by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Climate scientist loses faith in the IPCC
A few years ago, I was branded as a ‘heretic‘ for losing faith in the IPCC. Now another climate scientist has publicly stated that he is losing the faith. Who is this scientist? None other than Kevin Trenberth, in an interview with theage. Excerpts:
I think it will be less successful than the last assessment, and I think it will be blander – I’m disappointed in what I’ve seen so far.
But Professor Trenberth believes too many researchers and too much ”second tier” science are diluting the report’s quality, and that science has jumped far ahead of the lumbering process. ”There are more people, it’s more diffuse, it’s harder to gain a consensus – quite frankly I find the whole process very depressing,” he said. ”The science is solid, but with a larger group it’s harder to reach a consensus, and updates every six years are just too slow. After the fifth assessment, we should push on with a different format.”
”With the links between weather and climate for instance – we know they are there, but the specific numbers need work,” Professor Trenberth said.
Wow. Could it be that my faith in the IPCC process will start to increase? Mine seems to be inversely proportional to Trenberth’s.
U.S. politics and the greenhouse
Theage article mentioned Climategate as a causative factor in the decline of the saliency of the climate issue. Keith Kloor has an interesting article entitled The Greenhouse that takes a look backwards at statements made by previous presidential/vice presidential candidates, going back as far as 1988 and Dan Quayle’s statement of concern about the issue. Kloor argues that there has been a sharp change since 2008 (when McCain was concerned about global warming), and argues that the current situation in the Republican Party is:
an anomaly, owing largely to a confluence of circumstances stemming from the global financial meltdown and the rightward shift of the GOP. If the economy continues to rebound and severe weather continues to be associated with global warming, I bet the politics of climate change will soon return to what they were in 2008, when both major parties in the U.S. agreed that reducing greenhouse gases was an imperative.
Any bets on this prediction?
Explainer in Chief
Speaking of former U.S. Presidents, the Yale Forum has an article How President Clinton, ‘Explainer in Chief,’ Frames Climate Change. One of the quotes from Clinton:
“My strategy on [engaging deniers] is very simple. Some people who are climate skeptics are climate skeptics because it’s in their interest to be. They just want to preserve the old energy economy, and there’s not much I can do about that. But what I am trying to do, literally all the time, is to prove that saving the planet is better economics than burning it up. Not 10 or 20 or 50 years from now — [but] now. There are a lot of climate skeptics but their reasons are being chipped away…. There are a lot of people who have a different view. Their view is, ‘Look, this may be good, this may be bad. But God almighty the world is coming apart at the seams economically and we’ve got other fish to fry. We have to deal with other things.’ [For] those people, you must prove it is good economics to change the way we produce and pursue energy…. So what I do to try to overcome the climate skeptics is to figure out how to solve the financing problems, because fundamentally all the financing problems look alike. Whether you’re dealing with clean energy or energy efficiency, the costs are all up-front and the savings are all in the back….”
Scary pictures
Bjorn Lomborg has an article in project-syndicate entitled Scary pictures. His main point:
Campaigners on important but complex issues, annoyed by the length of time required for public deliberations, often react by exaggerating their claims, hoping to force a single solution to the forefront of public debate. But, however well intentioned, scaring the public into a predetermined solution often backfires: when people eventually realize that they have been misled, they lose confidence and interest.
When scare tactics replace scientific debate, whether about GM crops or climate change, nothing good can come of it. We all deserve better.
Climate spin is rampant
Roger Pielke Jr has an editorial entitled Climate spin is rampant. Key excerpt:
Does it matter that campaigners and the media are actively peddling disinformation? For the most part, probably not, as the public is by now used to such nonsense on just about every subject from unemployment figures to Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
But there is one group that should be very concerned about the spreading of rampant misinformation: the scientific community. It is, of course, thrilling to appear in the media and get caught up in highly politicized debates. But leading scientists and scientific organizations that contribute to a campaign of misinformation — even in pursuit of a worthy goal like responding effectively to climate change — may find that the credibility of science itself is put at risk by supporting scientifically unsupportable claims in pursuit of a political agenda.
JC comment: This collection provides a wide range of perspectives. So who do you think is making sense? Trenberth? Kloor? Clinton? Lomborg? Pielke Jr?
My answer: Pielke Jr.
To be clear, the claims of an climate change leading to increasing extreme weather damages come from the insurance industry, flatly contradict what Roger Pielke Jr. is and has been claiming and are not isolated to Munich Re.
In any case neither Pielke nor anyone else has ever figured out how to factor in the effects of improved infrastructure on damages sustained. If correcting for population without correcting for improvements yields constant damages, then clearly the weather has turned for the worse since building codes, construction methods and construction materials are constantly improving as have warning systems to get people out of the way. If the climate has not been changing then because of these things, correcting for population growth would yield decreasing losses. They have not
Finally Pielke is being deceiving, scientists are not making the claims he is writing about, insurance companies, a notably hard headed, green eye shade wearing group are.
Given that the insurance industry will charge higher premiums if there’s a likelyhood of more extreme weather which way does old Eli Rabett figure they’d like to err:
1) predict more extreme weather is coming but less arrives
2) predict less extreme weather is coming but more arrives
Let’s see if Eli would make a good insurance company exec. ;-)
What does the weather say about trends in extreme events? ACE, tornadoes? A building built to the most exacting standards will still suffer more financial damage than unimproved wilderness.
The claims of increased severe events due to AGW is no more scientifically justified than claims that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. In fact, since these events are thermodynamic heat engines, the expected signal from warming would likely be a reduction in number and severity of events.
If you believe Munich RE, then perhaps you believe Merck on VIOXX. Of course, they want to make the case damages are increasing so they can increase rates. It reminds me of Muller’s examination of the claims in Gore’s movie on hurricanes. In the 1930’s there seem to be no hurricanes in the middle of the Atlantic because as Muller points out we had no satellites and ships avoided those areas because there might be hurricanes. Damage claims for ships depend on lots of other variables, including maintainance and how careful operators are to avoid potentially damaging weather events.
The forestry industry, also, is run by hard-headed practical people. They know that climate is changing and that their profitability depends on taking future changes into account.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTCC/Resources/407863-1229101582229/DCCDP_3Forests.pdf
I like the comment attributed to former UK PM Tony Blair, quoted in The Mammoth Book of Great British Humor: “I don’t make predictions. I never have and I never will.”
So Blair predicts that he will never predict . . . Hmm.
Trenberth says:
What science?
Where is the science that demonstrates AGW is a catastrophic threat? Where is the science about the costs and benefits of the impacts of mans CO2 emissions? I haven’t seen a persuasive case to justify expenditure of $ trillions on the CO2 mitigation policies advocated by the CAGW alarmists? I haven’t seen the science that demonstrates the CO2 mitigation policies advocated by the CAGW alarmists would make any measurable beneficial change to the climate.
So where is the science he is referring to?
Peter Lang,
You’re supposed to be an retired economist so, possibly, it’s a bit late to start thinking of re-educating yourself to be a scientist. But since you’ve asked
” So where is the science he is referring to?”
I might just suggest you start with :
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
You also perhaps need to enrol in a Physics course at your local TAFE and if you get some decent grades your local uni , the ANU, has some very good courses to help you understand it all.
It could be quite tough going though, but it should keep you busy and out of trouble for the next few years. You certainly won’t have quite so much time for writing nonsensical posts to climate blogs.
Pielke Jr.
Tsk! It’s hard getting a consensus’ with a larger group. Select coteries work so much better …better still jest one or two shamen up on the hill:
‘Listen serfs, we know what’s b…’
Hey, Beth, Ah reckon U an’ me an’ (maybe) Jim Cripwell cud start one of them “corn-sen-sus” groops cudn’t we?
Seein’s how we is all on diffrunt con-ti-nents, we cud call it a “global corn-sen-sus”, doncha reckon?
Max
I have been stating for some time on Climate Etc. that the science that claims to have produced actual numeric values for climate sensitivity is just plain wrong. Now we have Kevin Trenbeth stating “The science is solid”. The science is very far from solid, as I have been trying to point out.
Back on the thread “Communicating uncertainties in natural hazards research”, I pruduced a controversial post. Now I am quite prepared to admit that what I haved written may not be completely scientifically accurate. I have been wrong before, and I will, undoubtedly, be wrong again in the future. But it would be nice to hear from the denizens of Climates Etc. who are proponents of CAGW, whether my science has any proper basis, and if it doesn’t, then why is it wrong? Or it woukl be nice to hear from others who believe that what I have written has merit.
Here is what I have written previously.
@@@
Jim Cripwell | October 12, 2012 at 8:57 am
Back at Jim Cripwell | October 11, 2012 at 9:37 am I wrote
@@@
To me the important issue is different from what you two are arguing about. The overall warming trend that seems to have been occuring since the LIA has not changed over all the centuries. There have been periods over decades where the trend has been warming, and similarly, there have been periods when it has been cooling.’ But over all there has been no change whatsoever.
What happened in the last part of the 20th century, when CAGW was supposedly active, was that we had a period of “excessive” warming; excessive meaning stronger that usual. This has now been followed in the 21st century with a period of cooling. Which means that my contention of no change in trend is being preserved.
But the conclusion that the trend has not changed for centuries means that there is absolutley no sign that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has any effect on global temperatures. The total climate sensitivity of CO2 is indistinguishable from zero
@@@
I also wrote “Now, I feel reasonably certain that you Max, will have no difficulty agreeing that I have a point. I would be interested if lolwot also agrees I might be correct.”
Max replied “I agree fully that the data tell me your statement is 100% correct.”
So, I had a reply form Max, but nothing from lolwot. I suspect the reason why lolwot has not responded is because I am right, and he does not have the integrity to agree that I am right. How about it lolwot. Am I, indeed, correct, or if I am wrong, why am I wrong?
Kevin Trenberth says, “the science is solid”
John Houghton said, “the science is settled”.
Al Gore parroted Houghton’s remark.
Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook”.
What someone says does not matter much.
Empirical data (facts) are important.
Max
There are daily, weekly, and monthly data on things to do with ENSO. Some examples are
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/southernoscillationindex/30daysoivalues/
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=soi
Now I know very little of the science behind changes to and from El Nino and La Nina conditions, but I see very little likelihood of El Nino conditions emerging in 2012. What is going to come, I clearly have no idea. I wonder if others have any guesses.
Jim,
Any news from Isaac Held?
Thanks!
Isaac Held – whodat?
GFDL.
I hope that Cripwell stays away from Issac. Cripwell has a virulent strain of stupidity. Let willard handle cripwell, he has the least to lose from any interaction.
Willard is a supreme BS artist, I agree.
Has the gift of blab.
Max
It might be profitable for Isaac Held to look into some scientific blind spots. Having to refute bad gambits is a good test for mastery. Once it is done, all it takes is to refer to the refutation. Not that I mind showing how little Jim’s stance can look like science, but then others could too.
Even Judy could do that. Perhaps Judy could ask Isaac.
Manacker,
Bad hominems won’t help you answer for the “CAGW premise” ball you spit on about every thread.
Steven, you write “Cripwell has a virulent strain of stupidity.”
Thank you for your opinion. Coming from you, I take this as quite a compliment. So, thank you very much indeed. I am very much obliged.
Isaac Held should be a name any climate modeling skeptic should know if they are paying attention.
I have already answered this question twice. Go away!
Where have you answered?
Beware RSS readers, Jim.
Jim Cripwell,
Just to make sure what I’m doing:
Last week you claimed:
> I hope that, if I am wrong, someone will point out that I am wrong and where I am wrong.
This contradicts the rhetorical question you asked last week:
> Why would I need to ask anyone?
if by “anyone” we remind ourselves that in our context this refers to Isaac Held, a guy who could very help you in understanding where you are wrong, if you are.
You are under no obligation to contact him.
You are under no obligation to pretend wishing being shown wrong too.
You are under no obligation to pretend being a scientist.
Your wish to let me contact him evidenced some kind of curiosity. You might wish to take responsibility for that curiosity. My own curiosity has been piqued when you have not responded to my critique of not playing the game like a scientist would.
Next time you’ll pretend to play that game, I might be around.
Willard, Your problem is very simple. You believe in CAGW. I have put forward my ideas as to why CAGW is wrong. Therefore, if CAGW is right, I must be wrong. But you cannot prove where I am wrong. So you are desperately seeking someone who can prove I am wrong. I am not prepared to play your game. I spend enough of my time already on the blogs I frequent. I am not going to go looking for trouble in other places. So, I sugggest you either address the science I have presented, or forget whatever it is you are trying to do.
Jim Cripwell,
I don’t where you get that I believe in CAGW. Not only I have a very vague idea to what this refers, but I see no reason why I would entertain a belief regarding that.
As I said, you are free to play the game scientists play. You’re now once again refusing to go play with scientists. So far as I’m concerned, you simply did signal processing tricks.
This is not science. This is formal sophistry.
Jim Cripwell
You are wasting your time with willard the waffler.
He uses lots of words to say nothing.
He avoids getting specific.
He apparently believes that AGW is a serious potential problem, but doesn’t even know why.
And it sounds like he basically has no notion of what he’s talking about, either.
Poor fellow.
Max
Manacker,
Insults won’t help you answer to this comment:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/08/whats-the-best-climate-question-to-debate/#comment-253419
What was the quote for the ending of that Willard Romney ghostwritten book, again?
The name of the Romney book is “No Apologies”.
I suppose Mittens won’t apologize for hiring a ghost-writer to lay out exactly the same potential path as suggested by Clinton.
Jim Cripwell: Weekly NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies are no longer in the range of “official” El Niño conditions. They’ve been cooling quite rapidly for 5 weeks. Refer to my September 2012 sea surface temperature update:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/september-2012-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/
While you’re there you may wish to check out the latest model-sea surface temperature data comparison:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/model-data-comparison-sea-surface-temperature-anomalies-november-1981-through-september-2012/
Regarding your lack of familiarity with ENSO, I’ll suggest a book. Here’s a link to the free preview:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/preview-of-who-turned-on-the-heat-v2.pdf
And here’s a link to the introductory post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/everything-you-every-wanted-to-know-about-el-nino-and-la-nina-2/
Regards
Jim,
We are currently in a general period (cool PDO) that favors more La Nina’s versus El Niño, and those El Niños that do occur are likely to be weaker and shorter lived. But, despite what you may hear from Bob T. and others, ocean heat content continues to increase over the long-term regardless of the ENSO cycle or PDO. As long as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate, you can set your ocean heat content dial on “accumulate”.
R. Gates you write “But, despite what you may hear from Bob T. and others”
You obviously dont remember my philosophy. I only believe empirical data. I dont car what anyone thinks. Show me the data. And the data I have seen gives a strong indication that global temperatures and heat content are NOT increasing very much.
Jim,
At least least you are looking at it from the right perspective. ENSO is going to tell us far less about long-term energy imbalances in the Earth system than ocean heat content, and then we really want to look as deep as we can measure. Even before the current weak head fake of an El Niño began to fade, ocean heat content was rising at deeper levels on the other side of the Pacific, but that’s nothing new as ocean heat content has been going up by about 0.5 x 10^22 joules per year on average for the past 50 years.
You on’t want to know gatesy – I think you are a space cadet.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-3-23.html
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Clementetal2009.png
Jim Cripwell says: “You obviously dont remember my philosophy. I only believe empirical data. I dont car what anyone thinks.”
That’s a good thing, because then you’ll likely understand the significance of the NODC ocean heat content DATA for the North Pacific north of 20N:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-63.png
It’s beyond the grasp of R. Gates, who believes only greenhouse gases can explain the warming of the global oceans. He fails to comprehend that whether the oceans store naturally created heat or whether they release it at high latitudes is dependent on surface wind patterns, which inhibit or enhance the distribution of water from the tropics to the poles, and that changes in surface wind patterns are reflected in shifts in sea level pressure. And of course what’s presented in my book about ENSO is supported by data and so are the discussions of the natural warming of sea surface temperatures, lower troposphere temperatures, and land+sea surface temperatures, as is the discussion of ocean heat content. That’s why there are more than 380 illustrations.
Regards
The Skeptical Warmist (aka R. Gates) says: “We are currently in a general period (cool PDO) that favors more La Nina’s versus El Niño, and those El Niños that do occur are likely to be weaker and shorter lived.”
While the spatial pattern of the sea surface temperature anomalies of the North Pacific north of 20N, which is represented by the PDO, does provide feedback to the tropical Pacific, it is ENSO and the sea level pressure of the North Pacific that dictate that spatial pattern and, in turn, the PDO.
ENSO has its thermal origins in the Humoldt Current. This brings cold water from Antarctica to the ocean upwelling region of the eastern Pacific. It displaces the warm layer that suppresses upwelling in an El Nino. The upwelling propagates across the central Pacific. It is linked to sea level pressure at polar and sub-polar regions – measured as the Southern Annular Mode. There is a somewhat similar process in the Californian Current.
http://world-geography.org/311-humboldt-current.html
It is more intersting to speculate on what causes the decadal – and presumably much longer – changes to SAM and therefore ENSO.
‘Observations and numerical experiments suggest the annular modes have played and will continue to play a role in climate change. Both annular modes have exhibited trends towards their high index polarities over the past few decades: The trend in the NAM is largest during NH winter, is most pronounced from the middle 1960s to the late 1990s, and has relaxed somewhat in the past decade. We likely need at least another decade of data to know whether the trend in the NAM is, in fact, continuing. The trend in the SAM is largest in the SH summer season. The trend in the NAM helps explain the spatial structure of recent trends in NH climate and several ecosystems over the past few decades. The trend in the SAM helps explain the pattern of recent temperature trends over Antarctica.’ http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/ao/introduction.html
It is usual to try to bring in climate change – but it seems better to understand the underlying natural variability first. It is a bit difficult to separate out feedback in clouds and winds. This may connected to UV/ozone interactions in the polar stratosphere.
Chief Hydrologist says: “ENSO has its thermal origins in the Humoldt Current. This brings cold water from Antarctica to the ocean upwelling region of the eastern Pacific…”
The warm water that fuels an El Niño is supplied from the west Pacific Warm Pool and that supply of warm water is replenished by the trailing La Niña through increased downward shortwave radiation associated with reduced cloud cover, which is in turn caused by the stronger-than-normal trade winds associated with the La Niña.
Occasionally, a La Niña event creates much more warm water than was released by the previous El Niño. This happened during the 1995/96 La Niña, which supplied the fuel for the 1997/98 El Niño. The 1995/96 La Niña wasn’t strong any sense of the word in the NINO3.4 region, but the trade winds in the western tropical Pacific were strong enough to push aside the cloud cover and allow all that wonderful tropical Pacific to warm the west Pacific Warm Pool. See McPhaden (1999):
http://lightning.sbs.ohio-state.edu/geo622/paper_enso_McPhaden1999.pdf
Jim Cripwell,
This constant demand for Empirical Data! But when you get it you say it isn’t empirical enough. You seem to think that empirical means repeatable experimentation.
Have you been comparing notes with Kent Hovind? He’s said he’ll only accept the theory of Evolution when there is ’empirical evidence’ to validate it. He has a widely publicised standing ‘offer’ to pay $250,000 for scientific empirical evidence of evolution. He argues that the ‘failure’ of anyone to claim the prize is evidence that the ‘unsubstantiated hypothesis’ of evolution is not scientific but religious in nature. Sound familiar?
But guess what? Anyone’s chances of claiming the prize is zero. When evidence is provided, it certainly won’t be empirical enough for our Mr Hovind. He’ll want repeatable experimental results that humans evolved from apes, just like you want repeatable experimental results that climate sensitivity to CO2 concentrations isn’t insignificantly small.
Are Brazil, Russia, India and China on board with the consensus yet?
With regard to this week’s Climate Etc topic “critical thinking”, a very striking recent trend is scientific analysis that is *more* critical contrasted with denialist analysis that is *less* critical.
WUWT, indeed? Perhaps the explanation is that scientists and rational skeptics alike accept that “Nature cannot be fooled” … while denialists still cherish hope in that regard! ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Indeed.
FWIW, the skeptical side has their own theories on climate change. However, the recent critical thinking by the skeptics has recently been dominated by discussion of which of these theories are hoaxes propagated by delusional thinkers or (as Springer has noted) a clever “double agent”.
For evidence, see the discussion with this Myrrhhh character. Some deep critical thinking going on there :)
“Any bets on this prediction?”
Climate change is dead, gone to meet its maker, ten toes up . . . . ‘e fu*^%ng snuffed it. But the plumage is beautiful.
With all apologies to Norwegian Blues everywhere in our carbon dioxide poisoned planet.
In a world where the EU gets a Nobel Peace Prize and the USA shows the planet it has a VP with a bad case of Turettes Syndrome, where economic systems are on the verge of collapse in th significant parts of the world the only people who still worry about invented disasters like Cimate Change are those with a lip lock on the Glowball Warming Funding teat, the MSM who desperately need ever scarier headlines to try and stop their slide into irrelevance and the mushy heads who have substituted kowtowing to Gaia for traditional religious beliefs.
The corpse of Climate Change is still twitching but it is dead as that Norwegian Blue.
Wanna buy a slug?
Now, *that* is funnny! ….smile…. ….Lady in Red
I am afraid that Bill Clinton, though a great orator, doesn’t reflect on his own Presidency for fiscal policy: Pay As You Go. Of course there are accounting tricks to government spending, the so called “smoke and mirrors” of carnival hucksters. However, paying for what you want, or, “you break it you pay for it” types of policies are understood by most households who ultimately pay most countries’ bills.
If you are going to have energy to grow your economy, then that energy better be factored within the costs of goods or services that OTHER PEOPLE WILL BUY.
The costs of energy will vary depending upon regions, availability, extraction costs, transportation and a slue of other considerations I could mention ad nauseam.
As far as I can tell, the current rage over “renewables” has been short circuited by the lack of storage technology. When the wind doesn’t blow; no energy. When the sun doesn’t shine; no energy. There is no way to store the energy made. Then of course there are the transmission costs and line losses when electricity is transported over long distances.
My temporary solution to a constantly evolving issue, use the energy the region can make at the price that energy is the major governing item in a cost/benefit analysis. Coal in West Virginia, Ohio, Southern Illinois, Wyoming, etc. OK, send coal to Newcastle if we must or the Ruhr Valley if the Germans want it, but apply technology to reduce pollution, and get off the “CO2 is sending us all to hell” meme.
Oil for transportation as it is the most economically and portable energy we have at the moment. You get the idea.
My plea, pay as you go. No considerable up front costs for a “will of the wisp” nice idea.
The wind is always blowing somewhere. The earth’s atmosphere has a combined potential energy and kinetic energy that is effectively at a steady-state constant value over time (ignoring the external forcing function change). The kinetic energy is basically comprised by the wind and the global cumulative value cannot instantaneously change. So, at least theoretically, we can extract energy from the wind at a constant pace. The riddle is in how to do this via smart grid technology. There are obviously some Carnot-cycle-like efficiencies with how far one can go with this, but the premise does exist.
The sun is always shining somewhere. The same principle applies.
The sun is generating electromagnetic energy (PV), kinetic energy (wind), and potential energy (gravity hydro) at a steady pace, and renewable energy scientists are working at ways to efficiently exploit this efficiently, just as Clinton noted in the post above. Every intelligent politician is using climate change as a smokescreen to make the bitter pill of switching to alternatives easier to swallow.
Is there no room for optimism? A lot of you sound like the Luddites of centuries past.
“Every intelligent politician is using climate change as a smokescreen to make the bitter pill of switching to alternatives easier to swallow.”
That’s as stupid as it gets. The pill is sweet and the switching to alternatives will suffer. And money is just wasted mindlessly.
Edim is a run-of-the-mill contrarian and a scientific Luddite.
“The earth’s atmosphere has a combined potential energy and kinetic energy that is effectively at a steady-state constant value over time (ignoring the external forcing function change)”
A sentence that means nothing what so ever, I can give you a thermal reservoir full of kinetic energy and you cannot obtain work from it. You can only obtain work from two reservoir’s at different states.
The wind blows because more energy falls and is thermalized at the equator than at the poles.
It’s called efficiency. I did mention Carnot-cycle-like efficiencies, did I not?
Fun spotting the contrarians and Luddites. They walk among the denizens.
The wind is blowing somewhere and the sun is shining somewhere so we don’t need storage technology ignores the fact that the alternative is to have a transmission system that moves the energy from where it is not to where it is. In the case of solar that means halfway around the world and surely even you can understand that will never be cost effective. RiH008 simply recognizes that fact and says you need storage. Before you come back and say yeah but wind could be transmitted over far less distance, keep in mind that wind does not blow in the middle of a high pressure system which can cover half the continent and correlates very well to the highest demand periods. Again the transmission necessary to cover that eventuality would be cost prohibitive. If no storage then you could build gas turbines (can’t keep the current crop of old dirty power plants around) but then who would build one when it only gets to run when the sun isn’t shining and wind does not blow.
I did mention efficiencies, did I not?
Or put options together:
Sun shining, Wind blowing
Sun not shining, Wind blowing
Sun shining, Wind not blowing
Sun not shining, Wind not blowing
Note how the logical addition works. One can cut down the risk by stringing together technologies.
Could also turn out that we have a laundry list of alternative and renewable technologies that each contribute a few percent to the total. The central limit theorem and law of large numbers says that we can reduce the variance of the total by adding these together.
Storage does add another variable that we get to play with.
It’s fun using these Luddites as punching bags. To all of these Luddites, they would argue with a farmer about giving up farming — you see, you can’t always depend on the rain.
Your logical addition only works if the values being summed are significant and in this case where the sum or your laundry list of alternative and renewable technologies can provide all the power needed at peak loads. Wind and solar energy are intermittent and diffuse. As a result utility scale electric generation using those technologies must have storage, transmission, or backup to provide all the power needed at peak loads, particularly so when one of the technologies (wind) is weaker at the peak loads. Throw in the fact that the only viable wind energy storage technology is pumped storage hydro but there are limits where that can be used. The result is you can call me a luddite but yes I would advise a farmer to give up farming if he lives in a desert and plans to rely on rain for his water
And I would suggest that we transition off of fossil-fuels if we want to look to the future. That is the risk mitigation for both AGW and fossil-fuel depletion.
I am way ahead of you in the insight department.
I believe it is more likely that conventional fossil fuel innovation will keep those sources of energy the choice for this century than some miracle of technological innovation that makes renewable alternatives to fossil fuels the unmandated energy choice. I think it is more important to fund the research necessary to develop the miracles necessary for the transition than to try to implement today’s technology. Sadly there is a real chance that emotion-based fears by an uniformed electorate may elect politicians that mandate alternatives to fossil fuels at the expense of that research.
WHT – Because you are so ahead of me in insight could you please show how you would change the energy system of any entity with today’s technologies to get to your transition off fossil fuels goal. If you need a place to start take the New York State data in this post::
http://judithcurry.com/2011/06/27/on-meeting-80-of-the-worlds-energy-supply-by-renewables/
I don’t have to show how we will proceed. My point has always been to demonstrate the decline of crude oil reserves via probability and statistical analysis. Lots of people in certain positions wish to “hide the decline”, so it is indeed a useful analysis to concentrate on.
