by Judith Curry
It’s your turn to introduce topics for discussion.
I have some spare time during the coming week to prepare some new posts, stay tuned.
by Judith Curry
It’s your turn to introduce topics for discussion.
I have some spare time during the coming week to prepare some new posts, stay tuned.
If not for what psychologist Clive Hazell calls “the narcissism of small differences… to achieve a superficial sense of one’s own uniqueness, an ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness,” a Climatist would simply be a weatherman.
They of course made their play for starker differences but nature refused to cooperate. And, they could never make their case with real data. We now know that a Climatist is just a dishonest weatherman with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and a flair for histrionics.
Nature has given us a cold ocean (PDO) and cooling sun, and even then we have the warmest decades. This seems to be Nature showing us what we are doing by removing the excuses.
In the revealing 13-March-2013 Email to skeptical bloggers on the internet, self-named Mr. FOIA (the still anonymous whistleblower who released foi2009.pdf on the eve of the corrupt proceedings in Copenhagen that detailed all of the CRUgate shenanigans) said, “It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods… We can’t pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it’s not away from something and someone else… Even if I have it all wrong and these scientists had some good reason to mislead us (instead of making a strong case with real data) I think disseminating the truth is still the safest bet by far… Keep on the good work. I won’t be able to use this email address for long so if you reply, I can’t guarantee reading or answering. I will several batches, to anyone I can think of. Over and out. Mr. FOIA”
PDO only switched to cold a few years ago.
Wait until it is both the PDO and AMO negative.
AMO is approaching negative for the winter months, but not yet the summer months.
And thats why winters in the UK and Europe are so cold.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/has-the-amo-peaked-may-oct-says-no-and-nov-apr-says-yes/
sushine, but the PDO cooling trend started nearly a decade ago and has probably already passed the trend max, next being a more steady cool phase that won’t impact AGW warming.
The Sun and PDO has failed them jim.
They only have the AMO to cling onto now. I am greatly interested to see what happens when that doesn’t pan out for them either. I expect a sudden rush to accept manmade global warming.
” but the PDO cooling trend started nearly a decade ago”
All the temperature series are flat or negative for the last 10 years.
sunshine, exactly. Solar and PDO are downward yet global temperature is flat, something else must be rising to compensate.
“something else must be rising to compensate”
The AMO hit bottom in 1975 and started rising and peaked in 1998 but has stayed well into the positive range since then.
http://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/amo-all-years-amo.png
Also, clean air legislation has resulted in significantly more sunshine in the Europe and the USA starting in the mid 70s thanks to dropping SO2 emissions.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/cleaner-air-more-sunshine/
Chinese use of coal has resulted in more SO2 since about 2000.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/are-we-cooling-the-planet-with-so2/
If only the AGW/CO2 cult considered other factors.
AGW cult is like the dumb cop who latches onto an obvious suspect (CO2) and never considers anything else while the amateur sleuth finds all sorts of overlooked clues pointing at other suspects.
AGW = bad TV detectives.
sunshine, the steadily increasing use of coal in China is another negative factor. Thanks for reminding us. Now we have three (1) Solar, (2) PDO, (3) Chinese sulphates.
I’m glad you agree JimD that CO2 is irrelevant to changes in temperature.
As I said, AMO + PDO + more sunshine from cleaner air caused the post 1980 warming ….
When the AMO finally goes negative it will get bitterly cold.
sunshine, we are naming a list of negative-trend factors and yet seeing no negative trend. Your explanation so far is that we are awaiting some kind of AMO. Anything better?
But you forget that if the AMO is strong enough it can balance out the other negative trend factors. And increased sunshine in Europe and NA could be counteracted by less in Asia. etc etc
The AGW obessession with CO2 has blinded fake scientists to the real import climate factors.
Sunshine hours writes:
Maybe thats why winter Arctic Ice is doing fine and summer Arctic Ice is not doing fine.
Open Arctic is part of a normal cycle. That is when ice is replenished on earth. It is a necessary part of the well bounded cycle. If we did not have warm ocean and open Arctic, we would not get cold and snow again. This is normal natural and fine.
Jim D
Yeah.
But Nature has started a slight cooling trend in globally and annually averaged land and sea surface and tropospheric temperature anomalies, so she is showing us pretty clearly that she is still in charge of our climate.
Max
manacker, the kind of false sense of security that precedes each of the large El Ninos.
Jim D
“manacker, the kind of false sense of security that precedes each of the large El Ninos.”
Good point. I wonder what the temp records would look like if we controlled for the spurious warming created by the impact of El Ninos on the surface temp records?
GaryM, there are some who think that the reduced ability of the earth to cool off after large El Ninos has nothing to do with rising CO2, but they can’t explain it themselves.
Jim D
BIGGEST El Nino on record 1997/1998:
HadCRUT3 globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly in degrees C
1996: 0.124.
1997: 0.356
1998: 0.517
1999: 0.263
2000: 0.239
“Reduced ability”?
Looks like the Earth cooled off pretty fast after that last big El Nino, Jim.
Max
Jim D,
You miss my point. there shouldn’t be any need for the Earth to cool off after an El Nino. Everything I read about the El Nino is that it is a concentration of heat in the western Pacific caused by the trade winds.
But it does not warm the Earth. As far as I can see, the concentration of existing heat in during an El Nino, causes temp readings to surface temps to spike. If the trade winds were not concentrating the heat, it would still be somewhere in the climate system.
So the rise in global average temperature during an El Nino, does not reflect real warming, but the weakness of our ability to measure global average temperature at all.
Now I have asked repeatedly here, and once on WUWT, if any consensus type can explain how an local (albeit large) weather phenomon of natural variability, can raise global average temp without adding heat to the climate.
The closest to an answer came from Dr. Curry who posited that added cloud cover resulting from an El Nino, would prevent radiation of heat. But my question, still unanswered, is whether there is any study that shows that the net effect of any such increase in clouds is net positive, and to an extent that justifies the resulting spike in GAT? That question has not been answered as far as I have seen.
Perhaps you have an idea?
manacker, you can look at any temperature series and see that the earth never cooled back to pre-1998 strengths of either El Nino or La Nina. Each one seems warmer than the previous. Now even La Nina years are warmer than pre-1998 El Nino years when you look at annual averages.
GaryM, the atmosphere and ocean both warm due to climate forcing. The ocean surface affects the atmosphere directly, and during El Ninos, some of the accumulated ocean energy is released to the atmosphere at an accelerated rate due to the El Nino circulation change. This is ultimately why the surface temperature doesn’t change uniformly with time even if the forcing change is smooth. It is the ocean circulations that introduce the variability in surface and atmospheric temperature.
I wonder what the temp records would look like if we controlled for the spurious warming created by the impact of El Ninos on the surface temp records?
Sort of weird as you would be leaving in the spurious cooling caused by La Nina years.
Like the back-to-back ones that have trounced the worst full-moon effect on ever seen on Climate Etc..
TJim D
The temperature records do, indeed, show that post-1998 temperatures have dropped, but not to the pre-1997 levels.
But what is also apparent is that we had several fairly strong El Ninos during the 1980s and 1990s, and this trend has reversed in the 2000s.
As many are “putting the blame” on La Ninas replacing El Ninos for the current slight cooling trend one could also “put the blame” on El Ninos replacing La Ninas for the 1980s/1990s warming, including, of course, the warmest year of all: 1998.
Others are quick to attribute the 1980s/1990s warming to CO2, but the current slight cooling on La Nina (which is not totally logical).
I think it’s much more complicated than that, and that we really don’t have any idea what all the factors were behind the 1980s/1990s warming or the 2000s slight cooling.
And I am also sure that Nature is still in charge of climate – not IPCC’s anthropocentric notion that it is our SUVs or light bulbs.
Max
Jim D,
“…some of the accumulated ocean energy is released to the atmosphere at an accelerated rate due to the El Nino circulation change….”
You are still missing the point. That is how I understand El Ninos as well. But the releasing of heat that has already “accumulated” should not raise the average temp. That heat raised the temp somewhere else when it entered the system. The fact that it is concentrated in one area of the Pacific, the released to the atmosphere, does not add any heat/energy to the climate.
But don’t worry, no one else has actually answered my question yet.
GaryM, the ocean absorbs heat at a nonuniform rate too. La Ninas are a phase where it absorbs more, so between absorbing more at some times and releasing more at others, it balances out over time to the general absorption of the increased forcing and overall heat content rise. You can only cancel out this ocean oscillation by suitably averaging over long periods. A ten-year average gets rid of most of it, and only a couple of tenths of a degree is left that people attribute to PDO, etc.
“…the ocean absorbs heat at a nonuniform rate too. La Ninas are a phase where it absorbs more”
You are still missing the point. Whether the ocean is absorbing heat or releasing it into the atmosphere, it is not adding heat to the climate system. The average of the system should not be affected by movement of heat among its various components.
The answer is obvious. It’s a travesty. Really, it is. GaryM and Trenberth agree. Holy freakin’ cow, how did that happen?
GMT is like some sort of crude butted, 2-meters above the surface crap. When the earth disagrees with it – 15-year pauses, HadCrappy3, RSS, HadCrappy4 as examples – go with the earth.
> The answer is obvious. It’s a travesty. Really, it is. GaryM and Trenberth agree. Holy freakin’ cow, how did that happen?
It might more appropriate to say:
> Holy travesty, Batman!
GaryM, the surface temperature is not a measure of the heat in the climate system. The ocean heat content is nearer the kind of quantity needed to measure that. At best, the surface temperature is proportional to how efficient the surface is in removing the solar heat input, but there are large annual and interannual cycles in the way heat enters and leaves the system. Snow cover, sea-ice and clouds modulate this. It is far from a smooth behavior over months.
Right wag, and not very good weathermen at that. Who would you take in a weather forecasting contest, Joe Bastardi or (insert name of just about any establishment climate scientist you can think of) ?
That’s an easy one: famous hurricane hunter William Gray — the weatherman’s weatherman.
you’d have to dig him up first
Really?
my bad, i got the wrong person! hoisted on my own retard!
Climategate 3.0: Will it be a tipping point to get more non-climate scientists steamed at climate scientists? A lot of public trust is at issue with the Mann et al. ‘negative externality.’
The big news there I’d say is that any objective observer now has to conclude what we’ve strongly suspected all along, that an insider is responsible for this, i.e. a whistleblower.
I would not expect Mr. FOIA to be a whistleblower, being a non-English-speaking person with a manifesto, but perhaps he obtained his files from an internal source at UEA.
pokerguy,
Do you think that the whistleblower law in the UK still applies to the Miracle Worker?
If not, I suggest that your use of “whistleblower” is metaphorical.
I think it’s pretty clear that an individual hacked the CRU mail server and tried to hack realclimate too. And this individual wants everyone to think he doesn’t live in the US.
willard, I’m afraid you’re confused. The term is always metaphorical. Are you suggesting that people are lliterally blowing whistles?
I think not.
Legal definitions are not metaphorical, pokerguy:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/21/uk-whistleblower-legislation/
Too bad our Miracle Worker chosen bitcoins instead of legal protection
Again, you’re deeply confused. The term itself is ultimately metaphorical, whether or not it now has come to have precise legal definition. You should have said, “legally speaking, this fellow is not a whistleblower.”
What you did say was, “your use of the term (whistleblower) was metaphorical.” Not only is it grammatically incorrect with respect to what you intended to say, the statement itself makes no sense. Either one is using a term or he is not. There’s nothing metaphorical involved.
My use of “metaphorical” was also metaphorical, pokerguy. The Miracle Worker might not be a whisteblower anymore, in the legal sense of the word, the one that matters most when talking about the Miracle worker as a whistleblower.
Thank you for parsing my question in a way to evade answering it.
By his own admission Mr. FOIA is a whistleblower.
The definition of a whistleblower includes no requirement that the person be an employee of the accused organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower
I really wish people would stop making up their own meanings for words and/or failing to consult a dictionary to double-check what they believe is the defintion. In the online world where you can check a dictionary in the time it takes to type the word to look up there’s no excuse for poor vocabulary.
Willard you are conflating two definitions or two different questions.
Not every whistleblower can avail themselves of the whistle blower defense. Assuming that the OP was talking about the legal definition does not demonstrate charity. At the limit you realize that the principle of charity allows one to recast what anyone says into a position that doesnt conflict with anything I believe.
Steven Mosher you are correct!
It’s an early Easter miracle! Hallelujah!
David Springer, I don’t think you read the Wikipedia article you linked to very carefully; the whole thrust of the article opposes your point. Perhaps you could stand to do your own double-checking of definitions, before running other people down. The article says (in the third sentence, no less): “Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other people within the accused organization) or externally (to regulators, law enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues).” David, what kind of whisteblower *outside* of an organization has the choice of making their allegation internally or externally? The “Definition” section or the article you send others to read carefully also repeats and elaborates the thought that whistleblowing is one or the other. (You could insist it’s very critically meaningful that the linked article doesn’t stress the word “employee”, but only at the risk of insulting everyone’s intelligence.)
bentabou | March 17, 2013 at 12:06 am |
“David Springer, I don’t think you read the Wikipedia article”
No, it was you that didn’t read it carefully. My bold below so you don’t miss it again. I was exactly correct and you are exactly wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower#Definition
I’d say thanks for playing but your response was so poor it was just a pain in the ass to correct your pathetic attempt to make a point. Next time put in a little bit more effort.
> By his own admission Mr. FOIA is a whistleblower.
Indeed, and I am a ninja.
A relevant resource:
http://www.secwhistleblowerprogram.org/SEC-Whistleblower/anonymity/
The concept of whistleblower deserves due diligence, unless one wants to consider any kind of leaking whistleblowing.
Never send to know for whom the whistle blows…
It blows for thee.
The concept of whistleblower deserves due diligence, unless one wants to consider any kind of leaking whistleblowing
The due diligence with Mr Foia being that the information was about what public servants were doing with taxpayers money, hence the public have a right to know. The whistle was blown not only on the crooked science being done, but also on hiding the crookedness.
> [H]ence the public have a right to know.
See how easy it is to switch back to the legal mode.
All we need is another commenter.
willard (@nevaudit) | March 17, 2013 at 6:50 pm |
ds: By his own admission Mr. FOIA is a whistleblower.
willard: Indeed, and I am a ninja.
By your own admission you are now a ninja. This doesn’t speak to the veracity of your admission. That’s a different matter. Mr. FOIA might be lying in his admission.
By my own admission it was I not Al Gore who invented the internet. Difficult as it is to believe I may be exaggerating that claim a wee bit. ;-)
Rob,no.
> [Y]ou are conflating two definitions or two different questions.
Our Miracle Worker’s actions do not qualify as whistle blowing anymore.
Calling him or her a whistleblower won’t change that fact.
Thanks for the concerns.
RELEASE ALL THE EMAILS!
There are internal whistleblowers and external whistleblowers.
One need not be a member of an organization to qualify as a whistleblower.
Example:
Who is an eligible whistleblower?
An “eligible whistleblower” is a person who voluntarily provides us with original information about a possible violation of the federal securities laws that has occurred, is ongoing, or is about to occur. The information provided must lead to a successful SEC action resulting in an order of monetary sanctions exceeding $1 million. One or more people are allowed to act as a whistleblower, but companies or organizations cannot qualify as whistleblowers. You are not required to be an employee of the company to submit information about that company. See Rule 21F-2.
A canadian example
Whistleblowers are people who put themselves at risk, often when they didn’t have to, in order to protect the public interest. Typical examples might be a scientist trying to stop drugs of questionable safety from being approved, or an auditor trying to halt the misuse of tax dollars.
Ask yourself the question: “How is the public interest harmed by… [whatever wrongdoing you have observed]…? If there isn’t an obvious answer, you are probably not a whistleblower by our definition, and unfortunately we probably cannot help you.
As with most words you will find substantial disagreement about the meaning. It’s really dishonorable to pretend such disagreement is not real.
here is a discussion that wasnt to far away. Staring with Ralph Naders view ( he was one of the first to use the term )
http://www.whistleblowing-cee.org/about_whistleblowing/
Rather than quibbling about the meaning of whistleblowing It might be more helpful to discuss why people felt his actions were justified or not justified. In what ways does he differ from Gleick, if at all?
That would be interesting since Gleick put himself in the middle of his forged document and RC remains anonymous.
Whistleblowers by definition have to be selfless. Anyway, that would be an interesting conversation. Not sure where I would come down on that. Was FOIA/RC selfless?
Mosher > Whistleblowers by definition have to be selfless.
Surely not. Just need to expose some wrongdoing.
From that same resource, we see that priviledged access must be demonstrated:
> Whistleblowing must involve an intentional disclosure of information to which the whistleblower has privileged access.
http://www.whistleblowing-cee.org/about_whistleblowing/
***
We also see that non liability must be demonstrated:
> This is the main difference between whistleblowers and informants: informants are often involved in some sort of unethical affairs, and use disclosure for clarifying their own role, or reduce their liability.
So much the worse for the theory that Briffa could have been the whistleblower.
***
We can be thankful for the Miracle Worker’s concerns, but he can’t have his cake and eat it too.
Briffa has never been a candidate. Eliminated him early on.
Oddly, in this case people WITH privaledged access would not require the whistleblower defense, since they would not be in violation of the computer security laws in the UK.
Bottomline, you should be more charitable in trying to understand what people mean when they use the term whistleblower, but i guess when Charity doesnt work, it is quickly forgotten.
Mosher, in the US whistleblower protection isn’t usually about avoiding criminal prosecution. It’s about the internal whistleblower avoiding what would otherwise be legal retaliation like getting fired from the job at the company he snitched on or being subject to a hostile work environment. Presumably it’s essentially the same in the UK.
To whoever said the whistleblower is position on the moral high ground that’s not necessarily true either. Paid informants are also whistleblower. Say I know the company I work for cheats on taxes. I take evidence of cheating to the IRS from whom I get a percentage of taxes recovered and penalties assessed. That’s not a moral high ground it’s an opportunist out to make a buck. Whistleblower law would protect me from retaliation by my employer. There are other instances of monetary damage to the government (contract breaches and frauds for instance) where the goverment pays the informant and then protects him from retaliation. This is actually rather morally bankrupt for the government to pay people to inform on each other and leads to all kinds of societal ills and even atrocities such as Nazi’s rewarding people for reporting Jews in hiding. It’s rather bad business if you ask me and the government should not be allowed to have paid informer programs of any stripe.
david,
I’m not particularly interested in your limited understanding of the law or anything else you have to say on the matter. I have yet to read anything from you that I
a) don’t already know
b) couldn’t find with the five seconds of googling.
The issue from my perspective is not what the law says about whistleblowing, its not what willard thinks about whistleblowing.
The issue is what do people actually mean when they use the term. It may be that folks using the term are at variance with the legal meaning, or at odds with what you think. What you think doesnt interest me because you tend to be contrarian. If I said white, you would say black. Just sayin
( go ahead and disagree it proves the point )
When most people argue that FOIA is a whistleblower what exactly are they trying to point to? what are they trying to do? That’s more instructive that trying to decide what a “whistleblower’ actually is “in reality”.
Are they:
1. arguing its an insider ( employee)
2. talking about the motive ( protect the public interest)
3. talking about a legal defense
4. defending the morality of the act.
Moving away from the term whistleblower facilitates this discussion.
For my own part I always thought the motive was personal which would make him an “informant” as opposed to a whistleblower.. but you see how those terms color the discussion. As a term whistleblower was introduced because Ralph Nader want to spin the description of snitches.
FOIA is a snitch. FOIA is a whistleblower.
hmm part of me wants to do an “ordinary language’ approach to the problem, but only willard would get that. For now, I’ll suggest that people avoid the labels as they are an impediment to understanding. In this case language gets in the way of communication.
> hmm part of me wants to do an “ordinary language’ approach to the problem, but only willard would get that.
When done right, this kind of analysis makes more sense than using a dictionary. It mainly consists in providing examples and analyzing their variations.
It makes sense to refer to our Miracle Worker as a whistleblower. Just as it makes sens to refer to him as a hacker. It might even make sense to refer to him as a Miracle Worker. All these cases provide their own set of connotations. They all serve a rhetorical function. Et cetera.
My point is that the concept of whistleblower entails social strictures that the story of our Miracle Worker might not satisfy.
Expect a corresponding global cooling=>
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/to:1965/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:1052/normalise
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/16010218/highly-variable-northern-hemisphere-temperatures-reconstructed-from-low-high-resolution-proxy-data
…implying that the temperatures after 1990 are unprecedented, otherwise they would have included that period when the land temperature rose another half degree.
Jim D
Yeah. The temperatures after 1990 may be “unprecedented” (I don’t believe there is any real evidence to support this), BUT:
The trend since the turn of the millennium has reversed again to slight cooling, so they should become “less unprecedented” year-by-year, if the trend continues for a while.
Max
http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pdf
Jim D, No, that’s what you’re implying, and thereby missing their point entirely.
Record Ice Extent in the Antarctic. What stupid excuse will the AGW cult come up with?
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/8th-antarctic-sea-ice-extent-daily-record-for-2013-5th-in-a-row/
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/antarctic-sea-ice-extent-daily-records-count/
An infinitesimal amount of warming in the deepest oceans that cannot be found let alone measured but the models nevertheless say must be there…
Jim D, Larsen C is many times as big as the peninsula glaciers which it ‘anchors’.
Besides, where did you read that it could collapse any time soon? Everything I’ve read indicates that it’s stable with no reason to believe that’s going to change.
You’re missing the propaganda value. Give a glacier a name and it’s like losing a member of your family when it clves off and falls into the water. Al Gore did his understudy under Bill Clinton not Roger Revelle when it comes to propaganda.
Why do we need an excuse sunshinehours1? we aren’t denying the antarctic sea ice is increasing.
Anymore than you are denying Arctic sea ice is in a death spiral, right?
If by death spiral you mean the global sea ice is slightly above normal and the Arctic Sea Ice is 250,000 sq km below the mean and Antarctic Sea Ice is 1,000,000 sq km above the mean.
By the way, that translates to:
Arctic = 6% below the mean
Antarctic = 28% above the mean
Sunshinehours1, thank you for illustrating the willfully ignorant cherry-picking — the turning of a “blind eye” toward scientific evidence — that is pathognomonic of climate-change denialist cognition!
sunshine, summer sea ice is 50% below the mean. The Antarctic responds differently by occasionally losing centuries-old ice shelves.
Its not summer JimD. Arctic Sea Is only 6% below the mean now.
But take a look at this graphic …
http://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/ssmi1_ice_ext_2012_oct_17_4_steps_yellow_and_pink.png
But I do admit than September 2012 Antarctic maximum was 1,000,000 sq km above the mean.
So both minimum and maximum Antarcrctic Sea Ice Extent are 1,000,000 sq km or more above the mean.
sunshine, winter sea ice varies very little compared to summer, and the lack of sunshine means it matters less in winter too.
“winter sea ice varies very little compared to summer”
The Antarctic Sea Ice Minimum Trend is increasing at 140,000 sq km per decade.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/antarctic-sea-ice-minimum-trend-climbing-at-140000-sq-km-per-decade/
“and the lack of sunshine means it matters less in winter too”
In the Antarctic Maximum Sea Ice is first day or spring. 12 hours of sunshine. Reflected by an extra 1,000,000 sq km of sice much further from the pole compared to Arctic Ice.
sunshine, the Antarctic would be fine if those ice shelves would just stop breaking apart. There has been a southward progression of these events, starting with the northern tip near S. America, and another one due any time now.
Larsen C is 48,000 sq km.
Maximum Antarctic Sea Ice is 19,000,000 sq km. Antarctica it self is 14,000,000 sq km.
Larsen C is microscopic compared to the extra 1,000,000 sq km of ice caused by cooling in the SH.
yeah thank god for a new ice shelf each winter!
Larsen C is over 10000 years old, and could suddenly collapse within the next decade. It is the size of the state of Louisiana (or Slovakia on the European scale).
Jim D wrote: “Larsen C is over 10000 years old”
Considering the ~50m rise in sea level in that time, it must have started out well above the water.
Or is dynamic movement – which includes breaking off – simply a part of the natural process?
Louisiana? The 1,000,000 sq km of extra sea ice in Antarctic is the size of Texas+California.
If losing Rhode Island or Lousiana is a tragedy and a sign of AGW, then adding Texas+California must be a sign that AGW is false and the world is saved (and doomed to freeze to death).
