G20, Bonn and the climate of opinion
Sometimes, on reading comments on this blog, I draw the same impression as simon-swede did on the last post: "so much vitriol".
But at other times, I find myself in full agreement with jr4412 - "an informative and well-argued debate" - which is a far more satisfying state of affairs.
That's what we're aiming for - and thanks to everyone who posted constructive comments on the last thread, and for every bit of humour - something that's sorely lacking in many environmental circles, and very welcome here.
I wanted to pick up three comments on recent threads that I thought made an interesting counterpoint to events this week - the G20 meeting in London, and the UN climate convention meeting in Bonn, the first formal gathering on the route to December's Copenhagen summit which is supposed, as regular readers will know, to agree a global climate treaty with even more bells and whistles than the Kyoto Protocol.
One is PAWB46's "there is no scientific evidence for AGW" (anthropogenic global warming).
The second, CuckooToo's "despite the fact that the science is far from settled, despite the IPCC's reservations about computer modelling, despite the BBC's refusal to report newsworthy articles by sceptics, it's a done deal?"
... and the third, pmbiggsy's "I suggest our efforts are focused in a direction that both climate realists and alarmists can agree on - developing new fuels/technology rather than futile attempts to control the weather/climate with unilateral policies".
I think, pmbiggsy, that this is exactly where we are now. Reporting of the UN negotiations tends to focus on headline commitments made to cutting greenhouse gas emissions; but I would argue that the mechanisms set up to stimulate the development and spread of low-carbon technologies are more critical to making carbon reductions than the size of countries' promises.
This is the point Lord Stern made this week in a briefing directed into the ears of G20 leaders. An economy that is green but prosperous is, he said, "the only option. Low economic growth in a world that has poverty and that is aspirational is unacceptable".
There are voices in the climate change sphere - some of them camped in the City of London - arguing that economic growth and conventional versions of what economics actually is are the real problems. Whatever the merits of these arguments, they are not the voices being listened to in the wind-tunnels of power.
Ask, then, what is essential to a prosperous and green economy; and I would suggest the most fundamental long-term ingredient has to revolve around energy, both saving it and implementing cleaner ways of generating it.
These are the technologies at the centre of the Kyoto Protocol's technology transfer clauses - clauses that have to be be re-energised in the Copenhagen process if the Kyoto successor is to work at all.
Cost will be an issue, true; but when the price of oil can rise fourfold or even more in a few years, and with "end of oil" projections ranging from few to many decades, who's to say that the relative stability of renewables prices and the certainty of continued raw energy supply do not make attractive compensations?
All this is happening, of course, because where it matters, "The Debate" on climate science (there are actually many debates, but only one so acrimonious as to merit initial capitalisation) is "a done deal".
Among scientists themselves, The Debate is, if not completely settled, at least producing large majorities on one side; rossglory reminds us of one of several surveys indicating a significant consensus in the active scientific community, and we've previously discussed others on these pages.
Which does not mean that current day climate change is proven, indubitably, irrevocably, and irrepressibly, to be of human manufacture. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not make the claim; though some may read its pronouncements as indicating certainty, everything in its reports is couched in terms of probability.
This may make uncomfortable reading for scientists, but to politicians, probabilities are part of everyday life.
Will the MP accused of fiddling expenses or extra-marital dalliance be forced from office, or manage to cling on? How much are the banks eventually going to need in bail-out money? Will World Cup victory and a lovely summer win us back the vote-critical feelgood factor?
All are judgement calls; and the reality is that politicians are used to dealing with probabilities and uncertainty, and framing policy under these conditions.
I have heard it argued that the IPCC's climate projections are a lot more reliable than most economic forecasts; and surely Bryn_hill is right to argue that the meaningful question is "at what shade of grey do you say we need to act?"
The vast majority of European governments and leaders found the shade of grey convincing more than a decade ago.
For years, the Bush administration in the US and the Howard government in Australia argued against international actions to curb emissions, though both continued to endorse IPCC reports, hence accepting its version of climate science; their opposition was not based primarily on science, but on political and economic considerations.
From time to time, Russia and Canada, among developed nations, raise banners against firm emission curbs; but their arguments too are economic, not scientific.
At its current meeting, the G20 is set to agree a paragraph endorsing a strong deal in Copenhagen. G20 governments represent most of the world's population and most of the world's emissions.
In Bonn, representatives of these and other governments are batting around ideas as to what the Copenhagen deal might include; and all are posited on the idea that man-made climate change is real and needs tackling.
At the global political level, then, the deal IS done; human-induced climate change is accepted as a threat virtually everywhere. Governments set up the IPCC, and it is to that body's advice that they listen to - not to wattsupwiththat, not to ClimateAudit, not to the Lavoisier Group.
In comparison to the weight carried by the G20, the G8, the UNFCCC, UNEP, the UN Security Council, the IPCC, and all the other organisations backing emissions-busting policies, it's hard to see the recent Heartland Institute conference, for example, as having any more political relevance than a government in exile.
In a strict sense, of course, science is never a "done deal"; more research can always turn a consensus on its head, and you can bet your life that if convincing evidence emerges that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not driving climate change, governments will change direction faster than a cosmic ray, so conducive would that be to business as usual.
But for the moment, in the judgement of 194 countries endorsing the last IPCC report, the shade of grey is dark and glowering enough to indicate action now.
I know the community of "climate sceptics" is vast and disparate, and for that reason I try to avoid sweeping statements on the issue; but I sometimes think the sheer size and breadth of the political consensus escapes from that community's field of view.
Against that consensus, statements such as PAWB46's "there is no scientific evidence for AGW" stand out like a sore thumb.
I see the statement, simply, as untrue, and demonstrably so. There is a mountain of research supportive of, or indicative of, or consistent with (if not proving) anthropogenic warming, whether it's observational data, computer models, or trends drawn from the Earth's historical record. There is evidence in abundance.
Now, the key is how you interpret that evidence. For me, statements such as "I don't find strands of that evidence convincing", or "I don't accept that computer programs can model the complexity of the climate", or "I believe natural cycles have been under-represented as a cause of climate change" are all entirely legitimate and defensible, because they acknowledge that in the end, we all make judgement calls on what is before us.
With few exceptions, those with political and economic power are taking as little notice of statements such as "there is no evidence for anthropogenic climate change" as they are of protestors hurling bricks through the windows of capitalism this week; perhaps that is partly because they are demonstrably untrue, or partly because they are often delivered with, to quote simon-swede, "so much vitriol".
So what will have been accomplished by the end of the G20 meeting and the conclusion of the Bonn gathering in a week's time?
In concrete terms, not much. The G20 countries all support the primacy of the UNFCCC as a decision-making body, and all know that discussions between the US administration and Congress are vital; so anything more than what our friends in Washington call "Mom-and-apple-pie" was never likely to emerge in London, especially with climate concerns cast in the shadow of the world's economic woes.
The Bonn conclusions are likely to be a bit more subtle, but in the end more relevant.
An essential part of the context is that even if the bill just introduced into the US House of Representatives by Congressman Waxman and Markey becomes law, it would only commit the US to reduce emissions by about 6% from 1990 levels by 2020.
It's unclear, too, what target Japan might adopt for 2020, with a government advisory panel last week producing six possible strategies ranging from an increase of 4% to a cut of 25%.
The big questions here, where it matters, are not whether emissions need curbing at all; but whether these important industrialised countries are prepared to stomach tough targets that may incur an economic price, and whether developing countries will find the west's proposed package of cuts, technology transfer and financial support worth responding to with carbon constraints of their own.
New fuels and technologies will form an important part of the discussions. Whether there is enough evidence to make anthropogenic climate change a "done deal" is a question highly unlikely to see the light of day.
Comments
Sign in or register to comment.
As history has a habit of repeating itself I wonder when the parallel will be made with scientific individuals of old who were ridiculed for not conforming to the 'settled' view and who proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to have been correct and the vast majority the complete opposite!
Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin?
Sooner rather than the wildly expensive alternative that will cost the earth and remedy absolutely nothing.
Complain about this comment
Once again, you take a very moderate and reasonable line which makes agood deal of sense. In essence the debate surrounds alternative technologies not banner headlines on who is to blame. It was therefore very disappointing to see that Google had used the least ice extent on their accompanying graphic to the Catlin Arctic Expedition. Surely it is not beyond the wit and reason of this technical behemoth to have the actual or current ice extent on their graphics - but then that would give some credence to the fact that the Arctic ice has actually been increasing ( fifth lowest year since 2002 according to NASA,could'nt have that could we?
Complain about this comment
"This may make uncomfortable reading for scientists, but to politicians, probabilities are part of everyday life."
Ummm, no, it is the other way round. Politicians, and the public, prefer done deals, certainty, etc, not probabilities. The scientists on the other hand will use probabilities etc in a scientific sense, then get confused when people act as if there is nothing to worry about despite what the scientist has just said, because simply put, too many people want certainty, and any uncertainty is seized upon by doubters as meaning their doubts are correct, never mind the reality of the situation.
Complain about this comment
Yet the abundance of evidence you mention doesn’t seem to contain a reliable surface temperature record, a reliable sea level record, a reliable arctic/ant-arctic ice cover record, uncompromised proxy records, or any atmospheric data supporting the hypothesis. There are lots of assumptions being made on the basis of computer models, but by definition, they can’t provide evidence of anything. If this is an abundance of evidence, then clearly, words have little real meaning in the realm of climate science.
Your claim that “statements such as PAWB46's stand out like a sore thumb” is irrelevant. They might well do, but that doesn’t stop them being factually correct. Such a “sore thumb” indicates that some basic assumptions need addressing and should appeal to any scientist with a sense of robust enquiry. Of course, if AGW is regarded more as a political movement than a scientific undertaking, I can see your point.
You are, of course, perfectly correct to decry the all too common refuge in vitriol. Perhaps then, you should make your criticism clear to those who employ it most often, particularly the likes of James Hansen, whose regular condemnation of “deniers”, misrepresentation of power stations as “death factories” and disrespect for even the most eminent scientists who disagree with his views, only detracts from his case and steadily lowers his credibility as a rational scientist.
Complain about this comment
"I think, pmbiggsy, that this is exactly where we are now. Reporting of the UN negotiations tends to focus on headline commitments made to cutting greenhouse gas emissions; but I would argue that the mechanisms set up to stimulate the development and spread of low-carbon technologies are more critical to making carbon reductions than the size of countries' promises."
Richard I think you are being too nice to the vociferous climate sceptics and to the way CDM has worked. Right now, civil servants are advancing the notion of emissions trading as justification for building Kingsnorth as they did for the Heathrow Third Runway. None of this is cutting the use of oil, it's just getting more economic value out of the oil that remains.
Complain about this comment
Richard, I'd just like to say that I think the discussion on this blog is generally quite well-informed, civilised and polite. There is little of the mud-slinging and irrelevant ranting that spoils some of the climate blogs. And this is despite the very wide range of views expressed. This shows that the moderators are doing a great job. The only problem is 'over-posting' by some people (I don't know if the technology allows it, but it would be good to impose a limit on the length and number of posts).
Remarks about surveys by rossglory and simon-swede are misleading. There is a self-reinforcing clique of climate scientists who agree on AGW and are doing very well out of it, raking in research funding. But many other scientists who are able to look at the question more objectively are not convinced (this includes PAWB46 and myself, both with science PhDs). Among the general public, scepticism is increasing, with 41% now saying that global warming is exaggerated, according to a recent Gallup poll, up from 35% last year.
Complain about this comment
Richard
I have to agree with many posters here and thank you for providing a space where we can all discuss these matters in a (reasonably) civilised manner. OK, it sometimes gets a little heated, but rarely do things get out of hand.
I disagree in part with SamuelPicket when he says the moderators are doing a good job, because I get the impression that most people here are genuinely trying to uinderstand and respect the opinions of others.
I wholeheartedly agree with the final paragraph from FRACTIOUS
I am pleased that you have acknowledged the science isn't settled, I just wish the rest of the BBC would acknowledge this ;)
Complain about this comment
"...the key is how you interpret that evidence." Interesting statement.
FRACTIOUS - you are spot on.
"Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house." ~Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, 1905
Complain about this comment
The big questions here, where it matters, are not whether emissions need curbing at all; but whether these important industrialised countries are prepared to stomach tough targets that may incur an economic price,
Considering the full cost of cars, roads and hospitals, switching to rail and bicycle based transport, might actually produce a large economic benefit.
No yet to be discovered technology is required. We could extend rail service to every country on the planet and end famine. We can eliminate air pollution caused lung aliments, and reduce transport deaths and injuries to nearly zero.
The only tough part will be, getting the politicians to believe that we actually do want them to ban cars, and can you please improve the rail service first?
Of course improve, means, many more trains, many more destinations, and much lower fares. It should go without saying, that private motor vehicles should only be banned from areas with enough alternatives. (rail spurs to large shops, and enough bicycles, cargo-bikes and pedal-cabs, to move everything and everyone else)
Yes, all that will cost. But cars, trucks, fuel, roads, and hospitals all cost something too.
There are more than one million road deaths every year now. A wildly exaggerated one thousand trips per year for all our one billion private motor vehicles, gives a death rate of one death per million trips.
Japans bullet trains have moved seven billion passengers with only one fatality, so they have a death rate of one death per seven billion trips. If they were as dangerous as the world wide average for private motor vehicles, they would have killed seven thousand people, instead of one.
Or, if the whole world adopted rail technology with the safety record of the bullet trains, and banned all motorized road transport, we could take our one trillion trips per year, and less than one hundred and fifty of us would die, instead of one million.
The savings on fuel are just as certain, although it would be tough to beat an improvement ratio, of one to seven thousand.
So we have two very good reasons for banning private motor vehicles, neither of which are AGW. If the politicians already want to act on AGW, then all we need to do, is make clear the other reasons for banning cars, and let them know that we will be willing to give up our cars, after viable rail and pedal powered alternatives are put in place.
Complain about this comment
I'm probably one of the people accused of the vitriol by some. However, my complaint is generally not against the science, I am perfectly capable of reading and resaerching and forming my own opinion.
What I and I suspect many others object to, and what causes the descent to vitriol is the bias in reporting. The BBC should not set itself up as the arbiter of what science is worth reporting ( To me Richard , this is where the article falls down) . I accept that it would be impossible to report all aspects of climate change , therefore the BBC should present one pro , and one anti , and allow people to form their own opinions.
I did send this link : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
off line to you Richard, I would suggest , that this man , one of the foremost intellects of the 20th/21st Centuries , knows far more about the situation than you, I , Gore, or the BBC Commisariat.
Where is the BBC reporting of the US Senate vote , which Obama will have to face when he gets home , where cap and trade has been rejected overwhelmingly ?
Link here: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/the-thune-amendment-5096
Hardly the ranting of vitriolic web warriors , more the reflections of experienced scientists.
And finally Richard, here is the debate that you mentioned to me in an email , I'm surprised you have not reported it !!
http://www.rollcall.com/multimedia/tv/33727-1.html
But then again ............
Complain about this comment
To Bicycle-Fan #9:
I'm liking your trend of thought Bicycle-Fan.
We use bikes in all but winter, and we no longer have a car.
We do miss a car's convenience for getting to the mountains, and there are only a few, largely unsatisfactory alternatives. But I remember a time when you could get an inexpensive bus ride to the ski-hill. I am hoping that type of thing may emerge again. According to George Monbiot, a bus is some ten times more efficient than a car, overall, all things considered. We do have rail lines to the mountains, but there is a dichotomy. If you are a grain of wheat, it's an inexpensive ride. If you are a passenger, you had better be a well-heeled passenger.
In a posthumously released book, "Project Mars: A Technical Tale" (2006), the late Dr. Wernher von Braun, chief designer of the Saturn Five rocket and defacto visionary for the American manned space effort, describes a fictional transportation system on Mars, by Martians. It resembles the rail system you envisage. Being an engineer, Dr. von Braun gives us his best shot description, not just an entertaining story.
Dr. von Braun wrote this in 1949, and left it in his desk, unpublished until recently.
This is a gem of a book for people like me, who think the exploration of space is our destiny, but the transport system envisaged by our chief rocket scientist so eerily resembles your own idea, that I thought you just might be interested.
- Manysummits, Calgary - a long! bike-ride from the hills -
Complain about this comment
Re 'toughNeilHyde' # 10:
Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written:
"One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."[20]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_dyson#Global_warming
To 'rossglory' (last post)
Sure, I know just the place - Sulphur Mountain, Banff National Park.
Question: the 'glory' in your blogging name - would that be from the meteorological phenomena, the circle of light and color sometimes seen framing the shadow of a mountaineer on top of a peak, or framing an airplane??
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
The question of greenhouse gases causing the rise in atmospheric and ocean thermal mass has reached a consensus in most of the scientific community. It is far less clear is whether the political leaders are willing to pay the short term and long term financial and political costs of doing something about it. There should be no doubt that there will be both. With rare exceptions I have yet to see the groundswell of public support that will be needed to sustain a 40+ year program to reduce world CO2 emissions to historic levels.
The growing question just starting to be discussed is whether realistically, the world can make the required changes. The UN energy forecast is still for world energy consumption to rise 50%, and if the world makes a concentrated effort to reduce energy consumption that the growth will "only" be 33%. The latest estimate of global energy usage since the last IPCC report shows the world on a higher energy growth curve than their most pessimistic or worst case model. I have yet to see a realistic vision of a world that operates on the budget required to stabilize CO2 levels at lower than current levels.
Complain about this comment
A simple suggestion:
Science being admittedly still gray is something that I believe to be true, however I also believe in freedom of choice.
Bringing technology forward does no harm, and if people choose to use it, that is their right. If the consensus is so widespread, the majority will do this. However I am extremely hesitant to turn people into criminals for making choices that aren't in line with science that's still "gray", "fuzzy" or a matter or probabilities.
Build a bullet train, people will surely ride it. However making someone a criminal for driving a car seems somewhat rash.
Complain about this comment
I enjoyed reading this latest piece Richard. Thanks again.
I wish to offer a few comments and observations on the following. You wrote: The big questions here, where it matters, are … whether these important industrialised countries are prepared to stomach tough targets that may incur an economic price, and whether developing countries will find the west's proposed package of cuts, technology transfer and financial support worth responding to with carbon constraints of their own.´You suggest also that the most fundamental long-term ingredient has to revolve around energy, both saving it and implementing cleaner ways of generating it. I agree. I also agree with the concern expressed by Lord Stern, namely that it is essential to develop economies which are green and prosperous.
While I would love to see the actions driven by recognition of the imperative for action and motivated by humanistic values and disinterested moral awareness, I realise that these things may be insufficient to overcome the economic and political inertia and opposition. It seems to me that it is important to also identify the benefits of such changes. I see increasing signs of this now, at least at a rhetorical level, with talk about green economies, and green jobs. How strongly this rhetoric is believed, even by those using it, remains to be seen. Nonetheless, I think there are real economic benefits that can accrue to those making choices for greener energy, including efficiency, and that these benefits can be found both domestically and in a globalising world economy.
But it is also possible to get this wrong! For a specific example of a wasted opportunity, I come back to Sweden. The wind turbine industry has a knowledge base that is mechanical and electrical engineering mixed with software and aerodynamics. Since its inception, in Europe, it has been dominated by Danish firms, a success story which continues and continues to grow. However the right mix of expertise also exists here in Sweden, and has done so for a long time. In the 1970s it was suggested that there was an opportunity to invest large scale in wind energy development in Sweden. In 1975, the then incumbent firm Saab received funding for the design of a large experimental turbine. This was followed by a more substantial R&D programme for wind energy in 1977, and up until 1979 Sweden spent more government funds on wind energy than did Germany. In Sweden, however, the national R&D programmes were restricted to the very large turbines and the Swedish industry was dominated by two to three large firms. In spite of a substantial government R&D programme, a domestic industry never quite materialised even though Sweden was the first European country to operate offshore a wind turbine. Today, there are only a few Swedish firms active, none of which are major players in the global industry. Germany shared the Swedish emphasis on large wind turbines in the early 1980s, but in the mid-1980s a set of firms supplying smaller turbines emerged. These firms now constitute the key players in the German industry, which grew phenomenally in the 1990s and is now the second largest industry in the world. Today the industrial capacity for building wind power plants in Europe is dominated by other countries, in particular Denmark and Germany. So too is the expertise in offshore wind turbine development and placement, where the UK is also a leader but Sweden is not.
To realise the economic benefits of greener energy choices takes vision and the benefits will accrue most to those who make the right choices early on. But an enabling framework is also required to encourage this. It is vital that legitimacy is created for the new technology or industry. Without legitimacy, private capital will not flow into the industry. Thus, even if a number of support systems are implemented, poor legitimacy will obstruct the evolution of a virtuous circle of resource supply, market development and firm growth. It is important to create powerful, predictable and persistent economic incentives. Powerful incentives create the profitability needed to attract private investors. Predictability reduces the uncertainty for the actors involved, and persistent policies are required since the development of an industry takes time.
It is often suggested, perhaps not altogether convincingly, that it is easy for people in relatively wealthy countries like Sweden to blather on about green investments when they are not confronted by massive poverty and rapidly growing populations. It is true that the pressures are very different and urgent in the developing and rapidly industrialising world. But there are potentials here too. The notion of so-called technological or industrial leapfrogging, finding pathways to go from A to C without having to transit B, offers domestic benefits by avoiding some of the mistakes made elsewhere at a comparable stage of economic development. It also offers the possibility of stealing a march on potential competitors in global markets, by being the first to develop new products and services which will be needed elsewhere too. Such longer term strategic thinking is essential, and is starting to occur. For example, in the report about what it labels as a green revolution, McKinsey and Co described pathways whereby China could seek to maximise both energy and environmental sustainability by carefully prioritising technologies to invest in to meet its growth aspirations. It can be found at:
http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/greaterchina/mckonchina/reports/china_green_revolution.aspx
Complain about this comment
Very nice article Richard. You capture much of the debate and force us to question in both directions. This is more like the old BBC I remember from a few decades ago. If I was still paying the license fee I would feel I was getting my money’s worth!!
For me you brought out an interesting quote in your article from IPCC:
"Which does not mean that current day climate change is proven, indubitably, irrevocably, and irrepressibly, to be of human manufacture. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not make the claim; though some may read its pronouncements as indicating certainty, everything in its reports is couched in terms of probability."
This goes to the heart of my thinking. Science is only our interpretation of our current understanding from which we develop theory’s. e.g. we call a void a "space". That space we define by multiples of a defined "yard stick". The only "fact" is that the space we have defined is so many "yard sticks". I can give many examples but it’s late and I hope you get my drift.
I believe we use science for what it was not intended. It does not, cannot and is not designed to give "certainty". It just helps us to model our "current" knowledge which humans in a few centuries from now will think “how quaint and Neanderthal”.
So in this respect I think the IPCC is spot on when it talks about probability. I wish we could see more of this in the debate.
Cheers
Complain about this comment
To Simon-swede #15
Noticed that we have posted comments at almost the exact same time in the last few days. Interested in where you are you are located if you feel free to share. Or are you so engaged you stay up all night!!
Cheers.......
Complain about this comment
To timjenvey @17
Good morning from a now sunny part of Sweden. Funny about the coincidence in posting times! Not up all nght, but I tend to be an early riser.
Complain about this comment
(I don't know if the technology allows it, but it would be good to impose a limit on the length and number of posts)
It exists, and has since time immemorial. The problem tends to come with the humans behind it who set and police the 'rules', and where their skill sets, influences and/or sympathies lie. So I am unsure how 'good' that would be.
While I agree that the blogosphere can get prone to 'distractions', trying to explain or debate science via Twitter-feeds is indeed a worthy discipline to encourage, and may be great for those seeking sound-bites, but may lead to incomplete and hence inaccurate posts. I think most blogs do have a limit anyway, and seem to work as a consequence.
As to number of posts, what if I agree? And suggest this should be the last on this issue? Shame you might not get to have any further opinion on that, at least in the same thread:) I also find that when the mods call a halt often leads to suspicions that an over-arching agenda is at play, and when things are not going in a favoured direction impositions can get applied. Not great for free and open debate.
I agree it can be frustrating, but on balance simply skipping over those that seem to be going in a poor direction still works best for me.
Complain about this comment
ToughNeilHyde #10- Dyson does not know more about the climate. This is a simple statement of fact. Good science reporting is not a matter of saying "One side says this, another says this". Otherwise you end up promoting anti-vaccination, which is responsible for the massive increase in measles cases (and at least one death) in the UK. When an ever increasing majority of scientists of the speciality in question agree on something, including the naysayers just gives them more publicity when they don't deserve it.
Complain about this comment
A great article again Richard, really enjoyed reading it - I just wonder how many of those who post replies would have denied the link between CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer several decades ago.
It is all well and good relying on research the disproves AGW and all but ignore the vast volumes of research that shows that human activities are accelerating the effects of global warming and as a result our climate is changing. With the complexities of our natural system it would be naive to offer anything other than probabilities as to how much this is due to man and all but impossible to predict exactly what is going to happen and when it will happen.
Can we afford to take the risk and let human activities continue as normal, as that is in effect what those who say climate change is not caused by human activities are saying. So if that is the case, lets continue pumping GHG from industry into the atmosphere, continue to increase agriculture and cattle herds to release methane, keep on changing land use and cutting down the rainforests etc, as it doesnt matter because humans arent contributing to climate change at all...
I have spent the two years establishing a not-for-profit organisation to get businesses and individuals taking proactive action on an array of environmental issues and have been lucky enough to meet some key figures at the UN, (UNEP+FAO), leading academics on the topic, government advisors and IPCC scientists and each person I have spoken to has said that we are accelerating global warming through our activities and this could lead to a lot of problems in the future.
Complain about this comment
Re 'toughNeilHyde' # 10:
Your first link was to an article about Freeman Dyson. As manysummits states, his stance, is that AGW is real, but we should not disrupt our economy, because we can easily just plant a trillion trees or a billion GM carbon eating trees. (which do not exist and no one is working on them)
The second article claims that cap and trade will not work, because of an amendment that prevents it from raising electricity or gasoline prices.
Maybe the legislation could subsidize renewable energy enough that it could replace all carbon emitting power production, without raising rates. Since the rates are allowed to rise with inflation, and the sun and wind are free, while coal and oil are not, the subsidy would be both short lived and small.
On the gasoline front, the most effective carbon reducing path the legislation could take, would be to just ban it. Of course there would have to be more trains in place first for that to happen, but they are more likely to subsidize electric cars instead.
Since electric cars only move emissions around, the devil is in the details. Cap and trade so far just seems to be a framework for incentive. The details will influence the reaction to that incentive, and thus the degree to which reduction targets are met.
We need not only the carrot and stick, we need a good road-map. The big problem I see, is that not ALL possible paths have been evaluated.
The video in your last link locks up at the one minute mark. An since there is not text and the first minute of video is mostly an ad for AT&T, I have no way of evaluating it.
To manysummits #11:
Although it is encouraging that dr Wernher von Braun had similar ideas about transportation systems, I do not find it eerie. It just seems like common sense.
Freeman Dyson also had some interesting ideas about intelligent extraterrestrials. He thinks they might possibly require so much energy, that they completely surround a star with solar panels to collect it.
And thank you for reminding me of mountains. I am lucky to live a short bus ride away from some, but it is too bad so many people never take advantage of this. The view from the top of a mountain, is always refreshing and educational.
To Washburns 14;
Have you seen my train building and car banning ideas? At first glance that might not seem realistic, but if you have seen someone move all their household belongings by bicycle convoy, or understand the true costs of private motors, maybe building enough trains to ban cars, looks better than one million road deaths per year.
To JuniorFromCanada 14;
It is not that simple. Allowing private motor vehicles, makes the streets dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, takes money away from rail systems, and creates a two tier transportation system. Only those with the financial and physical ability to operate a motor-car are able to travel freely. The rest of us are either dependant on the able, or stuck with woefully inadequate public transport.
Complain about this comment
The fact that government ministers agree with each others or management in a company is not news, neither is the fact that all the kids in a school wear the same clothes. They have no choice.
My scepticism comes from the fact that a discussion between working scientist in this field reveals very deep and fundamental differences in the interpretation of data.
Complain about this comment
Not sure if links are allowed so I am adding these seperately.
There is also the observation that warming from 1910 to 1940 (including the great depression) was greater than from 1970 to 2000.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif (Hadley)
and
Global Warming: A Classic Case of Alarmism
This is a Guest Post by Dr David Evans
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/04/03/global-warming-a-classic-case-of-alarmism/
Complain about this comment
To Washburns # 13:
Your words:
"I have yet to see a realistic vision of a world that operates on the budget required to stabilize CO2 levels at lower than current levels."
I agree with the essence of your post # 13. For me, the situation appears far more serious than mainstream, IPCC, conclusions. I am already tired of being thought an alarmist, and I have only been blogging for three months! I wonder at the cost to men like Al Gore and James Hansen etc..., who have been at this for years?