Beyond that, something is required to replace the dwindling reserves and most of advanced society is using the tried and true techniques of funding the R&D for potential technologies.
Most of the commenters here put on a fright wig or reach for the smelling salts when the possibility of renewable energy comes up. The obvious point is nothing will ever live up to the standards set by conventional crude oil, as the energy density of crude was the ultimate confluence of natural phenomenon that may never be recreated. Yet there is much room for optimism that we can get to the point of some fractional efficiency of crude oil. One thing we have now that we didn’t in the past was amazing computational power to efficiently optimize the renewable energy that we can extract from the environment.
With all due respect, the “amazing computational power to efficiently optimize the renewable energy that we can extract from the environment” still has to overcome the problem of diffuse and intermittent renewable energy – a task I don’t think is possible.
rogercaiazza | October 14, 2012 at 6:34 pm |
Yours is not an unusual opinion, especially among qualified energy systems engineers.
I recall barely a decade ago being told that if more than a fraction of a percent of the energy that went into the grid came from what was called ‘micropower’ then the whole thing would come down catastrophically. There’d be no way to keep a grid fed off, say, one to three percent wind power, from repeated brownouts and blackouts. That was the prevailing wisdom.
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-gas-and-electric-co.-completes-latest-wind-farm/article/3642176?custom_click=pod_headline_financial-news
My understanding today is that the problem of integrating wind comes when you get over 15-20% unless you have a lot of hydro that can do the balancing for you. The Oklahoma wind farm referenced means the utility company can meet about 10 percent of its customer requirements with wind.
rogercaiazza | October 14, 2012 at 8:44 pm |
I don’t disbelieve you, and I don’t think the claims currently being made are unfounded.
Nor did I think a decade ago the claims of ‘fraction of a percent’ were unfounded.
I well remember in the 1980’s attending a presentation from telephone engineers explaining why we would never see data transmission above 3,750 baud in residential service.
(For the non-technical people reading, that’s like saying no car would ever exceed 0.005 mph.)
Engineering is one of the most rapidly evolving of all fields. There are unbending precepts. And there are seemingly unbending precepts. In some places, 30%-40% wind power is practical, today.
So, at least theoretically, we can extract energy from the wind at a constant pace. The riddle is in how to do this via smart grid technology.
transmission line losses are 40% or so in the US according to graphs etc from EIEA. First poster was correct vector, more regional/local plants.
It is hilarious that they push wind without considering storage of distribution. Build a better battery or more efficient electrolyser and wind and solar could kick butt, but right now they are a horseless cart.
Generate a list of alternative energy technologies that are bit players. Start adding these together. What do you get? Hint: It’s going to be a lot more than nothing.
Pick an alternative energy technology – make it cost competitive with existing energy sources and make several billion bucks a year. Go for it webhubcolonoscope. As it is he is proposing just what – we have for instance a generating capacity in the east that is backed up by another generating capacity in the west and would still have to be backed up by something reliable? I would like to see the dollars on that. To work it would need to be half the dollars per MW/hr – not three times.
No one objects to technology or cheap electricity – but why is it he is so relentlessly moronic?
Watch this space. The moronic Aussie Rupert Murdoch has taught a few of us some valuable lessons, particularly on how the Faux News network relies on endless repetition to propagate propaganda.
Nah – I can read the words but they make no sense at all. Rupert Murdock? About par for the attack smurf. Relentlessly abusive and insulting but moronically incoherent. Sounds like a cult of AGW groupthink space cadet.
Everything is an idea worth spending someone else’s money on… right?
Margaret Thatcher once said, ‘The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.’
Wagathon,
You would be an imbecile to believe that you could command how the world’s nationalized oil companies to spend their profits.
You are tilting at windmills as you choose to define your own geopolitical landscape.
webhub — Generate a list of alternative energy technologies that are bit players.
There really is no need for alt tech with no storage when nuclear is perfectly viable and can be easily scaled to a regional level. A plant providing say 500 MW to a local area due to xmission loss negation is providing 400MW overall. Grid switch all you like (“smart” grid my ass) with megaplants but you still lose 40% of the energy to the air. Wind and solar require special physical locations to be effective and have to feed energy far away thus guaranteeing loss of investment (they generally aren’t providing enough energy overall to cover line loss.)
Alt energy is a **political** solution seeking a physical problem; none of the wind or solar farms are viable enough to cause energy utils to stand in line to invest. Rather, it’s *government* forcing them to buy this junk by imposing absurd “green” standards where “green” means “anything but that which is known to work.” And how do we know it’s absurd? Simple; Gov ‘guidelines’ stipulate adoption timelines that are far shorter than any known approval process for nuclear plants.
Nope. Alt energy and peak oil arguments to push same are all politics and championed by those who don’t get physics. It’s pretty clear. It’s about control, not addressing a physical problem. Anyone with even a dim grasp of line loss would be against wind/solar by definition.
randomengineer,
OK, add nuclear to the mix. What exactly is your beef? Crude oil reserves are declining and we are looking at alternatives that are not fossil fuel based.
BTW, what kind of an engineer are you? No engineer that I know would state flatly that 40% losses occur without putting in the context of some dimensional units. Is it 40% per 100 miles?
Or is the number closer to 10% loss over a 100 mile long transmission line?
Actually this randomengineer guy is likely a completely random phony.
Just take a look at the transmission line data from American Electric Power
http://www.aep.com/about/transmission/docs/transmission-facts.pdf
LINE LOSSES – MW/100 MILES
Resistive Corona* Total
765 kV LINE @1000 MW LOAD: ——— ——- ———–
Original 4-conductor (“Rail”) bundle 4.4 6.4 10.8 (1.1%)
Newer 4-conductor (“Dipper”) bundle 3.3 3.7 7.0 (0.7%)
Current 6-conductor (“Tern”) bundle 3.4 2.3 5.7 (0.6%)
Planned 6-trapezoidal cond. (“Kettle”) bundle 3.1 2.3 5.4 (0.5%)
500 kV LINE @1000 MW LOAD:
Typical 2-conductor bundle 11.0 1.6 12.6 (1.3%)
345 kV LINE @1000 MW LOAD:
Typical 2-conductor bundle 41.9 0.6 42.5 (4.2%)
Isn’t it interesting how the losses are at this 40% number that randomengieenr cites, but pushing the transmission voltage higher brings down the losses substantially.
Lesson on physics from a PhD in electrical engineering. Power losses go as V^2/R so if you double the operating voltage from 345 kV to 765 kV, the resistive power loss savings are improved by around a factor of 4, just as the numbers show from AEP. Of course, the corona losses will increase but that is part of the trade-off.
We kind of want citations, not junk. Good ideas are also desired, as in the possibility of magnetic topological insulators:
http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/magnetic-topological-insulators-could-yield-dissipationless-electronics.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222913590
or High-Tc superconductors.
> It’s going to be a lot more than nothing.
I feel adventurous and will predict it will be a bit more than twice than that.
Right Willard, it may be upwards of a 1000 times nothing.
You are baiting me to suggest that this should remind us of one of Peter Lang’s straw-man arguments, i.e. like switching to nuclear power will reduce transportation costs by a factor of a million. The bait worked and it does :) :)
BTW, Correction on my resistive power loss, which is I^2*R (I inadvertently wrote V^2/R). When the voltage is doubled and the current stays the same, then the ratio of power transferred to resistive power loss increases by a factor of about 4.
Wow,
I’ve just seen WHT is still making misleading statements (i.e. lying) about this:
What a dishonest person ins WHT.
He’s stated this around five or six times that I’ve notices and I have corrected him each time.
Liers are not worth debating. The fact that it is a common trait with CAGW extremists shows why nothing they say can be trusted.
Just to clear up what I said, for anyone who hasn’t seen me correct WHT previously, it is as follows:
Energy density of nuclear fuel is 20,000 to 2 million more than coal.
That means 20,000 to 2 million less shippings to ship the same energy content – e.g. from Australia to Japan or China.
That means 20,000 to 2 million times less fuel to drive the ships and trains that move the nuclear fuel than to move coal with the same energy content.
Most people would prefer to replace 20,000 coal ships passing through the Great Barrier Reef with one ship carrying nuclear fuel out of Darwin.
Since I’ve corrected WHT a number of times, and he has read my comments, but continues to misrepresent what I said (i.e. bating and lying), I realise he will keep doing it. Clearly he is a basically dishonest person at heart.
Some of us are optimistic and firmly convinced that fossil fuels are the energy for the future until the anti-nuclear folks (and the CAGW alarmists) are finally foiled.
WebHubTelescop says:
@ October 13, 2012 at 11:39 am
@ October 14, 2012 at 12:56 am
Note how the logical addition works. One can cut down the risk by stringing together technologies.
Could also turn out that we have a laundry list of alternative and renewable technologies that each contribute a few percent to the total. The central limit theorem and law of large numbers says that we can reduce the variance of the total by adding these together.
Storage does add another variable that we get to play with.
It’s fun using these Luddites as punching bags. To all of these Luddites, they would argue with a farmer about giving up farming — you see, you can’t always depend on the rain.
WHT, you accuse others who do not share your beliefs of being ignorant, stupid, luddites and a host of other vitriolic terms. However, I haven’t seen you do even the most basic sums to check your beliefs about renewable energy. You seem to have no concept of the costs or economics considerations of your ideas.
Follow me through a simple estimate of capital costs of wind versus gas (of course the operating cost must be added to gas, but lets do a first calculation with capital cost). If you want to go further an look at the full cost of electricity, here is a start:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/
Rough unit prices ($/kW):
Gas = $1,000
Wind = $2,500
Solar PV = $3,000/kW
Solar thermal with 6 h storage = $8,000
Pumped hydro energy storage = $1,500 – 4,000/kW
Transmission = $1.5/kW.km
A gas plant can be built close to the demand centres, so additional capital cost for transmission is negligible (in comparison with renewables). Therefore, the total capital cost for a gas new gas plant is say $1,000/kW.
Wind plant with gas back up:
Wind = $2,500/kW
Transmission, say 500 km average distance = $750/kW
Gas back up plant = $1,000/kW
Total = $4,250/kW (c.f. gas alone for $1,000/kW).
Would you like to add some solar thermal with storage? Add
Solar thermal = $8,000/kW
Transmission, say 1000 km average distance = $1,500/kW
Running total = $13,750/kW (c.f. gas alone for $1,000/kW)
That does not reduce the need for full gas back up capacity at $1,000/kW. All it does is reduce the amount of fuel used. It’s an additional cost with no reduction in the capital cost of wind, gas back up or transmission.
Do you want to add some wave power and biofuels? Just keep adding to the capital cost. The reduction in amount of gas capacity is negligible, because you still need a reliable back up generator.
The only realistic options for providing a reliable electricity supply are: fossil fuels, nuclear and/or hydro if available.
If pumped hydro energy storage is an option you can replace some gas capacity (but not much) with pumped hydro energy storage. That is, replace $1,000/kW gas with $1,500/kW to $4,000/kW pumped hydro energy storage. But that cost is for only 6 to 10 h storage. That amount of storage is nearly useless as back up for intermittent renewable energy. Also add some more transmission lines, say another $1,500/kW.
You can do the sums, but without even doing them you should be able to get the picture, given you reckon you are semi-numerate.
Costs: for coal, gas, wind, solar here:
http://www.bree.gov.au/documents/publications/aeta/Australian_Energy_Technology_Assessment.pdf
costs for pumped hydro energy storage here:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/en/government/initiatives/aemo-100-per-cent-renewables/~/media/government/initiatives/aemo/APPENDIX4-ROAM-report-on-pumped-storage.pdf
Lang, You really ought to get a grip. The Monopoly game numbers you bandy about are obsolete the minute you put them to paper.
You accuse me of not doing the most basic sums, yet I can refer you to my ebook in the link in my handle.
If not that, I can refer you to David MacKay’s ebook “Sustainable Energy”. The guy is a genius.
WHT,
See my reply to your comment below my re-post of my comment (with corrected format).
WebHubTelescop says:
@ October 13, 2012 at 11:39 am
@ October 14, 2012 at 12:56 am
WHT, you accuse others who do not share your beliefs of being ignorant, stupid, luddites and a host of other vitriolic terms. However, I haven’t seen you do even the most basic sums to check your beliefs about renewable energy. You seem to have no concept of the costs or economics considerations of your ideas.
Follow me through a simple estimate of capital costs of wind versus gas (of course the operating cost must be added to gas, but lets do a first calculation with capital cost). If you want to go further an look at the full cost of electricity, here is a start:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/
Rough unit prices ($/kW):
Gas = $1,000
Wind = $2,500
Solar PV = $3,000/kW
Solar thermal with 6 h storage = $8,000
Pumped hydro energy storage = $1,500 – 4,000/kW
Transmission = $1.5/kW.km
A gas plant can be built close to the demand centres, so additional capital cost for transmission is negligible (in comparison with renewables). Therefore, the total capital cost for a gas new gas plant is say $1,000/kW.
Wind plant with gas back up:
Wind = $2,500/kW
Transmission, say 500 km average distance = $750/kW
Gas back up plant = $1,000/kW
Total = $4,250/kW (c.f. gas alone for $1,000/kW).
Would you like to add some solar thermal with storage? Add
Solar thermal = $8,000/kW
Transmission, say 1000 km average distance = $1,500/kW
Running total = $13,750/kW (c.f. gas alone for $1,000/kW)
That does not reduce the need for full gas back up capacity at $1,000/kW. All it does is reduce the amount of fuel used. It’s an additional cost with no reduction in the capital cost of wind, gas back up or transmission.
Do you want to add some wave power and biofuels? Just keep adding to the capital cost. The reduction in amount of gas capacity is negligible, because you still need a reliable back up generator.
The only realistic options for providing a reliable electricity supply are: fossil fuels, nuclear and/or hydro if available.
If pumped hydro energy storage is an option you can replace some gas capacity (but not much) with pumped hydro energy storage. That is, replace $1,000/kW gas with $1,500/kW to $4,000/kW pumped hydro energy storage. But that cost is for only 6 to 10 h storage. That amount of storage is nearly useless as back up for intermittent renewable energy. Also add some more transmission lines, say another $1,500/kW.
You can do the sums, but without even doing them you should be able to get the picture, given you reckon you are semi-numerate.
Costs: for coal, gas, wind, solar here:
http://www.bree.gov.au/documents/publications/aeta/Australian_Energy_Technology_Assessment.pdf
costs for pumped hydro energy storage here:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/en/government/initiatives/aemo-100-per-cent-renewables/~/media/government/initiatives/aemo/APPENDIX4-ROAM-report-on-pumped-storage.pdf
WHT in his usual writing style says:
Maybe, but WHT clearly has not read or understood his book. Yes, David Mackay’s book “Sustainable energy – without the hot air” is good, as are the updates he’s released in bits and pieces since. But please show me where he refers to the costs in his book – for the benefit of other readers of this comment David Mackay makes it clear that his book is about the physical limits of renewable energy, e.g. if you covered UK with solar panels, wind farms and dedicated the farmland to grow biofuel for example. He clearly states near the start that the book does not deal with the costs or economics of the technologies, let alone with the system cost. Although he writes to to win the hearts and minds of the eco-warriors (obviously WHT fell for it hook, line and sinker) is is clear that renewables are impracticable and if you want low emissions energy, nuclear power will have to supply the the major proportion of it.
There is no point in reading your book, because you have demonstrated you have no understanding about costs, economics or financing.
Your repeated rude comments are a demonstration you are ignorant and struggling as the whole basis of your deeply held beliefs (CAGW, renewable energy, carbon pricing) are being shown to be wrong one after another.
Peter,
Boy do I wish I could install a tad more PV at $3 watt (sts rating I assume) as my current marginal costs for a kwh from PG&E is around 33 cents and it will be increasing.
Kakatoa,
The $3/W (peak) is for large commercial projects (50 MW and above) that are optimally sited, and commercially managed. This cost is not for residential solar panels.
Furthermore, you make a common mistake of (incorrectly) comparing the after-subsidies costs of residential solar panels with the before-subsidies costs that the whole of society has to pay.
And, you are comparing retail prices with wholesale prices. The 33 c/kWh you quoted is a retail price which is well above the wholesale price of power. The wholesale price of baseload power might be around 5 c/kWh and you are paying retail price of 33 c/kWh due to the cost of transmission, distribution, metering and retail. Therefore, if you are connected to the grid, you should compare the before-subsidy cost of production of electricity from your solar panels with the cost of electricity from the power stations (at the same time of day).
If you don’t want to pay for the benefits of the grid, you can buy batteries and manage your own system. That is another way to estimate the true cost of residential solar generated electricity.
Lang, No read? Your loss. The hypocrisy is staggering.
WHT says,
Is that your hypocrisy you are referring to?
Did you read this? http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/ If so, and if you think you have found a substantial error, why haven’t you asked for clarification?
By the way, I’ve just done a rough calculation of the cost of the transmission lines (not the generators) to connect the world as you suggested in your comment above:
My rough cost estimate is $2,000 trillion!
WHT lacks any sense of perspective. He lacks what is called “engineering judgement”.
WHT ends his comment with his usual belief ridden comments followed by his usual vitriol:
It is telling that on the Field Guide to Climate Clowns, I placed an image of a scarecrow strawman next to the entry for Peter Lang.
The circle of skeptics resembles a microcosm of the human experience, as it describes all the fallacious arguments ever put forward.
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#straw
WHT,
So, you’ve got no arguments left other than to squeal abuse at those who do not accept your belief’s, eh? That’s not a very convincing argument to persuade others to take your beliefs seriously. In fact, it demonstrates you have no argument – you just have a belief – and it suggests other CAGW alarmists are in much the same position.
No, it is.just an observation that you use the same fallacious arguments against serious oil depletion analysis as you do against serious climate science analysis.
Shorter Peter Lang :
The answer to global warming is nuclear power.
The answer to fossil fuel depletion is nuclear power.
Ok, we get it. You have the answer, yet you can’t face the fact that to rationalize the answer you have to accept either AGW or peak oil. Unfortunately that rationalization will never come because some may think of you as a closet leftist, and that would be the most horrible thing in the world.
WHT,
You are twisting and turning and avoiding the point under discussion, as usual. The point we were discussing here was that renewable energy is very costly.
A second point I made was that you have next to no understanding of cost, economics or finance.
A third point is that you lack the ability to see things in perspective. You can’r recognise that something you advocate is is orders of magnitude too expensive to be viable. You lack what is called ‘engineering judgement’.
Those are the points this discussion was about.
But you avoid the points and diverted to a discussion about your hysterical beliefs in CAGW and peak oil.
Furthermore, as usual, you’ve used strawman arguing tactics. Just to be clear on the strawman points you’ve raised, I am arguing for economically rational policies. If the CAGW alarmists want to cut GHG emissions, then they need to stop blocking low-cost nuclear. I am not advocating nuclear while it is excessively expensive, which is as a result of the policies of the anti-nukes. First step, if CAGW alarmist want to cut GHG emissions, is to stop blocking the removal of the impediments that prevent us having low cost nuclear.
You’ve demonstrated, again, there is no point discussing anything with you because you don’t understand any of this; you don’t realise how ridiculous the ideas you advocate are – like a global transmission network to transmit power from where the sun is shining to where it isn’t ($2,000 trillion capital cost), and many other ideas you advocate.
I also realise that when you are losing an argument you resort to abuse and/or changing the subject.
`About the only thing that would make polluting the countryside with windmills a possibly sensible idea would be superconducting power lines. Otherwise, the distribution system would cost a tremendous amount both in capital and energy losses. This doesn’t address all the other anti-environment problems associated with windmills.
Solar power makes some sense, at least in some areas. It tends to follow power needs. Few places use large amounts of electricity during the night. Many places can use solar electricity to offset air conditioning costs, which often occur mostly when the sun is shining.
WebHubTelescope,
[I suspect you saw this comment, but just to be sure, I’ll post it in reply to one of your comments, so you won’t be able to pretend you missed it, and then go and repeat the same misinformation and lies again (for about the seventh time).]
I’ve just seen WHT is still repeating his misleading statements (i.e. lying) about this:
What a dishonest person WHT is.
He’s stated this around five or six times that I’ve seen and I have corrected him each time.
Liars are not worth debating. The fact that it is a common practice with CAGW extremists shows why nothing they say can be trusted.
Just to clear up what I said, for anyone who hasn’t seen me correct WHT previously, it wass as follows:
Energy density of nuclear fuel is 20,000 to 2 million more than coal (depending on the type of reactor it is used in).
That means 20,000 to 2 million less shippings to transport the same energy content – e.g. from Australia to Japan or China.
That means 20,000 to 2 million times less fuel to drive the ships and trains transport nuclear fuel than to transport coal with the same energy content.
Most people would prefer to replace 20,000 coal ships passing through the Great Barrier Reef with one ship carrying uranium out of Darwin.
Since I’ve corrected WHT a number of times, and he has read my comments, but continues to misrepresent what I said (i.e. bating and lying), I realise he will keep doing it. Clearly he is a basically dishonest person at heart.
Good highlights showing where the AGW issue stands today.
1) Trenberth is clearly confirming that his beloved ship to fame, fortune and Salvation, the IPCC, is steadily rendering itself irrelevant.
2) Keith Kloor’s bet will be a losing proposal, since the IPCC and all momentum will finally be lost to oblivion as the USA drills its way back to prosperity in the coming years.
3) Clinton can go on deluding himself that he is making end-runs around the deniers. In the meantime, his economic models will keep failing where the green love children of electric cars, wind and solar power are concerned, just as they did for Carter. Engineers will keep improving the energy efficiency of just about everything we use because that’s what they do for a living.
4) Lomborg is 110% correct.
5) I’ve been openly worried about the black eye science in general is getting with the public due to the AGW nonsense. Why is it that the smartest people are the most obtuse when it comes to the public perception of their ravings? Oh, right: hubris.
Amazing how George Bush saw it all so clearly. “W” inherited all of Clinton’s corporate scandals; all of the chickens came home to roost in 2002–e.g., Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, Global Crossing… and then, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 simply shot in the head all of the horses in the country that were pulling the load. And, we’re not supposed to remember that the Democrat party blasted Bush for telling Americans to go shopping when Bush was actually pleading with Americans to fight against the fear tactics of Osama bin Laden and to carry on life as usual and not let the terrorists win in the aftermath of 9/11.
One can gauge quite a lot about Trenberth’s mental attitude to the IPCC from the Climategate2 e-mail attached. It does not ring to me loudly of an objective scientist trying to establish the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But more of a politician who is delighted that an apparently objective report has come to the political conclusions he wanted.
‘0462.txt (h/t to Rog Tallbloke)
date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:58:09 -0700
from: Kevin Trenberth
subject: The first Nobel and other Christmas greetings
to: IPCC-group
Seasons greetings to you all, my fellow Nobel Laureates (even if we did not get to go to
Oslo).
I just want to wish you and your families all the best for the holiday season, and Merry
Christmas to those of you who celebrate that festival. As part of IPCC we have achieved
something to be proud of. Thankyou for being a part of it with me.
At NCAR at the Christmas party a group made up a song that mentions by name all the NCAR
LAs in AR4. The song is below. You may appreciate it. (or not).
All the best for 2008.
Kevin
Sung to tune of The first Noel
Our First Nobel
Our First Nobel, for the IPCC,
Goes to Beth, Bette, Bill, Jerry, Kathy and Guy.
Kevin, Linda, Paty, Re-to and so many more,
And we’re sharing the honor with Mister Al Gore.
Nobel, Nobel, a story to tell,
We hope our coworkers’ egos don’t swell.
The First Working Group said to sound the alarm,
Rising CO2 levels are causing great harm.
Temperatures and greenhouse gas are racing up neck and neck,
Soon the whole Earth will be hotter than heck.
Nobel, Nobel, the planet’s unwell,
This is the future the models foretell.
The Second Working Group said that change is assured,
>From the melting of glaciers to migration of birds.
>From loss of land and crops to habitats,
How can they make it much clearer than that?
Nobel, Nobel, the oceans swell,
Polar bears search for new places to dwell.
We must work to mitigate, tells us Working Group Three,
Change from fossil consumption to clean energy.
If we all do our share in reversing the trend,
Our children might have a clean Earth in the end.
Nobel, Nobel, sound the warning bell,
Let’s make a future where all can live well.
Nobel, Nobel, we are stars for a day,
Can an Oscar be far away?
–
****************
Kevin E. Trenberth
Since I have been contributing to peace in Europe for the last 25 years you may now all refer to me by my proper title. Alongside such giants as Al Gore and Kevin Trenberth (and, gladly, Judith Curry, too) I am now a Nobel Laureate. We’re all working hard on a song, but there’s this little squabble over what language it will be written in.
Eat your hearts out, all you Americans who stayed home.
P.S. I’m still waiting for my checks, the one from Oslo and the others from Big Oil.
– Trenberth is depressed he’s lost influence and is blaming it on his supposed inferiors.
– Kloor is making a naive static analysis that assumes future conditions favorable to his take on climate change but there’s always more to the equation.
– Clinton is right that all thing boil down to financials, but too frequently government imposition doesn’t solve the problem and often creates others.
– Lomborg and Pielke correctly identify the outcome of ‘crying wolf’ too loudly.
So they all ‘make sense’ in highly restricted ways about different things.
Pretty much. Nice and succinct.
Agree.
Only disagreement is that Clinton does not realize or will admit how bad the financials are for non-carbon energy sources. Absent a miracle of technological innovation the financials just don’t make sense
Agree as well and thanks for being concise. Wish that more posters can be concise as well.
I guess it is not politically correct to remember that Clinton was actually impeached during his last term in office. The Clintons have a problem: they cannot tell the truth. Bill Clinton’s AR bar license was revoked because he lied under oath. And of course there was the Whitewater Scandal. Whitewater was Hillary’s only client in AR where she drew a salary as a figurehead partner of the largest law firm in AR. Hillary’s salary was the way connected insiders paid off Governor Bill Clinton for political favors–which was the only way to get anything done in the state.
It was machinations like those practiced at Whitewater that helped usher in all of the 2002 corporate scandals and the big “dot.com” boom which became a big “dot.com” bust of 2001, which in turn resulted in the loss of billions of dollars, a stock market crash, unemployment and abandoned Porsches in parking lots across the Silicon Valley.
Remember the Vain…
http://www.examiner.com/article/in-copenhagen-clinton-pledges-100-billion-for-climate-change-with-conditions
those were, the days.
Sadly I find myself in agreement with Bill Clinton.
The economics of burning coal are not what they once were in much of the US and the world.
Our current glorious leader will make his Copenhagen commitments without need for further legislation. Coal consumption in the US for the first half of 2012 was down 100 million tons from 2010. Waxman-Markey was designed to force a more ‘gradual’ reduction.
harrywr2
Yeah. And the reduction in coal consumption occurred without any (direct or indirect) carbon tax.
Max
Like all the smart political tacticians, Bill Clinton is using climate change as a euphemism for a change in energy policy:
Note that this passage has a dual meaning that is pretty apparent to all but the most naive. The old fossil fuel energy economy will not last. If we look at the reserves of conventional crude oil, it is clear that these are all being “burned up”, regardless of the effects they have on the climate.
