Comeback for climate cautions and caveats
There are many ways in which climate science has moved on since the mid-1990s, the period from date which the oldest e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and featured in the so-called "ClimateGate" affair - and there are quite a few in which many both inside and outside the mainstream would argue it needs to change further.
I referred to some of them in a previous post dealing with the first report into the affair, from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (STC).
Another of them is flagged up in the second report, from a panel chaired by geologist and former Shell chairman Lord (Professor Ron) Oxburgh.
In essence it says: tell the whole story.
"Their published work contains many cautions about the limitations of their data and their interpretation."
And a little further on:
"All of the published work was accompanied by detailed descriptions of uncertainties and accompanied by appropriate caveats. The same was true in face-to-face discussions."
And finally:
"CRU publications repeatedly emphasise the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th Century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue. While this was regrettable, we could find no such fault with the peer-reviewed papers we examined."
In any branch of science, if you follow a path from raw data to scientific publication to meta-analysing review, you will inevitably see a process of simplifying and parsing.
If you then follow the non-scientific channels where that information flows - through governmental report to distillation for ministers to sound-bite, or from a journalist's research through article to headline - you will see further reduction, and sometimes not so skilfully done.
The Oxburgh review's point is that we reduce the uncertainties and caveats and cautions at our peril.
As one might have predicted, this review (like the STC's) has been broadly applauded by mainstream scientists and scientific institutions, and ridiculed by "sceptical" organisations.
But over the last decade, many people I've spoken to across the spectrum have expressed concerns at the loss of caveats and "small print"; perhaps, at least on this aspect of the Oxburgh review, there will be some consensus.
It is not without challenges. Communicating climate science is hard enough as it is; the more uncertainties and limitations are involved, the more daunting as a communication challenge it becomes.
Yet, extrapolating from Oxburgh, it is a challenge that needs to be taken up.
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
© 2012~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~27~RS~)
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When the science moved to the political arena everything changed. The right-wing has taken the position that all change is evil, if they don't agree, and there can be no compromise. With those being the beginning caveats of the right not much can be done. Extreme interpretations that by doing anything we enter the path of world domination of a world government conspiracy makes finding rationale solutions impossible because the science will be challenged by a minoirty that insist the only proper course is that the tail should wag the dog. I am not a supporter of cap and trade as it appears to be a revenue generator for the governments and a windfall for the bankers. Cap and Trade simply continues the fossil fuel pollution and gives the governments a vested interest in that continuation. The challenges to the science, used in almost every field by the businesses being identified with a negative outcome or practice and the cap and trade agenda has distracted from the other serious environmental impacts of fossil fuels. Climate Change will be treated politically in the same manner as the financial crisis. Once the crisis occurs the politicians who did nothing when warned will claim it is time to move on and deal with the crisis and coal and oil companies will be the industries deciding how the crisis should be managed, insuring no blame is assessed. There is no longer any sense of a social responsibility or even an interest of the society, there is only profit and tax revenue. Representative government only represents business and the business of government is only business. Everywhere is beginning to look like China, but China will change.
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"CRU publications repeatedly emphasise the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th Century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue."
So the CRU scientists, like Briffa and Jones, had their work misrepresented by the IPCC authors, like, er, Briffa and Jones.
So Briffa and Jones are entirely blameless - much of the blame has to fall on Briffa and Jones.
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1. ghostofsichuan
I think you are misguided if you still believe that ‘The right-wing has taken the position that all change is evil’ and are therefore opposing change. I think the situation is now rather the reverse! It is big business which is profiting hugely from, and stands to profit even more in the future, the idea of climate change and it is therefore being driven from that quarter now.
Climate Change is simply an idea who’s time has come. Whether it is perceived as calamitous for the future of mankind or just another scare, whether it is thought it may bring possible benefits or potential disaster, whether the ‘science’ is believed conclusive or is just plain bodged, will be entirely attributable to the disposition of the individual whose opinion it forms. Whether it ‘real’ or ‘imagined’ is really of little consequence, the ‘idea’ of it is with us, and with the idea comes everything that human nature consists of. There are those who see the idea as an opportunity to profit, either by financial gain or increased prestige. There are those who see it as a call to crusade against the ‘tyranny of greed’. Some find it a convenient catch all for everything they see as ‘wrong’ with the world, like poverty, disease, animal suffering or ‘environmental damage’. Many feel anger at being ‘conned’ whilst others simply worry if it will affect their grandchildren.
I do not believe that it is a ‘huge conspiracy’ although ‘the idea’, like any other idea, naturally gives rise to conspiratorial cabals within its bounds. Neither do I believe that humans do not affect the climate, as all living things affect that which surrounds them. How much, in what ways and to what effect cannot be determined with any certainty at all because we are merely part of a much larger system, the complexities and timescales of which are quite beyond our grasp, however much we may wish to think otherwise.
But I do believe that Climate Change as an ‘idea’ affects us all, here and now. There are fortunes being made and deals being done, at this very moment, in carbon trading and ‘offsetting’, in the sale of everything from million pound wind turbines to home insulation, whilst at the same time other livelihoods are being threatened and lost. There are reputations at stake, right now, of politicians and journalists, scientists and film makers, who stand or fall upon our opinion of their merits. For some, a sense of ‘goodliness’ is felt; their sacrifices now will save the planet for ‘future generations’. Yet even this, seemingly altruistic stance, is questionable. If asked to forgo their own particular future generations to make space for somebody else’s, would their altruism remain intact? And there are those, like me, who feel we should live our three score years and ten in the most satisfying manner achievable whilst endeavouring to cause the least amount of dissatisfaction to who and what surrounds us. Tomorrow must look after itself.
Climate Change is an idea who’s time has come. But we should not forget that it is a human idea; which will be used, manipulated, shunned or embraced by humans, for humans, whatever their purpose may be. It seems remarkably naïve to believe otherwise.
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It is not necessary for climate-change researchers to be frauds or charlatans for their conclusions to be false.
Let's step back and look at what is really hapening here.
We are able to take more measurements of our climate than ever before. This has allowed us to amass a great deal of data. This data has been subjected to statistical analysis and we believe that we have detected a trend.
We have assumed that this trend will continue without interruption. We have made many other assumptions about what effect this will have on our climate, both global and regional.
We have simply been staring at a lot of numbers that we can't interpret and frightened ourselves witless.
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4. persuademe
Well said! And somewhat more succinctly than I!
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Caveats and uncertainties,is a very good way to describe how the science should have been framed. For many of us that is what we found so interesting in the story told by the CRU Emails.
But that is not the story the team collaberated with the the IPCC to present, and certainly not the story told by the media as the projected warmning got ever hotter
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"Climate Science" started as occupational therapy for second-rate minds - like "Gender Studies" or "Golf Psychology". They had conferences, wrote papers, slapped each other on the back.
They never discovered anything and for a long time it didn't matter if their "narrative" was real or just an elaborate self-supporting fantasy.
Some hoped they would discover some laws or some insight if they carried on wearing white coats and drawing graphs. Cargo Cult scientists. Others knew it was a crock but wanted a free ride for as long as it lasted.
One plausible theory is that Jones leaked the emails himself. He started to feel out of his depth. Politicians and activists were beginning to rely on his work and he knew just how shonkey it all was.
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Bonn1e #3.
As the age of monarchy ended so may the era of what has been called represetative government. Somewhat amazing that the bankers could steal everyones money and the government decide to give them more from the very people they stole it from. Your position reads like a Chinese Mahayana thesis and therfore is unclear to my suffering mind. Compassion is a term to consider.
Things will certainly change but it will be all about how and when..motivations are usually made up in retrospect.
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#4 persuademe
i really think this 'climate scientists are crooks or idiots or sheisters or self deluded' has really got a bit out of hand.
over and over again the statistics these scientists use have been verified. oxburgh is just the lastest:
"as far as we can judge the (statistical) methods which CRU has employed are fair and satisfactory."
would you go to a hospital that had a 50% higher than average mortality rate...it's just a number.
would you send your child to a school that had a 20% lower pass mark than average...it's just a number.
these numbers do reflect reality. climateaudit has been working hard to rubbish the stats of climate scientists but have found nothing significant. none of this is to suggest things can;t be done better. but i am saying to ignore the figures is reckless.
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@9, rossglory wrote:
“ …...
over and over again the statistics these scientists use have been verified. oxburgh is just the lastest:
"as far as we can judge the (statistical) methods which CRU has employed are fair and satisfactory."
…... “
The panel only considered 11 selected papers which did not include any of the more contentious work.
Even then the panel stated that there may be superior ways of handling the data.
“would you go to a hospital that had a 50% higher than average mortality rate...it's just a number.”
Yes, they are often the ones that deal with more serious complaints so have greater expertise.
I would also stress the point made by Peter317 #2.
Were Lord Oxburgh and his panel really unaware that the IPCC reviewers who neglected to highlight uncertainties were frequently the same CRU scientists that they exonerated?
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Less than three weeks, only 5 pages.... The good Lord protects the pies that his fingers are in.... What a surprise.
Let's ignore the obvious and talk about more important issues.
What about that sun eh....?!
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Could these be the people who selected the papers for the panel to review:
http://royalsociety.org/The-science-of-climate-change/
Does anyone know?
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Yes. Seems like just yesterday that the IPCC gang was screaming down any and all questions with 'the debate is over"!
Who are these rabid right wingers - The Royal Statistical Society? Look what they just stated:
"Prof Hand singled out a 1998 paper by Prof Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a constant target for climate change sceptics, as an example of this.
He said the graph, that showed global temperature records going back 1,000 years, was exaggerated – although any reproduction using improved techniques is likely to also show a sharp rise in global warming. He agreed the graph would be more like a field hockey stick than the ice hockey blade it was originally compared to.
“The particular technique they used exaggerated the size of the blade at the end of the hockey stick. Had they used an appropriate technique the size of the blade of the hockey stick would have been smaller,” he said. “The change in temperature is not as great over the 20th century compared to the past as suggested by the Mann paper.”
Prof Hand praised the blogger Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit for uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results."
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You will find this story at the site wattsupwiththat.com. You will find many more inconvenient things there too.
Reading some comments here makes it so obvious why Orwell set 1984 in the UK.
On the other hand, comment #2 from peter 317 was spot on!
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rossglory @9:
"would you go to a hospital that had a 50% higher than average mortality rate...it's just a number.
would you send your child to a school that had a 20% lower pass mark than average...it's just a number."
Yes, they're probably just numbers.
In your two examples, there are so many confounding factors that those statistics are totally meaningless.
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8. ghostofsichuan
I am no student of Buddhism, merely a student of human nature! As far as I understand it 'compassion' has remarkably little to do with 'Climate Change'.
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Some people must have an incredibly high opinion of their ability to come up with a definitive assessment of climate science (and the plausibility of AGW) with just the benefit of a layman understanding of the science and an incomplete appreciation of what the consensus view and current state of the sciece says.
"It's all rubbish"
"The stats are completely meaningless"
"climate science is just an idea who's time has come"
These are extreme views. As extreme as someone coming in here and proclaiming that AGW is DEFINITELY happening and we're all going to frazzle within 50 years.
The reality is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Where in the middle? That's why we have scientists. That's why we seek out evidence. That's why we apply rigorous statistical techniques and demand that the techniques used are valid. My experience of academia is that if you stand up in front of a room full of people and explain a technique with holes in it, there will ALWAYS be some clever boffin ready to shoot you down. It is irresistable to human nature. It transcends funding and partisan tendencies and this is crucial to science. What's right is right, what's wrong is wrong and clever people in science float to the forefront.
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Hey Richard - About that photo. I assume that you just wanted to use the usual AGW poster child, the polar bear, but that bear looks more like a grizzly bear to me. The face is too short and the body too 'round'. As you may know there have been a few hybrids documented lately.
Are you sure that's a polar bear?
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SR @16:
Yes, it is irresistible - prepare to be shot down.
"The stats are completely meaningless"
As I'm the only poster on this thread who has used that phrase, I'm assuming you're referring to my posting @14. Read it again and tell me what I said that has anything to do with AGW.
"climate science is just an idea who's time has come"
Again, Bonn1e's posting @3 had nothing to do with science, and everything to do with politicians and other opportunists capitalising on "the idea".
"It's all rubbish"
The only person on this thread to mention the word "rubbish" is rossglory @9. I thought you and him were on the same side.
Please make sure that you have things in context before accusing people of having extreme views.
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16. SR
'What's right is right, what's wrong is wrong'
I admire your simplicity but suggest right and wrong are both subjective in the immediate and changeable over time. At one time it was thought that the sun moved around the earth, it was obvious to all who observed it rise and set each day and therefore the idea was considered ‘right’ for hundreds of years. Of course the idea would be considered ‘wrong’ now. Are you saying that what might be considered right or wrong now will never change?
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18. Peter317
Yes! It's a little surprising to be labelled extreme having taken such pains not to be!
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11. Dave Ware
Ahh yes! Thw sun. I feel very slightly put out by this. Haven't there been a lot of people saying 'But what about the effect of solar activity?' To which the 'consensus' reply has been 'Nonsense, the sun has nothing to do with it'. To now claim this as a 'new discovery' (which of course 'only affects a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend') seems a bit underhand. Couldn't they just have said 'Sorry, we've found that it does make a difference after all'!
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To Richard Black:
Best of luck in presenting the caveats and nuances of the science and still keeping your editors happy!
But it does need to be done. Might I also suggest as a matter of standard practice that the article or articles used in your pieces be directly cited, using your highlighted link methodology - right to the abstract would be best I think?
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I would like now to discuss the theme "where to from here?"
I may have an answer, or rather, acting as impressario, I would like to pass on an idea, verbatim, that was written eighteen years ago by a man who has taken a lot of the heat from the skeptics' lobby - former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore.
I am doing an iterative project these days as regards climate science - going back to old sources as much as the new. For example, "Ice Ages - Solving the Mystery", by the Imbries, 1979.
And I just now re-read the part of Al Gore's 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance," the part I remember most. It is as relevant today as it was then, perhaps more-so:
From Chapter 14 - 'A New Common Purpose'
"...we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization. Whether we realize it or not, we are now engaged in an epic battle to right the balance of our earth, and the tide of this battle will turn only when the majority of people in the world become sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join an all out effort." [my emphasis]
=========================================
It is relevant that Al Gore was a politician at the highest level - that he is an environmentalist since his university days - that he is now a businessman.
And I believe, that after what Al Gore called the 'long fuse' of public awareness, the threshold that many of us have been hoping for vis a vis the public is about to be crossed in a city in Bolivia, situated some twenty-five hundred meters above sea level, and instigated by a man who was nearly beaten to death by the powers that be as he fought for the rights many take for granted, but have been denied to a majority of the worlds' citizens. That man is Evo Morales.
The Rubicon will be crossed next week, but this time by the people, not an emperor, and I understand the BBC intends to cover it - Bravo!
What the corrupt nation-states have failed to do, what the psychopathic corporate world has done, what the intolerable business as usual lobby is doing - all will be engaged next week, and not a moment too soon.
James Hansen is expected to speak. That might be an eye-opener.
But I expect suprprises - this is all new - and the Internet will play a large roll, vindicating the prescient title of Freeman Dyson's book, "The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet."
It's funny, but I always look forward to the haunting music of the high Andes at the annual Calgary Stampede in July. I have heard and seen up close many Bolivians in their colorful attire on the grounds of the Stampede, and wondered what they were thinking as they surveyed the scene.
And I have always wanted to climb Illimani, without a guide, 'by fair means,' and to do so in the same way I climbed peaks in Baja California, and southern Mexico - meeting the people, celebrating life with them, learning their language and ways, and always, always, moving at a pace, 'for to admire, an' for to see' (RLS).
Of interest:
Cochabamba, host city to the first "World People's Conference on Climate Change," prospered as the lucre from the giant silver mines at Potosi made its way back to colonial Spain.
The city is now presiding over quite a different scene - an attempt by the world's citizens to wrest colonial power from the current empires of the planet.
Will the 'City of Eternal Spring' go down in history as the 'open plain' where mankind turned the corner, and once again turned its face to the Sun?
- Manysummits -
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The fundamental problem here is that the science establishment has made a monumental error. It is almost certainly too late to go back to caveat and caution.
Too much funding, too many reputations, scientific and political reputations, and indeed too many branches of science themselves have tied their fates to the Carbon hypothesis. The unfortunate coincidence of climate warming with the growth in theory here led to a premature "calling" of the science.
Since 1999 no increase in temperatures can be found, or hypothesised or theorised with any conviction. The certainty of the previous vehement assertion on Carbon's role in warming now haunts all of the scientific establishment. The stasis - and now decline - in temperatures coupled with the hideous embarassment that these findings tally exactly with the predictions and dismissed "science" of the sceptics exposes the entire scientific community to ridicule and scorn. They are truly stuffed and must simply watch as warming slowly unravels and we deal with the cooling planet - cyclical and natural which folowed the previous warming - also cyclical and natural.
Ten to twenty years of "denial" now awaits us - not by the "Sceptics" but by the entire establishment, before the bitterest gall of their own hubris is crually exposed by the unrelenting force of the truth of our cooling planet.
The real victim here is that of genuine environmentalism which will be destroyed by the right wing backlash which will follow the complete humiliation of environmentalism in its foolish tying of genuine and pressing concerns to the arrant foolhardiness of AGW.
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Ice Man - I agree with your comments, and particularly the last paragraph except for your label of a "right wing" backlash.
Unless by "right wing" you mean informed critical thinking.
This "right wing" versus "left wing" thing is just the divide and conquer strategy that the power elite uses to keep the masses distracted from what is really going on.
And, if anyone just thinks about these labels they will realize how conveniently simplistic they are.
To use my favourite corporate jet-setting buffoon, which is Al Gore? Are his partners in his carbon flogging business, Goldman Sachs et al, left wingers? These people just use so called "left wingers" for their own ends.
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Thank you once again for pointing out the essentials.
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In 1887, a volcano between Java and Sumatra exploded violently, launching several cubic miles of dust into the highest part of the atmosphere. Result, inter alia, was that much of the northern hemisphere suffered a very cold winter in 1888. In northwestern Oregon, the Willamette River froze solid from Swan Island south to the falls at Oregon City. Some people iceskated that distance and back.
Crops failed in the summer of 1888, as a cooler than usual summer. By 1889, temperatures got back to normal.
Do you suppose that the current Iceland volcano could eventually cause temporary global cooling? Just a question.
TeaPot562
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OOPS! Just read an article stating that Krakatoa eruption was in 1883, rather than 1887 as my earlier post stated. Sorry for the error. Oral tradition recalled, memory perhaps not perfect. Again, apologies.
TeaPot562
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@Richard Black
"CRU publications repeatedly emphasise the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th Century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue. While this was regrettable, we could find no such fault with the peer-reviewed papers we examined."
If this is true, why didn't CRU do the honourable thing and resign from the IPCC as others, who considered their work to be misrepresented, did?
/Mango
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Maybe Richard Black and the BBC have Greenpeace looking over ther shoulders?
(from a transcript a pro agw activist made - Roger Harrabin knows of the activist!) 14th April 2010
http://www.campaigncc.org/scepticsmeeting
Guardian environemt reporter also a speaker!
Ben Stewart: Greenpeace (Head of Media Greenpeace UK)
"- We have to launch a campaign so these people are scared of us. (journalists)"
"we need to pull together a community of activists to hold journalists to account. We have to launch a campaign so these people are scared of us."
"We have to make "brand sceptic" toxic."
"We need a new, compelling narrative, and pull together a community of
activists determined to hold journalists to account."
"We have to launch a campaign so these people are scared of us."
http://www.joabbess.com/2010/04/15/ben-stewart-greenpeace-stalking/comment-page-1/#comment-885
can't be much fun being an environmental correspondent at the bbc any more, post climategate.
The sceptics believe the BBC to be totally biased on AGW theory,
the believers, post climategate think the bbc and other journalists are pandering to the sceptics, because they are covering the story
(allbeit, in my opinion a partial way, all those pictures for each article, etc) why not look at climate audit and report what steve mcintyre is saying about the careful selection of paper reviewed, that did NOT include the papers that this was all about, ie Mann and Jones.
Have a look everybody here.(maybe the BBC will look as well and dare I suggest report it)
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/15/a-fair-sample/
Even Hand on the committee said that Mcintyre had done GOOD work in this field.
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Richard Black wrote:
"In any branch of science, if you follow a path from raw data to scientific publication to meta-analysing review"
Which sciences follow this path? Which genuine science starts with "raw data" and then leads to a dreary bit of academic assimilation like that?
This is the sort of thing that someone would say if their paradigm example of a science was psychology, and they had no experience of real sciences that genuinely explain their subject-matter. (Far from trying to understand the mind, psychology attempts to measure mere correlations in behaviour, like phrenology.)
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#23 The Ice Man wrote:
"The fundamental problem here is that the science establishment has made a monumental error."
I agree, except I wouldn't call it the "science establishment". Most mainstream scientists do not follow this idiotic inductivist methodology at all. It's just psychologists and AGW people who ape what they think real scientists do.
I'll bet Richard Black has a degree in psychology or some other humanities subject, and that's where he got his deep "understanding of the scientific method"!
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I see Richard Black links to some 'sceptical' website..
I will believe the bbc is attempting to be fair ad impartial, when they actually link to the main one. ie Climate Audit. Stve mcintyre made submissions and his coauthor prof Mckitrick..
why not report their very 'strong' criticisms of this enquiry. Where they explain in great detail.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/15/a-fair-sample/
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/14/hand-praised-mcintyre-of-climate-audit/
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#13 CandianRockies
i think you forgot to add this part from prof hand's report:
"Prof Hand said his criticisms should not be seen as invalidating climate science. He pointed out that although the hockey stick graph – which dates from a study led by US climate scientist Michael Mann in 1998 – exaggerates some effects, the underlying data show a clear warming signal."
otherwise it looks as if you're questioning the science.