Maybe it started out as a land glacier, which is what it is now an extension of.
sunshine, you are averting your eyes from the 3 million sq km lost in Arctic summer sea ice.
It was only for a month or so. As I’ve pointed out, Arctic maximum is only 6% lower than the mean … about 250,000 sq km, not 3,000,000.
And a large chunk of that 3,000,000 was caused by the huge cyclone.
Jim D, Perhaps, but then it would either still be resting on the ocean floor, or would have slowly melted from the bottom over thousands of years.
But that also implies that pieces have continuously been breaking off over the millennia.
Also, if it is just an extension of a land glacier, saying it’s 10000 years old is just as nonsensical as saying a river is 10000 years old.
phatboy, I believe the land ice here is not flowing because these shelves are anchoring it, which is the concern about them disappearing, but I need to read more about that.
CO2 warming mechanism works 24 hours/day 7 days/week. If the Arctic winter isn’t warmer but the summer is, which is exactly what we observe, then the cause is related to incoming shortwave not CO2 longwave.
A key difference between Antarctic sea ice and Arctic sea ice is proximity to sources of anthropogenic black carbon (soot). This accumulates on multi-year ice darkening its surface. In the polar winter the darkened surface is irrelevant because there’s no shortwave energy to absorb. In the summer it makes a big difference with the sun beating down on it 24/7.
So it’s actually anthropogenic forcing partly or largely responsible for acceleration of glacial and multi-year sea ice melt but it’s not a well mixed greenhouse gas that’s doing it. It’s soot generated in the Northern hemisphere where it can remain aloft long enough to reach the north polar region but doesn’t mix like CO2 does and make it to the south polar region.
To whomever said that Antarctic sea is different because it’s a thick shelf that calves that’s a grand display of ignorance.
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/images/climatology.jpg
Antarctic sea ice expands and contracts seasonally as much if not more than Arctic sea ice as can be easily seen in the north and south pole seasonal sea ice extents pictured above.
Unfool yourselves. Due diligence is required. The data is there for anyone who cares to look for themselves. Believe nothing without going to the source when the source is so readily accessable as is the case here.
Jim D, Larsen C is many times as big as the peninsula glaciers which it ‘anchors’.
Besides, where did you read that it could collapse any time soon? Everything I’ve read indicates that it’s stable with no reason to believe that’s going to change.
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/whatonearth/posts/post_1292991500275.html
lolwot
Wording is important.
Antarctic sea ice is “increasing”
Arctic sea ice is “in a death spiral”.
Duh!
Forget the histrionics, lolwot – just simply state that it is “decreasing at a somewhat higher rate”.
Sounds more “scientific” (and less hysterical) that way.
Max
phatboy, Larsen C was the subject of a Scientific American article in July 2012. The initial signs such melt ponds are already there.
I agree words are important. Such as Precipitous. We need to convey the Arctic is rapidly heading towards a new summer free ice state.
its soot. Soot causes melting in the north and growth in the south.
no wait, its the sun. causes melting in the north and growth in the south.
no wait its the wind, causes melting in the north and growth in the south.
No wait its underwater volcanoes. No wait its the ocean currents causes ..
you get the idea sunshine? there is no simple explanation. I know you want one.. hey more sunshine? melts the north causes more ice in the south
Steven Mosher
how ’bout:
its the not-so-global global warming?
Max
How about, “I can’t believe it’s not AGW”
AMO
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/amazing-graph-of-amo-vs-arctic-sea-ice-vs-antarctic-sea-ice/
nice
Breaking Scientific News …
LOL … Anthony Watts seemingly doesn’t appreciate that WUWT‘s own proxy analysis asserts that the last time temperatures rose this abruptly — circa 10,000 years BP — the result was massive melting of the polar ice-sheets and a sixty meter sea-level rise!
Conclusion Thank you, Anthony Watts/WUWT for publishing an immensely strong trifecta of evidence that:
• James Hansen’s scientific worldview is right,
• Michael Mann’s hockey stick is right,
• culture-drowning CAGW sea-level rise is credible.
Well done, Anthony Watts/WUWT! Your fore-sighted public service in refuting the short-sighted astro-turfed ignorance of climate-change denialism is hugely appreciated!
“the last time temperatures rose this abruptly … ”
“According to Marcott, NHX temperatures increased by 1.9 deg C between 1920 and 1940, a surprising result even for the most zealous activists.”
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/15/marcotts-zonal-reconstructions/
I’m not sure I follow the logic of your post. The WUWT post showed what happens when one blogger approximately redid the steps in Marcott et al. paper using the Marcott et al. data. It showed that you get roughly the same distribution. If I add A+B=C and you and I both add A and B we’ll get C. Even if *you* believe that C is a credible estimate of temperature then this doesn’t exercise doesn’t show that I’ve just proven it by adding two numbers.
Incidentally that post you mocked showed that the hockey stick handle was most likely an artefact of the algorithm used in the analysis. The proxy temperature corresponding to the recent period actually went down over that period :)…. Even the author of the paper says its “not robust”.
McIntyre and Watt’s point is irrelevant. The Marcott curve is long enough that it can be joined onto the instrumental temperature record. Joining that with Shakun gives us r Hagelaar’s wheelchair curve, which is the scary one.
Eli
You’ve lost me there. What year is that vertical line at the end supposed to start from and end?
tonyb
Google translation:
Figure 3: The temperature reconstruction Shakun et al (green – manual y-correction) of Marcott et al (blue), combined with HadCRUT4 (red) and model mean of the IPCC A1B (orange) to 2100.
JCH
So it runs from 1880 to 2100? Wheel Chair graph? I can think of a few names for it and ‘Vivid imagination’ is the politest.
tonyb
Eli Rabett said, “McIntyre and Watt’s point is irrelevant.”
Really? If they misdated the proxies by 500 to a thousand years that is irrelevant because of why exactly? I have always thought that crap is crap no matter the source.
fan, hard to know where to start with your post as it is so full of misinformation.
I will start with the fact that the author of the post is Steve McIntyre.
If you cannot get even that simple fact correct, then why should anyone believe anything else you say?
Second, the chart you link to shows how one can create, by spurious means, a chart that emulates Marcott’s. It is part of Mr. McIntyre’s on-going total destruction of the shoddy work of Marcott.
It is very down-in-the-weeds stuff from McIntyre, but if I understand it, he is not denying that the global temperature rose in the last century, or that the Marcott proxy happens to be right in this regard, but he argues whether the proxy data should be able to show this and be right in this way. Convoluted way of saying the proxy is only right by accident or error.
No, Jim that is not what Mr. McIntyre is arguing. What he is arguing is that the uptick in Marcott is purely due to the fact that most proxies end before the uptick so that the “average” of the remaking proxies is *artificially* high. Hence, the uptick is purely a fiction of the imagination (or arthimetic if you like). It is *not* representative of temperature in that period.
In simplest terms, Jim, here is what causes the uptick:
I have two proxies. Proxy one has values of (-2, -2, -2, -2, n/a). Proxy two has values do (2, 2, 2, 2, 2). I average these over the five periods and get: (0, 0, 0, 0, +2). OMG, it’s a huge uptick in the last period!!!
But the uptick isn’t real, it’s an artifact of the fact that the first proxy didn’t have data for the last period.
A big problem I have with the way they filter proxies, is that they have to remove proxies that show a correlation with the current warming, so as not to introduce a hockey stick effect artificially. I find this removal to be a strange practice, which is why I tend not to like these methods in general.
sunshinehours1 and roger, there’s a common-sense reason why the US Navy decisively rejects climate-change denialism …
… it’s because willful ignorance, astro-turfing, and cherry-picking amounts to a losing battle-strategy.
Ain’t that right, sunshinehours1 and roger?
That’s we the world’s military and business leaders overwhelmingly reject climate-change denialism. It’s because … these leaders hate to lose!
Anyone can read the scientific tea-leaves for themselves … the present-day “double hockey stick” of warming-rates and CO2 levels is unprecedented.
Denialist spinning, quibbling, and astro-turfing == LOSING plain and simple!
A fan
Sorry – you behave like a troll.
Please, try to use first principles logic and dispute the content of my post if you’re able to. Sloganeering isn’t the same thing.
Thank you Fan for showing a perfect example of “willful ignorance”.
You can’t defend the facts so you resort to the only thing left in your bags of tricks. Is ad hom all you’re left with?
The US Navy, now down to a small handful of ships (smallest # of ships since 1917), is jumping on the AGW bandwagon in hopes of subsidies from Obama.
fan, here is the mone quote from the post you quote:
“Marcottian (uptricks) upticks arise because of proxy inconsistency: one (or two) proxies have different signs or quantities than the larger population, but continue one step longer. This is also the reason why the effect is mitigated in the infilled variation. In principle, downticks can also occur – a matter that will be covered in my next post which will probably be on the relationship between Marcottian re-dating and upticks.”
Translation: the uptick in the Marcott paper is purely a remnant of poor science.
Great strawman, fomd, the point being made by Watts, McIntyre, et al is that the Marcott Hockey Stick is as bogus as the original hockey stick. Have you even read McIntyre, Istvan’s and others’ demolition of the, at best, flawed analyses in Marcott’s paper? Never mind, I am sure that you did not.
The common-sense scientific fact that you have overlooked, KSD — and Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts overlooked too! — is that the two most prominent features of Steve McIntyre’s own paleo reconstruction are:
• the sharp rise at 10,000 years BP, and
• the comparably sharp present-day temperature rise.
The former temperature rise was accompanied by a 60-meter sea-level rise, eh?
Uhhh … so won’t the latter do the same? Ain’t that pure common-sense, k scott denison?
Uh, fan, you do know that the “sharp rise” seen at 10,000 BC is inferred from proxies, the same ones that no longer correlate in current times, right?
“common-sense” = Faith void of facts.
And perhaps to short circuit the back and forth, fan, I will state that I’m not a big believer in proxies, no matter what they show. The science behind them, while extensive and certainly very sophisticated, is not enough to convince me that the represent temperature. Once someone puts instrumentation next to a tree to measure temperature (integral not min/max during a day), humidity, CO2, sunshine, precipitation, pH, soil content, animal patterns, etc, AND then compares those results to tree ring growth AND shows that ring width = temperature I’ll be a believer.
LOL … thank you, KSD, for so vividly demonstrating to Climate Etc readers that unbounded skepticism regarding climate-change theory and observation is operationally indistinguishable from willful ignorance and deliberate denialism!
Needless to say, responsible institutions like the US Navy can’t afford the luxury of willful ignorance and deliberate denialism, eh KSD?
Surprised it took you so long to resort to ad homs fan, but you finally go there.
Yup, the US military seems to believe that climate change is the biggest challenge they face. Is this same US government who thought there were WMD in Iraq as well? The same one that won’t allow a pipeline to be built that would lower energy costs and provide jobs even though they also have authored a report that it will have no negative environmental impact? Or the one that thought it could control wildfire risk in Colorado?
Yeah, that same government that’s *always* right, eh?
LOL
Yeah! Carbon-based energy economies are OK, `cuz our astro-turfers say so!
Don’t forget, without that carbon based energy economy you wouldn’t be having this discussion. Guess its not all that bad, eh?
Your posted claims are wrong yet again, KSD!
WOW!!!!
fan is powering the *entire internet* with solar panels on his roof! Thanks fan!
But what’s your trick for powering it at night???
k scott denison
Why fan produced those panels himself, and carried them to his roof. They are all made with organic materials grown in his garden, and made with tools hewn from already dead wood. He eats, wears, drinks, drives, and builds with nothing that requires the use of those evil carbon based fuels.
St. Fan the First, patron saint of progressive green delusion.
Once unre-dated
The vorpal blade went snicker,
Redacted for real.
===========
Speaking of which:
> REDATE ALL THE SERIES!
http://memegenerator.net/instance/36281405
Totally different Subject: Drought conditions
I have, from the U of MN archives, aerial pictures of lakes in southern MN taken in 1937. When compared to DNR contour maps, it shows lakes were down by as much as 20 ft. Attempts were made to farm many of the lakes. Some completely disappeared and some were merely pot holes.
The drought lasted most of the thirties and was a significant contributor to the depression.
Now, when according to model projections, we are supposed to be having warmer, wetter conditions, attributing the current minor drought to AGW seems more than silly.
Upon request I can send anyone the pictures.
A lot of these warmists seem to want to forget the truths about a lot of the weather and climate in the 1930s. It sort of destroys their myths about how this climate now is without precedent.
Lots of studies also identify major droughts in the 1100 to 1250 time frame in the Sierra lakes. Mono Lake has 100 feet deep remnants of tree stumps that show how low the water level was in that time.
Plus some southwest Indians were devastated by drought at that time.
Scott
It must be a fake photograph. Indeed, we now know that John Steinbeck was an outrageous liar. The 1930’s were much cooler in the whole of the Northern Hemisphere than present, and the USA was almost a degree cooler in the days of the ‘dust-bowl’ than present.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.D.gif
Next time the GISS is updated we will find that the mid-West of the 30’s was under a glacier.
“The real question, then, is when to start playing politics with science.
…
Fracking, on the other hand, could never be studied enough to make them accept it.
I happen to share that perspective.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/12/fracking_bans_let_politics_not_science_decide.html
Salon and Slate are the only two flamingly progressive sites I know of that actually, occasionally, blurt out the truth about their agenda, and tactics.
A 15-17 year “pause” in the reported GAT?
The models incapable of predicting climate on even a short time scale?
The hockey stick beaten down to the size of a number 2 pencil?
No “science” that supports a ban on fracking?
No worries. It’s not all about the science after all…it’s all about the politics. Which is of course what we conservative skeptics have been saying about them all along. Nice of at least one CAGW progressive to admit it though.
Stephen Schneider would be so proud.
I thought it was pretty fair:
When they say “let the science decide,” fracking opponents mean: “Let us score political victory by endlessly calling for more studies before fracking ever happens.” What fracking proponents mean is: “Let us win by endlessly calling for more studies after fracking is already happening.”
The real question, then, is when to start playing politics with science.
It would be fair, if it were true. But that paragraph is just another soldier in the CAGW straw man army.
Calling for endless studies is, and has for decades been, a tactic by which progressives have sought to stop any project that did not meet with their approval. Skeptics, however, have not been “endlessly calling for more studies after fracking is already happening.” It’s flat out dishonest. But I can see why a progressive would think that is fair.
The ME could care less if the the US is energy independent. Most of humanity resides elsewhere so that monopoly has all of the pockets in the rest of the world to pick. The only people who want America to fail are Eurocommies. If Ayn Rand was alive to substitute modern-day personalities in science for protaganists in her novel The Fountainhead, Michael Mann would be Ellsworth Toohey and William Gray would be Howard Roark.
LOL … the market-place has spoken:
• 97% of the public loathe John Galt’s character
• 03% of the public adore John Galt’s character
All hail the infallible market-place!
John Galt is short for, ‘Welcome to the fall of Western civilization.’ Who would say they’re for that…?
John Galt is the best argument the left has against capitalism, but the libertines who call themselves Libertarians are too blinded by their adoration of Ayn Rand to see it.
Howard Roark blows up property that belongs to someone else. John Galt leads a movement to leave society to fall apart so he can go elsewhere and follow his god of self absorbtion.
Capitalism works because it is the system that best utilizes human freedom to create wealth. But the only reason any society would adopt such a system is because it is also the best system for improving the lives of those who are not the John Galts and Howard Roarks.
It is not an accident that capitalism achieved its greatest success, and broadest expression, in a society governed by the Judeo Christian ethic, including the moral imperative of providing for those who cannot provide for themselves.
Ayn Rand’s fictional characters are nothing but an argument for her religion of the self, and shining examples of what progressives claim conservative principles are all about.
GaryM, your moral and economic views are essentially Rawlsian … which is a roundly sensible, practicable, and moral view (IMHO) …
… provided that we all keep in mind that “corporations are not people”, and moreover that:
fan,
My views are more Smithian/Hayekian/Freedmanian with an equal dose of conservative Roman Catholicism. You may now reach for your pitchfork and torch.
To be more clear, Rawls is to progresivism what Rand is to conservatism. I think Rawls can fairly be blamed for raising “fairness” and “social justice” (the ultimate contentless tools of deception of government progressives) to the level of the credo on the left.
He was just the latest attempt to try to find an excuse for having the benefits of a religious ethic, without all the cumbersome responsibilities that come with it. Principles? We don’t need no stinkin’ principles!
So no, my views are anything but Rawlsian.
Perhaps you should rethink this view, because John Rawls’ moral and religious views are solidly grounded in your own Christian catholicism (and Wendell Berry’s too), GaryM!
Yes, Rawls’ views are “founded” on Christianity, the same way Rand’s views are founded on conservative principles of liberty and the free market. They are both examples of the bastardization of those initial principles. Which is why I equated Rawls to Rand in the first place.
Mussolini’s view were “founded” on both principles of socialism, with an attempt to keep the benefits of capitalism. The result being fascism.
Where you begin is irrelevant. All that matters is where you end up. Once you divorce yourself from basic principles, the only limits on where you go are your own wishes. All the rest is rationalization.
omanuel I posted to you on the let’s play hockey thread but for some reason it was disjoined from your post, and my explanation that this was to you got lost in the system. http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/11/lets-play-hockey-again/#comment-302969
This is a better place to discuss it however, so, I’ll repost here and hope you see it.
From a link you posted here: http://forum.keshefoundation.org/showthread.php?30-Theory-on-how-the-sun-works/page1
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/running.htm
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true, then the sequential photos on the right and these types of high resolution running difference SOHO images speak volumes. These movies were created by “stringing together” a series of these running difference images from many consecutive days, and they show persisted rigid surface features.
I can’t see it. It looks to me like a heavy liquid, moving slowly under gravity much like our ocean with convection currents (which can take hundreds of years to move any distance), but made of more ‘sticky’ fluid, which could be something like molten iron if it is iron. Could it be condensed plasma?
Here’s the video recording the TRACE satellite made of a mass ejection event on 28 August 2000 from an active region of the Sun (AR 9143), using the 171Å filter that is specifically sensitive to the iron ion (Fe IX/X) emissions. This shows the rigid, iron-rich structures from which the material is ejected:
http://trace.lmsal.com/POD/movies/T171_000828.avi
Rigidity may be induced in the iron-rich structures by deep-seated solar magnetic fields.
This shows the rigid, iron-rich structures from which the material is ejected:
http://trace.lmsal.com/POD/movies/T171_000828.avi
omanuel | March 16, 2013 at 11:58 pm |
Rigidity may be induced in the iron-rich structures by deep-seated solar magnetic fields.
I found that difficult to watch, too short and not really sure how the bright flare was interfering in it. I’ve found the others posted on the original page, http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/running.htm? , more useful:
“The SOHO satellite took a remarkable series of these running difference images from October 5th 2004 through October 15th 2004 which I have put together into movie form. You’ll notice as you watch these movies and view the chronological images on the right, that the surface features are consistent from image to image and the surface features rotate uniformly from left to right in the same direction and at the same speed as the sun’s rotation.
“SOHO created a newer, more complete, and more methodical series of these images starting on May 26th of 2005. I have created a second movie from a series of these images collected from late May through early June of 2005.
“As you can see from the series of snapshots on the right, and from the movies, we can make out more than just a single random pattern emerging from just one composite image. Instead we can see a CONSISTENT set of surface features in these images that MOVE from left to right as the sun rotates. These features are completely consistent and move UNIFORMLY across the surface. In other words, they do not move at different rates near the equator than than they move at the poles like the photosphere. Whatever this “structure” is, it absolutely cannot be the photosphere or the chromosphere because of it’s consistency. This photographic evidence stands in direct opposition to present theories of the sun which claim that the sun is a giant ball of gas and has no solid surface below the photosphere. ”
I think he is confusing solid with fluid under immense pressure of gravity so dense it acts like a solid, the Sun’s core is 150 times denser than water. It is the next layer up from that which spins with the Sun, the radiative layer. The radiative layer transports out the 14,000,000°C heat from the Core.
“2.) The Radiative Zone, from 25% to 70% of the solar radius, the Radiative material is hot and dense enough that thermal radiation (not fusion) transfers the intense heat of the Core outward. Heat is transferred by photon radiation.” http://solarcellcentral.com/sun_page.html
I do hate all these garbled explanations because of AGWScienceFiction pc requirements.. by “thermal radiation” is fine, this is thermal infrared, aka longwave infrared, that is, heat. It then follows with the idiotic ‘photons travel in all directions’ meme from AGWSF, when this should remain properly with bog standard traditional physics of heat transfer via thermal radiation, heat flows from hotter to colder spontaneously, always.
Anyway, rant over, it goes on to say: “The plasma density drops a hundredfold from the bottom to the top of the Radiative Zone. Between the Radiative Zone and the Convection Zone is a very narrow transition layer called the Tachocline. The Radiative Zone rotates like a normal solid body. The Tachocline is a region between the uniform solid rotation of the Radiative Zone and the conventional fluid rotation of the Convection Zone. The Tachocline’s plasma rotation rate changes very rapidly causing an extreme shear – a situation where successive horizontal layers slide past one another.”
What these photos appear to show, to me, is the top of the radiative zone, appearing solid, where it meets the convection zone at the tachocline.
The layer of the photosphere is often called the “surface”, but this is considered more correctly to be the first layer of the atmosphere. This is a very thin band only 300 miles wide and fairly insignificant compared with the rest of the Sun’s layers.
My thoughts on this ‘problem’ some are arguing about wondering why the layers cool from the core to the photosphere and then heat up again, is that it is typical of the ratio of heat to light as given off by an incandescent bulb – which releases its energy mainly in heat and not in light – radiating only 5% in visible light and the rest 95% in heat, that is, 95% thermal radiation aka longwave infrared as the Sun is emitting.
What is happening appears to me to be standard traditional physics, the heat transfer by thermal radiation from the 14millionC core is flowing outward from hot to cold – the photosphere isn’t a ‘layer of cold of 6000°C’, it’s merely the extent that light exists within the flow of the thermal radiation, heat, which is invisible. Just like the heat is constantly flowing from an incandescent bulb, there isn’t a ‘layer of colder visible and then heat flowing again’…
Anyway, that’s where I think the confusion about “solid” surface comes from.
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/03/Whitehouse-GT_Standstill.pdf
@@@@@
In retrospect, nobody predicted that in the age of global warming the annual average global temperature would remain unchanged for so long. It began as a tentative observation but has become one of the most important investigations in climate science, and one of the major talking points for others interested in the debate about what is happening to our planet, and what we should do about it.
@@@@@
Some argue that the duration of the standstill is too short to be meaningful. Thirty years is taken to be the baseline for observing climate changes and fifteen years is too short. This report argues that 15 years is not an insignificant period; what has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation. The period contains important information and should not be dismissed as having no climatic importance. The recent warming period began about 1980 after four decades of globally stable temperatures thus the years of constant temperature are about equal to years when temperatures increased. This is not a trivial observation.
@@@@@
I would love to see a discussion as to whether this report has a really sound scientific basis.
I am, shall we say, skeptical that “the annual average global temperature [has] remain[ed] unchanged for so long.” I don’t think we can actually accurately calculate the average global temperature, on a daily, monthly, annual, decadal or longer time frame, because we don;t actually know what it is on any given day.
The danger in taking averages of incomplete, inaccurate, massaged temperature measurements, and arguing that they show a “pause,” is that they might not continue to do so. Those who are so confident that the Earth is cooling, or will remain at the current temperature for any length of time, are making the same error as the CAGW advocates.
It does not seem arguable that there has been slow, consistent warming, since the LIA. And historical/anecdotal evidence suggests that the MWP was as warm or warmer than today. But no one can predict climate because we just don’t know enough.
It is possible the CAGWers are correct. It is also possible that lukewarmers are correct. Ditto skeptics.
To be frank, if natural variability is as strong a factor as skeptics believe it to be, how do we know how many years of a “pause” would prove that there is no risk of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? As a skeptic, I don’t think anyone knows.
We shouldn’t argue that CAGW has been “falsified,” we should argue that it has simply not been shown to be a sufficient risk to justify (more) government intrusion into the economy.
Gary M,
Good thoughts and well reasoned. We need more data and improvements to models based on their ability to simulate changes shown by the data.