Plain as day. Just as I have been saying, the risk mitigation for climate change and fossil fuel depletion has exactly the same considerations.
“clean energy” == “energy efficiency” is an equivalence to Clinton, and the savings will be the same independent of the initial rationalization.
Every intelligent politician is using climate change as a smokescreen to make theEven Romney’s ghost-writers are pushing this.
Webby
You are spot on about “energy” and “energy efficiency” being key issues for the USA (and world) as former US President Bill Clinton states.
And there is no doubt that this intersects with “global warming”.
But I think that the “driver” is now more and more becoming “energy” (including “energy efficiency”) rather than averting disastrous “climate change” from AGW, which people are becoming increasingly aware is physically impossible, no matter how much money one throws at it.
Max
Where is money being thrown that is effectively being squandered?
1.Toward CO2 sequestering schemes? Perhaps, as this requires lots of extra energy to get the CO2 from a high entropy state to a low entropy state.
2. Toward clean-coal technologies? Perhaps, as we might be getting to diminishing returns on scrubbers and serious EROEI limitations.
But AFAIAC, incidental squandering of money on renewable energy R&D is just a cost of doing business. The nationalized corporations (AKA state capitalism) are putting money into this, and if we don’t follow their lead, we get left behind.
If you got left behind on the train to Auschwitz, that’s a good thing – it would be great to get left behind on green energy, at least for now, when we have nuclear and nat gas (and coal and oil), to burn.
Hey WHT – check this one out. Could be (another) oil and gas game changer.
“Stark explains in part how the discovery was made, “Technology transfer is a huge part of this business right now. We’re accessing what were once considered just source rock. To be able to do that takes technology. Anything we learn on one resource play can be transferred to the next play. There’s always some adjustment here and there, but the bottom line is the technology we have perfected in the Bakken is directly transferable to what we’re doing here in the Woodford.”
This new discovery announcement shouldn’t be taken lightly. Continental is the largest producer, driller and leaseholder in the new Bakken field. The company produced 22.2 million barrels of oil over the past year, has 576 net wells in the region and has identified at least 4,000 potential wells.
For observers the key is Stark’s comment, “We’re accessing what were once considered just source rock.”. Many oil reservoirs are pooled from seeps out of source rock where the oil formed. Pooled reservoirs are not the whole of the reserve, but only the easily accessed and freest flowing of the petroleum.
We’re still learning about subsurface oil and gas. The amounts of oil and gas to be recovered are still incalculable. The extent of petroleum to be discovered isn’t known. How much oil is in source rock from the reservoirs already found is still a big question without hard answers.
The new Woodford Shale discovery is great news for the U.S. Once the world’s largest oil producer, the U.S. could do it again in phase two of mankind’s oil age.”
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2012/10/11/huge-oil-strike-in-oklahoma/
jim2, you are quite the sick little puppy. As children, both my parents passed through Auschwitz towards the end of the war. They and my grandparents and aunts and uncles all got on the train.
What the heck am I doing here … its because I choose to do what I can.
So, contrary to what your twisted mind thinks, our adversary is not some crazed sect of people, but an inanimate resource of fossil fuel sitting underground. The fossil fuel is passive and won’t attack us — we just have to think about what we should do when that fuel depletes. Other countries still have fuel resources left in which to leverage and find new sources of energy with.
Is this premise too complicated for you to wrap your mind around?
I’m sorry WHT, about whatever may have happened to your family, but the emotional approach to debate is repulsive to me. It is a old liberal tactic in the same bucket as scaring seniors about social security, so don’t vote for conservatives. Stop it already, you sick puppy. There is nothing wrong at all with fossil fuels and everything wrong about solar and wind. This doesn’t take a genius to figure out.
Jim 2 and Web
As you both know, there is one main thing wrong with both wind and solar: they only generate power between 20 and 30% of the time (if you’re lucky). And it’s not necessarily the same time as when power is needed.
So they are good for small local power generation, when there is a backup, but worthless as a major supply source.
Figure out a way to reliably and economically store that electrical power for when it’s needed and they could be viable sources for a larger portion of the total. A good place for some basic research (partly subsidized with taxpayer funding?).
Web is right about carbon sequestering (CCS) schemes. A total waste of energy as well as money to achieve zilch. A bad place to spend taxpayer money IMO.
“Clean coal” (central stations with complete flue gas cleanup to remove all harmful pollutants) makes sense for nations with large coal deposits (USA, Australia, South Africa, etc.). No taxpayer funding needed
Studies have shown that current nuclear technology, including costs for spent fuel disposal, competes with “clean coal” with no carbon tax in most countries.
Improved nuclear technology (fast breeder, thorium, etc.) will solve much of the spent fuel problem and (very likely) bring the cost down as well. I do not know whether basic research work is still required here or to what extent there is taxpayer funded work going on. Maybe Web knows.
So it looks to me that there are places where the government can make a difference by supporting selected basic research work with taxpayer money.
This is all about electrical power generation.
Transportation is a totally different story, and here we’ll probably be relying on oil plus natural gas, including the vast shale deposits (or liquid fuels from coal). And in the short term the USA will be hostage to the OPEC until its government decides to “drill, baby, drill”.
And, while I have seen estimates that North America could supply all its own liquid motor fuel needs within 5 to 10 years with such a program, even then this would probably mean that sooner or later the USA would run out of oil and gas and would also have to start making liquid fuels from its large coal reserves as South Africa does. No basic research required here as this technology exists commercially.
Then there are bio fuels and various ethanol sources. Corn ethanol has been a (partially taxpayer funded) economic disaster and there isn’t enough agricultural crop land in the USA to grow the ethanol required to replace gasoline. A bad place for taxpayer money.
Various oil companies and others are working on algae, etc., and some of the basic research may be getting direct or indirect taxpayer funding.
Finally, there is elimination of waste and energy efficiency improvement, no doubt a very good thing. To what extent the government should subsidize these efforts directly with taxpayer funds depends on what the taxpayers want (via their elected representatives).
That’s my understanding.
So the “Great Explainer” may be right on a lot of the alternates for the USA (and the world), but maybe for the wrong reasons.
Just my opinion, and I’m sure Web has other thoughts.
Max
Max @ 6.40 re thorium: the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory did a position paper on thorium in August 2010. Very recently, they did a brief update assessment which I cited on CE, I can’t remember the thread. In essence, they said (a) much work and great expense needed; (b) uneconomic for countries with existing nuclear power; (c) maybe valid for India which has thorium and is starting from scratch. Peter Lang et al cited other material re small-scale thorium plants.
Max, correction, I drew on the 2010 NNL paper, I thought I’d seen an update.
Similar mitigation considerations, but not the exactly the same. For example, CO2 sequestration makes little sense except where used as tertiary oil recovery (reduces viscosity, enhances net recovery factors in many (but not all) reservoir types.
The energy problems will be bigger, sooner, than is commonly understood. For example, all the press about the ‘new’ horizontal drilling and tracking technology that unlocks tight oil and has caused a temporary natural gas glut (depressing coal). There is less there, and it will be produced more slowly (independent of how many wells) because of their faster decline rates. Thinking these newly producible resources salvage the situation shows a lack of basic understanding of the resource and the technology. There are some superficial examples here, for example Continentals estimate of the Woodford shale, itself at most about 1/3 of the Bakken.
At a minimum, none of the SRES scenarios can be ‘true’. See Rutledge’s Caltech presentation (available on line free), as just one among many. The topic is covered in the upcoming book Arts of Truth, complementing the previous guest posts Dr. Curry kindly enabled here. The energy issue is covered in more depth in Gaia’s Limits. There are any number of other books well worth reading specific to peak oil production. The first two of Deffeye’s three recent books, plus Twilight in the Desert, would be good starters for those interested in digging further into the energy ‘science’, rather than rely on the blogosphere.
Let’s see Rud – I can believe you, or I can believe the balance sheet of the O&G companies. I think I’ll go with the balance sheets. Sorry.
jim2, What exactly are you referring to? . Those O&G companies don’t exist to assuage your fears. They exist to make money, and many make it by trading.
And more importantly, the O&G companies are barely even relevant on a global scale. In actuality, it is the national oil companies that control the vast majority of the world’s reserves of oil and gas:
http://www.realclearenergy.org/charticles/2012/07/09/sovreign_oil_companies_now_dominate_world_oil_106619.html
Do you believe the balance sheets of the nationalized oil companies? Remember, they don’t have to play by any of our rules.
A whole universe of facts seems to exist outside your own personal opinion sphere.
Yes, Rud and WHT, the O&G companies are in a conspiracy against you and the other peak oilers. They will even risk prison to mislead you and, in the process, investors. Yeah, that’s it!
Please remember jim2 when you speak speak “tongue-in-cheek” with AGW True Believers that you are talking to persons who suffer from Hot World Syndrome and being insensitive to their infirmity is not cool. You’re not an employer so there are no legal consequences but still, could you try in the futuure to not to be so politically incorrect?
jim2,
The search for and development of alternative energy schemes is driven largely because of the realization that fossil fuel reserves can’t last forever.
Too bad that you have these cornucopian delusions of plenty. People believe weird things.
Having just walked out of an industry conference in central Queensland – exports of gas increasing fivefold in the next decade and coal exports more than 3 times. There are hundreds of years of coal and gas resources and relatively inexpensive ways of turning these into liquid fuels. It is all happening in the market as we speak. The US EIA projects rising liquid fuels volumes to at least 2035.
Sequestration of carbon is in fact simple and has major benefits in a number of other areas. Feeding the world for one. Why is any of this a problem?
‘Agriculture is thought to have developed about 12,000 years ago and since that time has changed the face of the planet in a slow but relentless transformation. However, researchers and ecologists of the 21st century have interests and concerns that were not even considered by scientists of any other time in our history. Global climate change is one of the areas receiving a great deal of attention and research effort.
Soil organic matter plays a critical role in the global C cycle. The importance of soil in the C cycle is due to its role as both a major source and sink for C in the biosphere. The total soil C pool is three times greater than the atmospheric C pool and 3.8 times greater than the biotic C pool (19). The soil C pool contains about 1.7 X 1012 tons of organic C and about 8.3 X 1011 tons of inorganic C to a depth of 3.3 feet (20).
Although the soil C cycle is complex, the concept of C sequestration for mitigating the release of greenhouse gases is relatively straightforward. Carbon stored in soils ties up C that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere as C-containing greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Scientists are keenly interested in determining the extent to which atmospheric carbon can be diminished by storing C in soils.’ http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/M1273.html
Chief
The paper you cited on Soil Organic Matter and Soil Organic Carbon is very interesting. Thanks for posting it.
This looks like it could be an interesting method for carbon sequestration, and it would be interesting to see some estimates of just how much CO2 could be sequestered in soils and at what cost.
Since it appears that SOM also improves agricultural yields but the whole concept is still in its infancy, there appears to be a major economic incentive to do more basic research work here, quite apart from any side benefits of sequestration of CO2.
You didn’t quote the concluding paragraph of the study, so I’ll do it here.
Good stuff.
That’s the kind of basically new thinking that’s needed – not a top down, bureaucratically administered, direct or indirect carbon tax that would achieve nothing but cost for everyone.
Max
http://www.soilcarbon.com.au/case_studies/index.html
http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5738e/y5738e00.htm
If we can get a 1% increase on agricultural soils – that’s 500 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. Well worth it because it has all these other benefits – not least feeding the world.
About 15% of Australian farmers are conservation farmers – and the number is rapidly increasing because it is so productive.
http://www.confarming.org.au/
Judith Curry
You ask your denizens “who makes sense?”
Trenberth’s lament sounds like a retake of “it’s a travesty” – only this time it’s the IPCC process (last time it was the climate itself). He seems to be sad that the “glory days” are over – sic transit gloria.
Kloor’s prediction that the politics of AGW will return as a “major issue” is poorly founded IMO. Fads usually die out and get replaced, but rarely return.
Explainer-in-Chief (aka “Slick Willie” in Arkansas) can spin the words like no one else (“I did not have…”). But now it’s really all about “energy” and “energy efficiency” – not “global warming” (or “climate change”) – even though these intersect by definition
Lomborg’s article explains one major reason why the AGW hysteria fizzled: over-hyped fear-mongering never works for long.
Pielke’s essay is spot on. Spreading disinformation backfires. When this is done by scientists to promote a political agenda, it risks the credibility of science itself.
All interesting articles.
Max
“This collection provides a wide range of perspectives. So who do you think is making sense? Trenberth? Kloor? Clinton? Lomborg? Pielke Jr?”
They all ‘make sense’ viewed in appropriate context. But that is not a very discriminating answer. What you really have me pondering is ‘what does it mean to say something makes sense?’ and ‘how does that phrase confound attempts at communication?’ Meanwhile I will follow the foodfight.
Clinton makes perfect sense.
Trenberth makes the most sense. It sure is hard to get a consensus if you include people that don’t agree with you.
“.. If the economy continues to rebound and severe weather continues to be associated with global warming, I bet the politics of climate change will soon return to what they were in 2008, when both major parties in the U.S. agreed that reducing greenhouse gases was an imperative…”
Not a snow balls chance in hell. Climategate changed all.
And weather is now cliimate??….LoL….so record snow and ice is now proof of CAGW !!
“Any bets on this prediction?”
AGW is dead and buried from a policy standpoint. The alarmists just don’t know it yet.
“So who do you think is making sense? Trenberth? Kloor? Clinton? Lomborg? Pielke Jr?” (and I’ll add Judith Curry?)
All of these perspectives make sense; some ironically so.
Lomborg’s pot-kettling shows so little self-awareness as to leave my jaw gaping, but contains truths, albeit one suspects thinly draped over ulterior and sordid nonsense: the same criticisms as the Lomborg piece makes against alarmists of all stripes (Lomborg himself possibly chief among them) apply equally, for instance, to Dr. Curry’s favorite caricaturist’s work, and to many even of the moderate Denizens here. It would be hard indeed to open one’s mouth, set pen to paper, strike keys on a keypad or touchscreen and not fall afoul of Lomborg’s overly broad scary picture net. And it isn’t even Hallowe’en yet.
Trenberth and Curry’s contrarian relationship (its mimickry of a married couple’s approach to what to watch on television aside) over the IPCC and open, participatory Science throws into sharp relief the divide inflicted on the framing of all issues in Science by the foot-draggingly slow parasitic processes built around communicating Science due the arcane and archaic publication world that leeches the life out of exchange of ideas like a lamprey. Put some salt on that thing and get on with Science, cut out the sources of adverse rewards that lead to hording data and obscuring information, fix the monkish agoraphobia of the system and just get it done.
Clinton — and I say this as someone so positioned on Capitalism and the Market that the only room to the Right is padded and requires a straight-jacket to take up residency in — is not wrong on the economics. Not even a little. Kloor isn’t perfectly correct, but he’s interesting.
Speaking of, Pielke Jr.’s writing.. does anyone else get the feeling the target of most of it is his dad?
@bart r
Not often I agree with you, but your comments about the publication process are spot on.
It might have been appropriate for the 1860s when ink on paper and the penny post were just about the only means of communication available in addition to face-to-face convesation.
But nowadays – as this blog and many other show – there is no real reason why ideas can’t be disseminated and criticised in near real-time.
And AFAICT the only reason for the old journal based system being retained at all is to feed the rather ridiculous academic reward system. Which looks to outsiders like a combination of the more vacuous Hollywood awards ceremonies and the infant school brownie point system.
With the internet and search engines all of this falls away. You do not need a special peer-review system, when the awful example of Gergis et all shows that the blogosphere can provide in a few days what peer-review failed to do in a year. And you don’t need to spend the year waiting for space and time and typesetting in a printed journal when the internet provides near limitless capabilities.
And lastly, it gives you as much space and accessibility as to meet the dreams of any believer in scientific openness. No more are they limited in how much can be made available, or how it is stored or how to transmit it.
Surely this is every researchers concept of academic heaven…all the data you need, easily accessible from anywhere!
Also relevant to the Climate Etc topic “critical thinking” is an article this week in Psychological Science by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues:
Perghaps this article will stimulate Anthony Watts/WUWT to add to the already-impressive WUWT portfilio of nineteen recent anti-Lewandowsky editorials! ;) :lol: :roll: :lol: :roll: :lol:
Seriously, the furious response of climate-change denialists to Lewandowsky’s critical analysis itself constitutes strong evidence that Lewandowsky’s critical analysis is substantially correct. As is typical, whenever a climate-change message is irrefutable, denialists respond by attacking the messenger . :lol: :lol: :lol:
Good on `yah, Lewandowsky! ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
By this reasoning Bush was the best president we ever had.
Lewandowsky didn’t need to do his fake study to tell the world that WUWT-style deniers are pathetic rubes who believe in conspiracies and the boogieman. Just like we don’t need no stinkin studies to explain the Chicken Little mental defects and resulting hysteria exhibited by you and your lot. Don’t fret Fan, a Steely Dan will cure your “issue”.
Sorry mate, I had you confused with Barney.
Stay thirsty my friend.
Fan
I hate to say it but you are right, nineteen posts-I’ll take your word on hatt-is too many by about 17
tonyb
LOL … yes climatereason, rational skepticism “trusts *and* verifies” … verifying the nineteen-post count is readily accomplished at the WUWT-hosted “Tag Archives: Stephan Lewandowsky.”
The reason for WUWT/Watts dislike of Lewandowsky is not readily evident … perhaps these nineteen diatribes are a pre-emptive WUWT strike against *further* critical analysis similar to Lewandowsky’s Misinformation and its correction: continued influence and successful debiasing? :?: :?: :?:
If so, perhaps we can look forward to further WUWT diatribes against Naomi Oreskes and her colleagues too! ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
fan
I lost the will to live on the subject and didn’t consider it important enough to count up everything. Whether your’e exactly rght or slighty wrong doesnt matter. I also got bored with gleick. Perhaps the two are much more important over in the US
tonyb
1. Tribes need targets.
2. Dr. Loo makes a great target for several reasons. least of all his funny name.
3. There is no such thing as too much of a good thing.
4. WUWT is successful because of repeated themes. repitition and then
repetition with variation is key to control. ( building brand associations )
5. It was a slow week in climate and the Antartic foil to the Arctic story didnt have much traction.
If you stand back you can see both side do this. It’s pretty boring. ringe repeat. rinse repeat. All the good stuff happens in the margins.. ask willard.
They’ve taken those little airplanes marking the miles off American highways because too many psychologists got killed trying to take off in them.
==============
Lists look authoritative moshpit?
I think I got the Dr Loo reference – after googling and getting Dr Loo and the filthy fhaleks. A british porno. I’ll go with this instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM
I do not read blogs other than this one. Although I have made a few comments in the past – it never seems a balanced environment on any site. C’est la guerre climatique.
Lewandowsky’s methodology is absurd and Wattt’s methodology is based on – http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/qmws_2010/CountryReport/CS202_Leroy.pdf – let’s see who is right.
Fan,
You are correct that the Lewandowsky affair did not rate “nineteen” posts one one blog. Any “scientist” as despicable and pathetic as Lewandowsky should be totally ignored.
FWIW, all of them make sense, including Junior, even if his reasoning seems to rely on the precautionary principle…
Bill Clinton makes the most sense because 1) he is by far the smartest person of the group 2) he knows how to get *stuff* done and 3) he understands that the root of any response has to make sense economically.
Trenberth admits impotence while singing the same tune that *fixed* him and his comrade’s agenda.
Kloor is superficial as usual and cannot think for himself.
Lomborg and RJPJr are saying essentially the same thing, explaining why Trenberth’s IPCC club was neutered.
I’m going with Lomborg, Pielke Jr, and you.
If the economy continues to rebound and severe weather continues to be associated with global warming,
First, it will take more of a “rebound” than has occurred so far.
Second, it will take a stronger association of severe weather with global warming than has been demonstrated so far.
Third, it will require a demonstrated continuation of warming into the future, something some scientists have predicted will not occur, at least not for a few decades.
Fourth, it will require a disregard for natural variability: floods and droughts, heatwaves and ice storms will continue to occur pretty much as they always have, and dealing with them has a greater priority than dealing with the conjectured mean temperature change.
Lomborg: But, however well intentioned, scaring the public into a predetermined solution often backfires: when people eventually realize that they have been misled, they lose confidence and interest.
Furthermore, it takes much longer to rebuild trust that has been lost than it took to build up trust in the first place. “Once burned, twice shy.” “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” The sayings are endless. “Once the public learns that you are willing to lie to obtain a goal, they never again believe anything that you say.” I think it was Henry Kissinger who said: “You can lie in diplomacy, but you can only do so one time, so you better choose that one time carefully.”
A counterexample among many:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
willard,
I have completely missed your point. To what is that a counterexample, and how so?
MattStat/MatthewRMarler | October 13, 2012 at 1:00 pm |
We see this backfire in Mitt Romney’s running mate, Tommy Flanagan, as he Yeah!-That’s-the-tickets his way stereotype reinforcingly across the public stage in the guise of an Irish fabulit and prevaricating politician both. That’s just too redundant to bear.
We see it too in the unintentional irony of the Republican Party’s mouthpieces attempting to paint Joe Biden as a tired cranky old man with no fresh ideas. Not that they’re entirely wrong, but potkettling on this level may result in a black hole of obsolescence.
And we see it in Lomborg himself, who only has credibility in the world of goldfish perception, where the span of time it takes to circle the fishbowl is enough to be astounded by, “Oh look! A castle!”
And we see it in replies that go straight into polemic examples to make a point.
John Carpenter | October 13, 2012 at 2:13 pm |
Wow. Did you intend that irony? Because if not, that’s First Prize in unintended self-lampoon.
Bart has few equals in the scatological approach to discourse. Throw enough around and hope some sticks is a tired old ploy not worthy of serious consideration. That is the Scatological Spice to a t – uber unserious.
“Wow. Did you intend that irony? Because if not, that’s First Prize in unintended self-lampoon.”
As usual Bart you write words that in the end make no sense. Sorry you can’t understand the point… but I’m not surprised.
Bart R
Naw. He meant it (and he’s right).
Max
manacker | October 13, 2012 at 7:17 pm |
Woot! For the first time in the brief history of Climate Etc. I can recall, we have a (probably) true comment from manacker!
Pointless, but noteworthy for breaking his streak.
Well said. Some people are so full of their self esteem. I doubt Bart R can understood your point.
Lomke & Pielborg – both spot on :)
Lomborg, Pielkie jr, and Curry
This might be a good time to iterate the excellent suggestion from earlier in the week by Latimer Alder, that the Denizens ought pay more attention to Jeremy Paxman, perhaps my favorite foreign English language television meteorology reader.
Overlooking that his overambitious attempts at journalism have led to having his narrow provincial worldview and limited understanding exposed by Ann Coulter, and that embarrassing incident where Iceland’s mayor (or whatever they call their head of state) schooled Paxman on being prepared for an interview, he’s entertaining in that British way, and he’s had his teeth fixed, so isn’t distracting for an American audience to watch, with that bucky hypnotic quality some gumflappers over there have.
And I suspect his foibles may have been inspiration for Aaron Sorkin, so that’s worth looking at all on its own.
Paxman was OK when he started out but he is the classic example of someone believing their own publicity. If there is anyone on British TV more pleased with themselves (except possibly jeremy Clarkson) I’d hate to meet them.
@andrew adams
Possibly true about his egotism.
But the point is that the interviewees hate to meet him too.
Latimer,
I’m sure that’s true – he certainly doesn’t just let them trot out their prepared lines. The problem is that when interviews turn into a battle between the interviewer and the subject it’s often not very enlightening for the viewer. Having said that, the infamous Michael Howard interview is still great to watch.
19 posts or not, what Dr. Lewandowsky has done is despicable by any standards of science, and to leave it lie and not called out for attention would be just as bad. McIntyre feels the same way and has done many posts as well.
I’ve also done hundreds of posts on temperature issues, I have over 7000 now in all. The severity of the problem is directly proportional to the amount of discussion about it.
Compare my 19 posts to the hundreds of negative comments left by “fan” who was the former “A Scientist” at WUWT until I caught him in a lie, and told him that he needed to make good on his promise made in comments when challenging what I was doing. Instead he switches to another fake persona. So much for integrity. Just so people know “Fan” is a medical professional at the University of Washington, and I wonder what his medical peers there would think of his serially taunting emotive behavior on display here.
You can also compare the substance of my 19 posts to the thousands of emoticons used by “Fan” in comments here. It would have been in the tens of thousands if his comments at WUWT were added in, but I purposely turn off emoticons at WUWT because they add nothing to the discussion, especially when used in multiple strings. “Fan” has discovered that Dr. Curry hasn’t yet figured out how to turn off this juvenile feature.
In “Fans” case, it is a clear cut case of “emoticon rape”:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=emoticon%20rape
Lewandowsky has broadly smeared many people by association, using shoddy science and bait and switch ethics approvals in the process. If that offends you that I continue to call that out, so be it. But the arguments being made by “fan” are just noise. Be as upset as you wish.
Correction. That was supposed to read “A Physicist” not “A Scientist”
The public weal is well-served (in my opinion, and the opinion of many) by *impersonal* skeptical analysis of the *strongest* scientific evidence. ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
In this regard, perhaps Climate Etc readers will appreciate — as exemplary of Judith Curry’s recommended style of contemporary critical analysis — Naomi Oreskes’s concise survey of the methodological shortfalls of contempory climate science. ;) :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
After all, no good whatsoever comes when the *weakest* cherry-picked science is subjected to *personalized* denialist attacks, eh? :?: :roll: :?: :roll: :?:
Heh, “Fan” is incorrigible.
Here’s some strong evidence.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/13/ncdcs-new-ushcn-hockey-stick/
Reminder: until you make good on your broken promise you are not welcome to comment further at WUWT under any of your fake persona’s.
WTFUWT sayz: Reminder: until you make good on your broken promise you are not welcome to comment further at WUWT under any of your fake persona’s.
C’mon Ward, can’t you take it a little easier on the Beaver?
Given the choice between his giving further coverage to his DOA ‘paper’ or the Arctic Ice record melt, I’m surprised Watts didn’t do 119 posts on Prof Lew……..mind you, each one of them merely served to demonstrate the phenomenon the survey was investigating.
Superb own goal …….. + 19!!
Howard,
I’d be more interested in Anthony’s deep and abiding concern over a ‘lie’ told by an anonymous poster on a blog, if the said accuser would deal with the rather more serious, and outstanding, matter of earlier accusations directed towards scientists that they had deliberately falsified the US surface station record.
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that this charge has been comprehensively rebutted.
Whether the erroneous charge was laid as the result of monumental scientific incompetence, or deceit, matters only a little (mostly as to whether one wishes to point to intellectual or ethical failings), compared to an honest accounting of the matter.
A fan of *MORE* discourse: After all, no good whatsoever comes when the *weakest* cherry-picked science is subjected to *personalized* denialist attacks, eh?
I think the innuendo that Anthony Watt *personalized” the attack on this Lewandowsky’s work is baseless. At worst, he referred to other shoddy work by Lewandowsky.