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#14 Peter317
"Yes, they're probably just numbers."
hmmm, but then your words are just words and they express ideas that are just ideas and......maybe i should just go back to bed.
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#3 Bonn1e
"Climate Change is simply an idea who’s time has come."
if you've capitalised climate change to emphasise the idea or meme then you may have a point. we've been trashing the planet for millenia, different parts, different amounts and only now is there the means to pull all this together into a coherent concept.
climate change with little c's is not just an ethereal human concept, it's just the other side of your window.
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#35 rossglory wrote:
"we've been trashing the planet for millenia"
I can see that some parts of the planet are worse than they were before, from a human perspective; and other parts of the planet are better than they were before -- again from a human perspective. But in what sense is the planet "trashed" as opposed to just "different"?
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woke up to a fabulous blue sky...no glorious sunset last night ;-( It is now 8am and clouds are overhead. Are they Iceland-volcano clouds or cloud clouds? Between waking and writing I investigated other phenomena that I hypothesized would happen. My expectations were positively rewarded. Thats it! How many thousands of people notice unusual phenomena and that is as far as it goes because they don't have the means of recording what they have observed?
This blog is looking at how the same data is adapted, compressed, manipulated and distorted to 'suite' the various audiences. Outliers are often eliminated from the final polished version of what is to be said. The whole range of versions should be continuously available for all to study. I say continuously because some data is continuous and ongoing. The USGS is my first port of call in the morning because it offers up to the minute data at whatever level of information I can handle. If the information is too difficult for me to take in I can click on a tab to learn.
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Bowman at 330 and #31
You are welcome to your crusade but it's simply pathetic to keep on insulting everyone who doesn't share your perspective.
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The lack of caveats and cautions from the IPCC and others has helped to fuel the recent rise in scepticism. So has the insistence on referring to climate-change research as "science".
This has led to many people expecting to see a science of the nature of physics. Climate-change research, of course, is not remotely like physics.
Climate-change predictions are made following statistical analyses made by people not expert in the field of statistical analysis. If we view this research in that way and stop referring to it as "science", perhaps the debate can progress a little more quickly.
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Persuadme at #39
"Climate-change research, of course, is not remotely like physics."
Such a sweeping assertion is meaningless.
What do you mean when you write "climate-change research"? There are a huge range of areas of climate change-related researchm these draw on a range of disciplines and use a wide variety of research methods.
I think you need to include some caveats!
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38 simon-swede wrote:
"You are welcome to your crusade but it's simply pathetic to keep on insulting everyone who doesn't share your perspective."
I'll take this to mean: you can't give me an example of a genuine science that follows the imaginary "path" from raw data, leaving out any attempt at explanation.
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Bowman at 341
You can take it whatever way you like - as you usually do.
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#39 persuademe wrote:
"Climate-change predictions are made following statistical analyses made by people not expert in the field of statistical analysis. If we view this research in that way and stop referring to it as "science", perhaps the debate can progress a little more quickly."
I agree with this. The word 'science' is just an empty honorific. I'm not sure if the people who apply the statistics in climate science are not "experts", but the statistics used is mostly the statistics of extrapolation rather than the statistics of testing.
There are some applications of the statistics of extrapolation (methodology: get sample, assume sample is representative, then generalize) that have made some limited progress over the years. Psephology is now much more reliable than it was a few decades ago. HOWEVER, the samples used as the bases of extrapolation in psephology are in effect "tested" every time there is a real election. So the factors that govern choice of sample are constantly evolving. As always, testing is essential.
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35. rossglory
'climate change with little c's is not just an ethereal human concept, it's just the other side of your window'
Except that it isn't! I have read of hundreds, if not thousands by now, of examples of the effects of AGW
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
gives a somewhat tongue-in-cheek list to date!
In reality what is 'just the other side of my window' has not changed in the last 60 years of my life! Were it not for the continual shouting that it is so, I would be completely unaware of climate change.
'Just outside my window' I find abundant 'native' ladybirds, when I was told 6 years ago that climate change had brouht forth armies of 'alien' ladybirds which would wipe them out in a matter of 2 or 3 years.
Outside my window I spend my days trying to salvage the 'medittereanean style' gardens of people who trustingly followed the advice given about future climate change, and which have been wrecked by the British climate doing what it has always done.
Outside my window I propagate and grow plants which do not 'bloom earlier than ever' but simply bloom when spring arrives just as they always have.
I am aware that the idea of climate change is something that some people worry about or profit from or attribute problems to, but it is definately not something which is just outside my window!
,
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"we've been trashing the planet for millenia"
But almost all of the changes that humans have made to the planet were deliberate attempts to improve life for humans, which on the whole do in fact improve life for humans. For example, Europe is almost completely free of bears (which attack humans) and wolves (which attack livestock). You may think it is a shame that there are no bears and wolves, but they were killed in the first place to make life better for humans. If your livestock were regularly attacked by wolves they might not seem such a lovely romantic animal.
The planet is crisscrossed by roads and electrical wiring and the like, but that is because humans want to travel easily, and they want to use energy in their homes. Life is much better for us with those "mod cons" than without them, on the whole.
It is true that there is much pollution in the developing world, but probably less than there was in the middle ages. And even the pollution we have is a by-product of overall improvements in human living. It's a sort of compromise, and you have to look at the "upside" as well as the "downside".
To use an old-fashioned word, there's something very "bourgeois" about all this "trashing/raping the planet" rhetoric. I'll bet most of the people who use it enjoy lives of comparative luxury compared to the lives they would be leading without the pollution and other signs of modernity such as aircraft in the sky.
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Oxburgh: CRU scientists Jones and Briffa are not to blame.
Oxburgh: IPPC lead authors Jones and Briffa are the ones at fault.
Oxburgh: CRU scientists Jones and Briffa were right not to refer their work to professional statisticians, like Steve McIntyre.
Oxburgh: CRU scientists Jones and Briffa should refer their work to professional statisticians, like Steve McIntyre.
Oxburgh: CRU scientists Jones and Briffa should be more concerned about cherry-picking data and methodologies.
Oxburgh: It is perfectly okay for the Royal Society to cherry-pick the CRU research papers by Jones and Briffa to be reviewed.
Conclusion: The Oxburgh report is 5 pages of complete nonsense. It makes Lord Hutton's famous whitewash look balanced and fair.
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The loss from statement to headline meant that the 'sceptics' said 'aha! The Met Office promised a mild winter yet it was unusually cold! therefore their computer models are all wrong'.
Even though what the Met Office actually said (in an article headlined 'Brace yourselves: forecasters predict mild winter') was "there's still a one in seven chance of a cold winter – with temperatures below average."
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45. bowmanthebard
I wholeheartedly agree with you, nicely put!
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Bowman #45
Ahhh, Dr Pangloss is back!
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"CRU publications repeatedly emphasise the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th Century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue."
"So the CRU scientists, like Briffa and Jones, had their work misrepresented by the IPCC authors, like, er, Briffa and Jones.
So Briffa and Jones are entirely blameless - much of the blame has to fall on Briffa and Jones."
----------------------------------
no. 'neglecting to highlight' does not mean 'misinterpreted' if information was still there in black and white. if anything, your post shows how readily denialists themselves 'misinterpret' information lol
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"To use an old-fashioned word, there's something very "bourgeois" about all this "trashing/raping the planet" rhetoric. I'll bet most of the people who use it enjoy lives of comparative luxury compared to the lives they would be leading without the pollution and other signs of modernity such as aircraft in the sky."
actually bowman, the environmentalist 'rhetoric' is not a luxury, but mere hard nosed survival instinct. because if human growth on a finite planet is left unchecked, it will inevitably lead to its own collapse as fast as it was created. and then what use is a fancy aircraft.
i would throw it back. its bourgeois to luxuriate in a lifestyle created by scientific advances while overlooking, or disregarding the wanton and unsustainable destruction to the systems that support it, and to other people that dont have your luxuries and never will.
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Were CRU scientists involved in helping the Royal Society pick the research papers that Lord Oxburgh's panel were to review?
The Royal Society despite repeated requests are refusing point-blank to divulge who were involved in picking these 11 papers.
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"45. bowmanthebard
I wholeheartedly agree with you, nicely put!"
i think it was a crappy apologist argument, but it was nicely put.
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49. simon-swede
Optimism is not at issue here! It is not optomistic to point out that much 'trashing' as you put it has been done in the name of 'improvement' - it seemed like a good idea at the time. Isn't that what AGW proponants claim to be trying to do? Improve things?
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@Bonn1e
rossglory is correct - it is just outside our windows you just have to notice things. An example in mid December last year (it was 'unseasonally mild' up to that point) I encountered two things that made me pause for thought:
First a confused tree putting out flowers attended by a confused and quite large bumble bee attending to the flowers. I though that's late for a bumble bee and way too early for blossom. Then a little later I walked through a cloud of midges!
In mid December.
Probably down to 'weather' but indicative of the slow creep of 'climate'.
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andy765gtr @50:
"no. 'neglecting to highlight' does not mean 'misinterpreted' if information was still there in black and white. if anything, your post shows how readily denialists themselves 'misinterpret' information lol"
You're the one who 'misinterpreted'.
What I actually wrote was, 'misrepresented'. Big difference.
The words, 'pot' and 'kettle' spring to mind.
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Re 23. The Ice Man:
"Since 1999 no increase in temperatures can be found, or hypothesised or theorised with any conviction."
The trend alone since 1999 is up. In more detail, we are in a solar minimum yet global temperature currently rivals that seen during the last solar maximum (~2003). Both times contained El Ninos. I find this comparison to suggest we have indeed warmed. The background temperature level seems is higher.
The current el nino shows that even in a deep solar minimum global temperature can be elevated to similar highs seen last decade. The past 3 months have been some of the warmest on record. The best you can hope for is a La Nina to draw out the post 2003 plateau for another year, but I think that plateau is on borrowed time. The solar cycle is no longer on the decline so the continued co2 rise will soon go uncontested and even reinforced by the increasing solar cycle. So I think we'll see a jump in global temperature within the next few years.
"coupled with the hideous embarassment that these findings tally exactly with the predictions and dismissed "science" of the sceptics exposes the entire scientific community to ridicule and scorn."
As warming continues skeptics will just claim it's continued "recovery from the little ice age" and they expected it. They didn't predict anything as they have no theory to explain climate change. They are merely just noting whatever happens.
"They are truly stuffed and must simply watch as warming slowly unravels and we deal with the cooling planet - cyclical and natural which folowed the previous warming - also cyclical and natural."
There's nothing cyclical about 20th century warming nor any reason to expect it to be that way. Your claim is not a scientific explaination for temperature changes at all, it's the "god did it" explaination of climate.
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Eleven?
Nice round number?
Perhaps they couldn't find twelve.
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'the environmentalist 'rhetoric' is not a luxury, but mere hard nosed survival instinct'
Well that's all very well if 'surviving' is all you want from life! Personally I think I would rather go the way of the dinosaurs!
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#51 andy765gtr wrote:
"if human growth on a finite planet is left unchecked, it will inevitably lead to its own collapse"
I'll wearily repeat this simple question, expecting the usual silence as an answer:
What do you think kept the human population at lower levels in the past?
as fast as it was created.
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To those of you that have been telling us how wonderful the modern temperature records are we have, this little Gem from GISS:
"2010-04-15: The data shown between 4/13 and 4/15 were based on data downloaded on 4/12 and included some station reports from Finland in which the minus sign may have been dropped. NOAA updated GHCN on 4/13 by removing those data and we updated our displays today. The March 2010 global mean temperature was affected by about 2/100 of a degree Celsius, well below the margin of error (about 15/100 of a degree for monthly global means)."
No, big fanfare attached to this particular retraction, unlike the one that was attached to Finland having the warmest March ever recorded, which came as a bit of a shock to the people of Finland.... Especially the Finnish Met office.
And you lot wonder why there are so many sceptics out there!!
You really have to wonder how much more of this sort of thing is going on(Russian temps from 2008, spring to mind, as do the more recent Bolivian ones). Infinity may have some more downloading to do ;-)
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'i think it was a crappy apologist argument, but it was nicely put.'
We are in agreement in part at least then. Isn't every viewpoint on here an 'apologist argument', including your own, i.e. in defence of the posters own belief? That just leaves 'crappy' which undoubtedly suggests you find the argument put forward less than satisfactory, but gives little indication as to why you find it so.
Of course your remark could simply be meant as an insult.
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Behind my home the winter ducks and waterfowl have disappeared, the storms are stronger and the river is higher. I would use the logic of Bonn1e and attest that out my window things have changed and therefore using her reasoning say that there is climate change. Outside your window is not the world.
"For the betterment of human beings: Chernobyl, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, mercury in Japanese water system, DDT, and deaths from London smog to name a few benefits. Human advancement has had a price and that price has been borne primarily by the poor for the sake of profit for others. The modernization of Asia has been an environmental disaster, but you can buy a cheap coffee pot. The issue becomes one of point of view: mankind as a part of a natural system or mankind as the harvester of the natrual system. Your fortunate condition of birth was not of your doing. Greed has been the primary motivation not the betterment of the human condition as this has certainly been uneven at best. The betterment of some human beings would be more accurate.
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@ChangEngland and Bonnie
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/cardiffdata.txt
Not sure that you can call December 'unseasonally mild' with or witout inverted commas - I guess it would depend on where you are in the UK, but Cardiff wasn't mild and neither were London
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/heathrowdata.txt
or Paisley in Scotland,
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/paisleydata.txt
Someone, should check their facts... Perhaps, the person looking out of her window, is a tad more reliable than your average warmist?
Maybe it was statistically milder on a Random Tuesday in December, if you're standing on one leg, wearing a kilt and holding a penguin ;-)
Or maybe our friendly warmist is just mistaken.
I'll let you decide........
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55. ChangEngland
Please can I refer you to my post at 44 with regard to seeing things out of my window. Actually, I don't really need to look out of my window as I have spent the last 40 odd years working outside. There is little that I have failed to observe in the way of 'odd things' in nature and after this long, none of them surprise me. Please don't think that because you saw 'midges' in December or flowers blooming in the snow or any other of the myriad 'unusual events' that are cited as evidence of climate change, you have witnessed something meaningful. Believe me, individual plants and animals behave oddly from time to time and have always done so. It is quite easy to spot things which could be used to demonstrate the climate is warming, or cooling, or getting wetter, or dryer, or anything else if you have a mind to! None of it 'means' anything at all, except perhaps that it means we know very little. Seek and you will find!
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Re 61. blunderbunny:
Please reference this "fanfare" you claim existed from NASA over finland temperatures. Your argument hinges on that.
Did you miss the sheer irrelevancy of the error made to the global mean? A 0.02C error and it was corrected within 2 days has on anything?
Why do you ignore the irrelevancy?
"And you lot wonder why there are so many sceptics out there!!"
Because they ignore the irrelevancy of things?
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Breaking News: March 2010 was Earth’s warmest on record
“Warmer-than-normal conditions dominated the globe, especially in northern Africa, South Asia and Canada," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement on Thursday.
Cooler-than-normal temperatures prevailed in some locations, however, including Mongolia, eastern Russia, northern and western Europe, northern Australia, western Alaska and the southeastern United States.
Average ocean temperatures were the hottest for any March since record-keeping began in 1880, while the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record.”
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/04/report-march-was-earth%E2%80%99s-warmest-on-record/1
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\\\ A 'Major Caveat' - Just In ///
'Missing' Heat May Affect Future Climate Change
- ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2010)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100415141121.htm
Kevin E. Trenberth and John T. Fasullo. Tracking Earth's Energy. Science, 16 April 2010 328: 316-317
===================================
James Lovelock has repeatedly warned that we lack sufficient observational data, instead favoring models.
Freeman Dyson would appear to agree, noting the profound diference between a model and a theory.
James Hanson has always stated that models are the weak link in climate science.
And now, further evidence to support these views - i.e., that it is time to spend money, big money, on field work and more empirical studies.
I will quote the last lines of the 'Science Daily' article, by one of the two authors of this new 'Perspectives' article in Science:
"Global warming at its heart is driven by an imbalance of energy: more solar energy is entering the atmosphere than leaving it," Fasullo says. "Our concern is that we aren't able to entirely monitor or understand the imbalance. This reveals a glaring hole in our ability to observe the build-up of heat in our climate system."
===============
\\\ A Warning ///
While it is all well and good to discuss the science, that is not at the heart of the problem.
As I have said many times before, we already know enough to mobilize fully, on a war footing, to avert environmental catastrophe.
The problem today is the politicians, the nation-states they represent, the beholden to none corporate giants of the world, and a public so long abused and indoctrinated that it is scarce possible to find anyone who can think and associate freely anymore in civilized society.
It is little wonder that the solitude of the mountain quest, or of a Buddhist devotee, are required to allow one to see the obvious, while those embedded in society, consuming and supporting the status quo, including our culture of conquest, are wrapped up in their own world of the trivial and the mundane.
The time for soft and polite words will have to wait, in favor of the truth.
- Manysummits -
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#63 ghostofsichuan wrote:
"Behind my home the winter ducks and waterfowl have disappeared, the storms are stronger and the river is higher."
It's April!
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Bowman:
maybe you have not been following the discussion, this is about over time. April is New Year's in most of S.E. Asia should we change that because in the West it is on Jan. 1st. Sorry we need to spell everything out not to draw the ire of the literalist. Looking for fault, one can always find it, even when not there.
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@Infinity
Yep, the error was only 0.02C when smeared all over the planet [The phrase lies, darn lies and statistics comes to mind] it was more of the order of +11-12C when you're just looking at Finland!
Again, please check one's facts before responding or we're going to end up with another very long and circular referencing thread.
My problem is that you get headlines like it's the warmest something ever somwhere, but nothing apart from a little mention on the GISS site to say Ooops sorry chaps we got it wrong. So, Joe Public is left with the impression that Finland did indeed Experience an abnormally warm March, when if anything it was in fact abnormally cold!!!!
Plus, it wasn't GISS that noticed anything was amiss it was all those darn public spirited sceptics, that you're all so busy complaining about - Plus, the Finnish Met Office of course ;-)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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bowmanthebard #60: "I'll wearily repeat this simple question, expecting the usual silence as an answer: What do you think kept the human population at lower levels in the past?"
I'll wearily reply...
How about; they lacked the ability to trash the planet in their incessant (from your #45..) "attempts to improve life for humans".
/davblo
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68. manysummits
'As I have said many times before, we already know enough to mobilize fully, on a war footing, to avert environmental catastrophe'
I'll put my tin hat on then.
'The problem today is the politicians, the nation-states they represent, the beholden to none corporate giants of the world'
Oh come on! 'Corporate giants' are lining up to get their hands on the massive government subsidies which enable them to sell, at a nice profit of course,'green energy', which would otherwise represent a very poor investment indeed. Result 'Corporate Giants 1 - Electricity customers 0.
'and a public so long abused and indoctrinated that it is scarce possible to find anyone who can think and associate freely anymore in civilized society'
Anyone except you I assume you mean?
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@blunderbunny
No kilt or penguin required. If you want to use numbers to back up your arguments then please do your arithmetic first:
From your quoted Heathrow records ....
AVERAGING 2008 DEC & NOV = 6.225 Deg C.
AVERAGING 2009 DEC & NOV = 7.000 Deg C.
AVERAGING 2010 DEC & NOV = 7.025 Deg C.
Yes it got cold and snowy after my encounter with the bee and midges, which probably made the December much figure lower than it was at mid point in the month.
Now I say again UP TO that point it was mild - Just look at the November Figures.
I trusted to my memory I did not look at numbers first.
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@myself
Oops, Sloppy presentation of arithmetical results error in msg #74
I have reversed 07 & 08 but the result stands 09 was warmer. especially in Nov.
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Come on mods, How can we have a conversation with 1 hour between posts ???
Please pretty please, hurry it up a bit :)
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Re 71. blunderbunny wrote:
"My problem is that you get headlines like it's the warmest something ever somwhere, but nothing apart from a little mention on the GISS site to say Ooops sorry chaps we got it wrong."
So where are the news stories that claimed Finland had the warmest March ever? Correct me if I am wrong, but there aren't any. I checked google news with the keywords Finland and Warmest and found nothing.
Did anyone at NASA announce Finland had the warmest March ever?
Will you answer these questions?
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"Plus, it wasn't GISS that noticed anything was amiss it was all those darn public spirited sceptics, that you're all so busy complaining about - Plus, the Finnish Met Office of course ;-)"
I should comment on this too. Skeptics haven't done science a service by finding this error. The error would have been detected soon enough without the skeptics, eg you even say the Finnish Met Office found it. All the skeptics finding it first means is that they use it as you are using it to smear the science unjustifiably. You are exagerating a trivial error into a reason to doubt the science. Therefore this misleads people. There is no scientific benefit to misleading people.
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bonn1e@73
In a world where AGW is happening (if that isn't beyond you to imagine), who would you expect to deliver the greener technologies that will lead to a low carbon economy? The fairy godmother? Do you expect it all just to magically materialise?
No. This is just close to the normal capitalistic response. Resources are being mobilised to a certain area. To equate this to a common demoninator of corporate giants 1 - 0 electricity consumers is not an attack on AGW, it is an attack on capitalism. I thought it was the green side of the debate who hated capitalism, unless, you are trying to peddle the conspiracy that corporate giants are lobbying scientists to alter their results to show CO2 induced warming thereby protecting their investment?
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#68 manysummits wrote:
"As I have said many times before, we already know enough to mobilize fully, on a war footing, to avert environmental catastrophe."
Sounds like the Fourth Reich -- thank heavens the "political will" isn't there!
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Third time lucky :(
I was trying to correct the post from memory of what I'd written, as I could not see it for over an hour!!
Here are the correct figures and year labels!
AVERAGING 2007 DEC & NOV = 7.000 Deg C.
AVERAGING 2008 DEC & NOV = 6.225 Deg C.
