by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Mullers on fracking
Richard and Elizabeth Muller have written an article on tracking: Why Every Serious Environmentalist Should Favour Fracking. Summary points:
Environmentalists who oppose the development of shale gas and fracking are making a tragic mistake.
Some oppose shale gas because it is a fossil fuel, a source of carbon dioxide. Some are concerned by accounts of the fresh water it needs, by flaming faucets, by leaked “fugitive methane”, by pollution of the ground with fracking fluid and by damaging earthquakes.
These concerns are either largely false or can be addressed by appropriate regulation.
For shale gas is a wonderful gift that has arrived just in time. It can not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also reduce a deadly pollution known as PM2.5 that is currently killing over three million people each year, primarily in the developing world.
This air pollution has been largely ignored because PM2.5 was an unrecognized danger until recently; only in 1997 did it become part of the US National Ambient Air Quality Standards. It is still not monitored in much of the world. Greenhouse warming is widely acknowledged as a serious long-term threat, but PM2.5 is currently harming more people.
Europe shares an ironic advantage with China – the high price paid for imported natural gas, typically US$10 per million BTU (compared to US$3.50 in the US). At those prices, the cost of shale drilling and completion can be much higher and still be profitable. Europe can therefore be the testing and proving ground where innovative technology can be tried and perfected while still profitable.
As both global warming and air pollution can be mitigated by the development and utilization of shale gas, developed economies should help emerging economies switch from coal to natural gas. Shale gas technology should be advanced as rapidly as possible and shared freely.
Finally, environmentalists should recognize the shale gas revolution as beneficial to society – and lend their full support to helping it advance.
Looks pretty common sense to me.
Climate of middle earth
From Bristol University comes a very interesting article: Scientists simulate the climate of middle earth. A teaser:
Ever wondered what the weather and climate was like in Middle Earth, the land of hobbits, dwarves, elves and orcs, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings? Climate scientists from the University of Bristol, UK have used a climate model, similar to those used in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, to simulate and investigate the climate of Middle Earth.
This is actually quite interesting, and a good bit of fun.
Trenberth and Fasullo on the hiatus
Trenberth and Fasullo have an overview of the hiatus in a new online journal Earth’s Future [link]. It is good to see mainstream climate scientists taking the hiatus seriously (unlike the IPCC). This paper is well worth reading, it is very readable and written for a broad audience.
Bursting the bubble that protects us from opposing views
Technology Review has a very interesting article How to burst the filter bubble that protects us from opposing views. Subtitle: Computer scientists have discovered a way to number-crunch an individual’s own preferences to recommend content from others with opposing views. The goal? To burst the “filter bubble” that surrounds us with people we like and content that we agree with. Excerpt:
The results show that people can be more open than expected to ideas that oppose their own. It turns out that users who openly speak about sensitive issues are more open to receive recommendations authored by people with opposing views, say Graells-Garrido and co.
They also say that challenging people with new ideas makes them generally more receptive to change. That has important implications for social media sites. There is good evidence that users can sometimes become so resistant to change than any form of redesign dramatically reduces the popularity of the service. Giving them a greater range of content could change that.
This article suggests to me that checking the people that an individual is following on twitter is a litmus test for your filter bubble. Would be an interesting thing to diagnose for those tweeting on climate.
AGU
From: Bursting the bubble that protects us from opposing views
“The results show that people can be more open than expected to ideas that oppose their own. It turns out that users who openly speak about sensitive issues are more open to receive recommendations authored by people with opposing views, say Graells-Garrido and co.”
We certainly are exposed to opposing views on a variety of subjects here. Most here tend to speak their minds on controversial subjects. I see a lot of learning about climate, but not a lot of “mind changing.” I think that’s because a lot of us require evidence-based science and since the evidence for CAGW isn’t adequate, we remain unconvinced. No filter bubble on this blog.
The ‘stadium wave’ article changed minds. It marked a sea change not only in belief at CE but also in attitude.
(related: I’m still waiting to see from Marcia & Judy an animation that will prove John S.’s point about climate stadium wave physical propagation (in physical space, not variable space) — (I do hope John realizes I agree with him on that…))
WUWT certainly have a bubble that protects it from opposing view. Time and time again they’ve promoted the same botched greenland fudge, despite various people pointing it out. Now they are at it again!
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/12/denier-weirdness-this-is-denialism-at.html
I guess you don’t read WUWT. Anthony posts warmist articles.
“Trenberth and Fasullo have an overview of the hiatus in a new online journal Earth’s Future [link]. It is good to see mainstream climate scientists taking the hiatus seriously (unlike the IPCC). This paper is well worth reading, it is very readable and written for a broad audience.”
Lolly remains unpersuaded.
The fatal problem with wuwt is the aggressive thought-policing. (Curiously, all of the thought-policing agents operating for wuwt are based in California — not sure what’s up with that.)
jim2 | December 7, 2013 at 12:32 pm |
I guess you don’t read WUWT. Anthony posts warmist articles.
Right– he only censors articles by warmists.
@Russell Seitz | December 9, 2013 at 1:47 pm |
Why don’t you make some whine with those sour grapes?
An individual that is employed in the government-education complex is a litmus test for their filter bubble and political views about whether AGW exists and the need for government to assume it does and assume it is a problem that only more government can solve.
Waggy,
The more people, the more government. If you don’t want more government, advocate birth control.
Is that the politically correct thing to do?
@
Max_OK | December 7, 2013 at 12:04 pm | said:
“The more people, the more government. If you don’t want more government, advocate birth control.”
That’s not logical. What a crock.
The more people we have, the fewer police we need, the fewer firefighters we need, the fewer teachers we need?
That would be nice.
The more Leftist gadflies we need?
You have a point there for the police and firefighters, however the size of the administrative portion of the government can be slashed without adverse consequences.
Proving skeptics wrong, China moves ahead on carbon trading.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/28/us-china-carbon-beijing-idUSBRE9AR07C20131128
Just the sort of cash-for-clunkers investment opportunity Leftists love…
“Coal-fired power plants, which contribute to Beijing’s huge air pollution problem and were linked in June to 60 percent of the region’s premature deaths in a Greenpeace report, will receive free permits for 2013 equal to 99.9 percent of their average emissions over 2009 to 2012.
By 2015, the amount will drop to 99.5 percent.”
If they switched to shale gas CO2 would drop to 50% of current levels.
But AGW Cultists would prefer a cash grab.
If local pollution issues can be mitigated, shale gas is a good stop-gap solution to replace coal or other fossil fuels. It burns efficiently in terms of energy per CO2 produced with little pollution, and the total reserve is self-limiting to only a few ppm of global CO2 (if I have figured it out right). Looks good to me.
As a holder of mineral rights in a natural gas producing area, I would agree. However, in other parts of the country fracking may be a threat to clean water.
@Max_OK | December 7, 2013 at 12:09 pm | said:
“As a holder of mineral rights in a natural gas producing area, I would agree. However, in other parts of the country fracking may be a threat to clean water.”
There is no evidence for fresh water contamination from fracking other than politically or profit (from law suits) motivated anecdotal BS.
Why would it be a threat to clean water?
19% of US wells are already contaminated.
http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/trace/pubs/sir2011-5059/
” … a good stop-gap solution”
Stop-gap to where, exactly ? Details, please, not rhetoric
stop-gap in the context of replace coal with natural gas now, plan for the next step away from fossil fuels while the natural gas starts to run out. This allows a faster reduction of coal.
Fracking is clean and good on Max_OK’s land but on land he doesn’t own it can be bad.
What did your integrity sell for, Max in Oklahomo?
Re: Trenberth & Fasullo — my 60 second synopsis is that T&F feel the heat is going into the deep ocean, since about 2000, driving sea level rise and cooling (keeping cooler?) the surface temps. But Sea Level Rise measurements don’t show an accompanying increase in rise rates since 2000….in fact, CSIRO and CUSLRG data show an amazingly steady mid- and long-term rate.
If Trenberth is right, shouldn’t there have been a discernible acceleration in SLR?
“But Sea Level Rise measurements don’t show an accompanying increase in rise rates since 2000….in fact, CSIRO and CUSLRG data show an amazingly steady mid- and long-term rate.”
These fellows are not the type to let something as trifling as real world data get in the way of a good theory.
The theory is correct, therefore the world and its oceans must be wrong.
pokerguy, kip hansen has erected what is known as a strawman. Intentionally or not.
What we expect from ocean heat gain is sea level rise, which is happening. There is no requirement for it to “show an increase in rates since 2000”.
This plus the continued inability to get the very easy basics about the GISP2 ice core correct (see WUWT reference above) makes me wonder about skeptics, it really does.
If the heat uptake of the oceans is increasing, starting in 2000 — T&F’s view — then SLR should be increasing….if the sea is taking up the heat (instead of the air), NOW, but wasn’t before (the air was taking up the heat), then shouldn’t the increased uptake by the ocean cause more SLR? That’s my question….it seems that way to me.
I went through their paper expecting them to “next” show me the SLR graph, showing how the extra heat entering the deep ocean has caused *this* added SLR — but neither the graph nor the data was there.
Anyone have a clue? Could they be correct about where the heat is going absent additional SLR?
Kip, the sea level/OHC issue inspired me to do a reverse paleo reconstruction.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/12/2000-years-of-climate.html
With lolwot whining about the Alley 2000 Greenland temperature reconstruction I am thinking of expanding it a touch.
Kip,
The issue of OHC gain is one of perspective. To say the bulk of the TOA imbalance is “going into” the deeper ocean, under 700m, is a common way of talking, but is not dynamically correct from a physics perspective. Net energy on this water planet never ever moves from atmosphere to ocean, but very strongly the opposite direction. Net energy flow is always from ocean to atmosphere. The gains in ocean heat content over the past 40+ years very closely parallel the gains to GH gas concentrations, and these gains took no hiatus during the past 10-15 years. Energy input to the ocean is dictated by ice, solar, clouds, and aerosols– energy output is dictated largely by GH gas concentrations.
Fine, Lolly. What bothers me is that sea level rise,,,that is the rate of sea level rise…has not been accelerating. Of course I don’t expect to have a rational conversation with you in that regard as you’re still denying the
pause/hiatus/lacuna/gap/where’s the heat/it might be in the ocean/or in someone’s backyard for all we know…
As R Gates says, it is better to think of it in terms of the heat going through the ocean (and land) to the atmosphere. When the heat from ocean to atmosphere is slowed by the spread of colder surface water during a negative PDO phase, it accumulates in the deeper ocean. PDOs regulate this flow.
Gates ==> So where does this leave us with regards to T&F 2013?
[ T&F just saying “sea level rise is happening” is (egads!) just silly. Of course it is happening, and has been happening, fairly steady rate for a real long time. It certainly doesn’t make their point.]
Captn. Dallas,
I was pleased to see your Indian Ocean SST reconstruction so clearly showed the huge impact from the 1257 mega-volcano.
“Gates ==> So where does this leave us with regards to T&F 2013?”
—-
They are only partially correct and not telling the full story. As a water planet, where the ocean is our primary reservoir of climate system solar derived energy, we need to look at inputs and outputs to that reservoir if we want to really understand how the energy in that reservoir can be declining or increasing. Over the past 10 to 15 years, inputs have been declining, mainly from the sleepy solar cycle, likely a Dalton, but possibly at a Maunder type minimum, but also because of a moderate uptick in global volcanic activity leading to an increase in volcanic aerosols. However, these decreases to the inputs have been more than matched by decrease to the output from the global ocean, caused by both the long-term increase in GH gas concentrations as well as short-term variability in ocean cycles like the PDO. So less in, but even less out, leading to an increase in OHC.
Then again – the TOA radiant flux data doesn’t agree.
The major cause of ocean warming in ARGO was cloud radiative forcing.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=142
Jim will suggest it is a feedback but clouds vary with SST naturally.
Further to what I said above, I think there is an important consequence of PDOs with global warming. PDOs suppress warming for decadal-scale periods, accumulating energy in the oceans below the spreading cooler surface. This leads to explosive releases of energy from the ocean like 1998 when the PDO eased. These explosive El Ninos may be a new phenomenon resulting from energy accumulation during an increasing background forcing. You could argue that 1983 was the first of these, but 1998 was stronger and 15 years later again we may be due for an even stronger one. It is like venting a warming pot. As the burner heat is raised the venting gets more vigorous.
Gates, Nothing “clearly shows” a 1227 dramatic impact, but they all show a nudge within a decade or two depending on the type of proxy and region.
Captn.,
I guess it is a bit upsetting to you when your analysis shows a result that doesn’t support your assumptions. You graph clearly shows a huge fall in temperatures after the largest volcanic event in the past 1000 years. You should be proud– not in denial, just because it does not support your memeplex.
Chief,
You are still confusing energy in to energy out of the oceans. Ice, solar, aerosols, clouds all impact energy in. GH gases regulate energy out on the long-term, natural variability (PDO, AMO) regulate energy out over the shorter-term.
R. Gates, Oppo 2009 shows a ~.5 C drop over ~70 years. Because of the samples and spline fit the average data point covers 50 years which is then interpolated into 10 year bins for splicing to instrumental. There is also a solar minimum years earlier which likely had some impact. So while the Oppo fit on its own is pretty good, it gets washed out by higher latitude proxies which have an earlier impact, faster rebound, different weighting and smoothing. That is what I mean by doesn’t “clearly show” since the impact and timing are not good enough to get an actual range of impact by which event to compare with other regions.
It does seem have a very good fit from 1750 onward though.
Cap. Dallas doesn’t think his excellent reconstruction shows the huge impact of the 1257 mega volcano– the largest eruption of the past 1000 years. The point in time of that mega volcano is circled in green on this chart from the good Capt. :
http://tinypic.com/r/11uycmp/5
What do you think? I think he deserves a huge pat on the back!
Gates, This will give you a better idea of what you are up against.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-KST5l-AgXIg/UmrSj9vWuHI/AAAAAAAAKLA/P9kjjVLRO9Y/w781-h427-no/sol+y+vol+with+oppo+to+800+ad.png
By itself, the 1257 Volcano likely would have had only about 0.25C impact even as massive as it was. But there was a sequence of volcanoes and solar events making “clearly shows” a bit of a joke.
This was written in 2007. It reflected my understanding of ENSO at that time – which has evolved of course. It describes energy dynamics as you say. Beyond that there are secular changes in cloud cover that are quite obvious. Underlying dynamical complexity is another story entirely.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html
As I keep saying to you – the whole story is necessary and this can only be understood with data. TOA radiant flux – TSI – ocean heat – all required to understand the energy budget of the Earth. Otherwise the delusions and fanciful narratives go on for ever.
Talking about fanciful narratives. The 1998 El Nino seems in fact to be a baby event in terms of Holocene variability.
‘According to Fig. 5, a series of intense El Nino events (high red color intensity) begins at about 1450 BC that will last for centuries. In that period normal (La Nina) conditions have but disappeared. For comparison, the very strong 1998 El Nino event scores 89 in red color intensity. During the time when the Minoans were fading, El Nino events
reach values in red color intensity over 200.’ http://www.clim-past.net/6/525/2010/cp-6-525-2010.pdf
Captn,
Thanks for that additional detail. You are right, the 1257 mega volcano was only the extreme in a series of large and moderate volcanoes spanning from the 1200’s right up to around 1900’s. As discussed earlier, the there was a general increase in volcanic activity and resultant aerosols over the LIA, punctuated by a few very big ones, and the 1257 mega event. Additionally of course, we had the Maunder and Dalton solar minimums. All this brought less energy into the oceans.
Gates, ” All this brought less energy into the oceans.”
It really looks like let more energy out. The southern hemisphere has a long lag relative to the NH similar to the MOC or THC circulation delay. Most of the major volcanic impact was in the NH thanks to the Crowley and Untermann paper which divides things up. Based on the Oppo IPWP the tropics just recovered around 1985 to pre-1200 levels. The NH recovered years earlier, ~1938.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xJ_nqnPbVkk/UqENwThn58I/AAAAAAAAKvM/8MWUxwLjle4/w689-h423-no/weakly+damped+basins.png
That is a detrend version of Oppo with the ocean basins.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3jpWAo45ctk/Up6B7etUkBI/AAAAAAAAKuA/7-WdrcZhKi4/w775-h445-no/internal+variability+45S-45N.png
That is SST by latitude band showing the slower sh recovery.
Two interesting (or should I say ridiculous?) things from the Trenberth abstract. The first is that he mentions the unusual warming since 1970. This was a very cold time so why is it unusual that it warmed? Even in the current multiply adjusted data, the rate of temp. increase in the 30s is similar to that more recently. The second item is that in this particular abstract, he does not give the error bars in the TOA energy analysis. As I recall, these are substantial uncertainties and in some versions of the calculations, the error is larger than the predicted “imbalance” itself. Meaning that they are not really all that sure even of the sign of the imbalance. It will be interesting to see this progress scientifically. Too bad it will be accompanied by all the political baggage as it has the last 30 years.
He’s still hoping for a miracle, that will fry us. I’ll settle for not freezing our asses off.
===========
The sign of the imbalance is given by the change rate of ocean heat content, which for the past decade has been positive. In fact, the OHC gives a good measure of the imbalance that has to be about 1 W/m2 to support its rate of change since 2000 (see Figure 10 in T&F paper).
