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

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Eclectic at 17:38 PM on 23 April, 2024

Theo Simon @4 :

As John Mason says @5 , there are certainly some Red Flags attached to that Kubicki paper ~ including it's citations of papers by Harde; by Humlum; and by Idso . . . those prominent luminati of the Alternate Universe.

Theo, to save your reading time in future ~ whenever you see a "gotcha" article in NoTricksZone .com , claiming that the mainstream science (of anything) is quite wrong . . . then there's a roughly 99% probability that the article is a load of taurine excrement [abbreviation = BS ].

Reading the cited [Kubicki] article's Abstract quickly demonstrates that the authors have simply failed to understand the basic physics of the atmosphere & GreenHouse Effect [abbreviation = GHE ]. And this first impression gets confirmed by reading the article's Conclusions, which are comprised of an excessive amount of word salad and bizarro politics.

Kubicki et al. seem to have discovered ideas that have been well & truly debunked . . . many decades ago. If only the authors had troubled to have their "novel" ideas reviewed by experts, before presenting their paper to the world ! They could have saved themselves so much embarrassment, as well as saving dollars.

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

Bob Loblaw at 11:11 AM on 14 July, 2023

Philippe @ 29:

Yes, SB Idso would be that Sherwood Idso. He has been getting things wrong about CO2 and climate change for something like 40 years, since his early claims that surface temperature was not sensitive to CO2 concentration. He made those claims on the basis of "natural" experiments comparing surface temperature variation to surface changes in incoming IR radiation.

His mistake there was to not recognize that the important IR changes are the ones for outgoing IR radiation at the top of the troposphere (earth energy balance), not the surface ones (surface energy balance). It's such a shame, as he was a very good microclimatologist in his early years. He moved big time into the CO2 is fertilizer realm many years ago.

He's listed at Desmog:

Sherwood B Idso

and has turned his denial into a family business, including his sons.

Craig Idso

Keith Idso

Desmog also has a page on the family business:

https://www.desmog.com/center-study-carbon-dioxide-and-global-change/

I am not at all surprised that Dave Burton would find them a useful source of "information".

How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?

Philippe Chantreau at 07:24 AM on 14 July, 2023

I am late for this party as many have provided answers and further explored the subject. I will only mention a couple of things from a post further back that was on the wrong thread.

A citation in that post was this article:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26929390/

Quotes of interest from the abstract:

"Greatest yield stimulations occurred in the e[CO2 ] late sowing and heat stressed treatments, when supplied with more water."

"There were no clear differences in cultivar response due to e[CO2 ]. Multiple regression showed that yield response to e[CO2 ] depended on temperatures and water availability before and after anthesis."

My main point was that water availability is the major controlling factor.

Another was not peer-reviewed but a "working paper" from a think tank:

www.nber.org/papers/w29320

This paper claims to establish a causal link between agricultural yields and CO2 atmospheric content. They use a six year sample and then attempt to regress backward to the post-war era. I did not bother downloading the pdf so I am not sure about how they controlloed for other factors in the sample and how they integrated the enormous changes in agricultural methods post-war, like increased mechanization fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, etc. They write this interesting snippet: "In a thought exercise, we apply the CO₂ fertilization effect we estimated in our sample from 2015-2021 backwards to 1940, and, assuming no other limiting factors, find that CO₂ was the dominant driver of yield growth..." So the working paper amonts to a thought exercise involving a rather gigantic assumption.

The third included S.B. Idso as an author, possibly of infamous CO2 Science website affiliation (I did not verify that). I could only access the abstract and it mentioned nothing about other factors than CO2, such as water availability.

In post #24, drought is mentioned and Hao et al (2014) is mentioned, with a graph that generated excitement at WUWT come years ago. The data ends in 2012. Looking at more data extending to recent times reveals a different picture, as shown by Rodell and Li (2023) in Nature Water:

www.nature.com/articles/s44221-023-00040-5

Of course, in greenhouses with very controlled conditions and water distributed carefully, concentrations in excess of 1000 ppm give good results, that remains true.

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

daveburton at 07:39 AM on 6 July, 2023

Rob wrote, "that greening is now turning into 'browning.'"

Well, here's what AR6 shows:

Some people point to that little orange box and say that greening has ceased. That reminds me of the folks who say that the it's not as warm as the 2015-16 El Nino, so warming has ceased.

Philippe wrote, "There is probably a better thread for this argument,"

I agree. I was just trying to address OnePlanet's remark about a "locked in" CO2 level.

Philippe wrote, "There is only one factor that truly controls how green any region can be: water availability."

That's a common misconception. Elevated CO2 levels greatly improve plants' water use efficiency (WUE) and drought resilience. That's why elevated CO2 is especially beneficial for crops when under drought stress. It has been heavily studied by agronomists. Here's a paper about wheat:

Fitzgerald GJ, et al. (2016) Elevated atmospheric [CO2] can dramatically increase wheat yields in semi-arid environments and buffer against heat waves. Glob Chang Biol. 22(6):2269-84. doi:10.1111/gcb.13263.

Philippe wrote, "The experiences that have shown a CO2 fertilization effect were done in very controlled conditions and involved extremely high concentrations (800 ppm and up)."

That's incorrect. All major crops have been studied, and all benefit from elevated CO2. It is true that the greatest benefits accrue at 1000 ppmv or higher, but even modest CO2 increases significantly improve crop yields.

This recent study quantifies the effect for several major crops. Their results are toward the high end, but their qualitative conclusion is consistent with many, many other studies. They reported, "We consistently find a large CO2 fertilization effect: a 1 ppm increase in CO2 equates to a 0.4%, 0.6%, 1% yield increase for corn, soybeans, and wheat, respectively."

This study evaluated pine trees:

Idso, S., & Kimball, B. (1994). Effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on biomass accumulation and distribution in Eldarica pine trees. Journal of Experimental Botany, 45, 1669-1672.
Pine trees grown at varying CO2 levels

As you noted, the effect is greatest with CO2 >800 ppmv, but, as you can see, even a much smaller CO2 increase has a substantial effect.

Rob wrote, "This entire paragraph is patently absurd and completely fabricated."

It is 100% factual, Rob. I'm surprised that you didn't already know it.

These figures are from that same AR6 Table 5.1 excerpt which I already showed you:

average CO2 removal rate in the 2010s = 2.7707 ppmv/yr
average CO2 removal rate in teh 2000s = 2.3481 ppmv/yr

These figures are from Mauna Loa:

average CO2 level in the 2010s = 399.91 ppmv
average CO2 level in the 2000s = 378.84 ppmv

(399.91-378.84) / (2.7707-2.3481) = 49.86

So a 50 ppmv increase in CO2 level accelerates the natural removal rate by about 1 ppmv/year.

49.86 / 2.1294 = 23.42 ppmv increase yields a +1 PgC removal rate increase.

I encourage you to do the calculations yourself for any other time period of your choice.

If you have the natural removal rate as a function of CO2 level (which we do), it is trivial to simulate the CO2 level decline if emissions were to suddenly cease. I wrote a little Perl program to do it; email me if you want a copy.

Rob wrote, "if true, the oceans would just continue to suck up all the atmospheric CO2 and we'd live on a frozen planet."

That's incorrect. The system progresses toward equilibrium, which is below 300 ppmv, but not zero.

Rob wrote, "rather that starting from a prior where all the published science is getting it wrong, and making stuff up... you don't have the requisite training to fully grasp the topic"

Rob, it's not necessary to resort to ad hominem attacks. I'm happy to document things that are surprising to you. You need but ask. Everything I've written is well-supported.

Rob wrote, "take some time to fully familiarize yourself with Henry's Law."

Due to the temperature dependence of Henry's Law, a 1°C increase in temperature slows CO2 uptake by the oceans by about 3%. But a 50% (140 ppmv) rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration accelerates CO2 uptake by the oceans by 50%. That's the main reason that ocean uptake of CO2 continues to accelerate.

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

scaddenp at 11:28 AM on 13 June, 2023

RH - well CO2"Science" have long history in misrepresenting what science papers actually say, secure in the knowledge that their intended audience won't read them to check. LikeitWarm, I agree that the Idso's are intelligent and smart - just not in a good way.

Likeitwarm - I appreciate that it is very difficult to evaluate material that you dont know very well. However, a common strategy for the deniers is the"strawman fallacy". Ie they claim that "science says X", which means that it follows that Y should be observed. If Y is not observed, then clearly X is wrong. (eg Idso is effectively claiming "Science says CO2 is only thing that effects temperature, therefore past temperatures must reflect CO2 concentration" ). If you discover that science says no such thing (eg check with what the IPCC reports claim instead) and that your source would likely be aware of that, (eg quoting or misquoting IPCC) then you have reasonable grounds for assuming that the source is bad actor, and not to be compared with what peer-reviewed science is saying (no matter how appealing their presentation is).

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Bob Loblaw at 07:36 AM on 11 June, 2021

Nick Palmer:

I agree with what Phillip and NigelJ have said to a much larger extent than I agree with what you have said. I will focus on a few points in your latest comment.

"I was referring to the definite and real uncertainty in the science BEFORE Hansen's 1988 speech"

Give me a break. I was studying climatology for 10 years before Hansen's speech, and a dozen years before the 1990 IPCC report. I did not need Greenpeace or any other media reports to know what was going on - I was reading the primary literature. I found about papers like Manabe and Wetherald (1967) by reading them when they were still <20 years old.

"It is less than honest of people to assert that our modern established science in any way is comparable to the nascent science back then,"

It is less than honest for people to assert that there was not a lot that we knew back then, either. We knew in the mid 1980s that Sherwood Idso's arguments for negligible warming were wrong. That did not stop special interests from funding him for decades afterwards. That funding was not intended to pursue a legitimate sicentific goal - it was to sow doubt.

Climatology was not "nascent" in the 1980s. It was "nascent" in the 1880s.

"I submit that these tactics of Big Oil were just ordinary political manoeuvring to resist irrationally draconian 'green/red' calls until the science got strong enough. "

I submit that if this were the case, then Big Oil would have tried to argue the real science and legitimate uncertainty, instead of funding positions that were already known to be bunk.

"...government pandering to the views of misinformed activists ..."

You mean like the denial industry that was created specifically to maximize the extent to which politicians and the public were provided with misinformation? As you point out, right-wing politicians like Margaret Thatcher had a reasonably realistic view of the science several decades ago. Something - someone - managed to convince them otherwise.

"It is a matter of record that the fossil fuel industry increasingly deserted the early 'denialist' fossil fuel organisation - which was formed in 1989 - the 'Global Climate Coalition' - until by the early 2000s it was disbanded, and this was because the science had got strong enough."

Alternate explanation: as early denial organizations lost credibility, it was easier to let them die and fund new organizations that could spout the same misinformation under a new name. Until that organization loses it credibility. Or don't even wait - just create a whole bunch of them and make it look as if there is widespread doubt.

Much of the rest of your comment dives into "the mean lefties made them do it". I heard the same kind of arguments being made about general environmental issues when I worked in the oil patch in the early 1980s. It was not a reaction to climate isuses - it was a standard rhetorical tactic long before then.

"BTW, are there are any links to Big Oil documents which actually deny the science in the way that deniers do - it's the Sun - it's cooling - it's cosmic rays - the temperature record was tampered with - it's all fraud etc? I've never seen any actual full-on denialism in them. "

Because they learned from the problems the tobacco industry ran into over their internal documents? And funneled the money through shell corporations or institutes to hide the source, letting the denial groups do this for them? People that don't want to get cuaght doing what they are doing usually figure out eventually to not keep records.

It doesn't matter if Big Oil believed the denialism or not - they sure funded it. Out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they thought it made good business sense?

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

Eclectic at 23:51 PM on 10 April, 2020

Thanks Nigelj , yes I do read Realclimate from time to time (and note your presence there too ).

Now I am reporting back after reading the first article listed on Page One of climatescience.org.nz

# It is a fine example of one style of Denialist propaganda.

The article is titled, in very large blue letters in upper case :- [ * Moderators please excuse my use of upper case for this exact quote] :-

" DROP IN NUMBER OF SUNSPOTS SIGNALS IMMINENCE OF A COOLER WORLD "

~ this is followed by a single paragraph in small font, commencing:

" An important new paper by Dr David Whitehouse for the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that 2019 was mostly without sunspots. ... [and finishing:] This paper discusses some of these issues." With LINK to the GWPF important new paper .

Note the typical Denialist technique:

(A) The huge headline indicating Imminence of a Cooler World ( i.e. that the mainstream scientists are wrong about ongoing global warming)

(B) An entirely unrigorous newspaper-supplement-like report (by Dr Whitehouse) is implied to be a respectable scientific paper. It is no such thing.

# The editor of this website knows that many of his Denialist clientele will not bother to read past the headline, and they will proceed elsewhere holding the comforting knowledge that the planet is about to enter a cooling phase.

And that those who do actually read the single paragraph, also will proceed elsewhere, holding that same "Cooling" impression.

(C) Those who do follow the link, are met with a multi-page essay headed by beautiful huge photos & artistic illustrations of close-up views of the sun (all looking a bit National Geographic sciencey). Followed by 8 pages (plus sciencey reference list) of Whitehouse's text ~ discursively discussing cherry-picked famine in 17th Century France; horrible child mortality in Europe during the Little Ice Age; dire comments from a sermon by a contemporary English preacher . . . and various other irrelevancies including historical aspects of sunspot observations.

In the end, Whitehouse has given no quantification of the implied Grand Solar Minimum which is "imminently" about to strike us. Indeed, regarding future climate, he hasn't really said anything at all. His "important new paper" is lurid but vacuous commentary.

As such, it all comes as no surprise to regular readers of SkS.

Nigelj , I fear that the rest of the NZ website's headlines probably have a similar modus operandi. Is that correct? (And does that website have comments columns?)

I am very much reminded of that propagandist, the marvellous Lord Monckton who boasted that 400 scientific papers demonstrated the worldwide nature and much-higher-than-today warmth of the Medieval Warm Period. When science-journalist Peter Hadfield (Potholer54) challenged him for the list, Monckton blandly supplied the references [actually a list by Dr Idso]. Hadfield said that he carefully studied the first 6 papers on the list, and found none of them supported Monckton's MWP claims. So no point reading further down the list. (Monckton is well known for his bold mendacities/errors.)

