actions say anyway. Don't fly or kill off humanity.. The choice is ours, but of course not having a car or not being able to fly, would mean taking away basic human freedoms, despite the facts that these have existed for less than 1% of the time of human existence and therefore it seems to kill off humanity is the choice humanity is making, with eyes wide open even if the majority of humanity is in denial, that climate change is now, right now and a direct threat to us all wherever we live! -
Albatross at 03:21 AM on 1 February 2013New Research Finds that Most Monthly Heat Records Today are Due to Global Warming
On a related note, Donat has a new paper out with numerous co-authors from around the globe. They used an updated version of HadEX (a collation and analysis of the gridded land-based dataset of indices of temperature and precipitation extremes). Here is a key passage form their abstract: "Results showed widespread significant changes in temperature extremes consistent with warming, especially for those indices derived from daily minimum temperature over the whole 110 years of record but with stronger trends in more recent decades. Seasonal results showed significant warming in all seasons but more so in the colder months. Precipitation indices also showed widespread and significant trends, but the changes were much more spatially heterogeneous compared with temperature changes. However, results indicated more areas with significant increasing trends in extreme precipitation amounts, intensity and frequency than areas with decreasing trends." Yet more evidence indicating that we are in for tough times ahead. -
Photon Wrangler at 03:14 AM on 1 February 2013New Research Finds that Most Monthly Heat Records Today are Due to Global Warming
The NASA GISS video of the shifting distribution pattern of temperatures is fascinating. Not only is the whole thing obviously -- and perilously -- shifting to the right, towards positive temperature anomalies, but it seems that curve is also flattening. There's just less and less time spent in the middle. Even the "new normal" is becoming less normal. I'll try to find time to read the paper behind it, but can someone here answer: Is the "flattening" of the curve a consequence of changing temperature? In other words, if we do manage to stabilize climate at say, 2.5 degrees warmer, and it holds there for a while, will the peak of the curve perk back up? If so, that's a least one bright spot. The new normal may not be fun, but at least it could be consistently not fun. -
dana1981 at 02:36 AM on 1 February 2013Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Thanks tmac, image fixed. -
Jim Baird at 02:15 AM on 1 February 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Permafrost and icecap melting is hastened by the movement of ocean heat from the tropics towards the poles by tropical storms. “Earth's poles are warming faster than the rest of the planet because of energy in the atmosphere that is carried to the poles through large weather systems.” NASA- What's causing the poles to warm faster than the rest of Earth? A paper entitled: "Artificial Upwelling for Environmental Enhancement" by a group from the University of Hawaii and Florida Atlantic University pointed out, ”The prospect of global climate warming will only mean more intense and frequent hurricanes, as they do not form in the North Atlantic when the monthly mean temperature is less than 26.8C over a minimum area of about 10 million square kilometers (approximately 3 square miles). Hurricanes form in these warmer waters and dissipate when incurring a temperature drop of 2C. Thus, if a mechanism can be found to lower the temperature of the ocean surface in those areas of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans where hurricanes/typhoons are normally generated, it is possible that the frequency or severity of them can be minimized, if not entirely eliminated.” As was suggested in this paper and by Ray Schmitt, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "Assessing the potential of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion(OTEC)", OTEC could provide this benefit. -
tmac57 at 01:18 AM on 1 February 2013Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Dana-the link to Fig. 1 is broken.Heads up -
vrooomie at 01:06 AM on 1 February 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Bernard J, I've sent your words, in #19 to an Aussie friend of mine, who is *consumed* with hatred of Julia Gillard, and who has switched to the Liberal Party, in order to help Tony Abbott take over the reins of power. I'm saddened beyond words, but also agree that likely, we are going to kill a majority of ourselves off before learning. Oh, well...we will have tried, like J. P.McMurty in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." Maybe, at the point we've "extinctified" 90% of us off, perhaps one of the survivors, those who listened to the scientists, will be able to toss the sink through the wall of denial.... -
bvangerven at 00:57 AM on 1 February 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