JimD, “The sign of the imbalance is given by the change rate of ocean heat content, which for the past decade has been positive. In fact, the OHC gives a good measure of the imbalance that has to be about 1 W/m2 to support its rate of change since 2000 (see Figure 10 in T&F paper).”
The good about Trendberth is that he is consistently behind the times. So about the time he figures one thing out you know things will change.
oops typo, Trendberth should have been Trendbirth.
Looking at this plot:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/sea-level-tidal-satellite.jpg
Global corrected tidal station data (Church 2006 updated to 2009-dark blue, and Jevrejeva 2008- red
And keeping in mind the approximate years of 1910, 1940, 1970 and 2000, one may see a shift where the sea levels do rise more during a pause and less at other times.
Unfortunately, fracked wells don’t produce as long as traditional wells drilled into pools. Will the fracking boom turn into a fracking bust? I don’t know, but my guess is it will be more like a fade than a bust.
See
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-dot-shale-oil-boom-may-not-last-as-fracking-wells-lack-staying-power
Exploration, drilling, a production technologies are advancing quickly due to the ~$100/bbl price of WTI oil, which makes oil shale oil profitable. Technological change makes the prediction of peak oil much more uncertain. Most of the worlds shale resources have not been tapped, adding another unknown to the equation.
One aspect of Muller’s piece is that technology isn’t transferable in all cases. This is because each shale resource, and even within a given resource, presents different geological scenarios and therefore requires different techniques to optimize extraction. That being said, much of it is transferable.
You might be surprised to know that shale plays can still be profitable at oil prices of $50-60/bbl.
From the article:
…
“ES: There have been some questions raised about the sustainability of certain fields, and that’s a valid question. We saw that with the Haynesville field in northwestern Louisiana and east Texas several years ago. That was the fastest-growing natural gas field in the country-massively prolific wells-but they were expensive wells to drill and there’s no capital being directed there. Haynesville will phase out and continue to decline unless natural gas prices are high enough to justify drilling wells there. The Marcellus and Utica shale wells have taken the spotlight; the resource is enormous in these plays. The wells are getting better. Completion methods are improving and production continues to ramp up.
Most of the activity has been more oil-directed these days, for instance, in the Bakken in North Dakota and in South Texas in the Eagle Ford. Those are the biggest oily plays right now. I think in 2014, people in the field will have delineated most of their acreage and are going to turn these things into a pure manufacturing process with pad drilling. Continental Resources Inc. (CLR) is testing 16 wells per pad in the Williston Basin in North Dakota. The company will repeat that pattern and drive costs down. We’ve seen a big shift to multi-well pad drilling in 2013, but I think it’s going to become much more standardized in 2014. The efficiencies that we’ve seen, which have led to more productivity with fewer rigs, will probably remain and perhaps even accelerate in 2014.”
…
ES: If there’s a meaningful decline, I think you would see a reduction in capex spending. Most of these plays show favorable economics down to $60 or $50/bbl, even less than that in some cases. You just might have a pause by some players in the industry at under $80/bbl, but it would take a decline closer to $65 or $60/bbl to see any real, sustained declines in drilling budgets.
…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1883161-producers-that-can-pump-at-60-bbl-oil-evan-smith
Most shale wells are profitable in the 1st year and can produce for another 40 years.
Fracking of oil is a boom/bus cyclet. The Red Queen effect is taking place. See Richard Heinberg”s book Snake Oil where he references Rune Likvern’s work.
WHT, you really need to untie the Red Queen and let her out of your basement.
I heard Heinberg also refer to the Red Queen effect as walking up a downward-moving escalator.
As long as new fracked wells are being produced (“walking up”), then it is compensating the fast decline of individual wells (“escalator moving down”). When the production stops, one starts moving downward. Heinberg is a journalist and not a scientist but he does keep up with the latest analysis.
To look at the actual science, it’s not hard to do projections:
http://contextearth.com/2013/10/06/bakken-projections/
WHT – A Bakken well will produce for about 30 years using current technology. “Current” being the operative word. I’m sure technology will continue to advance and this estimate will be pushed out just like most others WRT shale production. Nevertheless, oil will at some point become too expensive to use. It’s just that the world supply will have to become tight before that happens, as oil is a fungible commodity.
Also, I have no doubt that higher oil prices have hindered the economy. I have no doubt that government regulations are a bid drag on the economy. That’s one drag we can deal with in short order.
Heinberg also called this walking up a downward-moving escalator a “Treadmill to Hell”.
It is easy enough to see this effect if you put in the numbers for a diffusion-flow-limited fracked well.
http://contextearth.com/2013/10/06/bakken-projections/
A few nobodies can claim all they want that these wells last for 30 years, but the physics doesn’t lie.
So, WHT, you believe there are no physical processes at work other than diffusion? Whole industries have grown up around getting oil out of shale.
It’s either diffusion or drift. Lucky that it is diffusion, because there is the possibility of a tail. Unfortunately, the data is saying that the wells are being shut in when they hit marginal returns. These aren’t the stripper wells of yore.
While there is only diffusion through the rock itself, fraking is a physical process. As soon as the oil migrates to a crack, diffusion is out of the picture.
Cracks go in all directions and it takes time to follow the 3D random walk out of the maze. Anything with a random walk element is diffusive flow.
Plus I analyzed the flow out of individual wells and it is diffusive flow. If you could do this analysis, which I kind of doubt you can given your inability to do anything besides paste news clippings, you would find the same thing.
Fracking is one of a few issues I don’t have a strong opinion on.
I listen to the people who are drilling for the stuff and their explanation of the possible risks and I am reminded of Upton Sinclair’s comment that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
I live in New Brunswick, Canada and local anti-shale gas protestors are burning RCMP police cars and setting fire to tires in the middle of highways. This is done in order to prevent seismic testing for gas deposits. I listen to them and am reminded of another quote (I think by George Will) that it is impossible to reason someone out of an opinion when they haven’t reasoned themselves into it.
Sigh.
Does anyone know where one can find a reasonably dispassionate assessment of the risks and benefits?
Hugh, you write “Does anyone know where one can find a reasonably dispassionate assessment of the risks and benefits?”
I doubt if one exists. What I would suggest is that there is a lot of fracking going on in Canada and the USA and very few, if any, cases going to court. That is, there is not much of anyone suing someone else for damages as a result of fracking. For what that is worth.
“This is done in order to prevent seismic testing for gas deposits”
The modern greenie equivalent of book burning. Exploration reports are very dangerous beasts and must be burnt
In a nutshell, this is the reason that CAGW advocates so dislike geologists – devil’s spawn producing very dangerous knowledge
This from T & F’s conclusion:
“The PDO is essentially a natural mode of variability, although there are questions about how it is affected by the warming climate, and so the plateau in warming is not because global warming has ceased. The evidence supports continued heating of the climate system as manifested by melting of Arctic sea ice and glaciers, as well as Greenland, but most of the heat is going into the oceans and increasingly into
the deep ocean, and thus contributes to sea-level rise.”
——
T & F are correct, but don’t seem to fully recognize the negative forcing (which was substantial) from the general increase in volcanic aerosols during the period and the significance of the new Dalton or even Mainder minimum solar cycle that we might be seeing. Yes anthropogenic warming is continuing, without pause, but the cool PDO simply is a natural modulation in the rate of energy flow from ocean to atmosphere and thus can affect sutface temperatures so strongly, whereas volcanic aersols and the very sleepy solar cycle actually impacts the amount of energy going into the oceans. Neither of these two negative forcings will make much difference to the long-term upward trajectory to the amount of energy being stored in the Earth system, but a true understanding of the “hiatus” is not complete without including them more fully.
RG, T&F are correct in that ENSO is a big part of the variability. My CSALT model incorporates the SOI measure of ENSO, along with the other energy fluctuation terms, and reproduces all pauses, dips, and excursions over the past 130+ years.
The only possible trends are the CO2 forcing and some LOD stadium wave variation, but the latter looks relatively stable as of now.
http://imageshack.com/a/img513/2702/oa57.gif
The relationship between ENSO and variability of tropospheric surface temperatures is of course quite solid and based on the rate of energy flow from ocean to atmosphere, which decreases during the cool phase of the PDO.
Reminder: http://imageshack.us/a/img441/2314/sunspotsvei.png
The pulsing (solar & lunisolar) spatial dimension of the coupling is what’s left scrambled with temporal sorting. Start with section 8.7 and then see the update on “28 times” in Sidorenkov (2009) (which addresses questions introduced in his 2005 work [that came up for discussion in the “stadium wave” thread but weren’t explored fully]). Alert: Part of the asymmetry in sunspot records may be due to lunisolar modulation of terrestrial viewing conditions (causing systematic aliasing). This stuff isn’t for people who aren’t willing to be serious — (good thing Judy looks increasingly willing to crack down on harassing commentary).
Those would be mote beams, right?
============
Related to the current fracking boom– this is an exceptionally short-lived boom that will not do much for long-term energy supplies, but will ease the pain of decreasing fossil fuel supplies for a while, and make a lot of people, like Muller’s previous financial backers the Koch Bros. very wealthy. Have a look at this article from Business Week:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-dot-shale-oil-boom-may-not-last-as-fracking-wells-lack-staying-power
WRT to the well that 4 years ago produced 1200 bbl/day and now has stablilzed at 100 bbl/day, that is $3,650,000 per year. I’ll take a well like that in my backyard any day!
“2,358 barrels in May 2004, when it went live. … declined 69 percent in the first year.
At current oil prices: $230,000 / day to start. $71,000 at end of year.
55 million dollars in first year. From a well costing 5 million.
The horror! Ha ha ha ha.
jim2, because of pooling, your royalty could be far less than you might think.
Someone might get wealthy?
Oh no!
To the barricades!
Someone get George Soros, Al Gore, Thomas Friedman and Bill Clinton on the line. We have to have a march on Kansas City led by these paragons of frugality.
And that wealth will come from making energy more affordable for the average stupid voter, so he might not be as willing to trade his freedom for the false security of a centrally planned utopia?
Why we ought to round them all up and put them in camps like FDR did Japanese Americans.
If the royalty is greater than zero, it would be more than I’m getting now.
Yes, everyone up here in the Upper Midwest touts the NoDak booming economy as a success story. It just goes to show you that “Cheap Energy” does in fact drive the economy.
Conversely, people do not want to admit the fact that the overall worldwide recession starting in 2008 is mostly caused by a decline in cheap energy.
Can’t have it both ways. Can’t claim that North Dakota is thriving without referring to oil, and you can’t claim that most of the past recessions are not due to oil shocks. This is an fossil fuel-based economy predicated on future cheap energy to finance debt.
jim2, the royalty on a fraction of an acre (your yard ?) might not be enough to compensate you for the inconvenience of the drilling and the production.
R. Gates aka Skeptical Warmist: this is an exceptionally short-lived boom that will not do much for long-term energy supplies, but will ease the pain of decreasing fossil fuel supplies for a while, and make a lot of people, like Muller’s previous financial backers the Koch Bros. very wealthy.
The people to benefit financially will be the people who produce the natural gas, their customers, their suppliers, and their financial backers — plus some governments from the tax revenues. Do you see a problem in there somewhere?
Mathew M. asks:
“The people to benefit financially will be the people who produce the natural gas, their customers, their suppliers, and their financial backers — plus some governments from the tax revenues. Do you see a problem in there somewhere?”
—–
You are asking if I have a problem with capitalism, right? As I have personally benefitted greatly from it, I suppose it would be hugely hypocritical to say I have a problem with it.
@
Max_OK | December 7, 2013 at 1:46 pm | said:
“jim2, the royalty on a fraction of an acre (your yard ?) might not be enough to compensate you for the inconvenience of the drilling and the production.”
As an ex-oilfield chemist, I’ve been on more leases than you can shake a stick at. In the vast majority of cases, the landowner wasn’t inconvenienced much at all. People still lived in their houses and farmers still raised their crops. Live went on.
jim2, as a curent owner of mineral rights in a major producing area, unlike you I would not want a well in my back yard. And if the mineral rights for my backyard, which is less than a acre, were leased I wouldn’t expect much money from royalty for a producing well anywhere in pooled area I share.
were
R. Gates aka Skeptical Warmist:You are asking if I have a problem with capitalism, right? As I have personally benefitted greatly from it, I suppose it would be hugely hypocritical to say I have a problem with it.
It seemed that your earlier comment was a dig at the Koch brothers, but for no articulated reason..
Max_OK | December 7, 2013 at 11:54 am | Reply
Yeah, they’re going to require the power companies to buy carbon permits for a whacking 0.1% of their emissions in 2013, and will require them to buy permits for 0.15% of their emissions in 2015.
Gosh, 0.1% of power plant emissions will be covered … you think the Chinese might have done this just to impress credulous folks in the West?
Seems like a dumb plan to me, though. I mean, what are the chances that a person with even half a brain is going to believe that these are anything but Potemkin Permits?
w
Willis, those are baby steps. I doubt you would criticize an infant for trying to walk, so why are you criticizing the Chinese?
You have to make a start to get anywhere. The U.S. hasn’t (no carbon tax, no cap and trade), but China has.
You guys might read Andy Revkin’s interview with Zou Ji, the deputy director of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy at :
http://tinyurl.com/ofk7t5g
Short answer: They are going to burn coal and more coal.
Contrast China’s strategic challenge.
China’s True Economic Achilles’ Heel? Oil Dependency
This is behind China’s activities in the South China Sea
“Willis, those are baby steps. I doubt you would criticize an infant for trying to walk, so why are you criticizing the Chinese?”
The Chinese need baghouses and scrubbers not tiny reductions in CO2 emissions. The Chinese people are being hurt by a Chinese government that needs to satisfy western fetishes about CO2.
Doug, “The Chinese need baghouses and scrubbers not tiny reductions in CO2 emissions. The Chinese people are being hurt by a Chinese government that needs to satisfy western fetishes about CO2.”
The Chinese are more likely playing politics with the lives of their people.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/china-energy-1006.html
I agree that the Trenberth and Fasullo review is worth reading. Here is a quote: Indeed, some energy goes into melting Arctic sea ice, which has decreased by more than 40% in late summer since the 1970s, melting of glaciers and ice sheets such as Greenland, heating the land and the atmosphere, heating the oceans, and in driving changes in the hydrological cycle.
How is it possible that with the record high concentration of CO2 and the claimed positive TOA imbalance, we can simultaneously have the record winter refreeze of Arctic Sea ice and the ongoing accumulation of ice cover in the Antarctic? T & F assert that 30% of recent accumulation of energy is in the deep ocean, but that’s a poorly supported conjecture, lacking any mechanistic proposal of how such a change could have initiated.
Marler, You should look into the CSALT model of temperature variability. I have a new installment up which shows how the variation is caused by a combination of forcing factors which takes the temperature on an apparent random walk about the secular mean trend — the latter due to the CO2 control knob signal.
http://contextearth.com/2013/12/06/tidal-component-to-csalt/
Don’t get stuck in looking at regional anomalies, the energy balance is taken as a whole.
So you think there is no heat gain in the oceans, and ice is on the increase.
So why is sea level rising?
WebHubTelescope: Don’t get stuck in looking at regional anomalies, the energy balance is taken as a whole.
A good idea. Notice that I was asking about a regional variation in response to T & F’s notice about a regional variation.
On the whole, does your model confirm, disconfirm, or be neutral about T & F’s assertion that recently 30% of the energy flow imbalance has been transferred to deep ocean?
I actually don’t see any imbalance except for a divergence the past couple of years in the HadCrut data. And this is explained by Cowtan and Way in their hybrid model.
Just shows what kind of integrity (TM) that a scientist such as Trenberth possesses. The fact that he is trying to justify an imbalance that I don’t see in the free energy accounting that I do, speaks to his honest concerns.
“Just shows what kind of integrity (TM) that a scientist such as Trenberth possesses. The fact that he is trying to justify an imbalance that I don’t see in the free energy accounting that I do, speaks to his honest concerns.”
—
I agree. Kevin Trenberth is a scientist with the highest of integrity, and all the more reason that when he states that the consensus approach of the IPCC likely leads to UNDER stating the likely effects of AGW, one ought to take notice.
When has sea level not risen lolwot? The answer is at the end of the Eemian interglacial.
Other than the sea level dropping by record amounts in 2010/2011 which should have been taken for what it was … a warning. This interglacial is ending.
WebHubTelescope: Just shows what kind of integrity (TM) that a scientist such as Trenberth possesses.
I agree with you on that. He is one of the correspondents who comes across will in the purloined CRU emails. However, the comment that 30% of the recent energy imbalance has gone to warm the deep ocean should be qualified more clearly to indicate that it is a so-far untested ad hoc hypothesis.
It is not untested or ad hoc, it is what the ARGO data shows in Figure 10 of his paper.
WebHubTelescope: You should look into the CSALT model of temperature variability. I have a new installment up which shows how the variation is caused by a combination of forcing factors
I think that you have enough to write up the model for publication.
I’m afraid the Mullers have folded in the PM 2.5 health effects with global warming CO2 story.