As to your main point: Much of the weakest cherry-picked science gets a wide circulation, such as the extravagent claim that Hurricane Katrina was caused (or strengthened) at least in part by global warming, and that more were certain to occur in the subsequent years. In fact, the calls for public action and the occasional alarm that our grandchildren have much to fear are mostly based on such cherry-picked weakest science. The best and most thorough science is full of caveats, showing at best weak relationships between climate change and CO2 change. This best science hardly gets circulated at all.
Therefore, it does a great good to critique the weakest cherry-picked science. Lewandowsky’s work deserves as many comments as necessary to slow its acceptance by the AGW promoters. The work is terrible.
I rather like the emoticons. And why shouldn’t FOMD deck out incisive and impressively informed commentary as (s)he sees fit? Certainly (s)he is poking fun at the contrarians, but they can hardly claim to be standard-bearers for blog etiquette.
Delegitimisation attempts are low kicks and dirty fighting never plays well with the crowd.
I like the emoticons too. I especially like it when they turn themselves into cars and trucks and then back into robots.
So you’re not actually a (real) physicist, Fan? Not surprising.
Not sure why you’re bringing up Naomi Oreskes’ point of view when her expertise isn’t climate science and Watts’ is. Anthony even has a paper that was published in the JGR and Naomi well… doesn’t.
I’m also fairly surprised that she hasn’t changed her point of view regarding models (since her expertise is model verification) since it doesn’t appear that the Multi-model-mean in AR4 is doing all that well for forecast skill: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/arima11-test-reject-ar4-multi-model-mean-since-1980-1995-200120012003/
Fan has a BA in physics from University of Iowa and a PhD in physics from University of Washington. I believe that makes him a bona fide physicist and at the same time makes the universities of Iowa and Washington look like backwoods diploma mills.
19 posts and a mini hissy-fit at Climate, etc. verifies Dr. Lew’s fake but accurate findings based on his *study*. Your incessant bleating about it is not offensive at all… it’s a joke and we are having a laugh.
Semi-outing and implied threat of a full outing of Mr. Fan is cowardly. I hope Dr. Curry deletes your disgusting post.
If the temperature siting problem is so severe to require 7,000 posts, why did you withdraw your rush to post, last minute roping in of Mcyntire, Muller-Killer paper and not release the code and data? Don’t bother, we know the *real* answer and we also know the nature of your previous obfuscations.
“fake but accurate” LOL!
Both Howard and “Fan” provide textbook examples of the rule of “anonymity breeds contempt”.
Oh and the post is still here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
Another one with what we learned from the first discussion is coming. Turns out TOBs was a non-issue after all.
I admire the surface station project. I don’t admire the denier-friendly “environment” and the middle-school girl-gossip focus of WUWT.
The stupidity WUWT perpetuates breeds contempt more than anonymity. In any event, hiding behind computer screens is the biggest factor in internet “Dutch Courage”.
What’s up with no data and code for Mosher to digest?
How many posts asking for data and code did you delete?
Anthony Watts | October 13, 2012 at 2:37 pm |
You got through that lollipop awfully fast.
Have another. No biting this time.
I find nothing contemptible in Howard or Fan’s posts; as I’ve been on the pointy end of their comments on more than one occassion, and have to admit with some introspection that their points are not so far off, I’d have to recommend some introspection on your own part.
Howard and Fan are not fools, and dismissing them in a huff.. especially with the potkettling of invoking Fan’s failure to live up to his promises.. is just made of fail.
I point to:
> “fake but accurate” LOL!
And I point to:
> “anonymity breeds contempt”.
That is not all. I also point to this:
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2012/10/wattsbusters.html
Please allow me to commend to you Tom Paine’s Common Sense, Anthony Watts! :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Why is there never anything of any substance from the usual suspects? I am pretty sure they are fools with scatological proclivities. Double for bart.
Fan is Professor John Sidles of University of Washington Medical School.
He “outted” himself at PJ Media by inadvertantly filling out the email/name form for a comment with the email/name entries switched so his comment appeared with his email address for a name. It was his university email address. He’s never denied who’s behind the trolls “a physicist” or his first(?) reincarnation, after getting banned at WUWT with that handle, “a fan of more discourse”.
This illustrates one of the problems with anonymity – if you screw the pooch with one cowardly anonymous name you can just abandon it and take up a new name in a never-ending stream of second-chances to be a first class troll.
Pathetic.
Lew made Willard Tony Do It.
Yikes!
If “fan” is a medical professional, I’ll keep miles away from wherever he(she?) practices.
Max
Fan’s salary and responsibilities at the University of Washington are a matter of public record. Googling it one discovers he has no responsibilities and is on a leave of absence or something to that effect. At least that was the status in the last public report. It’s comforting to know the professor has no students other than us here where the tuition is in line with the quality of the lectures. ;-)
Anthony Watts | October 13, 2012 at 2:04 pm |
Dude. You’re not actually qualified to speak to the topic of standards of Science. Nor is Mr.McIntyre.
Can you find someone who is, to back up your opinion?
Thanks.
Have a lollipop. Grownups are talking now.
Though to be fair, Lewandowsky was wrong so many ways it leaves one incredulous, in my opinion.
“Have a lollipop. Grownups are talking now.”
Said the scientifically qualified ‘grownup’
John Carpenter | October 13, 2012 at 2:20 pm |
Where did I claim to be qualified (or even grown up)?
“It doesn’t take a great actor to recognize a bad one.” Tim Allen, GalaxyQuest.
“Where did I claim to be qualified (or even grown up)?”
You didn’t… and that’s the funny part… don’t you snicker at people who are even less qualified and more juvenile than those they pass judgement on… I do. snicker snicker
John Carpenter | October 13, 2012 at 5:59 pm |
You don’t spend a lot of time watching professional sports, do you?
Otherwise one would expect by now you’d have died laughing.
Bart, don’t be an idiot, I’m a Cleveland Browns fan… I can’t count the number of times I’ve died laughing.
or crying… you pick.
John carpenter, Cleveland Browns? My sympathy sir.
John Carpenter | October 13, 2012 at 11:05 pm |
Cleveland Browns.. so you _don’t_ spend much time watching pro sports.
Well, I also follow the Indians… soooo….
Again Bart, what the pro sports has to do with my comments, only you seem to really understand. Look, at some time you have to start making sense with your replies or people are going to lose interest.
John Carpenter | October 13, 2012 at 11:25 pm |
You appeared to be connecting the dots in the evolution of the thread well enough up to now. It hadn’t occured you’d need a re-cap of the score, given you were the one pushing the evolution of the sport metaphor.
http://xkcd.com/1120/
Recap: Anthony Watts came here to Judith’s to insult and attack (or counter-insult and counter-attack) one of her Denizens while giving his side of the story on the issue of his practices of internet censorship and betraying confidences as a web administrator. In the process, Mr. Watts made a statement which I took to imply that Anthony Watts believes he is qualified to determine what are and are not Scientific standards. I protested strongly that assertion, based on my knowledge of Watts’ prior failures in the business of asserting scientific standards. Even though the particular scientific paper Mr. Watts refers to is in my layman’s view flawed.
In the process, I may have swept Mr. McIntyre into the topic, due Mr. Watts’ seeking to enhance his own renown by grouping himself with the more illustrious and able — though still wrong — retired Accountant from Scarborough, Ontario.
You then assumed (irrelevantly) I was claiming to be qualified to judge scientific (or grown up) standards myself, which I clarified is no part of my own view on this matter.. Using a sport metaphor.
We all caught up now?
Funny link… so your the one with the hat?
Bart R | October 13, 2012 at 2:12 pm |
Dude. Unless you charge double-overhead barrels, don’t say Dude because you are not qualified.
However, anyone is qualified to speak about any scientific topic that curls their hair. It either makes sense or it doesn’t. It doesn’t require approval from Gavin Schmidt, Mommy or Daddy either. Appeals to authority are a sign you (Bart R) suffer from mental impotence. Regardless of what you or I think, at least Watts and McIntyre have skin in the game, and are willing to face ridicule on the public square.
Howard | October 13, 2012 at 4:24 pm |
You apparently missed the word ‘standards’ (which is an inherent appeal to authority).
I wasn’t making an appeal to authority. I was holding one to its own implicit requirements.
And what the heck kind of skin in the game do Watts or McIntyre have that you or I lack? Do they have an extra set of lungs, that the composition of air is more important to them than to us?
You make it sound like they’re pilloried, set in the stocks, like holy martyrs. Compared to the outlandish outrages they’ve visited undeservingly on Scientists over the years, the mild reproofs they occassionally are subject to makes mockery of your claim.
Bart R you keep mocking yourself. In your pink-pony world, you think Willing to face ridicule = pilloried, set in the stocks, like holy martyrs.
Also, they have published in peer reviewed journals and have contributed in big way to the debate. Point me to your articles and mega popular blogs, then you can claim to have skin in the game.
Howard | October 13, 2012 at 5:09 pm |
So now number of hits on a website=qualified to dictate scientific standards?
Point me to the PhD either has earned in a scientific field, a distinct discipline of standards setting, or one of their peer reviewed papers where they have actually established a standard that wasn’t found so completely lacking as to be dismissed by everyone that isn’t one of their fanboys?
Watts has proven that not only aren’t his own made-up standards for weather stations useless and pointless, but that when he and his merry band attempt to apply actual formal standards from regulations to weather stations, it makes zero difference to the ultimate outcomes on GMT. Well, Muller and Mosher have proven it, but that’s only because Watts is not a man of his own word.
McIntyre is respectably qualified to discuss Accountancy standards, including the standards of organizational audits; but I don’t recall him ever standing up and proclaiming what is and is not a “scientific standard” on his own credentials or authority.
I’d have been fine if Mr. Watts had said something along the lines of, “I don’t believe a scientist would find this up to scientific standards,” and I’m sure there are thousands of scientists who would agree with the position that Dr. Lewandowsky’s paper was so wonkishly nonstandard as to cast doubt on his credibility.. But it was kinda funny, and sometimes in scientific papers that matters, otherwise there’d be no Ig Nobel Prizes.
But Mr. Watts didn’t defer to the authority of actual scientists on this matter of scientific standards, and that’s the problem. I wouldn’t want someone who graduated from Clown College deeming what is and isn’t a Medical Standard, or a proctologist determining what is or isn’t funny about big feet and red noses.
If Mr. Watts were making assertions from authority about television standards, or standards of internet censorship — both of which he’s practiced extensively, and is plainly authoritarian about — that’d be a different matter. But this is science.. and he isn’t.
I was reminded of earlier interactions with bart when I likened him to the famous French flatulist Le Pétomane. I had forgotten that I already had a name for him – and a recording. Perhaps willard will be more appreciative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixKopGjn5s
Is any detail raised by Le Pétomane worth discussing? I shouldn’t think so. The Watts methodology is on the website and in the document from the WMO meeting. I am surprised that so many of the stations remain as Class 1 or 2 – not so comparitively few. No wonder Mosher is so upset – this puts the whole BEST result at considerable risk. Them’s the breaks mosh old buddy.
Bart R
There is no way to respond (of course I didn’t read your pathetic little *Theseus*). Your preconceived notions and deep insecurities are beyond boring. Later, Dude.
Hey Zeus Christo, Chief.
You and Bart are two peas in a pod. Enjoy your pillow fight.
Howard,
I will remember you when I need some shallow and irrelevant advice from a dickwad.
More bloviating… your argument dictates you aren’t qualified to make a judgement of Mr Watts or McIntyre either, which was my point earlier up thread. You painted yourself into a corner on that one… oh well.
John Carpenter,
Bart R’s main argument is contained in this sentence:
> I wasn’t making an appeal to authority. I was holding one to its own implicit requirements.
This argument does not entail being a scientist. It only entails one respects the standard one sets for others. In this specific case, it means that Willard Tony should hold himself to the same standard he wishes others to follow.
In other words, Bart R is accusing Willard Tony and the Auditor of entertaining some kind of double standard. This is a strong accusation. The accusation has merits, if you ask me.
This is a serious matter. I’m not sure that following through this discussion will be to your liking. More so if you stick to ad hominems.
Willard, point well taken.
John Carpenter,
Thanks. I should take the opportunity to tell you that I appreciate your comments, for instance this one:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/08/whats-the-best-climate-question-to-debate/#comment-250667
Your exchange with Joshua might have saved this thread.
I find agreement with most of your comments, even though I might hesitate now that you tell you you’re a Browns’ fan.
PS: Last time I followed baseball, the Indians were quite strong.
Willard, I was just busting Bart’s chops a little. I’m not really interested in ad hom comments, so the ‘bloviating’ comment was perhaps a little over the line.
As for the Browns…. Look, It’s a hometown thing I can’t seem to get over (even though I don’t live there anymore)
Chief.
Let me clue you in.
. As far as my own work goes, my results ( with zeke, nick stokes, matt menne ) are Closer to Watts results ( even his new results ) than they are to the BEST papers. So whether the final answer is
a. 0C ( BEST)
b) .1C ( Zeke, me ect)
c) .15C ( watts)
is LESS interesting to me that the issue of reproduceable results. I’ve said this consistently for the past 5 years. That is not going to change so people just better get over it. I’m going to continue to press for data and code, regardless. Of course, some people like to change their tune and make excuses. I leave it to others to Judge who has been consistent in his principles and who has not been.
Chief Hydrologist | October 13, 2012 at 11:56 pm |
So.. he’ll be always on your mind? Poor guy. I know what it’s like to have an obsessive webstalker.
Le Pétomane,
How could I forget your scatological talents.
I would say that the value of your comments is in inverse proportion to the varbosity – but that isn’t true. It is all worthless.
> However, anyone is qualified to speak about any scientific topic that curls their hair.
Qualification is not a right, nor an entitlement.
John Carpenter | October 14, 2012 at 2:43 pm |
Bills, Sabres, Bison, Bandits, UB Bulls.. and not even a hint of an NBA team since the dim memory of the Braves’ move.. I share your pain.
And I admit to being a bit over-the-top in some of my comments. To which I answer, when in Rome..
Bart R,
Here you go:
> What should the team be called: the Kyoto Flames? the Blades? the Heat? So many decisions, so little time.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/5874729706
Enjoy,
w
Hey Bart, the Browns just defeated the Bengals 34 to 24 ending an 11 game losing streak. This is the launching pad to greatness…here today.
(wishful thinking… Please don’t ruin the moment)
willard (@nevaudit) | October 14, 2012 at 3:12 pm |
I admit, I’m always a bit dubious about the understanding of The Game held by Toronto Maple Leaf boosters.
Their appreciation of the fine points of elbowing and dirty fighting while acting polite? That’s got to be admired.
Steven Mosher | October 14, 2012 at 3:43 pm |
I don’t think anyone would consider it self-promotion if you included a link to your open work.
And one could do worse than recommend people keep current on http://stevemosher.wordpress.com/
Howard,
Yr: “Dude. Unless you charge double-overhead barrels don’t use Dude because you’re not qualified.”
Hey Howard, please forgive me if my comment strikes you as excessively nice-guy, but my previous blast in your direction got creamed by the moderator so I’m toning things down with this shot.
Had to look up that “double-overhang barrels” business. Seems it’s got something to do with the lingo slung by surfer-creep dude-muffins. And you seem to be very protective of the word “Dude”, aren’t you, Howard?
O. K., Howard, I’ll bite. I don’t “charge double-overhead barrels” (whatever that means), but I’m callin’ you a geek-ball dude, DUDE!
So let’s see, Howard, what kinda dude-butt yah got backin’ up your big-talk dude-mouth.
P. S. Hey “crusher crew”–Give us a break will yah? This wrecker-bot, Howard-bozo guy is really an over-the-top creep-out who contributes absolutely nothing to this blog’s commitment to build bridges between us skeptics and you scamster, hive-flunky, lefty greenshirts, you know.
Bart R
As an innocent lurker, I’d say that Anthony Watts has contributed quite a bit to the general public’s knowledge on the ongoing scientific and policy debate surrounding AGW, starting with his rating of US surface stations and going on to creating and managing the one of the most successful “climate” sites, WUWT.
Have you contributed anything useful?
Max
Max,
I would say yes. See above.
Cheers
manacker | October 13, 2012 at 7:25 pm |
Are we judging the general public’s knowledge measured against your own error-prone beliefs?
Bart R,
As a ninja, I’d say that manacker’s claim of being an innocent lurker has no merits.
Lurkers that use tu quoques and ad populums are never that innocent.
“I’d say that Anthony Watts has contributed quite a bit to the general public’s knowledge on the ongoing scientific and policy debate surrounding AGW, starting with his rating of US surface stations and going on to creating and managing the one of the most successful “climate” sites, WUWT.”
Like telling everyone that they can’t believe the world has warmed since 1900?
lolwot,
Anthony’s venue speaks well as an indication of his world view. A world view that clearly encourages independent critical thinkers. His venue’s unprecedented achievements indicate there was a very high demand for increased independent and critical thinking on the IPCC’s so-called ‘consensus’ on climate science.
I can tell it is the most open of climate science venues by just looking at who it’s most vehement antagonists are. The most emotionally biased antagonists are from the controlled /revisionist/ censored venues. Those venues cannot tolerate Anthony’s promotion of free and open discourse in climate science. My case for wholehearted support of Anthony’s venue rests. : )
I hope his amazing energy continues and hope he continues to inspire others to create venues that emulate his venue!
John
John Whitman | October 14, 2012 at 12:08 pm |
You break me up! That is hilarious! I love that “independent and critical thinking” bit!
And the “controlled /revisionist/ censored venues” jab is priceless!
You need to put a warning on your stuff when you’re going to be that funny; I shudder to think the number of spit-takes on keyboards and changes of pants the unaware were subject to from this dead-on lampoon.
Now there’s more ice at South Pole than ever (So much for global warming thawing Antarctica!)
See Graph of Maximum Sea Ice Extent
Actually, for the Daily Mail that’s not a bad article. Shame about the stupid headline but otherwise quite reasonable.
David
Oops!
You mean to tell me that the current “global warming” is NOT “global”
(Isn’t that what some guy measuring tree rings in US bristlecone pines claimed about the Medieval Warm Period?)
Max
Who ever said that warming would be uniform across the entire globe? What does the “A” in GAT stand for? People who say that current trends in the Antarctic contradict AGW “theory” just prove that they don’t understand the theory.
andrew adams
I fully agree that a “global” trend does not need to be a “universal” trend (what the hell, a good third of all those many thermometers out there don’t even see any “global warming” this time around).
The point is simply that CAGW aficionados have argued that the Medieval Warm Period, which is well documented in many parts of the world, was not a “global” phenomenon, because there “may” have been locations, where the temperature was not unusually warm.
Same argument, different time period.
Max
Is there an AGW theory?
Perhaps not:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/8960561626
Does CAGW refers to something?
Perhaps, but manacker has difficulty quoting something (anything) directly from the IPCC. The best he did so far is to handwave to the SPM.
> [T]he Medieval Warm Period, which is well documented in many parts of the world.
Citation needed.
For now, we do know that this has been documented in Washington, in WSJ, in Inhofe 2012, etc.:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/10/08/more-use-and-abuse-of-ipcc-1990-fig-7-1c/
Max,
Sure, the fact that particular locations were relatively cool during the MWP does not mean that is wasn’t warm globally, just as the fact that individual locations were warmer than today doesn’t mean that it was warmer overall.
Ultimately to make a judgement on the MWP we need a global reconstruction, and there is no credible global, or even NH, temperature reconstruction which shows MWP temperatures warmer than today’s, although given the size of the error bars it can’t entirely be ruled out.
“Ultimately to make a judgement on the MWP we need a global reconstruction, and there is no credible global, or even NH, temperature reconstruction which shows MWP temperatures warmer than today’s, although given the size of the error bars it can’t entirely be ruled out.”
It seems if reconstruct histories glaciers globally, in terms of there advancing and retreat, this would helpful in assessing MWP as it compares to the present time.
Willard,
I agree with MT’s argument about “AGW theory”. I think the same could be said of “CAGW theory”, more so in fact because for a start we have separate questions of whether the world will continue to get warmer and by how much (itself two separate questions), and what the resulting impact will be. And the latter question is a judgement we have to make based on a number of different theories about various possible impacts of warming.
I do think it is generally accepted that there was a MWP which was relatively warm in the context of the last 1,000 years and that during this time some parts of the world were warmer than in modern times.
Here is paper which shows this, in particular it would seem to support the skeptics’ claims about Greenland being suitably hospitable for Viking settlements. No doubt the author will be in trouble if the “Team” find out about this.
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/MannetalScience09.pdf
gbaikie,
I think your reply got slightly garbled but that sounds reasonable.
Andrew,
It seems that the world has been turned upside down.
A renegade from the Kyoto Flames talks about the MWP as if it existed; auditors telling we might be living in an “unprecedented” times:
> The idea that present temperatures are “unprecedented during the past several centuries” was definitely not original to the Mann hockey stick, as this view dated back to at least Hubert Lamb and could be said to be a consensus view.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/33641595222
More about the Lamb over there:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/10/10/adoration-of-the-lamb
Willard,
auditors telling we might be living in an “unprecedented” times:
Ah, but still plenty of old favourites as well – Yamal, bristlecones, upside down proxies, hide the decline.
I guess it’s like a rock star adding an unreleased track to their latest Greatest Hits collection, just to keep the fans interested.
And I make no comment regarding the accusation of bait and switch against Lew.
Denier Porn
I bet you really get off on proving what an insignificant little dickwad you are.
Did your mother have any children who lived, Howard?
When Chief and David get their panties in a bunch and drool uncontrollably, you know that “denier porn” hit the bulls-eye in their deep unconscious.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
No – what was objected to was the mindless drivel. Why would you think that was a contribution of any worth at all? Insignificant is about the best that can be said.
My point had intrinsic value in that it made you and Dinglefritz whinge. Like a bass mouthing the hook on a flashy spoon. I see your other point, Chief: by definition, truth is insignificant to deniers.
For current original evidence see WUWT’s Sea Ice Page- Global Sea Ice Reference Page: Arctic and Antarctic current graphs and imagery
evidence and WUWT in the same sentence = oxymoron
Howard
Can you show that any of the resource links provided in the WUWT reference pages do NOT link to sources of evidence?
Can you show any evidence that needs to be added to complement what is there?
Otherwise, by applying critical thinking,
Lack of evidence = non-scientific illogical argument.
I look forward to your rising to providing some coherent argument.
Ring Lardner tells a shaggy climate story.
==========
Hmmm. Which of five ardent lefties make the most sense? Probably Pielke, Jr. and Lomborg because they are the only ones of the 5 to raise any honest questions about the dominant left-wing narrative.
But these five represent “diversity” in the same way that US presidential debates achieve diversity in moderators — an old liberal, a female liberal, a male liberal, and a female liberal with a personal relationship to the president.
Pingback: U.S. politics and the greenhouse | Living on the Real World
Pielke Jr. and Lomborg both state the same truth — those who exaggerate threats (or just make them up whole cloth) for a ‘noble cause’ are soon found out and it is the cause that suffers the damage. Only those who closely follow the topic will remember that it was Bill Clinton who used the phrase “saving the planet is better economics than burning it up” but the majority will know that Global Warming/Climate Change/whatever and driving their gasoline powered cars is not going to ‘burn up’ the planet and the majority will tune-out Climate Change alarms just a little more, turning down their ears and minds one more notch.
As it stands now, the percentage that believe CliSci is an important issue has dwindled to the point where it is the absence of the issue in US Presidential politics that has people talking.
That said, ‘Extreme Weather’ is a great stick for the Climate Alarmists to use — everyone always thinks the weather is worse today (this year, this decade, this century) — ‘We don’t get snow like we used to in my day’ and ‘We never used to get this much snow’ are equally agreed with, even within the same community. And there is always a new weather record being set somewhere to point to (MattStat I believe can explain why this is true, and will always be true.)
Even though Clinton is [explanation deleted] … his claim that a good economic solution to the energy needs of the world is what is needed is absolutely correct — Revkin calls this the Great Energy Quest. Cheaper, more plentiful, cleaner, more dependable energy sources are The Solution to a basketful of many diverse problems. Mankind just has to come up with them now…..there are several on the scientific horizon.
Judith asks: what makes sense? what do we predict? Here are two predictions: the climate change debate will recede into the background, and be replaced by still-more-vigorous debate on the large issues of sustainability. The IPCC process will continue, but be streamlined and be internalized into world affairs (and therefore itself be more sustainable). I offer a fuller description here:http://www.livingontherealworld.org/?p=743
Too reasonable to be discussed.
I will only note that a good bet to predict the future is to actually describe the present.
Where’s the accountability? Why should politicians and academics be held to a different standard to any business that knowingly engaged in fraud?
If we exercise just a modicum of reason, we know that humanity has much more to fear from a trend of prolonged cooling than warming. And, if reality dictates, we have as much reason to believe that there may be more global cooling than warming in our future. Moreover, if the Earth descends into another ice age by the end of the century, what can Climatists of global warming alarmism do about it? Give us our money back?
We know what triggers violent volcanic explosions
This may help predict volcanic erruptions and the consequent impact on climate.
You don’t like to drill down too deep. This is an interesting paper that does nothing to predict volcanic erections.
I assume that is a failed attempt at a joke on the level one might expect from a 10 year old – either that or it is a successful attemp at idiocy.
Wait’ll you hear the jokes from the third childhood.
========
Howard
I provided a hint for a series of potential PhD theses. You are welcome to pick one of the implications and pursue it! Prove what you can achieve.
Check out Do Hard Things – Rebel against low expectations!
Carry On Mr. Bowditch
An example of what can be achieved with minimal education.
Check them out. You might be surprised at what you can achieve.
“JC comment: This collection provides a wide range of perspectives. So who do you think is making sense? Trenberth? Kloor? Clinton? Lomborg? Pielke Jr?”
Kloor and Clinton:
“If the economy continues to rebound and severe weather continues to be associated with global warming, I bet the politics of climate change will soon return to what they were in 2008, when both major parties in the U.S. agreed that reducing greenhouse gases was an imperative.”
And:
“Their view is, ‘Look, this may be good, this may be bad. But God almighty the world is coming apart at the seams economically and we’ve got other fish to fry. We have to deal with other things.’ ”
And:
“Y’all got on this boat for different reasons, but y’all come to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this – they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.”
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, ‘Serenity’
What – most recent warming was something other than CO2? Who would of thunk it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf4LXv6r_cs&feature=player_embeddedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf4LXv6r_cs&feature=player_embedded
You can set your dial on global cooling – gatesy – as the global system moves into a 1000 year cool mode of much more frequent and intense La Nina.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg
‘ENSO causes climate extremes across and beyond the Pacific Basin, however evidence of ENSO at high southern latitudes is generally restricted to the South Pacific and West Antarctica. Here we report a statistically significant link between ENSO and sea salt deposition during summer from the Law Dome (LD) ice core in East Antarctica. ENSO-related atmospheric anomalies from the central-western Equatorial Pacific (CWEP) propagate to the South Pacific and the circumpolar high latitudes. These anomalies modulate high latitude zonal winds, with El Niño (La Niña) conditions causing reduced (enhanced) zonal wind speeds and subsequently, reduced (enhanced) summer sea salt deposition at LD. Over the last 1010 years, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below average (El Niño-like) epochs, 1000-1260 AD and 1920-2009 AD, and a longer above average (La Niña-like) epoch from 1260-1860 AD. Spectral analysis shows the below average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2-5 years, while the above average epoch is associated more with variability around 6-7 years. The LDSSS record is also significantly correlated with annual rainfall in eastern mainland Australia. While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910-2009 AD) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and south-eastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.’
