Arctic canary looking sicker than ever
If the Arctic really is the "canary in the coal mine" for climate change impacts, as it's often been labelled, then it's a canary about which we know a little more following a spate of scientific papers coming out over the last week or so.
And looking at what they say, as well as readings from instruments monitoring the canary's heath, the signs of sickness appear to be stronger and more certain than before.
There are several distinct symptoms that need monitoring here: sea-ice area and volume, air temperature and wind, water temperature and currents, and the state of the Greenland icecap.
Arctic sea ice area is heading for a record winter low this season
Along with all this is the constant effort to interpret new data and see whether long-term beliefs about how Arctic weather works still hold true, or whether - as with the El Nino Southern Oscillation, for example - the sustained rise in global temperatures may change mechanisms people thought they understood.
Greenland is especially important globally because of the potential of icecap melting to raise sea levels around the world.
Andy Shepherd's research team shed a bit of light on how higher temperatures might affect ice loss with a paper in Nature this week showing that paradoxically, inland glaciers flow slower at higher temperatures.
Essentially, there's so much meltwater that it runs away in channels under the ice, and doesn't lubricate the glacier's flow against the rock so well.
However, what it means in real terms isn't clear, as several other mechanisms are in play that could work in the opposite direction (see Wednesday's news story for a bit more on this).
Disappearance of ice from any part of the world will have an impact on albedo - the reflectance of solar energy back into space.
But because there's so much of it there, the Arctic ice on land and at sea is especially important.
The steady shrinking of both has clearly led to a change in albedo and so, presumably, to amplification of temperature rise.
In Nature Geoscience recently, Mark Flanner from the University of Michigan and colleagues calculated what the shrinking ice cover means for radiative forcing - the impact on temperatures.
Climate Central has a good account of the paper, with commentary.
"Upside-down weather" brought snow at lower latitudes while parts of the Arctic stayed warm
But one figure alone is enough to give pause for thought: over the course of the satellite record, the net heating from this loss of albedo - the extra absorption of solar heat by the Earth - has increased by 10-20% - a huge change in just over 30 years.
Ice is affected by higher temperatures in the air above and in the sea below.
Warm water moves northward in the Atlantic Ocean by dint of the North Atlantic Drift, more colloquially known as the Gulf Stream.
Whether the warmth affects the Arctic - and if so, whether its impact is changing - is a question that a team led by Robert Spielhagen from the University of Mainz in Germany addresses in this week's Science.
Using a marine sediment record from Svalbard, they deduce that the temperature of Atlantic water entering the Arctic Ocean is higher than it's been for 2,000 years.
The average temperature since 1850 is 2C higher than the average before - and comfortably higher than during the Mediaeval Warm Period, for example.
To quote a comment from the Nature News write-up that surely won't arouse any ire...
"It's yet another hockey stick."
The paper itself is behind a paywall (like the others quoted here, frustratingly), but its final sentence reads:
"...Warming of the Atlantic water layer, unprecedented in the past 2,000 years, is most likely another key element in the transition toward a future ice-free Arctic Ocean."
And what of that transition itself?
At a briefing mid-week on the coming season's work by the Catlin Arctic Survey, Simon Boxall, who designed one of the projects they'll be carrying out this year, cautioned reporters (and I guess by extension everyone else) not to place too much importance on annual statistics.
Some iconic ones do stand out in the annals of climate change history: 1998 with its strong El Nino spike, 2003 with its European heatwave, 2007 with its startling Arctic melt, and they make news.
His point was that although summer melt records haven't been set since 2007, what we have had are four summers in succession where the ice has shrunk back further than at any other time since 1979.
The winter maxima are showing a similar trend. And the latest plot from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that another record low, this time for the smallest winter maximum, could be on its way; watch this space.
Meanwhile, the ice volume, as calculated by the University of Washington's Polar Science Center, shows not just a steady decrease over the last couple of decades, but a decrease that's accelerated in the last few years.
If it is accelerating, then it would be good to know why.
But here, science inevitably has to play catch-up. Analyses of weather and climate depend on data, which must by definition come from the past; and you need a fair bit of data before you can start extracting rules.
But the slow build-up of greenhouse gases, along with albedo changes and perhaps influences from events further south, may be altering the rules as we go along.
A month ago, the Northern Hemisphere had the same kind of "upside-down" temperatures that we saw for large chunks of last winter, with the Arctic Oscillation in a "negative phase", bringing snow to western Europe and leaving parts of the Arctic itself basking in unseasonable warmth.
See this often enough, and the question of whether we've entered a new regular weather pattern begins to be asked.
It's currently unanswerable. But in the words of NSIDC:
"It may be that with a warmer Arctic, old rules regarding links between the atmospheric pressure patterns and sea ice extent no longer hold."
What all this means for Greenland, and hence for sea levels globally, is less clear - and we're not likely to have answers before the next Intergovernental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2013/4.
Already, a fair proportion - I won't claim to know the exact figure, but I'd estimate it's over 90% - of Arctic researchers believe that for the region as a whole, the canary is already toppling off its perch.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~57~RS~)
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.
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If we've been getting Arctic air for most of the past few winters (and summers), then the Arctic would have to be getting its air from somewhere else, right?
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As the Ratcic caps have been retreatin naturally since the last ice age (Green land is just a relic of that time) why is it's shrinking, with a mre 30 year satellite record significant.
Specfically where their are maritime records going back much further hacingmuch the same discussion of warmer periods and ice shrinking, to be followed with periods where colder periods and the ice has grown.
I wonder if Richard is aware that the very best advice from AVOID (Hadley, Grantham, Walker, Tyndall) has sea levels of Up To 2 feet and worst case 59cm? (2100)
Additionally don't sweat over Greenland
Guardian: Greenland ice sheet is safer than scientists previously thought
New study overturns fears that increased melting could lubricate the ice sheet, causing it to sink ever faster into the sea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/26/greenland-ice-sheet-climate-change
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#1 - bowmanthebard wrote:
"If we've been getting Arctic air for most of the past few winters (and summers), then the Arctic would have to be getting its air from somewhere else, right?"
Get a grip...
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@Richard Black
We all know the Arctic is losing ice and we don't know why temperatures are rising, so yes, the globe maybe warming, but man may not be the culprit. Until there is definitive proof that CO2 is able to raise the temperature significantly, why bang on with the same old alarmism?
You also don't mention the Antarctic has gained ice in almost the same quantities that the Arctic has lost ice. You may argue that the Antarctic is gaining only sea ice, but the Arctic is mostly sea ice, and doesn't the net gain in Antartic ice increase the albedo effect anyway?
/Mango
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b5happy #3 wrote:
Get a grip...
Get a grip yourself, on some topology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem
We are given to believe that recent cold winters here do not result from a global change in temperature, but instead from movements of air masses. So if there's cold air somewhere it's normally mild, there must be mild air somewhere it's normally cold.
(I say "must" because it's almost a matter of pure mathematics.)
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#4 - MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
"Until there is definitive proof that CO2 is able to raise the temperature significantly, why bang on with the same old alarmism?"
Until there is definitive proof that CO2 is not able to raise the temperature significantly, why not bang on with the same old alarmism?
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #4
You also don't mention the Antarctic has gained ice in almost the same quantities that the Arctic has lost ice.
Not quite true - see the actual trends at the NSIDC site
Trends 1979-2008
Arctic: Significant decrease of 4.1% (~500,000 km2) per decade
Antarctic: Small increase of 0.9% (~100,000 km2) per decade
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All very interesting, but of course, it is all the effects of natural changes in the climate, which have been going on for billions of years. There is no causal link to human outpourings of gases.
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#5 - bowmanthebard
The Earth lives and breathes.
Earth can exist as a snowball (sans cowlick).
Earth can exist as a sauna (sans cowlick).
Earth can exist as any scenario in between (with cowlick).
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b5happy #6 wrote:
Until there is definitive proof that CO2 is not able to raise the temperature significantly, why not bang on with the same old alarmism?
Alarmism is no fun. I recommend a relaxed "mañana attitude" -- don't worry, b5happy, in the long run we're all dead anyway.
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#8 - PAWB46 wrote:
"All very interesting, but of course, it is all the effects of natural changes in the climate, which have been going on for billions of years. There is no causal link to human outpourings of gases."
I respect your point of view...
I am seriously asking this question: Let's say that in 10-20 years time
the Arctic Ice is gone in summer and violent weather has become the norm. Maybe even Europe is freezing from lack of a Tropic conveyor. Would you stand by your viewpoint (which I would still respect) or would a "causal link to human outpourings of gases" be considered?
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#10 - bowmanthebard wrote:
"Alarmism is no fun. I recommend a relaxed "mañana attitude" -- don't worry, b5happy, in the long run we're all dead anyway."
I knew I should not have used a word that wasn't of my own mind... :D
And yes, yes we are...
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b5happy #11 wrote:
Let's say that in 10-20 years time the Arctic Ice is gone in summer and violent weather has become the norm. Maybe even Europe is freezing from lack of a Tropic conveyor. Would you stand by your viewpoint (which I would still respect) or would a "causal link to human outpourings of gases" be considered?
Let's say that in 10-20 years time the price of food is so high that famine and disease has become the norm. Maybe even Europe is gripped by diseases of malnutrition from lack of an efficient food production economy. Would you stand by your viewpoint (which I would still respect) or would "alarmism about human outpourings of gases" be rejected?
By the way, the scenario of "global climate catastrophe" has never been seen in human history. The scenario of people starving in Europe (and elsewhere) because of economic collapse and human folly has been a frequent occurrence throughout history, even within living memory.
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One can always consider a "causal link to human outpourings of gases", but evidence would still be needed, whatever the climatic conditions were in 10 - 20 years. The current AGW hypothesis is no more than that, and every day that passes, more evidence accrues that does not support it.
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7. At 5:48pm on 28 Jan 2011, Paul Butler wrote:
see the actual trends at the NSIDC site
Well, looking at the graphs at the foot of that page, any "trends" here are really barely perceptible either at the N or S pole...
Given that the legendary "Northwest Passage" was traversed for the first time (and almost the last time) over a hundred years ago, and given the difficulties of measuring even the least difficult things to measure in this business (are glaciers advancing or retreating?) I'd say scepticism is the order of the day!
Aside: I think those graphs (which are very good, by the way) illustrate an interesting difference in epistemological temperament between our respective "sides" here -- something like the "half-full" and "half empty" glass of water to the optimist and pessimist. To me, the obvious conclusion is: "well, that just shows how little we know, doesn't it?"
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I would like to report that the vast ice sheets that once covered virtually all of Canada have suffered a catastrophic retreat, leaving only remnants in some mountain and Arctic regions.
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That canary is sick!
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
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It should obviously be noted that PIOMAS is only a model? It's not actually a measure of ice volume at all - It's just a model's estimation of ice volumes ;-)
Regards,
One of the Lobby
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CanadianRockies @ 16 says:
"I would like to report that the vast ice sheets that once covered virtually all of Canada have suffered a catastrophic retreat, leaving only remnants in some mountain and Arctic regions"
I would add - "and the wooly mammoths that once thrived in those lush regions are just now coming out of deep freeze"
CanadianRockies @ 17 says:
"That canary is sick!
No it isn't.
Yes it is"
This questions needs to be the first that is asked and an answer provided. Unfortunately this information is delivered in what we have here as speculative/alarmist/religious fashion and thus forces folks to take sides.
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#19. No Titus, the mammoths did not live where the ice sheets were. They lived in Berengia (and Siberia, where almost all of those ones you mention 'coming out of the deep freeze' are being found) where there was no ice, plus more south of the continental ice sheets. Nor were these areas "lush," except relative to other tundra.
That is why I said "virtually" all of Canada was covered by ice.
Of course, their range expanded as the ice sheets retreated. Until human hunters arrived.
In any case, the long term roller coaster of climate history puts the short term trends into their proper perspective... that is, they are meaningless blips.