“ This air pollution has been largely ignored because PM2.5 was an unrecognized danger until recently; only in 1997 did it become part of the US National Ambient Air Quality Standards. It is still not monitored in much of the world. Greenhouse warming is widely acknowledged as a serious long-term threat, but PM2.5 is currently harming more people.”
The 3 million or so people who are estimated to die/year from PM 2.5 exposure include @ 0.8 million whose exposure is outdoors. Many of these are exposed to diesel fumes in urban areas; Europeans are the proud holders of these data of acute cardiovascular mortality.
For the rest of those exposed to PM 2.5 and die, @ 2.2 million, their exposure is indoors, from mom cooking dinner using biomass sources. Moms are effected but children are the primary legatee. Their elevated respiratory rates increase the toxic pulmonary burden, they get more ambient air toxins than adults. The particulate matter has immense surface area which holds many substances including those that directly injure the lining of the respiratory tree, cause coagulation of the mucus, part of the mucocillary escalator clearance system, and disable respiratory host defense early responders.
Parenthetically, efforts to alter the cultural indoor cooking behaviors with new and more efficient stoves has not been very successful.
Gas stoves emit NOx and SOx products that have respiratory impacts as well.
More likely than not, if there is going to be a serious effort to impact infant mortality in the developing world, the efforts should focus upon mom’s using electric stoves.
Electricity in every house and a chicken in every pot seems a win-win situation to me.
Oh, by the way, coal burning power plants contribute 6% to the atmospheric PM 2.5. 60% can be attributed to industry, cars and trucks and things that go.
It seems to me that if we want to stop killing kids, we just might decide to kill the current EPA and their ilk’s War on Coal.
RiHoOH, now that is just crazy talk. Based on the best scientific evidence available, COAL is the spawn of the Devil and must not be used. It is impossible to use the spawn of the Devil safely once you consider all those decimal places.
God’s Grid (solar power) and wind power can supply most of the electricity, with natural-gas powered diesel generators in reserve. Even nuke is preferable to coal.
Max_OK
Yeah. For the 75% to 80% of the time that they are idle (because there’s no sun or wind.
So “God’s Grid” is (at best) supplying 20% to 25% of the demand and natural gas (also a “gift from God”?) supplying the other 75% to 80% on an intermittent standby basis.
But forget the “natural-gas powered diesel generators in reserve” (these are too expensive). Combined cycle gas turbines is a much more efficient intermittent standby power source.
But even this is less efficient than running the gas plants continuously since it requires close to 90% of the natural gas as running them all the time, so you only reduce CO2 by around 10% at significantly higher investment plus other running costs.
A bummer, Okie. (Unless you get someone to subsidize it with taxpayer funding). Pass the cup.
But why should the taxpayer pay for a boondoggle?
To save the planet? Hardly.
It is economically competitive and arguably safer (has a much better safety record overall than coal), but has some heavy political baggage in a large part of the world, as a result of the campaign of incessant fear mongering by green lobby groups and green politicians.
So if you can get Americans and Europeans (beside the French) to be as rational about nuclear power as the French have been, you’ve got a good point. I wish you luck.
Max_CH
Is there a cite for “coal burning power plants contribute 6% to the atmospheric PM 2.5. 60% can be attributed to industry, cars and trucks and things that go”?
RiH008 –
Moving past your rather odd last sentence, I was wondering if you had some more information about this:
Joe Born
Sorry to take so long to get back to you but I had researched the issue several days ago, initially with Wikipedia and pursued references where I found the 6% number. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to retrace my steps exactly so I did the next best thing, went on line. The source is British as the USA EPA has obfuscated the issue by lumping ALL fossil fuel sources under one category. This source shows 10% but you get the idea:
http://archive.defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/air/airquality/publications/particulate-matter/documents/ch1.pdf
Joshua,
I first heard about the lack of adherence to use of improved stoves in the developing world through an article in the Guardian about a month ago whereby a charity was lamenting the fact that their efforts went for naught.
I believe one of the articles on which the Guardian article was based appeared in 2012:
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/18/clean-cookstoves-must-be-rethought-so-they-actually-get-used-in-developing-world/
The Guardian article about clean cookstoves misses the point, as is so common when do-gooders go into poor countries with a mission to play Lady Bountiful.
People do not change their cooking methods because some stranger comes into their lives and tells them that they have a “healthier alternative.” That is not why we cook the way we do. People change their cooking methods if the alternative that is on offer is cheaper, easier to use, still brings the same results or better, and does not cause any loss of amenity.
We do not know on which of these grounds the particular examples alluded to failed, but I’m guessing more than one. For example – there is a reference to “maintenance” – well, who of us wants to “maintain” their own stove? It may also be that the indoor fires had other functions, such as heating, which were lost when the stoves were used. It may be that the stoves did not produce the same results; every cook knows that you get different results using gas or electric stoves, for example.The same goes for using a barbeque, and most Westerners still like the flavour of barbequed food although they have indoor stoves.
The point is, if we want people to change their cooking methods, which are a fundamental part of their lives, the alternative on offer must be primarily driven by what users want, not by what someone else thinks is best for them.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/22/chinas-bad-air-puts-the-lie-to-epa-scare-tactics/
I haven’t looked at the issue, but are these 3 million deaths actual reported deaths with a finding of causation pursuant to autopsies, or are we talking modeled, estimated deaths like second hand smoke?
There’s probably a business opportunity in smoky dung flavor to be added to electrically cooked foods.
================
Feed some mesquite chips to Asian palm civets.
RiH008:
Much obliged for the reply.
RiHo08 –
Thanks.
Climate alarmists do not bother to consider that even if they were correct that humanity’s release of CO2 effects climate change, they have zero evidence that such effect is negative. It could be that such effect is a huge net benefit–e.g., an amazing golden swan. It is a Leftist bias that Ayn Rand is all wrong about socialism and that individual liberty is to be feared.
There used to be zero evidence that smoking was harmful.
You mean back with everybody d smoke knew it was bad for them?
Waggy, Ayn Rand was a sociopath or a psychopath. I forget which one. Anyway, her followers want the liberty to be nuisances.
…ad hom attacks from the Left are not surprising — in fact, what would the Left do with out that form of argument?
Max_OK
Huh?
Sounds like the words of an adolescent anti-feminist.
Is dat you, Okie? Or did some nut-job borrow your name?
Max_CH
Max_CH, Ayn Rand doesn’t look very feminine to me. It could be I’ve seen only bad pictures of her. But you are sexist in thinking a woman can’t be a sociopath or a psychopath. Women can be as bad as men. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be equal.
Re your 2:21 PM comments, I am skeptical of your data. I suspect you just pull numbers out of your hat and then build on them.
As for small turbine-powered generators as peakers, yes, these are used to help large turbine powered generators meet predictable peak load demands. However, I believe diesel rather turbine power usually is used to supplement power from wind farms when the wind dies down, which may be unpredictable. The faster response of diesels (start up time) may be part of the reason. Turbines take a few minutes to get going. You might be interested in the following:
/www.google.com/webhp?sa=N&hl=en&tab=lw
Sorry about the link. Here’s the right one:
http://www.akenergyauthority.org/PDF%20files/Wind-Diesel_Options_Alaska_Steve-Drouilhet_NREL.pdf
“Trenberth and Fasullo have an overview of the hiatus in a new online journal Earth’s Future [link]. It is good to see mainstream climate scientists taking the hiatus seriously (unlike the IPCC).”
—-
Recognizing that Trenberth thinks the IPCC process leads to UNDER estimating the effects of AGW.
Trenberth has ALWAYS taken the hiatus seriously.
Remember, he even called it a “travesty”.
How serious can you get?
Max
PS Now he and his cohort, Fasullo, are trying to rationalize it away. Some folks (those who believe, and hence are not very skeptical) are falling for it. Others (those who are a bit more skeptical) are not.
It’s about neither believing nor not believing but rather seizing a learning opportunity.
Vertical stratification of the sea and surface wind = something most commentators here haven’t experienced first-hand (makes the difference between ice and no ice where I sea-kayak in winter).
http://imageshack.us/a/img856/1999/01u6.gif
http://imageshack.us/a/img850/876/f0z.gif
http://imageshack.us/a/img850/8112/wm4.gif
Sidorenkov (2009) is missing 2 keys. Dickey & Keppenne (1997) give one of them in figure 3. I’ve given the other.
Kevin Trenberth is the Baghdad Bob of climate science.
“The regime of the great Saddam Hussein has not stopped; it is merely manifested in different ways.”
He and Fasullo should be ashamed of their blatant, unprofessional, and unscientific spin doctoring. But of course, they are not.
Climate vs Life without electricity
Pakistan among 10 countries facing severe energy crisis
Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations
in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture. An illustration of the variability in TOA radiation is provided in Fig. 1, which shows a continuous 31-year record of tropical (20S–20N) TOA broadband outgoing longwave (LW) radiation (OLR) between 1979 and 2010 from non-scanner and scanner instruments.’ http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
T&F are not consistent with what is understood about TOA radiant flux. It is based on a series of gross simplifications of elements that seem only to be understandable with data. If the data tells the wrong story then the data must be wrong it seems.
LW interannual variation is large and related to ENSO in cloud variations caused by changes in ocean and atmosphere circulation. There is significant decadal variation in there as well.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=78
For SW I like this because it combines instruments. Cloud reflects SW. Note the shift in cloud about the turn of the century that has major implications for energy budgets.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=41
Oean heat content is a bit of a problem. This one from Lyman and Johnson 2013 show OHC peaking in 2003 – which is somewhat more consistent with energy considerations than continued runaway warming.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/oceanheat_zps2cb4a7a1.png.html?sort=3&o=18
Most of the fluctuations are accounted for by the variational approach used in the CSALT model. After accounting for these fluctuations, the defluctuated trend shows a 2.1C warming for a doubling of CO2.
http://imageshack.com/a/img12/1706/5t6e.gif
2003 is between 2000 and 2005
Webby insists on repeating endlessly this nonsense.
Natural variations – another name for chaotic climate shifts – added to recent warming (1976-1998) and is causing the current lack of warming.
webby so-called variational method – empirical decomposition or otherwise simple multiple linear regression – is incapable of distinguishing between this natural decadal mode and anthropogenic factors.
‘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
The ‘slight rise’ is some 2.1 W/m^2 increase in cloud radiative forcing.
JCH
The coverage to depth was some 15% prior to ARGO.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/OceanHeatCoverage_zps6cb294af.png.html?sort=3&o=19
Showing a different reconstruction of OHC merely underlines the uncertainties surrounding the data. You can take it that I am aware of Sydney Levitus and others. What you need to look for is consistency across data sources – in this case clouds, TOA flux, ocean and atmospheric temperature – and not just wave competing graphs around.
Rather than Chief Hydro’s rather dubious clip art graphs on OHC, why not go to watch a recent and excellent presentation by one of the leading climate experts in the world. You come away realizing how far off the mark Chief is by claiming OHC peaked in 2003 (or 1998, as he also said recently). For real science, watch:
http://youtu.be/agKayS6h6xA
0 to 700 meters
What I said was that energy inputs seem to have peaked late last century.
Do I really need to link the data again? Gatesy is a massive fail – he fails to comprehend – shows extreme bad faith – indulges in simplistic and quite nauseatingly unctuous narratives – behaves routinely like a nasty little dweeb. All a bit tedious really.
The ocean heat content from Lyman and Johnson 2013 clearly is consistent with the TOA energy budget.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/OHCA_1950_2011_final.pdf
It is obviously not ‘real science’. Is science in gatesy’s universe that which he agrees with? Everything else is not science? Not terribly impressive.
Quite interesting to see you twist in the wind Chief. You did not once use the word “input” in referring to OHC in this post:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/07/week-in-review-7/#comment-422193
Which was my motivation to post Trenberth’s excellent recent presentation on the subject of OHC, to counter your clip art distractions and diatribes that lead so far away from actual science.
von Shuckmann and Le Troan 2011
You will note that this one starts in 2005 as that was when ARGO reached full coverage. Oceans warmed in ARGO? Of course they did – the biggest factor in this period was cloud radiative forcing. Try some real science JCH and not more blog generated crapola. Apologies to all blog generators of crapola.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=142
The only reason I use this is that is shows trend lines for the uninitiated. The y axis is W/m^2. The different colours are different instruments. It was posted by Roy Spencer on WUWT I seem to recall. In other words – blog crapola but the data is what it is.
Again – true an complex understanding doesn’t seem to be the point here. Merely waving graphs around in support of ideologies.
Chief Hydro said:
“What I said was that energy inputs seem to have peaked late last century.”
—-
That might well be true, but is uninteresting in regards to the long-term increase in OHC. That “peaking” is related to natural variability, and long-term OHC levels are not about shorter-term variations in input, but about the longer-term balance of inputs to outputs. If inputs decline over the short-term, but output declines even more…guess which direction OHC goes?
Chief Hydro said:
“Oceans warmed in ARGO? Of course they did – the biggest factor in this period was cloud radiative forcing.”
—-
Nope, globally clouds don’t warm the ocean Chief. You’ve got the completely wrong direction of thermal flow. Not just wrong…but physically impossible.
Inputs?
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=142
I split the comment because of the links limit – but nested to make it obvious that the comments were connected.
Clip art?
Almost any graph I link to is taken from peer reviewed literature. All of the references are available – but the graphs allow visualisation of some central aspect of the system. That is the point of graphs is it not?
That was my motivation for linking to Norman Loeb and his top notch team, Enric Palle and Ben Laken with their groundbreaking methodology for cross calibration of instruments for cloud cover and – not least – the meticulous work of Lyman and Johnson over many years at NOAA.
gatesy I think has honesty issues surrounding the ‘human volcano’.
‘Chief Hydro said:
“Oceans warmed in ARGO? Of course they did – the biggest factor in this period was cloud radiative forcing.”
—-
Nope, globally clouds don’t warm the ocean Chief. You’ve got the completely wrong direction of thermal flow. Not just wrong…but physically impossible.’
This confirms the descent into madness and absurdity.
‘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
Chief,
Sorry, but Trenberth’s presentation is simply far better than all your clip art and hand waving. Nothing personal– he just has expertise that you lack.
Regarding my very creative and extremely descriptive term “human carbon volcano”– this term accurately captures the massive movement of carbon from lithosphere to atmosphere brought about by human activity– mainly by the burning of fossil fuels. Sorry you did not think of it, but I am sure you have other strengths.
I think you will find that Lyman and Johnson have much more experience in OHC analysis than Trenberth.
The difference is that I compare and contrast data sources and you look for confirmation of an internal narrative on the ‘human volcano’. The terminology – btw – is cloying, clumsy and counter productive.
If you have nothing else to add but a comment on a youtube video – time to leave it at your latestt nonsense.
Regarding this post by Chief Hydro:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/07/week-in-review-7/#comment-422269
—-
Oh my Chief, you seem to have had a tough year. A reduction or increase clouds or aerosols is not those clouds or aerosols actually warming or cooling the ocean, but allowing more SW to enter or not.
Again Chief, clouds do not warm or cool the oceans, as the net flow of energy is always from ocean to atmosphere. Clouds or aerosols may regulate how much solar enters the ocean, but it us the solar that warms…not the clouds. Or did you forget, and leave yet another word out of your post?
Greenhouse gases don’t warm the planet – they merely change the flow of energy to space?
Clouds change the energy dynamic at TOA – and the difference between clear sky and all sky flux is known as cloud radiative forcing. Which – I should not have to add – is not constant but variable.
gatesy has some very basic gaps in understanding – that I would put down to cognitive dissonance. The lack of appreciation of the essential climate lexicon results in misguided, simplistic and pompous lectures about the sun warming the planet and not clouds.
Again – the purpose seems not to understand but to fling narratives around in support of ideologies.
J.M. Lyman and Gregory Johnson. First, Gregory Johnson’s paper got trashed here at CE. Lol.
From 2004 thru 2011 there was no warming in the upper oceans. Since then the upper oceans have resumed warming, and I think J. M. Lyman would be more than happy to ram that finding up your down under.
Chief Hydro:
You ignore the big picture of energy flow through the climate system in order to advance whatever your odd-duck perspective is. You pile on clip art with cut-n-paste from irrelevant topics combined with diatribes that seem to make no point at all. Clouds pass no energy on a net basis to the global ocean, anymore than your winter coat passes energy to your body. Clouds and aerosols regulate the flow of solar into the ocean and they may regulate the flow of long-wave out of the ocean along with all the other GH gases, but they do not warm the ocean– the sun does that. OHC is balance of energy in versus energy out of the ocean. More has come in than gone out on a decadal basis for many decades.
You probably will have more success with your Vogon poetry.
So a Gregory Johnson paper was ‘trashed’ here by the usual incompetent suspects?
Pathetic.
The paper I linked to is on the NOAA website and was finalised last month.
Now what was gatesy babbling on about now? Links and quotes from peer reviewed science? Graphs from those same sources? How else do you discuss science without actually discussing science. Bizarre really. As I say – there seems a critical lack of god faith and honesty.
Chief does his usual dubious blog science whereas I work to substantiate findings from the peer-reviewed literature. Such as in furthering Richard Ray’s work [1] on analyzing how tides and climate complement each other.
http://contextearth.com/2013/12/06/tidal-component-to-csalt/
thanks to skeptic Clive Best’s continued curiosity.
