Have you paid into the “public CRU email searchable database” fund?
Have you registered it on Kickstarter?
Obtained the legal rights?
Investigated the legal rights?
Made your own emails publicly searchable?
(Come now, you can’t tell me any doctor of any discipline alive today hasn’t benefited so greatly from the public purse in their education as to not owe the public access to all their correspondence, if you want a public searchable CRU email database.)
There need be no great expense in making the balance of the CRU emails publicly available. No more expense than than the Deep Climate Leaker faced. The real objection is surely the fear/knowledge that more malfeasance would come to light.
It’s a publicly-funded institution, there really is no excuse for the public being denied access to the work-related emails.
(Come now, you can’t tell me any doctor of any discipline alive today hasn’t benefited so greatly from the public purse in their education as to not owe the public access to all their correspondence, if you want a public searchable CRU email database.)
Clever. And disingenuous. It’s not the education of climate scientists at issue here, it’s the work they do for their jobs.
They are just chipping in. If you were a researcher and a major organization on your field was about to “move big”, you would also follow similar deadlines. There is no need for conspiracy on everything (or anything, really), we are not them.
Having just reviewed Judith’s post on (Ir)responsible advocacy by scientists, After Climategate, Himalayan melt impacts, I would like to express my admiration for her all over again.
Despite all the personal attacks people in her position get, she has decided she will pursue science, real science unpolluted by societal trends, to wherever it goes, at whatever personal cost. Thank heavens that we have people like Judith, even if we don’t have quite enough of them. Roger Pielke Jr. also falls in this category, I’ve seen him get smeared by the likes of Chris Fields on TV, and I saw his emotional reaction. But he kept his cool, stated the science, instead of reacting in kind. His analyses of historical records of damage from tornados and hurricanes is crucial to a full and unbiased understanding of historical trends, not available anywhere else. Hats off to those scientists who do what Judith and Roger do, despite all the personal abuse they get.
Let me illustrate for readers how widespread personal abuse has gotten, from the top to the bottom us US civil society.
Normally I keep my mouth shut about my understand of the science, which I read about on a daily basis, but at a party a month or so ago, a friend said that sea levels might rise 3 feet by 2060. I know that the recent science says about this, and this was a friend, so I unwisely said that there was good news, that sea levels weren’t going to rise anywhere near that much. Here is an account of the hell that broke lose, ending up with a former diplomat pointing his finger in my face:
——-
Let’s talk about personal ad hominem attacks.
My first experience on the receiving end of personal ad hominem attacks occurred last weekend. Usually I know enough not to say anything about global warming, but when a friend who was in attendance said that sea level rise was getting worse, we can now expect sea levels to be 2 to 3 feet higher by 2060, I responded (before I could catch myself) that the best and the newest science about Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise suggested that Greenland might add around 5 inches by 2200; and without much contribution from Greenland, you can’t get too much over one foot, that that would be early in the next century, not 2060.
All hell broke loose.
My friend said that Antarctica is melting, look at the breakup of all the ice sheets. I reminded him that when floating ice shelves melt, it doesn’t contribute to sea level rise, and that the ice sheets on the mainland aren’t contributing a pittance to sea level rise at present.
Then my friend’s wife mentioned the tragedy of increasing sea ice melt in the Arctic and asked me if I denied that. I agreed it was melting, but pointed out that 6,000 years ago, the Arctic wasn’t just lower in sea ice, but ice free for enough of the summer that Scandanavian scientists had found on the NW shore of Greenland unique patterns on the shore indicating the presence of large waves, which can only happen when there is NO sea ice — and that we survived that.
The shots were coming from all sides, but without getting angry, I returned fire with better armaments (knowing the science).
Then it was my friend’s turn again: he said that 1/3 of Bangladesh would be under water. I responded that Bangladesh is actually ADDING land mass in the last several decades, even with the one foot sea level rise of the last century, because of the huge deposition of glacial soils from the glacial rivers that empty there.
Back to my friend’s wife, who said, OK, but with world populations so high now, sea level rise will be so much worse. I agreed that sea level rise will impact coastal populations, but that the point of my original comment is that whatever the impacts, they will be smaller.
My friend said that low lying islands would get drowned, creating environmental refugees. I pointed out the science that shows that during the last 40 years, when sea levels rose several inches, that about 85% of the low lying Pacific islands in a recent study either ADDED land mass or didn’t lose any. People naturally asked about that, and I explained the process — when sea levels rise, storms deposit coral rubble on the island, when sea levels fall, wind erodes the rubble down to about 5 feet, so the islands stay about that level over time.
My friend’s wife talked about Alaska losing land. Here, I agreed that with less sea ice, wave action is indeed crumbling low lying silty lands on the NW part of Alaska, and that surely much more land must have been lost during that period of no sea ice in late summer in the Arctic, around 6,000 years ago, but I agreed that at least one village of about 200 people was in the process of a necessary relocation.
But what about the wildlife, she asked? Wildlife can move northward (and is) and can move up a mountain, I replied. (I should have pointed out the truly massive relocation that occurred when most of Canada and Scandanavia was under 2 miles of ice.)
So far it was just my friends, who know I don’t say anything about climate change without being able to back it up. They don’t get angry with me, either.
But now we come to the former diplomat, failing to be diplomatic — one of the strangers at the party.
He said we need to be leading the world and that it was criminal the way we keep increasing our greenhouse gases. I pointed out that the US has actually be reducing our CO2 emissions, because of shale gas, while the EU has been increasing them lately because of replacing nuclear with coal. I also pointed out that whatever we do, China and India will continue to dwarf our effort.
He got angry and maintained we have to lead. I asked him if reducing our GHGs in ways that other western countries don’t is leadership. He said that the reason we are reducing CO2 emissions is because of the new regulations on emissions from cars that Obama put in place. I told him that those regulations don’t go into effect until 2015 or 2016, and that the reduction is CO2 from the transportation sector in the US was a reaction to higher prices of gasoline the last 7 years or so. This again increased his anger. Throwing undisputable facts on the fire makes it grow higher; pointing out that someone’s suppositions — made up in the moment — are wrong makes the person angrier.
Finally, he pointed his finger at me, told me I was wrong, that 97% of the scientists were right and I was wrong. Despite his undiplomatic behaviour, I simply rewound the spool and pointed out that all of this started when I merely pointed out that the best and most recent science has now shown undeniably good news for us, that Greenland was going to contribute very little to sea level rise, and that was going to mean that sea levels were going to rise pretty little, relative to recent projections in the media. I pointed out that I agreed that CO2 warmed the climate and that we were going to see a warmer world, I wasn’t a “denier.” I just found it good to know that things weren’t going to be nearly as bad as supposed by some, based on the best science available on Greenland ice melt.
This didn’t do much to calm him down, but we changed the subject. Being a diplomat, he acted better from thereon out, but left the party early, and didn’t offer to shake my hand.
One solace is that my wife thought I defended myself quite well, contained my emotions, and from any reasonably neutral standard, won the debate by a mile. (Usually when a stranger wags his finger in my face, I don’t act like a teacher with a poorly behaved child and go on as if it didn’t happen, but I did so here.)
Another source of solace is that I felt quite good about myself, usually I just let climate change discussions go on without me, staying silent until the subject passes, suppressing my usual interest in sharing science with friends — so I felt liberated.
My worry is that our hosts, who were preparing food and heard the emotional level of the talk but not the substance, might be less inclined to invite us back. That would be a disappointment to both my wife and I, but that is the risk you take today in opening your mouth about climate change.
I was at one point ‘one of the biggest tech geeks in the world’, according to the hyperbolic rhetoric of my circle of friends and family at the time — who really didn’t have a clue how big the world was, or how much tech they’d never heard of — and yet when cute girls at parties said in passing how smart Bill Gates was, I smiled and nodded and just let it go.
Because I am not a giant jerk who ruins parties, or confuses chitchat with scientific dialogue.
You can’t cite references at parties in any meaningful way (at least, not without some hot hardware and a good wireless connection, and I don’t get the impression that’s the scene your crowd is into); you can’t demonstrate the math with a drink in one hand and a canapé in the other; it’s not the right place. Discretion, judgment and the ability to remember what’s important in the moment.. all of these inform me that your narrative is just an attempt to propagandize a failure of social intelligence.
I recommend buying flowers for the hosts, and writing heartfelt individual letters of apology to each of your friends, to try to salvage both your valuable relationships and some shred of dignity.
And don’t point out to them how right you still are.
I have been button-holed at Parties and at Boy Scouts camp out to explain evolution to people of a religious bent. Many of the people strongly suspect that the position they get in scripture.
I like to point out the presence of two, compatible, creation events
Genesis 1:25-27 (Humans were created after the other animals.)
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image…. So God created man in his own image.
Genesis 2:18-19 (Humans were created before the other animals.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Genesis 1:27 (The first man and woman were created simultaneously.)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 2:18-22 (The man was created first, then the animals, then the woman from the man’s rib.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them…. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Its a bit like talking to Thermodeddonists like you and Josh, asking how you explain the 1900-1975 period, without magic.
Bart, this is what I have come to expect from you. Unfortunately for you and all of us.
Not engaging with actual issues.
Lecturing (whether it is Steve Mosher or me or someone else) on what we need to do after the sins we have committed. In my case, the sin of actually engaging a friend on an issue of importance to all of us.
I take it from your response that one should never engage on such an issue, because….well because it would be impolite to talk about reality when someone brings up what has become known as a fantasy.
You epitomize the problem, Bart. You don’t care what someone says factually, you don’t care that someone spends a great deal of time over the years trying to understand what is really going on with regard to what might be a very important issue for the world. Whether that person is Roger Pielke Jr, Judith, or on a much lesser scale, me.
No, you don’t engage on the level of science. You just lecture someone whose views you don’t agree with.
You are the equivalent of the tea party, just on the opposite side. Like them you know the truth and close your ears to science based argument that doesn’t agree with your preconceptions. The only difference between you and the tea party is that you have opposite beliefs, but you are very similar in the way you hold to your beliefs no matter what, no matter how much new science we learn.
“You can’t cite references at parties in any meaningful way (at least, not without some hot hardware and a good wireless connection, and I don’t get the impression that’s the scene your crowd is into); you can’t demonstrate the math with a drink in one hand and a canapé in the other; it’s not the right place. Discretion, judgment and the ability to remember what’s important in the moment.. all of these inform me that your narrative is just an attempt to propagandize a failure of social intelligence.”
You need to hang out with a more intelligent crowd.
“No ad hominem attacks, slurs or personal insults. Do not attribute motives to another participant.
Snarkiness is not appreciated here; nastiness and excessive rudeness are not allowed.”
Bart:
Then you are an ingrate and a leech.
Because I am not a giant jerk who ruins parties, or confuses chitchat with scientific dialogue.
Which is why I so closely endeavor to adhere to the hosts’ rules of engagement and theme.
##############
personally, I dont endeavor to adhere to Judiths rules. sorry.
weird that there are people who think they do, when they don’t.
Maybe Bart had a typo and meant to write
“Which is why I so closely endeavor to violate to the hosts’ rules of engagement and theme.”
Odd that folks who seem so insistent on telling others how they should behave cant abide by their own rulz.
PS, you are all free to say any horrible things you want about me. I’ll take your comments under advisement.
When I’m feeling sociable (which I know 10% of denizens will mistake for socialist, I’m guessing because they aren’t terribly good at the former and don’t know when they’re being the latter), I hang out with a sociable crowd.
When I’m in a mood to tolerate boors and misfits, I’m quite content to hang out with a more intelligent crowd that excludes fun, interesting people with actual manners.
When I’m feeling sociable (which I know 10% of denizens will mistake for socialist, I’m guessing because they aren’t terribly good at the former and don’t know when they’re being the latter), I hang out with a sociable crowd.
so, when you’re feeling sociable and put aside your moralizing and refrain from calling people ingrates, and stop your whining about wanting to get paid for the air, you hang out with a sociable crowd… really, tell us about the one time that happened.
That’s right Bart. People who “think” like you can just blurt out ridiculous untrue statements and that is ok, but no one can ever point out that they are mistaken.
I was so put off by WUWT’s deceptive practices in my original contacts with it in its earlier days that I shook the dust of the place from my sandals and swore never to return.
I’m sure it doesn’t miss me, any more than I miss it, but I do my best to avoid it.
Which is becoming harder and harder, lately, with imbedded links to WUWT that disguise the destination.
Say. Do you think that might have something to do with the blip upwards in traffic?
I guess I’ll never know, if it means spending even a half second digging through more WUWT lies.
This one was pretty funny:
“Yep, at 25.9 degrees outside. The “Airport UHI” demon is irrepressible. It took a huge deep breath and blew all the hot air from the building twenty meters or more, right into the Stevenson screen and bulls eye – it hit the thermometer.” http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/08/anthony-watts-visits-greenland-and.html
lolwot – I can only conclude from that dig at the WUWT airport post that you believe an airpost is a suitable location for a thermometer intended to inform us about global warming?
If you think a party is about being right or wrong, then you’re doing party wrong.
Just imagine how much fun DocMartyn | August 10, 2013 at 10:50 am | is at parties.
Btw, one of the reasons for avoiding talking shop at parties is that it’s so hard to get things right in a party environment, even as simple as understanding the other side’s premise.
Btw, Thermodeddonist implies I either care much about temperature (compared to, say, the other 49 essential climate variables, or my wallet), or that I am concerned with predictions of doom; I’ve been explicit and at great length and repetitive in explaining that these do not interest me, to the point even a child of five could grasp it.
I can’t speak for others; I can say, for myself, my point is that dumping CO2E wastes hits me in the pocketbook without my consent and without compensation to me, and I want my money back.
As predicted and expected, it is a lecture about what someone else does wrong, and about how he, Bart, has the correct solution for us lesser folks. No engaging on actual issues, that might expose possible holes in his belief system.
Mr. Tea Party of the left calls me an ingrate and a leech, for the sin of engaging what a friend said.
I am happy with my friends, and I am happy to report that because we are friends, no adverse fallout came our way from them. I worried at the time, as noted, but both the hosts and our other friends at the party have reached out. They understand and like me, thank goodness, even if they wonder how I can have the views I have. The former diplomat, not so much, he knows what he believes, he knows that people on the other side deserve fingers in their faces. Just like Bart.
Yes, I long for the days when we could discuss something, and disagree without being disagreeable.
“kim | August 10, 2013 at 11:37 am |
Weather was the classic icebreaker, but now that it’s turned into politics and religion, we have a problem, Houston.”
Well it has been raining all morning in Houston, I got wet cycling to and from work this morning.
> The former diplomat, not so much, he knows what he believes, he knows that people on the other side deserve fingers in their faces. Just like Bart.
Whatever the politeness of this sentence, John, it is still works like any kind of sentences that uses guilt by association. The calmness of your tone does not erase the function of this association, which conflates somebody who was lost for words (your diplomat) and somebody who dismissed your interjection as unworthy of any reply (Bart R). Nor does the vividness and dignity of your story obscures the fact that it basically amounts tone trolling.
That said, I must admit that I liked reading it, and that your diplomat does seem to have acted in a suboptimal way.
***
Your parabole seems to provide an argument to Judy’s solemn stance. I already provided many (I mean many) reasons to be cautious about what you make your interpretation.
How could we settle this disagreement while maintaining a decorum that even Solomon would applaud?
Since people are clamouring for an address of John’s manifold and gross errors of fact, while overlooking his manifold and gross errors of social grace, here goes.
As he provides no citation for his mythical 5″ Greenland melt by 2200, it’s not really possible to much explore. I can find no scholarship making such a claim, so I can’t really appraise the validity of it. Other than this appears to fly in the face of every study I can lay my hands on about the topic.
Antarctic? Antarctic isn’t expected to melt so much (as the continent is much colder than either Greenland or the Arctic) as weaken and slough off ice from its coast at an increasing rate, forming a grinding conveyor of continental ice onto the sea — which doesn’t need to melt to raise sea levels, what with 90% of sea ice being below sea level, new sea ice is 90% new sea level rise.. But it does melt along the edges of the ice, and at its bottom, making way for more sloughing of continental ice.
GRACE data tends to confirm this conveyor, as does pretty much all the available data. If anything, claims about the Antarctic contribution to sea level appear too conservative.
The Arctic 6,000 years ago is relevant how, again?
Oh, that when the tilt of the Earth was exactly at the angle that would result in the maximum Arctic melting under normal conditions and 280 ppmv CO2, we saw an effect much like we expect within a few decades at most, at 400+ ppmv CO2? Well, that’d be interesting, when the Earth tilts so much we’d expect an Ice Age.. in 20,000 to 30,000 more years, if the CO2 level falls back to 280 ppmv by then.
This “we” that “survived that” John speaks of. Does he have any literature describing how that survival thing went? Any evidence at all? Not that “that” was so similar to “this”, and I’m not overly concerned with the “survived” part so much as the “expensive and unconsented” part, but I’m curious if his omniscience extends so deep.
Bangladesh is a river delta. Gaining silt in the river mouth is not gaining land, it’s losing navigability and requiring costly infrastructure development.. which will be washed away when sea levels rise, requiring new costly infrastructure development. But sea level rise isn’t among the most pressing risks of climate change Bangladesh is facing right now, today, or expecting to need to cope with every day going forward while CO2E continues to elevate in level.
The glib dismissal of habitat loss with “Go North, young malaria mosquito,” really captures the just-not-getting-itness of this whole fiasco of an exchange, whether about manners or science or just not being an embarrassment.
The whole Pacific islands Rube Goldberg homeostasis hypothesis is too flakey to say much about, except what a happily pronoiac world we live in, that the pure coincidence of flotsam and jetsam exactly balancing loss of habitable land ends up exactly where islanders’ feet will tread, as if blown by the breath of a friendly personally present God. Very moving. Utter twaddle.
After bearing up to the barrage of nonsense John uttered to his gullible friends who think he can back up what he says about climate, it’s hardly a wonder that any adult present might find it worth speaking up. As we have only John’s version of events, and we’ve seen he is an unreliable narrator, it’s difficult to judge this part of the debacle. Sure, the world has George Bush to thank for so weakening America and crashing the economy that there was some drop in demand, and there was a happy coincidence of switching from coal to natural gas while a paralyzed Congress was too distracted and defective to get in the way of business like it usually does, but I’m not particularly addressing the shortcomings of former diplomats today.
If there’s a citation to this wonderful Greenland unicorn study, I’d like a chance to see it, and share the joy John says he has to spread.
Greenland can over time contribute up to 7 meters to sea-level and with CO2e getting towards 1000 ppm by 2200, and Arctic sea-ice struggling to form even in winter, it will be unsustainable and in full irreversible melt mode by then. This is not something to brush off, and given the Arctic’s ability to surprise us with its recent speed of change, this could all happen a lot earlier.
Re new estimates of Greenland’s now reduced contribution to sea level rise during the Eemian. Here is Andrew Revkin’s blog on the subject and on the article:
From the press release you can also blow up the Figure discussed in the next paragraph.
In the Figure at the top of Revkin’s blog, you can see that temps were 6 to 8 degrees C higher than today in Greenland from about 127,000 to about 120,000 years before present, 7,000 years.
Here is a quote from the article’s lead researcher:
“Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen….”
From here, the math is simple. If Greenland contributed less than half of 4 to 8 meters of sea level rise, relative to today, that would be less than half of 2 to 4 meters, so let’s call it 3 meters. Let’s also ignore the 8,000 years in the Eemian when temps were ramping up to or down from the plateau of 7,000 years of 6 to 8 degrees C, let’s say that all of the 3 meters occurred during the highest temperatures of the 7,000 year period.
3 meters = 10 feet = 120 inches. Divide by 70 centuries (7,000 years) and you get less than 2 inches a century.
Play with the numbers all you like, it is a couple of inches, give or take a centimeter or so, per century, and it requires a great deal of heat to make it happen.
One small caveat: back in the Eemian, there weren’t black carbon emissions falling on ice caps and glaciers, at least not from the daily use of diesels and from wintertime residential coal use in places like China, with no pollution controls. So it is possible that we might also have a small contribution per century to sea level rise from this modern source of warming ice caps. This is one reason so many people want to focus on black carbon in the short term, in part because reducing black carbon emissions will have an immediate impact, and in part because it seems easier politically to reduce black carbon emissions than to reduce CO2 emissions.
Finally, here is a Nature commentary on the subject, which says that the total contribution to sea level rise from Greenland during the Eemian was 2 meters, not the 3 meters I have used.
You will note that the “worrisome” issue mentioned in the commentary is that Antarctica must have contributed more sea level rise during the Eemian than previously estimated. I would agree that this would be worrisome, IF I thought humanity would be stupid enough to warm the planet without interruption for many thousands of years. But I’m betting on no more than two centuries.
Of course, whether Bangladesh adds or loses land depends not just on deposition of glacial silts, but also on the rate of sea level rise.
That is why the good news on Greenland’s meager contributions to sea level rise, and thus only small (~ one foot) sea level rise this century, is also good news for Bangladesh. If sea levels don’t rise much more this century than last, Bangladesh will likely continue to gain land.
“When floating ice shelves melt the land ice behind them slides faster into the ocean. Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise.”
Yes, the issue is well known qualitatively. The question is at what point will this process get into motion. My reading is that a couple of centuries of 2 degrees C warmer than today won’t produce such slides into the ocean, either in Greenland (where it had previously been hypothesized, but recently rejected after rigourous inspection of the grounding of major glaciers) or in Antarctica, where modest warming actually increases snowfall in the interior, thus adding to Antarctica’s ice mass.
I do agree that during the Eemian, with the 7,000 years of exceptional warming (6 to 8 degrees warmer than today), that there must have been substantial amounts of some of Antarctica’s ice sheets adding to sea level rise. If sea level was 4 to 8 meters higher in the Eemian than today, and Greenland contributed 2 or 3 meters, most of the rest must have come from Antarctica.
The question is whether smaller warming, for a couple of centuries, might cause important Antarctic ice sheets to contribute to sea level rise. My read of the science on this question is “no.”
Why didn’t the 134 contributors to the paper think of that?
Oh. Because it makes ZERO sense.
The authors, actual experts who got their paper peer reviewed and published and study this professionally never thought of 5″ because an assumption of equipartition is unwarranted. It is most likely an extreme sigmoid shape represents the ice loss in Greenland, with much of the melt occurring in the first one percent of the time under consideration. Not 70 centuries, but 0.7 is far more plausible.
What’s 120/0.7?
Further, we’re still talking about only one single ice core taken from the part of Greenland most impervious to melt, hence most reflective of the minimum ice loss expected. Without many more proxies from areas more representative of the whole — which it would be hard to find, as they’ve by and large melted — we have very great uncertainty, and so taking an average of half of an expected value in a large range is extremely deceptive.
And you confound a Nature commentary with a Nature published article, as somehow authoritative? All eight meters from Greenland is just as plausible as only 2 meters, absent significant additional analyses of Antarctic and nonpolar other ice cores.
And you did this at a party with people you call friends?
What do you do to people you don’t like?
John | August 11, 2013 at 11:12 am |
Bangladesh is pretty screwed up either way.
Silt choking up river deltas is normal and natural and an old story in almost every river mouth. It has to be dealt with, sometimes by dredging, sometimes by adaptation, and sure, more land — if it’s land, not dead mud clogging up and killing sea life without providing sufficient foundation for farming or building on — sounds pretty good. But that’s a big ‘if’.
Since silt doesn’t settle significantly above sea level, all the ‘gained’ land is irrelevant, as a sea level rise, which could be anywhere from a foot by 2060 to two meters by 2100, will undo it all, leaving a larger coastal dead zone that remains dangerous to navigate. And since that range of possible sea level rise is so large, there’s no way to know what infrastructure solution is the right one to choose, making the cost of addressing the changes higher.
How does anyone deal with the level of complexity of the case with a drink in one hand and a cupcake in the other?
John | August 11, 2013 at 11:22 am |
Your reading of ice?
Ever live on ice?
Ice has that funky and almost unique quality that at its freezing point it expands to be less dense than its liquid form. That’s why it floats. But as it gets colder, it does get denser and denser, as well as harder.
Antarctic land ice is the largest ice cube on the planet; if it’s getting a few degrees warmer, it’s softening and expanding. The softer it gets, the lower peaks it can maintain and the flatter it spreads out. The more it expands, the wider that flatter expanse of land ice gets. It already essentially covers all the land, so every bit of expansion results in new sea ice. The new sea ice is 90% below the water line, so is 90% contributing to higher sea level. That’s not counting all the other effects of the warming of the Antarctic sea ice.
Did you cover this question at your party?
Maybe smushed down on the cupcake to show what’s happening to the Antarctic?
John | August 11, 2013 at 12:14 pm |
Adding rubble and debris may be ‘growing’ land, but it isn’t a remedy for sea level rise, as for the most part the new grown trash piles are only at sea level, so will sink again, and do not lift the rest of the actual land in customary use, which also will find itself below sea level, and turned to trash. Which might ‘grow land’ elsewhere, but again, it’s still just flotsam and jetsam and debris until labor and capital are invested in it to reclaim it. It’s a liability that is growing, not a benefit.
Antarctic land ice is the largest ice cube on the planet; if it’s getting a few degrees warmer, it’s softening and expanding.
Now tell us how long it takes for that few degrees at the surface to soak into the ice to a sufficient depth to make a significant contribution to this effect.
Bart R, I don’t need to do the math to know that it’s an extremely slow process – and that’s assuming that the surface temperature does in fact increase by a few degrees.
Of course, you can always try to prove me wrong by doing the math – which is only fair seeing you made the original assertion without quantifying it.
The Antarctic is full to the top with land ice. Every bit of warming immediately affects that ice at the top like protracted low-temperature popcorn, and pushes it over the top and onto the sea. This is going on now. This is all that record high Antarctic Sea Ice you’re hearing people talk about. Right now. Today.
Will this take a long time to get all the way to the point the Antarctic isn’t full to the top of ice?
Not sure which is the more spectacular failure: that you thought you were polite, or you don’t get just how much better understood you are than you understand yourself.
Bart R, you come along sprouting your wild fantasies, with nothing in the way of facts, figures or citations to back anything up, then you have the effrontery to throw insults at anyone who calls you on it.
FYI, the Antarctic surface temperature varies by many tens of degrees between summer and winter – are you suggesting that the ice overflows into the sea like some strange popcorn machine every summer and then shrinks right back every winter? Get real!
And as for your nonsense about sea ice coming from land ice?
THINK HARDER!!!
Bart R, If you had a disk of ice the size of the Antarctic ice sheet, and you warmed it up by a full ten degrees, the radius of the disk would increase by roughly two millimetres!
So much for your popcorn fantasy!
So what’s the explanation for the sea ice? Ever hear of water freezing?
Correction to the above: (I took the cube root of the difference in volume rather than the difference between the cube roots of the volumes) the radius of the disk would increase by around five metres – so that would be the size of Bart’s ‘popcorn effect’, assuming that increase wasn’t completely swallowed up by cracks, fissures etc
Still absolutely nothing to write home about.
John writes:
“My friend said that Antarctica is melting, look at the breakup of all the ice sheets. I reminded him that when floating ice shelves melt, it doesn’t contribute to sea level rise, and that the ice sheets on the mainland aren’t contributing a pittance to sea level rise at present.”
Uh John,
When floating ice shelves melt the land ice behind them slides faster into the ocean. Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise.
Geez. Maybe you should invite them back to dinner to apologize for being wrong!
“When floating ice shelves melt the land ice behind them slides faster into the ocean. Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise.”
Yes, the issue is well known qualitatively. The question is at what point will this process get into motion. My reading is that a couple of centuries of 2 degrees C warmer than today won’t produce such slides into the ocean, either in Greenland (where it had previously been hypothesized, but recently rejected after rigourous inspection of the grounding of major glaciers) or in Antarctica, where modest warming actually increases snowfall in the interior, thus adding to Antarctica’s ice mass.
I do agree that during the Eemian, with the 7,000 years of exceptional warming (6 to 8 degrees warmer than today), that there must have been substantial amounts of some of Antarctica’s ice sheets adding to sea level rise. If sea level was 4 to 8 meters higher in the Eemian than today, and Greenland contributed 2 or 3 meters, most of the rest must have come from Antarctica.
The question is whether smaller warming, for a couple of centuries, might cause important Antarctic ice sheets to contribute to sea level rise. My read of the science on this question is “no.”
Just a reminder that the floating ice shelves hold the glaciers that feed them back, so it’s not the ice from the floating ice shelves that add to sea level rise, but the increased flow from the glaciers behind them that do.
How does something that floats, and is exposed to open sea at one end, hold a glacier back? Glaciers flow, as far as I know, and reshape the countryside as they do, in some cases.
I’ve seen rocks hundreds of metres high, apparently transported by glaciers, and dumped when the glacier vanished. Surely floating ice won’t hold a glacier back.
Are you sure floating ice can stop a glacier flowing?
What do you call it when you hold back the course of a river? That’s right, a dam
Does that stop the upstream river from flowing? No
Same thing with glaciers – only in slow-motion
Are you talking about grounded glaciers? These do not have their flow restricted by the “grounding” below sea level. You will note that the base of a glacier sits on the “ground”. Whether the “ground” is below sea level or not does not affect the flow rate of the glacier overall (with the usual caveats, of course).
The floating portion of the glacier is no longer grounded. The portion of the glacier situated on the “ground” will move no faster if the floating ice shelf breaks off (which it does from time to time).
Mike Flynn,
This is an observed phenomenon, as an ice shelf collapses, the glacier behind it speeds up. This was observed with the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf.
There seems to be some differences of opinion between glaciologists as to whether ice shelf “collapse” (sounds far more impressive than a glacier “calving”, doesn’t it?), results in increased basal glacier speed upstream.
Depending on the reasons for calving, it may appear that a surface speed increase has occurred after the calving, rather than precipitating it by a complicated series of events. In any event, actual research on surface and base flow speeds, combined with interferometric radar observations of the calving front, indicate that at least for the glaciers studied, upstream speed showed no increase after calving events.
NASA, and some others, just make a bald assertion that an increase in speed and thinning is attributable to ice shelf loss, and nothing else. They also measure surface speed, which tells very little about ice movement in total. Glaciology is not as simple as one might think.
There is some merit in your argument if it can be shown that the friction on the sides of the ice shelf is sufficient to demonstrate a damming effect by raising the surface of the glacier/shelf interface. This does not seem to be the case, in spite of sophisticated measuring equipment available to NASA.
Well – if he is good-looking, then he must have mistaken beliefs because women have lied to him. Just ask Wills – one of the leading lights of “skeptical” thought.
Willard, thank you, but I am no longer young, never was tall, and was good looking only in the distant past.
This was my first experience on the receiving end of personal ad hominem attacks because it was the only time I have broken the rule of not saying anything that was remotely outside tribal beliefs on warming. I usually won’t do such a thing. But, as noted, it was a friend who made the outlandish comment that Greenland would contribute up to 3 feet by 2060 — and excellent illustration of how well the PR machine has worked, BTW. Because it was a friend, who I knew wouldn’t flame me, I made the mistake of bringing up the latest actual science (although there are other scientific articles of late which also point to much lower Greenland contribution to sea level rise, which I haven’t brought up here, yet, as the Nature article on the Eemian says it all very well).
Steve, yes, the shale gas revolution had produced so much natural gas, that prices have fallen so low, that it is now cheaper to use natural gas than coal in some areas of the US to produce electricity. That causes a big drop in CO2 emissions. If and when natural gas prices recover a bit, there might be a bit of a switch back to coal. But many coal plants are now being retired because it is too costly for them to meet the new environmental requirements under the Obama Administration, so there might come a time, a decade or so from now, when there might not be enough coal capacity remaining to go substantially back to coal when natural gas prices once again rise. At that point, the reduction in CO2 emissions from the electricity sector will be permanent.
It’d be interesting to see Zeke’s method and graphics applied for comparison of what’s effective on multiple different CO2 siloes: Australia, BC, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, India, South Africa, and those special cases with sequestration or other regulations.