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#13. At 6:53pm on 28 Jan 2011, bowmanthebard wrote:
"Let's say that in 10-20 years time the price of food is so high that famine and disease has become the norm. Maybe even Europe is gripped by diseases of malnutrition from lack of an efficient food production economy. Would you stand by your viewpoint (which I would still respect) or would "alarmism about human outpourings of gases" be rejected?"
See, I just don't get that. Why wouldn't I stand by my viewpoint?
It's all part of the same package.
bowmanthebard continues:
"By the way, the scenario of "global climate catastrophe" has never been seen in human history. The scenario of people starving in Europe (and elsewhere) because of economic collapse and human folly has been a frequent occurrence throughout history, even within living memory."
7 billion people existing on this ball of dirt has never been
seen in Earth's history let alone human. Human collapse can be recorded
over and over. Yes. Planetary change as a result of 7 billion (and counting) is new, baby!
__________________________________________________________________
#14 - PAWB46 wrote:
"One can always consider a "causal link to human outpourings of gases", but evidence would still be needed, whatever the climatic conditions were in 10 - 20 years. The current AGW hypothesis is no more than that, and every day that passes, more evidence accrues that does not support it."
Conversely, every day that passes, more evidence accrues that does support it.
Look, can you say: Lilliputian? Come on! Can't we agree that the Egg
is the Population? Are we to discuss which end is the big end and which is the small end let alone which end we wish to open?
bowmanthebard linked us in the last blog to show an author can be a scientist and a scientist can be an author. Yo! I know we're goofing
with the atmosphere (not to mention absolutely everything else).
I don't need charts and graph's. I don't need "TESTING" (bowmanthebard).
What would be nice is the evaporation of lilliputianism.
What would be cool about that?
I don't think would pollute the atmosphere
(please comment don't on that... I don't think I could bear it). :)
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Richard states:
"If it is accelerating, then it would be good to know why."
As I have have stated previously:
When it's time for the cake to be removed from the oven, well,
I think we all know what happens as the minutes and seconds to
the minutes go by... acceleration.
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CanadianRockies @20 you say:
"#19. No Titus, the mammoths did not live where the ice sheets were"
Is this true? Just for interest this article talks abiout the advance and retreat of the Fraser Glaciation:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5953846/when-did-the-wooly-mammoth-live-on-earth
Look at page 5 "where do we find elephant bones"
BTW Not so long ago ice came down into northern US and the sea was iced down as far as Bay of Biscay were our ancestors used to fish of the ice flows. Would'nt like to return to that.
I agree it's all meaningless blips!!
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#23. Titus
Note that I wrote: "Of course, their range expanded as the ice sheets retreated."
That was a hint that their actual range varied over time, depending on the extent and location of continental or Cordilleran ice sheets. To go into all those details is beyond the scope of comments here, of course, but I was just emphasizing that mammoths could never live ON ice sheets... and thus there never were any where/when the ice actually was.
Also, there were mammoths south of those ice sheets through all that. Until human hunters also got south of them. (Yes I know that the debate rages on about the impact of human hunting on Pleistocene megafauna but, having looked into that and more recent human hunting in great detail, I have reached my own conclusions on that.)
And yes, they ice did reach into parts of the northern US at their maximum extent but rather amazing how close it stopped to the border. Thus Canadians are totally delighted with the warming that has occurred since that last glacial maximum, and this Canadian in particular sees any recent warming and glacier melt as the logical result of the ending of the Little Ice Age - which was and is a more significant blip.
After all, there is documentary and photographic evidence that the glaciers in my part of the world started receding no later than the late 1800's, as one would expect.
Oh well. The mammoths are now extinct but Chicken Littles are hyper-abundant.
Cheers.
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Titus,
Forgot to add... re the Bay of Biscay... are you familiar with the theory of people migrating from that area to North America along the southern edge of the sea ice. It seems like a wild idea but was first suggested by the striking similarity between the Clovis spearheads in North American and ones made by the Soulterian (sp?) cultures in Spain and France, and now there is actually some DNA evidence too. Not to mention archaeological sites too old to be explained by the simple 'they all came across Berengia' story.
It is all very interesting. And related to the big climate change picture.
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Richard wrote:
"But the slow build-up of greenhouse gases, along with albedo changes and perhaps influences from events further south, may be altering the rules as we go along."
Wrong and unscientific - the CO2 changes follow the changes in temperature I'll let you have albedo, but what of the changes in solar radiation incidence on our planet this is the primary heat source and you ignore it while concentrating on CO2. This is rather like sitting in front of a fire screen and complaining about getting cold or hot, and blaming it on the fire screen, when in fact it is the changes in the fire that are causing the changes the temperature!
AGW needs to be deleted as a cause of anything - so that Climate Change can be addressed and properly understood as the result of changes in solar radiation. CO2 AGW is NOT real science! The Intergovernental Panel on Climate Change urgently need to move on and base their work on reality and real science.
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CanadianRockies @25 you ask:
"are you familiar with the theory of people migrating from that area to North America along the southern edge of the sea ice"?
In my mind there is no doubt that it would have happened. Knowing man's adventurous instinct I would have expected it. Saw a documentary many years ago. Tried to find it but no luck. They had boats and would have landed on the ice to rest and hunt like polar bears do. Marine life would have been abundant at the margins so no worries over food for the distance.
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Titus - I have seen that documentary too. Pretty hokey and romantic in the details but they did get the point across.
It does seem very plausible to me too, and they have recently found genetic markers in the Ojibway people that appear to confirm that. Seems there were multiple routes and immigrations of people to North America, although the Berengia route, and along the Pacific coast there was obviously the simplest. And the Inuit, who now occupy the Canadian Arctic, expanded east from Alaska relatively recently during, of course, a previous warm period.
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Dr Syun Ichi Akasofu is the founding Director and Professor of Physics, Emeritus, of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks from its establishment in 1998 until January of 2007 and has published more than 550 professional journal articles.
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/
Dr Akasofu, in his peer reviewed work, has evidenced that recent Arctic warming is entirely consistent with what would be expected of the earth's recovery from the Little Ice Age..
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/two_natural_components_recent_climate_change.pdf
"it is shown that the Earth has been warming from about 1800–1850 to 2000 at approximately the same rate, so that there is no definitive proof that “most” of the warming after 1975 is due to a manmade greenhouse effect (Figure 2b). This is simply their hypothesis. It is well known that CO2 molecules can cause the greenhouse effect and that its amount in the atmosphere is increasing, so it is natural to hypothesize that CO2 is one of the causes of the warming trend. However, it is not appropriate to conclude a priori that the 0.6°C rise is mostly due to human causes without carefully subtracting the contributions of natural changes. Natural causes are almost ignored in the IPCC study except for some obvious causes (e.g., solar changes and volcano effects). The results presented in this paper show that natural changes are substantial and, further, that there is nothing unusual about the present temperature rise."
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@b5happy #6
Until there is definitive proof that CO2 is not able to raise the temperature significantly, why not bang on with the same old alarmism?
I suggest you read up on the scientific method and burden of proof
@Paul Butler #7
Not quite true - see the actual trends at the NSIDC site
You're absolutely right, Paul. This is what happens when you fire off a note just before leaving work for the weekend. My bad.
What I meant to say was the loss of sea ice in the Arctic is almost mirrored by the gain in ice in the Antarctic. The current global ice anomaly is slightly positive.
/Mango
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27. At 11:40pm on 28 Jan 2011, Titus wrote:
Marine life would have been abundant at the margins so no worries over food for the distance.
They "would have had" better luck than Franklin and his crew, then!
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This debate reminds me of a table tennis match.
I think most of us ordinary folk want to know whether-or-not we need to invest in water wings and flippers or air conditioning.
I don't know whether it is this blog, but, over this past week I have had an odd feeling that something really big is about to happen. Last night I had this weird dream that millions of birds, from all directions, flew overhead is such numbers that they darkened the sky. The birds all hastened to roost on every available perch and on every roof top. In the dream I was wading down a street, through glowing phosphorescent water which was a meter deep and I was looking towards a queue of people waiting in line to get the last boat out of the place. (It must have been indigestion from the curry I ate).
Stop scaring old grannies unless you have irrefutable proof that you are right. ;-)
Nature does what it does, and what it has always has done. It is more than obvious, that over-sized populations of whatever sort become vulnerable, when any type of major change occurs.
The sun is producing solar flares and sun spots and confounding scientific predictions. l love it when nature confounds science as it demonstrates nicely, that human beings cannot predict or control everything. Thank goodness!
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@sensiblegrannie
I don't know whether it is this blog, but, over this past week I have had an odd feeling that something really big is about to happen.
Whatever it is AGW will be blamed ;)
/Mango
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Maybe Richard (and the BBC) has to be really careful with his sources of information, who to trust - the Met office?
Steve McIntyre says:
January 29, 2011 at 12:22 am
I’ve met Roger Harrabin and am completely confident that he behaved with total integrity in this matter. I am sure that he was misled by his sources. [Met Office, my addition]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/28/the-met-office-and-the-bbc-caught-cold/#comment-585905
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@sensiblegrannie #32
Is that a real dream?
Careful interpreting dreams, they do tend to be chocker with metaphors. Floods in are particularly common in metaphors. And there's plenty of scary stuff in the news at the moment that might invoke such metaphors but has nothing to do with literal meteorological climate. Things like double dip recessions, forthcoming public sector redundancies, unrest in the Middle East, etc.
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JaneBasingstoke
Yep, real dream, in colour etc. I am going to look up on the Internet to see which species of bird I saw in the dream. The birds had flashes of red and the wings and tails looked pointed, a bit like house martins or swallows. The birds did not fly in regular bird patterns but in swirling tornado fashion (but I have never seen a horizontal tornado before) I think poor old Australia is taking a pasting at the moment, have you looked at their weather patterns there lately?
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@Richard
More evidence that higher temperatures are nothing new:
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V14/N4/C2.php
Clegg, B.F., Clarke, G.H., Chipman, M.L., Chou, M., Walker, I.R., Tinner, W. and Hu, F.S. 2010. Six millennia of summer temperature variation based on midge analysis of lake sediments from Alaska. Quaternary Science Reviews 29: 3308-3316.
/Mango
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bowmanthebard @31. You say:
"Marine life would have been abundant at the margins so no worries over food for the distance.
They "would have had" better luck than Franklin and his crew, then!"
Nothing to do with luck. Franklin was ice-bound. If he could have stayed floating at the margins he would have been fine. The folks I'm talking about had small boats and moved around with a combination of using them for sailing and sledging.
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I do sympathise with you Richard on this matter. Trying to take scientific studies that poke holes in the derived wisdom of CO2 created global warming and then try and spin them to fit the BBC's party line on the matter.
That current shifts have been detected and appear to be causing warming in the Arctic is scientifically interesting, but neither a headline grabber or a helpful story.
Sadly, Dr Mitchell Taylor made such a suggestion (he's actually an expert on Polar Bear's) and this was enough to have him banned from the Copenhagen 2009 Climate Conference (in the Polar Bear conference). The fact that he's correct might be recognised. But I doubt it.
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@barrywoods
I agree the comments section of WUWT can be very revealing, its amazing (or not) what’s buried away in them.
Steve Goddard is again showing his total inability with very basic physics here
he thinks the Arctic is at the triple point of water, Jeez,several others and Watts are trying to correct him here (among many places) but Steve Goddard just doesn't know when to stop digging his hole until Anthony Watts tells Goddard is wrong and out of order and closes the thread here.
It starts earlier in the thread with other people picking him up about the rubbish he writes.
Is Steve Goddard still writing “science” articles at wuwt?
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@Mango #37
Be careful with results from sediment cores, as they never go right up to the present day.