The hits keep coming.
[1]R. D. Ray, “Decadal climate variability: Is there a tidal connection?,” Journal of climate, vol. 20, no. 14, pp. 3542–3560, 2007.
Chief hydro asks:
“Greenhouse gases don’t warm the planet – they merely change the flow of energy to space?”
—
Slowly, an awareness opens up…same energy in but less energy out and bingo!
WHT said:
“Chief does his usual dubious blog science…”
—
Would you mind putting quote marks around the word “science” when writing about the Chief in this context. It will help clarify your point (and the truth) even more…
The point gatesy is that clouds change the energy dynamic similarly to greenhouse gases. It works by reflecting SW and trapping LW.
It seems astonishing that this is a difficult concept – but I suspect that you are simply being dishonest now.
Webby is funny as hell. I don’t do blog science. I discuss science from many reputable sources. webby on the other the other hand relies exclusively on his loser and incompetent blog. This is all just painfully stupid and intended to subvert discourse.
Oh sure you do blog “science” Chief. You don’t publish anything yourself but you make your assertions in a blog, and making it more ridiculous by doing it in the comments section of a blog.
And then you apply psychological projection by suggesting that what others do is somehow phony science because they actually present findings with a real narrative arc.
Science is a process of hypothesis, analysis and synthesis. Science needs a testable hypothesis, reasonable analysis and the really interesting bit is synthesis.
I don’t do either hypothesis or analysis on any blog. As a natural philosopher I am fascinated with the big picture. This entails wide reading, comparing and contrasting results and ultimately building a model of the world that integrates analysis into a comprehensive visualisation. I am more interested in understanding and communicating than what can be a limiting focus on hypothesis and analysis – publish or perish. I am too eclectic by far to survive in such an environment. My mentor for this is my old Professor of Environmental Science. John actually did know everything – I only sound like a know it all.
I went through your newest methodology some years ago. It is empirical decomposition as in the Lean and Rind paper we discussed. You asked what you – and indeed L&R – missed. The answer is persistent effects of changes on ocean and atmospheric circulation on surface temperature. There are a number of ways to look at this – using AMO or PDO indices or cumulative SOI for instance. Looking at cloud data raises intriguing questions.
‘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.’ AR4 3.4.4.1
Dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing?
blog science = fake science narratives
Chief doesn’t get the fact that I use all the denier arguments in my model — orbital cycles, stadium waves, SOI, TSI.
The Chief as the self-proclaimed leader of Team Denier should be very interested in this approach.
I have been through webby’s method – which of course is not original – in great detail. I just can’t be bothered wasting any more of my time with incompetent blog science.
Many people do it better including Stockwell and Cox – http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1828 – and Bob Tisdale.
Both of these use a cumulative SOI which webby rejects out of hand on spurious grounds. We know that internal variability added to surface temperature in the period 1976 to 1998.
e.g. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
Ignoring this is simply incorrect and leads to spurious correlations.
We know equally well that current temps are falling for the same reason – internal variability. The proximate cause of falling temps is a change of cloud cover around the turn of the century.
i.e. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Earthshine-1.jpg.html?sort=3&o=74
‘Earthshine changes in albedo shown in blue, ISCCP-FD shown in black and CERES in red. A climatologically significant change before CERES followed by a long period of insignificant change.’
A critical concept in all this is that the climate shifts such as happened in 1998/2001 occur because climate is in the broad class of deterministically chaotic systems. The importance of this cannot be overstated – the behaviour of the system is qualitatively unlike simple systems but some knowledge of chaos theory is required to understand how. One of the implications is that history suggests that the hiatus will persist for another decade to three at least.
The space cadets are desperately hoping that none of this is true. It is a forlorn hope indeed.
Like I said – a spurious rejection of climate science based on loud hand waving and ad hom.
We know that internal variability added to warming between 1976 and 1998. We know that this changed in the climate shift of 1998/2001. webby doesn’t – it’s that simple. He flounders around with a few simple mathematical techniques trying to prove that it is not so – but the core ignorance means that this is ultimately futile.
Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
Science understands that internal variability added to warming in the 1976/1998 period – and are not warming the surface since. Webby doesn’t. It is as simple as that.
Instead of looking at science – we get the same tedious tirade all over again.
Do something useful with yourself webby.
Chief, I hope you realize that quoting a press release is not citing peer-reviewed science,
Here you go for a privileged look at how a state-of-the-art energy balance model (CSALT) compares against historical instrumental temperature observations from NASA over the last 130+ years.
http://imageshack.com/a/img513/2702/oa57.gif
webs – I hope you understand that loser blog science is not science at all.
The NASA site is reputable and Josh Willis and Bill Patzert quoted are respected scientists.
Use it as a springboard to greater understanding.
Here a hint – http://depts.washington.edu/amath/research/articles/Tung/journals/Tung_and_Zhou_2013_PNAS.pdf
Also – http://www.pnas.org/content/107/5/1833.full
Perhaps also – http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3945.1
Try to keep up – and not simply deny or ignore science that you don’t agree with.
Gatesy – you endlessly repeat a few simplistic talking points without realising that any moderately sophisticated observer passed over many years ago.
I am a moderately sophisticated observer with degrees in engineering and environmental science and have been teasing out these things – especially ENSO and related hydrological regimes – for decades.
I get it that you don’t understand that the chaotic earth system has multiple equilibria – one of these is the 60 to 80 year periodicity. The shifts at this frequency result in changes in the surface temperature trajectory that are related to changes in cloud radiative forcing and of ocean/atmosphere energy partitioning.
Go back to the 1st order differential global energy equation.
d(W&H)/dt = power in – power out
Here we are obviously talking global energy content using a formula derived from fundamental principles.
Put together multiple chaotic equilibria with the expectation that tropical cloud cover increases with cooler SST and the real potential of these climate shifts emerges.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
Come back when you understand why.
Stockwell and Tisdale are the ABCD D’nihilists that will turn any measure into an integrating factor that replaces the obvious upward trending CO2.
These deniers are so absolutely desperate to find a measure that will trend upward that they will integrate any measure that they can find. Their trick is that since just about any measure has a slight offset, this offset when integrated will rise linearly, which mimics the warming signal.
Voila, they have an attribution mechanism to replace CO2.
And all the denialist sycophants such as The Chief buy into it.
It’s like a mathematical sleight-of-hand. However if you know their trick, it is not very impressive at all. Instead you realize it is a common method in Team Denier’s toolbox of deception, shared by other denialists such as Murry Salby and Lord Monckton.
The science on this is extensive and I have provided many examples.
As I said – these patterns added to warming in the 80’s and 90’s. Come back when you understand and are not merely cutting and pasting a comment you have repeated far too often.
This is the progression of forcing perturbations to the average temperature in the CSALT model
http://imageshack.com/a/img809/2322/9u4u.gif
The strongest is obviously CO2. Get back to me when you understand this, Chief.
Missing a forcing – in this case cloud radiaitive forcing – means that it is all nonsense.
‘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.’ AR4 3.4.4.1
That large cloud changes occur with changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation seems as the science progresses very real.
Put the cloud perturbations in the CSALT model and it will become even greater than it already is.
Chief Hydrologist: Put together multiple chaotic equilibria with the expectation that tropical cloud cover increases with cooler SST and the real potential of these climate shifts emerges.
What is a “chaotic equilibrium”? How do you “put together” chaotic equilibria?
The Earth system might have multiple chaotic oscillations whose effects sometimes add and sometimes cancel, producing temperature curves with quasiperiodic peaks and valleys, as described by Tsonis and colleagues, but your concept of multiple chaotic equilibria needs some work.
WebHubTelescope:
Put the cloud perturbations in the CSALT model and it will become even greater than it already is.
Maybe, if you do it well enough.
If (and it is a BIG IF), the multiple chaotic oscillators described by Tsonis and colleagues (and by Chief Hydrologist) are large enough and they are not included in your model, then your model is worthless for predicting the future. In my opinion, only time will tell which models are reliable and there is not now sufficient evidence for choosing a model to use for planning purposes.
Clouds are a critical component of Earth’s climate system. Although satellite based irradiance measurements are available over approximately the past 30 years, difficulties in measuring clouds means it is unclear how global cloud properties have changed over this period. From the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) and
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) datasets we have examined the validity of long term cloud
changes. We find that for both datasets, low
level (>680mb) cloud changes are largely
a reflection of higher level (≤ 680mb) variations. Linear trends from ISCCP
also suggest that the dataset contains considerable features of an artificial
origin. Despite this, an examination of ISCCP in relation to the MODIS dataset shows that over the past ten years of overlapping measurements between 60°N–60°S
both datasets have been in close agreement (r = 0.63, p = 7×10^-4). Over this time total cloud cover has been relatively stable. Both ISCCP and MODIS datasets show a close
correspondence to Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) over the Pacific region, providing a further independent validation of the datasets.’ http://www.benlaken.com/documents/AIP_PL_13.pdf
Cloud cover is only available over the past 30 years. Although you could extend the record using a Pacific SST proxy. That would be interesting and novel. This can still not be projected beyond a few decades because of non-linearity. Climate sensitivity is λ in the linked diagram.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Ghil_fig11_zpse58189d9.png.html?sort=3&o=26
The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the
norm. http://www.unige.ch/climate/Publications/Beniston/CC2004.pdf
The climate system is often regarded as being bi-stable – glacials and interglacials. In reality there are states between the two that persist for a while before shifting again. The system shifts abruptly between multiple equilbria. It is the nature of the beast. Climate is wild.
Couldn’t care less about anything Muller is saying — I don’t trust him AT ALL.
___
Trenberth devotes DUE attention to the annual cycle and surface winds in this recent video. It seems to me that some mainstream climate leaders are figuring out that non-alarmists aren’t listening to anyone who fatally undermines trust by denying the primary importance of such factors. Good work Kevin. You manage to maintain my attention where others are not willing to be reasonable. However, the section of your presentation based on climate models is total BS, so I recommend a sober re-think there. Cheers.
Paul,
Thanks for that link to Trenberth’s excellent presentation. Everyone here should go and watch that video. His attention to the volcanic and solar impacts on OHC during the “hiatus” is right on target.
+10 to that presentation and +10 to Paul for bringing it to our attention.
I’ve been babbling for months about there being some people whose daughter’s papers I would no longer read, and lo, here’s Pere et Fille with one I might bother to read if they had anything to say that I didn’t know already.
And now Kevin Trenberth’s worth listening to? Signs that the endtimes are upon us.
==============
He’s fundamentally in the dark on volcanoes, but he deserves credit for devoting due attention to the annual cycle & surface winds. This is the way to connect with sensible non-alarmists. He gets it that SURFACE winds are the PRIMARY driver of vertical mixing in the ocean. I’ve been waiting forever to see someone clue in to that, so in the “has a basic clue about reality” department Kevin Trenberth suddenly towers over most of the (can’t think of a polite term to go here)’s I encounter in the online climate discussion. Of course there’s nothing stopping “skeptics” from eclipsing him in this department …EXCEPT IGNORANCE OF THE ROLE OF SURFACE WINDS IN VERTICAL OCEAN MIXING …(not to put it too mildly *cough* *cough* to provoke better attention to Sidorenkov’s landmark 2009 book – see particularly section 8.7 as a guaranteed-good starting point for people who want to have a basic clue about terrestrial climate reality).
–
kim, this may not seem very palatable, but let me put it this way (as I have with tallbloke at some point in the past):
The horse has to go before the cart.
(That’s all I can say at this time….)
Best to you
As Paul Vaughan said, Surface winds. Trenberth came off in the video as reasonable. There was a part where he listed a number of factors, without drawing the conclusion that CO2 does all this. Back in about a July he had a statement regarding the problems of accounting for all the heat. I got the impression we was willing to say, he didn’t ‘know’ where all of it is.
Seriously, how long do you thin Trenberth has known about trade winds? I would say since he was an undergrad.
Paul Vaughan, the link you posted to Sidorenkov’s book is highly appreciated. Quite an interesting book.Here is the link again
http://f3.tiera.ru/2/P_Physics/PGp_Geophysics/Sidorenkov%20N.S.%20The%20Interaction%20Between%20Earth's%20Rotation%20and%20Geophysical%20Processes%20(Wiley,%202009)(ISBN%203527408754)(O)(319s)_PGp_.pdf
Sidorenkov 2009 TIP:
Lithosphere = 28 times…
To ignore (and go on making false assumptions possibly for the rest of one’s career) or not to ignore….
Tony from UK:
See this:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/07/week-in-review-7/#comment-422180
And this:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UxfO3016ARs/UpvcTaKSfmI/AAAAAAAAKqw/LS89ybhG5PI/s1600/2000+years+of+climate.png
As you’re looking for volcanic effects at the beginning of the LIA.
HT to Captn. Dallas for his excellent reconstruction that so clearly shows the huge impact of the 1257 mega-volcano on SST’s.
A follow-up on Judith’s “Middle Earth” comment …
————————————
BREAKING NEWS
The Climate of Middle-Earth Revealed
“IT’S HOTTER IN MORDOR”
!!! Saruman-the-Skeptical responds !!!
Summary The consensus of Men, Elves and Dwarves is that James Hansen’s thermodynamic-based scientific worldview is basically right.
Orcs, Trolls and Barrow-Wights are skeptical, and Saruman’s web-site in particular already is condemning the sketchy credentials and second-rate wizarding skills of Radagast the Brown
And so it goes!
From lolwot | December 7, 2013 at 1:49 pm |
There used to be zero evidence that smoking was harmful.
Either this assertion is trivial (i.e., back in early colonial times) or meaningless if referring to studies in the 1960-1970 time period. Cigarettes have been called “coffin nails” for as long as I remember – about 1948. Some people understood the reality of cigarettes from their experiences long before science became involved. Even the Nazis knew of the effects on health of smoking.
The understanding about smoking didn’t take hundreds of millions of dollars in scientific studies and 10’s of years to reach common people either.
Gaspers. Not a cough in a carload.
=======
Judith: If Trenberth and Fasullo wanted their Hiatus paper to be taken seriously, they would not have begun a paragraph with “Deniers of climate change…” Their use of the word denier makes them sound like a couple of foolish adolescents.
Unless of course, they are talking about actual deniers, in which case their use of that word is quite descriptive and they show their maturity to be accurate and not shy away from such accuracy because of those whose feelings are hurt from an accurate description of their religion.
Had a mature moment, eh? Wait’ll Max_OK hears of it.
===============
Bob –
Just curious – what term(s) do you use to describe those who disagree with you about the likely impact of ACO2 emissions?
Joshua, over the past year or so, I’ve most commonly referred to them as “Global warming enthusiasts”. Before then, probably “proponents of global warming”.
Bob –
So then you must realize that taken literally, the terms you’re using don’t really make any sense. They are inaccurate. Certainly, those you’re referring to are not enthusiastic about or proponents of global warming.
If using the term denier makes no sense because it is inaccurate, and if you think that in using the term “denier,” T & F should not be taken seriously, then I think that you have a logical problem if you expect to be taken seriously given the terms you use.
I know that you focus on more technical aspects of the debate. Seems to me that it would make more sense for you to assess T & F’s paper on its technical merits as opposed to the terms they use for those they disagree with.
Deniers of climate change are the a-warmists. They’re losing their denial though.. Good.
Joshua, the term climate change denier makes perfect sense – it’s a projection.
Edim –
Do be careful. There are many here (Judith among them) who are quite “concerned” about the use of the term “denier.”
In fact, Judith called use of that term “intellectual tyranny at its worst.”
You wouldn’t want to get Judith and folks upset, I’m sure.
Alarmist is the parallel, catastrophist an extreme. Don’t like ‘enthusiast’ for it’s theo content, unless it’s for a realist, concerned about cooling more than warm, grateful for its fertilizing and mild warming effects, yes, that’s plenty for which to be enthused. ‘Fanatic’ fits most caught with this fit of crowd climate madnessl, driven by guilt, overcome with fear.
================
Nice find BOB !
The quote is
Which is true, because this cherry-picking does happen.
And why beholdest thou the cherry that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the cherry orchard that is in thine own eye?
Joshua: “So then you must realize that taken literally, the terms you’re using don’t really make any sense…”
They’re much easier to write than “enthusiasts about the hypothesis of human-induced global warming ” or “proponents of the hypothesis of human-induced global warming”, and they get the point across without being offensive.
Regards
Joshua: “If using the term denier makes no sense because it is inaccurate…”
Are you putting words into my mouth, Joshua?
Denier is offensive to many.
I like the 100% accurate term “denier”.
Here’s (part of) why:
http://imageshack.us/a/img9/7195/xu88.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img440/2402/yms.png
Recently I made a list of the climate discussion participants that I consider either devils or devil’s slaves and it dawned on me (not sure how/why I hadn’t taken deeply conscious note before) that they are ALL from California. What’s up with that??? i wonder….
—————————
No offense intended towards Bob Tisdale. Bob: You know well that I appreciate your work for a very good reason: You put OBSERVATIONS OF NATURE FIRST. That gives you a +10 in my book, even though we disagree on “denier”.