The production of Bakken oil is easily modeled as an average well prodcution profile convolved against the number of new wells coming on line. This is the chart of a model I put together: http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/5992/9ew.gif
The concept of the Red Queen in oil production is described in the first link. The month that the development of new wells stops increasing will result of aggregate production undergoing a rapid decline.
Fracking is a boom-and-bust operation that can not be sustained over the long term. It is not anything like the old days of conventional crude production where individual wells had a longer lifetime.
And to clarify, lest it go unremarked and be felt discourteous, I’m shocked and surprised by the perception that my comments may be taken amiss.
It is my hope to address arguments and commentary productively and without ad hominem, as what reason is served by ad hominem upon those whom I do not know, especially when there is so ample material to discuss in what they post?
If I fall below our hosts’ standards, or my own, it is a human failing, and I would be glad of it being overlooked in favor of focus on the content of postings and threads, rather than personalization.
I regard CE as Mother Teresa did Calcutta: an opportunity to serve God’s blessed children, with humility and so much grace and joy as I can hold in my heart.
Be assured, I could not feel more grateful for the opportunity.
If you feel slurred or personally insulted, FREAKING READ HARDER.
And to clarify, lest it go unremarked and be felt discourteous, I’m shocked and surprised by the perception that my comments may be taken amiss.
It is my hope to address arguments and commentary productively and without ad hominem, as what reason is served by ad hominem upon those whom I do not know, especially when there is so ample material to discuss in what they post?
If I fall below our hosts’ standards, or my own, it is a human failing, and I would be glad of it being overlooked in favor of focus on the content of postings and threads, rather than personalization.
######################
overcompensating style is read as insincere. The bottom line Bart is that you are a boor. I have no issue with that. I find it funny that you dont see that in your self or that you cant admit it. I mean really funny. You pick your nose and tell John not to fart. that is what I love about you.
Don Monfort | August 10, 2013 at 8:45 pm |
Steve, who is the more humorless? Bart R , or Brandon Schollen….? Are you still mad at me?
##################
Don, I am not mad at you. you made me look hard at some of the things I said with more care. There things in you I dont like about me.
Humorless. Hmm, I would say brandon. I would tell him what a old wild weasel told me : “kid, you need to put a few links in your chain”
Bart, I happen to agree with a lot of what he says, but dammit I see this big ole balloon, and cant help pokin it with a needle. you get that of course,
Hard to see that a social gathering such as the party you attended would be an appropriate venue for the type of discussion that had ensued.
A private conversation with your friends is another matter and the more of this type of private discussion where sceptics engage with warmists is indeed something to be hoped for.
John…I agree that ad hominem attacks are very uncivil. I just wish that you had read the same books and sources that your friend had. Maybe you might have agreed with him on most points.
Actually, very much to my wife and my own relief, we will soon be seeing the hosts. And we will be dining with our other friends (the husband being the one who said Greenland will contribute up to 3 feet of sea level rise by 2060) this Saturday evening. So — thank goodness — no harm done. Very nice to see that these friendships weren’t destroyed by saying something non-tribal.
Yes, I will shut up in the future as I have in the past. I really didn’t like the result at the party, I just reacted to an outlandish statement, and this was the only time I ever have done something like that. If you can have a good time with friends, I really don’t want to do something that gets in the way of that (as much as it might make me grit my teeth to hear some of the unlikely or untrue tribal statements).
These are good people, I wasn’t looking forward to trading them in.
I get it, as verbosity is not needed when one has context. The key word in the clip is irrelevancy, and the more that someone pollutes a space with meaningless quips and one-liners, the more irrelevant the place becomes.
Talking about context, that is the name of my new web site, http://ContextEarth.com. The dual context here is how to apply models of the earth and its environment to solve problems in design and research. The environment becomes the context for the system under investigation.
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Best wishes for your new website WHT. It seems an excellent opportunity for the type of scientific discourse that you have been seeking from Judith’s blog, but I suspect that reader numbers and contributors will probably fall somewhat short of the numbers that Judith is currently experiencing.
It’ll fall of short of the traffic on Bill Dembski’s site Uncommon Descent back when I was running it too. So if we can serve up sad to Paul Pukite and his idol His Assholiness Doctor Bob Park that makes it a super-sized serving of sad.
Socrates – is – non – pareil, Kim – is – non – pareil. Wanna argue?
Hmm … now – where – is – that – lasso – i – kept – from – way
– back – when – I – used – ter – be – a – carefree – cow -girl –
afore – I – became – a – serf? )
These – doggone – hyphens – take – a – lotta- con – sent -trashun.
Climate Models have forecast warmer and warmer every year for two decades. It has not happened for seventeen years. 1998 still holds the record as the warmest year since thermometers were invented in the late 1800’s.
Water on Earth is abundant. Water changes state in our comfort zone.
CO2 is a trace gas. CO2 does not change state in our comfort zone.
For six hundred million years, the lower limit of temperature was bounded by the temperature that sea water freezes. For six hundred million years, the upper limit of temperature was bounded by the temperature that water evaporates and produces huge amounts of water vapor and clouds. In between these two temperatures, there was no set point and no strong regulation of temperature around a set point.
The modern ten thousand years has enjoyed a set point and powerful regulation around that set point and the new bounds are well inside the old bounds. Look at actual data.
We now have a temperature that has stayed inside plus and minus one degree C for most of ten thousand years. We now have a temperature that has stayed inside plus and minus two degrees C for all of ten thousand years.
The Temperature that Polar Sea Ice Melts and Freezes is the NEW and Wonderful Thermostat for Earth.
When Polar Waters are Frozen they do not provide moisture for snow and the Sun Removes more Ice Every Summer than gets replaced every Winter and Ice on Earth Retreats and Earth Warms.
When Polar Waters are not Frozen, oceans do provide moisture for more than enough snow to more than replace the Ice that Melts Every Summer and Ice on Earth Advances and Earth Cools.
These advances and retreats are not something that starts and stops when the snowfall change occurs. It is delayed. When the snowfall starts the ice volume capacity starts building. The ice extent advance starts later after the ice volume has grown. When the snowfall stops, the ice advance continues until the ice volume capacity to push ice outward is depleated.
Consensus Theory is that ice volume starts to grow when temperature starts to drop and that ice volume grows until the temperature starts to rise. That is very wrong. They make temperature go up and down with external forces that have no set point and no powerful regulation. A set point and powerful regulation can only come from something inside the system.
The Roman and Medieval Warm Periods were much like now.
Our Climate Cycle is exactly in the Phase it should be in Now.
Why do people believe this Warm Period should not have happened? Warm Periods have always followed Cold Periods in these same bounds for ten thousand years. Then Cold Periods followed the Warm Periods.
This is Normal!
NASA and NOAA and 97% of the Consensus Group are going to be really embarrassed when these simple truths become more and more evident as the snow each year rebuilds the Ice Volume which will again advance and Cool Earth into the next Cold Phase which always follows every Warm Phase.
Consensus Climate People do not understand Computer Models and they do not understand this Simple Polar Ice Cycle which is perfectly well explained by Actual Real Data.
It was a huge mistake to give Super Computers to Climate People without teaching them anything about building and verifying models. If your forecasts are wrong for two decades, you have something wrong in your Theory and Models.
When our Rocket Models missed a Forecast, we fixed the problem or problems before the next launch. When we did not fix things soon enough, we killed people and we were forced to review and improve the process. We launched the Space Shuttle with people on board during the very first launch. If our Models were as good as Climate Models, we would not have reached LEO.
You cannot explain a temperature set point with tight regulation around that without something that has a set point. You cannot explain tight regulation without something that performs different on the different sides of the set point.
CO2 does not have a set point or any powerful means of enforcing a set point.
Polar Sea Ice has a Set Point and can cause massive snowfall when the Set Point is Exceeded and can turn off the Massive Snowfall when the Temperature is below the Set Point.
This Set Point is clearly in the DATA!
Consensus Theory has temperature going up and up like nothing that has ever happened before. Or, at least, it has not happened for a hundred and thirty thousand years. Our most recent ten thousand years are different and I know why. If you do not know why and/or cannot explain why, don’t tell me you understand climate.
Data shows that temperature has been tightly bounded around a set point for Ten Thousand Years. I have told you my theory. If you agree, say so. If you disagree, tell your theory.
SNOW MUST FALL WHEN OCEANS ARE WARM AND WET. ICE ADVANCES SOME WHILE IT IS STILL FALLING AND IT CONTINUES TO ADVANCE AFTER THE OCEANS FREEZE. THIS GIVES THE APPEARANCE THAT ICE VOLUME IS STILL INCREASING AND FALSLY SUPPORTS THE MILANKOVICH THEORY THAT ICE VOLUME IS STILL INCREASING UP TO THE POINT THE ICE STARTS TO RETREAT. IT CANNOT HAPPEN THIS WAY. THE ICE VOLUME STARTS TO DECREASE WHEN THE SNOW STOPS FALLING. THE ICE ADVANCE LASTS LONG AFTER THAT.
Milankovich makes earth cold and then adds ice. You cannot get moisture out of cold frozen water to use to add ice.
You can only get moisture from wet water to use to add ice. You always add ice when water is wet. You must add the ice during warmer times and then it gets cold.
MILANKOVICH THEORY IS NOT POSSIBLE! WHERE CAN YOU GET MOISTURE WHEN THE WATER IS ALREADY COLD AND FROZEN? ACTUAL ICE CORE DATA SHOWS THE SNOW FALLS IN THE WARM TIMES.
MILANKOVICH THEORY PROVES EWING AND DONN WERE WRONG.
ACTUAL DATA PROVES EWING AND DONN WERE RIGHT.
THE ACTUAL DATA DOES PROVE EVERTHING. LOOK AT THE DATA.
“Climate Models have forecast warmer and warmer every year for two decades. It has not happened for seventeen years.”
In any other field a model is treated as a falsifiable hypothesis. The inability of a model to match reality is taken as proof that the model fails to replicate reality. In climate science, on the other hand, it is taken to mean that they have not managed to alter the measured reality enough.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday issued a peer-reviewed 260-page report, which agency chief Kathryn Sullivan calls its annual “checking on the pulse of the planet.” The report, by 384 scientists around the world, compiles data already released, but it
puts them in context of what’s been happening to Earth over decades.
Wow. They now have 384 scientists. They used to have Thousands.
We are gaining. Their 97% is down below the CO2 PPM. This is a major milestone.
Wow. Sharper, clearer, punchier, more direct, cleaner. A vast improvement.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get through the formation of the planet to the Oxygen Catastrophe and its causes and implications half so well with such brevity before.. at least not while still being funny.
Up to Chapter 6, I have no quibbles of note that offer much help, and I like what I see. (For most people, that’s no a quibble, but if I like something, I’m always immediately more suspicious I’m unconsciously unduly influencing my judgment in its favor.)
Chapter 6, the scientific method definition makes exactly the high school mistake of stopping one clause too soon.
To “..but the Scientific Method remains one of humanity’s most powerful inventions,” add (per Isaac Newton’s Principia): “because when we treat scientific conclusions as accurate or very nearly true until new observation requires us to alter the conclusion, we make the best possible informed (evidence-based) decisions.” Or wordsmith as appropriate and funny.
For Chapter 7, I prefer “Projections” over “Predictions”; predictions are pretty useless, and a more precise constraint than you need, if you’re discussing “threats” as opposed to “certainty”. Projections reflect change in threat.
Speaking of, I would want to see more on cost vs. catastrophe. A good epic world-ending disaster makes for good reading, but I’m a practical adult (and, as Neil Gaimon observes, when writing for adults you’re allowed to leave the boring bits in), and if these threats hit me in the pocketbook by making food more expensive today, for example, that means more to me than being up to my armpits in sea water in a hundred years.
Overall, I’m very impressed and quite enjoy the opportunity to read your writing.
” and with an observation
•[YB: Settled.] MT: But key to make clear that we’re talking hugely different timeframes for change. Again, the sentence as phrased reinforces “denialist perceptions” in ways I don’t think you intend. ALSO RP: “Earth’s Climate has always been in flux” (but never so fast as when humans are helping it along) [such changes should take hundreds of thousands of years – we do it in 200] Careful, cause the argument that “climate always changes” is a top trope of those who wish to avoid dealing with it. [YB: I think this is okay; we’ll explain this more later on.]
•JA: “Earth’s Climate has always been in flux.” A better statement would be: “The Earth’s Climate has always been in flux, except for the last 10,000 years when the Climate has been remarkably stable, leading to the conditions that allowed civilized life to develop on this planet.”
PLUS
/p14: “But if the climate is always changing…”
•YB: Comments here! Yes, but in the past, climate has changed naturally over tens of thousands of years, allowing plants and animals to adapt. Humans are causing climate changes much faster than Nature ever did, so we’re creating a mass extinction, like when that asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. –PJ
—— ——–
No no No No No!!! Climate constantly changes, sometimes by small amounts that humans and nature barely notice, sometimes it fundamentally affects our civilisation and nature. I wrote about it here when virtually every decade was changing and some changes were highly noticeable;
. http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
It is a complete fallacy to say climate previously changed naturally over tens of thousands of years and was stable until man drastically speeded up the process.. .
Please read such basic Climate History books as ‘Climate history and the Modern world’ by Hubert Lamb; ‘History and Climate’ by Phil Jones, Ogilvie, Davies and Briffa. ; ‘Climate and weather’ by John Kington or one that specifically targets the demise of past civilisations through a changing climate such as ‘Weathers greatest mysteries solved’ by Randy Cerveny.
Even Al Gore wrote about drastically changing climates that affected past civilisations and nature in his book ‘Earth in the balance.’
If a belief in a naturally evolving stable climate over tens of thousands of year until affected by man in the last fifty years is the basis of your book it is fundamentally flawed I am afraid. .
tonyb
Perhaps reconciled by returning again to the framing of “threats”, which are described in probabilities rather than absolute certainties.
The more forcing, the higher the expected rate of changes and the higher the intensity of the forcing, the likelier the change is to be extreme.
Hence, we’re threatened by faster, more expensive, changes because humans are helping the changes along. There are more threats, and bigger ones, in less time. That will mathematically translate to more harm and bigger costs faster, but we cannot predict exactly when or what specifically. (In part because our models for volcanic eruptions — a major climate input — are so imprecise yet.)
Hi tonyb: It would be much more helpful for me if you would react to the book draft rather than the comments on the book draft. You can find the PDF downloads on the website I linked above: http://cartoonclimate.wikispaces.com/
PS. I don’t know what you mean by “a naturally evolving stable climate”, but if you read my book draft you will get a much better sense of the basis of the book. Thanks!
Presumably this cartoon style and phrasing style is meant to appeal to a young age group?
Consequently how will you explain the ‘pause’ to a generation born this century that have never actually known global warming and if they live in certain countries-like Britain-will actually have seen the temperature Fall during their lifetime?
Under uncertainties it would be good to explain that we have been this way before as regards high temperatures during the time of advanced human civilisation without enhanced co2 concentrations. So fingering co2 as the cause of the recent warming is a hypothesis and it is likely a minor climate driver compared to natural variability.
Incidentally, whilst I may disagree with some of your basic premises I thought the book was well done
Given the last weekends discussions on lead and intelligence/violence I thought I would off up this for comment.
One can show statistically that the star sign one is born under correlates with academic performance in school, so children born under the star sign Cancer do less well than those born under Virgo. Those born under Leo have a bimodal performance, comprising of the best and worst achievers.
Do you have any idea why this is?
I have an explanation that simply explains the observations universally and without many exceptions, that is school intake begins in September and at the time in children’s lives where scholastic ability is most rapidly improving, so children entering older present a bias toward higher academic performance that puts them in a favored cadre, with positive feedback effects tending to reinforce the bias.
So, did you ever answer whether the sample was corrupted with copper?
Probably the same reason that athletes born in August do poorly. They don’t have enough maturity compared to other kids in the same grade. Big whoop.
Here is a better discussion point. It can be verified with statistical certainty that the number of thunderstorms in an urban area increases during the course of the work-week.
T. L. Bell, D. Rosenfeld, K.-M. Kim, J.-M. Yoo, M.-I. Lee, and M. Hahnenberger, “Midweek increase in U.S. summer rain and storm heights suggests air pollution invigorates rainstorms,” Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 113, no. D2, Jan. 2008.
Further evidence that mankind can readily change the climate. Only man has any knowledge of the properties of a “week” and these properties happen to be artificial as well. The only uncertainty in the statistics is that heightened awareness over the years may have contributed somewhat to the autocorrelation.
This is one of the examples of objective certainty of statistics that many people can’t separate from magic.
You posed a not dissimilarly framed quiz a while back about two samples taken from the same source and studied in two different labs (yours, and another’s), with radically different outcomes.
I don’t recall the details, but I remember wondering at the time about copper contamination, since it’s known to have that type of effect on the sample in question.
I grow cells in Houston and a colleague was growing them in Colorado. Some primary cancer cell cultures, those will a lot of mitochondria, appear to grow well at sea-level, but are quite poor at a mile high.
Dang, I puzzled over that for days. Does this mean that if we start Kindergarten at six instead of five, that all of the children will be above normal?
===========
So you think that the correlation with star sign, which is as strong as the school starting date, is bogus?
Not at all. The correlation exists. What would be “bogus” would be to jump from the correlation to some causation.
Again – it appears that perhaps you thought that people would find that jump somehow intuitive? Perhaps you weren’t expecting CE readers to be skeptics. Why would that be? Any skeptic would consider that jump to be counterintuitive.
The immediately obvious conclusion is to only allow children to be conceived in the same month, to make school fairer.
Heh,.
The obvious conclusion is that it is evidence that is related to one of the problems with out traditional educational paradigm – which incorporates the fallacy that comparing one student to another is directly relevant to fostering intellectual curiosity and/or skills.
All I know is that since I’m only 5’7,” I need another 120k worth of income per year to compete with guys who are 5’11” on Match.com., according to some study or other. They just don’t realize how irresistibly sweet I am in person.
> Children born under the star sign Cancer do less well than those born under Virgo. Those born under Leo have a bimodal performance, comprising of the best and worst achievers. Do you have any idea why this is?
Easy. Virgos’ Suns may be ruled by Mercury, the traditional ruler of wit. Therefore, they need to have a sharp (in fact, precise and meticulous) mind for their body to have a good flow of energy. Leos will go wherever they will dominate, and Cancers care for something else.
Do you have statistics about Capricorns and Sagitarius, Doc? A ruling Saturn can show dedication to work and Jupiter (with the ninth house) is the natural ruler of studies.
I am supposed to come up with off the wall suggestions for the medics to turn down.As most of cancer cell metabolism is lactic, I suggested we give the patients lactate drips to push their lactate levels up to about 15 mM, about the level you get to after exhaustive exercise. The idea being that we push the Lactate/Pyruvate couple and so lower the ATP/ADP couple. They all said “You can’t do that”. I said why, and they said “You can’t do that”.
Its going to be a bugger to do in mice I can tell you.
Be a hero and investigate DCA. Those cancers with lactic metabolism have mitochondria that are shut-down and then aerobic metabolism shuts down along with it. It had been presumed that mtDNA is irreparably damaged in the mutunt cancer cell but that might not be the case it’s shut down by some other means. DCA wakes the mitochondria back up and when it becomes operative it senses the cell is phucked up and initiates apoptosis. The cost (essentially $0) and lack of adverse side effects of DCA cry out for clinical investigation but because it can’t be patented, and hence milked for big-pharma profits, it’s ignored. It’s a travesty.
David, I have looked at both DCA and FluoroPyruvate.
Both are too toxic to other cell types to be used as sole agents.
I actually designed and synthesized the first mitochondrially targeted drug to damage mtDNA. We have a patent and drug company funding for animal work and I was in the lab this morning weighing mice and testing their grip.
We also have a targeted nanosyringe system up an running. We target using peptides that bind to (upregulated) tyrosine kinase receptors on the cell surface and deliver hydrophobic drugs and also drug pump inhibitors.
I have been shrinking breast cancers in nude mice; 50% shrinkage in treated and 100% growth in controls on day 25. Just waiting for the tumors to get >2 mm3 so I can begin the ‘death’ curves.
DCA is very well tolerated in amount and duration for cancer chemotherapy. You may be thinking of its use treating congenital lactic acidosis. In that disease it is taken in higher doses lasting years. It also has the benefit of being a very small molecule that passes through the blood/brain barrier for treatment of brain cancer.
No it’s probably not a single cure-all for cancer of any kind. No drug is so it shouldn’t be any different. Side effects are so mild, tumor shrinkage so drastic, and price so low it could be an important part of any regimen for cancers that exhibit high rates of glycolysis. It is suspected that the main side effect from long high dosage, reversible peripheral neuropathy, is caused by pH imbalance and/or interference with thiamine uptake.
The only actual clinical trial was tiny, a dozen patients with stage 4 glioblastoma. As a group their average expected survival rate was a mere 6 months. They averaged 18 months on DCA. It’s worth looking into but no one will fund it for reasons stated.
Bart, you write “It’s also impossible to do controlled experiments on other planets. ”
As usual you seem to be misquoting me. It is clearly possible to do controlled experiments on this earth we live in; they are done routinely. It is impossible to do controlled experiments on the earth’s atmosphere; and I suppose the atmospheres of other planets. So what?
That’s directed at the wrong guy. The Intelligent Design bodyguard/bouncer David Springer is your man for questions on this topic. Dinosaurs spring from intelligence, apparently.
Jim’s the guy I ask because verificationists have problem with scientific statements that refer to things over which we don’t have direct evidence.
The usual examples are planets, like Bart R recalled, dinosaurs, like David Chalmers would, and the Sun, like David Hume. There are others for sure, but philosophers are good recyclers.
Dembski has no problem with billions of years of evolution. He has a problem imagining a unverse in its lowest entropy state 14 billion years ago just poofing into existence with all that order in it. I have a problem imagining a highly ordered universe just appearing as if by magic too.
Yes I have a problem with that too. I’m an agnostic. But that doesn’t mean when I see a information processing system coupled to a programmable assembler of 3D components that can produce and assemble all the parts to make copies of itself that I’m prepared to make the null hypothesis the one where said machine is an accident. Where there’s a machine there’s a machinist. That’s the null hypothesis.
The popular counter to that is that our universe is one of an infinite or nearly infinite number of unverses where anything physically possible must happen by accident.
But even if that’s the case then a universe which initially had, by accident, a god-like entity able to create organic life is also possible. If a mind can be contained by a brain and a planet can contain six billion minds, all by accident then surely something greater could be contained by a whole universe.
David, here is the Biblical account.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light..”
here is the current scientific account.
“In the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded”
Yes I’m aware of the parallels in Genesis and Big Bang theory. Big Bang theory was initially opposed because of it. Something from nothing isn’t very intuitive.
Even more intriguing is genetics and Genesis. Genetically speaking what would it take, discounting accidents, for there to be no death? Or for animals to all be vegetarians so they didn’t kill each other? Better DNA repair mechanisms perhaps including telomere replacement? More accurate error detection and correction is certainly possible. Digesting vegetable matter is just an enzyme or two away for any obligate carnivore. Eden seems remarkably close in evolutionary terms if we presume it existed and that genetic entropy has been taking its toll since the fall.
Parthenogenesis producing a human XX male is also possible in perhaps one in a few billion live births.
Not being committed to a black and white world view where the God of Abraham either is or is not allows one to consider these things without emotion or bias.
..one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.
That’d be an invalid conclusion drawn from an inadequate premise.
ie, “One cannot do controlled experiments (in the lab) on the existence or non-existence of other planets, so it is impossible to prove other planets exist.”
Do you know of any controlled experiment validating that the Sun will rise tomorrow, Jim? I don’t think you have. Then the claim that the Sun will rise tomorrow can be a scientific statement as you conceive science.
I think this shows a problem with how you conceive science, some of which we called natural sciences, and not the laboratory sciences.
Jim excludes from science everything that’s interesting. He accepts only almost trivial measurements of quantities that are already rather well known.
Nothing that’s of real scientific interest is so simple and so well understood that it could be studied using the narrow approach that’s the only one acceptable to him.
Pekka, you write “Jim excludes from science everything that’s interesting”
That I deeply resent. There is general agreement that when discussing CAGW, the most important issue is the value of climate sensitivity, however defined. That is what I am talking about. If you can name another issue that is more important than the value of climate sensitivity, on this subject of CAGW, what is it?
On one point I agree. Climate sensitivity in some form is the key. (Transient climate response may be the most relevant of the alternative measures of climate sensitivity.)
What i don’t accept at all are your views on what’s known about climate sensitivity. Your arguments are generic enough to justify claims like the one of my previous comment. You haven’t been able to present anything more specific and for that reason you resort to false generalities.
Generalities are almost always wrong when applied to a controversial matter. They are a poor excuse for not knowing enough about the subject to discuss more relevant issues.
Mirriam Webster gives this definition for science:
a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science
Note the reference to general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
Mirriam Webster gives us this definition for scientific method:
principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses
Jim Cripwell has emphasized the need for the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
The CAGW premise as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report is based on a hypothesis, which has been formulated, but has yet to be tested through observation and experiment.
I’d agree with Jim that CAGW is therefore an uncorroborated hypothesis at this time, until it can be tested and either corroborated or falsified through observation and experiment.
Seems pretty straightforward to me, Willard.
Do you see this differently? If so, how (specifically)?
We’ve been through this a few times already, MiniMax.
That science collects evidence does not entail that you should ask evidence for every freaking abstracta scientists find useful to devise.
Here’s how speed of light was measured for the first time:
The first successful measurement of c was made by Olaus Roemer in 1676. He noticed that, depending on the Earth–Sun–Jupiter geometry, there could be a difference of up to 1000 seconds between the predicted times of the eclipses of Jupiter’s moons, and the actual times that these eclipses were observed. He correctly surmised that this is due to the varying length of time it takes for light to travel from Jupiter to Earth as the distance between these two planets varies. He obtained a value of c equivalent to 214,000 km/s, which was very approximate because planetary distances were not accurately known at that time.
I assume the Sun will rise tomorrow. So do you. No one can “prove” what will happen in the future.
I also assume that the “climate sensitivity” to atmospheric CO2 is negative, but unable to be quantified given present limitations of measurement techniques.
My assumption is based on the interaction between light and matter (as used by Feynman).
Even using your figures, atmospheric CO2 concentrations are rising, surface temperatures are not. There is no “missing heat”. Heat is not a physical entity – anyone who thinks so probably needs a course of reality readjustment.
Weather changes moment to moment. Climate is the average of weather. In order to change the climate, you first have to change the weather, by definition. I see no volunteers for this first step – why not? How hard can it be?
I’m not sure whether you are agreeing with me or not.
I looked at your link, but my non tweeting history made the format of the exchange a little confusing.
If I choose to leap out of the way of a car on the assumption that our paths will intersect in the future, I am not foretelling he future. Nor is the goalie defending a penalty shot. Indeed, his assumptions, even though based on years of expertise gained at the highest levels of the game, prove to be wrong more often than not.
And so with “scientists”. How sound are their assumptions? Nobody knows. A track record of previous success is no guarantee of future performance. Bending the weather to our will hasn’t worked all that well to date, so predictions or assumptions about future averages don’t seem well founded.
Given that the longest average of surface temperature that we have shows a decrease from molten to non molten (cooling), it would take some new facts to engender a change of mind on my part. To each his own, but I would not be unhappy if the Warmists would apply their own assets to the Cause, and leave me to go to perdition if I wish.
You’re in front of a wobbling car that seems to be coming at you. You have people behind you. They don’t see the car.
You feel that moving away from the car would be a good idea. Yet, the people behind you are keeping you from moving. They ask for evidence of the car’s impact before moving.
What do you do?
The point is not to solve this, but to think. This is why it’s called a thought experiment. If you don’t like this, it’s OK: nobody forces you to pump your intuition with this kind of tool.
***
If we had Earth holodecks, you’d have a point about the scientists’ assumptions. Just test them all. But we just can’t.
This is a decision problem under uncertainty, but we don’t have to evaluate the risk of dumping CO2 into the atmosphere like there’s no tomorrow. In the very long run, we’re all dead. The uncertainty lies in the middle or long run. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
We have to find ways out of this mess without ever having dealt, as a specie, with such a big challenge. Hammering requests for an evidence that lie in the future is plain silly: nobody can’t see the future. When coupled with sceptikism about any kind of evidence, these requests can quickly becomes abusive.
I see. When your “thought experiment” is shown to be flawed, you introduce new assumptions. Well done. A bit like coming up with “missing heat” when you can’t point to any actual “warming”.
But in response to your question, what would I do?
Well, nothing really. Unbeknown to the people you have just introduced, and yourself, I can see that the wheels are falling off the wobbly Global Warming car, and it is about to plunge into a chasm. No danger to me, or the panicking crowd you have placed behind me.
As you say, the point is to think.
If 97% of scientists believe the same thing, I test that thing. If it is false, then the 97% belief is nonsense. Global warming due to CO2 is being tested. CO2 is rising, temperatures are not. “We” don’t have to do anything. You may do as you wish, but don’t expect me to pay for it!
Please note that I haven’t asked for evidence for anything in the future. Your assumptions about the future suit you. Mine suit me.
> When your “thought experiment” is shown to be flawed, you introduce new assumptions.
Hmmm. Yes, and no.
1. There’s no such thing as a flawed thought experiment. And I did not need to introduce new elements in the story to show that to rely on evidence alone can’t even move you away from a wobbling car in front of you. In fact, you did admit to such limitation when you said:
> No one can “prove” what will happen in the future.
The first step of the thought experiment only establishes that.
If you see a flaw, please spell it out. For now, you’re begging a question about which you already stated the opposite of your current presumption.
That’s the no part.
***
2. A thought experiment is simply a way to envision parameters of a model. Since all you do is to tell a story, you’ve got to assume its elements. Unless, of course, your point is to show that assuming them leads to a contradiction, like Putnam’s brains in vats:
I introduced new elements to the story of the car for three reasons. The first is that for Twitter to keep track of a conversation, you need to mention the names of everyone. So I made Wott and Richard Betts a part of the story. The second is that a tweet is short, so I had the leasure to construct my story as I tweeted.
More importantly, I wanted to introduce new elements that I think are relevant to our current predicament:
– many persons;
– people with no direct connection with the evidence;
– people that are asking for direct evidence;
– a driver (wink wink);
– a car that wobbles.
The two last elements may be unessential, but not the first three. We do have a collective decision to make. People that have no direct connection with the evidence are asking for future evidence.
As you can see, if I introduced new elements in the thought experiment, it is not to cover for any special flaw.
***
In fact, this thought experiment is just a way to model what you can read over there:
If you read that page, you’ll see that there are two important notions of evidence. The thought experiment deals with one of them, i.e. what makes direct contact with sense organs. The only plausible alternative would be to consider evidence like a “piece of evidence”. This alternative leads to a conception of science that is inductive or abductive, i.e. non-deductive.
I don’t think Jim or MiniMax want to go where this leads. This leads to a conception of science that goes around the time of Whewell, which was Darwin’s favourite epistemologist. If you accept the idea that science proceeds like any investigation, then you have to admit that to ask for “proof” and “direct evidence” may very well be suboptimal.
In fact, Darwin’s favourite reply to the Jim and MiniMax of his times was to point at the wave theory of light:
I will attempt to answer the question you have posed.
“Now in a social gathering, would you try the thought experiment, or would you lecture on the philosophical notion of evidence?”
The answer of course, is “Neither.”
As we agree, the future is unknowable. So when you say that we have to make a decision, I am merely pointing out that my decision may be to take no action at all about the “global warming” that some people are convinced will : –
a) occur, and
b) be bad for me, and
c) need me to contribute time, effort or money, or all three, to the cause of averting something that may or may not occur at some time in the future.
I don’t wish to offend, but most of the “thought experiments” bandied about seem to be poorly thought out, and usually contain many unstated assumptions, which may or may not affect the result.