Here's a quote from the paper itself (which can usefully be contrasted with the opinionated "summaries" at the CO2 Science site you linked to)
The Moose Lake TJuly record is of limited value for assessing
anthropogenic warming in the context of the long-term natural
variability because of the relatively coarse temporal resolution and
potential impacts of human activity on the lake chemistry. The
youngest sample of the record spans the period of AD 1968-1972,
falling within the cooler interval of the 20th-century in Alaska
then they go on to cite other studies which do show much more 20th century warming in the same area and speculate as to the reasons for the discrepancies
************************
Also, going back to your reply at #30 to my #7 re sea ice:
What I meant to say was the loss of sea ice in the Arctic is almost mirrored by the gain in ice in the Antarctic. The current global ice anomaly is slightly positive.
Can you explain, since as far as I can see, the page I linked to at NSIDC indicated a total loss at the Arctic of 500,000 km^2 per decade compared with an increase at the Antarctic of 100,000 km^2 per decade over the period 1979-2008
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
@18. blunderbunny wrote:
It should obviously be noted that PIOMAS is only a model? It's not actually a measure of ice volume at all - It's just a model's estimation of ice volumes
Why are we still repeating this old fallacy that a computer model is by definition worthless. Many scientific computer models are extremely good. Those that model quantum theory are astonishingly accurate. Scientists can even model gravity and the movement of bodies through the solar system to high accuracy even though orbits are chaotic.
A model has to stand on its abilities alone. Without evidence that the PIOMAS model is a poor predictor of ice volume I don't think blunderbunny's argument has any merit at all.
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43. At 5:58pm on 29 Jan 2011, Beersmith wrote:
Those that model quantum theory are astonishingly accurate.
"Model quantum theory"? What do you mean here? A theory, like a model, is a representation of reality. Quantum theory yields extremely accurate predictions, which strongly suggests that quantum theory is itself an accurate representation of reality. Computers can be programmed to do the calculations of quantum theory, thereby "embodying" quantum theory, if you like, or modeling reality at the quantum level.
The idea that a computer model "models a theory" seems completely confused to me. It leaves reality out altogether!
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To Bowmanthebard
No real confusion. Indeed it is quite simple really. Scientists devise theories and models of how the world works, but in this modern world enjoy the luxury of having powerful computers to perform the calculations.
Now of course some scientists are brilliant and devise excellent theories and some scientists are crackpot and devise bizarre and incorrect ones. The former deserve our praise and the latter our condemnation but in neither case can we conclude anything about the merits of the theory simply by observing that a compute or computer model was used.
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"paradoxically, inland glaciers flow slower at higher temperatures"
I think the correct term here is not 'paradoxical' but 'ad hoc'. An ad hoc hypothesis is something specially made up to protect another favoured bit of theory. For example, the hypothesis that "God works in mysterious ways" protects the theory that "God exists" (in case anyone's wondering how a benevolent, all-powerful God would let s*** happen).
Real scientists are fitted with alarm bells that ring when they detect ad hoc hypotheses.
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40#
expert piece of distraction on your part..
an FOI request would indicate that the exceptional cold start to winter secret prediction, by the MET offic is a total lie...
and you ignore it and witter on about something else.
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33. MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
"@sensiblegrannie
I don't know whether it is this blog, but, over this past week I have had an odd feeling that something really big is about to happen.
Whatever it is AGW will be blamed ;)"
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Yes indeed. Even now Mubarack may be consulting with distinguished IPCC climatologists and Egyptian glaciologists to identify what is causing the 'disruption' there. Perhaps the imprisonment of so many of his opponents has created such an increase in CO2 in his dungeons that it has finally reached this tipping point? Perhaps he has already contacted the whitewashing crew from the UK to explain to the little people that Mubarack has done nothing wrong and that his rule is still as solid and beyond debate. Perhaps if he just dispensed carbon credits to the masses that would make everything OK.
After all, floods, droughts, and plagues of locusts are part of Egypt's ancient history, and they probably did not even realize that AGW caused those things back then.
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Beersmith #45 wrote:
No real confusion.
Then what could you have meant when you said the following?
"Many scientific computer models are extremely good. Those that model quantum theory are astonishingly accurate."
If what the computers are doing is making good predictions, then the theory the computers use/embody/do-the-calculations-for is good. But you were trying to make some sort of point about modeling. Nothing like "modeling" is going on with a computer doing the math for quantum theory.
Please, be explicit: what are you talking about?
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At 49 Bowmanthebard wrote "Nothing like "modeling" is going on with a computer doing the math for quantum theory."
I disagree. We seem of a like mind that quantum theory is a good one. We are possibly of a like mind that some models employed in the science of climate change are not good.
But my argument is that the distinction you make between theories that are "just doing calculations" and those that are "modelling" is erroneous. Computers do not have minds of their own, they are following constructs, algorithms, assumptions, rules and operations provided to them by the theorists.
Meteorological departments predict the weather using models, pharmaceutical companies predict the chemical properties of substances using protein folding models, traffic departments predict the efficiency of traffic control systems using models, even quantum theory is a model of how nature works at a subatomic level. All these are done with varying degrees of success that reflects the underlying quality of the theory.
You asked me to be explicit. Here goes. I am asserting that there are good and bad scientific theories, but scientific theories stand on their own merits. Interpreting the term "modelling" as automatically implying invalidity is lazy thinking, unscientific and simply incorrect.
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Folks, argue all you like for or aginst anthropogenic climate change but the gorilla in the room is METHANE.
Methane hydrate / clathrate and the methane held in Yedoma are a huge risk to massive climate change and extinction events:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/methane-hydrates-and-global-warming/
http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=5970&method=full
Now, if there was a chance that we ARE affecting this planets complex and nutural systems surely it would be prudent to acknowledge it and change our ways eh?
Or are we ALL to be tarred with the same corporate, overconsumption is perfectly sustainable brush?
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mincehead
METHANE
Save the planet and don't eat baked beans or brussel sprouts. Seriously though, methane is one father of all bad gorillas that is now being released from captivity.
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Unlike C02 methane`s effects are relatively short lived in the atmosphere but it doesn`t need to hang around for long when it`s around 20 times more potent than C02 as a greenhouse gas:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/28/ban-ki-moon-economic-model-environment
Joke about beans or ruminant belching all you like (it`s not flatulance that generates the most methane by the way), but ignoring even small rises in global average temperatures and allowing the corporate spin doctors to `psychosell` you the ignorance they depend on to plan for future profitability and you may as well sign your own death certificate!
OR..............................
Carry on overconsuming, develop various cancers because of mitochondrial damage from the pollutants you generate or choose to live around and wait for a barely natural death before nature decides it`s high time for a clean-up job.
That job will entail eradicating the vast majority of life on this planet as the clean-up takes place.
Mass extinction events have happened before, they`re part of the natural cycle of life on Earth but one greedy and ignorant species may well be the only one throughout this planets long and majestic history to directly cause another.
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Richard, many of us don't believe this twaddle anymore since Climategate. We are all freezing our wossits off!
Why don't you go check out why all the animals are dying and report back?
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Rising levels of CO2 are worrying not only in terms of raising temperatures but also in terms of replacing oxygen for us to breathe.
Also,if there is excess methane in the atmosphere I'm surprised that some enteprising company has not set about extracting for use as a fuel when the oil runs out.
As for the possible movement of ice between the poles,my concern would be about poleshift and the movement of the seas and flood water over the Earth's surface with all the consequences that has for those living on land.Imagine a world where the entire surface or most of it is covered with water and how problematic that would be given the devasting effects that water has caused in places like Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka etc.
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Beersmith #50 wrote:
But my argument is that the distinction you make between theories that are "just doing calculations" and those that are "modelling" is erroneous.
No. I'm drawing a distinction between reality and representations of reality. For example, a chair is a four-legged wooden object in reality, with a particular size and weight. The sentence 'I'm sitting on a chair' is a linguistic representation of reality which can be true or false (i.e. more or less accurate). Both computer models and theories are representations of reality. So a computer model doesn't "model" a theory, but rather the same bit of reality that the theory describes truly/falsely.
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newshounduk @55 wrote:
“Rising levels of CO2 are worrying not only in terms of raising temperatures but also in terms of replacing oxygen for us to breathe.
Also,if there is excess methane in the atmosphere I'm surprised that some enteprising company has not set about extracting for use as a fuel when the oil runs out.”
If you look at the actual concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere you will see that what you have written is nonsensical.
Methane 1.79 ppm
Carbon Dioxide 390 ppm
Oxygen 209,460 ppm
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@Beersmith and Bowmanthebard
So a computer model doesn't "model" a theory, but rather the same bit of reality that the theory describes truly/falsely.
The theory comes first obviously but the reality is whatever you make it in the model
This is full of problems and simulation magnifies these. It depends on whatever data you give it, and uses whatever methodology and parameters(biased by your theory) you dictate to produce a prediction of how the system changes over time
The reality acheived is similar to a forecast on weather charts for the first three days, generally a good prediction but rapidly detiorates due to the assumptions and margins of error in multiple areas magnifying the uncertainty
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Paul Kerr #58 wrote:
The theory comes first obviously
Unfortunately, in climate science the hope is that constant tinkering with the model to fit past "data" will do instead of a theory. (Something vaguely similar can be done with artificial "neural networks" which are "trained" to recognize patterns, but the similarity is only "vague" because the "training" process involves repeated testing and correction.)
but the reality is whatever you make it in the model
What I mean by reality is atoms and molecules, the climate -- i.e. real things, not something inside a computer! That really is my complaint with Beersmith: I think he's confused about reality and representations thereof. Subatomic particles and the climate belong to the former, but computer models and theories belong to the latter.
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For nearly 200 years we've known that the Earth is about 33°C warmer than its distance from the sun alone would indicate, and for 150 years we've known that the principal 'greenhouse gases' responsible for keeping it this warm are water vapour and carbon dioxide (CO2).
Human activity has put 1.2 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in the 250 years since the start of the industrial revolution, mainly from fossil fuel combustion and cement production. Around half of this has been gradually absorbed by nature, and half still remains in the atmosphere, enough to raise the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by nearly 40%, as shown by instrumental measurements and ice core data. The global warming effect of this additional CO2 and other human influences on the climate has been predicted for many decades and has become clearly distinguishable from natural variability in the last 20 - 30 years.
Satellite measurements show that less heat is being radiated away to space at the wavelengths associated with CO2 absorption, and ground-based measurements show that more heat is being radiated downwards from the atmosphere, thus warming the global climate - this is confirmation of the long-predicted enhanced greenhouse effect due to raised atmospheric CO2 level. Observations show that nights are warming faster than days, and that winters are warming faster than summers, both of which are characteristic of this enhanced greenhouse effect and the direct opposite of what increased solar activity would cause. Indeed, solar activity has declined slightly since mid-20th Century, and that combined with a small cooling influence from volcanic eruptions means that if only natural influences were affecting the climate, they would have caused cooling since the mid-20th Century, whereas in reality we have seen substantial global warming.
This substantial and accelerating anthropogenic warming is reflected in the accelerating decline of Arctic sea ice, Greenland ice mass, Antarctic ice mass and worldwide glacier ice mass. Its influence is seen in the widespread thawing of Northern Hemisphere permafrost, changes in wind patterns, increases in the incidence of intense precipitation events, rising global sea level, shifting of climate zone polewards and uphill, increasing atmospheric water vapour, longer and warmer summers, shorter and milder winters, fewer frosts, increasing drought and changes in thousands of other physical and biological metrics which indicate warming.
Changes in climate reflect the influence of the anthropogenic enhanced greenhouse effect rather than natural causes, with the troposphere warming while the stratosphere has been cooling, as would be expected with the restricted passage of heat upwards through the atmosphere - another feature which is the opposite of what would be expected if warming was due to increasing solar activity rather than enhanced greenhouse warming. We have just seen the hottest year since instrumental records began (2010), and the hottest decade, despite what should have been a substantial cooling influence from the deepest and longest solar minimum for a century - that cooling has been completely overwhelmed by anthropogenic warming, which is proceeding at around 0.18°C and continuing to accelerate.