Here’s one key issue with the notion that it was the warm phase of the PDO that caused the atmospheric warming of the 1970’s through the 1990’s– no energy is created by this shift, and more remarkably, even though this period favored the El Nino over the La Nina, and given that El Ninos release more heat on average than La Ninas, the oceans continued to accumulate energy during the last warm phase of the PDO, and indeed, continue to accumulate energy during the current cool phase. It doesn’t matter
It is this accumulation of energy in the oceans, regardless of the phase of the PDO that we’re in, that is the most telling evidence that the accumulation is not due to shifts in the PDO. Added to this of course, is the fact that we have a robust theory that explains exactly why we would expect this accumulation of energy as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.
ENSO is interesting, especially to track shorter-term energy exchanges between ocean and atmosphere, and it will be interesting to see how the character of a cyclical event like ENSO changes as energy continues to accumulate in the worlds oceans.
I think you are a robot gatesy – it is the only explanation because you keep coming back with the same discredited argument. Clouds change and force changes in ocean temp.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Clementetal2009.png
We don’t know what was happening to ocean heat content before ARGO and certainly not before the mid 1970’s. We know without a doubt that cloud changes respond to sst change in the Pacific.
‘The overall slight rise (relative heating) of global total net flux at TOA between the 1980’s and 1990’s is confirmed in the tropics by the ERBS measurements and exceeds the estimated climate forcing changes (greenhouse gases and aerosols) for this period. The most obvious explanation is the associated changes in cloudiness during this period.’ http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/projects/browse_fc.html
2.4 W/m2 warming in the SW and 0.5 W/m2 cooling in the IR. We have not just a robust mechanism but data and observations. We can link that with phenomenon and show the the phenomenon vary in coherent ways. The world is cooling. You got nothin’ but handwavin’.
“Clouds change and force changes in ocean temp.”
So clouds have been decreasing for the past 50 years if not longer? Wow. Amazing. Do you have the research I could link to on that?
Hope you don’t mind if I wax a bit skeptical on your cloud explanation until I see the solid research that shows clouds have been decreasing in a way that parallels the rise in ocean heat content.
Chief said:
“The world is cooling.”
___
So, oceans are not part of the world? Are biggest non-tectonic heat sink isn’t part of this world. Wow. Can your hands must be rough from all that cherry picking…especially when you have to ignore the largest non-tectonic energy reservoir of planet Earth to make your absurd claim.
Also, Chief, your net SW down at the surface seems pretty constant to slightly declining over the years (perhaps the quiet sun period we’ve entered):
http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/zFD/an9090_SWdw_srf.gif
Certainly nothing to justify your contention somehow more SW has been entering the oceans. You really need to explain your theory a bit better. The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere explains rising ocean heat content a whole lot better than your unsupported explanation of more SW down at the surface. The data just doesn’t back that up.
R. Gates, I don’t believe it is as much the amount of cloud change as where the clouds change.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/20071203_tropicalbelt.html
Remember, the hemispheres are not created equally. Change the southern tropical belt where there is more precipitation and cloud cover in the Austral spring has more impact than just changes in clouds. It not always how hard you hit something as much as where you hit something. funny huh?
A number of studies have demonstrated the connection of ENSO to radiative flux and therefore to cloud. In an analysis of global warming cloud feedbacks, Dessler (2010) used short term variations in surface temperature and CERES data to determine that cloud cover was negatively correlated with temperature. Dessler also plotted ENSO against surface temperature leaving no doubt that ENSO was the primary cause of the short term temperature variations. Leaving aside anthropogenic global warming – the finding of a positive feedback here is in the first instance an ENSO feedback. As was reported, ‘the climate variations being analysed here are primarily driven by ENSO, and there has been no suggestion that ENSO is caused by cloud variations.’ The study takes a statistical approach that may gloss over the difference in processes in play in ENSO and from global warming.
Zhu et al (2007) found that cloud formation for ENSO and for global warming have different characteristics and are the result of different physical mechanisms. The change in low cloud cover in the 1997-1998 El Niño came mainly as a decrease in optically thick stratocumulus and stratus cloud. The decrease is negatively correlated to local SST anomalies, especially in the eastern tropical Pacific, and is associated with a change in convective activity. ‘During the 1997–1998 El Niño, observations indicate that the SST increase in the eastern tropical Pacific enhances the atmospheric convection, which shifts the upward motion to further south and breaks down low stratiform clouds, leading to a decrease in low cloud amount in this region. Taking into account the obscuring effects of high cloud, it was found that thick low clouds decreased by more than 20% in the eastern tropical Pacific… In contrast, most increase in low cloud amount due to doubled CO2 simulated by the NCAR and GFDL models occurs in the subtropical subsidence regimes associated with a strong atmospheric stability.’
More can be found here – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/
We are talking multi-decadal changes in ENSO and related Pacific conditions. I have linked to NASA/GISS the IPCC, many other and still you just armwave. Do you think you are immune from having to cite any science at all? Or is it just that you have none – you just make it up as you go along.
I linked to observations of cloud changes over decades that are consistent with ocean heat content changes from the 1960’s. I liked to NASA ISCCP-FD who say in no uncertain terms that SW flux changes is dominant.
I have previously linked to Wong et al 2006 – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Wong2006figure7.gif – who show that ocean heat content is consistent with the ERBS radiative flux changes in the tropics.
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ IPCC 3.4.4.1
Low frequency climate variability is certainly real – an certainly occurs over much greater timesacles than mere decades. As the recent study of the Law Dome ice core shows. Here is another one on millennial variability. http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSO11000.gif It is from Tsonis’ Minoan paper – but we can also see a chaotc shift around 3000BC which caused the drying of the Sahel.
I have also linked to CERES and MODIS that shows that any modest warming – in the oceans that I never neglect – in this century was all in the SW.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES_MODIS-1.gif
I wish you would stop using non-tectonic when you mean something other than geologic process. Tectonic comes from the Latin meaning building. So it appliies to forces that shape the Earth but not to the Earth itself.
All reasonable and knowledable scientists acknowledge natural and decadal processes. As La NIna intensifies over the next decade or three the world will be cooler. Beyond that – enhanced La Nina seems more likely than not. The current El Nino mode since the mid 1800’s seems both uncommon in the proxy records and entirely natural.
And you base your in depth analysis that a return to a La Nina mode is highly unlikely based on exactly what? I think that this – along with everything else you say – is pulled entirely out of your arse gatesy.
‘The main variations in the upwelling SW flux at SRF are very muted versions of the features in the upwelling SW flux at TOA except for the sudden decrease in the last couple of months of data: this appears to be an error and is being investigated.’
Eyeball it in did you Gatesy? The change after 1998 is very much part of the climate shift theory leading to muted warming this century despite the return of weak El Nino after 2001 over much of the decade. As the increased cloud persists and builds as La Nina intensifies less energy accumulates in the system.
We want real science not ineptly interpreted graphs gatesy.
Chief,
This bit:
“Dessler (2010) used short term variations in surface temperature and CERES data to determine that cloud cover was negatively correlated with temperature.”
_____
Really? You are tossing Andrew’s paper on net cloud feedback and climate sensitivity as an explanation for what exactly? This would not be to the advantage of proving your point if followed to its logical conclusion.
But really, a more appropriate paper to understand what CERES data can tell us about TOA flux and OHC is this one by Trenberth & Fasullo:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/bquj732425827t15/fulltext.pdf
I think both you and many others will find many interesting little tidbits in here related to ENSO, OHC, and Earth’s overall energy imbalance. Here’s a sample:
“At the TOA, the radiative imbalance is known exactly under these circumstances (Fig. 7). One example (Fig. 7, top left panel) shows that the net radiation at the TOA (RT) is order 1 W m-2 into the climate system. Clearly the planet imbalance is considerable, despite the stasis at the surface, and so where is the energy going?
Examination of the changes in OHC shows clearly that this is the main sink. Indeed, the full-depth OHC continues relentlessly upwards (Fig. 7),”
Really Chief, you miss the very simple in trying to over-explain yourself. It hasn’t mattered in the longer-term what the natural variability has been doing. Ocean heat content has been increasing in the long-term across all the ocean cycles and at all depths. Yes, sure there could be some longer-term low frequency ENSO cycles, but it is still a zero-sum game with longer-term ocean heat content, which has showed a decide penchant to head one way (up) over the long-term for many decades. So how many more decades will ocean heat content have to increase (along with greenhouse gases) before you’d see that the heat content and the level of greenhouse gases are connected through a direct causal relationship? This is not complicated physics.Thicken the greenhouse blanket around the Earth, and heat escapes less readily to space, with the biggest heat sink of the planet storing the largest amount of that extra heat.
Chief said:
“As the increased cloud persists and builds as La Nina intensifies less energy accumulates in the system.”
___
?? Except that clearly has not been the case. Again, see:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/bquj732425827t15/fulltext.pdf
By “the system” we must include the oceans to the greatest depths we are measuring. The system has been gaining energy, despite the La Nina dominance (cool phase of the PDO) currently, or the warm phase PDO from 1970 to the late 1990’s. It has not mattered…up up the energy in “the system” goes…
“Figure 1 is modified slightly from that originally published, as discussed below.” :) 18 Wm-2 of mixed phased cloud missing heat is a slight adjustment compared to a modeled energy imbalance of 0.9 +/- 0.5 now Wm-2? :)
At least you are reading the paper there Captn. Perhaps not fully grasping it by missing the forest for the trees,but it’s a good start.
gates, Trenberth’s over confidence in models is a large part of the problem. The models are actually pretty remarkable when you put the right conditions in, which would be a realistic ocean model that allows for 5,30, 60, 150 and 1430 year oscillations. The models do not represent the real world until long term “unforced variability” is properly considered.
http://amselvam.webs.com/earlsel/socpp.PDF
gates, there is also this, “There is widespread agreement that the global mean surface upward longwave (LW) radiation is about 396 W m-2, which is dependent on the skin temperature and surface emissivity (Zhang et al. 2006).”
Based on the AQUA data before is degradation, the “true” sea surface temperature from a radiant perspective was ~21.1C (425Wm-2). That value checks out pretty well with, though there is a considerable amount of just plain uncertainty which Stevens and Schwartz place in perspective pretty well here, http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/stevensbjorn/Documents/StevensSchwartz2012.pdf
Since the Antarctic is thermally isolated, including it in the “average” surface temperature plus underestimating the “radiant” temperature of the seas, tends to cause a tad of an over estimation of “sensitivity. That is the problem with planetary scale problems, you have to deal with planetary scale complexity.
‘The climate variations being analyzed here are primarily driven by ENSO, and there has been no suggestion that ENSO is caused by cloud variations.’ The cloud variations discussed by Dessler are related to ENSO. You don’t really want to understand that do you?
You bring in T&F 2011? I have read it.
‘With the successes of CERES, variability in the net radiative incoming energy at the TOA can now be measured to within 0.1 W m-2 year-1. Thus, a key objective is to track the flow of such anomalies through the system over time in order to address the question as to how variability in energy fluxes is linked to climate variability. The main energy reservoir is the ocean, and the exchange of energy between the atmosphere and ocean is ubiquitous, so that heat once sequestered can resurface at a later time to affect weather and climate on a global scale. Thus, a change in the energy balance has consequences, sooner or later, for the climate. Moreover, we have observing systems in place that nominally can measure the major storage and flux terms, but due to errors and uncertainty it remains a challenge to track anomalies with confidence.’
It changes nothing of what I said. What little warming there is in CERES – the missing energy – is all in the SW. – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif
“At the TOA, the radiative imbalance is known exactly under these circumstances (Fig. 7). One example (Fig. 7, top left panel) shows that the net radiation at the TOA (RT) is order 1 W m-2 into the climate system. Clearly the planet imbalance is considerable, despite the stasis at the surface, and so where is the energy going?
Yes I have read von Schuckmann as well. The ocean gained a modest amount of heat that turned around in the most recent significant La Nina and will continue to turn around as La Nina intensifies in the current cool Pacific mode.
Again the OHC data before ARGO is dicey – but let’s assume that ocean warming did commence again in the 1970’s. This is still consistent with decadal Pacific variability – which as Dessler shows is cloud related. Dessler is by no means alone – there are many others many whom I have linked to here and elsewhere. The ENSO and cloud relationship is very solid. It appears in both satellites and surface observations.
The satellite data is what it is – it shows that net warming between the 80’s and 90’s was about 1.9W/m^2 – with 2.5 W/m2 warming in the shortwave and 0.5 W/m2 cooling in the LW.
ENSO is not a zero sum game – it varies over decades to millennia. It is non-stationary and non-Gaussian. This can easily be seen in the ENSO proxies I supplied or easily confirmed on line.
Let me google that for you – http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ENSO+%2B+non-stationary+%2B+non-Gaussian
Really – you give me T&F which in no way contradicts what I say and suggest that Dessler says something different to what is in his paper. I suggest you go ask “Andy” for his meaning before rabbiting on with more condescending – but utterly incorrect – arm waving nonsense.
Capt
Thanks for the links.
Chief,
The non-stationary and non-Gaussian nature of ENSO (which I fully agree with by the way) has nothing at all to do with the net energy gains to the Earth system, which are a zero-sum game when it comes to ENSO, and darn well better be or we will have discovered a whole new source of energy! When a rain squall splatters rain against your window, the pattern is non-stationary and non-Gaussian, and this is because it is responding to minute variations in squall itself (moisture, wind, etc).
The finding of the Boucharel paper is that climate changes do affect ENSO and lead to this non-stationary and non-Gaussian behavior. Which of course leads back to my observation that it will be interesting to see how anthropogenic climate change affects the nature of ENSO. You can be sure it will be in a non-stationary and non-Gaussian way, just as you can be sure that ENSO will continue to be a zero-sum game from an Earth system energy perspective as only an external forcing can affect the energy balance, and certainly ENSO is most decidedly not that, but does, as Boucharel and others have pointed out, respond to external forcings.
ENSO is assuredly not energy neutral as the cloud radiative feedbacks change albedo.
‘The overall slight rise (relative heating) of global total net flux at TOA between the 1980′s and 1990′s is confirmed in the tropics by the ERBS measurements and exceeds the estimated climate forcing changes (greenhouse gases and aerosols) for this period. The most obvious explanation is the associated changes in cloudiness during this period.’ http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/projects/browse_fc.html
You still got nothing but handwaving – and cannot see that the obvious even in the Dessler, Clements, Burgman, Zhu etc papers or any of the many others I linked to. ENSO is associated with cloud changes.
‘El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon to cause global climate variability on interannual time scales. Here we attempt to monitor ENSO by basing the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) on the six main observed variables over the tropical Pacific. These six variables are: sea-level pressure (P), zonal (U) and meridional (V) components of the surface wind, sea surface temperature (S), surface air temperature (A), and total cloudiness fraction of the sky (C). These observations have been collected and published in ICOADS for many years.’ http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
It is like you just can’t process the information – a psychopathology of cult of AGW groupthink spaces cadets. Groundhog day again.
Most warming was the result of SW changes – including in CERES. It is all a bit odd because this is evident in the data. What causes secular cloud change gatesy? Because that is assuredly in the data and observations.
ENSO moreover is part of the chaotic global climate system. Not cyclical at all. The latest shift after 1998 is to a cooler mode – the world is not warming for a decade or three more.
At least you have stopped using the term ‘non-tectonic’.
Chief,
It is funny that you accuse me of hand waving, when I suggested we get down the the basic situation at hand– no matter what ENSO is doing in the long-term, and regardless of it’s effects on cloud cover,– ocean heat content continues to rise. ENSO simply can’t be the reason for Earth’s long-term energy imbalance as ENSO is an internal variability of the system itself, and it requires an external forcing of the system to alter the energy balance.
If the facts were different, and we were only talking about energy in troposphere and ocean heat content had been declining steadily while the troposphere warmed over the long-term, then we could consider that this heat in the troposphere was a long-term cyclical release of heat from the ocean due to its non-stationary, non-Gaussian behavior.
But that’s simply not the case Chief. You keep saying the “world is cooling for a decade or three” but the only way you can say this and come even close to being partially accurate is by ignoring the worlds largest non-tectonic energy reservoir– the ocean. The world isn’t cooling for a decade or three, but has in fact been warming for three decades or five.
Clouds change in the Pacific gatesy –
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Clementetal2009.png
What does this mean? It means that albedo changes.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-3-23.html
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ IPCC 3.4.4.1
Low frequency variability exists – and has an impact on the global energy budget. And you just keep telling me it just isn’t so just because. We think that most warming was ENSO – based on the available data – and the world is nor warming. Simple hey. :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool:
I think it is quite odd to imagine that clouds don’t change as a result of changes in sst, convection, winds, etc. There are very significant changes in albedo in the record. Not sure why this is such a problem.
Oh yeah, Chief said:
“You can set your dial on global cooling – gatesy – as the global system moves into a 1000 year cool mode of much more frequent and intense La Nina.”
——
You apparently forget that the oceans accumulate energy during La Nina’s more so than El Ninos, thus in the very unlikely event of a 1,000 “much more frequent and intense La Nina”, we’d see ocean heat content skyrocket even more so. And given that the oceans are the largest repository of non-tectonic energy on Earth, such a long La Nino favored period would definitely see Earth warm (and by Earth, we must include the larger heat sink of the ocean).
Atmospheric energy content is quite small compared to the ocean. When talking about a warming or cooling Earth, if you don’t include the ocean in that metric, you are not talking about the whole Earth.
Gates, here is a Readers Digest condensed version of long term climate oscillations :)
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/10/tuggweilder-and-samuels-1994-effect-of.html
Chief, “You can set your dial on global cooling – gatesy – as the global system moves into a 1000 year cool mode of much more frequent and intense La Nina.”
I thought a coupla three decades at a time was more reasonable. Now you are starting to sound like me. :)
The long term variability was always there – and I have linked Moy 2002 often. The new proxy from the Law Dome is high resolution and it is clear that EL Nino is far less common than we have seen in the past 150 years.
Oh I agree completely. That is why I have been spending so much time on ocean paleo trying to isolate the recurrence patterns.
4.3ka is a harmonic of the precession cycle. Looks like a fifth pretty much. Off that harmonic there is the three Bond or D-O recurrences (~1430 year “events”). Land use change though can de-tune that pattern., since snow cover is a major feedback.
Kira Lawrence should have an interesting paper coming out soon plus Tutwielder(?) had an interesting paper on the ACC variation in diffusion rates. Pretty spiffy graph, I will have to look that up for you.
Sorry Captn, but no “4.3ka harmonic” needed to explain gains in Earth’s energy system, as interesting as all that might be.
gates, the 4.3ka harmonic does not change the gains, just the period in which those gains are distributed. If it takes 4,300 years for the deep ocean to overturn, then the current uptake would be insignificant over the next hundred or two years we have to figure out energy solutions. It’s a timing thing.
Chief,
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/jrt9502.pdf
It was Toggwielder and Samuels at the GFDL. Good reference.
”The science is solid”
No, it isn’t. None of the above is defending the science: they are defending the scientists. The only way to show that the IPCC science is correct is to go through it, process by process, and show that each is correct. They have never done this, probably because they know it would fail. Another way would be to issue a challenge: show us the countervailing science. Well, I for one can certainly do that. See my website above.
Obviously the IPCC group think, lowest common denominator, was that urgent action should be the priority. Thus they labeled 1940 climate as normal, though many of their scientists must have objected, on the alter of urgency. The rest is history. They never did investigate the roots of anthropogenic global warming in enough detail to realise that it was a limited phenomenon.
A more general view might be to beware of linear thinking. Of course linear thinking has been tremendously valuable to scientists in a natural world that is often non-linear. Before the invention of the computer, there was not much choice but to linearise a part of the problem, simplify and solve the differential equations. Artificial as it was, these simplifying assumptions often worked. A few rugged individuals using desk calculators spent years manually solving the non-linear equations, but when they had finished, people had lost interest in the problem.
While I decry linear thinking in climate, other aids like conceptual models should not be ignored and are often the starting point for elaborate simulations. Indeed the structure of a computer mathematical model (programming or coding is a separate issue) relies on a good conceptual model for a start. Most of the more serious critics in these columns seem to have some sort of conceptual model in mind, even if it is some vague notion of natural forces. One way to start is to try to construct a mental narrative of climate from the beginning of the 20th century and see where this leads. My website above has an example.
Love the laconic Catalina tales. I was still in the womb at the time, in post-bombing Coventry.
PS: meanwhile, my father was doing pre-delivery in-flight testing of bomber electrical systems (pre delivery of the aircraft, that is!). Unfortunately, he flew off in 1944 so I have no aircraft tales from that era.
Alexander Biggs
Thank You.
Here is my narrative => http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd
Alexander, your narrative – An alternative theory of climate change – is very coherent. What responses have you had from CAGW proponents? Has anyone provided a superior counter-narrative?
Thank you Faustino and Girma for your replies. Girma, ypor basic data mostly agrees with mine: temperature increase from 1910 to 1940, the dramatic fall after 1940, the rise again in 1970 to 2000 and the levelling off after 2000. What I don’t understand is your high temperature pre-1910. What could have caused it, or is it an error in the data?
Faustino, sorry about your father, but I guess he would be proud of you now. Glad you found my narrative coherent, my own sons are not always so appreciative, but can’t come up with a better explanation. The CAGW proponents rarely defend their stance nowadays – I wish they would, but they seem to prefer, like their mentor, the IPCC, to hand down judgements from on high, a one way communication. Coventry, yes, I was at the RAE in the fifties and helped build the Bloodhound system to protect them.
Here is what Phil Jones said about the early temperatures:
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
Alexander
Your narrative agrees with that of Swanson et al, 2009:
Observations suggest the
warming of the 20th century global mean surface temperature
has not been monotonic, even when smoothed by a 10–20 year
low-pass filter. Temperatures reached a relative maximum
around 1940, cooled until the mid 1970s, and have warmed from
that point to the present. Radiative forcings due to solar
variations, volcanoes, and aerosols have often been invoked as
explanations for this non-monotonic variation (4). However, it is
possible that long-term natural variability, rooted in changes in
the ocean circulation, underlies much of this variability over
multiple decades (8–12).
http://deepeco.ucsd.edu/~george/publications/09_long-term_variability.pdf
Girma, thank ypu for the link to the Swanson et al paper. While I agree that there global temperature record is similar to mine obtained from our BOM, there interpretation via the RASST procedures lacks conviction. Adding and subtracting temperature fields from simulator records of non-linear processes streches credibility and requires more convincing evidence of its validity. That the momentum of temperature change pre 1940 could so rapidly be completely reversed after 1940 suggests to me that some force more powerful than atmosphere-ocean SST was involved. The only powerful force I can think of that could do this is the little-explored forces of quantum thermodynamics. Normally the phasing of quantum jumps (up or down) is so random that it appears to be continuous, but taking accuont of air density due to temperature, concerted quantum action is possible. Even classical theory would allow that vibrational states within the CO2 molecule would reach limits of energy absorption.
In my humble and mindfully considered opinion, kim makes better sense than all of them.
============
kim
I agree!
Max
Sometimes, Max, I think nobody in the world makes any sense except you and I, and sometimes I worry about me.
=======================
kim plays the Great Game
with subtlety and wit
but without humility
Ignorance humbles me regularly, but curiosity keeps setting me up for the next fall. What is truly humbling is to contemplate the grand edifice raised in response to the illusion of knowledge created by faith in the usefulness for policy direction of pitifully primitive computer modeling.
=======================
There are more people, it’s more diffuse, it’s harder to gain a consensus – quite frankly I find the whole process very depressing
May be they are ALL telling him the observations and the projections don’t match => http://bit.ly/SPzOHn
One point I missed, but am beginning to understand.
Like him or not, Bill Clinton is a super-intelligent guy, no doubt. And we all know he has had problems where his self-image of invincibility exceeded his self-control.
But one thing is for sure. He has a way of sensing what is politically “in” at the moment and seizing it to his advantage (and to that of his cause).
Gently shifting the emphasis away from yesterday’s hot button issue (CAGW prevention) to tomorrow’s (energy), while keeping up the facade, is a Clinton masterpiece.
And he probably really means what he’s saying, as well (most of which makes sense to me).
Max
Bill Clinton once said that carbon dioxide was plant food, but amusingly, only said it once.
===========
kim | October 13, 2012 at 7:45 pm |
So did you believe him when he said he didn’t inhale that carbon dioxide?
280 ppm is plant food and lots of other things. 560 ppm is around 280 ppm worth of plant food and a whole lot more of lots of other things.
130-150 ppmv is necessary for plant life.
Depending on other nutrient availability, conditions of heat and light, 150-2500 ppmv may stimulate additional growth by influencing hormones, (see “Armstrong, Lance”).
WHT 13/12 @11.39am says that the wind is always blowing somewhere.
The ‘theoretical’ possibilities of effficient storage or inexpensive transportation of wind energy, however, are still a pipe dream. The fact remains that intermittant wind technology is a constant problem. In the UK, BBC weatherman reported that it in 3 consecutive winters of intense cold there was little or no wind to generate electricity. On the 21 December,
2010 , coal and gas generated 45,000MW of electricity compared to wind generated electricity of20 MW.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/economy/electricitycosts2012.pdf
Kim makes mockery
Of Cassandra certainty
‘It’s worse than we thought!’
– – – – –
Before responding to Judith’s question of who makes sense, I first reminded myself of the need for context from the broader climate science positions over the past decade of Trenberth, Kloor, Clinton, Lomborg & Pielke Jr.
Everyone of them maintains, consistently over broad periods of their careers up to today, that the AGW theories in climate science are already sufficiently conclusive that there is a serious warming problem that requires a relatively urgent need to significantly react to current CO2 production by strong government intervention broadly across all aspects of human activities.
Given that context of their overall view in the climate science dialog, which has not been established, I find little merit in Trenberth’s, Kloor’s, Clinton’s, Lomborg’s & Pielke Jr’s statements provided in Judith’s post.
Trendberth is blaming others for the failure of the public and the scientific community to myopically accept his alarming AGW scientific position. His comment is irrelevant to the ongoing intellectual dialog on climate science; it has passed him by.
Kloor is doggedly cheerleading from his one sided journalistic meme for a miracle comeback of his badly losing team of alarming AGW science supporters. Will he probably be one of the last to recognize the intellectual game is already over? Let’s not tell him, he implies he is a journalist so let him discover it with his honed investigative skills.
Clinton is just being his usual experienced cynical political pragmatist cum opportunist with his incorrect rationalization that the pain to be expected from implementing broad interventionist policies based on alarming AGW science is normal compared to the pain that we would have anyway if AGW wasn’t a concern.