I have recently read an interesting book – “Revolutie met Recht”. It is also available in English: “Revolution Justified” written by Roger Cox, a dutch lawyer. Although it describes the situation from a European perspective, I think it is interesting for everyone. Cox basically claims: democracy has failed. The largest multinational corporations (many of which belong to the fossil fuel industry) have an income that is bigger than the income of many nations, and therefore they also represent a bigger power than nations. This causes governments to become dependent on multinationals. Governments should represent the people who voted for them, but instead they only defend the interests of multinational corporations. Therefore, we must give up all hope that international politics will ever result in binding agreements to fight climate change. Instead, we should turn to the law. Governments have received the mandate from the public to defend the population against internal and external threats, and there is no bigger threat than climate change– perhaps it is even the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. We should sue our governments if they don’t take appropriate actions to protect their citizens. Whereas in the media the impression is given that the climate debate is not decided yet, in a lawsuit the scientific evidence is all that counts. In court, the IPCC is considered the ultimate authority on climate science. There is more than enough legal basis to win such a lawsuit. -
vrooomie at 23:52 PM on 31 January 2013New Research Finds that Most Monthly Heat Records Today are Due to Global Warming
rab, may I suggest reading this? The Y-Axis of Evil -
Tom Curtis at 21:44 PM on 31 January 2013New Research Finds that Most Monthly Heat Records Today are Due to Global Warming
If only I had a dollar for every time Skeptical Science was accused of bias for faithfully reproducing a graph from a paper under discussion (in this case our figure 1, which is to say, Comou et al's figure 5), I'ld be rich. In this particular instance, I cannot help but notice that the recommended solution (a log plot) is less easy for the general public to understand, and has the effect of deflating the very large ratios of heat to cold records seen at the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty first century. But I guess that would be the point, wouldn't it! -
rab at 16:05 PM on 31 January 2013New Research Finds that Most Monthly Heat Records Today are Due to Global Warming
Plotting Figure 1 as you've done leaves you open to the charge that the graph unfairly emphasizes heat records over cold ones. For example, a ratio of 1/2 is as much of an effect on the cold side as a ratio of 2 is on the warm side. But 1/2 barely shows up whereas 2 looks like a big effect. To get round this, the vertical axis should be a log plot. -
curiousd at 15:38 PM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
This may be pushing the no political comments policy, but IMO, in the U.S. there will be effective action once things get bad enough (hopefully dust bowlism of the American Midwest will suffice) that permanently installed "World War Two Type Rules" for climate change action will be invoked. I will stop at severely rationing what is for most people a vacation luxury - round trip intercontinental jet flights. There is a long laundry list of such actions that would be necessary, but are no more draconian than done during WW2. There is already a flicker of this....the folks whose ocean view of Cape Cod would be terribly marred by windmills may now have to deal. See http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/us/wind-farm-faa/index.html -
Bernard J. at 13:36 PM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Dagold. There was a TV advertisement broadcast in Australia back in the 1990s (or perhaps earlier) where a grandfather and his small grandson are walking into the middle distance on a barren plain, and the grandson says something to the effect of "grandpa, what happened to all the trees?", to which the grandfather responds with "when I was a lad we had these things called forests...". He followed with a description of the animals that lived in the forests, and I seem to recall the boy asking why the forests were allowed to be destroyed. At the end there was the inevitable message from the NGO that commissioned the ad, but I have to admit that the tail end of the content escapes me at the moment. Perhaps someone here has a better recollection of the piece, and might even be able to locate the video itself. I'd be interested to actually see it again, and it would probably be a good template for your project. -
dana1981 at 13:28 PM on 31 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Yes, sparse OHC data are a challenge. It's interesting that for example when Levitus et al. (2012) came out, climate contrarians were saying the error bars were too small and OHC data are still highly uncertain. Now suddenly they seem to think the uncertainties are inconsequential. In his new 'ten tests' document, Matt Ridley said that aerosols and ocean heat uptake "are now well understood". My jaw nearly hit the floor when I read that. Personally I'm more comfortable with paleoclimate-based sensitivity estimates, the main problem there being that feedbacks in different climate states may not be the same, as I mentioned in this post. And of course there are significant uncertainties in forcing and temperature data further back in time, but the results always seem to be fairly consistent (PALAEOSENS being the latest example). -
Bernard J. at 13:27 PM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
gws at #13:Utterly disastrous and calamitous climate disruption will make sure that we drastically lower our consumption and population. The former requires preemptive action, history teaches us that the latter is more likely to become true.