Studies of past climate show that changes in the level of atmospheric CO2 are intimately linked to large changes in temperature, for example the multi-thousand year cycles of ice age and interglacials in the last million years. In these natural cycles, small changes in solar irradiance are amplified many times by the enhanced greenhouse effect of increasing greenhouse gases, together with other positive feedbacks, and this is enough to take the planet from an ice age with mile-thick ice sheets over much of the North America and Northern Europe, to today's much warmer state with Northern Hemisphere ice largely confined to the Arctic. Hence we can be confident that today's man-made changes in greenhouse gases will also have a large effect on global climate, with natural feedbacks acting to amplify rather than minimise global warming. Modern climate observations reinforce this conclusion that natural feedbacks will be overwhelmingly positive rather than negative, and thus will amplify warming. Given the proven sensitivity of the global climate to past natural forcings, it is not likely that it will react differently just because it is now human activity raising the CO2 level rather than natural changes. Modern observations of global temperature changes also rule out a very low climate sensitivity, whereas it has not been possible to rule out very high sensitivity.
Temperature records show a very slow and consistent cooling for the past few thousand years, which we would expect as the Earth headed towards the next ice age in around 10,000 years, but this has been dramatically reversed just in the last 200 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution, with very rapid warming which continues today. Cooling of around 0.2°C per millennium has been, in geological terms, almost instantly transformed into warming of 0.2°C per decade - 100 times faster than the previous natural cooling. There is no plausible doubt that this warming is largely the result of the huge and exponential growth in fossil fuel combustion of the past 200 years. With anthropogenic warming running at or above the worst case scenarios, and the climate already changing in many different measurable ways, the prospect of retaining anything similar to the climate in which modern human civilisation developed looks bleak. Unless we take massive and concerted action to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases, it is almost certain that our actions will trigger huge natural albedo and carbon cycle feedbacks which will take global warming out of our hands. For example, given the rapid rate of Arctic warming - at least twice the global average - it is unlikely that any significant amount of summer sea ice will survive for more than a few years, and hence that is a substantial positive feedback which we're already committed to. A rapidly warming Arctic makes the loss of the Northern Hemisphere permafrost much more likely, and that will mean more carbon released than is in the entire atmosphere today. If that happens, then even reducing our own emissions to zero wouldn't halt global warming, and our planet would be heading for temperatures not seen since the age of the dinosaurs. Indeed, it may already be too late to stop it... but we owe it to ourselves and future generations to try.
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@Bowmanthebard , agreed, I think from slightly different angles.
Icarus62
You cant really compare warming of 0.2 decade without saying which metric and which decade you are talking about.There is no significant warming at all using Hadcrut for the last decade.
I think you are a bit mixed up about when anthropogenic warming may have started.We have been warming slowly since the end of the little ice age but the accelerating anthropogencic rise in CO2 only began 30-40 years ago
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Another scare-mongering article from BBC's propaganda machine.
Now we are told that severe cold winters and heavy snows are "upside down weather" and it is all confirmation of the great religion of man-made global warming. But wait, it is worse - the arctic is the canary and it has fallen off its perch - we are all doomed (based only on a mere 30 years of satellite data)!
What they do not tell you: Studies of longer term records (1,000 and millions of years) have always shown huge climate variations - making these small recent changes totally insignificant - the canary will live to fly again!
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V14/N4/C2.php
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#60. Icarus62 wrote:
Observations show that nights are warming faster than days, and that winters are warming faster than summers, both of which are characteristic of this enhanced greenhouse effect and the direct opposite of what increased solar activity would cause.
----------------------------------------------
Have you been outside at all during the last few winters?
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NOAA Arctic Report"While 2009 showed a slowdown in the rate of annual air temperature increases in the Arctic, the first half of 2010 shows a near record pace with monthly anomalies of over 4°C in northern Canada. There continues to be significant excess heat storage in the Arctic Ocean at the end of summer due to continued near-record sea ice loss. There is evidence that the effect of higher air temperatures in the lower Arctic atmosphere in fall is contributing to changes in the atmospheric circulation in both the Arctic and northern mid-latitudes. Winter 2009-2010 showed a new connectivity between mid-latitude extreme cold and snowy weather events and changes in the wind patterns of the Arctic; the so-called Warm Arctic-Cold Continents pattern. " -
In other words, human activity has been warming up the Arctic so much that we may well be changing the weather patterns over the entire Northern Hemisphere, causing unusual excursions of cold Arctic air over North America and Europe in winter. Combine this with the 4% increase in atmospheric water vapour due to anthropogenic global warming, and you have the right conditions for unusual cold and extreme snowfall, exactly as we've seen in a number of places in the Northern Hemisphere recently. And global warming continues unabated and indeed is still accelerating -
Accelerating warming since 1890
From 1890: 0.06C per decade
From 1910: 0.07C per decade
From 1930: 0.07C per decade
From 1950: 0.11C per decade
From 1970: 0.16C per decade
From 1990: 0.19C per decade
i.e. warming has increased by a factor of 3 over this period.
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We've just had the deepest and longest solar minimum for a century combined with strong La Niña conditions in the Pacific, both of which are a cooling influence on the planet, but we've seen *no* cooling at all - it's been completely wiped out by anthropogenic global warming. During the next few years we will have continuing and accelerating AGW *and* rising solar irradiance, so the warming will be that much the greater.
By 2020, global temperature will have risen by around another 0.3°C above today's value. By 2030, it will be at least 0.6°C above today's value, and by 2040 it will have risen by at least 1.0°C above today's value. By mid-21st Century, we will have exceeded 2°C above mid-20th Century temperature, and probably by a wide margin as albedo and carbon cycle positive feedbacks will be substantially amplifying anthropogenic warming, and the summer Arctic sea ice will already have been gone for at least 10 years. This will have devastating effects on world agriculture and fresh water supplies. Drought will increase, forests will die off and burn, and ocean dead zones will continue to spread. Millions of humans will die from famine, thirst, resource wars and natural disasters.
In theory there might still be time to avert some of this warming before positive feedbacks take it out of our hands, if we take immediate and rapid steps to phase out fossil fuel combustion... but we won't do that, because we can't. Virtually all of modern civilisation relies on fossil fuels and there is nothing that can replace them for convenience and energy density. Very few people will want to voluntarily abandon the convenience and comfort and standard of living that we have all come to expect, or aspire to. In general, people would rather sacrifice a habitable planet for their children than accept even the slightest inconvenience in their everyday lives, let alone hardship - just think about the fuss over replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents, for example.
In any case, we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet for humans, even in a benign climate, and are firmly in overshoot. The current population was only made possible by industrial agriculture, which is highly dependent upon rapidly depleting fossil fuels - effectively we are living on our savings, but our savings are fast running out. Fossil fuels have been both a bonanza and a curse, facilitating exponential population growth on a planet which cannot possibly sustain anywhere near 7 billion and more people as those fossil fuels now start to decline.
What is the solution? Simple: There isn't one. The party's over folks, and it only goes downhill from here, so enjoy life while you can.
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In other words, the warm winters predicted by the "experts" all the way through the late 80's and 90's failed to materialise so you have to come up with some new voodoo to explain why we're spending our winters shoveling two feet of global warming off our paths.
And yes, warmer, snow free winters were EXACTLY what was predicted by Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia back in March 2000.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
I do love the way alarmists expect us to believe all their pronouncements, even when they contradict each other.
There's a name for that. Religion.
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Brunnen wrote:
"In other words, the warm winters predicted by the "experts" all the way through the late 80's and 90's failed to materialise so you have to come up with some new voodoo to explain why we're spending our winters shoveling two feet of global warming off our paths."
Of course in reality winters have been warming up, in England as well as the world as a whole:
Central England Winter Temperatures since 1800
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At 59
Sorry Bowman I'm not the one who is confused.
You point out that there is a difference between reality and representations thereof. Agreed there is. But none of our science is reality. Even the very best theories are representations.
The science that describes sub-atomic particles had advanced considerably over the years but is still not yet a complete or perfect description. It is an example of a very successful theory but it is not reality.
Your are creating an artifical construct so you can portray the scientific representations you agree with as reality and the scientific representations you do not agree with as some form of inferior guesswork.
That is not subjecting science to proper scrutiny. I am speaking neither for nor against AGW. I am speaking out against faulty logic.
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@Icarus62
You will notice the annual CET has been on a long term trend that has recently reversed
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
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It's not possible to determine that the longterm trend has reversed from just a few years of data. The red running mean line is incomplete, being a 10 year running mean it's value for 2010 doesn't yet include the years 2011-2014
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"In other words, human activity has been warming up the Arctic so much that we may well be changing the weather patterns over the entire Northern Hemisphere, causing unusual excursions of cold Arctic air over North America and Europe in winter. Combine this with the 4% increase in atmospheric water vapour due to anthropogenic global warming, and you have the right conditions for unusual cold and extreme snowfall, exactly as we've seen in a number of places in the Northern Hemisphere recently."
"Of course in reality winters have been warming up, in England as well as the world as a whole"
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Like I said, all the pronouncements are correct. Even the ones that contradict each other.
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The arctic is definitely the canary in the coal mine and may turn out to be the trigger point to act. People can irrationally deny the temperature readings, but denying a significant visible change in ice in the arctic is impossible.
On that note it's important not to forget that many prominent skeptics have in recent years been predicting or giving credance to claims that arctic sea ice is recovering and that the world has stopped warming. There will come a time in coming years when observations demonstrate these statements to be undeniably untrue. At that point it would be a good idea to make clear to everyone how wrong they were so that the credibility of this kind of political inspired knee-jerk "skepticism" cannot be trusted when it is attempted in the future (which it will be). Im not going through yet another decade of "The world stopped warming in 2013, arctic sea ice has been recovering since it's 2012 low"
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Beersmith #68 wrote:
I am speaking out against faulty logic.
I ask again: what could you have meant when you said the following?
"Many scientific computer models are extremely good. Those that model quantum theory are astonishingly accurate."
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#72. quake wrote:
"it's important not to forget that many prominent skeptics have in recent years been predicting or giving credance to claims that arctic sea ice is recovering and that the world has stopped warming. There will come a time in coming years when observations demonstrate these statements to be undeniably untrue."
Or not.
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@Quake and Icarus62 ,
I would like to point out that by 1990 the 1st IPCC report concluded that the anthropogenic warming effect was not detectable.
The argument is really about what has happened from that time and what will happen in comming years.
Therefore the CET trend for the last decade is of some interest.
The relevant AGW models and predictions run from 2001. They rely on exponential increase in global temperatures from that time.We are not witnessing that.
We will certainly have to wait for several decades for catastrophic warming predictions to be proven as incorrect
I must point out again that AGW could not have commenced in the mid 19th century.
AGW suggests the long term warming trend to be quite dramatically exceeded
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Brunnen: There is no contradiction. The world as a whole is warming, and that warming is accelerating, as shown by abundant evidence. Even just in England the long-term warming trend is very clear. Unusual cold weather events do not change that fact.
Think about it: The warming trend is around 0.2°C per decade or 0.02°C per year. You can't possibly *feel* that amount of temperature change, so if you are experiencing particularly hot or cold weather today, you know it must be due to heat moving around the planet (weather), not the long-term gradual warming trend (climate). Cold Arctic air is usually confined to the far Northern latitudes by circumpolar wind systems, but if something disturbs that and allows warm air to flow into this region from lower latitudes, then the cold air has to flow out somewhere else - in the case of this winter and last winter, some of it has flowed down over the UK, replacing our usual Westerly weather systems from the Atlantic and giving us some cold, snowy weather.
Weather, not climate - no contradiction involved.
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Judging from what I have been reading on the blogosphere, that recently aired 'Horizon' program featuring geneticist Nurse musing on climate change, carefully edited clips of Delingpole, and other travesties looks like it may have been some kind of tipping point for the BBC.
Potentially has all the scary climate themes. A catastrophic meltdown in credibility. A flood of public complaints and rising levels of irrelevance. And a drought of funding.