Both Lomborg and Pielke Jr have long since stopped focusing on the validity of AGW alarming climate science because they have conceded to it. They maintain that we should implement policies like those resulting from the findings of AGW alarming climate science anyway, whether the alarming scientific view is ultimately is found to be correct or not, because those policies are just our duty to do anyway because they think the policies are good in and of themselves . . . kind of like they are suggesting a Kantian ethical premise of duty.
Judith, next time I suggest you should include some significant skeptical intellects, instead of having only supporters of AGW alarming science. Please endorse more balance.
John
Yeah! `Cuz everyone can see, that Wendell Berry’s far-sighted point of view makes far better scientific, economic, moral, skeptical, and common sense, than all the other “thinkers” on Judith’s list put together! ;)
Dear A Physicist cum A fan of ‘MORE’ discourse {or whatever shape shift of the moment you are using},
Prof Jonathan Jones @ Oxford University would have been a good independent thinker to balance against the group of ‘consensus’ supporters that Judith selected. It is easy to data mine for quotations that are recent enough.
With respect to the US’s Farm Bill, there isn’t a more bizarre piece of legislation in existence. W. Berry would be worthy only if he advocated for total repeal of the Farm Bill. The current Berry has lobbyist tendencies and that is his occupation.
John
By Judith Curry-style objective measures of critical capacity, Oxford’s Jonathan Jones comes off very poorly, compared to Wendell Berry’s amazing multi-decade record of achievement.
Compared to Wendell Berry, pretty much everyone on Judith Curry’s list is a lightweight critical thinker, eh John Whitman? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Dear A Physicist cum A fan of ‘MORE’ discourse {or whatever shape shift of the moment you are using},
The lesson of critical thinking is its essence cannot be like popular thinking, therefore I respect Prof Jonathan Jones over the ‘consensus’ populists like Trenberth, Kloor, Clinton, Lomborg & Pielke Jr.
What you have provided via the link on Berry is evidence that he is instrumental in the creation of the current disaster that is the US Farm Bill cacophony; he did so over a significance period of time. It shows an embedded career lobbyist; a paladin not an intellect.
John
Is this assertion not bizarrely illogical John Whitman?
Because it implies — does it not? — that the consensus opinion can *never* be correct!
In which case, republican democraciess — like the United States — could scarcely work as well as they do, eh? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
As for the claim that Wendell Berry is an “embedded career lobbyist”, a close inspection of this assertion discerns not one atom of sensibility in it!
Rare indeed is the “embedded lobbyist” who combines Berry’s devoutly Christian religious commitment with a well-regarded poetic sensibility, eh John Whitman? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
They maintain that we should implement policies like those resulting from the findings of AGW alarming climate science anyway
The last I checked Pielke Jr’s preferred policy is energy innovation R&D to achieve ‘clean energy cheaper then coal’.
harrywr2,
Exactly.
John
An interesting article appeared in the Mail quoting Judith. It points out that there have now been 15 years without any measurable warming. Judith pointed out that natural variability is almost certainly a stronger influence than the IPCC claims and that climate models overrestimate warming. Phil Jones however sticks to his guns in contradiction to previous statements. It’s a great article.
Could you kindly post the link?
Scott
The article is here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29E78OR9H
tonyb
Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it
Read David and Tony’s Daily Mail link before you start playing in the long woods with short matches. And while you are at it, find them a photographer worth his silver salts. You wanna understand the oceans’ effect on climate? Buy Bob Tisdale’s book before it sells out. And read it.
================
I read the article.
Did you notice it hasn’t been 16 years since 1997? Lol.
I take issue that the warming trend has ceased. There is no proof that this has happened. I have seen no analysis of the whole of the HAD/CRU4 data (Girma?) but the HAD/CRU3 data shows clearly that there has been a linear trend ever since the start of the record, and probably since the LIA. What happened was that in the last part of the 20th century, when CAGW was supposedly occurring, temperatures rose at a rate that was above the trend of the previous data. This comparatively rapid rise in temperatures has now ceased, and we are have a pause in the rise, which is restoring us back to the observed linear trend. If nothing has changed, and the future is going to be the same as the past, then eventually global temperatures will start to rise again, and resume the linear rise that has been observed since 1850, of about 0.06 C per decade.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/gistemp/compress:12/detrend:0.1/offset:-0.075/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/detrend:-0.83/offset:-0.35/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.0001/detrend:-0.83/offset:-0.9/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.0001/detrend:-0.83/offset:-0.64/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/offset:2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/offset:-2
Bob Tisdale himself, in today’s WUWT, asserts that warming has *NOT* ceased.
Of course, Tisdale has his own (idiosyncratic) theory as to the origin of the warming! :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
As for the Daily Mail article itself:
Not much Curry-style “critical analysis” to be seen here, folks! :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
A fan of *MORE* discourse says: “Bob Tisdale himself, in today’s WUWT, asserts that warming has *NOT* ceased.”
Incorrect. One subset indicates continued warming, and since it’s the largest, OHC has risen globally. The post actually shows the OHC exhibits no evidence of anthropogenic warming.
You continued: “Of course, Tisdale has his own (idiosyncratic) theory as to the origin of the warming!”
I simply present the data so that it can explain why sea surface temperatures, lower troposphere temperatures and land+sea surface temperatures have warmed. You can’t do that with a global metric. You need to divide a dataset into logical subsets.
Bob Tisdale, when we inspect the data that you posted on WUWT (and ignore the red-letter “spin labels” you added) we see ongoing warming quite plainly, eh? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
With regard to theoretical explanations, the simplest (by far) is James Hansen’s Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications. and moreover this theory plainly predicts “acceleration of the rate of sea-level rise this decade.”
Do you care to offer a comparably definite scientific prediction Bob Tisdale? :?: :?: :?:
Bob T. said:
“OHC exhibits no evidence of anthropogenic warming.”
____
Tis truly the last bastion of fake skeptics to suggest this. The 50 year rise in OHC, is showing no let up, despite ENSO cycles and despite PDO and despite solar cycles and despite cloud cover and despite the NAO This rise indicates some external forcing on the system. Do we have both scientific theory, data, and models that all point to what this external forcing could be? Yep. Is it robust? Yep. What level of certainty is involved? Over 95%. What is the external forcing? I think everyone knows the answer, except apparently for Bob T. who somehow thinks that internal variability can create energy in a system as if by some new magical physics running counter to basic thermodynamics.
R. Gates : “Tis truly the last bastion of fake skeptics to suggest this.”
I didn’t suggest it; I illustrated it. The fact that you can’t read a graph or read a description of it is telling.
A fan of *MORE* discourse says: “Bob Tisdale, when we inspect the data that you posted on WUWT (and ignore the red-letter “spin labels” you added) we see ongoing warming quite plainly, eh?”
You obviously have difficulty reading graphs.
With respect to Hansen et al 2011, they base their misunderstandings of global warming on the Model E, a coupled climate model that does not model ENSO well, if at all. They assume that greenhouse gases do more than simply evaporate more surface waters, when SST and OHC data show no evidence of an anthropogenic global warming component.
Last: There’s no reason to make predictions of sea level rise since ENSO cannot be predicted and it is the primary cause of the decadal sea level variability, or aren’t you aware of that?
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/2012rel4-gmsl-and-multivariate-enso-index
If Hansen et al’s projection fails, they simply have to claim ENSO did it, and if it comes to pass, they’ve relied on the decadal variability of ENSO. Of course they wouldn’t say that. And there are people who would fall for their nonsensical claims that their predictions came true. Know anyone like that?
Golly Bob Tisdale, don’t Hansen and colleagues provide us with a simple, physically well-grounded, and rationally compelling argument to the contrary? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
The key to Hansen’s reasoning is that energy is conserved globally (not locally), and so one we have global measures of
• ice-mass loss, and
• ocean temperature, and
• sea-level rise,
… then from any two of these data-sets, we can predict the remaining data-set.
And *that*’s how Hansen and his colleagues combine theory with observation to make confident predictions regarding accelerating sea-level rise! :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Now, ain’t that prediction admirably elegant and wonderfully simple Bob Tisdale? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Bob T.,
No you suggested it by your very words. Do you even remember what you write?
“OHC exhibits no evidence of anthropogenic warming.”
That’s an actual suggestion Bob. Your cherry picked graphs are simply your trumped up proof to attempt to prove your suggestion.
___
But now to the overall point you are making regarding OHC. How convenient of you to cherry-pick regions of the global ocean to try and prove some point, and then through a not very subtle verbal slight of hand.to suggest we ought not look at the overall global ocean to see what the energy gain has been in the overall global ocean! We’re you even embarrassed to write that?
Bob wants to select his own special regions of the planet (only to 700 meters of course) to prove that the global ocean isn’t warming by anthropogenic forcing. Don’t you see how nonsensical this is? Certainly you’ve studied the THC and general ocean currents enough to know that it’s all connected Bob, and to carve and slice the global ocean up to try and prove anything about the global ocean is so impossibly wrong. But of course, this wasn’t enough– so to make your point, and for another extra cherry on top of your nice bushel full, you want to restrict your analysis to the top 700 meters. How convenient for the foregone conclusion you are trying to reach!
Here’s the only honest approach to talking about the OHC of the global ocean…be as broad and as deep as you can. You need a broad metric at the deepest levels we have regular readings. Currently the 2000 meter ARGO data fits that bill (though some research is probing deeper it is not regular enough), and so for those who want to see what Bob won’t show you, see:
http://i49.tinypic.com/riuhaa.jpg
This represents the broadest and best and most honest measure we currently have of global ocean heat content, and by the way, the broadest and best measure we have of gains to the Earth’s energy system over the past 50 years. It is far from perfect, but it is a whole lot better than the cherry-picked 700m regional approach. We see the oceans warming, consistently. In that the oceans represent the biggest energy reservoir of the planet, anyone who says the planet is cooling is either unaware of the oceans, or trying to make some point about the lack of anthropogenic warming and so they’d focus just on the troposphere with its low thermal inertia and small energy content compared to the oceans. So either by ignorance or dishonesty someone would say the world hasn’t been warming recently and for at least the past 50 years..
In the “satellite era”, we see variability from below -0.6C to about +0.9C for monthly GMT:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/plot/uah/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/plot/rss
This is, of course, a processed signal, not the raw data (which is far, far more variable). The rules of how the raw data was assembled into this set misleadingly called ‘raw data’ by WFT are somewhat arbitrary, but have been largely confirmed by statistical review projects like BEST to be fit to the purpose (barely) over long enough periods. What periods are ‘long enough’?
Well, one month, clearly, is not long enough. One year? One year is better. It shows us what is meant by interannual natural variability, which is still in the satellite era so large as to obscure completely any climate trend.
The standard for what identifies a climate GMT as defined by the international meteorology standards body (Anthony Watts can help us out here), is a 30 year average.
But we don’t want to wait 30 years, or even 15 years, to know about today. Which again statistical analysis has an answer for. Over periods as short as 17 years, we have at least a 95% confidence that the shorter trend will reflect the longer trend. That is, there will be no significant opposite trend in spans of 17 years or longer compared to 30-year GMTs, over 19 times in 20. Which still means we’ll see this opposite trend about one time in 20, on spans 17 years long, for the HadCRUT dataset.
We can’t know how long a span it takes to get the same effect on the satellite datasets. Why? Because we only have barely one 30-year span of time to judge against, which is too little to do signal:noise analyses on. Further, the three prominent satellite ‘raw data’ sets (remember, not actual raw data, but processed by intermediaries — in this case including bible-thumping activists) show significant internal disagreements among each other (even where based on the same actual raw observations), and with proxies from actual surface station measures and other global climate effects (they don’t match the trends in either Arctic or Antarctic ice, they don’t match observed changes in animal habitat, etc.). So we have to for now deprecate the satellite record until these serious issues are addressed.
Leaving us with: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/every:204/plot/uah/mean:204/plot/hadcrut3vgl/every:204/plot/rss/mean:204
This isn’t a very satisfying graph, of course, for people who wish some idea of what’s happening right now. Well, again, statistics has an answer that might give us a 95% or better idea closer to the current day:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/every:51/mean:4/from:1912/plot/uah/mean:51/mean:4/plot/hadcrut3vgl/every:4/mean:51/from:1912/plot/rss/mean:4/mean:51/plot/gistemp/last:204/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:204/trend/plot/uah/last:204/trend/plot/rss/last:204/trend
Which tells us (to 95% confidence) every large record of GMT indicates significant rising trend on the span of what meteorology regards as a climate in the current timeframe right to the present day.
#Time series (gistemp) from 1880 to 2012.75
#Selected last 360 samples
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0160818 per year
Satellite era monthly variability |-0.65C-0.95C| ~= 1.6C;
Global Warming on the climate |30*0.016| ~= 0.5C;
Natural variability exceeds triple the signal. There is no skill in satellite era estimation of GMT trend, using satellite records alone.
So anyone who claims anything about the satellite era and GMT or periods under 17 years and GMT is giving you questionably-founded opinion.
@Bart R “So anyone who claims anything about the satellite era and GMT or periods under 17 years and GMT is giving you questionably-founded opinion.”
+1
I think that mainstream climate scientists are now starting to realise that there isn’t enough reliable data to determine any trend from past observations let alone make any prediction about the future trajectory of global climate.
The satellite era is actually easily extended backwards. Because it’s little different than GisTemp, NOAA, and HadCrud. Which means its long-term trends, had it started say Sputnik, would be basically the same: 2 meters above surface, how could it be otherwise?
Agreed, but the series seem not amenable to being compared, the satellite data being way more reliable than the others.
Imo, Gistemp is by far the most reliable series.
Sputnik to today.
Sputnik to today!
I am not sure …
http://climatewtf.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/gistemp-attacked-again.html
JCH, “Which means its long-term trends, had it started say Sputnik, would be basically the same: 2 meters above surface, how could it be otherwise?” The Sputniks measure the average temperature near 3000 meters above the surface. With the lower air density at that altitude, the Sputniks should read an amplified temperature anomaly. If CO2 forcing is causing the warming, then the Sputniks would track the surface pretty well. If CO2 is not causing the warming, then the Sputniks wouldn’t track so well. That might give you an idea of the gain knob setting on the amplifier?
Recently UAH adjusted their 2012 numbers. Now, I could go running around screaming FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD, but I prefer to have at least a little toe grounded in reality.
Peter Davies | October 14, 2012 at 8:52 am |
You’re fairly close to being right, in a number of ways, but off or ambiguous just enough to introduce a quibble.
“..mainstream climate scientists are now starting..”
I believe most climate scientists have had the technical competency to question the reliability of data appropriately. I review all the IPCC reports, the peer-reviewed reports that went into their compilation, even random non-IPCC peer-reviewed climate science and find little to no general trend of the abandonment of conservatism in the treatment of data. That said, some have gone on after fully rational data-handling and conclusions drawn from observation that again appear fully rational and conservative to say pretty freakishly wrong-headed things. It’s not the dominant outcome, but it’s there. The infamous “2 degrees C/century” prediction was one such case, where poor grasp of Bayesian logic and the nature of models led to a stupid utterance that in no way reflected how solid and well-founded the real meaning of the report was. (On reflection, wow am I longwinded.)
“..there isn’t enough reliable data to determine any trend from past observations..”
Anyone who practices mere trendology without well-founded proposition independently derived and tested without reference to the trend lines is practicing superstition and bunkum.
This is true in the stock market and in astrophysics, chemistry and biology and climatology. Yet we see in all these fields there are valid trends interpreted out of past observations when tested against independent measurement and by reasoning about underlying mechanisms, where there is a good enough general understanding of all inputs and relationships.
A statement like the ill-considered 2-degree/century prediction can’t be made meaningfully.
“..let alone make any prediction about the future trajectory of global climate..”
A statement that says that out of the next twenty sets of three decades, all other things being held equal and CO2 continuing to remain elevated, nineteen of twenty of them will hit or exceed 2-degrees/century?
That’s pretty close to what we can say, assisted by the trendology but not if we stop only with trendology of past observations.
http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/annual-with-forcing.pdf
More accurately, if we insert phrases like “subject to conditions of aerosols and particulates from all sources,” and “absent a major unanticipated tipping point” we’re golden.
Not because of some lines on paper, but because strict logical ab initio reasoning from the underlying Physics up to the macro level tells us it must be so.
That’s fair enough Bart. My rhetoric probably could lead to some issues of fact but data sets from economics and Earth’s weather (as two examples of chaotic systems) must considered to be incapable of yielding stochastically valid predictions in any case.
Peter Davies | October 14, 2012 at 7:48 pm |
On their chaotic spans, any field will share the issues of Economics and weather prediction.. which isn’t to say Economics and Meteorology lack entirely predictability on some spans. But there we get into hairy stuff full of ambiguity, so I’m content to leave it as you’ve said.
It may well be the case that sudden shifts in climate could be predicted within say 2 to 3 months if we can infer anything sensible from our observations of co-related proxies, but I doubt very much that climate could be predicted beyond this comparatively short time-frame. There should be more study of these proxies and of the extent of natural/un-natural variability rather than to focus to much on CO2..
Bart R., just a general +10 to all your comments, but this one get’s a +10 for humor:
“Further, the three prominent satellite ‘raw data’ sets (remember, not actual raw data, but processed by intermediaries — in this case including bible-thumping activists)…
Roger Pielke Jr.: “Does it matter that campaigners and the media are actively peddling disinformation? For the most part, probably no,….. But there is one group that should be very concerned about the spreading of rampant misinformation: the scientific community.”
******************************************************
Just so. I am against rampant disinformation. And I am also against labeling scientific disagreement as disinformation. It has become routine that if your science says something against global warming dogma you are accused of being in the pay of ExxonMobile, Koch Brothers or other undesirables, and must be a liar. And if you want to publish that you will find that scientific journals refuse to accept it. Climategate showed that they will even get rid of editors who occasionally let some papers critical of their views get through. And if by some chance your paper does get published by a maverick editor it is completely ignored by any “real” climate scientist and never referred to because referrals these days count in the academic world. This is not my idea of how science should be conducted. I will give you some real world examples of how it works. But first I want you to know that I did not study climate science in college. I worked in the field of spectrochemical analysis and later taught bio. Coming to climate science from another field of science seems to be fairly common: Stephen Schneider was trained as a mechanical engineer at Columbia and James Hanson was an astronomer on the Pioneer Venus Project before he joined GISS. What attracted me was Al Gore’s movie where he spoke of a twenty foot sea level rise and showed Florida under water. That struck me as an alternate universe and pretty soon I proved that the expected sea level rise for a century was 24.6 centimeters, not twenty feet. However, I could not get it published so did some more research and put it all together as a book called “What Warming? Satellite view of global temperature change.” The book started out as an analysis of satellite temperature curves but out of necessity I had to expand it in order to explain ENSO, demolish the volcanic cooling myth, and prove that Arctic warming was not greenhouse warming. But darn it, a month after it went to press an important paper about observations of warm water reaching the Arctic comes out. I was not going to rewrite the book so I just took the section about the Arctic from it, expanded it, and got it published as a standalone paper in E&E, vol 22, issue 8 in 2011. Five other journals, all openly global warming advocates, refused to accept it. The paper demolishes the myth that Arctic warming is greenhouse warming and shows that its probable cause is a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the twentieth century that began to bring warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. The warming paused for thirty years in mid-century, then resumed, and is still going strong. It is much faster than IPCC models predict, and no wonder because their models use the greenhouse effect to predict a non-greenhouse warming. The paper seems to have made no impact on true believers who still attribute the unusually fast Arctic warming to “Arctic amplification” that nobody can find. I bet you anything that AR5 will also ignore it despite its having been peer reviewed and out since 2011. Just to send a message to that recalcitrant editor of E&E. Another very important work that is almost completely suppressed is that of Ferenc Miskolczi. Miskolczi studied the absorption of infrared radiation by greenhouse gases while he was at NASA. He came to the conclusion that for a stable climate to exist the infrared optical thickness of the total atmosphere had to have a value of 1.867… A stable atmosphere is one where a runaway greenhouse effect cannot happen. Geologic history tells us that there never has been a runaway greenhouse on earth. This does not stop James Hansen from bringing it up as a bogeyman because according to him, that is what happened to Venus. Unfortunately he is ignorant of Venus’es geologic history because Venus grows a new crust every 300 to 600 million years and its atmosphere is derived from out-gassing by these huge volcanic events. What happens on earth is that as we add more carbon dioxide to air it will cause more absorption of infrared radiation, just as you would expect. But what about that constant value of optical thickness that Miskolczi talks about? What happens according to him is that a system of feedbacks among the greenhouse gases will then counteract this change of absorption and restore the original IR optical thickness. In practice the gases that count are carbon dioxide and water vapor, and all the adjustment is done by water vapor because it has an unlimited source/sink in the oceans. Thus, the extra absorption from the added carbon dioxide is balanced by a reduction of water vapor in air and this restores the original value of IR optical thickness of the atmosphere. What this amounts to is negative feedback by water vapor, the exact opposite of positive feedback that IPCC climate models use. When this became clear there were numerous objections to his theory in the blogosphere. I looked at them and it was obvious that they did not understand Miskolczi’s math. Miskolczi first came out with his theory in 2005 and there were no actual observations, pro or con, at the time. But in 2010 he used NOAA weather balloon observations that go back to 1948 and showed that the IR optical thickness of the atmosphere had been constant for 61 years straight. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased by 21.6 percent during this time interval. This means that addition of this amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere, just what his theory had predicted. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect. This is an empirical observation, not derived from any theory, and it overrides any calculations from theory that disagree with it. More specifically, it negates the existence of the enhanced greenhouse effect, alleged to be the agent of global warming. It follows that there is not now and there never has been any greenhouse warming as long as carbon dioxide and water vapor have coexisted in the air. This goes to the very root of today’s global warming theory. You simply cannot shrug it off because the paper using NOAA’s database has been out there for more than two years now and no peer reviewed rebuttals have appeared. It proves the non-existence of anthropogenic global warming. My advice is to get going on a fully funded analysis of his entire theory, no expense spared, and prove him wrong or else fold up your business, terminate IPCC, and defund all emission control laws.
Arno
Sorry to point it out.
Your posts would become easier to read if you use paragraphs.
Please do.
Girma, I’m also sorry you pointed that out, Arno’s post is extremely well-written and easy to follow. Let’s stick with his scientific argument.
Sticking with just his scientific argument, we see if quite vacated by science.
Arno
…demolish the volcanic cooling myth
How?
Volcanoes don’t cause cooling? Well then, a remarkable series of coincidences has occurred as the planet has cooled repeatedly after large volcanic eruptions going back thousands of years. And apparently then it is also a coincidence or myth that the aerosols released by the volcano reflect more sunlight to cause this cooling.
I’m thinking it isn’t any wonder that the scientific journals rejected Arno’s paper.
Only for a year or maybe two,
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET1690-1960.htm
however submarine volcanic activity (far more numerous than the atmospheric) may have critical effect on integrity of the thermo-haline structure, which in turn would may lead to rise of warmer saline content to the ocean’s surface, and contrary to the expectation, due to the water’s high thermal capacity (1000 x atmospheric) alter the atmospheric circulation patterns above.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NPG.htm
That’s an interesting notion Vuk, and one that other’s have brought out before, even related to things like the ENSO cycle. Do you have any data or studies that give any estimates for how much energy is released to the ocean through underwater volcanic activity on a global basis?
ENSO is the more convincing example, not so much of the energy released, but periodic disruption of the South equatorial current:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ENSO.htm
Ask the chief
Miskolczi claims certain fundamental physical relationships – that simply are not. When you ask what these are about – you are then told that it is based on radiosonde measurements that can’t possibly be accurate enough to give the result he imagines. There are no peer reviewed rebuttals because everyone understands that it is utter nonsense and cannot be bothered wasting their time.
There is not a snowballs chance in hell that climate is stable much at all. Climate always changes as they say. Miskolczi is as incoherent as the sky dragons. Do us all a favour and drop the nonsense – try to discuss something real if you must.
A climate that has remained hospitable to life for billions of years is not stable? That’s your story and you’re sticking with it?
Amazing.
Well gee springer – I guess I was thinking of little things called glacials and interglacials. Not to mention Bond and DO events, the Younger Dryas and the 8.2 kiloyear event. Other than that – or perhaps the 65 MY asteroid impact – you might be right.
‘The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it’s only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn’t evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth’s history.’
I am sure those prokaryotic cells had it great all those billions of years ago – give or take a snowball Earth or 2. Yep – about as stable as you are springer.
Not enough of these chaos enthusiasts want to understand the principles behind reversion-to-the-mean physics as exemplified by the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.
What causes real perturbations to these anchored processes is a change in the mean, as caused by a forcing function — say GHG increases, for instance.
There is likely a real mean associated with the earth that drifts along with the very long term change in the Sun’s radiation output.
chief
Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago.
Don’t forget that we are mostly interested in climate change within a human lifetime. I believe the climate is predictable within this time scale.
I don’t.
I’m not even sure that Girma’s drive bys are predictable within this time scale. Just highly confident.
manacker 13/10 @ 10.43 am;
Say Max, yer high soundin’ ‘global corn – sess – sus’ or GCSS,
(Don’cha luv those acronyms, they sound so ‘UN?’ ) has the ring of truth about it …
When will AGW pseudo-scientists admit Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ is nothing more than a religious symbol? When will all scientists agree that the Left’s refusal to concede that the Earth has been in a cooling trend for the past 10,000 years is a moral breach that dishonors reason?
Did the Clintons sell America down the river? The boss of Al Gore — the almost Global Warming Fearmonger-in-Chief — certainly has a lot to explain for the enviro-whackpot, Democrat party war on the poor and middle class. And, how about the Left’s absurd attempt to halt the rise of the the seas and its war on capitalism and trying to increase the cost of energy across the board to fuel a bloated secular, socialist government that has become too big to fail. Look at Greece, Spain and California for good examples about how liberal Utopionism and Democrat Stonkernomics (The Bankruptcy of Leftists Stonkernomics and Liberal Utopianism) is pushing the country off a cliff.
On the night that Obama had won his primary victory over Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the party’s presidential candidate, among his promises and claims, he said, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” You cannot get more absurd than that. It would translate into the administration’s push for cap-and-trade legislation. ~Alan Caruba
” So who do you think is making sense? ”
Bjorn “Choose Your Battles” Lomborg
What I luv are elegant solutions ter wicked problems. Carbon sequestration through conservation farming methods seems an elegant solution to a wicked problem . Say, next Friday I’m organising a Tango Tea Dance, 5.00 6.00 pm at the local Golf Club 19th Hole ) Its ter raise fund towards a soil conservation project .
Great post, Beth (as usual)! :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
As you and your fellow conservationists “increase in wisdom, and stature, and in favour” of soil conservation, you will slowly-yet-surely arrive at a Common-Sense/Wendell Berry appreciation that — in the long run — the earth’s air and soil will either *both* be healthy, or *neither* will be healthy!