AVERAGING 2009 DEC & NOV = 7.025 Deg C.
Apologies :(
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Bowman:
FYI: The hemispheres have opposite seasons so if someone makes a statement about the cold weather and they are from the Southern Hemisphere it is because it is the beginning of winter there. Does not refute warming trends.
In Qinghai Province, place of recent earthquake, it is very cold, in the mountains you understand, and it is April!
Note: China is not the name, that is from the West when stealing the process to make porcelain: Zhong Guo, meaning Middle Kingdom (center of the world)is most commonly used, but I guess that should be changed to adhere to occidental perference. Round-eyes, what a sensitive group.
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#82 ghostofsichuan wrote:
"FYI: The hemispheres have opposite seasons"
I knew the North and South hemispheres had opposite seasons, but it's news to me that that happens with the East and West hemispheres.
"Round-eyes, what a sensitive group."
Yeah, I find them ridiculously sensitive -- what a bunch!
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Some insight into the paper selection process:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/16/actons-eleven-the-response.html
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79. SR wrote:
'unless, you are trying to peddle the conspiracy that corporate giants are lobbying scientists to alter their results to show CO2 induced warming thereby protecting their investment'
No I am not a conspiracy theorist, just a realist! Corporate giants do whatever they need to do to remain corporate giants. My point is merely that the times in which AGW proponents could accuse anyone who disagreed with them as being 'Funded by Big Something' are long gone.
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33. At 08:04am on 16 Apr 2010, rossglory wrote:
#13 CandianRockies
i think you forgot to add this part from prof hand's report:
"Prof Hand said his criticisms should not be seen as invalidating climate science. He pointed out that although the hockey stick graph – which dates from a study led by US climate scientist Michael Mann in 1998 – exaggerates some effects, the underlying data show a clear warming signal."
otherwise it looks as if you're questioning the science.
--------------
What is "the" science? All this shows, at best, is a "signal" of warming. Which one would expect as the Little Ice Age ends.
In the meantime, it clearly does show that the gang employed statistical tricks to exaggerate the effect. Even then, the cause is another question.
Seems some people actually believe that there is something called "the science," thus revealing that they don'y really understand what the scientific process is, let alone how complex this particular question is.
In any case, Prof. Hand's comments were very polite and understated, as seems to be the way in the whole Monty Pythonesque UK 'scientific' establishment these days. This kind of clubby whitewashing is not going to fly in the U.S. when this hits the courts.
On another hilarious front, now posted at wattsupwiththat.com:
OSLO (Reuters) – A thaw of Iceland’s ice caps in coming decades caused by climate change may trigger more volcanic eruptions by removing a vast weight and freeing magma from deep below ground, scientists said on Friday."
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Personally, I have a great affection for scientists, because they tend to be intelligent and I do most certainly have a bias in favour of intelligent people, for which I see no need to apologise.
However, in the matter of climate threats, we are considering the impacts of Six-Point-Eight Billion humans (plus their vehicles as well as their cattle and animals, for example): that is a whole lot of people to get to read the caveats and footnotes and fine print.
We simply can no longer hold the process hostage to a planet-wide town hall meeting we have no capacity to actually ever hold, much less the time to hear from even 1/10th of 1% of the human population.
Not even the ones who actually have opinions!
And that means that the debates about the science really belong firmly within the circle of scientists, together with the interested laypeople (that might include most politicians).
There is a side that is certainly motivated to create the illusion of "disagreement & uncertainty in the scientific community" -- where in fact that is only a tiny fraction of actual scientists that remain unconvinced.
Just as in legal proceedings, we take account of conflicts of interest, we should be able to apply logic & common sense to the climate discussion -- and not just pretend this is "only about science"!
Learning how to cook using less water is, indeed, a process that involves both Physics and Chemistry. Yet few of us think of the mother in the kitchen boiling pasta as a "scientist."
And ultimately, the battle for eco-sanity is going to be won in the kitchens and at the shopping malls and at the filling stations. It does not require an advanced degree to sort it out.
So with all due respect to scientists and their employers: you do not own this subject. Go ahead, take all the time you need to arrive at whatever consensus you feel compelled to battle for.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will do something about the problem: which is that we drive inefficient vehicles, waste too much of everything, vote for the wrong people, have been seduced by materialism & a pervasive culture of greed, and need to share more & be better friends with other human beings.
Oh, and yes, that we need to press the "Power On" switch inside our brains into the "Now Please Think" position, before creating new human beings. And even before making more animals than we need, or more automobiles.
Literally, that is all it will take.
And praying won't hurt anyone, either.
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@ChangEngland
You claimed it was unseasonably mild - it was not.
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@Infinity
+11.8 degrees C is not a trivial or insignificant error.
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89. blunderbunny:
Your argument wasn't simply that an error occured, your argument was that the error had misled people and NASA failed to set the record straight:
"Joe Public is left with the impression that Finland did indeed Experience an abnormally warm March, when if anything it was in fact abnormally cold!!!!"
That's quite an accusation. But it's false. NASA didn't say anything about Finland. Neither did any of the media publish any story about it (because NASA didn't give them a story). So "Joe Public" hadn't been left with any such impression.
What *will* happen is that skeptics will unjustifiably damage the credibility of NASA by spreading the false claim that NASA made press announcements based on incorrect data and then didn't correct it afterwards.
That's the real damaging error. Not the error NASA made, but the error the skeptics are spreading. It's kind of ironic that skeptics accused NASA of misleading Joe Public when it's the skeptics who are the ones misleading Joe Public. I have no doubt this little anti-NASA meme will be added to the rest of the misleading anti-NASA canon that skeptics have built up over the years.
The Finland error is all the more irrelevant given that what NASA data *does* show about March is that globally it is the 2nd highest monthly anomaly on record. So whatever happened in Finland wouldn't have been the news story even if NASA had released something.
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I live near London and stick my head out the window often and would say that the weather at the end of 2009 was very mild.
I have been a gardener for last 25 years and concur with recent claims that things spring to being much earlier than in the past. Records in Japan show cherry blossom much earlier also.
Big problem would seem to be that skepticism does not mitigate effects of increased co2 so in the end it will bite a skeptic on the arse just the same as it will bite the rest of us. But according to Richards informative posts absolutely nothing is being achieved by the convening powers that would help to resolve the situation so we are all on the same side.
Good to see the link to the claim that when 9/11 grounded flights in USA temp increased 1C. That is some serious mitigation from contrails.Maybe situation in Iceland at the moment will give the opportunity to study this more. Perhaps we can all go on holiday and save the planet.
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I look outside my window and see a clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine today. The difference is the lack of condensation trails from aircraft. The volcano ash is not evident. I left a sheet of white photocopy paper outside last night to see if it collected any volcano debris. Nope! The paper was rather damp from the usual nightly condensation but that was all. There was a blissful lack of the constant droning noise from the airport and the birds did not have to scream so loud to make themselves heard. I am expecting it to be warmer today partially due to the lack of con. trails blocking out the sunshine.:-)
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91. ezeezee
'I have been a gardener for last 25 years and concur with recent claims that things spring to being much earlier than in the past'
Your statement implies that 'things spring into being much earlier' regardless of what the weather is like! As a gardener you will of course appreciate that plants simply respond, on an annual basis, to the onset of warmer weather and longer daylength. Thus gardeners in much of the northern hemisphere will have noticed that this year, for instance, 'things sprung into being' much later than usual! Conversely whenever the spring comes earlier they bloom earlier. Plants couldn't really care less about 'global temperature', they continue to do what they have always done.
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92. sensibleoldgrannie
Yes, it is rather nice isn't it?!!! Doubtless we will have to pay a price for it though, as all that trade is lost! What a tangled web we have woven for ourselves! I think it is a good illustration of something which never seems to get mentioned in these debates, i.e. that there is a huge cost involved in 'doing something' about climate change as well as 'not doing anything'. The cost and impact of such measures are proposed will have an absolutely enormous impact on everyone, but these never seem to be subjected to the same kind of analysis and debate as the possible effects of climate change. The economic 'models' predict absolutely mammoth hardship for everyone, but it would seem that AGW proponents consider climate 'models' to be far more reliable!
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@blunderbunny
You claimed it was unseasonably mild - it was not:
Year Month High Low
2007 11 11.4 4.6 = AVG = 8.00
2008 11 10.7 5.2 = AVG = 7.95
2009 11 12.6 7.4 = AVG = 9.90
November was on average nearly 2 degrees warmer then the previous 2 years.
Did you go and look at the records? I don't want to go and get the daily record - but I will if necessary, and if memory serves the warmer weather persisted until about mid December.
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I predict a massive rise in the sales of barbeque equipment; outdoor plants; barbeque food; ice cream; coffee and cakes; buckets and spades; crab lines; salads; flip flops; summer gear; sun hats; sun cream; sun glasses today. Small potatoes but lots of 'em. ;-)
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@ 93 bonn1e
The point is that on average the plants are blooming 2 to 12 days earlier than at any time in last 250 years. According to study of historical observations.
Also there is a report that animals are repruducing on average 11 days earlier.
On the former i concur through my personal experience the later i'll take their word for it. Makes sense that animals will be responding to the same stimulus as the plants. Namely its getting warmer.
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95. ChangEngland
Met office records differ from your own
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2009/november/averages.html
These are given as
average Nov 2009 max 10.0
average Nov 2009 min 4.6
mean Nov 2009 7.3
71-00 anomaly +1.4
The 2008 anomaly was +0.3 and the 2007 anomaly is given as +1.0
Not that it really matters!
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Environmental science is also about people. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to study what people do when air travel is restricted or stopped. There will be immediate behavioural changes. Come on those of you in Richmond who I saw on the Beeb. celebrate by having a communal barbeque or picnic in the park and photograph everyone enjoying themselves. Show you can make the most of such a rare event.
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97. ezeezee
If it has been decided that for the past 25 years spring has, on average, arrived 2-12 days earlier than at any time in the past 250, obviously plants will, on average bloom 2-12 days earler! The 'average' time at which plants start spring growth is a completely nonsensical statistic. Its a bit like announcing that 'on average people are using more umbrellas' when, on average, there has been more rain! The statement 'plants are blooming earlier than ever before' implies that plants have undergone some sort of botanical change, which is rubbish.
The fact that someone actually spent time and money producing such a pointless report is quite beyond me!
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It isn't that the IPCC covered this up. Instead the problem was that, in Oxburgh's words, the IPCC "neglected to highlight this issue".
From AR4
"Several analyses of ring width and ring density chronologies, with otherwise well-established sensitivity to temperature, have shown that they do not emulate the general warming trend evident in instrumental temperature records over recent decades, although they do track the warming that occurred during the early part of the 20th century and they continue to maintain a good correlation with observed temperatures over the full instrumental period at the interannual time scale (Briffa et al., 2004; D’Arrigo, 2006). This ‘divergence’ is apparently restricted to some northern, high-latitude regions, but it is certainly not ubiquitous even there. In their large-scale reconstructions based on tree ring density data, Briffa et al. (2001) specifically excluded the post-1960 data in their calibration against instrumental records, to avoid biasing the estimation of the earlier reconstructions (hence they are not shown in Figure 6.10), implicitly assuming that the ‘divergence’ was a uniquely recent phenomenon, as has also been argued by Cook et al. (2004a). Others, however, argue for a breakdown in the assumed linear tree growth response to continued warming, invoking a possible threshold exceedance beyond which moisture stress now limits further growth (D’Arrigo et al., 2004). If true, this would imply a similar limit on the potential to reconstruct possible warm periods in earlier times at such sites. At this time there is no consensus on these issues (for further references see NRC, 2006) and the possibility of investigating them further is restricted by the lack of recent tree ring data at most of the sites from which tree ring data discussed in this chapter were acquired. "
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-6.html
Which paraphrases to
"There are some tree rings from northern latitudes that match thermometer temperatures extremely well until very recent decades when they diverge from the thermometer readings. Some scientists treat this "divergence" as a uniquely recent phenomenon. Others think it is a more general response to warm temperatures associated with drought. If the latter is true divergence would interfere with the ability to establish the full intensity and extent of the Mediaeval Warm Period. There is no consensus on this amongst mainstream climate scientists, and the lack of evidence interferes with the ability to investigate further."
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101. JaneBasingstoke
Oh well, that’s OK then. The divergence is either unimportant and we can dismiss Cook et al without further ado, or it’s not really possible to check what we’re saying but never mind, we’ll just sort of suggest it anyway.
Bearing in mind that what Cook et al actually say in their paper is
Compared to the earlier "megadroughts" that are reconstructed to have occurred around AD 936, 1034, 1150, and 1253, however, the current drought does not stand out as an extreme event, because it has not yet lasted nearly as long. This finding shows that the West can experience far more severe droughts than any found in the 20th century instrumental climate record, including the current one.
Don’t you think this is stretching the expression 'failing to highlight' somewhat beyond the bounds of normal usage?
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@Barry Woods #32
Did you click on that link before criticising it?
Not only is the "sceptical site" link to the respectable GWPF (chaired by Nigel Lawson), but the article is by Climate Audit's Steve McIntyre, and mirrors a Climate Audit article.
http://www.thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/815-stephen-mcintyre-oxburghs-trick-to-hide-the-trick.html
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/14/oxburghs-trick-to-hide-the-trick/
I make that two respectable sceptic sites for the price of one.
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@Bonn1e #102
No it isn't all right. It's a long way from "all right". It's a complete b***** mess. But it does show there is no intent to deceive.
And I will point out that the scientists involved don't seem to think that Hockey Sticks are central to the case for AGW. Here is Michael Mann on the matter:
"MYTH #0: Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures indicating anomalous late 20th century warmth.
This peculiar suggestion is sometimes found in op-ed pieces and other dubious propaganda, despite its transparant absurdity. Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth’s surface. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called “Detection and Attribution Studies”. Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing (due to the combined influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and industrial aerosol increases).
"
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/
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104. JaneBasingstoke
I don't really see why it demonstrates that there is no intent to deceive; it is quite possible to deliberately understate something in order to deceive! But I do not think the intent is really of much importance anymore. What matters is the outcome.
However, like beauty 'state-of-the-art' is in the eyes of the beholder! What is state-of-the-art today is laughably out-of-date tomorrow. It has to be said that, although today we are told that it is quite possible there will be 'long periods of cooling within the overall warming trend' no state-of-the-art model of yesteryear predicted this! Hence the 'snow will become a much rarer phenomena' statements of that time.
Personally I have no strong conviction one way or the other. My only belief is that we can never predict the future and the more one looks at these things the more apparent it becomes that nobody has a clue!
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With regard to MM's Hockey Stick, I don't think for one moment 'Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures indicating anomalous late 20th century warmth.'
I simply think that others have demonstrated that it was very poorly constructed. The fact that MM has so vocally and, at times rather unpleasantly, 'defended' it has done his argument no good whatsoever.
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@Bonn1e #105
I see no such understatement. The IPCC's "no consensus [on divergence]" seems pretty straightforward to me.
Meanwhile here's the last two sentences from AR4 Chapter 6, which also expresses a concern about bias in temperature proxies:
"Lastly, this assessment would be improved with extensive networks of proxy data that run right up to the present day. This would help measure how the proxies responded to the rapid global warming observed in the last 20 years, and it would also improve the ability to investigate the extent to which other, non-temperature, environmental changes may have biased the climate response of proxies in recent decades."
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-7.html
They could have got away without even mentioning it here, and the choice of right at the end is significant, bored readers often skip to the closing words. This is not the language of someone who wants to bury divergence in the small print.
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@Bonn1e #106
"The fact that MM has so vocally and, at times rather unpleasantly, 'defended' it has done his argument no good whatsoever."
So, where do you stand on Isaac Newton versus Robert Hooke? Do you support Newton's work or Hooke's. If Hooke is as bad as Newton makes out, does this mean that Hooke's microscope work should be ignored? Perhaps we should reject Hooke's Law of elasticity as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke#Personality_and_disputes
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To Maria Ashot:
I thought you might like this, from the 2010 Worldwatch Intitute's State of the World - Transforming Cultures - From Consumerism to Sustainablilty":
"What is Higher Education for Now?"
by David Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio
"It is reasonable to assume that the disordering of ecological systems and Earth's biogeochemical cycles reflects a prior disorder in thinking about humanity's role in ecological systems."
===============
My description is simpler, befitting my simpler station in life, that of a mountain and desert explorer turned Papa - insanity.
I liked your last post very much. (#87)
- Manysummits -
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To Bonn1e:
From the same reference as my post #109, Professor David Orr:
"The excesses built into the industrial system threaten the living systems of the planet, moving toward massive biotic impoverishment and potentially catastrophic climate change."
================
That 'tin hat' you mentioned in an earlier post - perhaps you could tell us all about it?
If it works, you might find yourself with six point eight billion customers.
- Manysummits -
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To sensiblegrannie #99:
I remember being fogged in at an airport in Nova Scotia a very long time ago.
I spent the long midnight hours talking to a young man who was captain of a commercial ship. We whiled away the time in earnest and fascinating conversation.
- Manysummits -
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And there you have it manysummits. Perhaps things need to happen before we start really talking to each other.
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108. JaneBasingstoke
So are you saying that if, say, a builder who has built you a wall which is subsequently found to contain various faults, then proceeded to 'defend' his work 'vocally and, at times rather unpleasantly' you would consider his argument improved?
Perhaps this is why nobody remembers Hooke and everyone has heard of Newton!
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110. manysummits
Haha! Yes, my tin hat is indeed excellent! You see if the 'catastrophic climate change arrives', my tin hat will have enabled me to enjoy life without wasting it endlessly worrying what might lie ahead before I go. Of course if it never happens.....
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I've been away for a week helping to build a garden for the RHS Malvern Spring Flower Show. No radio, no TV, no internet, no politics, just very pleasant, very helpful ordinary people. What a pleasure it was. And now I get back to all this deception and more whitewash from another bunch of politicos woith their own money-making scam. They say scum rises to the top. And all these top politicians and their hangers-on, like the RS, IPCC, university big-wigs etc just prove it. Why can't ordinary, decent folk run the country instead of the scum that gets to the top?
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115. Flatearther
You can come and help build our next showgarden if you like!
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103. At 1:40pm on 17 Apr 2010, JaneBasingstoke wrote:
@Barry Woods #32
Did you click on that link before criticising it?
Yes I did...
I'm not criticsing the link, I'm criticising Richard Black:
why not directly link to climate audir, where Steve Mcintyre criticeses this enquiry and explain exactly why?
of course we have a 'polar bear' as a picture above, allbeit a grubby one.
Who does choose the pictures, Richard? or some right-on editor..
and of course 'so called climategate affair" in the article above.
It is called climategate, why make out otherwise.
The guardian call it that, why the quotes at the BBC and a little bit of spin?
Of course previoulsy, Richard wrote a whole article about the 'Change in Climate' post Copenhagen without even mentioning it (climategate)once...
Which everyone pointed out was a bit silly.
Richard provided an earlier link, but did not show 2 more current links, directly related to the article.
One where Steve Mcintyre was being praised by the enquiry (a peer-reviewed published scepic praised!! - surely not at the bbc.)
These:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/13/lord-oxburgh-of-globe-international-to-report/
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/14/hand-praised-mcintyre-of-climate-audit/
New one today:
very relevant
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/15/a-fair-sample/
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117. At 7:32pm on 17 Apr 2010, Barry Woods wrote: "of course we have a 'polar bear' as a picture above, allbeit a grubby one."
I don't think that is a polar bear. As I wrote in
17. At 10:53pm on 15 Apr 2010...
"Hey Richard - About that photo. I assume that you just wanted to use the usual AGW poster child, the polar bear, but that bear looks more like a grizzly bear to me. The face is too short and the body too 'round'. As you may know there have been a few hybrids documented lately.
Are you sure that's a polar bear?"
------------------
Would be nice if he would double check. It sure looks like a hybrid or perhaps even a very light coloured barren ground grizzly bear. On the other hand it could be a young polar bear. The adults have a longer looking body shape and, most notably, a longer and narrower skull.
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@117. At 7:32pm on 17 Apr 2010, Barry Woods wrote:
“ ….....
New one today:
very relevant
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/15/a-fair-sample/
“
The CA post is actually more than 24 hours old and as I pointed out in post #84 Bishop Hill has had a response to his own enquiry:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/16/actons-eleven-the-response.html
It is worth scanning through the responses to see the posts by Judith Curry.
Richard Black writes above:
“ …...
In essence it says: tell the whole story.
"Their published work contains many cautions about the limitations of their data and their interpretation."
And a little further on:
"All of the published work was accompanied by detailed descriptions of uncertainties and accompanied by appropriate caveats. The same was true in face-to-face discussions."
….. “
Was this “All of the published work” or all of the published work presented to the panel?
It appears that 10 of the 11 papers considered by the Oxburgh panel were the same papers that the UEA itself submitted to the earlier parliamentary enquiry.
It is extremely disappointing that it is left to amateur bloggers such as Bishop Hill, Steve McIntyre and others to ask these questions.
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@bonn1e #113
Whoa. You really blame Mann for ... everything ... don't you.
Mann created what might be described as a prototype. He has since worked at improving that prototype. His work has been criticised, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly. Sometimes he has over-reacted to criticism. The whole Hockey Stick saga is a scientific spat that got out of hand when outsiders (non-scientists such as Gore and Barton) weighed their oar in.
So no, your builder analogy only works in explaining your feelings. Not Mann's actual mistakes.
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Would anyone ask a dodgy car dealer to decide which vehicles to show to a trading standards officer?
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120. JaneBasingstoke
What an odd post! I personally don’t ‘blame’ Mann, or anyone else, for anything at all! I simply mean that his ‘over-reaction’ did little to further his argument, rather like your own :-)! Had he and others, been the type of people to pleasantly accept and act upon reasonable criticism, some of the angst associated with this matter might have been prevented and thus their argument progressed.