Recommended reading for everyone:
http://f3.tiera.ru/2/P_Physics/PGp_Geophysics/Sidorenkov%20N.S.%20The%20Interaction%20Between%20Earth's%20Rotation%20and%20Geophysical%20Processes%20(Wiley,%202009)(ISBN%203527408754)(O)(319s)_PGp_.pdf
Regards
This is interesting. The usage of the word ‘denier’ peaks in the 1950’s for obvious reasons.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=denier&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cdenier%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bdenier%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BDenier%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BDENIER%3B%2Cc0
The word ‘denialist’ only starts just before 2000 and is still growing, mostly used in relation to climate, I expect. I think this is purely to avoid the use of ‘denier’ with a more acceptable term.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=denialist&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdenialist%3B%2Cc0
If these links don’t work do ‘define denialist’ in a Google search bar then hit the down arrow below the definition. Also note that common usage of this word is relatively new and the definition puts climate change as the example.
Bob
Agree with you.
With this lead-in, it is apparent that it was a political paper to try to rationalize away an inconvenient “travesty”, not a scientific one.
Max
Bob –
I would suggest “people who are concerned about ACO2 emissions.”
People who use the term denier claim that that others shouldn’t take offense – that they are only using a accurate description.
Look through your comments here and at WUWT. Do you really think that no one would find offensive how you characterize people that disagree with you about climate change?
Consider what it might take for you to act in a way that is consistent with the standard you apply to others.
Joshua, I just point out that it’s the warmists who deny climate change. I don’t mind being called denier, it’s obviously a projection.
Edim –
Personally, I think that all the pearl-clutching and “outrage, outrage I say” about who labels whom with what term is an indication that the debate is largely about identity politics and not the science.
What difference does it really make what terms people use? It’s all a distraction – both the use of the terms and the “concern” about the use of the terms.
And along similar lines, while you may not care about being called a “denier,” your show that you’re more interested in labeling than in being accurate. No one here “denies” climate change. Some do “deny” anthropogenically attributable climate change – many more than some “skeptics” like to admit.
Joshua, don’t forget denial of natural variability. The worst deniers of all are the deniers of external governance of terrestrial climate, notably that tied tightly to the changing pace (not to be confused with amplitude) of solar activity. This is a dead simple consequence of Dickey & Keppenne’s (NASA JPL 1997) figure 3. See Sidorenkov (2009) section 8.7 for foundations needed to understand. This doesn’t rule out AGW, but let’s be super-super-clear: Denying this catastrophically undermines trust as it’s literally equivalent to asserting 2+2=5. Recommendation: Be sober about this.
pokerguy – how can you possibly be ‘unpersuaded’ by “Trenberth and Fasullo have an overview of the hiatus in a new online journal Earth’s Future [link]. It is good to see mainstream climate scientists taking the hiatus seriously (unlike the IPCC). This paper is well worth reading, it is very readable and written for a broad audience.”? I for one am most certainly persuaded – that they are trying to remain in control while the paradigm shifts. I hope that enough others will be persuaded that they must not be allowed to get away with it, and must be brought down with the paradigm.
Jim D – you say the 1998 El Nino was stronger because of AGW. Tell me, which of these two temperature spikes is 1998:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~jonas1@westnet.com.au/Comparison_1858_1978.jpg
One series starts in 1858, the other in 1978, same scale. Hadcrut3 GL unadjusted.
Yes, maybe they just look more impressive now because of the background temperature ramp added to them.
On the TF paper, I haven’t seen any skeptics give this type of big picture view that we see here and with some of Hansen’s imbalance papers. They weigh the factors and review recent results, showing the numbers they are working with. I wish the skeptics had someone half as coherent and that can think as broadly in global terms as Trenberth and Hansen, then this would be a debate.
Yeah, Mike Jonas,
Hoist by their own paradigm, that’s only fair,
especially when they’re os fond of extolling
fairness and social equity.
Jim D. said:
“I wish the skeptics had someone half as coherent and that can think as broadly in global terms as Trenberth and Hansen, then this would be a debate.”
—–
But then they would be warmists.
Jim D – you say “maybe they just look more impressive now” – well, no, they don’t. In the graph, ‘Series 1’ is the 1858 series, and the 1878 El Nino spike is clearly taller than 1998’s..
OK, 1878 looks like a once a century type of thing. Anyway, we are due for another one anytime now, which will take care of the “pause”, and I suspect will be about 0.2 degrees, possibly more.
Anyway, we are due for another one anytime now
You need a solar minimum for large EN to arise,
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1858/mean:12/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1858/mean:12/normalise
JimD said:
I would look at Clive Best and Nicola Scafetta. I have learned that they are doing much of the heavy lifting, and use what they find to fill in the details.
The skeptics desperately want a one-size-fits-all solution that will do the ABCD role. So even though these factors that the diligent skeptics are looking at won’t replace GHGs, they can provide valuable information as natural variability gap fillers.
For example I was reading one of Clive’s posts and he pointed out the potential impact of long-term tides. Sure enough, this provides some of the variability.
http://contextearth.com/2013/12/06/tidal-component-to-csalt/
Webster you should reconsider reconsider those meds. “The skeptics desperately want a one-size-fits-all solution that will do the ABCD role.”
That is so wrong it is painful. Most of the skeptics have noted that climate is NOT a one size fits all problem. CO2 is part of the puzzle and makes a good reference, but is obviously not THE driver of climate. There is no reason to make carbon THE solution if you can’t even fathom the complexity of the fluid dynamics on a planetary scale.
Web, I agree Clive Best does provide things to think about. Scafetta, not so much in my opinion. What is needed is for someone to post a retort to Trenberth’s Yale video on this recent paper. Trenberth says the warming is continuing, measurements show that the PDO affects how much goes into the oceans, and Otto et al. twisted their numbers to minimize the ECR. Now we need the opposite side with graphs and numbers like Trenberth, otherwise they lost this round, but who do they have that can do this with any credibility?
Cappy will never take the place of a Clive Best to keep things honest.
Scafetta obviously has some agenda going since, as with Otto, he is intentionally lowballing the CO2 TCR. .. or perhaps he is taking a big gamble on the outside chance his complex solar forcing model will pay off.
Webster, “Cappy will never take the place of a Clive Best to keep things honest.”
I don’t expect to take anyone’s place or expect honesty from anyone but myself. The GHE theory has a major flaw by not considering the predominate fluid with the majority of the heat capacity. The impact of CO2 is grossly over estimated and those pressing policy on flawed physics are going to be extremely embarrassed. I think that will be entertaining to watch.
When you get the sign of clouds wrong, you know there is a train wreck a coming. Trenberth btw is just starting to catch up, but still hasn’t admitted he made an 18Wm-2 error at the atmospheric boundary layer that basically shuts the atmospheric window to catastrophic CO2 impact in any time frame of consequence.
That’s why you are useless, Cappy. Nothing you say can be applied to anything. It’s all whiffs.
For example, you suggesting that a 18.5 W/m^2 has been made is pointless. It adds absolutely no value.
Webster, “For example, you suggesting that a 18.5 W/m^2 has been made is pointless. It adds absolutely no value.”
Really? Then Why did Stephens et al and Stevens and Schwartz feel the need to step in and point out the ~18Wm-2 error and the ridiculous 0.9 +/- 0.15 Confidence interval?
As I said the error was in the atmospheric boundary layer super-saturated mixed phase water/ice/vapor attenuate the impact of CO2.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Water_infrared_absorption_coefficient_large.gif
That is the surface spectrum to be considered for over 70% of the surface.
kim said on December 7, 2013 at 4:32 pm |
Had a mature moment, eh? Wait’ll Max_OK hears of it.
______
Hi, kim. I’m glad to see JC hasn’t run you off.
Sadly, many here at Climate Etc have matured into fuddy-duddies. In fact, they are post-mature or over-ripe. I would call them manured rather than matured.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/354006/Climate-change-warning-Killer-winter-storms-for-next-THIRTY-years
Those of us who value our self-respect have lately been trying to control our urges to get stoopid and nasty with our fellow denizens. We don’t expect you to clean up your act. But you could surprise us.
So I frequently read “skeptics” talking about the collective wisdom of the competitive marketplace. And I also frequently read “skeptics” talking about the unsustainability of a carbon tax. And I also frequently read “skeptics” talking about the steep decline in the political viability of a carbon tax.
Interesting. Good thing that being a “skeptic” means that you don’t have to bother about logical consistency, eh?
This is a long bow – from prudent business planning to sceptical illogic. Trivial nonsense as usual from Josh.
Business in the west would be foolish to totally ignore potential changes in government regulation – even one with a low probability.
‘Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest energy company by market value, is planning future capital investments on the assumption that it will be required to pay $US60 a metric ton for carbon emissions.
That’s the highest among 11 U.S. and European corporations that provided figures in a report released today by CDP, a nonprofit that compiles environmental performance data for investors. Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc are planning on $US40, and Total SA anticipates a carbon cost of $US34, according to the New York-based group formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Those estimates compare to European Union carbon credits that closed today at 4.64 euros ($US6.34), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Companies involved in extracting and processing hydrocarbons such as crude oil and natural gas must ensure that multibillion-dollar investments remain profitable for decades under even the strictest environmental rules, said Deborah Gordon, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s energy and climate program.
“Nobody builds infrastructure that costs tens of billions of dollars to last for a 5- or 10-year lifespan,” said Gordon, a former Chevron Corp. chemical engineer. “These things are built to have 100-year lifetimes, so these companies have to think about what regulatory regimes will look like way beyond the next presidential election cycle.”
http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/oil-giants-brace-for-much-higher-carbon-emissions-price-20131206-2yuln.html#ixzz2mpkgKEdZ
The criticisms of taxes and caps remains.
‘The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.
The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization.’
Good thing that being a pissant progressive means never having to be practical, pragmatic or indeed honest.
Chief –
Apparently you missed the point. I have read “skeptics” many a’ time telling me how not only is a carbon tax unsustainable, it is a political non-starter (you know, “iron law” and all that). Many a triumphant post has been written about how the tide has turned (you know, final nails and fatal stakes through the heart and all that).
So which would it be? Are those “skeptics” not so quick on the uptake, or the market not being all that wise after all?
Apparently you missed the point Joshua. Due diligence requires anticipating changes in the regulatory environment.
Taxes and caps are a distraction – they are not the main game as pissant progressives delusionally imagine.
Why would corporations anticipate things that are politically inviable, non-starters, and which violate iron laws?
Either they aren’t so wise, or many of our much beloved “skeptics” have been wrong.
Shall I repeat yet again what you missed?
For some reason, this lede from the article (not linked to of course) was omitted.
“More than two dozen of the nation’s biggest corporations, including the five major oil companies, are planning their future growth on the expectation that the government will force them to pay a price for carbon pollution as a way to control global warming.”
Companies expecting to be forced to waste millions on “carbon pollution” policies by the government are planning for the regulations progressives are already in the process of publishing.
Wow, what a revelation. For the terminally blind.
The best part of the article:
” But unlike the five big oil companies—ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and Shell, all major contributors to the Republican party—Koch Industries, a conglomerate that has played a major role in pushing Republicans away from action on climate change, is ramping up an already-aggressive campaign against climate policy—specifically against any tax or price on carbon. Owned by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the company includes oil refiners and the paper-goods company Georgia-Pacific.
The divide, between conservative groups that are fighting against government regulation and oil companies that are planning for it as a practical business decision, echoes a deeper rift in the party, as business-friendly establishment Republicans clash with the Tea Party.”
So we have a divide between crony capitalists and conservatives.
Again, this is news to no one who actually pays attention.
And the link:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101248344
Reminds me of the due diligence they have in exploring the Arctic when all their thinktanks say nothing long-term is happening there. Or, it could be that their political wing doesn’t govern their financial wing who look at the bigger picture to get a more realistic view when their investments matter. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do.
We have seen that message numerous times before, Josh. Tedious. Try to mix it up a little.
1. It is a commonplace on the pro-market side, going back to Adam Smith, that producers will often seek to reduce competition amongst themselves in various ways. Interventionist governments often present a useful avenue for such schemes, as well as a weapon that some firms will use to cripple their competitors. Experience to date, as well as theory, suggests that complex cap-and-trade systems are likely to enrich middlemen and sharp operators and to be manipulated in the political process by incumbent firms to a significant degree.
2. Even if a firm is not planning to actively take advantage of anti-CO2 policy for its own purposes, it is often considered prudent to anticipate the possibility that such policy is going to happen, regardless of its merits. Since we have a considerable head of steam in the U.S. and other countries to adopt anti-CO2 policies, including coming EPA regulations, it would be unwise to bet 100% on public backlash killing those regs and policies.
3. Every corporation has to decide how to prepare for these risks. They may gamble on the new policy coming in hard and then make investments on that basis. Once these irreversible investments have been programmed, firms taking this path have a private vested interest in seeing that the policy is carried forward. They effectively co-opt themselves into becoming pro-regulatory lobbyists. This dynamic is one reason that the regulatory ratchet is so insidious–merely presenting a credible threat of regulation can induce the creation of a well-heeled interest group in support of that regulation.
Or a firm may gamble that the policy is unlikely to go into effect at all or not in full force and shape its investments that way. If it goes that route, then it becomes an opponent of the regulations and will seek to delay, weaken, or eliminate them. Political conflict with the firms in the first group is likely to ensue
When the firms in the two groups are also direct competitors, matters can become pretty heated. Generally there will be a vicious struggle to shape the regulations so that they advantage oneself against rivals.
There is no contradiction between the proposition that “carbon taxes or other such policies are likely to be so unpopular that they will be repealed” and “firms x, y, and z are preparing for the onset of carbon pricing.”
> It is a commonplace on the pro-market side, going back to Adam Smith, that producers will often seek to reduce competition amongst themselves in various ways. Interventionist governments often present a useful avenue for such schemes[.]
At this level of generality, non-interventionist governments also present a useful avenue for such a scheme. One only needs to think about the ways producers seemed to reduce competition among themselves in the past, e.g. industry leaders dumping their products and lobbying governments not to intervene. There are so much schemes like that that “non-interventionist governments” might very well be an oxymoron.
Joahua – Maybe you should take a look at the last election in Australia. Carbon Tax was defeated there – that the big issue.
Maybe you should expand your reading horizons, Joshua. Get out of your shell.
From the article:
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s conservative opposition swept to power Saturday, ending six years of Labor Party rule and winning over a disenchanted public by promising to end a hated tax on carbon emissions, boost a flagging economy and bring about political stability after years of Labor infighting.
…
A victory for the conservative Liberal Party-led coalition comes despite the relative unpopularity of Abbott, a 55-year-old former Roman Catholic seminarian and Rhodes scholar who has struggled to connect with women voters and was once dubbed “unelectable” by opponents and even some supporters.
…
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/7/conservatives-take-australia-elections-after-promi/?page=all
http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/07/week-in-review-7/#comment-422283
Blog policy Judith? Another pointless and content less snark from Joshua. Please delete.
Ask Beth for some lessons, Chief.
So here we have a couple of nasty little dweebs who really cannot resist reducing the discourse to the lowest possible level again and again.
The dishonesty and bad faith is immense. The object is not understanding science – neither of them have much of a clue or any training or background – but in indulging in narratives, insults, ridicule and generally bad behaviour. More progressive nonsense.
My object is always understanding the science Chief– hence why I lead people away from your diatribes and clip art to actual presentations and research by leading climate scientists. Someone needs to provide a balance to your cut-n-pastes.
Is this a little tedious? I am certainly bored.
clip art = graphs from peer reviewed papers
diatribes = rational discussions of energy based on the best available data
You are a nasty little dweeb gatesy with no redeeming qualities – little technical education – no compunction about lying or distorting – and a line in simplistic progressive denialist narrative that is second to none.
I refer to a paper finalised last month by leading researchers – you link a you tube of Kevin (surel it ain’t decadal) Trenberth. Well – it is decadal.
Not pointless, but certainly snarky. What constitutes good poetry is highly subjective.
I have written short stories, plays, poetry and science journalism – as well as many technical documents. I am currently busy on a project that I have had in mind for 30 years – inspired by James White’s 1962 Hospital Station – http://full-ebooks-downloads.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/hospital-station-by-james-white.html. It is a storyline for a movie I’m calling Galactic General – contained within an epic poem called Many Boy Things.
Here’s an old one from circa 1990 when I was doing a Masters in Environmental Science at Wollongong University.
Debris
Forget the passionate and visionary in your poetry.
Take a still photo of your ontological evolution.
Where do you stand now?
Myself I live amongst the debris of experience.
The undone washing, the unclean toilet,
coffee grounds loitering the kitchen nook.
Is this a time for poetry?
Poetry would subsume the past and future
into the evolving moment.
Glacial ice would grind away the coffee on my kitchen floor.
Hot suns would volatise the inconsequential detritus of my experience.
A bubble in the limit less expresso of the cosmos
I float.
Practical questions intervene.
Can I afford to wait to the next
ice age for the washing up to be done?
Or should I sort and organise
amongst the rubble for the clues
as to the meaning of my life.
How shall we marshal meaning out of chaos? I have an idea it is by love. The mind may traverse the universe – invent demons and dragons. But that is a lonely universe. Loving and being loved are the twin poles about which my being revolves.
I must have a plan. Something modest and unassuming would be appropriate. Especially with people. Great events are under way and I do respect the dreams of others.