That’s 21st century Common Sense, eh Beth Cooper? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Upon the occasion of any given Week in Review, it’s worthwhile to learn what Wendell Berry’s been up to this week:
Now, everything that Wendell says about the health of the world’s soil applies similarly to the earth atmosphere too, eh?
Because both air and soil require only decades to degrade, but millenia to restore. That’s pure Common Sense, eh?
And that’s why Wendell Berry fully agrees with Tom Paine’s celebrated maxim: “Time makes more converts than reason.”
Climate-change neodenialists of course embrace all the opposite values to Wendell Berry … in particular neodenialists resolutely decline to consider any but short-sighted science, or any but short-sighted economics.
Summary So it’s clear that Wendell Berry is the ultimate anti-neodenialist, eh?
• Berry argues for far-sighted not short-sighted science! :!:
• Markets as servants of democracy not masters! :wink: :!:
• Enduring moral value ahead of ephemeral monetary gain! :wink: :smile: :!:
• A healthy contempt for every kind of short-sighed selfish ideology! :wink: :smile: :grin: :!:
• Oh, and impeccable good manners, of course! :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Three cheers for Wendell Berry: a true American original! :lol: :lol: :lol:
Different media have orders of magnitude differences in physical, chemical and biological properties.
Your analogy is as useful as comparing apples to cats.
Clinton : Some people who are climate skeptics are climate skeptics because it’s in their interest to be. They just want to preserve the old energy economy …
Supreme politician that he certainly is, deftly avoiding the vastly bigger opposite problem :
Most people who are climate alarmists are climate alarmists because it’s in the interest, supports their ideology. They just want to expand political control over society; and/or their politically-funded research grants
Memphis | October 14, 2012 at 6:05 am |
It’s odd that I have to agree with part of the assertion made here. Many people do abuse crises (real or imagined) to seek to expand political control. However, it’s easy to see when this is actually happening, and when it isn’t.
Following the money — if you can avoid the pitfall of the clumsy false trails set by the likes of Jo Nova and Bjorn Lomborg — you find out where exactly it leads, pointing to the real culprits in the power-seeking game.
Where did the money go for biofuel, for example?
The simpleminded might leap to the conclusion, “the Greens, they backed biofuel subsidies!” Which is idiotic. Some hippies did fall for the corn ethanol scam, but so did many others. Blaming the victim is not the right answer.
Well, was it farmers? Farmers raise corn, right? In this case, with the corn monoculture monopoly, you can’t really blame farmers. Farm families suffered more overall than they gained in all this, and a very tiny fraction of the benefits of the biomass hoax went to farm families.
Breaking down the money trail on the many tens of billions spent on biomass and related subsidies in the USA alone (not even counting US pressure on trade allies to do likewise), we see ADM (the corn giant) had the most lucrative share of the corn ethanol scheme, followed by the fossil fuel industry and automobile industry.
Heck, many in the fossil fuel industry opposed the corn scheme publicly while raking in cash privately in the form of secondary economic benefits of the Market distortion for transportation: a subsidized vehicle fuel binds consumers more tightly to their privately held vehicle decision, encourages waste and excess use, and shuts innovation and alternatives from the Market.
Repeat the exercise of following the money from the general revenues of the federal and state governments to the pockes it pools in on these manufactured crises, and you find pretty much all roads lead to fossil fuel.
Small wonder they’re so ready to accuse others of this practice they’ve developed to a high artform.
The attention of Climate Etc readers is directed to an introductory paragraph of Tom Paine’s Common Sense:
The steady increase in influence and readership of Climate Etc owes much (as it seems to me) to scrupulous adherance to Tom Paine’s doctrine of impersonality.
As for forums that adhere less scrupulously to Tom Paine’s well-mannered guidance … these rude forums deserve the neglect that ensures (as Paine wisely foresaw) that they will “cease of themselves.”
These principles are pure, all-American Common Sense, eh? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
> In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live? Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public… There is no liberty without dependency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein
Fan of discourse, I do not think either side of the fence would argue against soil improvement or conservation, even those dreaded
NEO denialists have families to feed, yer know.
But where Wendell Berry argues for top down government initiatives
like a ‘FIFTY Year Farm Plan,’ (guess he’s forgotten about Communist Leaders’ Five Year Plans , great leaps forward …that weren’t,
and hasn’t read Taleb’s ‘Black Swan’ ) there are good arguments fer bottom up commons initiatives alrady posted on Climate Etc.
Look at them, and see what yer think, fan, There’s Elinor Ostrom’s prize winning work examining how people act together to manage commons resources, there’s the video on Kitafuji, in Japan, a long history of successful management of the commons. There’s the new regional soil conservation action in poor countries. action which is increasing crop yields remarkably, all without bureaucracy management and cloud tower
l – o – n – g range plans (projections) ………………….?????????
That assertion is entirely wrong-on-the-facts, Beth Cooper!
At a typical neodenialst discount rate of (say) 4 % per annum, market efficiency requires that (1) too-small family farms be merged into larger corporate farms, and (2) the soil of those farms be mined to exhaustion within ~50 years.
Because *that* is the economic strategy that maximizes *foreseeable* farming profits, eh Beth Cooper?
As for the more distant future, neodenialist doctrine asserts that we need not worry about it! Because (1) we can be sure that technology will discover *NEW* ways to renovate destroyed soils, and (2) our present generation will be long dead … and so we have no rational economic reason to care.
Needless to say, these neodenialist principles directly oppose the Common Sense principles of conservation, eh Beth Cooper? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
A fan of *MORE* discourse | October 14, 2012 at 7:14 am |
I believe the adherents of “typical neodenialst[sic] discount rate” prefer the term ‘positivist’ (as opposed ‘ethicist’) in their literature. (www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/Online%20Library/Papers/Weisbach_Sunstein_Climate_Future.pdf)
Who but Harvard (who famously booted Bill Gates for failing Business Ethics 101) would argue being the opposite of ethical is a positive thing?
Not true – here is part 2 of the Commons of the Kitafugi. The true enlightenment liberal defends individual freedom and self determination.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT4x2qFF-j0
Conservation farming is mainstream becasue it is so productive. Unlike your green/neo-socialist ramblings that are always wrongheaded in bizarrely unproductive ways. Let’s socialise the land? Idiot.
Couldn’t argue history’s record of poor agricultural practices leading to dust bowls, fan, particularly immigrants applyinging old farming practices that aren’t suited to their new home lands. Soil degradation is recognised as a global problem, yes, but farm management is improving and farmers are leading the way. The wide spread recognition of no-till farming, or conservation agriculture, as a truly sustainable and economic system should ensure its spread. it is no longer viewed as just a fad.
In 1970, no-till farming was barely practised. In1999 no-till farming was adopted on about 45 million ha, world wide, growing to 111 million ha in 2009, corresponding to a growth rate of about 6 million ha per annum.
Farmers and investors in agricultural developments know where their interests lie. The rate of land under no-till farming, with its improved soil fertility producig higher crop yields, should continue to grow apace..
http://www.fao.org/ag/ca/CA-Publications/China_IJABE.pdf
Beth Cooper, with sincere respect for your many excellent posts, a crucial yet seldom-discussed aspect of the climate-change debate is this:
Carbon taxes, in essence, represent Judge Hand’s “tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society” in the face of the sobering scientific realities that are critically analyzed by James Hansen and colleagues in Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications and the follow-on analysis Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature .
All of this is simply 21st century Common Sense, eh? :wink: :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
Carbon taxes are the least effective way forward. Ultimately there needs to be technological solutions to providing cheap and abundant energy to support unfettered economic growth. I bet you don’t believe in economic growth FOMBS. I bet you are one of these suspension of democracy and the rule of law guys and a great believer in ‘economic degrowth’.
We want to build resilience in human societies – let me introduce you to a truely effective and pragmatic proposals. http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation
The best thing you could do FOMBS is encourage your government to live up to its millennium development goals committments. Then we might get somewhere faster on soil conservation in Africa.
“Ultimately there needs to be technological solutions to providing cheap and abundant energy to support unfettered economic growth.”
We shouldn’t use that as an excuse to pollute the atmosphere in the meantime, being that it risks climate catastrophe.
Say, messrs Trenberth and Kloor, looks like the horse has bolted,
might as well shut the stable door.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29E78OR9H
‘The new figures mean that the pause in global warming has now
lasted about the same length of time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980-1996.’
If you want to compare the 1980-1996 period then warming has actually accelerated since then.
Warming 1980-1996 = 0.176C total warming (0.11C/decade)
Warming 1980-present = 0.512C (warming trend from 1980-present: 0.16C/decade)
Evidentially the warming hasn’t stopped since 1997, or we’d have only seen 0.176C total warming since 1980.
Phil Jones tries to warn the journalist several times about the journalists statistical errors, but the journalist doesn’t heed it.
16 years ago to latest month, even HadCrappy3 is positive!
Yeah – keep deluding yourselves guys – the world is not warming for a decade or three more.
hows that going to work Chief? what’s the mechanism?
GHGs are rising. You accept the greenhouse effect right? So we have positive knowledge of a warming factor.
So to conclude the world won’t warm for a decade or three you must be equally as certain about a cooling factor. What cooling factor would that be and what’s the evidence?
It’s warming right now. When is it going to finally stop?
HadCrappy3 is your best hope. A regional temperature series.
Chief seems convinced that some magical way has been found for internal variability of a system to cause it to gain energy. In all his talk, he refuses to acknowledge the large amount of energy gained by the oceans (far more than the troposphere over the past 50 years). Basic physics of course dictates that only an external forcing to Earth’s energy system can cause it to gain energy, but he seems stuck in some odd anti-physics parallel world in which ENSO becomes that external forcing agent and so the 40% increase in CO2, and similar increases in methane, and N20 over the past few centuries simply don’t matter.
JCH
Since 1998, two records (HadCRUT3, RSS) show slight cooling; two records (GISS, UAH) show slight warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/plot/gistemp/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/trend
Conclusion: it has not warmed over the past 15 years (Trenberth’s “travesty”).
Who knows what will happen over the next 15 years?
Not you.
Not me.
Not James E. Hansen.
Not IPCC.
We’ll just have to wait and see whether or not the long-term warming trend of around 0.04 to 0.05C per decade (since 1850) resumes or something else happens.
I’m not a betting man when it comes to the weather or climate, but I think it is likely that the long-term warming trend will resume before too long.
What is your guess?
Max
HadCrappy3
GisTemp
the horrible at the arctic RSS
for the love of gawd, when is the cooling gonna start, UAH
And, of course, the oceans just keep right on warming.
Yeah. Or Custer at Little Bighorn. (Let’s see.)
Max
JCH
Saying over and over again that it’s still warming isn’t going to make it true.
The record shows the atmosphere (at the surface and in the troposphere) hasn’t warmed in 15 years (Trenberth’s “travesty”).
ARGO measurements show the ocean hasn’t warmed since they replaced the old unreliable XBT devices in 2003.
Trenberth has opined in an interview that the “missing heat” may be reflected out “to space”, with “clouds” acting as a “natural thermostat”.
This makes good sense to me.
How about you?
Max
PS I’m not claiming that the current “lack of warming” is part of a new long-term trend. It could well stop next year. Who knows?
Are you going to bake a cherry pie with all those cherries you are picking?
Gry M
How about a “clafoutis” (French version of a “cherry cobbler”)?
Max
lolwot
The “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” record tells us:
– Essentially flat (very slight cooling) since 1998 (for 15 years now).
– Cooling at -0.06C per decade since January 2001 (start of new millennium).
That’s what all those thermometers out there (even the ones next to AC exhausts, asphalt parking lots and airport runways) are telling us (HadCRUT3).
Rejoice!
(Let’s just hope this is not the start of a more serious cooling trend, lolwot.)
Max
HadCrappy3 and the delusional folks who love it.
JCH
Like IPCC, I suppose.
Right?
Max
You probably haven’t noticed. I’m lukewarm on the IPCC. My uncle was the commander of an infantry battalion in the bocage, and the IPCC reminds me of Montgomery at Caen. Too stodgy.
JCH
[This post ended up in the wrong place so am re-posting]
(Re: Montgomery at Caen)
Yeah. Or Custer at Little Bighorn. (Let’s see.)
Max
LOL … it’s time for some of Curry-style “critical analysis”:
Beth, is David Rose’s nonsensical journalistic twaddle *really* the highest-quality “critical analysis” that you can locate? :smile: :grin: :lol: :!:
An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’
It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here.
UK Met Office
“Our” response? I didn’t know we had MET Office member among the denizens here.
Interesting.
OHC continues to rise, which is orders of magnitude greater in heat storage capacity than the air. Media matters!
Free discussion, fan, you bet… Since I don’t consider we’re heading for dangerous CO2 caused warming, and I do believe the world needs cheap efficient energy and especially if it gets colder fer a decade or three, I am not in favour of a carbon tax. The reasons fer my views have been argued effectively by others and at length here on Judith’s site so I ‘ll leave it there. It’s late night here in old Melbourne town so I’m signing off, goodnight, fan :-)
There may be a number of reasons for Kevin Trenberth’s “enlightenment” but a change of heart is not one of them. Here are a few of theories:
(1) The honorary professorship granted Trenberth by The Age newspaper (he is not a professor) may have caused him to think he must sound more intellectual or reflective;
(2) He finds himself in somewhat of a publicity shadow of late. Remember there are two reasons for flatus in church. Either one cannot help it or one would like to be noticed.
(3) Consensus aren’t what they used to be!
Non Nobis
To (mis)quote Yogi Berra.
“Consensus is tough, especially if you involve other people.”
Or (more recently, as Trenberth has also lamented):
“Consensus ain’t what it used to be.”
Max
Important Observational Alerts of Ongoing Global Climatic Change
ALERT 1: In less than 20 months it is very likely that atmospheric levels of CO2 will surpass the 400ppm mark for the first time in at least 15 million years. The NOAA have updated their observational graph of atmospheric CO2 levels as measured at Mauna Loa to include the 400ppm mark
ALERT 2: Satellites observing Arctic sea ice report the ice has failed to recover sufficiently since over a dozen low records were shattered this summer. The University of Illinois has issued satellite data revealing 2012 still tracking well below the previous record year of 2007. Current ice anomaly stands at negative 2.58 million square kilometres and falling. Ice anomaly is expected to breach previous records lows within days.
ALERT 3: Satellites observing Sea Level Rise report <a href=http://sealevel.colorado.edu/a sharp jump in sea level in the past year. Recent data suggests a 8.95mm rise this year, almost 3 times higher than the longterm rate to date.
Alert, Alert: a sharp jump in sea level rise in the past year… Honest, em><really — this time we’re telling the truth. YOU’VE GOT TO BELIEVE ME. WE’RE DOOMED! SOMEONE CALL A CLIMATOLOGIST BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!!
You are making fun of alarmists, right?
lolwot, R Gates had this to say about recent sea level data: short-term natural variability (while interesting from a short-term weather perspective) really don’t matter
For some reason, he posted that in response to my graph of the whole record, not your focus on the “8.95mm [note: 3 sig fig in your post] rise this year, almost 3 times higher than the longterm rate to date.” Possibly I could have made it more clear in my post that I was mocking attention to short-term variability. I thought that my “cherry-pick” reference was clear enough.
My point was that short-term trends don’t really matter when looking at long term signals. The only point at which short-term trends do matter is when a long-term forcing begins to affect the nature of short-term variability, which it inevitably does. We’re beginning to see that on several fronts regards to anthropogenic effects on climate. We might see it later this century related to an acceleration in sea level rise, but certainly not yet.
In regards to cherry-picking– it goes on from both sides with some picking the “up” cherries and some picking the “down”, hence, looking at the long term keeps you out of everyone’s cherry orchards.
R. Gates: My point was that short-term trends don’t really matter when looking at long term signals.
Yes. I brought that point to the attention of lolwot, who drew our attention to a really short trend.
We might see it later this century related to an acceleration in sea level rise, but certainly not yet.
No disagreement from me, either on the “might” or the “certainly no yet”. The “certainly not yet” may apply to lolwot’s Alert 3 as well.
“My point was that short-term trends don’t really matter when looking at long term signals. The only point at which short-term trends do matter is when a long-term forcing begins to affect the nature of short-term variability, which it inevitably does.”
Translation: “Short-term trends don’t really matter, unless they support the claims of CAGW.”
Nice piece of logic that. Situational logic is no better than situational ethics.
And this just compounds the self-conrtadiction: “… looking at the long term keeps you out of everyone’s cherry orchards.” Except of course when it comes to the caveat in the preceding paragraph, ie. when it confirms the CAGW attribution orthodoxy.
That was a 100% inaccurate translation of my statement Gary, and you apparently meant to restate what I said in an inaccurate way. Short-term trends in and of themselves, regardless of their direction, intensity, etc. tell us nothing about the existence of longer-term forcings in the climate. However, when a longer-term forcing reaches certain bifurcation points, you would expect them to begin to affect short-term variability in some way. Paleoclimate research confirms this is the case, as the movements to and from glacial periods show consistent alterations in the behavior of short-term natural variability at distinct bifurcation points.
Hey matt, I am just pointing out how much sea level has risen in the last year. This thwarts certain attempts to claim sea level isn’t rising. I often see claims like “sea level rise has stopped since 2008” or “sea level rise has slowed down”. If I state what’s actually happening then people will be less reluctant to assume something false is happening.
R. Gates,
If my “translation” of your progressivese comment was incorrect, you should be able to give me an example of a short term trend that would contradict the CAGW consensus.
Otherwise, my “translation” is spot on.
On Alert 2. Why does it not mention that the reported records are northern hemisphere only/ When we discuss global average temperatures, local temperatures in isolation don’t really tell us much. Why is this any different with ice? If we are going to use ice extent (sea, glaciers, Greenland etc.) as a proxy for global average temperature, why do we care about anything other than global ice extent?
If I were going to be interested in the extent of ice as an argument pro or con CAGW, the only figure that I would find even interesting would be global ice extent. If there is more total ice world wide, that would be at least suggestive (thought certainly not dispositive) of a drop in GAT. If there were less, that would similarly be at least suggestive (but again not dispositive) of a rise in GAT.
The fact that ice is receding in one area, without reference to the rest, I just don’t find terribly interesting with respect to CAGW. Total global ice extent would not be determinative of CAGW, but I would at least find it relevant.
Obsession with the Arctic alone just strikes me as more cherry picking.
Arctic’s the canary in the coal mine
So you don’t have an answer? I am shocked…shocked.
you asked why focus on the arctic not the antarctic.
It’s because changes are happening fast in the arctic that will impact the upper northern hemisphere. The antarctic has no bearing on this.
lolwot,
I didn’t ask why focus on the Arctic and not the Antarctic. I asked why focus on any one area when claiming that melting ice is a proxy for increasing global average temperature. Nary a word about impacts on the norther hemisphere.
So you have no answer either as to why global ice extent is ignored, while one declining area is all you CAGW advocates seem to care about.
It’s the same type of cherry picking discussed elsewhere on this thread. Pick the starting and ending dates that show the trend you want. Pick the area where ice is declining, and ignore areas where it is increasing… for exactly the same reason.
Y’all should have been farmers for all the cherry pickin’ going on here.
The antarctic has no bearing on this.
Is that the consensus view…?
The Arctic is surrounded by warming continents with their river run-offs and has a warm current towards it from the Atlantic called the Gulf Stream. The Antarctic, not so much.
The coincidence of:
1. Climategate emails and documents released in 2009, and
http://tinyurl.com/7b6vp3e _ http://tinyurl.com/925vauu
2. The strange response of leaders of the scientific community to evidence public funds bought deceptive global temperature data
Means the conclusion to a sixty-seven year (2012-1945 = 67 yr) battle between the ego and the force is fast approaching:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1369
The conclusion was written many, many years in the ancient scriptures of almost every religion: “Truth is victorious, never untruth” [Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.6; Qur’an 17.85; Numerous verses of every other religion]
Talk about “catching your eye”!
Great photo of Prof. Judith Curry here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who will read this rather unscientific nonsense written by Mr. Rose and believe it. They’ll take a sip of their coffee, dunk in their biscuit, and move on to the next story.
Yeah, look at that garbage graphic that they have on that site.
They apparently shifted the HADCRUT4 plot by a half a year.
http://imageshack.us/a/img856/3547/hadcrut4.gif
I imagine they did this thinking that no one would notice, or perhaps because they are incompetent.
Great statistical eye you have there MattStat … yawn.
WebHubTelescope: They apparently shifted the HADCRUT4 plot by a half a year.
I liked the photo of Dr. Curry. I was going to address the text after reading the original. Since you raise the issue, merely shifting the axis in the graph makes no difference to the estimate of the slope.
WebHubTelescope: They apparently shifted the HADCRUT4 plot by a half a year.
That is no problem at all. Mislabeling of graphs happens frequently in the peer-reviewed literature, and results in nothing more serious than little corrections published as “errata”, not claims of incompetence. In this case, the number on the horizontal axis (e.g. “2012) denotes mid-year, not start of year, and the first half of 1997 is omitted. The graph that you linked to does not seem to have the data (green line) up through August 2012. Shouldn’t it?
If you were to read the article carefully, that is likely the recent data release, and not everyone is caught up with the data. So, a half a year does make a difference. This kind of sloppiness can waste a lot of people’s time as they try to make sense of the charts. That’s why we count on statisticians with a good eye for the details.
WebHubTelescope: If you were to read the article carefully, that is likely the recent data release, and not everyone is caught up with the data. So, a half a year does make a difference.
A half a year’s difference in data makes next to no difference. Using the number of the year to denote midyear instead of start of year makes no difference. And yes, the article says early on that they used the most recently updated data.
It makes a difference for people like me that essentially have to waste their time trying to figure out how the skeptics are manipulating the data.
More interesting is how the Daily Mail has altered the start and end data point on the graph so they are both 0.5C. Look closely….
Good eye, Lolwot.
Note that the manipulated false graphic is on the front page of the right-wing faux news site Drudge Report as of right now.
Millions of clueless people are becoming more clueless. And so it goes with the War on Brains.
(Since Drudge does not archive any of its articles or provide permalinks, here is a snapshot : http://imageshack.us/a/img839/6056/drudge.gif)
I agree with Matt. It doesn’t make much difference in the conclusion. I thought the response of Phil Jones tells you all you need to know. It’s amazing how people forget their previous pronouncements when confronted with new data.
Time for a sing-along to the one and only Daily Mail Song.
All together now…
BBD
Couldn’t open the link to the Daily Mail Song.
But a few years ago an article (in the Daily Mail) likened climate change hysteria with a religion.
Well, it seems to have some similarities: the belief is not based on data derived from empirical scientific evidence, as we see from posts here (Willard, Very Tall Guy, etc.) but rather on prophesies for the future coming from super-computers, the modern-day oracles.
These are spread by modern-day prophets (e.g. James E. Hansen of coal “death train” fame and Al Gore, who has made a neat bundle for himself in the process).
The message: Repent (stop your sinful burning of fossil fuels) and ye shall be saved! And while you’re at it, pass the collection plate to drop in your share of the carbon tax.
Verily, verily! Now let’s sing #312 in our global warming hymn book (to the tune of the Gospel song “Gimme dat ol’ time religion”:
Gimme dat climate change religion
Gimme dat climate change religion
Tho’ it’s only warmed a smidgen
Still it’s good enough for me
It made Al Gore lots of millions
It made Al Gore lots of millions
And it’s gonna cost us trillions
And it’s good for you and me
Gimme dat ol’ greenhouse warmin’
Gimme dat ol’ greenhouse warmin’
It’ll keep them ‘skeeters swarmin’
And it’s good enough for me
Let’s go scare dem li’l schoolchillun
Let’s go scare dem li’l schoolchillun
That’ll make ‘em weak and willin’
T’say ”it’s good enough for me”
Gimme dat ol’ greenhouse fryin’
Gimme dat ol’ greenhouse fryin’
Don’ mind dem polar bears a’dyin’
‘Cause it’s good for you and me
’s good for every politician
’s good for every politician
So they’re really on a mission
T’show it’s good for you and me
Gimme dat ol’ greenhouse heatin’
Gimme dat ol’ greenhouse heatin’
It’ll keep dem scientists eatin’
And it’s good for you and me
Let’s make gas cost fifteen dollars
Let’s make gas cost fifteen dollars
Until everybody hollers
“Yes, it’s good for you and me”.
Gimme dat climate change religion
Gimme dat climate change religion
Tho’ it’s only warmed a smidgen
Still it’s good enough for me
Amen.
Max
BBD,
I believe that when manacker speaks of “prophesies”, he’s referring to projections:
> A major advance of this assessment of climate change projections compared with the TAR is the large number of simulations available from a broader range of models. Taken together with additional information from observations, these provide a quantitative basis for estimating likelihoods for many aspects of future climate change. Model simulations cover a range of possible futures including idealised emission or concentration assumptions. These include SRES illustrative marker scenarios for the 2000 to 2100 period and model experiments with greenhouse gases and aerosol concentrations held constant after year 2000 or 2100.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
We have no evidence if manacker can distinguish projections from predictions, nor if he can grasp the concepts emphasized.
This might explain why he’s speaking in tongue.
Whodat “we”, willard?
Got a mouse in your pocket?
Max
PS Guess the distinction doesn’t mean much when they’re both wrong.
manacker does not falsify our (i.e. me and the mouse in my pocket) hypothesis that manacker does not distinguish prediction from projection:
> Guess the distinction doesn’t mean much when they’re both wrong.
Perhaps this example from backgammon could help manacker:
> The way computer programs play strategy games is quite different from the way humans play. Humans apply logical reasoning to make the best possible play. In perfect-information games like chess and checkers, a game-tree search is the core technique in a computer program’s arsenal, augmented by good evaluation functions and clever secondary strategies. However, brute force alone is not sufficient for a variety of reasons. In perfect information games such as chess, checkers, and go, the game tree grows exponentially, thereby constraining the usage of brute force techniques such as alpha-beta search. In imperfect information games such as bridge and scrabble, the missing information renders it impossible to build the game tree in order to perform a brute-force search. A variety of techniques are used to counter this encumbrance. In other perfect-information games such as go and clobber, there is very little intuition in evaluating
how good a position is, and consequently constructing a good evaluation function is not easy. It turns out that Monte-Carlo simulations, i.e. producing repeated random samples and considering their average in making a decision, work surprisingly well in these games. In imperfect-information games such as bridge and scrabble (the latter game has inherent randomness associated with it as well), Monte-Carlo simulations once again turn out to be useful.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/Grad/scholarlypapers/papers/Rajkumar.pdf
Simulations are there to help making a decision, not to predict the future.
To believe that models are predictors is as silly as saying that Monte-Carlo simulations of a backgammon position B can predict that you’re going to roll a double.
willard (@nevaudit)
<IPCC’s projections until 2030 are predictions as it says “decadal average warming over each inhabited continent by 2030 is insensitive to the choice among SRES scenarios”
For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. {10.3, 10.7}
Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections. {1.2, 3.2}
Model experiments show that even if all radiative forcing agents were held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would occur in the next two decades at a rate of about 0.1°C per decade, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans. About twice as much warming (0.2°C per decade) would be expected if emissions are within the range of the SRES scenarios. Best-estimate projections from models indicate that decadal average warming over each inhabited continent by 2030 is insensitive to the choice among SRES scenarios and is very likely to be at least twice as large as the corresponding model-estimated natural variability during the 20th century. {9.4, 10.3, 10.5, 11.2–11.7, Figure TS.29}
Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century. {10.3}
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
> IPCC’s projections until 2030 are predictions as it says “decadal average warming over each inhabited continent by 2030 is insensitive to the choice among SRES scenarios”
Is there a place where they predict that one of the SRES scenarios must obtain?