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Those 'unusual cold weather events' are what we call 'the last few winters'.
We were told winters would get warmer in the UK and snow would become a thing of the past. Don't bother denying it, it's on record. Now we're told severe weather events with lots of snow will be commonplace in winter, but we should ignore them as they're just weather, winters are actually getting warmer, can't you tell?
Well no, we can't tell.
Last winter was the coldest winter since sometime in the 80's, this winter the coldest since sometime in the 1800's
I'm sick of the alarmists making predictions that prove patently false and then having the bare faced cheek to say what is happening, despite being the opposite of what they predicted, is because of AGW.
In 2000, Dr David Viner predicted that "in a very few years" snow in the UK would be a rare event. Because of global warming. Now we're told it will be a commonplace event. Because of global warming.
Back in 2005 we were told Hurricane Katrina was enhanced by, you guessed it, global warming and storms of that ferocity would become the norm for that part of the world. Over 5 years later there hasn't been a single storm to even come close. I'm waiting for someone to blame it on global warming.
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Brunnen #78 wrote:
I'm sick of the alarmists making predictions that prove patently false and then having the bare faced cheek to say what is happening, despite being the opposite of what they predicted, is because of AGW.
Cheer yourself up with the thought that practically every analyst of the scientific method, on every side, regards that sort of thing as worse than merely sickening. "Getting a prediction wrong" is bad enough, but "arranging things so that no wrong prediction could conceivably rule the theory out" is considered worse than bad. It is generally regarded as the most discreditable maneuver of them all.
The funding for this insane and dishonest industry will dry up eventually, when journalists and politicians finally catch up with their betters.
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#78. Brunnen wrote:
"I'm sick of the alarmists making predictions that prove patently false and then having the bare faced cheek to say what is happening, despite being the opposite of what they predicted, is because of AGW."
Seems that the Ministry of Truth from Orwell's 1984 is their operating model. But, so far, there is no way to erase or revise history - or burn the internet - so it comes back to haunt them.
If the cooling trend which some predict takes hold, it will be hilarious to watch the desperate spin.
As you suggest, it is just a matter of time before somebody claims that the lack of hurricanes is a sure sign of the apocalypse. In the meantime, we supposedly have this Canary of Doom in the Arctic. Still just penguins in Antarctica though. Must be on a different planet.
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Objective evidence shows that AGW is happening just as projected decades ago by climate scientists such as James Hansen -
http://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/hansen-right-for-30-years
Unfortunately we're following the 'worst case' scenarios at the moment, global warming is continuing unabated and indeed is accelerating -
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1890/mean:60/plot/gistemp/from:1890/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1910/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1930/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1950/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1970/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1990/trend
From 1890: 0.06C per decade
From 1910: 0.07C per decade
From 1930: 0.07C per decade
From 1950: 0.11C per decade
From 1970: 0.16C per decade
From 1990: 0.19C per decade
i.e. warming has increased by a factor of 3 over this period.
The science tells us that this warming will result in increasing atmospheric water vapour (already observed - Santer et al 2007) and consequent increase in intense precipitation events, which is also being observed (IPCC AR4). The warming is reflected in the accelerating decline of Arctic sea ice, Greenland ice mass, Antarctic ice mass and worldwide glacier ice mass. Its influence is seen in the widespread thawing of Northern Hemisphere permafrost, changes in wind patterns, increases in the incidence of intense precipitation events, rising global sea level, shifting of climate zone polewards and uphill, increasing atmospheric water vapour, longer and warmer summers, shorter and milder winters, fewer frosts, increasing drought and changes in many thousands of other physical and biological metrics which indicate warming.
James Hansen thinks that if we rapidly reduce carbon emissions we *might* still be able to mitigate global warming enough to avoid the natural albedo and carbon cycle feedbacks really kicking in and taking the warming out of our hands. James Lovelock seems fairly sure that it's already beyond our control - i.e. we've raised atmospheric CO2 by such a huge amount that nothing we're capable of doing now will avoid the climate moving to a new and much hotter state. Certainly all the evidence shows that we're well on the path of the 'worst case scenario' at the moment, with 4C or more of warming by the end of the century - maybe *much* more if we've already done enough to trigger the unstoppable thawing of permafrost, release of sea floor methane, outgassing of CO2 from the oceans, and disintegration of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Given the current rapid rate of Arctic warming (at least twice the global average) it's unlikely that any significant amount of summer Arctic sea ice will survive beyond 2030, so that's a substantial positive feedback which we're probably already committed to, and it makes the other positive feedbacks much more likely... and that will mean more carbon released than is in the entire atmosphere today, and eventually an ice-free planet many degrees hotter than it is today. Of course there is uncertainty... but it's not in our favour.
We need to get off fossil fuels, as they are the largest cause of AGW, but as far as I can tell, there are no 'sustainable' (i.e. inexhaustible) sources of energy capable of maintaining our current global civilisation in anything like the form that fossil fuels have allowed us to build. Nuclear puts out less carbon but it has its own problems and we're never going to replace the entire fossil fuel electricity generation infrastructure with anything similar to current nuclear power stations - we don't have the money or the resources to build them and there wouldn't be anywhere near enough fuel to run them. Nor is it practical as a way of powering vehicles, except for trains.
We can try 'powering down', but modern economies are based on growth and can't survive if we do that. In any case, all the evidence says that we're well into overshoot - i.e. there are far more people on the planet than it can possibly support, now that the bonanza of fossil fuels and exponential growth is coming to an end. I think the best thing we can do is face reality - hope and plan for the best (e.g. some new energy miracle), but also plan for the worst, protect our land and our interests, relocalise, become more self-reliant on every level (families, communities, nations), accept that global civilisation based on exponential energy use is basically over and do the best we can to survive. Politicians need to be telling us this stuff, not still harping on about 'growth' - that way of living is over, it's unsustainable, and we have to do the best we can to survive its demise.
We won't do that by ignoring reality and pretending that the problems don't exist.
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@Paul Butler #41
Be careful with results from sediment cores, as they never go right up to the present day.
Something similar can be said of most proxies - are tree rings proxy for temperature, precipitation or both? But let's not get into that can of worms!
Here's a quote from the paper itself (which can usefully be contrasted with the opinionated "summaries" at the CO2 Science site you linked to)
Ah, the obligatory nod to AGW. Tell me why is it that every critique of a paper, that doesn't agree with AGW, is "opinionated". Ever thought the authors of the critique might actually know what they are talking about - the authors have published many papers relating to climate, so I think their critique should be considered valid, not dismissed as "opinionated"
Can you explain, since as far as I can see, the page I linked to at NSIDC indicated a total loss at the Arctic of 500,000 km^2 per decade compared with an increase at the Antarctic of 100,000 km^2 per decade over the period 1979-2008
Yes, Paul, the page you linked to describes sea ice not combined land and sea ice which is slightly positive as far as i am aware
/Mango
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I hope so bowman, I hope so. What gets me riled is the colossal amount of money that will be wasted in the meantime, money that could be better spent ending poverty, famine and improving the lives of billions. Real people who could get real help.
And I REALLY, REALLY hate that my family's kids get this bull**** shoved down their throats at school. They're being terrorised into thinking that the world is coming to an end and it's all their fault.
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The Piltdown Canary
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/6440/Is-It-Really-The-Warmest-Ever
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#83. Brunnen wrote:
"And I REALLY, REALLY hate that my family's kids get this bull**** shoved down their throats at school."
Indeed! Just happened to find these relevant quotes in a comment over at the Bishop Hill blog:
"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." - Josef Stalin
"The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense." - Karl Marx
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@Mango #82
Tell me why is it that every critique of a paper, that doesn't agree with AGW, is "opinionated".
I didn't say that and you know it. I was referring specifically to the summary of the paper on the site ("CO2 Science") that you linked to.
Ever thought the authors of the critique might actually know what they are talking about - the authors have published many papers relating to climate, so I think their critique should be considered valid, not dismissed as "opinionated"
Can you give me some examples of these papers?
I don't often go down the "deniers funded by oil industry" route, but since we are discussing why "CO2 Science" might be opinionated, I think it is relevant to mention that that it has a history of funding from Exxon Mobil
*****************************
the page you linked to describes sea ice not combined land and sea ice which is slightly positive as far as i am aware
Citation please. Land ice extent does not change rapidly, certainly not on a seasonal basis, whereas sea ice is at its minimum in the summer when its effect on albedo will be at a maximum.
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Brunnen wrote:
"And I REALLY, REALLY hate that my family's kids get this bull**** shoved down their throats at school. They're being terrorised into thinking that the world is coming to an end and it's all their fault."
It's a hard reality to accept, I do understand that... but pretending the problem doesn't exist isn't going to help us.
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#65. At 3:41pm on 30 Jan 2011, Icarus62 wrote:
We've just had the deepest and longest solar minimum for a century combined with strong La Niña conditions in the Pacific, both of which are a cooling influence on the planet, but we've seen *no* cooling at all - it's been completely wiped out by anthropogenic global warming. During the next few years we will have continuing and accelerating AGW *and* rising solar irradiance, so the warming will be that much the greater.
Did you ever hear the one about the shepherd and the wolf.
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#81. Icarus62 wrote:
From 1890: 0.06C per decade
From 1910: 0.07C per decade
From 1930: 0.07C per decade
From 1950: 0.11C per decade
From 1970: 0.16C per decade
From 1990: 0.19C per decade
i.e. warming has increased by a factor of 3 over this period.
We won't do that by ignoring reality and pretending that the problems don't exist.
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Why not? You're ignoring reality and pretending that the predictions of snow free winters don't exist. Or at least putting your fingers in your ears and shouting LALALALALA!
Oh, and you only need to post a set of stats once. We read them, thanks.
Would you like the long or the short list of problems with that data?
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@Brunnen #89
Why not? You're ignoring reality and pretending that the predictions of snow free winters don't exist.
Where does Icarus 62 say that?
Actually Icarus62 has presented over a few posts a coherent and powerful argument for the reality of the problems we face due to AGW.
Compared with which the accuracy or otherwise of an isolated prediction about future winters matters not one single jot.
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#89. Brunnen wrote:
"#81. Icarus62 wrote:
From 1890: 0.06C per decade
From 1910: 0.07C per decade...
Would you like the long or the short list of problems with that data?"
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Wow, one must be impressed with the inexplicable accuracy - to one one hundreth of a degree!!! - of that data! Or not. Here's a very short list of problems with it. One fundamental problem actually. It is not that accurate at all. Period.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/20/surface-temperature-uncertainty-quantified/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/27/new-science-on-himilayan-glaciers-shows-debris-fields-to-be-a-regulating-factor-in-melting/
So, how many angels were dancing on pinheads in 1900 compared to now? And, of course, how does AGW cause that and how catastrophic is that trend?
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90. At 8:31pm on 30 Jan 2011, Paul Butler wrote:
Compared with which the accuracy or otherwise of an isolated prediction about future winters matters not one single jot.
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You're right, it wouldn't matter at all, if some politician, pundit or other talking head head had made the prediction.
When a senior figure at the government funded Climate Research Unit makes such a prediction in a national newspaper, a prediction that has proven to be SPECTACULARLY wrong, you bet it matters.
And Icarus' pretence came not from what he said, but from what he didn'tsay. By ignoring the issue, he was pretending nothing had been said. QED.
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Some of the ignorance for COMMON SENSE in this series of comments would astound some folk but not me.
The halcyon years for mankind are coming to an end, no matter what the deniers, mickey takers and corporate funded misinformation monkeys say or do they`ll die with those of us who recognise what our own senses are telling us.
MANKIND NEGATIVELY AFFECTS THE ECOSYSTEM.
While living as hunter / gatherers our impact was little, we knew to respect the planet that gives us life, but in this 21st century of `I can have it because I can afford it` attitude the negative impact on the ecosystem has grown exponentially!
We ain`t gods, we`re never likely to even conquer some of the simplest of microorganisms effects on us, yet we big ourselves up judged by our possesions and monetry wealth.
