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Search for dana1981

Comments matching the search dana1981:

More than 100 comments found. Only the most recent 100 have been displayed.

CO2 effect is saturated

OldHickory at 11:56 AM on 6 August, 2022

After reviewing several papers on the topic, I can only conclude that the water vapor feedback loop (from Climate Myth 36) is not possible due to saturation of the CO₂ greenhouse effect. As noted in The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters, the saturation length for the (most important) 14.99 micron CO₂ absorption line at a partial pressure of 0.0004 atm is about 18 meters. Also, the author dana1981 of the rebuttals for this Is the CO₂ effect saturated? forum stated the claim is true that adding more CO₂ won't absorb much more IR radiation at the surface.

Now I realize that the bottom layer of the atmosphere (near the surface) will warm the layers above it, but that is irrelevant regarding the water vapor feedback loop. In this case, we are only interested in what warming occurs at altitudes where there is still liquid or solid state H₂O available in order to complete the loop.

In general, we can expect that adding more CO₂ to the atmosphere will increase the CO₂ greenhouse warming, but at altitudes well above that which would result in a CO₂ "control knob" or disruptions to the weather or climate. Therefore, atmospheric H₂O is in fact the dominant and controlling GHG and Climate Myth 36 actually isn't a myth.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #21 2022

One Planet Only Forever at 02:45 AM on 30 May, 2022

"Homo bolidus" was indeed presented by you in your comment on the 2012 SkS post by dana1981 "Lindzen, Happer and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun".

Revisiting that item highlights how difficult it is for public opinion to be 'improved to reduce harm done' by attempts to get people to have increased awareness and improved understanding the evidence based fuller story related to harm done on any issue. So much of the harmful misunderstanding in 2012 is alive and kicking harder today.

The legacy dominance of utilitarian beliefs that 'harm done can be dismissed or justified by claims that some people benefit from the harmful unsustainable activity and associated developed harmful misunderstandings' is hard to correct. People motivated by competitive pursuit of higher status can be very reluctant to learn that their current status or desired ways of obtaining more benefit are harmful obtained and unsustainable. Giving up potential for more benefit and making amends for harm done can be contrary to their liking. And they will readily believe and support purveyors of harmful misleading messages. They can even be seen to become more irrationally determined to believe that 'increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and the required corrections' is a political ideology that is harmfully trying to 'cancel their type of people'.

It is tragic that a harmfully misled minority can have so much influence due to 'Defending and demanding Freedom to believe what they want and do as they please'.

Why and How to Electrify Everything

David-acct at 12:16 PM on 12 May, 2022

Dana1981

your link to the heatpumps indicate they only work down to -10f & -13f

"Fujitsu cold climate heat pumps (AOU line) have a lot in common with Mitsubishi’s. But instead of delivering 100% of their capacity down to 5F, all but the smallest Fujitsu models offer 75-95% of their capacity. They’re rated to work down to -10F, just above Mitsubishi’s -13F."

That doesnt do much good when places like MN, MT, ND, SD regularly have 1-2 weeks at a time with -20f . Further

CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused

Feneley at 22:16 PM on 6 January, 2019

The arguments presented are helpful and fairly comprehensive, but I was surprised the author, dana1981, did not address what, in my view, is the most important scientific publication on this issue: “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature” by Ole Humlum, Kjell Stordahl and Jan-Erik Solheim in Global and Planetary Change 100: 51-69, 2013. These authors showed, using published temperature time series from multiple sources and global CO2 and anthropogenic CO2 data that, for the years 1980 to 2011:

1. There was a good temporal correlation between global CO2 and ocean temp, land temp, global temp and lower troposphere temp BUT the global CO2 FOLLOWED the ocean temp, then the land temp, then the lower troposphere temp, in that order, with lags of 9-12 months.

2. In contrast, there was poor temporal correlation between anthropogenic CO2 emissions and both global CO2 and temperature.

3. While anthropogenic CO2 was emitted overwhelmingly from the northern hemisphere, the time sequence of ocean temperature variation commenced in the Southern Hemisphere, reasonably close to the equator, then spread north and south to the poles, always preceding the global CO2 time sequence.

These carefully determined temporal sequences and correlations, based squarely on the published temperature and CO2 data, clearly indicate a causal sequence in which global temperature changes PRECEDE global CO2 changes by 9-12 months, commencing with changes in the ocean surface temperature, then the land temperature, then the lower troposphere temperature. These observations are the complete OPPOSITE of what should be expected if anthropogenic CO2 emissions were driving both the global CO2 levels and then causing a secondary increase in temperatures.

So, while I appreciate the energy balance and other arguments advanced above, causality requires a demonstrated temporal sequence of changes that the data I describe here simply do not support. I would be very interested in your explanation for these observations.

California, battered by global warming’s weather whiplash, is fighting to stop it

newairly at 21:03 PM on 16 May, 2018

Not working Win XP and latest Firefox.

Only shows part of this article summary after the first on the home page.

California, battered by global warming’s weather whiplash, is fighting to stop it
Posted on 14 May 2018 by dana1981

Global warming stopped in ~~1998~~, ~~1995~~, ~~2002~~, ~~2007~~, ~~2010~~, ????

villabolo at 09:24 AM on 4 March, 2018

Hey guys at SkS, this article is attributed to Dana1981 but was written by yours truly villabolo. :-)

Trump and the GOP may be trying to kneecap climate research

chriskoz at 08:37 AM on 4 December, 2016

john warner@13,

Please note that dana1981 is a man. Everyone on this site knows Dana because of his invaluable contributions as science communicator and scientist with growing resume of peer reviewed publications.

If you don't know Dana yet, you can easily get to know him by looking here or his numerous photos. And please avoid the pitfalls of English language & never again refer to him as "she".

Insight into the scientific credibility of The Guardian climate coverage

chriskoz at 11:27 AM on 19 October, 2016

I'm happy to find out that both articles found to be unscientific in this review:

False alarmism by Wadhams and Denialism by Lovelock were not written by our SkS authors dana1981 nor John Abraham. I don't know if their writing have been scrutiniesd here but for my part, I praise them because I always find them accurate and informative. Thank you Dana & John for your contribution to both TheGardian and SkS.

How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?

Locane at 09:46 AM on 29 September, 2016

Quick question for the author dana1981 - is the purple band in the GHG Emissions flowchart representative of ALL food-producing agriculture; IE plants (corn, rice, fruit, etc) AND animals? Or just animals?

If it's all, does that mean that raising animals for meat consumption is 5.1% of the total in the world GHG chart?

Thanks!

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize

tonychachere at 10:19 AM on 17 August, 2016

Dana1981,
What is the solution to knock down CO2 emissions? Humans are not going to give up cheap, reliable power. You post plenty about reasons to cut CO2 emissions, but never any solutions.

I am quite certain that at your job location, and your house that you depend on reliable power. Do you use any alternative energy as a source of power for your computing, heating/cooling needs?

What you need to know about the NOAA global warming faux pause paper

KR at 06:05 AM on 10 June, 2015

dana1981 - It's my understanding that V6 of the UAH data uses a completely new method for calculating lower tropospheric temperatures, resulting in lower LT trends. Dr. Spencer describes the differences as follows:

(1) a decrease in the global-average lower tropospheric (LT) temperature trend from +0.140 C/decade to +0.114 C/decade (Dec. ’78 through Mar. ’15); and (2) the geographic distribution of the LT trends, including higher spatial resolution.

There are also differences in how they calculate diurnal drift adjustments for the satellites, particularly NOAA-15.

The previous method for LT temperatures used multiple angles with individual weighting functions, the new method uses a combination of multiple channels at a single location to derive LT temperatures - with a pre-processing step of averaging all view angles.

As such, I believe that V6 LT temperature estimates cannot be directly compared to V5.6 or earlier, as they are not the same computation at all. The LT code previously released is now outdated, and it remains to be seen when/if the current code will be released.

Given past actions by the UAH team (including the Spencer/Braswell 2011 low sensitivity debacle leading to editor resignations) I find myself a bit suspicious of the reduced LT trend; we'll have to wait and see how it stands up to examination. In the meantime it would seem imprudent to be making policy decisions on a new and untested methodology.

Fiddling with global warming conspiracy theories while Rome burns

McMeatFace53 at 04:26 AM on 12 February, 2015

Great post dana1981. Extremely informative.

Just to comment about the Christopher Booker article, he references a person by the name of Paul Homewood. I believe this is the same Paul Homewood who is a retired accountant and has no formalized training in the climate change realm. My question is why has nobody attacked this person's credibility in providing key stats to Christopher Booker's article? Paul Homewood has no advanced degrees, no formalized training, has no peer reviewed articles (that we know of), but the deniers take these findings as gospel. It is the equivalent of someone who is a stock broker, but reads articles on Web MD. Does that make the stock broker an expert in the medical field versus someone who has been in medical school for an extensive amount of time? Should that person be allowed to prescribe medication? This source would be crucified if this was under circumstances.

Antarctica is gaining ice

Composer99 at 12:55 PM on 25 September, 2014

Tom Curtis @285: Deniers making themselves look the fool is well and good, however enough exposure to the same commenter who trots out the same shtick, over and over, eventually just wears out my patience.

Skeptical Science does a good job of not being overrun with deniers in the comments (as compared to, say, dana1981's blog at The Guardian) but even so I am sure I am safe in assuming there will be no shortage of deniers posting here to maintain a more-or-less constant flow of foolishness (to say nothing of any foolishness posted by yours truly).

-----

To keep this comment on topic, I did a Google Scholar search with the terms 'antarctic sea ice history' and found a few papers that might be of interest when it comes to Antarctic sea ice and its extent (especially in light of jetfuel's claims with respect to same):

- Gersonde and Zielinski 2000 (link), which reconstructs Antarctic sea ice during the late Quarternary

- Crosta et al 2004 (link), which does the same in a geographically limited area (the Southern Ocean - Indian Ocean boundary, effectively)

- Rayner et al 2003, already referred to by Tom Curtis upthread (via Tamino - Tamino's blog post has a link to the paper).

These papers are unfortunately behind paywalls for me, but as I said they may be of interest when thinking about the current state of Antarctic sea ice, especially any part of the G&Z and Crosta reconstructions occurring in the Holocene.