I pick up a foot soiled sheet of paper from the floor to finish this poem. Balance the science and technology studies folders on top of a mountain of paper. Take up the thread of the day.
I have occasionally quoted poetry here and discussed literature. It is an immensely civilised eSalon that so frequently aspires to poetry.
It suffers from an excess of small minded nonsense that would use the most personal and revealing discourse to create an environment of denigration and ridicule. It has the intent of inhibiting open communications and discouraging people such as myself from wanting to continue the discussion. Ideology rules and the discourse must be kept pure under pain of slings and arrows. I am not much concerned with slings and arrows – I just keep doing what I do.
Oh no!
It’s worse than we thought!
We’re all going to die!
http://www.easac.eu/home/press-releases/detail-view/article/easac-warns-1.html
Yawn.
I’m interested in the issue of statistical significance in the climate scene.
1/How is it that different lengths of term exist for the public to hear from scientists when talking about the pause?
2/How and when does not statistically significant warming become stated as statistically significant nothing happening?
‘ Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
The last climate shift happened in 1998/2001. The new ‘climate state’ stabilised from 2002.
When will we start to give the “hiatus’ or pause its proper name. the “Turn”.
another 3 years?
Will warmists be called skeptics then?
or still the true believers.
mind you, I am a regression to the mean person, not a coldist.
Radagast the Brown neglected to mention that carbon dioxide would make Mordor greener.
Judith,
You have got to be kidding “Global warming has not stopped; it is merely manifested in different ways.” is not a very enticing start to a paper. You know in advance where the paper is going, and it is nonsense. Deep ocean warming of a small fraction of a degree per century can’t come back to warm more than a small fraction of a degree per century any way you play it. This is on top of the fact that deep ocean water takes several centuries on average, to come back up.
It’s not deep ocean warming of a fraction of a degree. It’s energy. It’s upwelling in the Eastern Pacific; it’s mounding and downwelling of warm water in the Western Pacific; it’s how the pools of water that play a role in ENSO are changing.
There are very large oscillations of 0.2 degrees about the mean in the interannual variability. This is mostly ocean variability, everyone agrees, and makes it hard to detect climate changes of 0.2 C per decade in periods less than a couple of decades. We are always affected by this variability, and ENSO and PDO account for much of this.
I never cease to be amazed by how much people claim to know about the virtually unmeasured deep ocean.
Gary M
Nobody knows whether or not the deep ocean is gaining heat or not.
It has not been measured.
The deep ocean is so large and has such a high specific heat that the purported “missing heat” would only warm it by tenths of thousandths of a degree – which no one could measure, even if measurements were being taken, which they are not.
So this is simply a rationalization to keep the CAGW message alive when nature appears to be falsifying it with the “pause” – a statement of faith, so to speak.
Max
Re: the deep ocean, they do know that the temperature changes get weaker as you get deeper, and that can be inferred down to 2000 m where they have measurements and changes are almost imperceptible.
Leonard,
I too was struck by that description of an article which is nothing but a tired reprise of the “We’re changing the metric now” showtune.
So what does all that energy do once it’s been freed from the depths?
phatboy,
you say it’s not warming in the deep deep. thought so.
‘specially since they don’t want to talk about the not warming in the not deep.
Trenberth and Fasullo tell us
Guess we’ll see over the next few years how well these climate models can really set realistic expectations. T+F apparently still have faith in them (and in the IPCC premise of a high 2xCO2 climate sensitivity) despite the recent evidence to the contrary.
It looks to me like the pause could well last for another two decades, in which case we will know that T+F were wrong and their model-predicted climate sensitivity was too high and needs resetting.
Only time will tell.
Max
There can be no ‘imbalance’ in energy flux; taking as true the role of atmospheric CO2 in IR recycling, during the course of a day the amount of energy absorbed and radiated by an Earth with 280 ppm CO2 compared to one with 1120 ppm CO2 are the same, the only difference would be the output spectrum with a bigger notch in the IR spectrum at high CO2 and more longer wavelength IR.
Doc,
You left out the very important part about the change in the system as it goes from 280 to 1120 ppm. The system is altered as more energy is retained by the system. The oceans, the cryosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere all respond as GH gases increase. Even once a new GH gas level is achieved, it will take several centuries before all of these systems have all reached equilibrium again. Not sure why you have such a large blind spot to these basic system changes that occur with in increased GH gases.
“Even once a new GH gas level is achieved, it will take several centuries before all of these systems have all reached equilibrium again”
In a thermodynamic equilibrium, there are no net flows of matter, of energy, no phase changes, and no unbalanced potentials or driving forces within the system.
The Earths climate system is not at equilibrium, never has been at equilibrium and never has been at equilibrium. The sun comes up, the sun goes down.
I cannot see how you can equate a helicopter with a helium balloon and not know that one is held aloft by a completely different mechanism to the other.
Why would corporations anticipate things that are politically inviable (sic), non-starters, and which violate iron laws?
The companies are international operations. Last I heard there was still a ‘carbon market’ operating in a few places. What is the likelihood of an international inclusive scheme? Zilch in my opinion and that of many others. Many of us will certainly oppose this – successfully in Australia. Sentiment seems to be about 4 to 1 against carbon taxes.
Taxes are ineffective. They cover some fraction of total emissions and are nowhere near high enough anywhere much to effect generation technology.
If taxes were sufficiently high to globally change the energy mix – all hell would break loose.
Climate is wild as I keep saying. Multiple forcings need to be addressed in an inclusive way – black carbon as much as CO2. What we have had instead is 25 years of spinning wheels yet all the pissant progressive can think to do is return again and again to worrying carbon taxes like a dog with a bone.
I linked to the Breakthrough Institute for a reason – it provides an outline of a program – which Joshua duly ignored. Joshua is an example of the massive failure of progressives to aspire to the practical and pragmatic in climate policy. It is a failure of intellect, imagination and of empathy.
Wrong again, eh Chief?:
Idiotically trivial and irrelevant again Josh. It comes with the territory of massive fail.
To get technical – here’s a graph from GHD which is an Australian engineering firm.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/SOI-GHD_zpsd6f54d3d.png.html
The graph shows both the SOI and a cumulative SOI plot. The question is whether the SOI sums to zero over time. Certainly you can make that claim – and if you pick the right times this can certainly be shown. Over other periods – such as the recent warming period of 1976 to 1998 – it can be in the graph that the SOI cumulation index becomes progressively more negative. The SOI obviously doesn’t sum to zero over this period.
This detail matters.
Of course a cumulative SOI will sum to zero over time, and that is what your graph is showing Chief. It is heading back to zero if you would just look at the graph. The SOI is defined by an atmospheric pressure differential, and it is physically impossible for pressure to change appreciably over time, and so the integral of a +/- differential sums to zero.
It always comes down to this. The deniers so desperately want a cumulative that rises like CO2 that they will come up with the most ridiculous rationale. From Tisdale to Salby to the Chief, you see these easily debunkable arguments.
WHUT, you write “The SOI is defined by an atmospheric pressure differential, and it is physically impossible for pressure to change appreciably over time, and so the integral of a +/- differential sums to zero. ”
Of course you are right, but, as usual, you don’t seem to understand the basic physics. It is what is termed a “time constant”. Noise has two characteristics, magnitude and time constant. The time constant is a measure of the period over which the noise oscillates. Now if the integration of the period over which a signal is measured is long compared with the time constant of the noise, the noise integrates to zero. But if the period over which the signal is measured is short compared with the time constant of the noise, there will be a residual value of the noise, which can be confused with a signal.
This is the problem the warmists face when trying to claim a CO2 signal exists. The integration period over which they are trying to detect a CO2 signal is short compared with the time constants of all the various noises, so it is impossible to find the very weak CO2 signal in the presence of all this noise.
I, for one, am very grateful that it is so weak. But, dang, we could have hoped it would delay the next glaciation. Oh, well, plants are OK, and will be. Let it be so with the animals, too.
==========
Jim Cripwell comments on “WHUT, you write “The SOI is defined by an atmospheric pressure differential, and it is physically impossible for pressure to change appreciably over time, and so the integral of a +/- differential sums to zero. ”
Webster is actually complete wrong. Barometric pressure, ~1013mb may be nearly fixed but differential pressure ~2mb is three orders of magnitude smaller and by no means “fixed” at any latitude band. The southern ITCZ can shift more than one degree for millennial which is a bit longer than the instrumental period. He should be banished to his mother’s basement for one week without laptop privileges.
http://www.woodhous.arizona.edu/geog453013/Toggweiler2009.pdf
Chief has already pointed out that SOI has a trend and I have pointed out why it can have a trend. Webster just needs a time out to reflect on his abuse of fluid dynamics.
Here is old Crips telling me what noise is, and it is clear that he has no clue.
You just about have to bust a gut when Crip can’t see that a value of 400 PPM compared to 280 PPM makes that CO2 signal virtually noise free,
And what I am doing with the CSALT model is incredible in terms of determining attribution of factors to what looks like a noisy temperature series. In fact the temperature only appears noisy because the real physics is in the free energy of the system, and that, since it is conserved, is much less noisy. The temperature when factored by an entropic heat capacity factor is simply one component of the free energy. All the other components compensate for the temperature fluctuations, and what is left is that strong CO2 control knob staring us in the face.
http://contextearth.com/2013/12/06/tidal-component-to-csalt/
background
http://contextearth.com/context_salt_model/
And Cappy is so ridiculously inept in that he can’t figure out that fluctuations can occur. Since he never went to college and never got the equivalent of a physics degree, he never understood concepts such as the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and so he is way out of his element.
Instead of pressure it would also be better to use something like geopotential height, which is a direct measure of the potential energy due to pressure of the average atmosphere,
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries.pl?ntype=1&var=Geopotential+Height&level=1000&lat1=90&lat2=-90&lon1=0&lon2=360&iseas=0&mon1=0&mon2=0&iarea=1&typeout=2&Submit=Create+Timeseries
but since I am going back to 1880, the SOI works as a substitute. And it works great, to the continuing dissatisfaction of the inept Cappy.
That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing with the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time since Sept 2007. KT in the infamous emails
The SOI doesn’t ‘sum to zero’ over the period from 1975 to 2000. This period should of course be recognised as the period of recent warming. That is shown quite clearly in the graph from the engineering company. The cumulative values of the SOI clearly show the length and severity of drought in Australia. Here it is again.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/SOI-GHD_zpsd6f54d3d.png.html?sort=3&o=0
There are long periods – hundreds to thousands of years at least – where one mode or the other predominates
This can easily be seen in the proxies.
In this one more salt in the Law Dome ice core is La Nina and flooding in Australia. Over the past millennia ENSO has been predominantly in the La Nina mode and this changes over the past century and a bit. It may be related to a solar control variable. Less active sun – tighter polar cyclone – less cold water in the Peruvian Current and less upwelling in the region of the Humboldt Current.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=96
This one shows red shift – more is El Nino – in a South American lake.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=155
Here is ENSO frequency – from the same paper – in a 50 year sliding window.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Tsonis-Minoan-Fig6_zps448b1c20.png.html
webby needs to attend classes in remedial Earth sciences to achieve any depth of understanding of climate. Not merely repeat absurd claims that it all sums to zero over some period or other and therefore doesn’t matter.
Here’s something that is much more fun.
Webster, “And Cappy is so ridiculously inept in that he can’t figure out that fluctuations can occur. Since he never went to college and never got the equivalent of a physics degree, he never understood concepts such as the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and so he is way out of his element.”
That hurt, I think I am going to cry, boo hoo.
BTW, The average SST in the 15S-10S band is 26.7C and the SLP average is 1012.6 if the average temperature in the latitude band 55S-50S is 4.9C what is the average barometric pressure genius?
Oh and Webster, show your work in the response so it can be preserved for posteriorty.
Come on Webster we ain’t got all day. Here is your formula,
“Consider the expansion of the ideal gas law, nRT = PV
dT = 1/nR( PdV + VdP)
SOI is the dP term which relates to a differential change in temperature dT.”
Cappy said:
Webster, “So, 2 parts out of a thousand and 0.6K out of 300K in temperature are the same ratio.
That’s what happens when you don’t graduate. You make bonefish-headed mistakes.”
So are you saying that the 55S-50S pressure is 939mb? Same ratio? You really should show your work.
Cappy,
dp/P = dT/T
for fixed volume, if you understand how to do calculus.
An extra great zinger in the CSALT model is that it is an example of a great heuristically-based estimating tool, even if somebody doesn’t understand the physics. Generating a fit with R=0.994 and with that kind of yearly resolution over the past 130+ years is not easy to do.
So in terms of heuristics, one can then plug in the parameters to SALT which can be projected, such as future CO2, TSI, and orbital cycle values and then guess as to the extents of SOI and volcanos, and you have a useful climate projection tool.
Webster, “Cappy,
dp/P = dT/T
for fixed volume, if you understand how to do calculus.”
Right, so you are betting the farm on adiabatic compression, so maybe I got that answer inverted. The 55S-50S average sea level barometric pressure should be 1079 mb?
You seem to be evading the question for some reason? Based on your brilliant logic the slp for the latitude band 55S-50S is somewhere between 939mb and 1079 mb and zeros out over some short period of time. No dynamic impacts to concern my pretty head over, right?
Come on just for old time blog sake chunk a number out there for the 55S-50S average sea level pressure for say 1982 to 2012.
Come on Webster, help an uneducated Redneck out.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6vFomTYFcxg/UqTlIf-kbBI/AAAAAAAAKyA/V9RyvUVdlz4/w671-h436-no/dP+12.5+and+52.5.png
When it that differential pressure going to zero out again? When the Antarctic Sea Ice trend reverses?
Cappy, remember that these are small fluctuations. The temporary fluctuation due to SOI pressure differences exceeds +/- 0.1C in equivalent temperature only a few times in 100 years, and the RMS contribution is only 0.034C averaged over 130+ years. That is 0.1 mbar of equivalent average atmospheric pressure fluctuation.
Yet these all go into the free energy mix and that’s why the overall CSALT is so effective. This must be very painful for you to acknowledge.
Webster, another dodge. You sure you are not a used car salesman by trade? Now you are saying the SOI doesn’t mean anything which is more likely given that it is defined as a oscillation so it artificially has no trend even though it does have a trend until the baseline is changed. So that is one part of your model that is useless.
I agree with MattStat though, you should definitely publish and soon.
The model is far from useless. It puts denialists in their rightful place and it forces them to eat their own dog food. Bob Carter is the guy that said SOI was important.
Trenberth “The picture emerging is one where the positive phase of the PDO from 1976 to 1998 enhanced the surface warming somewhat by reducing the amount of heat sequestered by the deep ocean, while the negative phase of the PDO is one where more heat gets deposited at greater depths, contributing to the overall warming of the oceans but cooling the surface somewhat.”.
How can an trained scientist say that when the sea gets cold the surface gets warmer and when the sea gets warmer the surface gets colder.
Leaving aside quibbles and semantics.
If the deep ocean gets colder the surface will get colder, If it gets warmer the surface will get warmer
A temporary current here or there may make this natural scientific observation not hold for a temporary time interval, in a localized area where the current comes to the surface but the whole sea gets the heat and where one current comes up another has to go down restoring the balance.
Which leads to the question in all this anyway, which came first the ENSO or the egg.
It comes down to the ocean being 3-dimensional. The surface parts don’t have to be moving the same way as the deep parts. This is where knowing about currents and upwelling helps. The Balmaseda work is a clue to how they do this.
Well actually, when the northern ocean lose heat there is something call Arctic winter warming and sudden stratospheric warming events. That surface is technically ocean, but when covered with sea ice and air is at -20 C or below, the “surface” temperature is warming even though the total energy is reducing. That is the reason “surface” temperature anomaly sucks.
Now Trenberth is not going to get too honest since the 18 Wm-2 he missed in the budgets is related to mixed phase clouds which confuse what the “surface” actually is.
He is a good example of the highly skilled and intelligent “scientists” you are dealing with.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/significant-warming-of-the-antarctic-winter-troposphere/
They noticed that the Antarctic troposphere was warming ans since the Antarctic was not being “amplified” they thought that at last their salvation had come. Nope, just another example of how far over their heads they are.
Here is another good one.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/why-does-the-stratosphere-cool-when-the-troposphere-warms/
That is Gavin trying to explain something he is obviously clueless about. the wheels fell off long ago.
JimD, “The Balmaseda work is a clue to how they do this.”
Right if you screw up reanalyze. Never mind all the over confidence that led to the screw up, just fix that pesky data.
Thanks Cap , read Gavin et al, now my head hurts.
Thanks Jim D, yes the ocean is 3 dimensional, just like a cup of hot water.
They even both have convection currents,
but
if the cup of water is hotter, the air over the cup of water gets hotter, if the cup is cooler the air gets cooler.
Overall, if the ocean is getting hotter, the sea surface and adjacent atmosphere must get hotter as well.
ENSO is just one current in that cup, it does not cause the change in the rest of the world, It is part of the change that is all happening together.
“How can an trained scientist say that when the sea gets cold the surface gets warmer and when the sea gets warmer the surface gets colder.”
——
If you understand energy flows on this water planet, you can make this claim very easily on solid physics.