Antarctica is gaining ice

Eclectic at 17:02 PM on 13 June, 2019

Jesscars @487 , if you go to the well-known website WUWT [WhatsUpWithThat] you will find that "skeptics" have all sorts of beliefs about climate-change / global-warming. And these beliefs are mostly mutually contradictory.

A few hold beliefs that are quite reasonable ~ at least, for the conditions prior to the industrial-revolution / coal-burning. Others believe that the [observed & well-documented] ice-melt & sea level rise are simply not happening ~ are a hoax (from a two-century conspiracy by corrupt scientists worldwide . . . a conspiracy without even a single whistle-blower ! ) Others believe that "chemtrails" are being sprayed by the Lizard People (disguised as humans) in order to befuddle and subdue the human race . . . leading to a dictatorship by an Anti-Christ or alternatively a Marxist World Government (run by the Illuminati or similar).

Half are in complete denial CO2 has any physical effect whatsoever (other than nourishing plants). Others think the atmospheric CO2 effect is low but negligible, and that we can keep merrily burning coal/oil until it's all used up. Yet others think (despite the evidence) that all global warming/cooling comes from oceanic overturning cycles of 1400 years' duration (or whatever). Or believe that the the orbits of Jupiter & Saturn are the underlying cause of climate change . . . or that Galactic Cosmic Rays are the sole responsible factor. In short : ABCD (Anything But Carbon Dioxide) .

But what say you, Jesscars ?

# Probably simpler for you to answer here , rather than on all the other six threads you have posted in over this afternoon.

# Also, please don't bother to mention Idso & Corbyn ~ since those two gentlemen have failed at basic arithmetic.

Antarctica is gaining ice

jesscars at 16:21 PM on 13 June, 2019

I believe that there are observable changes in the natural environment (such as ice-caps melting and sea-level changes), and that these are due to climate change. But I think denial of such things is probably bad science, and promoted by bad skeptics. It's not fair to characterise all "skeptics" as all having such beliefs.

The better scientific case against "climate change" is that it's not human causes, but natural causes, that are responsible for the bulk or entirety of these changes. The climate changes naturally and always has. The true question is -what is causing that change-?

AGW promoters say CO2. "Skeptics" say natural factors such as Milankovitch cycles, solar radiation cycles, and the circumpolar vortex.

Sherwood Idso, in a 1998 paper, presents a case, based on results from eight natural experiments, that the influence of CO2 on the temperature, through the greenhouse effect is minimal - he derives an upper limit of 0.4 degrees C for a 300 to 600 ppm doubling of atmospheric CO2. Piers Corbyn also believes that the influence of CO2 on climate is minimal/insignificant.

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

Mal Adapted at 05:27 AM on 11 March, 2019

Alonerock,

Ben Davidson's claim that climate scientists ignore substantial incident energy fluxes is simply false: see this Oregon State University tutorial.

In any case, attribution of the recent, accelerating rise of global mean surface temperature to enhanced 'greenhouse' forcing is based on the radiative properties of the oceans, land and atmosphere. During the last 60 years, GMST has risen by more 0.9 degrees C (Berkeley Earth dataset), while atmospheric CO2 has increased from 315 ppm to 410 ppm (the Keeling curve). No significant trend in incident energy can be shown in that interval, however: thus the proportional contributions of the regions of the incident EM spectrum, along with high energy particle fluxes, are not relevant.

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

nigelj at 14:17 PM on 10 March, 2019

Alonerock

Correction. Ben Davidson appears to be claiming climate scientists only consider the UV component of solar irradiance, and ignore the rest so radio waves, xrays, gamma rays, cosmic rays and that they also ignore the solar wind and high energy protons (I confess dont know what high energy protons are about). But as I said scientists obviously don't see these as significant in warming, and they are the experts.

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

nigelj at 13:13 PM on 10 March, 2019

Alonerock

Regarding the Ben Davidson video. I've read somewhere that the guy is a lawyer, a science sceptic, and a conspiracy theorest, and it all goes beyond climate change.

I didn't watch his video in full. I gave it 15 minutes, and he is obviously not a scientist. His main argument appears to be scientists only consider impacts on earths climate of total solar irradiance and ignore other emissions from the sun including he claims xrays, solar winds, magnetic fluxes and high energy protons and their possible effects on warming. I'm not a physicist, but I would hazard a fairly confident guess that scientists ignore this material because these things have no bearing on earths climate, or are insignificant.

Physicists know what impact different forms of particles and radiation have, because it's in their training, and so they don't waste time with non starters. In addition there would have to be some proof that these fluxes have changed substantially since the 1980s when warming really started in earnest, and davidson provides none. Instead he just goes on about 11 year cycles and yearly cycles which can't explain a change over a sustained 50 year period of warming. His theories are all just crazy stuff.

I mean I'm not going to waste my time watching his numerous long videos on all sorts of scientific issues. The guy is a lawyer so is hardly likely to have anything credible to say on particle physics, and has proven he is not a logical thinker and is captured by motivated reasoning as below:

realitychallenged.blog/category/motivated-reasoning/

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

alonerock at 11:37 AM on 10 March, 2019

Can someone please comment on the flaws in this "Fatal flaw in climate change science" video on youtube for me ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYoOcaqCzxo

He seems to almost totally ignore discussing CO2 and thousands of years of data that does not fit his agenda. Is this person speaking Ben Davidson, and whoever it is, what are his credentials?

Thanks in advance for any help any of you are willing to porovide to me, and I understand if everyone is too busy. I will work on this on my own as well.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

Cedders at 00:54 AM on 7 December, 2018

Craig Idso and others of that ilk have been commenting on a study by Rodeheffer et al (2018), who fail to replicate the effect on the same measure of cognitive ability. However, they are using a different population, and I think shorter exposure. Maybe submariners have become habituated to high carbon dioxide levels, or maybe the sample size is too small. The lack of reported effect on comfort might suggest some acclimatisation.

Allen et al (2015) (free full text) is strongly supportive of the cognitive effect. There's also a new review by Kenichi Azuma et al (2018): 'Effects on cognitive performance begin at 1000 ppm during short-term exposure', but other physiological variables at 500ppm.

Our brains and circulatory systems did indeed evolve in a high-O₂, lower CO₂ world, so this seems plausible, but needs more research. When contrarians ask about the direct human health effects, it is usually a distraction from what is healthy for the climate and biosphere.

Rodeheffer CD, Chabal S, Clarke JM, Fothergill DM. Acute exposure to low-to-moderate carbon dioxide levels and submariner decision making. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2018; 89(6):520–525

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Tom Curtis at 12:07 PM on 7 July, 2017

supak @14, nigelj @20, Wallace may be an obscure engineer, but D'Aleo is a meteorologist, and Idso is a climatologist. Both, however, are well known deniers, and Idso has earned a reputation for, for want of a better word, dishonesty when it comes to climate science. Idso does not appear to have any peer reviewed climate research since the early 2000s, but has been very productive of misleading denier "reports".

I have not gone right through the report but evidence in the early sections suggests this is just another in that sequence. In particular, they show a graph of various versions of the GISS temperature trends (Figure IV-1), the differences between which they attribute to "adjustments". The graph plots versions for 1980, 1987, 2007, 2010 and 2015. Wallace et al, however, feel no need to inform readers that the number of meteorological stations used increased from 1000 to 2200 between 1981 the 1980 (actually 1981) and 1987 versions, or that it increased to 7200 for the 1999 version. Nor do they feel any need to inform their readers that prior to 1995, no Sea Surface Temperature data was used, so that the data was for meteorological stations only. The very substantial changes in the temperature series between "1980" and 1987, and between 1987 and 2007 are probably influenced by these large increases in available data. Attributing the effect to "adjustments" without taking into account the change in available data is straightforwardly dishonest IMO.

Hardly any better is the "proof" that the "adjustments" eliminate a large "cyclical" component by comparison of global temperature data to US and North Atlantic temperature data. What is not noted is that the current versions of temperature data, even with all the adjustments, retain that large "cyclical" element in those areas. This can be seen clearly here, for example. (I should note that adjustments have increased the trend of the temperature data for the contiguous US, but has not eliminated the "cyclical" pattern. As a further note, I put "cyclical" in inverted commas because it is unclear to what extent the pattern is due to cyclical patterns in the climate, and to what extent it is due to changes in the aerosol forcing over time.)

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

supak at 05:11 AM on 7 July, 2017

Anybody seen this paper I hear the deniers crowing about today?

https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf

Wallace, Aleo, and Idso.

They're saying it's peer reviewed, yada yada. If anyone could point me to a debunking of this, I'd appreciate it.

Just who are these 300 'scientists' telling Trump to burn the climate?

Nick Palmer at 00:31 AM on 2 March, 2017

I thought I'd see how many of the usual suspects were in it. Interestingly, I didn't find Christy or Peiser in there...

ABDUSSAMATOV, Habibullo Ismailovich
ANDERSON, Charles R
BALL, Tim
BARTLETT, David
BASTARDI, Joseph
BELL, Larry S
BOEHMER-CHRISTIANSEN, Sonja A
BRIGGS William M.
D'ALEO, Joseph S.
DOUGLASS JR.
DYSON, Freeman
EASTERBROOK, Donald J.
EVANS, David M. W.
HAPPER, William
HUMLUM, Ole
IDSO, Craig
LEGATES, David R.
LINDZEN, Richard
MANUEL, Oliver K.
MISKOLCZI, Ferenc Mark
MOCKTON, Christopher
MOORE, Patrick
MORNER, Nils-Axel
MOTL, Lubos
SCHMITT, Harrison H.
SINGER, Fred S.
SOON, Willie
SPENCER, Roy W.
WHITEHEAD, David

To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?

Tom Curtis at 08:22 AM on 8 April, 2016

ELIofVA @14, as of 2012, the total global production of plantation timber was 520 x 10^6 m^3 (download of PDF of report 3MB), or approximately 260 x 10^6 tonnes of wood. That wood in turn contained about 130 x 10^6 tonnes of carbon. In the same year, total human emissions amounted to 10.5 x 10^9 tonnes of Carbon. That is, if the world's entire production of plantation wood was turned to charcoal, and buried, you would sequester just 1.2% of the total annual anthropogenic emmissions. Inother words, biochar can at most provide one strategy among many to tackling climate change, and a relatively minor one.

One concern I have about sequestering carbon as biochar is that it is not permanent storage. Specifically, carbon in soil decomposes, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. That decomposition may, or may not be temperature sensitive, but it certainly exists. The consequence is that there is an upper limit on the improvement of soil organic carbon by improved agricultural methods, which will vary by location, type of soil, drainage, and other factors. That does not mean such methods are not a good strategy for reducing CO2 content in the atmosphere, but they will not permanently offset CO2 emissions. (They will also need to be sustained more or less permanently a significant fraction of the increased soil organic carbon content will be returned to the atmosphere as CO2.) Biochar is said to be resistant to this type of decomposition, but it will not be immune to it. In the limit, biochar will decompose until its contribution to soil carbon does not exceed the equilibrium value of soil organic carbon in any particular environment. That will probably take thousands of years. The effect of that decomposition, however, will be a reduced reduction in atmospheric CO2 from the natural take up of carbon once we reach zero net emissions, which in term increases the long term stable temperature increase we can expect from current CO2 emissions.

They predicted an ice age in the 70's

NecktopPC at 00:18 AM on 4 February, 2016

Glenn Tamblyn@39

Well; if a statement regarding atmospheric cooling is taking place, and we know from past experience (climate history) that if this cooling continues and the build up of ice continues in Antartica like it is; then it is possible that the planet may very well be headed back into an ice age - and when this 'atmospheric cooling' trend is mentioned on the GISS [NASA] Webpage, and by one of the GISS scientists (Kate Marvel, a climatologist at GISS and the paper's lead author) then i would have to conclude that the are embracing the science revealing evidence that such mechanics are, taking place, and I view their statemnt as an endorsement and ot their recognition, of global cooling.

RE: "The definitiuon given by the moderator [PS] is appropriate."

It may very well be appropriate to the moderator and to your organization. But do you really believe (convinced) that because such a statement was made by that organization, that the issue has thus been settled, and that no other opinions and or studies are worthy? I assume so.

This comment was directed at me and speaks evidently of what I mentioned above: "I hope you are aware that Idso and Scafetta represent a very small fraction of researchers who hold such position. Both of them are very well known to all the regulars at this site. In such, you're attaching yourself to a position that is extremely unlikely to be correct."

This type of opiniated stance is not peculiar to the regulars at your site, or even your team. It is, usually a case of; our scientist (the ones we believe in) are correct and yours (the so-called small fraction) are not - the papers that our scientist author are relevant and the ones by your scientist are not.

The statement which was made regarding atmospheric cooling, is from NASA, and not Columbia University: "To quantify climate change, researchers need to know the Transient Climate Response (TCR) and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of Earth. Both values are projected global mean surface temperature changes in response to doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations but on different timescales."

Does any scientis today, know with emphatic certainty, the 'normal' or standard, if you will, temperature of the Earth's surface, or the oceans for that matter?

Someone said its 16 degrees - but that temperatures vary greatly around the world, depending on the time of year, ocean and wind currents and weather conditions.

Or as the climate changes? Like everyday; somewhere on the planet?

"There have been many attempts to determine TCR and ECS values based on the history of temperature changes over the last 150 years and the measurements of important climate drivers, such as carbon dioxide. As part of that calculation, researchers have relied on simplifying assumptions when accounting for the temperature impacts of climate drivers other than carbon dioxide, such as tiny particles in the atmosphere known as aerosols, for example."

Here is their web address, with an included link to the actual paper: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20151218/

They predicted an ice age in the 70's

Rob Honeycutt at 06:45 AM on 3 February, 2016

NecktopPC... I hope you are aware that Idso and Scafetta represent a very small fraction of researchers who hold such position. Both of them are very well known to all the regulars at this site. In such, you're attaching yourself to a position that is extremely unlikely to be correct.

They predicted an ice age in the 70's

NecktopPC at 06:16 AM on 3 February, 2016

Rob Honeycutt@18

I disagree with you on the accuracy of Mr. Cooks comment, that's all - and I have been working on providng some refrences, which are helping to substantiate the inacuracy of his statement, and or story here.

RE: "thus far you've not linked to any specific science on global cooling in the 1970's."