As for my feelings, I apologise if my analogy did not work but I think perhaps, as the saying goes, you are mistaking me for someone who gives a …..!
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When I looked out of the car window I saw the moon and the stars. There were no aircraft of course. I also saw the crane lights the street lights as usual. Then I noticed a stationary terracotta coloured glowing ball shape approximately 6 times larger than the stars behind it. My chap thought it was a helicopter light or a crane light at first. It appeared to be at about the hight of a very tall crane and it appeared to be motionless and without sound. Is this something to do with the volcano? Is the lower atmosphere being monitored for levels of dust or something? Just being naturally curious of course.
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23 sensibleoldgrannie wrote:
"It appeared to be at about the hight of a very tall crane"
It sounds like the planet Venus. Did you see it just after sunset, between the crescent Moon and the place where the Sun had recently set?
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hello bowmanthebard at post 124
The orange light/ball appeared to be in the foreground within (approximately) a quarter of a mile of where we were going. It was situated over a very built up area, hence initially thinking it was a crane light but it was too big for a crane hazard light and it was the wrong colour to be a helicopter light. Helicopters have a red port light and a green starboard light plus other white lights for landing. It was situated directly behind and above the tall street lights in front of us as we drove around a roundabout.
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@Bonn1e #113 #122
It wasn't just a reaction to your cowboy builder analogy. (You do know how powerful a metaphor that is, don't you?)
It is also a reaction to all the used car salesman cracks that pepper the debate, which it seemed related to. Oh look, there's another used car salesman crack at #121.
Incidentally the current position on the historic Newton vs Hooke spat is that Hooke's reputation may have unfairly suffered as a result. Newton was a great scientist. But Hooke was still a good scientist. You use Hooke's Law of elasticity every time you use spring balance based scales to weigh ingredients in the kitchen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke%27s_Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke#Hooke_the_scientist
When spats are dealt with properly they can push science forwards and they can even enhance the reputations of the scientists on both sides of the dispute. Tragically in this instance things have gone rather the other way.
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@sensiblegrannie #123
(@bowmanthebard)
I saw the moon a few nights back when it was very new. It was so close to the horizon that it looked a murky pink. So if you didn't spot a normal looking Venus (it is an evening star at the moment) then maybe it was really close to the horizon and turned pink by the ash in the Earth's atmosphere.
Alternatively if Venus was recognisable and clear of the horizon, Mercury is also an evening star at the moment, and it always looks pink from the Earth. But Mercury is very hard to find and I wouldn't normally describe Mercury as looking six times bigger than normal stars.
On the subject of planes I have heard a low altitude propeller plane twice this morning.
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Aircraft all across Europe have this week been grounded on the basis of expert scientific opinion, and everyone accepts this without question, even though the -- alleged -- cloud of ash across the sky cannot be seen with the naked eye.
And yet when expert scientific opinion suggests that our entire way of life is very likely to be causing serious problems for us all just down the road, this is refuted with astonishing vehemence.
Odd.
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@rniloc #128
(sigh)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8622099.stm
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From BBC News.
About the airlines reaction to the flight ban.
"However they are beginning to question whether the Met Office's computer model of the ash cloud is exaggerating its size. They claim that satellite pictures do not corroborate the Met's computerised simulation of the cloud.
"It is possible that the Met Office is being too cautious", an airline executive said to me."
The Met's computer model eh? Now where have we heard that before?
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@rniloc #128
"cloud of ash across the sky cannot be seen with the naked eye"
Actually if you are based in Britain or North West Europe you can see evidence of the ash cloud with your own eyes. The following photographs are not as dramatic as a Turner sunset because the clouds haven't performed, but they still show strong orange and pink tints to the sky.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/apr/16/natural-disasters-iceland
And you might be referring to the wrong sense.
"Residents of Shetland and Aberdeen say they could smell the ash, describing it as "sulphurous"."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/8621783.stm
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#128 rniloc wrote:
"And yet when expert scientific opinion suggests that our entire way of life is very likely to be causing serious problems for us all just down the road, this is refuted with astonishing vehemence."
You're obviously someone who unquestioningly takes the advice of anyone you regard as "an expert". So how do you tell who's an expert? Do you regard Catholic priests as experts on morality, and unquestioningly accept all their pronouncements on right and wrong?
Your astonishingly unquestioning attitude makes my flesh creep.
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@Barry Woods #117
How old are you (roughly)? Where are you based? Are you familiar with the Thatcher era of British politics?
If not, take a look at the GWPF. Their chairman is Nigel Lawson. He was the chancellor in Thatcher's government between 1983 and 1989. He was one of the few members of her cabinet to ever stand up to her.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Lawson
That this intellectual heavyweight, not the sort of man who is fooled or can be bought, is siding with the sceptics on this one is having a significant impact with those who have not already sided with the sceptics.
Meanwhile the GWPF mirror of the McIntyre piece does include a link through to the original article on Climate Audit and more on a related subject at Climate Audit.
Like I said. Two sites for the price of one.
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The airlines are understandably erring on the side of caution, not just to keep their passengers out of harm's way but also to avoid liability, and to avoid high maintenance costs of wear and tear.
Their reaction to the current volcanic dust is almost entirely the result of a single famous incident in 1981 when a 747 ran into volcanic dust. That dust was much thicker than the dust currently over most of Europe. It was an important -- and at the time surprising -- incident that changed air safety procedures all over the world.
It was nothing remotely like the "discovery" of a computer model cobbled together without understanding by pseudo-scientists on the basis of past "data". Nothing worthwhile can come of that (apart from generous funding).
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126. JaneBasingstoke
'It wasn't just a reaction to your cowboy builder analogy'
YOU might say 'cowboy', but I couldn't possibly comment!
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@bonn1e #135
:-)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/cinema/features/house_of_cards.shtml
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@bowmanthebard #134
"idiotic inductivist methodology" (#31)
"the "discovery" of a computer model cobbled together without understanding by pseudo-scientists on the basis of past "data"". (#134)
There is rather more to AGW science than Hockey Sticks, late 20th century warming, and dodgy computer models.
In particular the scientists get to check their sums against the atmospheres of various other planets and moons within the Solar system, and against the young Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#Bodies_other_than_Earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_Sun_paradox#Greenhouse_hypothesis
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I wish you'd stop assimilating current AGW computer modeling and respectable physics involving hypotheses and tests. I'm not calling the greenhouse effect into question, and as far as I know neither are any serious sceptics. What I'm calling into question is the "abracadabra" assumption that getting a computer model to ape the past climate will magically make it track the future climate. It's like training a chimp to smoke cigarettes in the hope that it will go on to write something by Cole Porter.
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RNILOC @ #128 "Aircraft all across Europe have this week been grounded on the basis of expert scientific opinion, and everyone accepts this without question, even though the -- alleged -- cloud of ash across the sky cannot be seen with the naked eye.
And yet when expert scientific opinion suggests that our entire way of life is very likely to be causing serious problems for us all just down the road, this is refuted with astonishing vehemence.
Odd."
Scepticism of a theory and belief in what's actually happening right now? What's the problem? I may not be able to see the ash in the sky but I can certainly see it on my car. NATS have, quite properly, reduced the flow rate to nil until they are confident that the danger to aircraft has passed. What does that have to do with the price of fish, or in this instance the inability of some people to believe in AGW?
Knownought
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Just a quick note - heading out to the Livingstone Range by the Oldman River to head up to a fire-lookout with Dr. Chaos and a friend.
"What is Higher Education For?" in the Worldwatch 2010 State of the World is totally on the mark.
And there is a 'Box' by the Ehrlich's of Stanford University which is fascinating, investigating the reasons for humanity's "self-destructive behavior."
It is available as a pdf on the Internet.
- Hasta Luego in virtual Bolivia next week, with culmination on Earth Day, April 22,
Manysummits
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It is hoped that a number of the barriers previously encountered can be overcome if new ways to overcome barriers with a pilot project what should be considered as a priority. It is a challenge that needs to be taken up. In any branch of science, if you follow a path from raw data to scientific publication to meta-analysing review, you will inevitably see a process of simplifying and parsing.
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139. knownought
You can see the ash on your car indeed. But can you measure the effectiveness of greenhouse effect on climate? Do you know you will likely win the Nobel Prize for successfully measuring it, as now no one can do it.
Why climate fanatics refuse to see the solid paleoclimatologic evidence that PROVES the insignificance of carbon-dioxide concentration?
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@bowmanthebard #138
"not calling the greenhouse effect into question"
Thanks for that clarification. This is not always clear from your posts.
"as far as I know neither are any serious sceptics"
Thanks for that. Always good to remind people. The real debate is about climate sensitivity.
"What I'm calling into question is the "abracadabra" assumption that getting a computer model to ape the past climate will magically make it track the future climate."
That is a position you share with many on the pro-AGW side of the debate. James Lovelock is always banging on about over-reliance on computer models. And James Hansen is less than enthusiastic:
"Our understanding of the Earth’s climate, in particular, depends foremost on the Earth’s history: how past climate changed in response to changing boundary conditions. I rate observations of ongoing climate change and processes today, processes on the ice sheets, in the oceans, etc., as the second most important source of knowledge about climate change. Climate models rate only third, in my opinion. Models are a tool that helps us understand the other two, i.e., climate history and on-going climate phenomena. Models are a representation of reality, one that helps us combine different factors, evaluate relative importance, and try to understand interactions. As we make progress we add more processes to the models and improve representations of others. "
[from Aug. 4, 2008, "Trip Report"]
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/
"like training a chimp to smoke cigarettes in the hope that it will go on to write something by Cole Porter"
:-)
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As for the volcanic ash issue, for those who don't know, the airlines are dealing with silicon compounds, whose hardness is comparable to diamond. Though tiny, the ash in air flows through the jet engine that processes supersonic air flow, which is now mixed with the ash, with extremely high air pressure so to produce forward force. The engineer might be confident guaranteeing the strength of the jet fan and other mechanisms, but no one can guarantee the safety of the airplane.
***
This is not a good comparison. The airlines are worried about volcanic ash, because they are certain of the danger AND the loss of profit is bearable. The AGW tells a totally different story. No one knows how much AGW could do to climate, though a hypothetical mechanism has been presented. So far all the statistical 'presentments' are compiled upon the hypothesis no matter how 'despiteful' the correlation is. No one can even be sure that global warming is harmful, because there have been warmer periods in the Earth history, which cimate workers stubbornly refuse to approach.
One thing now I see amusing is that certain anti-dote to the probability of a cooler summer is received by climate workers from the eruption. What is funnier is a couple of weeks ago certain climate workers just claimed that sunbeam had had no effect on climate, but now the comming summer is gonna be cooler because less sunbeam is gonna penetrate through the ash cloud. What if this situation lasts a half-decade or longer?
The climate workers are just so ready to slight anything they don't know and they call it science.
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I wonder if anybody here has signed up below:
Campaign for Climate Change (CACC) invites any activist to sign up to an email list:
Skeptic Alerts - ( http://www.campaigncc.org/node/384 )
"Are you fed up with sceptics and pseudo-scientists dominating blogs
and news articles with their denialist propaganda?
Well, fight back!
We are trying to create an online army of online volunteers to try and tip the balance
back in the favour of scientific fact, not scientific fiction."
"You will receive one e-mail alert per day containing links to various climate change news articles. "
The idea apparently is to organise 'climate change' activists to post comments on any sceptical man made climate change article in the media. When signed up, the activist recives a daily list of articles where it is intended for the activist to 'politely explain' why global warming is real and occuring. I imagine the intent of this idea is a PR companies strategy to fill the comments sections with a 'climate change' activist message. To perhaps give the misconception to the general public, journalists and the editors, of strong public belief in 'man made global warming', so that they may see the error of their ways.
CACC give examples of tactics to use and sources of information to counter any sceptical article.
Very establishment:
http://www.campaigncc.org/whoweare
George Monbiot - Guardian,
Michael Meacher (Lab MP),
Norman Baker (Lib dem MP),
Caroline Lucas (green leader, MEP)
Jean Lambert (Green MEP),
How more establishment can this man made climate change lobbying group be, with Mainstream Media Journalists, 2 Members of the European Parliament and 2 Members of the UK Parliament, one is even a former Minister of State for the Environment!
So, who has the well funded AGW PR machinary again?
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# 142
"Do you know you will likely win the Nobel Prize for successfully measuring it, as now no one can do it. "
Eh????? Sorry to appear as thick as volcanic ash but I've no idea what you are trying to say!
Knownought
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@nsctcs #144
We need to be clear on sunbeams and mainstream climate science.
Mainstream climate science already takes account of the more straightforward aspects of solar output, such as changes in power related to the 11 year sunspot cycle. Timing of these changes shows that late 20th century warming cannot be explained by changes in basic solar power. More exotic effects such as the suggestion that the solar wind has an effect on cloud cover are still under investigation.
Mainstream climate science has long acknowledged the link between aerosols from volcanoes and temporary cooling. This has been used to test the science for significant eruptions such as Pinatubo in 1991.
So yes to sunbeams affecting climate. Yes to volcanic ash affecting climate. But no to variations in sunbeams explaining late 20th century warming.
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@manysummits
Saw this and thought of you.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627567.100-global-challenges-what-the-worlds-scientists-say.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
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" What is funnier is a couple of weeks ago certain climate workers just claimed that sunbeam had had no effect on climate, but now the coming summer is gonna be cooler because less sunbeam is gonna penetrate through the ash cloud. What if this situation lasts a half-decade or longer?" #144
I'll respond to the above in parts.
" but now the coming summer is gonna be cooler because less sunbeam is gonna penetrate through the ash cloud." #144
The massive eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 resulted in ash particles in earth's atmosphere that reduced global temperatures. In 1992 and 1993, the average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was reduced 0.5 to 0.6 degrees C, the planet as a whole cooled by 0.4 to 0.5 degrees C.
The current eruption is much, much smaller than Pinatubo. It's estimated that it's a 2, or 3 at the most on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), which goes from 0 to 8. (The VEI measurement is based on how much material is thrown out of the volcano, the explosive forces involved, how long it lasts etc. Like the Richter scale used to measure earthquake size, the VEI is logarithmic - meaning that a volcano with a VEI of five is 10 times more powerful than one with a VEI of four.)
Pinatubo's eruption in the Philippines in 1991 had a VEI of about 5 or 6; Mount St Helens in 1980 was a 4. The current eruption is on par with that of Mount Etna on Sicily in 2002 and 2003. I doubt many people even remember those.
It remains to be seen whether the current eruption will be long lasting, or if it's going to have any major impact on temperature as Pinatubo did.
The much larger Pinatubo eruption only had an effect for around two and a half years, so any temperature reductions this one produces will be much shorter lived.
It is widely known and accepted in climate studies that volcanoes can affect global temperature and weather in the short term.
---------------------------------------------
Now to: "certain climate workers just claimed that sunbeam had had no effect on climate". #144
There have been a number of studies looking at whether solar activity is responsible for global warming over the past century, including two major recent solar studies.
One by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research et al (Sept. 06): "Scientists have examined various proxies of solar energy output over the past 1,000 years and have found no evidence that they are correlated with today’s rising temperatures. Satellite observations over the past 30 years have also turned up nothing."
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2004/wigley.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060914095559.htm
The other is by Heliophysics & the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Sept. 2006) that concluded: "Sunspot-driven changes to the sun's power are simply too small to account for the climatic changes observed in historical data from the 17th century to the present."
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/research/current_research/hl2006-9b/hl2006-9b-en.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060913-sunspots.html
It is worth thinking of the charge made by some sceptics that scientists produce the results that will increase their funding. In that case the solar observatories would find it in their interest to produce results that pointed towards the sun being the main agent of change, after all they need funding too. But this isn’t the case; over and over again they are ruling it out. Honest science.
---------------------------------------------
"...because there have been warmer periods in the Earth history, which climate workers stubbornly refuse to approach." #144
I'm afraid that's utter, uninformed tosh.
If you read books as well as blogs its worth looking up these. (Try your library or 2nd hand on Amazon. There are of course many other such books.)
1) Ice, Mud and Blood by Chris Turney.
A summary of key discoveries by scientists about past climate change going back deep-in-time and the implications for the present.
Review of Ice, Mud and Blood Here
http://www.popularscience.co.uk/reviews/rev494.htm
2) Earth: The Power of the Planet by Iain Stewart & John Lynch. Book of the TV series. An accessible introduction to and earth's history and the role of atmosphere, volcanoes, oceans etc in it.
3) Earth's Climate Past and Future. William F. Ruddiman. An account of known factors that have influenced climate change over earth's history.
4) Climate Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach. W.J. Burroughs. (Chpt 8 is particularly good on past climate changes and causes.)
5) An Ocean of Air: A Natural History of the Atmosphere by Gabrielle Walker. A history of some of the major discoveries about air, gasses and the atmosphere from Galileo to the present day together with explanation as to their importance for life on Earth.
If you mean the Medieval Warm Period I'm happy to discuss that also; I'm developing (when time allows) a website examining it.
http://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/Home
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147. JaneBasingstoke
Good to read about the opinion of 'Mainstream climate science'. I wonder if 'Mainstream climate science' is brave enough to tell the audience that the whole AGE thing, so far, is a guess and that the effectiveness of carbondioxide concentration on climate is unproven.
If no, stop using the term 'Mainstream climate science' please, because you are not talking about science.
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144. nsctcs:
"there have been warmer periods in the Earth history, which cimate workers stubbornly refuse to approach"
"What is funnier is a couple of weeks ago certain climate workers just claimed that sunbeam had had no effect on climate"
That's two mistakes. My advice to you is to stop presuming what "climate workers" think and say and instead go and check first.
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@nsctcs #150
OK, mainstream climate science in its own words:
Mainstream climate science on basic solar power variation:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-7.html#2-7-1
Mainstream climate science on volcanic aerosols:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-7-2.html
Mainstream climate science on natural contributions to climate:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-9-2.html
Meanwhile what do you mean by "the whole AGE thing"?
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149. SheffTim
I have read through your website, and I'd like to say it is an intriguing study. The end of MWP might account for the fall of population that is the orthodoxy presented by Postan, but the end of MWP is not a proper explanation in terms of arable productivity. The famine of 1315-7 is indeed notorious. Its influence lasted as late as till the early 1320s, causing mass mortality among human as well as animals. Yet afterwards the corn price level was slightly decreasing with the implication of economically recovering, in a peaceful period of around 30 years for English, though not as peaceful for French. Since then, the only remarkable crop failure and murrain, accompanied by another outbreak of plague, happened in 1438, that is 120 years later. There is no clear link between climate change and English husbandry in this period.
Regarding pestilence, the serial plague started in 1348. The reason of the mass mortality in the plague is apparent: the lack of antibodies. It is proven that, though plague returned to England many times afterwards, its impact on the fifteenth-century economy is barely observable. It is more likely that English people were growing stronger and stronger against the germ(s) and medicine was possibly also improving, rather than that the weather became milder after 1350.
And there is one point that is totally overlooked in your argument. The frequent droughts and floods in the MWP resemble our current climate. Droughts and floods are happening when the temporature is rising. Thus the question remains: the same climate situation has happened before without visible human interference, what is the justification of AGW, possibly a natural copy, being considered responsible for the temperature.
It is like you see, the more historical evidence presented, the more contradiction to AGW found.
Don't just list the books. If you know the answer of the above question, it will only take you one paragraph to demonstrate it.
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151. infinity
"there have been warmer periods in the Earth history, which cimate workers stubbornly refuse to approach"
This statement is completely true. They know about the carbondioxide concentration's lag behind the temperature, but no one has ever answered what the trigger of the rising temperature is. The fact remains unchallenged that the temperature could rise without interference of carbonsixide concentration.
However, all we have got from climate workers is that this is not important. The important thing is there was increase in carbon dioxide concentration later on, so carbon dioxide must have had contribution. This answer is plainly dodgy.
"What is funnier is a couple of weeks ago certain climate workers just claimed that sunbeam had had no effect on climate"
As that doctor who from, where, Sussex?
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It turns out that the volcano ash forecasts come from a computer simulation at the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in London, which is part of the British Met Office, as is the CRU. It is a total disaster like their climate models.
LOL !!
http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/no-uk-flights-until-tuesday-but-airlines-suspect-reasons-for-ban-is-unfounded/story-e6frfkur-1225855203278?from=public_rss
However, German airlines Lufthansa and Air Berlin said the decision to close much of Europe?s airspace was not based on proper testing.
The said that their aircraft showed no signs of damage after flying without passengers. The decision to close the airspace was made exclusively as a result of data from a computer simulation at the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in London, Air Berlin chief executive Joachim Hunold said. Not one single weather balloon has been sent up to measure how much volcanic ash is in the air.
Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walter added. The flight ban, made on the basis just of computer calculations, is resulting in billion-high losses for the economy
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152. JaneBasingstoke
Now that is the answer, except the evidence that proves AGW.
For this reason I have to assume that AGW is not included in 'Mainstream climate science'. Or maybe I spelt AGW wrong.
So I correct and say it again:
"I wonder if 'Mainstream climate science' is brave enough to tell the audience that the whole AGW thing, so far, is a guess and that the effectiveness of carbondioxide concentration on climate is unproven.
If no, stop using the term 'Mainstream climate science' please, because you are not talking about science."
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I can see you guys' points and understand that I have made an improper assumption of climate scientist's mind. Clearly, they did not earn their PhDs with fabricated studies. Nonetheless, climate workers' current doing about AGW is pretty much irresponsible. And I don't consider climate workers scientists.
Indeed, some responsible persons have given observations of vulcanic eruption and have presented discoveries in relation to sunbeam. These cannot be of help to the apocaliptic scam.