My apologies in advance if someone else has already shared one or both papers in a previous comment on this thread. (I have performed a cursory search and believe that not to be the case, though.)

Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature

Russ R. at 04:06 AM on 20 September, 2014

Perhaps the final answer on whether Level 2 ratings endorse >50%:

"We can't assume that just because a paper says "anthropogenic global warming" that they agree the human contribution is >50%, but they have explcitly endorsed that humans are contributing. Thus they go in category #2.
The way I see the final paper is that we'll conclude 'There's an x% consensus supporting the AGW theory, and y% explicitly put the human contribution at >50%'."
2012-02-16 05:51:23
dana1981

It would appear that x = 97.1 and y = 1.6

(snip)

Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature

Russ R. at 06:59 AM on 18 September, 2014

Sorry, was trying to respond to the moderators comments @312, but for some reason my last comment was repeated.

I'll try again... shorter this time:

"Please note that the OP is written by John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli. Cook is the lead author of Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Cook et al, 2013, Environmental Research Letters. Nuccitelli is a co-author of the ERL paper. Are you stating that Cook and Nuccitelli deliberately misrepresented the findings of the ERL paper in the OP?"

No, I'm not refering to the OP (i.e. "Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature" Posted on 16 May 2013 by dana1981, John Cook).

I'm specifically refering to another post (and subsequent comments), The 97% v the 3% – just how much global warming are humans causing? Posted on 15 September 2014 by dana1981.

Dana writes:

"96–97% of climate experts in arguing that humans have been the dominant cause of global warming since 1950"

and

"96–97% of climate science experts and peer-reviewed research agree that humans are the main cause of global warming."

These claims are not supported by Cook et al (2013), since only 1.6% of the reviewed papers stated "that humans are causing most of global warming".

Whether the overstatement is deliberate or not, I don't care to speculate. But it is a misrepresentation regardless.

In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy

Terranova at 22:41 PM on 17 June, 2014

Dana1981,

Three points for which I would like to see some clarification.

There is evidence that BC residents are crossing the border to the US to buy cheaper gas. From the Statistics Canada website found here, the numbers can be run and clearly show a huge increase in "one-day return trips to the US from British Columbia, by automobile". This does not appear to be factored in your calculations.

How is the program administered? There have to administrators, supervisors, beancounters, etc... to manage the input and output of tax money. These people have to paid. Can you explain the percentage of the taxes that must be siphoned off to pay this people?

Where is the data to back up the following claim of yours? "In a key side-benefit, because other air pollutant emissions are reduced as fossil fuels are phased out, the report projects that 13,000 premature deaths would be prevented annually after 10 years, with a cumulative 227,000 American lives saved over 20 years."

Thank you in advance.

Climate contrarian backlash - a difficult lesson for scientific journals to learn

chriskoz at 19:18 PM on 16 April, 2014

John Vonderlin@8,

You assert that you occupy "different part of AGW spectrum" but you said nothing substantial.

For example I'm interested in your argument in response to "Wheels OC" (sic!): 'A number of other blogs, mainly Contrarian, have dissected this issue "ad nauseum."' Please give me an example together with your short comment as to what that example shows. Note that a short comment is required per this site's policy - "naked links" are not accepted.

Your responses to One Planet Only Forever and dana1981 appear to be not in good faith, but rather ad hominem trolls so I'm not interested in them.

But I note hewever, that in case of your response to dana1981, you're engaging in the nitpicking spell/grammar checks, while on the other hand you mispelled WheelsOC's name. While I don't engage in spelling nitpicks, people names are an exception to me. IMO, the care of name spelling is a sign of respect towards others on the internet. So I understand Lewandowsky who suggests the same with his "Say whatever you want about me, but be sure to spell my name right." You seem to denigrate/not understand the issue of person's name respect. No surprise, because you've denigrated WheelsOC's name in the same message.

GWPF optimism on climate sensitivity is ill-founded

Russ R. at 03:37 AM on 11 March, 2014

dana1981 @16,

Thank you for clarifying.

Kevin C @19

Has any similar analysis been done on the CMIP5 ensemble, to show the correlation (or lack thereof) between estimated ECS, and historical values for total anthropogenic forcing and aerosol forcing?

Tom Dayton @20,

Models are but one "line of evidence", as are observational studies. Currently, they point in different directions. Not hugely different... still within a likely range, but different enough to be cause for disagreement.

I expect that over time as the observational record grows and the models improve, that difference will resolve and a consensus will emerge. Until then, everyone will simply have to agree to disagree.

Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk

chriskoz at 21:17 PM on 7 March, 2014

I concur with Tom Curtis@54, that the article characterises Judith Curry accurately. Especially the double-negation part. JC has been shown many times that she recently abandened the science and just plays the "uncertainty games".

Russ R.@37 claim:

Cook and dana1981, [...] are misrepresenting Judith Curry
(emphasis original)

is an absurd, given the welth of examples showing her abuse of double-negation. She likes to use the double-negation language and often contradicts herself in the process. On the other hand, I haven't seen any double-negation statements in IPCC. The cartoon's portrayal of JC as double-nagating obfuscator, is very accurate, in-line with the evidence I linked above.

Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk

Russ R. at 06:03 AM on 7 March, 2014

KR,

"You have indeed been pointed to a number of studies (here and also here), as per my previous post, discussing carbon pricing wrt the Federal deficit, energy costs, gas prices, household impact, discount rates, etc."

All of which are no doubt excellent arguments against "doing nothing". I'm not arguing with them because I'm not, nor have I been, arguing in favour of "doing nothing". As I wrote above: "Each action has to be evaluated on its own merits, and not all actions are mutually exclusive. Some actions will rank higher than others, and the "do nothing" option will rank somewhere in that continuum. Where "do nothing" ranks is currently unknown. I think it's a low probability that "do nothing" ranks highest, but that probability does exist."

So you're wasting your time and effort arguing, and I'm not interested in wasting mine doing likewise.

However, nothing in any of your comments responds to my original comment to John Cook and dana1981, who are misrepresenting Judith Curry by quoting her out of context, and drawing a cartoon to attack an argument that she never actually made.

If you can show me where Curry has ever actually said or written, without qualification, that "We should do nothing about climate change", I would concede that the quotation is not a misrepresentation.

Until then...

Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk

Composer99 at 04:51 AM on 7 March, 2014

Saith Russ R.:

I would be more than happy to show you real-world evidence of the public having been misled about the costs of mitigating global warming, only to discover the true costs once the policy was enacted.

I don't know what else Russ R. has dug up, beyond the articles regarding Spain and Ontario that Russ R. shared in the re-post of Dr Abraham's The Guardian blog (the one he shares with Skeptical Science's dana1981). I'll be interested in seeing them (if CBDunkerson requests them).

Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk

Russ R. at 02:50 AM on 5 March, 2014

dana1981 and John Cook,

First, to set the record straight, you omitted the first half of Judith Curry's comment:

""All we can do is be as objective as we can about the evidence and help the politicians evaluate proposed solutions," she says. If that means doing nothing, "I can't say myself that that isn't the best solution."

Note the word "if", which is rather important to the context of the quotation.

Second, "doing nothing" can absolutely be the best (i.e. most rational) solution, if the expected costs of taking action exceed the discounted present value of the uncertain future net benefits that would result from the action. Again, note the word "if".

Lastly, this never was a binary question of "do something" or "do nothing". There are countless actions which could be taken, each of which has its own expected costs, projected future benefits, probability of success, and uncertainties around each of these. Each action has to be evaluated on its own merits, and not all actions are mutually exclusive. Some actions will rank higher than others, and the "do nothing" option will rank somewhere in that continuum.

Where "do nothing" ranks is currently unknown. I think it's a low probability that "do nothing" ranks highest, but that probability does exist.

If the evidence and an objective evaluation of proposed solutions shows that "do nothing" is indeed the best option, then I'd be in favour of doing nothing (which is exactly what Curry said). Why wouldn't you?

MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming

Russ R. at 06:26 AM on 15 February, 2014

dana1981,

I'm not sure whether or not you realize that it is an entirely reasonable position to agree with both of the "consensus" arguments (i.e. that the planet has warmed, and that human activities are responsible), and still not support "climate policy to address the problem".

The "97% consensus" that's you're reporting has nothing to say regarding any of the following, each of which is an essential link in the chain of reasoning that corrective policy action must be taken.

How much will GHG emissions rise in a "business as usual" scenario?
How much will atmospheric concentrations rise for that level of emissions?
How sensitive is the climate to increased GHG concentrations?
How long will it take for changes to manifest?
How will those changes impact ecosystems, economies, societies and individuals (considering both positive and negative impacts)?
What is the net cost / benefit of the expected changes (allowing for the possiblity and costs of adaptation)?
What policy actions are politically feasible and economically viable?
At best, how much can those actions actually reduce emissions below "business as usual"?
With what probability of success?
Over what time frame?
At what cost, and with what unintended side-effects?
And ultimately... will the probability-adjusted future benefits of policy action (discounted to present value), exceed the real direct and indirect costs of taking action, and will those costs and benefits be distributed equitably?

According to your definitions, I'm part of the "97% Consensus", but I still do not support the vast majority of proposed "climate policies" because I have numerous doubts relating to the dozen issues I've listed above.

FWIW, there are small number of "climate policies" that I would support even if climate change was not a problem, and they had no impact on emissions (e.g. ending energy subsidies).

Climate scientist Dessler to US Senate: 'Climate change is a clear and present danger'

rockytom at 03:59 AM on 22 January, 2014

Dana1981.

Thanks for all you do for climate science and for excellent posts here and the Guardian. One minor correction in the abopve post: the IPCC AR5, The Physical Science Basis, was released on September 30, 2013, not 2014. Thr remainder of the AR5 will indeed be released in 2014. The 2013 AR5 is a draft but despite instructions to "not quote, cite, or distribute" it seems that many are ignoring this because the report is all we have of AR5 at present.

4 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming

Ruurd Lof at 17:06 PM on 26 November, 2013

@Dana1981 Thanks for the link to the original discussion. I missed that one.

The Other Bias

Timothy Chase at 03:10 AM on 17 November, 2013

Just below Figure 1 a paragraph begins "The UK Met Office have developed a very sophisticated analysis to address these biases."