I am doing my best at providing information (circa 1970s) which has, included the names of scientists, and the organizations of which they were associated with, at the time, i.e. NOAA & NCAR (thus far) and the association (ice age) that have been mentioned together with global cooling.

By the way; I have read Peterson's paper, and perhaps you have read Idso's paper as well - "The Climatological Significance of a Doubling of Earth's Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration"

There is another, which is more on topic of the sun and its effects on climate, as per Dr. Roberts - the paper is by Scafetta - "Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications"

Explainer: the models that help us predict climate change

Tom Curtis at 12:06 PM on 9 July, 2015

Hick'ry, try here for a starter. The page explicitly explains CO2 lasers, so does not cover some of the important factors for atmospheric absorption, but covers the basics reasonably well. You will notice that of the three types of modes that allow CO2 to absorb or emit IR radiation, the most important in the atmosphere is the bending mode, that absorbs or emits radiation at 667 cm^-1.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Stranger8170 at 23:17 PM on 4 February, 2015

Thanks Tom. The 97% controversy has been raging at our newspaper blog since the moment it was published. The Soon and Idso claims about your Cook et al was just the latest "skeptic" point that was to show how unriliable the study is. I would think the 1200 authous representing 2000 papers should be a large enough number as you point out.

I read a blog exchange between Dana and professor Mike Hulme. It's left me a bit confused or should I say very confused. I'm not sure what Hulme's point is or where he's comming from. His statement "..97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue...". has been embraced by the deniers to claim Hulme is shooting down the paper. It seems that he's down on the process not that there isn't concensus but unfortunately all he's accompolished to do is confuse. Is he doing this to obfuscate? The fact that he thinks were "beyound it" concerning concensus seems counter productive at this time.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Tom Curtis at 13:23 PM on 4 February, 2015

Stranger @20, searching The Consensus Project database, I find just two papers with Willi Soon as a coauthor. The first, on polar bears, was rated neutral because it does not include any discussion in the abstract germain to the attribution of recent global warming. The abstract of the second reads as follows:

"The authors investigate how the global monsoon (GM) precipitation responds to the external and anthropogenic forcing in the last millennium by analyzing a pair of control and forced millennium simulations with the ECHAM and the global Hamburg Ocean Primitive Equation (ECHO-G) coupled ocean–atmosphere model. The forced run, which includes the solar, volcanic, and greenhouse gas forcing, captures the major modes of precipitation climatology comparably well when contrasted with those captured by the NCEP reanalysis. The strength of the modeled GM precipitation in the forced run exhibits a significant quasi-bicentennial oscillation. Over the past 1000 yr, the simulated GM precipitation was weak during the Little Ice Age (1450–1850) with the three weakest periods occurring around 1460, 1685, and 1800, which fell in, respectively, the Spörer Minimum, Maunder Minimum, and Dalton Minimum periods of solar activity. Conversely, strong GM was simulated during the model Medieval Warm Period (ca. 1030–1240). Before the industrial period, the natural variations in the total amount of effective solar radiative forcing reinforce the thermal contrasts both between the ocean and continent and between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres resulting in the millennium-scale variation and the quasi-bicentennial oscillation in the GM index. The prominent upward trend in the GM precipitation occurring in the last century and the notable strengthening of the global monsoon in the last 30 yr (1961–90) appear unprecedented and are due possibly in part to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, though the authors’ simulations of the effects from recent warming may be overestimated without considering the negative feedbacks from aerosols. The simulated change of GM in the last 30 yr has a spatial pattern that differs from that during the Medieval Warm Period, suggesting that global warming that arises from the increases of greenhouse gases and the input solar forcing may have different effects on the characteristics of GM precipitation. It is further noted that GM strength has good relational coherence with the temperature difference between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and that on centennial time scales the GM strength responds more directly"

The first thing you will notice is that it says nothing to dismiss the attribution of at least 50% of recent global warming to anthropogenic factors. On the contrary, it several times mentions CO2 forcing (an anthropogenic factor) as a relevant forcing, and as a cause of recent warming. Specifically, it is stated:

"The simulated change of GM in the last 30 yr has a spatial pattern that differs from that during the Medieval Warm Period, suggesting that global warming that arises from the increases of greenhouse gases and the input solar forcing may have different effects on the characteristics of GM precipitation"

Given reasonable background information about the relative strengths of anthropogenic and solar forcing, that represents an implicit endorsement that >50% of recent warming was anthropogenic. However, we don't need to dig that far in. The paper uses climate models which are known, given historical forcings, to show humans as responsible >50% of recent warming. Absent an explicit disclaimer indicating that the authors are not using standard historical forcings, that again respresents an implicit endorsement. The paper was in fact rated as Explicitly endorsing but not quantifying, ie, a 2, and that is arguably a mistake. (I would rate it as 3, implicitly endorsing.) It is, however, a mistake that makes zero difference to the headline result of Cook et al.

Now it is possible that Soon and his coauthors did clearly indicate the use of radically a-historical forcings in the depths of the paper. The raters did not get to see the depths of the paper, however. They rated on the abstract and therefore a rating justified by the abstract, though contradicted within the paper merely shows that abstracts often poorly communicate the contents of papers, not that the raters made a mistake. Further, raters clearly rated abstracts, not authors. If Willi Soon is really saying that he (rather than an abstract of one of his papers) was rated as endorsing the consensus, then he either completely misunderstands the study he is criticizing (nothing new there) or completely misrepresents it.

Turning to Craig Idso, he also has to papers rated, one of which was rated as neutral. The second, which was rated as implicitly endorsing the consensus, had the following abstract:

"Since the early 1960s, the declining phase of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle has advanced by approximately 7 days in northern temperate latitudes, possibly as a result of increasing temperatures that may be advancing the time of occurrence of what may be called ‘climatological spring.’ However, just as several different phenomena are thought to have been responsible for the concomitant increase in the amplitude of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 oscillation, so too may other factors have played a role in bringing about the increasingly earlier spring drawdown of CO2 that has resulted in the advancement of the declining phase of the air’s CO2 cycle. One of these factors may be the ongoing rise in the CO2 content of the air itself; for the aerial fertilization effect of this phenomenon may be significantly enhancing the growth of each new season’s initial flush of vegetation, which would tend to stimulate the early drawdown of atmospheric CO2 and thereby advance the time of occurrence of what could be called ‘biological spring.’ Working with sour orange (Citrus aurantium L.) trees that have been growing out-of-doors in open-top chambers for over 10 years in air of either 400 or 700 ppm CO2, this hypothesis was investigated by periodically measuring the lengths, dry weights and leaf chlorophyll concentrations of new branches that emerged from the trees at the start of the 1998 growing season. The data demonstrate that the hypothesis is viable, and that it might possibly account for 2 of the 7 days by which the spring drawdown of the air’s CO2 concentration has advanced over the past few decades."

Cutting to the chase, the authors are suggesting an alternative explanation to the fact that spring is coming earlier than it did in the past. The standard explanation is that it is warmer earlier. Craig Idso's alternative explanation in terms of the CO2 fertilization effect is found to be a viable hypothesis, that "... might possibly account for 2 of the 7 days by which the spring drawdown of the air’s CO2 concentration has advanced over the past few decades." The might, possibly indicates not only uncertainty, but the upper range of the potential effect. That is, it might account for 28.6% of the botanical effect of an early spring (and zero of the effect on animals). That leaves around 70% still attributable to the traditional explanation, ie, the increased warmth.

To my mind, that is not enough to rate the paper as implicitly endorsing the consensus; though only because the consensus is implicitly defined as relating to attribution on which the abstract says nothing. Therefore this is a case of an abstract that was rated (3), but should have been rated, IMO, (4).

Note again that the ratings are not rating authors, and not rating papers. However, Cook et al did include a rating of papers by the authors. Comparison between it and the abstract ratings showed that by far the most common "error" was rating papers that endorsed the consensus as not endorsing the consensus. Again, if Craig Idso understood Cook et al, he would know that to be the case. He would know that pointing out one or two potential errors without pointing to the overall error statistics as shown be comparison of the abstract and author self ratings is a blatant cherry pick. Indeed, that is probably why he claims the error, but does not draw attention to the results of the author self ratings.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

KR at 13:01 PM on 4 February, 2015

Stranger: If you look at the rated abstracts, and search on "Soon" and "Idso", you will see that of the sampled abstracts Soon's (2 abstracts) were rated 3 (implicit endorsement) and 4 (neutral) respectively, while Craig Idso's abstracts (I found 2) also were rated 3 and 4.

This was a sampling protocol - not an exhaustive search of every paper published - but of the particular Soon and Idso fish/papers in the net the rankings were neutral or higher in endorsement of AGW.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Rob Honeycutt at 12:03 PM on 4 February, 2015

Stranger... In terms of the big picture, that hardly matters. Cook et al took the extra step of allowing researchers to self-rate their papers, and the results were nearly identical to the SkS raters' results.

If Soon and Idso self-rated their papers, then their ratings were recorded there.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Stranger8170 at 11:21 AM on 4 February, 2015

I’ve been having an exchange over the Cook et al paper and would like some information concerning Willie Soon and also Craig D. Idso’s claim that they were mischaracterized in the survey as being neutral instead of showing that they were in opposition. I’ve looked for a response to the claim but I’ve been unable to find it. Can someone steer me to an explanation?

There is no consensus

MA Rodger at 19:49 PM on 8 January, 2015

The Forbes story amhartley asked about @650 is rather strong in its assertions. It asserts that Cook et al (2013) involves "egregious misconduct" and was "a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public." These claims are backed up by a mis-description of the Cook et al method and the comments of some well-known scientists - Richard Tol, Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta and Dr. Nir Shaviv, this last one being a not-so-well-known climate change denier compared with the other three.

Antarctica is gaining ice

Tom Curtis at 15:38 PM on 2 November, 2014

karly @341, regardless of his qualifications, Steel derived a massively flawed theory which he has not tested in any appreciable way against empirical evidence. When he recognized it faced criticism that he needed to respond to to retain any credibility for his theory, he squidded. That is, he disappeared in a puff of (electronic) ink, scattering ad hominens in abundance.

You may not be able to follow the nuances, but you should be able to follow these simple points:

1) His findings on orbital movements are sound, but have no implications about climate without an albedo model to change the minor seasonal variations into a significant global variation;

2) His albedo model requires both an earlier melting of ice, and and earlier freezing of the ice;

3) He claims is model is shown to be reasonable by what has been occuring with with Arctic sea ice;

4) Ergo, he claims that this data justifies a belief that the ice is both melting and freezing earlier:

That claim is transparently bollocks.

Antarctica is gaining ice

Tom Curtis at 15:29 PM on 2 November, 2014

This is my last planned comment on Daniel Steel's theory.

The most fundamental problem with his theory is that, averaged over the year, the difference in insolation between 1750 AD (or 1000 AD) and now due to the milankovitch cycles is neglibible. Consequently he needs some method whereby the near linear increase in NH spring insolation over that period can become significant. His answer to that problem is found in changes in seasonal albedo due to the increased seasonal insolation. It is unsurprising that he should appeal to this, as a similar mechanism is thought to be involved in the milankovitch forcing of the glacial cycles.

To compute the effect of the interaction of changing seasonal insolation and albedo, he uses albedo data from NASA's Terra satelite, finding a total of 3.674 x 10^24 Joules of solar energy absorbed over the Gaussian year (equivalent to 228.25 W/m^2 averaged over the globe. He then faces a problem determining the albedo data for 1750. He writes:

"I continue with a rhetorical question for which we do not, and cannot, have a definitive answer. Unfortunately governments in 1750 were not far-sighted enough to start a satellite observation program similar to those currently being carried out."

and then continues three paragraphs later:

"With that in mind I can argue that the albedo back in 1750 is what scientists often call a free parameter[9]. I can choose any values that I want in order to conduct the experiment that I want to do. I should be sensible, though, and make a justifiable choice."

I would not be so hasty to jump to an arbitrary choice in generating a theory. The issue is, however, what is his choice, and is it any good. He continues:

"What I will do is to pick up the absorptivities in a region of interest (latitudes northwards of 30 degrees north, March through June), and replace them with the absorptivities from 30 days earlier (February through May), so as to simulate the effect of the putative delayed melting of the snow and ice back in 1750 compared to the present. We certainly know that the amount of Arctic ice coverage now is rather less than in the past, with record lows of sea ice being recorded in the north, justifying in principle my choice of free parameter."

Now, it is very far from evident that this is a reasonable choice, from basic principles. The recession of the perihelion relative to the NH vernal equinox only results in a drift of 4.33 days. That is not the only effect driving the theory, but it is by far the most important. That 4.33 day drift in the perihelion is, however, being asked to justify a 30 day drift in albedo. That is a very large ask.

Nor is Steel's justification valid. Regardless of the merits of his case, AGW has caused considerable warming over the last century (something Steel acknowledges). Therefore at least some of any early ice and snow melt in the NH must be due to AGW, yet in justifying his theory he wants to count it all as a consequence of seasonal drift in insolation. That is, he is counting the ice albedo feedback to global warming as an intrinsic effect of the seasonal drift in insolation, which is certainly invalid.

Further, his approach not only requires that ice melt earlier in the spring, but also that water freeze later in the autumn. If it does not, because the insolation change is near zero averaged over the year, there will be near zero effect. That, however, is not what we see. Rather, we have both earlier melting and later freezing:

You will notice the changes for Autumn and Spring are closely matched. Those for Summer and Winter are not, but the seasonal change in insolation for those times of year is small. (You will also notice the lack of an obvious trend in retreating ice in the early twentieth century, contrary to Steel's hypothesis.)

That, of course, is just one measure. Other measures of times of freezing, or thawing are available, of which one of the most convenient is the freezing and thawing dates for Lake Mendota, Wisconsin:

As it happens, the lake is freezing later by 8.3 days per century, and thawing earlier by 8.5 days per century, so the change in albedo for Autumn is nearly that for Spring. That is not projectable back to 1750, however, as other evidence strongly suggests an ongoing cooling at that time (again contrary to Steel's theory).

So, not only is Steel's hypothesis about ice and snow albedo unjustified, its most crucial point (the opposite trends in spring and autumn) is directly contrary to available evidence. This key point to his theory also stands as empirically refuted.