Panic-mongering is clear in climate workers' publications. Kiehl and Shields's simulation of Permian Extinction (2005) sets up an example that uses extreme boundary counditions (Kidder and Worsley, 2004) in a simulation where apocalipse is unavoidable. The initial condition of this simulation is that frequent vulcanic eruption has raisen CO2 concentration to a dangerous degree. It is logical for the reader to ask how the 10-times-as-present CO2 concentration is possible and it is as considerable that the influence of volcanic ash seems to be ignored. Fortunately, this is not the 'Mainstream' argument of Permian Extinction, as it is cannot be. But it is intriguing why people have made this strongly biased simulation and why this simulation is allowed to publish in a major journal.
The other one is the methane eruption, by Ryskin, which, so far as I know, no evidence is found in Earth history, in which several periods are recognised to have had higher temperature than now, yet not evidentially triggered the eruption. The interesting point is, as Ryskin warns of all the apocaliptic possibilities, he admits this is only a hypothesis. Fine for the hypothesis, but why being so apocaliptic, when a 'scientist' has no evidence in hand?
An easy explanation for this apocaliptic fashion of writing is that the difficulty of getting published in a highly privileged journal makes people comply with the political atmosphere and publish the research with inappropriate exaggeration in compliance with money-men's interests.
The AGW myth is but a myth left for know-hows. Laymen simply don't care because they only care whether the apocalipse will come or not. Since many of them believe that the Doom is neigh, they work along with AGW despite that they know nothing of it. And for the know-hows, everyone knows AGW is yet another hypothesis. No evidence, no support, and no interest in taking on the responsibility for misleading the crowd. Yet this wicked secret would not leak out if the last winter was not so bitter.
What is the result? Mass-panic upon a pure fairytale, based upon no evidence.
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#55 spectrum wrote:
"It turns out that the volcano ash forecasts come from a computer simulation at the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in London, which is part of the British Met Office, as is the CRU. It is a total disaster like their climate models."
I imagine the models used to predict the position of volcanic ash are the same as those used to produce their short term ( = a few days ahead) weather forecast. Unlike their long-term weather forecasts, these are fairly reliable. They are reliable because they are in effect tested by the actual weather a few days after they are issued, and the models that produced them are subsequently adjusted as the future unfolds.
So I imagine the Met Office's predictions of "where the ash will go next" are fine. What's wrong is the assumption -- by someone outside the Met Office presumably -- that any ash at all is fatal to aircraft. Is this "health and safety gone mad" again? We live in an age of extraordinary sissiness in which people are expected never to make their own decisions about risk, but instead to have "experts" make these decisions for them.
I trust that following the famous 1981 incident, extensive wind tunnel tests were performed with various concentrations and types of dust in airflows of various speeds and temperatures entering various types of jet engine and types of cockpit glass? I feel that aeronautical engineers are surely too intelligent not to do that.
However, when I read that not a single weather balloon has been sent up, I shudder at the extent to which half-baked inductivist philosophy has permeated the mainstream as a supposed alternative to testing.
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"They know about the carbon dioxide concentration's lag behind the temperature, but no one has ever answered what the trigger of the rising temperature is." #154
I'm guessing your talking about Ice Ages and the lag of CO2 rising behind temperature.
Actually the trigger (cause) of ice ages starting and ending is well known. (Those that use this line of argument leave out mention of the cause in a deliberate attempt to deceive people such as yourself.)
Ice ages are due to variations in earth's astronomical cycles. (Also known as: Milankovitch cycles.)
http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/earth/milankovitch-cycle/
These cycles are the 'elephant in the room' for people attempting to use this 'CO2 lags temp' argument. By omitting mentioning them, they try and pretend that the argument is about CO2 levels on their own causing both ice ages and interglacials. No-one has ever claimed that.
The lag simply demonstrates that rising CO2 did not cause the initial warming that ended past ice ages - but no climate scientist has ever made that claim.
It does not in any way contradict the idea that higher CO2 levels cause warming.
The amount of solar energy received by earth due to Milankovitch cycles, and the temperature effect this has can (and has - by solar scientists) be worked out, and it amounts to around 5 degrees C. (Again this isn't disputed.)
The additional rise and fall in temperatures beyond the 5 degrees C range, particularly warming, can only be explained by the effects of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere due to various feedback or forcing mechanisms.
Ice is another contender: as the great ice sheets that covered large areas of the planet during the ice ages melted, less of the Sun's energy would have been reflected back into space, accelerating the warming.
But the melting of ice lags behind the beginning of interglacial periods by far more than the rises in CO2.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/289/5486/1897
Once the warming got going, CO2 was released naturally through ocean de-gassing (CO2 is less soluble in warmer water) and other natural sinks. This added CO2 to the atmosphere incrementally, a bit at a time.
Each extra bit of CO2 causes a bit more warming which released more CO2, and so on.
The lag shows only that the first bit of warming at the end of an ice age was not caused by CO2.
Yet if you look at the core data, CO2 and temperature are extremely closely correlated, adding weight to the argument that the climate is sensitive to CO2.
It takes about 5000 years for an ice age to end and, after the initial 800 year lag, temperature and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere rise together for a further 4200 years.
CO2 is released as the earth warms, and the warmer it gets, the more CO2 is released: positive feedback and evidence that the climate is sensitive to atmospheric CO2.
What no sceptic scientist can do is provide a counter explanation for why this happens? Are CO2 and temperature linked by pure coincidence?
Does another external source drive the warming, if so what? (BTW: Milankovitch cycles are generally accepted by pretty much everyone, except young earth creationists, nowadays.)
So why else does CO2 lag temp?
Surely, CO2 and temp would be in phase all along, if the cause of an interglacial were some other (unexplained) external cause?
NB: No serious sceptic attempts to deny that greenhouse gasses have heat trapping properties. It can be demonstrated in any school lab.
Nor of the existence of the 'greenhouse effect' that warms our atmosphere.
What seems to have happened at the end of the recent ice ages is that orbital changes caused a rise in temperature.
This led to an increase in CO2, resulting in further warming that caused more CO2 to be released and so on: a positive feedback that amplified a small change in temperature. At some point, the shrinking of the ice sheets further amplified the warming.
See also:
CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Climate myths: Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html?full=true
The lag between temperature and CO2.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
Volcanism is considered a leading contender for the end Permian extinction event; it was a massive magma outpouring rather than an explosive event such as Pinatubo; and over a very long time-scale too.
On the topic of CO2 and past climates in deep time you may also want to consider the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum. The role of CO2 in that is generally accepted.
http://sites.google.com/site/thepaleoceneeocenethermalmaxim/home
Work calls, but I'll try and look in late tonight.
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nsctcs 157. The end Permian extinction event is now generally ascribed to the huge flood-basalt-outpouring that created the Siberian Traps.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/education/flood_basalts_1
There’s an excellent book on the end Permian event -When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time – by M.J. Benton [Head of the Joint School of Geology and Biology of Bristol University] 2003 – that surveys the evidence and supports the conclusion that the Siberian Trap outpouring was the culprit.
First by contributing first to a short global cooling (caused by ash etc), followed by a rapid rise in earth’s temperature to well above its previous levels due to the release of CO2 and methane. The release of chlorine and fluorine gases also harmed much of the ozone layer, raising the amounts of UV to harmful levels, particularly to plant life.
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Essays/wipeout/default.html
See also:
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Permian/SiberianTraps.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/dayearthdied.shtml
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Permian/SiberianTraps.html
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/permian-extinction.html#page=1
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as an interesting aside, on the BBC no less i read an article on AGW that raised a very interesting point (apologies i cannot remember the article, but it was definitley on the bbc site):
The majority of (scientific) sceptics are from industry whilst the majority of (scientific) supporters are from academia.
There are of course people from both camps on both sides.
a slight qualifier here would be that i don't remember the article providing any info to back this assetion up, but i find it eminently believable.
Scientists in industry are FAR more rigorous than academic scientists (i've worked in both fields and am currently working in a biotech firm moving from academia to industry- it's a challenge to say the least) with regard to data collection, storage, methods, proceudres, documentation and general QA/QC; their jobs and the future of their companies depend on it.
I therefore do not find it difficult at all to understand why the same group (industry-scientists) are apalled and shocked at th abject treatment of the data.
Now this is REGARDLESS of your viewpoint on the situation- i.e. forgetting your stance, it is hard to argue, from either side, that the data collection, storage, interpretation and presentation has been anything other than abject. This affects the 'message' behind the data, as if the AGW 'theory' turns out to be true it has been done a HUGE disservice by the scientists presenting it, OR that the lack of rigorous controls (as 'enjoyed' (notice the inverted commas) by industry) has lead to a rather unfortunate situation...
Just thought it was a very interesting point, and probably worthy of discussion.
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LabMunkey at #161
"Scientists in industry are FAR more rigorous than academic scientists with regard to data collection, storage, methods, proceudres, documentation..."
As shown by: "...apologies i cannot remember the article"?
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@162
as shown by the cru debacle for a start.
I wasn't intending to cast dispersions by this post- rather to raise an interesting point. Everything in industry is covered by iso9001 at a minimum. Academia doesn't have this kind of control.
Also, you'll notice there is undoubtedly excelletn work performed by academia- but, in this case, it is interesting to compare the difference in mindest.
As i said, i posted it as a talking point, not an attack of any sort,
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oh, and there is a slight difference between reading and raising an interesting point in an article, and collecting data which ALL your work and future assumptions are based on.
slightly disingenuous post that simon.
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LabMunkey at #164
My comment was intended somewhat light-heartedly. Clearly the context of data management is important.
In a more serious vein, there are numerous examples of university institutions that have gone through the ISO 9001 certtification process and/or apply other Q/A procedures. It varies from institution to institution, of course, and some are lousy at it.
It is an exaggeration to claim that "Everything in industry is covered by iso9001 at a minimum." Even ISO wouldn't claim that level of uptake!
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ISO (the international standards organisation, as mentioned by LabMunkey) has a page where it describes its tools for monitoring climate change; quantifying GHG emissions and communicating on environmental impacts; promoting good practice in environmental management & design; and opening markets for energy efficient products.
http://www.iso.org/iso/hot_topics/hot_topics_climate_change/hot_topics_climate_change_tools.htm
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@165- yes of course. sorry for getting the wronig end of the stick
and a good point on the iso9001. It was a generalisation for the sake of simplicity, apologies if it was misleading- a lot of companies don't apply for it. only work towards it. However, for any level of success i.e. making a product, work before due dilligence etc etc it is an absolute.
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The report was an absolute disgrace. They did not even consider the emails or check the science and appalling use of statistics.
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This may help inform, or confuse further...
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/climate-impact-of-iceland-volcano.php
Either way, par the course.
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159. SheffTim:
"Yet if you look at the core data, CO2 and temperature are extremely closely correlated, adding weight to the argument that the climate is sensitive to CO2."
Indeed "adding weight to the argument that the climate is sensitive to CO2", but how much weight is that?
The lag explains that the CO2 concentration was very likely contributed by the rising temperature, as the high correlation proves so. Because it is lagged behind temperature, CO2's contribution to the temperature, is not found in this evidence, as it is more likely a result than cause due to the lag. Instead, its only support is given by greenhouse effect. Since the effectivenss of CO2 on climte, in terms of greenhouse effect, is unknown, CO2's significance as an amplifier is uncertain.
It might have been overlooked, but the lag is observed at the end of the warm period, too. This gives further evidence that proves CO2 to have been less determinative in climate change, because temperature fell permanently when CO2 concentration was high.
The lag is not the 'Elephant in the room', but the logic of interpretation is. You cannot make a result the cause.
Now lets get back to your list of publications.
The logic that "makes a result the cause" echoes in the all three. #1 is omitted, because its information is way basic. And because it is impossible for me to review the whole thing, I only make comments on selected excerpts.
In #2
"This proves that rising CO2 was not the trigger that caused the initial warming at the end of these ice ages - but no climate scientist has ever made this claim. It certainly does not challenge the idea that more CO2 heats the planet."
- The authors are purposedly defending the point that CO2 has a role in rising temperature. I agree with this point.
- But through the whole article the authors compile the arguments that emphasises CO2 concentration to be determinative, twisting the formation of the lag. 'CO2 is the amplifier', ok, as I have never denied it. But is it the determinant? For this instance it cannot be, because, firstly, the magnitude of amplication of CO2 is not given; secondly, it does not account for why CO2 concentration remained high as temperature fell at the end of the warm period. This article is yet another twisted logic, which is made for a single purpose: defending a dwindling argument, rather than finding the truth.
#3 is yet another emphasis on greenhouse effect, though poorly done.
"We cannot explain the temperature observations without CO2"
Let's omit the 'logic' here, because it has been explained above. The argument given in #3 only proves how ignorant climate workers/supporters can be. What is the role of methane and other GH gasses? Why CO2 is so important? Since CO2 cannot explain the start of the warm period, nor can it explain the end of the warm period, why "We cannot explain the temperature observations without CO2"?
I like the PETM (Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum) theory, which is listed #4. For a moment I believed I was going to fall into the dark side, until I digged out a genuine scientific argument by Appy Sluijs1, Gabriel J. Bowen, Henk Brinkhuis, Lucas J. Lourens, and Ellen Thomas.
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
They did not use extreme, artificial, boundary conditions for any twisted simulation; instead, the whole the whole thing is composed of observations. The use of CIE (Carbon Isotope Excursion) in this study is fantastic and it proves the correlation between carbon concentration and temperature. Even so, they are conservative about giving a determinative conclusion that claims all the probabilities of a apocalyptic carbon-injection. They admit they don't know the real cause and they don't know the magnitude of carbon injected. This is science.
Apart from what they have said, the lag, which is practically unobservable from Paleocene-Eocene period, is not included in the discussion. Hence there is no possibility for them to claim for the 'prime mover' and they probably knew it.
Returning to the link you give, we see that the author is completely a AGW fanatic who does not study his source material at all. He said "The PETM is CO2’s smoking gun, a demonstration that atmospheric CO2 concentrations directly influence the planet’s temperature", when the leading scientists in this topic have said they are not sure of this point. #4 link is an utter tosh.
Now that, still, you cannot make a result the cause.
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My earlier post, spent a long time in moderation:
Have a look at:
145. At 5:56pm on 18 Apr 2010, Barry Woods wrote:
I wonder if anybody here has signed up below:
Campaign for Climate Change (CACC) invites any activist to sign up to an email list:
Sceptic Alerts:
etc
etc
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@nsctcs #156
The basic greenhouse effect for carbon dioxide is robust. You won't find a good sceptic scientist challenging it.
The debate is over climate sensitivity. As is made perfectly clear in IPCC literature:
"The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of the climate system response to sustained radiative forcing. It is not a projection but is defined as the global average surface warming following a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations. It is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values. Water vapour changes represent the largest feedback affecting climate sensitivity and are now better understood than in the TAR. Cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty."
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html
Meanwhile I have a problem with your posts. You keep mischaracterising the mainstream climate science case. This does not help either side of the debate. You need to be aware that some of your statements undermine the arguments made by scientists on your side.
For instance your statements about carbon dioxide are ambiguous. They are either wrong or very unclear, depending on whether you are referring to the existence of the greenhouse effect or a robust reasonably precise value of climate sensitivity. They therefore undermine Richard Lindzen's work on climate sensitivity for people assuming you mean the former.
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To JaneBasingstoke #148: (New Scientist & the Inter Academy Panel)
Thank you for the link.
From the New Scientist editorial:
"The poll also contains a warning. In the developed world, the public's perception of science is distinctly ambivalent, despite the extent to which it is the key to our prosperity."
=======================================
I have just returned from my Firelookout trip to the Livingstone Range in the southern Rockies, where the Oldman River breaks out of the mountains onto the eastern slope. The west aspect ascent was relatively free of snow, but the descent from 2172 meters on the north facing fire-road was a mini-epic, with isothermal totally rotten snow which was at times waist deep.
My companions were Dr. Chaos and a physicist who runs a university laboratory.
We talked a lot about climate science and environmental degradation.
Linking to the New Scientist poll, and comparing to our talks is interesting, particularly in light of Paul and Anne Ehrlich's involvement with the Millenium project on human behavior.
The more I see and talk, the more I become convinced this whole debate has less to do with denial, and scientific illiteracy, and more to do with the reticence of the scientific mainstream community to step outside of their comfortable world and state unequivocally what the possible dire consequences are of our Columbian Age infatuation with conquest and now consumerism. (Job security I imagine)
I wonder if consumerism is not a mental manifestation of such a long period of colonialism, followed by the breathtaking results of the industrial revolution?
A sort of first world 'culture shock,' or more probably, something more akin to a massive stress disorder?
Collectively, the first world is engaging in what is best described by the Ehrlichs as 'self-destructive behavior.'
This is clearly a form of mental illness. Tribal Ice Age hunters are not at home in cities, on farms, or in civilizations. And we have lost touch with nature.
We must go to the root cause - whatever that is.
- Manysummits -
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Far right get in on the act.
A number of western companies have been buying up prime African farm land in order to grow food and even cut flowers to sale in the west thereby reducing the amount of food available to local people. The bio-fuel industry is now actively shopping for African farm land which will only exasperate the problem, the issue with bio-fuel verses food is well known and does not need explaining again here. It now appears that the far right are the latest to jump on the environmental/clean energy band wagon, there is now a chain email doing the rounds with pictures of what appears to be an African bio-fuel farm, pictures of hungry Africans and the caption “Grow bio-fuel not food, Combat Global Crowding”. Worrying isn’t it?
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@ 171.
i read this earlier
everyone should view barry;s post at #171
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The populations of Africa & South Asia are set to double in the next 30 years. If we are to feed all these extra people we must all of us, and I mean all of us, slash our water consumption especially the water that goes into the goods that we import, give up meat, give up bio-fuels & accept GM crops. If we do all of these things then there is hope for the peoples of Africa & South Asia and we will not have to face the problem of over population again for another generation.
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#161 Labmunkey wrote "Scientists in industry are FAR more rigorous than academic scientists (i've worked in both fields and am currently working in a biotech firm moving from academia to industry- it's a challenge to say the least) with regard to data collection, storage, methods, proceudres, documentation and general QA/QC; their jobs and the future of their companies depend on it."
LOL. My equivalent anecdotal evidence, based on personal experience working in both academia and industry in the Earth sciences, is that indudstrial Earth scientists are no more rigorous than academic Earth scientists, for lots of reasons. So now we have a sample size of two, both anecdotal, both biased, and apparently contradictory. I suggest we put this line of argument aside, and concentrate on discussing the science.
#159 SheffTim
"The amount of solar energy received by earth due to Milankovitch cycles, and the temperature effect this has can (and has - by solar scientists) be worked out, and it amounts to around 5 degrees C. (Again this isn't disputed.)"
Can you provide a citation to this work? 5 degrees C seems surprisingly high as a consequence of a few percent variation in solar insolation. Does this temperature range includes a feedback boost? If so, one has to ask how it has been calculated??
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172. JaneBasingstoke
I have never questioned the 'basic greenhouse effect for carbon dioxide' and I wonder why you dodge the question that 'Mainstream climate science' has yet been able to answer, let's say: what is the magnitude of greenhouse effect to contribute to climate change.
This, "..but is defined as the global average surface warming following a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations. It is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C..", is a statistically extrapolated result, not a result of experiement and not even a result of observation. This conclusion is there only because climate workers have found two rising trends. And just because one of the two trends is hypothesized, climate workers believe they have proved the magnitude of greenhouse effect on temperature. This is not evidence, let alone being 'robust'.
Your quotation is the very reason why AGW is bitterly rebuted by real scientists. You cannot just pile up the statistics that cover slightly more than a hundred years to produce a conclusion for a mechanism that is only partially understood and that is contradicted by solid geo-historical evidence.
The statistical process is fine with a faulty sampling basis. This can at most make AGW a fine guess, but not an answer at all, as many climate workers have admitted. What is your position here being an enthusiastic supporter, who yet sees the problem in the method?
I am still open to the real evidence that proves the link between greenhouse effect and the present temperature, as there is no experimental link presented yet.
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Those insisting on hard experimental evidence for a more precise figure on climate sensitivity will have a long wait, unfortunately. The world does not have that luxury. Instead, we just have to run with what we've got. The key point for me is that I don't think anybody has succesfully argued that the sensitivity is low enough for us not be concerned, nor that the methods used to come up with these estimates on sensitivity are flawed beyond the caveats that have already been attributed to them.
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@ncstcs
"It might have been overlooked, but the lag is observed at the end of the warm period, too. This gives further evidence that proves CO2 to have been less determinative in climate change, because temperature fell permanently when CO2 concentration was high. "
Or is this just further evidence that the same external force that caused the initial push upwards in temperature (Milankovich cycles, 'something else'), also caused this subsequent lowering in temperature, pushing the feedback cycle in reverse. We know Milankovitch cycles are cyclic. This is actually all very consistent with the view that C02 induces warming just as predicted by the physics and just as we've observed since the industrial revolution.
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@manysummits
@bowmanthebard
@LarryKealey
Think the following will interest all of you.
(Bowman, don't be put off by the G-word in the URL.)
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/04/is-god-a-mathematician.php
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@Jane
Interesting article
It is true that mathematics is 'perfect' - and ironic to note that mathematics is the language of science - which is far from 'perfect'.
Kealey
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manysummits:
things don't satisfy that is why they keep telling everyone that they do. Every religion, and pardon the subject for those opposed, but would like to put that in context, has told that personal satisfaction is an internal process and not the external accumulation of things, but no one has listened for over 2,000 years. If there is one glaring point of human ignorance, it is this one. The non-believers will need to just subsitute phiolosophy for religion as they are the same root. The selling of things is based on keeping people unsatisfied and as most people are anyway, it works out for sales. It is not just a house, it is a bigger house, it is not just enough to eat, but higher end food to eat, it is not just a trusted mate, but one that exceeds in some social scale. Some will argue that this is human motivation and it may be if extinction is the goal.
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@nsctcs #178
Firstly when questions contain hidden assumptions or contain ambiguities they don't deserve simple straight answers, nor is it helpful to give them. Simple straight answers to confusing questions can and do add to the confusion.