We`re lost and we`re on a destruction course, sadly extinction events will not just affect the naked ape!
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Paul Butler and mincehead: Well said, and thank you.
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Why is it the green lobby can never resist breaking out the sackcloth and ashes?
They tell us to repent of our sinful ways and promise us a flood to engulf the world and a fiery doom if we do not. Luckily, if we obey their commandments we can be saved!
Funnily, they get really tetchy if you call AGW belief a religion...
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For those who still imagine that wind power is some 'green' salvation - despite its insane cost (to the 'little people'), complete unreliability (and thus ongoing need for backup capacity), impacts on birds and bats, and impacts on our enjoyment of rural landscapes, etc. - here's another problem:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
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@Brunnen #92
When a senior figure at the government funded Climate Research Unit makes such a prediction in a national newspaper, a prediction that has proven to be SPECTACULARLY wrong, you bet it matters.
Well, for what its worth, it probably isn't wrong in the longer term. The cold European winters of the last two years are most likely transient effects of rapidly changing ice extent in the Arctic.
And Icarus' pretence came not from what he said, but from what he didn'tsay. By ignoring the issue, he was pretending nothing had been said. QED.
Good grief! With that logic, I just give up. You win every time.
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For anybody that cares about the environment this is worth a read.
from the Mail:
"This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what's left behind after making the magnets for Britain's latest wind turbines... and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html#ixzz1CYUdta2k
The full article really is an inconvenient truth...
In addition, every new Nissan Leaf (lots of adverting recently) the electric car, has 4KG of lithium in it... take some time to investigate lithium mining, processing and productiion of batteries..
Of course anyone charging one up, will be doing so via a gas, coal or nuclear plant
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CanadianRockies: You're right. Everyone's looking for a viable replacement for the ubiquitous but rapidly depleting fossil fuels, and there simply isn't anything. Wind power, as you say, has its own problems, and can't possibly supply anywhere near enough energy to support Business As Usual. We're going to have to get used to the fact that we will have a *lot* less energy in the future.
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97. At 9:30pm on 30 Jan 2011, Paul Butler wrote:
@Brunnen #92
When a senior figure at the government funded Climate Research Unit makes such a prediction in a national newspaper, a prediction that has proven to be SPECTACULARLY wrong, you bet it matters.
Well, for what its worth, it probably isn't wrong in the longer term. The cold European winters of the last two years are most likely transient effects of rapidly changing ice extent in the Arctic.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Which is worth nothing. He didn't say in the longer term, or the medium term for that matter. He said "in a very few years". How many years is that? Two? Five? No more than ten, surely?
So it must have been Scotch Mist I spent the majority of last month and nearly all of last winter shoveling off my path.
Either that or you can accept that a senior figure at the CRU made a prediction that was entirely wrong and that is indeed, a big deal.
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#99 Icarus62 wrote:
We're going to have to get used to the fact that we will have a *lot* less energy in the future.
----------------------------------------------
No. That's not an acceptable solution. We just have to get the hippies to shut up and heavily invest in nuclear power.
Modern nuclear energy is cheap, clean and reliable. Best of all, it doesn't rely on destroying China to make it.
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#99. Icarus62 wrote:
"CanadianRockies... Everyone's looking for a viable replacement for the ubiquitous but rapidly depleting fossil fuels, and there simply isn't anything."
I think you are confusing peak CHEAP oil with "fossil fuels." There is plenty more expensive oil, huge quantities of natural gas, and even huger (yes, I know that is not a real word) supplies of coal which, at a price, can be converted to liquid fuels (as the Nazis and South Africa once did). So there's actually plenty of fossil fuels.
So I agree with you when you write that we "can't possibly supply anywhere near enough energy to support Business As Usual" only in the sense that energy costs are going to rise higher than Business As Usual has been operating on. So energy efficiency and conservation will be the driver going forward, not because of the AGW scare but because of simple supply-demand price rises and economics. All the AGW scare and its associated government meddling and carbon trading ponzi schemes, etc. have done and will do is make it all much, much worse for energy consumers.
But, apparently, the UK has already decided to go on an AGW economic suicide mission at the expense of the 'little people' there.
As for alternatives, I am a big fan of nuclear power which has less environmental impacts than anything else per unit of energy produced, but has been demonized - for the benefit of the Big Oil gang - with the help of Three Mile Island, the greatest disaster that never happened, and endless nonsense about its so called 'waste.' France proves how dense all those fear/emotion-based arguments are.
And I must say, with a pen name like yours I am surprised that you are not arguing that the sun has something to do with the climate. Or is there now a new myth about flying in too much CO2?
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Just looking at the changes in the weather and seasons I have seen for myself over the past 50 years, I can tell that there is something wrong. It is warmer and wetter now. I've just returned from Australia (Brisbane) and everyone there told me that they are very worried about the recent changes. Unlike the real alarmists on this forum, I do believe in what the scientific community is telling us. I'm not sure if our increasing consumption/population will destroy our lives before climate change gets us, but we do need to do something about these problems sooner rather than later.
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Brunnen, when you grow out of short trousers please make some sensible replies to a SERIOUS topic!
Tell us all just what you know about nuclear power,let`s see your knowledge beyond spouting hatred towards folk who care about the planet?
In the mean time I`ll give you some reading material:
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2008/update78
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#101. Brunnen
Of course, there could be problems for some nuclear reactors when they are submerged by the predicted catstrophic rise sea levels... and cooling them will be more challenging with the planetary fever and all that.
But, who knows, maybe those predictions won't come true?
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I wonder if there`s any industry goons plying their misinformation here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/30/greenpeace-protests-koch-brothers-rally
Idiots abound in human society.
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#104 mincehead wrote:
Brunnen, when you grow out of short trousers please make some sensible replies to a SERIOUS topic!
Tell us all just what you know about nuclear power,let`s see your knowledge beyond spouting hatred towards folk who care about the planet?
In the mean time I`ll give you some reading material:
---------------------------------------------------------
From your link: "To get a sense of the costs of nuclear waste disposal, we need not look beyond the United States"
And we'll stop right there and not waste any more time on that greenwash nonsense.
I notice they fail to mention the reason the US has such a problem with disposal of nuclear waste. Greens. Thanks to anti-nuclear campaigners, US nuclear plants can't do the sensible, clean and economical thing with their waste; reprocess it.
In the UK waste from nuclear plants is over 97% recyclable and that which can't be recycled is low level waste that is buried very deep underground, posing a risk to no-one.
Unlike a certain toxic lake in China I could mention.
Mincehead. How apt.
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103. John Lilley wrote:
"I've just returned from Australia (Brisbane) and everyone there told me that they are very worried about the recent changes."
.....................................
The Ausies have every reason to be worried. Their green-obsessed local government has been the direct cause of the recent floods.
1. The rain is due to La Nina. Nothing unusual about that.
2. The state government , believing their Green advisers who told them that, because of global warming, floods were a thing of the past, allowed building on previously protected floodplains.
3. The state govenor, deciding that every drop of water should be retained in order to "save the planet", ordered the local water company not to release any from its reservoirs as it generally did in small ammounts over several months. They eventually were forced to do so in huge volume when the water level reached to within a couple of inches of the top of the dams threatening their structure.
This naive green meddling reminds us of the huge Australian fires a couple of years ago when the intensity of the blazes was increased by the ending of the practice of clearing of undergrowth due to Green political pressure.
If the Ausies want to sleep soundly at night they should vote against the Greens at the next election and return to traditional management practices.
Shame all our mainstream parties are similarly green obessed.
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"Nuclear Power in France
(Updated 21 January 2011)
France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this.
France has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and fuel products and services are a major export.
It is building its first Generation III reactor and planning a second.
About 17% of France's electricity is from recycled nuclear fuel."
And lots more... http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html
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WHAT DO WE DO WITH NUCLEAR WASTE AND MATERIALS TODAY?
http://www.cite-sciences.fr/francais/ala_cite/science_actualites/sitesactu/question_actu.php?id_article=4743&id_mag=0&langue=an
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France digs deep for nuclear waste
Geological storage of long-lived radioactive material is moving closer to reality in Europe, says Declan Butler.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100810/full/466804a.html
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Yes yes, mincehead, I see where this one is going. Before we know it the accusations of being in the pay of Big Oil / Big Business / Right Wing Politicians / C'Thulu will be flying in our direction.
I'll say the same thing to you I've said here before. I bloody wish!
By the way, If anyone representing a major political party, company, or elder god from the planet Vhoorl wishes to pay me for debunking alarmist nonsense then I am open to offers.
Cash is preferable.
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My chosen name amuses you somewhat Brunnen, how quaint?
There is no such thing as SAFE nuclear waste, would you want even low level waste in your house / cave? (delete whichever is not appropriate)
Mankind relies on the planet for all he desires and covets, nothing can be made without naturally occurring resources.
Nuclear fusion is a failed science, no matter how it`s managed, packedged and psychosold to the sheeple.
The `issues` surrounding it are not even remotely sensible when considering the future of the planet, but I guess many here are not concerned about the planet, more about their `comfort` throughout their ignorant lives.
Now fission shows promise it`s true but as yet it`s also got it`s problems, in the time between scientists being allowed to drop out from corporate meddling and funding mankind should be investing heavily in known technology that our ancestors used in rudimentary ways very successfully for thousands of years.
Free energy is all around us but it`s not OWNED or COPYRIGHTED yet so investment stumbles. No shares and trading, no interest, capiche?
A little insight into the nuclear industry in the UK would allow anyone to understand what`s behind it clawing it`s way back into favour. Politicians want to heat those duck houses now!
Sadly no matter how hard anyone tries, nutritional needs cannot be met from eating printed paper with a queens head on one side.
If anyone thinks corporatism, economic growth and a reliance on science with agendas are more important than helping to keep the only known inhabitable planet in a condition whereby it can support our sorry a*ses beyond this century, should seek psychiatric help.
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DrBrian wrote:
"The Ausies have every reason to be worried. Their green-obsessed local government has been the direct cause of the recent floods.
1. The rain is due to La Nina. Nothing unusual about that.
2. The state government , believing their Green advisers who told them that, because of global warming, floods were a thing of the past, allowed building on previously protected floodplains..."
I don't know what 'Green advisers' they were supposedly listening to but certainly climate science hasn't said that floods would be a "thing of the past". For example:
"Australia (12°-45°S 110°-115°E)
The warming ranges from 1 to 2°C in summer and is about 2°C in winter. Summer precipitation increases by
around 10%, but the models do not produce consistent estimates of the changes in soil moisture."
This is from IPCC AR1 (1990) and refers to projected changes by 2030 - obviously values projected for today would be some substantial fraction of those projected for 2030.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Also an increase in intense precipitation events (and hence flooding) has long been predicted, and now observed.
So those Australian authorities certainly *should* have known that severe flooding events would still be expected.
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Re 108. At 11:38pm on 30 Jan 2011, DrBrian wrote:
2. The state government , believing their Green advisers who told them that, because of global warming, floods were a thing of the past, allowed building on previously protected floodplains.
-------------------------
That's odd because it's at odds with what the IPCC say about precipitation in Australia in a warmer world:
"A range of GCM and regional modelling studies in recent years have identified a tendency for daily rainfall extremes to increase under enhanced greenhouse conditions in the Australian region (e.g., Hennessy et al., 1997; Whetton et al., 2002; McInnes et al., 2003; Watterson and Dix, 2003; Hennessy et al., 2004b; Suppiah et al., 2004; Kharin and Zwiers, 2005). Commonly, return periods of extreme rainfall events halve in late 21st-century simulations. This tendency can apply even when average rainfall is simulated to decrease, but not necessarily when this decrease is marked (see Timbal, 2004). Recently, Abbs (2004) dynamically downscaled to a resolution of 7 km current and enhanced greenhouse cases of extreme daily rainfall occurrence in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland as simulated by the CSIRO GCM. The downscaled extreme events for a range of return periods compared well with observations and the enhanced greenhouse simulations for 2040 showed increases of around 30% in magnitude, with the 1-in-40 year event becoming the 1-in-15 year event."