As a final note, using his faulty albedo assumptions, Steel calculates a difference in energy recieved over the gaussian year of 0.022 x10^24 Joules (ie, a "forcing" of 1.37 W/m^2). He calculates that as a difference of 0.6% in absorbed solar radiation, which he compares to the 0.17% of TOA insolation found by the IPCC. Experienced AGW-myth busters will immediately recognize the misleading comparison made by the switch of units. In fact, the "forcing" from seasonal drift in insolation is 0.1% of top of atmosphere insolation. Put another way, as calculated it is just 60% of the anthropogenic radiative forcing. Even that, however, is misleading for a substantial part of the "forcing" from seasonal drift in insolation is part of the ice albedo feedback. The correct way to caclulate the actual forcing from a given albedo model would be to take the difference between the model with unchanged insolation and that with changed insolation, rather than treating it all as being a consequence of the drift in seasonal insolation.

This point, however is inconsequential, for (as previously noted), Steel's assumptions about albedo are simply false, and if corrected will radically reduce the calculated effect.

Global warming: a battle for evangelical Christian hearts and minds

PhilippeChantreau at 13:53 PM on 3 October, 2014

About Legates, I'd add that he was involved in having the Soon-Baliunas fiasco paper published. He later "published" a more tedious version in Energy and Environment, with the Idsos (speaks volumes).

Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously

Composer99 at 22:47 PM on 7 May, 2014

Warren, you state:

we know "about 0.75c per century" is not [alarming].

To paraphrase Dikran, whether some phenomenon is alarming or not is a question of the observer's attitude towards the phenomenon. After all, melting ice, changing weather patterns, and rapid ocean acidification don't have emotions.

You can be as alarmed or not, as you wish. What you can't do, if you want to be taken seriously (at least around here), is argue your case on the basis of misleading evidence (e.g. the material from Joanne Nova and Craig Idso), cherry picking (e.g. "ice-free Arctic in 2013" when the correct estimate is 2016 ± 3 years), and outright false claims (e.g. your comments about the "Hockey Stick", which others have noted has been substantiated over and over in the literature). If you persist in doing so you aren't likely to get any more polite reception than you are now.

Personally speaking, if you don't find an unprecedented temperature change, in geological terms, alarming (or at least potentially alarming), that's your lookout. Frankly it seems that you don't have the slightest grasp just how rapid and significant a 0.7-0.8°C change in global mean temperature over a single century is.

Regarding your (again, apparently reflexive) dismissal of 9+ metre sea level rise: the simple fact of the matter is that 9+ metre sea level rise would become inevitable, given sufficient unabated warming. It would take a few centuries to happen (even worst case scenarios for 2100 call for no more than 2 metres of sea level rise IIRC), but it would be inevitable (because, surprise surprise, ice tends to melt as temperatures rise, and there is a lot of ice locked up in the Greenland & Antarctic land ice sheets).

Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously

Glenn Tamblyn at 18:34 PM on 7 May, 2014

Warren. Your first link (GISP) tells us about Greenland. The MWP (if there was such a thing) doesn't appear to have been global in nature. Certainly not if it was 500 years apart in different parts of the planet. Whereas warming today is global. And by not showing the instrumental record for Greenland in conjunction with the ice core data that removes the context wrt current temperature changes.Picture what that graph looks like if, at the far right the line climbs to current temps in Greenland. That would put it up at around the 'minoan' level, a much larger change than any of the other spikes given that we should be in a long term downward trend as the curved trend line on the graph suggests. Incomplete information can be very misleading Warren.

Your second link was about evidence for differing proportions of different plant types in the Great Plains in the transition out of the last Glacial involving lots of factors. And if you read Nordt et al they show graphs from studies by others that differ significantlyfrom their work. So what was the point of the second link.

And what excatly is Craig Idso's manipulation of the graph from Otto et al telling you about the reliability of your sources?

And your links were all to the same source - Jo Nova. And she sourced 2 of them from Craig Idso. And Idso manipulated both the images he supplied.

You need to find better sources of information Warren.

Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously

Glenn Tamblyn at 17:54 PM on 7 May, 2014

Warren

Regarding your 2nd link, this is a small excerpt from a paper Nordt et al here. Quite a technical paper about variations in the proportion of C3 & C4 plant in the US Great Plains over the last 12 kyr+

Here is the conclusion from the paper:

"Conclusions

The delta 13C and delta %C4 from organic carbon of buried soils within the mixed and shortgrass prairie of the North American Great Plains permits a regional analysis of C4 grassland dynamics for the past 12ka. The delta 13C data compiled from a literature review of buried soils reveal that C4warm season grasses were present throughout the Great Plains study area during the past 12ka, but that there were appreciable fluctuations with 0.6 and 1.8ka periodicities. The crossover latitude of equal relative production of C4 and C3 plants appears to have been several degrees to the south of the modern location of 46 deg N prior to 6.7ka, with a shift to near the modern position after 6.7ka.

Relative C4 production did not increase monotonically in response to orbitally forced insolation between 12 ad 6.7ka, apparently because of a negative feedback from the presence of the LIS, glacial lakes in the northern plains, and cool glacial meltwater pulses into the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic. Thereafter, fluctuations in solar irradiance provided a more direct influence on delta %C4 as outflow of warm subtropical air from the Gulf of Mexico became established, interrupted periodically by warm, dry westerly flow contributing to episodes of drought. Here, increased delta %C4 occurred during intervals of elevated solar irradiance and with shifts in the ITCZ into the northwest Gulf of Mexico in the absence of ice-rafting events in the North Atlantic.

The coherency in our buried soil record with pollen spectra, marine cores, and ice cores, demonstrate the reliability of C4 plant dynamics not only as a proxy for grassland evolution but for climate as well. More work is needed to better understand grass dynamics in the early Holocene in response to conflicting reports of whether conditions were warmer or cooler than present. The paradox in the middle and late Holocene is that positive delta %C4 anomalies correspond with periods of dune activation. More work is needed to understand why during drought conditions C4 plants flourished. No doubt, C4 plants were responding positively to elevated temperatures as they should, but either these grasses thrive during drought or were growing between drought events during periods of landscape stability.

Hopefully our work will spawn further investigations into grassland dynamics of the past, provide additional parameters for climate and biome modeling, and create a better understand C and N dynamics in a region that is poorly understood"

So what exactly is the relevance and more importantly significance of your 2nd link?

Then there is this graph from Nordt et al. Seemingly one of the graphs that your graph was based on.

Whereas your looks like this:

Sort of a bit different isn't it when you leave half the data off. Because the Nordt paper was looking at some quite complex local climatic issues as the Laurentide Ice sheet melted and so on. Again not exactly global.

So who produced this truncated graph that could o easily mislead people? Well lets quote Jo Nova "Thanks to the Craig Idso at CO2Science for compiling so many of these on his site.". Interesting concept don't you think. Truncating graphs and cherry-picking is 'compiling'?

As to your third graph and some more from Craig Idso, try reading this. Note particularly the section labelled CO2 Non-Science on how CO2Science misrepresents Oppo el al (2009).

Here is your graph as shown in Otto et al (b)

Notice the '1997-2007 mean annual SST' line that Craig Idso at CO2Science 'compiled' away in your version and replaced with another line that is not on the original, is not identified, and might suggest well sumfink or uver.

Finally Warren. If you wish to discuss science here with people that's great. But please make them your opinions or the published science itself. Not a blogger said that another blogger said that ... well you get the picture.

Just doing a copy and paste from an old Jo Nova blog doesn't really count as making your own argument does it? Its sort of insulting to everyone here.

Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972

Rob Honeycutt at 01:57 AM on 27 March, 2014

adrian smits @5... Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you must be referring to this web page here. The full quote that you post is also found there.

What you would find if you pushed just a little further are a few interesting elements to this story. First, the graph presented on that page do not come from the paper that is being quoted. The paper doesn't specifically compare N. Sweden temperature to N. Hemisphere temps. They've pulled a trick on you by adjusting the two Y-axis scales to fit the message they want to deliver to you. Note the left axis applies to Korallgrotten series of oxygen isotope readings and the left side applies to NH temperature.

The graph originates from this website called CO2 Science, which is funded by the the fossil fuel industry and run by Dr Craig Idso. The CO2 Science site has gone through and reinterpreted peer reviewed research, added their own made up graphs, that generally do not agree with the actual findings of the actual research. And if you don't believe me, just pick one paper on their site, email the lead author and ask them if they agree with CO2 Science's interpretation. I've done this and in each case the scientists do not agree with the re-interpretations of their research.

The actual paper this is derived from is: Sundqvist et al 2010. Stable isotopes in a stalagmite from NW Sweden document environmental changes over the past 4000 years.

This research is limited to speliotherm data for Northern Sweden.

Medieval Warm Period was warmer

Philippe Chantreau at 05:55 AM on 5 January, 2014

Aristotelian, SkS is not some random website and if you believe so, you have not paid any attention. It won the Eureka Prize of the Australian Musem for advancement of climate knowledge. That's not a popular online vote in which everybody who has no clue can click and bots can click automatically. Every SkS article is backed up by peer-reviewed science papers, readers are encouraged to explore them, so the kind of dissimulation that happens at Idso's site can't happen. Several of the SkS moderators have had publications in high impact science journals in the past 3 years. In comparison, it took years for Watts to publish one paper, and when he did, it failed to confirm the very premise to the existence of his website. It also brought nothing new to previous publications by others that had already done that.

So really ,the choice is between a website with established expertise demonstrated by winning awards from scientific organizations and a record of publications in the field, against some random interview in the NYT. That is a much better representation of reality in this case.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

barry1487 at 16:25 PM on 23 November, 2013

Question:

Of the scientists that were surveyed to rate their own papers, did you include Alan Carlin, Craig D. Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nils-Axel Morner, Nir J. Shaviv, Richard S.J. Tol, and Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon?

I ask because Anthony Watts, referring to a PopTech article regarding those scientists' comments on the paper, says that they were not contacted. But the scientists themselves say nothing about that.

Do you have a list of the scientists you attempted to contact, perhaps in supplementary material?

Any leads appreciated.

Barry.

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

MA Rodger at 01:53 AM on 5 November, 2013

What was it I said @12?

"...these "experts" (Idso & Ball) do not know the difference between "forcing" and "feedback"..." It seems I am not the first to come to such a conclusion. Thirty-one years ago, somebody wrote - "Idso's interpretation of empirical radiation measurements confuses primary forcing and the amplifying feedbacks engendered by that forcing." p20. Carbon Dioxide - A second Assessment 1982. Report of the C02/Climate Review Panel to the Climate Research Committee of the Climate Board/Committee on Atmospheric Sciences and the Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee of the Climate Board.

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

MA Rodger at 23:06 PM on 1 November, 2013

I was a little over-optimistic with what I said @12. The NIPCC Chapter 2 becomes rather quickly dull reading being mainly straw-man-lynchings, misrepresentations and denialist nonsense. How boring is that?
I do wonder if a useful approach to debunking this NIPCC nonsense would be to compare the level of mistakes it manages to present with the level of mistakes within IPCC AR4. Then a short analysis of part of NIPCC would show that these numpties, the denialist 3%, are so error-prone that they create 30,000%* the level of error (* Actual value to be determined). How many mistakes in AR4 WG1? How many pages?

Having read section 2.1 of NIPCC, it is truly riven with error. And almost all the citations are rather ancient. One passage is a simple cut-&-paste from Idso's website, a bizarre move as this insertion is new for 2013 in the NIPCC (that is, not in the 2011 version) but the insertion was written in 2000. So it's smack up to date, then.

Well, it is smack up to date compared with some of their "case" that CO2 does not cause warming (apparently). That graph they use from the Journal of Archaeological Science gives part of the Alley 2005 data that is known to provide data only up to 1855. Yet the numpties assume it provides data up to 2000 (which is quite evidently wrong if anyone actually examines the graph) This erroneous assumption of 2000 data results in them concluding that temperature has not been affected much by the 100ppm rise of CO2 over the last 200 years. This is a whopping CO2 rise give the previous 275-285ppm CO2 range during a 4,800 year period which shows large temperature fluctuations (although I'm not sure the Romans ever reached Greenland, or did the Late Bronze Age for that matter). Of course, by 1855 CO2 had yet to rise above 290ppm which sort of pulls the rug from under their "case" that 'CO2 doesn't cause warming'.

So to go through a whole chapter of this level of drivel is perhaps asking too much. I think I'll stick with a section or two. Error is ubiqitous although due process even on a single section will probably require more work than the numpties ever invested.

Then, may be it takes a lot of effort to pack in so much error. For instance, the numpties say of Pagani et al 1999:-

"They (Pagani et al 1999) stated their finding “appears in conflict with greenhouse theories of climate change.” In addition, they noted the air’s CO2 concentration seemed to rise after the expansion of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, also in conflict with greenhouse theories of climate change."

I think that counts as two errors in just the one sentence as "conflict" is neither stated nor implied by Pagani et al 1999.

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

MA Rodger at 20:50 PM on 31 October, 2013

Re climate feedbacks @9 & 10.

The NIPCC analysis of cloud feedbacks would indeed be laughable if they actually were talking of feedbacks. Actually it is far worse than that.

The finding I quoted @4 is based within their Chapter 2 Forcings & Feedbacks , a 98 page treatment by Craig Idso & Tim Ball with contributions from Tom Segalstad. These gentlemen then must be the NIPCC experts on forcings & feedbacks. The quote @4 appears in Section 2.4 Clouds but it is very obvious from reading section 2.4.1 that these "experts" do not know the difference between "forcing" and "feedback" which is a trifle embarrasing, even for Numpy Idiots Professing Climatological Credentials.

I think I will enjoy reading the rest of Chapter 2. I will learn why, for instance, these numpties source their paleoclimate reconstruction from an archaeologist and not from the original climatologist (Alley 2004) or perhaps a more recent piece of work.

Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication

Rob Honeycutt at 09:36 AM on 6 September, 2013

I'm really fascinated by this. It strikes me as strange that someone, like Akasofu, whom I gather has the capacity to do substantial, original research, would think that it's okay to not do similar work related to climate change?

Surely he understands this paper was not truly up to snuff. What would be his motivation?

Could there be an element that he doesn't want to push any deeper into the material because it might actually challenge the conclusions he prefers to believe?

Could he be knowingly publishing bad research counter to AGW for ideological reasons?