So my answer tackled the ambiguity in your question. Which you have now clarified.
Meanwhile I point out that my answer covers the clarification of your original question. I have provided evidence that the IPCC's coverage of climate sensitivity comes with caveats and probabilities. I haven' ducked the question. Instead you moved the goalposts in your apparent demand for some in depth discussion on the derivation of those probabilities that very few individuals are qualified to deliver.
And there are two new claims in your post that I have a problem with.
Firstly your reference to "solid geo-historical evidence" that contradicts AGW. What is this evidence?
Secondly your characterisation of climate sensitivity work as "a statistically extrapolated result, not a result of experiement and not even a result of observation. This conclusion is there only because climate workers have found two rising trends". This is at best a gross oversimplification that ignores attempts to find different approaches to investigating climate sensitivity.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5.html#box-10-2
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@LarryKealey #182
"Perfect" is perhaps a little strong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del#The_Incompleteness_Theorem
:-)
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184. JaneBasingstoke
I hope that the ambiguity of my word has been a good excuse for you to evade the questions and for you to overlook the long discussion of CO2 concentration lag in the ice core evidence. But, worries not. Just go back and read please. It took me considerable time for reading your links that contain most basic and mostly duplicate knowledge. I suppose my time deserves your patience.
For the stated reason, I am not going to answer your first question. As for the second one, my answer is straightforward. If the IPCC report was persuasive to me, I would not be here. The link that you give does not deliver anything except a complicated version of your quotation above. There is no experiment to explain how much CO2 could influence temperature. There is no observation to present the magnitude of greenhouse effect on climate. The only information it contains is justification of the estimates derived from raw data of temperature and CO2 concentration, which form the two upward trends as stated above.
I do spend time on the details whatever people give. And I have enjoyed quite a lot reading some of the replies above, despite their oppositive opinions to mine. But please, may I have a break from bombardment of basic yet inaccurate information, by which many 'sceptics' are fed up?
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"Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get."
Climate, is an expectation of future weather averages based upon historical record.
By definition, change in climate is only provable AFTER the fact, and then it depends upon how long a period you require to define your expectations.
Weather is current.
Weather prediction is difficult. We do o.k. for about 5 days into the future, which is a large improvement over a few decades ago, but long-term weather prediction is still inaccurate, and is unlikely to remain so without a considerable improvement in our monitoring and modelling capabilities.
Complaining that people cannot agree about a climate prediction for 10-200 years in advance is simple stupidity...we're not capable of doing it yet, and even if we could, it is subject to many unpredictable events--from meteorite impacts to volcanoes.
Unfortunately, politics and other entertainment industries seldom pay attention to facts when making decisions--they pay attention to the interests of those deciding.
One major trend in geological studies over the past 200 years has been the continual discovery that things can and do change far, far faster than we ever thought (though even the Bible mentions several weather-related phenomena which happened far faster than most would credit.)
One bias present in all science is the observer's "credibility" bias. This bias determines whether or not the researchers will, themselves, accept their observed data.
Data which appear "unreasonable" to the observer are often discounted. Note that the first dinosaur bones were found by Bible believers, who, given their beliefs, could not have accepted the now recognised age of their finds. Scientists are, after all, people.
However, as Pascal said, "Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't happening."
We know for a fact that the planetary climate is unstable, and has been unstable for at several million years.
We know for a fact that planetary events not only happen, but can happen in an eye-blink. Meteorites such as the "Dinosaur killer," or the massive and very quick destruction and freezing of Arctic flora & fauna.
I look at the projected changes and find that they are far too optimistic--one really wants to err on the conservative side (i.e. things will be worse than expected.)
The factors which contribute to global ice melt are all positive feedback mechanisms. This means that the rate of change accelerates with time rather than remaining constant. Practically it means that a 10cm rise in sea level over the past decade is likely to be much smaller than the rise over the next decade--and so on.
With climate change, we argue in the political arena over things which are already highly probable. Very few scientists believe that the long-term weather isn't becoming warmer. None believe that it will never change.
Do humans affect the climate?
Humans have affected local climate conditions for at least thousands of years.
Iraq, Lebanon, North Africa, Greece, Spain, France, England and the Eastern USA were all once huge forests. Several are now rocky deserts, and we know that humanity is responsible for those changes.
Can we affect it on purpose? Probably? Should we try?
We really have no choice. We will affect it regardless of our desires, the only question is whether or not we try to determine what those effects may be.
Since we WILL affect our environment no matter what we do (even if we all dropped dead, THAT would be a major effect upon the ecosystem!) then we should try and at least know in advance what our actions are likely to do...and monitor what actually happens in order to ensure that unwanted side-effects are observed and reacted to before they become uncontrollable.
Economically what we should do becomes a cost-benefit analysis problem (unfortunately there are those who stand to win or lose--at least short-term--however we decide.)
Simply put: What are the costs/benefits of preparing for climate change which doesn't come, or comes much more slowly than expected?
What are the costs/benefits of being caught unprepared?
We've known for centuries that dumping toxic materials into your drinking water or farmland or air are very bad things. What has saved us has been our ability to find fresh, untainted land and water. Today, such pristine environment exists only off-planet, and in places which are habitable only with a great deal of effort.
So even without climate change, reducing our impact upon the environment is an undoubted good thing for us and other animals and plants. Whatever the cost of trying to alleviate the climatic problems, it seems likely that such actions will benefit the planetary population regardless of the climate.
However, if we assume that we make no difference, or that the problem will not become significant until long after we are dead---leaving the cost to our descendants--and we take no actions, there are possibilities.
Since climate does change, we can guarantee that change will happen "sometime."
Thus, it is only a matter of being prepared long or shortly before the need arises, or perhaps being unprepared when the need arises.
Generally, being prepared for disaster is cheaper than being unprepared--since preparation for nearly all disasters is very similar. Some disaster is always certain!
This is why we have Tsunami warning systems, tornado and severe weather warning systems and emergency hurricane and other disaster plans.
So, do we prepare today for a probable tomorrow, or wait until the threat is undeniable--and irresistible?
In any case, there is no point in complaining that the science is based upon poor data and lousy models--those are always likely to be the facts...yet we need predictions, however inaccurate.
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To JaneBasingstoke #181 re Feynman & Wouk & mathematics:
Thanks for the link.
I was something of a math whiz, but the idea that math is perfect is nonsense. It is no more perfect than the inventor or the practioner, which is to say that it may or may not be perfect, which is definition dependent, which is of course - more invention.
Math is a clue - perhaps that we are truly babes in the Universe's woods.
Instinct is more powerful than mathematics, by a country mile, but harder to use, because it requires more courage - which is in shorter supply than mathematical ability. It is also messier, and involves the emotions, which is anathema to many in the dispassionate professions.
I have actually had mathematicians tell me with a straight face that they did nothing wrong - it was the chemists who were responsible for many of the world's ills. Even Freeman Dyson has alluded to this in his book "The Sun, the Genome and the Internet."
Another piece of empirical evidence of the mental ilness that I am so fond of describing in our first world culture. It catches you unawares because it is found in the most unexpected places.
If you write ten books on any subject, how much time are you spending with your family and out of doors?
- Manysummits -
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Hi Ghost! (#183)
Yes, religion and philosophy - the same root.
I remember a Catholic priest who used to start every Mass by reminding us that we were about to study "the sacred mysteries."
Basically, no one has ever figured out why we are here, or where we are going. It is human nature to comfort oneself with either philosophy or religion.
Now, in this time, we are engaging in a fight for survival. This is much easier to understand, and once enough of us realize that this is the situation, our strengths will appear.
This is now happening in Bolivia.
The declarations are straightforward and to the point.
The first world is a culture of Death (see 'Livy'), and the indigenous peoples of the world are a culture of Life.
This will be hard to swallow for many, but it is entirely accurate, and not one bit an exaggeration.
The Ehrlichs at Stanford University talk of 'self-destructive behavior,' which is what a culture of Death is all about.
Your remark at the end of your 181 alludes to this point.
Bolivia is where we stand just now. Where we will stand next week I don't know.
I was just outside with the family, in magnificent warm weather, with the first leaves coming out, and the panorama of the Rockies bathed in summer haze before us. But it is too early for summer - yet it is here.
I was seized with the conviction that unless we learn to appreciate and love the natural world again, those of us who have forgotten, we will indeed go extinct.
As we wandered amongst the mansions on Signal Hill on the way home, the contrast could hardly be greater.
Bolivia wants an international climate tribunal.
And I do too.
- Manysummits -
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~170. Your argument regarding the Ice Age seems confused. 'CO2 is the amplifier', ok, as I have never denied it. But is it the determinant?'
If I'm understanding your use of terms 'the determinant' (forcing) was Milankovitch cycles, CO2 a feedback. Hence also a lag as temperatures fell; more CO2 was absorbed by a colder sea etc.
The PETM.
The paper you refer to is probably: 'Environmental precursors to rapid light carbon injection at the Palaeocene/Eocene boundary' by Sluijs et al.
Opinion if firming up as to the causes of the PETM.
Two of the authors of the above paper, Zachos and Dickens also wrote 'An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics' Nature. 2008. (Google the title, its a PDF.)
"During the most prominent and best-studied hyperthermal, the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; about 55 million years ago), the global temperature increased by more than 5°C in less than 10,000 years6 (Fig. 3). At about the same time, more than 2,000 Gt C as CO2 - comparable in magnitude to that which could occur over the coming centuries - entered the atmosphere and ocean.
Evidence for this carbon release is found in sedimentary records across the event. This includes a rapid and pronounced decrease in the 13C/12C ratio of carbonate and organic carbon across the globe (that is, a negative carbon isotope excursion) and a prominent drop in the carbonate content of marine sediment deposited at several thousands of metres water depth (that is, a deep-sea dissolution horizon).
The first observation indicates injection into the atmosphere or ocean of a very large mass of 13C-depleted carbon, affecting the composition of the global carbon cycle. The second observation is a telltale signature of ocean acidification. The entire event lasted less than 170,000 years. Given the residence time of carbon (the average time a carbon atom spends in the ocean; about 100,000 years), this is consistent with a fast release and subsequently slower removal of carbon."
'An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics.'
Even a geologist funded by oil companies to survey the N. Sea seabed finds the idea uncontroversial:
"At the time of the break-up of the North Atlantic 55 million years ago there was a very sudden increase in global temperatures... The increases in global temperatures are thought to have been caused by a massive release of methane from under the seabed..."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327172238.htm
Others also believe so:
'Release of methane from a volcanic basin as a mechanism for initial Eocene global warming'. Svensen et al. (Svensen et al have extensively surveyed parts of the N. Atlantic seabed as part of oil and gas exploration work, their papers come from this research.)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15175747?dopt=Abstract
#171. I haven't a citation to hand I'm afraid; its from something I read but didn't make a note of at the time.
You may be right. Looking on the Web I came across 'Milankovitch Radiation Variations: A Quantitative Evaluation' (DM Shaw, WL Donn - Science, 1968.) who estimated changes in insolation (watts per square meter etc) caused changes in temperature of between and 1.4 degrees C and 3.1 degrees C, depending on latitude.
(A lot of the calculations as to the roles of isolation and GHGs were probably done in the last century when physical evidence for astronomical cycles was accumulating, and so may be in the journals rather than on the web.) there certainly are quite a few book on Ice ages so it may be worth looking at references therein.
The point is that changes in insolation are too small (ave 8 degrees C, again from memory) to account for the changes in temperatures seen between an ice age and interglacial.
Feedbacks have to play a major role. The known properties of GHGs do account for this.
I've just done a quick Web search and come across 'Glacial/interglacial variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide' (Do a Google, it's a PDF.) by Sigman &. Boyle, that looks at the processes involved.
Looking at past climate research including ice ages I suggest Chpt. 6 of the IPCC's The Physical Science Basis.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm
As always, there are other points above that could be discussed; but with the demands of work, sleep and 'life' I'll have to end here tonight.
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Something relatively new on opinion polls on attitudes in the USA...
Jon Krosnick, from Stanford University, has claimed that some recent polls and media reports describing a sharp decline in public belief that 'global warming is real' mischaracterize the trend in opinion in the USA.
Krosnick's own survey showed a slight drop in belief late last year, from 80 percent to 75 percent -- caused by recognition that the earth's average temperature was cooler in 2008, rather than questions about the credibility of the research effort on climate change. In addition, the perception of people who trust scientists decreased only slightly, from 72 percent in 2006 to 70 percent in late 2009.
For a lot more detail, see: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2010/0322climate.shtml
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LabMunkey at #167
Agreed! :-)
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simon-swede - That was before Climategate. That changed everything, and every day more is coming out that exposes the joke that IPCC 'science' has become. Its even worse for UK 'science' after the latest two whitewashes. Monty Python's Royal Society and all that.
The sad part is that this will spill over to other credible sciences and, worse, severely erode support for all genuine environmental issues.
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Spectrum (at #155) and Bowman (at #158) on the volcano and restrictions on flying.
It is perhaps unsurprising that IATA is calling for an early resumption of flights – its ‘raison d’etre’ is the promotion of the interests of the airline industry.
International air safety is addressed by ICAO – the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Their manual notes:
“The question at issue is — when does the concentration of [volcanic] ash in the contaminated airspace decrease to a level considered safe for aircraft? Moreover, flying through even very low ash concentrations considered safe from the standpoint of immediate engine damage may … still cause long-term engine damage, with significant economic consequences. …it is assumed that if the ash is still visible by eye or from satellite data, it still presents a hazard to aircraft.“
Above excerpts from the: Manual on Volcanic Ash, Radioactive Material and Toxic Chemical Clouds (Doc 9691), ICAO.
International Standards and Recommended Practices concerning volcanic ash contingency are contained principally within ICAO Annexes 3, 11 and 15 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation. In addition, a number of global and regional ICAO manuals and documents are available to support a coordinated response to the hazards posed by volcanic ash to the international aviation community.
More guidance as well as links to principal documents can be found at:
http://www.paris.icao.int/news/20100415_eyjafjallajokull.htm
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CanadianRockies at #193
You wrote: "That was before Climategate."
Umm, no. If you read the link, you would have seen: "The controversy, called 'climategate' by global warming skeptics, soon made headlines around the world. But according to Krosnick, the effect on public opinion was minimal."
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@ 177.
i'm sorry but i disagree. Academia simply doesn't have the regulatory controls industry has. I FULLY accept that there are good and bad examples on both sides, but i think, due to these exceptionally rigorous controls, industry is more rigorous.
The MAJOR advantage of academia is the 'lack' of focus- i.e. if they find something interesting they can pursue it, fully. Industry cannot.
To re-iterate, i was not trying to imply superiority by either side, but, i Do find it a plausble reason for the levels of skepticism AND it's origins/professional basis.
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bowmanthebard #134: "The airlines are understandably erring on the side of caution, not just to keep their passengers out of harm's way but also to avoid liability, and to avoid high maintenance costs of wear and tear."
Manual notes of the International Civil Aviation Organisation [quoted by simon-swede #194]: "flying through even very low ash concentrations considered safe from the standpoint of immediate engine damage may … still cause long-term engine damage, with significant economic consequences."
bowmanthebard: This seems to confirm that even if airlines are wholly motivated by profit, they are at least conflicted over whether to fly through "ash zones". On the one hand they want to keep making money flying passengers around. On the other hand they want to avoid high maintenance costs.
simon-swede #194: "It is perhaps unsurprising that IATA is calling for an early resumption of flights – its ‘raison d’etre’ is the promotion of the interests of the airline industry."
But even if their judgement is entirely guided by profit, it seems to me that they are concerned about wear and tear "considered safe from the standpoint of immediate engine damage". Which is pretty much to say "considered safe", as the other really vulnerable aircraft part is the cockpit glass, which if sand-blasted renders an aircraft obviously un-flyable (it would cause immediate alarm if encountered in the air, the aircraft cannot be taxied on ground, etc.).
But as a matter of fact I don't think airlines and airline pilots are wholly motivated by profit at all. Most people in most professions take pride in their work and want to do as good a job as they can. In the case of airlines, that involves making sure that reasonable safety standards are observed. But of course that means taking reasonable risks to do what they are supposed to do.
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@JaneBasingstoke #181:
Thanks! I thought The Caine Mutiny was a terrific book, but I had no idea Wouk had met Feynman or had given any thought to mathematics and all that. I just ordered The Language God Speaks and look forward to reading it.
One of the reasons I went into maths in the first place was that I too was convinced that mathematics was the "language of the universe". One of the reasons I left it was that I realized we humans are too ambitious if we think we can speak the language properly. Most (although not all) of our attempts to use mathematics to describe reality involve our assuming too much detail in our descriptions/representations of reality. This is more obvious when the representation in question is a desire rather than a description. To use an example of Daniel Dennett's, if I want some beans on toast, I don't want exactly 127 beans on toast, although exactly 127 beans might suit me fine. My desire is just not that fine-grained.
I would say much the same about any model we can hope to create of the climate: it cannot be anything like as fine-grained as the climate itself. So when you see climate science furiously paddling up its own creek of technical detail, you can be pretty sure it's mostly worthless artifactual detail.
PS: I don't have a copy of The Caine Mutiny as I write, but one of my favourite lines goes something like this: "These great events unfolded around Keith [the protagonist] like a mighty bank vault door turns on a tiny ball-bearing." Due modesty!
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@nsctcs
OK.
AGW is unproven
The IPCC's mealy mouthed language has hidden this.
Sorry for not making this clear.
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@ncstcs
However AGW isn't disproved either, and it looks far more likely than not.
I have not seen any "solid geo-historical evidence" that contradicts AGW. Where and what is it.
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Sorry - not really addressing the issue.
People are rebelling against all the things hooked onto 'global warming' Any amount of re-writing the evidence is not going to change this.
So long as:
* Government uses it as an excuse to tax
* Business uses it as an excuse for price hikes and marketing
* 'Environmentalists' use it as an excuse to take us back to the dark ages
We are still going to rebel.
Don't change the evidence - change the unacceptable package.
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The question is not whether climate models are capable of fully simulating the finest granularities of reality, rather if they are capable of producing a useful predictor of future climate.
Models can accurately predict global cooling caused by erupting volcanoes (as has been demonstrated), and there is ever-increasing evidence that water vapour feedbacks are accurately accounted for too.
The literature is littered with success stories of modern GCM models accurately hindcasting past climate and it's worth bearing in mind that few, if any, GCM models have ever been able to model the 20th century temperature without including CO2. You don't *need* to simulate the system with too fine a granularity - i'm sure someone with experience in other modelling fields will tell you that you gain very little after a certain point - i.e., reality is massively over-detailed in its finer details and there's really no need to account for this when looking at large scale drivers like those forcing climate.
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@ncstcs
" I haven' ducked the question. Instead you moved the goalposts in your apparent demand for some in depth discussion on the derivation of those probabilities that very few individuals are qualified to deliver." [my #184]
I was lying. I was ducking the question. The correct answer to the question was AGW is unproven and the IPCC have hidden this by fudgy wording
Sorry
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@JaneBasingstoke
Perhaps I phrased that incorrectly - but only in mathematics can 'perfection' be found, might be a better way. Relating to your article - have you studied calculus? or how about Pi - while we can get a 'closed form solution' which is 'perfectly exact', to turn this into a 'number representation', we must approximate - interesting isn't it?
Cheers.
Kealey
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@196 Labmunkey
You seem to be saying that rigour arises from regulation, and this may well be true for the biosciences, but, so far as I am aware having worked in the field for 20 years, there is no equivalent regulation covering day-to-day work in the Earth Sciences, either in industry (where I currently work) or in academia (where I have worked previously). So whatever rigour there is presumably arises for other reasons, perhaps via things like peer review? And generally, in my experience, peer-review is a far less potent force in industry than in academia. Plus, only in industry have I encountered terms like "80% solution" and "over-sciencing a problem" neither of which has ever indicated to me high levels of rigour.
Finally, realted to this debate, most so-called climate sceptics do not seem to be generally skeptical in the philosophical sense. They are specifically sceptical about claims of AGW, but often appear much less sceptical when assessing the quality and rigour of evidence and argument against AGW. Based on my experience this is the case of both industry and academic examples.
But, as I said in the previous post, anecdotal evidence, mine or anybody elses, does not get us very far. So a true skeptic probably wouldn't pay much attention to either of our posts, or indeed much of the above ;-) A true skeptic would probably be out collecting data to enhance our ability to know and explain what has happened in the past, and to predict what is going to happen next...
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A return of 'climate cautions an caveats' - in other words, we don't really know with any level of certainty. It has come out before than many in the field of climate science felt 'pressured' to understate their uncertainties and overstate their conclusions...hence the rise of the skeptic.
Yet we still have the likes of rossglory, SR and Paul stating that 'the core science is settled' - not so, at least not with any certainty.
Just look at the debate of climate sensitivity (to CO2) which is reported to be between 2 and 4.5 C - the error band is the same order of magnitude as the value - not very certain there, are we? Reality - we don't even know...and of course there is also the assumption which I have pointed out (many times) that has no justification - that this is a constant. Perhaps it is, but only with all other factors remaining constant, which I find highly unlikely...
Of course, if the uncertainties were stated - and they are huge - then no one would worry for a long time to come - and there's too much money to be made from climate change for that...
Cheers.
Kealey
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@JaneBasingstoke #203
did I hear you right? AGW is unproven an the IPCC have hidden this by fudgy wording?
I become more impressed with you as time passes...
Cheers.
Kealey
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The mainstream media blackout of the Bolivian Climate Conference continues, as far as I can see. Not a word in the Globe and Mail or The Sun or Metro here in Calgary.
\\\ Everest Clean up & Global Warming ///
Namgyal Sherpa is leading the 'Extreme Everest Expedition' to clean up the highest part of the southern route, that between the South Col and the summit.
"The garbage was buried under snow in the past. But now it has come out on the surface because of global warming."