Scott
+1 GaryM
Yup, Gary, that’s why I qualify ‘for how long even kim doesn’t know. This is a terribly double edged sword, or a Scylla and Charybdis, correct navigation of which will require knowledge of climate sensitivity to CO2 and understanding of all predictable natural climate processes. Also, the will to do what we can about it.
We ain’t there yet, and should spend the money getting there, and preparing the 10 Billion of us for an iceberg strewn ride ahead.
======================
GaryM:
Exactly! The ‘Annual Temperature of the Earth’ is tracked avidly by the Climatology Hierarchy and much furor is generated, including the predictable doomsday headlines, if the ‘annual temperature of year X’ is a few hundredths of a degree greater than the temperature of year (X-1).
It would be difficult to convince me that two teams of of the creme de la creme of climate science can, acting independently, instrument a WV county of their choice, measure the temperature for a year, and have the two measurements of the annual temperature of their chosen county agree within +/- .01 degree, never mind convince me that the current planetary instrumentation system is capable of measuring the ‘annual temperature of the Earth’ (never defined, by the way)’ with hundredths of a degree precision.
Of course the measured data, which is flogged unmercifully on this and numerous other similar sites in an attempt to ‘prove’ one point or another, is not all that important. After all it is apparent that climate has always changed and continues to do so. The real problem, and the reason that CAGW is an existential threat, is not in the effects of the changing climate per se but in the consequences of the political actions that are being taken using the excuse that the climate changes are the direct result of human activity, that the effects of ANY changes to climate vary from unpleasant to catastrophic, and that the changes can only be averted through concerted, coordinated control of all energy production and consumption by government. Now THAT is truly dangerous.
The “pause”, which is variously reported to be 15,16, and 17 years, is total BS. The “standstill” is 10 years, and it is quickly disappearing as the that powerful heat engine called ENSO neutral obliterates it. Perhaps we are in a new regime. One characterized by new record warm La Nina years, an occasional record hottest ENSO neutral year, and, of course, frequent new record hottest El Nino years. And no negative AMO.
This is just one more example why the term “global average temperature” is meaningless to me. If ENSO, a localized weather phenomenon, increases the global average without adding heat to the system, then there is something wrong with the way it (GAT) is calculated.
Dr. Curry answered one of my questions about how ENSO, or the AMO for that matter, could actually increase the heat content of the atmosphere – by affecting cloud formation, trapping more heat. But since clouds can also reflect incoming radiation, the question still is the net effect. I have seen nothing that indicates anyone has even tried to quantify this. So the fact that another ENSO will increase the GAT does not strike me as an argument in favor of accepting the reported GAT as measuring anything worthwhile. Just the opposite.
GaryM +2… You’re on a roll.
k scott denison,
I’d prefer to be on a nice cheese danish.
JCH
The “pause” is real. It has lasted (as you write) a bit more than 10 years today and is increasing month-by-month.
There is no apparent shift back to a warming trend, as we had in the 1980s and 1990s.
Rationalizations abound, but no one (including you and me and IPCC) really knows why it stopped warming around 2001 or why it warmed so sharply from around 1980 to 2000.
Max
@manacker
Hansen, who calls it a standstill, says
The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade.
That means it’s 15 years of no warming because it takes 5 years of no warming to establish the first data point of a flat 5-year mean which then continued for 10 more consecutive years and counting.
If Hansen admits a standstill you can take it to the bank it’s standstill because I’m pretty sure he’d rather stick needles in his eyes than say global warming has stood still for 15-years. In fact he worded it such that to the uncritical ear it sounds like it’s only been 10 years. As far as weasel words go however it’s an improvement for Hansen. I wonder if his EAS (estimated arrest sensitivity) will increase due to the lessening of his ability to preach climate gospel connected to actual climate data? It must suck to be him right about now. It’s going to suck worse as time goes on. On the other hand he must might be laughing all the way to the bank and flipping the bird to the gullible progressives who made his acquisition of wealth possible. Of course he pales in comparison to the Mac Daddy of Climate Change (ka-ching) Opportunism the right honorable former Vice President of the United States and Co-Inventor of the Internet (I’m the other co-inventor thank you very much) Herr Doktor Professor Albert Gore.
David Springer @ 16 March 6.30 re your role in inventing the Internet:
“The BBC reports: “Pioneers of the internet are the first recipients of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
“Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreessen will share the £1m award.”
You’d better get online an demand your share.
Helping us understand what amounts to purposeful ignorance in the face of easily observable phenomena Dr. Tim Ball observed, as follows:
The analogy that I use is that my car is not running that well, so I’m going to ignore the engine (which is the sun) and I’m going to ignore the transmission (which is the water vapor) and I’m going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel (which is the human-produced CO2) … the science is that bad!
glad to see Dr Tim Ball acknowledging that the Earth’s climate system is not running that well and needs fixing.
The analogy is your bank account is not fat enough so you ignore that takes providing something of value to society that people will voluntariliy want to buy with their own earnings and just stab the productive in the back and take everything.
lolwot
Yeah.
But certainly not by turning the “CO2 control nut on the right rear wheel”.
I’d say “the Earth’s climate system is not running that badly at all and doesn’t look like it needs fixing”
In fact, in a “Goldilocks sense, I’d say the climate we have now and are likely to have over the next period is “jes’ right”.
Besides, we cant change “the Earth’s climate” no matter how much money we throw at it, anyway.
In your opinion:
1. What “is not running well” in the Earth’s climate system?
2. What specific actions do we need to undertake to make it “work well”?
3. What would be the specific climate changes resulting from these actions?
4. What would these actions cost us?
Don’t be shy, lolwot. Step up to the plate.
Max
Maybe a better analogy is that the engine is running well, but we are in an enclosed garage, and either we switch the engine off or wait for the fuel to run out.
Indeed, the best engine and transmission are no good when the wheels fall off.
Huh. My car has 5 lug nuts per wheel, and I bet it’s for a reason. Didn’t realize JimD’s only had one.
I now see why some are so afraid of climate change! They don’t have all their nuts!!
That’s about right. The effect we have seen so far is less than 20% of the effect we will see. The wheel hasn’t come off yet, we notice.
What *exactly* is the 20% we’ve seen JimD? Cause up here in Wisconsin, we still pray daily for warmth!
20% is the global temperature rise, CO2 addition, or forcing change from pre-industrial to now compared to a century from now. Take your pick. The big part is yet to come.
You really believe the Left can engineer the climate like a well-running car? Amazing.
JimD, if that’s 20%, then bring on the other 80… hell, bring on 180, we need the warmth in Wisconsin!!
Jim D
As they are from the IPCC CAGW bandwagon today.
Max
Jim D
Sounds like another version of, “it’s worse than we thought!”
Max
PS Let’s talk about the “big part” when it appears imminent that it is about to happen, not when it just a figment of your overactive imagination (and some IPCC model jockeys).
…more like, this is just the start, folks.
JimD:
“The big part is yet to come.” and “…more like, this is just the start, folks.”
—————
Hey Jim, some said the world was going to end last December as well. You’re beginning to sound like one of them!
Please, describe to us exactly what “the big part” is and how we can prevent it. As max encouraged lolwot: “don’t be shy.” Give us the details of who, what, when, how much (cost) and how much (impact) we can have. Then we can all see the $ per degree C that your mitigation plans will cost.
Thanks in advance… although this usually where the crickets start to chirp.
Jim D | March 16, 2013 at 2:42 pm | Reply
“Indeed, the best engine and transmission are no good when the wheels fall off.”
My sincere condolences at the loss of your nuts.
While I claim we are only at the beginning of the temperature change which will eventually exceed 5 C with business-as-usual CO2 production, I can only refer to reports like the World Bank report on a 4 C climate change, or the IPCC reports. I have yet to see a positive report on this size of temperature change, but if there is one, it should be interesting reading. Some “skeptics” are now in the Kubler-Ross bargaining phase where they accept some degrees of warming, but claim it might be good, but these people haven’t put that in a written document yet.
JimD: “While I claim we are only at the beginning of the temperature change which will eventually exceed 5 C with business-as-usual CO2 production, I can only refer to reports like the World Bank report on a 4 C climate change, or the IPCC reports”
—-
Nice topic switch JimD… From WE HAVE TO ACT NOW to I HAVEN’T SEEN ONE REPORT THAT SAYS IF THERMAGGEDON HAPPENS IT WON’T BE CATASTROPHIC.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program… please detail your plans, JimD, to SAVE US ALL FROM THERMAGGEDON.
We will wait.
Oh, and JimD, for extra credit, please tell us why, when we missed so horribly on SATURN, THE WINTER STORM THAT SHUT DOWN DC, we should believe any tales of THERMAGGEDON.
Chirp, chirp, chirp.
ksd, if you read any of my posts, I am not saying act now, because I don’t know an action that stops the warming. I am more of the view ‘realize now’ what the temperatures are heading towards. Start thinking now of what the consequences and their costs would be. This doesn’t fall neatly into your political worldview that AGWers all want world government, does it? I think warming is a done deal. Preparation for adaptation is the key. But that’s just me. The rest want world government, I suppose. Go after them.
JimD, since the beginning of recorded history, some men have tried to control the others using fear and doubt. It is human nature. Open your eyes.
The beauty of the climate is it will not change quickly enough for today’s man, with all of our capabilities, to adapt. No need to panic, which is what the “soothsayers” of RealClimateScience would have us do in orde to impose their worldview.
Arrhenius didn’t have a political agenda a century ago (except, being in Sweden, he thought warming would be nice). The science follows from that rather neutral science-only view. “Skeptics” should follow the more realistic view that warming is coming, and try to justify that it may be ‘nice’ (at least for themselves). That is a more reasonable area to hold their ground than on the defeated ‘warming won’t happen’ view.
JimD, do you really not understand the difference between a measurement, in the very controlled conditions of a lab, where all but one variable is held constant and what might happen in a world where not a single variable is constant?
I can tell you from experience that there is a world of difference JimD.
ksd, yet, despite this complexity, we can see and measure the effects of even the very subtle solar cycle changes and volcanoes on earth’s temperature, and have some comprehension of the relative effects of changes in CO2 which are panning out in temperature measurements over the last century. Not so complex after all because it all fits together.
So, JimD, if we can see it all so well and it fit together so nicely, why can’t we predict the results of a snow storm two days in advance, nor the rise in temperature over the past 30 years, nor the flattening of temperature more recently?
ksd, you must be a newbie if I have to explain the difference between weather and climate to you. Weather is like predicting every bubble in a boiling pot, while climate is like predicting how quickly the pot warms, an easier problem when you know the heat inputs and outputs, and it can be done much further ahead.
The pause is also explainable, but hard to predict because solar changes and ocean circulations are not known far ahead, and those were the big factors in the short term. Volcanoes also fall into the unpredictable category. Decadal prediction is more like weather prediction in that way, but in the long term these factors are small compared to sustained CO2 forcing which is quite predictable.
Nope, not a newbie JimS. Please pick your favorite, weather or climate, and point me to the predictions that are validated, verified and accurate at the appropriate time scale. That will prove I’m wrong and you’re right, that it’s just not that complex and we can predict (not explain after the fact) one and/or the other.
I just don’t believe that Monday morning science is science so to speak. That is, once I know the answer I can tell you why it happened just ain’t science.
ksd, yes skill is measured when predictions come to pass. For weather this is a daily assessment that results in a measurable success rate at beating chance at least out to a few days, but not much beyond. For climate we have to wait 50 years to verify it. We can look at Hansen’s 1981 (Science article) forecast, which has worked out quite well for 30 years so far, where he predicted that CO2 warming would appear above the annual variability in the 90’s at a time in 1981 when the warming had paused for nearly two decades and some were still talking about ice ages.
Hansen’s forecast was right? Please send me that link JimD. Cause his 1988 forecast ain’t doing so well: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/15/james-hansens-climate-forecast-of-1988-a-whopping-150-wrong/
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html
This is Hansen’s 1981 paper. A simpler model back then. His later models ran at the hot end of the consensus, but this earlier one with 2.8 C per doubling was actually closer to what would now be the center of consensus. “Opening of the fabled Northwest passage” in the abstract. Also 4C warming by 2100.
Ah, I see now. The old model was good (well at least up until 2000 which, interestingly, is about the time the warming went on hiatus) but the newer model not so much. Both from the same guy. Kinda sounds like Nostradamus. If I make enough and vague enough predicitons I’m bound to be right!
Sounds more and more like religion to me.
The old one was closer to current consensus. Charney came up with 3 C per doubling as an early consensus in 1979, and it hasn’t changed much since then. You can complain about Hansen being warmer than consensus, but that implies that you would be happier with a consensus projection that actually did fit through 2010 quite well if you look at his 1981 paper, and you should have been unhappy with a projection of no warming if you are being consistent.
This is the Hansen 1981 model compared against what I get when I assume 2.8 C sensitivity with estimated carbon emissions and a fat-tail sequestering response. This is a fast-feedback model which needs to be plotted against land data, pointing to the high end of Hansen’s interval.
http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/3918/hansen1981.gif
It is becoming more clear that averaged ocean+land data corresponds to slower feedbacks. If one uses that data, it will map into the shaded region.
Hansen, Lacis and company had it already figured out back then. Impressive.
Jim D
You wrote:
Well, that may have been true up until recently.
However, there have been several observation-based studies that now challenge the old model-predicted 3C per doubling estimate.
These all seem to suggest a 2xCO2 ECS of around half of the older consensus value, which you cited.
We’ll have to wait and see what IPCC choses to do in AR5 with these new data. Out hostess has suggested that “they can’t sweep them under the rug as in previous reports”.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/19/climate-sensitivity-in-the-ar5-sod/#more-10669
I personally believe that this presents a dilemma for IPCC: acknowledge the new data and lose some of the AGW fear factor or “sweep them under the rug” at the risk of losing even more credibility and relevance.
What do you think will be the IPCC response, Jim?
Max
Jim D | March 17, 2013 at 12:58 am |
“Opening of the fabled Northwest passage” in the abstract.”
CAGW is dead, Jim.
It may interest you to know that without the aid of satellite imagery and GPS navigation to pick their way through the ice there were 9 successful Northwest Crossing transits between the years 1940 and 1986. There were no transits again until the year 2000. In the past 13 years, aided by satellite imagery and GPS navigation, there have been 19 successful transits.
It’s not exactly a traffic jam of commuters in the NW Passage and considering the modern navigation aids available now that weren’t available in the mid-20th century there would appear to be a dearth of transits now compared to mid-20th century. It should be a piece of cake and everyone doing it but that’s not the case even with the uber-safety of satellites to guide us. Yet there’s barely one crossing per year.
In comparison as of 2010 there have been 5000 successful climbs of Mt. Everest to the summit and with sometimes now hundreds of teams making the summit in a single short climbing season there have been traffic jams there.
So far the Northwest Passage opening up is a myth. It must have been just as open 60 years ago when people were doing it without modern navigation aids.
WebHubTelescope | March 17, 2013 at 1:53 am |
It was impressive up to where that graph ends in the year 2000.
Now extend that curve out for 13 more years and compare the predicted anomaly to the actual. It’s no longer in the ballpark, Webby. The land-sea anomaly should be between 0.6C and 0.9C right now and it’s actually 0.4C and falling.
The past 15 years demolished all catastrophic global warming predictions Webby and you really, really need to incorporate this good news into your world view before you get so twisted and frustrated at things not going your way that it effects both your physical and mental health.
Jim D re the Northwest Sea Route, it was hardly ‘fabled’ as
Hansen refers to it, but fficially opened after runs in 1933/34
in 1935. The Northwest passage remainedin use into th 1940’s.
Beth, you write “The Northwest passage remained in use into the 1940′s.”
Sorry to pick a nit, but it depends what ships you are talking about. The North West Passage is used routinely every year. The Canadian Coast Guard, using our icebreakers, escorts supply ships to ports in the Canadian Arctic every year, with the final visit to Eureka early in September.
What many refer to as use of the NWP, is that by unescorted vessels. In recent years, there have been many occasions when unescorted vessels have traversed the NWP. Even more recently, there have been cruise ships going through.
There is currently a proposed develoment of an iron mine on Baffin Island. So far as I can see, this will require vessels to operate year round in this part of the world. The Russians have the technology to do this; all we need to do is copy them.
How doth it cool?
=======
WebHubTelescope | March 17, 2013 at 10:25 am |
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/4568/bestmodeldata.gif
“If you click on that link, you can see how the temperature anomaly is still above what Hansen predicted in 1981.”
There is absolutely no indication of what that graph is showing other than time and temperature above an unknown baseline. You can’t seriously consider that making a point. It could be the temperature change of the of the pond water in Central Park for all I know.
What I do know for sure is it bears no resemblance to HADCRUT4 global mean anomaly. The largest difference in 10-year mean going back to 1850 is less than 1C. It was the lowest in the record circa 1910 at not quite -0.5C and highest at not quite +0.5C in 2007.
In other words you can’t even cherry pick any two times in HADCRUT4 where there’s been 1C of warming in the 10-year mean.
Please provide an adequate description and provenance for your graphs or don’t bother using them.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/every/mean:120
I said it was data from BEST which you can also get from the WoodForTrees.
If you want to follow the full derivation, go to:
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/climate-sensitivity-and-33c-discrepancy.html
The key point was to compare against Hansen’s 1981 graph which started at 1880 with a zero temperature anomaly. I worked the problem all the way through using a 2.8C sensitivity. Hansen’s chart only went to 2000, so that is where I had to end it to make a nice overlay. I extended it by re-running the 2.8C model beyond 2000 and overlaid the BEST data to get it close to 2010.
I think the last two or three years of BEST have been flat, but those were not available from WfT.
So tell me what you see now.
WHT, the 1981 paper I saw has a Figure 7 that goes up to 2020. Reading it, I see that the temperature between 1980 and 2010 rises by about 0.4 degrees which is about in the middle of observations.
OK,
Here is a very crude overlay of BEST data and a 2.8C sensitivity model onto Hansen’s 1981 chart.
http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/8798/hansencrudeoverlay.gif
You can complain all you want but the data is pretty clear for land-based data. i.e. implying limited ocean heat capacity interfering with the fast transient warming.
Hansen and Lacis either guessed right in 1981 or they built up the models of those before them and are revealing the primary cause of warming.
And I could care less about CAGW. I want to understand the basics before I get to the outliers.
Yes, that is a pretty modest increase compared to the land-based increases we have seen in the last 30 years.
Jim D | March 16, 2013 at 11:13 pm | Arrhenius didn’t have a political agenda a century ago (except, being in Sweden, he thought warming would be nice). The science follows from that rather neutral science-only view.
Do stop with the Arrhenius nonsense, he showed nothing about carbon dioxide, but was using carbonic acid which is primarily water. And, he didn’t understand what Fourier said, but made up his own peculiar idea of the atmosphere. And, that he didn’t have a polictical agenda doesn’t mean he didn’t have an agenda..
As a chemist he warmed to his mistaken ideas about CO2 and the atmosphere and so preferred to believe that a trace gas was capable of heat transfer via radiation on the collosal scale of instigating the huge rises of temps into interglacials, rather than changes in the Sun’s orbit as was being explained by Croll at the time [http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/iceagebook/iceagetheories.html].
Arrhenius had zilch sense of scale. As have all who support AGW/CAGW – you get a thermal insultating blanket from a trace gas which makes is pratically 100% hole and ignore the real gas thick heavy blanket of nitrogen and oxygen.
Since it appears you, generic, can’t tell the difference in scale it is probably yet again a waste of time to explain that it is without our real gas atmosphere of mainly nitrogen and oxygen that the temps are minus18° C, in traditional physics, CAGW/AGW has taken this figure and applied it to their Greenhouse Effect fraud – claiming it is this temp only without ‘their ir imbibing greenhouse gases of mainly water and carbon dioxide’
I’m not expecting you to understand the sleight of hand in this magic trick.., but I’ll tell you again that with the heavy under gravity real gas thermal blanket atmosphere of mainly nitrogen and oxygen in place, but without water, the temps would be 67°C.
You have missed out the Water Cycle..
Although Arrheniius did have a political agenda, he got himself onto the Nobel committee which then awarded him a prize.
For his misunderstanding of Fourier see my links here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/#comment-274012
Mr. McIntyre’s demolition of Marcott continues, this time focusing on datng.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/16/the-marcott-shakun-dating-service/
BTW, the gist of the new piece from Mr. McIntyre is this: redating the proxies causes a sharp downturn seen using the published dates into a sharp upturn in the 20th century. Huh, imagine that, turn something upside down and voila! It gets rid of an inconvenient mismatch with observations! Wish I would of thought of that.
Compare to my reconstruction:
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/hockey-stick-found-in-marcott-data/
It takes two left feet to do the Marcott Nature Trick.
Albatross looked at John Christy’s code and after a few hours realized it was mostly in FORTRAN. Before that, he thought the spirit of the matrix was speaking to his soul.
Then he stumbled upon this comment:
> special treatment for hightest latitudes [see tlt_3_5.4 2011.07.01.f]
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2013/03/an-apology-from-eli.html?showComment=1363223632510
Now some, not Albatross nor me, might suggest something nefarious is going on when Christy talks about special treatment.
AUDIT ALL THE CODES!
OR DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY that requires ‘special handling’ befoe modeling is even possible. The problem of GIGO comes before unexplained adjustments and adjustments to adjustments by nameless functionaries without the slightest explanation..
Willard,
The whole story here is rather interesting. telling half the story is also interesting. you might look at magicjava, moshpit and ITAR.
And how and why did Eli come to find out about MJs effort.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659
Must read new technique using hydrophilic mineral crystal ‘ikaite’ locks in oxygen18 isotope in crystal lattice at time of formation giving wonderful record of water temperature. The crystal is destroyed by temperatures above 4C but in polar regions it’s preserved for thousands of years in ocean and lake bottom cores.
Positively confirmed and corroborated by other records is that the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period both extended to the West Antarctic Penninsula which is known to be sensitive to climate change.
The subject I’d like to discuss is the claim that if MWP was global it means that sensitivity is high. I don’t agree because we don’t know the nature of the forcing which caused it except that it wasn’t CO2 and that it didn’t runaway but rather was constrained within the temperature range of the rest of the Holocene.
At any rate, for the sake of argument let’s say MWP was global and sensitivity is high. That also means, by the same proxy, the Little Ice Age was global. If a little bit more forcing causes something like the MWP then by the same token a little less forcing causes something like the LIA.
Therefore, should we be contemplating reducing modern forcing when we know for certain that the consequences of another Little Ice Age would be very bad? And, given the average duration of interglacial periods is 10,000 years and the Holocene is now 11,500 years old, the older the interglacial period gets the more likely it is that a perfect storm of cooling events like a quiet sun, strato-volcano eruption, and cold side of multidecadal ocean cycle comes along to tip the balance and end the interglacial period?
It is my opinion that anyone cognizant of the above and still advocating actions that would ostensibly cool the earth isn’t acting in a sane and reasonable manner with regard to risk of adverse climate change.
Current CO2 levels near 400 ppm preclude ice ages (or even much summer Arctic sea ice for that matter, which is where they start), as these levels were last seen well before Greenland even glaciated (which says something about Greenland’s long-term stability too). So I wouldn’t worry about ice ages unless we somehow drop back below 300 ppm.
Current CO2 levels = 1,000,000 sq km extra sea ice in Antarctica. If AGW causes that much extra sea ice then 500ppm should guarantee an ice age.
You have been fooled by your own extrapolation assumptions.
Actually Jim the mechanism of interglacials is colder winters and warmer summers in the northern hemisphere. In other words warmer winters and cooler summers are what makes glaciers advance. Orbital parameters (Milankovich Cycle) doesn’t change total solar energy reaching the earth it merely redistributes it between winter and summer.
The mechanism is that warmer winters result in more total snowfall over land. Glaciers are land based. The more snow depth come spring the longer it takes for warm weather to melt it all away. When the summer is cooler less of it gets melted and the permanent snowline moves south latitude-wise and lower in elevation altitude-wise.
As the permanent snowline advances it creates a positive feedback effect in two ways, both related to albedo. First of all snowcover reflects most sunlight so the more the snowcover and the longer lasting the snowcover the less energy is absorbed into the earth/atmosphere system in and around the snow covered area.