So the results of the “thought experiments” are about as valid as the results of the “computer model experiments” relating to future weather patterns and averages (referred to as climate by the climatologists).
Spend freely of your time, effort, and money. I’ll spend mine as I see fit.
If you understand, no explanation is necessary.
If you don’t, no explanation is possible.
‘Catastrophic’ is not a defined quantity or a measurable metric by controlled experiments of any kind, so it is impossible to define or measure what CAGW means therefore making it a meaningless term.
The questions? Oh, I’ll give it to you…
Why is using ‘CAGW’ a meaningless term when discussing climate science?
BTW, CS has been empirically measured using paleo data.
John, you write “BTW, CS has been empirically measured using paleo data.”
Garbage. Paleo data cannot meausre CS. It is impossible to prove in the paleo data, that the rise in temperature is caused by the rising levels of CO2. It is impossible to measure time with sufficient accuracy to determine whether the observed rise in temperature preceeds of follows the rise in CO2. The evidence suggests that, in fact, first temperature rises, and then CO2 levels rise; c.f. Murry Salby
John, to follow up on the issue of paleo data, you can read the paper by Hansen and Sato, and not find that they use the word “measure” when to come to CS. They use the weasel word, “infer”.
Milankovich makes earth cold and then adds ice at the tails of glaciers. Ewing and Donn puts ice on top of glaciers and use the weight of ice to advance the glaciers. The piles of debris that are left behind when the ice melts does support the Ewing and Donn Theory.
I read Tony B’s current article on sea level rise and found I’m in agreement with him on “measuring sea level is problematic.” I’m guessing because I’m not a scientist that problematic means close to meaningless, is that true?
One wonders whether Sir Paul Nurse and the Royal Society realize just how much damage they have done, and are still dong, to the British economy, by maintaining their completely unscientific statement of CAGW.
The news isn’t the possible cooling so much, as many of us are aware of that possibility, but that such an article has been printed by a main stream paper in a very green country…Denmark. I think this is tremendously important. Yet another brick has loosened in the increasingly shaky edifice of global warming induced climate change. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/10/denmark-gets-a-dose-of-global-cooling-in-major-newspaper/
Keep snoozing, Josh. Much easier than having to admit you’ve been taken in by this nonsense. The facts are the facts, a respected paper that’s done nothing but support the “consensus” in bright green Denmark, comes out with an article that dares to question the status quo, and in quite a dramatic way.
“a respected paper that’s done nothing but support the “consensus” in bright green Denmark”
What’s your evidence of that? Please tell me you aren’t just swallowing that line from WUWT or some other skeptic blog. These blogs always exaggerate stuff like this to persuade readers that their posts are more important than they actually are. The thinking presumably being that people like you thinking the story is earthbreaking will go around the internet breathlessly posting it to places like climate etc.
Jim D | August 10, 2013 at 5:44 pm |
I find that the “skeptics” keep asking for evidence from and proof of the future. This request, they should know, makes no sense.
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No need to get evidence about the future JimD. We will be happy to hear all the evidence of harm to the planet that has come from the warming to date. You know, facts about climate refuges, crop yield declines, land lost to sea level rise, populations displaced by rising seas, polar bears lost, etc.
…and if they are not asking for proof of damage in the future, they are asking for proof of damage with 0.7 C warming. Even the skeptics agree there won’t be much damage at 0.7 C warming and the foot of sea-level rise we have had so far. However, 4 C and a meter is more of a concern at this point.
Scott you have to put 4C warming (or even 2C) in context of how much climate has typically warmed and cooled over the past few thousand years.
2C or 4C in a matter of centuries would be a massive jump to not only a temperature level not seen for millions of years, but a possibly unprecedented fast change to get there.
The danger here is pretty obvious, to anyone who understands climate changes impact the environment and species (including us)
lolw0t | August 11, 2013 at 8:37 am |
Scott you have to put 4C warming (or even 2C) in context of how much climate has typically warmed and cooled over the past few thousand years.
=========
Actually, I don’t have to put 4C in any context given that I don’t believe there is scientific evidence that 4C will happen anytime soon. To me, it’s just like the Y2K “the world is going to end if we don’t do something now” meme. Just another group crying “wolf!”
Jim D | August 11, 2013 at 9:07 pm |
ksd, it doesn’t look like you have attempted to understand the science, so we can take your opinion for what it is worth.
===================
Which science is it you think I’m not understanding?
All the evidence is that CO2 is a climate control knob.
Even if we go with 1C warming per doubling of CO2, and CO2 rises from 280ppm (preindustrial) to a future level of 800ppm (if we keep burning it all), that’s 1.5C warming.
Almost twice the total warming of the 20th century and a lot of that would have been due to CO2.
So then natural variation is much smaller than the effect of CO2. Natural variation is a few tenths of a degree C up or down each century. CO2 is 1.5C upwards.
The control is obvious, and this assumes a low climate sensitivity of 1C per doubling.
With an effectively infinite reservoir of water vapor (the ocean), only the temperature acts as a lid for the amount in the atmosphere because it condenses. Rising temperatures raise this lid in a predictable way following Clausius-Clapeyron. CO2 raises the temperature 1 degree per doubling. The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.
JimD, “The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.”
No it doesn’t. If you have a closed system where you can ensure a uniform rise in temperature yes, but the oceans are not a closed system. Most of the evaporation is in the tropics/lower latitudes and most of the temperature increase is in the higher latitude/ dryer regions. Ocean heat content is increasing the average deep ocean temperature by ~1 C every 400-500 years which is not adding to evaporation significantly with an average deep ocean temperature of ~4C degrees. Average “surface” temperature is just about meaningless. You seem to have a great deal of misplaced confidence.
Now if you want to considered the regions were most of the evaporation takes place, changes in precipitation are generally associated with ENSO, AMO and PDO phases so regional SST would be more meaningful, not some “global” temperature that doesn’t capture the dynamics.
captd, try it at home (or in a lab). A one degree rise in water temperature increases the amount of vapor above it. Your obfuscations can’t deny the basic physics that happens over water surfaces.
JimD, “captd, try it at home (or in a lab). A one degree rise in water temperature increases the amount of vapor above it. Your obfuscations can’t deny the basic physics that happens over water surfaces.”
JimD, learn to read. If the one degree rise in the water temperature is in a lab, yes. At 2000 meters below the surface no. If the one degree already has a saturated vapor pressure you get something different than if the surface rH is 50% or 10%. You are not in a lab and averaging the “surface” temperature for 350 million square kilometers in an open system is nearly meaningless.
You note that diurnal temperature change reversed trend then mumble some nonsense about when the precipitation catches up with land warming then everything will fit again. The trend shifted nearly 30 years ago. The ocean surface warming since 1995 has been near zero. The stratosphere trend flatted in 1995. It is almost like the thermostat kicked in isn’t it?
captd, I don’t know why you keep talking about below the surface. CO2 raises the surface temperature, which is also the part that determines atmospheric H2O. Is it that hard to understand?
JimD, “captd, I don’t know why you keep talking about below the surface. CO2 raises the surface temperature, which is also the part that determines atmospheric H2O. Is it that hard to understand?”
CO2 does not uniformly raise surface temperatures and definitely does not raise “surface” temperatures as much in the presence of saturated water vapor. If it did, the tropical oceans would be warming at the same rate as the northern high latitudes, is that so hard to understand?
The reason I talk about below the surface, is because the mean temperature of the SST is actually the mean temperature of the sub surface mixing layer. If you use the wrong temperature you get the wrong result ala K&T who underestimated latent cooling by nearly 10 Wm-2.
If you compare the “actual” SST by hemisphere where “actually” is approximated by satellite at the actual surface, the SH oceans average ~17 C from 70S to Equ and the NH is ~21.6C from equ to 70N. Then if you really want to get serious you can compare the eastern and western hemispheres. Pay particular not to the western hemisphere which includes the Atlantic using the prime meridian.
Then you might understand why I provided the Marchitto 2010, as in more recent peer reviewed literature, that attempts to explain the ocean dynamic thermostat.
captd, you are probably not realizing we are talking about equilibrium conditions, not transients, or are you thinking the tropics won’t warm by 1 degree with CO2 doubling? You have a block somewhere, and I can’t see what it is.
JimD, “captd, you are probably not realizing we are talking about equilibrium conditions, not transients, or are you thinking the tropics won’t warm by 1 degree with CO2 doubling? You have a block somewhere, and I can’t see what it is.”
I am talking about a limit aka thermostat. For each theoretical degree of “average” SST warming there is an associated amount of latent cooling based on the absolute temperature not anomaly. When the latent cooling equals the surface forcing, warming stops. That energy is transferred to the lower atmosphere and its surface impacts depends on poleward transport, the shifting westerlies.
You and Webster focus on fat tail possibilities instead of diving into the fun part of the problem, the complex negative feed backs.
captd, unfortunately your cooling doesn’t stop the CO2 warming effect. The CO2 will warm the surface temperature until it has risen by the required amount to balance it radiatively. It doesn’t matter what goes on between. It is a given in the first step.
JimD, “The CO2 will warm the surface temperature until it has risen by the required amount to balance it radiatively. ”
Right, ~ 0.8C from a moist air boundary layer at ~316 Wm-2, the planetary boundary layer. If you actually consider that there was a little ice age event that had a “global” impact impact of ~0.9 C, we are back at the upper bound or strange attractor if you prefer, the Planck response ~316-340 Wm-2. Without adding mass to the atmosphere or snow/land based ice for positi8ve feed back, you have hit the upper “normal” limit.
That was another K&T mistake. They estimated an atmospheric window radiation of 40Wm-2 as being from the :”surface” where Stephens et al. more accurately estimated the :”surface” window as being 20 Wm-2. Half of the CO2 potential warming was an accounting error. The Sky Dragons said K&T violated the second law and it did because of that mistake.
Estimates of TCR and ECS are dropping like a brick for a reason. Natural internal variability research is increasing for a reason. The reason is “Persian Flaws” belong in rugs not science.
captd, it is also said that GCMs are closer to Stephens than to K&T, but it is not correct to say that K&T had an error of any significant magnitude. Measurements can refine things, and Stephens did that refinement years after K&T. No basic ideas changed. Science advances by refinement.
JimD, “captd, it is also said that GCMs are closer to Stephens than to K&T, but it is not correct to say that K&T had an error of any significant magnitude. Measurements can refine things, and Stephens did that refinement years after K&T. No basic ideas changed. Science advances by refinement.”
Years? You mean like 2-3 years? The FTK 2009 had the same error even though they admitted to a “minor adjustment”. The error, ~18Wm-2 would be significant versus CO2 forcing and thermonuclear war. Still FTK professed a “certainty” of 0.9 +/- 0.15 Wm-2 while whining about missing heat. The whole object of ERBS and CERES was to reduce uncertainty which FTK ignored.
So now since science advances by refinement, it would be nice if science blog commentors could as well. Better yet, wouldn’t it be nice if FK&T followed Wikipedia’s lead and pulled their old Persian budgets so science could march on?
captd, from the abstract the only significant things they mention are that there is more precipitation than previous estimates and they increased the back radiation from the atmosphere to the surface (more GHG effect). These don’t seem to be related to anything you said about it. Where are you getting that stuff?
JimD, Where am I getting this stuff? From their budget. It doesn’t balance with 40 Wm-2 of window flux. Stephens et al. estimate the window flux at 20 +/-4 Wm-2 and Stevens ans Schwartz at 22 Wm-2 which agrees with my original 18Wm-2 estimate. Water/ice/water vapor in the atmosphere absorb solar energy at ~75 Wm-2 making up half, 1/2, 50% of the DWLR of 334 Wm-2 +/- 15.
If you look at the Stephens et al budget they use the terms “latent heating” and “sensible heating” because the “surface” that responds to WMGHG forcing is above the planetary boundary layer. There is no Tropical Troposphere Hot Spot for a reason, CO2 does not impact the tropical SST to any significant degree. Atmospheric water/ice shields the surface. That is Solar’s wheelhouse which Marchitto et al. notices has century to millennial scale responses to solar forcing.
JimD, “captd, how do you get that the GHG effect is weaker when they have a higher back radiation?”
By considering an Atmospheric Effect and a Greenhouse Effect. The well mixed GHGs help the atmosphere maintain its energy level. Basically, the GHE reduces the DTR. Increasing GHGs will help the atmosphere retain more energy but not produce any more energy than the atmosphere can hold. Since water/ice/water vapor, ozone, absorb solar energy, that portion is not due to the WMGHGs. If you don’t consider when and where solar is absorbed you over estimate the WMGHG portion of the effect.
The total impact doesn’t change, just the attribution.
captd, I don’t know about what you said, but increased downward IR at the surface makes the atmosphere a better insulator, which some regard as the greenhouse effect, so Stephens has emphasized this insulation effect more than K&T. Few skeptics would be happy with this direction Stephens went, if they realized, especially the skydragons.
JimD, “captd, I don’t know about what you said, but increased downward IR at the surface makes the atmosphere a better insulator, which some regard as the greenhouse effect, so Stephens has emphasized this insulation effect more than K&T. Few skeptics would be happy with this direction Stephens went, if they realized, especially the skydragons.”
I doubt the Sky Dragons would ever be happy, but the Stephens et al. approach is more illustrative of the combined effects. Based on the simplistic Greenhouse Effect analogy, all of the solar penetrates a transparent atmosphere and is absorbed by a single “surface”. You only have one surface and one “sensitivity”. In reality a portion, 150Wm-2, is absorbed in the atmosphere and 330 Wm-2 is absorbed at the surface during “Day” mode with some portion absorbed below the “surface”. You have three surfaces to consider with three “sensitivities” to consider due to solar. One of the reasons “sensitivity” is non-linear.
Since energy is absorbed at different levels of the atmosphere, you have the added problem of the upper 25% of the atmospheric mass, not included AFAIK, which provides another layer of insulation which is more greatly impacted by solar max/min cycles which should also have some magnetic field orientation impacts. That should be negligible, but with “sensitivity” being lower, it can play a larger than expected role.
Climate Models as the stand now are a lot like taking a knife to a gunfight.
I’ll just end where I started. Good try at obfuscation, but basically off the subject which is just basic physics, captd. I said…
With an effectively infinite reservoir of water vapor (the ocean), only the temperature acts as a lid for the amount in the atmosphere because it condenses. Rising temperatures raise this lid in a predictable way following Clausius-Clapeyron. CO2 raises the temperature 1 degree per doubling. The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.
JimD, “I’ll just end where I started. Good try at obfuscation, but basically off the subject which is just basic physics, captd. I said…
With an effectively infinite reservoir of water vapor (the ocean), only the temperature acts as a lid for the amount in the atmosphere because it condenses. Rising temperatures raise this lid in a predictable way following Clausius-Clapeyron. CO2 raises the temperature 1 degree per doubling. The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.”
Not if the water vapor intercepts the incoming solar. with 150/330 you have a ratio of 0.45 with 88Wm-2 of surface evaporation. If the latent increases, the ratio changes so more solar is absorbed in the atmosphere as well as scattered and reflected. You are assuming that the same solar keeps making it to the surface. It doesn’t. That also comes from physics. You have two reservoirs, one near infinite and the other finite.
That is not obfuscation, that’s just the facts Jack.
captd, you are inventing a new mechanism that doesn’t make sense. I think you work backwards from trying to get a negative feedback from water vapor, don’t you?
JimD, “captd, you are inventing a new mechanism that doesn’t make sense. I think you work backwards from trying to get a negative feedback from water vapor, don’t you?”
No, I was curious how K&T could miss 18Wm-2 and started digging. Most of the 18Wm-2 was due to mixed phase clouds, primarily in the Arctic and water vapor absorption at lower angles, the lower angles increase the effective path length allowing more solar to be absorbed. Both of those can be a positive feed back or a negative feed back depending on time of day. The biggest negative feedback is the diurnal cloud formation cycle. When clouds form earlier they absorb/reflect more of the solar energy and burn off/ rainout earlier allowing more radiant cooling. That is why Callandar considered clouds a neutral to negative feed back.
K&T was about an energy budget, not climate change feedbacks. Energy budgets have to consider clouds too, but not how they would vary in a forcing change. I don’t know if Stephens proposed a cloud feedback, but that would be interesting because it was just current observations in their abstract.
The 2 linked articles here. Perhaps it’s a bit too much to expect of the media to be able to hold its position and concern over the last so many years of flattening temperatures or however you want to describe it.
As i said on the previous thread, I deny the pause in climate change. Climate is 30-year averages. This is the 30-year average and how it is changing (up to date) from two global temperature sources. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/mean:360/plot/gistemp/from:1850/mean:360
The latest trend is 0.17 C per decade and this looks steady. The ‘pause’ is an illusion of a more rapid rise followed by a correction that evens out in 30-year trends. The pause is just a feature of natural decadal variability, not present in climate change.
For the sake of humoring you, fine. Many of the more rabid warmists are now conceding the pause, but if you want to hang on by your fingernails, that’s your prerogative. Nonetheless, even giving you this, the models on which this whole rube goldberg contraption is built, have almost all wildly over-estimated any warming…during a period of much increases co2. Even you can’t get around that.
I don’t agree with him but he does have a valid point in that how many years do you use to compute an average? Shouldn’t this be agreed upon before using the data to support whatever premise you may have?
It’s long amused me that one phase of the PDO is around 30 years. So, you got your 30 year trend, and boom! a new phase and new climate.
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The pause is natural variation on short time scales, so I agree with people who say that. It doesn’t show up in climate trends, so I disagree with people who relate it to climate change.
Web:-
” If one looks at the Law Dome CO2 proxy data, it appears that as much of 0.25 C of the warming may be due to CO2 if one assumes a 2C per doubling of CO2 as a global sensitivity number”
If your position is that the climate sensitivity is only 2 degrees, then I am afraid that you are going to be classified as a ‘Denialist’.
“If your position is that the climate sensitivity is only 2 degrees, then I am afraid that you are going to be classified as a ‘Denialist’.”
The 2C per doubling is a rough transient value that doesn’t apply to the eventual steady state, which would be about 3 degrees per doubling of CO2.
This is not just a theoretical exercise since the 3C sensitivity does apply to land regions but without the long lag of ocean temperatures. I use 2C per doubling because the chart of temperature rise shown used both ocean and land data, and ocean contributes 70% of the weighting.
Maybe you can see that better. ~20 ppmv so the “globe” must have warmed ~.0.2 C over the past 7000 years. Good thing too, when CO2 drops below 265 there has to be an ice age. The great and power Carbon says so.
Since you are the guy that has all the CO2 answers, noting how “global” CO2 is joined to the IndoPacific Warm Pool hip, that compares the Antarctic Dome C Co2 record to the equatorial Pacific. Other than that nasty 2000 year CO2 lagging temperature at the start of the interglacial, the fit is not that bad. Stott btw is one of those CO2/Temperature not so linear relationship guys. He is also keen on the solar processional cycle and Calcium Compensation Depth drift.
Cappy Dick says over 7000 years that there has been about a 20 PPM change in atmospheric CO2 levels, which is a very, very gradual change of 0.3C at high sensitivity or about 0.0004C per decade.
Webster, “Cappy Dick says over 7000 years that there has been about a 20 PPM change in atmospheric CO2 levels, which is a very, very gradual change of 0.3C at high sensitivity or about 0.0004C per decade.
Are you seasick or something?”
Nope, that 20 ppm is 22 percent of the 190 to 280 ppm range that gradually increased well after the start of the Holocene and correlates with the gradual warming of the tropical pacific oceans. With the “global” cooling supposedly for the past 7000 years CO2 should have been reducing. The Holocene appears to be a little bit special since a typical interglacial would have continued cooling with the cooling accelerating once CO2 fell below 265 ppm.
“The reconstructed CO2 record shows that the Northern Hemisphere glaciation starts once the long-term average CO2 concentration drops below 265ppmv after a period of strong decrease in CO2 . Finally, only a small long-term decline of 23ppmv is found during the mid-Pleistocene transition, constraining theories on this major transition in the climate system. The approach is not accurate enough to revise current ideas about climate sensitivity.” http://epic.awi.de/25382/4/vandewal2011cp.pdf
It is unlikely that the 20 ppm rise caused warming but was more likely caused by warming. Cooling while CO2 increases, like Marcott implies, doesn’t seem to make sense. Of course, there are numerous issue with Marcott, but that’s you reference for cooling for the past 7000 years with no MWP period and no LIA worth considering.
Many would suggest that the climate record is relatively flat for the past 10000 years. CO2 increased by 5% and that would effect the temperature by 0.2 to 0.3 degrees assuming the 3C climate sensitivity.
Not a large dynamic range to draw conclusions over, which I think is the point of the hockey stick metaphor.
That’s about right, JimD. If one looks at the Law Dome CO2 proxy data, it appears that as much of 0.25 C of the warming may be due to CO2 if one assumes a 2C per doubling of CO2 as a global sensitivity number.
Here is a quick curve: http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/7527/7be.gif
Note that CO2 changed by more than 25 PPM during this period (starting from a base of 283PPM) which translates as significant on the log sensitivity scale.
Good point about the sun (being responsible for around half the past warming). Several solar studies have also come to this conclusion.
The unusually high level of 20thC solar activity (highest in several thousand years according to some solar studies) certainly had an impact.
For example, the average Wolf number of:
– SC 10-15 (1858-1928) was around 90, and
– SC 18-23 (1945-2008) was around 148 (peaking in SC19 at 190)
(i.e. a 64% increase)
SC23 was already much lower and it appears that SC24 will be even lower yet.
So the sun has very likely played a significant role in the past warming and may be playing a role in the current lack of warming.
3*ln((283+25)/283) = 0.25C
3*ln(2)=2.08 C per doubling.neglecting any other factor that may have contributed, like ~0.9C recovery from a cooler period to be renamed later.
”
captdallas 0.8 or less | August 10, 2013 at 3:15 pm |
3*ln((283+25)/283) = 0.25C
3*ln(2)=2.08 C per doubling.neglecting any other factor that may have contributed, like ~0.9C recovery from a cooler period to be renamed later.
”
The global average temperature has been on a decline since 7000 years ago, so your compensation has the wrong sign.
So when it comes to attribution for the 0,7 C rise in the 20th century, 0.2 C is from a solar increase, 0.9 C is from CO2 and -0.4 C is from aerosols. “Skeptics” often forget aerosols even though they are looking actively for negative effects.
Webster, “The global average temperature has been on a decline since 7000 years ago, so your compensation has the wrong sign.”
Nope, NH was on a decline, Tropics slight increase and SH on an upswing. There is a see saw effect related to the ~20ka precessional cycle more strongly evident near the poles. Since the game has shifted from “surface” temperature to OHC, which orientation do you think has more impact on SST and ocean heat content?
btw, if temperatures “globally” were in decline, why has CO2 in the Antarctic Ice cores risen for the past 7000 years? Natural CO2 should have peaked 7000 years ago, not started increasing again.
Webster, could you make that the full 800ka so it would be really hard to see the past 7ka? There is not much change, but what is the direction of change?
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | August 10, 2013 at 4:20 pm said: ”Over 7000 years, not much of a change in CO2 PPM”
wrong! for the last 7 000y most of the planets forest were turned into the today’s deserts. Uncontrollable bush-fires by rubbing two sticks – just the ”environmentalist brainwashing books” avoid reality. That’s when most of CO2 was released
IPCC AR4 has made it easy for us to attribute the various pieces of anthropogenic forcing.
According to AR4, the past radiative forcing from all other anthropogenic factors other than CO2 (other GHGs, aerosols, etc.) cancelled one another out, so that forcing from CO2 = total anthropogenic forcing.
But IPCC had problems with natural forcing, conceding that its level of scientific understanding of natural (solar) forcing was low.
It also conceded that clouds remain the largest source of uncertainty.
Fortunately there have been several solar studies, which show us that around 50% of all the past warming can be attributed to the unusually high level of 20th C solar activity (highest in several thousand years).
This was higher in the early 20th C warming cycle than in the statistically indistinguishable late 20th C warming cycle, where anthropogenic forcing played a greater role. It is even lower now.
The role of clouds is still unclear and being debated.
So you see that there is still a high amount of disagreement regarding anthropogenic versus natural attribution of past warming.
Jim D August 10, 2013 at 12:10 pm: “As i said on the previous thread, I deny the pause in climate change. Climate is 30-year averages.”
I am not sure you are saying what you mean. The climate is always changing so everyone would agree that there is no “pause in climate change.” I don’t think many would agree that climate respects a “30-year average.” Best I can tell the 30 years was chosen based on modern global temperature measurements and that 30 year period conveniently begins during the low point of a 70 year cycle. That is just as arbitrary as when some one picks the past 1,000 years. I have read more statistical justification for a 15 year period than I have for an arbitrary 30 year period.
Incidently your reference covers 140 years beginning at the end of the little ice age and ending in 2000 before the pause.
With 22-year filters (as Vaughan Pratt used recently) or 30-years you get a similar two-rise pattern in the 20th century. This is the real climate change. The first rise is possibly half solar, half CO2, the mid-century pause may be an aerosol growth and global dimming (if you look spatially where that cooling was), and the late century rise was CO2-dominated being largely in the northern continents and Arctic.
Jim D | August 10, 2013 at 12:10 pm | Reply
As i said on the previous thread, I deny the pause in climate change. Climate is 30-year averages.
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Why 30 JimD and not 28 or 32 or 100 for that matter? What science supports your assertion that climate is 30-year averages?
Is it just me or has anyone else notice that way the wind has changed?
We now have ‘warmistas’ declaring that variations in solar output are able to change global temperature. This is of course complete nonsense, as anyone with a background in realclimate science knows; the Great Gavin himself has stated time and again that variations in solar output have contributed between nothing and close to nothing to the Earths temperature
:-
” I think that the solar variations are indeed a factor in driving climate change, though my opinion is that it is a relatively small factor over the last century. It’s difficult to assign a specific number because of the uncertainties in solar and other forcings particularly early in the century and in even working out the correct calculation to do – i.e. since there are multiple positive and negative forcings it will depend on how you group them. If you lump them as ‘natural’ forcings vs. ‘anthropogenic’ forcings, you end up with something like 20% natural from 1900 to 1940 (note that I haven’t done this calc exactly), and even less since then. There is the potential for some wiggle room there though. You can do the calculations yourself based on the forcing fields available at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/simodel/F.indiv.data.txt. -gavin
“What we see is how science often works – increases in knowledge by increments and independent studies re-affirming previous findings, namely that changes in the sun play a minor role in climate change on decadal to centennial scales. After all, 2009 was the second-warmest year on record, and by far the warmest in the southern hemisphere, despite the record solar minimum. ”
The greatest mathematician and climate statistician of all time also poo-poo’s solar as a drive of natural variability.
“The cooling effect of man-made sulfates also helps explain the hemispheric asymmetry in temperature history. Most industrial activity is in the northern hemisphere, so most of the anthropogenic sulfate cooling should be there too. The northern hemisphere has warmed faster than the southern because there’s more land in the north than the south, and land has far less thermal inertia than ocean. But if sulfates are mostly in the northern hemisphere, that means that there should have been a stronger mid-century cooling effect in the north than in the south — and that’s exactly what we observe:
So begone foul solar energy flux changes, you can’t have it both ways. Now all you have to do is explain why there is a long lag between the increase in CO2 levels changes and the Earths temperature coming to steady state (i.ie. why you talk about ‘transient’ and ‘equilibrium’ climate sensitivity), but an instantaneous changes in temperature with aerosols or solar changes.
You guys are so much fun, its like watching the look of horror on the face of a man juggling chainsaws when he realizes he is about to sneeze.
The number of sunspots tripled between 1910 and mid-century. That has got to have an effect. There have always been irradiance proxies, such as Lean et al. that use this, but some chose not to believe them.
Clear as mud max, as usual someone brings a dictionary to a scientific discussion. I want a scientific definition of the pause, like a trend of x with uncertainty less than y degrees.
Nice use of wood for trees, but what is the uncertainty of your cooling trends and does it exclude the “about 0.2 C per decade trend from the IPCC?”
Bob Droege, “What about adjusting for ENSO?” What a novel idea? We can “adjust” for ENSO and Volcanoes without really knowing how to properly do that so we can get another 0.05 C of possible warming to make a trend just under significant, significant.
I think the gentleman is referring to this comment in the reference: “After two busy hurricane years in 2004 and 2005, many of the world’s leading experts (including Judith Curry and Roger Pielke) concluded that global warming was making major hurricanes hit more often.”
Based on prevailing data, at one point or another most of us were believers in AGW. My observation has been that our hostess has adhered to the adage “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”. There are some, however, who have their reputations and income stream invested to the point that they can’t follow the data.
This thread has meandered, as any weekend thread will do. I’d like to get back to a point which has gotten a bit lost, please forgive for repetition from above:
Having just reviewed Judith’s post on (Ir)responsible advocacy by scientists, After Climategate, Himalayan melt impacts, I would like to express my admiration for her all over again.
Despite all the personal attacks people in her position get, she has decided she will pursue science, real science unpolluted by societal trends, to wherever it goes, at whatever personal cost. Thank heavens that we have people like Judith, even if we don’t have quite enough of them. Roger Pielke Jr. also falls in this category, I’ve seen him get smeared by the likes of Chris Fields on TV, and I saw his emotional reaction. But he kept his cool, stated the science, instead of reacting in kind. His analyses of historical records of damage from tornados and hurricanes is crucial to a full and unbiased understanding of historical trends, not available anywhere else. Hats off to those scientists who do what Judith and Roger do, despite all the personal abuse they get.
We actually have some real heros and heroines to look up to here. Let’s put our hands together for Judith and Roger.
I’ve seen him get smeared by the likes of Chris Fields on TV, and I saw his emotional reaction. But he kept his cool, stated the science, instead of reacting in kind.
I don’t agree that Judith pursues the science “unpolluted by societal trends,” (an impossible standard) but I will join you in expressing appreciation for her attempts to do so.
RPJr., IMO, is different kettle of fish. He’s just as much of a climate warrior as anyone else.
Without commenting on his science per se, or the specific incident you’re characterizing, he “smears” on a pretty regular basis on his blog,.
Joshua, I will not let your unsubstantiated smear of Roger Pielke, Jr. stand uncontested. I have never seen him engage in anything that could reasonably be called a “smear” of anyone. In fact, unlike so many in the climate debates he seems to be remarkably evidence-driven. I don’t know the man beyond reading some of his blog writings, but unless you have evidence to offer your “smear” comments are most unworthy of this forum.
I guess it depends on what you consider to be a smear.
As one example, he has insinuated that he was released from editorial responsibilities because of the content of his science and not the reasons as stated by the officials who released him. He offered no concrete proof, and instead insinuated unethical behavior of others based on nothing other than circumstantial speculation. He uses terms like “climate chickens” to describe those who disagree with him.
I don’t think that Roger should be condemned in some fashion for the way that he engages this debate – as it is no different than the fashion in which many engage in this debate. Further, his manner of engagement is not (necessarily) directly relevant to his science. But I also see no reason to pretend that his manner of engagement is distinct in character than that of myriad others, on both sides – or that somehow he stands outside the circle of science affected by “societal trends.”
> I have never seen him engage in anything that could reasonably be called a “smear” of anyone.
Perhaps this:
[O]ne climate scientist suggests that my calling out Al Gore for misrepresenting the science of disasters and climate change […] to be morally comparable to killing 1,000 people. I kid you not.
As I said in the thread, steven Roger asks “When did you stop beating your wife?” and then says that he never said that you beat your wife.
It’s kind of a specialty of his. ‘
Hey, just another day in the climate blogospohere. Same ol’ same ol,.’ Not really a big deal. But IMO, if you’;re going to play those games then own up to it, and don’t pretend that somehow you’re above the fray.