- Namgyal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/19/mount-everest-death-zone-clean
============
Question?
Why are there no comments on this mainstream media blackout of Bolivia?
- Manysummits -
PS: I just checked the avalanche bulletin for Banff National Park a few minutes ago. It is EXTREME in the alpine and also in the trees as the Spring wet snow avalanche cycle gets underway, but what caught my eye was their notation that the freezing level in the atmosphere was expected to remain above 3500 meters for awhile! This is above all but a few of southern Canada's highest peaks, and it ties in with what we saw on our mountain trip this past Sunday.
El Nino year, Sun turning back on - plus AGW.
For the first time that I can remember, I looked at the odd pale yellow sunrise this morning, and the 22 degree C temperature forecast for today, and the 24 degrees for tomorrow, and I was more than dismayed - I was a little frightened.
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@ncstcs #186
I don't ask you to agree with the IPCC, or approve of them. Only make sure that your descriptions of the IPCC don't mislead others about the IPCC. Your comments about IPCC climate sensitivity in #178 are misleading and your #186 does not fix this. Unless you are confusing "trends" with "categories"?
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@LarryKealey #204
I have done some calculus.
I am not a natural mathematician. I did well at school but I am far more interested in using maths than in maths for its own sake. I could never have done a maths degree for instance.
I am also a little wary of the concept of perfection. It appears in dodgy attempts to prove the existence of God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument
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@manysummits
The freezing level in the atmosphere during late spring, summer and fall is generally above 5000 M for all but the northernmost latitudes. This, from my experience as a skydiver, usually jumping from 4000-5000M. Why does this worry you?
Cheers.
Kealey
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Larry @206
Those uncertainties and caveats have always been present in the literature. It is the distorion of media and the play on words by non-experts that has contributed most to this belief by some that the science itself is slowly subjugating the uncertainties. This is not so. A paper would be ripped to shreds by the experts in the field if it failed to fully account for the uncertanties. A lot of the time, the uncertainty in a method is the main topic of a paper - like uncertainty in climate models, uncertainty in the tree ring record, uncertainty in feedbacks. In many ways, 'uncertainty' and how it's accounted for has become a major sub-field within the field of climate science.
LarryKealey, I feel that you are insulting a whole field of scientists by claiming that they are grossly underestimating the uncertainty in their studies. I do not believe you would think they'd do this 'on purpose', would you?, if not, it must be because you feel they are incapable of determining if the results of a study are significant or that they are deluded. What it really comes down to, Larry, is that you disagree with an entire field and it's my opinion that the experts have a far better idea than you do about what makes their work significant/insignificant and how uncertain the uncertainties are. I'm always annoyed when a whole field is rubbished in a self congratalatory way when the only substance to the attack is a high level analysis. I would prefer to listen to specific arguments relating to areas that scientists may be misguided rather than broad brush stroke arguments.
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@LarryKealey #207
ncstcs wanted my beliefs on this matter in sceptic terms and sceptic language, and would not allow me to duck this challenge.
A better characterisation of my position is that although AGW isn't proved beyond reasonable doubt, AGW isn't disproved either, and it looks far more likely than not.
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@LarryKealey #207
As for the IPCC hiding this with fudgy language.
To me it looks as if the hiding is at least partially accidental, and the language is incomplete rather than simply fudgy. I would endorse a lot of what Richard Black has said about problems communicating caveats.
But ncstcs's question did not concern itself with excuses. "Remains unproven" on the front page of AR4 would have got through to the general public. AR4's actual caveats didn't.
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Anyone know why all the errors unmasked in the IPPCC reports were in the same direction?
Every single mistake was an exaggeration.
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@LarryKealey #206
(@rossglory)
(@SR)
(@Paul)
Personally I wouldn't use the contentious term "settled".
I would however describe the core science as robust - no serious scientist challenges the greenhouse effect per se. And I would remind you that this does need pointing out to some non-scientists. There is a lot of nonsense out there that harms both sides of the debate.
There is real debate over climate sensitivity. This isn't just pro-AGW vs sceptics, this is pro-AGW vs pro-AGW.
Anyway that's my position on the core science. Perhaps it matches that of others.
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@Jack Hughes #215
Absolutely. All exaggerations. Except ... hang on a moment ... what about sea level projections?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/ippc-sealevel-gate/
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#202 SR wrote:
"The question is not whether climate models are capable of fully simulating the finest granularities of reality"
No one is asking or expecting it to "fully simulate the finest granularities of reality" but rather to avoid having more "granularity" than than the reality it reliably simulates. Any detail in the model that does not reliably reflect detail in reality is artifactual detail.
"The literature is littered with success stories of modern GCM models accurately hindcasting past climate"
"Hindcasting" is a grotesque parody of genuine prediction. You seem to be impressed by "experts". The people who do this sort of thing are distinctly non-experts in applied logic.
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#203 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"AGW is unproven"
Don't let that rattle you -- in that respect has the same status as all respectable sciences.
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#212 SR wrote:
"it's my opinion that the experts have a far better idea than you do about what makes their work significant/insignificant"
The people you refer to may be experts in climate science, but in logic they are completely inept. An expert in the logic of scientific discovery is much more reliable guide of what makes work significant or insignificant than someone actually working in the field.
Experts in astrology think work in astrology is significant.
Experts in homeopathy think work in homeopathy is significant.
Experts in reflexology think work in reflexology is significant.
Experts in psychology think work in psychology is significant.
Experts in sociology think work in sociology is significant.
Experts in gender studies think work in gender studies is significant.
To find out whether work in any of these field is significant, we have to acquire expertise in a field above these fields, which compares their methods and so on.
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Re 215. Jack Hughes wrote:
"Anyone know why all the errors unmasked in the IPPCC reports were in the same direction?"
Biased reporting?
Or perhaps the samples is so small that it could just be chance (do we even have more than 2 errors?)
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I wonder if we have an organised activists responding to SCEPTICS ALERTS here today?
Hopefully the story is better written here (wink ;) )
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/19/skeptic-alerts.html
As James Delingpole (Telegraph) mangled the story, (preaching to his tribe) http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/jamesdelingpole/
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@bowmanthebard #219
I am upset that I was forced to choose between "proven" and "unproven", and forced to keep my reply simple, which prevented me from elaborating on "unproven" in the same post.
I am also upset that the IPCC effectively faces the same choice, as this form of simplification is the only fix for the way caveats get lost or misunderstood.
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hello manysummits wherever you are
I have been trying to get my head around new words and new meanings today. I have started looking at electojets and counter electro jets and wondering if they are all tied up with volocano events. Of course I am just a beginner in this type of learning.
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#223 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
'I am upset that I was forced to choose between "proven" and "unproven"'
Well, anyone who discards "unproven" theory is going to be stuck with little but logic, maths, and some empty tautologies such as "it's raining or else it isn't raining". -- In other words, no science at all.
The simple fact is that a scientific theory doesn't "rest on foundations" of any sort the way a mathematical theorem "rests on axioms".
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@Barry Woods
Whoa.
"Establishment" seems a little strong. All of them have criticised the Brown government, especially the ex minister Meacher.
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@SR #212
You need only go back to last summer to see articles where there were researchers who came forward and claimed that they were 'pressured' to understate uncertainties and overstate confidence in AGW and climate change theories. It was even here on the BBC on the blog of Bloom.
Take it personal if you want, I don't care. There is no doubt that the IPCC reports overstated confidence and understated uncertainties now is there? Funny, you do quote the IPCC quite a bit - looks pretty much like rubbish to me (always has).
Cheers.
Kealey
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Hi Jane
Ex environment minister, 2 mp's , 2 MEP's is very much 'poltical establishment, relative to you and I!!
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@Barry Woods #228
Political establishment. OK. How about seven current members of the House of Lords, including the Bishop of Chester (Peter Forster) and a former Chancellor (Nigel Lawson). Would that count as "establishment"?
http://www.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/mps_and_lords/alphabetical_list_of_members.cfm
http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/board-of-trustees.html
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#153. "And there is one point that is totally overlooked in your argument. The frequent droughts and floods in the MWP resemble our current climate. Droughts and floods are happening when the temporature is rising. Thus the question remains: the same climate situation has happened before without visible human interference, what is the justification of AGW, possibly a natural copy, being considered responsible for the temperature."
A serious question, I'll try and do a brief(ish) answer.
I also have a question for you at the end.
(Ice ages also produced great droughts BTW; due to water locked in ice sheets, and a cold air holds less [if any] water vapour. e.g.
http://mbgnet.info/sets/desert/cold.htm )
Climate has changed dramatically during earth's history; that's one of the fascinating stories geology has revealed in the past few centuries.
The earliest geologists realised they could categorise and date rocks by the types of fossils found therein; as the geologic record changed they realised that they were seeing evidence of great changes to conditions, and life, over earth's history.
The unfolding of that great story has also involved many other scientific fields such as biology, oceanography, chemistry, physics and astronomy.
Many factors have contributed to climate and environmental change over deep time.
Changes in surface albedo, solar variations since earth's birth, astronomical cycles, ice ages, volcanism, asteroid impacts, aerosol concentrations, changes in the positions of the continents, the opening of seaways, mountain and land uplift, chemical weathering, changes to the complexity of life (plants altered that atmosphere) etc.
Changes to concentrations of GHG's have also played a major part.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to explain many changes (e.g the 'greenhouse earth' of the time of the dinosaurs) without taking into account changes to the composition of the atmosphere; particularly the rise and fall of greenhouse gasses.
See: British Geological Society below.
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/education/climate_change/greenhouse_earth.html
Even Steve Goddard of the WattsUp blog felt he had to explain that the 'greenhouse effect' and the role of GHG's was actually real.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/25/a-short-primer-the-greenhouse-effect-explained/
-------------------------------------------------------
So to your question about the Medieval Warm period. "If you know the answer of the above question, it will only take you one paragraph to demonstrate it."
There was a solar maximum between 1075-1240 AD. (Solar minimums and maximums have some effect, but they are thought to produce no more than 0.1°C (0.18°F) of cooling or warming.)
Ocean/atmosphere interactions are the main driver behind any weather variability, and ultimately a region's climate as measured over long periods of time.
El Nino/La Nina events involve only changes in ocean temperatures of a few degrees, yet have major worldwide impacts. (They could be a good analogy for changes to climate, if ocean temperatures change long-term.)
Ocean/atmosphere interactions (ENSO, NAO, PDO, Indian Ocean Dipole etc) also have their own variability; influenced only slightly I suspect by solar cycles. (Oceans operate slowly over long time-scales.)
There is also increasing evidence that there was also a oceanic influence at work affecting climate change over the past two millennia. i.e. Leading up to the MWP and during it the Pacific remained predominantly in a La Nina state whilst the Atlantic was in a predominantly NAO positive state. (I see no evidence that CO2 concentrations changed at all during this time. I'll come back to that point.)
A positive NAO produces: "warm and wet winters in Europe and cold and dry winters in northern Canada and Greenland.
Greenland, however, will have milder winter temperatures."
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/NAO/
"A positive NAO on average can increase rainfall in northern Europe by a little over an eighth of an inch per day and warm the air there by roughly 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius). If the condition persists for most of the winter, it can lengthen the growing season by 20 days in Sweden, lower reindeer populations in Norway, lead to water shortages in the Fertile Crescent, and provide sunnier, drier conditions for tourists on the French Riviera."
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NAO/NAO_2.php
Does some of this sound familiar?
I think Hubert Lamb (who coined the term MWP & a hero of mine) was on to something,
http://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/Home
but not enough was known to identify the causes. Now oceanography is identifying the causes, and explaining the effects.
There was an abrupt change early in the 14th Century; hence the epic rains that lead to famine and lowered resistance to disease in Europe.
SE Asia had had rich monsoons during the MWP leading to the rise of the Khmer empire, conditions changed to drought in the 14th C and it fell.
There was severe drought throughout the Americas (and floods due to El Ninos). There is a pattern during these centuries that can be tracked across the world, based on the known effects of these ocean/atmosphere interactions.
A good book on the MWP, BTW, is Brian Fagan's 'The Great Warming' about the MWP.
He's also written one on the LIA.
(Mainly due, I think, to predominantly negative AO/NAO conditions combined with El Ninos in these centuries).
But not always: e.g. "What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance." From 'letters of Jane Austin. Letters, 18/09/1876.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Austen
Back to the point (above) about GHGs. Of course there's natural variability. Most of which is explainable, such as this winter:
http://sites.google.com/site/whythe2009winterissocold/
But, GHGs also play a role.
Sure, ocean/atmosphere influences change on their own time-scale and influences regional climate (as this winter shows).
Sure, solar minimums and maximums also have some effect ( 0.1°C [0.18°F)] of cooling or warming), but I can't see a reason why increasing GHG concentrations (on a major scale) won't also have an effect.
So, to my question[s]? Were GHGs higher during the MWP?
I think they were at the pre-industrial levels of around 270 ppm. So they had no effect on climate. The MWP period can be explained by natural climate variability factors; oceanic/atmospheric influences in particular.
Of course, natural variability continues today.
But, why won't increased concentrations of GHG's also play a role in altering earth's climate and weather patterns?
-------------------------------------------------------
#178: I have never questioned the 'basic greenhouse effect for carbon dioxide' and I wonder why you dodge the question that 'Mainstream climate science' has yet been able to answer, let's say: what is the magnitude of greenhouse effect to contribute to climate change.
I've found a page by RealClimate that goes into this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/
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208. At 3:57pm on 20 Apr 2010, manysummits wrote:"The mainstream media blackout of the Bolivian Climate Conference continues, as far as I can see. Not a word in the Globe and Mail or The Sun or Metro here in Calgary."
Try the net(newspapers are irrelevant these days). Here's the first paragraphs of a story from thejakartaglobe.com which I just found linked to another site that you may have never seen called climatedepot.com.
"Bolivian President Evo Morales opened a "people's conference" on climate change on Tuesday with an attack on capitalism's debt to global warming, before participants booed a UN envoy.
Environmental activists, indigenous leaders and Hollywood celebrities were scheduled to take part in the three-day summit focusing on the world's poorest, which they say were largely ignored at official United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen last December.
"Either capitalism dies, or it will be Mother Earth," leftist Morales said to a crowd of some 20,000 people."
So I wonder why papers in Calgary are covering this?
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195. At 07:54am on 20 Apr 2010, simon-swede wrote: "CanadianRockies at #193 You wrote: "That was before Climategate."
Umm, no. If you read the link, you would have seen: "The controversy, called 'climategate' by global warming skeptics, soon made headlines around the world. But according to Krosnick, the effect on public opinion was minimal."
Yes. One poll does not reality make. If you think this hasn't had a major and long lasting impact, you're not looking at either the majority of the polls or, more significantly, the results. The parrot is dead.
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CanadianRockies ar #232
You comment: "One poll does not reality make."
True. However Krosnick at least had data from a real opinion poll to support his viewpoint. Whereas your view is based on...?
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Bowman at #197
You wrote: "But as a matter of fact I don't think airlines and airline pilots are wholly motivated by profit at all. Most people in most professions take pride in their work and want to do as good a job as they can. In the case of airlines, that involves making sure that reasonable safety standards are observed. But of course that means taking reasonable risks to do what they are supposed to do."
This of course is no doubt true in part. However I noted in this morning's newspaper that the head of the Swedish airline pilots association disagreed with IATA and airline company pressure to reopen routes.
In doing so the association's spokeperson noted that the pressure to reopen routes early was driven almost entirely by the airline's narrowly defined short-term economic concerns. He pointed out that the proposals put forward would create a grey zone (no pun intended) whereby pilot 'judgement' would determine whether an aircaft would fly a route that may or may not have dangerous levels of volcanic ash. The association was seriously concerned that pilots safety judgements could be subjected to undue pressure because of the economic implications (i.e. fly or we go bust and you'll be out of a job). The association preferred the current clear 'no fly' directives where volcanic ash may be present.
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Bowman at #220
Self-declared experts think their opinion is important.
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"Either capitalism dies, or it will be Mother Earth," leftist Morales said to a crowd of some 20,000 people."
With minor variations straight out of the Hollywood version of lunatic Commies. Woody Allen couldn't have said it better. A parody worthy of Monty Python.
Good to see that nature, in the form of a minor Icelandic volcano, has prevented our environmental activists from joining the latest Green beanfeast in Bolivia. Perhaps Gaia is telling them something. LOL.
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#234 simon-swede wrote:
"the head of the Swedish airline pilots association disagreed with IATA and airline company pressure to reopen routes."
Well, one wouldn't expect unanimity in this sort of judgement, where the object is not to avoid risk altogether but to keep it at a reasonable level. Perhaps Swedish pilots are less accustomed than most to desert destinations where dust is thick enough to be clearly visible up to 10000 feet? British Airways pilots routinely fly to Middle East destinations, through much thicker dust than our own, albeit at slower speeds, and dust might seem less outlandish to them than to Swedish pilots.
"the association's spokeperson noted that the pressure to reopen routes early was driven almost entirely by the airline's narrowly defined short-term economic concerns"
Translation: they were willing to satisfy their paying customers, who wanted to keep flying and were prepared to take risks to do so. The way you've put it seems to disregard the desires of the customer to travel, and the personal responsibility of the customer to take risks. You have focussed solely on the airlines' desire for profit, as if the customer is just a mindless victim of their corporate capitalist scheme.
We live in an age of unprecedented paternalism, in which individuals are expected to defer to experts on absolutely everything, and make no decisions of their own.
Truly, we need a new reformation to liberate us from this authoritarianism!
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Bowman at #237
"Perhaps Swedish pilots are less accustomed than most to desert destinations where dust is thick enough to be clearly visible up to 10000 feet? British Airways pilots routinely fly to Middle East destinations, through much thicker dust than our own, albeit at slower speeds, and dust might seem less outlandish to them than to Swedish pilots."
And sometimes you just spout a load of nonsense on subjects you know nothing about.
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Bowman at #237
"You have focussed solely on the airlines' desire for profit, as if the customer is just a mindless victim of their corporate capitalist scheme."
No I didn't. I was responding to your earlier posting in which you gave your guessed at opinion about what airline pilots might think. My post wasn't my opinion, it was actual information that came from a representative of airline pilots.
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I thought that this might be of general interest, given all of the recent discussions relating to data sharing:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18801-uk-university-ordered-to-give-data-to-climate-sceptic.html
This was the most interesting bit to me:
The researcher whose work is now public property, palaeoecologist Mike Baillie, says:
"Sets of measurements made using personal expertise and involving specialised decision-making are no longer regarded as intellectual property. In future any scientist researching on any topic which can be regarded in any way as 'environmental' must live under the threat that they can be made to hand over their measurements."
Apparently, it seems that those involved in the earth sciences, still don’t get it....
Source data, methods et al should always be supplied to interested parties once they been requested!!
Independent Confirmation is one of the corner stones of both modern and not so modern science. It should not require a FOI request to obtain this information.
Thankfully, at least in this particular case it would seem that the law has forced the issue, but you’d do us all a great service by simply following what are regarded as "best practices" in the first place.
Note: I would have used the word "standard", rather than "best", but we’ve been round that loop (Paul and Infinity) so many times that it’s long since ceased to be funny.
The end result will either be less sceptics, which should please you or better and more robust science, which one would hope would please you more. Unless of course, the real root of all this is really not terribly scientific in the first place....
Unfortunately, one is forced to guess that is the real reason for this general/endemic level of reticence to share – Why else do we descend into same playground arguments every time this issue is raised?
Surely, you’ve all seen enough in recent months to come to the conclusion that the current position/state of play is unsustainable?
The simplest way to counter all of this and to restore some semblance of order is just to publish, publish, publish..... Otherwise, I think the writing is already on the wall for those involved in "climate studies" and in future they may find that their laywers are migrating to the top of their speed dials ;-)
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@Barry Woods
Meanwhile Google has date stamped that email alert page as 8 March 2010.
Have these threads been swamped by pro-AGWs since 8 March 2010? There have been new pro-AGW posters, but they aren't engaging in the debate in the way that CCAC's alert page encourages them to. I think the only significant arrivals since then have been sceptics such as CanadianRockies and ncstcs.
Perhaps sceptics were already the majority of those signing up for the service.
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simon-swede #234: "the association's spokeperson noted that the pressure to reopen routes early was driven almost entirely by the airline's narrowly defined short-term economic concerns"
simon-swede #239: "My post wasn't my opinion, it was actual information"
Supposed I say that Morales NOTED THAT either capitalism dies, or it will be Mother Earth. Would you regard that as "actual information" rather than my opinion?
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@bowmanthebard
@simon-swede
I need to remind both of you. This volcano situation is unprecedented.
This has implications. The previous policy towards volcanoes worked because the ash was off major routes.
Amending that policy, to identify larger safe fly zones that are genuinely safe, takes time, and, depending on the equipment and skills involved, money.
A week may be a long time in politics. But it is short when re-examining safety procedures.
Meanwhile Bowman, it is hardly worshiping experts to want to listen to the advice of those experts before making a decision based on risk.
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@blunderbunny #240
You are attacking the wrong target.
This c*** about intellectual property rights is imported from free market economics and imposed on academics.
Scientists have to pay their way. This ruling will affect the money available for Baillie and his colleagues to do their science.
Here is NERC's take on intellectual property rights.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/using/business/commercial/intellectualproperty.asp
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240. At 11:13am on 21 Apr 2010, blunderbunny wrote:
"it seems that those involved in the earth sciences, still don’t get it...."
It reminds me of the movie My Cousin Vinny, in which inept law student Vinny (Joe Pesci) on his first case is unaware of the rules on disclosure (each side has to make witness statements etc. available to the other side). It seems he learned the law from watching courtroom dramas!
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#243 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"This volcano situation is unprecedented."
Iceland's volcanoes (like others around the world) erupt fairly routinely -- what is unprecedented is the political reaction to this particular eruption. I think the West has acquired an anti-liberal streak a mile wide since the 1960s, for all sorts of reasons, and this example of extreme paternalism is just one of its many symptoms.