People like Pat Michaels and the Idso's, I think I get those guys. For them climate denial is a lucrative gig. They are, essentially, working for the FF industry and will present conclusions the industry needs. Their pay depends on producing contradictory claims, accurate or not.

It's these second tier researchers who don't seem (as far as I know) derive any direct income from the FF industry that I don't get.

The Consensus Project self-rating data now available

Tom Curtis at 08:04 AM on 11 July, 2013

dana @9, the claim that "skeptics" are "more likely to pretend to endorse it in the abstract while claiming they rejected it in the full paper" is not supported by Poptech' sample. One of Poptech's sample (Scaffeta) outrageously misrepresents the nature of the scientific consensus so that he can falsely claim an error in the abstract rating. Shaviv's abstract, however, concludes:

" Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19°K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04°K."

The increase over the 20th century was 0.7 K, so the paper attributes greater than 50% of warming to natural causes under an assumption the authors are willing to entertain. That indicates the paper should be rated (IMO) as at most a 5 (implicitly rejects), and certainly not, as it was actually rated, at 2 (Explicitly endorses).

In like manner, Idsos' abstract describes the impact of enhanced growth on the seasonal cycle in CO2 and should probably (and at most) have been rated neutral, but was actually rated 3 (implicitly endorses).

These two examples represent genuine mistakes. Of course, Poptech has only found two genuine errors from among a very large number of abstracts rated as endorsing the consensus. As always, he avoids mentioning the denominator.

CO2 effect is saturated

Tom Curtis at 23:18 PM on 18 June, 2013

Stealth @204, you appear to have ignored the substance of my critique, while simply repeating distortions from the WUWT article. Specifically, two key errors on the WUWT article that I focussed on was that there table of "universally accepted" was anything but, and that it did not show the most important feature of the "universally accepted" values CO2 forcing, ie, near constant forcing for each doubling of CO2. You present your own table of values derived from the Univesity of Chicago version of Modtran, which is superficially similar to that at WUWT, without noticing that it supports my criticism, rather than rebuts it. To illustrate that, I have expanded your table of values using Modtran, and shifted the baseline percentage to the forcing for 1000 ppmv so that the percentages match those at WUWT. The result is as follows:

Doubling: Forcing: Percentage: WUWT Perc:
50-100___ 2.86____ 9.10%
100-200__ 2.76____ 8.78%_____ 10.10%
200-400__ 2.83____ 9.00%_____ 7.30%
300-600__ 2.83____ 9.00%_____ 5.20%
400-800__ 2.83_____9.00%_____ 4.60%
500-1000__2.86____ 9.10%_____ 2.10%
800-1600__2.85____ 9.07%
Average:___2.83____ 9.01%

Please note that while the WUWT values descend rapidly with increased CO2 concentration, the Modtran values are near constant for each doubling of CO2, regardless of the initial CO2 concentration. In that, the Modtran values reflect the standard physics the radiative forcing of CO2. In constrast, the WUWT figures are simply bullshit, as also is the claim that they are universally accepted values.

A third key error was the claim that increases of CO2 concentration above 1000 ppmv "... can only ever be absolutely minimal even if CO2 concentrations were to increase indefinitely." That claim is superficially supported by the declining values per doubling shown by WUWT, but are definitively refuted by the near constant forcing per doubling of CO2 shown by the general equation for radiative forcing of CO2 (see Table 1), as also by the Modtran model, which reflects the same radiative physics. Again this can be shown on the Modtran model by simply redoubling from 140 ppmv, which show successive increments in radiative forcing for each doubling of 2.8, 2.82, 2.83, 2.86, 2.95, and an average of 2.85 W/m^2. You will note that while all values are approximately the same, the final value, for a doubling from 2,240 to 4,480 ppmv is the largest. I ran the values out to 4,480 ppmv because it is near, but below the upper limit of the increase to atmospheric CO2 that could be caused by humans by the combustion of fossil fuels.

The argument in the WUWT article is based on the accuracy of their radiative forcing data, which we have seen to be bullshit; the absurd claim that radiative forcing reaches an assymptote at (or slightly above) 1000 ppmv, and an absurdly low value for radiative forcing which I did not adress. You have shown nothing to the contrary, and indeed if you look carefully at your data, it contradicts the WUWT article as clearly as I did.

Finally, with regard to the minimum CO2 concentration for the growth of plants, it is known that plants using C3 photosynthesis are dependent of ambient CO2 concentration for their growth rate. In contrast, C4 plants rates of photosynthesis are "... independent of the intercellular CO2 concentration" (Ehlereringer and Bjorkman, 1977). On a hunch, I looked up the pathway of Golden Pothos, the plant used by the Idsos' in their experiment. Unsurprisingly it was a C3 plant. Odd that they should not mention this important fact, and the importance of the fact in relation to their experiment. Nevertheless, their experiment does show that for C3 plants, atmospheric CO2 concentrations << 150 ppmv are to low for growth when they are adapted to a high CO2 environment. Given a multigeneration adaptation process to lowering CO2, however, it is quite possible that C3 plants would survive and even flourish on lower CO2 levels. The would, however, be at a competitive disadvantage to C4 plants. Any further discussion of this topic should be taken to the relevant thread, whose advanced article I highly recomment to you. As related to my original criticism, it is IMO absurd to benchmark a minimum CO2 level at levels 33-100% higher than laboratory estimates of the minimum required, and 10% higher than CO2 concentrations plantlife is known to have survived for periods longer than the lifespan of most trees.

CO2 effect is saturated

Rob Honeycutt at 14:58 PM on 18 June, 2013

Craig Idso is paid over $11k/month. (Just wanted to source the claim above.)

CO2 effect is saturated

Rob Honeycutt at 14:52 PM on 18 June, 2013

Stealth... You also need to understand who the CO2 Science folks are. These are the Idso's who are, literally, paid by the FF industry to produce material to cast doubt on climate science.

The experimental test you link to is patently absurd. You just can't compare CO2 concentrations in an aquarium to planetary level systems. The very notion that this experiment has any larger implications should be a clue as to the motivations of the Idso's (and their conclusions are contradicted by published research).

There is a large body of actual research published on this topic (which is going off topic for this thread) that you can read. You just have to get out there and find it. I would link to it for you but you should probably locate it yourself so that you know that I'm not trying to mislead you in any way.

My favorite quote of all time related to the climate change issue comes from the late Dr Stephen Schneider, where he says, "'Good for us' and 'end of the world' are the two lowest probability outcomes." So, when you see people like the Idso's claiming this is all good for us, that speaks volumes about their reliability.

We're heading into an ice age

Kevin8233 at 02:48 AM on 16 February, 2013

Here is a source for wine in UK CfA Press Release
Release No.: 03-10
For Release: March 31, 2003 20th Century Climate Not So Hot

Cambridge, MA - A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.

Smithsonian astronomers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, with co-authors Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) and David Legates (Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware), compiled and examined results from more than 240 research papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. Their report, covering a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators, provides a detailed look at climate changes that occurred in different regions around the world over the last 1000 years.

"Many true research advances in reconstructing ancient climates have occurred over the past two decades," Soon says, "so we felt it was time to pull together a large sample of recent studies from the last 5-10 years and look for patterns of variability and change. In fact, clear patterns did emerge showing that regions worldwide experienced the highs of the Medieval Warm Period and lows of the Little Ice Age, and that 20th century temperatures are generally cooler than during the medieval warmth."

Soon and his colleagues concluded that the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1000 years, nor is it the most extreme. Their findings about the pattern of historical climate variations will help make computer climate models simulate both natural and man-made changes more accurately, and lead to better climate forecasts especially on local and regional levels. This is especially true in simulations on timescales ranging from several decades to a century.

For more information, contact:

David Aguilar, Director of Public Affairs
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Phone: 617-495-7462 Fax: 617-495-7468
daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu

Christine Lafon
Public Affairs Specialist
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Phone: 617-495-7463, Fax: 617-495-7016
clafon@cfa.harvard.edu

Lukewarmerism, a.k.a. Ignoring Inconvenient Evidence

Rob Honeycutt at 05:37 AM on 13 February, 2013

Nick... Yup. And I believe this is the original source of the colored and doctored version:

http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/ch1.php

You can catch these pretty easily when they pop up because most of the Idso's MWP Project graphs are doctored in various ways. The always add in their own notations of where MWP, LIA, etc occur. They delete any aspect of the original that might be inconvenient and then they add the notation "Adapted from..."

Lukewarmerism, a.k.a. Ignoring Inconvenient Evidence

Rob Honeycutt at 02:47 AM on 13 February, 2013

Nick Palmer... First thing I notice about that graph, even without going to Stoat to see it, is the phrase "Adapted from Ljundquist, 2010." I would bet my bottom dollar that graph actually comes from the Idso's website, CO2science.

This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.

Albatross at 14:08 PM on 30 December, 2012

Ron @60,

"...should not be attacked for not being a climate scientist by people who aren't climate scientists."

Your red herring argument dismisses one and all critiques made by non-climate scientists in this faux debate? You are conceding that the opinions Monckton, Watts, McIntyre, Ridley, McKitrick, Morano, Michaels, Pielke Jnr., Inhofe, Bastardi, Douglass, Knox, Singer, Easterbrook, Peiser, McLean, Jo Nova, Montford, Mosher, Baliunas, Loehle, Tom Harris, Muller, Liljegren, Condon, Happer, Lewis, Plimer, Soon, Idso, Tisdale, Dyson and many, many other fake skeptics and contrarians are to be ignored when it comes to climate science.

For the record, in science it is not considered an "attack" to note legitimate and noteworthy errors and flaws in arguments made by fake skeptics and those in denial. Trying to invoke that hyperbole in a scientific debate is conceding that you have lost and are grasping at straws.

It's not bad

Philippe Chantreau at 08:59 AM on 18 September, 2012

I note that AHuntington1 continues to fail providing scientific references to his assertions. His argument seems to consist of associating a supposed higher efficiency of mitochondria when exposed to higher levels of CO2 with overall benefit for animal and human health, together with increased oxygen delivery due to the vasodilatory effect of CO2. It seems a little self contradictory, is beyond a stretch and is not supported by the litterature as far as I could tell. In fact, the whole argument is rather confused and conflates different reactions as well as apparent assumptions.

AH1 asserts that people living at high altitude experience an increase CO2 to O2 ratio in their blood compared to low altitude dwellers. I could not find articles supporting that assertion. All known adaptations to high altitude, whether short or long term, are responses to hypoxia and physiological solutions to hypoxemia.
I searched "lactate paradox" and found rather a lack of knowledge than anything allowing to make sweeping statements on whole body response, let alone mitochondrial metabolism.

Interestingly, one study found increased mitochondrial efficiency, but associated with low levels of carbon monoxide.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0041836

As I could recall, vasodilation/constriction regulation is quite complex and involves both O2 and CO2, but also NO, and effects are different at the central and peripheral levels. If regulation is normal, there is no reason to believe that the range of O2 and CO2 will vary from what we need, since regulatory response will keep the levels where they need to be. People with COPD, who live with high levels of CO2, are not known to derive benefits from the higher CO2.

This treats of O2 mediated vasoregulation:

http://ajpheart.physiology.org/content/295/3/H928.full

I have so far not found articles treating of mitochondrial metabolism's response to increased CO2. Other chemicals, however, are the subject of intense study.

Studies of high altitude functional adaptation do not make much mention of mitochondrial metabolism either. However, it is worth noting that prolonged stays at high altitude lead to decreased density of mitochondrial populations, as well as reduced muscle mass (references below). The possibility of increased mitochondrial efficiency has been proposed but, to my knowledge, not investigated, and in any case would be associated with a decreased mitochondial population density, so the overall benefit is highly dubious. It has more signs of being an adaptation to the intense stress of hypoxia.

Here are a few references on the subject, and about the so-called "lactate paradox", which does not appear to show in all situations.

http://jap.physiology.org/content/83/2/661.abstract

http://www.bio.davidson.edu/Courses/anphys/1999/Dickens/Dickens.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19139048

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1623889

It also appears that ventilatory response to CO2 is not significantly different among altitude acclimated subjects, although it is slower. Some hypotheses as to why that may be are briefly discussed at the end of this paper:

http://jap.physiology.org/content/94/3/1279.full.pdf

Medieval Warm Period was warmer

scaddenp at 06:17 AM on 13 July, 2012

"people like the Idso's prey on people's ignorance to create a false impression of the MWP"

Not to mention relying on them believing what Idso tells them the papers say instead of actually reading them.

Medieval Warm Period was warmer

Rob Honeycutt at 03:11 AM on 13 July, 2012

realscience @ 159... The papers I've read say that the MCA was "heterogeneous." So, while you can find proxies all over the globe that had a MCA you also find proxies that show no MCA, or you find temporal shifts in when the MCA occurred.

What often happens, and is even presented on the Idso's ~~CO2now~~ CO2science website, without reading the literature people see regions of a strong MCA at widely distributed points around the globe and come away with the assumption that the MWP was global and warmer than today. They don't know enough to look closely at the time frame during with warming in each proxy occurs and they don't know that there are 100's of other proxies that show no warming or even cooling during medieval times.

In that way, people like the Idso's prey on people's ignorance to create a false impression of the MWP. But what you never get is the Idso's or McIntyre ever producing a real multiproxy reconstruction.

Medieval Warm Period was warmer

Rob Honeycutt at 06:33 AM on 12 July, 2012

realscience @ 142...

You know, McIntyre has had over a decade to produce a multiproxy reconstruction that shows something different than Mann's work. Nearly a dozen other multiproxy reconstructions have been produced in the interim, all confirming the conclusions of MBH98/99.

I just don't believe that the peer review process works any slower for McIntyre or anyone else (the Idso's also seem to have taken a long term interest in the MWP) than it does for the other scientists doing the same work.

Medieval project gone wrong

heijdensejan at 18:49 PM on 16 May, 2012

If the MWP was indeed warmer then today and the "evidence" shown by CO2Science would actually support this, then McIntyre should make a multi proxy analyses from the data and publicise this in a scientific journal (not E&E).

The Idso's are already funded by Heartland, the data is already selected and gathered so the job to compile a global multi proxy analyses should not be to big / expensive.

As they have not done so, it is clear that either they are not interested, or the outcome would undermine their conclusion.