Also, as more water gets locked up in permanent ice the ocean level falls. Ocean albedo is very low i.e. it absorbs almost all the sunlight that hits it. As the ocean level drops its surface area decreases exposing higher albedo rocks to the sun instead of lower albedo ocean surface. Thus less energy is absorbed by the ocean-atmosphere system even at the equator where there is no ice because even at the equator as sea level drops the higher albedo rocks are exposed.
Now you know. Or at least I hope you do but I fear your ignorance is willful. I can spoonfeed this stuff to you but if you don’t stop making faces and spitting it out it won’t do you any good.
DS, yes, you have echoed the mainstream view of why the Antarctic is expected to be more snowy when the southern oceans warm. This may explain the sea-ice behavior there too. Normally the skeptics don’t like the mainstream view, but here is a case where they tend to agree.
DS, regarding your version of the Milankovitch mechanism, it doesn’t mention the summer sea-ice extent. I imagine that is just an oversight, or is your idea totally different to Milankovitch?
Jim D | March 16, 2013 at 3:23 pm |
You have been fooled by your own extrapolation assumptions.
—–
You have been fooled by tales of THERMAGGEDON.
ksd, your continued talk of Thermageddon is typical. Is a 5 C warming Thermageddon, and in what way, or is it more the gradual sea-level rise that you worry about? If 5 C warming is safe, how did you figure that out?
JimD, you missed what I thought was an obvious point: predictions of catastrophes are most often incorrect. Hope this helps.
How often in the past have humans put the planet on a path like this? I would say never. Perhaps there are historical examples of races that did unsustainable things in their environment and didn’t heed warnings, and this is that type of thing. I don’t think we’ve had the predictive power before. How this works out, whether better or worse than predicted, will be interesting.
Jim D,
Sometimes we’re wrong.
We don’t know anything.
USE ALL THE CAPS LOCKS!
http://memegenerator.net/instance/36283184
JimD, circular logic. It is only if you believe that man has set us on a course for THERMAGGEDON that you believe this is the first time in history that its been done.
At least I now know that this is a religious belief you hold. Noted.
ksd, are you making biblical references? Because if so, I am not going to touch that for fear of offending someone.
I told you to break logical chains, Jim D.
Now k’s going post hoc ergo propter hoc on you.
Funny you jump to equating religious beliefs with the bible JimD. I don’t remember saying anything about the bible, just about your dogmatic beliefs.
ksd, you were referring to man putting the earth in danger before. Maybe it was nuclear bombs rather than Noah’s flood or Armageddon, come to think of it, but I had no idea what you were referring to. I think this is the first genuine global environmental effect.
re; sea ice
I didn’t mention sea ice because in Quaternary glaciations only northern hemisphere land ice is vitally important. The ocean off the US northeast coast remains free of ice but inland at the same latitude is covered by a glacier a mile thick. The ocean is thought to have completely or almost completely frozen over to the equator a few times hundreds of millions of years in the past when the sun was substantially dimmer but nothing close to that has happened in the past few million years. In the Quaternary the tropics remain hot and the oceanic conveyor belt continues to transport warm water to the northern pole keeping sea ice at a safe retreat. The big deal is the continental interiors of north America, Europe, and Asia getting covered with glaciers a mile thick.
What’s really interesting is the rapidity of the melt once it begins. Temperature shoots up like a rocket due to positive feedback high albedo ice turning into low albedo water and ocean surface area expanding. Then as the atmosphere warms up the rest of the hydrologic cycle kicks into full gear and clouds once again build up until they shade ~70% of the surface which brings further warming to a screeching halt. When glacial periods end the warming overshoots and hits a ceiling temperature that is almost exactly the same every time. Glaciers advance slowly but retreat rapidly.
See figure 1.5 here:
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/iceagebook/history_of_climate.html
If you are looking at longer terms, paleo evidence suggests that vegetation spreading northwards darkens the albedo and acts as another positive feedback on the longer term, which when added to the complete ice loss explains the higher 6 C per doubling sensitivity derived from the change since 50 million years ago when CO2 levels were 1000 ppm.
Introduction to Micrometeorology pg. 35
Albedo range for vegetation is 10% to 25% and for rock, sand, and soil surfaces 10% to 40%. Sand is the highest and wet soil the lowest. Wetting darkens everything. Rock is dependent on type with igneous (basalts, granites) usually low on the scale and sedimentary (limestone) somewhat higher. You really can’t tell by looking at it. The average albedo of the moon for instance is 0.12 which equates to the albedo of weathered asphalt here on earth.
Vegetation needs to be considered differently at any rate because much of the energy it absorbs is given up insensibly through evapotranspiration so it doesn’t heat the air in contact with it like dry rocks & sand. Walk beneath a forest canopy vs. over dry sand in the same region and tell me where the air temperature is cooler. The answer doesn’t correspond to which has the lower albedo.
Jim D
Great crystal ball you’ve got there, Jim, but could it be that it’s a bit cloudy?
OK. It was a lo-o-o-ong time ago (650 million YBP), but “iceball Earth” occurred when atmospheric CO2 level was 3000 to 6000 ppmv.
Looks like back then CO2 was NOT the “climate control knob”.
Why should it be now?
Max
Jim D
Forgot to mention the Ordovician Ice Age, ~450 million YBP, when CO2 level was ~4000 ppmv.
(Please don’t refer me to the “Skeptical Science” rationalization of this event.)
Max
Does anyone deny that the glaciers in the northern hemisphere are disappearing at a current rate of one trillion tons a year? The melting of the ice tends to keep the atmospheric temperature much lower than it would be otherwise. I believe all this heat comes from the energy we use. All energy goes to heat ultimately. Example: in 2008 we used 16 terrawatts of power which is equivalent to 50x10E16 btus per year. This alone is enough to raise the atmospheric temperature by 0.17*F per year. Since earth’s geothermal heat flow of 44 terrawatts will raise earth’s temperature to maintain the gradient between earth and atmosphere, the 16 TW we emit will go primarily to raise atmospheric temperature and to melt glaciers. I am tired of arguing whether it is heat or CO2 causing global warming. When fossil fuels are phased out, both CO2 and heat from that source will be gone. Too many people who believe CO2 is the cause are pushing nuclear power. Nuclear power produces twice the total heat as its electrical output so be careful of what you support as an acceptable power source.
1. What is the net global ice loss?
2. What is the basis for thinking we can calculate ice loss on such a large scale with any accuracy?
3. What does the loss represent as a percentage of total global ice extent.
4. (Repeat question 2)?
5. How does this prove that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of any net global ice loss?
5. How do we know that the loss will continue?
6. How do we know that we can stop it by enacting national policies which will not impact global CO2 emissions much at all?
“The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.
The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains
This is why I maintain a field guide to climate cranks. Some of them make seasonal appearances, such as PH here.
If you don’t know the counter-argument to this specific argument, you have to spend valuable time to debunking it.
To let the cat out of the bag, the heat emitted from combustion is real but since the heat is not retained year-to-year it is not acumulative effect and so does not build up like the cumulative GHG effects of not-easily-condensing CO2.
PH will never listen to the counter arguments because he has an agenda and only will work backwards from the agenda to something that sounds plausible but is ultimately wrong.
Indeed, with the earth’s energy flow from the sun and out via IR, the combustion energy addition is like pouring water (or I could use a more colorful analogy) into a river and expecting its level to rise.
A climatist wants to know the average temperature of the water in your pitcher.
“To let the cat out of the bag, the heat emitted from combustion is real but since the heat is not retained year-to-year it is not acumulative effect and so does not build up like the cumulative GHG effects of not-easily-condensing CO2.”
Not that I am a fan of CAGW theory, but why would emitted heat be any less cumulative than solar radiated heat? Why would CO2 retard the outward radiation of one, but not the other? I think I have a basic grasp of the GHG effect. Is “emitted” heat of the wrong wavelength? Is it all the same wave length?
Because of the negative feedbacks of Stefan-Boltzman law it doesn’t accumulate.
Some of the excess heat will migrate to the ocean but the rest will radiate to outer space, proportional to how much it heats up. Heat or thermal energy is more easily sequestered than is CO2, simply because it has this escape mechanism. IOW, it can bleed off to outer space. And with a short residence time (except for heat in the ocean), the greatest the temperature can rise is relatively small.
This is the funniest exchange I’ve seen in a long time – WHT, what are you saying here? That carbon dioxide doesn’t trap heat?
So there is no “Greenhouse Effect” of “greenhouse gases trapping heat”?
Myrrhhh, You are another one of those pesky pranksters, trying to create an alternate universe where you can trip up some gullible marks and get some pathological satisfaction out of it.
Jim D
No doubt, the ONLY (real) input of energy comes from the sun.
But the outflow is provided by two factors: outgoing LW radiation (as you mention), as modified by the GHE, but also reflected incoming SW radiation (primarily from cloud cover). This represents around 30% of the incoming solar radiation. A 10% change in overall cloud cover has a greater impact than the theoretical GH impact of a doubling of atmospheric CO2.
This is Nature’s “control knob”, and it is far more significant than the highly ballyhooed “CO2 control knob” (Lacey, Alley).
And (as IPCC concedes) it represents “the largest source of uncertainty”.
Max
manacker, we don’t have any evidence that a warmer world is a cloudier world. In fact the contrary seems to be better supported by the evidence.
We have considerable evidence that cloud changes from variations in ocean and atmospheric circulation causing much of the recent warming and most of the current pause.
WebHubTelescope | March 16, 2013 at 7:15 pm |
Myrrhhh, You are another one of those pesky pranksters, trying to create an alternate universe where you can trip up some gullible marks and get some pathological satisfaction out of it.
Not fair! That’s what you said. And so what, are you admitting that your marks are gullible? Well, yes, I say they are because CAGW/AGWScienceFiction has destroyed all understanding of the difference between heat and light. If you could understand why visible light from the Sun isn’t heat, isn’t capable of heating matter, you wouldn’t be tripping yourself up.
What are you trying to say in your post?
Skippy, the evidence so far has been about anthropogenic cloud effects (aerosols), not clouds per se. Even though Spencer would like to attribute ENSO to cloud variations, I don’t think he proved it.
Jim,
The aerosol effect has to do with cloud nucleation. In most cases there is no sparsity of particles around which moisture condenses.
But Spencer did not claim that clouds cause ENSO. It is more that ENSO involves cloud feedbacks. http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/
‘El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon to cause global climate variability on interannual time scales. Here we attempt to monitor ENSO by basing the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) on the six main observed variables over the tropical Pacific. These six variables are: sea-level pressure (P), zonal (U) and meridional (V) components of the surface wind, sea surface temperature (S), surface air temperature (A), and total cloudiness fraction of the sky (C).’ http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
CH, Dessler said yes there are cloud feedbacks with ENSO and they are positive. Spencer wasn’t able to prove otherwise except to dispute which one led.
No – Dessler said that there was reduced cloud with El Niño. As El Niño warm the planet it was said to suggest the possibility that warming will cause reduced cloud – a positive feedback. It may be not be all that simple – if you look at Zhu et al in the much earlier CE post I linked to – the suggestion is that there are different mechanisms for clouds in ENSO and warming.
Cheif Skip-a-along
“No – Dessler said that there was reduced cloud with El Niño. As El Niño warm the planet it was said to suggest the possibility that warming will cause reduced cloud – a positive feedback. It may be not be all that simple – if you look at Zhu et al in the much earlier CE post I linked to – the suggestion is that there are different mechanisms for clouds in ENSO and warming.”
Skeptical Science even had to pooh pooh the concept, but there is a definite link.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Falling-Cloud-Height-In-the-Last-Decade-Is-It-Just-ENSO——-.html
With a rough cloud base of 5000 meters, bringing CO2 up to 3000 ppm would only change the forcing at the rough ceiling by 1Wm-2. I think that would be effectively saturated at that altitude, nixing a significant portion of that water vapor feedback issue and boosting deep convection.
Dallas,
From sks –
Laken (2012) state:
“We observe a net increase in cloud detected by MODIS over the past decade of ~0.58 %, arising from a combination of a reduction in high – middle level cloud (-0.31 %) and an increase in low level cloud (of 0.89%); these long term changes may be largely attributed to ENSO induced cloud variability”
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES_MODIS-1.gif
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=AdvancesinUnderstandingTop-of-AtmosphereRadiationVariability-Loebetal2011.png
It is not how I would read the data. I would put a decrease in cloud cover down to moderate El Nino over most of the decade – with a bit of an untick in the more recent La Nina.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
Go figure.
Chief, there are several things going on with clouds. The lowering of the cloud base and increased deep convection are probably due to a longer term tropical warming trend, the shift in the thermal equator that Toggweiler talked about. That mysterious 100 plus year trend that isn’t supposed to exist, likely related to a Bond type event I would suspect.
So what Spencer was stating versus what Desser was defending is kind of muddled. .
Jim D
NEITHER Dessler nor Spencer were able to PROVE their points (Spencer could at least point to some empirical data based on actual short-term CERES satellite observations over the tropics, which suggested a net negative cloud feedback with warming).
But the real issue seemed to be whether or not clouds act ac a separate forcing based on some as yet ill-defined mechanism. And the two “agreed to disagree” on that, as I recall.
Max
Jim D
Spencer & Braswell showed that over the short term, the net overall cloud feedback with warming over the tropics was negative.
Model studies by Wyant et al. using superparameterization to better capture the behavior of clouds, also showed a net negative cloud feedback at all latitudes.
So much for “cloud feedback” (so maybe a “warmer world” could become a “cloudier world”).
“Cloud forcing” is another matter. Here it appears from Earthshine data (Palle et al) that decreased cloud cover over the 1980s and 1990s resulted in less incoming SW radiation being reflected back out to space and global warming, and this trend reversed itself around 2000 when the warming stopped.
As I understand it Spencer has proposed that clouds act as a separate forcing.
One mechanism proposed for this is the GCR cloud nucleation hypothesis of Svensmark et al., which is being tested under controlled conditions at CERN. (So maybe a “cloudier world” could become a “cooler world”).
[I believe Kevin Trenberth once referred to “clouds” acting as a “natural thermostat”, which could fit both ways.]
Max
A Watt is not a unit of power. It’s a rate. A Watt/hour is a unit of power.
Write that down.
A Joule is also a unit of power. Let’s run some numbers again. Or better yet let’s just let wickedpedia run them for us and then calculate a ratio of solar energy vs. anthropogenic energy to see how much influence the latter might have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun
The number of hours in a year is 24*365 or 8760. So solar energy heating the earth is 8760 times the amount of anthropogenic energy heating the earth. In other words anthropogenic energy is 0.011% of the earth’s energy budget. A drop in the bucket once again, just a bit more than one part in ten thousand. It is significant in urban areas which is where the energy is mostly released though so it’s a significant contributor to urban heat islands.
“A Watt is not a unit of power”
How does he manage to publish so much BS then?
We are talking about diferentials. The heat from combustion is approximately sufficient to warm the atmosphere to the new higher greenhouse gas equilibrium. At this higher temperature the emmission of IR at toa is as before the increase in gases and temperature – all else being equal. Apart from increased photon scattering in the atmosphere.
A Watt is a unit of power.
A Joule is a unit of energy.
Write that down.
Memorise it.
I was leaving that one alone Phatboy – gee you’re brave.
Not brave, just on very solid ground.
Chief Hydrologist, Sideshow Bob Ellison wrote:
This statement is gibberish. Combustion of hydrocarbons won’t do anything of the sort.
Why does anybody pay any attention to what he writes?
Webby is a very peculiar rum tum tugger – to continue an Elliot sub-theme.
‘The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious beast:
His disobliging ways are a matter of habit.
If you offer him fish then he always wants a feast;
When there isn’t any fish then he won’t eat rabbit.
If you offer him cream then he sniffs and sneers,
For he only likes what he finds for himself;’
You guys are out to lunch re; Watts and Joules.
How far will 750 Watts lift a one ton weight off the ground?
You cannot answer because 750 Watts (approximately one horsepower) is the rate of power production not the total power produced. To know how much power is actually produced, i.e. how far that one ton weight will be hoisted, we need to know how long the power is applied. One horsepower will hoist one ton one foot in one second. Energy flow rates (such one horsepower or the equivalent 750 Watts) requires a unit of time to know how much power is expended. Write that down.
Now, the context of this was that the commenter above stated the earth receives so many Watts then conflates that with how many Watt/hours humans produce burning fossil fuels. I then corrected it by using the Joule which is a unit of energy (total power generated) and compared annual Joules received by the sun to annual Joules produced by humans. It’s about 10,000:1. Write that down too.
A Watt is a unit of power
A Joule is a unit of energy
Power is the rate of energy flow
1 Watt is 1 Joule/second
Read any engineering or physics textbook – they’ll all tell you the same thing.
You can’t make up your own definitions.
It was explicit in context in that total power is expressed in Watt/hours or Joules. “Total power” and “energy” are synonymous. I chose to use power contrasted with total power to help the original commenter understand the difference between power flow rate and total power flow over time which he had confused by quoting solar energy flow rate into the system vs. total power produced by fossil fuel burning per year. He was comparing different things.
If that offended the pedant in you that’s just too bad.
In case you’ve forgotten what you wrote:
“A Watt is not a unit of power. It’s a rate. A Watt/hour is a unit of power.”
and:
“A Joule is also a unit of power.”
You were wrong. Get over it.
see I said you were brave…
Actually Spencer has a post on this and argues that in the US, its a significant effect. Probably in other parts of the world. Unlike the urban heat island effect, increasing energy usage will increase the effect. I think Spencer calculates it as 1/3 W/m2, which is he claims amplified by several other factors. Interesting reading and I haven’t seen anyone rebut it. Webby, since you are such a brilliant acolyte of conventional doctrine, why don’t you tell us why Spencer is wrong. If he’s right, we need to adjust US temps down significantly as a function of energy usage.
It 2006, total U.S. energy consumption was estimated (according to DOE/EIA) to be 97.1 quadrillion BTUs, which when converted to “watts” type measurements is equivalent to 3.25 x 1012 watts generated continuously over the course of a year.
If we divide that by the surface area of the U.S. in meters, we get 0.33 watts per sq. meter. – R. Spencer …
So out in the pasture where the cows are, it’s .33 watts per sq. meter?
Spencer mentions this, but never puts a number on it.
Yes, Spencer is correct. A large fraction of anthropogenic power production occurs on a tiny fraction of the earth’s surface, primarily in urban/industrial complexes. So there’s a 1000:1 concentration of anthropogenic waste heat vs. total surface area of the earth. This is somewhat moderated by a portion of the fossil fuel power produced going into chemical bond energy in durable manufactured goods and thus doesn’t become waste heat going into the environment. Even so this is dwarfed by warming produced by impervious ground cover in urban areas. Rainfall over urban areas is largely funneled off into deep narrow streams either below or above ground. The greatly reduced wet surface area/time drastically retards evaporation which would otherwise cool the surface and thus we get the urban heat island which is typically 5F-10F higher temperature than surrounding areas which have much more evaporative cooling of the surface and near-surface air. Enthalpy is the same between urban and non-urban areas but thermometers only measure temperature. Looking at enthalpy instead of just temperature alone is much more revealing. Water’s ability to transport huge amounts of energy from surface to far above our heads insensibly as heat of vaporization is the most important factor in any analysis of near-surface climate except in sub-freezing or desert environments where evaporation at gound level and condensation thousands of meters above ground level is naturally curtailed.
We know little about the small planet Makemake discovered in 2005 except that it’s a cold and faraway place beyond Neptune. At its distance from the hub of our universe the amount of warmth Makemake gets from the Sun has been compared to the heat from a light bulb more than 30 feet away (about 100 watts at 10 meters).
It is much easier to see what is happening right here on earth. The Earth is of course much closer to the Sun and a lot of solar energy coming our way is actually reflected away. The reflectivity of a glacier, for example, nears 100%. Clouds over the ocean that covers more than 70% of the planet increase as the ocean is warmed by the sun. Clouds reflect solar energy. The moisture in clouds also make rain and thunderstorms. All of these things have been visible to humanity for thousands of years. We call it weather and it changes. We refer to many years of weather as the climate and if humans have enough time on their hands they can find both warming and cooling trends.
Phillip Haddad
Not to belabor the number of “tons per year” or the exceptional glaciers that are not receding, I think it is generally accepted knowledge that Northern Hemisphere glaciers are receding today.
As we all know, glaciers are simply slow-flowing rivers of ice. As with a river of water, the net balance depends on what comes in and what flows out. If growth and melting balance, the glacier appears to be ‘stationary’. If precipitation exceeds melting the glacier advances: if melting exceeds precipitation the glacier recedes, but there will be a time lag between cause and effect. Air temperature itself (i.e. response to “global warming”) seems to play a secondary role, but prolonged periods of warming or cooling seem to have an effect long-term.
Studies in the Swiss and Austrian Alps (Schlüchter 2005, Patzelt 2000) have shown that a) glaciers have gone through several periods of expansion and retreat over the past several thousand years, b) they have receded to much lower altitudes than today in the past, c) they were at lower levels than today for over half of the past 10,000 years, d) they reached their highest extent for 10,000 years around 1850, and d) they have generally been receding since 1850.
These studies used actual physical evidence, i.e. carbon-dated remains of trees and other vegetation recovered under receding glaciers, high above today’s tree line.
So the current glacier loss is neither unprecedented nor can it be attributed to higher CO2 levels (which did not exist during the past periods of glacial retreat).
But you are right. They are (generally) retreating today.
Max
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the current 30-years global mean temperature secular trend is about 0.1 deg C/decade, not IPCC’s about 0.2 deg C/decade as shown below:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:-0.08/detrend:0.04/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/offset:-0.03/detrend:0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:2/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1974/to:2004/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1974/to:2004/trend/offset:0.01
IPCC’s 0.2 deg C/decade was the transient trend for the recent warming phase.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:5/mean:7/plot/gistemp/mean:5/mean:7/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:5/mean:7/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:365/mean:367/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:125/mean:127/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:125/offset:0.2/mean:127/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:125/offset:-0.2/mean:127/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/mean:5/mean:7/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1974/trend
Fixed some of the technical errors, so far as I was able.
But if you want a better look at what you claim to say, let’s try something that makes sense:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/plot/rss/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/plot/uah/mean:191/mean:194/derivative/plot/wti/mean:191/mean:194/derivative/plot/esrl-co2/mean:191/mean:194/derivative/scale:0.008
Accepting the hypothesis that this represents essentially a rise corresponding to CO2 level rise, with two large multidecadal drops of slightly different duration spaced roughly 70 years apart that might be explained by multiple volcanic activity pumping aerosols high into the atmosphere, and many smaller bumps that might be from regional basin teleconnections such as ocean oscillations, then we see the current rate of warming for 32 year climate spans might be influenced by some of these other effects, but continues to trend overall toward a CO2-caused rise.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:101/mean:103/derivative/plot/gistemp/mean:101/mean:103/derivative/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:101/mean:103/derivative/plot/rss/mean:101/mean:103/derivative/plot/uah/mean:101/mean:104/derivative/plot/wti/mean:101/mean:104/derivative/plot/esrl-co2/mean:101/mean:104/derivative/scale:0.008
The _much_ noisier 17-year derivative trends obscure the reading strongly, though they may have some predictive power of where the climate might be heading. If so, we should be paying closer attention to aerosols in the high atmosphere. Because when they go away (as they generally do in less than 5 years if caused by volcanic activity) like they typically do 2/3’s of the time, then we can anticipate a very high spike accompanied by extreme weather events in clusters and numbers the likes of which we will at that time call unprecedented.
If you go in for trendology on imperfect data and imperfect tools.
tl/dr – assumed tedious repetition of garrulous and error riddled complaint.
Bart
What is important is the secular GMST Trend, not the transient one.
Here is from your graph what is important (the red line trend):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/trend/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/plot/rss/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/plot/uah/mean:191/mean:194/derivative/plot/wti/mean:191/mean:194/derivative/plot/esrl-co2/mean:191/mean:194/derivative/scale:0.008
Bart, Nice trap you set for the clueless Girma Gobbles.
Girma models an upward trend for the derivative of the temperature data.
But what is an upward trend on a derivative but a positive acceleration of the temperature? Girma is an alarmist, showing upward acceleration in global temperatures !!!
These actually aren’t arguments. Girma could link to anything and all the fake skeptics would just sit there, realizing that Girma is an important cog WRT shoving FUD and foo in our general direction.