I think James Hansen's vision of the future as presented in his "Carbon Tax and 100% Dividend...", submitted to Congress Feb 26/09, a useful start. I would be interested in your opinion?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
'Misery loves company', we are told. So I thought this 'alarmist' might ellicit the aid of mental friends, both past and present, to share his 'alarmist' misery with:
I quote from George Monbiot's latest atricle:
"Professor Lovelock might not be around when it happens, but at least he will have the equivocal satisfaction of knowing that his prophecy - the total collapse of human society - is more likely to come true."
The late Jacques Cousteau:
"If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed [and] if we are not willing [to change], we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect."
"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps a hundred years."
There has been much talk of political agendas, and business interests, all entirely valid, in my opinion. But it seems to this observer that both James Lovelock and Jacques Cousteau are gemerally thought of as of the highest imtegrity. Should we not listen mre carefully to their thoughts as above?
The climate science blogs often revolve around climatology, current observations, and comparisons with the past - ususally from the present back to the beginning of the Pleistocene, our Ice Age, some two million years ago. Well and good. But the Earth has a much deeper past, and the emminent paleontologist Peter Ward, from the University of Washington, will be coming out with another book on climate change etc., which brings into the debate the deep past, one of his, and my own, special interests. This book is called "The Medea Hypothesis", and is named as a foil to James Lovelock's "Gaia Hypothesis." Try www.bn.com for details.
The public, us, already overwhelmed with new words and thoughts, like GISS Global Circulation Models, and instabilities in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, GRACE satellites etc..., is now asked to delve into the 'deep past'. A lot to take in.
Those of us who have always been students of science feel so comfortable with any new scientific thoughts, I think we forget how new and utterly unfamiliar this all is to an awakening public.
Perhaps we might give thought to addressing this 'psychological' issue???
- Manysummits, Calgary -
Complain about this comment
Forumdude2 #24- I used to have a link to a paper published a few years ago, which showed that about 40% of the warming from 1860 to 1990 or so was down to increased solar output, as is well known by climatologists. The key issue is the warming in the second half of the 20th century, which is mostly due to increased Co2 and other greenhouse gases.
Complain about this comment
Richard you state that “There is a mountain of research supportive of, or indicative of, or consistent with (if not proving) anthropogenic warming”.
Can you give me a single piece of empirical evidence that supports the theory that carbon dioxide has ever, in the entire earth’s history, ever had an effect on the earth’s climate. All of the empirical evidence that I have seen shows the opposite. CO2 levels have been up to 10 times higher than today during an ice age and lower when the global temperature were higher.
Computer models are not evidence; they are just a sophisticated way of expressing assumptions.
Complain about this comment
calcination
That is not official agw theory as far as I know. You can't simply invent things because you think you have the establishment on your side.
Complain about this comment
zzzzzzed wrote:
"Can you give me a single piece of empirical evidence that supports the theory that carbon dioxide has ever, in the entire earth?s history, ever had an effect on the earth?s climate."
Yes. The temperature history of the past 600,000 years.
The in-/de-creased insolation from orbital changes is not enough to make the difference in temperature recorded.
H2O vapour isn't enough to make the difference.
CO2 changes is.
Now where do you get "the evidence that I have seen shows the opposite."?
Complain about this comment
forumdude2, the dude is repeating verbatim a misrepresentation of a paper that applies purely to North America (which isn't the world) and doesn't even say what he has been told it says (which he could have found out by reading the original source but then he doesn't care if it's right or wrong as long as it says what he believes in).
The puff piece:
“Natural causes also responsible for global warming: Scientists”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Natural+causes+also+responsible+global+warming+Scientists/1453524/story.html
Here is the study:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
The article claims:
“It estimates the “natural” change is substantial and could be close to half of all warming in North America”
This is an error, largely of omission, since the study indicates that natural forcing in North America might not have been substantial at all. See figure 3.4 on page 64. Note the range of natural forcings in North America. It could be substantial on the high end, accounting for close to half, or it could have resulted in slight cooling. Most importantly, note the global model. On average, natural forcing since 1950 should have lead to slight global cooling, and the range of uncertainty is smaller, such that natural forcings even on the warm end don’t account for any significant global warming since then.
Complain about this comment
formdude2 #28 - you want official dogma? How about this from the fourth report, page 188 of chapter 2:
"The estimates of long-term solar irradiance changes used
in the TAR (e.g., Hoyt and Schatten, 1993; Lean et al., 1995)
have been revised downwards, based on new studies indicating
that bright solar faculae likely contributed a smaller irradiance
increase since the Maunder Minimum than was originally
suggested by the range of brightness in Sun-like stars (Hall and
Lockwood, 2004; M. Wang et al., 2005). However, empirical
results since the TAR have strengthened the evidence for solar
forcing of climate change by identifying detectable tropospheric
changes associated with solar variability, including during the
solar cycle (Section 9.2; van Loon and Shea, 2000; Douglass and
Clader, 2002; Gleisner and Thejll, 2003; Haigh, 2003; Stott et
al., 2003; White et al., 2003; Coughlin and Tung, 2004; Labitzke,
2004; Crooks and Gray, 2005). The most likely mechanism is
considered to be some combination of direct forcing by changes
in total solar irradiance, and indirect effects of ultraviolet (UV)
radiation on the stratosphere. Least certain, and under ongoing
debate as discussed in the TAR, are indirect effects induced
by galactic cosmic rays (e.g., Marsh and Svensmark, 2000a,b;
Kristjánsson et al., 2002; Sun and Bradley, 2002)."
Oh look, the IPCC thinks that changes in solar output affect the climate!
Oh, wait, they still think the warming in the later 20th century is mostly anthropogenic. Because even taking into account the solar changes, you can't explain the observed temperature changes.
Complain about this comment
"Oh look, the IPCC thinks that changes in solar output affect the climate!"
Nah, what's happening is that the scientists are using a weather satellite to MAKE it warmer, just like in Superman 3...
Complain about this comment
calcination
Yes, but you didn't address my original point in any way whatsoever, did you ?
Complain about this comment
Ah ha, I managed to find it:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-40378TB-X&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F01%2F2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ec8379d07b04e7a9de5a56afb461419c
"These findings point to an active role of the Sun in past climate changes beside other geophysical factors, internal variability of the climate system, and greenhouse gases. In fact a non-linear regression model to separate natural and anthropogenic forcing since 1850 is consistent with a solar contribution of about 40% to the global warming during the last 140 years."
Now, as a rough comparison, you are looking at about 0.7 degrees warming since 1850 or so, 40% of which is 0.28 degrees, which seems about right.
Complain about this comment
I wanted to pick up on a few things you said Richard:
“In a strict sense, of course, science is never a "done deal"; more research can always turn a consensus on its head, and you can bet your life that if convincing evidence emerges that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not driving climate change, governments will change direction faster than a cosmic ray, so conducive would that be to business as usual.”
Convincing evidence is already there, it’s always been there. It’s being ignored for reasons I won’t debate here. Draw your own conclusions folks.
“But for the moment, in the judgement of 194 countries endorsing the last IPCC report, the shade of grey is dark and glowering enough to indicate action now.”
The 194 countries concerned are governed by politicians who have their own political motivations. Making this statement just tends to underline that your argument is political in nature and not scientific.
“I know the community of "climate sceptics" is vast and disparate, and for that reason I try to avoid sweeping statements on the issue; but I sometimes think the sheer size and breadth of the political consensus escapes from that community's field of view.”
That’s because the sceptics are using scientific arguments. Political consensus is worthless to them and rightly so. If CO2 were indeed trapping heat in the atmosphere then that would be entirely straightforward to prove using modern technology so why are we still talking about political consensus anyway?
“I see the statement, simply, as untrue, and demonstrably so. There is a mountain of research supportive of, or indicative of, or consistent with (if not proving) anthropogenic warming, whether it's observational data, computer models, or trends drawn from the Earth's historical record. There is evidence in abundance.”
But you can summon as much research as you want and it changes nothing. Anybody can do research but without a scientific proof the whole lot is irrelevant. AGW should be entirely straightforward to prove using the normal scientific method but after so many years where actually is that proof? What surprises me most about this statement though is your assertion that earth’s historical record supports AGW. Are you sure it’s this earth you are living on?
Complain about this comment
"Yes, but you didn't address my original point in any way whatsoever, did you ?"
Well what WAS your original point?
Nothing there said that CO2 doesn't warm the atmosphere.
Complain about this comment
calcination
It doesn't provide any kind of explanation for my original point that temperatures increased more from 1910 to 1940(including the great depression) than from 1970 to 2000 despite there being a fraction of Co2 emmitted. There is no suggestion that the sun was a greater factor during that period.
Complain about this comment
I received a paper today which considers the relation between "knowledge and concern", and stresses the importance of taking into account the content of the information that different types of people acquire and choose to rely upon.
The authors looked into how the American public have responded to information in the news media about scientific findings on global warming, GW. They asked whether learning this sort of information has led the American public to become more concerned about GW.
Using data from two surveys of nationally representative samples of American adults, the article argues that the relation between selfreported knowledge and concern about GW is more complex than what previous research has suggested. Among people who trust scientists to provide reliable information about the environment and among Democrats and Independents, increased knowledge has been associated with increased concern. But among people who are skeptical about scientists and among Republicans more knowledge was generally not associated with greater concern. The association of knowledge with concern among Democrats and Independents who trust scientists was mediated by perceptions of consensus among scientists about GW’s existence and by perceptions that humans are a principal cause of GW. Moreover, additional analyses of panel survey data produced findings consistent with the notion that more knowledge yields more concern among Democrats and Independents, but not among Republicans.
Hmm, I wonder if that analysis will surprise anyone out there!
For the full paper, see:
“The Association of Knowledge with Concern About Global Warming: Trusted Information Sources Shape Public Thinking” by Ariel Malka, Jon A. Krosnick, and Gary Langer, Journal of Risk Analysis, Volume 29, Issue 5, Pages 633-647
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Complain about this comment
"It doesn't provide any kind of explanation for my original point that temperatures increased more from 1910 to 1940(including the great depression) than from 1970 to 2000 despite there being a fraction of Co2 emmitted."
How does that mean that the change from 1970 to 2000 isn't from CO2?
Complain about this comment
"The 194 countries concerned are governed by politicians who have their own political motivations."
But you seem to think their own political motivations are all the same???
"That?s because the sceptics are using scientific arguments. Political consensus is worthless to them and rightly so. "
No, they aren't using scientific arguments. "CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas because a greenhouse has glass over the top" is NOT a scientific argument. Neither is "Radiative balance is not how you work out the balance temperature of the earth".
And it isn't political consensus, it's reliability.
We have a consensus that things fall DOWN. That there is a consensus on this doesn't mean that newton's gravitational theory isn't science. You're arguing a false dichotomy.
Complain about this comment
Thanks to so many for coming back so quickly with some comments here. Just to pick up a few:
moralclimate, I agree with you about the CDM - and clearly one of the key tests for Copenhagen is how much it's going to be beefed up, streamlined, and complemented by other processes.
SamuelPickwick - you're right, some recent polls indicate a lessening of public concern, or appetite for action, on climate change. But it depends a bit where you look - this poll, for example, turned up significant differences between countries. Nevertheless, Washburns, I have a lot of sympathy with your point - is there, as you put it, "the groundswell of public support that will be needed to sustain a 40+ year program to reduce world CO2 emissions to historic levels"? Not sure...
toughNeilHyde, I understand what you're saying about balance but it's not as simple as that. calcination has given one of the reasons why, and MMR vaccination is a real cautionary tale here - as I've outlined previously on these pages, one poll at the time showed the UK public thought scientific opinion was split on the safety of the vaccine, which was clearly not the case - and this misconception is probably behind the impacts calcination describes. Also, what do you mean by an "anti" - someone who doesn't think the climate is changing, someone who thinks it is changing but is caused by natural cycles, or someone who thinks GHGs are responsible but the impact won't be significant?
As Bicycle-Fan has flagged up (I love mine too, by the way, especially now the Sun has located London again), the video you've linked to doesn't run properly - maybe there's a different version somewhere else on the web?
Finally, zzzzzzed - I rest my case...
Complain about this comment
Another example of false scientific argument is this one:
"Physics tells us that CO2 absorbs almost all the heat that it is capable of absorbing at 25ppm".
Wrong.
Physics tells us that a layer is opaque to radiation after an optical depth of 1, which depends on MEAN FREE PATH. Not parts per million. Else you'd have an opaque gas with 20 CO2 molecules if it was on its own.
Its conclusion would also be wrong even if it were scientifically accurate. Even though the lagging on my roof absorbs all the heat it's going to if it's 3 inches thick, the insulation on my house is still higher if I add another 3 inches loft insulation. According to this misrepresentation of science, that should not happen.
Complain about this comment
My problem with AGW is that the main proponents too often appear to lack the will to show teir cards. When Black points out that the mainstream politicians, society`s front-page-news-suppliers and the general jet-set do not listen to alternative voices, he is absolutly right. The deal is done , - for now. But the example of ClimateAudit just goes to show the response to honest questioning of the global consensus. The team at Climate Audit too often have to drag the facts, or lack of the same, out into the open. Which make the scaremongerers seem dishonest. Black indicates that if the AGW teory were to be proven wrong the high and the mighty would be overjoyed. I think not. Never has so much money and government subsidies been poured into "green" industry and various private and governmental programmes. Never has the "Green" lobby enjoyed so much power and influence. If AGW were to be proven scientific rubbish, all hell would be loose. The loss of face in the political establishment world-wide would be unbearable. AGW is here to stay for a long time. True or false.
Complain about this comment
"My problem with AGW is that the main proponents too often appear to lack the will to show teir cards."
Um, how?
http://www.ipcc.ch/
It's all in there. Every card.
Where's ClimateAudit's cards? Why is a mathematician and economist going to be right about climate when a climate scientist isn't?
You also use "scaremongers" for the AGW proponents. IN THE SAME SENTENCE you say "makes them seem dishonest". Isn't your villification by the loaded term "scaremonger" also dishonest when you're trying to show how moderate and rational you are?
How much money does the treasury get from petrol taxes, VAT on petrol (and its tax) and the tax on the oil companies (including windfall tax)? Would you say it's more or less than the UK government spends on climatology or green products?
Where are YOUR cards?
Complain about this comment
Frethopper:
"If CO2 were indeed trapping heat in the atmosphere then that would be entirely straightforward to prove using modern technology so why are we still talking about political consensus anyway?"
It IS proven...
Griggs & Harries 2004
"Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present."
They have used direct observation by satellite of the Earth's infra-red(IR) emission spectra to demonstrate a closure in the IR band for CO2. They conclude "we can explain the differences seen in the CO2 and ozone bands by the known changes in the those gases over the last 34 years."
The significance is that this is direct observational evidence that the earth is not radiating IR in bands it had been. Thus this energy is being trapped, stopped from radiating into space. And trapping energy in this way causes warming (very very basic physics).
Furthermore as they use modelled results to match against this is yet another independent check of modelling skill w.r.t. changes of radiative forcing.
For me the only consensus that matters is that of the primary peer reviewed published science (which I study as a hobby). The reason there is a consensus that human activity has caused "most" (in my opinion "all") of the warming of the last 30 years is that all the bases have now been covered. There is no reasonable doubt about AGW.
Complain about this comment
Addition to my comment #16 of last night:
Having written this I looked for some references to the IPCC on estimating the probability of their projections. I did a quick Google and the only piece I found was by - "DK Johnston is an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada"
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/5526/
The first few paragraphs show his colors but what he goes on to say about working with the probabilities is quite interesting for starters.
Can anybody point me to work on this area? A reference in the IPCC literature would be good.
Thanks
Complain about this comment
Calcination,
...and anyone else who wants a solar explanation for the last 30 years of warming.
With regards Total Solar Insolation (TSI). The point is that during the last 30 years TSI has remained flat (discounting the solar cycles), yet Global Average Temperature has increased 0.6degC.
As is noted by Wild et al (studying surface solar radiation levels); "Despite the fact that surface insolation at the turn of the millennium is rather lower than in the 1960s, land surface temperatures have increased by 0.8degC over this period." Therefore "..speculations that solar brightening rather than the greenhouse effect could have been the main cause of the overall global warming over the past decades appear unfounded." Wild et al 2007, "Impact of global dimming and brightening on global warming" Paywall free copy from Martin Wild's homepage: http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/wild/
With regards Svensmark's Cosmic Ray Flux (CRF) effect. The CLIMAX neutron monitor provides a count of neutron flux at ground level. See here: http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/clmx/main.htm
This is critical for Svensmark's theory as the neutron flux comes from cosmic rays impacting with atoms in the upper atmosphere and ripping them apart. The problem for those trying to use Svensmark's theory to dismiss AGW is that there has been no corresponding trend in CRF for the last 50 years, so it cannot explain the warming.
zzzzzzed,
Beware of using paleo-reconstructions of CO2 to try to dismiss CO2 and temperature linkages.
People often present compilations such as the Royer Compilation as a line graph, when they're not. Royer is a series of points, a compliation of studies based on different time samples with no information about what happened between. When further studies are done it then turns out that the CO2 temperature linkage stands. e.g. Those denying AGW had used the Ordovician to question CO2-Temperature linkage; when scientists looked deeper it turned out there was in reality no discrepancy: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/earlyice.htm
TimJenvey,
There are no probability estimates for projections. Each projection is based upon a set of assumptions, detailed in the SRES emissions scenarios. Here are the scenarios http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/emission/ As to what SRES scenario path we follow only time will tell - it's near impossible to assign meaningful probabilities. I suspect the Peak Oil/Coal/Gas lobby are right and that the IEA have massively overestimated the recoverable reserves of fossil fuels. But it looks like natural carbon cycle feedbacks are ready to make up for the IEA's overoptimism.
Complain about this comment
timjenvey, ensemble predictions are how they get the estimation of error from model inaccuracies.
These are then extended by the statistical methods that cover "unknown unknowns" to borrow a phrase from Rummy (I think it was).
If you feel this is insufficient, I've read your philosopher's explanation and found it fairly lacking in hard evidence, merely supposition. His biggest problem is how he considers the calculation of what "human production of CO2 is very likely to be the major cause of global warming". It IS NOT "Well, we could be measuring it wrong", it's more calcuated like CSI:Miami calculating the likelihood that someone did the crime. There is nothing know, absolutely NOTHING known that can bridge the gap between measurement and theory other than CO2. There's a small chance that an unknown feature will occur. E.g. we pass through an interstellar gas cloud, reducing solar radiation on earth. We can't see one coming up, but it's not impossible. It could be aliens shooting invisible heat rays at earth (having watched War Of The Worlds, and figuring it would be better to sterilise the planet FIRST). It could be that the reduction in the numbers of pirates has caused His Noodly Appendage to vent his wroth on the world.
So it's not ***100.0000%*** certain.
But you can't say "well, there's a 5% chance that there's no problem so we'll do nothing and hope for the best" because that 5% is the chance that someone will find a new theory that WILL fit. YOU, if you wish to guide us to that 5% must first come up with a theory that
a) better fits the measurement than current theory (AGW)
b) explains any anomalies that the current theory doesn't
c) can be shown to be wrong if it is
The chance of that is negligible but it's there.
Care to make it happen? It's a lot of work...
Complain about this comment
Yeah-Whatever was not very happy with my comments about AGW supporters an asked me to show my cards. The thing is, that most of us who are slightly sceptical about the science behind the politics of AGW are simply not convinced. I don`t have any personal agenda. The arguments from the AGW side are not convincing. Plain and simple. The AGW science seems so far to be politically and economically motivated. I know they say otherwise, but the lack of will to be 100 pct open on their maths and techniques - as documented in ClimateAudit - shows that something is rotten in more places than ancient Denmark. Sorry Mr. Yeah. You and your people have to convince me. Not the other way around.
Complain about this comment
The quality on this blog is best described by: 'the pitts'.
I am wondering why?
Lets talk about, say, aliens in New Mexico - that's about the level we're at here.
Is it because money and politics have reared their ugly faces again?
At least vitriol is energizing. Stupidity is not.
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
The politicians seem ready to at least attempt emission cuts. This is likely due to as many different reasons as there are politicians. But the leading causes are probably, they have seen evidence that the skeptics have missed, they do not need the same level of certainty the skeptics seem to, or they believe the cost of mitigation will be less than the cost of adaptation
There is one further option, that no one seems to consider. Moving to a zero carbon economy,(mitigation) may actually have an economic benefit that exceeds its cost, no matter what the climate does.
Most on here want to talk about the adaptation side of the equation, or whether we will need to. They all seem to assume mitigation will cost too much, when it may not cost anything at all.
Complain about this comment
\\\ Latest from James Hansen - Re: Freeman Dyson & AGW ... ///
I'm emotional - it comes with the territory (# 50).
Back to science:
Excerpt from Jim Hansen's latest "Communication" (see Mar 29/09, "An Unfortunate Quote":
- http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
"The reporter left the impression that my conclusions are based mainly on climate models. I always try to make clear that our conclusions are based on #1 Earth’s history, how it responded to forcings in the past, #2 observations of what is happening now, #3 models. Here is the actual note that I sent to the reporter after hanging up on him:
'I looked up Freeman Dyson on Wikipedia, which describes his views on "global warming" as below. If that is an accurate description of what he is saying now, it is actually quite reasonable (I had heard that he is just another contrarian). However, this also indicates that he is under the mistaken impression that concern about global warming is based on climate models, which in reality play little role in our understanding -- our understanding is based mainly on how the Earth responded to changes of boundary conditions in the past and on how it is responding to on-going changes. If this Wikipedia information is an accurate description of his position, then the only thing that I would like to say about him is that he should be careful not to offer public opinions about global warming unless he is willing to first take a serious look at the science. His philosophy of science is spot-on, the open-mindedness, consistent with that of Feynman and the other greats, but if he is going to wander into something with major consequences for humanity and other life on the planet, then he should first do his homework -- which he obviously has not done on global warming. My concern is that the public may assume that he has -- and, because of his other accomplishments, give his opinion more weight than it deserves.' Jim Hansen"
A personal note:
This blog is about politics and business, with very little science. I left this world to climb mountains for seven years. To those astute enough, this will speak volumes.
But today, April 4, is my wife's birthday. And 'Blossom' has always claimed I am an artist (Julie is a painter and climber). Today, as a birthday present, I confess that she has been right all along - always and forever.
Curiously, my most cherished saying from John Fitzgerald Kennedy has to do with his appreciation of the artistic community. He was the first President, and I think to date the only President, to have a poet speak at his inauguration - Robert Frost.
"In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation."
- J.F.K.
So this I will do. When necessary, I will comment on the science of climate change and geology, because I think I have something to contribute, and because my scientific instincts have been unerringly correct in the past.
But I heed the words of Joseph Canbell as well, who said:
"The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment, and the world."
I am reminded of the legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who also, late in life, served in politics for Germany. He left this endeavor wholly dissatisfied with the politics, and he was a member, if memory serves, of the Green Party. He went to Antarctica, and went to the South Pole on foot, and remarked, in his book "Antarctica":
"I have nothing against science, but must all myths be sacrificed to it?"
I will answer. No Reinhold, they must not be, cannot be.
'Sacrifice', from the Latin - to make sacred. Both mythology and science are to me sacred pursuits, they are not mutually exclusive, in the same way that religion and science are not imcompatible.
Our political and business interests however, often verge on the profane, and James Hansen appears to think similarly, as per the latest March 29 article he has posted (see link above).
Let's get back to 'Science and the Environment', there are more than enough 'lines' devoted to politics and business.
For my wife, for my four and a half year old son, this mountaineer will try and remain true to his devotion and to his family, bearing in mind the immortal words of Robert Louis Stevenson, an artistic 'caveat' if you will, and a calling I am helpless before:
"My mistress still, the open road and the bright eyes of danger."
- Happy Birthday Blossom, Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
Yeah_whatever @ 48 refers to Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns".
Thank you! I love this little gem, which Rumsfeld offered up in February 2002. It is one of the few times I can recall my ever actually agreeing with Secretary Rumsfeld.
In full, what Rumsfeld said was:
There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.
I like it, because he inadvertently offered up a very good summation of why a precautionary approach is needed.
Some have in these blog pages crudely characterised the precautionary approach as blindly going off in one particular unjustifiable direction on the basis of scarce and unreliable information.
That is complete mischaracterisation of what a precautionary approach entails. A precautionary approach is all about recognising the limits to knowledge and factoring that uncertainty into decision making. As such, it is an essential tool in any decision makers kit.
Complain about this comment
ODHillgaar, there were no cards shown, just "these are not the cards you're looking for" with a wave of the hand.
If you meant (as your "response" implies if it is to be anything LIKE an answer [cf all answers are replies but not all replies are answers]) that the motives must be stated, then they ARE stated.
Scientist wants to investigate the universe. And tell you what they found.
Did Einstein want something nefarious when he poposed general relativity? After all, based on his work, he got tenure. Surely that was his ONLY motive!
And you DO have a pony in this race. Even if your unsubstantiated claims are genuine: you will have to change if AGW is real. And so if you can convince yourself it isn't real, you don't have to change.
Complain about this comment
"I know they say otherwise, but the lack of will to be 100 pct open on their maths and techniques - as documented in ClimateAudit"
Well, the minuites of the meeting between the lobbying group of Texaco et al and the US government isn't 100% open.
You're 100% wrong that there is opacity on the maths. The IPCC report and the papers in the journals do (and MUST) show the maths and techniques. But since you didn't LOOK, you haven't seen them. You don't look because you WANT to not see the techniques.
Gerlich produced a "paper" with plenty of maths in. However, that meant it was very easy to prove it wrong. So he didn't put it for peer review. However, he didn't just use incorrect maths, he also managed to make statements with no justification. I.e. "you can't use radiative equilibrium laws to work out the temperature of the earth" with NO REASON why you can't. Convection doesn't happen in space. Neither does conduction.
But it is lapped up by those who DEMAND AGW be wrong.
I'd like to see their cards on the table. Why do they act with immense credulity when there's someone saying "AGW is wrong" yet demand 100.000% (and a little more) from anyone saying "AGW is a real problem"? It isn't skeptical as you want to imply, since you accept the partial maths and incomplete explanations of ClimateAudit (from an economist..! you seen how well THEY handle sums recently???) as being 100% correct (and fail to check out any sites that critique ClimateAudit too) but do not do the same on, say, RealClimate. They, you opine, are not clear and complete. The directed and partial credulity is not skepticism. And the only ones you'll convince it is are the ones doing the same.
Complain about this comment
@3 - calcination, very well put. I've just been struggling with the stats (probabilities) for a current assignment :o(
In fact a big part of the issue is that wonderful but horribly flawed human organ.....no I'm talking about the human brain. Basically it has been designed to help us cope with the trials and tribulations of the African savannah not deal with huge amounts of conflicting information, complex probabilities, timescales greater than the yearly cycle, global geographic scales, mathematical series or, last but not least, the prospect of change.
And it is these areas where the climate change issue suffers the most. I like to think of myself as fairly rational (I've been accused of it in a derogatory way more than once) and my thinking goes along these lines:
1. There is a strong statistical correlation between knowledge of the climate and acceptance of AGW (95% of climatologist do not deny it's reality) primarily caused by CO2 emissions.
2. CO2 is still growing by 3% a year. That doesn't sound like much but exponential growth is very difficult to conceptualise and it is an alarming number.
3. 2020 seems like a long way off. That's exactly what I thought about 2009 in 1999, but 1999 seems like yesterday now (could it be an age thing). But in 2020 CO2 levels will be 38% greater than today (uncharted territory for the Pleisticne).
4. There is a lot of conflicting information on climate change from sources with a range of motivations, so the best authority for science must be national scientific academies (reputation wise, these guys have the most to lose if they're wrong!). And treat any on the web including this blog, with suspicion - nothing personal Richard :o)
5. Nothing is a done deal scientifically, but if a scientist saying something is highly probable what he really means is, for all intents and purposes, take it as a fact.
6. Switching to a low carbon economy entails a huge amount of cultural change but all change provides a lot of opportunity (I'm looking for a jo in the environmental sector if anyone has a vacancy).
Individually these can be challenged, but taken as a whole I think it just makes most sense to go with the scientific and political (what they say rather than do!!) consensus.
If any of you sceptics come up with something better I've an open mind so fire away.
Complain about this comment
yeah_whatever wrote: “Yes. The temperature history of the past 600,000 years. The in-/de-creased insolation from orbital changes is not enough to make the difference in temperature recorded. H2O vapour isn't enough to make the difference.”
So we agree that something else caused the changes – not H20 vapour.
“CO2 changes is.”
So when did an increase in CO2 levels precede an increase in global temperatures? The record shows that is usually the other way round.
On the other hand there is a strong correlation between solar sunspot activity and global temperature. This doesn’t indicate cause and effect but it is worth looking at, especially as the recent rapid reduction in solar activity had been followed by a reduction in global temperatures (whilst CO2 levels still rise)
Complain about this comment
CobblyWorlds wrote: “Beware of using paleo-reconstructions of CO2 to try to dismiss CO2 and temperature linkages.”
Why is it on this topic and this topic alone we are constantly advised to ignore empirical evidence and trust computer models. We are asked to ignore paleo-reconstructions, the Vostock ice core data, re-constructions from stalagmite samples from around the world etc. etc
Complain about this comment
"So when did an increase in CO2 levels precede an increase in global temperatures? The record shows that is usually the other way round."