"very sophisticated analysis" is hyperlinked to the main page of Skeptical Science. Two places that seem more appropriate are:

First Look at HadCRUT4
Posted on 18 April 2012 by dana1981
http://www.skepticalscience.com/first-look-at-hadcrut4.html

HadCRUT4: A detailed look
Posted on 22 May 2012 by Kevin C
http://www.skepticalscience.com/hadcrut4_a_detailed_look.html

The second seems especially relevant. I would leave Figure 1 as is, then hyperlinks "more complex" in the caption to figure 1 to the first and "a very sophisticated analysis" to the second.

I believe this would go a long way to addressing the concerns wili expressed in comment 3.

Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy

franklefkin at 03:55 AM on 8 October, 2013

Dikran Marsupial,

Yes, I accept that Tom presented the CIMP3 trends accurately. But that is apples to oranges. Only one of those trends is over 30 years long. The question that I am asking has to do with the minimum expected temperature increase rate predicted in AR4. Is it 0.10 C/ Decade as Tom depicted in his trend graph (and Dana1981 in his "better than you think" post), or is it 0.15 C /Decade as I maintain? The answer has a large impact on the graph presentative that Tom did on trends in @79.

IPCC model global warming projections have done much better than you think

grindupBaker at 11:21 AM on 3 October, 2013

@engineer #22 "doesn't matter what you call it, predictions or projections....supposed to accurately predict natural phenomenon". No. Predictions require knowing future non-natural phenomena and knowing rare natural phenomena of great consequence. Need to know relevant decisions of U.S. President in 2038, the Sino-Russian-Luxembourg government in 2077, how many volcanoes and nuclear weapons exhanges will occur, and when, meteor impacts for predictions. Can only go with projections using the numerous energy and climate basics they are using presently in the simulations (Dr. Randall says they are looking at how life in the oceans mixes water, dunno if they got to that yet). It is spooky though how this dana1981 knows what I think, sounds conspiratorial-hoaxy.

IPCC model global warming projections have done much better than you think

franklefkin at 01:39 AM on 2 October, 2013

Tom C & Dana1981,

So, right now surface temps are lower than predicted a few years ago. So if we compare in another 15 years, predictions from say 2003, you are saying that those predictions should be lowered because actual temps are lower now. <-snip-> The predictions are what they are. Consider what was said in the AR4:

Since IPCC’s fi rst report in 1990, assessed projections

have suggested global average temperature increases

between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to

2005. This can now be compared with observed values

of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confi dence in

near-term projections. {1.2, 3.2}

(from AR4 SPM pg 12)

In the Article above, DANA1981 quotes a fiqure of

"within the range of model projections of about 0.10 to 0.35°C per decade. As the IPCC notes,"

The AR4 report clearly states that the lower end is 0.15 per decade. Regardless of where the baseline occurs, observations are at the very lower limit of predictions.

The report goes on to state "

Best-estimate projections from models indicate
that decadal average warming over each inhabited
continent by 2030 is insensitive to the choice among
SRES scenarios and is very likely to be at least twice
as large as the corresponding model-estimated natural
variability during the 20th century"

(also from pg 12)

So unless natural variability has suddenly spiked, natural variability cannot be the reason for the models' over estimate of warming.

What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

Terranova at 11:53 AM on 14 August, 2013

Dana1981,

Is the section entitled "Where We Are Today" directly from the study itself, or an add-on from Freya Roberts? The paper is paywalled unless you have another link available.

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

Barry Woods at 03:09 AM on 30 July, 2013

@dana1981 Richard Betts managed a tweet. how about you?

Is More Global Warming Hiding in the Oceans?

Donthaveone at 11:02 AM on 25 June, 2013

I am sorry maybe i misunderstood what the point of SKS was.

dana1981 posted a newspaper story which in a nutshell claimed OHC data taken some 120 years ago was compared to current day Argo data and from this comparison it was then stated that the comparison shows the OHC has risen by an amount and this was due to AGW. The newspaper story gave no indication of how this comparison was achieved.

I was of the opinion that such a comparison was unrealistic in terms of both number of samples and methodology and stated such in the hope of generating a discussion point however this did not occur, instead i was told my "tone" was not acceptable and you cannot end a post with the word "cheers" i would be fascinated to know what is the correct way of ending a post DiKran?

Following on from this a moderator made this statement

(-Moderation complaints snipped-)?

To Dikran,

You stated in 9

(-blockquote snipped-).

(-Inflammatory snipped-). In regards to discussing science well i have asked questions regarding the science around this issue, have you even attempted to respond to those questions?

To scaddenp in 11,

Thankyou very much for the link i have not read the paper as yet but i will and respond to you in time.

Regards?

2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

grindupBaker at 02:17 AM on 21 June, 2013

"Antarctic melting from underneath". Obviously. I presume it's useful for projection data if they can quantify it, to project the rate once it really gets going. Since ocean temp is 4.05 an increase to 5.55 to 7.05 for CO2x2 (depending on whether, say, 2.0-3.0 Celsius is final CO2x2 radiative balance restored after ocean equilibrium and whether oceans dissolve enough CO2 to slow it) should have an effect considering the huge proportional increase above the freeze/melt point of water (presumbly the -1.9C for sea water). Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén (2013) asserts 200+-40 ZettaJoules added to oceans since 1958. Since 11,000 to 17,000 ZettaJoules must be added to oceans before the oceans will permit the surface to restore its radiative balance of CO2x2 for my example +2.0-3.0 Celsius, it would be interesting to know how much ice melt for the trivial 200 ZettaJoules thus far.

"Global warming appears to have slowed lately" Plumer, Wonkblog, Washington Post states "the “missing heat” may be lurking in the deep layers, 700 meters below the surface" but SKS Posted on 25 March 2013 by dana1981states categorically "A new study of ocean warming has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters by Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén (2013)." and "...has been found in the deep oceans...". What is the certainty of this paper and if >90%, say, then why is Plumer, Wonkblog saying "may be lurking". The slope of B,T & K (2013) indicates 0.85 wm**-2 average 2000-2010. This seems crystal clear. I understand that the buoys' data of prior decades likely has suspect accuracy, but typically these random errors cancel well to near-zero if a large enough statistical sample is used and I see no reason why buoys' data of prior decades would affect the slope 2000-2010.

On the same topic when are you educated bods going to tell media suits and the public what "global warming" is so that this nonsense stops ? Typically for science, what the subject is would be outlined fairly early in a discussion of the science subject, not 20 years after "the science is settled".

Lu Blames Global Warming on CFCs (Curve Fitting Correlations)

John0001 at 03:30 AM on 7 June, 2013

I just read Solanki and Krivova (2003) and found the following:

"[10] In Figure 2 we have scaled the irradiance such that the magnitudes of the temperature and irradiance variations are similar between 1856 and 1970. To be precise, we minimize the X2 between irradiance and temperature prior to 1970. This implies converting irradiance into temperature using a linear regression."

There is essentially no difference from Fig. 9 in Lu (2013).

And dana1981 (Dana Nuccitelli ?) also used a similar presentation in this post, "IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun", 14 December 2012 by dana1981 (http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc-draft-leak-global-warming-not-solar.html ).

Aren't there double standards??

Moreover, the results presented in his Figs. 12 and 13 of Lu (2013) are the temperatures observed and CALCULATED using the IPCC radiative-force equation for CFCs, rather than based on correlations between temperature and CFC concentrations.

Please stop damaging the reputation of IPCC.

The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial

Brandon Shollenberger at 10:21 AM on 29 May, 2013

Rob Honeycutt, I'm at a loss as to how this is "nitpicking the definitions." You and your associates felt examining a consensus was worth a great deal of effort. You also felt it was worth a certain amount of money gotten from your readers. If examining something was worth that much, surely it is worth stating what that something is.

Glenn Tamblyn, this site has posted many critiques of papers. Why should I refrain from doing the same? As for replication, you guys spent a great deal of time on this study. It is unreasonable to suggest nobody criticize your paper without having spent an equal amount of time working on an issue. That is especially true given that I am but one person, and you were 24.

dana1981, you have suggested exactly that. I've even quoted you as suggesting exactly that. While I can understand you may have forgotten having done so, it is unwise for you to state it so categorically. My statement is fairly easy to verify.

The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial

Brandon Shollenberger at 09:22 AM on 29 May, 2013

shoyemore, I was less clear than I should have been. The definition I'm referring to is not the definition of the word "consensus," but rather, the definition of the specific "consensus" being examined by Cook et al.

John Hartz, given I believe this issue is an important one, that could only serve to encourage me. I would like discussion to continue.

dana1981, you yourself have suggested comparing categories 6 and 7 with category 1. Given category 6 has as much (or rather, as little) quantification as category 5, what makes my inclusion of category 5 so much more illogical? Why should it be okay to include category 6 but not category 5?

What you need to know about climate sensitivity

Doug Hutcheson at 17:57 PM on 12 May, 2013

dana1981 @ 9:

Earth System Sensitivity (in the ballpark of 6–8°C for doubled CO2)

Yikes! That's the first I've heard of ESS and its 6–8°C. I have been stuck in my own little world, thinking the 3°C bandied about would be the end of the matter (barring methane amplification, which I didn't think was quantified as yet). Big wake-up call to whoever is asleep at the wheel. Thanks for cheering me up. Not.

Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths

KR at 00:26 AM on 2 May, 2013

dana1981 - An additional part of that correction is that the deeper subsurface Antarctic waters are (relatively) warmer than surface waters, not colder as stated in the OP.

Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'

Brandon Shollenberger at 15:41 PM on 16 April, 2013

I feel I should thank Tom Curtis for his comment @62 as he is the only person who has responded to what I actually said. Hopefully chriskoz, Rob Honeycutt, KR and dana1981 can understand what I actually said after reading his comment.

However, I disagree with this part of his response:

2) Had he done so, as Jos Hagelaars did above, it would have made no difference in visual impact, as can be easilly seen above. This is true even if the "blade" is omitted and the instrumental record is shown. It follows that you are quibbling.

I don't think it makes "no difference in visual impact" to have an entirely new record added to a graph. Even if the resulting curve is (nearly) the same, there is an obvious difference introduced when you have to have three records as opposed to two. The additional complexity alone is important. The fact an over-simplification gives a "right" answer doesn't stop it from being an over-simplification.