With respect to effective and timely action to address human-caused global warming, I've thought for several years now that your alternative description of cause and effect is inevitable. A significant nail in the coffin will be the likely result of the Australian federal election on 14 September this year, which will result in a government that intends to reverse, by effectively a decade or two at least, action to mitigate carbon pollution. I hope that there is serious, significant, and prominent scientific input in the coming debate, although Australia's media (including much of the ABC's news outlets) doesn't want logical, objective truth - they want a story, and the best story would be to change the government. And when the climate is subsequently changed all the more for having changed government and installing a cadre of climate change denialists, the Australian media will be delighted at the inevitable smörgåsbord of climate disaster stories - up until the day that their jobs and/or their lives are affected by it... -
michael sweet at 12:46 PM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Witsend: Go comment on the thread about renewable baseline power. People who have looked seriously into this issue come to the opposite conclusion you do. Perhaps you could learn more about the available data. -
michael sweet at 12:43 PM on 31 January 2013Renewables can't provide baseload power
The Los Angeles Times had another article on solar power in Hawaii published January 2013. Apparently they get 25% of their power in some parts of Hawaii from rooftop solar. They will be the leaders in developing how to manage this type of power source. They install more solar in Hawaii because grid power is much more expensive than in the rest of the country. This article suggests that nighttime baseline is about 30% of peak daytime usage. Hawaii has trouble with surges in power due to their small grid size (each island has a separate grid). These issues would not apply to the mainland. -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:59 AM on 31 January 2013Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen
dana1981 @ 16, Daniel Bailey emailed the Ridley GWPF PDF to me - thanks, Daniel. What a crock! I am an interested spectator of average intelligence, not a scientist, but even I could debunk most of what the document contains. The front cover lists the GWPF Board of Trustees and Academic Advisory Council: why am I not surprised at the rubbish they advocate? -
curiousd at 11:38 AM on 31 January 20132012 Shatters the US Temperature Record. Fox, Watts, and Spencer Respond by Denying Reality
I am taking a different approach to digging out these two datasets myself. I have now a PNG of the version 2.5. I also have found a quote from a NOAA site to wit: "The US HCN version 2 monthly data will continue to be updated through 2012 and will be available in static form thereafter." So I will contact a public relations e mail at NOAA I found and ask for the version 2 for CONUS 2012, as per stated. -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:38 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
scientists tend to invoke the "principle of least astonishment"
Whereas nature impartially invokes the principle of "cause and effect". Perhaps scientists should emphasise the most likely outcomes suggested by their research, rather than the least astonishing and not downplay the worst possible outcomes. Policy makers need accurate information, in order to increase the chances of making effective policies. The public need to be woken up, but I despair of discovering how to do this. -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:12 AM on 31 January 2013Australia's Great Barrier Reef: Last Chance to See?
For its part, the Australian Government appears to not be genuinely concerned about the ultimate fate of the Great Barrier Reef. Simultaneously, it has expressed an intention to save the reef, whilst planning to greatly increase fossil fuel exports from sea ports adjacent to the GBR.