Well, apart from now, the PETM.
You even forget yourself and say why your argument is no such thing right there: "usually the other way round".
If CO2 is a greenhouse gas (which is proven by experiment to be true), why is that usually it comes after a milankovich cycle increases insolationto do some more warming proof it cannot warm the atmosphere when it's released by other methods?
That argument is no argument at all.
Complain about this comment
"On the other hand there is a strong correlation between solar sunspot activity and global temperature."
There is? Please show your workings.
IPCC report concludes that about 4% of the variation is correlated with sunspot activity. Why is it, for example, now we have fewer sunspots we have hotter weather, yet when we had hotter weather in the 80s we had more sunspots?
Have you done your chi-squared analysis, what was your null hypothesis, are you conflating different things? What is your causation, since all statisticians know that correlation does not imply causation.
Complain about this comment
- Nuclear Waste Dump - Australia -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7975930.stm
"If it's not in their backyard, they're happy," she says of white Australia. "But it's going to be in our backyard and we're not happy about it."
- Mitch, Alice Springs, Australia
Here is another touchy subject, nuclear waste disposal. It's important I think because a low carbon economy will look first to nuclear energy.
I am frankly ambivalent, which is to say conflicted. James Hansen is a proponent, for example, of the switch to nuclear.
Instinctively, I agree with Mitch from Australia. I could have gone into the exploration for uranium in Canada as a geologist, but chose to go into oil instead, largely because of my distaste for nuclear, once I had researched it. And it's not the technology - it's the people. Freeman Dyson is I think entirely correct when he points out our inability to predict the future. Some times this doesn't matter. As 'rossglory' and others have pointed out, we do our homework, and take our best shot. Nuclear is seen by many as one of those 'best shots'.
The rationalist in me sees nuclear as an option. Just another piece of technology, amenable to risk assessment.
"And what is right, Phaedrus, and what is not right?" (Greek)
The metaphysics of quality, Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", from which the above quote was taken, springs to mind.
What is our best option at this time?
How about this:
- Self limit our numbers - go negative on the population curve. Without doing this, I see only darkness ahead.
- Stop consuming the unnecessary - find out what is necessary for happiness; is it more, always more things? Don't things have a habit of chaining you down?
- Learn how to do the once simple things, like eating correctly, again. Do you really think our escalating medical bills and degenerative diseases are the result of 'improvements' in our diet and lifestyle?
- Learn to socialize again, and not always within circles of peers. As 'rossglory' has pointed out in post #56, we are effectively a tribal people, in an alien land. Maybe being 'too' rational is at the heart of our problems - maybe. It costs little to reexamine this in depth.
- Get out into the natural world on a regular basis, and at some risk to life and limb. Our endocrine systems are designed for this, and there must be a cost to allowing them to atrophy. We have never returned to the average height or state of health of the hunter-gatherer - why not?
- Manysummits, Calgary -
Complain about this comment
"Why is it on this topic and this topic alone we are constantly advised to ignore empirical evidence and trust computer models. We are asked to ignore paleo-reconstructions, the Vostock ice core data, re-constructions from stalagmite samples from around the world etc. etc"
You're advised to ignore the "obvious" common sense.
You need to work out what happened at that time. E.g. the billion year record is not fine grained. So something that "looks" like it is at the same time is millions of years apart. You have to be EXTREMELY careful to get the timing.
Didn't say "ignore". just "beware".
Complain about this comment
yeah_whatever wrote: “You even forget yourself and say why your argument is no such thing right there: "usually the other way round".
I am not arguing in either direction I am asking for empirical evidence to support the carbon dioxide theory – which is a good theory – but has a surprising lack of empirical evidence to support it.
If past rises of CO2 had preceded rises in global temperature that would be evidence.
All the IPCC computer models predict that CO2 led warming should lead to heating of the lower troposphere above the equator. If this heating was found it would be evidence – but it hasn’t been found.
Rival theories suggest that sunspot activity somehow has a controlling influence on climate. Times of minimum sunspot activity have corresponded with very cold periods on earth (such as the little ice age 1400ish to 1840ish) and visa versa. So if the current unexpected minimum in solar activity corresponded with rises in the earth’s temperature that would be good evidence. But the earth’s temperature (and sea temperatures) are falling again.
There has never been a time in the earths history when the climate wasn’t changing – what drove this and what influence is it having now?
Complain about this comment
zzzzzzed,
So you didn't read the second paragraph of my message to you in post 47. Nor, apparently, did you read the article I linked to.
I'm not dodging the paleoclimate on the issue of CO2 and warming. The evidence, such that it is, supports that linkage.
As YeahWhatever points out it's only at certain times (now and the PETM are pretty certain) that CO2 increases have preceded temperature changes. More typical behaviour is that temperature changes cause changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. But CO2 still causes additional warming/cooling as it's added-to/removed-from the atmosphere. For example in Hansen et al 2007 section 2(a) the authors demonstrate how it is only by including the effect of Greenhouse Gasses during the glaciations and interglacials that one can explain the observed temperature variations.
Hansen et al 2007: Climate Change & Trace Gasses. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2007/Hansen_etal_2.html
Regards the Sun: See my post 45 to Frethopper, the Infra-Red trapping ability of CO2 has been observed from space as CO2 levels have gone up since the 1970s. That trapped energy implies a temperature rise, so whether you understand the science or not - the evidence shows that increased CO2 causes rising global average temperature. This is the case in theory, in laboratory observation, and in observation in the real world!
Also see my post 47 to Cacination, there is now no realistic prospect of proving a role for the Sun in the post 1970s warming. Because on all indices the Sun isn't behaving the way it would if it were responsible.
There is reason to see changes in solar output and changes in the Earth's relationship with the Sun as causal mechanisms in most of the past climatic changes. The issue is complex but I broadly accept that the Little Ice Age was caused by the changes in the Sun evidenced by the Maunder Minimum. All that said; the Sun does not cut it as a significant factor in the changes of Global Average Temperature after the 1970s.
PS there's a lot of talk about cooling/cessation of GW at the moment and it's being coincident with the Solar Cycle Minima. Those purveying this line should brush up on what is happening in the Arctic right now and the impact of changes in the Arctic on Northern Hemisphere (even global) atmospheric circulation hence ocean circulation.
I'm off.
Complain about this comment
It suddenly occurred to me that just as discussion of world population seems to be overshadowed by climate change; I hadn’t heard much about the projected exhaustion of fossil fuels recently. I remember that years ago it was a hot subject and forecasts were talking of only 10s of years supply remaining. I saw that Richard made brief reference to end-of-oil above, but didn-t elaborate. I wondered how the two potential catastrophes actually fit together. How can we go on increasing CO2 levels if the fossil fuel source is running out?
A quick search led to an interesting report from back in 2003…
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/10/02/global.warming/
How does the balance between end-of-oil and climate-change look these days?
What differences are there in the routes to development of alternative energy sources in the two cases?
Would financially interested parties favour one motivating argument over the other?
Complain about this comment
To zzzzzzed #63:
You wrote:
"All the IPCC computer models predict that CO2 led warming should lead to heating of the lower troposphere above the equator. If this heating was found it would be evidence ? but it hasn?t been found."
I disagree. Here is the empirical evidence you asked for:
From "Abrupt tropical climate change: Past and present", Lonnie G. Thompson et al., "Proceeding s of the National Academy of Sciences", July 11, 2006, vol. 103, pgs. 10536-10543:
"The recent, rapid, and accelerating retreat of glaciers on a near-global scale suggests that the current increase in the Earth's globally averaged temperature (Fig. 6D; refs. 49 and 50) may now have prematurely interrupted the natural progression of cooling in the late Holocene. These observations suggest that within a century human activities may have nudged global-scale climate conditions closer to those that prevailed before 5000 years ago, during the early Holocene. If this is the case, then Earth's currently retreating glaciers may signal that the climate system has exceeded a critical threshold and that most low-latitude, high altitude glaciers are likely to disappear in the near future."
Dr. Thompson is perhaps the leading expert on the subject of tropical glacier retreat. See Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Thompson
For a more in depth profile, see the book "Thin Ice" (2006), by Mark Bowen, Ph.D., physics, about Lonnie Thompson's work with his unique and interesting team of high altitude ice-corers.
These glaciers are in the exact location you question, the tropical lower troposphere. Their rapid and accelerating retreat is a 'net' result. Dr. Thompson's language is of course couched in the language of science, as he is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, and this paper was written for this body's journal.
It would be worth remembering that this man has personally watched and documented the retreat of these glaciers for over thirty years now. His evidence and credentials are impeccable.
- Manysummits, Calgary -
Complain about this comment
"I am not arguing in either direction I am asking for empirical evidence to support the carbon dioxide theory ?"
You said it yourself. USUALLY. You even admit there that sometimes CO2 preceedes warming.
Arrhenius proved the CO2 theory (though again, I have to guess what you mean by that since your query is indecipherable). 1861, IIRC.
"If past rises of CO2 had preceded rises in global temperature that would be evidence. "
Why would you have said "usually" if it never happened? PETM showed it. You admit it happened before by using "usually". And this today shows it too (or show us where they 800-year-old temperature increase is in our temperature record).
"Rival theories suggest that sunspot activity somehow has a controlling influence on climate."
And have you asked the same proofs from these theories? No. Where is the sunspot record from 600,000 years ago?
And those theories have not stood the test of comparison with the measurements.
"But the earth?s temperature (and sea temperatures) are falling again."
No they are not. They're rising here in the UK (It's summer). What? That's not "rising temperatures"??? Well it is the form YOU are using for "falling temperatures". out of the 15 hottest years on record, 14 have been in the last 15 years. Doesn't say "cooling" to me.
Where are your figures showing it's cooling? Does that surface from the figures in a statistically sound manner? Ask Australia if summer was hotter than they can remember.
"what drove this and what influence is it having now?"
CO2 drove this change. CO2 with an isotopic signature that doesn't occur in nature from organic actions, but DOES occur in carbon kept out of the organic cycle in fossil fuels.
CO2 drove it for the PETM. Vented CO2 from supervolcanoes.
Other times there were different reasons.
Just like when your great-grandmother died. She didn't die from flu like mine, I bet. But she DID die and that she didn't die from flu when mine did doesn't mean your great grandmother isn't dead.
Complain about this comment
"All the IPCC computer models predict that CO2 led warming should lead to heating of the lower troposphere above the equator. If this heating was found it would be evidence ? but it hasn?t been found."
Where is the stratospheric warming that increased solar influence would result int?
When you say "IPCC computer models predict", where do you think they get the prediction from? Someone put "while (1) { t=t+0.001}"? No, they put in the physics. The equations that ARE science. Things like PV=nRT. Put in P, V, R and n and you'll get T, but T can cause expansion which can change V, P and T. So do the equation again. At some point it will settle on a stable value. Takes a long time for humans to do it, but that is science. Now if you can get some sort of automatic calculator to take these equations and run them through quicker and with less wasted paper and pencil, you may be able to do more accurate calculations.
Oh, that's what a COMPUTER MODEL is...
But can you please explain what you mean by lower tropospheric warming. Where do you get that from? Where do you get the measurements that do not show it? Because you could be looking in two different places. A stratospheric model would consider the upper troposphere "low". But if the troposphere is acting like a blanket, it will be cooler at the top the more insulating it is. So tell us where you mean. You may be right in your statement and completely wrong in your supposition.
Show us your working. The words you use are insufficient to see whether you are right or wrong.
Complain about this comment
"How does the balance between end-of-oil and climate-change look these days?"
There's orders of magnitude more carbon stored in coal than oil.
When it comes to how much is left, you need to remember that OPEC members must limit how much they extract to a proportion of their reserves.
Saudi Arabia have increased their reserves five times (I believe, the records are out there) yet have found no new sources. They just say that there was more in the oilfields they have than they thought.
And they won't let anyone check on their findings.
And "Peak Oil" doesn't mean "running out". It means that supply can no longer follow demand. That's all. There may be more oil left than has yet been extracted but if demand goes up exponentially, at some point, it will be IMPOSSIBLE to extract and refine quick enough to keep supply at the level of demand.
And what happens when a resource supply cannot keep up with demand???
Price increases.
Now, what have we here? $70-90/bbl oil compared with $30-40 a few short years ago.
A few short years ago would be what? 2003? Maybe a little earlier? Later?
Join the dots.
But peak oil doesn't mean "run out". Just that it can't keep with rising demand.
Complain about this comment
zzzzzzed in post 27
Well said. This is exactly what I tried to say after Richard's last post on carbon rationing.
I would love the alarmists to look this far back for the geologically historic precedent for their predictions.
I can find no evidence in any of my geology text books that would indicate that the mean climate temperature has been greater than 10C above the present in the last billion years, or that it has in any way affected life adversely.
There's a challenge for you, Richard?
Complain about this comment
To Crowcatcher #70:
Try this from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinctions
This would represent a start for your researches. You might be particularly interested in a book coming out this April, "The Medea Hypothesis", by the paleontologist Peter Ward. See bn.com for information on the book, for information on Peter Ward:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ward_(paleontologist)
- Manysummits - off to the birthday party -
Complain about this comment
To wfmgeo:
A long time ago, many blogs away, you ascertained that the reason I blogged on climate science was because I have a stake in the future in the person of my son.
At the birthday party, I just discovered how right you were.
When wrong - I admit it.
All the best, Manysummits
Complain about this comment
manysummits #25 wrote:
"The public, us, already overwhelmed with new words and thoughts, like GISS Global Circulation Models, and instabilities in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, GRACE satellites etc..., is now asked to delve into the 'deep past'. A lot to take in.
Those of us who have always been students of science feel so comfortable with any new scientific thoughts, I think we forget how new and utterly unfamiliar this all is to an awakening public."
heartfelt thanks, since I'm one of those who're not well-educated and up-to-date with the many facets of debate, I appreciate your making this point.
I would like to suggest the following (to Richard Black): perhaps this and all future EarthWatch blogs could have a link to a glossary (perhaps written by volunteers) of acronyms and technical terms, augmented by links to relevant articles; that would allow everyone to acquire some background info, from "on-site".
Complain about this comment
Been otherwise engaged and just getting back to what I started to comment on back in #46 about ‘probabilities’’
Thanks to CobblyWorlds #47 for the link and yeah_whatever #48 with some thoughts.
Having worked in project management I’m familiar with managing risk and in one of Richard’s previous articles (‘Fast words on warming; snail's pace on whales’) I took him up on a request to look at some of the output from the IOP conference in Copenhagen earlier last month. I looked at:
Session 42 Adaptation And Climate Risk Insurance
Session 43 Integrating Climate Change into Global Sustainability
I was looking at the risk in terms of their potential impacts, the mitigation strategies should they be realized and the probability of them happening.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the risk impacts very well documented from the catastrophic to the positive outcomes. The mitigation strategies were also very strong and detailed and gave good foundational guidance on how to develop them. What also pleased me was to see that all of these papers could be adapted for any type of climate change.
The weak piece in my opinion was predicting the probability of likely events. I said at the time that it appeared to be based solely on computer models.
This is where the link from CobblyWorlds #47 (the summary findings are worth a read: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/emission/) reinforced my thoughts as it appears that this is the case.
Well, putting on my project manager hat I start to ask questions about the robustness of computer models as this is key to a successful outcome of my project. This took me to another of Richard’s recent articles (“A whale of a week for climate”) in which we discussed surveys. The one we sited for comment was: Hans von Storch and Dennis Bray http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/08/climate_scientists_views_on_cl_1.html
The most interesting parts of this survey for my investigation are the individual answers which can be found in Appendix B of the full report. It shows up significant doubts by scientists on the ability of model’s to predict the future (see fig 17 onwards definitely worth a read if you have not been there).
So where does this lead me?
- We have a project with a mass of detailed potential impacts (very good to very bad).
- We have strong mitigation strategies to call upon if needed.
- We have a single source of probability which according to scientists when asked the question “Climate models can accurately predict climatic conditions of the future” predominantly disagree.
Apparently we have no process for incorporating ongoing status updates on the progress of this project which when investigated show that temperatures have decreased in at least the last 7 years. I do an earned value assessment on these results which tells me: ‘we have not started and we have already reached a point of reduced GW by more than we planned without spending a cent’. That’s huge so let’s do more of the same!!
My recommendation on this project would therefore be to leave well alone and monitor closely. I would put more rigorous controls and processes in place to assess probabilities’. The only way I would carry on with the current processes would be if this was one of the “Sponsors/Senior Management Pet Projects” which put my job on the line if I objected (this is common in project management and are usually the projects that get agreed upon on the golf courses. Cynical but true).
I feel I must be missing some essential information so please input and I will add to my assessment.
If you got this far thanks for staying with it.
Cheers……..
Complain about this comment
To Manysummits: Say a happy birthday from me. Have a great time and report back on this blog.
Cheers.......
Complain about this comment
To jr4412 #73:
Heartfelt thanks in return! Sometimes it is discouraging, not knowing if one's blogs are going "Into Thin Air", or are of use. I blog to Longfellow's admonition:
"Give what you can, to someone it might be more than you think"
My antennae (hopefully not Cousteau's insect here already), tell me you are truly interested in this subject of climate change, and hopefully, of the environmental crisis as a whole. In my opinion, the "Limits to Growth" discussed so long ago (1970's), have now been reached, and quite probably, superceded. We are in big trouble. I say this not to alarm in the pejorative sense, but because, as a former pilot, and huge fan of the movie, "The Right Stuff", I truly believe that: 'you tell a pilot the condition of his craft'.
I hope Richard Black takes you up on your suggestion for an onsite glossary. In the meantime, might I make a few suggestions?
1) Wikipedia - generally high quality, generally with even higher quality references at the end of each subject article. The location is wikipedia.org - just type in your interest, say 'global warming', or West Antarctic Ice Sheet, or a scientist's name, for example, Richard Alley, etc...
2) There is a vast literature out there on climate science and the environment. Here are five of my favorites, listed chronologically, which I think cover many bases, and are both thrilling to read and informative. All should be available at your library, and the books contain extensive bibliographies and references to the scientific literature. Here are the books, in chronological order:
"The Two Mile Time Machine", by Richard Alley (2002)
- An excellent starting point for any serious student of climate science; about the ice-cores of the Greenland Ice Sheet, by one of the world's premiere glaciologists, who is now a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, arguably the number one scientific body in the United States.
"Thin Ice", by Mark Bowen (2006)
- The author has himself a Ph.D. in physics from The Massassachusetts Institute of Technology - the book is about Dr. Lonnie Thompson, ice-coring specialist of the world's tropical and high altitude mountain glaciers. Lonnie is also a member of the prestigious United States Academy of Sciences. The book contains excellent information on the history and science of climatology and paleoclimatology, and the work is mostly outdoors, on some truly spectacular mountain terrain. The tropics are extremely important in climate science, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone.
"Fixing Climate", by Wallace Broecker and Robert Kunzig (2008)
- 'Wally' Broecker is one of the deans of climate science, from Lamont-Doherty, one of the world's top ocean observatories. The ocean conveyor, or thermohaline circulation, is Wallace Broecker's nom de plume, so to speak(see Wikipedia). In this book we see the oceans, the marine sediment cores, so crucial to the long view, or paleoclimatic history, of the past. An extraordinary book. A compliment, if you will, to the ice cores of both the north and south poles, and of the tropics. Most of the bases covered by now.
"Censoring Science", by Mark Bowen (2008; same author as "Thin Ice")
- about Dr. James Hansen, planetary scientist and global circulation modelling guru, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences for NASA, and perhaps the most outspoken climatologist on the planet. His website is a must - see http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/ - I read anything and everything by this man. The first half of this book is like a detective novel, or a lawyer's case, intersting to some, but the second half is brilliant - on who James Hansen really is, and on the science itself. James Hansen is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
"Sea Sick - The Global Ocean in Crisis", by Alanna Mitchell (2009)
- Alanna was voted by Reuters Foundation the top environmental reporter in the world in year 2000. This book travels the world oceans, speaking to life scientists, in contrast to physical scientists, such as the first four books. If I had to choose only one book to read, it would be this one. If I wanted a thorough background, all five books are my recommendation.
Then it's on to the scientific literature itself. Here is the original source material for virtually all of the high quality popular accounts you see in 'Discover' magazine, or 'Scientific American', or the BBC etc... Journals such as "Nature" (United Kingdom), "Science" (United States", or "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" are three of the finest. There are many more, some very specialized. These original papers by the original scientists themselves are not as easy to access, but not too difficult once you get the hang of it. As a start, you can obtain the 'abstract' for free, by typing in the exact name of the artice, and perhaps the lead author's name. I'll give you an example:
Go to Google - type in - Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year, Steig.
Then find the article with the address www.nature.com............, and click to see the abstract. This is an article from January 2009 - and you are right up to date, or as much as an amateur can be in this time.
All of the scientists mentioned above have Wikipedia biographies at the click of a mouse. The internet is truly incredible, and may be one of the keys to getting us out of this pickle we are in. But the books are better!
- Good Luck, Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
See this contribution from Prof Roger A. Pielke, Sr.
http://climatesci.org/2009/03/31/open-letter-by-the-cato-institute-on-climate-science/
Here is a scientist who reports anthropogenic land use and aerosols as being at least as significant as CO2 in terms of their climate forcing impacts, and who regards upper ocean temperature as the best metric for warming and cooling of the climate. He is committed to understanding climate at the regional level which is, he argues, much more important for policymakers when it actually comes to decisions about actions to be taken on the ground. He resigned from the IPCC in 1995.
This debate could move on if there was a far greater appreciation that the IPCC is an agenda-driven organisation that does not treat all peer-reviewed published work with an impartial eye.
It ought to be "discovering the extent to which" Man has impacted (and will impact) the environment, not "backing up the presumption" that the anthropogenic GHG impact is going to deliver such-and-such amount of damage.
It is the difference between open and closed minds.
Complain about this comment
"It is the difference between open and closed minds."
So believing AGW is a hoax across thousands of disparate scientists is being "open minded" and believing that thousands of scientists may be right is being "closed minded"???
Now where is Pielke's maths? Where are all HIS cards???
PS you should be sure your mind is not so open as to let your brain fall out.
Complain about this comment
"I would love the alarmists to look this far back for the geologically historic precedent for their predictions."
I don't know about alarmists (and odd you use that term when there's all these people squawking about how we'll have to be reduced to living in caves, which sounds "alarmist" to me) but climate scientists HAVE looked into it.
Google scholar or the IPCC reports. It's in there, if you deign to look.
It would require you to learn, however, which may not be appropriate for your conspiracy belief...
Complain about this comment
"I would like to suggest the following (to Richard Black): perhaps this and all future EarthWatch blogs could have a link to a glossary"
Go to RealClimate: www.realclimate.org.
Click on the "Start Here" section.
Read up and learn.
Complain about this comment
Question:
AGW theory states there should be a signature or hot spot that greenhouse gases should leave, where is it?
Please don't point to Sherwood or Santer. Santer thinks the hotspot is lost in noise and Sherwood is trying to measure temperature from windshear
Complain about this comment
RealClimate is the website owned by Gavin Schmidtt (climate modeller) and Michael Mann (of Hockey Stick infamy) amongst others, so check everything you read
Complain about this comment
To timjenvey #75:
Thanks for the greetings! My wife sends her appreciation, as do I.
Your post #74:
I read your assessment with great interest. Risk assessment as practiced by management and, I presume, the IPCC, is not one of my strong points, and I learned a lot from your description. Thanks - it must have taken some time to go over those IPCC reports!
May I tender some thoughts on the IPCC. First, I have not read their reports in full, not even in part. I have kept track through the excerpts from the media, and the discussions about the IPCC in books and websites such as I mentioned in my post above, #76. I know of and have the highest respect for a few of the contributing scientists, such as Richard Alley.
But I realize it is a concensus report, attempting to placate the interests of an awful lot of national interests, while trying to deliver good science. I would be incapable of withstanding the beaurocratic machinations myself, and I commend those who can.
I prefer the approach I outlined in post #76. I am an 'moq' man, Robert Pirsig's 'metaphysics of quality.' I seek out the highest quality scientists, get to know them through other means than just their scientific literature, and go from there. My own background keeps me centered, I hope, and leads me to these scientists.
You note in your assessment the weaknesses in the predictive robustness as expressed by the scientists as a whole. This is what I would expect and could not handle in such a body as the IPCC. This is however, both a strength and a weakness. The conclusions of the IPCC are quite frightening enough, though I personally consider them watered down. Freeman Dyson quite rightly points out the inability of anyone to predict the future, but I think he misses the main point. We need to act anyway - always have, and always will have to make decisions on partial information. The real question is not "are we certain", it is "are we certain enough?"
In detail 'timjenvey', here is how I look at the science, and here is how Jim Hansen says he does:
"I always try to make clear that our conclusions are based on #1 Earth’s history, how it responded to forcings in the past, #2 observations of what is happening now, #3 models."
and : "However, this also indicates that he [Freeman Dyson]is under the mistaken impression that concern about global warming is based on climate models, which in reality play little role in our understanding --our understanding is based mainly on how the Earth responded to changes of boundary conditions in the past and on how it is responding to on-going changes."
- from: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/ ("An Unfortunate Quote," Mar 29/09)
There is no fast and easy way to assimilate a deep background in geology, one of its branches glaciology, or paleoclimatology. This is of course, exactly what is required to 'understand' through Jim's #1 approach, 'Earth's History'. I would highly recommend to you the approach I outlined in post #76, for 'jr4412', especially the books. You are quite probably well versed in separating fact from fancy, and I can think of no shorter route than these books to a reasonable appreciation of the true depth of understanding and background which these practicing scientists possess, of 'Earth's History', and of #2, 'what is happening now'.
The 'skeptics' and contrarians are quite correct in noting the flaws in science by concensus, but this cuts both ways. Why not see who the best are, and see what they have to say, by getting to know them personally through these books? I would never recommend such a time consuming project were the stakes not so high.
To CuckooToo # 81:
You wrote: "AGW theory states there should be a signature or hot spot that greenhouse gases should leave, where is it?"
I don't understand your question CuckooToo. Could you elaborate?
- Manysummits, Calgary -
PS: From Robert Frost, poet, in "The Tuft of Flowers":
"Men work together," I told him from the heart,
"Whether they work together or apart."
Complain about this comment
Manysummits post 71
Many thanks for the links.
I’ve looked at the Wiki. link many times in the past, but the Peter Ward one is new to me and very enlighening.
I have been interested in geology all of my adult life and my geological knowledge never “squares up” with the alarmist view of “Global Warming” (Note – I am not denying that the climate may be changing due to mans’ use of fossil fuels – the way we waste so much must be having some consequences)
I always recommend to those without much scientific knowledge or education that they buy, and watch, the DVDs of the BBC’s “Earth Story” before they watch or read anything else on climate change, it is probably the best science series the BBC has ever produced.
I bacame more interested in mass extinctions following an excellent R4 Leading Edge special on Mass Extinctions from about ten years ago (I still have a recording of it). This is what Prof Chris Humphreys of the Natural History Museum said on that programme :-
“At the moment human population is increasing at an exponential rate. There is is not one square kilometre of the Earth’s surface that is not affected in some way by mans’ presence; that presence is causing other species to become extinct at a much greater rate than the “background” rate, one day that extinction will, almost certainly include us”
And, on a BBC World Service programme on poulation last year Prof. Aubrey Manning said :-
“Forget climate change, if we do not get to grips with the problem of overpopulaion, we are doomed”
My own thought is that whilst we have nuclear weapons, one day some “nutter” of a politician will, in defence of his last drop of oil and last lump of coal press the proverbial “Red Button” – now that is frightening!!
Oh dear! As they say in Private Eye “I really must get out more”
Complain about this comment
To Crowcatcher # 84:
Glad I could help. As you are interested in geology and mass extinctions, I will venture a little deeper into the subject via three more book recommendations:
1) "Under a Green Sky", by Peter D. Ward (2007)
- Greenhouse extinctions - evidence as of 2006/2007 - implications for the present.
2) "Out of Thin Air", by Peter Ward (2006)
- Cutting edge, in depth paleontology and the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere - for serious inquiry.
3) "Gorgon", by Peter Ward (ca 2005)
- A favorite of mine. If you want to know who this man is, and travel to South Africa in search of clues to Earth's greatest mass extinction, this is the book.
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
#83 Manysummits,
Not really back but I couldn't let this matter go unaddressed. Sorry for the length...
Cuckootoo is referring to the expected mid tropospheric warming profile that you can see in the yellow and grey bands of this graph from Santer et al: http://www.realclimate.org/images/santer_etal08_fig6.jpg
In simple terms the models suggest that the tropical troposphere should warm more than the surface.
Contrary to what Cuckootoo says; Santer et al do NOT say the signal of the expected tropospheric warming is "lost in the noise".
Santer et al do however utterly shred the earlier Douglass et al paper which claimed to have found a fatal discrepancy between models and observations. Douglass et al used a combination of flawed approach (2 flaws) and out-of-date datasets (one has to wonder why...)