Of course then they would also have to face the fact that a warm MWP would also mean a high climate sensetivity

Newcomers, Start Here

Daniel Bailey at 02:57 AM on 1 April, 2012

For the interested parties, Wayne Davidson (Arctic atmospheric researcher) documents changes in Arctic (atmospheric, snow and ice cover) conditions in his blogs here and here.

2012 SkS Weekly Digest #10

DSL at 02:59 AM on 14 March, 2012

Actually, Trent1492, that's a link to an analysis from a couple of paid misinformers: Craig Idso and Keith Sherwood. Perhaps you could provide your own analysis of the Eldrett et al. 2007 article that I'm betting Idso and Sherwood grossly misread.

Monckton Misrepresents Scientists' Own Work (Part 1)

owl905 at 17:28 PM on 21 February, 2012

With Tom on that one. The pigeon-hole DK reference holds up; but the 'great' pro-pollutionists like Skinner, Idso, and Moncton, first and foremost believe in themselves. Truth v lies is malleable and adjustable - the priority trumps the value of bland truth. Skinner's UHI/Unstoppables; Idso's Petition/Fertilizer; Moncton's Presentation, Lomborg's Cost/Benefits ... every debate and word-joust has the road sign "Caution, Slippery Ahead".

If you're looking for ones who actually believe in their case - turn right at the corner of McIntyre & McKitrick; head down Barton Street to where it turns into Inhoffe Blvd; and head straight to Christie&Spencer Circle. It's just past Lintzen's Curiosity Shop.

If it's a contest for artificial supports - how about Moncton's need to be a Lord, versus Lintzen's need for the "of MIT" title?

DenialGate - Infographic Illustrating the Heartland Denial Funding Machine

Tom Curtis at 22:04 PM on 19 February, 2012

Michael of Brisbane @28, there are several crucial differences between the money received by climate scientists and that received from the Heartland Institute.

The first, and most crucial is that money paid to scientists is paid based on the quality of their research, not on the basis of the conclusion reached. So called climate skeptics will dispute that, but there is no question that it is formally correct; and no question also that some well known so called skeptics continue in the university sector in publicly paid positions with no financial penalty despite rejecting the consensus on climate change for over a decade. (Spencer and Christy come to mind, but there are others).

In contrast, payment from the Heartland Institute is definitely conditional on the recipients hold particular opinions. I do not know if that is a formal requirement, but how long do you think Craig Idso would continue receiving his $139,000 a year if he started publicly arguing that the evidence supported the IPCC consensus, and that the IPCC AR4 was a sound document, with few and inconsequential errors?

Because payment form the Heartland Institute is conditional on opinions held, it represents a conflict of interest for any scientist investigating climate change, and any person speaking out on the topic. This does not mean that those receiving payments are wrong (although we know they are wrong on other grounds), but because it is a conflict of interest it should have been publicly declared by those people long before now. Not declaring a known conflict of interest is an ethical breach.

Second, contrary to your supposition, many of the activities of scientists are unpaid, including any participation in the IPCC, and of course in internet forums. While Anthony Watt can build his site with 44-88 k donations from the Heartland Institute, John Cook (for example) must do so with his own money, and that from a few small donations from friends. I understand that RealClimate does receive free web hosting, but that is the limit of funding. As they say:

"The contributors to this site do so in a personal capacity during their spare time and their posts do not represent the views of the organizations for which they work, nor the agencies which fund them. The contributors are solely responsible for the content of the site and receive no remuneration for their contributions.

RealClimate is not affiliated with any environmental organisations. Although our domain is hosted by Science Communications Network (and previously Environmental Media Services), and our initial press release was organised for us by Fenton Communications, neither organization was in any way involved in the initial planning for RealClimate, and have never had any editorial or other control over content. Neither Fenton nor SCN nor EMS has ever paid any contributor to RealClimate.org any money for any purpose at any time. Neither do they pay us expenses, buy our lunch or contract us to do research. This information has always been made clear to anyone who asked."

(My emphasis)

I am sure there are climate scientists who would love to be paid $119,000 a year to work full time in science communication as Craig Idso is paid to work full time on pseudo-science communication, but the money is not forthcoming for that purpose.

Further, unlike payments from the Heartland Institute, payments to scientists are largely used up in research costs and administrative costs for universities (which always take a large chunk). Not having been employed as a scientist, I cannot speak from experience, but my understanding is that scientists typically get paid significantly less than Craig Idso is being paid, and for positions which are very demanding in terms of time and stress. This is not a significant factor for most of the anti-scientists paid by the Heartland Institute. Most of their "research" consists of cherry picking librarianship, with their research costs being restricted to the costs of journal subscriptions (where they do not already have such subscriptions through university affiliation.

Finally, assuming that the Heartland Institute payments are the limits of payments to the various scientists received for their opinions held. There are many conservative "think tanks" which attack AGW, and most of the scientists involved are affiliated with more than one of them. The assumption that they only receive money form one of the poorest and smallest of those organizations is unwarranted.

A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation

kampmannpeine at 06:04 AM on 19 February, 2012

the only think to debunk all those myths - be them from whoever - is to kind of attack each individual personally. this requires a lot of investigation ... from the scientific community ...

here in Germany there is a new article in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" about financial support of IDSO (http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/vertrauliche-akten-veroeffentlicht-die-geldquellen-der-klimaskeptiker-1.1287309) by some US-companies ... even Microsoft is amongst them, however they said they only gave a piece of software and are fully aware of AGW ... therefore possibly a misfortune ... :)

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

Glenn Tamblyn at 12:39 PM on 16 February, 2012

Interesting that Heartland are claiming the key document is a fake. Surely if someone was wanting to fake a document like this, for maximum impact they would have picked a different list of recipient scientists. Idso as the largest recipient? Most people haven't herd of the Idso's. A fake would more likely have targetted Lindzen, Christy or Spencer. Or even suggested that Watts was directly on the payroll. The more moderate nature of who is on the list makes it more credible.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

KR at 08:16 AM on 16 February, 2012

An update: According to a recent press release from the Heartland Institute, they claim that the majority of the documents were emailed to someone claiming to be a board member who had changed emails and needed copies.

In addition, they claim that the "2012 Climate Strategy" document is a fake - although the various components (monthly payments to Idso, Singer, Carter, $88K to Watts for a new surfacestations project, Wojick for "Lesson Plan modules") are line items in the (confirmed by HI) budget, and have in addition been supported by statements from Watts and Carter.

So: this leak may have been obtained with "social engineering", not a whistleblower. And the exact language of the strategy document (curiously, it appears to be a scan from hardcopy, unlike the computer documents that make up the majority of the leak?) may be suspect, although the finances are in fact confirmed by the Heartland press release.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

Rob Honeycutt at 06:01 AM on 16 February, 2012

Phila... Well, you can say one thing about Idso. He's very effective at negotiating his compensation. Can't say the same for Bob Carter.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

Phila at 05:57 AM on 16 February, 2012

Philippe,

considering the quality (cough!) and the influence of Idso's miserable pile of nonsense, 6 figures is way overpaid.

That's what really gets to me about this stuff. It's such a waste! If these people invested in, say, cleantech, they could earn valuable patents and popular and political goodwill, and provide a dramatic demonstration of the free-market principles they claim to cherish. People would probably be a lot less likely to begrudge them tax breaks, at that point. Or protest them.

But jeez...giving all that money to Idso? As you say, he's not even any good at what he does. Seems to me they'd earn a better return on his annual income by taking it to Vegas and pumping it into the slots.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

Philippe Chantreau at 05:26 AM on 16 February, 2012

Eric considering the quality (cough!) and the influence of Idso's miserable pile of nonsense, 6 figures is way overpaid. Then again, it's not clear that anyone at Heartland can actually appreciate the true quality of what he puts out. By their perception, it probably reads like pure gold.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

Eric (skeptic) at 05:02 AM on 16 February, 2012

What is so stunning about Idso's (3 of them) getting six figures? That pays for a few papers and the co2science.org website. Other than their ongoing newsletter, a lot of the website is about 5-10 years old (by cursory review). Their rank is 937,193 worldwide 654,262 US

Skeptical Science is 101,300 worldwide and 45,747 US with more than twice as many incoming links.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

KR at 02:40 AM on 16 February, 2012

Primus - I believe most people realized what groups like Heartland were up to, and now there's proof. I think this may be a very significant story.

I think I would tend to agree with some of the speculation here - that Idso (as a fairly minor public figure) may be acting as a distribution hub, that Singer isn't giving Heartland much bang for the buck. And that $88k to Anthony Watts is an awful lot for setting up a website! Hmmm...

The person referred to in the documents as "The Anonymous Donor" is fascinating: roughly $15M US given by a single donor to lobby against acting on climate change?!? I wonder who that is.

Secundus - I'm greatly encouraged by the discussion here, with actual consideration of the ethics of disclosures. I somehow don't recall anyone in the 'skeptic' groups being upset over email hacking. Moral high ground, anyone?

That said - whistleblowing is a time-honored tradition when a person of ethics feels that an entity (company, government, etc) is acting in an illegal or immoral fashion.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

Glenn Tamblyn at 14:46 PM on 15 February, 2012

I just tried posting a couple of comments over at WUWT, wondering what theur response might be to DenialGate. Instead of the usual awaiting moderation message nothing appeared at all. So I thought something had gone wrong and resubmitted the comments. And got a 'you have already posted that comment' reply. So they have them but they aren't coming up. Very queer. I wonder if they have gone into lock-down.

Anyway, these were the comments I posted to no avail - maybe Anthony might get around to responding when he is a little less busy:

===============================================================
Since you don't have a post up yet about Denialgate, I will comment here and you can then transfer comments across when WUWT does comment.

One important comment that struck me from Heartlands little treasure trove was this this juicy little gem:

“Development of our “Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms” project.

Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. To counter this we are considering launching an effort to develop alternative materials for K-12 classrooms. We are pursuing a proposal from Dr. David Wojick to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain- TWO KEY POINTS THAT ARE EFFECTIVE AT DISSUADING TEACHERS FROM TEACHING SCIENCE (my emphasis).We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $100,000 for 20 modules in 2012, with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor.

Cant have teachers teaching now can we.
And pay a lot of attention to the ‘Anonymous Donor’ We will no doubt hear more about them, whoever they are. And generous to a fault:

2006 – $1,559,703
2007 – $3,277,000
2008 – $4,610,000
2009 – $2,170,590
2010 – $1,664,150
2011 – $979,000

Nearly 15 Million ponied up so far to fund the denial machine in just one ‘dont think tank’. Wouldn’t we love to see similar accounts from all the other dont think tanks.

In the best of American traditions. You can always get what you want if you are willing to pay enough for it. And so the dumbing down of America continues….
===============================================================
Anthony, when will the new Temperature website be up and running? I'm sure Heartland and their Anonymous Donor would like to know their $88K is being well spent.

And nearly $400K for the NIPCC Report. A bit pricy don't you think when the scientists who work on the IPCC report do it Pro Bono.

Still $144K for Craig Idso, $60K for Fred Singer, even $20K for Bob Carter down in Australia. One only needs a few nice gigs like that and you have yourself a 'nice little earner' as they say.
=============================================================

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

john byatt at 14:17 PM on 15 February, 2012

#1
Dana, Australian Dr Wes Allen "weather makers reexamined" seems to have relied heavily on Idso's misrepresentations of the science for his book of fantasy.

.

.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

Bob Lacatena at 12:07 PM on 15 February, 2012

Dana,

I'd be surprised if Idso didn't act as a conduit, funneling a chunk of that money on to others. What I wouldn't give to see all of their past budgets as well.

I'm sure Anthony will claim that the $88K he's getting is all going towards building this "web site." It will be very interesting to see what it looks like when it's done (if ever, and how much it really cost to put up).

I think it's no surprise that their 2010/2011 review has a line item labeled "Contributions to Allies" with $0 in both years. They'd never be that obvious, even on their own reports.

Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network

dana1981 at 11:29 AM on 15 February, 2012

Stunner #1 - Craig Idso makes a six figure salary from Heartland. Stunning in the large sum of money, and the fact that he's really not that prominent. I don't think Heartland is getting their money's worth on that one!

Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960

Rob Honeycutt at 04:31 AM on 3 January, 2012

dawsonjg @ 35... "I have read thoroughly convincing analyses that the hockey stick is 'problematic'."

We all know what you've been reading and many here have read that same work. But you might stop to consider this... Why did someone go to so much trouble to try to undermine one piece of science? Normally, if a piece of research is poorly crafted and the results are suspect the course of action is to reproduce similar research using different methods to show that the results are erroneous. The new research would conflict and probably supersede the previous research. There you go. Problem fixed. MBH99 shown wrong. Move on with the research.

So, why haven't McIntyre or Montford done this? Why do they only operate to try to find flaws without producing any actual research of their own? Why don't we have any multi-proxy reconstructions from them showing a different conclusion? They obviously consider themselves qualified. They obviously have the time and backing to perform such research. But they don't. Why?

I can tell you for sure that the Idso's (who are well connected with the same folks) have several hundred studies on the MWP that they've collected and posted online. I've poured through them in detail. But they also don't go so far as to try to produce a multi-proxy reconstruction of that data. Why?

You should really go and watch that Peter Hadfield video on the scientific process. Here is the link.

Medieval project gone wrong

Rob Honeycutt at 09:16 AM on 29 December, 2011

Something interesting I just now noticed. If you compare that CO2Science interactive map with the IPCC MWP map that Tom just posted... it looks very much like the Idso's cherry picked their way around the large areas of cooler MWP.

I haven't done a detailed look into it but it sure looks like the skip over most of the Baltic region and into Siberia. They skip that swath across central Africa. They skip western Canada and the north slope of Alaska. The IPCC map makes it look like there IS data for those regions that the Idso's are not showing.

Medieval project gone wrong

Rob Honeycutt at 04:41 AM on 28 December, 2011

Markx... You're making the same mistake that many people make with the MWP. There are hundreds of papers on the MWP. There are better than 300 listed on that CO2Science website alone. MOST of those papers are research into local records of temperature. The MWP is a very loose term applied to any warm phase occurring anywhere between 700-1300 AD.

The key word to remember in any discussion on this subject is "heterogenous."

Even the Ed Cook paper you quote states clearly that the MWP is NOT homogenous. It does not occur everywhere at the same time. In many places the warming is early, ~700-900 AD. Other places it occurs late, around 1000-1300 AD. AND along with that you have places that are cooling when other places are warming.