This exactly parallels the government's approach to global warming: paying lip-service to CO₂ reductions, while pressing hard on the accelerator of fossil fuel exports. Sadly, they talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. I guess this reflects public attitudes here in Oz. Homo Stupidus stupidus. -
amhartley at 10:47 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
As a statistical decision theorist, I’m not convinced that ESLD should stop or even be reduced. The optimistic under-estimations of sea level rise, global warming, etc., identified by Brysse et al. are all exercises, albeit informal, in risk minimization (here, risk = expected loss). To explain: If one knows that an (optimistic) under-prediction of, say, 1% of the effects of climate change will result in a loss of x, whereas a (pessimistic) over-prediction of 1% will result in a loss of Ax, where A>1, then it takes a systematic under-prediction to minimize risk, & the degree of under-prediction needed depends on A. Of course, if individual climate scientists were the only ones to suffer when their predictions are wrong, then A would probably equal 1, so that they would want to report simply the most likely future effects as such. However, one could argue that the entire society will suffer more from over-predictions than from under-predictions, at least in the short- to mid-term, since over-predictions lead to those charges of “crying wolf” & thus a loss of confidence in climate science. So, ESLD might not be so bad, & might even minimize risk? -
dana1981 at 09:37 AM on 31 January 2013Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen
Doug @15 - you're not missing anything good. But there will be a link in the blog post we do on the list. -
dagold at 09:01 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
I am shooting a 3 minute video (having it shot by a filmmaker) in which a grandparent is apologizing to his grandchild for the planet we are leaving them (I am using as my rough baseline the potential 4C world the Pottsdam Institute/World Bank report finds is possible by the 2060s). I intend to shoot multiple videos with similar themes. (Robert Redford, for example, is a grandparent. He WILL (I declare) be in one of the vids once they catch on). The vid will be followed by a short narrated slide-show backing the dialogue with scientific findings, descriptions of the 'coming world', satellite film of Arctic ice melting, etc. If anyone would be interested in vetting the 1 page script and slideshow, please email me and I'll be glad to send it along. my email: dagold56@hotmail.com -
tamikenn57 at 08:48 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Vroomie and Shoyemore thank you for the links. -
Doug Hutcheson at 08:46 AM on 31 January 2013Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen
Martin Lack @ 13, following that link, I get "ERROR 403: Forbidden". It seems my computer is the common denominator, as others have obviously not had the problems I am having accessing this document. Sigh. -
gws at 08:13 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
"... only by drastically lowering our consumption and population could we hope to stave off utterly disastrous and calamitous climate disruption." Hmmh, more like this way I guess: Utterly disastrous and calamitous climate disruption will make sure that we drastically lower our consumption and population. The former requires preemptive action, history teaches us that the latter is more likely to become true. -
witsend at 08:04 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
When I was in West Va for a mountaintop removal mining shutdown protest, the miners (in a very suspiciously well-organized terroristic counter-demonstration) would shout at us things like, don't like electricity? use candles! This is something deniers understand that most climate activists and scientists won't admit (and it weakens their case) which is that there really is no change that we can replace the concentrated energy of billions of years of sunlight in fossilized fuels with so-called renewable sources. It does not compute. So, since activists and scientists have been falsely promising the public that our industrial party can continue uninterrupted if only we install solar panels and wind farms, the message has been rejected...because it's just false. It almost certainly wouldn't work anyway because it's too late - but people who know this, and who know about amplifying feedbacks, have a moral obligation to state the truth - only by drastically lowering our consumption and population could we hope to stave off utterly disastrous and calamitous climate disruption. I won't hold my breath! -