The graph in question shows projected temperatures flowing directly from the reconstructed temperatures. That's a very simple image which relies on the two records meeting at an exact point. If you remove the uptick, they no longer meet. That's a significant change. You may be able to make another significant change to combat that, but that doesn't mean the original version is correct or appropriate.

Further Comments on The Economist's Take on Climate Sensitivity

archie lever at 20:26 PM on 14 April, 2013

dana1981

I was making a general point about the Economist article from a newspaper which is influential worldwide, as is Skeptical Science. Hence my visit to your site - you are quoted outside this blog as a source of reference material on climate science.

I think it would be fair to say that the Economist's researchers have a standard to maintain, and that serious errors in their 2 page article would be unlikely. Their conclusions say to a pretty well educated readership that the science is not settled and the projections of warming might well be exaggerated.

Now regarding your specific points, you say:

"So what's happening in the real world? We're seeing a preponderance of La Niña events, an accelerated warming of the oceans, especially the deep oceans, low solar activity, etc. Basically what we would expect for a period of relatively flat surface temps - the heat is going elsewhere."

As Ray@25 has pointed out, ENSO patterns and other effects are poorly understood, and I don't think anyone can claim definitive knowledge of the energy uptake in the deep oceans. Low solar activity is on an approx 11 year cycle so the last 10-12 years should have seen all phases of one cycle. Computer predictions going forward are used by climate scientists to warn the public and policy makers all the time. It is their most powerful tool for sending the message.

I think it is obvious that the actual global temperatures from Ed Hawkins Chart 1 are heading outside the 5-95% confidence interval after a 10-12 flat period - something not seen since the 1950-1980 period, given that all the effects of CO2 release, ENSO, solar cycles, ocean absorption should be present in the Ed Hawkins 1950- chart.

The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years?

Dumb Scientist at 12:02 PM on 12 April, 2013

How can the anthropogenic warming be approximately linear in time when we know that atmospheric CO2 has been measured to increase almost exponentially? Implicit in that statement is the expectation that the warming (i.e. the rate of surface temperature increase) should follow the rate of increase of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere. This rather common expectation is incorrect. An accessible reference is that from Britannica.com: "Radiative forcing caused by carbon dioxide varies in an approximately logarithmic fashion with the concentration of that gas in the atmosphere. ...

No, I'm not ignoring the last century of physics. It's exasperating to be lectured about the ancient fact that CO2's radiative forcing in Earth's current atmosphere depends approximately on the logarithm of its concentration. My article linked to a graph of CO2's radiative forcing, which accounts for this logarithmic dependence. Notice that CO2's radiative forcing increases faster after 1950, because increasing CO2 faster also increases its logarithm faster. That's what makes the forcing "slightly more curvy than linear".

As shown in Figure 2a, the green line is quite nonlinear and shows the acceleration of greenhouse gas forcing after 1950 referred to by DS, but the aerosol cooling also increased after 1950. The net anthropogenic forcing is the small difference of the two large terms.

That same radiative forcings graph also accounts for aerosols. Notice that the black line includes aerosols and also increases faster after 1950.

Because the aerosol cooling part is uncertain, we actually do not know what the net anthropogenic forcing looks like. There is no obvious argument that one can appeal to on what the expected warming should be. There is nothing obviously wrong if the anthropogenic warming is found to be almost linear in time.

Perhaps the IPCC's estimates are wrong, but subtracting the standard NOAA AMO index to determine anthropogenic warming is equivalent to assuming that anthropogenic warming is steady before and after 1950. If it isn't, you'll never know because subtracting the AMO will just subtract signal after 1950.

That was probably the source of the circular argument criticism from DS: "Tung and Zhou implicitly assumed that the anthropogenic warming rate is constant before and after 1950, and (surprise!) that's what they found. This led them to circularly blame about half of global warming on regional warming." It is important to note that the trend we were talking about is the trend of the Adjusted data, and not the presumed anthropogenic predictor.

No, that wasn't the source of my criticism. Dana1981, KR and bouke correctly pointed out that your circular argument results from adding the AMO(t) regressor, which is correlated with surface temperatures after 1950 if you used the standard NOAA AMO index.

Concerning Dana181's statement that most models use radiative forcing that show acceleration after 1970s, I just want to make the following observation. The models that adopted the kind of net radiative forcing that varies in time in approximately the same manner as the observed global mean temperature---with cooling in the 1970s and accelerated warming in the 1980s to 2000--were trying to simulate the observed warming using forced response alone (under ensemble average). So the net heating used has to have that time behavior otherwise the model simulation would not have been considered successful. Here we are questioning the assumption that the observed warming, including the accelerated warming in the later part of the 20th century, is mainly due to forced response to radiative heating.

That's only true for inverse models of aerosol forcings. It's important to note that they're compared to independent forward calculations which are based on estimates of emissions and models of aerosol physics and chemistry.

Dumb Scientists claim of circular argument on our part consists of two parts. The first part deals with the linear regressor used, which is discussed here, and the second part deals with the AMO index used, which will be discussed in my second post. ... the choice of the AMO Index (whether the detrending should be point by point or by the global mean)...

If you used the AMO index with global SST removed that KR mentioned, then your result is really interesting. I assumed that you used NOAA's linearly detrended N. Atlantic sea surface temperatures, in which case the anthropogenic warming would be hiding in your AMO(t) function. Again, that's because warming the globe also warms the N. Atlantic, and anthropogenic warming was faster after 1950.

We have tried many other predictors with similar results. Using a nonlinear anthropogenic regressor would still yield an almost linear trend for the past 100 years, if the Residual is added back. And so this procedure is not circular.

It's only circular if you used NOAA's standard detrended AMO index. If so, you added a regressor that's correlated with surface temperatures since 1950. Again, in that case the warming would be hiding in your AMO(t) function.

The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years?

KR at 05:47 AM on 12 April, 2013

I would agree with dana1981 that the standard AMO index, being a linearly detrended set of sea surface temperatures, is quite tied to global warming and incorporates some of that warming signal - subtracting signal from signal, and reducing the identified anthropogenic component.

Any regression against the AMO requires, of course, defining which AMO index you are discussing - the linearly detrended version, or one as suggested by Trenberth and Shea 2006 Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005, who recognized the incorporation of a global warming signal into the traditional definition:

In particular, the recent warming of North Atlantic SSTs is known to be part of a global (taken here to be 60N to 60S) mean SST increase. While detrending the AMO series helps remove part of this signal, the SST changes are not simply linear and a linear trend has no physical meaning. To deal with purely Atlantic variability, it is highly desirable to remove the larger-scale global signal that is associated with global processes, and is thus related to global warming in recent decades. Accordingly, the global mean SST has been subtracted to derive a revised AMO index.

Also of interest is Anderson et al 2012, Testing for the Possible Influence of Unknown Climate Forcings upon Global Temperature Increases from 1950 to 2000, which analyzes ocean heat content (OHC), sea surface temperatures, and forcings, and indicates from an energy conservation point of view that:

...less than 10% of the long-term historical increase in global-mean near-surface temperatures over the last half of the twentieth century could have been the result of internal climate variability.

According to that work, there is insufficient energy available within the constraints of OHC to cause observed warming via natural variability and maintain observed OHC.

Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year

Joel_Huberman at 01:45 AM on 4 April, 2013

Thanks, Dana1981, for a very useful article. I'm an American, and although I did pay some attention to the interesting report of Marcott et al (2013) and its analysis at Skeptical Science, I'm also very interested in the topic of fossil fuel subsidies. After all, as shown in one of your illustrations, we're the world champions at subsidizing fossil fuels.

Although it's difficult to calculate the total cost of wars over fossil fuels, I think it would be fair to attribute America's two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to oil and gas (pipeline rights in Afghanistan's case). After all, if those wars were not for fossil fuels, what were they for? Could they have been completely irrational?

Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year

chriskoz at 15:13 PM on 3 April, 2013

dana1981@1,

Your comment is OT ;) but I can add to it that I think most of the valuable commenter crowd was stolen by realclimate.org where they just posted the analysis of Marcott 2013 paper, which appears to be over-popular in US. Strangely, Marcott 2013 does not draw so much interest here in OZ (where SkS also belongs at least geographically)

But back to the topic, it's a shame that the economics of climate change do not draw as much attention as it deserves. Even climate scientists like Mike Mann & Gavin from RC are saying: "if you want to want to help Earth, don't look at the research in climate (whatever you do there won't change the problem humanity is facing), look at the engineering slutions and their economy".

Your reported internalising of CO2 polution at the level of $100 per tonne would bring the total cost to 4trillions of 6% of global GDP. To put this number into perspective, the World War II cost us 3% of GDP that that was somewhat signifficant effort, according to the stories from my parents. So, it seems unbelievable that nowadays, the FF subsidies take twice that effort. Still, at $25 per tonne (current tax in OZ where I live) we spend 1.9trillions or 3% of GDP, so the effort at the same level as WW II. It does not feel like. The humanity dependency on FF must be enormous if those numbers are justified.

Making Sense of Sensitivity … and Keeping It in Perspective

MA Rodger at 03:57 AM on 31 March, 2013

The video that dana1981 linked @45 gives us the name of the author of the article - John Parker, Globalisation Editor of The Economist (although in their list of journalists, he is listed as Energy & Environment Editor. This would be a recent appointment as James Astill was for a while from 2011 Energy & Environment Editor ). Parker doesn't seem too fluent with his message in the video & has colleague Oliver Morton riding shotgun for him.

And in the video Parker kicks off again telling us temperatures have plateaued for at leat the last ten years and possibly the last fifteen. This is bonkers. Temperatures, say GISS 5-year average, have 'plateaued' between 2003 and 2010. Yet the creation of that plateau only begins in 2008. Until the 2008 temperature arrives to influence the 5-year average of 2006, the data is wholly consistent with a continuation of the accelerating temperature rise. The plateau or flat or pause or whatever is only 5 years old, going on 6. It is never "possibly fifteen"!!