A copy of the actual Santer et al paper is linked to in the first line of the following Realclimate post: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/10/tropical-tropopshere-iii/
Here is what Santer et al really say:
"On the basis of these new results, we conclude that... ...modelled trends in tropical lapse rates are now broadly consistent with results obtained using RSS T2LT data.[a satellite dataset of tropospheric temperature]"
They also note that using another satellite dataset (UAH) the warming in the troposphere is smaller than the surface on a decadal basis, but the amount is not significant enough to prove the models wrong (anyway on an annual/monthly basis the UAH dataset does show the expected signature - bizarre!).
Santer et al note that previously:
"For month-to-month and year-to-year temperature changes, all satellite and radiosonde datasets showed amplification behaviour consistent with model results and basic theory. For multi-decadal changes, however, only two of the then-available satellite datasets (and none of the then-available radiosonde datasets) indicated warming of the troposphere exceeding that of the surface."
But in a key study Karl et al came to the conclusion that this decadal timescale mismatch was most likely due to uncertainties inherent in the observational datasets themselves (due to the way they're obtained).
In concluding the Santer paper finds:
"There is no longer a serious and fundamental discrepancy between modelled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates, despite Douglass et al's incorrect claim to the contrary."
PS There is another predicted outcome of GHG driven Global Warming, and that is a cooling of the mid-upper stratosphere and the mesosphere: This is robustly observed.
PPS Anyone wanting to cry that UAH is the correct dataset would do well to ponder the paragraph in Santer et al that starts "Our findings do not bring final resolution".
I was once a sceptic of AGW, I was ill-informed. That and my scepticism have been rectified. There is an acronym used on the internet; RTFR. It means, Read The Full Report, and it applies especially to those trying to claim established science is wrong.
Down with Pseudoscience!!!
Complain about this comment
FRACTIOUS, complains, "Yet the abundance of evidence you mention doesn?t (sic) seem to contain a reliable surface temperature record, ... or any atmospheric data supporting the hypothesis. He goes on to say that, "There are lots of assumptions being made on the basis of computer models, but by definition, they can?t (sic) provide evidence of anything. If this is an abundance of evidence, then clearly, words have little real meaning in the realm of climate science."
What is forgotten or ignored is that the self-correcting process of science makes an observation, poses a question, observes/researches, poses hypotheses, proposes experiment, etc, etc.
Science has observed and having made an observation it now rightly seeks to understand the potential outcomes. While the data of this research seems arguable to some, that fact does not refute the mounting data of the observation.
That data is indisputable. It shows that atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily CO2 are increasing, CO2 as a percentage of Earth atmosphere is higher than it has been in 600,000 years.
These were 600,000 years of global freezes and thaws, mini climate fluctuations, correlated rises and falls of CO2 absent human influence. Regarding the current phenomena, there is only one vector point, humans and there behavior, how they fueled the industrial revolution. For those who would seize on that point, merely an observation not a judgment.
While the science into consequences is arguable, only a fool denies or argues there will not be consequences, argues against acting to reduce CO2.
We have an opportunity to act; we have in our hands an opportunity to revitalize a weakened world economy and create an economy for the 21st century. It is a job creating opportunity, in which we begin to use of available resources with greater and greater efficiency, while bringing to market in greater and greater volume sustainable means of fueling our energy needs.
Complain about this comment
@manysummits #83
The IPCC Assessment Report 4 (AR4), 2007, Chapter 9. Figure 9.1, in
Section 9.2.2.1, on page 675 shows 6 diagrams. The one marked "greenhouse inc CO2" shows where the AGW signature should be - it's around 10km over the tropics. The red bit is the hotspot and is predicted by the all computer models to show where the temperature is rising. Despite weather balloons searching for the last few decades, the hotspot has never been found.
Complain about this comment
To CobblyWorlds #86:
Thanks for that! I just read the 'realclimate' links you posted. I am not a climatologist, and so will refrain from technical comment on detailed issues in the middle troposphere etc..., but I can read between the lines. I think the point made which I like very much is the usefullness of the blogosphere in quickly countering blatantly poor science, before it is countered in the peer reviewed literature.
I have been perhaps a little paranoid about the 'disinformation' campaign, but only in seeing too many 'skeptics' as part of this. I don't think this is the case anymore, though I would be more than surprised to find that there is 'no' disinformation campaign.
As 'rossglory' and others have pointed out in previous blogs, there is a very strong statistical correlation between real knowledge of climate science and 'belief' in man-made global warming. This is entirely consistent with the real world I know, and I am leaning strongly to the view that most 'skeptics' are simply not far enough up on the learning curve as regards climate science, geology, and paleoclimatology. This is entirely understandable, as quite literally only a lifetime of devotion to science is capable of providing nuanced understanding, and convergent evidence probability analysis.
Simon-swede went so far as to cite a study in which United State's Republicans were relatively unmoved from their stance on AGW despite increased knowledge. This was the opposite for Democrats and independents. Here is an obvious discontinuity - why should this be the case?
The answers are not apparent, and the one I favor is frought with danger, in that it touches on fundamentalist religious thinking. I don't wish to go further with this issue at this time, as I am not in any sense 'sure' that it is the case. It is just a best guess for now.
The Antarctic:
The Wilkins ice-shelf looks to be in imminent danger of breaking up, as reported by the BBC today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7984054.stm
In the course of my focused research on climate change these last three months, I, a geologist with a particular interest in weather and climate and glaciology as an outdoorsman, and with a long standing interest in the evolution and extinction of life throughout Earth's history, from the Hadean on, with this background I was led seemingly inevitably to the West Antarctic. I have gone to some length to describe my findings in a previous blog, 'climate tidy' posts #'s 104 and 106.
The instability in the Wilkins ice-shelf was unknown to me at the time I wrote those posts, and the news of the ice-shelf's possible impending breakup comes at what might be seen as a fortuitous time, reinforcing those posts, and my ongoing concern that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is at present, our Achilles Heel.
I'm going to go play with my young son now,
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
Re my post # 89:
I paraphrased the words of 'rossglory' and simon-swede', and failed to cite their posts. My apologies. I think I will copy direct transcriptions and cite post numbers from now on.
Here are the relevant posting numbers:
1) for 'rossglory's statistical correlation between knowledge of climate science and 'belief' in AGW, see:
- Carbon: How much is enough?; post #114
2) for 'simon-swede's Republican/Democrat information, see:
- G20, Bonn and the climate of opinion; post #38
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
Manysummits,
I don't think there is a seriously funded denial lobby any more, but there is a lot of knee-jerk reaction against the notion of AGW that is driven by attitudinal reasons. Furthermore the whole idea of AGW as a scientific scam has taken on it's own life, much the same as the "moon landing are a hoax" or the "9/11 was a set-up" ideas. The complexity of the science means it's easy for those relying on soundbite simplicity to continue to sow their message amongst a public loathed to spend the time needed to sort the wheat from the chaff. I have virtually given up posting in forums such as this as the real ongoing process will settle the matter in due course, and I never thought we'd do much about it anyway.
All that said, I now think Peak Oil is the pressing issue within my lifetime. It seems likely that the Credit Crunch was precipitated by Peak Oil, and as such it's quite possibly going to be the first of a series of major depressions/recessions as we are forced into increasing "energy poverty". I'm learning to live frugally now.
I suspect that one reason I lose myself in reading the science is that it helps to distance how precarious our situation really is.
Definitely back to lurking.
Complain about this comment
To CobblyWorlds #91:
Nice to meet you! I'd like to relax a bit and speak from the heart.
We are also "learning to live frugally", and quite enjoying it. It feels right. It's our 'High Road to the Future'. (quality/duty towards self/pre-Socratic "man is the measure of all things"/live in the moment)
The phrase that pops up increasingly to describe our true situation is the 'perfect storm'. Funny how the artists in the entertainment industry are often so prescient - and I mean that.
- Population curve = crash (a biological near certainity)
- Peak Conventional Oil ca 2020 = war?
- 2048 = total collapse of the ocean fishery
- mid-century/2100/2200 = sea level at least five meters higher than at present, ocean pH threatening the base of the food and oxygen chain.
- current extinction rate ca 20%, and going to 50 to 70 percent = mass extinction number six
- change of state for lifeforms in the works = ??????????
- Cousteau's "we will be replaced by the insect".
Not promising. James Lovelock agrees, as does Sir Marin Rees, the United Kingdom's former Astonomer Royal. James Hansen - "end of Creation", Farley Mowat, "Humanity is visiting a desolation upon the world", Freeman Dyson (take care of the poor - my impression?), etc.
Naturally there is denial, courage has always been rare. But compulsion and necessity may suffice.
What to do?
Blog.
Our leaders have lost it, they have no clothes. Despite the efforts of Toynbee's 'creative saviors', we are in for it. We just don't know how bad, how soon.
Maybe salvation is the people finally growing up, or reverting to tribal values - concern for each other, concern for the children, concern for the future, attention to natural laws.
"The fundamental problem of man's future is not economic but spiritual, the problem of diversity... Sanity is, in its essence, nothing more than the ability to live in harmony with Nature's Laws."
- Freeman Dyson (Disturbing the Universe, 1979)
Intellectually I don't even pretend to know , but I learned a hard won lesson in my life - depend on your heart, your instincts, whatever you want to call it, and all will be well.
Blogging feels right - despite some frustrations. Going back to the 'patch' to make money doesn't.
Blogging is tribal.
I'm looking at an old idea of mine, which compared mountaineering and civilization. May I leave you with these thoughts, from the introduction to the book "Popul Vuh - The Great Mythological Book of the Ancient Maya":
"In many ways civilization is pitted against the spirit of Man. In Freudian terms, the more civilized a people, the more removed from instinct, and thus the more neurotic the individual. The artist is one member of society for whom a break with custom is often essential. His case is extreme because he is a creator, and self-expression is his life."
- Ralph Nelson (translator, 1974)
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
Just to finish off my thinking on this AGW debate looking at from the point of view of a project manager of which I have some experience. My apology for the disjointed thread. I just cannot find the time to get on line that much. Just to recap:
I started by picking up on the theme of "probabilities" of the outcome of AGW scenarios in comments #16& #46. I then took a project management (PM) approach to assess the project in #74. Basically the project was weak on the Risk Assessment. Impacts and Mitigation were robust but probability assessments were weak as it was just based on computer models which on deeper analysis were believed by scientist to be poor at predicting the future (please read #74 for references). The Earned Value (EV) was very strong which indicated that the project was already ahead of the planned schedule to reduce global temperatures as they had recently dropped without much attention. To maintain this positive EV it was recommend to maintain the current direction of doing very little. The other mayor recommendation was to improve our methods of probability assessment (e.g. including current trends) to present a more robust overall Risk Assessment.
Well, the next level of PM is to look at Portfolio Management. Here we look at ‘Optimizing’ our projects for maximum effect to our business. We use methods like AHP (Analytical Hierarchal Process) and Pair Wise. These look at the business 'Drivers" (cost reduction, strategic alignment, time to market etc.) which are prioritized and then applied to each project. Decision makers then get a good view of how the projects rank in their portfolio.
Based on the PM assessment in #74 our AGW project would not be on the list for consideration under an average set of 'drivers'. Particularly the assessment ROI (return on investment) is years away and very flakey at best.
So how does AGW appear to be so high? I think the answer is starting to emerge. The Obama budget includes tax revenues from "Cap and Trade" which if they do not get approved will require a reduction in the spending and a White House official I heard questioned on NPR (BBC US equivalent) was saying that healthcare would be reduce. Therefore n the light of this we must redefine our portfolio 'drivers' to weight projects that generate tax revenues higher. There are other 'drivers' I can think of but that would be speculation at this time. Basically our AGW project would not even be a consideration if these drivers were not present.
Sorry that this is a bit long but I have just dumped it as sleep is calling. I hope you get the drift. Please tell me if you think this is totally wacko. I just tried to approach from a different perspective. I get to thinking sometimes that this scientific debate is being deliberately fuelled to remove the focus from the really policy decisions. I have seen this used as a tactic in my career.
Cheers......
Complain about this comment
To Manysummits #89;
About AGW deniers you say "it touches on fundamentalist religious thinking".
I do not have any of these in my circle of friends. My analysis of my little circle would be that believers drink wine and deniers drink beer:)
Be careful manysummits. Read some history and see where this type of thinking will take you.
Cheers......
Complain about this comment
@manysummits #89
The fact is, manysummits, many sceptics on these pages have asked for empirical evidence to prove the AGW hypothesis. The AGW signature would be empirical evidence and would disprove the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Santer "found" the signature, but so far Santer and his colleagues have refused to release the data used despite requests under the FOIA.
If this evidence was unequivical, do you not think that it would have been trumpeted around the world as conclusive evidence of mans involvement in global warming, and yet you, and others, hadn't heard of it before despite the search for decades? Do you not think that at least one of your heroes would be using it to beat sceptics around the head?
Read up on it, manysummits. Google "the missing greenhouse signature" and see what comes up (the original is a pdf so i can't link to it) or go here http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/links/ and head down the page to "the missing hotspot"
(Happy belated birthday to your son)
Complain about this comment
"I would argue that the mechanisms set up to stimulate the development and spread of low-carbon technologies are more critical to making carbon reductions than the size of countries' promises."
First time I have ever agreed with an evironmental correspondent!!!
Even if people have not been taken in by the climate of fear over 'climate change' - oil is coming to the end of it's day. We can all agree that viable alternatives need to be found.
I'd like to see some serious expenditure on alternatives. Example: current research on using household waste to brew bio-fuel. Millions of tons of grass clippings fermented for fuel not 'composted' (rotted away with massive release of methane). How much funding is the researcher I saw getting for that? I'd like to see a mini Manhattan project push his work through to industrial scale. Budget: whatever it takes.
The media are very powerful in this country. I'd love to see more questions asked about this.
Just how much funding is going into alternative fuels?
Complain about this comment
The Swedish Commission on Sustainable Development asked Mikael Roman and Marcus Carson at the Stockholm Environment Institute to analyse economic and political developments in the USA with a focus on climate change. Their report was published on the 3rd April 2009.
The Commission asked for the assessment in the context of the Copenhagen climate summit and the key role that the US might be expected to play in any agreement. They note that President Barack Obama has given clear signals that the USA is now ready to engage in a dramatically new way in international efforts to fight climate change.
One of their conclusions is that the development of US climate change policies in the near-term will be a highly iterative process with an almost exclusively domestic focus. This implies that COP-15 in Copenhagen should not be seen as an end-point but, rather, a key consolidating event in a process of US reengagement on the global climate change arena.
Here is a link to the report “Sea Change: US Climate Policy Prospects Under the Obama Administration” http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/5867/a/123914
The Swedish Commission on Sustainable Development, reports to the office of the Prime Minister of Sweden.
Complain about this comment
The Swedish Commission on Sustainable Development have also posted a report on China and climate change on 3rd April 2009. Again the focus is the upcoming Copenhagen summit and a consideration that the outcome of these negotiations hinges in many respects on what China decides to do. There are many signs that China may come to play a much more important role in global mitigation of climate change than was thought only a couple of years ago. The report in question deals with this issue, and explores Chinas possible role in a future global climate policy regime, taking into account the economic and political development in China.
The report argues that four key aspects of how climate change is conceived by the Chinese leadership signals that China may come to play a much more important role in global mitigation of climate change than was thought only a couple of years ago. These are
1. Climate impacts: There is a growing realisation that climate change will cause significant damage. The leadership’s main concern is with the impacts on economic and social stability and the interplay with other development and environmental challenges.
2. Low-carbon opportunities: There is growing awareness amongst both business and, to an increasing extent, political leaders that there are considerable low-carbon opportunities for China. These would mean coming to grips with energy security, pollution and exploitation of natural resources and, even more, in ascending the production value chain and moving towards an innovation and technology driven growth.
3. Geopolitics: With climate security increasingly being seen as a geopolitical issue, China’s ambition to be seen as a responsible world actor influences its range of options within global climate talks. An indicator of this is the potential change from alignment with the G77 to a position where China negotiates to maximise its national interests.
4. Development: Climate change is still predominantly a development issue. Tradeoffs are currently being gauged between the harm that it can cause to development, the costs of mitigation and adaptation, and the opportunities it could offer. But development is fuelled by energy and in the foreseeable future it is a concern for energy security that will drive China’s climate mitigation actions.
The report notes that energy security concerns have driven China to ambitious carbon mitigation policies. Energy security is one of China’s overriding priorities, being closely linked to the administration’s key concern’s of economic development, poverty alleviation and social stability. Since 1994, domestic oil supply has not keep pace with demand and China is presently covering half of its oil demand from imports. With increasing demands from transportation and petrochemicals, China’s dependency on imported oil is bound to increase to about 80 percent by 2030. But China is also increasingly dependent on coal imports as domestic mining and transportation of coal and transmission of electricity from coal fields in the west cannot meet increasing demands in the rapidly developing eastern provinces.
China has set ambitious targets that bear on climate mitigation and adaptation. The targets include
- 20 percent reduction of energy intensity and 10 percent reduction of pollution discharge by 2010 compared to 2005 levels;
- 15 percent renewables in the primary energy mix by 2020; and
- Specific goals and programmes for reforestation, ecological conservation and green technology development.
Participation in global efforts to mitigate climate change has the potential to reinforce all of these national policies, and, through ambitious strategies, China is now getting closer to meeting its 20 percent energy intensity reduction target. Were this target met
China could, by the year 2010 alone, avoid emitting as much as 1.5 billion tons of CO2 as compared to a trajectory without energy intensity gains – arguably a significant carbon mitigation effort by global comparison.
Whether or not China manages to meet its 2010 target will be a key factor in determining to what extent the Chinese leadership feels confident to take on further mitigation policies. Success in reaching the 2010 target is not unlikely to result in renewed political ambition to reduce energy intensity in the range of 20 percent per five-year period from 2010 to 2020. Compared to a trajectory without energy intensity gains this would imply a total potential carbon dioxide avoidance of more than 50 billion tons to 2020. Meeting this target, however, would require mobilising international investment for low-carbon technology and continued reform of China’s regulatory system and incentive structure.
International voices are now being raised that China’s recent progress in avoiding carbon emissions is already part of, and therefore not additional to China’s strategic development driven energy policy. According to this line of argument, a business as usual projection based on constant energy intensity is not a relevant reference trajectory for measuring the ambitions and successes of China’s climate action. Instead it should be the trajectory defined by China’s current policies that constitutes the reference for additionalities. This highlights the difficulties of setting a baseline for a country like China and raises questions about how a pragmatic approach to climate mitigation, like the one taken by China, could be credited in a future climate regime.
There is international scepticism also about China’s ability to tackle climate change and the reliability of its data. The wide gap between formulation of ambitious policies and their implementation in the real world is well documented and the uncertainties about Chinese official statistics are widespread. Oftentimes, when meeting a target becomes a political task, there are many ways to manipulate the data so that the target is “met” on paper. The ability to verify progress towards a target is critically important for most OECD countries when discussing China’s involvement in a green deal.
The report was produced by Karl Hallding, Guoyi Han and Marie Olsson at Stockholm Environment Institute. A link to the report “A Balancing Act: China's Role in Climate Change” can be found at http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/5867/a/123915
Complain about this comment
@cuckutoo - "Read up on it, manysummits."
Dear me, I've been away for a few days and it appears the friendly banter has gone. Btw manysummits - I would suggest you don;t bother with JoNova, bit of a a waste of time imo.
"The fact is, manysummits, many sceptics on these pages have asked for empirical evidence to prove the AGW hypothesis." - asking for 'proof' as you well know is pointless. There is no level of proof about future warming that you guys will accept. There has to be a rational balancing of probabilities. I don't find it particularly rational to run the in-vivo experiment and then see what happens.....unless you have another planet somewhere nearby ready to go, you know, just in case Dr Spencer got some sums wrong.
"infamous Hockey Stick graph" - in what way do you mean infamous Cuckutoo. Infamous in sceptic circles for having at least 6 subsequent peer-reviewed papers corroborate it or 'in-famous' as defined in 'The Three Amigos' (my favourite comedy....after monty pyhton of course) as 'more than famous' :o)
Complain about this comment
To yeah whatever @ 80
ROFLMAO!
Complain about this comment
To sum up:
There is no scientific theory for anything beyond a very small impact of CO2 on the climate. GCMs rely on unproven and arbitrary positive feedbacks from water vapour. Temperature changes lead CO2 changes.
There is no evidence for CO2 causing warming. The CO2 warming hot spot over the tropics in the upper troposphere, predicted by the GCMs, is absent. The global temperature records are seriously flawed due to data manipulation. But they don't prove anything anyway.
The hockey stick graph was proven flawed and even the IPCC has dropped it from the 2007 reports. Reconstructions by the same "climate scientists" rely on the same flawed data and statistical methods.
Natural climate change is occurring as it always has. The climate goes in cycles. The sun has gone very quiet and the oceans are in cooling mode. The oceans store over 99.9% of the sun's energy which drives the climate. Atmospheric warming and infra-red radiation have negligible effect on the oceans. The oceans warm the atmosphere - hence it is habitable in the UK (at the moment, until the Holocene ends and the next glacial period begins).
Did I make it 100 again?
Complain about this comment
Rossglory @99
Check the Wegman report. Here is a brief summary:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Excerpt:
A social network analysis revealed that the small community of Paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peerreview and temperature reconstructions.
So much for other studies, check out Climate Audit, McIntyre has written about this too.
Complain about this comment
- Spin City -
There is an interesting article on 'spin' which my wife sent me last night. It is rather long, but is, in its essence, an elaboration of Noam Chomsky's assertion that we are mostly 'spun' consumers, dumbed down to buy. I'll post the link, its almost funny, but I can't get rid of the pop-up in front of the main article. (My wife sent me the link and the article separately).
http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/15/perception.htm
To the 'skeptics' I will say this:
"Ice bridge ruptures in Antarctic" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7984054.stm
(see also posts # 104 and 106 on Antarctica by yours truly, "A climate tidy")
And we are all beginning to notice the absence of 'skeptical' input or meaningful discussion on empirical evidence, such as the impending breakup of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Isn't that curious? The 'skeptics' profess a need for real evidence, an ice shelf the size of half of Scotland is in the progress of disintegration, and not a word, except perhaps that it is all natural, not AGW. Very reassuring.
I've been doing a lot of thinking this past weekend. On these blogs, and their 'worth'.
I think we have here in the blogosphere a modern 'commons'.
In my time on Cape Cod in 1994/95, I loved the large 'commons areas' in front of the usually equally lovely architecture of the old town halls.
Here, in my imagination, were gathered the early American democrats, discussing their future.
The blogosphere is our international commons.
It is simple in design, there are no pop-ups, just words from the people. All kinds of people. Not a complete representation yet, but the best we can do for now, until we take to the streets.
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
There are some certainties:
Infinite economic growth is impossible, as is infinite population growth. So we need to change the way we manage ourselves and resources to ensure our continuation (if that is desireable).
Finite resources are inevitably running out so we need to find alternatives. Burning oil is a wasteful use of that particular resource.
We are undoubtedly destroying the environment to the detriment of all species. Man is the only species that makes no positive contribution, but which consumes everything.
And finally; over the last 200 hundred years we have put into the atmosphere CO2 which accumulated over millions of years; it seems more than a coincidence that Co2 levels are higher now than at any time in mans history; C)2 is a known cause of climate warming; the climate is showing signs of warming. Not a certainty that it is our fault, but a degree of logic suggests it is.
The precautionary principal must prevail; if we do nothing and we are causing irreversible change then we are doomed. If we act and the sceptics are right, we have conserved resources and addressed the need to find a way to live on a speck of dust with finite resources. One option is lose/lose. The alternative is win/win.
Complain about this comment
Many Summits #103
Have a read here for an alternative view about the Wilkins Ice Shelf:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/wilkins_back_in_the_news/
Complain about this comment
@rossglory #90
Dear me, I've been away for a few days and it appears the friendly banter has gone.
It was meant to be a suggestion to read about the predicted hotspot and lack of empirical evidence. If manysummits or anybody else has mis-construed my suggestion then I apologise.
There is no level of proof about future warming that you guys will accept.
I think if climate science actually found the hotspot, the actual signature of CO2 induced global warming, without "re-examining the data", the debate really would be over.
Complain about this comment
@manysummits #103
And we are all beginning to notice the absence of 'skeptical' input or meaningful discussion on empirical evidence, such as the impending breakup of the Wilkins Ice Shelf.
with respect, manysummits, this is not empirical evidence of AGW. It may be evidence of warming, but not evidence of AGW
Complain about this comment
Re the Wilkins ice sheet, I suggest a look at the latest research at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/ps-wai031709.php.
I quote:
'Researchers today worry about the collapse of West Antarctic ice shelves and loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet, but little is known about the past movements of this ice. Now climatologists from Penn State and the University of Massachusetts have modeled the past 5 million years of the West Antarctic ice sheet and found the ice expanse changes rapidly and is most influenced by ocean temperatures near the continent.
"We found that the West Antarctic ice sheet varied a lot, collapsed and regrew multiple times over that period," said David Pollard, senior scientist, Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences' Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. "The ice sheets in our model changed in ways that agree well with the data collected by the ANDRILL project."
"We found that the ocean's warming and melting the bottom of the floating ice shelves has been the dominant control on West Antarctic ice variations," said Pollard.
I hope no-one thinks that a bit of atmospheric warming is causing the oceans to warm.
It's quite amazing how alarmists will blame all these phenomena on global warming and never bother to think that maybe nature has a hand in these events (I've already been emailed today by someone saying this is evidence of AGW!). There's too much jumping to conclusions and not enough time spent studying the science.
Complain about this comment
Post 102
The removed link can be looked at here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
Look at reference 42.
Complain about this comment
And a cup falling off a table isn't proof of gravity either.
But if it's predicted to fall, then it's a proof of the theory that predicted it.
Then again you'll never see it will you, because you'll always, even if you lived for a million years to see the results, insist that it is not your fault.
Complain about this comment
RB Says: There is a mountain of research supportive of, or indicative of, or consistent with (if not proving) anthropogenic warming, whether it's observational data, computer models, or trends drawn from the Earth's historical record.
The KEY PHRASE here is '...if not proving....' And that is the Achilles' heel of the AGW argument.
This, so-called, evidence would not stand up in a court of law where FACTS are what matter to prove a case, NOT (however well-meant) predictions and theories.
That is why people like me, PAWB46 and millions of others will continue to challenge the myths of AGW.
Complain about this comment
@102 - theskyisnotfalling (but is warming!) - ahh, the infamous wegman report....seems a long time ago now.
here's a couple of response from Mann to the key parts of the report (as far as I know never responded to):
"Unfortunately, Dr. Wegman made this claim without engaging in any effort to
ascertain the extent to which climate scientists interact with statisticians. To the contrary, Dr. Wegman simply assumed --- without data, indeed, without any basis at all --- that climate scientists, and paleoclimatologists in particular, do not interact with statisticians."
"Dr. Wegman’s accusations are so riddled with flaws that it’s hard to know where to begin in response. But let me first address the specious accusation by Wegman that the peer-review process somehow “failed” with respect to our ’98 and ’99 studies."
This tit-for-tat quoting really gets nowhere. Once again it's a 'balancing of probabilities'. Are paleoclimatologists really that stupid??? I don;t think so, so my vote goes to the hockey stick graph.
Complain about this comment
I've thought about this for a few days now and all this hockey stick, modelling etc, is all irrelevant without the smoking gun or in this case the missing signature of man made global warming
as rossglory rightly states, all the tit-for-tat gets us nowhere
if the alarmists had the smoking gun they would make sure the world knows about it, but for decades they have searched for the signature, but have only "found" it by widening the error bars. In other words, the hot spot doesn't exist
prove me wrong
Complain about this comment
meant to add:
how does AGW / CO2 hypothesis manage to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics?
Complain about this comment
rossglory: Why vote for the hockey stick when the IPCC has disowned it?
Complain about this comment
Richard,
Skeptics don't see things as you see them, we just don't believe, more importantly we challenge consensus openly, which is exactly where the environmental movement started and still is.
It is not wrong to challenge consensus, however morally right and proper the consensus appears to be.
Personally I don't believe in the current fashion for AGW science, and the Alarmism that surrounds it, because it fits too neatly with our primitive beliefs that what happens with the Weather/Climate/Planet is due to our activities, every human civilisation has believed that and all were wrong, human history reveals that Science that ties itself to belief is always totally wrong.
The constant alarmist coverage that appears out of the BBC has little basis in science, with most of it being a small scientific minority view.
Your NEWS reporting of Climate Change very rarely contains any News and is usually opinion and prediction, is that News? I lost faith with the BBC when they at first reported the Asian Tsunami as "caused by Climate Change" (oh yes you did!).
Complain about this comment
@106 CuckuToo - afraid I have to disagree, the debate would not be over even if the hotspot did appear (it's a long term equilibrium effect so tricky to find). The hotspot is a result of the decreased moist-adiabatic lapse rate - I'm a glider pilot so love big bubbles of warm moist air....not in the cockpit though :o(
The lapse rate decreases because the lower troposhpere will contain more moisture (and latent heat) as it warms and carries it aloft. Hotspot is a bit of a misnomer, red indicates a bigger temp change (not absolute temp) so there's not big hot spot in the sky.