gws at 07:01 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Sorry to spoil the good vibe, but if the past is anything like prologue, the next IPCC report is not likely to be strongly worded. The process does not allow for that, I think. The strong words have to come from us scientists directly, more actively than passively as has been mostly the case. In addition, people who, like my better half, don't like to hear or see doom and gloom, and the mainstream press of course, would have to finally wake up to this unprecedented challenge ... sooo, not remotely likely to happen (at least in the US). I cannot read the Oreskes&Conway article from this wireless, but I venture to say its contents may be viewed as ... "prophetic"? It is hard to "do the right thing" when you do not know what the future brings. These days it feels even harder although (because?) we do know what the future brings. Alas, I think it will get much much worse before humanity collectively works on the solution, which is why humanity will survive, but society as we know it definitely not. And as Naomi Klein wrote, that is a, if not the main reason the denier movement exists. They fight a fight against physics they cannot win, ultimately, and unequivocally, destroying along the way the very thing they care most about. Go figure. -
Bart Verheggen at 06:52 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Same here: I've cited Ramanathan and Feng's (2009) simple climate diagnosis often, assuming (like they did) that equilibrium sensitivity enters into the calculation of the post-Industrial energy budget. Nic Lewis' estimate (at Bishop Hill) takes the same approach, also assuming it is equilibrium sensitivity he's getting. Problem is that for the past 150 years, no OHC data are available. But still, also for the past 40 years, with the decreased estimate of aerosol forcing in the draft AR5 report, the resulting effective sensitivity would be smaller than it is using a stronger aerosol forcing. There could be a lot of potential explanations for that, but one key aspect which I don't have a good answer to, nor have I found one, is: How much would we expect the effective sensitivity to differ from the equilibrium sensitivity, and why? I think the key must be in the fact that while the system is out of balance and in transition, the ocean heat uptake of the past decades is not necessarily reflecting the extent to which the climate is currently out of balance, because it takes time to warm up and catch up to the current imbalance/forcing. Just thinking out loud here. -
shoyemore at 06:33 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
vroomie #7, Great video. David Suzuki does a great short video on exponential growth as well. See here: David Suzuki on Exponential Growth: The Test Tube -
dana1981 at 06:02 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Bart @19 - the concept of effective sensitivity is fairly new to me, and does seem rather unclear even amongst many climate scientists. It seems like the default assumption is to treat it as equivalent to equilibrium sensitivity, as long as sufficiently long timespans of data (~150 years) are analyzed. But if the estimated value can change by 50% just by including another 10 years of data, something is wrong. It may be more of a problem on the measurement side, with deeper ocean heat accumulation being neglected, in combination with uncertainties in the forcing data. So the issue may not be that feedbacks change over time, but rather that measurements of the necessary variables are not sufficiently precise for effective sensitivity calculations to be very accurate. I think that's still an open question, but I would caution against assuming that these effective sensitivity results are accurate estimates of equilibrium sensitivity. -
witsend at 05:39 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Naomi Oreskes explores exactly this problem in a fascinating essay from the fictional perspective of science historians in the future, basically asking, what were they thinking with the reticence and caution when the fate of our species (and most others) was obviously at stake? Excerpts here: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/01/more-research-is-needed-not.html -
Bart Verheggen at 05:36 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Dana, Re the difference between effective and equilibrium sensitivity you write: "The two are also the same if climate feedbacks do not change over time" Is that the only difference though? I know that equilibrium sensitivity (and thus the strengths of the feedbacks) depends on temperature, but this dependency is rather weak at the current global temps (it becomes stronger for a much warmer or much colder planet). So why then would feedbacks change significantly over time, if it's not due to a temperature dependence of the sensitivity? I thought that part of the difference may be that while the planet is out of energy balance and the radiative forcing is increasing, that catching up with that imbalance takes time, during which the forcing has again increased, causing yet another build-up of the imbalance. Ie it is an iterative process, and the current ocean heat uptake does not give the full imbalance that we may eventually expect. I'm not sure if I'm on the right track here, since I'm incorporating the future increase in forcing, which may or may not be correct. I haven't come across a good explanation of the difference between effective and equilibrium sensitivity yet; the IPCC definition of the former are not very clear either in my mind. Many authors have in the past assumed them to be the same (eg Schwartz, Ramanathan and Feng). So this seems to be quite a source of confusion. current ocean heat uptake is for some reason not the full measure of the -