The uncertainty is not in the climate predictions, it is in the explanation for the existence of commenters such as Girma. Is it a political agenda? Is it pranking? Is it general incompetence? Is it retaliation against science? Is the retaliation against science borne of some personal vendetta?
Girma | March 17, 2013 at 7:36 am |
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:59/mean:61/derivative/to:1964/trend/plot/gistemp/mean:59/mean:61/derivative/from:1964/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:59/mean:61/derivative/plot/rss/mean:59/mean:61/derivative/plot/uah/mean:59/mean:61/derivative/plot/wti/mean:59/mean:61/derivative/plot/esrl-co2/mean:59/mean:61/derivative/scale:0.03
How do you expect to get any information about the GSMT trend by taking a linear trend of that trend, thereby removing the trend levels?
You can get information about the acceleration of the trend of trends; this is true. You can even, if you can identify a period of interest (for instance, the past 5 decades), show whether that period has a distinct trend of acceleration of warming overall from another trend (all records prior to the start of the 5 decade acceleration of acceleration of warming).
But when you look at just the derivative of the secular trend, you can observe whether there is any true cyclic pattern on any particular period. The derivative of a fixed period has the same length of period:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sine:10/plot/sine:10/derivative/plot/square:10/plot/square:10/derivative/plot/sawtooth:10/plot/sawtooth:10/derivative/plot/triangle:10/plot/triangle:10/derivative
On a pure decadal trend we observe nothing in the derivatives that indicates the 30-year (or multiple thereof) periodicity you claim. We see oscillation, but that oscillation is an artefact of the filters, not a signal of any cycle.
What the trend of trends of global temperatures shows is that up to today the past five decades have generally moved toward a higher acceleration toward higher temperatures. If the IPCC prediction that by 2020 decadal temperature rise will be 0.2C/decade is in much doubt, that doubt does not come from empirical data or their trends.
WebHubTelescope | March 17, 2013 at 11:00 am |
Surprised you did not note that the graph depicts what is commonly called Fat Tail response.
Bart,
The worst part of the fat-tail response is when the source of excess CO2 is cut-off. The trending will maintain an inertia because of the slow sequestering.
And of course the strong accumulation of CO2 is also a result of the fat-tail.
So yes indeed, you are right.
Alas, Girma is a trendologist prankster and this brand of physics does not concern him, obviously.
Southern Oscillation Index:
The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) has steadily increased over the past two weeks, mainly associated with higher than normal pressures in the tropical Pacific. This is considered to be largely a weather effect, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the boarder climate situation. The latest (10 March) 30-day SOI value is +9.5.
Sustained positive values of the SOI above +8 may indicate a La Niña event,while sustained negative values below −8 may indicate an El Niño event. Values of between about +8 and −8 generally indicate neutral conditions.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Girma | March 16, 2013 at 4:38 pm |
You, uh, left off the first and last line from your cite, which entirely reverses the meaning. I’m sure the oversight was unintentional.
Atmospheric and oceanic indicators of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) generally continue within the neutral range.. The SOI is known to be volatile at this time of year.
For a particular value of sure.
Climate models indicate the tropical Pacific is likely to remain ENSO-neutral through the first part of the southern hemisphere autumn. While it is known that predictions from dynamical models during the April through June period have lower skill, all models agree that an ENSO-neutral state is the most likely scenario for the next season.
In other words, past the next three days to three months, no one has the least clue what the weather will be; conversely, over the next 30-80 years, the climate can more reliably than the 3-day-to-3-month weather forecast be expected to sharply warm and exhibit higher levels of extreme events.
Thanks, Professor Curry, for your efforts to unravel the Climategate mystery. The key to this mystery is:
““Fear of Humans – Pathology behind the Climate Change Movement”
http://orach24463.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/fear-and-loathing-of-humans-the-pathology-behind-the-climate-change-movement/
With kind regards,
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
omanuel, please see my post above, Myrrh | March 16, 2013 at 12:56 pm.
Sorry about all the bold but I forgot to close it after your name.
Thanks, Myrrh. I responded above.
‘Atmospheric and oceanic indicators of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) generally continue within the neutral range. The recent increase in the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) has been due to persistent high pressure weather systems in the central Pacific Ocean, and is not considered indicative of the broadscale climate. The SOI is known to be volatile at this time of year. ‘ from your link Girma which I quite often visit.
‘Most models forecast Niño-3.4 SSTs to remain between 0°C and -0.5°C through Northern Hemisphere spring and to remain ENSO-neutral (between -0.5°C and +0.5°C) into the fall (Fig. 6). However, there is increasing model spread and overall less confidence in the forecast during the last half of the year, partly because of the so-called “spring barrier,” which historically leads to lower model skill beginning in late spring.’
The spring barrier is also called the window of unpredictability. A full blown ENSO is essentially a SH summer phenomenon. But we are in a multi-decadal period of increased La Niña frequency and intensity – and there is every expectation that La Niña will dominate over the next thousand years.
We know from various sources that ENSO frequency changes over very long timeframes. Cyclone frequency and intensity in north east Australia for instance- which is related to ENSO.
‘Prediction of future tropical cyclone climate scenarios requires identification of quasiperiodicities at a variety of temporal scales. Extension of records to identify trends at century and millennial scales is important, but to date the emerging field of paleotempestology has been hindered by the lack of a suitable methodology to discern the intensity of prehistoric storms. Here a technique to quantify the central pressure of prehistoric tropical cyclones is presented in detail and demonstrated for the tropical southwest Pacific region. The importance of extending records to century time scales is highlighted for northeast Australia, where a virtual absence of category 5 cyclones during the 20th century stands in contrast to an active period of severe cyclogenesis during the previous century.’ http://www.tesag.jcu.edu.au/staff/jnott/abstracts/jgr_paper.pdf
Here’s another ink to Jonathon Nott – http://www.tesag.jcu.edu.au/staff/jnott/index.html
We have this recent high resolution ENSO proxy from the Law Dome in the Antarctic.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1?journalCode=clim
We know that ENSO+PDO is associated wth cloud changes in the Pacific – I have discussed it here – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/
Here are some observations in the north east Pacific – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Clementetal2009.png
The PDO and ENSO are influenced by shifts in polar SLP which may in fact be a top down effect resulting from interaction of solar UV and stratospheric ozone – e.g. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/3/034008
So the question is – could this be a missing mechanism for millennial scale temperature variability? If so – it is indeed global.
What is the point of all the discussion about temperatures and arguments about ideology?
What is their relevance to recommending policy and where our wealth should be spent/wasted?
Judith,
My most recent comment simply disappeared. It first of all appeared with a moderation note – presumably because of the number of links and now is nowhere to be seen. This was a comment 100% about climate – and on areas little known to most people ranging from cyclone frequency in northern Australia to UV/ozone interactions and suggesting a global mechanism for millennial temperature variation. A very serious and thoughtful comment and I object to it being disappeared.
I’m not sure how long I took to write this – over a slow Sunday morning breakfast of coffee and French toast – but I don’t have a copy and that is time I will never recover.
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
Whoops – apologies – it has come back again. I will make a copy.
Chief, the post had a lot of links, which automatically sends it to moderation. I check frequently to release any posts that land in moderation. So your post is now up.
Thanks Ms Curry – I should have known better.
You may have noticed that I use a couple of handles. If I am using another handle you can be sure that I am stealing myself against abusive responses from some denizens. I will enter into the bad spirit of things but like to have the psychic barrier of a persona in place – just to remind myself not to take it at all seriously. It would be better to be able to take everything seriously in a civilised forum.
The Chief Hydrologist handle derives from Cecil Terwilliger (brother to Sideshow Bob) who was Springfield’s Chief Hydrological and Hydrodynamical Engineer. He opined that this was a sacred vocation in some cultures. The more I thought about this the more it resonated with me. I am an hydrologist by training, profession and (much more) through a deep fascination with water in all its power and beauty. Given the importance of water to us practically and symbolically, there is more than an element of the sacred.
To quote myself from a more civilised era of climate etc – snarky comments are not appreciated. Here, it is seeking of the sacred hydrological truth through dialogue. For this the required attitude is humor, patience, good will, honesty and good faith.
I will leave you with the Boston Pops mixing up Pachebel with Jewell.
Skippy,
On the 14 + hour flight from Sydney to Dallas-Fort Worth, reading Leonard Susskind’s “The Theoretical Minimum”, listening to a menu of songs, I became aware of the music I liked vs that that which made me punch to the next song: the synchrony and timing of vocalist with their instrumental accompaniment. Voice, background. Air and earth.
Your posting Jewell with Pachebel reminded me of that enduring connectivity, the precision, the beat. The melodic pitch and tone, the nuances of that vocal instrument cast with the counterpoint of the orchestration. My mind’s eye pictured the musical treble and base cleft staffs, the printed notes, a pictured articulation of equations. I was both listening, seeing and feeling physics in motion.
I again reminisce how enjoyable it is when we observe or mimic nature in that precise connection of voice and accompaniment, how satisfying and how “right” it all seems. When the vocalist is just a millisecond late, we know something is “off.”
I wonder if our sensing this timing has anything to do with our “BS” detector when we hear or read climate science: models vs observations.
Models, whether for ENSO events or for predicting future weather, cyclones, whatever, just seem to me to be a bit “off”, not quite having the timing right between atmosphere and earth’s surfaces.
Standing with one foot in the Southern Ocean, facing a vertical escarpment, observing horizontal layer upon layer, the treble and base clefts with notes of songs we do not yet hear.
Pretentiousness in writing is setting off my own BS detector.
WebHubTelescope
As in Climate forcings, feedback is both positive and negative. The outcomes are what we observe. The interpretations are personal.
Pretention is something else – the urge to sing is a deep seated and primordial impulse. It is an urge to bridge the chasm of emotion and the world, experience and imagination, being and nothingness. It is a childs jungle gym on a sandy foreshore. You twist and somersault and fall to be captured to the breast of love – with love no daring is fatal.
Nice song.Such a pervasive human tendency, dear
Chief, we erect barriers, adopt personnas, build walls.
I myself am cow-girl, serf, and more besides. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL7CklKfxa4
BC
This video is a bit like the Melbourne Cup in that it seems to stop traffic and change moods almost magically. The old feller was probably coming back from one of his breakdowns.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq7ncjhSqtk?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360%5D
Nice line – notes of songs we have yet to hear has both promise and poignancy. I was reading the comments on Beth’s video – Frost is a wonder – ‘Robert Frost himself stated that a poem has a “life of its own” it is not so much invented as is discovered.’ Thanks Beth.
So as a stranger in a strange land – discovering your footprints in the sand is revelatory.
The Axe Helve is a good poem illustrating this particular myth of Frost’s.
What you’ve described with you consciously using multiple handles as a defense mechanism is exactly what the brain unconsciously does in multiple personality disorder. The psyche is subdivided into multiple partitions with limited communication between them. We should all just start calling you Sybil. Everyone here is exposed to exactly the same amount of abuse by others but hardly anyone responds to it the way you do by using a plethora of different names. I suggest that’s an abnormal, clinically psychotic response mechanism that deserves its own entry in the DSM-IV-TR.
Just sayin’.
Do you think this puts you in a good light David? You suffer from smartest person in the room syndrome. It is characterised by bombastic didacticism and shouting down anyone who dares to disagree. They must be wrong after all. You – as you have said – can spend 10 minutes on the internet and become and become an instant expert on anything at all. Your natural mode is aggressive. It contrasts strongly with those of us who are open, creative, imaginative, reflective, communicative and self doubting. As Beth alluded to with her Robert Frost poem – a life without fences.
Chief Hydrologist is a metaphor of the natural philosopher. An earnest seeker after truth – a patient worker in the vineyards of science with a heritage that is centuries if not millennia old. One milestone – for instance – in this long progression was the invention of the telescope some 400 years ago. That there have been people counting sunspots since then is a wonder of human perseverance – a triumph of spirit. I know who I am – I am Robert I Ellison – engineer, scientist, poet. I have no need of self aggrandisement – I have need of good food, a song and a friend.
Captain Kangaroo – and then Generalissimo Skippy after seizing control of this blog – is a metaphor as well. Although I can neither confirm or deny his true identity. First of the entrenchment of positions in the climate war and then of the will to power that is informed by an overweening moral conviction. A will to power that has proved disastrous for ordinary humanity in the 20th century and may again this century if we are not careful.
My problem – as I have stated before – is that I don’t think you are the smartest person in the room by a long way. And even if you were – your natural mode precludes any real modesty, self reflection, ability to learn from others and to build on common understanding. The difference is between individualism – doomed to failure because these problems are far too complex for individuals – and approaching the problems synergistically as environmental scientists are trained to do. ‘Environmental science is a multidisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, (including but not limited to ecology, physics, chemistry, biology, soil science, geology, atmospheric science and geography) to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems. Environmental science provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems’. wikipedia
Environments include both the natural and human spheres – and you can’t solve problems in one without considering the other.
Chief Wiggles of Oz, when people figure out the prank, it’s time to hang it up.
This one is way past the expiration date
You are an instant expert on raising ignorance to an art form.
Listen, Chief, why don’t you go into Wikipedia and yank all that stuff out that you disagree with? That would be the ultimate prank. Just place the quote of yours “It is quite likely that warming will cause a slowdown in MOC this century and the potential for threshhold change is quite unknown.” in the above Wikipedia entry and you can get your jollies that way.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/10/new-perspectives-on-climate-sensitivity/#comment-303356
And just to make sure you don’t miss it.
‘Overall, there is high confidence in predictions of a MOC slowdown during the 21st century, but low confidence in the scale of climate change that would cause an abrupt transition or the associated impacts. However, there is high confidence that the likelihood of large-scale and persistent MOC responses increases with the extent and rate of anthropogenic forcing.’
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/10/new-perspectives-on-climate-sensitivity/#comment-303360
I think you are the dumbest person in the room. The speculation is rife as to why you are so inconsequential – nothing of any import or seriousness in a scientific sense but simply endlessly repeating the same old tired complaint, the sychophantic, self aggrandising trivial and childish abuse. It really is so tedious.
Jut what is it that you think you have figured out? That there is a person called Robert I Ellison – who has a handle of Chief Hydrologist and actual knowledge of climate? Was that difficult for you? That there is a partisan right wing climate warrior named Skippy – who emerges when the ideologies are most entrenched. You could take it as a reminder to be less intransigent and self indulgent if you had any subtlety of intellect.
You opportunistically agree with David? Really no surprise. You both have the same smartest person in the room syndrome. Your modes of interaction are fundamentaly agressive – you dictate and then abuse when questioned. Is this appreciatied by anyone? Shouldn’t think so.
Sloppy said “You opportunistically agree with David?”
Springer is a pain but we all know people like him in engineering circles.
Springer is the guy that the project leads bring in as a devil’s advocate during project reviews. He makes critical comments that you need to take heed of at the risk of making a design mistake. You might hate him, but ultimately thank him when he makes the product better.
You Chief, on the other hand, would be completely shunned. A dead-ender and impediment to progress.
And just to make sure you don’t miss it.
‘Overall, there is high confidence in predictions of a MOC slowdown during the 21st century, but low confidence in the scale of climate change that would cause an abrupt transition or the associated impacts. However, there is high confidence that the likelihood of large-scale and persistent MOC responses increases with the extent and rate of anthropogenic forcing.’
I am an engineer and environmental scientist at the leaing edge of my niche in environmental technlogy. You are a complete bonehead with little wit and no charm – and such a paucity of knowledge of climate in particular. David is an obsolete gamer who lives in a dry lake bed.
I bet you have tracked down Tomas’s latest comment by now to apply your obsessive slime. Yes? Let’s see.
Sloopy said:
Like Springer, I let technology do the tracking for me. I use an RSS blog feed you see.
Document the atrocities, as Atrios would say. Go after the self-described queen-bees, “chiefs”, and those of you that claim intellectual leadership. It also keeps the logical arguments sharp — if you have something to challenge, have at it.
Webnutcolonoscope – oh wait that’s hardly new and so not funny anymore.
I can’t be bothered with a feed – too much dross. Likewise I generally ignore you and springer if you are not actually being pests.
If you have anything to say that isn’t totally moronic – have at it. Perhaps some science that doesn’t rely on climate being a log function – log (axb) = log(a) + log (b)
Hell – that makes a lot of sense.
And just to make sure you don’t miss it.
‘Overall, there is high confidence in predictions of a MOC slowdown during the 21st century, but low confidence in the scale of climate change that would cause an abrupt transition or the associated impacts. However, there is high confidence that the likelihood of large-scale and persistent MOC responses increases with the extent and rate of anthropogenic forcing.’
Are you going to continue to ignore your laest boneheaded error? Then again you are a fool a liar and a fraud. Par for the course.
an interesting comment I found digging in the stacks at RC
Your mistake. You can’t point to it.
I keep pointing to it because it is so much fun.
Listen, Chief, why don’t you go into Wikipedia and yank all that stuff out that you disagree with? That would be the ultimate prank. Just place the quote of yours “It is quite likely that warming will cause a slowdown in MOC this century and the potential for threshhold change is quite unknown.” in the above Wikipedia entry and you can get your jollies that way.
Nick Stokes emulated Marcott & al and had this to say:
http://moyhu.blogspot.ca/2013/03/my-limited-emulation-of-marcott-et-al.html
Emulating a process requires using the same process. Nick Stokes didn’t even try to do much to replicate their work. Either he didn’t replicate anything, or their method has little difference from a straight average.
Regardless, if the latest part of the reconstruction isn’t robust, that calls into question the entire reconstruction.
+1 Brandon. Why is this so,hard to understand for some?
Emulation is not replication.
Well Brandon, I’m sorry if I’m not getting through it fast enough for you. But I have now done the calc with Marcott’s revised dating, and it does introduce a marked recent spike.
But it makes not much difference elsewhere. Non-robustness of the recent reconstruction simply means that there are very few proxies that continue into recent times. They don’t need an overlap for calibration, so there is no reason why that should call into question the entire reconstruction.
The link leads nowhere, Nick.
Nick, the sudden appearance of a “marked spike” in just the right time, with no significant differences elsewhere… does this set off any alarm bells for you?
Nick Stokes, the authors provided the data as they used it. That means it was already re-dated. You’d have to go to a different source to get a version that wasn’t re-dated. You didn’t. You used their already re-dated data.
Which is irrelevant to the point I was making here. The point I made here is you didn’t even try to do their Monte Carlo method. That means your approach either doesn’t offer much of an emulation, or their method isn’t very different than the (relatively) simple averaging you used. Either way, you’re offering next to no support for their method.
If we accept your “emulation” was sufficient, the value of their Monte Carlo process is greatly reduced. If we don’t accept such, the value of your “emulation” is greatly reduced. It’s a weak case either way.
And that doesn’t criticize you for anything. It just says you haven’t made much of a case for anything.
Willard,
Here’s the link. Sorry about that. It’s the same as the one you gave above.
By the way, I normally ignore willard, but since he made a semi-valid point, I’ll respond. He said:
This is true. Emulation is imitation not exact replication. One can emulate a process without using the exact same process. As such, when I said “same process,” I was somewhat unclear. The point I was making was thus:
The authors used a Monte Carlo process which involved a thousand runs for each series. Nick Stokes did a single (weighted) average. Those two processes are very different, and one is not an emulation of the other.
If people like willard want to argue some point of semantics as to how similar two processes have to be before one qualifies as an “emulation” of the other, they can. It doesn’t matter for my point. My point is what Nick Stokes did is greatly different than what the authors did. It is certainly far too different to qualify as an emulation no matter what semantic quibbling anyone wants to engage in.
Brandon,
“Nick Stokes, the authors provided the data as they used it. That means it was already re-dated.”
The authors spreadsheet provided, among other things:
E: Published Age
F: Published Temperature
G: Marine09 Age
G wasn’t always Marine09, but mostly. This is their re-date. I originally used E and F, in the update I used G and F.
My post was titled: “My limited emulation of a Marcott et al reconstruction”.
BS,BS
Apparently I need to stop talking. For some reason I didn’t think the data release contained both the re-dated and originally dated data. This is weird because earlier I talked about about the effect of re-dating data. I guess I just saw a “Published age” column in each sheet and jumped to an assumption in my haste (it’s a weekend, and I’ve been out and about).
That’s a pretty stupid screw up, but it has no bearing on the point at hand. Why are we talking about this when the point I made is something else entirely?
Brandon Shollenberger, “your response is about as pathetic as they come.”
“Insult me all you want. It won’t change the fact you jumped to an incredibly stupid conclusion.”
“And that’s ignoring how petty you are being.”
Your words! :)
Peter Lang, I hope you just lost track of your location and aren’t stalking me now. That’d be creepy.
Regardless, if you have a point to make, you should just come out and state it. Until you do, it just seems like you’re portraying me as hypocritical for behavior that isn’t hypocritical in the slightest because you’re grossly distorting what I said.
Horatio Stokes.
==========
Who pumps from all stumps without end. What heart! What capacity!
======================
Speaking of semantics, to speak of “semi-valid point” has no semantical merit. One could speak of “semi-decidable” point, though.
Chewbacca should know that emulation is not replication. He might even have studied this in more formal settings. We could also talk of simulation, which in one sense Chewbacca brings to the ClimateBall game, a sense by which computer theorists do not usually construct bi-simulations.
At some point people will realize the importance of providing the
data as used and the code as run.
Hint: you dont know the data provided is the data as used unless you have the code as run.
Instead smart men like Nick and Steve have to waste time trying to emulate what should have been shared and shared freely.
It’s a waste of human capital and ingenuity. Failure to share is only defended in these instances on utterly ad hoc grounds.
Favorite meme of the week:
> UNIT TEST ALL THE THINGS !
http://memegenerator.net/instance/23195178
From Michealsp’s:
http://planet3.org/2013/03/15/a-simple-agent-model-of-dunning-kruger/
willard –
Classic (Beck 67).
Most mentally healthy people overestimate their abilities. In contrast, the clinically depressed self-evaluate performance much more accurately in absolute terms. The result is a devaluation of their own performance relative to most others.
It may be that depressed people project accurate self-assessment onto others and therefore readily accept others’ overblown self-estimates. The result is that depressed people conclude they are not as good as others.
This might be why ClimateBall acts like a depressant.
How could anyone be as good as Big Dave?
Even DS might have a tough time living up to his character.
Reality is way overrated.
Here be luverly corolurries.
===========
If I can take this one step further without going a bridge too far.
It may be that healthy people who have a knack for honest self-assessment risk becoming depressed – unless of course they maintain some awareness that most others lack similar ability.
A therapist I know told me that really problematic people rarely go on treatment by their own free will. His clientele are mainly people that need to come to realize that what they feel is real, that they can take action on most of these feelings, even if that entails accepting reality as it is. Therapy might only with an expansion of the serenity prayer.
We all need contact, among one another and with reality. ClimateBall is juvenile. Gaslighting is evil.
willard – We all need contact, among one another and with reality. ClimateBall is juvenile. Gaslighting is evil.
For you, do the 2nd two satisfy the first?
Good question, blue. I think it does, sometimes. Now, it does.
What about you?
‘Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able
to judge it.’
Pericles of Athens (about 430BC)
‘The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male
or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind
of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all
on his own initiative; neither out of zeal nor even playfully.’
Plato ( some eighty years later.)
Note some pertinent comments on the confident prediction
by ‘the expert’ and amnesia regarding experts’ previous
unsuccessful predictions in ‘The Black Swan.’
( Nassim Taleb Introduction)
Thankfully a modest concern re uncertainy is a strength
some experts, like Judith Curry, do demonstrate .
Jest sayin’
If we are to make progress in a corporate way in counterimg the mistskes of the IPCC, we need to agree on a few fundamentals.
(1) The IPCC has greatly exaggerated the affect
of carbon dioxide on global temperature increase.
(2) That human generared CO2 has caused some increased global temperature.
(4) That the correlation between global temperature and CO2 concentration has been poor and sometimes zero or negative for periods of years.
(5) Because climate is an averaged property of the atmosphere we should agree on a smoothing formula that is not too lomg oy too short to be a measure of climate.
Other agreements are possible but would need to be negotiated e.g.what negative and positive feedbacks exist and their influence, the vibrational modes of CO2 and the power involved, the increased importance of heat islands on global temperature particularly in the N.hemisphere.