I believe the whole hotspot meme started with the barmy viscount, he misinterpreted the IPCC plots. The reason the hotspot is not as pronounced in the solar forcing plot is because the model was for 20th century forcings and there wasn't a large solar forcing during that period.
Rerun the models with solar forcing (not greenhouse) creating the increase in GMSTs and hey presto the hotspot appears.....and not an anthropogenic greenhouse gas is sight!!
I believe this is a truly brilliant sceptic tactic. Set up the missing hotspot as the killer for AGW and if/when it is found fall back to 'but it could still be solar'. The real pattern of AGW is a coldspot in the stratosphere and that has been found (does that count?)
Complain about this comment
hmmmm, let's see the IPCC claim there is an AGW signature, the climate scientists claim to have found it (but haven't even though they have searched for decades) and you think it's a brilliant sceptic tactic. What do you know that the IPCC and climate scientists don't know?
Complain about this comment
rossglory: more ad homs. If the viscount is barmey, why won't the alarmists debate with him? Is it because they know they haven't a leg to stand on. Gore v viscount? KO in round 1, Gore on canvas.
Complain about this comment
To rossglory #117:
You're a glider pilot! I used to fly Piper Cherokee 140's, but I did once fly a glider over Cape Cod. Small world!!
To CuckooToo too - From what I can gather, this hotspot sounds a lot like something in a numerical model. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a climatalogist. Thanks for the belated birthday greeting for my wife!
But there is a hotspot, to this field geologists way of thinking. It's in a link provided by 'rossglory'. I just had it printed off in color a few hours ago. Click on the link below (The World Glacier Monitoring Service), and then click on the 'pdf's for figures one and two. You will find evidence of what I think of as a hotspot - it's worldwide, and is a net result, nature's vote so to speak - the melting of the world's glaciers. Proverbially - "A picture is worth ten thousand words."
http://www.geo.uzh.ch/wgms/mbb/mbb10/sum07.html
To PAWB46 #108:
You wrote: "I hope no-one thinks that a bit of atmospheric warming is causing the oceans to warm".
The oceans cover some seventy percent of the Earth's surface, and absorb most of any extra heat produced by global forcing, as far as I know - I believe eighty (80%) per cent is a rough figure. That extra ocean heat is now most probably nibbling away at the Wilkins Ice Shelf, and others.
While obtaining my copy of the world glacier record mentioned above (with link), I also obtained a copy of:
"West-side story of Antarctic ice, by Phillippe Huybrechts, which discusses the waxing and waning of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet over the past five million years, and mentions, I believe, the article you refer to. I haven't read the article yet, but I reference it below, for I will have more to say soon on this.
- "Nature", vol 458, Mar 19, 2009, pgs. 295-296
The article you refer to is probably "Nature", Pollard, D & DeConto, R.M., vol 458, pgs. 322-328, Mar 19, 2009.
I will try and obtain a copy of this tomorrow.
It's looking like heat absorption by the oceans is the 'key' here. I have some quantitative data, which I will be happy to provide soon. But perhaps someone out there is already more familiar than I on this??
\\\ Glacial Isostatic Adjustments - West Antarctic Ice Sheet ///
This is my real focus now, and I could use some help. I've talked to a mechanical engineer about gravity anomalies and numerical modelling of ice sheets, and I've sent an email to a friend in geophysics at the University of Calgary.
The WAIS is the only remaining 'maritime' ice sheet left from many during the last glacial. The crust of the Earth is currently depressed beneath it, due to the weight of the ice above. There should also be a forebulge on the ocean side at least, to compensate. Is the grounding line on the forebulge???
I know I have to do more research on this myself, perhaps someone can save me from sleep-deprivation. The new "GOCE" satellite is apparently extraordinarily sensitive. Could this pick out the gravity anomalies which are presumably associated with the depression below the WAIS and the forebulge surrounding it?
I am really finding it quite humorous that the 'skeptical' beating rug, global circulation models, are now their best friend. Could this have anything to do with the empirical evidence being presented - the breakup of seven ice shelves in the west Antarctic so far; world glaciers melting; instrumental temperature records since 1880, courtesy of James Hansen and the Goddard Institute for Space Science; latest information indicating that the entire Antarctic is warming, with the West Antarctic and the West Antarctic Penninsula warming as fast as that other fastest warming place, the Arctic; and the lower tropical troposphere warming as evidenced by the rapid and accelerating retreat of the high altitude tropical mountain glaciers.
And all of this, amidst the now firming idea that the latter half of the Holocene (last 5000 years), was cooling overall until, surprise surprise, the late Industrial Revolution. I love field work!
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
This debate is mind boggling to a regular Joe public like me. Read Manysummits #120 and did a Google search on ocean temperatures. The first on the list was:
http://www.examiner.com/x-1586-Baltimore-Weather-Examiner~y2009m1d21-Oceans-are-cooling-according-to-NASA
Nearly all the top searches were about ocean 'cooling' over the past few years.
I just take a little side step and see that the Woolly Mammoths that got frozen in the ice about 12k years ago are only just beginning to thaw out and there are plenty more to come.
Come on guys. You have got to do better than these bricks you keep lobbing around.
Has anybody got any feedback on my project/portfolio perspective summarized in #93. I'd be really interested if wacko or not.
Cheers
Complain about this comment
mnaysummits: Volume for volume water holds about 1000 times as much heat as air. The sun heats the oceans since most of the sun's radiation enters the water (ever been in the sea and noticed that the sun heats the water?) In the long term where can that heat go? One way, into the air. It's a no-brainer. Ever tried heating a pan of water by blowing hot air over it? Ever tried heating air by using hot water?
Complain about this comment
@manysummits #120
Thanks for the link, but melting ice is an effect of global warming not a cause.
If you look at the IPCC AR4 chapter 9 section 9.2.2.1 you will clearly see diagrams showing different signatures for increased solar irradiation, volcanic eruptions, greenhouse gases, ozone depletion and a combination of the others.
The GHG diagram clearly shows a bright red spot 8-12km above the tropics. Despite searching for years with weather balloons, radiosonde and satellite, this signature has never been found. Santer claims to have found it be adjusting the data, but refuses to release the data so it can be independently verified.
Because the GHG signature cannot we found, we can draw 2 conclusions:
1 The IPCC theoretical signature is wrong, so the IPCC climate models have got it wrong, which calls in question the whole runaway CO2 induced climate change.
2 The signature is missing, which means the global warming recorded in the later part of the 20th century was not caused by mans CO2 emissions
There is growing evidence that the warming has flattened and maybe even started to reverse - temperatures have been stable for almost a decade now (yes, i know they are still at record levels, but that doesn't mean the trend hasn't changed), the oceans have started to cool and the oceans are rising at a slightly less rate than previously recorded.
Complain about this comment
"Ever tried heating a pan of water by blowing hot air over it? Ever tried heating air by using hot water? "
Have you ever taken a glass of water that is cold and let it stand? Does it warm up?
Yes.
Yet you never even BLEW across it.
Your statement is incorrect. It just takes longer to warm a pan of water by taking it into a warmer room than sticking it on a hob.
"Despite searching for years with weather balloons, radiosonde and satellite, this signature has never been found."
And its absence is not known. The measurements are not there because the error in attribution is too big.
You have made a false dichotomy because there is AT LEAST one more option:
3) Measurement of the temperature 6-10km above the tropics is not long enough to show any warming.
Heck, you people were saying in the 90's that 20 years wasn't long enough to show proof of any warmin. Yet one year is enough to "prove" it isn't.
Remember too, that the instruments were not all the same so calibration between series is not a simple matter.
Complain about this comment
"If the viscount is barmey, why won't the alarmists debate with him? I"
Because he's a nut.
Do you think that the PM of the UK would debate his putative alien lizard heritage with David Ike? No? Why? Is it because Tony Blair is a lizard overlord???
NO. David Ike is a nut and not talking to the vicount isn't proof of his validity, merely a result of him being a nutter.
Complain about this comment
"let's see the IPCC claim there is an AGW signature, the climate scientists claim to have found it (but haven't even though they have searched for decades) and you think it's a brilliant sceptic tactic."
Saying that the signature not being proven to exist is proof AGW is false is a classic denialist tactic.
You still have no competing theory, do you. Your "theories" don't explain the data better than the current one.
And you include 10km in your "lower troposphere" but that's the top of it. And the top of a thicker blanket is colder than the top of a thin blanket when someone is under it and warming the bottom. So why do you call data missing when it's data that isn't at the place you say??? I.e. how can tropical lower tropospheric warming be counted as missing when you're including the upper troposphere where you're looking? It's like looking for the car in the bathroom and assuming it's been stolen because it's not there.
Read
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=562
For those who don't know why this "lack" is not proof and not relevant.
Complain about this comment
PAWB @ 119
Lord Monckton did do an Oxford style debate with Richard Littlemore of desmogblog.com
If you want to listen to the debate try here:
http://globalwarmingwatch.blogspot.com/2008/08/monckton-vs-littlemore-debate-audio.html
Needless to say since this, no one wants to take on Monckton anymore. Least of all Al Gore, if he is so certain of the science then why no debate?.
I also found this radio interview very interesting:
http://www.aim.org/podcast/lord-monckton-debunks-global-warming/
It's a pity about the use of ad-hoc soundbites aimed in his direction, which just seems to be the norm on pro AGW web sites. I would like to see maybe Richard Black talking/interviewing Lord Monckton if for nothing else balance of reporting.
Complain about this comment
"Skeptics don't see things as you see them, we just don't believe, more importantly we challenge consensus openly"
HAH!!!!
You don't show skepticism on the consensus that seems to exist here that AGW doesn't exist, though, do you. You're NOT A SKEPTIC. You believe with infantile credulity any statement that says AGW doesn't exist.
And we have a consensus that things fall DOWN not UP, the sun rises in the east, the earth revolves around the sun, yet you don't deny these and propose intelligent falling or earth-centrism, do you.
Why?
Because you don't want to change, or you're making money now and don't want to risk losing it, or you merely hate "green issues" and fight it without consideration, or even that you believe that the Free Market is the One True Way and ANY government intervention is an anathema to you.
Not because there's a consensus, but because you don't WANT the consensus to be right.
Another term for the consensus is repeatability. And science DEMANDS that people generally agree that a result will happen repeatably under the same conditions. A consensus that YOU demand is not science.
So must each and every person prove gravity exists because otherwise they're believing in a consensus?
Complain about this comment
"Why vote for the hockey stick when the IPCC has disowned it?"
Why continue to bring up the hockey stick when even the skeptic scientists no longer bother because the consensus on their side that there's something wrong with it has been proven wrong enough for them?
Because you don't want to conceive of AGW being true. So anything you can do to prove your OK in keeping your current comforting status is regurgitated.
You know that the MPAA considered VHS a terrible thing and that it would be the death of Movies if it became widespread, don't you? Do you know that they get as much or more money from VHS/DVD rental/sales than they get from ticket sales?
A change can lead to more prosperity. You just have to see the advantages and use them.
Complain about this comment
"if the alarmists had the smoking gun they would make sure the world knows about it"
Stratospheric Cooling.
CO2 from organic processes has an abundance of C14, fossil fuels have been sequestered long enough to have NO C14. Check the isotopic signature of the carbon in the atmosphere.
There you go.
TWO smoking guns.
I take it you're going to accept AGW now, or was that just empty posturing on your part?
Complain about this comment
"how does AGW / CO2 hypothesis manage to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics?"
It doesn't.
In the same way as life doesn't circumvent the second law either (we are more structured and less entropic than just a random glob of matter).
In what way do you think it does?
Complain about this comment
yeah-whatever:
The net heat flow is from oceans to air.
Complain about this comment
"The KEY PHRASE here is '...if not proving....'"
Nope.
Only if you want to believe that's a key phrase and not consider it to be anything other than saying "not proving".
We place a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere. That CO2 should warm the planet. By warming the planet, there is not the heat flux at the stratosphere that was there before (until we get back into equilibrium). The ITCZ should move toward the poles. The glaciers should melt, the plants bloom earlier, the animal habitats move polewards.
All of this is observed.
This doesn't prove AGW, in the sense of "it is proven to be correct" but the old term for "prove" is "test" and the AGW theory has passed those tests. In much the same way as Herceptin proved its efficacy on late-stage breast cancer of certain types, AGW has proved its ability to predict what the climate is doing.
Do you have ANYTHING that fits the observational evidence any better?
Complain about this comment
"That is why people like me, PAWB46 and millions of others will continue to challenge the myths of AGW."
PS, two inadvertent admissions here.
1) you BELIEVE it is a myth. You hold to it like it is your God. This is not science and this is not skepticism.
2) if there are millions of others with a consensus that AGW is a myth, surely skeptics of a consensus should be calling you out on your statements too. Gives the lie to THAT self-image, doesn't it.
Complain about this comment
If you can't fault the man's logic, call him mad. Does Richard want to see these personal attacks here?
Gotta go. Work calls for a few days.
Complain about this comment
On Monday 7 April the latest Arctic sea ice data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center was presented. It shows that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. New evidence from satellite observations also shows that the ice cap is thinning as well.
Scientists who track Arctic sea ice cover from space announced on Monday that this winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years, 2004-2009.
The scientists also pointed to changes in the way that sea ice survives between seasons. Thin seasonal ice -- ice that melts and re-freezes every year – now makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent.
They report that the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28, was 5.85 million square miles. That is 278,000 square miles less than the average extent for 1979 to 2000. They also stressed that it is not just surface area, but also thickness that is important.
Sea ice thickness has been hard to measure directly, so scientists have typically used estimates of ice age to approximate its thickness. But last year a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the first map of sea ice thickness over the entire Arctic basin. Using two years of data from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite, ICESat, Kwok's team estimated thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover for 2005 and 2006.
Kwoks results show that the older, thicker sea ice is declining and is being replaced with newer, thinner ice that is more vulnerable to summer melt. His team found that seasonal sea ice averages about 6 feet in thickness, while ice that had lasted through more than one summer averages about 9 feet, though it can grow much thicker in some locations near the coast. Kwok is currently working to extend the ICESat estimate further, from 2003 to 2008, to see how the recent decline in the area covered by sea ice is mirrored in changes in its volume.
The press release can be found at:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/apr/HQ_09-079_Sea_ice_thins.html
Complain about this comment
"If you can't fault the man's logic, call him mad."
And if someone's mad, their logic will be faulty.
It's kind of the definition of mad.
Complain about this comment
"The net heat flow is from oceans to air."
If you must talk of "net" then there must be a movement the other way, yes?
Now what happens when that warm tropical air blows over a tropical sea? The sea isn't 40C, is it.
So which way does the heat go?
Oh, looky. Heat flow from the air to the ocean.
Complain about this comment
"It's a pity about the use of ad-hoc soundbites aimed in his direction"
How about the use of ad-hoc (and ad-hom) soundbites he manages against "the conspiracy of AGW"???
He's a kook.
Have a look http://www.creationmuseum.org/ to see how some people are kooks. Look at some of the credentials backers have for this hypothesis.
Complain about this comment
"There is growing evidence that the warming has flattened and maybe even started to reverse -"
Odd. In the 90's there wasn't enough measurement to prove there was any warming at all. Yet when the temperature hasn't broken a record high for some few years, there's "growing evidence" that the atmosphere is cooling.
If 50 years isn't long enough, how can less than 5 be enough to draw a conclusion?
And the 14 warmest years on record have been in the last 15 years.
Sound like cooling? Not to anyone not blinkered by dogma.
Complain about this comment
yeah_whatever has a lot to say for himself.
Pity it's mostly rubbish
Complain about this comment
Listening to the monkton audio,
1 Big money asked him to look.
2 Says without proof, that the HC pushed a lie to get funding.
3 20ft rises not possible? Oxfordshire was under water once.
4 HC wanted media attention so lies for it(he's had media attention too, is he lying too).
5 "I have no financial interest", but does he appear as a speaker for free? No.
6 "we should adapt not mitigate" so Oxfordshire people should grow gills?
7 The increase in chinese output is because we outsourced all our manufacturing there
8 "we would go back to the stone age without the ability to even light a fire" but he claims the HC was alarmist????
9 China has told families not to have two or more children. Have we?
10 "mentioned various equations and various facts". What?
11 "appears to be coordinated" but here there seems to be coordination
12 "radiative equation was wrong, from all these people" well, maybe that's because A-level physics students could see he got it wrong?
13 ad-hom against RC.
14 claims being the victim several times. if you think you're right but you are wrong, all corrections will seem like an attack.
15 "otherwise this scam comes to an end". Ad-hoc personal attack.
16 small effect of CO2 on temperature?
17 Sells a documentary which will sell because a lot of people don't want to know AGW.
18 there's a debate he's not going to because he's going to give a presentation (where he will be "the authority") instead.
19 science and public policy is a libertarian think-tank. Check their board. Lots of CATO members, a few directors of oil companies.
20 he's doing a couple of lectures in the week. He's getting paid merely because he says AGW doesn't exist. If not, why must people saying AGW exists be doing so merely for the money?
21 GGWS got several sections wrong and even had to retract some statements. Never really hit the media lines.
22 "I'm not saying you must believe in something" but he is: he demands people believe that there are two equal sides supported by science.
23 if so many are interested and undergraduates, where's the papers in the journals?
24 the international conference on climate change is from the Heartland Institute. A libertarian thinktank, where ANY government action is an anathema.
25 children saying to the parents "it's all your fault". Yeah, that's a good reason to deny it.
26 "people whose real motives are ...undermining the economy". Proofs? No?
So anyone know what radiative equation monkton says he got right? He refuses to say in the debate.
PS from wikipedia:
The Heartland Institute is an American libertarian/conservative free market-oriented public policy think tank based in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1984, and is designated as a 501(c)(3)non-profit by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Heartland Institute is advised by a 15 member board of directors, which meets quarterly. As of 2008, it has a full-time staff of 30, including editors and senior fellows.[2]
"The Heartland Institute's research and advocacy cover a variety of issues including government spending, taxation, healthcare, tobacco policy, global warming, and free-market environmentalism. In its early years, it focused on policies relevant to the Midwestern United States; since 1993 it has focused on reaching elected officials and opinion leaders in all 50 states. In addition to research, the Heartland Institute features an Internet application called PolicyBot which serves as a clearinghouse for research from other think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Cato Institute. The Institute's president and CEO is Joseph L. Bast."
Complain about this comment
"141. At 10:40am on 07 Apr 2009, yertizz wrote:
yeah_whatever has a lot to say for himself.
Pity it's mostly rubbish"
cf:
"It's a pity about the use of ad-hoc soundbites aimed in his direction"
Hmmm.
If someone isn't buying your snake oil, then they're talking rubbush...
Complain about this comment
To "yeah-whatever" 'manyposts':
I needed that this morning!
And I hope to hear 'plenty' more from you in the future, and good luck to us all!
To simon-swede #136:
I hope it's still sunny in your part of Sweden.
You do have to love field work and empirical data - 'the rock upon which we shall build our house.'
\\\ Manysummits (big Chinook in Calgary) ///
Complain about this comment
@118 Cucutoo - the IPCC includes climatologists.
Of course I'm happy to accept that climatologists (and paleoclimatologists for that matter) know vastly more than I ever will on the subject and that's why I tend to follow their research quote the bits I understand and are relevant and prefer to accept in general, their advice (with a bit of common sense thrown in of course). That's why I'm an alarmist and don't provide links to barmy viscounts, rabid oz journalists or right wing lobby groups.
So, the climatologists say the hotspot (if/when it is found) is a signal of warming NOT anthropogenic warming. So the debate would still be on. The real greenhouse signal, as I mentioned before, is stratospheric cooling and that has been found.
The barmy viscount lost any creditability with me when he tried to claim the earth was a black-body......seemed to be a lot of white bits when I last looked.
Is there any other proof you require?
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
don't shoot the messenger
Complain about this comment
No comments on the NASA Arctic icedata announcement from Monday? See post #136.
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever #126 etc
Saying that the signature not being proven to exist is proof AGW is false is a classic denialist tactic.
If the IPCC predict the existence of a signature and it hasn’t been found, despite extensive searches, surely that means it doesn’t exist or the models are wrong. Please explain your thinking for claiming it’s a denialist [sic] tactic.
You still have no competing theory, do you. Your "theories" don't explain the data better than the current one.
If global warming is natural, then no theory is required.
And you include 10km in your "lower troposphere" but that's the top of it.
I don’t think I mentioned the lower troposphere in this thread, but please correct me if I am wrong
Stratospheric Cooling
Please elaborate
CO2 from organic processes has an abundance of C14, fossil fuels have been sequestered long enough to have NO C14. Check the isotopic signature of the carbon in the atmosphere
Still no signature, therefore an assumption – not science
"how does AGW / CO2 hypothesis manage to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics?"
It doesn't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
"There is growing evidence that the warming has flattened and maybe even started to reverse -"
Odd. In the 90's there wasn't enough measurement to prove there was any warming at all. Yet when the temperature hasn't broken a record high for some few years, there's "growing evidence" that the atmosphere is cooling.
If 50 years isn't long enough, how can less than 5 be enough to draw a conclusion?
I didn’t say temperatures were less than 50 years ago or even 10 years ago and I was careful to say temperatures were still at measured record levels. Actual real life measurements show the ocean has cooled and the rise in sea levels has decreased – don’t take my word for it, check it for yourself
Complain about this comment
@rossglory #145
not all climate scientists agree with the IPCC
Monkton, like it or not, is a respected authority on climate with several published and peer-reviewed papers, therefore he should not be discounted
So, the climatologists say the hotspot (if/when it is found) is a signal of warming NOT anthropogenic warming.
The IPCC states if and when the hotspot is found, it is clear evidence of AGW, therefore the absense of the hotspot is evidence of the warning not being attributable to man. Santer clains to have found the hotspot over the tropics in exactly the location predicted, but refuses to release his data (which is a reworking of old data) for verification and replication. Science, don't forget, should be capable of being replicated
Complain about this comment
@simon-swede #147
what are you looking for? ice melting or growing is not evidence of AGW, it's just evidence of warming, probably natural as has occurred for centuries
Complain about this comment
"@yeah_whatever
don't shoot the messenger"
I'm not.
Stop denying physics when the results aren't comfortable for you.
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
Stop denying physics when the results aren't comfortable for you.
lol
Complain about this comment
CuckooToo @150
The press statement takes a difefrent view to yours. It concludes with the following:
"With these new data on both the area and thickness of Arctic sea ice, we will be able to better understand the sensitivity and vulnerability of the ice cover to changes in climate."
Complain about this comment
@simon-swede
but that statement doesn't seem to state it is attributable to AGW, just evidence of warming
Complain about this comment
Just learned of a delightful word which would seem to cover both "sides" attitudes towards the "others" use of science in this debate.
The word is NESCIENCE and it means: Lack of knowledge or awareness; ignorance.
Complain about this comment
"but that statement doesn't seem to state it is attributable to AGW, just evidence of warming"
It doesn't state.
But what is causing the melting?
Too much chocolate??
Someone earlier wanted (was it you?) a "smoking gun", well this isn't a smoking gun, but it IS a receipt for some more bullets and a letter saying "I'm going to shoot you".
Complain about this comment
"what are you looking for? ice melting or growing is not evidence of AGW, it's just evidence of warming, probably natural as has occurred for centuries"
Where's the evidence that it's natural?
We have CO2 out there and the amount of warming is appropriate for the effect of that much CO2.
So we have
a) a dead body (ice melting)
b) a bottle labeled "poison" (CO2)
c) a person who wanted this one dead (CO2 is a greenhouse gas)
And you want the body just buried because "people have died before. it's probably just natural causes and has been going on for centuries".
Complain about this comment
"not all climate scientists agree with the IPCC"
And not all scientists agree with an earth billions of years old.
I disagree with you. So you must be wrong, yes? That's all the "proof" you have that the IPCC is wrong, so it should work for you too.
"Monkton, like it or not, is a respected authority on climate with several published and peer-reviewed papers, therefore he should not be discounted"
He is???? He admits himself that he's no climatologist. How can he be a respected authority on something he's not an authority on? Because he says what some people like to hear???
"The IPCC states if and when the hotspot is found, it is clear evidence of AGW"
Please show us where this is.
Looking at the graph, the upper/middle of the troposphere looks to show no change. And doesn't get significantly negative until 20KM and more above the sea level.
That's above the tropopause.
But there's no mention in your weirding way of where the measurements showing the opposite effect is.
Please show us your cards. Where are the measurements and what is the error in them?
You can't point to a graph, state incorrectly that there's supposed to be a cooling in the middle troposphere and then state that this has not been found. You have to show where it's been found not to occur.
Complain about this comment
Read this:
http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/skepticsdenialists-part-2-hotspots-and-repetition/
Complain about this comment
"The word is NESCIENCE and it means: Lack of knowledge or awareness; ignorance."
Would it be pronounced "Niii Science" a la Knights Who Say "Nii"?
A lot of their arguments are about the level of A Shrubbery...!
Nii!
Complain about this comment
A little perspective on the Artic ice from a non-scientist to all you 'NESCIENTISTS' (nice word simon-swede) in my attempt to understand this debate:
Over 12k years ago wooly mammoths played in the Arctic region until they were frozen into permafrost. Our human ancestors then fished off the ice flows in the Bay of Biscay and glaciers covered the Great Lakes. Over a period of the next 8k years the ice came and went until it receded to our current levels. About 1k years ago Vikings were sailing in the vicinity of Greenland and setting up thriving settlements. 0.5k years ago the area iced over again and the early ocean explorers, in trying to find a route through the Northwest Passage could not even get close and many perished in the ice. 0.1k years ago Amundsan sails through the NWP for the first time in recent history. It freezes up again soon after. 0.06k years ago several expeditions make it through the Northwest Passage. 0.03k years ago we have the first accurate method of measurements with satellites. Over recent years the wooly mammoths that were frozen in the ice are just starting to thaw out so I guess we have just come full circle. Boy I hope we do not have to go through a cycle like that again.
Cheers..
Complain about this comment
"Over 12k years ago wooly mammoths played in the Arctic region"
And didn't drill for oil.
How does your little story prove that CO2 isn't causing warming and we're producing too much CO2?
Complain about this comment
#162 yeah_whatever:
Not trying to prove anything. Just offering a historic perspective on the 'natural' ebb and flow of ice. Take it or leave it.
Cheers...
Complain about this comment
Ahh, Cuckoo.
Lets see. You claim:
"how does AGW / CO2 hypothesis manage to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics?"
Do you still agree with that claim?
Or have you seen where you went wrong? Thermodynamics is a difficult topic, its ok to make a mistake.
Complain about this comment
"Not trying to prove anything. Just offering a historic perspective on the 'natural' ebb and flow of ice. Take it or leave it."
Why should it have been put here at all?
Should we have someone talk about the history of the UK monarchy???
And why should the "natural ebb and flow" be pertinent when this isn't natural?
In the days you mentioned, there was less CO2 in the atmosphere and we had an ice age. In the past it's been cold, warm, cold, warm, cold, warm. What do you think the next step is in this natural progression?
If you said "cold" you'd be right.
Now if it's went cold, warm, cold, warm, cold, warm, warmer, would you then consider something has changed? If you found out that fossil fuels had in the last one had been extracted and burned by the gigaton and no previous animal alive for any of the others had the capability to do so, would you not consider as a working hypothesis that maybe, just maybe, that burning of fossil fuels could be a major factor?
Of course, YOU won't, because you believe with all your heart that there is no such thing as AGW.
Come one, lets start finding where your assumptions change:
Step 1: Is CO2 a greenhouse gas or not.
Complain about this comment
"0.1k years ago Amundsan sails through the NWP for the first time in recent history. "
False. He passed through the NWP in a sailing ship. But mostly by being stuck in the ice and waiting for it to carry him where he wanted to go.
He didn't sail through the NWP.
Why do you lie so much?
Complain about this comment
Cuckootoo,
Exactly what data are Santer et al refusing to release?
Complain about this comment
#165 yeah_whatever
You ask why this comment of mine "should be here at all"
"Not trying to prove anything. Just offering a historic perspective on the 'natural' ebb and flow of ice. Take it or leave it."
Perhaps it has escaped your attention this is an Environment/Nature site. It seems to have been highjacked by AGW NESCIENTISTS
You ask "why I lie so much" over a single point of minor semantics.
You have an unfortunate way of expressing yourself.
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
This thread is partly about "so much vitriol" and whilst we are all guilty, you seem to be raising the level to knew heights. All of us at Richards blog like to think we are reasonable people, so perhaps you could turn it down a little and argue the points raised in a reasonable manner.
@CobblyWorlds
See here http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4314
Complain about this comment
@calcination
Always happy to be enlightened and rarely embarrassed to make a mistake - it's how we learn
Complain about this comment
Cuckootoo,
Your claim is baseless, as is the facile complaint of Steve McIntyre.
Steve McIntyre has no right whatsoever to expect others to do his work for him. As Ben Santer replies* all the base information and methods are available for researchers (indeed the methods are available for the general public, although a fee may be payable for the primary peer reviewed papers needed). *Ben Santer's reply is available on the page you linked to in post 169.