“if the cup of water is hotter, the air over the cup of water gets hotter, if the cup is cooler the air gets cooler.”
—–
Yes, but it is relative and where does the energy to warm the air over the warm water come from? Just as in politics you can follow the money– in the climate you can follow the energy.
Captn. Dallas said:
“Well actually, when the northern ocean lose heat there is something call Arctic winter warming and sudden stratospheric warming events.”
—-
The northern ocean has very little to nothing to do with SSW events. These are caused from planetary scale waves higher in the stratosphere that descend over the pole, compressing and warming the air. The energy behind SSW events actually develops at much lower latitudes.
R. Gates, “The northern ocean has very little to nothing to do with SSW events. These are caused from planetary scale waves higher in the stratosphere that descend over the pole, compressing and warming the air. The energy behind SSW events actually develops at much lower latitudes.”
Actually, the northern oceans have everything to do with the magnitude of the SSW events. There is always an imbalance so there will always be roughly biannual NH SSW events, the magnitude though is a different issue.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-ZGR8m7oBjz4/UqI_Y1wXpxI/AAAAAAAAKwI/3XjH32cWx2s/w705-h439-no/Arctic+and+OHC.png
That plot of 70N-90N lower troposphere temperature with NH OHC should be more than enough to make my point.
Captn. Dallas said:
“Actually, the northern oceans have everything to do with the magnitude of the SSW events. There is always an imbalance so there will always be roughly biannual NH SSW events, the magnitude though is a different issue.”
——
Would have to see some research on the linkage between the “magnitude” of SSW events and northern oceans. These planetary scale waves are driven by energy that originates at lower latitudes, far away from the northern oceans.
And BTW Capt., your chart of Arctic Temps versus OHC is excellent and shows why the warmer ocean really does impact the climate in the Arctic, through energy being advected to the polar regions.
R.Gates, when I pointed out to you that the pH paper you had linked that commented on decreased upwelling being part of the cause of that decrease in pH was inconsistent with arguments that increased upwelling was preventing surface warming, you made some comment to the effect that increased upwelling would be a violation of physics. Can you tell me how warm water got below the mixed layer if upwelling increasing wasn’t involved? I am not arguing it did but I would like you to explain your inconsistent arguments always made so assuredly. Are you now spreading silly rumors?
Steven,
I would have to see the exact context and paper I referenced related to upwelling. In general, the abyssal depths of the ocean seem to be both warming and freshening, due to more heat being brought down from the surface levels via downwelling. This is especially true off of Antarctica, as increased winds are driving increased downwelling. This warmer abyssal water seems to be spreading north from Antarctica, and will eventually show up as warmer water upwelling in the Northern Pacific, if indeed it is not already.
R. Gates, you can find our conversation on the SSTs Uncertainties post 13 NOV.
steven,
You comrnented:
“It doesn’t seem consistent to me. More upwelling causing more mixing is preventing the Pacific from warming. More stratified with less mixing causing loss of oxygen and lower pH.”
——
The Pacific Ocean is warming, but it is not uniform. Winds will pile the warm waters into the western Pacific. Sometimes these winds relax and we get El Niño events as the water migrates back to the east. The lower pH is caused by the uptake of the oceans of carbon we’ve transferred from lithosphere to atmosphere– which, by the way, is one more reason Salby is so off the mark. There may be more upwelling in certain regions like the eastern Pacific,, based on prevailing winds, but over the global ocean, less upwelling, greater stratification, and lower oxygen. With lower global upwelling, the ocean heat content globally would rise.
R. Gates, perhaps you should read your link since they were talking about the coast off of the W US. I am glad to see you now seem to know where I got that increased upwelling idea.
From T&F
After decades of gold-standard, unequivocal etc. research, the definition of the central concept in this branch of science has become a matter of opinion, ambiguous, subject to interpretation.
It didn’t used to be that way. Just one example, a definition of the term in the Literature by Michael E. Mann
When wrong, slowly change the meaning of words. “Global warming has stopped” is just unacceptable, thus the need for newspeak.
Some more explicit revisionism by Nuccitelli here, stating that global warming is only 2% of overall global warming.
“Some more explicit revisionism by Nuccitelli here, stating that global warming is only 2% of overall global warming.”
Excellent article by Nuccitelli. He actually compared surface warming to the energy being stored in the ocean, but it is convenient for you to twist his meaning, Prediction: article will be ignored by “skeptics” as it is too upsetting to their memeplex.
Gates, Nuccitelli is not exactly the sharpest tack in the climate science box. Consider the source and take Dana with a grain of salt.
Nuccitelli is saying pretty much exactly what Trenberth and many others are. Based on past exchanges with him, I’d say he’s plenty bright.
I love how they try to move the pea from under the “global warming” thimble to the “climate change” thimble to the “ocean heating” one. It’s like Three Card Monte.
T&F and Nuccitelli clearly recognize that the original ”global warming” doesn’t encompass the phenomena they want to talk about. There is always the option to forget the obsolete term and come up with an accurate one. But no, they put ”global warming” in titles of their articles and work to change the meaning.
Is this a memeplex thing or do they just like the ring of it? What is this wordplay doing in scientific papers? It’s more reminiscent of a politician trying to sell new ideas under an established ideological brand. Or religious assimilation.
Estimating the energy content of different spheres of the planet is a valid and interesting problem, no doubt (even if not the most relevant one). But intentionally conflating and ambiguating well established concepts is unlikely to get us any closer to scientific understanding.
Should this trend continue unabated, just in a few decades the meaning of ”global warming” will cover the Earth’s mantle, core, and possibly parts of the Moon.
RealClimate from Marcott et al response:
“Q: What is global temperature?
A: Global average surface temperature is perhaps the single most representative measure of a planet’s climate “
I would suggest this is nonsense. The atmosphere holds far too insignificant a portion of the global climate energy to be representative and also has far too low of thermal inertia. The global ocean heat content is the best single measurement, followed by cryosphere and atmosphere as equal seconds.
I wish you had been around when The Word was given us.
But now that you’re here, tell it to RealClimate, and to Dr Mann, would you, please, Mr. Gates?
Marcott et al was 2012.
They too need to know the truth, Mr. Gates.
Mr Gates!
Can we tell it to the proxies, and the doxies, the dirty soxies of climatism?
Are Drs. Mann and Marcott and Shakun “Deniers” now? Fey!!!!
Various indicators have their strengths and weaknesses. Comparing just OHC and GST, OHC is more stable and has a clear physical meaning, but it’s far too difficult to measure, lacks historical data, and does not directly influence significantly anything important to us. GST wins on all other counts except stability and clear physical meaning.
Right now and as far to the future as is possible to judge GST is the best single indicator. Sets of several indicators is another matter as no single indicator can tell very much about the climate.
If you want to know what the direction the climate is going long-term, look to the ocean, not the atmosphere. The ocean is the big dog that wags it’s little atmospheric tail.
Are those who insist that it’s GST Deniers, Mr. Gates?
Are you going to let RealClimate know what they are?
Pekka said:
“OHC is more stable and has a clear physical meaning, but it’s far too difficult to measure, lacks historical data, and does not directly influence significantly anything important to us.”
—-
You are most assuredly wrong if you think OHC “does not directly influence significantly anything important to us.” You seem very bright to me, and so I’m shocked you don’t realize the huge influence OHC has on the global climate.
Pekka The Denier?
I thought that was Stephan.
The changes in OHC over time periods for which indicators are most often used correspond to so small changes in average temperature of the bulk ocean mass that they really don’t affect us. Temperature is what affects us, not OHC.
As soon as you start to pick phenomena that change in a way of more immediate significance, you are not any more looking at OHC, but something else. That’s what I meant by saying that it has no direct influence, only indirect.
I guess those guys who claim the relationship of the orbit and tilt of the earth destroy claims regarding colder climate despite much higher CO2
…must be Deniers.
Tilt is in.
Some further comments:
The total OHC has far less importance than how OHC is distributed. SST tells more about the influence of ocean heat to us than OHC.
How do you feel OHC?
You might ask, how I feel GST. That’s a fair question as well, but the local temperature I feel is more closely indicated by GST than by OHC.
Trenberth has marched them into an Old Muddy of a quandary. How do you get catastrophic about zero point oh oh oh however of abyssal, never to be seen again soon, heating?
Sensibly, we could look upon it as storing energy for the long hibernation ahead. Does this carbon dioxide make me look fat? Do glaciers make my human carbon volcano look cornucopic?
============
Let’s get our terms correct.
It’s a Global Warming “Stoppage.”
Or, the ever popular Global Warming “Shutdown.”
Soon temprature will owe Mr. Trenberth an apology. Everyone does sooner or later.
Can weather resign from it’s post?
Marcott’s answer was the AGW consensus until it was obvious that surface temperatures were not cooperating with the hype. Now the hype industry has moved to OHC (for suggesting which Dr. Pielke, Sr. was ridiculed and dismissed by AGW promoters for many years). They have better hopes for OHC because it is more complex than simple temps, is easier to confuse policy makers about, and can be declared to be too subtle for the common person to understand. OHC, of course, is not cooperating with the AGW hypesters either, but they can run this for many years longer before they have to find another distraction.
I think it is called “Work to Rules”, but in this case,
no one knows what the rules are.
I think Global Warming is disengaged for lack of interest.
Pielke Sr. wanted to drop surface air temperature and to use OHC.
Wonder why?
Pieke Sr. tried to get RC to switch to OHC. GS said SAT was the definition, and that it would be too confusing for people to switch.
I think Pielke Sr. is the more correct, but GS does have a valid point.
As for the insipid conspiratorial rot, it stinks worse than ever.
Pekka said:
“SST tells more about the influence of ocean heat to us than OHC.”
—-
Not sure your intention here, but certainly SST is a subset of OHC in the broadest sense, but is also more variable in that it is energy that closer to the ocean-atmosphere energy flux, and thus, SST’s can often soar just when that energy is leaving the ocean on the way to the atmosphere. This is exactly why we see, in this order during an El Niño: higher OHC, higher SSTs, then higher tropospheric temperatures along with falling OHC. You can trace that energy as passes from ocean to atmosphere and then some of it to space.
“JCH | December 8, 2013 at 10:39 am |
Pielke Sr. wanted to drop surface air temperature and to use OHC.
Wonder why?”
—
He. Also advocated for using moist enthalpy versus sensible heat in the troposphere for similar reasons. Water is such a better storage vehicle for energy than dry air.
There are two levels of argument: one is on just effects, and one is on causes and effects. The effects argument is about surface temperature because that, after all, defines the climate we live in. The cause and effects argument has surface temperature and heat content as equal players together with energy balance and forcing. The public argument and majority of blog argument is just about effects, because bringing in OHC and these other quantitative things makes it more complex, having more moving parts, and more difficult to put into public conversation where linear causal relationships are the only ones that are understood.
If this has not been linked; it’s a good review.
R. Gates,
I thought that what I wrote is easy to understand.
We live at the surface. Most of the living organisms live near the surface. Atmosphere is influenced by the surface. For these reasons, what happens at the surface has a rapid effect on life and us. The worries about AGW concern what happens on the surface.
OHC affects what happens at the surface, but due to the huge heat capacity of the oceans OHC may change a lot without such an influence on the temperature that would have clearly noticeable effects. What happens on the surface is not controlled by OHC alone, on the contrary other effects are much larger for what happens on the surface even over several decades. For that reason OHC is a good indicator only for the OHC itself and for TOA imbalance, it’s relatively weakly coupled to everything that affects directly as or most of the ecosystem except over very long periods.
A good indicator:
– Can be determined accurately,
– Has a good historical data set to compare with,
– Is closely linked to the issues of immediate concern.
OHC fails on all these points. GST is not perfect, but much better.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
=======
RG is right that surface temperature is not the best way to think about the climate but it is the only one that the public has some intuition about.
When I started with my CSALT model, I wanted to add components of free energy that would complement the surface temperature factor. The aggregate free energy is the piece of the puzzle that tracks the forcing and is less immune to fluctuations than the temperature.
http://contextearth.com/context_salt_model/
Of course this works very well and reduces the fluctuations considerably and removes the pause as expected, but it suffers from the intuition challenge. The public is not going to understand what the free energy of the system is any more than they can comprehend what a “potential temperature” means.
Pekka said:
“We live at the surface. Most of the living organisms live near the surface. Atmosphere is influenced by the surface.”
—
Pekka, your failure seems to be one of understanding the scope and scale of the ocean’s influence on the climate. The ocean dictate’s this planet’s climate– period. This is a water planet. The atmosphere is indeed influenced by the surface, and to the greatest extent, that influence is the energy constantly moving from the ocean surface to the atmosphere. If this were purely a rocky surface planet (even with the atmosphere we have, which would be extremely likely) there would be no long-term energy storage mechanism. The ocean, as a large solar energy capacitor with high thermal inertia, is the local driver of Earth’s climate, and those of us who live on the land evolved only because of the amazing oceans we have and the unique thermal properties of water.
I’m not arguing on the importance of oceans on climate. I’m arguing on the informative value of the estimated value of OHC.
Mr Gates,
If oceans dictate then GST must translate to our language, eh?
If not, what is being dictated effectively?
I agree it is difficult for the average person, who perhaps Is living thousands of miles from the ocean to even give it much thought, and worse still, who cares that the energy being stored at 2000m in the middle of the Indian Ocean is increasing? Humans need immediate sensory experience to relate to, or at least that they can imagine. But scientists do a disservice to science by not constantly reminding people that this is a water planet, and that the bulk of solar energy reaching this planet that stays in the system for any period of time does so in the oceans, and the very best single way to gauge the effects of increased GH gases is by the energy the oceans are storing, since it is the largest and most stable energy repository. Along with this reminding, comes the fact that the majority of weather, climate, and storms are generated by the oceans, and as the oceans retain more energy, there will be effects in the weather and climate system– and they may be equally as unpleasant, or indeed, exactly the same as a heat wave in the middle of Kansas or a large hurricane hitting NYC.
Mr. Gates,
If you would stop gnawing on the commoners’ ignorance bone for a bit,
and answer the question instead, I would aprpreciate that.
If the OHC dictation is not translated by ocean surface temps, then what is being dictated effectively?
‘Do glaciers make my human carbon volcano look cornucopic?’
Plus one ter kim agen.
” If the OHC dictation is not translated by ocean surface temps, then what is being dictated effectively?”
OHC is reflected in sea surface temps on a cyclical basis as that energy moves through the ocean surface to the atmosphere.
“OHC is reflected in sea surface temps on a cyclical basis as that energy moves through the ocean surface to the atmosphere.”
Then why be a Denialist about what the scientists say about surface temps?
Can we tell it to the proxies?
Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine” Only Thing Film Critics Groups Agree On This Year
I spotted this in the comments at Tamsin’s blog:
Ruth Dixon says:
December 8, 2013 at 10:31 am
Thanks, Tamsin, for this article. It is a pity, though, that what the IPCC said about the attribution of global warming in AR4 and AR5 is not reported correctly.
You wrote: “In 2007, the IPCC said the likelihood that most of global warming since the mid-20th century was caused by greenhouse gas emissions was assessed to be greater than 90%. This year they made a similar statement but the likelihood was 95% or greater.”
In fact, in AR5 the IPCC did not change the attribution confidence level on the role of greenhouse gases from that in AR4.
AR4 (2007) Chapter 9: “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”
AR5 (2013) Chapter 10: “More than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) from 1951 to 2010 is very likely due to the observed anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”
And in the AR5 Technical Summary the comparison with AR4 was made explicit: “Consistent with AR4, it is assessed that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 is very likely due to the observed anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.
The IPCC definition of very likely has not changed, (AR4 Chapter 1: Very likely > 90% probability; AR5 Chapter 1: Very likely 90–100% probability).
The ‘extremely likely’ (95–100% probability) statement in AR5 refers to ‘human activities’ (chapter 10) or ‘anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together’ (SPM) and I don’t think that there is an exact parallel statement in AR4 (though please let me know if I am wrong on that). It may not be possible to make this comparison, as the IPCC itself cautions:
“The AR5 Guidance Note refines the guidance provided to support the IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. Direct comparisons between assessment of uncertainties in findings in this report and those in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) are difficult, because of the application of the revised guidance note on uncertainties, as well as the availability of new information, improved scientific understanding, continued analyses of data and models, and specific differences in methodologies applied in the assessed studies. For some climate variables, different aspects have been assessed and therefore a direct comparison would be inappropriate.” (Technical Summary of AR5 (TS-4))
I am sure that the IPCC authors were very careful indeed with the language that they used in these crucial attribution statements, so I don’t think I’m just being pedantic pointing this out. In an article that expects accuracy and statistical insights from journalists, I would like to see equal precision in reporting the scientific statements.
Link here
http://blogs.plos.org/models/nine-lessons-and-carols-in-communicating-climate-uncertainty/
but don’t read the main post yet, i have a post on this coming later today
I think Ruth Dixon’s analysis is technically correct, but what is the mumbo jumbo behind ‘extremely likely’ and why did this get the headline? Could it be that confidence was not increasing, but it was political to make it look like confidence was increasing?
Dr. Curry,
Any large financial interest is going to attract people to defend it. AGW is about a $billion per day financial interest. It is completely consuming- it only produces words, laws, policies and subsidies for money losing ventures like wind power. No disrespect to you, but the vast majority of resources spent on climate is to support parasitic enterprises that would make a corrupt televangelist blush.