Alexander Biggs,
It’s good to see a summary as you have done. However, from a policy perspective all this is next to irrelevant, If we want to inform policy we have to shows the steps from what you have listed to:
Climate damages per degree of warming
climate damages per tonne of GHG emissions
GHG abatement costs per tonne GHG abated
Policy options
Probability a chosen policy will control the GHG emissions
Or more importantly, that the chosen policy will control the climate within the selected design tolerances.
Why p*** billions of dollars annually away on flaky models when these empirical basics haven’t been done yet ?
(The empirical basics previously mentioned being deep ocean temperature and radiation balance at TOA. No doubt there are more too).
Does seem to be a good question. Too difficult, or models more compliant in terms of desired results ?
Dick DeadEye
+1
Whether you are sitting on the fence, or on one side of it or the other, you cannot but agree that CO2 global warming is a vast and complex issue with any number of interwoven subplots and levels, much still highly speculative.
It is though I think still agreed that the bottom line is the radiation budget; how much energy is being absorbed by the earth, versus how how much is being sent out again. Seems simple enough. If we knew this, we could easily see whether the net result moved with CO2 levels or not. End of complexity, doubt, endless quarrels, and the possibility of a genuine settled science (for practical policy purposes, at any rate).
So WHY are climate scientists and their government funding agencies not prioritizing empirical measurement of the radiation budget ?
Only need to look at Andrew Lacis comments on this blog
But he does say that GCM models and simulations have benefits
Web,
Thanks for that, but I don’t see how it addresses the question
Which is – if we could only get a good fix on the radiation budget, we would have pinned down the whole AGW question, and then either proceed to either tackle or ignore it, depending on the outcome.
BFJ Cricklewood,
Radiation budget and climate sensitivity is one but not the only important parameter we need to understand if we to “either proceed to either tackle or ignore it, depending on the outcome.”
The damage function is at least as important. That is, what is the net benefit – damage of warming?
Another important parameter is the decarbonisation rate. That is, at what rate will the world decabonise without mitigation strategies and with appropriate ‘No regrets’ policies?
Lastly, something that seems to be not even considered, is: what is the probability that the chosen solution will deliver the expected benefits?
It seems virtually all the research effort is on trying ti reduce the uncertainty of climate sensitivity. But, on its own, climate sensitivity is useless for effective policy options and analysis.
Peter Lang :
Radiation budget and climate sensitivity is one but not the only important parameter we need to understand if we to “either proceed to either tackle or ignore it, depending on the outcome.”
But is it the first one that needs to be settled. If the radiation budget turns out to vary very little as CO2 goes up, all the other questions can and should then be tossed into the bin. And if not, not.
So what I’m saying is, for now put all/most of the research money into solving the radiation budget, since without it everything else is pretty much just hot air (as interesting as it clearly is).
BFJ Cricklewood, you will be delighted to know that NASA’s chief climate scientists place a top priority upon in-depth observation and analysis of earth’s energy budget together with a multi-author multi-disciplinary analysis of its implications:
It is regrettable these sensible & foresighted (albeit somewhat boring) scientific voices sometimes are drowned-out by an orgy of astro-turfing, cherry-picking, and scandal-mongering.
It’s good that people like you are developing the patience to read-and-comprehend this scientific work, BFJ Cricklewood. There are far too many ideology-first know-nothings who lack the motivation and/or the competence to do so!
Fan seems to be from some distant planet. There is no group that more epitomises ideology-first, than the coterie of government lackey climate scientists and the IPCC, known to be corrupt by both Climategate etc, and their almost total lack of remorse or disapproval thereof. He is either being disingenuous in not noting this, or is the most gullible person alive today.
1. Is the radiation budget a priority though?
2. Worryingly, there is more talk of models there, implying a continued fudge factor.
There are far too many ideology-first know-nothings who lack the motivation and/or the competence to do so!
Yes the IPCC does need to be de-politicized. But how?
> Yes the IPCC does need to be de-politicized. But how?
As needed as that is, is that even possible ? … It’s a political body after all, and will thus inevitably tend to promote the cause of politics.
BatedBreath, BFJ Cricklewood, and Vassily, it is good that you appreciate this need …
… because scientists increasingly appreciate that the IPCC consistently underestimates the long-term gravity of climate-change.
As the IPCC becomes less political, the public will come to a more clear appreciation of the threat of climate-change to global civilization.
This increased seriousness will be good, eh BatedBreath, BFJ Cricklewood, and Vassily?
I’m afraid to click on the link. It probably goes to some idiot like Naomi Oreskes.
Your’re right about FAN‘s links just being to his favorite crazies.
He must be the gullible nitwit of the decade – actually thinks depoliticizing the IPCC will make it push for LESS less political correctness and alarmism Beat that!
You are detached from reality Fan. The IPCC is itself political, and hence politicized towards expanding government interference, not reducing it (whatever those activists you refer to say). De-politicising the IPCC may we well put CAGW off the agenda entirely. Which is why ultra-leftists like yourself don’t want that to happen.
BFJ Cricklewood asks “WHY are climate scientists and their government funding agencies not prioritizing empirical measurement of the radiation budget?”
—
NASA’s chief climate scientists place a top priority upon in-depth observation and analysis of earth’s energy budget together with a multi-author multi-disciplinary analysis of its implications:
“Appropriate measurements can quantify the major factors driving climate change, reveal how much additional global warming is already in the pipeline, and help define the reduction of climate forcing needed to stabilize climate.”
But what percentage of the total climate budget does this alleged “top priority” get? 1%? 10%? 50%?
Also the comments about “analysis of its implications”, “how much already in the pipeline”, and “stabilize climate”, sounds ominously like they have already broadly made up their minds about what to find
– ie they are committed to the alarmist consensus (they too are after all politically funded). And allocate only a small budget to this, for fear it might reveal CO2 to not be the demon that political – their funder – would like it to be seen as.
The sober voice of science:
The demented voice of John Galt:
Is Death in Jurassic Park reminding us —fair and square! — that Nature will unhesitatingly and irretrievably punish humanity, for the sins that John Galt condemns: willful ignorance, ideology-driven cherry-picking, juvenile scandal-mongering, and unscientific motivism?
Perhaps the (real-life) Wendell Berry is far wiser than the (utterly fictional) John Galt in soberly reminding us that:
Good on `yah, Wendell Berry!
The sober voice citizen-science:
Good on `yah, A-Team! Incredible data! At this rate of ice-export, 2013 may witness open-sea voyages to the North Pole.
Yikes so perhaps death in Jurassic Park folks are correct-on-the-facts?
Yeah … in the long run, the denialist astro-turfers, cherry-pickers, slogan-shouters, scandal-mongers, and abuse-hurlers are utterly helpless … in the face of solid citizen-science! Good on `yah, citizen-scientists!
The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294560/The-great-green-1-The-hard-proof-finally-shows-global-warming-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html
Oddly, they don’t talk about the land temperature which rose 0.9 C in this period. May not warm for another two decades according to Judith in big letters, a distorted quote, I would think. David Rose is known for these shrill opinion pieces rather than actually reporting the science. Nice that David Bellamy is the star of this, as the person who got the glacier data wrong in his previous efforts at activism.
Jim D > Oddly, they don’t talk about the land temperature which rose 0.9 C in this period.
If land temperature showed CAGW, activists like the IPCC would be trumpeting it from the rooftops. But they aren’t.
> May not warm for another two decades according to Judith in big letters, a distorted quote, I would think. David Rose is known for these shrill opinion pieces rather than actually reporting the science.
No, just your own distorted pause-denialist distortion kicking in.
It shows 0.3 degrees per decade lately. Do you call that CAGW already? They also don’t touch the subject of Arctic sea ice, probably hoping nobody will remember that bit if they don’t mention it. Makes for a better storyline without the inconvenient parts. I think Rose can fool people who aren’t really paying attention.
The UN is at it again:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/17/un-report-human-progress-may-be-reversed-by-climate-change/
The UN and the IPCC, ( say, where is Hercules when
yer need him ter clean out the Augean Stables?
The sad and remarkable irony is that only cold can cure this disease of fear of warmth. There would be no fear of warmth were there no hook to manipulation of human fear and guilt through the AnthroCO2 link, which allows for the sequestration of power.
A terrible and historic mistake, tragedy and farce. Perhaps predictable enough to foresee the next one.
======================
Wrong.
Yah know, Dave … when solidly conservative institutions all around the world — like the Roman Catholic Church and the US military and also alliances of hunters and fishers — unite against climate-change denialism … hmmm … perhaps its time for denialists to get a clue?
<i.ave Springer asserts his faith: “The past 15 years demolished all catastrophic global warming predictions.”
Wrong.
Agreed. The actual facts are not being allowed to interfere with official political-correctness-driven predictions.
The denialist is you. The catastrophic global warming narrative is in tatters. Mild, welcome anthropogenic warming in higher northern latitudes is still alive but that too may soon be an endangered species if the trend since 2010 continues for much longer.
The most interesting thing about your ilk is that you’d be disappointed to learn that climate catastrophe was a false alarm because of your unvoiced misguided misanthropic world view. You believe that the threat of climate catastrophe is the only way to stop useless eaters (to take a phrase from a different facist people-hater) from overruning the earth which must be preserved for the elite enlightened group you imagine yourself to part of. Spare me.
Now I’m quite sure I must be teetering on the edge of being the author of 5% of the last 1000 comments which I’ve obliged myself with our hostess to not exceed so I shan’t waste another on the pitiful , willfully ineducable likes of you, John Sidles.
Since 2010.
JCH: A two-year trend isn’t too meaningful, but of the short lines you draw on the graph it’s the most sensible, and it’s down. Just looking at the graph you can clearly see that it’s lower now than it was two years ago: with the exception of the huge (99th percentile) spike in Jan 2013, no value has exceeded the first half of 2010.
Spinning spokes on a roulette wheel.
=============
People throw out meaningless trends all the time. The “standstill” of 10 years is not very meaningful.
If your candidate were more significant than the shorties, the 10-year trend would be flat or negative. It’s back to positive.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2010/plot/rss/from:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:2010/trend/detrend:-0.325
Trend since 2010 is a bit more than -0.1C per year. PER YEAR! That’s negative 1.0C per decade if it persists. Imagine the hoots and hollers from the loony left if it was 1.0C/decade warming. OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!</b
At this rate global average temperature will be below the 1979-1998 baseline by the end of this coming winter. If it keeps up for 7 more years we'll be in a full blown global cooling panic. Pray it doesn't happen because global cooling is immediately bad news to agriculture and hence global food supply. No waiting for the year 2100 to roll around for a climate catastrophe on the cool side. No siree Bob.
David
You comment on a negative trend.
Cet is a reasonable, but not infallible proxy for global temperatures and seems to be a leading trend for what we can expect. Here is cet from 1772 to the present day
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Temperatures have dropped sharply in the uk for some 15 years or so and are currently now the same as those from around those of the 1730’s.
Temperatures have dropped as sharply as energy prices have risen with obvious consequences on the ability of many people to keep themselves warm and out of debt. We do have the satisfaction of course of having the worlds first ‘ climate change act’ that is legally enforceable and will drive up prices sharply upwards in future decades.
Tonyb
JCH > People throw out meaningless trends all the time. The “standstill” of 10 years is not very meaningful.
The standstill is now at 16 years, more or less the same as the entire period of AGW (1980 – 1998). By your reckoning then, the entire AGW trend is also meaningless . Perhaps you’re right, this is all just a figment of motivated activism..
Wow, the military is using the fear of a perceived threat to try and get more funding? That’s never happened before.
@:Fan of more idiocy
the Roman Catholic Church and the US military and also alliances of hunters and fishers unite against climate-change denialism … hmmm … perhaps its time for denialists to get a clue?
Heck, if these guys say cagw is true, it must be. Everybody be alarmist now please.
since 2010
Yikes! I just found myself wearing both orange and green. What to do? What to do?
Suddenly, I have some sympathy for the Once and Future Doctor Marcott.
========
Auditors around the world might be glad to know that Eli, just before his 2000nd post (way to go, Mr. Hockey!), that they now can audit Christy’s and Spencer’s code:
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2013/03/an-apology-from-eli.html
Hopefully I have all the blockquotes right.
This is the web page:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdr/operationalcdrs.html
AUDIT ALL THE CODES!
Cliff Mass has a post on Climate Tribes, check it out
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/03/climate-tribes.html
Hank Roberts gets nostalgic:
Hank forgets that our proxy debates are bigger than what Usenet could handle.
Cliff Mass is the voice of reason here. I don’t always agree with his views on specific work, but this general overview looks good.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/16/open-thread-weekend-11/#comment-303390
Trish Roberts-Miller’s celebrated on-line essay Characteristics of Demagoguery vividly describes twelve key features of demagogic denialism:
• 01 polarization,
• 02 ingroup/outgroup thinking,
• 03 scapegoating,
• 04 motivism,
• 05 personalizing,
• 06 denial and/orrefusal,
• 07 false dilemmas,
• 08 ad personum arguments,
• 09 conspiracy theories,
• 10 pandering to prejudice,
• 11 bad science, and
• 12 anti-intellectualism
However, Prof. Roberts-Miller omits a thirteenth key trait that is well illustrated by the frothing fervor of this weeks denialist demogoguery in regard to the Marcott et al 2013 hockey stick:
• 13 quibbling The emotional faith that cherry-picked refutations of weak climate-change science suffice to refute strong climate-change science.
Conclusion Though the dog may bark, the caravan (kafila) moves on!
Good list FOMD.
Let me suggest something to you. When I first finished reading the climategate mails ( about 2 days of reading) by friend Tom Fuller called and asked what I found. In a nutshell: “Well Tom, there is no smoking gun of any major wrong doing. But I will say this. They engaged in every form of bad behavior that they accused the skeptics of.” and then I went down the list, which frankly looked like your list below.Quite the inventory.
And what is the point of these lists. You care about the planet. I care about the planet. Does the list get you any closer to agreement about what to do? Especially when that list can be turned around on you?
Not a good tactic to demonize your opponent.. except to build solidarity within ranks.. So add item 14: makes lists of opponents bad behavior.
who has been naughty and who has been nice.
I was thinking of showing you examples of all 13. but that would merely perpetuate the list making.
a fan of *MORE* discourse: However, Prof. Roberts-Miller omits a thirteenth key trait that is well illustrated by the frothing fervor of this weeks denialist demogoguery in regard to the Marcott et al 2013 hockey stick:
• 13 quibbling The emotional faith that cherry-picked refutations of weak climate-change science suffice to refute strong climate-change science.
The careful analyses performed by Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit show that there is no clear data audit trail from the raw data to the adjusted data to the final graph reported by Marcotte et al. That is not quibbling: the procedure is unclear, and there is no good explanation why the published paper gets such different results than Marcotte’s dissertation, which used seemingly the same data and similarly described methods. If you can clarify exactly how McIntyre and other posters there are wrong, you might post your explanations. I bet that you can’t. Until Marcotte et al publish their code and independent reviewers reproduce their result and show it to be reliable, that paper is in serious trouble.
I don’t think you quite get-it Matthew R Marler!
The Marcott et al, analysis is NOT among the stronger pieces of evidence for the hockey-stick it’s among the weaker pieces.
Conclusion The cherry-picked WUWT/Climate Audit focus upon weaker hockey-stick evidence — coupled with studious avoidance of stronger hockey-stick evidence — is pathognomonic of demagogic denialism trait #13: Quibbling
Isn’t that plain common-sense, Matthew R Marler?
Apologies if I’m not the first to notice this, but Gullible Nitwit* provides a list demagogue traits, which pretty much describe his own efforts to a T. Such projections in one so old.
——-
* aka Fan of more deception
Speaking of dating services, here’s something to consider:
http://www.channel4.com/news/fools-for-love-how-one-internet-dating-firm-dupes-clients
What people would not do to have a conversation.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/16/open-thread-weekend-11/#comment-303474
Team Big Carbon responds: “Despite the trillions of dollars in profits that we realize each year from carbon exports, our free-market morality strictly prohibits astro-turfing activities … no matter how incredibly lucrative and/or politically advantageous such activities might be!”
Yeah … right.
Regarding my questions above about the effect of internal oscillations on global average temperatures, I asked the question at Real Climate on an open thread and got an answer that I think is as good as it’s going to get. It included a link to reported outgoing longwave radiation that correlates well with El Ninos.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/olr-s-pg.gif
Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it is certainly evidence that, if accurate, supports a claim that an El Nino can increase cloud cover, thereby decreasing OLR, and increasing global average temperature.
Not quite so simple, because increased cloud cover works both ways, decreasing OLR for warming, reducing solar input for cooling. But yes, ENSO, seasonal changes, volcanoes, etc. all cause fluctuations in the energy budget.
Yes, that is exactly what I wrote in response to you earlier. The question is the net effect. The graph I was given a link to strongly suggests the net is positive. Not proof, but strongly suggestive.
It turns out that adding low clouds has a negative feedback, and high clouds have a neutral effect when longwave and shortwave are considered together.
Here’s a CERES/MODIS plot. Combining the earlier satellites with CERES is dubious at best.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Loeb2011-LWCERES.png
The top graph compares the MEI of Claus Wolter to tropical and global LW flux.
The bottom one compares modeis cloud fraction with LW flux – cloud increases in La Nina and LW out decreases.
Here is the SW and MODIS.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES_MODIS-1.gif
As we are talking marine stratocumulous with ENSO for the most part the SW changes dominate.
Here’s the data for completeness.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=AdvancesinUnderstandingTop-of-AtmosphereRadiationVariability-Loebetal2011.png
Here’s the earlier ISCCP-FD cloud amount.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ISCCP-cloudamount.png
The result was 2.4W/m2 warming in SW and 0.5W/m2 cooling in IR in the period – according to the data. – http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html –
Bill’s message, conveyed Jack Nicholson-style: “The truth? Climate-change denialists can’t handle the truth.”
Web
Now, the global mean temperature is on the long-term secular temperature line. In the next couple of years, it will go below it (the yellow central curve).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:-0.08/detrend:0.04/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/offset:-0.03/detrend:0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:2/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1974/to:2004/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1974/to:2004/trend/offset:0.01
Between them, Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre have now posted more than one hundred lead stories that vehemently deny the reality of a climate-change “Hockey Stick.” It appears that Anthony and Steve ain’t never heard Albert Einstein’s adage: “If the theory were wrong, one would have been enough.”
Gullible Nitwit* > Between them, Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre have now posted more than one hundred lead stories that vehemently deny the reality of a climate-change “Hockey Stick.” It appears that Anthony and Steve ain’t never heard Albert Einstein’s adage: “If the theory were wrong, one would have been enough.”
Not so strangely, Gullible Nitwit didn’t notice the incessant pushing of the Hockey Stick fraud that prompted these responses.
—-
* aka Fan of more Deception, for those new to her
Herman Alexander Pope | March 17, 2013 at 2:41 pm |
Elsethread, the claim is repeated: So we get a huge payback from fossil fuel subsidies and zilch from alternative fuel subsidies.
http://www.awea.org/
When the claim was first made, in 2007, it sounded very nearly true.
Now, a mere six years later, we see the profitable fossil fuel industries — well able to have paid for what the government instead paid for and still remain the most profitable businesses in the world — give no improved payback to the taxpayers after the taxpayers’ investment than before. That would be.. let me do the math.. carry the zero.. aha.. Zilch.
And the wind farm industry that barely existed six years ago now generates 10% of the electricity of nine states, and become more cost competitive with every passing month. That would make the miniscule investment taxpayers put into wind a great bargain, by any measure.
Oh. Did the original claim exclude wind, and mean only fuel? Would those fuel subsidies be for biomass? Carbon-based biomass? How does that scam that benefits the fossil industry get lumped in with wind and solar?
And solar is improving its returns even faster than wind.
Of course wind requires a back-up system as there is limited storage. Yep freeze in the dark.
Brian | March 17, 2013 at 8:16 pm |
Enh. There’s enough backup in the 90% of the system that isn’t wind for wind to be worthwhile.
Heck, there’s still some qualified electrical engineers who were educated to believe that more than 0.1% wind would crash the electrical system.
We know you could replace half a grid with wind and not risk instability.
What is so Catastrophic about Non-Carbon Energy that you are this irrationally panicked by it? Are you a CNCE monger?
HaHa you’e funny, strange but funny!
There’s one shift with a power dispatcher in his future.
==============
> We know you could replace half a grid with wind and not risk instability.
No you couldn’t, you still need conventional equipment to be there as a backup every time the wind is low. So overall you need to spend more on equipment. And of course wind power is vastly more expensive per unit (hence the subsidies needed to pop it up).
@bart
What is so Catastrophic about Non-Carbon Energy that you are this irrationally panicked by it?
So it’s irrational to worry about the certainty of a massive hike in the cost of energy? And desecration of the countryside and threats to wildlife from windmills ?
Brian, with so many unemployed, you could line them up on stilts to blow the windmills. Though putting them on stationary bicycles to drive generators would probably be more effective.
@Faustino, and that would help with our obesity epidemic (not the one in science funding, I mean the usual one).
Tomcat | March 18, 2013 at 1:44 am |
So it’s irrational to worry about the certainty of a massive hike in the cost of energy? And desecration of the countryside and threats to wildlife from windmills ?
Tomcat | March 18, 2013 at 1:35 am |
“Fossil fuels are not subsidised as such in the US according to the IEA. ”
Except to the extent of defense commitments to sea lanes. Not sure how big that is in the overall picture though.
“It is a progressive shibboleth”
With the above exception, yes. A falsehood knowingly circulated, standard alarmist fare.
And I’m guessing you don’t even see the irony of these two postings by you less than ten minutes apart, shown in aposition?
Desecration of the countryside.. by windmills? So, high tension power line towers are so much prettier? Furnaces and chimneys are so beautiful? Or do you mean they’re sacred? Or healthy?
These threats to wildlife from windmills, this denialist shibboleth, how does it stack up to threats to wildlife from housecats and off-leash dogs? To cars? To utility towers, skyscrapers, chimneys, ozone, smog, aerosol pollutants? Wildlife harm by windmills doesn’t even break into the top ten causes, and net reduces the harm function.
Massive hike in the cost of energy? Let’s see what the experience of windmills has been according to AWEA in the USA:
Oklahoma Gas & Electric, which in a filing in Arkansas, reported cost savings to its customers from the “clean, renewable energy” of its Crossroads wind farm:
“From September 2011 through June 2012, fuel costs to Arkansas customers were approximately $1.2 million lower because of the incorporation of Crossroads into OG&E’s generation fleet. OG&E estimates that fuel savings to Arkansas customers from September 2011 through December of 2012 will be in the range of $2.2 million. Total Company production cost savings for the first five years of operation are estimated to be $268 million. Over the expected twenty-five-year life of the asset production cost, the savings are estimated to be $2.3 billion.“
What’s this? Carbon is the _more_ expensive option, the more wildlife hazardous, and if you think it’s the prettier option your taste in architecture is highly questionable, and your argument is to seek avoiding ‘certain’ massive hikes in energy costs? Well then, you’ve argued _for_ wind.
Vassily | March 18, 2013 at 12:18 am |
> We know you could replace half a grid with wind and not risk instability.
No you couldn’t, you still need conventional equipment to be there as a backup every time the wind is low. So overall you need to spend more on equipment. And of course wind power is vastly more expensive per unit (hence the subsidies needed to pop it up).
The ‘conventional equipment’ that is there as backup every time the wind is low? That would be the same as is there now as part of the grid for every time demand is high and part of the grid is down for maintenance or repair or due being more expensive than the best deal on the grid at the time. That is to say, it’d be that other half of the grid mix that would need to be there anyway even if not for wind.
Grids seldom run at full capacity in the USA. When they do, they generally do at times when wind is at peak efficiency; adding the wind option lowers the overall cost of having extra capacity, so grids become _more_, not _less_ stable for the same cost with wind, where wind is feasible.
I’m not suggesting only wind. I’m not suggesting mainly wind. I’m saying that where subsidies are entirely equalized, where infant industries are not foxed by their well-subsidized obsolete competitors, where subsidies are removed and the playing field is level, and in places wind comes out as the most cost-effective, then it’s pure pandering to special interests to continue to choose more expensive carbon.
So, yes, you can. You still have new conventional equipment, as opposed to expensive, unreliable obsolete equipment that is so old it breaks down without warning and needs massive parts shipped in from offshore because they just can’t produce them in America.