There is also a further video featuring John Parker from December 2012, this time putting the questions to fellow Economist journos Oliver Morton & Ryan Avant in the aftermath of Doha.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/03/global-warming-slows-down

Making Sense of Sensitivity … and Keeping It in Perspective

MA Rodger at 21:58 PM on 29 March, 2013

shoymore @15.
As Dana1981 says, the Economist article is not factually incorrect yet its analysis of those facts is in error. My own take is that the error is so bad, the article is entirely misguided.

You will note that the context of concluding phrase "Hardly reassuring" that you quote (with to much assurance in my mind). The quote is not saying climate is a problem. It is actually saying climatology isn't up to the job.
Such is the content of this article from the top 15-year flat temperatures to bottom. The author is continually exhibiting the symptoms of underlying denial.

As for elsa, consider her/his flip from insisting ECS=0 to suggesting ECS assessments flip about far too wildly 'and you ought to see what I mean' when I tell you that elsa's position no longer fits comfortably alongside itself.

Making Sense of Sensitivity … and Keeping It in Perspective

ubrew12 at 08:12 AM on 29 March, 2013

I read the Economists' article and all I can say is dana1981 seems to be correct. For example, the article gives pretty much equal weight between IPCC's 3C sensitivity estimate and Berntsen's 1.9C sensitivity. It backs up Berntsen's estimate with other studies, and mentions even lower estimates several times. The casual reader could easily come away with a 'feeling' the sensitivity is likely 2C or lower. What the Economist omits is the many studies that point to a 4C sensitivity or higher. This presentation of a false balance should be familiar to watchers of Fox News.

From the Economist article "[if climate sensitivity is low] more adaptation rather than more mitigation might be the right policy" It might be if mitigation costs are high, but what if they are low? Why does a magazine that calls itself 'the Economist' omit the HALF of that equation they would seem most qualified to estimate? By omission, the article maintains the myth that mitigation costs are high, and hence the 'adaptation' decision is solely dependent on those durned climate scientists and their tea leaves.

From the Economist article: "If climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, climate sensitivity would be on negative watch" But actually, if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then they would rate Wallstreet mortgage derivatives 'AAA' and sell them to pensioners. The Economist missed an $11 trillion housing bubble, yet the credit-rating agencies that helped create it are still the 'gold standard' when it comes to judging value? Such is the world we live in, apparently.

The uncertainty about climate change is now essentially ALL on the side of evaluating economic impacts versus costs of mitigation. Given its recent failings, I guess I can't blame the Economist for focusing on climate uncertainty instead. But its no service to their readers. The cost of mitigation is variously estimated to be 1% of GDP, which is pretty trivial. And the benefits? What is the benefit to keeping Manhattan and its credit-rating agencies from drowning? Whatever that is, the Economist won't be talking about it.

New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

grindupBaker at 11:56 AM on 28 March, 2013

mehus@19 dana1981@20 John Hartz@21 I inferred from Kevin Trenberth lecture on Utube that "missing heat" was discrepancy between radiation imbalance (KT stated 0.9 wm**-2) & delta ocean heat expected from it. If so, volcanos aerosols & others would not affect "missing heat". Did I misunderstand what the discrepancy was ? Was it rather a discrepancy twixt the underlying physics, or models, & prior delta ocean heat measured ?

NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority

Harold H Doiron, PhD at 05:59 AM on 28 March, 2013

dana1981,

It has just come to my attention that your critique of the work of The Right Cimate Stuff research team in your January 24, 2013 post that started all of these comments, did not directly address the one-page summary of findings from our year-long investigation that was the subject of a January 23, 2013 press release that you quoted. Our investigation findings, concurred with by all of our team members, were published on Jan. 23, 2013 at the link: http://www.therightclimatestuff.com/SummaryPrelimReport.html

Your critique was focused on answering questions that were posed in an introductory overview tutorial article written as background for visitors to our website that might not be familiar with the basic issues in question and that is found at the link:

http://www.therightclimatestuff.com/CurrentOverview.html

To the extent that any of the questions posed in that introductory article were addressed by conclusions of our investigation, those conclusions can be found at:

http://www.therightclimatestuff.com/SummaryPrelimReport.html

The introductory overview assessment article that you criticized was written by one of our members as a starting point situational description for our investigation. By accident, I now see that the Oct. 2012 introductory overview article title appears like it might be "the report" for which the one-page summary is published at the first link provided above. The " investigation findings" or conclusions in the one-page summary at the first link provided above were not derived from the Oct 2012 article posted at the 2nd link provided above.

I apologize for any confusion this may have caused. My CPAC 2013 presentation that Tom Wysmuller provided links for in comments above, was focused on the one-page summary conclusions of our investigation.

NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority

Harold H Doiron, PhD at 02:37 AM on 24 March, 2013

DSL, dana1981 and others interested in this discussion,

I know enough about your fears of a global climate disaster, and I think most of you must believe that CO2 emissions into the atmosphere will cause it; but I am not convinced. Why? I have read the IPCC arguments and interacted with climate scientists who have your same concerns.....but, the evidence to pin most of the recent global warming since 1850 AD on CO2 emissions is very weak, compared to the kind of empirical evidence I have been taught to look for, if I want to prove true root cause of a deviation from normal behavior. I believe that significant warming since 1850 AD could be due to natural climate cycles that we do not understand and don't know how to control.

There is lots of controversy about whether global average temperature is deviating from normal behavior of the last 10,000 years or not. However, it is much more straight forward to measure temperature at a given location on the planet and determine if temperature variations we are experiencing now are really that different from temperature variations that occurred at that location before CO2 became an issue. The specifics of what we find out about temperature variation at that one location will let us know whether we have a tempertature PROBLEM (deviation from the last 10,000 years of normal range) at that location for which we need to nail down true root cause with high confidence. I believe, from my experiences, that failure to prove true root cause before taking action that one believes will rectify the PROBLEM, is not rational thinking and can lead to disasterous, perhaps fatal, unintended consequences.

I'm still waiting for the simple answer from my initial simple question to all of you. At what location on earth is current temperature trend out of bounds, or headed out of bounds, of the last 10,000 years of temperature behavior? Then, with this location identified, we can start to look for true cause of that deviation from normal. If the global average temperature (a calculated value) is really behaving so differently to cause us such concern, surely there must be at least one location on earth that you could identify that has a temperature PROBLEM.

I can't identify true root cause of the disasterous climate changes you are worried about, because the data from the future are not available to examine to determine true root cause of the deviation that hasn't occurred yet. However, I do know how to proceed to define true root cause of any current temperature PROBLEM you have good empirical data for to define. I believe available temperature data from a single location has much better and more reliable information to work with than a computed global average metric whose historical value keeps changing with every new release of a temperature database.

New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming

Klapper at 05:19 AM on 20 March, 2013

@Dana1981 #17:

I think the best way to test the hypothesis that the models replicate the climate signal in the period 1910 to 1945 is to compare individual models with fixed parametizations, with the input varying according to the 95% confidence we have on intial conditions and forcing magnitudes. Of those runs, how many would pass conventional regression statistical comparisons against the observations is a very good question.

As noted above the ensemble "envelope" is a very murky number, coming as it does from 20 or so different models, with different parametization factors, and different levels of resolution/sophistication. My guess is they don't even necessarily use identical inputs for forcing and/or initial conditions, although hopefully they're close since the runs are part of a model intercomparison process.

Doing model by model, run by run statistics against the observations might allow you to reject some models and tighten up the ensemble envelope. Right now I don't see a good fit between the model ensemble and the observations in the period 1910 to 1945. Climate science should be digging deeper as to why that is.

New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming

Clyde at 03:52 AM on 20 March, 2013

@dana1981 - 12

You say in paragraph 2 -

Over the past 60 years (1951–2010), the study finds

Then you have what the abstract says except you put - (mainly from aerosols) - instead of - from other anthropogenic forcings. Then you use 0 to 0.5°C, while the abstract says, 0 to -0.5°C.

New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming

Klapper at 06:27 AM on 19 March, 2013

@dana1981 #4:

Natural variability should be smoothed out over the period I'm discussing (1910 to 1945 or 36 years inclusive). I checked the trend 1910 to 1945 inclusive on your trend calculator for all 3 SAT datasets: answer is 0.15 to 0.14C/decade +/- .04, meaning the minimum temperature trend in that period is about 0.01C/decade.

Using data from the KNMI data explorer website the model ensemble mean of the CMIP3+ runs for the 20th century, the trend is 0.05C/decade. What do you think 2sigma is on that trend? We use the term "within the model envelope". Are you saying that the model envelope is equivalent to 2 sigma on our best guess at the model generated warming rate for this time period?

This is a tricky question but I think the answer to my last question is no.

New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming

Clyde at 04:14 AM on 19 March, 2013

I think some minor corrections are needed.

dana1981 says - This was offset by a cooling from other human influences (mainly from aerosols) of 0 to 0.5°C. These results are consistent with all prior studies of the causes of global warming (Figure 1).

The abstract of the paper says -

Analysing the multi-model mean over 1951 to 2010 (focussing on the most robust result), we estimate a range of possible contributions to the observed warming of approximately 0.6 K from greenhouse gases of between 0.6 to 1.2 K, balanced by a counteracting cooling from other anthropogenic forcings of between 0 and -0.5 K.

Cherrypicking to Deny Continued Ocean and Global Warming

Smith at 09:59 AM on 8 March, 2013

Dana1981@34 - Thank you for your response.

I hope you're not holding me to a higher standard than you're holding Wattsy.

I guess the short answer is yes I am. Wouldn't you prefer it that way?

Cherrypicking to Deny Continued Ocean and Global Warming

Smith at 02:40 AM on 8 March, 2013

OPatrick@20 - I have to disagree. The Watts article has the figure labeled "Sure looks like a pause to me, especially after steep rises in OHC from 1997-2003. Note the highlighted period in yellow:"

He calls it a highlighted period. A period is not a trend.

Besides, Dana1981@11 clearly states "to be fair, Watts didn't say the yellow line was a trend, just that he was 'highlighting'". So my question still stands. Why call it a "Denial Fake Trend", when Watts never claimed it was and Dana also knew it wasn't?

If it's not a duck, even though it looks like one and sounds like one, I would argue that calling it a duck anyway certainly isn't very scientific.