This is the reason the hockey stick turns into a hockey stick when you start putting all the data together. Those offsetting events cancel each other out. But what we are left with is a clear modern global trend that is significantly positive, per Tom's second graph of NH temp reconstructions.

What I always note about the CO2Science group (Idso's et al) is that, even though they've pulled together all this data for the MWP, they've never bothered to try to use it to construct a multi-proxy chart of their own. Or they have and they didn't like the result.

Is there a case against human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 3

Tristan at 09:09 AM on 17 December, 2011

I'm looking for a comprehensive rebuttal of Sherwood Idso's 1998 paper. I heard that there was an issue of Climatic Change which served to do just that, but try as I might I couldn't locate it. Although it's pretty much guaranteed by the literature that his result for CS (0.4C) is wrong, I'm interested in a deconstruction of his methods. His paper consists of 8 simple experiments/analyses.

I suspect any of the mods here could do it themselves (in their sleep with their pjs on backwards).

Thanks in advance.

Schmittner et al. (2011) on Climate Sensitivity - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

skept.fr at 04:51 AM on 28 November, 2011

#24 KenH : a bit off-topic, but I agree with you. When a French interlocutor told me first about SkS, I browsed (very rapidly) and I concluded (very unfairly): ‘oh they seem one-sided, just the same that Idso’s site but on the opposite side’. A more attentive reading leads me to recognize the quality of this site, I was wrong. But I think SkS should be more cautious in the over-use of rhetorically agressive expressions, and also avoid any double standard. For example, if a study find a high sensitivity, it should be explained and examined here with the same scrupulous doubt adressed to Schmittner et al. It seems that it is not the case. For example, here is a SkS article on Lunt 2010 and Pagani 2010. Theses studies concluded to a higher sensitivity (3 K would be the fast feedback response, but more in the pipeline on long term). There is zero critics from the author about the methodologies, the proxies, the models, the uncertainties, etc. So, if the SkS reader is informed with high skepticism on low sensitivity but low skepticism on high sensitivity, he may logically conclude that there are selective biases in the explanation of current climate sciences conclusions.

SkS Responses to Pielke Sr. Questions

pielkesr at 09:58 AM on 21 September, 2011

NewYorkJ - The 2007 IPCC focuses on CO2 mitigation; e.g. see

Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 B. Metz, O.R. Davidson, P.R. Bosch, R. Dave, L.A. Meyer (eds)

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

The physical science basis focuses on added greenhouse gases, and a top-down global perspective as given in

Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

I am pleased, however, that you see the need to move towards hypothesis 2a.

CO2 is just a trace gas

muoncounter at 07:42 AM on 8 September, 2011

Dikran: Here's an applet for a double pendulum; here's an electrical analog.

As you can see from the graphs, some chaotic systems are quite periodic and therefore predictable - and should model quite well, although you might need a bigger computer.

Monckton at odds with the very scientists he cites

Svatli at 20:22 PM on 14 July, 2011

John:
Thanks for the good work of debunking Christopher Monckton, a necessary job.

I would also like to refer to a good debunking of the CO2Science medieval project by Hoskibui here on SkS, Medieval project gone wrong. Dr. Craig Idso's website doesn't seem to check the sources either and his website is filled with flaw work and misrepresentations.

2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?

Norman at 17:25 PM on 1 July, 2011

Albatross @ 182

"curious coincidence? Unlikely. And I for one am incredibly tired of people alleging to post here in "good faith" when all they appear to be doing is regurgitating stuff from a highly questionable political document prepared in the guise of science. And that said regurgitations do not even accurately represent the findings of the original paper or are not applied in context."

Sorry to disappoint but I have not heard of NIPCC report until I went to your Tamino link. It is not that curious of a conincidence. I go on Google and put in key phrases looking for historical data. I am seeking peer-reviewed publications. It is an easy coincidence. The claim made is that droughts are increasing and intensifying. So I put in the History of droughts and other search titles looking for .pdf material (seems a better chance for peer-review or at least well explained data, usually good graphs and detailed explanations of how data was collected and compiled and maybe good statistical analytical tools). The compilers of NIPCC report would probably be doing the same thing...looking for .pdf files for their material on droughts, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, all the typical events counted as weather extremes. They would be able to find the same articles.

I do not understand your point ("And that said regurgitations do not even accurately represent the findings of the original paper or are not applied in context") based upon my posts. I post a link to the article, read the material and then look at the graphs. I then ask you to tell me where is an obvious trend that indicates an increase in frequency, intensity or duration of historical droughts in North America.

You know Tamino uses his "eyecrometer" with his graphs on arctic ice loss.

Here is his posted arctic ice graph Tamino Arctic ice graph.

What he says about this graph. "Identifying a change in Arctic sea ice extent that can be attributed to temperature is as easy as looking at this graph:"

Note also in this post by Tamino, he goes on to show how statistics and trend lines can easily be distorted to show a false picture of reality. That is why I am seeking very long trends and just posting the graphs.

Because of the nature of my posts I still would like to understand "And that got me thinking about the fairly steady stream of papers being posted by "skeptics" (e.g., Norman)on this thread trying to convince people that there is nothing un-towards or unusual going on with the climate system."

I am not trying to convince you of this, I am posting the information and asking for you to explain to me an upward trend in the data provided. If it is there, I am fine with it. A simple request I would think.

Last one. Can you clarify this statement as I think the last sentence is about my posts....

"I will also note that one of the papers that they (NIPCC; Idso and Singer) cite in reference to drought in N. America is being used for purposes not intended by the authors. I happen to know the authors of the paper in question and I know for a fact that they are not "skeptics" or in denial about AGW. So these it is worrisome to see Idso and Singer to misrepresent the science in papers that actually do not go against the theory of AGW. And worse yet, to see uncritical "skeptics" perpetuate the misinformation and distortion."

What misinformation and distortion am I perpetuating?

Here is the content of my post @140:
"Here is one with droughts across North America. In the text they explain that the causes of drought in North America were also responsible for Global Climate patterns (more rain in some areas droughts in others). From this study it states there were much worse droughts in the past than today. They also have graphs at the end of the article which show 1000 years of droughts. I would challenge you to find an increase in frequency of droughts today as compared to the long 1000 year history."

Here is a direct quote from their conclusion (Paper on 1000 year droughts posted @ 140):
"Many of these reconstructions cover the last 1000 years, enabling us to examine, in detail, how the famous droughts of modern times compare to their predecessors during a time of quite similar boundary conditions (e.g. orbital configuration). Upon examination, what becomes apparent, is that the famous droughts of the instrumental era are dwarfed by the successive occurrence of multi-decade long ’mega-droughts’ in the period of elevated aridity between the eleventh and fourteenth century A.D. Whilst these mega-droughts stand out in terms of persistence,
they share the severity and spatial distribution characteristics of their modern-day counterparts."

My question asked for evidence of increased frequency, intensity or duration. The mega-droughts were of the same intensisty but had a much longer duration.

2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?

Albatross at 11:23 AM on 1 July, 2011

Rob @179,

"Your comment here contains a common theme that I see in those who wish to dismiss climate change as man made and a serious issue."

It is interesting that you should post that. Earlier today I drafted a post but it was lost b/c SAFARI crashed on me.

Anyhow, as you probably know Tamino has just posted a devastating refutation on one section of the NIPCC report. And that got me thinking about the fairly steady stream of papers being posted by "skeptics" (e.g., Norman)on this thread trying to convince people that there is nothing un-towards or unusual going on with the climate system. Let me just say that the framing and language has a certain tone to it that raised flags for me. So I went and cross-referenced some of the sources being referenced here by "skeptics" (see here, for example)and those that appear in the NIPCC report. Even just the most cursory of checks found that two of the papers being cited here (Herweijer et al. (2006), Hallett et al. (2003) to try and convince people that all is well are referenced in the NIPCC report and one of those (Herweijer et al. (2006)),appears in the section on extreme weather.

A curious coincidence? Unlikely. And I for one am incredibly tired of people alleging to post here in "good faith" when all they appear to be doing is regurgitating stuff from a highly questionable political document prepared in the guise of science. And that said regurgitations do not even accurately represent the findings of the original paper or are not applied in context.

I will also note that one of the papers that they (NIPCC; Idso and Singer) cite in reference to drought in N. America is being used for purposes not intended by the authors. I happen to know the authors of the paper in question and I know for a fact that they are not "skeptics" or in denial about AGW. So these it is worrisome to see Idso and Singer to misrepresent the science in papers that actually do not go against the theory of AGW. And worse yet, to see uncritical "skeptics" perpetuate the misinformation and distortion.

If some people wish to deny the reality, the science, then they are welcome to do so, but please do not tie the rest of us to the train tracks.

Coral atolls and rising sea levels: That sinking feeling

Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:55 PM on 24 May, 2011

@JMurphy

The first link is a figure cited by a number of websites - it’s from the pre-review paper. The next two figures originate (unchanged) also pre-reviewed the papers. I did not quote “a word” of comment to them - nor Idso or WUWT.
My information comes only from work Suggett & Smith1, 2010.. They are workers: Coral Reef Research Unit, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, UK.
Instead of looking for "conspiracy theories", we respond to their proposal: that even strongly coral bleaching is a natural phenomenon, often found in colonies of corals - and often quickly reversible.
It is worth to discuss their work in detail but we can not ignore.

Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)

Albatross at 02:22 AM on 18 May, 2011

Re #30,

Really, it is not clear what you are trying to say. But you seem to think that more than doubling CO2 and associated climate disruption will more than be compensated for by CO2 enrichment. Recent research has found that the ITCZ can migrate up to 5 degrees latitude when the planet warms-- think of the consequences that would have.

You ignored the results from field studies by Feeley. And you forget that this is not so much as to what has happened but where we are heading.

And really, citing cherry-picked studies from ideologues like Idso does not help you case. And what has below ground productivity got to do with things, or how is that related to this post? Oh, it is strawman, of course. We are talking about the canopy and transpiration, and die back of the canopy.

And talking of strawmen, you are also making a arguing a strawman about fires. Making the argument that there have been periods of greater fire activity in the southern hemisphere before so there is nothing to worry about in the future is nonsense. All you have demonstrated is that large variations in the degree of biomass burning in the Southern Hemisphere (not the Amazon per se, the authors do not mention specifically the Amazon that I could see), and that it is possible to burn a lot more biomass than has been of late. Hardly reassuring.

So your long post ultimately does not support Solomon's propaganda. In fact, it is just a fine example of the lengths people will go to to delude themselves.

Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)

Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:43 PM on 17 May, 2011

Solomon is essentially a professional misinformer.

Maybe ...

Sometimes he is too biased - use "cherry picking". Only that this case shows that - here - he's right. Like Idso who cites many articles of the late twentieth century, for example:
“In the relatively short-term study of Lovelock et al. (1999a), for example, seedlings of the tropical tree Copaifera aromatica that were grown for two months at an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 860 ppm exhibited photosynthetic rates that were consistently 50-100% greater than those displayed by control seedlings fumigated with air containing 390 ppm CO2.”

Co2 favors the development of tropical forests and these buffering - the hydrological cycle - is less periods of extreme drought.

And what says - cited by Solomon - Phillips et al., 2008., in: The changing Amazon forest : “Because growth on average exceeded mortality, intact Amazonian forests have been a carbon sink. In the late twentieth century, biomass of trees of more than 10 cm diameter increased by 0.62 +/- 0.23 t C ha-1 yr-1 averaged across the basin. This implies a carbon sink in Neotropical old-growth forest of at least 0.49 +/- 18 Pg C yr-1. If other biomass and necromass components are also increased proportionally, then the old-growth forest sink here has been 0.79 +/- 29 Pg C yr-1, even before allowing for any gains in soil carbon stocks. This is approximately equal to the carbon emissions to the atmosphere by Amazon deforestation.”

And what speaks - on this topic - Greenpeace?: “ Rafael Cruz, a Greenpeace activist in Manaus who has been monitoring the drought, said that while the rise and fall of the Amazon's rivers was a normal process, recent years had seen both extreme droughts and flooding become worryingly frequent.
Although it was too early to directly link the droughts to global warming, Cruz said such events were an alert about what could happen if action was not taken.”

Of course it is. Historically, droughts have been even greater and the smaller population of Amazonia. So We must - firstly - to increase the possibility of water retention in periods of drought - of course ...
It is always useful.

Will Amazon drought significantly affected the photosynthesis?:
“ We found no big differences in the greenness level [!] of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought,” said Arindam Samanta, the study's lead author from Boston University.
The comprehensive study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.
A study published in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible.

“This new study brings some clarity to our muddled understanding of how these forests, with their rich source of biodiversity, would fare in the future in the face of twin pressures from logging and changing climate,” said Boston University Prof. Ranga Myneni, senior author of the new study.”

A significant mistake of catastrophic forecasts (the reaction of global ecosystems to extreme phenomena - were found to be greater resistance - a significant reduction of "tipping points") speaks this paper:
The ecological role of climate extremes: current understanding and future prospects, Smith, 2011.:

“For example, above- and below-ground productivity remained unchanged across all years of the study ...”
Meanwhile in: The 2010 Amazon Drought Lewis et al, 2011.,

they are frighten us ...

Lewis also threatens us with fire

But here (SH - Southern Hemisphere) has recently seen something quite different - a surprising ... Large Variations in Southern Hemisphere Biomass Burning During the Last 650 Years, Wang et al. 2010.:
“ These observations and isotope mass balance model results imply that large variations in the degree of biomass burning in the Southern Hemisphere occurred during the last 650 years, with a decrease by about 50% in the 1600s, an increase of about 100% by the late 1800s, and another decrease by about 70% from the late 1800s to present day.
And so it looks like ...

I recommend also comments (not the same "very incomplete" text post) - here - to this post.

Who Ya Gonna Call???

idunno at 00:49 AM on 16 May, 2011

Hi Daniel,

(this is off-topic please feel free to delete it)

I am a little concerned that it seems that very little coverage has been given anywhere much to the new Arctic ozone hole.

Wayne Davidson has a piece up on his blog (www.eh2r.com) and has posted a couple of comments about it on realclimate's May open thread.