Bart R – when you, generic, put aside the hype and look at this objectively there are no benefits to introducing wind (or solar) into energy grids. They may have limited benefit for personal/small scale use, but until there is a breakthrough in storage, which has yet to be invented, I can’t see how claims of lower energy costs for consumers can be anything but creative accounting..
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/89476/wind-energy-co2-emissions-are-overstated
You always bet against the fake skeptics, of which the prankster Myrrh tops the list. Myrrh is wrong with regards anything he comments on and so is wrong here. See how that works?
Bah, power density. Such fools. Yeah, you.
==============
WebHubTelescope | March 18, 2013 at 8:54 am |
I don’t understand what you mean. I frequently find Myrrh a worthy correspondent.
Myrrh | March 18, 2013 at 6:23 am |
I understand the concerns you express. So many so often make such claims, and back them up with elaborate and qualified argument, it would be difficult to not give these issues the full weight of consideration.
My answer?
Money. The bottom line. Balance sheets. Accountants. Accounts. Audits. Multiple state-regional grids all using wind, all enjoying superior financial outcomes, all rigorously testing their wind farms and related transfer stations and all making substantial financial profits on the ventures.
In the Northwest, they’re up to 23.5% wind power on their grid, and they judge it cheaper and more stable.
The creativity is in the untested claims of the expert doubters; that is a good and worthwhile and necessary role — we need our systems to test for imagined faults and failings, so we need imaginative engineers to suggest faults and failings. However, the true test is the true test, and nothing less.
The true test has shown wind is economical in a wide variety of circumstances, up to significant levels.
And wind and solar are mere infant industries, still with plenty of new efficiencies to be found and exploited. You are right to consider the future and what developments will, if invested in and researched, we will all benefit from. This is the opposite of the situation for carbon, which only uses subsidies — 80:1 the subsidies for solar and wind combined — to entrench a tired and obsolete technology that is profitable enough to pay for its own research.
Bart R | March 18, 2013 at 9:56 pm |
WebHubTelescope | March 18, 2013 at 8:54 am |
Myrrh | March 18, 2013 at 6:23 am |
I understand the concerns you express. So many so often make such claims, and back them up with elaborate and qualified argument, it would be difficult to not give these issues the full weight of consideration.
My answer?
Money. The bottom line. Balance sheets. Accountants. Accounts. Audits. Multiple state-regional grids all using wind, all enjoying superior financial outcomes, all rigorously testing their wind farms and related transfer stations and all making substantial financial profits on the ventures.
So, show me the figures for the Arkansas poster child – what’s the trick here?
Here’s an example from Scotland: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/02/07/warning-wind-farm-subsidies-are-pushing-scots-into-fuel-poverty/
So how is your example, and I haven’t been able to find another, of “Oklahoma Gas & Electric, which in a filing in Arkansas, reported cost savings to its customers from the “clean, renewable energy” of its Crossroads wind farm:” managing to give saving to its customers? This is extraordinarily different from the rest of the industry where the customers are paying ever extortionate costs for this “renewable” greenie milch cow. Let’s see the accounts.
Was this one poster child example manufactured to order because Arkansas was in the process of scrapping tax credits for this greenie milch cow? Or rather, this one poster child example manufactured to order in Arkansas because the whole industry was set to lose its tax credits? The dates fit.
Gosh, it was successful: http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/01/02/congress-votes-extend-controversial-wind-power-subsidies
When the PTC expired in 1999 and wind power had still failed to become cost-competitive, Congress passed a series of temporary extensions. The most recent expired at the end of 2012.
Taxpayers will have to hand over $12 billion to wind power companies in 2013 as a result.
So, show how much the savings really will be for the customers in your example poster child in Arkansas..
Ummm, not.
In keeping with the impressive lead of today’s climate scientists, let’s analyze wind with an eye for detail
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/spatial-and-temporal-correlations-of.html
instead of the clownish absurdity that Myrrrrhhhhh applies.
Fossil fuels are not subsidised as such in the US according to the IEA. It is a progressive shibboleth.
But no one serious objects to either research funding for alternatives – something not being done to any great extent by government. I would suggest a billion dollar energy prize – that would change the landscape.
What we might object to is premature deployment of immature technology.
“Fossil fuels are not subsidised as such in the US according to the IEA. ”
Except to the extent of defense commitments to sea lanes. Not sure how big that is in the overall picture though.
“It is a progressive shibboleth”
With the above exception, yes. A falsehood knowingly circulated, standard alarmist fare.
The arguments are horrendously abstract. There is one argument that matters is a viable business plan that doesn’t rely on subsidies. Discussing technology is one thing – but there is little point in suggesting the technologies are ready to fly unless someone is willing to put the dollars down.
Mind you – I have actually installed solar panels in a PNG village and invested my modest dollars in wind power.
~60 Year Cycle of ~27 Day Terracentric Solar Rotation
A great argument that Obama is about to approve the Keystone pipeline, while making it impossible to build. From Stanley Kurtz at National review Online:
“Bloomberg reports that the Obama administration ‘is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects.’
…
So the Obama administration could green-light the pipeline, file a report that stops short of calling Keystone a major global-warming hazard, and still find the project delayed for years by environmental groups bringing court challenges under the new NEPA guidelines.
In this scenario, headlines loudly proclaiming Obama’s approval of Keystone would shield him from Republican attacks. Simultaneously, the president could mollify the left by claiming credit for guidelines that effectively allowed his allies to stop the pipeline. And that would be right. Obama can publicly ‘approve’ Keystone, while simultaneously handing the left the tool they need to put the project on semi-permanent hold. Environmentalists would take the political heat, while Obama would get off scot-free. Pretty clever.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/343182/did-obama-just-block-keystone-stanley-kurtz
Q. What do you call someone who retards progress?
It depends whether the “progress” under consideration is good or bad for environment/society/business/commons and there will always be disagreement.
Should there be general agreement that such progress is desirable then someone who retards this can only be labelled as self-interested (eg land owner not being adequately compensated) or psychotic.
This action would directly harm the US national security by increasing reliance on oil and beneffiting the Middle East and Venezuela while harming the US’ good neighbor Canada.
It would directly harm US economy by delaying global access to Canadian oil sands, thus increasing US fuel prices and reducing its GDP before replacement fuels can be developed that are less expensive.
This will directly harm the US including environmentalists by lower wages and higher unemployment, directly harming those environmentalists and the poor.
Those environmentalists worship nature and directly cause the greatest harm to the poor.
That is directly antithetical to the Judeo-Christian principles foundational to the Western Civilization.
Peter Lang
“Q. What do you call someone who retards progress?”
A. Rainman. “I’m a very good scientist.”
A. An anti-progressive; a retrograder; a ball-and-chainer; a poverty-entrencher (though you might have been looking for “Obama”).
Faustino,
Excellent letter in today’s Australian. I agree 100%
I read Faustino’s letter on freedom f the press yesterday too.
Good word. ‘stooge.’ )
Peter Lang, A. ‘A platonist,’
Plato on the hill:
It’s ESSENTIAL we arrest that goddam flux, we gotta get
back ter the Golden Age of perfect forms, stop the drift.
Serfs, stay in yer place and do not think. Only we, true
shamen, can interpet the reality behind appearance, we
will tell you what ter think.
Thank you BC for that quote from Plato.
:)
September 1, 1939
by W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Great citation Bart. Why do I keep thinking about climate science and world politics while reading this? Does humananity and the hubris thereof ever change?
Huh.
All this fuss about Auden, when it was merely posted to note the coincidence of the 52nd street with the (often mis-reported) interview a half century later in the same neighborhood of Dr. James Hansen by Bob Reiss:
“When I interviewed James Hansen I asked him to speculate on what the view outside his office window could look like in 40 years with doubled CO2. I’d been trying to think of a way to discuss the greenhouse effect in a way that would make sense to average readers. I wasn’t asking for hard scientific studies. It wasn’t an academic interview. It was a discussion with a kind and thoughtful man who answered the question. You can find the description in two of my books, most recently The Coming Storm.”
So, if CO2 had doubled from 1988 levels (to 700 ppmv from 350 ppmv) in 1988, Reiss asked hypothetically, Hansen answered hypothetically about like this:
Reiss went over to the window with Hansen and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, ‘If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, suppose CO2 doubled. Is anything going to look different down there in 40 years?’
Hansen looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, ‘Well, there will be more traffic.’
Reiss, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then Hansen explained, ‘The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.’
See the teleconnections of the Auden cant and this event?
Peter Lang,
I am preparing a scenario* which will involve Socratic dialogue,
Popper’s Open Society, Hayek (!!1) Nassim Taleb on outliers
and our – human – pro – pen – sity – ter- fergit – our – failed –
pre – diict – ions ( say where is Mike?) I miss his witty hypher-
nated- hyperbol! He and Max Anaker con – trib- ute a sane, –
almost – Montaigne – esque sanity ter Judith’s e – salon.
Judith, of course.is sane and enlightened, ter a high degree!
She also happens ter be bew – ti – ful )
BC
* It will take some time. I shall call it ” A Cowgirl’s Musings on
the Open Society and its Enemies.”
Beth,
Your quote from Plato gave me insight to the source of your spelling. It has Greek roots.
Somewhat related comment: I notice that the EU and Greek Cypriot government has decided to adopt the policy the Australian Government is threatening to introduce in the May Budget – i.e. rob savers’ savings to reduce the government’s deficit (and waste more on climate policies).
Debt which they borrowed at interest from the banking cartel which creates money out of nothing and lends it to goverments who collect the interest from the hoi polloi.
“You are a den of vipers! I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.” —U.S. President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
The money supply, created out of nothing in the fractional reserve scheme sanctioned by governments, is in the private hands of a few banking families which have created a ponzi/pyramid scheme to give other banks a bit of the fraud pickings to keep them on board. Though the banking cartel will throw these oik banks into the sacrificial flames when it suits them.
The EU and euro, and the IMF and World Bank, was set up by them to achieve the same control of sovereign nations which they perfected in setting up their privately owned Federal Reserve.
All taxes payed to the IRS, which is the banking cartels private collection agency, goes to paying interest on the loans the bank makes to the government – which government is complicit in the fraud because it can take control of its own money, which it doesn’t have to lend out at interest..
http://politicalvelcraft.org/2012/09/24/10-ways-youre-being-fleeced-by-the-banking-cartel/
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)
The above quotes and more:
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/Federal%20Reserve%20Scam/federal_reserve.htm
Read the letter to Dear Americans for background, and it’s this banking cartel which now has Europe in its grip – http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
If you could put your salary into your bank account and times it by ten and claim that your 100,000 per annum was now one million, which you could then lend out at interest, or could call the iou from someone borrowing from you to be actual money which again you could times by ten and lend out at interest, you’d soon accrue so much wealth created out of nothing that you would set about buying up the world…
..wouldn’t you?
The EU has taken control of the sovereignty of its member states, it has never produced an independently audited financial account of its dealings. It is run by unelected officials working to the banking cartel.
We’re screwed.
Myrrh,
Do you have a view on CAGW?
Peter Lang | March 18, 2013 at 7:23 am |
Myrrh,
Do you have a view on CAGW?
What is it?
Besides an illusion created by sleights of hand using science terms?
Robber barons all, Peter. Time fer another article by
u and Faustino. Bc
The ‘quote’ from Plato, Peter? Say, plenty more where
that came from, some in rhyming couplets. )
Heh, Bart, Auden ! :)
Beth
If you liked the Auden, then may I commend to you Mark Twain’s, “My First Lie”?
It’s a bit long, but I find it worthwhile.
‘The universal conspiracy of the silent assertion.’ Pretty
unadorned serious commentary fer MarkTwain, I reckon,
Bart. Pervasive consensus behavior.
What about this from Auden?
_
Warm are the still and lucky miles,
White shores of longing stretch away,
A light of recognition fills
The whole great day, and bright
The tiny world of lovers’ arms.
Silence invades the breathing wood
Where drowsy limbs a treasure keep,
Now greenly falls the learned shade
Across the sleeping brows
And stirs their secret to a smile.
Restored! Returned! The lost are borne
On seas of shipwreck home at last:
See! In a fire of praising burns
The dry dumb past, and we
Our life-day long shall part no more.
_
Read the above, and you presume you’ve been reading rhymed verse. But look hard. No rhymes! Huh? Then look harder. Or hear harder.
The first stressed word of the third line in each stanza rhymes with the last of the fourth.
The first and third lines end in consonant rhyme: it’s delicate, but perceptible.
Even more devilish is the way the second line rhymes fully with the front half of the fourth. (In tricky Auden fashion, there’s no caesura in “Across the sleeping brows”, but the ear still picks up the rhyme because of the quantity of the rhyming syllable, sleep-, and the weakness of the surrounding syllables.)
As if that’s not enough, check out the quasi-rhymes of the middle of the first lines and the ends of the third lines. And the fainter consonant rhymes at the end of each caesura in the first line of each stanza: still-miles, invades-wood, returned-borne. Subtle but audible – and he meant to do it.
All very deliberate…and all quite wonderful. And there’s more deliberate music, beyond those half-buried rhymes and assonances. There are metrical intricacies, too, and much attention to syllabic quantity. Note the slight bump in the metre at the penultimate line, with an alliteration right on the bump.
So clever. So pretty. Why does nobody talk about these things?
+1 ter Auden fer imbedded patterns of rhyme and alliteration
less obvious than Tennyson, that seduce the reader in such
a clever way. I love to see how a poem or some other literature
works. Thx fer the analysis, mosmoso.
Beth, I read and half-remembered that piece for years, and never realised there was no conventional rhyme scheme. Finally I checked the line endings. Maybe I should’ve done that forty years before? As you know, I’m not into lit-crit, but the way Auden crams so many musical effects into this short piece just screams out for some comment – and praise!
TonyB and mosomoso, please reflect that Wendell Berry respects the dignity of work, has children, and cares for the future … and his poetry reflects this.
Auden personal life reflected none of Berry’s personal virtues … and Auden’s poetry reflects this lack.
Hence the relevance to climate change: Berry’s poems authorize us to reflect upon the historical development of climate-change physics, and ask ourselves whether future generations will “look on our peace, and rejoice” (per Berry), versus curse our generation for creating “the darkened lands of the earth” (per Auden).
It’s not complicated, eh TonyB and mosomoso?
Fan
So the earnestness and airiness Of berry takes precedence over quality, accuracy and construction?
Quite how you manage to turn this into a statement on climate change beats me though
Tonyb
LOL not “earnestness”, but rather the admixing of “gravitas and levitas” is what chiefly matters in poetry!
Answer The only people who value poetry chiefly for its quality, accuracy and construction are ivory-tower critics … and their graduate students!
By which academic standard, the BOB is a poetic work of superbly ingenious construction, eh mosomoso? Even though BOB says … nothing?
mosomoso, “Why does nobody talk about these things?” Well, in my case because they are much too subtle for me. I might appreciate the overall effect, but never analyse what creates it.
It’s just that in universities and lit-crit circles they produce chaff bags of analysis and comment on poetry, but you’d be laughed at for looking hard at the musicality that makes it work (or not!). I dunno, maybe it’s just me. I’m into nice sound and don’t mind a bit of contrivance to achieve it. When it’s less contrived but still sounds lovely – as with Heine – that’s even better.
Faustino, I’d love a look at your letter to the Oz. I checked the net yesterday but no luck. Some way of pointing us to it?
Mosomoso, some letters recently published in The Australian FYI.
Sent 16/3, published 19/3: Australia is in a drawn-out election campaign in which an appalling government is facing annihilation. This same government is about to rush through legislation under which it would appoint a stooge who will have enormous power over the media. This stooge will be beholden to one of the worst ministers in recent history, Senator Conroy, a fierce partisan with no respect for freedom, due process or the public interest.
There is a great danger that Conroy and his media tsar will attempt to shackle any media coverage which they feel diminishes the ALP’s chances, and that we will not have a free and fair election. Senator Carr decries this approach in Fiji. He and those of his colleagues who wish to maintain their integrity must ensure the withdrawal of this anti-democratic measure.
15/3: I fear that some of your free speech-defending letter writers do not protest enough. Michael Schilling says that “any attempt to control and curtail it should be carefully and thoroughly considered before turning it into law.” John Piper says that we are being offered a compromise “to ensure media diversity and balance.” The ALP government has no interest in diversity or balance, and any attempt to restrict freedom of speech should be summarily rejected.
7/3: I sat across the Cabinet table from Hawke and Keating at EPAC meetings from 1985-91, then worked for Kevin Rudd from 1991-93, so am in a position to endorse much of what Paul Kelly says in his perceptive article (“Hawke’s secret: he knew how to rule,” 6/3). However, while Keating played a great part in the success of the excellent Hawke government, I did not think he was fit to be Prime Minister, and consider that the ALP has gone downhill ever since Keating’s first challenge to Hawke.
Yet the extent of the ALP‘s collapse still surprises me. Like many others who knew Rudd, I did not think he was fit to be Prime Minister, but his successor Gillard has taken us from calamity to utter disaster. It is difficult to see how the party can ever recover.
26/2: Letters, columns and news reports in The Australian have long conveyed serious concerns about threats to freedom of speech in Australia. Yet in that very journal GillianTriggs [Human Rights Commissioner] denies that Australians have such fears (Opinion, 25/2). She also says that, by contrast, we – Australians at large – are “justly concerned that they and their families will be racially abused in a public place,” something which holds no fear for the vast majority of the population, who are neither abusers nor abused.
I fear that, like some in the government, Professor Triggs gives insufficient weight to the critical importance of freedom of speech relative to potential abuses of it, and to abuses of power which flourish in darkness.
*** I do write on other topics too! And sometimes with more restraint.
Faustino. Your letters alone would make buying the Australian a worthwhile exercise! Unfortunately I don’t read newspapers, being on a relatively remote piece of rural real estate and disengaged with consumerism.
Faustino, please do something with your hitherto useless WordPress blogsite and CC your thoughts/letters/posts, etc there so that you may have a following to which I would unashamedly belong?
Peter has a point there. Bestir yourself, remittance man!
Well said, Faustino. I hope you keep the letters and comments rolling in. Of course, there is one subject on which your opinion is not sought, but you have plenty to keep you busy.
Is Conroy the first minister ever to cry over unspilt English milk which may or may not have been irradiated six years before he was born? I was raised not to trust weepers or men who wear brown suits. (I have no explanation for the brown suit thing, but I’ve discovered that blubberers tend to be self-absorbed rather than tender-hearted.)
This is a lengthy nesting and I’m referring to Peter Davies
comment to Faustino re keeping records
Say, Faustino,you would be more aware than I am, that
THE RECORD is our protection against the memory hole
and tyranny of the myth..
The record is what tony b presents in his long climate data
history, farmers’ almanacs, sunspot records, shipping data etc.
I do hope you are putting your career memoirs on the record,
Faustino. Private correspondence, memorandum of details of
decision making give the valuable historical context that public pronouncements do not reveal, may even conceal. )
Yer can tape yer memoirs fer starters, Faustino, if work
interferes with blogging, with writing pertinent letters ter The
Australian newspaper and walking by the purling river, tirra lirra
)…say, what a cheek fer a know – nothing serf ter be fergettin’
her lowly position and givin’ yer advice, bur serfs are like that,
we’re an ignorant lot.
BC
LOL … Mosomoso, for someone who self-professedly “doesn’t want contribute yo tonnage of comment on the works of W. H. Auden” … you haven’t scrupled to do just that — by recycling your own prose — have you?
Mosomoso, you need to let go of delicate Oxford-academic poetry! The sure-cure for “too-pretty too-clever” academic versification is robust Yankee poetry:
Aye, Climate Etc lassies and laddies, that’s solid Yankee poetry for `yah!
It’s okay. That’s as much as I’ve ever written on Auden, just some observations on the musicality of that one piece. I wouldn’t want to change, extend or shorten it by much. So, no danger of tonnage. Thanks for your interest and for your hit on my old site.
As to the Berry piece you quote, you seem to enjoy it. It’s a fine thing to be able to enjoy verses, regardless of what others think of them.
Mosomoso
You have a fine career stretching ahead of you as a diplomat. I am glad fan enjoyed the berry piece.
Tonyb
fan oh fan, if the quality of a poet’s work depended on his living
a conventional model life where would we be? Shakespeare …
‘Fail,’ Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Robert Burns, all ‘Fail,’
Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Rimbaud, fail, fail, fail.
Well, fan, at least we’d still have Wendell Berry.
LOL Beth Cooper, we’d be “stuck” not only with Wendell Berry, together with Carl Sandberg, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams. Not mention Alexander Pope, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Burns, and William Wordsworth!
To use one of Mark Twain’s favorite words: “So-clever so-pretty so-precious academic poetry (like Auden’s) gives me the fantods!”
Fan
Ah! I see now why you drew attention to Auden by referencing the lesser poet, Berry. It must be because Auden was born in York which was of course the centre for Viking rule in Britain during the MWP.
He then moved to Birningham which is the centre point of CET, which as you know demonstrates a warming trend throughout its 350 year instrumental record (what does Dr Hansen say about this warming that predates the start of giss by 200 years?) and finally, Auden was most active during the early 20th century warm period, which in Greenland demonstrates the warmest two consecutive decades in the instrumental record.
Thank you Fan, for pointing out the great relevance of WH Auden to the climate debate where he is able, through his life, to demonstrate that todays warmth is nothing new at all.
tonyb
Williams disdained the poetry of depression and despair:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
As a practicing physician, Williams knew what his poetry was about. As a practicing farmer, Berry knows what his poetry is about. As for academic poets (like Eliot and Auden), they generally have no clue whatsoever as to what they are writing about.
Please, the society of dead poets does not deserve this.
Frost? you haven’t read his letters or his biography. read some of his daughters accounts and the horrors she awakened to.
Williams.. worked himself to death trying to serve both art and mammon.
Coleridge.. addict.
Pope.. hunchbacked freemason
wordsworth, egotistical prick
Smart move Fan, poetry obviously way way more in your domain and skillset than climate.
Fan oh fan, if’n I’ve told yer once w/out exaggeration, I’ve
told yer a hundred times, poetry is about the whole range
of human experience, A ter Z, tragedy and comedy, virtue
and vice. employing a lot of techniques, rhyme rhythm.
metaphor, sound patterns et al as a means ter a total
con – centrat – ion of meaning, part emotion-al, part
in – tellect-ual, it’s an ordered representation to commun –
icate some perception of a partic-u-lar aspect of the human
con -dish-on, fan. Human preferences of course apply.
Censorship is kinda like telling the sea to obey a command…)
Kind regards,
Beth
Beth, poetry like all art more about chaos than order.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4552798-man-s-rage-for-chaos
Grafitti on a bikepath bridge leading to the Isla Vista:
‘THOUGH logic choppers rule the town,
And every man and maid and boy
Has marked a distant object down,
An aimless joy is a pure joy,’
Or so did Tom O’Roughley say
That saw the surges running by,
‘And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey.
Steven Mosher says, 19/3 @11.21 pm.. ‘Poetry like all art
is more about chaos than order.’
I hestitate ter disagree with some one of yer formidable logic
SM but herewith:
Yes I will read the book and yes poetry is ‘about disorder,’…
‘disorderly’ human behaviour and ‘nature’ a word response
by a poet some particular remembering or visualization, eg
Keat’s Ode on a Grecian Urn.
‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time…’
or Roethke’s Root Cellar,
‘Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark.. ‘
Some, even many poems are subversive and employ
subversive processes. Look at the way e e cummings
sets up expectations eg.
in jest
spring…
only to upset them, in language metre, patterning et al.
The process of creating a poem has its disorder also. Its a
process involving impulse, risk, not knowing from that initial
beginning quite whwere it’s going, BUT then it’s also an
ordering, arranging, excluding, creating a form, selecting
from an armory of dramatic elements,to produce what you
hope is not a falsification of reality, but a poet’s ordered,
(out of disorder,) repesentation in which the poet’s perception
stands out more clearly than it does in everyday life.
No room or time here, SM, but you might enjoy reading
Robert Frost’s essay on the process, ‘A Figure A Poem
Makes’. ‘a momentary stay against confusion.’
Beth – who – tries – ter – make – something – that – works –
a – unity.
(My sister is a painter who has work in all our main collections
and her processes in paint are also about an artist’s ordered
making though not a ‘mirror image’ of reality.)
Beth – don’t forget Baudelaire, Villon, Whitman…
“What’s madness but nobility of soul / At odds with circumstance?” Theodore Roethke
Weird Al was of course a parody of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues – but this is my favourite Weird Al song.