r.pauli at 05:35 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Indeed. Thank you so much for this breakthrough posting. A concept worthy of careful scrutiny And I refer us to Oreskes and Conway's peer reviewed speculative fiction article: The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future Authors’ note: Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540–2073); the dilemma being addressed is how we–the children of the Enlightenment–failed to act on robust information about climate change and knowledge of the damaging events that were about to unfold. Our historian concludes that a second Dark Age had fallen on Western civilization, in which denial and self-deception, rooted in an ideological taxation on “free”markets, disabled the world’s powerful nations in the face of tragedy. Moreover, the scientists who best understood the problem were hamstrung by their own cultural practices, which demanded an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind–even those involving imminent threats. Here, our future historian, living in the Second People’s Republic of China, recounts the events of the Period of the Penumbra (1988–2073) that led to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2074). http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DAED_a_00184 -
dana1981 at 04:53 AM on 31 January 2013Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen
Ridley's new list of '10 tests' is pretty horrid, full of denialist blog-based misinformation. We'll address it in a future blog post. -
vrooomie at 04:18 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
ubrew12, you are most assuredly correct: This video series is one I refer people to, all the time, in order to correct their poor understanding of the exponential function. -
ubrew12 at 03:52 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
They say the most tragic thing about humankind is its inability to understand the exponential function. This IPCC prediction-bias may in part be an example of 'linear thinking' at work. -
Martin Lack at 01:53 AM on 31 January 2013Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen
#11 For the avoidance of any doubt, Doug, the Matt Ridley document is here: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/01/Ridley-Lukewarmer-Ten-Tests.pdf -
Lionel A at 01:26 AM on 31 January 2013Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen
It looks like the GWPF have repositioned this document: There is a link on their home page along with a claim that 'James Hansen Turns Climate Sceptic' which turns out to be a pastiche of comment about that recent study examined here with the article 'Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome'. The article was originally on the The Daily Caller as Norway climate study sparks debate over global warming urgency with plenty of spin from Pat Michaels. The article does not imply that Hansen is newly sceptical about climate change as the GWPF head suggests. -
shoyemore at 00:32 AM on 31 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
vroomie #4, You Martin Luther King quote reminds me of Winston Churchill's remark that America always does the right thing - after it has tried everything else. Let's hope that time has come around again. With American leadership, action on climate change has a good shot. Without it, we are probably screwed. -
vrooomie at 23:41 PM on 30 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Amen, Bernard J, at @3. The more I read and study this issue, the more deeply concerned I become, and even being an earth scientist, I think a *loud* clarion call is needed. The 'herd,' as you perfectly put it, is simply content to go along to get along. Cornel West, on Tavis Smiley recently, said essentially the same thing. In many ways, we at a climatological 1967, a real turnign point, where what we do--we, extended to all of Western civilisation--is goign to be harshly judged by future generations, if we fail to do the right thing. Martin Luther King once quipped, it's always the right time to do the right thing. The right thing is to keep on battling back the misinformers and telling this story to all. -
Bernard J. at 23:23 PM on 30 January 2013Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
I've said it before and I'll say it again... It's for this reason I feel that if AR5 isn't strenuously worded in the most vehement terms, and if governments don't finally stand up in response and act with serious intent, all future assessment reports will simply become catalogues of humanity's path to civilisation collapse and ecological blitskrieg. The herd really needs to wake up. -
Bernard J. at 23:15 PM on 30 January 2013Australia's Great Barrier Reef: Last Chance to See?
I have no doubt that the Reef is on an inevitable trajectory to destruction, for all the reasons detailed in this comprehensive piece. I also suspect that in the next few decades the decline will begin to resemble that of the Arctic sea ice over the last few years, where all but the most pessimistic were caught off-guard by the rapidity of the decline as it progressed.
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