It takes rare courage to resist the relentless, merciless onslaught of those aboard the global warming bandwagon, particularly in the US. Judith Curry has it in heaps, obviously, otherwise she would not have prevailed. But moreover, it takes an extraordinary clarity of purpose and a fiercely independent intellect to pierce through the veil of poor science, pseudoscience and outright propaganda masquerading as concerned advocacy science and remain steadfast in a position of scientific authority. So great respect to Judith and other outspoken career scientists doing similar. I have a feeling their lives are going to get easier – though I would prepare for a last-minute barrage of hatred and vitriol from those aboard the ‘good’ ship CAGW as it starts to sink beneath the waves of an ignominious history.
“But moreover, it takes an extraordinary clarity of purpose and a fiercely independent intellect to pierce through the veil of poor science, pseudoscience”
The pseudoscience by the commenters on this blog is about as bad as it gets. Yet, no one on the mildly skeptical side challenges any of this stuff.
—
My advisor’s advisor is Robert Park, who writes the long-running What’s New blog (since long before a blog was called a blog) and is the author of “Voodoo science: the road from foolishness to fraud” and “Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science”. He is my inspiration for pointing out poor science and pseudoscience.
I hope Dr. Park recovers from his recent health problems and resumes his writing.
Ahh, David Springer, the accolyte of William Dembski of Intelligent Design fame. Springer moderated Dembski’s ridiculous Uncommon Descent blog for some time.
“How better to illustrate the overlap than to give the award this year to one of the nation’s top pseudoscientists, Dr. William Demski, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, often regarded as the leading intelligent-design theorist. The Intelligent-Design movement seeks to portray intelligent-design as science.”
Springer is the same type of pseudoscientist as his buddy Dembski. Congrats to you Springer.
Robert Park is past president of the American Physical Society, of whose members would laugh hysterically should someone like Dembski try to apply for the position.
I have a very simple question to which I don’t know the answer:
What caused the Little Ice Age and why did we recover from it?
A second question:
If we had modern instrumentation during the LIA would we understand it better?
My personal favorite is evil europeans brought their filthy diseases to the pristine new world. Millions of natives died. Their previously cleared land quickly reverted to forest. This sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere, and the weakened GHE resulted in rapid cooling.
There are millenial scale changes the causes of which we know not. They were ignored in the rush to ‘Hockey Stick’ and supporting the narrative of man’s guilt. It’s not the first time we’ve embraced a mistaken narrative nor will it be the last. We have ears and ignorance, and that is enough.
=================
I agree its a good question. i think that there is some speculation that it was due to the Maunder solar minimum. It’s really a stretch to say it was due to CO2 as ice cores show very little change.
Even Leif Svalgaard thinks a Maunder Minimum may be on the way, but he doesn’t have the mechanism for it to cool the globe, despite spending a long productive career looking for it.
========================
I’m glad to see that this question has provoked a response.
To quote AP Herbert: “If no one were to open their mouths without knowing exactly what they were talking about, a deadly hush would fall upon the World”!
I agree that the modern warming period could be a random fluctuation and I wrote a post about it:
This was damned with faint praise by the good lady herself and the thread was dominated by WebHubTelescope giving his insights. I realise in retrospect that I should have recalculated the statistics assuming an underlying trend representing recovery from the LIA (whatever it was).
One upshot of the analysis, which was a response to Ludecke et al, based on the idea of a system lag, i.e.: storage of thermal energy and a random forcing is that a high temperature predisposes to an increasing temeperature trend and a low temperature predisposes to a low temperature trend. In this case the LIA could conceivably have been a random fluctuation.
However, I don’t believe that this model is correct and in the post I was “flying a kite”.
it was written from a British perspective but CET has a wider proxy relevance than merely England.
The LIA was episodic not one continual extended era. Its first phase can be traced to around 1215 to 1290 when the warmer periods of a further phase of the MWP then predominated again. .
As you probably know the LIA was characterised by some very extreme weather (storms/floods/droughts etc) and also by hot summers that often counterbalanced the cold winters.
Its cause? Prof Fagan doesn’t know and nor do I. Perhaps it was solar related or perhaps solar related with blocking highs and changes in circulation in both the air and ocean.
Hope you will feel able to write a follow up to your original article.
tonyb
The reason I posed this question was simply that this (LIA, recovery) seems to be one of the biggest climate events in relatively recent history. Its seems to be roundly ignored and nobody, as far as I can tell, can account for it. My instinct is that it is most likely to be related to the sun or astronomical effects.
However, if we cannot account for an event of this importance, there seems to be something missing from an overall theory of climate. Can the modelling boys account for it through hindcasting? I suspect not.
The recovery in 1700 from the coldest period of the ice age was by far the biggest hockey stick in instrumental history.
Historical climatology has become unfashionable in recent times although. 30 years ago such as Hubert Lamb and Ladurie investigated hundreds of events covering the LIA. In recent decades we seem so beguiled by the modern hockey stick that the bigger ones in the past are overlooked.
Our knowledge of the climate is still at a very primitive stage although we like to believe we have a good grasp on how it works.
The recovery from the LIA and then a decades long period of considerable warmth seem to be of little interest to modern funded researchers. That temperatures have been on the rise for 350 years also seems to be forgotten with the belief that it is a recent concern.
tonyb
RC to try and answer your questions, together. I think the honest answer is that no-one knows what caused the LIA, which coincided with the Maunder minimum. So no-one knows why we recovered from it. There are all sorts of ideas as to how the sun controls our climate, but nothing that is much more than a hypothesis, at present. And very knowledgable people like Leif Svalgaard dispute some of the ideas.
I believe that the sun’s magnetic properties are are the root of what caused the LIA. And what we are hoping, and I wont be around unfortunately, is that when the Eddy Minimum gets into full gear, then modern instrumentation might well be able to answer some of the questions. I have no doubt that if such instrumentation, and our current knowledge as to how the sun works, had been around in the 17th century, we would not be guessing nearly as much as we are now.
” I have no doubt that if such instrumentation, and our current knowledge as to how the sun works, had been around in the 17th century, we would not be guessing nearly as much as we are now.”
And if Leonardo da Vinci had known calculus, the theory of relativity, and the know-how to build a wafer fab and a nuclear power plant, no telling how far advanced we would be now.
no-one knows what caused the LIA, which coincided with the Maunder minimum. So no-one knows why we recovered from it.
And no-one knows what caused the early or late-20th C warming, what caused the period of slight cooling in between and what is causing the current period of slight cooling (which Jim D still denies).
manacker, I have looked at 60-year averages and there you just get an increasing upwards trend like the CO2 curve. Skeptics would complain even more about that. Anyway, I think the 30-year trend is not showing PDO much because the mid-century cooling was due to aerosols if you check where it occurred (e.g., east US and north west Atlantic, not places where you look for PDO). On the other hand, there is a long-term PDO cooling phase now affecting this decade, and it could be as much as 0.1 C in the global average.
– latest decade (since 2002) shows cooling
– prior three decades (1973-2002) show warming
– prior three decades (1943-1972) show slight cooling
– prior three decades (1913-1942) show similar warming to 1973-2002
– prior three decades (1883-1912) show cooling
– prior three decades (1853-1882) show warming
– all on a slight overall warming trend of 0.7C over 150+ years
That graph includes a lot of human induced warming which doesn’t follow a 60 year cycle. So any 60 year cycle overall is a coincidence and nothing more.
Whether one attributes the 60-year warming + cooling cycles to PDO or whatever cause, the fact of the matter is that they are there in the observed record of the globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly (HadCRUT4).
It is also very unlikely that they are caused by human GHG emissions, because there are no such cycles in these.
And underneath it all we have a slight warming trend of around 0.7C since the record started 160+ years ago.
Since there were hardly any human GHG emissions prior to the end of WWII, we can safely conclude that this warming was caused primarily by natural factors.
Since 1959 we have actual measurements of atmospheric CO2 and these have increased at a fairly constant exponential rate of increase since at least the mid 1970s.
The latter 20th C saw a 30-year period of warming that is statistically indistinguishable from a period of similar length in the early 20th C, before much human CO2.
So if we make the WAG that most of the late 20thC warming and a smaller % of the early 20th C warming were caused by human factors (let’s say CO2), we arrive at a 2xCO2 temperature response of around 0.8C.
Adding in what IPCC in AR4 estimated to still be hidden “in the pipeline” (= 0.6C), we arrive at a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity at equilibrium of 1.4C.
This seems to be in the same range as the estimate of several recent observation-based estimates, and around half of earlier model-based predictions cited by IPCC in AR4.
If the current pause continues for several decades (as some studies project) despite unabated human GHG emissions and CO2 levels continuing to rise exponentially, we might need to revisit these observation-based estimates of 2xCO2 climate sensitivity.
On the other hand, if the warming resumes at the past long-term rate, this would tend to corroborate the latest ECS estimates.
That’s how I see it, anyway, based on the facts on the ground.
manacker, and I could show you that land sensitivity since 1980 works out to be near 4 C per doubling, no pipeline, no equilibrium assumption, no deep ocean response, just a land temperature change over a CO2 change. Land warming faster than the ocean is a signature of fast forcing changes because the land can respond more quickly. In these decades the land-only warming is twice the global rate.
IPCC has consistently used the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” (HadCRUT 3 and 4) as the key indicator of manmade global warming.
Don’t move the goalpost on us, Jim, now that this indicator is in a stall.
I find it significant scientifically that the land is warming twice as fast as the global average. Perhaps you don’t want to think what this entails, and that is fine. These kinds of details help to untangle what is going on in a global average.
I can quote prof Brian fagan who asked exactly that question. He wrote; ‘did small changes in the earths axis affect global temperatures for five centuries, or did cyclical fluctuations in solar radiation lead to greater cooling? The answer still eludes us, largely because we have barely begun to understand the global climatic system and the interactions between atmosphere and ocean that drives it.’
That comes from page 55 of his book’the little ice age.’
As regards modern instrumentation transposed to the lia. Digital automatic stations that have been properly set up are accurate within their stated parameters. All manually read thermometers have problems associated with them to a greater or lesser degree. My site climatereason.com carries instrumental records from 1659 and thereby covers much of the most severe phases of the little ice age, which was intermittent rather than continuous and could have summers every bit as hot as today’s but often had very much colder winters. However all manual instrumentation-ancient and modern- should be taken with a pinch of salt and are not accurate to fractions of a degree.
You just did! What else do you want to say about them? I am quite well up to speed on the 1258 one that Dr Mann thought so important he wrote a paper about it.
As in people might be better concerned about the impact of Iceland ‘s volcanoes erupting or the Yellowstone caldera blowing than what a warming climate might bring.
“I have a very simple question to which I don’t know the answer:
What caused the Little Ice Age and why did we recover from it?”
Well, Little Ice Age is mostly about a period of global glacier advance.
And past glacial advancement or retreat can be measured at the present time. One could also do what we commonly do today and discuss weather rather than climate.
So Little Ice can be detected due glacier advance and retreat, proxy temperatures, and past cold weather- rivers freezing, crops not growing, etc.
What can cause glacier advance could have to do with rainfall patterns- does snow when it’s cold, does it rain when it’s warm, though generally it about average yearly temperature changes- it’s a marker of average global temperature.
Our current interglacial period has a very slight cooling period over the last 8000 years, and the severity of Little Ice Age might have something to do with this long term trend. What is apparent over such a long period of time, is there are centuries periods of warming and cooling- and warming periods tend to last longer than cooling period, though Little ice Age tended to be cooler and longer.
What is known about LIA is there were a few very large volcanic eruptions- much larger than we have had in 20th and 21 century. Next we know yearly number of sunspots were unusually low these may added to a longer cycle of warming/cooling or be the reason for such cycles.
“A second question:
If we had modern instrumentation during the LIA would we understand it better?”
We would have had better resolution in the measurements. The modern El Nino peak in global temperature of 1997 and 1998 would been hard to accurately “see” during the LIA.
And there is problem “splicing” these different ways of measuring average global temperature. There problem even modern record or splicing different time period with merely the number and locations of weather stations recording temperatures. And it England’s long record keeping of temperature which has helpful in splicing these temperatures records together, but if we had to rely solely on England’s measuring earth current average temperature, one could see “problems” with that idea.
We really haven’t been measuring global temperature very accurately, before the the beginning of satellite record. And the Argos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_%28oceanography%29
Marks the beginning of accurately measuring the ocean’s temperature.
The ice core data is more than sufficient to understand what caused and ended the Little Ice Age and all the other Little Ice Ages in the past ten thousand years. The ice core data is more than sufficient to understand what caused and ended the Roman and Medieval and Modern Warm Period and all the other Warm Periods in the past ten thousand years.
The temperature has been bounded tightly around a set point for the most recent ten thousand years. That is different and new.
Continents drifted, ocean levels changed. ocean currents changed and Polar Ice Developed. The Polar Ice has become the new and wonderful thermostat for earth. When the Polar Ice is melted because earth is warm, it snows like crazy and builds ice that advances and cools earth. When the oceans get cold and the Polar Water freezes the snowfall is turned off and earth can warm.
If you disagree, propose your own theory to explain the modern set point for temperature and the tight bounding around that set point that has always worked for ten thousand years.
The set point and tight bounding is in the actual data. This is what has always happened for ten thousand years.
Earth temperature and sea level has cycled up and down in tight bounds for ten thousand years. If you believe my Theory is Wrong, tell me your theory that could possibly be better.
“The temperature has been bounded tightly around a set point for the most recent ten thousand years. That is different and new.
Continents drifted, ocean levels changed. ocean currents changed and Polar Ice Developed. The Polar Ice has become the new and wonderful thermostat for earth.”
[If by new you mean within millions of years, I am assuming. Or in terms of billions of years, millions of years could be called “new”. And changes of continental effects are on the order of ten million years]
“When the Polar Ice is melted because earth is warm, it snows like crazy and builds ice that advances and cools earth. When the oceans get cold and the Polar Water freezes the snowfall is turned off and earth can warm. ”
Yes, I am to some extent aware of your theory. And that is part of why I said growing/advancing glacier “could have to do with rainfall patterns”.
I leave it as possible that a summertime ice free polar ocean may be significantly changing rainfall [and snow] patterns. I also leave it as a possibility that other factors could be affecting rainfall patterns.
But I believe the evidence of volcanic and solar activity correlating the LIA, should not be ignored.
I don’t feel confident about what causes cooling periods, and I believe what causes cooling periods, is far more important than what causes warming periods- as cooling periods are far more consequential.
The idea that we should panic about warming, when have lived in ice box climate for millions of years is a humorous and sad state of the pseudoscience which is commonly associated with climate science.
“If you disagree, propose your own theory to explain the modern set point for temperature and the tight bounding around that set point that has always worked for ten thousand years. ”
As for my theories or thoughts about the issue. I tend to believe the tropics is major element in global climate. I also think oceans are where vast majority of heating from Sun occurs and is stored. So I think a major factor of global climate is related warming of the tropical oceans. So I tend to think the variation of cloud cover over the tropical ocean is probably major factor. And generally I think it more about a “greenhouse” liquid than greenhouse gases.
It’s possible that changes in polar regions could effect tropical conditions, and to extent it does, it would affect global temperatures.
Though it’s possible that if one concerned about century or less time periods related of global climate changes, that how much is snows where and when, could more important than average global temperature. As said the changing rainfall patterns could be casual factor, rather merely an effect of cooling or warming.
But if throw more than 100 cubic km of volcanic dust into the atmosphere, it seems it’s going to have some global cooling effect- and other kinds of effects.
Cenozoic temperature, sea level and CO2 co-variations provide insights into climate sensitivity to external forcings and sea level sensitivity to climate change.
Climate sensitivity depends on the initial climate state, but potentially can be accurately inferred from precise paleoclimate data.
Burning all fossil fuels, we conclude, would make much of the planet uninhabitable by humans, thus calling into question strategies that emphasize adaptation to climate change.
Summary It’s not complicated, folks! Just keep in mind the sobering reality, that even the fanciest Faux News “Five Stepping” can’t fool Mother Nature.
Conclusion Denialist “Five Step” practices are non-scientific, irrational, and morally wrong.
Hansen:-
“Our calculated global warming in this case is 16°C, with warming at the poles about 30°C. Calculated warming over land areas averages ~20°C. Such temperatures would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world . Increased stratospheric water vapor would diminish the stratospheric ozone layer .
More ominously, global warming of that magnitude would make much of the planet uninhabitable by humans.”
Interesting that Hansen ignores aerosols in his ice core data analysis, yet most modelers are captivated by the ability of modest changes in aerosols to drop global temperatures. Oddly, the dust levels recorded in the ice cores show that the levels vary by three orders of magnitude, with high levels during the ice ages, global dimming, and levels equal to those at present during the warm ages.
One gets the impression that Hansen is a big a fraud as Fan.
“Interesting that Hansen ignores aerosols in his ice core data analysis”
Does he?
“Oddly, the dust levels recorded in the ice cores show that the levels vary by three orders of magnitude, with high levels during the ice ages, global dimming, and levels equal to those at present during the warm ages.”
Sounds like a positive feedback to me then. Less dust as it gets warmer. If it’s a feedback then it’s part of the climate sensitivity Hansen has calculated. It actually makes climate sensitivity higher!
I wonder if this is a positive feedback the current generation of models don’t include.
Not on this site. The amount of comments by kranks outweighs rational skeptics considerably. You want a list and stats?
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #2 Denigrate any Scientists And Scientific Studies that conflict with the forced “Consensus” position
Name the scientists please. If they happen to be like Murry Salby who have somehow flipped out, we have no choice but to debunk them.
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #3 Equate Rational Skepticism of the “consensus” dogma With Simply A Conservative Opinion
Some of us can hear the dog whistles and interpret what they mean.
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #4 Claim That Skeptics obtain funding from Oil and Coal companies
Lots of names I can point out. It gets worse if you start bringing in oil cornucopians. Personally, I don’t really care that they get backing, as the objective facts and reasoning beat propaganda money in the line of work I am in.
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #5 Avoid Discussion of Specific Issues, but Characterize Skeptics of the forced “Consensus” As Simply “Kooks”
You are repeating yourself from point 1, unless you think a Kook is different than a Contrarian. Please name anyone that comments on this blog site that has a formal reasoned arguments on specific issues published or posted somewhere else. Your fallback is always Principia Scientific ….
“Conclusion Denialist “Five Step” practices are non-scientific, irrational, and morally wrong.”
As opposed to the Pope to whose authority you often appeal, who considers himself infallible. Lacking the funny hat and prestigious address, people can find themselves locked up for that kind of thinking
The Gist In recent centuries, Popes have learned (the hard way) to speak ex cathedra solely in regard to matters of faith; never in regard to matters of science, for the simple reason that Nature is utterly inflexible in her strict respect for science.
And so in matters of science, the Pope himself yields to the considered opinion of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science … an opinion that amounts to “James Hansen is right”.
The Gist In recent centuries, Popes have learned (the hard way) to speak ex cathedra solely in regard to matters of faith; never in regard to matters of science, for the simple reason that Nature is inflexible in her strict respect for science.
And so in matters of science, the Pope himself yields to the considered opinion of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science … an opinion that amounts to “James Hansen is right”.
Predictable how ridiculous and petty Dave Springer appears.
I mention my earth science modeling blog http://ContextEarth.com and he thinks he is some super-sleuth in hacking for my name, even though all he had to do is open any one of the 4 PDFs of papers that I have written in the last year that are linked via the top-level menu.
Should we call him SuperDave or IntelliDave, what works better?
Webby, you are looking more ridiculous with each comment.”
Thanks for the interest in the site, Max. The blog is a spin-off from open-source research that I was involved with in the last year.
At the heart of the project is a semantic web server that provides a knowledgebase and a modeling and simulation engine which can be used to provide an environmental “context” to solving problems or for general analysis.
What is important about the knowledgebase is that it won’t link to pseudoscience of the 3% type, so I suppose that will make Max kind of sad and weepy.
@lolwot | August 10, 2013 at 4:37 pm |
lolwot – please tell me you seriously have never heard of the whois internet service. I’m having a lot of trouble believing that. It’s like ping, dig, traceroute, and others. These are used by people and equipment on the internet. They are not only legal, they are vital to the operation of the internet.
I swear that the 3% are some of the dumbest people on the planet.
I have a website called http://ContextEarth.com. On the top-level menu, I have 4 papers linked that each have have my name plastered on the first page.
I was being sarcastic when I said that the genius Dave Springer thought he had to do a whois to discover someone’s name.
Who could have thunk it that someone who was involved in a multi-million dollar research project would not put their name on papers associated with said research project.
I didn’t happen to see name, address, email, and telephone number on the pdfs. Thanks for illustrating your ignorance, Wee Willie. Not that it needed further illustration mind you.
Hacking? Well there are a number of Hack’s who post here but the ability to cut and paste a website address into ‘who.is’ does not constitute a cyber super-sleuth. Unless of course I am also computer security bypass expert.
Could it be that Dr. Martyn Sharpe is as dumb as the 3%?
All that the good doctor has to do is open up the PDFs of papers linked at the top-level menu of http://ContextEarth.com to find out my name.
It’s like when he gets handed a research paper at a conference. You can bet that the Doc would go to the trouble of dusting for fingerprints and doing a match with the FBI instead of simply looking at the name at the top of the paper.
You see, they think all this sleuthing makes them look super-intelligent and capable of fighting crime instead of just like silly little punks hoping for others of the 3% team to pat them on the back.
You could indeed subject yourself to the cost, both in download charges and time, and boost WebHubTelescope’s web page readership statistics, or you could use Whois.
Your method seems more efficient. If WHT put his statistics on his web page, instead of trying to force visitors to read his “papers”, then looking at his web page would win, I guess.
I cannot guess as to his reason for not showing his statistics in the most user friendly manner. Why obscure that which could be as easily made clear?
” Mike Flynn | August 11, 2013 at 11:01 pm |
You could indeed subject yourself to the cost, both in download charges and time, and boost WebHubTelescope’s web page readership statistics, or you could use Whois.”
Go to Mike Flynn for instructions on how to attract spam.
“I cannot guess as to his reason for not showing his statistics in the most user friendly manner. Why obscure that which could be as easily made clear?”
Statistics is what Google Scholar is for. Once you register your name with Scholar, it keeps track of all your publications and does citation statistics. Why re-invent the wheel?
I’m wrong? Good. Then you won’t mind me emailing the fiance with a polite inquiry asking if her betrothed might possibly be the misogynist harassing Judith Curry night and day.
I couldn’t care less. I will suggest, however, that sending such an email might land you in some kind of problem for harassment. You see, Springer – you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, and sending such an email to the wrong person might get you in legal trouble, I would imagine.
You are confident about something for which you have misinterpreted whatever evidence you think you have.
And if you really think you’re right, lets arrange a bet. I will give you 2 to one odds on a 100,000 bet (you put up $50k. We’ll pay someone mutually agreed upon 10k to handle the money for us. I suggest Captain Dallas if he’ll agree. He seems to me like an honest bloke. If you want someone else, make a suggestion.
So what do you say, Springer? Deal? Or are you afraid to stand behind your reasoning ability?
Are we back to bargaining about the price of your courage? That didn’t turn out well for you last time. But it was fun. I’ll bet you one dollar I’m correct.
And just so you know, sending a stranger an email is no more or less illegal than sending them a letter by US mail, calling them on the phone, or knocking on their door. People selling stuff from credit cards to Jehovah do it all the time. Does your ass get tired from pulling ignorant comments out of it?
Springer is trying to prove that Springer is the logical endpoint of Intelligent Design. He has all the answers and that is what the original “Designer” intended apparently.
And just so you know, sending a stranger an email is no more or less illegal than sending them a letter by US mail, calling them on the phone, or knocking on their door.
The point was you are threatening to send an email to a woman and making false, and arguably slanderous, claims about her fiance – not a generic case of sending someone an email.
I’m not backing off on anything Joshua. Here is what I wrote that has you hot and bothered months later.
So you go back to what you wrote a while back rather than what you’ve written in the interim.
For example:
I’m wrong? Good. Then you won’t mind me emailing the fiance with a polite inquiry asking if her betrothed might possibly be the misogynist harassing Judith Curry night and day.
You see, Springer – one of the telltale signs of a “skeptic” is a selective approach to certainty. First you’re not certain. Then you’re certain. And when I point out your inconsistency, you suddenly aren’t certain once again.
Ask Chief to explain it to you. He’s an expert.
Do we have a bet or not, Springer?
That is a yes or no question. The terms are clear. Why not just put this all to rest now, and just admit that you’re going to just duck the bet. You obviously don’t have the balls to stand behind your words (and your threats as I excerpted above). Why drag out the obvious over numerous threads.
Just pull off the band-aid. It hurts real bad at first, but you’ll get over it.
QUestion Girma and Kim and Peter Lang, why are you all three linking, over and over again, to a science-free fact-free ideology-driven denialist screed?
There is one source of even relatively accurate ocean heat and salinity data – and that is entirely consistent with the most accurate methods to date for measuring toa radiant flux over the period.
You make much of highly inaccurate data – but reject data on toa radiant flux that goes to causation.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 5:45 pm: “Seriously, from a strictly scientific point-of-view, if global warming is over, then when will sea-levels start declining?
You are conflating two definitions:
The referenced article states “ I refer, not to any warming of the planet that may or may not be occurring, but to the world’s apparently serious and broadly shared belief in dangerous, man-made global warming”
The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause.
The AGW proponents won a PR point when they were successfully able to conflate these two issues. The 97% is a classic illustration. By associating any climate warming with anthropogenic climate warming they have confused the public into believing that anyone who concurs that the climate is worming is automatically endorsing AGW.
You are not making a serious scientific point; you are making a PR point.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm : “PMHinSC claims ‘The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause.’ And the globe *may* be only 8,000 years old, having been created at that time divine force, isn’t that right PMHinSC?”
Sarcasm is PR not science.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm: “And respectable scientists can be found who believe *both* hypotheses, isn’t that correct PMHinSC?”
I would hope that you would consider the following (who disagree with your absolute position that only manmade CO2 is causing global warming) to be respectable scientists:
Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever Doctorate in Physics,
Freeman Dyson Emeritus Professor of Physics (widely considered one of the world’s most distinguished scientists) at Princeton,
William Happer Professor of Physics at Princeton.
Dr. James Lovelock (god farther of Manmade Global Warming and guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism) who has renounced his support of AGW
Dr. Judith Curry our Hostess.
These are only a few among thousands.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm: “But neither opinion reflects in any way the broad and widening, strong and strengthening, scientific consensus that AGW is real and serious.
Isn’t that objectively true, PMHinSC?”
I find just the opposite; that more scientist are hedging their previous support. Dr. James Lovelock is just one of many examples. You will find that saying something over and over again isn’t enough to make it true. In the end the scientific process will tell us if it is true.
A fan of *MORE* discourse | August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm |, “Nowadays, more-and-more ordinary folks are seeing climate-change plainly with their own eyes.”
No matter what your long term position is, there has been nothing to see for at least 15 years. People cannot see what does not exist so that is a PR statement.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm: “that means denialism is fated for extinction, right PMHinSC?”
I couldn’t disagree more and am siding with our hostess when she says “Well, so far the uncertainty monster is winning the debate, I am putting my money on the uncertainty monster.”
Please notice that you have not provided any scientific support for your belief. You have used sarcasm, PR, and made unsupported statements. Do you really believe that there are not respected scientists on both sides of this issue? Do you really believe that over the last 15 years “people are seeing climate change plainly”? Belief is a religious concept not a scientific concept.
After claiming: “The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause”
He backs this up with: “I would hope that you would consider the following (who disagree with your absolute position that only manmade CO2 is causing global warming”)…
See what he did there?
He then digs into quite a hypocritical appeal to authority (for a climate skeptic, but then climate skeptics are hypocrits when it comes to authority) by citing such people as Ivar Giaever and Freeman Dyson.
These people might have titles, but they are only as good as their arguments. It’s quite revealing that supposed skeptics like PMHinSC are willing to promote people like Ivar Giaever.
Here are some quotes by Ivar Giaever which show he has less clue about climate than me.
Ivar Giaever: “How can you measure the average temperature of the Earth? I don’t think that’s possible”
Ivar Giaever: “Water vapor is a much much stronger green[house] gas than the CO2. If you look out of the window you see the sky, you see the clouds, and you don’t see the CO2”
lolw0t August 11, 2013 at 8:17 am: “PMHinSC moves the goalpost.
After claiming: The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause.He backs this up with: would hope that you would consider the following (who disagree with your absolute position that only manmade CO2 is causing global warming”)…See what he did there? He then digs into quite a hypocritical appeal to authority”
You have created a catch 22 situation for me. In response to a claim that all “reputable scientists” support AGW I listed several reputable scientists who (whether you agree with them or not) do not agree that CO2 is the main driver of climate. If I provide a list I am “appealing to authority”, if I don’t provide a list I am conceding the point. All of the evidence has yet to be presented and consequently neither your list or my list can claim absolute authority.
Just why do we have the dip in the 2011-2012 period.
Seriously, can anyone here tell me what the hell happened?
This dip appeared in the tide gauges the world over.
Call it 6 mm.
So we have 0.6 cm of ocean, across 3.6×10^8 km2 disappearing, which is a weight of just over 2 teratons of water, 2×10^12 Tons.
Seriously, where does 2 teratons of water hide for 15 months and then slouch back without anyone noticing where it went, where it hide, and where it came back.
Iolwot has provided a good link but it needs amplification. Firstly the level of accuracy of the combined passes of the monitoring satellites is around 2cm (the handbooks are much less certain and quote a margin of error of up to 15cm but practice makes better)
In addition there is up to 4cm of water suspended in the air -assuming the whole globe measurement not just the ocean area.
As Jason 1 was decommissioned so the opportunity was taken to make various adjustments.
Due to tides, waves , land movement, difficulty of judging heights around coasts, atmospheric vapour and that not all ocean basins are at the same height, the Colorado university methodology of judging sea levels is somewhat uncertain.
If you were involved with a local project-such as sea defences-you would rather take a tide gauge with a long and authenticated history -which is not the same as that used by the IPCC in Chapter 4.
Sea levels are a whole can of moving worms-the 3mm increase per year is highly averaged, some areas show a much greater increase, whilst in other areas sea levels are dropping.
Someone-not me-really needs to write a piece on the usefulness or otherwise of our ongoing desire to average global climate parameters. Its not really very helpful and disguises regional differences
tonyb
These two are argumentitive cretins with nothing much to say. From their general tone, they are clearly liberal arts/sociology types who have no education or interest in parsing a scientific argument.
The trouble with blogs such as this is that they attract intellectually challenged cretins who a dazzled by what they consider to their own brilliance.
Fan, that is a good question, when will sea levels start declining. According to some reconstructions, Marcott comes to mind, the world has been cooling for thousands of years. What about sea levels?
German’s electricity bills have doubled since 2000. (Germans pay about 40c a KWH.)
Up to 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because they couldn’t pay their bills.
Germany’s renewable energy levy rose from €14bn to €20bn in one year as wind and solar expanded. German households will pay a renewables surcharge of €7.2bn this year alone.
Germany has more than half the worlds solar panels. They generated 40% of Germany’s peak electricity demand on June 6, but practically 0% during the darkest weeks of winter.
Seimens closed it’s entire solar division, losing about €1bn. Bosch is getting out too, it has lost about €2.4bn.
Solar investors have lost almost about €25bn in the past year. More than 5,000 companies associated with solar have closed since 2010.
Germany has phased out nuclear, but is adding 20 coal fired stations. Gas power can’t compete with cheap coal or subsidized renewables and 20% of gas power plants are facing shutdown.
Despite the river of money paid to renewables, emissions have risen in Germany for the last two years.
It’s a case of lose-lose all around, everyone — taxpayers, investors, renewables companies, gas companies — all lost. Waste and stupidity on a colossal scale.”
Chief: The Black death showed the potential power of rats.