Chief,
Weird Al uses an abbreviation of the tune by the singer/song writer Don McLean’s “American Pie” better known as “the day the music died” a tribute to Buddy Holly who died in a plane crash.
Whereas Yankovic parodies Star Wars and the storyline holds together, McLean’s lyrics are more enigmatic, likely a lyrical abstract of his own life, with an occasional nod to the musical talent loss that went down with the plane.
The connection for me between this abstract autobiographical lyrical poetry and weather is the mood within ourselves that each creates. Not any one specific musical passage or turn of a phrase; not any one overcast day or snow flurry, just something that envelopes you and stays for a while.
I wonder if, as we may be touched by the sights and sounds of our every day life, that our perspective on topics, like climate, tempers the information we assimilate, and mood influences our interpretation; it is not all cognition.
If dialogue and understanding are what we seek, the tone of such an endeavor should probably match our objectives.
Learning, for me, is my objective. I am distress when learning is not on everyone’s agenda.
American Pie is a great example of what poetry can bring to us – a gestalt as you suggest. A vision that encompasses life, thought and emotions. If it was easy to explain we wouldn’t need poetry.
Here’s something in the spirit of Wendell Berry – written not 5 minutes ago.
My Grandmother’s Mulberry Tree
The tree filled almost all of the small back yard of my grandmother’s cottage. The trunk was inclined and the branches spread to fill the space. In my mind’s eye both she and the tree are rooted there – both gnarled and rough – arms with immense strength, solidity and endurance. In season the tree would be festooned with children like berry stained ornaments in a misshapen Christmas tree. After – she would turn what was left of the fruit into mulberry pies as I watched impatient but intrigued by the process.
Ultimately we would be piled into the bath with the woodchip heater to be doused and the berry stains perfunctorily scrubbed at. In later seasons I would ring my grandmother on the telephone.
“Hi Nan – it’s me Rob.”
“Rob? Rob’s at university.”
“No Nan – it’s me Rob.”
Much later I realised that she remembered this about me with love and pride – and even now the tears well in my eyes with love and gratitude. Thanks for the pies Nan.
That’s Aussie pie Chief and a nice tale of the importance of family and of love. That’s all that really matters. Years down the track, people will look at this whole AGW debate and wonder what all the fuss was about!
When it comes to the saturation of the absorption of CO2, it seems to me that I can make two statemements, one of which is clearly wrong.
1. There is a limited amount of energy in the spectrum where CO2 absorbs.
2. There is an unlimited amount of energy that CO2 can absorb.
I would argue that, res ipsa loquitur, 1 is correct, and therefore 2 is wrong.
If 2 is wrong then the absorption of CO2 can be saturated.
Where am I wrong?
I just received confirmation that Apr 25 is the rescheduled date for the Congressional hearing where I will testify
We shall all be there, where do we park the charabanc?
Tonyb
That date is not acceptable. It will. have to be rescheduled. It is ANZAC day!
:)
Just booked to go to Anzac Cove on Anzac Day in 2015. The tours are nearly booked already out I’m told. Must remember to take a box or two of tissues. Then a cruise around the Greek Islands afterwards.
Peter Davies,
Are you going to visit Cyprus? Transfer your holiday funds to a Cypriot bank? But a Cypriot bank?
Probably will be visiting Cyprus but will not be transferring any funds to any foreign bank that I can think of! I have paid a 25% deposit to a Turkish travel agency but the balance will not need to be paid until early 2015. The overall cost is quite modest in any case and in fact Turkey is very good value for money compared with other mainland European destinations.
Jim Cripwell | March 18, 2013 at 9:08 am |
Where am I wrong?
In framing the wrong question.
Suppose a hypothetical saturating atmosphere, where all eligible radiation (ie radiation in the bands absorbed by said atmosphere) could be predicted to be absorbed by height X0 from the surface.
It is unlikely X0 exactly corresponds with the total height of the atmosphere. (We don’t, for the purposes of this exercise, need to know much about X0.)
Treating altitude X0 as equivalent to the surface, we know all eligible radiation could be predicted to be absorbed by height X1 from X0, until like the layers of an onion we reach an atmosphere with some Xn where at least some eligible escapes TOA.
As concentration of absorbing molecules increases in a well-mixed atmosphere, every X demonstrably becomes shorter, and the value of n increases, while the atmosphere warms. Of course concentration is measured in terms of volume while X is height and there is certain to be a surface-area dependency term if you work out the details, but the result is mathematically inescapable.
The saturation that would have to happen in some aphysical way is the opposite of what we do see in physics: a limit on absorbtion that renders the atmosphere increasingly transparent to eligible radiation as concentration increases.
Hence, “at current levels” is a needless condition on proof or measurement of AGW of any variety. And while “The Oxygen Catastrophe” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event) is a real term relevant to science, prefixing “Catastrophic” needlessly to a real phenomenon likewise increases the complexity and ambiguity of a much simpler subject, so too ought be dropped.
Log/not on\gol.
============
Bart R. you write “Where am I wrong?
In framing the wrong question.”
OK let me rephrase the question. For the incoming radiation, is there a limit as to how much energy CO2 can absorb?
Jim Cripwell | March 18, 2013 at 12:18 pm |
Whoa. Hold on there, pard. That’s not a rephrasing of the question. That’s an entirely different question.
The answer is, we don’t care.
We’re not near the temperature of Venus, which though it’s further from the Sun than Mercury, is warmer than Mercury, due unquestionably to its high-CO2-concentration atmosphere.
As we don’t have to worry about the limit to how much energy CO2 can absorb in a thermally equilibrating atmosphere until we’re much nearer the temperature of Venus — which no one here appears to be suggesting will happen — it’s an impractical boundary question to explore.
Can you show me a reason why I’d care to answer this new, entirely different question (“For the incoming radiation, is there a limit as to how much energy CO2 can absorb?“), given that we’re talking about real AGW, and not some fantasy version of it?
Thanks, Bart.
Jim Cripwell | March 19, 2013 at 7:01 am |
You’re quite welcome.
So, to recap:
Socrates was an illiterate suicide of dubious character.
Plato’s writings are so riddled with error in the parts that can be validated and verified (i.e. the spectacularly fantastical Natural Philosophy with its four-legged ants and humours and zodiacism) that we cannot rely on anything Plato says in any of his writings such as, say, The Republic.
“At current levels” is a needless, that is to say superfluous, condition in the question you had been posing; absent significant new evidence supporting a different idea, “at current levels” will remain superfluous. We don’t need address “at current levels” again.
Direct instrumental measurement is extraordinarily rare, and therefore not a valid objection, as so much that has no direct instrumental measurement is accepted, and especially due the principles underlying the philosophy of science as set out 300 years ago by Newton.
Climate sensitivity as derived ought be regarded as accurate, or very nearly true, until observation and reason support newer and better measures.
The variable nature of Climate Sensitivity pending initial conditions, to use Tomas’ formulation “Climate dynamics = f (global warming,natural variability)” means we can satisfy no single linear equation for sensitivity, as sensitivity varies with f (global warming,natural variability,initial conditions, time scale)/g(ln(CO2E))), where g is a function of f..
We can agree that X, which you define as CO2 added, has been measured (however imperfectly) many ways through adequate proxies.
While we wish for more robust measures of global temperature, the ones we have — made full use of with full precautions against overconfidence — are fit to some uses, such as correspond to your Y.
The Z value remains a policy question. In decision-making under uncertainty, there are many valid approaches given Z. None of the valid approaches are to pretend we don’t know there is a relationship of X and Y, or to give X exclusion from responsibility for outcomes of Y.
And all of this is just about warming, merely one symptom of a much larger issue.
Bart. What to do? I participate on blogs for my own education. I can put my ideas up, and intelligent people comment. I have learned a lot in the past and hope to learn more in the future.
We had an interesting discussion, even though we did not always agree. I had learned all I was going to. I tried to end the discussion peacefully by putting up a short post with a deliberate error in it. I hoped you would correct my error, which you did, I could say “Thank you”, and that would be that.
For some reason which I do not understand, you chose to continue the discussion. I am not going to participate. From now on, I will ignore you. I am sure this will be of no interest to you, since I am an ignorant non-scientist who does not know his *rse from a hole in the ground.
Bart R
Looks like we agree.
For decades the old model-derived mean prediction for 2xCO2 ECS remained unchanged at 3.2C – almost like an unquestioned “holy writ of dogma” – except for debates on “how fat the tail was” (reminiscent of the old “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” debate of earlier times).
But now there have been a few newer (at least partially observation-based studies, all showing that the likely value is around 1.6C, or half of the earlier model-based estimate.
So I believe we can agree that the moment has arrived that “observation and reason support newer and better measures”, namely those of the recent observation-based studies.
Do we agree?
Max
Bart R
I am aware that Jim Cripwell is not prepared to accept that the latest 2xCO2 ECS estimates are correct, because they are only partially based on empirical data from real physical observations, with assumptions for the natural forcing and variability impacts. (We observe a total change in CO2 and temperature, we assume a natural forcing and variability impact, and assign the rest to anthropogenic forcing, which we then break down into various pieces, including CO2.)
IOW, even though these latest estimates are better than the earlier ones, as they are at least partially based on real observations while the earlier ones are based on model predictions alone, they are still not fully corroborated by empirical evidence in the scientific sense.
But I am willing to provisionally accept their validity until something better (i.e. more empirically based) comes along.
Can 2xCO2 ECS be determined by reproducible experimentation under conditions simulating our planet’s atmosphere?
I do not know the answer to that question, but I cannot imaging that this would be totally impossible (CERN is going to do the same for the Svensmark hypothesis under reproducible controlled conditions simulating our atmosphere, so why should it be impossible for the GHE of CO2?).
I am hopeful, Bart – and if/when we have these empirical data, you and I and Jim Cripwell can agree on the magnitude of the 2xCO2 ECS.
Max
Max, I am afraid you are making a fundamental error. It depends on what use the value of CS is going to be put. If it is a philosophical discussion, which has no impact on world politics, then any old number is good enough. If it is used to waste my taxpayer dollars, trying to solve a problem that does not exist, then I demand an EXTREMELY, ASTRONOMICALLY, high scientific basis before I will accept ANY number.
manacker | March 20, 2013 at 1:17 am |
For decades the old model-derived mean prediction for 2xCO2 ECS remained unchanged at 3.2C – almost like an unquestioned “holy writ of dogma” – except for debates on “how fat the tail was” (reminiscent of the old “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” debate of earlier times).
But now there have been a few newer (at least partially observation-based studies, all showing that the likely value is around 1.6C, or half of the earlier model-based estimate.
So I believe we can agree that the moment has arrived that “observation and reason support newer and better measures”,namely those of the recent observation-based studies.
Do we agree?
We’re getting much closer. The error is mine, for merely paraphrasing Newton, when his words express much more clearly what we ought do when newer and better measures change the picture.
4. “We are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phaenomena as accurately or very nearly true … till such time as other phaenomena occur by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.” (http://philosophynow.org/issues/88/Hypotheses_Non_Fingo)
Is 1.6 a ‘more accurate’ climate sensitivity than any other value? No. We can clearly see 1.6 is an exception, as are negative climate sensitivity values, as are very high climate sensitivity values above 4.5, as might any value in the range be considered.
If we learn only one thing from the excellent words of Tomas Milanovic, it ought be that “But the generic guy unless he is able to get out of the linear thinking will never understand that C=A+B and C=f(A,B) are 2 very different paradigms where in presence of strong coupling the former can never be an approximation of the latter.” However inaccurately characterised.
manacker | March 20, 2013 at 1:34 am |
I am aware that Jim Cripwell is not prepared to accept that the latest 2xCO2 ECS estimates are correct, ..
I am hopeful, Bart – and if/when we have these empirical data, you and I and Jim Cripwell can agree on the magnitude of the 2xCO2 ECS.
Climate sensitivity in a future period depends on the conditions that brought about the climate sensitivity of the current period, and they in turn depend on each other both in the current period and the previous period as well as outside forcings. We can’t say “+/- Natural Variability” because Natural Variability is influence by both temperature and CO2 level in any number of ways, often differing with the region.
The best we can get is that it appears Climate Sensitivity continues to rise over time to some value above the median estimate of 3.4 until some event interrupts a rising temperature trend, at which point the Climate Sensitivity curve falls dramatically before resuming its slow and irregular climb. That’s Fat Tail response, isn’t it?
We don’t have a good way to predict the length between sudden cooling events. Some of them appear triggered by some subset of volcanic activity near the equator with ejecta above the tropopause, which isn’t terribly liable to long range prediction or characterisation.
So Climate Sensitivity remains a “Strange” number.
Jim Cripwell | March 20, 2013 at 9:16 am |
Max, I am afraid you are making a fundamental error. It depends on what use the value of CS is going to be put. If it is a philosophical discussion, which has no impact on world politics, then any old number is good enough. If it is used to waste my taxpayer dollars, trying to solve a problem that does not exist, then I demand an EXTREMELY, ASTRONOMICALLY, high scientific basis before I will accept ANY number.
See how neatly the Strangeness of CS resolves Jim Cripwell’s concerns?
There is no correlation between spending taxpayer dollars and CS. Spending, or preferably not, taxpayer dollars ought be reserved for things that aren’t quite so Strange, perhaps.. or perhaps not, that’s a philosophical discussion.
As you know, I’m not into whether or not increasing CO2E levels or emissions increase global temperature. It results in perturbation, that’s all I need know as perturbation increases Risk and creates Key Vulnerabilities. As these are expensive, and no one pays the cost of these expenses, my issue is pricing CO2E and paying those who bear the Risk and Vulnerability.
BREAKING RESEARCH NEWS: Yet Another Hockey Stick
And for the 100th++ consecutive time, WUWT/ClimateAudit have responded by posting quibbling/smearing/motivistic/conspiracy-theoretic essays that vehemently deny the reality of 20th-21st century “hockey stick” climate-change!
fan of *MORE* discourse: And for the 100th++ consecutive time, WUWT/ClimateAudit have responded by posting quibbling/smearing/motivistic/conspiracy-theoretic essays that vehemently deny the reality of 20th-21st century “hockey stick” climate-change!
I don’t suppose you’d want, in the service of more “discourse”, to quote them exactly and rebut them?
Fan, are some of the models used to attribute this paper the same ones that produce enough non-forced variability to explain all the warming of the last century? Did they determine the oscillation was real? If so what stage are we in? Did they find their error creating the oscillation that isn’t real? If so what was the error? Are they just fudging the oscillation out? If so how do they know the error doesn’t affect the forced response?
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~jsmerdon/papers/2012_jclim_karnauskasetal.pdf
Models prove nothing.
Since the ‘CO2 is plant food crowd’ includes the whole human race, one must distinguish among them as to desire for AGW. Obviously, some climate scientists desire it with all their soul. I’m all for AGW so long as it’s weak enough not to be catastrophic and strong enough to buffer us into the next glaciation. So, you see, you think so exclusively. Sorry ’bout dat.
=========
Hmmmf. This was supposed to go below after willard sneers at the ‘CO2 is plant food’ crowd. That is all of us, of course. Par for the course.
==========
Plants, OK, small mammals, OK, reptiles, OK, medium-sized mammals equatorwards of 30 degrees, not so comfortable.
Jim D wrote: 2Plants, OK, small mammals, OK, reptiles, OK, medium-sized mammals equatorwards of 30 degrees, not so comfortable.”
————————————————————————————
You’re assuming that convection, which removes the vast bulk of heat from the surface in the tropics, is magically going to stay constant as surface temperatures increase?
Jim D
You seem to forget that GH theory (for what it’s worth) predicts that warming will take place primarily in the winter months and at higher latitudes.
Just the places that could use a bit of winter warming, increased crop land surface area, longer growing seasons, improved crop yields, etc. This is an immense swath of real estate, from North America across Europe and Asia, home to hundreds of millions of people.
Adverse impact at lower latitudes have been highly speculative, with some of the ones in AR4 (African crop loss and famine, etc.) shown to be based on bogus data).
So I’d agree with kim – it looks like more “winners” than “losers” within the warming range that is physically possible to reach as constrained by total fossil fuel availability.
Max
LOL … it is sufficient to note that WUWT‘s writers/commenters:
• plainly exhibit the characteristics of denialist demagoguery, and
• studiously ignore multiple independent scientific affirmations of a 20th-21st century “hockey-stick.”
Why else would conservative/citizen-science institutions like Roman Catholic Church, the US military, and global alliances of hunters and fishers all conclude that AGW is real, Matthew R Marler?
Uhhhh … unless AGW is all a gigantic conspiracy, of course!
Kudos to WUWT/ClimateAudit (and their readers) for sustained commitment to exhibiting all 12 traits of denialist demagoguery (plus quibbling as a bonus trait)!
a fan of *MORE* discourse: LOL … it is sufficient to note that WUWT‘s writers/commenters:
Sufficient for what? For baseless calumny?
And relatedly, Do you have a definition of “quibbling”, or some characteristics by which to identify it? Some of the readers at WUWT have graphed all of the data that Marcotte et al submitted with their supporting online material, and so far no one has been able to use those data to produce Marcotte et al’s main graphical claim. Something is clearly wrong, or at least insufficiently documented, perhaps the artificial selection of series by Marcotte et al, perhaps the obscure redating of some of the data (a large majority of the data have been redated, without Marcotte et al describing in detail the redating process.) Is it, in your usage, “quibbling” to point out that the main claim of Marcotte et al is not substantiated by the data that they provide?
Is it “quibbling” to point out that, contrary to its written and recently affirmed policy of requiring the deposit of the computer code, Science magazine accepted and published Marcotte et al without Marcotte et al actually sharing their computer code?
a fan of *MORE* discourse: Why else would conservative/citizen-science institutions like Roman Catholic Church, the US military, and global alliances of hunters and fishers all conclude that AGW is real, Matthew R Marler?
Why? I am the last person to understand the motives behind other people’s decisions.
Would you care to substantiate your claims that the criticisms of the Marcotte et al paper are baseless? I am a lot more interested in the question of whether a statement is in accordance with evidence than I am in the question of whether someone or some many believe the statement.
> Do you have a definition of “quibbling”, or some characteristics by which to identify it?
There you go.
Sorry, MattStat, ICNR.
LOL Matthew R Marler, the specific claim for which you’re requesting evidence is much stronger than that! The specific claim in-question is this one:
… and Climate Etc readers are invited to verify for themselves that this claim is factually correct!
Bonus Assertion Climate Etc readers are further invited to verify for themselves the ongoing WUWT/Willis Eschenbach quibbles regarding the Second Law of thermodynamics!
The comically willful ignorance of demagogic denialism is on full display this week!
Of course, Fan, you realize you’re just tap dancing. You make it fun to be a low down “denialist” practicing the black arts of “denialism.”
Thanks and a tip of the hat to A Fan of *More* discourse!!
willard(@nevaudit): Sorry, MattStat, ICNR.
What does that mean?
A fan of *MORE* discourse: LOL Matthew R Marler, the specific claim for which you’re requesting evidence is much stronger than that! The specific claim in-question is this one:
“For the 100th++ consecutive time, WUWT/ClimateAudit posted quibbling/smearing/motivistic/conspiracy-theoretic essays that vehemently deny the reality of 20th-21st century “hockey stick” climate-change!”
… and Climate Etc readers are invited to verify for themselves that this claim is factually correct!
I’ll have to let you have the last word on that.
> What does that mean?
I believe your question is as fine example of what you were asking, MattStat.
ICNR means “I Could Not Resist”.
Since you had to scratch your head to understand that, here’s what Nick says about all this that may be reconciled with Fan’s point:
> [T]here’s a lot of pointless argument about 20C proxy aberrations, when no-one seriously believes they should be preferred to the thermometer record.
http://moyhu.blogspot.ca/2013/03/my-limited-emulation-of-marcott-et-al.html
Reality might matter more than iconography.
LOL Matthew R Marler, thank you for illustrating the fourth of Trish Roberts-Miller’s Characteristics of Demagoguery:
• 04 motivism,
Please be encouraged to reflect, Matthew R Marler, that sufficient justification to appreciate the reality of AGW is that the mathematics and science of AGW is strong and growing ever-stronger.
Personal and political motivations need not enter — indeed, that’s substantially the point of mathematics and science, eh Matthew R Marler?
Isn’t that why increasingly few climate-change denialists are found among Catholic, military, and nature-loving scientists and mathematicians? For one simple reason: Nature cannot be fooled.
That’s simple common sense, eh Matthew R Marler?
willard(@nevaudit): I believe your question is as fine example of what you were asking, MattStat.
About quibbling? Among other things, scientific knowledge depends upon extreme attention to detail. In the case of Marcotte et al, the data that they supplied online do not support the graph that they produced and the numerous quotes from the authors about “fastest” warming and such. Is it “quibbling” (as I think FOMD asserted) to point that out?
LOL … Moyhu’s blog-spot lays it all out for everyone to see (including run-it-yourself code):
• the climate-change hockey stick blade is real, and
• the instrument record is strong evidence of it, and
• the paleo (Marcott) record is weak evidence of it.
Conclusion Focusing exclusively upon the Marcott “blade” is demagogic denialism strategy #13, eh Matthew R Marler?
If someone says that you’re quibbling, asking for a definition of “quibbling” looks a lot like quibbling, MattStat. You must admit that your response provides circumstancial evidence.
Science is about minute details alright, and the auditing sciences are about minuter details for sure. But are these auditing details really about science? They look to me more about iconography than anything else.
Perhaps we should settle a date between all the interested parties. To make this even more objective, we might try a blind date.
willard(@nevaudit): But are these auditing details really about science?
In the case of the Marcotte et al paper in Science, yes. Despite the publication requirements of the journal, it is not possible to reproduce the graph that represents their main claim from the material that they posted on line. Until they publish their code, thus clarifying what they have done, in line with the Science policy, their claim is not supported by their data.
Back to “quibble”.
Is it a quibble to point out that, as often in the past, a pro AGW editorial board has permitted publication of a paper in violation of its standard?
Is it a quibble to note that the most widely cited claim in the report is not supported by the data?
To me, neither is a quibble.
Will it be a quibble to point out (as may yet happen) that the authors do not share their code with other members of the AAAS? Right now a bunch of us are on tenterhooks.
In case anybody is wondering, this is the policy that so far Science has permitted Marcotte et al to evade:
All data necessary to understand, assess, and extend the conclusions of the manuscript must be available to any reader of Science. All computer codes involved in the creation or analysis of data must also be available to any reader of Science. After publication, all reasonable requests for data and materials must be fulfilled. Any restrictions on the availability of data, codes, or materials, including fees and original data obtained from other sources (Materials Transfer Agreements), must be disclosed to the editors upon submission
MattStat,
However justified might be your indignation, your cheek tone being a sufficient one to me, it won’t hide the fact that something else is going on with these ClimateBall episodes than “we only want Good Science”. For instance, I believe that to speak of a “pro AGW editorial board” does not sound much like this is all about science. And if you think about this, I believe nobody’s for AGW except the “CO2’s plant food” crowd.
Naming and shaming might not be the best strategy to settle a date with anyone.
willard(@nevaudit): However justified might be your indignation, your cheek tone being a sufficient one to me,
Now I am mystified.
On a later point, are you maintaining that the editorial staff of Science is uncommitted on the theory of AGW?
I’m not saying anything like that, MattStat. I’m saying that your remark bears on something else than Science
Speaking of which, it seems that Marcott made the Auditor do it:
> Over the years, I’ve tried very hard to stay away from criticizing articles by young career scientists and to limit my commentary to established figures (Mann, Briffa, Jones, Hansen, etc.) I’m not particularly comfortable with that aspect of the present commentary, though I’m not sure how it could have been avoided, once the article itself got so much play. Marcott unwisely invited this sort of focus by pre-labeling potential critics as a “fully mobilized troll army” and expressing “curiosity” about how potential critics would respond: […]
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/17/hiding-the-decline-the-md01-2421-splice/#comment-405838
Please tell me more about your “We just want better Science”, MattStat.
willard –
Why is that term in quotation marks and attributed to Marcott? Has evidence appeared that he actually said that? Please tell me that the much beloved “skeptic” Stevie-mac didn’t fail to exercise basic skeptical scrutiny before reaching a conclusion.
I implore you, say it ain’t so, Willard, say it ain’t so.