Cherrypicking to Deny Continued Ocean and Global Warming

Smith at 22:47 PM on 7 March, 2013

Dana1981@11 - Then why is the yellow line labeled "denial fake trend" in Figure 4? If you were aware it was not claimed to be a trend, what possible reason would you have to label it so?

The BEST Kind of Skepticism

KR at 02:23 AM on 28 February, 2013

dvaytw - You might also look at the excellent summary dana1981 posted in A Comprehensive Review of the Causes of Global Warming, discussing eight or nine different studies of the causes of climate change.

The average attribution of warming to human causes is >100%, as without anthropogenic influences the climate should have cooled. Human driven warming has both counteracted natural cooling and added considerable warming over the last 150 years or so.

Reconciling Two New Cloud Feedback Papers

Jsquared at 10:08 AM on 20 February, 2013

dana1981@5 - There has to be some good physics in that order-of-magnitude difference in the size of the responses. What could be so different in the short-term and long-term response of water vapor? All that comes to mind offhand is that aerosols don't have a chance to do their thing - nucleation - in the short-term response, or maybe it's a latitudinal effect built into the CERES and MODIS measurements? It's a little hard to give either one much credence.

There is no such thing as climate change denial

Clyde at 16:49 PM on 16 February, 2013

Importantly, it also ignores the fact that over the last 16 years, our planet has been building up heat at a rate of over three Hiroshima bombs worth of energy every second. To deny global warming is to deny the basic fact that our planet is building up heat at an extraordinary rate.

From <a href="

http://www.skepticalscience.com/dueling-scientists-oregonian.html

dana1981's"></a> article it says -

In fact, heat is accumulating in the Earth's climate system due to the increased greenhouse effect at a faster rate today than it was 15 years ago, and the energy is equivalent to detonating four Hiroshima atomic bombs per second, every second over the past 15 years.

Which is it 3 or 4? When you consider their detonating every second that makes a difference.

Dueling Scientists in The Oregonian, Settled by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)

Richard C (NZ) at 11:05 AM on 6 February, 2013

dana1981 at 08:59 AM

>"You mean besides the fact that it's been measured?"

OHC has been measured/calculated but the relevant question is 2)a) and that is wrt major (by implication) atm => ocean heat transfer across the interface. That is not tha same as ARGO measuremets of ocean surface and below say.

>"Your question seems akin to asking how we know gravity exists."

I have 6 questions, 1), 2)a), 2)b), 3), 4)a), and 4)b). It is the answers to those one-by-one that myself and a number of others a looking for given the quotes in my initial comment from prominant climate scientists and those associated with the Nuccitelli et al 2012 paper and SkS that convey a distinct impression that the heat transfer process in question is a verified phenomenon. Gordon Fulks, Robert Knox and David Douglass have the link to this thread for example so now is an opportune time to state your case in detail with citations in response to each question individually.

If your case is rock solid there should be no problem responding to those 6 questions.

Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen

Doug Hutcheson at 11:59 AM on 31 January, 2013

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?

Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome

Dean at 17:14 PM on 29 January, 2013

#6 dana1981
Perhaps you are right but the Norwegian press release (which is practically what published substance on the issue we have) describes what is classic overfitting. They claim that analysis over the period 1750-2000 gave 3.7K sensitivity, but including 2000-2010 data gave 1.9K. The 1750-2000 period was even outside their upper limit of 2.9. But it is well known that decadal variations occur via phenomenas like ENSO and the period has also been affected by large changes in aerosols forcings in Asia, which I assume is treated as "noise" in their study.

Open Letter to London Mayor Boris Johnson - Weather is not Climate

shoyemore at 02:49 AM on 23 January, 2013

dana1981 #9,

After reading Leo Hickman's article, I think that speculation may be correct. The Tory right are nervous about Europe and immigration, and they have the farther-right United Kingdom Independence Party on their case, threatening their turf. The UKIP once had Christopher Monckton as its Deputy Leader! It is more about publicly attacking renewable energy, especially wind farms, an issue with more public traction, than about climate change, but deniers they are.

The Tory right-UKIP are a sort of British Tea Party, and Johnson is probably signalling to that wing of British Conservatism that he is willing to be their man. I see the influence of Lord Lawson (an ex-Tory "Grandee") of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in this also, but that is a guess.

Politicians are always running for office, and this was more than an off-the-cuff comment by Johnson on the British weather.

2012 Shatters the US Temperature Record. Fox, Watts, and Spencer Respond by Denying Reality

StBarnabas at 05:22 AM on 16 January, 2013

@dana1981

The US has become a crazy place. Seemed a lot more sensible when I was doing my PhD there (Carter was president).
The Arke and Wilson vs Fox case is simply extraordinary.

It seems
Not only can Fox lie and distort the truth
It can force reporters to do so against their will
Fire them if they refuse
And Fox can be awarded damages if they try to take it to court for unfair dismissal

Makes me glad I returned to Europe!

Here if the Mail is found to lie there will be a retraction in small print in some obscure part of the newspaper.

2012 Shatters the US Temperature Record. Fox, Watts, and Spencer Respond by Denying Reality

Roger D at 10:19 AM on 15 January, 2013

by "this response" I mean dana1981's post, not my comment

Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming

KR at 03:15 AM on 12 January, 2013

smerby - "Facts" without context are perhaps better termed "Factoids" - a piece of information rather smaller than a fact, as in something (like 10 year trends) presented without sufficient background to correctly interpret.

dana1981 - Quite right about the link; I had only looked at what was linked through the figure itself, which is the full version of the graph.

Although it's still quite worthwhile to point folks to Google Scholar.

Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming

Clyde at 15:45 PM on 11 January, 2013

Bob Loblaw - 9

As for figure 3's source - the caption says "From Nuccitelli et al (2012)". It looks exactly like figure 1 in my copy of that paper. Have you not read Nuccitelli et al (2012)? Perhaps you are commenting on something that you haven't actually read?

I haven't read the paper. You have to pay to read it. I'm not into GW enough to pay to read something. Seeing it looks like your figure 1 perhaps you can tell me where you got your data? I'm wanting the source for for the ocean data. Is it from NASA, JPL, NOAA, etc ? Somebody used data from 1960 forward. I'm not saying it's wrong, just need to be able to say source "X" says Ocean Heat Content in 1960 was "Y" & has risen to "Z" in 2010.

P.S. I forgot to ask how you are doing...How are you doing Bob?

dana1981 - 12

As Bob @9 notes, Figure 3 in this post is Figure 1 in Nuccitelli et al., whose OHC data come from Levitus and land ocean atmosphere heating data come from Church (referenced in the paper, linked in the figure caption). Coincidentally, Levitus thought our paper was quite good (and Church was one of our co-authors).

I'm wanting the source for for the ocean data. Is it from NASA, JPL, NOAA, etc? Somebody used data from 1960 forward. I'm not saying it's wrong, just need to be able to say source "X" says Ocean Heat Content in 1960 was "Y" & has risen to "Z" in 2010. Does Levitus or Church say where they got it from?

Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator

Klapper at 03:51 AM on 10 January, 2013

#28 Dana1981

My point is that the flattening in temperature growth is real. The Met Office prediction to the end of 2017 just recently published shows more sluggish growth.

You make the point that all natural factors are working against warming right now. It is true that the average MEI is negative since 2000 or so which would suppress temperature growth (average about -0.1). It was also more strongly negative from 1950 to 1975 or so (-0.3). However, it was strongly positive from 1975 to 2000 (+0.4). Consider the possibility that if warming is being now suppressed by ENSO, it was being aided by ENSO in the period 1975 to 2000, so that some part of that warming is not due to GHGs.

The problem for the AOCGCM models is that if there is a natural cycle in ENSO, they don't know about it. Therefore they are "tuned" to replicate the warming from 1975 to 2000 via feedbacks as if it is solely due to GHGs. If that is not true they are possibly overpredicting the warming rate going forward.

I think my other point in posting here is to show your community that skeptics are not the simpleton thinkers they are made out to be on this forum. There should be room for alternative interpretations without generating the "fake skeptic/denier" type of name calling.

Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive

KR at 03:25 AM on 4 January, 2013

dana1981 - Ah, yes, the Advanced version of the blog post addresses intermittent supply via geographic distribution and linked systems. I had been looking at the Intermediate version, which does not - just energy storage techniques.

Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive

KR at 02:36 AM on 4 January, 2013

In addition to dana1981's points, it has been shown that distributed renewable systems provide a steady baseline power supply - Archer and Jacobson 2007 show that just 19 wind sites in the southwest US (no solar in that investigation, which would increase availability due to different time patterns) gives at least 1/3 of the average power at current baseline dependability/consistency rates, while minimizing distribution costs. This percentage would only go up with larger distribution areas - individual sites have high variability, but weather is local, and when one site is calm others are windy.

Back on topic - wind power is growing at 20% a year globally, solar power (photovoltaic) installations are doubling every two years. That wouldn't be happening if these weren't economically attractive, no matter what subsidies were given. ALEC and similar groups are arguing against reality.

Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive

Doug Hutcheson at 15:13 PM on 3 January, 2013

dana1981 @ 3, to my mind, we should use whatever safe technology we have available, as the cost of not replacing fossil fuels is far more important to our collective futures than the cost efficiency of any one technology.

If someone could come up with a demonstrably safe design for nuclear generation, I would be happy to include it in our future energy mix. That is my 'all the above, excluding fossil carbon' approach to future electricity generation.

Delay is our worst enemy.

Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate

Doug Hutcheson at 17:53 PM on 27 December, 2012

dana1981 @ 8, thanks for the explanation. FAR and SAR were based on models using a lower ECS than the IPCC thought they were using. I take it that the graphs would look different again (worse), if we plugged in the current best estimate for ECS (3°C).

As for the degree symbol, I am using Linux. It turns out that I can use the HTML code '& deg;' with no spaces - see this page.

Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate

Doug Hutcheson at 12:55 PM on 27 December, 2012

dana1981 @ 2, I'm still confused, so I am obviously missing something. If I have read the OP correctly, FAR and SAR originally used 2.5o ECS, the revised graphs were based on 2.1o and the real ECS is approx. 3o. To my confused little mind, the revised graphs should use 3o. Where am I going wrong?