I'd suggest that you or others might like to write something on two aspects of this:

1. A new hole in the stratospheric ozone over the Arctic may well cause a lowering of Arctic SAT, with possible implications for the rate of Arctic sea ice loss.

2. People who believe in basic science might be best advised to wear some more sunscreen this summer (and apply a lot more of it to small children). Baz Luhrmann has already published something on this... but then he is an Ozzy, and the Antarctic ozone hole is old news.

2a. (Regular readers of WUWT, etc, may of course feel free to ignore Mr Luhrmann's advice)

Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming

Daniel Bailey at 04:15 AM on 12 May, 2011

ExxonMobil is connected to nine of the top ten authors of climate change denial papers, according to a “fact-check” website.

Analysis by The Carbon Brief found that the ten authors are responsible for 186 of the over 900 peer-reviewed papers skeptical of man-made global warming.

The most prolific climate-skeptic author on the list was Sherwood B. Idso, president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a think-tank which the Carbon Brief said has been funded by ExxonMobil. Idso authored or co-authored 67 of the 938 papers analyzed, or seven percent of the total.

The second most cited is Patrick J. Michaels, with 28 papers. Michaels has said that he receives about 40% of his funding from the oil industry.

Researchers Willie Soon and John R. Christy are both affiliated with the George C. Marshall Institute, which receives Exxon funds, the website found. Another author, Ross McKitrick, is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, which also benefits from Exxon funding, the Carbon Brief said.

Eight of the ten have direct links to ExxonMobil, the analysis found, while a ninth researcher, Bruce Kimball, is linked to the oil giant because all of his papers were co-authored with Sherwood Idso.

Medieval project gone wrong

Same Ordinary Fool at 06:52 AM on 30 April, 2011

Soon & Baliunas(2003) used these deceptions, and one more. They compared MWP temperatures to the average temperature for the 20th century, rather than recent temperatures.

Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (of the CO2 Science website) were co-authors when Soon and Baliunas published (three months later) a longer version of this paper in E&E.

See Wikipedia: Soon and Baliunas controversy

Medieval project gone wrong

JMurphy at 03:54 AM on 30 April, 2011

Sphaerica wrote : "Really, the effort was/is shockingly disingenuous."

Agreed, but to what end, I wonder ? What do the Idsos get out of all this ?

Actually, the CO2Science Medieval Project's list of so-called proof of a MWP, reminds me of another little list that some have used to vainly try and 'prove' peer-reviewed skepticism of AGW Alarm...

CO2 is plant food? If only it were so simple

Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:36 PM on 28 April, 2011

@Chris S
Idso aim is to present these papers that deny the devastating impacts of increasing GHG in the atmosphere - so that these papers do not ignore - for the general conclusion. I have the same aim - including on this blog.

Consider - as before changing the ratio of C3 plants to C4? Is as fast as today?
Let's look at Figure 3C (C4 %) in Comparison of multiple proxy records of Holocene environments in Midwestern USA, Baker et al. 1998,. As you can see past the changes were often very large and fast, and long-term - where is the "famous" balance?

@Marcus

The current "mechanisms" of photosynthesis exist hundreds of millions of years. C4 grasses arose as a reaction to the unusual - in the history of life on Earth - a decrease in the concentration of CO2 - just a 3? million years ago ...

Being (in my country) at an scientific conference on pests - warming - I heard that you get from us (as a result of global warming), The Western Corn Rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera ...
I have a question - that the yields and profitability of maize production is higher in my country, or where there is a Western Corn Rootworm ?
... otherwise - whether the warming will not compensate the cost increase protection against pests - maize?

I recommend the conclusion in Leakey 2009: “The effect of elevated [CO2] on C4 crops has received a disproportionate lack of attention compared to the effects of other elements of climate change on C3 and C4 plants. Consequently, adequate data are not available to reliably estimate the extent to which amelioration of drought stress at elevated [CO2] will improve yields over the range of C4 crop growing conditions and genotypes.”

We should also remember that the increase in CO2 usually:
- increases the number of leaves and flowers,
- promotes the regeneration of plants propagated “in vitro”,
- In some cases can reduce the costs associated with the light made ...

CO2 is plant food? If only it were so simple

Chris S at 18:16 PM on 27 April, 2011

Thanks for this. Though I think it is written well enough for intermediate readers to understand as well as advanced.

I hadn't seen the temperature angle tackled like this before - very interesting.

Further to the interation with other species section it has been shown that lacwing predators of aphid pests become less efficient consumers under elevated CO2 (Gao et al.; 2010*). Which, if combined with increased fitness of pests & pathogens as hypothesised by Gregory et al. (2010)** signls a possible need for increased pesticide load under elevated CO2.

Is Sherwood Idso any relation to the CO2"science" Idsos? Speaking of them, I wonder how many of the studies cited above are also cited over there.

*Elevated CO2 lessens predation of Chrysopa sinica on Aphis gossypii. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata. 135

**Integrating pests and pathogens into the climate change/food security debate. Journal of Experimental Botany. 60

Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data

Daniel Bailey at 10:50 AM on 16 April, 2011

@ climatewolf

"as a 50/50 skeptic"

and

"I look to the deniers/skeptics to ask questions"

With all due respect, CW, taking the position that (in climate science) both "sides" have equal weight (which you imply by your looking to the denialists for questions to ask) shows how far you truly have to go to become informed.

There is no shame in being uninformed in regards to things climate. Getting an interdisciplinary background in enough depth to gain even a rudimentary understanding of the field is hard work. To be honest, it's a pain in the ass, taking dedication, sweat and perseverance beyond measure.

In reality, there are 3 "sides":
1. Those who've spent a LONG time studying the field and are trying, as best as they know how, to share that hard-won knowledge.
2. The uninformed masses who are understandably preoccupied with the struggle to stay alive long enough to see another morning dawn
3. Everyone else. This includes the disinformationists, like at CA or WUWT, the Kochites, the Idso's, Moncktonites, the Heartlanders, etc. They are well-funded and they are legion. They simply do not have the facts or the science on their side.

We do the best job we can to provide the most fair-balanced and objective science-based and sourced articles that we can. Period.

Truth is truth. Right is right, wrong is wrong. Muller is wrong WRT the topic of this thread. Period.

So, whenever possible, get to the source. Read the studies themselves, the peer-reviewed journals where possible. Exercise your skepticism of the disinformationist side: demand from them fair balanced pieces based on the science. Check their sources for proper quotation & interpretation. And check ours as well.

/Rant

The Yooper

Christy Crock #1: 1970s Cooling

citizenschallenge at 10:37 AM on 5 April, 2011

For a more detailed look at the Global Cooling myth check out this detailed study.

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf

THE MYTH OF THE 1970S GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS

Thomas C. Peterson, William M. Connolley, and John Fleck’s

"A review of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979 shows the myth to be false. The myth’s basis lies in a selective misreading of the texts both by some members of the media at the time and by some observers today. In fact, emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then."

"But perhaps more important than demonstrating that the global cooling myth is wrong, this review shows the remarkable way in which the individual threads of climate science of the time, each group of researchers pursuing their own set of questions, was quickly woven into the integrated tapestry that created the basis for climate science as we know it today."

2. RECOGNITION OF A PROBLEM: THE
POTENTIAL FOR WARMING.

3. THE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECORDS:
A COOLING TREND?

4. ICE AGE UNDERSTANDING

5. CARBON DIOXIDE

6. AEROSOLS

7. MEDIA COVERAGE

8. SURVEY OF THE PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE

"The survey identified only seven articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming. Those seven cooling articles garnered just 12% of the citations."

"Interestingly, only two of the articles would, according to the current state of climate science, be considered wrong in the sense of getting the wrong sign of the response to the forcing they considered. They are one cooling paper (Bryson and Dittberner, 1976) and one warming paper (Idso and Brazel, 1977) and both were immediately challenged (Woronko 1977, Herman et al. 1978)."

"As climate science and the models progressed over time, the findings of the rest of the articles were refined and improved, sometimes significantly, but not reversed. "

Hockey Stick Own Goal

angusmac at 07:21 AM on 4 March, 2011

Dana in your post, "Contrary to the Idsos' claims in the Prudent Path document, Ljungqvist says the following when combining his proxy reconstruction with recent instrumental temperature data:

Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period."

However, the actual statement by Ljungqvist (2010) (my emphasis added) appears to contradict your contention:

"Substantial parts of the Roman Warm Period, from the first to the third centuries, and the Medieval Warm Period, from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, seem to have equalled or exceeded the AD 1961-1990 mean temperature level in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere. Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades [of] the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period, if we look at the instrumental temperature data spliced to the proxy reconstruction. However, this sharp rise in temperature compared to the magnitude of warmth in previous warm periods should be cautiously interpreted since it is not visible in the proxy reconstruction itself."

The crux of Ljungqvist's statement which you have minimised, is that the, "instrumental data spliced to the proxy reconstruction" should be cautiously interpreted because the recent proxy data does not emulate the recent instrumental data. In a nutshell this is the "divergence problem."

Re your comment that, "Indeed by plotting data along with Moberg et al. (2005), Mann et al. (2008), and the surface temperature record, we can confirm that the three reconstructions are very similar, and all show the peak of the MWP approximately 0.5°C cooler than today's temperatures (Figure 1)."

Your statement that the MWP is 0.5 °C cooler than today is incorrect because you are comparing today's instrumental measurements with yesterday's proxies. To compare instrumental temperatures with proxy temperatures is physically and statistically wrong. The correct methodology is to compare today's proxies with previous proxies.

I enclose Ljungqvist's original reconstruction in Figure A and I have removed the instrumental calibration data in Figure B for clarity.

Figure A: Ljungqvist's Reconstruction with Instrumental Data that was used for Calibration

Figure B: Ljungqvist's Reconstruction with Instrumental Data Deleted

It is evident from Figures A and B that the MWP was at least as warm as the current warming period. Moberg (2005) and Mann (2008) show similar results when proxies are compared with proxies. Therefore, a correct interpretation is that all three reconstructions show that recent temperatures are similar to the MWP.

From the foregoing, it would appear that the Prudent Path does support its claim that, if you compare proxies with proxies in your three reconstructions, the MWP was as hot as today.

Hockey Stick Own Goal

Albatross at 18:26 PM on 24 February, 2011

Robert @106,

"I haven't seen any comprehensive reconstruction of net forcing over the past millennia, so it would seem to be a non-sequitur to state that the Idso's are necessarily arguing for a high climate sensitivity in arguing for a warm MWP."

Actually Hegerl (2006) looked into this. Estimates of the forcing data (solar, aerosol, GHGs etc.) are shown going back to 1000 AD, see Fig. 2.

Mann et al. (2009) looked into the possible role of internal climate variability over the last 1500 years.

Hockey Stick Own Goal

RobertS at 17:44 PM on 24 February, 2011

"The NIPCC report is claiming that the IPCC sensitivity range is too high by a factor of 10, but the Idso Prudent Path document, by claiming that the MWP was as hot or hotter than today, is arguing that the IPCC sensitivity range is too low. "

I don't quite understand this argument; I haven't seen any comprehensive reconstruction of net forcing over the past millennia, so it would seem to be a non-sequitur to state that the Idso's are necessarily arguing for a high climate sensitivity in arguing for a warm MWP.

A MWP comparable in temperature to today is virtually impossible given the slew of millennial temperature reconstructions showing otherwise, and there is little indication of any dramatic changes in TSI or volcanic activity that could lead to such a warm MWP, but I'm not sure the latter proposition contradicts Idso's concurrent argument that CS is low.

Hockey Stick Own Goal

Albatross at 08:05 AM on 24 February, 2011

protestant,

You seem to be arguing in circles and using excuses to try and discredit whichever information is inconvenient to you. You have questioned the validity of the temperature data from the instrument record, then questioning the splicing, then introducing the red herring of transient oscillations, now you seem to be arguing that the paleo reconstructions are questionable (including Ljungqvist it seems). Well, Idso et al. sure are placing a lot of emphasis and weight on Ljungqvist (2010) and excluded the spliced temperature data from the instrumented record that ljungqvist (2010) included in his paper.

All data have issues, that does not render them useless.

You have been shown to be wrong about a few things on this thread, yet you insist on trying to obfuscate and detract from the own goal scored by Idso et al.

PS: If you wish to challenge Tamino's work, then please do so at Tamino's site.

Hockey Stick Own Goal

Albatross at 04:36 AM on 24 February, 2011

Protestant @62,

"Looks like nothing like yours."

This is going to be fun. And note Protestant, that despite your protestations, Ljungqvist also spliced the CRU data to his reconstruction (as you showed @62). You do not like the observed marked warming in recent decades one bit, it is clearly very inconvenient for you and Idso et al., so I guess it now has to be "attacked". Be mad at Idso et al. for scoring such a spectacular own goal, not us.

A likely reason for the proxies underestimating the amount of warming at the end of the record (again referring to the original figure) is that for the last decade, as pointed out by Dana on this thread, there were very few proxies used in the reconstruction.

You are now spamming this site with many allegations and much arm-waving. For the record, McShane and Wyner might be statisticians but their ignorance and their inexperience in working worth paleo data was all too obvious in their paper. Regardless, you know what? They ended up with a HS, although their shaft was rather oddly rotated.
The many criticisms of McShane and Wyner can be found here, also follow embedded links.

Finally, you seem to be arguing for a warmer MWP. So as Dana and others have pointed out you are arguing against low climate sensitivity. What do you understand climate sensitivity for doubling CO2 (with feedbacks) to be protestant?

Hockey Stick Own Goal

MichaelM at 09:20 AM on 23 February, 2011

"In their Prudent Path document, Craig and Sherwood Idso argue ..."

Hockey Stick Own Goal

DSL at 09:20 AM on 23 February, 2011

Paul, search for Craig Idso.

Hockey Stick Own Goal

Paul Barry at 09:10 AM on 23 February, 2011

Could someone explain to me what the term Idso (or is that ldso?) means. Is it an acronym? A quick Google search did not help. Thankyou.

Hockey Stick Own Goal

dana1981 at 04:47 AM on 23 February, 2011

Thanis Albatross. Ljungqvist extended his proxy reconstruction through the decade of 1990-1999. Half of his proxies (15) extend through 1989, and one-third (10) through 1999. But he also plots the instrumental temperature record, unlike the Idsos. Which, considering the relatively low number of proxies extending to the late 20th Century, is a smart thing to do.

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