Speaking of potential,. can we return to our previous discussion of the internal energy of CO2? you mention electron dynamic energy. I call it vibrational; you call it potential. I think we are both right, But the electron is so light that it’s contribution to total molecular internal energy is negligable. Consider the degrees of freedom of the COI2 nolecule. It has two heavy outrigger oxygen atoms, each side of the central carbon atom. These can and do vibrate in the molecule bending mode at low IR frequencies, but not at 25C, or 13C: it takes a much higher temperature to excite them. That is the point I am trying to make. What do nyou think?
Kinetic energy is the vibrational and translation components. Potential energy is in the molecular bonds, the energy contained in the mass of the molecule and energy in energy states of electrons.
Anything that has heat – including at 25 degress C – has kinetic energy. Electron energy states are an utterly different consideration. In the atmosphere – I am told – about 7% of IR photons in the right frequency are absorbed an emitted.
It’s time to start telling America’s sportsmen the truth. We’re ignoring the single biggest threat we’ve ever faced and sentencing our kids and our grandkids to a life we’d never, ever want for ourselves.
This isn’t about politics. It’s not about Democrats vs. Republicans, or left vs. right, or liberal vs. conservative. It’s not about the Tea Party, or Al Gore, or Sarah Palin. It’s not even about Barack Obama. It’s about my kids, and yours, and whether we’re going to do the right thing – even though it’s hard – or whether we’re going to sit back and microwave Mother Nature until there’s nothing left to worry about.
We used to be a strong country; a moral country. We used to tell the truth whether or not it was politically expedient. Our word was our bond, and a handshake was all most of us ever needed. We were decent folks, focused on our families, our neighbors and our communities. We worked hard and treated the people around us with respect, and our compass always pointed true.
It’s hard to believe we’ve stopped listening to our fisheries & wildlife biologists, and our other scientists. Even worse, we’ve stopped believing what our eyes are telling us. We know climate change is real. We see it constantly, both on the evening news and right outside our front door. We know we’re contributing to it. And if we don’t make some hard choices right now, we’ll be begging our children for their forgiveness in 15 or 20 years.
Here’s the God’s honest truth. This is the single most important issue that any of us will ever face. It’s bigger than any threat to sportsmen that’s come down the pipe, and way, way harder to fix. And now we have to make a choice. Either we stand up for our hunting and fishing, and for our kids and grandkids, or we write off everything we’ve ever cared about.
That’s the black & white of it, and if you’re reading this, you need to decide exactly where you stand.
Folks who visit Conservation Hawks are visiting the future of American Conservatism.
Fan of More BS – I see you have found a crock of BS … again.
We have already hosed our grandchildren by running up more debt than we, their parents, and them can ever pay back. The idea that burning fossil fuels is our biggest problem is BS. It is based on models that even the modelers admit to be wrong, but the “best” we have, so this is just more alarmist BS piled higher and deeper. And I can assure you it has squat to do with conservatives.
PG quotes an economist/poltical scientist who’s written an opinion piece in an obscure and dogmatic political journal, where his primary source on climaye science is a book by an investment banker, who is also tied in to fringe conservative political think-tanks.
Yes the renowned Todd Tanner, founder and sole member of Conservation Hawks. The future of American Conservatism. Please visit his blog and leave a random comment. So far he’s only gotten about 6. And please make a donation. George Soros is about to cut him off.
LOL yeah, Conservation Hawks is today’s front-page link on Season’s End, the anti-AGW conservation site that is supported by its partner organizations:
• Ducks Unlimited
• Trout Unlimited
• BASS/ESPN Outdoors
• Izaak Walton League of America
• Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies
• Coastal Conservation Association
• American Sportfishing Association
• Pheasants Forever
• Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
• Wildlife Management Institute
• Delta Waterfowl
• Boone and Crockett Club
Say, just how huge *IS* this-here CAGW “conspiracy”???
Or do yah think, Don Monfort, that just maybe folks are starting to see AGW with their own eyes?
In which case, denialism is slated for extinction, ain’t that right?
You are just another hysterical Chicken Little clown. CAGW is near the bottom, or at the bottom, of most folks’ lists of things that they are most concerned about. The CAGW scare has jumped the shark. The greenie Eurocrats are backing out of their ill-conceived abatement schemes. The green energy subsidy gravy train is running out of steam. How are you doing in the carbon market? The Aussie greenie carbon tax dummies are about to get dumped. The pause is killing your cause. Denialism is triumphant. I think that covers it. Get some rest.
• Scientists are hysterical Chicken Little clowns.
• CAGW is near the bottom of most folks’ lists.
• The CAGW scare has jumped the shark.
• Greenie Eurocrats are backing out.
• Green energy subsidies are running out of steam.
• How are you doing in the carbon market?
• The Aussie greenie carbon tax dummies are about to get dumped.
• The pause is killing your cause.
• Denialism is triumphant.
Gosh Don, your list makes it plain that the Denialist Creed holds within it no elements of rationality, science, foresight, or morality.
‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.’
Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27).
Look guys – you have stuffed up and the planet is cooling for decades at least – a cooling planet has potential to make us look like idiots and set back carbon mitigation for generations.
However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.
To be honest the planet might warm or cool and we don’t have a freaking clue which – but we still don’t think changing the atmosphere without having a freaking clue as to potential outcomes is the best idea ever.
To be honest the planet might warm or cool and we don’t have a freaking clue.
Actually we have better than a clue. We have actual data.
We have data for the past ten thousand years. Earth warms, then cools, then warms, then cools, then warms, then cools. That is much better than a clue. We warmed, we cooled, we warmed, we cooled, we have now warmed again, we will next cool again.
Hard to tell what you think you mean by data – but repeating we warm – we cool over and over again doesn’t mean a damn thing. Assume we got it already and that no one gives a rat’s arse but Jabberwocky.
I think you are a deluded ‘blog scientist’ with a simplistic and misguided one dimensional blog theory for a system with many degrees of freedom.
Try reading some actual science over a broad spectrum and build a picture that has depth and complexity. Either that say something else occasionally. Show you have a sense of humour. Quote some poetry. Do a song and dance.
“If global warming is over when will the sea levels stop rising”
Probably within 10 to 30 years given that there will be some retained heat inertia like the poles continuing to melt for a little while after mid summer.
There should then be a pause (wow) and then a downslope.
Jim D how do you tell a pause from a natural variation? Clue no one knows . It is only in hindsight when it continues down that you can say that was a pause (or the other).
Your claim that there is no pause has no merit other than showing your position on AGW. However a pause has to start somewhere and when it does there will be a hiatus. I can always argue that any hiatus is the start of a pause. And be right or wrong. On the other hand you can only be wrong when you say there is no pause as your argument is yet to be tested by time, whereas my argument has already started.
A pause is irrelevant to climate unless it shows up in a 30-year average. It hasn’t even made a dent yet. We can wait and see if it shows up, but it could be a long wait, so I’m not holding my breath.
“If global warming is over when will the sea levels stop rising”
Sea Level goes up when earth is warming and goes down when earth is cooling. We have been warming. That is over, or almost over and sea level rise is over or almost over. It will start down again as the cooling occurs.
angech writes: “Probably within 10 to 30 years given that there will be some retained heat inertia like the poles continuing to melt for a little while after mid summer.”
But but but
I have been told by skeptics that the poles are not melting!
You know you guys keep switching argument. One second you are telling me the ocean is not heating up (the world has stopped warming!)
The next you claim Greenland melt isn’t as bad and Antarctic isn’t melting.
Now you claim oh yes sea level rise is continuing because Greenland and Antarctica are melting. Thermal Inertia.
But if you really believe the world has stopped heating up, then that requires greenland and antarctic melt to have accelerated in recent years to be able to explain why sea level is still rising fast (or faster?) as ever.
‘Skill is improved significantly relative to predictions made with incomplete knowledge of the ocean state, particularly in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans. Thus these results point towards the possibility of routine decadal climate predictions. Using this method, and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing, we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged. Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.’ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html
‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27).’ ttp://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
Some have both theories and models – although temporary in a wild climate may be over egging the chaotic pudding.
Just as some have practical and pragmatic responses to carbon emissions and some have magical, space cadet solutions.
I agree, it’s a cliff. The greater the cliff, the less you should ignore it.
Maybe this: Agreeing it can be described different ways and it’s better to keep as many different descriptions of it in one’s head as possible. Therefore not shutting down lines of thought that might aid in understanding. As long as I am not expected to keep an open mind…
So Swanson’s paper says large natural variability also implies large climate sensitivity to forcing. Interesting that the models underestimate this variability, because it has implications.
No Jim – it says that climate shifts. This is a significantly different concept to that of sensitivity.
‘Sensitive dependence nonetheless does exist in the climate system, as well as in climate models — albeit in a very different sense from the one claimed in the linear work under scrutiny — and we illustrate it using a classical energy balance model (EBM) with nonlinear feedbacks. EBMs exhibit two saddle-node bifurcations, more recently called “tipping points”, which give rise to three distinct steady-state climates, two of which are stable. Such bistable behavior is, furthermore, supported by results from more realistic, nonequilibrium climate models. In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point. We discuss briefly how the distance to the bifurcation may be related to the strength of Earth’s ice-albedo feedback.’ http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0253
You can tell an objective method by one that is not sensitive to start and end points. Decadal averages fit the bill, e.g. 2003-2013 minus 1993-2003, which gives 0.14 degrees warming robustly even changing the end points by a year or so.
CH, now you are not quoting the Swanson paper you did before where it mentions sensitivity and variability. Do you want to go back and find it, or should I quote it for you?
Jim D: “So Swanson’s paper says large natural variability also implies large climate sensitivity to forcing.”
I think you are correct. http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/04/scenarios-2010-2040-part-iii-climate-shifts/#comment-28100 – Tomas Milanovic on Tsonis 2007.
Once there: Find: genuflexion
I found that interesting. I don’t know much about chaos theory and Milanovic’s comments helped me with that.
Then when you look at SkS’s reaction to Tsonis, I think I see that, they can’t decide if they have to attack or not?
No – I am quoting another highly credentialed scientist in Michael Ghil describing exactly what is meant by ‘sensitivity’ in a coupled nonlinear system. It is a bifurcation parameter. The system shifts abruptly and out of proportion with the initial forcing. It is not a constant – it is large in the vicinity of a phase shift. It may be negative or positive and of varying strength. There are a number of control variables in the system – not just CO2.
Observation shows a ‘Momentous Pacific Climate Shift’ to a cool mode in 1998/2001. These last for 20 to 40 years. Ignore the models, the theory and the observations as much as you like Jim. It doesn’t change reality.
Ragnaar, I am not sure I believe that large sensitivity goes with large natural variability in models. I have to see the reasoning for that. It is not obvious to me, but I can maybe see how it relates to how quickly the ocean surface temperatures can change.
CH and Ragnaar, Swanson says this: ” …theoretical arguments suggest that a more variable climate is a more sensitive climate to imposed forcings (13). Viewed in this light, the lack of modeled compared to observed interdecadal variability (Fig. 2B) may indicate that current models underestimate climate sensitivity. ”
Gulp.
I see your point Jim B about end points. I like break points. If we entertain the thought that they might be significant then waiting longer before we recognize them, has some downside. It’s a trade off either way, I think.
‘… as the future evolution of the global mean temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum due entirely to internal variability that lie well outside the envelope of a steadily increasing global mean temperature.’
It is still not sensitivity as you understand it Jim. It is the potential for abrupt and nonlinear change.
‘ In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point.’
Jim D:
Yes I believe he said that. My other post suggested a reason for that. I didn’t rule what he said out, I don’t know enough about the whole subject.
CH, in the sentence I quoted, there doesn’t seem to be another way to interpret sensitivity except the standard one. I am not ready to believe this quote yet, but I just mentioned it because it was in that paper.
‘ In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point.’ – Chief’s post.
This I can follow.
Jim D: “I am not sure I believe that large sensitivity goes with large natural variability in models.” If there is natutal varibility and the models don’t recognize it enough, downward natural varibility if it is happening, could be suppressing some of the effect of CO2. Masking it.
Jim D:
As I struggle with chaos theory I see steps. You pointed out the last step was up earlier. I agree. As the temperature did step higher, and then seems to have plateaued since then. I can’t reconcile things at this point.
Chief:
Did someone change the definition of feedback from its classical one? Engineers have made this comment. If you say that X is 3X because of feedback. You are saying some feedback process holds it at 3X instead of accelerating it out of control. Is this shortcutting things instead of understanding them? It might have been Hansen in 1984. Saying X is 3X is saying that first the feedback is positive, then it’s negative when you reach 3X. Maybe it makes sense because of Plank’s law.
“Jim D
You can tell an objective method by one that is not sensitive to start and end points”
Or you fit to a nth order polynomial and then integrate the polynomial, which is the typical way one gets rates of complex wave functions.
That’s how the morons outside climate science do it.
[Response: Wayne, please note that this is Kyle’s article not mine, though I did encourage him to write it for us. I think the interesting question raised (though not definitively answered) by this line of work is the extent to which some of the pause in warming mid-century might have been more due to decadal ocean variability rather than aerosols than is commonly thought. If that is the case, then a pause or temporary reduction in warming rate could recur even if aerosols are unchanged. Learning how to detect and interpret such things is important, lest a temporary pause be confused with evidence for low climate sensitivity. –raypierre]
Roe makes 2 assumptions. All watts are created equal and do not have different feedbacks, and all variation is forced. Neither assumption is very supportable.
I’m not sure what Pierre was thinking. Of course an extended pause would reduce sensitivity estimates. That which can dampen can amplify.
A chaotic system has control variables and multiple positive and negative feedbacks.
There are multiple controls variables – most of them quite naturally creating responses in ocean and atmosphere circulation that change substantially change the Earth energy budget. CO2 is superimposed as another control variable on an already abruptly changing complex dynamical system. Let me know when we have a handle on all of the multiple feedbacks and all of the interactions.
I suggest that sea surface temperature is inversely related to cloud formation. And that SST is driven by top down modulation by UV/ozone interaction in he stratosphere. So a positive feedback to solar intensity. Again – warming in the Arctic melts ice – thermohaline circulation decreases – snow and ice increases. A negative feedback to warming that has been central to climate in the past 2.58 million years.
The loss of Arctic sea-ice would be a bifurcation, because it is a positive feedback that adds to the others, and is also not easily reversed. The climate has a hysteresis effect with regard to these ice areas. There is the old idea of catastrophe theory that applies here. Perhaps that is where the C in CAGW comes from, because it implies these tipping points that are not reversible with just CO2 reductions to recent levels.
I agree with all of these, Thanks for listing them so conveniently fan:
Scientists are hysterical Chicken Little clowns.
• CAGW is near the bottom of most folks’ lists.
• The CAGW scare has jumped the shark.
• Greenie Eurocrats are backing out.
• Green energy subsidies are running out of steam.
• How are you doing in the carbon market?
• The Aussie greenie carbon tax dummies are about to get dumped.
• The pause is killing your cause.
• Denialism is triumphant.
Unusual activity of the Sun during
recent decades compared to the
previous 11,000 years
According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.
Right there’s nothing wrong with doing it, until climate scientists do it, then it’s wrong. I could swear someone on an earlier thread was telling me instrumental and proxy data must never be compared like that
Pekka Pirilä | August 10, 2013 at 6:04 pm |
Jim,
On one point I agree. Climate sensitivity in some form is the key. (Transient climate response may be the most relevant of the alternative measures of climate sensitivity.)
What i don’t accept at all are your views on what’s known about climate sensitivity. Your arguments are generic enough to justify claims like the one of my previous comment. You haven’t been able to present anything more specific and for that reason you resort to false generalities.
Generalities are almost always wrong when applied to a controversial matter. They are a poor excuse for not knowing enough about the subject to discuss more relevant issues.
@@@@@
My original statement was
“With respect to CAGW, one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.”
Now let me ask you. What are your objections to this statement? Is it a “false generality”? Is it wrong? Is it too general? Is it a “poor excuse for not knowing enough about the subject to discuss more relevant issues”? What?
Let me see if this analogy can show you where you are wrong.
Since we can’t do a controlled experiment on adolescent drug use, we can’t demonstrate that drug use is bad for children.
The point being that we can take data and measure effects even without having any control over any of the variables we measure.
We know drought is bad for crops even knowing we can not cause drought.
Do you consider a change from “climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero” to “climate sensitivity has never been and can not be measured” to be significant?
Bob, you write “Let me see if this analogy can show you where you are wrong.”
Your analogy is irrelevant, and nothing to do with the issue. Overly simplistic, the scientiifc method in physics requires that you observe something, form a hypothesis, deduce what else should happen if the hypothesis is correct, and then go out and measure this. For CAGW, we observe that when CO2 rises, global temperatures rise, and hypothese that the rise in temperature is caused by the rising CO2. To show that this hypothesis is correct we need to measure climate sensitivity. We cannot measure climate sensitivity, so CAGW remains a hypothesis. Simple.
You also write “Do you consider a change from “climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero” to “climate sensitivity has never been and can not be measured” to be significant?”. You are misquoting me. The two statements I have written are not what you claim. The second one is correct; the first is wrong. The first ought to be “What little empirical data we have, gives a strong indication that the climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero”. When written correctly, both statements are completely accurate, and neither needs changing..
> [T]he scientiifc method in physics requires that you observe something, form a hypothesis, deduce what else should happen if the hypothesis is correct, and then go out and measure this.
This last this needs to be clarified.
That science can be done without “weasel words” (Jim’s epithet) like infer has yet to be shown.
Willard, you write “This last this needs to be clarified.”
Please note that you omitted my “Overly simplistic”. I am not writing a long learned thesis. For CAGW, I have defined it. The “this” is climate sensitivity.
“the scientiifc method in physics requires that you observe something, form a hypothesis, deduce what else should happen if the hypothesis is correct, and then go out and measure this.”
Talk to me about Larnder’s analysis of the weakness in American bombers and his work that lead to the placement of the mid Canada line. There was no testing of the hypothesis. They used the best information and their understanding of what might happen to make decisions.
In short, you know from your own work in OR that we very often cannot go out and measure things.
We look at the loss rates of our aircraft. We hypothesize that if this loss rate continues we will be out of planes in 1 month.
we do not go out and measure whether this really happens or not.
we advise the general that he needs to act. we dont wait for disaster
to test our hypothesis.
We predict that our missile defense can handle a threat from North Korea.
We test what we can, but we dont ask the Korean’s to launch a full blown attack so we can test our hypothesis.
And there are examples from physics if you like.
We observe that an asteroid has a certain mass. We predict that if it strikes the earth and hits new york, that the city will be flattened. We do not go out and measure this. Even if we could we would not. And if we knew that an asteroid was interceptable before it hit new york, we would not wait and say ” first we test the hypothesis”
Physics is not all we know. And lab physics is an even smaller universe of all we know. When you make labratory physics the measure of all knowledge you end up not being able to say much of anything that really matters.
We see lab physics as an ideal. but just because its an ideal doesnt mean that other forms of knowing are useless.
Steven, you write “In short, you know from your own work in OR that we very often cannot go out and measure things. ”
You have a wonderful way with words. Of course science, physics. is more that making measurements. But there are times when measurements are essential. There is no use our discussing all the wondeful things that happen in science when measurements are not required. And such discussions have nothing to do with CAGW.
This blog is about CAGW, CAGW is a perfectly viable hypothesis. It will remsain a viable hypothesis, and nothing more, unless and until CS has been measured. Why you and the rest of the alarmists cannot accept this simple truth, I have no idea.
And until CAGW is more than a hypothesis, there is no need to ruin the world economy on the basis that it might be right. Particularly since such little empirical; data as we have gives a strong indicartion that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a negligible effect of temperatures. And the longer we go on adding CO2 to the atmosphere, the more empirical data we are acquiring that indicates that CO2 has no effect on temperatures.
The IPCC has done the world and science an enormous disservice by claiming that CAGW is more than a hypothesis. I doubt I could ever forgive all the alarmisrts, such as yourelf, for bringing science, which I love, down to the level shown by the scientific nonsense statements on CAGW by so many of the learned scientific societies
Let me see if this analogy can show you where you are wrong.
Since we can’t do a controlled experiment on adolescent drug use, we can’t demonstrate that drug use is bad for children.”
Yes, of course.
In fact billions of dollars a spend on drugs for children because it’s considered good for children.
I believe drugs tend to kill more adults than children.
Nor do we know whether whipping children is good or bad for children.
Humans have been taking various drugs for thousands of years- one can’t say whether some use of drugs is good or bad.
I would guess it’s worse to put a human in prison than taking drugs- though taking various types of drugs may be similar in some respects to being in a prison.
Various drugs can make one impaired. One should not drink a lot of alcohol and attempt the operate a one ton vehicle design to drive over
100 mph. Nor should you drink a lot alcohol within a day period of time.
Same could said about salt. Red wine in moderation is suppose to be generally good for one health and emotional state.
It seems one of worst effects of drugs is one can be easily drugged- one can be unaware, that one has being drugged by someone.
This is also true in regard some poisons as well as drugs.
It seems controlling substances which can used against a person, is far more important than controlling substances if which people deliberately choose to use.
And is this deliberate choice which is aspect concerning children and drug use. That’s moral aspect.
One generally can’t expect children to make correct decisions about most things, and parents provide guidance to children. So they don’t fall into swimming pool or some well. Or whatever.
And generally, the matter of whether children takes any kinds of drugs or what they eat is mostly something decided by parents.
And largely because parents don’t want their children taking certain drugs, that we have prohibition against certain types of drug used by anyone. And such laws at a federal level were probably mostly a mistake.
“With respect to CAGW, one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.”
Jim, I think it would be possible to do controlled experiments at least on small ‘parts’ of the atmosphere, by creating artificial CO2 domes at chosen places (off-shore, deserts..) and latitudes. The CO2 domes could be created by relocating emission points of coal-fired power plants to desired locations, or by some other means. The domes would have increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations closer to the emission points. So, we would have variations in CO2 from background (~400 ppm) to some maximum achievable concentration at r = 0. Then we could measure temperatures, CO2 concentrations, humidity, wind, surface heat fluxes etc. This should be cheaper than a single satellite and we could learn something.
Edim, you write “Jim, I think it would be possible to do controlled experiments at least ”
Maybe so, maybe not. But such experiments have not been done, and may be technically infeasible or too expensive. Until such efforts have been completed, my major point has not been addressed. Climate sensitivity, in 2013, has NOT been MEASURED. That is the issue
Ah, but it’s been estimated poorly, the poverty enhanced by bias and dedication to the ’cause’ of the Piltdown Mann, Mike Hulme, and a myriad of other biased advocates wearing lab coats.
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Bart R is pushing a position that, as I understand it, demands “privatizing” the human contribution to the carbon cycle from fossil fuels by imposing a tax designed to make non-fossil energy competitive with fossil, remitting the receipts to the populace on a per capita basis. The rational for this demand is that adding fossil carbon to the biosphere represents a risk, that should be paid for.
Well, it’s my opinion that windmills and other devices designed to extract energy from moving atmosphere (free air in the environment) represent a similar risk, so I’m proposing a similar solution.
Let me start with the risk. The way the weather works, air masses in different areas have different temperature profiles, which results in different pressure/height relationships. This in turn results in lateral pressure gradients at various altitudes. These gradients are balanced by air movement (wind), and the geostrophic effect of these winds that results from the Coriolis effect. This situation holds throughout most of the troposphere poleward of perhaps 5 degrees of latitude, except for the boundary layers.
The upper boundary layer, the tropopause, is a complex interaction with the stratosphere, which is hyper-stable but also has lateral pressure gradients balanced by geostrophic winds.
The lower layer is what’s important for wind power, as well as its risk. Here, friction with the surface causes the average velocity of air movement to be lower than necessary to balance pressure differentials, resulting in net transfer of air from higher to lower pressure. Note that this only happens at the boundary layer(s), so pressure differences caused by convection, on scales ranging from local (thunderstorms) to planetary (jet streams) are resolved at the boundary.
The average profile of wind velocity in the lower boundary is normally described by the Ekman spiral (normally studied in the ocean, but also present in the atmosphere over both land and sea). The height of the spiral, and the amount of lateral air movement (between air masses), are dependent (AFAIK) on the amount of relief at the surface, which influences the nature of the turbulent “friction” in the boundary layer.
Wind turbines, which extract energy from air movement in the lower boundary layer, will have the effect of increasing the effective relief of the surface, which in turn will raise the height of the Ekman spiral and increase the net flow of air from high to low pressure at the bottom of the Troposphere. This will have a significant effect on the climate, the magnitude and nature of which are unknown.
Pending better modeling, the risk from wind turbines should be considered at least equivalent to the risk from dumping fossil CO2. Just as there are demands to “privatize” dumping rights by having the government charge a fee which is remitted to the populace on a per capita basis, the risk of thickening the boundary layer (raising the height of the Ekman spiral) justifies the demand to “privatize” extraction of energy from the wind.
The gov’mint needs to charge a fee on use of wind power, and remit all the proceeds to the populace on a per capita basis. The amount should be determined by the “Law of Supply and Demand”, in a fashion similar to what Bart R is demanding for fossil carbon. This needs to be done as soon as possible, so as to reduce distortion of the market for wind power by people risking the climate without paying for it.
Had there been a population needing energy near the mountain gap by the Boedele Depression in Africa, and had windmills been placed in that gap to supply it, then the Amazon Basin would be dying for lack of nutrients.
===========================
Thanks kim, I didn’t know about that. Talk about teleconnections! I’ve suspected for many years that climate changes a few thousand years ago might have resulted (partly) from massive African pasturing of domestic goats, as well as perhaps destruction of forests in the Sahara to increase pasture land. This could be a mechanism.
I’ve been touting this point for years, but not as eloquently or wittily as you just did. Granted, there is a huge amount of energy in wind, but once we take significant amounts of energy from it, it will change weather and climate. There is a large class of people downwind, all of us.
========================
I was raised that it is kinder to never attribute to actual malice what could be adequately explained by utter incompetence.
You’ve had this explained to you before, and at great length. You have access to the prezi that lays it out in simple terms a child of twelve could follow without great difficulty. You’ve asked questions and had them answered at length. You are capable of following and embracing the faulty ‘cheap energy’ argument, and even demonstrate enough elementary familiarity with the most basic ideas of Economics to differentiate supply from demand.
So I must believe you’re maliciously misrepresenting what I’ve said in so insulting a manner to your readers on purpose as a straw man, to confuse and mislead, to mischaracterize for the sake of interfering with an idea that shows your ironically named ‘cheap energy’ euphemism for state subsidized fossil fuels for the costly communist fraud it is.
Pushing?
Sure. Whatever. Explaining. Setting out. Illustrating. Showing. Delivering. Illuminating. Whatever word turns your crank.
..a position that, as I understand it,
Wow you use a lot of words to say very little. I’m pretty sure you don’t actually understand my position as you assert it to be, since you just can’t be that utterly incompetent.
demands
Huh. Does the position demands it?
The situation demands it?
I’m pushing Capitalism, a reasoned system of Economic thought and methods designed to most efficiently allocate scarce resources fairly among all citizens.
Methodical reasoning shows that what can be made private property, and thereby can be traded in the Market, ought be to allow everyone fair access to limited resources in a way that maximizes utility to every citizen. It is not the matter of joking or games or religion or rhetoric. When you lie to pervert Capitalism, you strike at hardworking Americans and honest businessmen trying to provide for their families.
How do we judge if a thing can be made private, under Capitalism?
There are five tests:
1. Is it commodifiable in lucrative transactions? (Can it be bought and sold?)
So far as CO2E in lucrative exchanges is concerned, commodifiability is already patently true. Where carbon can be sold to burn, everything connected with the burning of the carbon can be treated as part of that exchange at that point of transaction.
2. Is it scarce?
What demonstrates that it decreases with use is scarce. CO2E isn’t decreasing, so it’s just wrong to call it scarce or seek to privatize the CO2E in the air. Unburned CO2 in the Market, which we’ve noted is already a lucrative commodity, can only be intended for burning, and that burning dumps waste into the Carbon Cycle, which performs the scarce service of returning CO2E out of the air. As the level of CO2E in the air is significantly increasing, we know the Carbon Cycle to be scarce. We don’t need to demonstrate a human source for the rise. We don’t care the source of the rise. We care whether the rise shows scarcity, which it does.
3. Is it rivalrous?
If multiple people make use of the same slice of the resource equally and freely, it isn’t rivalrous. We’ve had demonstrated that CO2E level added into the atmosphere takes many years, decades or centuries to be removed by the Carbon Cycle, though individual molecules may recycle faster, the equilibrium level is something no rival may share the same slice of once one party has emitted CO2E into it, at least for a significant portion of a human lifetime.
4. Is it excludable?
Is there a way to prevent access in the Market to the lucrative commodity or service?
At first blush, one observes you can’t really go around blocking up people’s breath. Well, you can. You can dump enough pollution into the air that people stop breathing, but that’s one of the things we’d hope to avoid.
As the sale of carbon-based commodities intended for release into the air as CO2E is excludable, and as the intensity of CO2E in these commodities is well-known (by a treaty signed by all nations, a standard of weights and measures), yes, CO2E is excludable at the point of sale of carbon-containing commodities intended to emit CO2E.
5. Is it administrable?
Yes. Clearly. Nations administer VAT. Nations administer payroll and income tax systems that include returns to citizens. Combine the two systems, and nations in enforcing the standards of weights and measures of the sale of their private citizens’ Carbon Cycle right to use at the level of VAT collection can pay their private citizens their fair share by direct payroll return.
That’s “privatizing” but not as AK falsely and wrongly asserts in his straw man, “the human contribution to the carbon cycle from fossil fuels by imposing a tax designed to make non-fossil energy competitive with fossil,” but the private dumping of CO2E into the air that requires the services of the Carbon Cycle to dispose of. It’s a disposal fee, “remitting the receipts to the populace on a per capita basis.”
The rational [sic] for this is _NOT_ a demand .. that adding fossil carbon to the biosphere represents a risk, that should be paid for. The rationale is that what can be made private, ought be, and people can then decide for themselves as individuals what they want.
That Risk is involved, and consent for the acceptance of that Risk is not sought — since such consent is not administrably feasible — we can justify using the Law of Supply and Demand for all sellers as a single monopolistic entity. There are plenty of alternatives to CO2E-sourced energy, so the Law of Supply and Demand still applies, even with this single seller, and the condition of unconsented expropriation of private property is addressed with fairness and consideration.
Does this work for AK’s absurdly broken wind emissions?
No.
While windmills are commodifiable, there are kites, sailboats, buildings, towers, antennae, utility poles, tall trees, aircraft, balloons, convection due smokestacks in countless conformations outside the Market’s ability to control AK’s broken wind.
Wind further does not demonstrate scarcity, however much AK asserts his broken wind is blocked up by herniation of his large Ekman spirals. As the system of wind is complex and nonlinear, and not predictive, AK’s broken efforts at wordslaw to show scarcity are a mathematical impossibility. In contrast, we know CO2E levels rise, as observed by Keeling and countless adequate paleo proxies.
AK’s wind breaking is not excludable. How are you going to stop someone from planting seeds of tall trees, building kites, launching balloons?
AK’s broken wind is not administrable, too.
So regardless of AK’s broken wind risk argument, there’s no redress for it in Capitalism. He’ll have to go to the EPA and get it to cork up his broken wind by red tape.
I’m pushing Capitalism, a reasoned system of Economic thought and methods designed to most efficiently allocate scarce resources fairly among all citizens.
No, you’re pushing a bunch of absurd, armwaving, nonsense that you call “capitalism”.
Methodical reasoning shows that what can be made private property, and thereby can be traded in the Market, ought be to allow everyone fair access to limited resources in a way that maximizes utility to every citizen.
Reasoning, methodical or otherwise, is a method of progressing from assumptions to conclusions. GIGO.
Where carbon can be sold to burn, everything connected with the burning of the carbon can be treated as part of that exchange at that point of transaction.