PS: I still cannot get superscript tags to work, to render the degrees symbol: I am using the HTML codes 'sup' and '/sup' inside pointed brackets, but that is not working.

Solar Cycle Model fails to predict the recent warming

Bob Loblaw at 09:46 AM on 23 December, 2012

Philip: comments in journals are actually a fairly rare thing, and a lot of journals don't really like them much. Some may not allow them at all. It can also be a lot of work to prepare one, and you don't get much credit as an academic for them. To advance a career, time is better spent on full articles - but for that to be a "response" to a bad paper, it has to have enough new stuff in it to merit publication on its own (but then can also be submitted to any journal you want, not just the one with the bad paper). For a bad paper in an odd journal, the editors may not want to publicly acknowledge that they let utter crap through their peer review process - which may mean that the subject was one they didn't really know much about to begin with (and therefore can't judge the merits of the comment, either).

You'll see frequent mention here at SkS by dana1981 to the paper discussed in the post Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues. That was published as a comment, but the original idea was (I think) to submit it as a stand-alone paper, and the journal/editor decided it was more suited as a comment. Dana may wish to weigh in on the difficulties of the process.

IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun

Composer99 at 06:35 AM on 18 December, 2012

brr:

I have read through your comments and it seems to me you are arguing something that is orthogonal to the point of the OP.

I assume you think otherwise, so perhaps you can enlighten me.

As far as I am aware, the IPCC draft report quite correctly notes that:

There is very high confidence that natural forcing is a small fraction of the anthropogenic forcing. [Emphasis mine.] In particular, over the past three decades (since 1980), robust evidence from satellite observations of the TSI [total solar irradiance] and volcanic aerosols demonstrate a near-zero (–0.04 W m–2) change in the natural forcing compared to the anthropogenic AF increase of ~1.0 ± 0.3 W m–2.

(Note the 2-order-of-magnitude difference in forcings.)

The paragraph that Rawls asserts is a game-changer does not contradict the above statement in any meaningful fashion:

Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR [galactic cosmic rays] or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system [cites omitted]. The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.

Despite this non-relation, Rawls is attempting to claim the latter paragraph undermines the former in some crucial respect. It is this transparent mendacity that dana1981 is addressing in the OP.

Was it your intention to defend Rawls on his central point (that the unquantified cosmogenic effects on climate upend the quantified difference in anthropogenic vs natural forcings)?

If you were in fact arguing something else entirely, can you please clarify?

IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun

Ray at 15:55 PM on 15 December, 2012

Thanks DSL and dana1981 it'll teach me to pay much greater attention to the captions in figures

IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun

panzerboy at 11:14 AM on 15 December, 2012

Dana1981 @31, Thanks, that's what happens when I search for text (Cosmic Ray) in a scanned pdf. Doh!

IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun

hank_ at 03:08 AM on 15 December, 2012

@Dana1981 #3
I'm afraid you're a bit late on this one. It's going to be almost impossible to un-spin this story into obscurity because there is just too much uncertainty and hedging in this draft report, never mind the Solar angle =\
Hank

The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science

Klapper at 06:09 AM on 6 December, 2012

Dana1981@27:

I looked at your Table 1 from the March post on 2013. I was attempting to reverse engineer to see what baseline you were using for the GISS anomaly. I regressed the observed vs predicted anomaly and got an RSQ'd of 0.29 (2001 to 2011 inclusive). However, looking for the baseline by backcalc'ing from the predicted number and ENSO/TSI/CO2 adjustments, I got a jumble of numbers.

If I took the baseline to be 0.427 and redid the prediction through straight addition of your by year adjustments I got a much better RSQ'd (0.63), quite impressive actually.

I may have made an error, or your formula may have exponents or coefficients I don't know about. Either that or Table 1 has some errors.

The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science

Clyde at 17:56 PM on 2 December, 2012

@dana1981 - 10

Hyper linked from the link you claim i never read.

But the issue is far from settled, and climate change is not the only factor. For example, while sea surface temperatures are currently about 3 °C above average along the Atlantic coast, the expected increase due to global warming is just 0.6 °C, according to Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. So while the changing climate certainly plays a role, Trenberth says, there is plenty of space for natural variability.

Looks like Trenberth agrees with me. Nobody can say how much a role GW played.

On the link you claim i didn't read.

"While it’s impossible to say how this scenario might have unfolded if sea-ice had been as extensive as it was in the 1980s, the situation at hand is completely consistent with what I’d expect to see happen more often as a result of unabated warming and especially the amplification of that warming in the Arctic"

Trenberth said that the null hypothesis would be that the negative North Atlantic Oscillation was just part of the oscillation's natural phases, and at present the influence of polar warming was speculative.

There is actually a fairly simple answer to this question: human-caused climate change amplified the hurricane's impacts.

My question is by how much? If there was no GW would Sandy's damage been mild compared to what is actually was? So for news article to say GW caused Sandy to do X amount of damage is "Gish Gallop." I'm not saying GW had zero effect on Sandy. I'm just saying it can't be proved how much of an effect it did have, nor can it be proven what Sandy would have been like say in 1980.

Was the climate a whole lot different in 2011? Why didn't Irene turn into a Sandy?

Wigley and Santer Find the IPCC is too Conservative on AGW

Cornelius Breadbasket at 19:27 PM on 21 November, 2012

dana1981 @ 7. There is a difference between intelligent and educated ;)

What the 2012 US Election Means for Climate Change and Denial

John Hartz at 06:53 AM on 16 November, 2012

@dana1981

Many environmental organizations and activists worked their butts off to get Obama re-elected because they knew he accepted the scientific consensus on climate change and the need for the US to reduce carbon emissions. These organizations and individuals have spoken out and will continue to speak out on the need to move forward on the climate change front post haste. Brad Johnson's statement is in this vein.

Climate sensitivity is low

KR at 07:17 AM on 10 November, 2012

dana1981 - Actually, it's that those models with low sensitivity don't simulate humidity changes very well, not clouds. They note that clouds are a more difficult phenomena to observe, too.

Fasullo and Trenberth 2012 (described here) appears to be much in the same vein as Spencer and Braswell 2011, where they examined how climate models matched observations, although S&B 2011 was clearly refuted due to poor technique and the exclusion of models they themselves tested which refuted their conclusions.

WSJ, Sandy, and Global Warming - Asking the Right Questions

Bob Lacatena at 09:33 AM on 7 November, 2012

10, dana1981,

I was looking at historical storm tracks (see here and here.), wondering if there has been a change in the tracks of storms so that fewer hit the USA.

It's possible, but I'd need to download and analyze the data to see.

But I don't think it's worth the time. After just perusing the data, it looks to me like so few storms hit the USA mainland that it's just a "sparse data cherry pick." That is, without decades upon decades of data, you won't get enough to say if there's been a change.

It's a very easy thing to do, to say "no change" because so few storms hit, and without a 100% increase in the number of storms, you're not going to see a big change in that 0-3 storms making landfall average.

Interestingly, storms seem to take one of 3 tracks. If they form far enough south, they go straight and stay south and hit the Caribbean and Mexico, and maybe turn up to hit the USA Gulf Coast. If they form west or north, they turn sooner, maybe skirting Florida and then heading out to sea. And if they form in the "sweet spot", where they turn late, they'll hit landfall in the Gulf or East Coast. But that sweet spot is so small that very, very few storms form there.

Of course, now we have a fourth category, the "zig zagger" that turns north, then turns back to the coast.

Anyone know anything about this (the science behind predicted storm tracks)?

Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection

AndersMi at 09:48 AM on 4 November, 2012

Tom, thanks for your long and interesting reply. I take the first of your quotings from SREX as supporting the lack of certainty over the presumed trends (the Webster et al. paper is dated 7 years earlier than the SREX report and has been certainly weighted in). The fact that the lack of confidence in the trend has to be attributed to a small number of new events or in the uncertainty in the actual number of old ones, is frankly irrelevant. And if overall this doesn't tell us that there is no trend, as Dana1981 rightly remarks, it suggests that the global warming signal, if there is any, must be difficult to single out.

The new Grinsted et al paper is certainly interesting and I didn't know about it. Let's see whether its findings will be confirmed by other studies.

As for my "silly argument". No statistically significant increase doesn't mean, as you say, "an uncertainty in the magnitude of the increase". It means no increase detected. If you can't detect changes in events on a statistical scale, how can you blame a single instance on a specific cause? Not only you would need an absolute certainty on the causation mechanism, and on the fact that in different conditions the event wouldn't have realized - which you don't and can't have in this case; but you also need to justify why this causation mechanism doesn't show its signature with a detectable statistical trend, that is, why doesn't it happen *repeatedly*. You're like somebody claiming that a tumour was caused in a patient by a particular chemical substance, although there is no statically significant increase in tumours in populations subject to that same substance.

Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Connection

AndersMi at 06:21 AM on 4 November, 2012

Moderator and dana1981: as I've already written in many comments, the source for the statement "there is no clear statistical increase of storms" is IPCC's SREX report, published in March 2012. Full report, page 111: "There is low confidence that any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities." And more, with a slightly different nuance in the same report's Summary for Policymakers, page 6: "There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.".
For Moderator, I'd appreciate if you'd remove from my previous comment the request to provide a source, since it suggests that I hadn't - while I alrady had in my very first comment to this post:

>>-----
AndersMi at 22:06 PM on 3 November, 2012
It seems to me that this post contradicts the latest IPCC report on extreme events, SREX, published in March 2012, where it says:

"There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities."
>>-----

For dana1981: The Knutson et al. (2010) paper has been surely taken in account in IPCC's SREX (2012). As for what Emanuel shows, it's fine, but it's model-based. Reality doesn't seem (yet) to show the signature of GW in this respect.

Climate of Doubt Shines a Light on the Climate Denial Movement

Roger D at 09:26 AM on 27 October, 2012

dana1981@14
OK, point taken regarding Taylor.

And thanks for this post.

While watching Climate of Doubt I thought there should have been more explanation of why the scientific case of the "septics" is so lacking in credibility. But after thinking about it more I realized that in a one hour show you can only address so much: And like other commenters here I think PBS did a very good job exposing how the Heartland, etc was all about politics/worldview instead of rational discussion. The show was a good prod to any open minded viewers to view skeptically the "skeptics".