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11s11-7-3-5.html
Who were the green advisors and why did they convey something so different?
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#111 mincehead wrote:
Nuclear fusion is a failed science, no matter how it`s managed, packedged and psychosold to the sheeple.
The `issues` surrounding it are not even remotely sensible when considering the future of the planet, but I guess many here are not concerned about the planet, more about their `comfort` throughout their ignorant lives.
Now fission shows promise it`s true but as yet it`s also got it`s problems, in the time between scientists being allowed to drop out from corporate meddling and funding mankind should be investing heavily in known technology that our ancestors used in rudimentary ways very successfully for thousands of years.
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It would seem I'm not the one still in short trousers. This schoolboy error should keep me chuckling for quite some time. Especially since you had the arrogance to question my knowledge of nuclear power.
Back of the class, mincehead.
Oh, and you're quite right about one thing. The nutritional needs of 7 billion people cannot be met by eating money. They can only be met with large scale, modern, industrialised farming.
No doubt that's evil too.
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Au contraire Brunnen you fail to impress me with your knowledge, (we haven`t actually seen any) you in fact attempt to obfuscate and spin the conversation to rhetoric about feeding folk.
Maybe they can be feed genetically modified nuclear waste?
Believe me, as mankinds ignorance for the planet that sustains him creates even more problems you can expect those billions to be starting to decline.
What`s evil is that no matter how often folk are told that there`s just one inhabitable planet, they simply refuse to ACCEPT and move forward towards living sensibly.
It`s not surprising though, being drip fed the corporate lies throughout their lives tends to lead to addiction.
I guess you might have a career at risk from change Brunnen, perhaps reaching your `later` years and not wanting to be left on the heap? Maybe you`re still climbing the corporate ladder and want to be a big earner / achiever?
Well a heap`s a good place to be when the waters rise and the achievement may be as simple as survival!
Nighty, night muppets.
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115. At 01:14am on 31 Jan 2011, mincehead wrote:
Au contraire Brunnen you fail to impress me with your knowledge, (we haven`t actually seen any) you in fact attempt to obfuscate and spin the conversation to rhetoric about feeding folk.
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Oh very well. Since you obviously don't know, I will point out your enormous clanger in #111
Nuclear fission is the type of nuclear power we currently use to produce electricity. Nuclear fusion is the type of nuclear power we are currently working on and researching, and will hopefully have up and running within the next 20 years.
I have failed to impress YOU?
Good Grief...
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Re nuclear power... this was just posted at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/30/china-announces-thorium-reactor-energy-program-obama-still-dwelling-on-sputnik-moments/#more-32829
China was already going full tilt with regular reactors:
"BEIJING: China will construct 10 more mega nuclear reactors with a whopping investment of USD 121.5 billion, in addition to 25 currently being built, to step up its atomic power generation to meet its rising energy demands.
China is expected to raise its 2020 target for the nuclear power industry to 86 GW or 5 per cent of its power generation with an annual investment of 70 billion Yuan (USD 10.6 billion), state run China Daily reported today."
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/china-to-build-10-more-mega-nuclear-rectors/articleshow/7365901.cms
That's just China. Add India, Russia, South Korea, Brazil, Turkey, and the list goes on. Even Germany, land of some ultra-Greens, is now going to extend the life of their nuclear power plants.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Sigh:
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/09/07/German-revives-nuclear-to-green-energy-mix/UPI-31791283876576/
From above link:
Germany's 17 reactors will remain online for an average of 12 years beyond their planned phase-out deadline in 2021 as a bridge technology until renewables are ready to take over completely
Oh and apologies for making an error in an earlier post about the wrong type of nuclear process we currently utilise to generate electricity.
I`m multi tasking in several windows and not being of the female variety mistakes can and do happen while doing it.
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Icarus62 a series of clear explanations of the results from climate science --- would have thought that bowmanthebard would have appreciated the number of predictions climate science has made that have been verified by observational data. But than bowmanthebard still doesn't seem to appreciate the fact that Climate Models are process models that simply implement the physical processes known to be involved in regulating temperature on the planet.
MangoChutneyUKOK argues in some posts that warming isn't happening, that ice loss in the Arctic is due to changes in wind patterns and in another post says that Cosmic Rays account for 40% of the warming he implies isn't happening in his earlier post. When it comes down to it any explanation that means no government action need be taken is his bottom line.
Does anyone really think the Chinese will be any better at managing nuclear waste than they are at managing the waste from their mining activities?
For those who want to know why nuclear waste reprocessing isn't currently being done in the US. The reason is Kerr-McGee Corporation, not Three Mile Island. For a quick summary check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood
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I think there are just plenty of folk who view any changes to the way human society operates as in some way scary.
Hence they band together as deniers of anything that may threaten their perceived lifestyles.
Of course moving away from being addicted to the aquisition of wealth and overconsumption on to caring for each other and the planet that supports us all might indeed seem scary.
But, to compare it to what could happen if natural cycles reach a tipping point those fears are a walk in the park!
Folk here talk of feeding others, talk of profitability, talk of families and what they may be being taught in school but if there`s no environment to support life none of that matters anyway.
I`m sure plenty fear their careers coming to an end, perhaps their pensions and investments are at risk?
Well retirement on a lifeless rock will be great fun now won`t it?
Grow up and wake up mankind, the dreams were always dreams, life is a mish-mash of good and bad but it`s life never the less.
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@HungeryWalleye #120
MangoChutneyUKOK argues in some posts that warming isn't happening, that ice loss in the Arctic is due to changes in wind patterns and in another post says that Cosmic Rays account for 40% of the warming he implies isn't happening in his earlier post.
There is some doubt on the accuracy of the record temperature with regards to adjustments, drop off of stations and siting of stations. However, I have never stated the global record temperature indicates the warming is not happening. Your fellow AWGer's will confirm this or you can check my posts, so you should retract this statement.
For the record, my understanding is the overall trend is still upwards, despite the flat-lining when I last looked. Temperatures heading upwards, however, tell us nothing about what caused the upward temperatures.
/Mango
PS Sorry, Paul, I had to deal with that outright nonsense first
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AAaaand you're back in the room.
Few new posters i see.
Few points-
Icarus, raised the rising temperature meme. Two points:
1- rising temperatures do not prove that man is responsible- we're exiting a LIA, rising temperatures are expected and good.
2- there is zero chance that those numbers are accurate- especially to the 3 sig fig.
Wrt #2 It has been pointed out before that DESPITE there being a warming trend (which I agree was happening until recently- though we need more data (or years) to see where it's going now) you can not show, with statistical significance, that it IS warmming- the errors are larger than the signal.
Specifically, a lot of people on the Warm side of the debate are posting evidence that directly contradicts their own sides position (inreased precipitation in AUS for example).
There are some very clever people on this blog (myself excluded), please be more careful.
otherwise looks like if we can tone the name calling down that we might actually get a good debate for once!
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Very interesting Richard. Good article, thanks. I have to admit I am one who is more sanguin - I can't help feeling that the concerns are more about us looking at dramatic changes within a tiny time scale (geologically speaking) and then looking for a smoking gun in the form of industrialised humanity. This wouldn't work with any other climate change scenario prior to the last 2 centuries. I think we have impacted but I don't think anyone is in a position to say that this wouldn't have happened anyway without our help.
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#108 I amazed that DrBrain believes that politics caused the floods in Australia. The people I was talking to over there have been watching the weather for a long time, way before the Green party, probably long before DrBrain was in short pants. The El Nina event does result in extreme weather down there but nothing like what they got this year. Scientific consensus means that it's true, quite different from what politicians say. Unfortunately these forums give a disproportionate platform to the climate change deniers along with their dubious agendas. The planet is in a mess and they aren't helping.
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@ 125
No one is denying that the climate changes... it always has and always will (we think, lol).
Perhaps respond to individual points rather than Caricatures
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Welcome to our new posters, your ideas have bucked up this blog which had been getting a bit stale recently. One theme that comes across is that if we are to have any chance of averting catastrophe then we are all going to have get used to near zero energy lifestyles, of course most people are not going to chose near zero energy lifestyles, it will become compulsory.
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125. At 10:50am on 31 Jan 2011, John Lilley wrote:
Scientific consensus means that it's true
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I can't let that one slide, I just can't.
Centuries ago, the scientific consensus told us the Eun orbited the Earth, which was the centre of the universe.
More recently, the scientific consensus told us that the smallest unit of matter in the universe was the atom.
until very recently, the scientific consensus told us that gastric ulcers were caused by stress, until a couple of Australian scientists proved they are actually caused by a type of bacterium.
Now the scientific consensus tells us that the modest changes we have seen in the climate over last couple of centuries are caused by CO2 and we're all doomed.
Scientific progress is made by challenging the consensus, not agreeing with it.
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@Beersmith
First things first, quantum mechanics is one of the most thoroughly tested ideas science it has nothing in common with “climate science”. So, that conversation can stop there.
With regards to PIOMAS, there is an alternative modelling system called PIPS, which I think is still used by the Navy and coastguard. It’s more of a short term model, but then was written by engineers and scientists before climate science gained its current pre-eminence and it does provide significantly different estimates of ice volumes. Steve Goddard used to use it for his ice volume estimates and I know that there was quite a bit of argument about that in the past. But there are other models and this has only ever been modelled, so even if one it convinced that PIOMAS is better, if PIPS previously gave larger volumes and your historical volumes were calculated by PIPS, then some of your dramatic changes in volume, could be attributable to the model changes.
Ether way, there’s more than one model and more than one set of results and either way both of these are just model derived estimates. It’s like arguing that fairies are hypothetically blue not green, you can argue all you like, but it neither tells that 1) Whether Fairies Exist or Not or 2) If they are indeed blue or green.
As to model’s being useful, well they can be useful tools, but they are of limited usefulness in the real world as last year’s Virgin Formula 1 team can attest.
It really depends on what you want to model and how well you understand what you are modelling. With each subsystem and boundary we get new opportunities for a descent into chaos and with each descent into chaos our abilities to model become limited by the power of the computers involved.
Add to this the poorly understood forcings and feedbacks. The Guesstimated signal to noise ratio and C02 sensitivity, the “trouble” with clouds and any model’s predictive abilities become somewhat impaired. Hence the quite large levels of uncertainty.
So, I stand by my original statement – It’s just a model.
If you’ve got a problem with my assessment of the models, then I suggest you go and read AR4 Chapter 8 in a bit more detail – I’m not really saying anything different to the IPCC. I’m just not burying it in the depths of a document that most people won’t bother to read – you can simply search for the terms “uncertain”, “clouds” or even “boundary”
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Rising temperatures do not prove that man is responsible, but rising temperatures are expected due to human activity and yet not expected from natural changes (in that the recent warming is not explained through any natural means - the only card to hang on to being that the warming is due to some yet unknown natural mechanism)
So rising temperatures don't prove man-made global warming, but that is what scientists are expecting to happen and they have no other explanation.
Drought and floods are not contradictory. You can have longterm drought which is occasionally punctuated by sudden extreme precipitation events and of course trend wise both can be different. I hadn't thought of this before until I read the IPCC Australia region prediction which predicts both decrease in average precipitation and an increase in precipitation during extreme events.
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@ quake-
Your first point is quite off mate. People on the warmer side of the debate seem to insist that ignorance is a valid argument; i.e. we don't know what else it can be therefore it MUST be man's influence.
The fact is we STILL do not understand how our climate works, what the primary dirvers are and how they and all the inter-connected feedbacks work.
All research is geared towards supporting the cAGW theory, not ACTUALLY trying to understand the climate itself.
Therefore the "that the warming is due to some yet unknown natural mechanism" actually has to be the DEFAULT position, until evidence is provided otherwise. That's how science work- despite the cAGW-ers best efforts to change this.