Are you, or are you not, talking about fossil carbon? If yes, how do you deal with mixes, or special cases such as bio-fuels created from CO2 captured from stack emissions? (This applies to administration as well.) If no, well it seems totally unfair, as well as counter-productive, to apply your carbon-tax to renewable carbon fuels as well as fossil.
While windmills are commodifiable, there are kites, sailboats, buildings, towers, antennae, utility poles, tall trees, aircraft, balloons, convection due smokestacks in countless conformations outside the Market’s ability to control AK’s broken wind.
Energy derived from wind is easibly commodifiable, and other interference with boundary layer friction can be ignored as too little to worry about.
Wind further does not demonstrate scarcity, […]
It most certainly does. The total amount of energy in wind is finite, and if we assume that a limited fraction can be extracted without damaging the climate, that’s finite too. It’s also a good parallel with natural sequestration of fossil carbon: we don’t know how much of either limited resource we can use without causing damage. We don’t know to what extent human dumping of fossil CO2 is responsible for the rise in atmospheric CO2, we don’t even know for sure if that rise isn’t due to temperature increases as Salby has suggested. It’s quite plausible that the environment’s ability to absorb fossil CO2 is hundreds of times larger than the amount humans are dumping. Just like wind power.
How are you going to stop someone from planting seeds of tall trees, building kites, launching balloons?
As long as they don’t extract energy, we don’t bother.
Bottom line, a tax on wind power, with its rate set by the “Law of Supply and Demand” is a very good parallel to a tax on (fossil?) carbon. The proceeds should be distributed to the populace on a per captia basis. As soon as possible.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’ve read. But the sincerest post on CC is still pretty dubious, and you can’t flatter an idea.
If you believe what is being pushed isn’t capitalism, take the idea on its face and use whatever generally accepted definition of capitalism you can defend and use that.
If you think there are garbage assumptions, identify them specifically, and without the glittering generality incumbent in the hypocritical phrase “a bunch of absurd, armwaving, nonsense“; I’d be delighted to get a clear description of your exact rational objection, if you had one.
And yes, I’m saying “carbon”, not “fossil carbon”; I regard biomass as a scam, as generally the carbon being burned would otherwise be sequestered for longer out of the system, buried and composted by microbes at a lower net rate of emission. If an innovator comes up with a net less emissive program for biomass treatment that sequesters more than less — such as if the University of Houston pyoil research (that leaves the majority of biomass residue in the form of biochar and hydrotreats the rest to be lower in carbon intensity) where combined with the university of Arizona study in solar energy to store peak solar as usable octane and diesel — that abstract and unusual case would benefit because, even though the carbon in the mix is still paying the fees, the sequestration is doubtlessly a form of waste disposal that avoids even higher carbon disposal fees.
So your seeming ‘unfairness’ is just not an issue.
Also, you continue to mistake carbon for energy. The idea of privatizing the carbon cycle is not to tax energy. It is not restricted to fuels. Asphalt isn’t ‘energy’, yet emits huge amounts of carbon volatiles into the air that are definitely GHGs. Some industrial chemicals are made to be sprayed on surfaces for various reasons that will then evaporate to GHGs. If it is disposed into the air and is a GHG, it ought pay the service fee.
How are you so hung up on ‘energy’ that you can’t see this isn’t about that?
We’re not talking about carbon ‘energy’, just carbon dumping. A parallel idea wouldn’t discuss wind ‘energy’, but just your broken wind dumping model. Demonstrate a Keeling Curve for broken wind that can be ascribed to windmills (WHICH ARE ALREADY PRIVATE, SO YOUR POINT ISN’T EVEN MOOT) even one percent as significant as the impact on wind of rising CO2E, and you might be able to make a case for broken wind privatization.
Overcome your OCD and focus on what’s being discussed, not some straw man you’ve constructed in your own head.
Because if you need to talk about something I’m not talking about, that’s fine. Just don’t ascribe it to my argument.
And yes, I’m saying “carbon”, not “fossil carbon”;
So, for instance, if somebody follows the suggestions in my latest blog post, and comes up with a way to bio-convert hydrogen from solar electrolysis to methane using CO2 extracted from the air (or sea, which in turn extracts it from the air with a settling time of ~1 year, IIRC), they’d pay the tax despite the fact that they’re just recycling carbon already in the air? That’s absurd.
Also, you continue to mistake carbon for energy. […] How are you so hung up on ‘energy’ that you can’t see this isn’t about that?
Greenhouse gases represent a risk to the climate (among other things). Energy extracted from the wind represents a parallel risk. It is about energy when it comes to wind power.
Asphalt isn’t ‘energy’, yet emits huge amounts of carbon volatiles into the air that are definitely GHGs. Some industrial chemicals are made to be sprayed on surfaces for various reasons that will then evaporate to GHGs. If it is disposed into the air and is a GHG, it ought pay the service fee.
You forgot burning lime for concrete.
I’ve got work to do, I’ll address the rest as I have time.
“.. a way to bio-convert hydrogen from solar electrolysis to methane using CO2 extracted from the air (or sea,..), they’d pay the tax despite the fact that they’re just recycling carbon already in the air?”
Wow. Getting CO2 from the air or sea, where it’s measured in ppmv, is very much the hard way to do this, though I don’t deny it’s possible. (However, it is taking up resources that could be used more advantageously to get CO2 from emissions at flue, but that’s not my issue.)
If you want to sell your CO2 disposal service in competition with the carbon cycle, who am I to stand in the way of that?
Go for it.
Just adjust your prices, and pay the owners of the carbon cycle their share for your use of it. They won’t charge you anything for taking CO2 out of the system. As that’s not commodifiable, scarce, rivalrous, excludable or administrable.
And as explained before you chased your tail, wind mills are already privatized. You’re arguing for doing something that’s already done.
Using solar energy to get hydrogen from water would seem to be a better and more practical idea. Carbon-neutral too.
Far from practical. The technology for storing and transporting hydrogen is very far from “shovel-ready”. Methane technology is mature. I’d be fine with hydrogen if the technology can become mature in time, but IMO methane will have to fill in for a few decades.
The question is whether the bio-technology for tailored methanogens would be quicker to roll out. IMO it would. And it would be carbon-neutral as well, since the carbon would come from the atmosphere in the first place.
If you believe what is being pushed isn’t capitalism, take the idea on its face and use whatever generally accepted definition of capitalism you can defend and use that.
I’m not sure there is any “generally accepted definition of capitalism“, certainly my own working definition while based on older work, has undergone much development during my studies of the Industrial Revolution and other social innovations.
I turned out to be much more effort than I expected, as the original documents from which I got my ideas aren’t easily found on the Web, but I can put together some bits and pieces to back up my own summary:
Capitalism is the ideal of investing wealth in the means of production, rather than simply raw materials or finished products. For instance, from Wiki:
The accumulation of capital refers to the process of “making money”, or growing an initial sum of money through investment in production. Capitalism is based around the accumulation of capital, whereby financial capital is invested in order to realize a profit and then reinvested into further production in a continuous process of accumulation. In Marxian economic theory, this dynamic is called the law of value.
This is one out of a large number of somewhat inconsistent definitions present in the article, which I’ve cherry-picked as representative of my own working definition.
The profit motive is not just the result of greed on behalf of individual capitalists. They do not have a choice about it. The need to make a profit is imposed on capitalists as a condition for not losing their investments and their position as capitalists. Competition with other capitalists forces them to reinvest as much of their profits as they can afford to keep their means and methods of production up to date.
This points up the fact that the current systems of capitalism also include a somewhat “free” market in goods, services, and especially investment capital.
It is also possible (at least in theory) to have a free market economy that is not capitalist. Such a ‘market economy’ would involve farmers, artisans and shopkeepers each producing a particular product that they would exchange via the medium of money. There would be no profit-making and no class division—just independent producers exchanging goods for their mutual benefit. But it is doubtful whether such an economy has ever existed. The nearest that may have come to it would have been in some of the early colonial settlements in North America.
Actually, my own studies suggest, to me that something along these lines existed in the archaic and pre-classical Hellenic “city-state” polities. Whether or not it actually did, it can be used to point up a more general idea of “capitalism”:
If a farmer expends his free time on social activities, he is spending wealth in the form of labor, real or potential. This wealth could also be spent clearing rocks from farmland, investing it in improving the current means of production. I find the story of Deucalion interesting:
Zeus loosed a deluge, so that the rivers ran in torrents and the sea flooded the coastal plain, engulfed the foothills with spray, and washed everything clean. Deucalion, with the aid of his father Prometheus, was saved from this deluge by building a chest (literally “chest,” as in “box”).[2] Like the Biblical Noah and the Mesopotamian counterpart Utnapishtim, he uses his device to survive the deluge with his wife, Pyrrha.
It’s interesting that the Greek word for “chest” is “arcos”
Once the deluge was over and the couple had given thanks to Zeus, Deucalion (said in several of the sources to have been aged 82 at the time) consulted an oracle of Themis about how to repopulate the earth. He was told to cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder. Deucalion and Pyrrha understood that “mother” is Gaia, the mother of all living things, and the “bones” to be rocks. They threw the rocks behind their shoulders and the stones formed people. Pyrrha’s became women; Deucalion’s became men.
This might well be a metaphoric reference to such early capitalism, clearing the stones from farmland.
I would derive the name “Prometheus” through syncope from “pro-ment-theos“, ancient sources equate it with “forethought”, which is certainly embodied by capitalism as the ideal of investing wealth in the means of production.
Note that in my (working) definition, capitalism and relatively free markets were essential to the successful Industrial Revolution, but not identical either to it or each other.
“I’m not sure there is any “generally accepted definition of capitalism“, certainly my own working definition while based on older work, has undergone much development during my studies of the Industrial Revolution and other social innovations.”
Capitalism is not socialism. It’s word coined to distinguish socialism
in contrast to it. So, start religion called Mud, Socialism is Mud, Capitalism
is the infidels. Or socialism is this, and capitalism is the stuff other than that.
One could describe capitalism as self selecting specialization, and free
markets. Socialism is governing specialization and markets.
Really? Okay, autodidacts are admirable in a number of ways.. spiraling into crackpottery however is not one of the characteristics some autodidacts are prone to that could be considered admirable.
Awe-inspiringly point-missing?
Maybe.
Admirable?
No.
Wouldn’t it be great if education — including self-education — furnished greater clarity of categorization and organization of thoughts and ideas?
To wander so murkily into haphazard and obtuse understanding of such a simple concept as Capitalism — at least how it works — is bizarre.
http://capitalism.columbia.edu/theory-capitalism makes the argument that, as Capitalism is the subject still of new study today, is a dynamic philosophy that evolves as the Market evolves, that views of the theory change as perspective changes, there will always be innovations. In that sense, AK’s approach is not wrong in premise. But to get to the point where he renders the word less than useless?
That’s not how Capitalism works. It’s not an exercise in investing effort to reduce utility.
As this is what’s happened, we clearly need to take another tack.
For the purposes of this discussion about individual choices of what resources to allocate by private negotiation, what I mean when I say Capitalism is a competitive, fair, stable profit-seeking market economy in preference over command and control regulation or supplements or support or gifts or favors at the expense of taxpayers to a select few telling individuals what to do. Both approaches have their place in the effective allocation of resources necessary to a nation justified by the uplifting of its people, but Capitalism prefers the former.
In this sense, privatization removes these decisions about the object of privatization from the government (or, by default, accident, which is often the same as the effects of government) and hands these decisions firmly over to people in the Market by a minimal set of rules of conduct such as standards of weights and measures, enforcement of currency and laws against false advertising and theft.
Economists find several conditions necessary for a more ideal or ‘perfect’ Capitalist market; I focus only on two:
1. Reduction of barriers to entry and exit of sellers (such as subsidies to some that skew competition, arguably overcome generally by subsidies to new innovators for the short term);
2. So clear information for all sellers and buyers regarding prices and offers as practical.
The rest is quibble. My principle is minimizing the role of government as an actor in the Market by giving people the opportunity to decide what they want for themselves, not letting some expert interfere to tell them what they ought do.
If the government takes resources from people — taxes them — sometimes there’s a valid argument for that, like the defense of the nation. When it does this to decide for people that they ought prefer oil or coal more than they would if they were deciding on price — including price of disposal — alone, with perfect knowledge of the cost of that disposal obscured by failing to put a price on it, that’s not cheap energy: that is subsidized fossil and the opposite of Capitalism.
Okay, autodidacts are admirable in a number of ways.. spiraling into crackpottery however is not one of the characteristics some autodidacts are prone to that could be considered admirable.
What an appropriate comment to make about your own absurd notions.
To wander so murkily into haphazard and obtuse understanding of such a simple concept as Capitalism — at least how it works — is bizarre.
Many people think “Climate” is a simple concept too. A simple “definition” of “Capitalism” would be “that which won the Cold War – against ‘Comunism'”. Indeed, that’s how many use the word. (See gbaikie above.) Your own link has (IMO) roughly the same functional definition, although I suspect they would object to my saying so.
In that sense, AK’s approach is not wrong in premise. But to get to the point where he renders the word less than useless?
That’s not how Capitalism works. It’s not an exercise in investing effort to reduce [sic] utility.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. What you said is the exact opposite of the hypothetical example I gave, where effort is invested in increasing the utility of the means of production, by transforming poor farmland to good, and (as I didn’t mention) using the rocks extracted to create terracing of hillsides, which happened quite often in Classical era Greece.
If we consider farmland as the “means of production”, which it was in that culture, creation of new and/or better farmland constituted investment in means of production just as creation of new and better factories in the 19th century. As such, it was capitalism in action. Moreover, there was (probably) a similar “free market” approach where land was owned and managed by individual farmers, analogous to European land after Enclosure.
Sadly you again take far too long to make your basic point- which seems to be:
“When it (government) does this to decide for people that they ought prefer oil or coal more than they would if they were deciding on price — including price of disposal — alone, with perfect knowledge of the cost of that disposal obscured by failing to put a price on it, that’s not cheap energy: that is subsidized fossil and the opposite of Capitalism.”
The issue is your statement “with perfect knowledge of the cost of that disposal obscured by failing to put a price on it”
Please consider that there is never “perfect knowledge” of the costs or even generally accepted estimates of the net costs. If government applies the additional costs you advocate to only segments of the energy market and not all providers then government is distorting the marketplace.
I have to agree with Rob Starkey | August 13, 2013 at 11:41 am | that this has gone on far too long for a basic point.
Arguing the definition of Capitalism is, at this point that drags through ancient Greek farms, like arguing the definition of Thermodynamics with Sky Dragon Slayers, or the definition of temperature with stefanthedenier or Myrrh: an unproductive diversion unlikely to lead anywhere, when commonplace and sufficient definitions are available and well-accepted.
If you want to seek to privatize your broken wind, who am I to stand in your way?
Go for it.
It isn’t as if I hadn’t imagined and considered that many other candidates for privatization might follow in CO2E’s path: aerosol particulates, NOx, SOx, mercury (indeed the whole gamut of heavy metals), and on and on. Of all the cases I contemplated — each of them a thousand times more likely valid than I estimate your argument — CO2E recycling by the carbon cycle alone stood up as a present and patent candidate.
If you can get a non-IPCC body that specializes in broken wind — I suspect the NIPCC to be just the group for you — or even some well-funded tax-exempt lobbyists with expert marketers and seasoned tabloid copywriters on its payroll (call it GiantWindbagPollutionFlatulence.org if you like), and put together studies and make a sound argument, I might even be persuaded to support your argument.
But you have to agree, Carbon Cycle privatization is much more valid on every point than your broken wind.
• Scientists are hysterical Chicken Little clowns.
• CAGW is near the bottom of most folks’ lists.
• The CAGW scare has jumped the shark.
• Greenie Eurocrats are backing out.
• Green energy subsidies are running out of steam.
• How are you doing in the carbon market?
• The Aussie greenie carbon tax dummies are about to get dumped.
• The pause is killing your cause.
• Denialism is triumphant.
The reviews are in!
PokerGuy I agree with all of these. Thanks!
Peter Lang Good summary!
Willard (@nevaudit) Join the bandwagon!
Bob “As long as totalitarian – oriented pissant progressives such as yourself exist we will fight to the death.”
———————————————–
The scientific response:
▶ Recognize that no rational scientific dialog is possible with denialists whose faith asserts “scientists are hysterical Chicken Little clowns.”
▶ Once isolated in bubbles of ideological purity, denialism can recruit only stupider-and-stupider adherents; the resulting denialist bubbles thus are loud-but-harmeless; most denialists will not recognize that this isolation process is occurring.
———————————————–
Conclusion Climate-change denialism is fated for extinction.
Conclusion Fan? More like ‘CAGW-climate-change is fated
fer extinctshun and CAGW-skepticism feted fer distinctshun.’
A short-term-predickshun:
First ‘hide the decline’ must give us pause,
and next the ‘pause’ that is killing the cause,
then cometh green Eurocrats closing the doors
on costly renewables’ demonstrable flaws …
…
“Governments around the world have watched Europe as it has moved to implement generous subsidy schemes like Porter’s to meet ambitious green energy goals and race towards a future free of fossil fuels.
But with skyrocketing costs, major infrastructure challenges and biting austerity measures brought on by the debt crisis, some wonder why Europe has gone through the trouble of promising so much green so soon.
Across the English Channel, Germans consumers are waking up to the costs of going green: As of Jan. 1, they are paying 11% more for electricity than they did last year thanks to government plans to replace nuclear plants with wind and solar power that requires significant and constant public money to be made cost effective.”
…
“But her decision had little to do with the safety of Germany’s nuclear reactors, say analysts. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union were worried over regional elections, and federal elections in September: If she wants to remain chancellor she needed to siphon votes from the Greens and Social Democrats, both anti-nuke.
Dubbed the “energy transition,” the move has become a logistical and financial headache for Berlin. Nuclear power had represented one-fifth of the country’s energy supply, and Environment Minister Peter Altmaier recently estimated the shift to renewables could total up to $1.3 trillion by 2030.”
…
“”Eighty percent of households don’t even know what their electricity bill is,” she added. “A lot of people simply don’t think about it – they know their computer bill, their flat-rate (phone bill), their iPad well, but when you ask about electricity they don’t know.”
Politicians in Germany are worried over consumers, aka voters, waking up and the backlash it could create.
Still, the cost of trying to change the climate by reducing CO2 emissions has become too much to bear for other European nations mired in debt or hobbled by overspending.
As austerity measures take hold from Spain to the Netherlands, governments have been rushing to cut the very subsidies for green energy they once eagerly waved through to help the infant sectors grow.”
…
“European governments have now realized this growth – which saw consumers footing the bill for investors’ soaring profit margins – was out of control: The UK and Czech Republic have already cut their subsidies in half, while Italy imposed a cap on new renewable energy providers. Germany cut subsidies by up to 30% and announced a major overhaul of the program Thursday.
“Germany needed to act,” said Matthias Lang, an attorney with Bird & Bird in Dusseldorf that specializes in energy. “The previous rate was simply not sustainable. There is a limit where even the most willing consumers will object.”
The problem now, says Lang, is that with the shutdown of eight nuclear reactors and more to close, something has to fill the gap quickly. And in Germany, renewables are supposed to do so but no one knows how to do that affordably.
The German government has poured millions of euros in the past two years into trying to update the electricity grid system, and plans to build thousands of miles of electricity lines to accommodate the increasing influx of renewables. But huge gaps still exist because the infrastructure wasn’t in place when the decision to accelerate the nuclear exit was made.”
“But, with the levy added to German power bills to help pay for this growth nearly doubling to €0.053 per kWh – and an election looming in September – environment minister Peter Altmaier has unveiled plans to freeze renewable subsidies for two years. He has also said future rises would be limited to 2.5 per cent a year after that. ”
…
“Investors are scared,” Reed Smith’s Stefan Schmitz told a recent Mergermarket conference of renewable energy financiers in London. “A number of very big investors have already decided to pull out of the German market because of the uncertainty.”
“Must we really? According to news reports, fiscal pressures in Spain and Germany are causing them to renege on their expensive promises to subsidize solar and wind power. Reuters is reporting:
The Spanish Parliament approved a law on Thursday that cuts subsidies for alternative energy technologies, backtracking on its push for green power.
That measure, along with other recent laws including a tax on power generation that hit green energy investments especially hard, will virtually wipe out profits for photovoltaic, solar thermal and wind plants, sector lobbyists say…
Spain’s Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria defended the law in Parliament on Thursday, saying that the measures were necessary to eliminate the accumulated 28 billion euro ($37.4 billion) tariff deficit in the electricity system…
That deficit, built up through years of the government holding down electricity prices at a level that would not cover regulated costs including renewables premiums, is at the heart of Spain’s energy sector woes…
The problem was that the cost of the subsidies were not passed on fully to consumers because that would have pushed prices to unprecedented highs.
”
“OSTERATH’S 12,000 citizens are angry. Their quiet backwater in the Ruhr, close to Düsseldorf, is the proposed site for the biggest converter station in Europe. This vast installation will transform high-voltage direct current to alternating current. It will be an important link in Germany’s new “power highway”, a network of transmission lines that will send electricity generated by wind farms in the north of the country, and offshore in the North and Baltic Seas, to the manufacturing belt in the south. Osterath’s residents reckon it will be a monstrous eyesore, and intend to stop it. A bill to determine the outlines of the new power highway is making its way through the federal parliament. Of 3,300 objections from the public, 2,300 are from Osterath.”
…
“Businessmen say the Energiewende will kill German industry. Power experts worry about blackouts. Voters are furious about ever higher fuel bills. The chaos undermines Germany’s claim to efficiency, threatens its vaunted competitiveness and unnecessarily burdens households. It also demonstrates Germany’s curious refusal to think about Europe strategically.”
…
“In recent months efforts to keep a lid on companies’ power costs have led to even more perverse policy shifts. Germany, Europe’s self-professed leader in the fight against climate change, did nothing to stop the collapse of the European carbon-trading system (the EU’s main collective tool for reducing carbon emissions). The market had not been working well, largely because too many permits to emit carbon had been issued. The European Commission proposed reducing their number, but Mrs Merkel refused to support the proposal, mainly to avoid spooking big German firms already worried about power costs. Silence from Europe’s most powerful government helped to sink the commission’s plan in the European Parliament.”
…
“The strategically minded are pushing for more fundamental overhauls. Bold ideas include replacing the pricing distortions with a market based on production capacity rather than output: power producers would be paid by the amount of capacity they had installed rather than the amount of electricity they actually produced. There would also be a greater focus on energy conservation, including more incentives for investment in retrofitting buildings; more public investment into energy-storage research; and, from planning the expansion of the grid to the creation of new renewables capacity, a European, rather than a national, vision for the Energiewende.
Such boldness would be good for German economic rebalancing and for Europe as a whole. After all, Europeans live so close to each other that a national energy policy makes little sense: how safe is a reactor-free Germany when nuclear power stations go on running next door in France, the Czech Republic and, in due course, in Poland? And in a supposedly single European market, is a renewables revolution at national level even possible? Instead of a national Energiewende marked by U-turns and uncertainty, Germany needs to think European. Fortunately it has already begun to do so to manage its second big economic transformation: its looming skills shortage.”
” The problems for the supergrid lie more in the area of whether the participating countries will be inclined to fund such a costly project while they are having such severe financial problems. Eddie O’Connor gave evidence to the UK’s parliament in 2011 that it would cost 200 billion Euros ($275 billion) in total, with a first stage of 28 billion Euros by 2020. Though this sounds like a colossal amount, spread over the decades and between perhaps 20 countries, it is not that a great investment for a major move forward in infrastructure. In addition it is expected to lower offshore wind costs by 25%, and create jobs. The first “nodes” of the Supergrid are likely to be in the North Sea or between the UK and Ireland, where connections either already exist or are planned. If the EU framework is in place then the network can grow organically as more connections are added. It would encompass all forms of renewable energy, but wind turbines would be a major component. The EU wind energy sector installed 11.6 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in 2012, bringing the total wind power capacity to 105.6 GW, according to the 2012 annual statistics from the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), which was 2.2 GW more than was installed the previous year.
Image
Supergrid territory
Unfortunately the harsh economic conditions are starting to bite and roll-out of new projects is stalling. Overall, the EU is almost 2 GW (1.7%) under its National Renewable Energy Action Plan forecasts. Eighteen Member States are falling behind, including Slovakia, Greece, Czech Republic, Hungary, France and Portugal. It remains to be seen how this will impact on the whole supergrid project. ”
For the times, they are a changin’. I was particularly amused by the quote that said the big renewable energy investors are already pulling out of Germany. Lucky devils, they must know a better place now to get obscene returns through the malfunction of a market.
=============
In the past week or so, we’ve seen the AGU, BAMS and NOAA release massive studies ahead of the anticipated release of the first part of AR5.
What’s going on?
What are your thoughts on the state of Science as summed up by this avalanche of analytics?
Panic.
====
With music and knives.
==================
They see the impending collapse of an insane social structure that had threatened the very survival of mankind:
1. The top rungs of society are richly rewarded for violating moral principles – lying, cheating, conniving, etc. – without getting caught.
2. The bottom rungs of society are occupied by addicts and mental patients who are unable to adapt to social hypocrisy.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/a-berlin-story-eva/
See message to the Space Science & Technology Committee of the US House of Representatives: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Creator_Destroyer_Sustainer_of_Life.pdf
approach reminds me of witchfinders in earlier times.
If the scientists say something..they must be guilty of panic.
If they don’t say something…they must be guilty of panic.
I am just waiting for the searchable database of all the CRU emails to be released to the public.
“Whats the secret to good”
‘timing’
“comedy”.
DocMartyn | August 10, 2013 at 10:09 am |
Have you paid into the “public CRU email searchable database” fund?
Have you registered it on Kickstarter?
Obtained the legal rights?
Investigated the legal rights?
Made your own emails publicly searchable?
(Come now, you can’t tell me any doctor of any discipline alive today hasn’t benefited so greatly from the public purse in their education as to not owe the public access to all their correspondence, if you want a public searchable CRU email database.)
I am just waiting for the searchable database of all the CRU
Wait for the release of the code behind the hydrodynamic core,there are few in the CS community who will be able to defend the propositions.
There need be no great expense in making the balance of the CRU emails publicly available. No more expense than than the Deep Climate Leaker faced. The real objection is surely the fear/knowledge that more malfeasance would come to light.
It’s a publicly-funded institution, there really is no excuse for the public being denied access to the work-related emails.
(Come now, you can’t tell me any doctor of any discipline alive today hasn’t benefited so greatly from the public purse in their education as to not owe the public access to all their correspondence, if you want a public searchable CRU email database.)
Clever. And disingenuous. It’s not the education of climate scientists at issue here, it’s the work they do for their jobs.
Maybe they just graduated from a school where they recited this little ditto…
Text genre, features & theme to explore
We learned more with common core.
Fractions, decimals, journal prompts galore
We learned more with common core.
RUNNER & CUBES are strategies for
Learning more with common core.
Vocab words like (clouds, organs, force), & omnivore
We learned more with common core
Economy, government, Revolutionary war
We learned more with common core
So many new concepts to explore
We learned more with common core
—Semper Pie Everybody—
They are the herd. You know, the guys that invest everything just before the crash.
They are just chipping in. If you were a researcher and a major organization on your field was about to “move big”, you would also follow similar deadlines. There is no need for conspiracy on everything (or anything, really), we are not them.
Having just reviewed Judith’s post on (Ir)responsible advocacy by scientists, After Climategate, Himalayan melt impacts, I would like to express my admiration for her all over again.
Despite all the personal attacks people in her position get, she has decided she will pursue science, real science unpolluted by societal trends, to wherever it goes, at whatever personal cost. Thank heavens that we have people like Judith, even if we don’t have quite enough of them. Roger Pielke Jr. also falls in this category, I’ve seen him get smeared by the likes of Chris Fields on TV, and I saw his emotional reaction. But he kept his cool, stated the science, instead of reacting in kind. His analyses of historical records of damage from tornados and hurricanes is crucial to a full and unbiased understanding of historical trends, not available anywhere else. Hats off to those scientists who do what Judith and Roger do, despite all the personal abuse they get.
Let me illustrate for readers how widespread personal abuse has gotten, from the top to the bottom us US civil society.
Normally I keep my mouth shut about my understand of the science, which I read about on a daily basis, but at a party a month or so ago, a friend said that sea levels might rise 3 feet by 2060. I know that the recent science says about this, and this was a friend, so I unwisely said that there was good news, that sea levels weren’t going to rise anywhere near that much. Here is an account of the hell that broke lose, ending up with a former diplomat pointing his finger in my face:
——-
Let’s talk about personal ad hominem attacks.
My first experience on the receiving end of personal ad hominem attacks occurred last weekend. Usually I know enough not to say anything about global warming, but when a friend who was in attendance said that sea level rise was getting worse, we can now expect sea levels to be 2 to 3 feet higher by 2060, I responded (before I could catch myself) that the best and the newest science about Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise suggested that Greenland might add around 5 inches by 2200; and without much contribution from Greenland, you can’t get too much over one foot, that that would be early in the next century, not 2060.
All hell broke loose.
My friend said that Antarctica is melting, look at the breakup of all the ice sheets. I reminded him that when floating ice shelves melt, it doesn’t contribute to sea level rise, and that the ice sheets on the mainland aren’t contributing a pittance to sea level rise at present.
Then my friend’s wife mentioned the tragedy of increasing sea ice melt in the Arctic and asked me if I denied that. I agreed it was melting, but pointed out that 6,000 years ago, the Arctic wasn’t just lower in sea ice, but ice free for enough of the summer that Scandanavian scientists had found on the NW shore of Greenland unique patterns on the shore indicating the presence of large waves, which can only happen when there is NO sea ice — and that we survived that.
The shots were coming from all sides, but without getting angry, I returned fire with better armaments (knowing the science).
Then it was my friend’s turn again: he said that 1/3 of Bangladesh would be under water. I responded that Bangladesh is actually ADDING land mass in the last several decades, even with the one foot sea level rise of the last century, because of the huge deposition of glacial soils from the glacial rivers that empty there.
Back to my friend’s wife, who said, OK, but with world populations so high now, sea level rise will be so much worse. I agreed that sea level rise will impact coastal populations, but that the point of my original comment is that whatever the impacts, they will be smaller.
My friend said that low lying islands would get drowned, creating environmental refugees. I pointed out the science that shows that during the last 40 years, when sea levels rose several inches, that about 85% of the low lying Pacific islands in a recent study either ADDED land mass or didn’t lose any. People naturally asked about that, and I explained the process — when sea levels rise, storms deposit coral rubble on the island, when sea levels fall, wind erodes the rubble down to about 5 feet, so the islands stay about that level over time.
My friend’s wife talked about Alaska losing land. Here, I agreed that with less sea ice, wave action is indeed crumbling low lying silty lands on the NW part of Alaska, and that surely much more land must have been lost during that period of no sea ice in late summer in the Arctic, around 6,000 years ago, but I agreed that at least one village of about 200 people was in the process of a necessary relocation.
But what about the wildlife, she asked? Wildlife can move northward (and is) and can move up a mountain, I replied. (I should have pointed out the truly massive relocation that occurred when most of Canada and Scandanavia was under 2 miles of ice.)
So far it was just my friends, who know I don’t say anything about climate change without being able to back it up. They don’t get angry with me, either.
But now we come to the former diplomat, failing to be diplomatic — one of the strangers at the party.
He said we need to be leading the world and that it was criminal the way we keep increasing our greenhouse gases. I pointed out that the US has actually be reducing our CO2 emissions, because of shale gas, while the EU has been increasing them lately because of replacing nuclear with coal. I also pointed out that whatever we do, China and India will continue to dwarf our effort.
He got angry and maintained we have to lead. I asked him if reducing our GHGs in ways that other western countries don’t is leadership. He said that the reason we are reducing CO2 emissions is because of the new regulations on emissions from cars that Obama put in place. I told him that those regulations don’t go into effect until 2015 or 2016, and that the reduction is CO2 from the transportation sector in the US was a reaction to higher prices of gasoline the last 7 years or so. This again increased his anger. Throwing undisputable facts on the fire makes it grow higher; pointing out that someone’s suppositions — made up in the moment — are wrong makes the person angrier.