I have just done some work where I have drawn conclusions from a Discrete Fourier Transform of the data in question. I have not kept the DFT results as they are not needed. Anyone who disagrees with me on that matter can reproduce them in their own time.
I take it you have no substantive criticism of Santer et al.
Then that being the case, as you (and Steve McIntyre) cannot demonstrate a problem with Santer et al may I take it that you accept that globally the tropospheric warming fingerprint is demonstrated and that there is no substantive conflict between modelled and observed tropical tropospheric lapse rates?
Complain about this comment
"All of us at Richards blog like to think we are reasonable people, ..."
Hmmm. Please point out the differences.
I've seen "AGW is a scam to get money" posited on here.
I've been told all I say is rubbish.
Please, where is the vitriol that you see in my posts that outlasts that in others here?
Complain about this comment
PS
"and argue the points raised in a reasonable manner."
What points?
We have "in the long days ago, sild mastadons roamed the earth...". What point is that making that is pertinent?
None.
Pointing that out is rude???
Complain about this comment
"Perhaps it has escaped your attention this is an Environment/Nature site. "
Uh, take a look at the heading.
This isn't a thread about the ancient flora and fauna.
If you want to talk about ice age europe, ask for a new thread.
Complain about this comment
Good, ok, now you agree that CO2 effectively trapping heat, or rather slowing its outward progress, does not break the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This, plus your previous agreement that various gases and vapours absorb and re-radiate energy in the atmosphere sets us up nicely to ask precisely what your problem with CO2 is.
Do you think the sensitivity is only a degree or less?
Complain about this comment
And as to why I say "why do you lie so much", I said it once when you lied.
This is when you're allowed to say "you lie".
Amundsun did not sail through the NWP. Missing out the point that he stuck himself into ice and let it drift until he got free is kind of the point of your reason to mention it. Your implication that he managed the NWP is so as to remove any feeling of change when you now have commercial ships (not ice breakers, who would not have managed the trip in Amundsun's time either) move through the NWP. It didn't move through. The ice did. He went along for the ride.
Please check "lie by omission": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
Complain about this comment
Below is a link to a little column that points out that cherry-picking data may give a nice soundbite but it doesn't really do justice to the complexity of the masses of data out there on climate change.
The piece goes on to say that the data is there in abundance and indicates that AGW is actually happening in the real world. It cautions that communication of this needs to be improved, including the communication of the uncertainties.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/cool-spells-in-a-warming-world/
Complain about this comment
#177 simon-swede
I agree. The abundant data is not getting to me very clearly right now so I would appreciate the efforts to improve the communication.
#176 yeah_whatever
So maybe you could have corrected my statement by politely pointing this out and suggesting alternative phrasing. Something like: "Amundsen moved though the NW Passage in a boat". (My point being that he would not have made it if he had had to start in the Bay of Biscay.)
You would have contributed to my understanding instead of calling me a liar.
Just trying to help you out with examples of communication in a "reasonable manner"
Cheers....
Complain about this comment
"It cautions that communication of this needs to be improved, including the communication of the uncertainties."
The problem with that is that when a denialist sees the data and if they find something wrong (even if it has no effect), they can pounce on it and wave it in the air as "proof" it's all a hoax. And if it's changed, it will be ignored. Either by using the old data, proclaiming that the changes were unscientific fiddles, or by merely pretending there was no change.
Lindzen did that recently with the satellite data that was corrected but he continued to use the uncorrected data to show how the data proves AGW is wrong.
Of course, WUWT printed Lindzen's complete paper without critique, and haven't then gone back and as publicly critiqued Lindzen's paper now that his conclusions have been looked into.
There's plenty of data out there.
Then where there IS the data (getting back to your quote), they start asking for the source code used. As if they couldn't do the statistical analysis from the paper itself ("using the chi-squared test with a null hypothesis of...").
And they demand the raw data.
Which isn't all that useful since you only have a value from 0-INT_MAX which is the electron count from the CCD sensor. Converting that to a temperature would have them demand the schematics of how the sensor worked.
And whilst you're collecting all this stuff for them, you're not doing your job.
Now do we have the anti crowd doing the same?
Well you can see here.
I've asked if anyone had a competing theory. No response.
I've asked if someone has a problem with CO2 being a greenhouse gas. No response.
Someone else has asked questions about the "science" behind other people's assertion (like "GW disobeys the second law of thermodynamics"). No response.
Why is it that with a simple and well-proven theory
a) CO2 is a greenhouse gas
b) CO2 is the result of burning hydrocarbons in an oxygen bearing atmosphere
c) we burn trillions of kilos of hydrocarbons each year
d) this will warm the earth
why it must be the proof of those trying to find out the details that is demanded to the n'th level of detail.
Yet those saying "it's microlensing" or "it's cosmic rays" or "the sun does it" or other weirdness, don't even have to put their work up for peer review. Just have a thinktank-paid website post it and spread the word.
No raw data. No complete source code. No nth-degree cross examination. "That's interesting. I'd always suspected AGW was a hoax and this proves it" is about as critical it gets.
Complain about this comment
"So maybe you could have corrected my statement by politely pointing this out and suggesting alternative phrasing."
Why?
Could you not have read up about something before posting it?
Or if you knew, maybe not left out such a huge gaping hole in your story?
I've run* 10.75 miles in less than 35 minutes.
Olympic athletes, weep!
*by "running", I mean riding a bicycle, but my legs went up and down and it's 100% human powered, so what's the difference, eh?
Complain about this comment
PS as to "Something like: "Amundsen moved though the NW Passage in a boat"."
why again? Eskimos have WALKED the NWP for a thousand years. And quite a bit quicker. Polar bears, artic foxes and the like have probably done for much longer than recorded history.
They can't risk walking it now, mind. The ice has melted.
And what does "he went by boat and trapped himself in ice" have to do with global warming? If it warms much more, it will be IMPOSSIBLE to trap yourself in ice in the NWP during summer like he did. The ice won't be there. In fact the ice that WAS there summer before last wouldn't have kept Amundsen's boat locked like it did before against a wind stronger than brisk.
Getting locked in ice is the only thing that makes the nugget of information (that you seem to say you didn't know, so how many other things have you said that you don't know?) pertinent in climate change. And it would only be pertinent if you then said "and he wouldn't have had half the trouble today", though that would be a point FOR global warming.
Stop regurgitating things as FACT you don't know. Check whether you're being lied to by people who say AGW is false to the same level you question the thousands of climate scientists who say otherwise.
Then maybe you won't get called a liar.
Complain about this comment
" ... Unfortunately, politicized debate has overshadowed scientific understanding in public discourse."
Write Bowman et al in a letter about climate change and communication in the current issue of Science.
Think they've been reading this blog?!
Complain about this comment
#180 yeah_whatever. When I run my legs stride out. Unless you mean running on the spot.
Semantics again but I'm not going to call you a liar. Just a gentle observation.
I actually come to this blog to learn (and contribute in my limited way) because knowledgable folks have taken the time to give some excellent feedback in a gracious and non-hostile manner. I may not always agree with but it gives me food for thought and I'm sure helps to broadern and shift my view over a period of time. I'm relatively new to blogging but I know I would not have attempted contributiing to this blog if the current level of comments had been present when I made my first one.
Hey at this rate Richard's going for a double century. Is this a first? Not sure how proud he will be of it though.
Cheers....
Complain about this comment
The White House Office of Management and Budget, OMB, has begun reviewing a proposed EPA determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
Under the Clean Air Act, this "endangerment finding" is a necessary precursor to the development of Federal greenhouse gas emission standards for mobile and stationary sources.
OMB review is one of the final steps before release of the long-awaited proposed decision, which will undergo a 60-day public comment period before becoming final.
Complain about this comment
Firstly, Richard; fantastic post. Best one I think I've read from you (though I've only started following your blog relatively recently).
The string of comments has been hijacked, once again - though I'm not complaining, just stating; what has been said is quite interesting.
However, to stay on topic, you touch on the economics - and that element has been largely ignored in discussion here. The debate on climate change is about both. It's about, as you ask, whether the sky is grey enough to warrant us taking action. The more costly the action, the more certainty we require before we act.
104 - Borisnorris' post is fantastic.
For me, it sums things up.
Economics is easy if you take money out of the equation. I think creating "green jobs" is a red herring. Theoretically, the economy grows by us entering a new field, becoming more efficient at it (eg. through mechanisation), therefore needing fewer people to employ, making that product cheaper and therefore having the people who were working in the original industry move on to a new one. Result - real incomes rise, we can afford more "stuff" - which is apparently a good thing.
Something's cost can be boiled down to the cost of employing people in the supply chain, and the profit margin. If we create a power industry that requires twice as many people, that's twice the wages and twice the electricity bill.
This is a step backwards in economic development - a short term fix for employment maybe, but not a long term solution.
[Though notice I've mixed money in here, which confuses the issue, arguably a power industry with twice as many people and twice the cost is still worth it, if there are benefits (or avoided costs) to the eonvironment]
Renewables are fundamentally better for our economy, because they free up natural resources - as BorisNorris points out, but we have to be sensible. 7p/kW subsidy of offshore wind don't do us any good, because offshore is a technical nightmare and the manpower required per kW (the efficiency in an economic sense) is too low.
Personally, I'd rather see retrofitting of houses with heat pumps and solar collectors. A technology which looks far more efficient (material and labour-wise), than even natural gas for domestic heating - therefore real economic development.
Until we make a proper economic plan of where we want to go as a species, we can forget "saving the planet" because we're so short sighted that we do, as BorisNorris suggests, think far too short term. In the end, if we don't blow ourselves up first (I'm thinking more nukes than climate change here) I think we'll see the world move far more to a leisure economy, where resources are used less and all our basic needs are cared for with minimum employment of people. Funnily enough, it's all about sustainability.
OTHER POINTS:
@ bicycle_fan - quite early on.
You made a comment about electric cars just shifting CO2 emissions is not entirely true. There is an efficiency saving in generating the electricity in a gas station (40% efficient), transporting it (92% efficient) and storing it in batteries (again 90 something efficient) - roughtly, relative to the internal combustion engine - the percentage for which escapes me, but it's in the low 30s at best. David MacKay's "Without hot air" has the maths.
You do seem to have an aversion to the car, however, unfortunately, I don't think many people will bare the inconvenience of losing one as you have done. I'm sure trains and buses must play a bigger role in the future for purely practical reasons - congestion mostly - but the car is here to stay - unless someone works out teleportation. Here, efficiency is all.
@ theskyisnotfalling - 100,
"ROFLMAO" - "Rolling on the floor laughing my bottom[substitute correct word that the filter will not allow here] off" - I would moan about that being SPAM, but you lighted my mood (99 posts from you guys gets depressive!), so instead I'll say thanks.
Complain about this comment
"I actually come to this blog to learn (and contribute in my limited way) because knowledgable folks have taken the time to give some excellent feedback"
Then why are you saying things you don't know are true?
Why haven't you answered questions people have asked of you, rather than post more questions?
Complain about this comment
All I can say is - Jumping Jackfish!!!!!!!!!!!
This blog has taken on a life of its own!
I have just returned home, and on the way I stopped at a local college and printed off two articles from 'Nature' on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
1) "Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations",
- T. Naish et al, Nature, vol 458, Mar 19 2009, pgs. 322-329.
2) "Modelling West Antarctic ice sheet growth and collapse through the past five million years"
- Pollard & DeConto, Nature, vol 458, 19 Mar 2009, pgs 329-333.
But the 'CLIMATE' doesn't seem right for this just now.
I actually read all the last days' postings while at the college, and thought a lot about them on the twenty minute walk home. They made a very strong impression on me, one which I am still trying to digest.
I can feel the frustration of the pro-AGW group, manifested in different ways. There is obviously a pent up anger, even rage, at the 'obliquity' of the skeptic's views and lack of meaningful scientific discussion. This seeming 'tactical' obfuscation was pointed out on numerous occassions, and I put it forward that any reasonable man or woman would see this too. In a sense, for the AGW side - 'mission accomplished.'
However - we all know this is not the case.
The assault on the Environment continues unabated, our numbers soar.
The mitigation in the works is not sufficient, except perhaps as a beginning. There is hope there, and that we need.
'Timjenvey', I wish to speak to you on my own integrity, without cited references. The Mammoths, at least in North America, were in all probability driven to extinction by us. Not perhaps directly, in the sense that we speared them all, but we were the difference. They did not freeze to death, that is sure, and they had survived many glacial/interglacials before - "US".
Except for Africa, this has been the case on every continent and island group "WE", unbidden, have come to. Extinctions at various scales in some sense just because we were there. We are competitive, that is surely clear from the posts on this site, and inventive.
But are we inventive enough to survive in the long run?
- Manysummits, Calgary -
Complain about this comment
To yeah_whatever #what ever:
When I write about a boat that goes from A to B my mind just says it sailed. Boats do sail most of the time thank goodness. This is a blog not an English grammer class.
However, you correctly point out that the ice moved him some of the way for which I acknowledge and thank you for the correction.
I seem to have inadvertently pressed a sensitive spot and I apologize.
A little humble observation if I may; when you run take some 'strides' and you will actually move around which can be quite illuminating. Running on the spot as you say "my legs went up and down and it's 100% human powered" is not nearly so satisfying.
Got a good feeling about a double century of comments on this one!!!!
Cheers....
Complain about this comment
\\\ G20, Bonn and the climate of opinion ///
OK - I'll go political. Something about this blog-fest has inspired me.
1) We should speak through 'our' United Nations, and make a declaration to the effect that there are too many of us for a sustainable future, 'at this time' and for the foreseeable future. A simple majority of nations would be sufficient for me, and the support of the 'superpowers' is not essential.
2) If the United States declares CO2 a pollutant, then the United Nations should follow suit. This would require the consent and the active participation of the 'superpowers'.
3) I wonder if the Olympic flag might not become the official flag of the United Nations and of the world? When the Olympics was here in 1988, I remember this flag as the most precious part of the entire event.
We are a symbolic race, and the Olympic flag also represents Antarctica. I believe it is unique in this respect.
- Why not? - Manysummits, Calgary
Complain about this comment
simon-swede #184
Thanks for bringing to attention. I live in the US and will be affected by the EPA recommendation about CO2. I've also been following the Obama budget that seems to quite heavily depend on revenues from carbon taxing.
I do not have a problem with a carbon tax per se (as much as I do any tax of course). In fact I think it has some positive and could have a fare result. I did support Maggie Thatcher in the 80's when she used the exact same strategy with CO2 to defeat the miners and back nuclear.
My concern is with the baggage that will come from the eco activists and the frenetic rush for sustainable energy that so far has resulted in huge subsidies on non-fit for purpose sources ("fads" imo). If carbon tax is the end result then I hope this CO2 debate will quickly dissipate.
bringiton8989 #185: gave a very helpful insight into this area and I do find I am in general agreement with his thinking. We do need a robust economic plan that puts sustainability as its focus.
It would fit well with my Project Management perspective (from previous posts) in becoming a major “driver” and then we could quietly drop off CO2.
Cheers……
Complain about this comment
I just came across this, from the BBC: (Climate Change)
- by Andrew Simms
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7988648.stm
Here are a few excerpts:
"Using thresholds for risk identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on current trends, in only 92 months - less than eight years - we will move into a new, more perilous phase of warming.
It will then no longer be "likely" that we can prevent some aspects of runaway climate change. We will begin to lose the climatic conditions which, as Nasa scientist James Hansen points out, were those under which civilisation developed.
There seems to be a hard-wired link between memory failure and market failure.
As the historian E J Hobsbawm observed in The Age of Extremes: "Those of us who lived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impossible to understand how the orthodoxies of the pure free market, then so obviously discredited, once again came to preside over a global period of depression in the late 1980s and 1990s".
Perhaps the greatest failure is one of imagination.
Looking forward, the IPCC's worst case scenario warns of a maximum 6C rise over the next century.
Looking back, however, indicates that an unstable climate system holds worse horrors.
Work by the scientist Richard Alley on abrupt climate change indicates the planet has previously experienced a 10C temperature shift in only a decade, and possibly "as quickly as in a single year".
And, around the turn of the last Ice Age, there were "local warmings as large as 16C"."
A word or two on the WestAntarctic Ice Sheet seems appropriate here and now:
Five degrees of warming is seen as a possible threshold value for initiation of complete collapse of the WAIS. Recent work indicates the West Antarctic is warming at 0.1 degrees C per decade. Simple extrapolation yields a time of five hundred years to reach five degrees of warming. But everything we think we know about the climate system tells us that it is a chaotic system in the technical sense, i.e., not random, but non-linear.
This is what the Richard Alley quote, "as quickly as in a single year", given above, is all about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Alley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
To manysummits #187: Thanks for commenting on this one. Yeah_whatever also took time to reply so I’m feeling quite honoured.
You say – “ 'Timjenvey', I wish to speak to you on my own integrity, without cited references. The Mammoths, at least in North America, were in all probability driven to extinction by us”.
My understanding of our ancestors is that they had a lot more idea of sustainable living than we do now. Their very existence depended on it and would have been controled by it. So I do not think that you should do too much penance over the sins of our ancestors on this one.
In fact the woolly mammoths that I am referring to some how got frozen whole into permafrost. I think we would have at least made an attempt at eating them and using their bones and tusks etc. for ingenious devices. I cannot think we killed so many and left them around to go into deepfreeze. There again perhaps our ancestors knew that deep freezing them would preserve them so they would be good for future sustainability.
Just my perspective.
Cheers......
Complain about this comment
bringiton8989 @145 commented on “greenjobs”
In a similar vein, The Economist of 2 April has an article entitled “The Grass is Always Greener”. It discusses whether the goals of “saving the planet” and “creating jobs” are compatible. Essentially, some ways of creating jobs or fighting global warming, for that matter, are cheaper than others. In setting priorities for use of funds, one has to be clear about the goals and the priorities.
The potential benefits of a greenjobs strategy are manifold. As the Economist puts it, a “return to economic growth, deliverance from global warming and an escape from dependence on imported fuels, all wrapped up in an appealingly high-tech package.”
On the “plus” side, the article notes that there are numerous studies on green jobs that support this optimistic view. To cite just a few, it mentions one by the Center for American Progress, a thinktank with close ties to Mr Obama’s administration, which argued that USD100 billion on various green initiatives would create 2m jobs. Roland Berger, a firm of consultants, estimates that global spending on environmental technology is EURO 1 trillion, or about USD1.3 trillion, a year, and will grow by 5.4% a year until 2020. It calculates that this business sustains 1.5m jobs in Germany. The number of jobs could double, if the government offered more tax breaks, subsidies and other incentives for investment in greenery. The United Nations Environment Programme sees scope for ten times as many jobs in clean energy by 2030.
On the “down” side, the article notes that critics point to important outstanding questions. How many jobs would be created by spending the money in other ways? A recent paper from the Peterson Institute of International Economics and the World Resources Institute, tries to do just that for America’s stimulus package. It finds that USD1 billion in green spending creates 30,100 “job-years”. That compares well with 25,200 job-years for road construction and only 7,000 for temporary tax cuts (permanent ones do better).
Green stimulus schemes perform well where they catalyse private investment in things like windmills and fuel-efficient cars. But The Economist notes that also flatters the employment numbers, as it assumes that the stimulus induces private spending that would not otherwise occur. If it simply redirects capital from one use to another, then the number of jobs created might not be so great.
Public investment in green technology brings costs as well as benefits. Taxpayers, for example, will ultimately have to pay for government debt, while government borrowing may make it harder for businesses to raise money. Spending on renewable electricity, may have higher investment costs than conventional sources, potentially costing jobs. In 2006, in a study prepared for a pro-coal lobbying group, Adam Rose and Dan Wei of Pennsylvania State University looked at how increasing the share of renewables in electricity generation at the expense of coal might affect employment. Displacing a third of generation from coal by 2015 would put 1.2m people out of work, they concluded, and displacing two-thirds would raise the figure to 2.7m. The job losses came chiefly as a result of higher energy prices.
If greenjobs subsidies may be expensive, they might still be justified on the basis of the other benefits, such as reducing demand for, and thus the price of, fossil fuels. The article notes that the biggest benefit of all, of course, is to the environment, in the form of reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. To the extent that these and other externalities of fossil fuel use are free or “underpriced” the emissions reflect a severely distorted energy market where major costs are not factored into pricing. Taking all of that into account would doubtless make the numbers look better.
Not sure if the link to the full article is allowable under house rules, but here it is… maybe…. http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13404568
Complain about this comment
If money talks, then Big Oil investments speak louder than words about their attitudes to climate change!
The scale of their alternative [energy] investments is so mind-numbingly small that it’s hard to find them,” said Nathanael Greene, a senior policy analyst at the NRDC in Washington, quotes in an article in the New York Times.
The oil companies have frequently run advertisements expressing their interest in new forms of energy, but their actual investments have belied the marketing claims. The great bulk of their investments goes to traditional petroleum resources, including carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands and natural gas from shale, while alternative investments account for a tiny fraction of their spending. So far, that has changed little under the Obama administration.
Most investments in alternative sources of energy are coming from pockets other than those of the oil companies. In the last 15 years, the top five oil companies have spent around US$5 billion to develop sources of renewable energy, according to an industry trade group. This represents only 10 percent of the roughly US $50 billion funnelled into the clean-energy sector by venture capital funds and corporate investors during the same period.
For the NYT article, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/business/energy-environment/08greenoil.html?_r=1&ref=science
Complain about this comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Roch
Excerpt:
The St. Roch is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police schooner, the first ship to completely circumnavigate North America, and the second sailing vessel to complete a voyage through the Northwest Passage. (It was the first ship to complete the Northwest Passage in the direction west to east, going the same route that Amundsen on the sailing vessel Gjøa went east to west, 38 years earlier.)
Bring It on @185
You are right, the vitriol level here is getting bad and I was out of order to post my ROFLMAO at yeah what ever, but given the invective of his posts and the tone of them, I now find I just skip them, I don't sense any respect for other peoples opinion in his posts - but i do apologise to everyone for that comment.
Complain about this comment
Maybe this can help sober up the tone a little...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/11/climate-change-science-pope
Just one snippet as an example; this about the Greenland ice cover...
--- "Again, natural variability has been ignored in order to support a particular point of view, with climate change advocates leaping on the acceleration to further their cause and the climate change sceptics now using the slowing down to their own benefit. Neither group is right and all that is achieved is greater confusion among the public".
I imagine that the most a good debate can do is influence the people who are sitting on the fence to sway one way or the other. So I suggest that certain contributers stop ridiculing each other and aim some decent comments at those with an open mind where you might have some influence.
Complain about this comment
I thought Richard's piece yesterday on the Artic Ice was sober enough.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7987354.stm
It worries me a bit when I see a graph starting at 14 instead of zero. Was it to save space or make it look steeper?
Also a graph showing the changes in summer minimum area would have been interesting to see, especially as it is said to be declining almost 3 times faster than the winter maximum.
The Guardian had a less sober headline (last Monday) "Thinning Arctic sea ice alarms experts"...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/06/arctic-sea-ice-warning
...but the animated sequence; also at...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/apr/06/arctic-sea-ice-old-first-year
...looks really interesting. I just wish they had shown the actual years; presumably 1979 to 2009 but I haven't figured it out yet.
Complain about this comment
I see (on a lighter note) that the marketing people are working well.
You can buy an ECO kettle... (google it if you like)..
"The Eco Kettle has been invented to specifically meet the challenge of reducing the amount of energy wasted by overfilling your kettle. Fill the kettle to the brim and simply press the button in the lid to release a specific amount of water (1-to-8 cups worth) into the ‘boiling chamber’. This easy, simple method of accurately ensuring that you boil only the water that you need means that you can save the planet while on your tea break!"
...
"The Eco Kettle was invented in the UK and has been awarded the prestigious 'Recommended' mark by the Energy Saving Trust. This is the first award to be given in the EST's newly established Kettle category, and endorses the massive 31% average energy savings achieved by the ECO Kettle in independent trials. Based upon average usage figures, it is estimated that ECO Kettles sold over the past 3 years have already reduced CO2 emissions in the UK by a staggering 1000 tonnes."
I wonder how many people would realise that that "staggering" saving amounts to the emissions of just 30 people over 3 years.
As for "...save the planet while on your tea break..."
I wonder whether this kind of stuff "domesticates" the whole issue and makes the public more "at ease" with it.
Complain about this comment
I see Friends of the Earth offer a book...
"Save cash and save the planet"
"Practical advice for pound-stretching planet-savers: home-made cleaning products, no-cost energy efficiency measures, budget organic vegetables, and how to shop on the cheap without costing the Earth."
Last year they were advertising "Environmentally Friendly" car tyres here in Sweden. "Less polluting" I'd go with, but "friendly"???
I guess soon all commodities will have to be labelled as "Planet Saving" or they won't sell against the competition. That could be a nightmare for the marketing watchdog organisations.
Complain about this comment
Couldn't resist going for 200.
So from back in November 2007 ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/01/ethicalliving.g2
'Just where do you start when you want to "save the planet"? '
"The top 20: What the panel prescribes
1 Dramatically improve the energy efficiency of electrical goods
2 Religious leaders to make the environment a priority for their followers
3 Encourage the widespread use of solar power throughout the world
4 Secure a meaningful post-Kyoto treaty on reducing the emissions that contribute to global warming
5 Encourage households to generate much more of their own power
6 Introduce tax incentives to "buy green"
7 Tackle the rapid growth in aviation emissions
8 Wean ourselves off dependency on petroleum
9 Encourage individuals to buy less non-essential "stuff "
10 Dramatically improve public transport
11 Aim for a "zero waste" culture
12 Install "smart energy" meters in all homes
13 Introduce a measure of economic success that includes the environment
14 Fully harness Britain's huge potential for generating renewable energy
15 Seek alternative, less damaging sources for biofuels
16 Bury carbon dioxide from power stations underground
17 Encourage hydrogen fuel cell technology in cars
18 Implement government policies to control global population growth
19 Reach international agreement on preserving rainforests
20 Create better incentives to improve energy efficiency in the home"
Complain about this comment
On no...
"17922 'Green Oil' - For Bikes and More
Chains, gears, rusty bolts, catches, hinges, drawers? 'Green Oil' is the answer - this environmentally-friendly lubricant has no Teflon or petrochemical content, and no carcinogens. Awarded What Mountain Bike’s Gold Award, cyclists everywhere use Green Oil for bike chains and gears. If you’re not a cyclist it’s still a great lubricating oil for general purpose use - you'll love it."
No attempt to say what it's actually made of...
I'm not going to look for any more, I want to stay sane (at least for a litte longer).
Complain about this comment
#197, Davblo,
The graph is quite properly presented as it show it starts from 14 million sqkm. It's common practice to draw attention to the salient point.
If you want to see a steep drop check out what's happened to the perennial (multi-year) ice.
http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/
From the left hand panel under "Some Research Highlights" click on "Arctic Perennial Sea Ice Reduction" for a pdf copy of "Rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice" Nghiem et al 2007. Figure 3 is what I see as the real Arctic tipping point. Hidden behind the overall summer/winter maxima the amount of multi-year ice has collapsed. By the way Pottsdam Institute of Physics list the Arctic as "already tipped" in their summary of global tipping points.
Here's a graph of Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg
From Cryosphere Today.
This article is about a paper published before the 2007 crash,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070315161102.htm
"When the ice thins to a vulnerable state, the bottom will drop out and we may quickly move into a new, seasonally ice-free state of the Arctic... ...I think there is some evidence that we may have reached that tipping point, and the impacts will not be confined to the Arctic region."
Dr Mark Serreze March 2007.
In July 2007 exceptional weather "took advantage" of an already weakened polar sea-ice cap to cause a massive loss of 1/4 area down from the previous minima.
In August 2008 the Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island was closed because of the dangers posed by it's melting. Studies of permafrost in the region have carbon-dated the permafrost to be over 2000 years old. In Inuit Auyuittuq roughly translates as the land that never melts. Furthermore the Markham Ice Shelf went in September 2008, it was formerly attached to the North Coast of Ellesmere Island and was 4500 years old. Yet 2008's synoptic weather patterns in the Arctic Basin were not exceptional.
And whilst I agree in general with Vicky Pope's comments (your link poist 196) I do disagree with her suggestion that there may be a recovery of Arctic Sea Ice back to the pre-2007 trend.
Complain about this comment
"Again, natural variability has been ignored in order to support a particular point of view"
Nope, it isn't being ignored.
The denialists are ignoring that the IPCC include natural variability in their studies. That doesn't mean the IPCC is ignoring natural variability.
Naturally, YOU WILL DIE.
But your doctor will tell you to quit smoking, take some exercise and eat less junk food. Is he ignoring the natural death of his patients?
No. That you will die is not something your doctor can get you to fix. What he CAN get you to fix is dying from the result of an unhealthy lifestyle. The things that you do that will make you less healthy and die quicker or age worse.
Complain about this comment
timjenvey, saying "cheers" at the end of your posts doesn't make them polite. Linking to someone who says "the Hadley Centre are spreading lies because they want the attention and the money" doesn't mean YOU haven't said it, you've used a proxy. You don't even have the courage to come forward. You're standing behind someone else and mumbling "yeah" like the little kid siding with the school bully so he doesn't get hit.