Of course those who are benefiting from the continued largesse that AGW hype has created are going to obfuscate on issues that might get people to challenge the wisdom of so much capital going to something so non-productive.
> I think Ruth Dixon’s analysis is technically correct, but
Exactly, but.
Nothing tells really about increasing – or decreasing – confidence. It was strong before and it’s strong now.
Claiming that confidence has increased seems, indeed, to be a publicity trick. But so what?
Hunter and Willard. + 1000 each. I could not even try to express it better. And our hostess’s remarks are very pleasing to see.
Judith –
What’s the difference between “mumbo-jumbo” and opinions you don’t agree with?
Did you really not understand what she wrote, or do you just disagree with her opinion?
I thought Ruth’s analysis was spot on. I question the IPCC, not Ruth. The mumbo jumbo is introducing ‘anthropogenic’ as apposed to GHG only, without clarify what this is (and if it includes things like aerosols, the confidence level should even be less).
Exactly, but exactly.
==============
At this point, Pekka, what difference does it make?
==============
At this point, kim, what difference will Pekka’s difference make?
Just dropping him a little helpful Hillary hint, so butt out of this gossip.
============
But, kim.
AGW is about a $billion per day financial interest.
Really? Can we see your working?
That’s just the waste, andrew, and probably conservatively estimated. ‘Workings’? I can see that it is not working.
==============
Judith –
So you think that Ruth was spot on, yet:
(1) Ruth says that the authors were very careful with their language
(2) Ruth says that the authors did not change the attribution confidence levels on the role of GHGs.
Seems to me that you have written, extensively, opinions that are in direct contrast with those two fundamental viewpoints of Ruth.
Curious, no?
The authors were careful with their language, I agree. Apparently their intention was to mislead with the new ‘extremely likely’ in their headline statement in the AR5 SPM.
but.
Heh, J; under which shell is the pea?
======
My take. At first it may seem odd that just allowing for anthropogenic GHGs is less likely to account for the temperature change since 1950 than using the GHGs+aerosols. I think the way to interpret this is that just using GHGs there is a large negative factor that is not accounted for, so they can only say very likely until they have also put much of this negative factor under the anthropogenic umbrella, which is where the aerosols came in. Between GHGs and aerosols it becomes extremely likely that the change since 1950 is mostly anthropogenic.
The task of IPCC is to report on AGW. That requires reporting also on climate science more generally, but the whole justification is in reporting on AGW.
When IPCC is doing that, it’s doing its task. If doing that leads to bias, IPCC is not doing its task well.
With IPCC or without, there are activists and there are opponents. With IPCC or without some politicians are for strong policies and others are against. Without IPCC they could not refer to IPCC, but they would find some other source to refer to.
The IPCC is sworn to tell the truth, half the whole truth, and nothing but the anthrogenic part.
=================
That seems to be the orthodox story on this site.
Wonder, why.
Also change in wording:
AR4 “global warming”
AR5 “increase in global mean surface temperature”
AR5 “increase in global average surface temperature”
Spock: a difference that makes no difference, makes no difference.
more funny shell and pea games. It invites parsing.
The problem of IPCC is communicating correctly the role of uncertainty in decision making.
One new source where these issues are discussed extensively is the new book of William Nordhaus: The Climate Casino: Risk Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World. (I don’t like the name as both the word Casino and related words like dice have already been used too often.)
I have not read the whole book , only about half of it. Based on that I may not fully agree on every point, but the book tells well, what uncertainties matter and what are less important for decision making, It’s not a bad approach to use the operative assumption that IPCC WG1 is 100% correct. Where it may err, doesn’t change the conclusions much at all.
The reason that Hanson and Lacis’ CO2 sensitivities are so high is that the man-made aerosols are compesnsating factors. Since the observational ECS is obviously at 3C (see Trenberth’s recent video which states this emphatically at the beginning) then the non-aerosol ECS has to be 4 or 5 C as Lacis has recently written [1]. If CO2 is the control knob and yet contributes only 1C directly or 20% of the total contribution, then the actual value would be at least 5C for a doubling of CO2. Man-made aerosols then pull this back down to the observed 3C. Everyone better understand this because it is important if you want to make sense of the high sensitivity estimates.
[1]A. A. Lacis, J. E. Hansen, G. L. Russell, V. Oinas, and J. Jonas, “The role of long-lived greenhouse gases as principal LW control knob that governs the global surface temperature for past and future climate change,” Tellus B, vol. 65, 2013.
So with an intention of misleading they wrote carefully?
Hmmmm.
kim,
So where is this $365bn being wasted exactly?
Judith,
So just to be clear, you are accusing the IPCC authors of a deliberate attempt to mislead? That seems to me to be quite a serious accusation.
The aerosol fudge.
If it’s not a big effect, then Hansen’s high sensitivity estimate is bonkers.
So it all depends on the quality of fudge.
Nice ending.
> With IPCC or without, there are activists and there are opponents. […]
Worse, the opponents are also activists.
This might explain why we talk about inactivists.
Joshua
“Apparently their intention was to mislead with the new ‘extremely likely’ in their headline statement in the AR5 SPM.”
please offer some interpretations of this sentence which do not confirm your biases.
Then ask yourself why you choose the interpretation which did confirm your bias.
Ask yourself why you prattle on about motivated reasoning when you cannot see your own.
remember. the meaning of a sign is your response to the sign. The sign does not have an inherent meaning in and of itself. Ask yourself why you choose to respond to judiths signs in one way when you are aware that there are many ways to respond.
It is good that thisisnotgoodtogo understands the compensating aerosol effect because if we do start cleaning up the air of all the man-made particulates, then we may see extra warming.
See China.
From the article:
“Many people could die as extreme weather becomes common.
There will be more freak winds like the October storm, which killed four people.
Heatwaves will be lethal and the sea level will rise, leaving coastal towns at risk of being swamped by storm surges.
Sir Brian Heap, president of the European Academies Science Advisory Council, said he felt “obliged” to issue the warning after a new study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/354006/Climate-change-warning-Killer-winter-storms-for-next-THIRTY-years
They will never let up and I don’t mean freak storms.
JC said:
“Apparently their intention was to mislead with the new ‘extremely likely’ in their headline statement in the AR5 SPM.”
—–
The intention to “mislead” is a pretty serious charge, of which you yourself have been on the receiving end. I think the authors would no more appreciate your charge than then you did.
Hey Bob,
I never said Judith made any attempts to mislead– I said she has been accused of it by others. Please make sure to state things more clearly.
Regarding my pajamas– I do like to play in them, but they have no feet, so if you’d like to come over and play sometime, here’s the fun we could have:
http://youtu.be/YfF1_A2VVrM
Gatsey, pretty impressive. I assume you were the kid in Blue.
From the article:
Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst announced a Texas-led three-week effort that he says reduced illegal immigration, smuggling, and human trafficking to a standstill in the Rio Grande River section of the U.S./Mexico border.
The Lt. Governor spoke with me in an interview for Breitbart News; he stated: “In the Rio Grande Valley sector, nearly nothing moved in those three weeks. We shut it down. We had teams of Texas law enforcement in the brush, high altitude aircraft, gun boats, and more,” he explained. “Our intel revealed that the Gulf cartel was growing frustrated with our three-week effort.”
…
“For six or seven years, I’ve been calling on our congressional delegation in D.C., we need to at least double, if not triple, the size of our Border Patrol,” said the Lt. Governor. “The federal government is not providing the resources. I’ve grown convinced over the last year that this administration has no intention of securing the border.”
“This is just unacceptable,” he said. “ We have a problem and everyone knows it except for the Obama administration and people in high levels of Border Patrol.” The Lt. Governor did not stop there: “Organized crime groups in Texas are contracting with Mexican cartels to be their enforcers. The cartels’ presence are in all of our major cities. Seven of the eight Mexican cartels operating in Texas are using our state as a staging area for their operations across the U.S.”
“Illegal immigration is one issue, and we all understand why people want to come here. I’m a strong believer in legal immigration, but not illegal immigration,” said the Lt. Governor. “We have young girls being trafficked as slaves for immoral purposes across our border and through our state. This cannot be allowed.”
“The bottom line is that we have just showed that we can shut down the border for ‘X’ number of dollars,” he said. “We need to find the $5 million per month to make these operations continuous and replicate what we have just accomplished.”
Dewhurst concluded the interview by stating, “The State of Texas and our nation deserve better than what we are getting from Washington, D.C. Until they adopt the Texas approach, we will continue to do what’s right for Texans and for our state ourselves.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/06/Exclusive-Interview-Texas-Lt-Governor-We-Shut-Down-The-Border-Ourselves
Pingback: Trenberth and Fasullo Try to Keep the Fantasy Alive | Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations
‘With this final correction, the ERBS Nonscanner-observed decadal changes in tropical mean LW, SW, and net radiation
between the 1980s and the 1990s now stand at 0.7, -2.1, and 1.4 W m2, respectively…’ http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-3-23.html
‘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
I guess this is quote mining and clip art of the 1st order. Not sure what that means but they tend to get annoyed when I quote science at them. They never have a rational or technical response.
This is actually quite simple. We never have a quantified net for radiant energy leaving and entering the planet in the satellite data. That information is available – mostly as ocean heat content. Recent work for instance has reconciled net CERES, ARGO and SORCE data to close the global energy budget. Negative trends in IR and SW show increased flux towards the surface. Positive trends show increased losses to space. Net flux is warming positive by convention. Most of the warming in CERES is in SW – implying that the ‘missing heat’ in CERES was predominantly the result of changes in ‘cloud radiative forcing’.
The first order differential global energy equation is.
d(W&H)/dt = power in – power out
Ocean heat is a reasonable proxy work and heat (W&H). Power in from the Sun changes very little – although there does seem to be another (top down) mechanism in changing UV – 10 times as much as TSI – and stratospheric ozone.
power out = reflected SW + emitted IR
The data from both ISCCP-FD and ERBS sources are consistent and suggest cooling in IR and warming in SW between the 80’s and 90’s. A net warming trend of 1.8 W/m2 from changes in ‘cloud radiative forcing’ in ISCCP-FD data between the 80’s and 90’s. Some 3 times the change in greenhouse gas forcing. This is the biggest change by far in the global energy dynamic over the period of recent warming.
Most of the recent warming was ENSO in tow periods of extreme transitions between states – but changes in ‘cloud radiative forcing’ are right up there as a causal. Cloud changes are correlated with changes in SST. Work this year by Enric Palle and Ben Laken cross calibrated ISCCP-FD and MODIS cloud data with tropical SST. It is one more confirmation of the trends. Cloud decreases in the 80’s and 90’s, suddenly shifts late last century and has meandered around like a drunken sailor since. It is all consistent with changes in SST over the entire period of record.
Cue tranformations into nasty little dweebs – although little encouragement is generally required.
Nice self-description Chief.
Typical idiotic and pointless little snark. I am as straight as they come. I have lost another 6kg and gone off my diabetes meds again. I wouldn’t be compromising that with any serious drinking.
Don’t have to. I am getting to the life stage of finding it much more fun to talk to kids than ‘people’. I had an odd experience with the 5 year son of a friend of mine. He was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. We clicked immediately. I found him to be urbane, sophisticated and a heck of a funny guy with a line in sardonic commentary that just cracked me up. I am thinking that perhaps that they just couldn’t believe that a 5 year old was taking the mickey out of them. I met the new 6 month old baby in the family. Coyly smiling up at me from fluttering eyelids. How is that not instinctive? The 2 year old was cute as – all elbows and knees marching to a singing Santa. My niece Kate is bright with a glowing inner strength. They couldn’t be in better hands.
My best friends are all under 10 and don’t drink much. I am so impressed by this new generation I am thinking of doing some serous educational and childhood development study next year.
Why don’t you do something useful instead webster and look at the science?
Here’s the cloud meandering around the place. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=43
From – http://www.benlaken.com/documents/AIP_PL_13.pdf
Come back when you are capable of discussing it rationally.
Chief,
Good time to look at the science of energy balance.
I recently switched over from using a medium-compute-node of an Amazon cloud server (which was costing me $100 a month) to a locally-served i7 machine for hosting the interactive CSALT model:
http://entroplet.com/context_salt_model/navigate
The CSALT model captures all the richness of the natural variability while nailing the attribution of the underlying warming trend to the CO2 control knob. This substantiates what the vast majority of the world’s smartest climate scientists are reporting is causing climate change, not the FUD that you are passing off.
The complete series of Context/earth blog posts describing the CSALT model is here
http://contextearth.com/context_salt_model/
Check out in particular the subtle interaction with tides that I uncovered recently.
You have been repeating this for months it seems – I don’t pay much attention.
The cloud radiative forcing data is very suggestive – and the principles of collinearity apply to your simple multiple regression.
Science knows that internal variability added to temps between 1976 and 1998. Known without much doubt and becoming and being confirmed in the latest instruments.
‘Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.’
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
You really don’t understand this and are most certainly unable to incorporate chaos in your thinking. These are critical ideas in climate science and until you make some effort to understand it is all just piss and wind.
CO2 is not the control knob. Climate is a complex system – this implies that climate is a system with control variables and multiple feedbacks.
e.g. http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
The world is still not warming for a decade to 3 more – come back when you understand why.
Chief said:
“The world is still not warming for a decade to 3 more.”
—-
By “world” Chief continues to mean the lower part of the troposphere about 2 meters off the ground as measured by sensible heat only. Such a narrow definition would be akin to calling one square block in San Francisco as “California”. Such a narrow definition of both the “world” and the energy content of Earth’s climate system is beneath even you Chief.
Put in wrong place – this single level reply nesting is an utter nuisance.
Gatesy – you endlessly repeat a few simplistic talking points without realising that any moderately sophisticated observer passed over these elementary considerations many years ago.
I am a moderately sophisticated observer with degrees in engineering and environmental science and have been teasing out these things – especially ENSO and related hydrological regimes – for decades.
I get it that you don’t understand that the chaotic earth system has multiple equilibria – one of these is the 60 to 80 year periodicity. The shifts at this frequency result in changes in the surface temperature trajectory that are related to changes in cloud radiative forcing and of ocean/atmosphere energy partitioning.
Go back to the 1st order differential global energy equation.
d(W&H)/dt = power in – power out
Here we are obviously talking global energy content using a formula derived from fundamental principles.
Put together multiple chaotic equilibria with the expectation that tropical cloud cover increases with cooler SST and the real potential of these climate shifts emerges.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
Come back when you understand why.
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Professor Curry,
Please allow me to post controversial but unavoidable conclusions to precise experimental data that accumulated over my 53 year research career:
Chapter 2:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Chapter_2.pdf
I don’t see what the fuss is about.
So start here:
“The remainder of this brief chapter will present clear and unequivocal evidence
1.Neutron repulsion is the source of energy in cores of heavy atoms and stars
2.The Sun made our elements, birthed the solar system and sustains our lives
3. Iron 56 is the most abundant and most stable atom in the Earth and the Sun.”
Well it’s seems quite possible Iron 56 is quite abundant on Earth, Not exactly sure what in earth core, but considering Earth’s density, Iron 56
could very well be most abundant.
So, what?
Start from beginning: “Neutron repulsion is the source of energy in cores of heavy atoms and stars ”
We know the density of our sun, and therefore why are heavy atoms
important. Sun is millions of degrees and mostly hydrogen.
And so heavy atoms are fairly irrelevant. though there could compared to earth, large globs of heavy atoms which may be clumped, Or be dissolved
in water like metals in a glass of tap water. I don’t don’t know whether diffused or clumps of it, but seems fairly irrelevant in any case.
Next 2: “The Sun made our elements, birthed the solar system and sustains our lives”
It’s possible. But it seems like there were a lot large stars in early galactic
or section of this universe. Or currently there are a lot supernovas exploding, and large stars have relativity brief lifetime. Given a couple billion years one gets a lot of exploding supernovas and we currently have atoms flying from them at near the speed of light [GCR].
So considering enormous pile carcasses of from such massive stars, some of it ended up somewhere.
Meanwhile back at the Great Western we might not be math whiz – but we all know that ‘gravity sucks’.
curiousnc, Just for you Bud.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-be-skeptical.html
Keep it simple, keep it short and let them wiggle.
From the article:
According to a recent publication from the American Chemical Society, a study performed by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia University Earth Institute of New York came to the conclusion that more than 1.8 million human deaths have been prevented by world nuclear power production from 1971-2009.
On average, 76,000 deaths were prevented globally every year from 2000-2009 thanks to using nuclear power. A mean of 117,000 deaths per year were prevented alone in Germany between 1971-2009, yet Germany announced plans to shut down all reactors by 2022.
The estimated human deaths caused by nuclear power from 1971-2009 are far lower than the avoided deaths. Globally, some 4,900 such deaths were calculated, or about 370 times lower than the number of avoided deaths. Around 25% of these deaths are due to occupational accidents and about 70% are due to air pollution-related effects.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1880931-no-dead-cat-bounce-a-dead-serious-warning-from-uranium
Extreme results at the AGU.
http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/060/157/original/coldestplacerecords.jpg?1386634423
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