Finally, he pointed his finger at me, told me I was wrong, that 97% of the scientists were right and I was wrong. Despite his undiplomatic behaviour, I simply rewound the spool and pointed out that all of this started when I merely pointed out that the best and most recent science has now shown undeniably good news for us, that Greenland was going to contribute very little to sea level rise, and that was going to mean that sea levels were going to rise pretty little, relative to recent projections in the media. I pointed out that I agreed that CO2 warmed the climate and that we were going to see a warmer world, I wasn’t a “denier.” I just found it good to know that things weren’t going to be nearly as bad as supposed by some, based on the best science available on Greenland ice melt.
This didn’t do much to calm him down, but we changed the subject. Being a diplomat, he acted better from thereon out, but left the party early, and didn’t offer to shake my hand.
One solace is that my wife thought I defended myself quite well, contained my emotions, and from any reasonably neutral standard, won the debate by a mile. (Usually when a stranger wags his finger in my face, I don’t act like a teacher with a poorly behaved child and go on as if it didn’t happen, but I did so here.)
Another source of solace is that I felt quite good about myself, usually I just let climate change discussions go on without me, staying silent until the subject passes, suppressing my usual interest in sharing science with friends — so I felt liberated.
My worry is that our hosts, who were preparing food and heard the emotional level of the talk but not the substance, might be less inclined to invite us back. That would be a disappointment to both my wife and I, but that is the risk you take today in opening your mouth about climate change.
John | August 10, 2013 at 9:45 am |
Wow.
I was at one point ‘one of the biggest tech geeks in the world’, according to the hyperbolic rhetoric of my circle of friends and family at the time — who really didn’t have a clue how big the world was, or how much tech they’d never heard of — and yet when cute girls at parties said in passing how smart Bill Gates was, I smiled and nodded and just let it go.
Because I am not a giant jerk who ruins parties, or confuses chitchat with scientific dialogue.
You can’t cite references at parties in any meaningful way (at least, not without some hot hardware and a good wireless connection, and I don’t get the impression that’s the scene your crowd is into); you can’t demonstrate the math with a drink in one hand and a canapé in the other; it’s not the right place. Discretion, judgment and the ability to remember what’s important in the moment.. all of these inform me that your narrative is just an attempt to propagandize a failure of social intelligence.
I recommend buying flowers for the hosts, and writing heartfelt individual letters of apology to each of your friends, to try to salvage both your valuable relationships and some shred of dignity.
And don’t point out to them how right you still are.
With this awkward piece of social advice, Bart fails to show where John was wrong. Gawd, I admire your resistance to temptation.
==============
Bart is just remarking on the buzzkill effects of the “Debbie Downer” syndrome.
Kim is concisely dense in more ways than one.
I have been button-holed at Parties and at Boy Scouts camp out to explain evolution to people of a religious bent. Many of the people strongly suspect that the position they get in scripture.
I like to point out the presence of two, compatible, creation events
Genesis 1:25-27 (Humans were created after the other animals.)
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image…. So God created man in his own image.
Genesis 2:18-19 (Humans were created before the other animals.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Genesis 1:27 (The first man and woman were created simultaneously.)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 2:18-22 (The man was created first, then the animals, then the woman from the man’s rib.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them…. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Its a bit like talking to Thermodeddonists like you and Josh, asking how you explain the 1900-1975 period, without magic.
Bart, this is what I have come to expect from you. Unfortunately for you and all of us.
Not engaging with actual issues.
Lecturing (whether it is Steve Mosher or me or someone else) on what we need to do after the sins we have committed. In my case, the sin of actually engaging a friend on an issue of importance to all of us.
I take it from your response that one should never engage on such an issue, because….well because it would be impolite to talk about reality when someone brings up what has become known as a fantasy.
You epitomize the problem, Bart. You don’t care what someone says factually, you don’t care that someone spends a great deal of time over the years trying to understand what is really going on with regard to what might be a very important issue for the world. Whether that person is Roger Pielke Jr, Judith, or on a much lesser scale, me.
No, you don’t engage on the level of science. You just lecture someone whose views you don’t agree with.
You are the equivalent of the tea party, just on the opposite side. Like them you know the truth and close your ears to science based argument that doesn’t agree with your preconceptions. The only difference between you and the tea party is that you have opposite beliefs, but you are very similar in the way you hold to your beliefs no matter what, no matter how much new science we learn.
John | August 10, 2013 at 11:03 am |
If you want to engage issues socially, throw your own freaking issue engagement party.
Prepare the venue to make it fit to accommodate the discourse.
Prepare the guests so they know what they’re in for.
Don’t be a total putz and piss all over your hosts’ event just because you have an inflated sense of personal entitlement in a social setting.
Because did you pay for the party?
Did you cover your hosts’ costs for the whole shindig?
Was it yours?
No?
Then you are an ingrate and a leech.
Ingrates and leeches don’t deserve First Amendment rights. Bart demands their money, too.
================
DocMartyn, I’d be curious to hear your explanation of DNA polymerase.
Bart,
Nice to know you have more than one persona.
May I suggest you think of Climate Etc as a party you are invited to?
timg56 | August 10, 2013 at 1:06 pm |
I do.
Which is why I so closely endeavor to adhere to the hosts’ rules of engagement and theme.
kim
Bart
“You can’t cite references at parties in any meaningful way (at least, not without some hot hardware and a good wireless connection, and I don’t get the impression that’s the scene your crowd is into); you can’t demonstrate the math with a drink in one hand and a canapé in the other; it’s not the right place. Discretion, judgment and the ability to remember what’s important in the moment.. all of these inform me that your narrative is just an attempt to propagandize a failure of social intelligence.”
You need to hang out with a more intelligent crowd.
Yes climate Etc is Judiths e salon
rulz
“No ad hominem attacks, slurs or personal insults. Do not attribute motives to another participant.
Snarkiness is not appreciated here; nastiness and excessive rudeness are not allowed.”
Bart:
Then you are an ingrate and a leech.
Because I am not a giant jerk who ruins parties, or confuses chitchat with scientific dialogue.
Which is why I so closely endeavor to adhere to the hosts’ rules of engagement and theme.
##############
personally, I dont endeavor to adhere to Judiths rules. sorry.
weird that there are people who think they do, when they don’t.
Maybe Bart had a typo and meant to write
“Which is why I so closely endeavor to violate to the hosts’ rules of engagement and theme.”
Odd that folks who seem so insistent on telling others how they should behave cant abide by their own rulz.
PS, you are all free to say any horrible things you want about me. I’ll take your comments under advisement.
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 5:24 pm |
When I’m feeling sociable (which I know 10% of denizens will mistake for socialist, I’m guessing because they aren’t terribly good at the former and don’t know when they’re being the latter), I hang out with a sociable crowd.
When I’m in a mood to tolerate boors and misfits, I’m quite content to hang out with a more intelligent crowd that excludes fun, interesting people with actual manners.
When I’m feeling sociable (which I know 10% of denizens will mistake for socialist, I’m guessing because they aren’t terribly good at the former and don’t know when they’re being the latter), I hang out with a sociable crowd.
so, when you’re feeling sociable and put aside your moralizing and refrain from calling people ingrates, and stop your whining about wanting to get paid for the air, you hang out with a sociable crowd… really, tell us about the one time that happened.
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 7:40 pm |
Nah. I’m here for fact and information and analyses, not personal relationships. But thanks for the interest.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | August 10, 2013 at 10:33 am winged:
More greetings from Australia Mr. Telescope
Say hi to your Aussie buddy Chief of Hydrology Robbo the Yobbo for me.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | August 11, 2013 at 1:44 am said: ”Say hi to your Aussie buddy Chief of Hydrology Robbo the Yobbo for me”
The Chief is going to turn you into a ”Honorary Australian”, be good!.
That’s right Bart. People who “think” like you can just blurt out ridiculous untrue statements and that is ok, but no one can ever point out that they are mistaken.
“Nah. I’m here for fact and information and analyses, not personal relationships. But thanks for the interest.”
Ha, he used the climate porn response.
Bill | August 11, 2013 at 10:13 am |
If you think you possess a greater hold of the truth, by all means, don’t keep it secret.
Share it with us. Be specific. Be detailed. Let us see enough of your truth to expose it to tests of its validity and verity.
We all want truth, except denialists.
We all want to know what is true, which is why we contrive logic and uphold reason, and test what is said for consistency with the truth.
Or others, like you, assert some secret knowledge or intuition that can never be subject to reason or logic or sense if made open to scrutiny.
If what I’ve said is untrue, it is so open and detailed and invites remarks that will help me correct any of my human failings.
How’s that going for you?
When Bart uses the word “truth,” we should substitute “Bart-truth.”
@ Bart R | August 11, 2013 at 2:23 pm | Reply
“WUWT apparently is bleeding readership rapidly.”
jim2 | August 11, 2013 at 3:13 pm |
I’m quite sanguine about agreeing that the Alexa WUWT hockey stick graph shows the highest levels in WUWT traffic in recorded history.
The appearance of drop in readership in WUWT has clearly turned a corner since last I wasted any time thinking about it.
You say new changes have been made to drive readership to WUWT?
Is this of the same sort of changes as have been made by Microsoft to drive traffic to Bing (making it the world’s “most popular search engine”)?
Be specific. Be detailed. Spell out how this hockey stick hid the decline in WUWT’s credibility?
Bart, one minor technicality – I was quoting Anthony. Just follow the link.
jim2 | August 11, 2013 at 4:11 pm |
Yeah. No.
I was so put off by WUWT’s deceptive practices in my original contacts with it in its earlier days that I shook the dust of the place from my sandals and swore never to return.
I’m sure it doesn’t miss me, any more than I miss it, but I do my best to avoid it.
Which is becoming harder and harder, lately, with imbedded links to WUWT that disguise the destination.
Say. Do you think that might have something to do with the blip upwards in traffic?
I guess I’ll never know, if it means spending even a half second digging through more WUWT lies.
::grin::
===
I do occasionally visit WUWT directly, but in general I tend to peek at it through:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/
This one was pretty funny:
“Yep, at 25.9 degrees outside. The “Airport UHI” demon is irrepressible. It took a huge deep breath and blew all the hot air from the building twenty meters or more, right into the Stevenson screen and bulls eye – it hit the thermometer.”
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/08/anthony-watts-visits-greenland-and.html
lolwot – I can only conclude from that dig at the WUWT airport post that you believe an airpost is a suitable location for a thermometer intended to inform us about global warming?
You might like this one too, lolwot:
http://wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com/
lolw0t | August 11, 2013 at 4:37 pm |
So.. your hypothesis is that a good deal of the uptick in traffic is people going to see what everyone else is already laughing at?
I have to admit, analysis of humor is not my strong suit, but if you can cite sufficient evidence, I’ll consider it.
It could plausibly explain more than the idea that Anthony’s hired some sort of Black Hat hacker to do something devious.
Keep the Bart-truth coming.
kim | August 10, 2013 at 10:13 am |
If you think a party is about being right or wrong, then you’re doing party wrong.
Just imagine how much fun DocMartyn | August 10, 2013 at 10:50 am | is at parties.
Btw, one of the reasons for avoiding talking shop at parties is that it’s so hard to get things right in a party environment, even as simple as understanding the other side’s premise.
Btw, Thermodeddonist implies I either care much about temperature (compared to, say, the other 49 essential climate variables, or my wallet), or that I am concerned with predictions of doom; I’ve been explicit and at great length and repetitive in explaining that these do not interest me, to the point even a child of five could grasp it.
I can’t speak for others; I can say, for myself, my point is that dumping CO2E wastes hits me in the pocketbook without my consent and without compensation to me, and I want my money back.
Do you as angrily demand your money at parties as you do here?
==================
kim | August 10, 2013 at 11:10 am |
Generally, I avoid the parties with pickpockets and con artists.
Well, unless it’s a pickpocket/con-artist-themed party, like CE.
Re Bart’s reply at August 10, 2013 at 11:09 am:
As predicted and expected, it is a lecture about what someone else does wrong, and about how he, Bart, has the correct solution for us lesser folks. No engaging on actual issues, that might expose possible holes in his belief system.
Mr. Tea Party of the left calls me an ingrate and a leech, for the sin of engaging what a friend said.
I am happy with my friends, and I am happy to report that because we are friends, no adverse fallout came our way from them. I worried at the time, as noted, but both the hosts and our other friends at the party have reached out. They understand and like me, thank goodness, even if they wonder how I can have the views I have. The former diplomat, not so much, he knows what he believes, he knows that people on the other side deserve fingers in their faces. Just like Bart.
Yes, I long for the days when we could discuss something, and disagree without being disagreeable.
Weather was the classic icebreaker, but now that it’s turned into politics and religion, we have a problem, Houston.
============================
John | August 10, 2013 at 11:32 am |
Wow. So, you don’t think they reached out because they pity your wife, then?
I wonder what made Bart think that.
==============
“kim | August 10, 2013 at 11:37 am |
Weather was the classic icebreaker, but now that it’s turned into politics and religion, we have a problem, Houston.”
Well it has been raining all morning in Houston, I got wet cycling to and from work this morning.
> The former diplomat, not so much, he knows what he believes, he knows that people on the other side deserve fingers in their faces. Just like Bart.
Whatever the politeness of this sentence, John, it is still works like any kind of sentences that uses guilt by association. The calmness of your tone does not erase the function of this association, which conflates somebody who was lost for words (your diplomat) and somebody who dismissed your interjection as unworthy of any reply (Bart R). Nor does the vividness and dignity of your story obscures the fact that it basically amounts tone trolling.
That said, I must admit that I liked reading it, and that your diplomat does seem to have acted in a suboptimal way.
***
Your parabole seems to provide an argument to Judy’s solemn stance. I already provided many (I mean many) reasons to be cautious about what you make your interpretation.
How could we settle this disagreement while maintaining a decorum that even Solomon would applaud?
Since people are clamouring for an address of John’s manifold and gross errors of fact, while overlooking his manifold and gross errors of social grace, here goes.
As he provides no citation for his mythical 5″ Greenland melt by 2200, it’s not really possible to much explore. I can find no scholarship making such a claim, so I can’t really appraise the validity of it. Other than this appears to fly in the face of every study I can lay my hands on about the topic.
Antarctic? Antarctic isn’t expected to melt so much (as the continent is much colder than either Greenland or the Arctic) as weaken and slough off ice from its coast at an increasing rate, forming a grinding conveyor of continental ice onto the sea — which doesn’t need to melt to raise sea levels, what with 90% of sea ice being below sea level, new sea ice is 90% new sea level rise.. But it does melt along the edges of the ice, and at its bottom, making way for more sloughing of continental ice.
GRACE data tends to confirm this conveyor, as does pretty much all the available data. If anything, claims about the Antarctic contribution to sea level appear too conservative.
The Arctic 6,000 years ago is relevant how, again?
Oh, that when the tilt of the Earth was exactly at the angle that would result in the maximum Arctic melting under normal conditions and 280 ppmv CO2, we saw an effect much like we expect within a few decades at most, at 400+ ppmv CO2? Well, that’d be interesting, when the Earth tilts so much we’d expect an Ice Age.. in 20,000 to 30,000 more years, if the CO2 level falls back to 280 ppmv by then.
This “we” that “survived that” John speaks of. Does he have any literature describing how that survival thing went? Any evidence at all? Not that “that” was so similar to “this”, and I’m not overly concerned with the “survived” part so much as the “expensive and unconsented” part, but I’m curious if his omniscience extends so deep.
Bangladesh gaining land?
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/06/14/000445729_20130614145941/Rendered/PDF/784240WP0Full00D0CONF0to0June19090L.pdf
Bangladesh is a river delta. Gaining silt in the river mouth is not gaining land, it’s losing navigability and requiring costly infrastructure development.. which will be washed away when sea levels rise, requiring new costly infrastructure development. But sea level rise isn’t among the most pressing risks of climate change Bangladesh is facing right now, today, or expecting to need to cope with every day going forward while CO2E continues to elevate in level.
The glib dismissal of habitat loss with “Go North, young malaria mosquito,” really captures the just-not-getting-itness of this whole fiasco of an exchange, whether about manners or science or just not being an embarrassment.
The whole Pacific islands Rube Goldberg homeostasis hypothesis is too flakey to say much about, except what a happily pronoiac world we live in, that the pure coincidence of flotsam and jetsam exactly balancing loss of habitable land ends up exactly where islanders’ feet will tread, as if blown by the breath of a friendly personally present God. Very moving. Utter twaddle.
After bearing up to the barrage of nonsense John uttered to his gullible friends who think he can back up what he says about climate, it’s hardly a wonder that any adult present might find it worth speaking up. As we have only John’s version of events, and we’ve seen he is an unreliable narrator, it’s difficult to judge this part of the debacle. Sure, the world has George Bush to thank for so weakening America and crashing the economy that there was some drop in demand, and there was a happy coincidence of switching from coal to natural gas while a paralyzed Congress was too distracted and defective to get in the way of business like it usually does, but I’m not particularly addressing the shortcomings of former diplomats today.
If there’s a citation to this wonderful Greenland unicorn study, I’d like a chance to see it, and share the joy John says he has to spread.
Greenland can over time contribute up to 7 meters to sea-level and with CO2e getting towards 1000 ppm by 2200, and Arctic sea-ice struggling to form even in winter, it will be unsustainable and in full irreversible melt mode by then. This is not something to brush off, and given the Arctic’s ability to surprise us with its recent speed of change, this could all happen a lot earlier.
Bart R says: ‘What with 90% of sea ice being below sea level, new sea ice is 90% new sea level rise.’
And I hardly read it.
=============
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Heh, phatboy, I suspect calves are what he meant.
============
I know, but the bull got in the way
Re new estimates of Greenland’s now reduced contribution to sea level rise during the Eemian. Here is Andrew Revkin’s blog on the subject and on the article:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/eyes-turn-to-antarctica-as-study-shows-greenlands-ice-has-endured-warmer-climates/?_r=0
You can get to the press release from the U of Copenhagen from the article. The article itself is published in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/full/nature11789.html
From the press release you can also blow up the Figure discussed in the next paragraph.
In the Figure at the top of Revkin’s blog, you can see that temps were 6 to 8 degrees C higher than today in Greenland from about 127,000 to about 120,000 years before present, 7,000 years.
Here is a quote from the article’s lead researcher:
“Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen….”
From here, the math is simple. If Greenland contributed less than half of 4 to 8 meters of sea level rise, relative to today, that would be less than half of 2 to 4 meters, so let’s call it 3 meters. Let’s also ignore the 8,000 years in the Eemian when temps were ramping up to or down from the plateau of 7,000 years of 6 to 8 degrees C, let’s say that all of the 3 meters occurred during the highest temperatures of the 7,000 year period.
3 meters = 10 feet = 120 inches. Divide by 70 centuries (7,000 years) and you get less than 2 inches a century.
Play with the numbers all you like, it is a couple of inches, give or take a centimeter or so, per century, and it requires a great deal of heat to make it happen.
One small caveat: back in the Eemian, there weren’t black carbon emissions falling on ice caps and glaciers, at least not from the daily use of diesels and from wintertime residential coal use in places like China, with no pollution controls. So it is possible that we might also have a small contribution per century to sea level rise from this modern source of warming ice caps. This is one reason so many people want to focus on black carbon in the short term, in part because reducing black carbon emissions will have an immediate impact, and in part because it seems easier politically to reduce black carbon emissions than to reduce CO2 emissions.
Finally, here is a Nature commentary on the subject, which says that the total contribution to sea level rise from Greenland during the Eemian was 2 meters, not the 3 meters I have used.
http://www.nature.com/news/greenland-defied-ancient-warming-1.12265
You will note that the “worrisome” issue mentioned in the commentary is that Antarctica must have contributed more sea level rise during the Eemian than previously estimated. I would agree that this would be worrisome, IF I thought humanity would be stupid enough to warm the planet without interruption for many thousands of years. But I’m betting on no more than two centuries.
Re increasing land mass in Bangladesh, due to glacial silt accumulation:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/can-crumbling-himalayas-protect-bangladesh-from-rising-seas/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7532949.stm
Of course, whether Bangladesh adds or loses land depends not just on deposition of glacial silts, but also on the rate of sea level rise.
That is why the good news on Greenland’s meager contributions to sea level rise, and thus only small (~ one foot) sea level rise this century, is also good news for Bangladesh. If sea levels don’t rise much more this century than last, Bangladesh will likely continue to gain land.
To Lolwot, who says:
“When floating ice shelves melt the land ice behind them slides faster into the ocean. Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise.”
Yes, the issue is well known qualitatively. The question is at what point will this process get into motion. My reading is that a couple of centuries of 2 degrees C warmer than today won’t produce such slides into the ocean, either in Greenland (where it had previously been hypothesized, but recently rejected after rigourous inspection of the grounding of major glaciers) or in Antarctica, where modest warming actually increases snowfall in the interior, thus adding to Antarctica’s ice mass.
I do agree that during the Eemian, with the 7,000 years of exceptional warming (6 to 8 degrees warmer than today), that there must have been substantial amounts of some of Antarctica’s ice sheets adding to sea level rise. If sea level was 4 to 8 meters higher in the Eemian than today, and Greenland contributed 2 or 3 meters, most of the rest must have come from Antarctica.
The question is whether smaller warming, for a couple of centuries, might cause important Antarctic ice sheets to contribute to sea level rise. My read of the science on this question is “no.”
For those wanting information on how low lying Pacific islands can grow during sea level rise, here are some sources:
The article itself:
http://www.pacificdisaster.net/pdnadmin/data/original/SOPAC_2010_The_dynamic_response.pdf
And press on it (a bit more accessible if you just want to skim):
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-03/pacific-islands-growing-not-sinking/851738
John | August 11, 2013 at 10:57 am |
Wow. The math is simple. Divide 120 by 70.
Why didn’t the 134 contributors to the paper think of that?
Oh. Because it makes ZERO sense.
The authors, actual experts who got their paper peer reviewed and published and study this professionally never thought of 5″ because an assumption of equipartition is unwarranted. It is most likely an extreme sigmoid shape represents the ice loss in Greenland, with much of the melt occurring in the first one percent of the time under consideration. Not 70 centuries, but 0.7 is far more plausible.
What’s 120/0.7?
Further, we’re still talking about only one single ice core taken from the part of Greenland most impervious to melt, hence most reflective of the minimum ice loss expected. Without many more proxies from areas more representative of the whole — which it would be hard to find, as they’ve by and large melted — we have very great uncertainty, and so taking an average of half of an expected value in a large range is extremely deceptive.
And you confound a Nature commentary with a Nature published article, as somehow authoritative? All eight meters from Greenland is just as plausible as only 2 meters, absent significant additional analyses of Antarctic and nonpolar other ice cores.
And you did this at a party with people you call friends?
What do you do to people you don’t like?
John | August 11, 2013 at 11:12 am |
Bangladesh is pretty screwed up either way.
Silt choking up river deltas is normal and natural and an old story in almost every river mouth. It has to be dealt with, sometimes by dredging, sometimes by adaptation, and sure, more land — if it’s land, not dead mud clogging up and killing sea life without providing sufficient foundation for farming or building on — sounds pretty good. But that’s a big ‘if’.
Since silt doesn’t settle significantly above sea level, all the ‘gained’ land is irrelevant, as a sea level rise, which could be anywhere from a foot by 2060 to two meters by 2100, will undo it all, leaving a larger coastal dead zone that remains dangerous to navigate. And since that range of possible sea level rise is so large, there’s no way to know what infrastructure solution is the right one to choose, making the cost of addressing the changes higher.
How does anyone deal with the level of complexity of the case with a drink in one hand and a cupcake in the other?
John | August 11, 2013 at 11:22 am |
Your reading of ice?
Ever live on ice?
Ice has that funky and almost unique quality that at its freezing point it expands to be less dense than its liquid form. That’s why it floats. But as it gets colder, it does get denser and denser, as well as harder.
Antarctic land ice is the largest ice cube on the planet; if it’s getting a few degrees warmer, it’s softening and expanding. The softer it gets, the lower peaks it can maintain and the flatter it spreads out. The more it expands, the wider that flatter expanse of land ice gets. It already essentially covers all the land, so every bit of expansion results in new sea ice. The new sea ice is 90% below the water line, so is 90% contributing to higher sea level. That’s not counting all the other effects of the warming of the Antarctic sea ice.
Did you cover this question at your party?
Maybe smushed down on the cupcake to show what’s happening to the Antarctic?
John | August 11, 2013 at 12:14 pm |
Adding rubble and debris may be ‘growing’ land, but it isn’t a remedy for sea level rise, as for the most part the new grown trash piles are only at sea level, so will sink again, and do not lift the rest of the actual land in customary use, which also will find itself below sea level, and turned to trash. Which might ‘grow land’ elsewhere, but again, it’s still just flotsam and jetsam and debris until labor and capital are invested in it to reclaim it. It’s a liability that is growing, not a benefit.
Now tell us how long it takes for that few degrees at the surface to soak into the ice to a sufficient depth to make a significant contribution to this effect.
He leaves a detailed copy of his treasure map.
============
phatboy | August 11, 2013 at 3:53 pm |
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ice-thermal-properties-d_576.html
You do the math.
Though if you want to do the calculations on the stresses introduced with differential hardness, that I’m not going to be much help with.
You’ll need a structural engineer.
If only CE wasn’t so sparse in competent engineers.
Bart R, I don’t need to do the math to know that it’s an extremely slow process – and that’s assuming that the surface temperature does in fact increase by a few degrees.
Of course, you can always try to prove me wrong by doing the math – which is only fair seeing you made the original assertion without quantifying it.
Oh, and while you’re at it, you can quantify the ‘peaks’ which you expect to see flattened.
phatboy | August 12, 2013 at 5:15 pm |
Extremely slow process?
Howso?
The Antarctic is full to the top with land ice. Every bit of warming immediately affects that ice at the top like protracted low-temperature popcorn, and pushes it over the top and onto the sea. This is going on now. This is all that record high Antarctic Sea Ice you’re hearing people talk about. Right now. Today.
Will this take a long time to get all the way to the point the Antarctic isn’t full to the top of ice?
Sure. But see Curve, Sigmoid.
That take care of your peaks?
Bart R, do you have the slightest idea what you’re talking about?
If you do then you’re not very good at communicating it.
phatboy | August 13, 2013 at 1:52 pm |
It’s my fond hope then, that you READ HARDER.
Bart R, that was actually my polite way of saying that what you wrote is unadulterated balderdash
phatboy | August 14, 2013 at 1:50 am |
Not sure which is the more spectacular failure: that you thought you were polite, or you don’t get just how much better understood you are than you understand yourself.
Or that anyone cares.
Bart R, you come along sprouting your wild fantasies, with nothing in the way of facts, figures or citations to back anything up, then you have the effrontery to throw insults at anyone who calls you on it.
FYI, the Antarctic surface temperature varies by many tens of degrees between summer and winter – are you suggesting that the ice overflows into the sea like some strange popcorn machine every summer and then shrinks right back every winter? Get real!
And as for your nonsense about sea ice coming from land ice?
THINK HARDER!!!
phatboy | August 15, 2013 at 10:40 am |
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/14/so-what-is-the-best-available-scientific-evidence-anyways/#comment-365458
And to see the popcorn popping: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives/image_select.html for Southern Hemisphere, hit Beginning button (|), hit Faster.
Bart R, If you had a disk of ice the size of the Antarctic ice sheet, and you warmed it up by a full ten degrees, the radius of the disk would increase by roughly two millimetres!
So much for your popcorn fantasy!
So what’s the explanation for the sea ice? Ever hear of water freezing?
Correction to the above: (I took the cube root of the difference in volume rather than the difference between the cube roots of the volumes) the radius of the disk would increase by around five metres – so that would be the size of Bart’s ‘popcorn effect’, assuming that increase wasn’t completely swallowed up by cracks, fissures etc
Still absolutely nothing to write home about.
Could you expand on that?
That cracked me up.
One reason a retard like me follows your comments.
John writes:
“My friend said that Antarctica is melting, look at the breakup of all the ice sheets. I reminded him that when floating ice shelves melt, it doesn’t contribute to sea level rise, and that the ice sheets on the mainland aren’t contributing a pittance to sea level rise at present.”
Uh John,
When floating ice shelves melt the land ice behind them slides faster into the ocean. Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise.
Geez. Maybe you should invite them back to dinner to apologize for being wrong!
To Lolwot, who says:
“When floating ice shelves melt the land ice behind them slides faster into the ocean. Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise.”
Yes, the issue is well known qualitatively. The question is at what point will this process get into motion. My reading is that a couple of centuries of 2 degrees C warmer than today won’t produce such slides into the ocean, either in Greenland (where it had previously been hypothesized, but recently rejected after rigourous inspection of the grounding of major glaciers) or in Antarctica, where modest warming actually increases snowfall in the interior, thus adding to Antarctica’s ice mass.
I do agree that during the Eemian, with the 7,000 years of exceptional warming (6 to 8 degrees warmer than today), that there must have been substantial amounts of some of Antarctica’s ice sheets adding to sea level rise. If sea level was 4 to 8 meters higher in the Eemian than today, and Greenland contributed 2 or 3 meters, most of the rest must have come from Antarctica.
The question is whether smaller warming, for a couple of centuries, might cause important Antarctic ice sheets to contribute to sea level rise. My read of the science on this question is “no.”
Just a reminder that the floating ice shelves hold the glaciers that feed them back, so it’s not the ice from the floating ice shelves that add to sea level rise, but the increased flow from the glaciers behind them that do.
Bob Droege,
How does something that floats, and is exposed to open sea at one end, hold a glacier back? Glaciers flow, as far as I know, and reshape the countryside as they do, in some cases.
I’ve seen rocks hundreds of metres high, apparently transported by glaciers, and dumped when the glacier vanished. Surely floating ice won’t hold a glacier back.
Are you sure floating ice can stop a glacier flowing?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Yeah Flynn, I’m sure
The frozen ice shelves are usually frozen into the ground as in they are grounded.
What do you call it when you hold back the course of a river? That’s right, a dam
Does that stop the upstream river from flowing? No
Same thing with glaciers – only in slow-motion
Bob Droege,
Are you talking about grounded glaciers? These do not have their flow restricted by the “grounding” below sea level. You will note that the base of a glacier sits on the “ground”. Whether the “ground” is below sea level or not does not affect the flow rate of the glacier overall (with the usual caveats, of course).
The floating portion of the glacier is no longer grounded. The portion of the glacier situated on the “ground” will move no faster if the floating ice shelf breaks off (which it does from time to time).
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Phatboy,
What do you call it when you hold back the course of a river with a dam made of the same substance as the river?
That’s right, an impossibility. Does that stop the glacier from flowing? No.
Has it any relevance to anything at all? No.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn,
This is an observed phenomenon, as an ice shelf collapses, the glacier behind it speeds up. This was observed with the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf.
Bob Droege,
There seems to be some differences of opinion between glaciologists as to whether ice shelf “collapse” (sounds far more impressive than a glacier “calving”, doesn’t it?), results in increased basal glacier speed upstream.
Depending on the reasons for calving, it may appear that a surface speed increase has occurred after the calving, rather than precipitating it by a complicated series of events. In any event, actual research on surface and base flow speeds, combined with interferometric radar observations of the calving front, indicate that at least for the glaciers studied, upstream speed showed no increase after calving events.
NASA, and some others, just make a bald assertion that an increase in speed and thinning is attributable to ice shelf loss, and nothing else. They also measure surface speed, which tells very little about ice movement in total. Glaciology is not as simple as one might think.
There is some merit in your argument if it can be shown that the friction on the sides of the ice shelf is sufficient to demonstrate a damming effect by raising the surface of the glacier/shelf interface. This does not seem to be the case, in spite of sophisticated measuring equipment available to NASA.