What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?

KR at 01:22 AM on 20 October, 2012

The storm was not the sole cause of the observed low area, but rather one factor involved. Storms like that are part of the natural variability (+/-) of Arctic ice extent. It was also not a sufficient cause for this years area, as seen by previous storms of similar magnitude not driving ice area to record lows.

The storm was a contributing but not sufficient cause, one that only induced some variability over a multi-year trend of low ice volume due to another causal factor entirely - warming. In fact, if 2012 had the same weather factors as 2007, I expect the ice area minima would have been much much lower - this years weather was nowhere near as strong an influence on variability as 2007's.

What dana1981 and Albatross have shown is that the 05 August 2012 storm cannot (by itself) be blamed for the low 2012 area, part of denying (as many 'skeptics' have attempted) the issue of declining total ice levels driven by global warming. Pointing to the storm and misattributing low Arctic extent solely to that variability factor is a "Look, squirrel" red herring.

Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues

JoeRG at 15:43 PM on 16 October, 2012

#53 MarkR
Thanks for the explanation. It's clear now.

#48 dana1981
Thanks as well.
Regardless, the main conclusions remain unchanged.
Not quite. Speak of an "accelerated rate" is a bit overstated. But nonetheless, the forcing is of course strong.
For me it seems that DK12 used this difference of the 2000-2008 and 2002-2008 to generate this "negative" forcing. If so, it would be absurd.

I have a last question. Why you use a factor of 0.62 what includes the whole surface?
For a forcing that counts to the OHC, only the oceans surface is to consider. For the land values you use the LAI data where the rest, means the remaining 29% of the surface, have to be considered.
For your OHC data a factor of 0.88 would be correct, I think.

Do you agree?

2012 SkS Weekly Digest #41

Andy Skuce at 06:49 AM on 16 October, 2012

Yes, John Hartz, this weekly post is very useful.

Ouijit@7. Yes, I believe that the indefatigable dana1981 has a post in the works to debunk the Daily Mail article. Indeed, he has already prebunked it.

Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues

KR at 15:31 PM on 12 October, 2012

chriskoz - A small point of disagreement, at least in emphasis. Solar energy is the only significant heat source, as anything else (geothermal energy, waste heat from our industrial use) is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude smaller.

Changes in solar energy, on the other hand, are tiny - an order of magnitude smaller than anthropogenic greenhouse forcing changes over the last 150 years. Therefore when attributing causes of global warming over that period, solar changes simply are not in the ballpark for consideration.

Dale - As dana1981 pointed out, the oceans (representing ~93% of the thermal mass of the climate) have continued to warm over the period you mentioned. The atmosphere represents only ~2.3% of the climate thermal mass, and any variations in the efficiency of which the oceans absorb energy will show much larger temperature variations in the atmosphere. There certainly have been variations in radiative imbalance over the last decade - ENSO, aerosol loads, etc. - but given that ocean heat content (OHC) continues to rise, even those are fairly small change regarding ongoing climate trends.

To quote Galileo, or at least something attributed to him: "Eppur si muove" - And yet it moves. Global atmospheric temperatures represent but 1/40 of the climate energy, albeit a portion we pay considerable attention to.

2012 SkS Weekly Digest #40

ajki at 19:27 PM on 9 October, 2012

Side note unrelated to the topics of this digest:

Early in 2012 german readers saw the phenomenal rise of a new bestseller on the german book market, still provided in piles in all book stores. Even my local public library has bought two books - so for the next five to ten years Vahrenholt/Lüning's 'Die kalte Sonne' will be available here for all citizens. Vahrenholt and his 'insights' on climate change have been noticed and to some extent covered on SkS here [dana1981] and here [Bart Verheggen]. But until now english speaking readers did not have the questionable pleasure to read about Vahrenholt's positions directly.

But generously Prof Vahrenholt made available a lecture held on 06/13/2012 at the Royal Society in London with the title “Global Warming: Second Thoughts Of An Environmentalist” on his website [www.kaltesonne.de]. A pdf in english is downloadable from this page [direct link to pdf].

The Economic Damage of Climate Denial

Clyde at 04:36 AM on 6 October, 2012

@Bob Loblaw

I thought that name sounded familar. How you doing?

Trivial to do on the personal level. Remember that you said "Nobody is gonna make China do anything". I can easily make them stop selling stuff to me, so your statement is blatantly wrong.

With all do respect it's your statement that's blatantly wrong. China is not forcing you or your sister to buy any of their stuff. So you can't make them stop selling you anything. You can choose to not buy anything from China, but that doesn't make China do anything.

----------------------------------

@dana1981

Clyde says let the private sector solve the problem - that's exactly what carbon pricing does. It gives the private sector an economic incentive to solve the problem via the free market.

No! An "economic incentive" is a tax break or subsidy. Carbon pricing is imposing a cost on the emission of greenhouse gases. Calling it carbon pricing is a way to avoid calling it a carbon tax. Raising taxes on something doesn't encourage the free market.

If the state or fed govt raises your income tax do you have the incentive to work harder? It will take some of your purchasing power out of the economy & lower your standard of living.

-------------------------

Just think if a carbon tax/carbon pricing was in place.

Soaring gas prices across California have forced some station owners to shut off their pumps while people change their driving habits or, in some cases, avoid driving all together.

Read more here.

Now if anybody thinks (not saying any of you have) the solution is to raise the cost of things so high it puts folks out of business & others to lower their standard of living is a good way to solve the problem i respectively disagree.

The Economic Damage of Climate Denial

Clyde at 06:37 AM on 4 October, 2012

dana1981 18

US carbon emissions decreased in 2011 mainly because of the move away from coal toward natural gas.

My point (perhaps made poorly) was no tax was needed to reduce CO2 in the time frame. I have no problem with govt funding for research & development. IMO the fed govt (states can do as they please) shouldn't be raising taxes on anything. A carbon tax might be will intended in the beginning, Social Security was too. The fed govt now uses SS money for things other than SS.

Talking about Maine's expected slight increase in electricity prices as a result of renewable energy completely misses the point of this post - that the costs of fossil fuels are not reflected in their market price, so previous electricity rates were artificially low.

There's more than the "slight increase" in electric prices in the study. That's only part of the problem. Now lets move to a nation wide carbon tax scheme. I'm guessing gas/diesel will be included at some point. Either a direct tax on fuels or a mileage tax. That will increase the cost of everything in our daily lives. Using Maine's slight increase 8% in 2017.

1. Electric bill 8%
2. Fuel for vehicles 8%. *That will increase amongst other things, the cost of public transportation.
3. Grocery bill 8%

Just three things a 24% increase. Before long a slight increase becomes a big increase. I'm guessing you know that will hit the poor the hardest.

*Now some will say they poor can get tax rebates to help them deal with the increase. That money has to come from somebody. Not many (if any) folks aren't effected by higher gas/diesel prices & electric bills. Do you think companies won't pass the cost of production on to the consumers? Yet another 8% increase.

DISCLAIMER: I used 8% just for a visual. I don't know the actual % without seeing the actual tax. The point being everything in our daily lives will cost more with a CO2 tax. When everything cost more it's no longer a slight increase.

Your comment about China is an example of Tragedy of the Commons.

It might be, but it doesn't make it false. Nobody is gonna make China do anything. Do you agree that for a CO2 tax to have the desired results some claim it will have, it has to be a global CO2 tax?

The Economic Damage of Climate Denial

From Peru at 08:29 AM on 3 October, 2012

dana1981:

Could it be possible to fix the broken link (the first one in comment nº4) to:

Intergenerational Equity, Social Discount Rates and Global Warming

http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/faculty/dasgupta/pub07/climate.pdf

Thank you in advance.

By the way, do you (or anyone else) has some comments about the cases described in the two links above (comment nº4) where the discount rates can be not only very low, but even zero or negative?

PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?

Roger D at 08:52 AM on 21 September, 2012

OK Dale - maybe I misunderstood your point. And regarding 'minor bullets' vs 'thermonuclear weapons', I have to admit I'm not versed enough in the science to distinguish one from the other. But I'm skeptical that the Arctic melt rate is accurately described as a minor bullet. And of course to do so is to make that case that there is only minor global warming if/ when it goes the rest of the way and simply disappears...but as the moderator noted above, this Arctic vs Anarctic discussion is deviating from the topic of Dana1981's post - so I'm done with ice here.

Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator

John Hartz at 11:20 AM on 11 September, 2012

@ dana1981 #27:

I do believe that you are being a tad too harsh on Watts. After all, he and the Wattsonians come from a parallel universe where the laws of physics and chemistry are entirely diffeerent than those that apply here on Earth.

Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe

Joel Upchurch at 17:10 PM on 30 August, 2012

dana1981 @41. Sorry typo. I meant horizontal bars.

Your comments seem to all deal with C02 qualitatively. You haven't actually dealt with the data quantitatively. In your own article you speculate about greenhouse gas levels of 900ppm by 2100. "For example, if we reach an atmospheric CO2 level of 900 ppm by 2100 (which is entirely plausible if we follow Ridley's advice and don't worry about global warming or take action to mitigate it)"
e That works out to an increase of 504PPM for the next 88 years. A simple doubling would be an increase 396ppm. I tried to follow skywatchers advice and fit an exponential curve on the CO2 data.

When I tried to fit all the C02 data back to 1958, I actually got a very low value. The highest value I got was only using the CO2 data since 2000. That came out to f(x) = 0.0087800157 exp(0.0053225105x). This works out to 628PPM for 2100. That is a lot less than 900PPM or even 792PPM.
If you think my math is wrong please correct me.

Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe

Joel Upchurch at 13:53 PM on 30 August, 2012

dana1981 @34 . The first problem is the use of a bar chart. Anyone who is familiar with the work of Edward Tufte, will assume that anyone using a bar chart is trying to sell you something, since it is the 2nd worst chart after the pie chart. The 2nd problem is that there is no discernible algorithm for where the vertical bars are drawn. If you have access to the orginal source material, maybe you can post a link?

I said 'looks pretty good' because the r-squared is .98, which I included on the graph. I spent a fair amount of my career writing programs to create graphs to support actual engineering decisions and tend to be pretty picky about graphs. I usually download the raw data and draw my own graphs.

Wood for trees

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