"Meanwhile Bowman, it is hardly worshiping experts to want to listen to the advice of those experts before making a decision based on risk."
Listening to experts is fine. But we cannot escape the individual responsibility of judging who is and who isn't an expert. And we should not be deprived of the freedom to overrule people who coerce us for what they regard as our good, and to disregard the advice of people we regard as incompetent fools.
These things really need to be said. Every time I ask "How do you judge who is and who is not an expert?", I get a deafening silence that says: "duh... I haven't thought of that before!"
Competent adults are themselves the "experts" on what is and what isn't in their own interest, and if they want to take risks they should be allowed to do so.
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Bowman at #242
Assuming you hadn't made it up, it would appear to be you providing information about Morales stated opinion.
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#244 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"Scientists have to pay their way. This ruling will affect the money available for Baillie and his colleagues to do their science."
Even if it makes life harder for Baillie and others like him, it might be a small price to pay to make science better.
The last 12" vinyl LP record I bought had an inner sleeve emblazoned with the warning: "Home taping is killing music!" -- But home taping wasn't "killing music" at all -- it was just making pop music a bit less lucrative for some big-shot pop stars. It was making music better, not worse.
Much of what passes for "science" nowadays is a tawdry academic business of cooking up and withholding "results". The less middle management types can squeeze out of that the better, as far as I'm concerned.
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@JaneBasingstoke
Those that endeavour to practice science and therefore call themselves scientists have always, at least for the last 400 years or so, sought to do so by use of what's called the scientific method.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
Unfortunately, it would seem that some practitioners have sought, in part, to divorce themselves from this process. Those that do so are really no longer practicing science, yet they still seek to veneer their work as though it had gone through these "normal" rigorous processes.
Regarding, intellectual property and the source tree ring data in question: I’m afraid that NERCs position (thanks for link by the way) in this regard, is neither a legally (Note: The ruling in the previous post above) nor a scientifically (just my opinion) sustainable position.
The finding of the commissioner is included below:
"The complainant requested electronic data relating to tree ring research (dendrochronology). The public authority confirmed that it held the requested information but refused to provide it citing section 12 of the Act. The Commissioner indicated to the public authority that the withheld information fell within the definition of environmental information under the EIR. The public authority subsequently cited the exceptions at regulations 12(4)(d), 12(4)(b), 12(5)(c) and 12(5)(e) to refuse the information. The Commissioner finds that none of the exceptions is engaged and the withheld information should therefore be disclosed. The Commissioner also recorded a number of procedural breaches in the public authority’s handling of the request"
There are lots of other bits in the ruling, but the following is important:
"The Commissioner therefore considers that the information is not subject to confidentiality provided by law. It follows that the exception at regulation 12(5)(e) can not be engaged. Therefore there is no requirement to consider any adverse effect arising from its disclosure, nor is the Commissioner required to consider the public interest test."
And,
"As the Commissioner is not satisfied that any of the exceptions are engaged in relation to the withheld information, the Commissioner finds that QUB wrongly withheld the information set out at paragraph 32 above from the complainant."
Obviously, I’m selectively editing these, but it certainly was argued, unsuccessfully, that this information was intellectual property. I won’t go on, as I’m in danger of quoting the whole document. The PDF of the ruling is available from the new scientist link that was provided previously, if you are still interested/awake.
Getting back to the practicing of science or lack thereof:
Uncorroborated/unconfirmed results are hardly more valid than stuff you might hear from the proverbial "man down the pub". You need only look at the recent Korean stem cell debacle, the recent CRU rulings on failures to respond to valid requests and the older, but no less relevant, cold fusion work (Though given some more recent neutron track detections there might still be something in that)
To add the veneer of science, one must first start doing it - It’s really not a bolt on optional extra!
And, to those that claim the science is settled. I would say that they had better start practicing science before they try to make that kind of statement.
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#247 simon-swede wrote:
"it would appear to be you providing information about Morales stated opinion."
If all you were doing in your earlier message was providing information about what the Swedish airline pilots' association said, then I'll re-phrase my earlier remark as follows:
"The Swedish airline pilots' association disregards the desires of the customer to travel, and the personal responsibility of the customer to take risks. The Swedish airline pilots' association has focussed solely on the airlines' desire for profit, as if the customer is just a mindless victim of their corporate capitalist scheme."
The Swedish airline pilots are themselves subject to all sorts of pressure -- from the airline, from their own passengers who want to fly in spite of the risks, from their own passengers who don't want to take such risks, and from "health and safety" bodies who want to minimize risk regardless of inconvenience. It seems to me that the responsibilities of a pilot include not bending to pressure from any of these groups, and instead to weigh up the risks to the best of their abilities and experience.
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@bowmanthebard #246
"what is unprecedented is the political reaction to this particular eruption"
Actually what I thought was unprecedented was the location of the ash cloud in relation to major air routes combined with the duration of this situation.
"How do you judge who is and who is not an expert?"
Well in this instance it would definitely include the scientists and engineers that are involved in the design of aircraft. It would also involve the meteorologists tracking the ash cloud's movements.
These two categories of expert should be the only experts involved. But this is politics.
So there's the accountants telling everyone how much this is costing. One lot of PR experts telling the airlines that their customers want their planes back. Another lot of PR experts telling the airlines that compensation claims will be easier if the politicians are criticised for overreacting. And another lot of PR experts reminding the politicians that crashing aircraft costs votes.
"if they want to take risks they should be allowed to do so"
Most of these flights do not allow individual risk decisions. Passenger flights involve multiple crew and multiple passengers. Even most freight flights involve multiple crew.
And what about the people underneath the flight path? Many of them are glad to hear birdsong. You think the residents of Richmond wants to gamble with an aeroplane falling out of the sky before the ash reaches reasonably safe levels?
People also expect higher standards of safety when they have less direct control themselves. If someone's "little" girl takes a risk and dies in a plane crash her parents will need someone to blame.
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@bowmanthebard #248
@blunderbunny #249
Blunderbunny, where in my #244 did I even hint that I approved of this situation? Did you misinterpret my Scientists have to pay their way?
There is a partial workaround.
Under some circumstances it can be appropriate to get the scientist scrutinising the work (in this instance Keenan) to sign an agreement to confine his activities to such scrutiny (in this case checking the statement that the relevant tree rings don't show temperature). This workaround works best if the relevant scientist scrutinising the work (in this case Keenan) can actually prove his point, and I suspect that these tree rings won't allow that.
However perhaps I need to make my opinion clearer.
This issue with intellectual property rights is not good for science, as both of you agree. I think it appropriate to offer some sort of backup for affected scientists such as Baillie so that the beancounters at their institutions and other people involved in funding their work don't effectively penalise them for effectively losing the funder's money.
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bowmanthebard #246: "How do you judge who is and who is not an expert?"
JaneBasingstoke #251: "Well in this instance it would definitely include the scientists and" [...]
Putting aside the issue of the volcano no-fly zone for mo, I didn't ask who is an expert but how you judge who. Obviously, simply accepting someone as an expert in science (say) simply because he calls himself a scientist would bring all sorts of pseudoscientific riffraff into the category of "expert in science".
This is a problem that Plato raised in his dialogue Euthyphro, which is generally held to refute the idea that morality is a matter of God's commands. More generally, it undermines any appeal to expertise made without proper criteria of expertise. It might give followers of AGW with integrity a few sleepless nights.
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@bowmanthebard
@blunderbunny
Another reason to dislike Mandy
"There have also been more successful university spin-outs from our research base during the last ten years. This was one of the objectives set out in my 1998 White Paper “Driving the Knowledge Economy”.
The value of that knowledge and our ability to turn it into growing businesses is going to matter more and more.
All around us are examples of Britain’s ability to take a good idea and turn it into an enterprise that creates jobs and opportunities for people beyond the workshop and the laboratory. And that’s a strength on which our new Department is going to be focussed on building."
[Note, universities and science are currently covered by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.]
http://www.bis.gov.uk/News/Speeches/science-at-the-centre-of-Britains-future-prosperity
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@bowmanthebard #253
Your question in #246 works at different levels.
To attempt to answer it at a different level, the expert is to be judged according to their apparent relevance and their apparent competence.
So someone who worked in an industry where they had looked at the damage done by flying jets through volcanic ash and who was well regarded within that industry would normally qualify.
This is not the whole story. Sometimes conflicts of interest affect how otherwise suitable experts should be judged, or how those judging them should be judged.
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@Jane
We're certainly in agreement on our opinions on the formerly beloved (though not by me) Mandy ;-)
And it also seems that we're not too out of synch on our views on data sharing.
My recent round of circular posts with Paul and infinity may have left me a tad prickly on this particular subject – So, I’m sorry if my ire was unjustly overflowing, mea culpa.
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#251 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"One lot of PR experts telling the airlines that their customers want their planes back."
Well, if I had been saving up money, and time, and was looking forward to an exciting holiday, I would be bitterly disappointed if I couldn't go on the holiday, even if it involved quite a bit of risk. Just to give you a very rough idea of the sort of risks I'd be happy to take, if I knew we were going to lose one of four engines, I'd go anyway. But if I knew we were going to lose one of two engines, I'd say let's wait a bit.
By the way, I once landed (as a passenger in a commercial aircraft) in the Faroes in a heavy Atlantic gale. I'm sure British Airways would have chickened out. But our (Icelandic) pilots had much more experience of this sort of landing, and chose to take the risk. I'm very grateful that they did. (By the way, if simon-swede thinks I was denigrating the manhood of Scandinavian pilots earlier with their lack of experience of sand at high levels, this quivering lump of British-Irish jelly salutes them now!)
"Most of these flights do not allow individual risk decisions."
In one sense, nothing in life allows individual risk decisions, but in another sense, almost every venture (such as going to the shops in a car) requires them. The captain of the aircraft should be left to make the decision for her or his passengers and crew, and should not withhold information about reduced safety margins.
"And what about the people underneath the flight path? Many of them are glad to hear birdsong."
If it was so important to them, why did they choose to live right there?
"You think the residents of Richmond wants to gamble with an aeroplane falling out of the sky before the ash reaches reasonably safe levels?"
No one is saying flights should go ahead with unreasonable safety levels. We're wondering where the reasonable safety levels are, given the pretty strong incentives people have both to fly and not to fly.
"If someone's "little" girl takes a risk and dies in a plane crash her parents will need someone to blame."
Well, if she's literally a little girl, her parents have the responsibility for letting her fly and possible culpability in the case of disaster. But if she's metaphorically a little girl and literally an adult woman, she has responsibility for her own decision to fly. In either case, there is always the possibility of culpable neglect on the part of the airlines.
All of these decisions are "judgement calls". One of my main problems with the current state of the West is its lack of respect for judgement calls, and reliance instead on the rigidity of plodding algorithms and deference to experts.
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#256 blunderbunny wrote:
"We're certainly in agreement on our opinions on the formerly beloved (though not by me) Mandy"
For the record, I like Mandy very much. I think he has guts, intelligence, integrity, and is verbally articulate.
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@bowmanthebard
No problem with that mate, each to their own.
To borrow a description of a certain Mr Howard, I've always thought, "he has something of the night about him"
But that's just me - It would be a very dull world if we all agreed.
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@bowmanthebard #257
"If it was so important to them, why did they choose to live right there?"
The point about the birdsong was that people living near airports aren't all universally upset at the missing planes, i.e. many of them were not directly benefiting from the planes.
" pretty strong incentives people have both to fly and not to fly."
That's the thing. People living under the flightpath don't have quite the same incentive to get the planes back in the air as those using them.
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@bowmanthebard #258
(@bunderbunny)
"integrity"
I might have more respect for Mandy's integrity if he had actually stood as candidate for a seat in the Commons rather than getting back into the Cabinet via a crony seat in the Lords.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7666482.stm
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#261 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"I might have more respect for Mandy's integrity if he had actually stood as candidate for a seat in the Commons rather than getting back into the Cabinet via a crony seat in the Lords."
Me too, but then I would have less respect for his intelligence.
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243. At 12:18pm on 21 Apr 2010, JaneBasingstoke wrote:
I need to remind both of you. This volcano situation is unprecedented.
This has implications. The previous policy towards volcanoes worked because the ash was off major routes.
The word 'unprecedented' (adj. Having no previous example) intrigues me. The last time I heard it lobbed around was during the winter gritting problems, when it seemed to have acquired a time period, namely 30 years, which was when such snow falls last happened.
Now it seems to be further constrained when necessary by geographical locations when it comes to contingency planning. Not sure how a Californian Earthquake in the future, not near SF, might get referred to. 'Gosh, that was unexpected now.. here.
All of which suggests ever greater (mis)uses, if mainly by way of excuse as opposed to failure of reasoned professional experience.
On the matter of rational safety assessment, I could not agree more.
Though, while not one to err on much faith in corporate cash flow decision making, beyond the PR disaster of an actual disaster, the value of 300 x £1k would seem more than negated by 4 X RR or GE engines, so one is pretty such that the bean counters would rule, even with Safe at any Speed
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed ) fading from their minds.
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@JunkkMale
With the cold winter there were obvious parallels with 1963 (winter of 1962/1963), 1947 (winter of 1946/1947), and to a lesser extent 1991 (winter of 1990/1991). At least for UK winters.
There are no such parallels with a volcano grounding so many planes. This is because the jet engine is a modern invention and other eruptions have not clashed with flight paths. The jet aircraft's susceptibility to volcanic ash was not even discovered until 1982. Luckily in that incident the pilot got the engines going again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8622099.stm
The only remotely similar situation was after 9/11 and that was a completely different cause.
I agree with your cynicism over the use of the word "unprecedented" in other areas. But I stand by my use of the word "unprecedented" in relation to a volcano grounding so many planes. It is literally true, you will not find a precedent.
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264. JaneBasingstoke wrote
"But I stand by my use of the word "unprecedented" in relation to a volcano grounding so many planes. It is literally true, you will not find a precedent."
If I may interject on a subject that doesn't bother me too much.
It wasn't the volcano that stopped the flights but the authorities working, not on atmospheric testing, but on computer mapping of wind patterns.
The wind patterns over Britain have hardly changed this week but the planes are flying mainly because the airlines have insisted that different maps are used.
It has little to do with the volcano changing its pattern of erruption and more to do with hard-headed practical business men realising they might be being duped by fantasies in a computer and sending up planes to check experimentally.
Plenty of work for the lawyers before all this is over I think.
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@DrBrian #265
The airlines had the same opportunity to identify appropriate safety procedures for volcanic ash before the eruption as the politicians. The fact that less costly procedures and techniques were only identified after the disruption supports the description of the situation as "unprecedented".
I would also point out that the logical consequence of unreasonable caution by the politicians is full compensation of lost money to the airlines by the government rather than just reasonable help with difficult circumstances. This will be unfair on tax payers, NHS patients and school children.
If your post is about bashing the Met Office models rather than bashing the politicians then you need to be clearer. Because right now there is a lot of politician bashing on this issue. If you are based in the UK you may have noticed that Telegraph front pages have done just that.
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266.JaneBasingstoke
Yes I was Met Office model bashing. It may reflect on their models regarding climate change.
With regard to compensation. If the Government was following best advice and practice then it can't legally be held to be at fault but courts are fickle so this won't stop the various companies trying to claim money as they owe a duty to their bottom line and not to the taxpayer. If they win then individuals may also have have valid claims.
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SheffTim @230:
" 'Mainstream climate science' has yet been able to answer, let's say: what is the magnitude of greenhouse effect to contribute to climate change.
I've found a page by RealClimate that goes into this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/"
That page may go into it, as you say, but it doesn't answer the question.
For example, @111:
[Response: ... And you appear to be mistaking me for someone else if you think I ever claimed to know the climate sensitivity 'exactly'. - gavin]
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#268. I've stated before that I doubt that much will be done to reduce the rise in GHG concentrations. There is no readily available alternative off-the-shelf fuel source to hand.
(I'm also unconvinced that carbon trading has any value, that transferring wealth from developed to underdeveloped countries will result in any of the desired effects, and I support nuclear power.)
But, we're witnessing a real-time, real-world experiment. In itself that has some interest.
Past climates, over deep time, tell us that GHG concentrations do affect earth's temperature and changes to climate; it is the rate of change that would be unprecedented today.
Carbon emissions from human activity were 21 billion [giga] tonnes in 2003 alone.
(Source: Quoted from a speech – ‘Can the Oil and Gas Industry Help Solve the CO2 Problem?’ by P. Lacour-Gayet - Schlumberger’s Chief Scientist. (Schlumberger is leading provider of oilfield services.) to the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association. 2004.
If emissions continue - held at the 2003 rate - then 2,100 gigatons would be emitted this century. Each year we use an amount of fossil fuels that took one million years to produce.
In the 20th century 500 gigatons of carbon emissions were released into the atmosphere and oceans (Source: International Energy Agency's Coal Industry Board. 2006.).
It’s believed that during the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum up to 5,000 gigatons of carbon (a single gigaton equals about a billion tons) was released into the atmosphere and oceans, but over a span of 10,000 years, most of this at the initiation of the PETM.
http://sites.google.com/site/thepaleoceneeocenethermalmaxim/home
The key point is the time-scales involved; our current rate of emissions is much, much greater than those at the time of the PETM. Far greater than earth's carbon cycle would naturally generate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
Any consequent changes to climate will occur over a much, much shorter time-scale that those that occurred at the time of the PETM.
If you want to read what 'mainstream climate science' thinks might happen then at least read the IPPC reports. Vol 1: Scientific basis & Vol. 2: Impacts.
http://www.ipcc.ch/
I doubt many have. They're both 1,000 page long, text-heavy, coffee-table sized books. But until you've read them both you can't claim that mainstream science hasn't answered your question: 'what is the magnitude of greenhouse effect to contribute to climate change.'
#268. "(And you appear to be mistaking me for someone else if you think I ever claimed to know the climate sensitivity 'exactly'. - gavin)"
Even if the IPCC projections prove only half-right by the end of the century, we (humanity) will still have a major problem; given we inhabit just about all the land that is available and able support human habitation.
Otherwise also try these books:
'Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey' by Wallace and Hobbs. Academic Press. 2006.
'Atmosphere, Weather and Climate' by Barry and Chorley. Rutledge. 2009 and
'Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere' by Ambaum. Wiley-Blackwell. 2010.
Changes to the climate of many of the world's regions (that already face challenges from population pressures etc) will reduce their ability to support those populations.
History also shows us that this results in ways we know all too well, migrations, conflict and so on.
Even if modern climate change were to be conclusively demonstrated to be entirely due to natural variability (which of course still plays a part), it wouldn't be a cause for complacency.
As I've stated above, I also can't see a reason from looking at past climates in deep-time why the effects of changes to GHG concentrations in the atmosphere should be discounted as also contributing to climate changes.
I accept, there can be arguments over: degree of change, degree that feedbacks play and so on. But the core issue, that GHGs do exist and play a major role in earth's temperature and climate is as proven, as are the roles oxygen and nitrogen (and CO2) play in maintaining life on earth.
If we were discussing the atmosphere of Venus, the role of GHGs would be uncontroversial.
http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/venus/atmosphere-of-venus/
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"so captialism dies or mother earth dies..."
Gee, has anyone taken a look at environmental affairs and conditions in the former Soviet Union? If you thought Chernobyl was bad, there is a place in the Ural Mtns. where the signs tell you to seal your car and drive as fast as you can for the next 100 km.
The Soviets, in their infinite wisdom (and then the Russians) took their aging nuclear submarines to the north coast of Siberia, where they used them as 'power plants' until the fuel rods were spent, then the subs were taken away from the dock and scuttled, with all the spent fuel and nuclear waste on board. At the great submarine base at Severmorosk (sp?) there are nuclear subs sunk at the dock.
Not to mention whole large areas in the artic ocean where toxic chemicals were dumped. The whole country is a environmental disaster.
Meanwhile, in the horribly capitalistic US, where we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we have cleaner air, cleaner water, much less pollution, better forest management, we established the superfund and identified superfund sites and began the cleanup, there are rivers which used to 'ooze' but now flow and can be fished, the list goes on...
The last thing we need is a "Central Planning Committee" directing our industries and our lives. It hasn't worked in the past, so what makes you think it will work now?
Good luck with selling that one...
Cheers.
Kealey
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@SheffTim
"If we were discussing the atmosphere of Venus, the role of GHGs would be uncontroversial."
Shh. Don't mention Venus. You'll wake poitsplace up.
Venus's massive greenhouse effect upsets some of the lay sceptics. So what I think you meant to say was
"If we were discussing the atmosphere of Venus, the role of GHGs would be uncontroversial amongst even the sceptic scientists."
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"If we were discussing the atmosphere of Venus, the role of GHGs would be uncontroversial amongst even the sceptic scientists.""
You are, of course, a voice of sanity.
But, many more read these posts than contribute, and much information is new to them (as it was to me a long time ago).
Blogs aren't a structured way of discussing issues (much is just background 'chatter' between a few regulars) and it is difficult sometimes to judge what prior information people know.
I also tend to post late at night, after a busy day.
But yes, the more 'educated' sceptics do understand the physics of GHG's and so on.
I'm also a sceptic in that I follow the science (and I am an independent thinker, I do weigh different arguments - and form my own opinions); but so far I'm unconvinced that rising GHGs concentrations will have NO effect of earth's global climate or regional weather patterns.
KBO as 'Churchill' said in last Saturday's Dr Who.
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@SheffTim
Someone on that programme knows their Churchill. The "KBO" catchphrase is Winnie's.
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I kind of sympathise with your difficulty in communicating your views on climate change, Richard, but I don't think the answer is to avoid providing caveats.
With enough of caveats you will of course risk losing your "message", but you may eventually begin to approach something a bit closer to the truth - and what use is a "message" if in reality it is a bunch of lies?
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