Let me put it another way- to identify the antrhopogenic signal we first need to identify and QUANTIFY the natural signal. We can't do this at present, not even close. So, it is therefore impossible to assign an anthropogenic signal to the recent warming, therefore the 'null' hypothesis of an under-understood natural forcing is upheld.
The state of the 'science' wrt to climate at present seems to be devoted to measuring 'symptom' and then retrospectively trying to assign a cause (man) to it. Wheras it SHOULD be about understanding the NATURAL climate.
I have no doubt in my mind that C02 can warm the planet, however at present i think that the feedbacks vastly negate the additional warming. Whether this removes all the CO2-based warming i don't know, all i do know is that the current cAGW theory and predictions are not based on any hard science- besides lamentable models.
Finally your " but rising temperatures are expected due to human activity and yet not expected from natural changes" is plain wrong.
We're exiting a LIA, rising temps ARE expected.
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"Drought and floods are not contradictory. You can have longterm drought which is occasionally punctuated by sudden extreme precipitation events and of course trend wise both can be different. I hadn't thought of this before until I read the IPCC Australia region prediction which predicts both decrease in average precipitation and an increase in precipitation during extreme events."
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Is there any weather event that CAN'T be attributed to climate change?
Talk about trying to be all things to all men. Warm winter? Climate change. Cold winter? Climate change. Drought? Climate change. Flood? Climate change.
It would be funny if it wasn't so costly.
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From the article:
"But in the words of NSIDC:
"It may be that with a warmer Arctic, old rules regarding links between the atmospheric pressure patterns and sea ice extent no longer hold.""
I would be suprised if they DID still hold. I only know of a few "rules" that effect weather like the jet stream, the gulf stream, ocean currents, for which I don't know the names. ENSO I suppose as well. There's probably hundreds of these little patterns of heat transfer that meander through Earth influencing weather in different regions. While they change position over time from month to month, a lot of them are predictable enough in location to have been given names. Even when they do change position they cause significant changes to weather.
What I doubt is that this web of "heat channels" is fixed in stone. Their arrangement is probably tied to the state of the climate itself, much like a seemingly haphazzaed snaking of a river system is determined by the lay of the land.
If the climate changes then I don't see any reason why this web wouldn't also change in response, and perhaps quite dramatically, to rearrange itself in a new configuration that physically sits better with the new climate.
In fact to be honest if global temperature were to rise 5 degrees C with all the changes associated with that I don't really find it credible that all these little heat transfer lines will stay stubornly in place.
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Re 131. LabMunkey
"Therefore the "that the warming is due to some yet unknown natural mechanism" actually has to be the DEFAULT position, until evidence is provided otherwise."
I think evidence has been provided otherwise. I expect strong warming due to rising greenhouse gases because evidence leans that way. Thus the warming being natural is no longer the default position. There is no default position anymore.
What we have is a stronger case for it being human caused than natural caused, because the former has mechanism which expects the observed warming, wheras the latter has no mechanism and so doesn't expect the warming.
"Let me put it another way- to identify the antrhopogenic signal we first need to identify and QUANTIFY the natural signal. We can't do this at present, not even close."
It doesn't have to be that way round. We can identify the anthropogenic signal and then use that to quantify the natural signal. We don't need to understand natural forcings in order to quantify anthropogenic forcing sufficiently to know that they are likely a signficant cause of recent warming.
I don't accept "Exiting a LIA" as a mechanism. A natural mechanism for warming would be something that has an established physical cause and effect, like "increased solar output" or "reduced volcanic activity". If we explore those ideas then we find they are unable to explain the warming in recent decades. So I could go further than my last post which said "recent warming is not explained through any natural means" and also add that several natural means have in fact already been ruled out.
None of these things are absolute, but they do lean in one way. For example I am not saying the matter is settled on solar not causing the recent warming, only that it's not very likely given what is now known.
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125. John Lilley wrote:
"#108 I amazed that DrBrain believes that politics caused the floods in Australia. The people I was talking to over there have been watching the weather for a long time, way before the Green party, probably long before DrBrain was in short pants. The El Nina event does result in extreme weather down there but nothing like what they got this year. Scientific consensus means that it's true, quite different from what politicians say. Unfortunately these forums give a disproportionate platform to the climate change deniers along with their dubious agendas. The planet is in a mess and they aren't helping."
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This contribution is so full of nonsense and bile that it's difficult to know where to start.
1. Brian not Brain. Irony?
2. It's a good principle to look to simple local causes of floods before assuming that huge universal factors are at work. A similar apocalyptic view of last years Cumbrian floods was immediately pushed by the Greens when the causes were again local.
3. Ad Hominem argument(Attacking the person) is a cheap political trick. I have a bald head and a grey beard. Peoples memories of weather are usually quite short and previously there have been deeper floods in OZ.
4 The statement of the "truth" of scientific concensus is so naive as to be beyond parody. It makes me wonder if everything you have written is a gee up.
5. Your call for a restriction of sceptic comments mirrors the attitude of the little laboratory gods who think that every conclusion they come to ought not be challenged simply because it's irritating to be argued with when you feel yourself to be omniscient. The Lenin complex.
6. Politicians want green votes and will back anything that they think will allow them to keep their seats. Similarly science is not a selfless business and, more than anything else, scientists want to keep the money coming. It's a dance of death that will end in the financial collapse of Britain when the windmills stop turning and the lights go out.
7. What agenda?
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Re 132. Brunnen:
"Is there any weather event that CAN'T be attributed to climate change?"
A long wet period in Australia couldn't be attributed to climate change as stands because the IPCC report references studies that expect more drought.
Then again regional climate forecasts are uncertain, so if it turned out false it would just falsify that particular regional prediction. A new one would form.
It's easier to look the question without the "man-made" baggage. How would weather to be different in a world with average temperature 2C warmer than present? Would Australia get less average rainfall or more? Really that's the question and I doubt the answer matters on the cause of the warming.
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@ quake
"I think evidence has been provided otherwise."
i don't believe it has, we have the models for sure and the 'theory' but there's no 'fingerprint' that can be attributed to c02 induced warming that i'm aware of.
"What we have is a stronger case for it being human caused than natural caused, because the former has mechanism which expects the observed warming, wheras the latter has no mechanism and so doesn't expect the warming"
The logic doesn't flow in this statement mate- the world was warming long before the 'anthropogenic' effect was supposed to take, erm, effect. The temperatures, of anthropogenic forcing is a signal we are trying to detect ONTOP of the 'natural' forcing. Or are you suggesting that the anthropogenic forcing statred exactly as the natural cycle ended and exactly matched the natural warming with no percievable difference?
"It doesn't have to be that way round. We can identify the anthropogenic signal and then use that to quantify the natural signal. We don't need to understand natural forcings in order to quantify anthropogenic forcing sufficiently to know that they are likely a signficant cause of recent warming."
I disagree and i think this is a realy important point. I'll try and be clear as i can-
-The IPCC itself says it does not fully understand the natural forcings (esp clouds).
- Yet you (and the IPCC) says it is confident that it can attribute an anthropogenic signal to the recent forcings.
Now the problem we have here is that we cannot be sure that the anthropogenic signal is not infact a NATURAL forcing that we don't currently understand (this is not a skeptic straw grabbing exercise, we don't even understand clouds, let alone any of the more exotic forcings).
I.e. we could be attributing X to CO2, yet 90% or X could in fact be down to natural forcing Y.
This is the issue. Also, to suggest we can use the unnatural forcing to calibrate or determine the natural forcing shows precisely what is wrong with climate science as a whole (not an attack here bud).
We MUST be able to quantify the natural forcings, predictably and reproducably before you can then assign the anthropogenic.
"I don't accept "Exiting a LIA" as a mechanism."
agreed, however given the current state of knowledge re: our climate (abject) it is the best we can do. The vostock data for one shows long-term cyclical patterns of temp that suggest we are in the midst of a natural warming phase- now just because 'you' don;'t understand why it is happeniing doesn't mean you can automatically assign all warmind to co2.
"None of these things are absolute, but they do lean in one way. For example I am not saying the matter is settled on solar not causing the recent warming, only that it's not very likely given what is now known."
And this is why i'll take the time to debate with you and answer (where i can) your points- you at least seem to be interested in getting to the bottom of this debate. I respect that, despite being on the other side of the fence.
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i also need to spellcheck. sigh
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#136. quake wrote:
It's easier to look the question without the "man-made" baggage. How would weather to be different in a world with average temperature 2C warmer than present? Would Australia get less average rainfall or more? Really that's the question and I doubt the answer matters on the cause of the warming.
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Interesting point. However the answer would be nothing more than an educated guess. Which is all well and good, but I'm not comfortable with hundreds of billions of dollars fixing a problem which may or may not arise.
The money would be better spent on problems we know exist and can do something about.
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I agree earlier warming periods without anthropogenic influence can be used to set a null hypothesis for recent decades, but I am wary of using such a null hypothesis during a time period when the human forcing is the greatest it's been. More importantly I think using such a null hypothesis forces the bar of evidence too high so that it must be proven there are no unknown natural forcings that can explain the warming, which seems like having to prove a negative. Okay that's the point of a null hypothesis, but I am more interested in knowing what is most likely - natural or human cause of recent warming.
In my opinion the recent warming being human caused is more likely than not because the human forcing is so large and there is no larger known natural forcing. I am taking into account the potential for unknown natural forcings that might dwarf human forcing as uncertainty. If that potential didn't exist I would say it was proven that recent warming was human caused. Because it does exist I just say it is likely. If human forcing wasn't known to be large I would say I don't know.
My view is though that uncertainty is part of the risk. Not being able to rule out human forcing of climate establishes risk in itself. That has to be balanced against the cost of mitigating the risk though.
Brunnen says "I'm not comfortable with hundreds of billions of dollars fixing a problem which may or may not arise. The money would be better spent on problems we know exist and can do something about."
I am not comfortable with it either, but I consider the fix is a change we have to make eventually (we aren't staying on fossil fuels forever) so it's a matter of do we start it now or later. And compared to the chaotic waste of money through wars and all kinds of other stuff I wonder how much it will stack up. Both options have risks attached. Part of me thinks do it now at least we can then do it at a leisurely pace and slow it down/speed it up as necessary later. Part of me thinks if we wait it might be easier later or wait to get more indication of what the risks are of not doing it. A nagging voice says don't put it off - do it now, but maybe I have simplified it too much and am thinking about a task like cutting the lawn...
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@139
If the world suddenly adopted this philosophy, it would be in chaos soon after. There is a very good chance that AGW is a problem, therefore it *is* a problem, at least until time travel is invented.
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Brunnen @ 132
Is there any weather event that CAN'T be attributed to climate change?
According to this site the answer is no:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
It's list of 843 different things which have been linked to Global Warming, from Acne to Zoonotic diseases. Most of have links to the original articles.
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18. At 8:33pm on 28 Jan 2011, blunderbunny wrote:
It should obviously be noted that PIOMAS is only a model? It's not actually a measure of ice volume at all - It's just a model's estimation of ice volumes ;-)
Well for God's sake tell the model the ice is retreating.
Geoff.
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Hi Bowman,
the (computer) model modelling the theory ...........
I guess that Darwinian evolution is still a theory, though the proofs to the satisfaction of most are well established.
The modelling of cladistics based on eg DNA, metrics, etc are modelling the physical, chemical, metrical expressions of the theory wrt time. Cladograms are some of the clearest computer-generated models around; they hang together because of (Darwin's) theory.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/clad/clad3.html has a nice primer.
At the core, we are playing with semantics here.
Regards, Geoff.
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@sensiblegrannie #36
Still sounds rather more metaphorical than directly representative. I doubt that you'll find a matching bird species.
Here're some swirling birds in a rather less apocalyptic situation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE
The situation in Australia is horribly distressing. But it is only peripherally related to the climate debate stuff on threads like these. You might be interested in this article, by Germaine Greer (who is Australian).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/15/australian-floods-queensland-germaine-greer
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