Vitriol??? No. Honesty. But when you're talking to someone who's either an idiot or a liar (I figured "liar" since at least that has some violition behind it, but if you prefer "idiot" then I'll use that), you can go "Ooh, he's being mean! everyone! look at me! I'm being picked on!!!".
Complain about this comment
"When I write about a boat that goes from A to B my mind just says it sailed. "
But Amundsen didn't sail the NWP.
Either you didn't read anything and just heard some denialist site say that and, rather than use your "project management" skillz to find out if you're being lied to, you decided to promote that idea.
It's a lie.
Amundsen did not sail the NWP.
He stuck himself in the ice and waited until the ice moved through it.
That's not sailing.
Stop lying. Amundsen did not sail the NWP.
Got it?
Complain about this comment
"Running on the spot as you say "my legs went up and down and it's 100% human powered" is not nearly so satisfying."
Here's some illumination for you. Unlikely to be noticed when your optical equipment is investigating a dark place, but here goes.
When cycling your whole body moves forward. This is completely different from running on the spot where your body doesn't move forward.
It's quite a subtle difference as you can see, so you being fixated on it is quite understandable. After all, you will post things you don't know as if you do know them, so this is small potatoes in comparison.
Complain about this comment
To davblo2:
If I read you correctly, you are feeling the same way as I:
"We fiddle while Rome burns"
To CobblyWorlds:
I imagine you agree?
I'm going to post more on the West Antarctric Ice Sheet, though I'm beginning to wonder why? In the meantime and related, the BBC report this morning:
"Americas on alert for sea level rise"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7977263.stm
I see the map at the end of the article, and I wonder if the public is starting to clue in?
When they do, when we all do, I imagine they and we, will feel betrayed, in the same way the global financial collapse has unfolded.
Ultimately, many of us are still objective observers, with comfortable incomes and lifestyles. We will not be appreciated any more than the recently fired president of General Motors. But he is probably not hurting too much - and neither are we - that is my perception, and it is the public's perception.
But there are people who are hurting, and there will be more, lots more.
In a previous post, I brought up what I thought a real suggestion, that is, a United Nations declaration to reduce our numbers, a simple statement of the 'condition of our craft'. No response, none at all.
Am I out in left field, or are we in denial?
We are in denial, I assure you. It is what Freeman Dyson and James Lovelock have been trying to tell us. It is what Cousteau saw.
Davblo is right:
"I wonder whether this kind of stuff "domesticates" the whole issue and makes the public more "at ease" with it." (post #198)
And that doesn't just refer to tea kettles.
And all the while - comfortable incomes and lifestyles from the intelligentsia - me included.
We're going to have to do better - any suggestions?
- Manysummits, Calgary -
Complain about this comment
10,000 years ago the area where I live in southern Ontario was buried under fork along hundreds of ice. For a long time I focused on this and believe that pitchers showing the melting of the polar ice caps were simply a continuation of this process, which they may be to some extent. After thinking about it for a long time I decided that on balance I would go with the consensus scientific opinion as indicated in the reports on climate change given by the IPCC. Like you, I still acknowledge that there is considerable uncertainty remaining, particularly as to the magnitude of the contribution made by man's activities as compared to the contribution made by natural factors.
Like you, I do not believe that the world will, or should, live in misery and poverty simply to control climate emissions. Therefore we need to look for solutions that allow us to have reasonable economic activity and a decent standard of living while mitigating the worst effects of global warming. This necessarily involves the development of new technologies and new materials as well as using the ones that we already have.
There are hundreds of millions of people in China subsisting on dollars a day. The rulers of China are unlikely to buy into any scheme which is going to hinder their ability to improve the lot of their people.
Complain about this comment
Thanks CobblyWorlds #202. I'll check out those links as soon as I get time.
Complain about this comment
Just one more thought. We have the fears about environmental damage and climate change to manage and we also have the reality of resource depletion. The measures to cope with the one are not necessarily incompatible with the measures to cope with the other. In fact, we should be looking for synergies that allow us to extend our nonrenewable resource base while managing greenhouse gas emissions and allowing the economic growth that the world needs to provide a decent standard of living for all of its citizens.
Complain about this comment
#203-#206
Please re-read last paragraph #196
Please act upon it.
Complain about this comment
#207 ManySummits,
On the whole as a species we're completely unaware of the pickle we're in. I certainly agree that we need to reduce our numbers. But for me the fiddling is going on against a background of 2 major factors AGW long/medium term, Peak Oil short/medium term. The underlying problem remains our inability to comprehend the exponential function and the sheer lunacy of our addiction to growth. As for reducing our numbers, sorry but I think you may as well expect us to sprout fins and join the dolphins, it's in our genes.
On sea level rise I'm a bit of an odd-man-out: I view it as a long-long term issue and can't get as worked up about it as many seem to. In and of itself it's not really a major problem, but it'll be compounded by our inability to organise in the face of threats on an international level. This is where I'm reminded of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. The Hurricane cannot be attributable to AGW, however the inept and shoddy response to it's human impact will I fear stand as an example of how we will exacerbate AGW impacts. That's where I see a meaningful Katrina - AGW linkage.
I'm also an odd-man-out with regards the claimed impact and cause of a stopping of the THC. I think it's a non-issue. But that's another story...
Complain about this comment
"I do disagree with her suggestion that there may be a recovery of Arctic Sea Ice back to the pre-2007 trend."
Well 2007 was an extreme year.
Whether it's possible to get back to a September minima like the pre-2007 trend was temding to depends on how much multi-year ice there is and whether it's going to drive south.
Complain about this comment
@CobblyWorlds #171
Apologies for the tardy reply, i'm looking into something at the moment and yes, it is about something that somebody said, that made me think, hmmm, perhaps i am wrong, but i will try to come back to that some other time
OK, in response, Santer has refused to release his date as requested by McIntyre.
Steve McIntyre has no right whatsoever to expect others to do his work for him. As Ben Santer replies* all the base information and methods are available for researchers (indeed the methods are available for the general public, although a fee may be payable for the primary peer reviewed papers needed). *Ben Santer's reply is available on the page you linked to in post 169.
McIntyre has asked for the data as used, so that McIntyre is able to replicate Santers results. Setting aside the fact that Santer has no right to refuse the request under the FOIA, Santer has used the existing data in such a way that other scientists and statisticians are unable to replicate the results.
Previous work by McIntyre has shown the climate scientists have been not particular robust in their statistical analysis. Perhaps with McIntyres help, or other statisticians, this could become a thing of the past
Complain about this comment
With this post having stretched so long I felt I ought to look back and re-read Richard’s original report. Mostly it made good sense, but one point (mentioned by calcination early on at #3) hit me again. I know it’s not the main theme, but I think it warrants another mention.
----------------------------
"G20, Bonn and the climate of opinion
Richard Black
…
This may make uncomfortable reading for scientists, but to politicians, probabilities are part of everyday life.
Will the MP accused of fiddling expenses or extra-marital dalliance be forced from office, or manage to cling on? How much are the banks eventually going to need in bail-out money? Will World Cup victory and a lovely summer win us back the vote-critical feelgood factor?
All are judgement calls; and the reality is that politicians are used to dealing with probabilities and uncertainty, and framing policy under these conditions."
----------------------------
This makes me question whether the distinction between "probability" and "judgement calls" is properly understood.
The examples Richard gives are (as he says) judgment call, i.e. intelligent or informative guesses based on experience and available information. These could even be stretched to "gut feelings" and "instincts".
Whilst these may have a place in how scientists carry out their research, they have no place in conclusions they draw and the results they present. The scientific meaning of "probability" is far from a "judgement call". The mathematics of probability has been pursued to extreme depths and is (should be) well understood by most scientists.
On the other hand the layman's understanding and I'd guess that of most politicians is far different and very easily misled. That's why so many people buy lottery tickets and don't understand if you tell then how many people you actually need in a room before it's more than likely that two have the same birthday.
So I wonder why Richard, writing on a scientific subject would mix-up and confuse these terms. Scientists are well used to dealing with probabilities; whilst politicians, unless they have a scientific training, are less likely to fully appreciate the their full significance.
If the politicians are going to resort to judgement calls, then I'll be really worried.
Hopefully Richard has a good answer.
Complain about this comment
"McIntyre has asked for the data as used, "
Well the data is from US sources, so are free to get from the department concerned.
If Steve McIntyre can't manage to find the weather data (the data set was mentioned in the paper, maybe Steve didn't read it either), what says he'll be able to use it?
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever #216
Please read the full paragraph. Here it is:
McIntyre has asked for the data as used, so that McIntyre is able to replicate Santers results. Setting aside the fact that Santer has no right to refuse the request under the FOIA, Santer has used the existing data in such a way that other scientists and statisticians are unable to replicate the results.
Complain about this comment
Cuckootoo,
I do not accept that this is a problem and I find it hard to believe McIntyre really does.
To test Santer et al's method it is not necessary to have exactly the same set of model runs, so by inference it is not necessary to have exactly the same set of derived synthetic MSU data. Each model run has it's own weather, it is in effect a representation of a virtual world. Therefore using synthetic MSU data derived from any appropriate subset of the 20CEN model runs will be sufficient.
Let me put it this way: Whether Mt Pinatubo erupted in 1991, or 1980, 1965, 1998 does not affect the underlying physics. The physics apply to each world, regardless of when Pinatubo erupted. Therefore the experiment is repeatable whether or not exactly the same 20CEN dataset it used.
McIntyre knows this and is just creating a deliberate storm in a tea-cup to spread doubt.
If he doesn't know it he's not qualified to audit Santer et al.
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
To Yeah_Whatever # What ever
As this seems to be such a big issue with you I did a quick bit of research. The first Google hit I got was the National Maritime Museum.
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/sea-and-ships/in-depth/north-west-passage/exploration-adventure-and-tragedy/roald-amundsens-expedition-1903-06
The article stated: "Roald Amundsen is one of the world’s most famous polar explorers. He was the first person to SAIL through the North-West Passage and the first man to reach the South Pole"
I guess I have some good lying friends to call upon. I hope you deal with them in the same boorish fashion.
Cheers - (No I'm not going to change a life time of using this farewell)
Complain about this comment
To Yeah_Whatever #204
Only just getting to catching up today and was curious why you wrote that I linked you to the Hadley Center. I think you might have got the wrong person but I'd stand to be corrected.
The boorishness is quite something to behold. It takes the cake for me:
You say:
"Linking to someone who says "the Hadley Centre are spreading lies because they want the attention and the money" doesn't mean YOU haven't said it, you've used a proxy. You don't even have the courage to come forward. You're standing behind someone else and mumbling "yeah" like the little kid siding with the school bully so he doesn't get hit.
Vitriol??? No. Honesty. But when you're talking to someone who's either an idiot or a liar (I figured "liar" since at least that has some violition behind it, but if you prefer "idiot" then I'll use that), you can go "Ooh, he's being mean! everyone! look at me! I'm being picked on!!!"."
Complain about this comment
To Cobblyworlds #212:
Thanks for your reply - much appreciated.
See you on the next blog?
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
Despite the color of the language, what has been said on this blog needed to be said (re misinformation).
The difficulty, as I see it, is discriminating between the ignorant and the infamous.
For the ill-informed, I feel compassion; for those who deliberately confuse and bend the truth, a cold fury.
Good luck to all of us in differentiating between the two.
- Manysummits -
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
@cobblyworlds #218
Do you agree Santer et al (NOAA employees) are public employees?
Do you agree the FOIA is applicable?
If the answer to these questions is yes, I do not see what the problem is. Santer has already done the work and just needs to give McIntyre access.
McIntyre, as you well know, is perfectly capable of understanding the code and statistics behind the work and merely wants to check it. As checking the code should be part of the peer review process, what is the problem?
Santer has used a unique method of reworking the existing data to find the AGW signature. As a fundamental requirement of science is replication and the only way to replicate the science is by using the original code, what is the problem?
Who knows, McIntyre may back up Santer and declare the Holy Grail has been found, so what is the problem?
But regardless of any of these reasons for Santer giving the data etc to McIntyre, under the FOIA, Santer and his NOAA colleagues are required to do so by law.
Complain about this comment
I said earlier that AGW circumvented the second law of thermodynamics and I think, Calcination said (in a condescending way), are was sure. I also mentioned that something made me think was i wrong and it was that statement.
I am reading Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effect Within the Frame of Physics Gerlich and Tscheuschner, 2007 and they state in section 3.9.4 Possible resolution of the paradox "In climate models it is customary to neglect the thermal conductivity of the atmosphere....This could explain, why the numerical simulations could produce small effects in contradiction of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. To set the heat conduction to zero would not be a real violation .....
So, it looks like i was wrong
Complain about this comment
Cuckootoo,
From the title page of the Santer et al page - "Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA" That program is funded by the Climate Change Research Division of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program.
So writing as a Brit; it doesn't look to me like he's employed by the NOAA. But if I was in his shoes I'd still tell McIntyre to do his own legwork.
"Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effect Within the Frame of Physics Gerlich and Tscheuschner, 2007." Groan.
I cant be bothered to address it's many faults, but Eli Rabett (a physics professor) has done it to death: http://rabett.blogspot.com/search?q=gerlich
One thing that made me laugh about G&T - they reckon photons can't go from a colder atmosphere to a warmer. Inteligent Design / Intelligent Photons. :)
Manysummits,
Perhaps, but as I've just loaded "Halflife 2: the Orange Box" onto my laptop... I may be gone for some time. I've spent too many years dealing with denialists and have concluded it's essentially pointless. They may affect public opinion but they can't change reality. The process will make their stance obsolete, all we have to do is be patient.
Complain about this comment
Santer works for the government as does the et al, therefore they have no right to refuse the request
it really is as simple as that - add in the replication and Santer is clearly wrong to refuse
Complain about this comment
refusal to comply with FOIA happens again in climate science, John Mitchell of the UK Met Office refuses to hand over correspondance with the IPCC claiming it was private, despite emails etc being on Met Office paper and the IPCC's requirements that all correspondance is kept for a minimum of 5 years
Complain about this comment
Ah, the Gerlich paper.
Note how it's posted not in a journal of repute but on a blog paid for by CATO and other libertarian thinktanks (where there is the ROCK HARD BELIEF that anything government gets involved with is broken)
It took me 5 minutes to read that paper and come up with 25 errors. And it's been 20 years since I've done any serious physics.
" climate models it is customary to neglect the thermal conductivity of the atmosphere...."
Nope, it's really quite simple: if climate models didn't include conduction or convection, there would be no adiabatic lapse rate.
But when you get to the top of the atmosphere, you reach space. Where do you conduct your heat then? The aether???
He states (without proof) that you can't use radiative equilibrium.
He states that CO2 doesn't stop IR and then shows two surfaces with radiation bouncing between them (reflection, note: this will be used later) and then uses this to "prove" this. But re-radiation is isotropic: it goes not just back but onward. Only to someone who WANTS to believe him will take this as any analogue of "truth".
He states that CO2 doesn't work the same as a greenhouse because glass REFLECTS (note the not above...) IR. But neglects to show WHY it reflects. It reflects because at the free surface there is one open route to release IR photons and the other way, there's another layer of glass that will reabsorb re-emit (in all directions!) IR photons. So the overall effect is that IR photons are reflected back into the greenhouse. He doesn't show this proof of glass reflecting IR photons because it is also the proof of why CO2 in the atmosphere does. It's just the layers are physically thicker. Optically (in the IR), they are the same.
Just a couple of snippets.
That paper wouldn't pass A-level physics.
Complain about this comment
"McIntyre, as you well know, is perfectly capable of understanding the code and statistics behind the work and merely wants to check it"
Which will have been done in the PEER REVIEW process.
Why does McIntyre wish to redo that work? Because the alternative is to put HIS work up for similar review and be told where he's got it wrong (and lose a talking point that will see him on the lucerative Anti-AGW lecture circuit)?
Seems likely, doesn't it.
McIntyre should, if he's confident in his results, put his work for review in the same journal.
Or is he not confident in them? If so, why are you?
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"Roald Amundsen is one of the world?s most famous polar explorers. He was the first person to SAIL through the North-West Passage and the first man to reach the South Pole"
And this is not true either.
He sailed INTO the ice. Sat IN the ice. The ICE went through the NWP. He waited till the ice broke up. He sailed into port.
Read not the headline, read the body of the text.
Doofus.
Complain about this comment
Here you go, from the wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen#Northwest_Passage
"After a third winter trapped in the ice, Amundsen was able to navigate a passage into the Beaufort Sea after which he cleared into the Bering Strait, thus having successfully navigated the Northwest Passage."
Hmmm.
Complain about this comment
PS
"In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans ... with six others in a 47 ton steel seal hunting vessel, Gjøa. Amundsen had the ship outfitted with a small gasoline engine."
SAIL
???
Complain about this comment
Re: Santer/McIntyre.
I'm not really sure what's going on here; but a few years ago I worked in Europe for a US company. I remember a guy in the States worked on something I was involved with and announced a result. I asked for copies of his data, working, results and reasoning; and was told very clearly that it wasn't relevant. I should just accept the conclusion. There was obviously a different in our mentalities.
I didn't ask because I was out to steal anything, I wasn't saying he'd done anything wrong, it's just natural scientific curiosity. The potential was there for me to spot a mistake, learn something new, confirm all was well; who knows. It was drummed into me from early school days that "showing my working" was as (actually more at school) important as the result. I don't see why anyone woud have a problem with that.
Complain about this comment
I've just read Santer's letter to McIntyre and it certainly looks outrageous. Even if he has reason to believe McIntyre is a waste of time dealing with, he could have been more polite. Comments like "I see no reason why I should do your work for you..." are totaly out of order. If the work is done then showing what you did just saves everybody time and more importantly allows potential difference in approach to be seen.
As for "Please do not communicate with me in the future"; is McIntyre really that bad?
Complain about this comment
and the principle of replication is engrained in science, so there should be no problem
in this specific case, if McIntyre does reproduce Santer's work, it would be a real blow to sceptics that the AGW signature has never been found despite extensive searches
Complain about this comment
"Do you agree Santer et al (NOAA employees) are public employees?"
Well that seems in doubt. And US research in universities are held in a trust to "monetize" the discovery, despite having US public money input and being part of the US government.
So even if true, may not be accepted any more.
"Do you agree the FOIA is applicable?"
No.
Complain about this comment
@davblo2
McIntyre "the man who must not be named" has previously shown Manns work to contain errors and is the author of peer reviewed papers that were mentioned briefly in IPCC AR4, but essentially ignored, although IPCC AR4 used unpublished work by AGW climate scientists
Shocking but true
Complain about this comment
"I didn't ask because I was out to steal anything, I wasn't saying he'd done anything wrong, it's just natural scientific curiosity."
a) would he know that?
b) you want him to do work to respond for "natural curiosity"?
c) his employer would have to accept it (even if it was a university, most Univerities now "own" any product from their employees and they don't give two hoots about your curiosity).
Complain about this comment
"John Mitchell of the UK Met Office refuses to hand over correspondance with the IPCC claiming it was private, despite emails etc being on Met Office paper and the IPCC's requirements that all correspondance is kept for a minimum of 5 years"
Has to be kept for 5 years doesn't mean has to be published publically.
Commercial in confidence is enough to keep a document from public use.
And a FOIA request that takes more than (IIRC) £65 to process can be ignored.
What do you have that makes you suspect the email is important? That it isn't private and that you should have a copy?
Complain about this comment
#241.
a) if he had nothing to hide or keep secret he shouldn't care
b) the work would be minimal and most real scientists and engineers would be only to glad to show of their work (pride)
c) in that case we both worked for the same company so ownership didn't come into it
I called it curiousity because my request was informal; on a formal basis it would be a peer review. Where I work now we review each other's work all the time. It's not a big deal, just a good way of working. Our reviews are open to anyone interested not closed up.
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
#239
If Santer's work is not subject to FOIA, why didn't Santer just reply "sorry, steve, we are not subject to FOIA rules"? Regardless of this the NOAA employees are subject to FOIA rules and therefore the data should be released
#242
Mitchell is an employee of the UKMO and as such he is subject to FOIA rules for any work carried out by him on behalf of the UKMO. As the IPCC clearly state in their reports that Mitchell is an employee of the UKMO, then Mitchells work is subject to the rules. You are correct when you sat the IPCC doesnot require correspondance to be published, but FOIA rules require the information to be made available when requested.
Not sure what you don't understand here
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
regardless of whether or not the IPCC or the FOIA requires publication, this process affects billions of people around the planet, surely a little transparancy isn't too much to ask for?
And like i have said, replicated proof that the AGW signature is there, would put a huge hole in most sceptics arguments - not a bad thing i would imagine
Complain about this comment
"a) if he had nothing to hide or keep secret he shouldn't care"
Ah, the old "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".
Load of bunk.
Give us your address. Just curious...
"b) the work would be minimal and most real scientists and engineers would be only to glad to show of their work (pride)"
Uh, if the university has solicitors, then they would by default say "don't give it". From a lawyers point of view, giving that data away could give them problems (copyright violation, even if near impossible, costs and as the RIAA suits against filesharing by a printer show, there's no need for the accuser to bother with any costly research). And it's a cost.
For why?
"c) in that case we both worked for the same company so ownership didn't come into it"
Then ask through your company. Then you'll hear from the company why.
"I called it curiousity because my request was informal; on a formal basis it would be a peer review."
Then why make work for himself? Nothing interesting will result. Should he not be working on the next thing, the thing he's getting paid to do?
Complain about this comment
"McIntyre "the man who must not be named" has previously shown Manns work to contain errors and is the author of peer reviewed papers that were mentioned briefly in IPCC AR4, but essentially ignored, although IPCC AR4 used unpublished work by AGW climate scientists
Shocking but true"
Another lie.
From a denialist???
Shocking but true.
PS McIntyre produced work that was proven wrong, but you still use it to prove AGW wrong. Why is that?
Complain about this comment
"and the principle of replication is engrained in science, so there should be no problem
in this specific case, if McIntyre does reproduce Santer's work, it would be a real blow to sceptics that the AGW signature has never been found despite extensive searches"
Yup, so why hasn't he published his work for peer review? It's worked before. see Pons and Fleishmann's work on cold fusion.
Or does he have nothing that stands up to scrutiny of his peers?
Complain about this comment
"regardless of whether or not the IPCC or the FOIA requires publication, this process affects billions of people around the planet, surely a little transparancy isn't too much to ask for?"
There's plenty of transparency:
1) The IPCC report is publicly available
2) The papers used in the report are available from the journals in the same way as any other paper is
3) The IPCC cannot breech copyright in answering FOIA, nor can it breech DPA.
"And like i have said, replicated proof that the AGW signature is there, would put a huge hole in most sceptics arguments - not a bad thing i would imagine"
Then get it published properly, with peer review. After all, if the IPCC scientists can get it wrong, surely you can too. And McIntyre.
Publish or be damned.
Complain about this comment
"If Santer's work is not subject to FOIA, why didn't Santer just reply "sorry, steve, we are not subject to FOIA rules"?"
Because this isn't a court case. You don't have to use all arguments in your defense or lose the option of using it later.
"Mitchell is an employee of the UKMO and as such he is subject to FOIA rules for any work carried out by him on behalf of the UKMO."
And if it's private, then it's not work done on behalf of the UKMO. What if it has "my new address is ...."? DPA prevents its release.
Stop using FOIA to dumpster dive. If you believe you have proof, use it. If you have a suspicion, take it to court (where a judge will look at the email and tell you if you're wrong or not).
Don't use unofficial blogs to cast libelous commentary.
Complain about this comment
This place could do with an EDIT button...
PS
"Not sure what you don't understand here"
Not sure what you don't understand. FOIA cannot be used to make the respondent break the law. Laws such as copyright, state security, commercial contract or DPA.
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
#247
"McIntyre "the man who must not be named" has previously shown Manns work to contain errors and is the author of peer reviewed papers that were mentioned briefly in IPCC AR4, but essentially ignored, although IPCC AR4 used unpublished work by AGW climate scientists
Shocking but true"
Another lie.
Ammann and Wahl were accepted even though the publication was after the IPCC deadline, breaking IPCC rules
no lie
#248
what are you talking about? McIntyre does have peer reviewed work and in this specific case, he just wants to replicate Santers work. What is the problem?
Complain about this comment
However the Hockey Stick debacle is spun, no one can deny the following:
1) The official Wegman Report, by the US House Commitee on Energy and Commerce upheld Mcintyre's critique
2) It also had serious concerns about the statistical methods applied
3) It also called in to question the paleoclimate researchers peer review process and temperature reconstructions
This is pretty official.
No amount of spamming from another blogger on these pages can change that. Have a read of this article to see what McIntyre & McKitrick were up against.
http://www2.canada.com/national/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=ba5c8f1e-60a1-42f3-8e72-e95e19a8163e
Complain about this comment
Concerning the Heartland Institute:
Give them a fair hearing and read what they have to say, instead of the vitriol that has been posted here:
http://www.heartland.org/about/truthsquad.html
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
#249
"And like i have said, replicated proof that the AGW signature is there, would put a huge hole in most sceptics arguments - not a bad thing i would imagine"
Then get it published properly, with peer review. After all, if the IPCC scientists can get it wrong, surely you can too. And McIntyre.
1 The work is not by McIntyre, me or the IPCC. It is by Santer
2 McIntyre wants to check the work
3 Until McIntyre obtains the method of working to produce this miraculous result, it is impossible to replicate or publish anything
#250
Don't use unofficial blogs to cast libelous commentary
it is not libelous, it's a matter of record and this specific matter has been raised in parliament, not that you would hear about it in the media
#251
Not sure what you don't understand. FOIA cannot be used to make the respondent break the law. Laws such as copyright, state security, commercial contract or DPA.
Comply with the law, not break the law. If this issue was covered by copyright, state security, commercial contract or DPA, McIntyre would have been politely told so
Do you agree that something as important as this, should be open to scrutiny or do you think we should try to geoengineer our climate on the say so of the IPCC?
Complain about this comment
further reading for the hockey stick and the ipcc accepting unpublished articles see here:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html?currentPage=6
Complain about this comment
Ah, yesss, the authoritative source on ANYTHING.
A personal blog.
Where the person doesn't say what the heck he's doing nor where he gets his information from, nor who he is.
Priceless.
Or worthless.
Complain about this comment
"Do you agree that something as important as this, should be open to scrutiny"
Something as important as WHAT???
John Mitchell emailing someone? How can that be "so important"?
"Hi, John Mitchell here, I'll be off on leave 18th August until 23rd August".
Yeah, real important.
The information about what the IPCC is talking about is on the IPCC website and in the publications that you are as able to get hold of as anyone else.
What do you think is being hidden and why? What evidence do you have that this is important?
Anything?
Complain about this comment
"2 McIntyre wants to check the work"
Why?
If he doesn't get the same results, PUBLISH THEM. That's how Cold Fusion got overturned. Published, people published their findings in the same journal and the consensus was that there was no evidence of Cold Fusion.
My can't McIntyre do that?
Does he not have evidence himself?
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"Give them a fair hearing and read what they have to say, instead of the vitriol that has been posted here:"
Uh, would you go to an Evangelical Church website to find out about evolution?
No.
Why?
Because the evangelical church doesn't believe that there's any proof at all to evolution.
The Heartland Institute believe that ONLY the free market can sort ANYTHING out.
They believe that ANYTHING that the government gets involved with is inherently wrong.
They believe that ANYTHING that restricts companies from doing what they want is bad.
They are hardly unbiased.
Complain about this comment
"1) The official Wegman Report, by the US House Commitee on Energy and Commerce upheld Mcintyre's critique"
But where's the proof?
OJ Simpson's innocence was upheld by the court.
When was this done? During Shrub's tenure? Whose his daddy? Big Oil.
Ahhh.
Or is political machination and conspiracy only extant when supporting AGW, not denying it?
Complain about this comment
Hmmm, how old is the hockey stick paper now?
How many times has it been confirmed by other studies?
Indeed, Wegman found that the analysis lacked statistical skill. Oddly enough, nobody asked him what difference doing the stats his way made.
Thats because it makes no appreciable difference to the end result. You still get a hockey stick. Or in other words, people only bring it up again because they have run out of anything coherently useful to say.
Complain about this comment
#246
So do you maintain that scientific/technical work can be a black box and just the results published?
If not, then just how much transparency do you expect?
Where do you draw the line and why?
Complain about this comment
"what are you talking about? McIntyre does have peer reviewed work and in this specific case, he just wants to replicate Santers work. What is the problem?"
Uh, you've just said he's already tried and failed.
Why does he not publish his work and see if his peers can find out where he went wrong (if he did)?
What's his problem? Afraid to be found wrong?
Publish.
Complain about this comment
The AGW theory
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This was shown in lab work by John Tyndall in 1859. No one knowledgeable disputes it. And nowadays we have a quantum mechanical explanation as to exactly how greenhouse gases work.