Interesting. Please continue.
Met Responds Here: http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/
There was not an actual Met “report”, as such, just a data update.
I stopped reading the Daily Mail article when I came to Dr. Curry’s photo, which I thought was quite dramatic. It reminded me of the phrase “eye of the tiger”. The rest looked like a rehash of what gets presented here.
A fan of *MORE* discourse said
on October 14, 2012 at 11:47 am
Is this assertion not bizarrely illogical John Whitman?
Because it implies — does it not? — that the consensus opinion can *never* be correct!”
– – – – – –
Dear A Physicist cum A fan of ‘MORE’ discourse {or whatever shape shift of the moment you are using},
My statement implies that critical independent thought, per se, recognizes no intellect authority. It implies every critical independent thinker provides his/her own independently formed intellectual basis for analyzing popular or ‘consensus’ ideas.
It is irrelevant whether a critical independent thinker initially supports a ‘consensus’ idea and irrelevant whether he comes in the end to agree with a ‘consensus’ idea. N’est ce pas?
I am describing hard core scientific skepticism; the bane of all whose main argument is that a ‘consensus’ of authority trumps all other arguments.
As to Berry, you have shown him a truly populist favorite of populist supporters . . . which is why he is so complicit in past lobbying in support of the serious problematical faults underlying the cacophonous US Farm Bill.
John
global mean sea level change continues to fluctuate:
http://climate4you.com/images/UnivColorado%20MeanSeaLevelSince1992%20With1yrRunningAverage.gif
Non-statistically-significant decline over past year interrupted general upward trend. Mean sea level is a little lower that forecast in 2010. Cherry-pick other details to your liking.
Long-term sea level and ocean heat content continue to rise. If you’re looking for a long-term forcing signal such as you might expect from the long-term rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gases, then short-term natural variability (while interesting from a short-term weather perspective) really don’t matter– and shame on those who blame climate models for “failing” to be able to model short-term variability.
Please explain how long the Argo floats have been in the water? Is that what you consider to be ‘long term’? What was the spatial coverage down to 2000 meters prior to Argo?
Harrywr2,
Best source of ARGO information: http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/
But they started being deployed in 2000 and were completed somewhere around 2007 I think with about 3,000 or so floats around the globe.
For an overview of heat content data prior to ARGO, and then including ARGO see:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat12.pdf
For recent corrections to ARGO calibrations see:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/PDF/heat_content_differences.pdf
For a recent analysis of what this all means related to Earth’s energy budget see:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/bquj732425827t15/fulltext.pdf
In general, of course there is increasing uncertainty the further you go back in measuring global ocean heat content, as is the case with all climate data, but if you combine the current ARGO data with previous data and then move into more recent proxy data for ocean heat content it tells a very consistent story of a general warming of the oceans for many decades.
harrywr2
Tip on ARGO data.
You can essentially ignore all the heat content data points prior to around 2003. These are based on spot measurements by expendable XBT devices, which even team leader, Josh White conceded introduced a “warming bias”, and before that on even more unreliable and spotty measurements.
After 2003, the measurements were made by much more reliable ARGO devices, which have since been increased in number, so that we have a fairly comprehensive record. However, the data do not show ocean warming.
In 2006 ARGO reported cooling of the ocean. Willis called it a “speed bump”.
A 2009 study by Craig Loehle using ARGO data from Willis showed a continuation of the same cooling trend
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3152
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060921123321.htm
It is likely that the ocean did warm during the late 20th century period of atmospheric warming, although IMO the data are inconclusive for the reasons indicated.
It is fairly certain, however, that it has NOT warmed since ARGO measurements started in 2003.
Max
typo in first paragraph. Team Leader, Josh Willis (not “White”)
Sorry,
Max
Max said:
“It is likely that the ocean did warm during the late 20th century period of atmospheric warming, although IMO the data are inconclusive for the reasons indicated.
It is fairly certain, however, that it has NOT warmed since ARGO measurements started in 2003.”
_____
Complete garbage. The ARGO data since 2003 is among the very best and most reliable we have and shows a consistent warming of the oceans since then. But Max did say “IMO” related to this data, so I guess it would be Max’s opinion versus pretty much every expert on ocean heat content…the oceans have been warming since 2003, and likely for at least the past 50 years.
For those who want to see Max’s “cooling ocean” since 2003, have a look here:
http://i49.tinypic.com/riuhaa.jpg
Of course…it isn’t cooling at all, but continues on an upward climb, averaging about 0.5 x 10^22 Joules of energy being added every year on average over the past 50 years down to 2000 meters.
R Gates,
I am well aware of the Argo data. We have less then 10 good years of it.
There is also a long running saga as to whether or not the corrections made with regard to the XBT’s were too much or too little.
Even with that the sampling at depth greater then 700 meters pre-Argo is ‘sparse’ at best.
From Levitus 2012
Our estimates are based on historical data not previously available, additional modern data, and bathythermograph data corrected for instrumental biases. We have also used Argo data corrected by the Argo DAC if available and used uncorrected Argo data if no corrections were available at the time we downloaded the Argo data.
If you look at the spatial coverage in Levitus 2012 you will see the coverage is quite poor the further you go back.
But when I go to NOAA and look at the official 0-700M plot I don’t see much warming in the uppper 700 meters since 2003.
http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Figures/OHCA_curve_2011.pdf
If different government agencies can’t agree on how much the global ocean heat content has changed since 2003 somehow I think making a statement that we have ‘solid long term trends’ is overstating things.
The old sailors saying of there is no law below 40 degrees south and their is no god below 50 degrees south applies. There is no good long term data for the Southern Oceans because sailors avoided sailing there.
Anything that doesn’t go back more then a full human lifetime is not a ‘long term record’. There is no need for records if we are going to ‘restart history’ every 50 years.
Ocean heat content is heading upwards. There are two ways of knowing this.
1) the measurements of OHC
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
2) the measurements of sea level rise
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png
Sea level rise being largely the sum of
a) ice melt
b) thermal expansion due to increase in OHC
Shame on people who put shame on people who believe in climate models that have failed for 15 years. We were promised that it only took 12 years. The models have failed for more years than it was possible. Actual data does not show sea level rise and warming rise. Only adjusted data and alarmist computer models show warming and sea level rise. Shame on junk science that continues to ignore actual data.
Re the MET graf in the DM: Warmists are upset over “cherry picking”?
Remind me again of Roseanne D’Arrigo who famously said, “you have to pick cherries if you want to make cherry pie.”
The warmists entire argument is an exersice in “cherry picking”. All of the warmists projections start from local minima, such as the end of the LIA or the end of the local cooling seen in the 1970’s, and when the climate rebounds, yells…OMG…WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.
About 0.7dC from about the bottom of the LIA in the mid 1800’s to date…Call it about 0.5dC rebound from the LIA….Call it about 0.2dC from other effects ..OMG..WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.
And warmists wonder why engineers are some of the worst “deniers”
Engineers are the best “deniers’ because engineers have the best understanding of how everything works. They are the best BS detectors when you try to lie about what happens and why.
“And warmists wonder why engineers are some of the worst “deniers””
Because generally they’ve never had to do scientific analysis.
lolwot….looks like you define “cherry picking” as “scientific analysis”.
Yep…..I agree….engineers dislike your perceived process of analysis. We like our bridges to stand. Arm waving and shouting “denier” when someone critiques their math as defective does not cut it.
Things like “errors and omissions insurance” and “personal legal liability” tends to clear ones mind when taking a hard and cold look at the data supporting your design.
What is the legal liability for your “heroes” yelling ” OMG…we are all going to die”……none. When your “heroes” become as legally responsible for their work as engineers are for their work, I may pay more attention to them.
> We like our bridges to stand.
Out of curiosity, what’s the scale ratio between an average bridge and the Earth with its atmosphere?
Pingback: More evidence of global warming.
Bart R said
on October 14, 2012 at 2:23 pm
You break me up! That is hilarious! I love that “independent and critical thinking” bit!
And the “controlled /revisionist/ censored venues” jab is priceless!
You need to put a warning on your stuff when you’re going to be that funny; I shudder to think the number of spit-takes on keyboards and changes of pants the unaware were subject to from this dead-on lampoon.
– – – – – –
Bart R,
That was puerile. That is it?
NOTE: Your lacking in witty quick repartee skills look oddly like those belonging to the either Cook’s Crusher Crew from Paranoiaville (CCCP) or Scott Mandia’s CSRRT ragtag vigilantes. Are you assigned to Judith’s e-salon?
John
John Whitman | October 14, 2012 at 4:17 pm |
Wait.. you’re suggesting you were being serious?
And this pair of acronyms.. I have to admit, as I pretty much avoid blogs that aren’t this one, I’m not very familiar with, but any club that would want me — which I doubt they would — I wouldn’t want to be affiliated with.
If they’re really cunning, clever and well-informed clubs, I’d suggest you might mean willard or AK, Howard or Fan.. though it seems to me those goodly names are independent thinkers who don’t go in for travelling in gangs bullying people just because they’re different.
Speaking of, what are your own affiliations, may one ask?
Bart R,
Why do you persist in the puerile behavior?
The reason I asked whether you belong to Cook’s Crusher Crew from Paranoiaville (CCCP) or belong to Mandia’s vigilante CSRRT is because your activities are similar to theirs. That is all. And since they do not self identify their affiliation much less their legal names it looked to me like a possibility you were associated with them.
I am naturally curious as to whom I am interacting. Especially if the person I am interacting with does not provide their identity. Do you provide your legal name when asked? I am asking.
As to affiliations, look me up in Judith’s denizens. John Whitman is my legal name. I am a recently retired engineer, spending 40 years as a commercial nuclear power professional. I comment across ~six climate science focused blogs and have done so for the past ~5 years. I belong to no organized group of commenters.
Can you provide your background and experience? I would appreciate it if I am to continue to attempt a serious and civil dialog with you.
John
John Whitman | October 14, 2012 at 5:01 pm |
We have a difference of opinion about the purpose of Climate Etc.
I am here for ideas about Climate.
You are “naturally curious as to whom” you interact with.
Beyond the contents of http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/12/the-denizens-of-climate-etc/ there is nothing about who I am that I can imagine would be proper fodder for any but the most pointless curiousity with regards Climate Etc.
My name is fairly common. Googling it would turn up tens of thousands of hits that have nothing to do with me, or with my ideas. The commonest hits would be to a guy whose work is, I admit, so far beyond my understanding that I’m left gape-jawed any time I try to unravel it. I doubt more than five lurkers or commenters here would find it accessible.. and it has utterly nothing to do with Climate, Etc.
What purpose would pestering that person’s inbox with mistaken identity issues, or misleading people looking to follow up my ideas by chasing my name?
For discussion of my ideas offline, Prezi.com provides plentiful opportunity; take up the offer to expand on the discussion there if your natural curiousity extends to the world of ideas, instead of calling people names.
Though really, of late, I’m so impressed with and indebted to the likes of the often infuriating Mssr.s Mosher and willard for ideas, it’s hard for me to justify making comment at all. If we got a decent Economist from the point of view of strict Market Capitalism, and some people who understood Chaos Theory and Game Theory and could communicate effectively commenting here regularly, I’d likely disappear almost entirely.
John Whitman,
I’d like to know what similarities you find between Bart R and the other groups for which you found so charming names.
Many thanks!
NEWS FLASH!
Two Belgian scientists have come up with a revolutionary solar power generation scheme that increases the capacity factor from the current 25% or so to well over 70% (and maybe even higher).
The revolutionary new concept is a conventional PV system on wheels, which moves with the noon-day sun around the Earth, making one revolution every 24 hours.
The plant also has pontoons which automatically inflate for water crossings.
Transmission problems are solved by a long flexible cable which rolls out and in on a specially designed roller system.
Patents are pending.
Now, that’s gonna slow the earth’s rotation down. And cause the sky to fall.
Mebbe boil.
=============
Max,
I’m surprised you’ve endorsed the Belgian scientists’ concept. I’d have thought you’d have pointed out that it would only work for a short time and after that it would fall off the edge of the Earth :-)
#312 in our global warming hymn book, +1 Max. Here’s # 313.
When they said, ‘Repent,’
Ah wuhndered whaat they meant.
Now ah know fer ah can see
The money they hav spent.
It made Al Gore a mint,
More tax fer guv uh mint,
And heffty grants fer climate scien-tists.
Oh when they said, ‘Repent,’
Ah wuhndered whaat they meant.
Now the blizz-hard uv the world
Has crossed the threshhold,
And it has ovur turned…ovur turned
The order uv the soul,
‘Repent!’
h/t Leonard Cohen
Bob Tisdale, how do we order your new book?
On line PDF, available @ his site, for only about eight and a half bucks, yankee. Over 400 pages with full color illustrations. It’s observationally based analysis of the Pacific’s children, El Nino and La Nina, explained such that even I can understand the dynamics of heat flow in the water, the atmosphere, the clouds, the currents, the whole nine yards.
An epic work, stunning.
=============
Judith,
You claim ” A few years ago, I was branded as a ‘heretic‘ for losing faith in the IPCC”
You mean you just said something like “I don’t know about the IPCC anymore, I’ve lately lost a bit of faith in them”, and they branded (I hope not literally) you a heretic? How intolerant of them! Do they think you should count yourself lucky you were weren’t burnt at the stake?
But wait a minute. Are you sure that was all there was to it? You weren’t saying anything else that might have upset them?
Temp, Cut here some slack. On the broad issue, Judith is right that her dissenting views were not welcomed by the team and that there were a lot of unscientific personal attacks. You can see some of them on the hide the decline thread where our favorite communicator Gavin (the attack dog) Schmidt went way over the line of scientific discourse and used the childish line: “We may be guilty, but you are guilty too.” And in fact, Judith was not really guilty at all in the hurricane controversy cited.
” a lot of unscientific personal attacks. “??
I’ll have to take a look and see if I can get any new ideas then. But I hope I can find something more caustic than “We may be guilty, but you are guilty too.”
That’s just Gavin pointing out that Judith 2.0 was criticising Judith 1.0 for being a warmist.
BS, It was Gavin doing what he does best, smearing the opposition. An honest scientist is entitled to change their mind. Gavin isn’t in this category.
Except that Judith, on her own admission, hasn’t changed her mind on the fundamentals of the consensus scientific position.
“But wait a minute. Are you sure that was all there was to it? You weren’t saying anything else that might have upset them?”
Anything in particular?
Judith says a lot of things- unlike others.
Is there some problem with saying too much?
Is there really anything wrong if she was even incorrect
in whatever she said or even if everything she says is incorrect?
It seems to me, that only way you really go wrong in saying anything
is repeating parrot-like talking points [vastly ignorant talking points- as it’s degrading activity for any human to in engage in].
Degrading, but who can imagine them unhappy?
===========
gbaikie,
I’m not sure Judith is being totally honest on this one. Its one thing to mention “losing faith in the IPCC” – its not quite the same as accusing them of fraud:
…………..it becomes clearer by the day that the IPCC assessment reports were fraudulently designed to fit the desired political consequences
I’m probably not the most diplomatic of people but I do know that when you accuse someone of fraud they start to get cranky. I have my doubts that the IPCC have ever used the term heretic about her. I think she just likes to pretend that’s what they think. But, all the same, Judith has no right to complain. If I were in their position I’d use much stronger language than that!
tempterrain
Even I don’t accuse the IPCC of fraud. Misguided yes. Group think yes. Lack of knowledge of natural variabilty and a willingness to take it into account yes. Heavily politcised yes, Fraud? We’ll have to wait and see I suppose
tonyb
“I’m not sure Judith is being totally honest on this one. Its one thing to mention “losing faith in the IPCC” – its not quite the same as accusing them of fraud:
…………..it becomes clearer by the day that the IPCC assessment reports were fraudulently designed to fit the desired political consequences
I’m probably not the most diplomatic of people but I do know that when you accuse someone of fraud they start to get cranky.” –
Yes, particularly when they have committed fraud.
Fortunately for them, there is no framework or standards in which fraudulent behavior could be disciplined, nor is there any official procedural mechanisms which will inhibit it in the future. And this not unusual as this is the general environment that UN operates in [and explains the UN’s history of corruption].
– “I have my doubts that the IPCC have ever used the term heretic about her. ”
Well obviously there is no actual *being* known as IPCC which is capable of expressing such an opinion.
Though I suppose if wanted to put a face on the IPCC, it would be it’s chairman, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri:
“Pachauri was born in Nainital, India. He was educated at La Martiniere College in Lucknow and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Jamalpur, Bihar. He belongs to the Special Class Railway Apprentices, 1958 Batch, an elite scheme which heralded the beginning of mechanical engineering education in India. He began his career with the Indian Railways at the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi. Pachauri was awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974. He lives in Golf Links, New Delhi. He is a strict vegetarian, partly due to his beliefs as a Hindu, and partly because of the impact of meat-production on the environment.” – wiki
“I think she just likes to pretend that’s what they think. But, all the same, Judith has no right to complain. If I were in their position I’d use much stronger language than that!”
I do believe you.
Which jolts my memory of past times when I said Mann is an incompetent politician, as it seems obvious that it’s possible for someone to do far worse.
Despite Mann tweeting some pretty stupid stuff, he refrains from such type of communication in an official capacity. And btw, I would have to say that Mann has so far conducted himself far better than Pachauri.
As a fan of William and the Outlaws, I make this observation to … ahem … those who think that wind energy is easily transported hither and thither.
When no one listens to yer, the Violet Elizabeth response has sometimes been known ter work:: ‘I’ll thcream and thcream until I’m thick!’
“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.” ~The Outlaw Josey Wales
Maria blows the stars around, and sends the clouds a flyin’,
For she was born the wayward one, born of the westward wind.
==============
Hmm … time ter be takin’ up a collection fer construction of a home
fer wayward climate scientists.Why should wayward girls be singled
out fer preferential treatment?
She be blowsy.
=========
Dear John De Lafayette Nobel Laureate,
(May I say, that’s got a nice ring to it.)
About yer song, I suggest that it has ter be in Esperanto, politically neutral, fosters peace. Please accept my congratulations on yer recent award,
Yrs very respectfully,
Beth Chalmers Cooper.
JC comment:
”This collection provides a wide range of perspectives. So who do you think is making sense? Trenberth? Kloor? Clinton? Lomborg? Pielke Jr?”
Further Judith Curry writes in her blog ‘Heresy and creation of monsters’ among others, link http://judithcurry.com/2010/10/25/heresy-and-the-creation-of-monsters :
”People really find it hard to believe that I don’t have a policy agenda about climate change/energy (believe me, Roger Pielke Jr has tried very hard to smoke me out as a “stealth advocate”). Yes, I want clean green energy, economic development and “world peace”. I have no idea how much climate change should be weighted in these kinds of policy decisions. I lack the knowledge, wisdom and hubris to think that anything I say or do should be of any consequence to climate/carbon/energy policy.”
As far as I understand, Pielkes (Senior and Junior) have viewed the reason of global warming in a way, that there may be three alternetives of dominating cause on the recent global warming: 1) natural causes, 2) equal natural and anthropogenic causes, and 3) anthropogenic causes; and they seem to regard the #2 as the dominating one.
I have understood, that Judith Curry, because of the ‘deep uncertainty’ on present assessments and keeping an open mind, wants to make IPCC properly develope all the entirety of assessments to correspond with the multidisciplinary problem of climate; and in this question she is really ‘making sense’. In my opinion, an absolute requirement for the stated reason on global warming is that even decision-makers themselves can it understand. Otherwise they can not make proper decisions.
As to my view, I regard the #1 (i.e. natural causes) as dominating. It is based on findings in reality, whereas any human influence on the recent warming can not be found in reality. See e.g. my comment http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992 . To make it understandable for politicians as laymen, too, I regard as sufficient the next quote:
”As to the influence of human CO2 emissions on the atmospheric CO2 content it is determined by the proportion of the human CO2 emissions to the total CO2 emissions. Nowadays when the yearly total CO2 emissions are little over 200 GtC (CO2 as carbon) and the yearly human CO2 emissions are about 8 GtC, the influence of the human CO2 emissions on the CO2 content in atmosphere is approaching 4 % at the most. For instance, when the CO2 content in the atmosphere is 390 ppm, the manmade share of it is about 16 ppm at the most.” (Without any proper evidence the assessment of IPCC for manmade share is a little bit over 100 ppm)
And further we can add a quote:
”the human role on the recent yearly increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is also about 4 %. For instance when CO2 content in the atmosphere increases 2 ppm per year, the human portion of that is only about 0.08 ppm.” (Without any proper evidence IPCC regards all the 2 ppm as anthropogenic)
The point in my link above is that the recent increase of CO2 measured in the atmosphere has followed natural warming; the antropogenic increase of CO2 is so minimal that it can not be found by measurements in reality.
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Bart R,
Thank you for referring to your JC’S Denizen bio.
Your decision to refrain from self-identification is not significant to me except for uncivil tendencies in behavior . . . at that point I think even an anonymous commenter needs to own up for their behavior.
As to name calling, if you are referring to ‘Cook’s Crusher Crew’, heck . . . that is what they call themselves. I added ‘from Paranoiaville’ because of their propensity for making up conspiracy theories about people who are skeptical of CAGW claims. Hey, it was coincidence that it came out CCCP. : )
Also, as to your reference to name calling, Mandia’s CSRRT is the name they call themselves.
John
You’re quite welcome. Denizens is a great resource, and I’m glad of Dr. Curry’s explicit invitation to post to it.
I’ve never denied my tendencies toward uncivility here. If you have a specific issue in particular, by all means bring it to my attention and I’ll see what I can do to accommodate your sensitivies.
However, you’ve been a regular on WUWT, per your Denizens post, for six years. I’m not so stupid or so ignorant to believe you are capable of blushing at anything I say here, given the thoroughly Godwinned, contemptuous, schoolyard-bully posts that have been a mainstay at that den of bile.
So please stop insulting the intelligence of readers here with your double standard.
Bart R,
You are consistent to the end. I think without mature civility that comments are discounted heavily.
John
John Whitman | October 19, 2012 at 8:47 pm |
So, no specific issue; you just “hear” things and get to judge them in your own head.
I can’t help you with the voices you hear in your head.
I myself heavily discount all of WUWT, but at least I say specifically why.
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willard (@nevaudit),
What I based my observation of similarities on was the general tone of contemptuousness toward ideas.
John
John Whitman | October 19, 2012 at 8:35 pm |
You can hear tone through WordPress? It’s better software than I thought!
You may be mistaking skepticism for contempt; I’m skeptical of ideas. I’m contemptuous of errors and deception. Oh. That would explain it, too.
Bart R,
You can’t conceive an intellectual tone through a person’s written word? Really? All of history is lost to you then?
So, let’s imagine what would happen if I was to apply your principle of “I’m contemptuous of errors and deception” toward your comments. : ) That will forever remain an undiscovered country*** . . . .
Back to questions of civil behavior. You persist.
***apologies to the Star Trek movie
John
John Whitman,
So, it’s a general tone of contemptuousness toward ideas that deserves charming names. I’m glad that makes you feel justified.
Thank you for your answer.
John could also have used as a proxy the sighting of your name in proximity.
willard (@nevaudit),
As to the ‘charming names’, here is what I said in a previous comment to Bart R,
John
John Whitman | October 20, 2012 at 1:46 pm |
I will gladly stand up any week, month, or year of the ‘tone’ of my comments side by side with the ‘tone’ and civility of the WUWT you are a hard-core supporter of; I’ll have to take people’s word for how that goes, however, as I was so turned off by the tone of WUWT as to shake the dust of that den of vile prevarication and invective from my sandals years ago.
Here’s an interesting snippet by John “I think without mature civility that comments are discounted heavily” Witman on on WUWT:
Smokey,
I found HI’s write up on the billboards very well put.
Gutsy move by HI. They ain’t no walflowers and I do not think they are looking for support of the adoring fans of political correctness. No warm fuzziness from HI. : )
I would have done it differently, but individual style is to be expected in any PR campaign. They have my respect with this.
John
and
“I supported HI’s billboard experience right from the very first WUWT post about it”
As a side note, that reminds me. Whatever happened to the commenter Smokey on WUWT? After many years of heavy commenting he has fallen strangely absent. Perhaps there’s an untold story behind this? :D
lolwot,
Shall we take your initiation of the OT discussion of HI’s billboards to that original WUWT thread? (if it is still open).
See your there.
John
lolwot,
The WUWT posts on HI billboards do not appear to me to be open for comments any longer.
But Judith’s blog on HI still is at http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/24/heartburn-at-heartland/
Shall we take up the OT discussion of HI billboards over there?
John
Bart R | October 20, 2012 at 1:57 pm | said,
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Bart R,
I certainly do like WUWT for its positive aspects in promoting openness and independent critical thinking. Likewise for the very same positive aspects I also certainly do like Judith’s place and Bishop Hill blog and CA and Lucia BB and JoNova’s and . . . . . . you get the drift of places I like. I think WUWT’s moderation is a worthy benchmark for light touch moderation that trims uncivil excesses effectively.
Also, I find Cook’s blog plus RC blog and others very beneficial to learn about the negative aspects of blogs acting out the logical scientific fallacies known as the appeal to authority and circular reasoning. So to that extent I support their activities as valuable lessons learned rich environments.
John
Yeah, so civility actually means nothing more to you than an excuse to squelch dissent, and you neither practice nor appreciate nor defend civility in any other context than to object to opinions that disagree with your own.
You could’ve just said so from the start, instead of making us guess.
Personal denigration is not civil.
Bart R,
I think a poem interlude might put into a broader context my perception of your intentional contempt for the manifold ideas outside of your mythos. N’est ce pas?
John
John
One of my favourite poems. I once wrote an article containing this work. Its amazing how many people weren’t aware of it.
tonyb
@Tonyb (climatereason | October 23, 2012 at 12:24 pm),
Me too. One of my favorites since I was 14 years old. : ) It presaged my passage into a broader set of skeptical ideas.
John
Thank you.
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willard (@nevaudit),
Por nada. : ) {you are welcome}
John
He had no DOE though…
Tom,
?
John
Re Clinton (Explainer in Chief): Problem solved by deflection and diktat.
NSIDEEPA. “Obama ‘Punting’ on New EPA Rules Until Post-Election.” Scientific. ICECAP, October 2012. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/obama_punting_on_new_epa_rules_until_post_election/
A final solution to the opportunity society.
Truly no matter if someone doesn’t know then its up to other people that they will assist, so here it occurs.
Usually I do not read post on blogs, but I would like to say that this write-up very pressured me to try and do it!
Your writing taste has been amazed me. Thank you, quite great article.