2. CO2 is rising. This was proposed on logical grounds by Arrhenius in 1896, commented on with references to preliminary evidence by Callendar in 1938, and finally proved by Keeling et al. with observations from 1958 onwards. These observations have been repeated all over the world since Keeling et al. started their program at Mauna Loa.
3. The new CO2 is primarily from humans burning fossil fuels. This was demonstrated from its radioisotope signature by Hans Suess in 1955. Fossil fuel carbon is so old all its carbon-14 has decayed away, whereas carbon from the ocean or the soil would have the normal complement of carbon-14. There are also clues from the 13C/12C ratio. And invetorying how much fossil fuel is being burned, and knowing how much is going into sinks, the numbers match what we get from the radioisotope analyses.
4. The world’s temperature is rising. This is shown by land surface temperature readings, sea surface temperature readings (no urban heat islands there), borehole readings, balloon radiosonde readings, satellite readings, and effects such as melting ice caps and glaciers, tree lines moving toward the poles, earlier hatching dates for eggs of fish, frogs, insects, and birds, and earlier blooming dates for flowers and flowering trees.
5. Regressing NASA GISS temperature anomalies against ln CO2 for 1880-2008, I got 76% of the variance accounted for. That means all other causes of temperature variation for that 129-year period, including other greenhouse gases, caused no more than 24%. Volcanoes had a small effect (about 2%), and sunlight had no discernable effect–and I measured the sun’s influence four different ways, TSI, sunspot cycle, years since maximum, and years since minimum.
6. The signature of greenhouse warming by carbon dioxide is that the stratosphere should be cooling while the troposphere warms. All the observations say exactly that is happening. Some of the stratospheric cooling is due to ozone depletion, but not enough to account for all or even most of it.
Which of the above observations do you dispute?
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
@yeah_whatever
trying to get through to you is like trying to wade through treacle.
Complain about this comment
"trying to get through to you is like trying to wade through treacle."
Strange. I was thinking the same about you.
You state:
1) McIntyre has use the dataset and algorithms as Santer
2) McIntyre has not got the same results
The obvious and previously the default response would be
3) Submit work to the journal to review
4) ???
5) Profit!
However, it seems that McIntyre wants a new way
3) Say he didn't get the same results
4) Ask someone else to do their work
5) Cry on the blogs that he's being stymied in proving Santer wrong (what happened to publishing???)
6) You pick it up
7) AGW is dropped
8) ???
9) Profit!
Why does McIntyre not publish his work for review and inclusion in Nature?
You still haven't said what his or your problem with that is.
Complain about this comment
"So do you maintain that scientific/technical work can be a black box and just the results published?
If not, then just how much transparency do you expect?"
Uh, in McIntryre's case it seems he wants to keep his results secret. Where's the openness he and you are clamouring for there?
In your case, it isn't your colleague's place to give up the work he did for his company. You need to go to the owner of that information (the company YOU work for) and ask them. If they refuse, you will get a reason why.
In the case of some email to the Met Office, there are probably thousands of emails each day. Why is this one wanted? Why will revealing this cause more openness? And again, maybe releasing this information would be criminal (DPA).
If you don't like the DPA because it hinders openness, get the law removed.
Complain about this comment
#270
My question was aimed at you; but you just cite other cases.
I asked you; when you see a result from a piece of scientific work; do you accept it as a black box or do you expect some transparency? If so how much?
Complain about this comment
yeah_whatever
please point to the post that states any of what you claim in #269
what i have said is:
1 Santer produced work claiming to have found the missing AGW signature as predicted by the IPCC Chapter 9
2 McIntyre requested Santers data under the FOIA
3 Santer refused despite being subject to the FOIA
End of story
Until Santer releases the data and method of working, it is impossible for any scientist to replicate and verify that Santers claims are true
Complain about this comment
"I asked you; when you see a result from a piece of scientific work; do you accept it as a black box or do you expect some transparency?"
I expect some transparency but that transparency should be in the paper produced. If the paper produced does not have enough information in it to replciate the study, then the paper is incomplete.
No need to go directly to the author and say "gimme all your data and methods and programs".
And if I were to try replicating the study and got a different answer, I would ask friends and colleagues to proofread it skeptically. If it passed that, I would get it published.
Still no need to go "gimme gimme gimme" to the author. I may do so if I think I can see where their error is, but that would merely be professional courtesy.
Complain about this comment
"1 Santer produced work claiming to have found the missing AGW signature as predicted by the IPCC Chapter 9"
OK.
"2 McIntyre requested Santers data under the FOIA"
He may have no right under FOIA to ask for what he's asking.
"3 Santer refused despite being subject to the FOIA"
If he has no requirement to give the information being demanded, he doesn't have to.
"End of story"
Not really.
The paper says what methods were used.
The paper says what data was used.
The paper says what the results were.
People didn't go to Pons and Fleishmann (never remember how to spell his name) and demand their results, they looked at the paper and did the same as reported there.
Their results were inconsistent with the results in the original paper.
The published their contrary papers.
Cold Fusion was struck off.
So why doesn't McIntryre do the same? If he can't reproduce from the paper the study, then why would giving him the same information help? If he ran exactly the same stuff, he'd get the same answer. Even if the answer was wrong.
So science isn't advanced by McIntyre's demand.
It is if he does what the paper says was done with the data the paper said it used and publish the results.
Why doesn't he do that?
Complain about this comment
# 261
Keep your sarcasm to yourself.
# 262
Simpson got off the hook because of racist detective. It was not safe to convict him because of the possibility the evidence had been tainted. What this has to with this discussion is beyond me. Yet more spam.
# 263
The Wegman report stated:
A social network analysis revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peerreview and temperature reconstructions.
Report: “It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.”
You accuse us deniers of believing anything (LOL). This is pretty damning if you don't except this from an official investigation fair enough. Impasse accepted, I respect your belief and move on.
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
McIntyre does have a right to request the information - it's called the Freedom of Information Act
Verifying Santers work is in the interest of the AGW proponents, what do they have to lose?
Complain about this comment
"Until Santer releases the data and method of working, it is impossible for any scientist to replicate and verify that Santers claims are true"
Uhm, why do you say this? People replicated Newton's work on gravity without asking for his original data.
Feynman's papers on quantum chromodynamics was accepted and worked with without having to get the man himself to explain any more than was in the paper.
Why do you say that it is impossible to recreate the work?
All the information is there. If it were not, then it would be rejected.
You have made the statement, please provide proof.
Complain about this comment
"Report: ?It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.?"
Well, if any proxies were left out, he'd complain that they were incomplete.
Reusing the same proxies is only a problem if the proxy data was incorrect.
Why do you believe his report without the knowledge of how much of a dfference that makes?
PS the OJ trial was to say that you can have an official statement that doesn't say what it seems to say: the verdict wasn't "innocent because he didn't do it" it was "inncocent because we can't tell if he's been framed".
For people who demand "the raw information" you seem to let some people have a huge bye on that requirement before you believe them.
Bias getting in the way?
Complain about this comment
"McIntyre does have a right to request the information - it's called the Freedom of Information Act"
The FOIA says what is and isn't accessible under it. Please say where in the act the information falls under its perview.
The FOIA says that the act cannot override another law. Like, for example, copyright. Or data protection.
Stop just repeating "FOIA" if that were all there was to it, the information would be released.
Can I demand the blueprints of a trident submarine? FOIA!!!!!
Can I demand the contract under discussion for renovation of the Houses of Parliament? FOIA!!!!
No. One for the official secrets act, the other for commercial in confidence and contractual obligations thereby.
So just saying "He has to answer because of the FOIA" is bull.
And there's still no problem with redoing the study.
Complain about this comment
What does McIntyre have to lose if he tries to recreate the study?
Complain about this comment
Yeah What Ever
It's a piy but this forum seems to have been infiltrated by a troll!!!!
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
This is the last time I will try to get through to you
Santer’s work used existing data to produce a different result, which confirmed the existence of the AGW signature as predicted by the IPCC. To do this, Santer must have reworked the existing data using computer modelling to produce his unique work. For any other scientist to reproduce Santers work, the scientists must have access to Santers data, computer code etc, otherwise the principle of replication is impossible.
Santer is a public employee as are his NOAA colleagues and as such they are required to release there work under the Freedon of Information Act. Refusing to do so is an offence. It doesn’t matter if McIntyre wishes to discredit the result, confirm the result or re-engineer the code to produce a new paper for peer review and publication, Santer still has to provide the information
It really is as simple as that
Do you understand now?
Complain about this comment
The trolls were on this forum a long time ago.
CuckooToo
timjenvey
theskyisnotfalling (ooh, I wonder whether he's made his mind up about this already!)
globalclaptrap (hmm. not an open mind there either)
If you have nothing concrete to say, then attack the person. Who's the troll? look in the mirror.
Complain about this comment
#273
Good answer. I'll agree to that view.
I think the difficulties arise when the pressure of such monumental consequences come into play; when extraordinary decisions have to made, time may be running short, and accusations of dodgy publication are flying around. Under those conditions, don't you think your last paragraph in #273 (or similar) comes into play and everyone could benefit from as much openess and cooperation as possible. So far I just see a lot of bitching going on; which can't be good.
Complain about this comment
Cuckootoo,
The bottom line.
As I explain in post 218 it is not necessary for McIntyre to have Santer et al's exact intermediate step data. McIntyre has the methods or working, and can calculate (e.g. something along the lines of Fu & Johansen 2005) his own synthetic MSU data from his chosen set of 20CEN model runs.
McIntyre fully well knows this but is kicking up a fuss to persuade the public that something is amiss in Santer's work. Remember how the advisors to the Tobacco firms advised them to spread doubt about the cancer connection?
If McIntyre were interested in genuinely checking Santer et al he'd do the working himself. But he clearly isn't. The AGW signature in question is the last one that's not been clearly demonstrated, until recent work of which Santer is the most detailed.
There is a very good reason for the involvment of 17 authors in the Santer Paper, aside from the principle that many hands make light work. These include some of the most important working scientists of the field of atmospheric physics, they are backing these findings publicly and flying the flags of their respective substantial reputations from that mast.
If McIntyre wants to prove them wrong he can do his own work. I for one fully back Santer's stance.
The atmospheric signatures expected from an increase of CO2 are:
1) The cooling of the mid to upper stratosphere and mesosphere. DEMONSTRATED.
2) The reduction of diurnal range, caused by enhanced night-time warming. DEMONSTRATED.
3) The enhanced warming of the mid troposphere ahead of the surface. DEMONSTRATED on a global basis, less clear in the tropical troposphere, but following Santer et al - the evidence does not reject the hypothesis that the signature is also there in the tropical troposphere.
Consider these signatures as Predictions of the theory that increased CO2 should cause GW, predictions in the sense of Sir Karl Popper's requirements of a theory. And the theory is looking very strong.
Staying with Sir Karl Popper, we can use the direct observation of changes in planetary IR emission as a falsifiability test for the theory that CO2 should trap IR. And once again as I note in post 45 above: This has been observed. THE key test of falsifiability has been satisfied.
At what point does it become clear that those clinging to the notion that further emissions of CO2 will not lead to a further increase of global average temperature are engaged in a futile denial of an established scientific finding?
Complain about this comment
The sky is not falling - The wegman report is stating the obvious and well known fact that scientists in a discipline know each other and review each others work. Some people see this as a conspiracy, but they are wrong, and lack all evidence for an actual conspiracy.
As for data sets, you are aware that you are talking about a 1998 paper? The current IPCC report has more studies by different people confirming the broad outline of the 1998 report. Science moves on, even if denialists don't.
Cuckoo too - can we get back to your ideas on CO2 and warming at some point?
Complain about this comment
"I think the difficulties arise when the pressure of such monumental consequences come into play; "
And in that case you're advancing science more by trying the same thing as described by the paper than by repeating the calculations behind it.
Or, better, thinking of a way to test the theory even harder.
Not wasting time asking for the complete package.
Complain about this comment
"Santer is a public employee as are his NOAA colleagues and as such they are required to release there work under the Freedon of Information Act."
And he has. It's all in the paper released.
There's no requirement to release all and any information.
Do you get it now?
If the above were not the case, then Santer would be facing charges. That he isn't either means
a) McIntyre is in on it and just kidding on
b) FOIA doesn't apply to what is being asked.
Get it now?
Complain about this comment
Nosing about a bit, I found this:
"Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels."
Guess who wrote it?
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13252
Complain about this comment
# 286
Give this a read:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/what_hockey_stick.html
Complain about this comment
And then read this
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/
Complain about this comment
Calcination # 289
I am aware of the latest reconstruction and McIntyre has been working on that too (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4757). It will be interesting to see where it leads and I am sure we will all discuss this again at some point in the future.
Complain about this comment
Once you get past Moncktons hyperbole, its nothing more than a re-hashing of the hockey stick controversy, from one side of course. In reality most of the critiscisms are wrong or slightly correct but not enough to affect the graph. The cherry on top is the use of a number of sites to prove that things were warmer in the medieval period. Of course you can pick whatever sites you like to prove whatever you want, the thing about Mann et al is that they look at lots of different sites from all over the planet. Hence Monckton is up to his usual silliness. If it was that easy to prove a medieval warm period comparable to the last decade of the 20th century, someone would have done a paper integrating all the data. Instead, it seems to be left to Mann and others to do the work, I wonder why?
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever
#291
out of date and biased since it is from the Mann who produced the HS
going to poland this weekend to exercise my size 18 carbon footprints - have a great Easter everybody
Complain about this comment
@calcination #289
Isn't this the paper that Mann produced last year, but has since been shown to contain the same working as his previous paper and mixes up Spain and Africa?
Complain about this comment
"out of date and biased since it is from the Mann who produced the HS"
This from the man who accepts a 1998 paper's faults as being current faults.
HAH!
Complain about this comment
"Isn't this the paper that Mann produced last year, but has since been shown to contain the same working as his previous paper and mixes up Spain and Africa?"
No.
Complain about this comment
"Isn't this the paper that Mann produced last year, but has since been shown to contain the same working as his previous paper and mixes up Spain and Africa?"
Well...
Having searched the paper and supplemental data for Spain and Africa there are 0 (zero) results. However having searched Google for "Mann Spain Africa" there are many results referring to Simon Mann (the African Coup Plot chap). Searching Google with "Michael Mann" plus spain plus africa - zero results! (Hint - it's not hard.)
So I'd say no too...
And I'd suggest people check their facts before casting slanderous accusations around.
Figure 3 of Mann 2006 shows the following studies:
Mann and Jones (2003)
Esper et al. (2002)
Moberg et al. (2005)
Briffa et al. (2001)
Crowley and Lowery (2000)
Mann et al. (1999)
Jones et al. (1998)
Oerlemans (2005)
Huang et al. (2000) Borehole
Mann et al. (2003) Optimal Borehole
You can see a similar graph here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
The lines aren't in pretty colours for artistic effect, the colours denote the papers cited, you can even go down that page to see a list of the researchers involved (to save certain people taking their socks off - there are 21 researchers excluding Michael E Mann).
ALL, YES ALL, of these studies support the statement that "Northern Hemisphere temperatures in the late 20th century are likely exceptionally high in the context of the last 1000-2000 years".
Get that?
A
L
L
So why DO people keep BULLYING Michael E. Mann?
Are they really so thick they cannot read simple graphs???
Or is this monomania epiphenomenal of their pathology???
Complain about this comment
Yeah_Whatever #What ever
You appear to be showing some distressing symptoms over this sailing nomenclature. So to help I have reworded in the following fashion:
1/. My previous comment using your preferred phraseology from #235:
2/. Completely removed any reference to the piece that caused you the distress.
3/. Just the opening and closing phrases.
Please choose the one that causes you the least distress and I will re-post as my final. For me they all make the same point so no problem with me. In fact on re-read I like 3/.
1/. Over 12k years ago woolly mammoths played in the Arctic region until they were frozen into permafrost. Our human ancestors then fished off the ice flows in the Bay of Biscay and glaciers covered the Great Lakes. Over a period of the next 8k years the ice came and went until it receded to our current levels. About 1k years ago Vikings were sailing in the vicinity of Greenland and setting up thriving settlements. 0.5k years ago the area iced over again and the early ocean explorers, in trying to find a route through the Northwest Passage could not even get close and many perished in the ice. "In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans ... with six others in a 47 ton steel seal hunting vessel, Gj?a. Amundsen had the ship outfitted with a small gasoline engine." 0.06k years ago several expeditions make it through the Northwest Passage. 0.03k years ago we have the first accurate method of measurements with satellites. Over recent years the wooly mammoths that were frozen in the ice are just starting to thaw out so I guess we have just come full circle. Boy I hope we do not have to go through a cycle like that again.
2/. Over 12k years ago woolly mammoths played in the Arctic region until they were frozen into permafrost. Our human ancestors then fished off the ice flows in the Bay of Biscay and glaciers covered the Great Lakes. Over a period of the next 8k years the ice came and went until it receded to our current levels. About 1k years ago Vikings were sailing in the vicinity of Greenland and setting up thriving settlements. 0.5k years ago the area iced over again and the early ocean explorers, in trying to find a route through the Northwest Passage could not even get close and many perished in the ice. 0.06k years ago several expeditions make it through the Northwest Passage. 0.03k years ago we have the first accurate method of measurements with satellites. Over recent years the wooly mammoths that were frozen in the ice are just starting to thaw out so I guess we have just come full circle. Boy I hope we do not have to go through a cycle like that again.
3/. Over 12k years ago woolly mammoths played in the Arctic region until they were frozen into permafrost. Our human ancestors then fished off the ice flows in the Bay of Biscay and glaciers covered the Great Lakes. Over recent years the woolly mammoths that were frozen in the ice are just starting to thaw out so I guess we have just come full circle. Boy I hope we do not have to go through a cycle like that again.
Cheers.......
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Of course the really funny thing is that even if Mann et all made everything up and someone found the e-mail saying "hahaha, they still don't realise we made everything up", it would have no effect upon the knowledge of and attribution of the warming in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
Years spent persecuting people and it is irrelevant.
TimJenvey #299 - I see you bring up the old "Oh look the climate changed in the past, so I'm hinting that this modern climate change is down to natural factors, and insinuating that the climatologists still don't know anything about how the climate changes."
This is completely wrong, as you would know if you had read the IPCC report and various other papers out there, I reccomend starting with Spencer Wearts history of the discovery of global warming.
Secondly you mention thriving colonies in Greenland. Oddly enough they thrived so much that their cattle were smaller than any in Norway, and the colonists succeeded in using up most of the trees for firewood, thus ensuring a cold and painful life. They were so poor they didn't have much in the way of iron mongery, and eventually died out because the climate got worse. Meanwhile, in 20th century greenland, they are growing all the crops the settlers grew, and more, including thousands of sheep, and melting ice has revealed settlements from that period. Of course ice does not melt overnight, it takes time to absorb all the energy, so you cannot just claim that since the settlements have been revealed recently that means that modern day temperatures are cooler than in the past.
Complain about this comment
Cuckootoo,
I didn't call you a liar did I?
I merely said based on what I had done (which I made clear) that I didn't see what you said.
OK so Mann "flipped latitude and longitude and it's really from Spain." He made that painfully easy mistake in 1 (yes one) proxy - exactly what effect do you think that had? Probably the same order of effect as the error McIntyre found in the GISS US series: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates/200708.html
I still say that the denialist obsession with Michael Mann is totally out of order. At work how would you like to be singled out and everything you did being picked over in minute detail? In employment tribunals firms can pay for such behaviour as it's considered bullying!
So you think there's a clique of scientists engaged in what amounts to fraud. Show how they are wrong with such watertight argument that the editors of Geophysical Research Letters, or some equally appropriate and reputable journal, have to sit up and take notice. Generally speaking Mathematics is your best bet for such an argument. When you have your notion published I'll take it seriously, until then it's hogwash as far as I'm concerned. Other posters have addressed the issue of peer review when there are only a small number of experts - it's a necessary evil, not a conspiracy.
Check my posts, I have not relied on the Hockey Stick. I merely defended Mann in the last post. I consider the paleoclimate studies interesting and know that those trying to pin down climate sensitivity have recourse to those studies. But they are not what persuades me. That said, the general message stands - the current warming is unusual.
If you're going to cherry pick the studies that suggest a very warm MWP (and presumably a very cold LIA) for the Northern Hemisphere: You won't like the implication...
The implication is that climate sensitivity is towards or above the upper Charney range. So if you're right we'd have much more warming than I (who subscribe to a Charney Sensitivity of 3degC for 2xCO2) consider at all likely. Remember that we can be pretty confident that the models correctly model the radiative forcing (RF) of O3 & CO2 from Griggs & Harries (post 45 above). Other studies constrain other factors So your claim could only imply a very sensitive response of Global Average Temperature to RF with a very negative forcing for anthropogenic aerosols (which is still a significant wildcard). Simply put this would mean we're going to exceed the IPCC projections.
I've already explained above that I agree with Santer's stance and exactly why, I refer you to those posts.
Complain about this comment
"i may be a sceptic/denier/flatearther or whatever term alarmists prefer, but the one thing i am not is a liar."
But you are.
There is more than just one type of lie, and therfore more than one type of liar.
Take, for example, the strangely specific accusation about Mann getting Spain and Africa the wrong way round.
Strangely specific, so it would seem to someone who isn't going to check that this is true. The strangeness comes from the one really rather major bit you missed out: WHERE IT SAYS IT.
Lie by misdirection. Using a specific accusation and hoping that people will think it real because of it.
You use several other techniques to misinform (i.e. lie).
Like this one:
"there is plenty of evidence to show the MWP existed with temperatures as high or in excess of 1998 and therefore temperatures are not unprecedented"
There's plenty of evidence that it was warm. But the evidence shows that it is unlikely to have been as warm as it has recently. This is from more recent and exhaustive study of the evidence. Lie by omitting the current knowledge.
And you lie by omitting that the MWP was only a European thing. Global temperatures is not equal to European temperatures. Working with proxy data (Amerindian tribes didn't write down the thermometer measurement from the stephenson screen all that often...) the global temperatures were lower in the rest of the world generally.
And you lie by repeating something you've heard someone else say and not checked. Like when you stated that the greenhouse effect broke the second law of thermodynamics.
You lie by stating as if you're an authority but all you're doing is parroting what you've read on a denialist site.
Uncritically. Which is not a skeptic trait.
Complain about this comment
"1/. Over 12k years ago woolly mammoths played in the Arctic region until they were frozen into permafrost."
What? ALL OF THEM???
And what point is this for?
Should we start saying things like "In days of yore, when knights were bold, one knight was bolder than all the rest..."?
"In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans ... with six others in a 47 ton steel seal hunting vessel, Gj?a. Amundsen had the ship outfitted with a small gasoline engine."
And took three years. You could WALK it in that time, near as dammit.
And now they're looking at an ICE FREE NWP.
Not where a ship gets trapped for THREE YEARS in ice. Ice free. Take an ordinary ocean going boat, sail it. No need for icebreakers. No need for Artic survival skills to survive three years in ice, unable to move the ship. Just sail straight through.
Again, your comment, if you were not omitting some honking great elephants playing the tuba in the room proves that there is a significant and disturbing change in ocean ice in the artic.
Are you willing to accept that? If not, what evidence do you have against this?
Complain about this comment
Tim Jenvey,
I noticed your third point.
You appear to misunderstand permafrost, it is not static as your argument seems to imply, it is dynamic. So your inference appears flawed.
Each year the top layer of tundra thaws, this is why plants can grow, then each winter it freezes. The permafrost is underneath that annual cycle and remains frozen. With time dead plant matter accumulates and as it gets buried by the plant growth in the active surface layer it gets buried and becomes incorporated into the permafrost.
If a large animal like a mammouth dies on the surface, once summer melt arrives it can be depressed into the upper permafrost, also death in acidic bog-like conditions can act to preserve bodies. Bodies which then get sealed into the permafrost and are fairly well preserved (compared to one only finding bones in other climates).
So to find a body melting out of permafrost now does not necessarily mean it was not frozen into existing permafrost in the first place.
Paleoclimate isn't my thing really, but a quick search in Google Scholar found mention of Northern Siberian permafrost core dates. e.g. 25,000yrs=5m, age range 7000 to 2,000,000yrs (no depths given in abstract) etc.
Complain about this comment
"finally, why do you think Santer won't release his methodology to McIntyre? "
Because McIntyre can get the methodology from the paper.
Why do you say he can't?
Complain about this comment
"Paleoclimate isn't my thing really..."
It's not timjenvey's thing either. He's just parroting what a denialist site has told him.
Not sceptical, he's directed credulous.
And you can see one reason why in this post:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
294. At 4:59pm on 09 Apr 2009, CuckooToo wrote:
going to poland this weekend to exercise my size 18
carbon footprints - have a great Easter
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If AGW was a problem, he'd not be able to go to Poland for a holiday.
Let someone else's kids pay for it if he's wrong. He'd be inconvenienced if he wasn't allowed to go to Poland. That's FAR more important.
Complain about this comment
To CobblyWorlds #305.
Thanks for feedback. Appreciated as it was helpful to understand the dynamics of permafrost.
I then went on to say in my comment that the ice then extended down to the Bay of Biscay and the Great Lakes I wonder how that would work. I’m more of an observer and my thoughts influenced more by history so always interested in knowing a bit of the science.
To Yeah_Whatever #What ever
In view of your outstanding contribution to my understanding of science, life and the universe I have awarded you with my top ward:
Please receive my Awesome_Boor award. Congratulations.
Only surpassed by a Nobel Prize which at your going rate and the required credentials you should receive quite soon.
Cheers...
Complain about this comment
Do you have ANYTHING useful left to say, timjenvey, or are spiteful snipes at your betters all you have left.
Poor you.
If global warming is not being contributed to by humans, what's happening with the CO2 we're pumping out?
If negative feedbacks will save us, why didn't they save the planet in the past (when temperatures got higher than today)?
If Lindzen has any solid science behind him, why is he only posting in blogs and talking in the lecture circuit with non-scientists?
If Amundsen could sail through the NPW by sitting in ice three years, when we can do that without sitting in ice today, does that not PROVE warming, not refute it?
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
And to bring some balance to this thread, if you looked at the Heartland Institute link, read what hand exists behind their "neutrality":
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=41
Do you think the American Petrolium Institute would have a pony in the climate denial debate??? I do.
Complain about this comment
Over 12k years ago, nobody was drilling for oil in the middle east, Russia and the US.
And there's no reason why today's temperatures is going to fall lower. So how does a tale of the happy mastadon prove anything whatsoever?
Their existence doesn't mean CO2 isn't a GG.
Their deaths don't prove that burning fossil fuels doesn't produce CO2.
Their melting proves nothing about where the climate is going.
Complain about this comment
Here's some worrying information on hidden money and the tangled web of lies behind the denialosphere:
http://opinion-nation.blogspot.com/2008/06/sound-science-and-climate-change-or.html
Breathe deep, boys, that smoke is good for you! Don't trust the scientists, they're paid for by government!
Complain about this comment
Some captioning might help us understand the relevance of the images on BBC blogs one on this post provokes many questions, I have spent 5 mins trying to find the answers here and on the climate camp site too with no luck so far - what is happening in the 2nd picture -are either of the main characters "voices in the climate change sphere" perhaps ? Has the hooded chap just asked "...what is essential to a prosperous and green economy ?" is the medic suggesting; "...the most fundamental long-term ingredient has to revolve around energy, both saving it and implementing cleaner ways of generating it."
Is the police medic punching someone; is the chap in the hood helping the policeman to keep his balance against the gales from the wind tunnel of power or vice versa; to whom do the the extra set of fingers belong, why has the policeman not got his visor down, what is the person doing with a blue thing in the background ? For those who pop in for a quick read and don't have time or inclination to hunt out the detail why not provide a hint or two via the tried and tested art of captioning images.
Complain about this comment
There ARE ALT tags on the images.
The first one:
Solar_panels_and_electric_car
The second one:
Altercation_at_climate_camp
Last one:
Sun
If your browser doesn't show these by default, either look at source, or right click on the image and select "Properties" (your specific browser may have a different name for it).
How about next time you see if there ARE alt text tags on an image (as is required for W3C compliance for assistive technologies for WWW pages) before opening your mouth and showing yourself sadly lacking in sense?
Complain about this comment
#308 Tim Jenvey,
Not sure what the issue is here.
Yes there were ice-sheets, the Laurentide over Canada/Northern US, and what I always think of as the Eurasian (could be another term I can't recall right now) over Europe/Northern Asia. One of the problems with coring permafrost is the disuption glacial movement caused when the glaciers (ice sheets) once sat on top of the permafrost, this is one of the limits on age analysis of permafrost cores.
A bit sketchy, but like I say paleo-science isn't my strong point.
The problem with just saying it's warmer so we're just at point X again is that such seemingly good common sense reasoning is likely to get the wrong answer. Climate is not magic: There are reasons for cooling or warming. Science is about trying to get to the reality: not the easily satisfying answer, but the well tested answer.
I can understand Yeah_Whatever's frustration, and when regularly dealing with the same repeated points from people who's views have been distorted by pseudo-science I too have exhibited that same frustration in the past. If I do not now it is because frankly I'm past caring, which is not to my credit. However, frustration aside I can't see