So, no. Maybe, maybe not.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Yes, just like a dam breaking. But, upstream, the flow is unaffected.
> My first experience on the receiving end of personal ad hominem attacks occurred last weekend.
You must be young, John, or very tall and good-looking.
Well – if he is good-looking, then he must have mistaken beliefs because women have lied to him. Just ask Wills – one of the leading lights of “skeptical” thought.
Willard, thank you, but I am no longer young, never was tall, and was good looking only in the distant past.
This was my first experience on the receiving end of personal ad hominem attacks because it was the only time I have broken the rule of not saying anything that was remotely outside tribal beliefs on warming. I usually won’t do such a thing. But, as noted, it was a friend who made the outlandish comment that Greenland would contribute up to 3 feet by 2060 — and excellent illustration of how well the PR machine has worked, BTW. Because it was a friend, who I knew wouldn’t flame me, I made the mistake of bringing up the latest actual science (although there are other scientific articles of late which also point to much lower Greenland contribution to sea level rise, which I haven’t brought up here, yet, as the Nature article on the Eemian says it all very well).
John
If you want some good information on why C02 is falling in the US, I’ll recommend this by one of our group members, Zeke Hausfather
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/explaining-declines-in-us-carbon.pdf
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 5:19 pm |
That’s a nice reference.
Thanks
its good work, but there is a typo that I failed to catch.
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 10:38 pm |
There’s always a typo that doesn’t get caught.
Hence, Persian Flaw.
The trick is to not make a big deal out of someone else’s typo the day after getting caught out on your own.
Steve, yes, the shale gas revolution had produced so much natural gas, that prices have fallen so low, that it is now cheaper to use natural gas than coal in some areas of the US to produce electricity. That causes a big drop in CO2 emissions. If and when natural gas prices recover a bit, there might be a bit of a switch back to coal. But many coal plants are now being retired because it is too costly for them to meet the new environmental requirements under the Obama Administration, so there might come a time, a decade or so from now, when there might not be enough coal capacity remaining to go substantially back to coal when natural gas prices once again rise. At that point, the reduction in CO2 emissions from the electricity sector will be permanent.
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 5:19 pm |
It’d be interesting to see Zeke’s method and graphics applied for comparison of what’s effective on multiple different CO2 siloes: Australia, BC, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, India, South Africa, and those special cases with sequestration or other regulations.
Vidi, vici, veni: vision, values, visuals.
Vidi, Vici & Veni may be an intriguing name for Moshpit’s boyz band.
This is a good read
http://theautomaticearth.com/Energy/shale-is-a-pipedream-sold-to-greater-fools.html
The production of Bakken oil is easily modeled as an average well prodcution profile convolved against the number of new wells coming on line. This is the chart of a model I put together:
http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/5992/9ew.gif
The concept of the Red Queen in oil production is described in the first link. The month that the development of new wells stops increasing will result of aggregate production undergoing a rapid decline.
Fracking is a boom-and-bust operation that can not be sustained over the long term. It is not anything like the old days of conventional crude production where individual wells had a longer lifetime.
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 5:43 pm |
And to clarify, lest it go unremarked and be felt discourteous, I’m shocked and surprised by the perception that my comments may be taken amiss.
It is my hope to address arguments and commentary productively and without ad hominem, as what reason is served by ad hominem upon those whom I do not know, especially when there is so ample material to discuss in what they post?
If I fall below our hosts’ standards, or my own, it is a human failing, and I would be glad of it being overlooked in favor of focus on the content of postings and threads, rather than personalization.
I regard CE as Mother Teresa did Calcutta: an opportunity to serve God’s blessed children, with humility and so much grace and joy as I can hold in my heart.
Be assured, I could not feel more grateful for the opportunity.
If you feel slurred or personally insulted, FREAKING READ HARDER.
Bart
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 5:43 pm |
And to clarify, lest it go unremarked and be felt discourteous, I’m shocked and surprised by the perception that my comments may be taken amiss.
It is my hope to address arguments and commentary productively and without ad hominem, as what reason is served by ad hominem upon those whom I do not know, especially when there is so ample material to discuss in what they post?
If I fall below our hosts’ standards, or my own, it is a human failing, and I would be glad of it being overlooked in favor of focus on the content of postings and threads, rather than personalization.
######################
overcompensating style is read as insincere. The bottom line Bart is that you are a boor. I have no issue with that. I find it funny that you dont see that in your self or that you cant admit it. I mean really funny. You pick your nose and tell John not to fart. that is what I love about you.
Steve, who is the more humorless? Bart R , or Brandon Schollen….? Are you still mad at me?
Steven Mosher | August 10, 2013 at 5:43 pm |
… You pick your nose and tell John not to fart. that is what I love about you.
=========
And this is why I love reading your comments.
Don Monfort | August 10, 2013 at 8:45 pm |
Steve, who is the more humorless? Bart R , or Brandon Schollen….? Are you still mad at me?
##################
Don, I am not mad at you. you made me look hard at some of the things I said with more care. There things in you I dont like about me.
Humorless. Hmm, I would say brandon. I would tell him what a old wild weasel told me : “kid, you need to put a few links in your chain”
Bart, I happen to agree with a lot of what he says, but dammit I see this big ole balloon, and cant help pokin it with a needle. you get that of course,
K scott
“And this is why I love reading your comments.”
dont encourage me or Don will come along and burst my over inflated ego.
thx, though
Hard to see that a social gathering such as the party you attended would be an appropriate venue for the type of discussion that had ensued.
A private conversation with your friends is another matter and the more of this type of private discussion where sceptics engage with warmists is indeed something to be hoped for.
John…I agree that ad hominem attacks are very uncivil. I just wish that you had read the same books and sources that your friend had. Maybe you might have agreed with him on most points.
It’s a good story. Now, do you want to be invited back if the price is to shut up? If so, next time do. If not, get better friends.
To Txomin:
Actually, very much to my wife and my own relief, we will soon be seeing the hosts. And we will be dining with our other friends (the husband being the one who said Greenland will contribute up to 3 feet of sea level rise by 2060) this Saturday evening. So — thank goodness — no harm done. Very nice to see that these friendships weren’t destroyed by saying something non-tribal.
Yes, I will shut up in the future as I have in the past. I really didn’t like the result at the party, I just reacted to an outlandish statement, and this was the only time I ever have done something like that. If you can have a good time with friends, I really don’t want to do something that gets in the way of that (as much as it might make me grit my teeth to hear some of the unlikely or untrue tribal statements).
These are good people, I wasn’t looking forward to trading them in.
Friends are more important than being right John. Horses for courses and there’s always CE where you can argue to your heart’s content.
Finally.
Someone who really gets what kim is all about.
Bart, one-liners aren’t your metier. Get verbose.
============
kim | August 10, 2013 at 10:03 am |
I’m not feeling the anthrax-laden IED from you, kim.
Who sent willard and Joshua out to battle without pots to piss in, or to cover their heads.
=============
I get it, as verbosity is not needed when one has context. The key word in the clip is irrelevancy, and the more that someone pollutes a space with meaningless quips and one-liners, the more irrelevant the place becomes.
Talking about context, that is the name of my new web site, http://ContextEarth.com. The dual context here is how to apply models of the earth and its environment to solve problems in design and research. The environment becomes the context for the system under investigation.
“Get verbose.” Right, easier to ignore.
Hah, hah, pg, you’ve found me out.
==========
Don’t tell him, pg, but Web has also figured me out, but as usual, draws the wrong conclusion.
==========
A little about context oight dot com
Registrant:
Paul Pukite
4960 Fillmore ST NE
Columbia Heights, MN 55421
US
Domain name: CONTEXTEARTH.COM Administrative Contact:
Pukite, Paul puk@umn.edu
4960 Fillmore ST NE
Columbia Heights, MN 55421
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+1.7635718705
Technical Contact:
White, Eric support@dotster.com
10 Corporate Dr., Suite 300
Burlington, MA 01803
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+1.8004015250 Fax: +1.7812726550
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Dotster.com, support@dotster-inc.com
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This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords,
DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions.
Registrar of Record: Domain.com
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Domain servers in listed order:
NS2.DOTSTER.COM
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Domain status: ok
One courageously outs after being caught rooting for an anonymous commenter, the other talks about piss as if it was sonnets.
Go team Denizens!
Thinks Wee Willard. Your encouragement means a lot to me.
HAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
Next!
Best wishes for your new website WHT. It seems an excellent opportunity for the type of scientific discourse that you have been seeking from Judith’s blog, but I suspect that reader numbers and contributors will probably fall somewhat short of the numbers that Judith is currently experiencing.
@Peter Davies
It’ll fall of short of the traffic on Bill Dembski’s site Uncommon Descent back when I was running it too. So if we can serve up sad to Paul Pukite and his idol His Assholiness Doctor Bob Park that makes it a super-sized serving of sad.
Bart – oh – Bart,
Socrates – is – non – pareil, Kim – is – non – pareil. Wanna argue?
Hmm … now – where – is – that – lasso – i – kept – from – way
– back – when – I – used – ter – be – a – carefree – cow -girl –
afore – I – became – a – serf? )
These – doggone – hyphens – take – a – lotta- con – sent -trashun.
B -t -s
Climate Models have forecast warmer and warmer every year for two decades. It has not happened for seventeen years. 1998 still holds the record as the warmest year since thermometers were invented in the late 1800’s.
Water on Earth is abundant. Water changes state in our comfort zone.
CO2 is a trace gas. CO2 does not change state in our comfort zone.
For six hundred million years, the lower limit of temperature was bounded by the temperature that sea water freezes. For six hundred million years, the upper limit of temperature was bounded by the temperature that water evaporates and produces huge amounts of water vapor and clouds. In between these two temperatures, there was no set point and no strong regulation of temperature around a set point.
The modern ten thousand years has enjoyed a set point and powerful regulation around that set point and the new bounds are well inside the old bounds. Look at actual data.
What is different?
Continents drifted, Polar Ice developed, Ocean Levels and Ocean Currents Evolved.
We now have a temperature that has stayed inside plus and minus one degree C for most of ten thousand years. We now have a temperature that has stayed inside plus and minus two degrees C for all of ten thousand years.
The Temperature that Polar Sea Ice Melts and Freezes is the NEW and Wonderful Thermostat for Earth.
When Polar Waters are Frozen they do not provide moisture for snow and the Sun Removes more Ice Every Summer than gets replaced every Winter and Ice on Earth Retreats and Earth Warms.
When Polar Waters are not Frozen, oceans do provide moisture for more than enough snow to more than replace the Ice that Melts Every Summer and Ice on Earth Advances and Earth Cools.
These advances and retreats are not something that starts and stops when the snowfall change occurs. It is delayed. When the snowfall starts the ice volume capacity starts building. The ice extent advance starts later after the ice volume has grown. When the snowfall stops, the ice advance continues until the ice volume capacity to push ice outward is depleated.
Consensus Theory is that ice volume starts to grow when temperature starts to drop and that ice volume grows until the temperature starts to rise. That is very wrong. They make temperature go up and down with external forces that have no set point and no powerful regulation. A set point and powerful regulation can only come from something inside the system.
The Roman and Medieval Warm Periods were much like now.
Our Climate Cycle is exactly in the Phase it should be in Now.
Why do people believe this Warm Period should not have happened? Warm Periods have always followed Cold Periods in these same bounds for ten thousand years. Then Cold Periods followed the Warm Periods.
This is Normal!
NASA and NOAA and 97% of the Consensus Group are going to be really embarrassed when these simple truths become more and more evident as the snow each year rebuilds the Ice Volume which will again advance and Cool Earth into the next Cold Phase which always follows every Warm Phase.
Consensus Climate People do not understand Computer Models and they do not understand this Simple Polar Ice Cycle which is perfectly well explained by Actual Real Data.
It was a huge mistake to give Super Computers to Climate People without teaching them anything about building and verifying models. If your forecasts are wrong for two decades, you have something wrong in your Theory and Models.
When our Rocket Models missed a Forecast, we fixed the problem or problems before the next launch. When we did not fix things soon enough, we killed people and we were forced to review and improve the process. We launched the Space Shuttle with people on board during the very first launch. If our Models were as good as Climate Models, we would not have reached LEO.
You cannot explain a temperature set point with tight regulation around that without something that has a set point. You cannot explain tight regulation without something that performs different on the different sides of the set point.
CO2 does not have a set point or any powerful means of enforcing a set point.
Polar Sea Ice has a Set Point and can cause massive snowfall when the Set Point is Exceeded and can turn off the Massive Snowfall when the Temperature is below the Set Point.
This Set Point is clearly in the DATA!
Consensus Theory has temperature going up and up like nothing that has ever happened before. Or, at least, it has not happened for a hundred and thirty thousand years. Our most recent ten thousand years are different and I know why. If you do not know why and/or cannot explain why, don’t tell me you understand climate.
Data shows that temperature has been tightly bounded around a set point for Ten Thousand Years. I have told you my theory. If you agree, say so. If you disagree, tell your theory.
SNOW MUST FALL WHEN OCEANS ARE WARM AND WET. ICE ADVANCES SOME WHILE IT IS STILL FALLING AND IT CONTINUES TO ADVANCE AFTER THE OCEANS FREEZE. THIS GIVES THE APPEARANCE THAT ICE VOLUME IS STILL INCREASING AND FALSLY SUPPORTS THE MILANKOVICH THEORY THAT ICE VOLUME IS STILL INCREASING UP TO THE POINT THE ICE STARTS TO RETREAT. IT CANNOT HAPPEN THIS WAY. THE ICE VOLUME STARTS TO DECREASE WHEN THE SNOW STOPS FALLING. THE ICE ADVANCE LASTS LONG AFTER THAT.
LOOK AT MY COMPARISON TO AN ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT.
http://popesclimatetheory.com/page50.html
Milankovich makes earth cold and then adds ice. You cannot get moisture out of cold frozen water to use to add ice.
You can only get moisture from wet water to use to add ice. You always add ice when water is wet. You must add the ice during warmer times and then it gets cold.
MILANKOVICH THEORY IS NOT POSSIBLE! WHERE CAN YOU GET MOISTURE WHEN THE WATER IS ALREADY COLD AND FROZEN? ACTUAL ICE CORE DATA SHOWS THE SNOW FALLS IN THE WARM TIMES.
MILANKOVICH THEORY PROVES EWING AND DONN WERE WRONG.
ACTUAL DATA PROVES EWING AND DONN WERE RIGHT.
THE ACTUAL DATA DOES PROVE EVERTHING. LOOK AT THE DATA.
“Climate Models have forecast warmer and warmer every year for two decades. It has not happened for seventeen years.”
In any other field a model is treated as a falsifiable hypothesis. The inability of a model to match reality is taken as proof that the model fails to replicate reality. In climate science, on the other hand, it is taken to mean that they have not managed to alter the measured reality enough.
Your first sentence is wrong, I didn’t bother to read the rest.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday issued a peer-reviewed 260-page report, which agency chief Kathryn Sullivan calls its annual “checking on the pulse of the planet.” The report, by 384 scientists around the world, compiles data already released, but it
puts them in context of what’s been happening to Earth over decades.
Wow. They now have 384 scientists. They used to have Thousands.
We are gaining. Their 97% is down below the CO2 PPM. This is a major milestone.
A new draft of The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change is now up and open for feedback at http://cartoonclimate.wikispaces.com/
Past drafts have gotten good comments from readers here that have improved the book, so I hope the same will be true this time!
Feedback is welcome on this blog or on our wiki: http://cartoonclimate.wikispaces.com/
Yoram Bauman | August 10, 2013 at 9:55 am |
Wow. Sharper, clearer, punchier, more direct, cleaner. A vast improvement.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get through the formation of the planet to the Oxygen Catastrophe and its causes and implications half so well with such brevity before.. at least not while still being funny.
Up to Chapter 6, I have no quibbles of note that offer much help, and I like what I see. (For most people, that’s no a quibble, but if I like something, I’m always immediately more suspicious I’m unconsciously unduly influencing my judgment in its favor.)
Chapter 6, the scientific method definition makes exactly the high school mistake of stopping one clause too soon.
To “..but the Scientific Method remains one of humanity’s most powerful inventions,” add (per Isaac Newton’s Principia): “because when we treat scientific conclusions as accurate or very nearly true until new observation requires us to alter the conclusion, we make the best possible informed (evidence-based) decisions.” Or wordsmith as appropriate and funny.
For Chapter 7, I prefer “Projections” over “Predictions”; predictions are pretty useless, and a more precise constraint than you need, if you’re discussing “threats” as opposed to “certainty”. Projections reflect change in threat.
Speaking of, I would want to see more on cost vs. catastrophe. A good epic world-ending disaster makes for good reading, but I’m a practical adult (and, as Neil Gaimon observes, when writing for adults you’re allowed to leave the boring bits in), and if these threats hit me in the pocketbook by making food more expensive today, for example, that means more to me than being up to my armpits in sea water in a hundred years.
Overall, I’m very impressed and quite enjoy the opportunity to read your writing.
Thank you.
Yoram Bauman
You say;
” and with an observation
•[YB: Settled.] MT: But key to make clear that we’re talking hugely different timeframes for change. Again, the sentence as phrased reinforces “denialist perceptions” in ways I don’t think you intend. ALSO RP: “Earth’s Climate has always been in flux” (but never so fast as when humans are helping it along) [such changes should take hundreds of thousands of years – we do it in 200] Careful, cause the argument that “climate always changes” is a top trope of those who wish to avoid dealing with it. [YB: I think this is okay; we’ll explain this more later on.]
•JA: “Earth’s Climate has always been in flux.” A better statement would be: “The Earth’s Climate has always been in flux, except for the last 10,000 years when the Climate has been remarkably stable, leading to the conditions that allowed civilized life to develop on this planet.”
PLUS
/p14: “But if the climate is always changing…”
•YB: Comments here! Yes, but in the past, climate has changed naturally over tens of thousands of years, allowing plants and animals to adapt. Humans are causing climate changes much faster than Nature ever did, so we’re creating a mass extinction, like when that asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. –PJ
—— ——–
No no No No No!!! Climate constantly changes, sometimes by small amounts that humans and nature barely notice, sometimes it fundamentally affects our civilisation and nature. I wrote about it here when virtually every decade was changing and some changes were highly noticeable;
.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
It is a complete fallacy to say climate previously changed naturally over tens of thousands of years and was stable until man drastically speeded up the process.. .
Please read such basic Climate History books as ‘Climate history and the Modern world’ by Hubert Lamb; ‘History and Climate’ by Phil Jones, Ogilvie, Davies and Briffa. ; ‘Climate and weather’ by John Kington or one that specifically targets the demise of past civilisations through a changing climate such as ‘Weathers greatest mysteries solved’ by Randy Cerveny.
Even Al Gore wrote about drastically changing climates that affected past civilisations and nature in his book ‘Earth in the balance.’
If a belief in a naturally evolving stable climate over tens of thousands of year until affected by man in the last fifty years is the basis of your book it is fundamentally flawed I am afraid. .
tonyb
tonyb | August 10, 2013 at 12:09 pm |
Perhaps reconciled by returning again to the framing of “threats”, which are described in probabilities rather than absolute certainties.
The more forcing, the higher the expected rate of changes and the higher the intensity of the forcing, the likelier the change is to be extreme.
Hence, we’re threatened by faster, more expensive, changes because humans are helping the changes along. There are more threats, and bigger ones, in less time. That will mathematically translate to more harm and bigger costs faster, but we cannot predict exactly when or what specifically. (In part because our models for volcanic eruptions — a major climate input — are so imprecise yet.)
Hi tonyb: It would be much more helpful for me if you would react to the book draft rather than the comments on the book draft. You can find the PDF downloads on the website I linked above: http://cartoonclimate.wikispaces.com/
PS. I don’t know what you mean by “a naturally evolving stable climate”, but if you read my book draft you will get a much better sense of the basis of the book. Thanks!
Yoram
I have read all the way through.
Presumably this cartoon style and phrasing style is meant to appeal to a young age group?
Consequently how will you explain the ‘pause’ to a generation born this century that have never actually known global warming and if they live in certain countries-like Britain-will actually have seen the temperature Fall during their lifetime?
Under uncertainties it would be good to explain that we have been this way before as regards high temperatures during the time of advanced human civilisation without enhanced co2 concentrations. So fingering co2 as the cause of the recent warming is a hypothesis and it is likely a minor climate driver compared to natural variability.
Incidentally, whilst I may disagree with some of your basic premises I thought the book was well done
Tonyb
Given the last weekends discussions on lead and intelligence/violence I thought I would off up this for comment.
One can show statistically that the star sign one is born under correlates with academic performance in school, so children born under the star sign Cancer do less well than those born under Virgo. Those born under Leo have a bimodal performance, comprising of the best and worst achievers.
Do you have any idea why this is?
Easy fix; school year round or not at all.
======
DocMartyn | August 10, 2013 at 10:07 am |
I have an explanation that simply explains the observations universally and without many exceptions, that is school intake begins in September and at the time in children’s lives where scholastic ability is most rapidly improving, so children entering older present a bias toward higher academic performance that puts them in a favored cadre, with positive feedback effects tending to reinforce the bias.
So, did you ever answer whether the sample was corrupted with copper?
Which sample was corrupted with copper?
He’s being Cu te. My job.
=============
Probably the same reason that athletes born in August do poorly. They don’t have enough maturity compared to other kids in the same grade. Big whoop.
Here is a better discussion point. It can be verified with statistical certainty that the number of thunderstorms in an urban area increases during the course of the work-week.
T. L. Bell, D. Rosenfeld, K.-M. Kim, J.-M. Yoo, M.-I. Lee, and M. Hahnenberger, “Midweek increase in U.S. summer rain and storm heights suggests air pollution invigorates rainstorms,” Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 113, no. D2, Jan. 2008.
Further evidence that mankind can readily change the climate. Only man has any knowledge of the properties of a “week” and these properties happen to be artificial as well. The only uncertainty in the statistics is that heightened awareness over the years may have contributed somewhat to the autocorrelation.
This is one of the examples of objective certainty of statistics that many people can’t separate from magic.
Yet 8 year old Kenzie showed that that weekday rainfall is declining.
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/8-year-old-kenzie-proves-weekday-rainfall-declining.html
Does this mean that pollution is declining over time? Duh.
Kenzie seems much better at science than webby.
Apparently, Kenzie needed the help of a PhD.
Same deal with Chief Hydro.
DocMartyn | August 10, 2013 at 10:58 am |
You posed a not dissimilarly framed quiz a while back about two samples taken from the same source and studied in two different labs (yours, and another’s), with radically different outcomes.
I don’t recall the details, but I remember wondering at the time about copper contamination, since it’s known to have that type of effect on the sample in question.
I grow cells in Houston and a colleague was growing them in Colorado. Some primary cancer cell cultures, those will a lot of mitochondria, appear to grow well at sea-level, but are quite poor at a mile high.
Interesting that Doc, as a “skeptic,” would apparently think the answer to that quiz was anything other than completely obvious.
Dang, I puzzled over that for days. Does this mean that if we start Kindergarten at six instead of five, that all of the children will be above normal?
===========
Joshua | August 10, 2013 at 11:48 am |
The immediately obvious conclusion is to only allow children to be conceived in the same month, to make school fairer.
So you think that the correlation with star sign, which is as strong as the school starting date, is bogus?
Not at all. The correlation exists. What would be “bogus” would be to jump from the correlation to some causation.
Again – it appears that perhaps you thought that people would find that jump somehow intuitive? Perhaps you weren’t expecting CE readers to be skeptics. Why would that be? Any skeptic would consider that jump to be counterintuitive.
Heh,.
The obvious conclusion is that it is evidence that is related to one of the problems with out traditional educational paradigm – which incorporates the fallacy that comparing one student to another is directly relevant to fostering intellectual curiosity and/or skills.
Hey I’m still trying to figure out why income rises with shoe size.
All I know is that since I’m only 5’7,” I need another 120k worth of income per year to compete with guys who are 5’11” on Match.com., according to some study or other. They just don’t realize how irresistibly sweet I am in person.
pg we realize. )
Bts
> Children born under the star sign Cancer do less well than those born under Virgo. Those born under Leo have a bimodal performance, comprising of the best and worst achievers. Do you have any idea why this is?
Easy. Virgos’ Suns may be ruled by Mercury, the traditional ruler of wit. Therefore, they need to have a sharp (in fact, precise and meticulous) mind for their body to have a good flow of energy. Leos will go wherever they will dominate, and Cancers care for something else.
Do you have statistics about Capricorns and Sagitarius, Doc? A ruling Saturn can show dedication to work and Jupiter (with the ninth house) is the natural ruler of studies.
DocMartyn | August 10, 2013 at 2:02 pm |
Intriguing.
The observations that led to the craze for hypobaric chamber treatment?
I am supposed to come up with off the wall suggestions for the medics to turn down.As most of cancer cell metabolism is lactic, I suggested we give the patients lactate drips to push their lactate levels up to about 15 mM, about the level you get to after exhaustive exercise. The idea being that we push the Lactate/Pyruvate couple and so lower the ATP/ADP couple. They all said “You can’t do that”. I said why, and they said “You can’t do that”.
Its going to be a bugger to do in mice I can tell you.
DocMartyn | August 10, 2013 at 7:29 pm |
Wonder what they’d say if you suggested copper bracelets? ;)
Doc,
when I watched this I thought of you.. fast forward to 11:30 and watch from there.
Be a hero and investigate DCA. Those cancers with lactic metabolism have mitochondria that are shut-down and then aerobic metabolism shuts down along with it. It had been presumed that mtDNA is irreparably damaged in the mutunt cancer cell but that might not be the case it’s shut down by some other means. DCA wakes the mitochondria back up and when it becomes operative it senses the cell is phucked up and initiates apoptosis. The cost (essentially $0) and lack of adverse side effects of DCA cry out for clinical investigation but because it can’t be patented, and hence milked for big-pharma profits, it’s ignored. It’s a travesty.
David, I have looked at both DCA and FluoroPyruvate.
Both are too toxic to other cell types to be used as sole agents.
I actually designed and synthesized the first mitochondrially targeted drug to damage mtDNA. We have a patent and drug company funding for animal work and I was in the lab this morning weighing mice and testing their grip.
We also have a targeted nanosyringe system up an running. We target using peptides that bind to (upregulated) tyrosine kinase receptors on the cell surface and deliver hydrophobic drugs and also drug pump inhibitors.
I have been shrinking breast cancers in nude mice; 50% shrinkage in treated and 100% growth in controls on day 25. Just waiting for the tumors to get >2 mm3 so I can begin the ‘death’ curves.
DCA is very well tolerated in amount and duration for cancer chemotherapy. You may be thinking of its use treating congenital lactic acidosis. In that disease it is taken in higher doses lasting years. It also has the benefit of being a very small molecule that passes through the blood/brain barrier for treatment of brain cancer.
No it’s probably not a single cure-all for cancer of any kind. No drug is so it shouldn’t be any different. Side effects are so mild, tumor shrinkage so drastic, and price so low it could be an important part of any regimen for cancers that exhibit high rates of glycolysis. It is suspected that the main side effect from long high dosage, reversible peripheral neuropathy, is caused by pH imbalance and/or interference with thiamine uptake.
The only actual clinical trial was tiny, a dozen patients with stage 4 glioblastoma. As a group their average expected survival rate was a mere 6 months. They averaged 18 months on DCA. It’s worth looking into but no one will fund it for reasons stated.
On the lighter side, let me emulate the TV game show Jeopardy, with Alex Trebek.
And the ANSWER is
With respect to CAGW, one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.
The Question is
Actually, the question is pretty much irrelevant.
Jim Cripwell | August 10, 2013 at 10:35 am |
It’s also impossible to do controlled experiments on other planets. (Except recently.)
So we didn’t know they existed until probes reached them?
Bart, you write “It’s also impossible to do controlled experiments on other planets. ”
As usual you seem to be misquoting me. It is clearly possible to do controlled experiments on this earth we live in; they are done routinely. It is impossible to do controlled experiments on the earth’s atmosphere; and I suppose the atmospheres of other planets. So what?
What we have is an uncontrolled experiment on earth’s atmosphere. Some people are trying to control it, but others are resisting.
Jim Cripwell | August 10, 2013 at 11:54 am |
Read harder. I wasn’t quoting you at all.
I was pointing out how invalid your objection is.
Bart, you write “I was pointing out how invalid your objection is.”
But what I wrote is completely and utterly valid. Where is it wrong?
Jim,
It has to do with your flavour of verificationism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationism
I thought I already told you that.
***
How do you explain dinosaurs, btw?
Willard asked Cripwell:
That’s directed at the wrong guy. The Intelligent Design bodyguard/bouncer David Springer is your man for questions on this topic. Dinosaurs spring from intelligence, apparently.
Web,
Jim’s the guy I ask because verificationists have problem with scientific statements that refer to things over which we don’t have direct evidence.
The usual examples are planets, like Bart R recalled, dinosaurs, like David Chalmers would, and the Sun, like David Hume. There are others for sure, but philosophers are good recyclers.
Dembski has no problem with billions of years of evolution. He has a problem imagining a unverse in its lowest entropy state 14 billion years ago just poofing into existence with all that order in it. I have a problem imagining a highly ordered universe just appearing as if by magic too.
But yet, you have no problem imagining a supernatural entity that could create a highly ordered universe as if by magic?
Interesting.
Yes I have a problem with that too. I’m an agnostic. But that doesn’t mean when I see a information processing system coupled to a programmable assembler of 3D components that can produce and assemble all the parts to make copies of itself that I’m prepared to make the null hypothesis the one where said machine is an accident. Where there’s a machine there’s a machinist. That’s the null hypothesis.
The popular counter to that is that our universe is one of an infinite or nearly infinite number of unverses where anything physically possible must happen by accident.
But even if that’s the case then a universe which initially had, by accident, a god-like entity able to create organic life is also possible. If a mind can be contained by a brain and a planet can contain six billion minds, all by accident then surely something greater could be contained by a whole universe.
Just sayin’.
David, here is the Biblical account.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light..”
here is the current scientific account.
“In the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded”
Yes I’m aware of the parallels in Genesis and Big Bang theory. Big Bang theory was initially opposed because of it. Something from nothing isn’t very intuitive.
Even more intriguing is genetics and Genesis. Genetically speaking what would it take, discounting accidents, for there to be no death? Or for animals to all be vegetarians so they didn’t kill each other? Better DNA repair mechanisms perhaps including telomere replacement? More accurate error detection and correction is certainly possible. Digesting vegetable matter is just an enzyme or two away for any obligate carnivore. Eden seems remarkably close in evolutionary terms if we presume it existed and that genetic entropy has been taking its toll since the fall.
Parthenogenesis producing a human XX male is also possible in perhaps one in a few billion live births.
Not being committed to a black and white world view where the God of Abraham either is or is not allows one to consider these things without emotion or bias.
Jim Cripwell | August 10, 2013 at 12:05 pm |
..one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.
That’d be an invalid conclusion drawn from an inadequate premise.
ie, “One cannot do controlled experiments (in the lab) on the existence or non-existence of other planets, so it is impossible to prove other planets exist.”
Bart, you write “That’d be an invalid conclusion drawn from an inadequate premise.”
Absolute complete and utter garbage. My statement is completely and utterly valid.
“With respect to CAGW, one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.”
Your logic is just plain wrong. Tell me how you can measure climate sensitiviy, when you cannot do controlled experiments on the earth’s atmosphere.
Please tell us about the future, Jim.
How can you verify that the Sun will rise tomorrow?
Willard, you write “Please tell us about the future, Jim.
How can you verify that the Sun will rise tomorrow?”
What on God’s Green Acre has telling about the future got to do with running a controlled experiment? Apart from absolutely nothing.
Do you know of any controlled experiment validating that the Sun will rise tomorrow, Jim? I don’t think you have. Then the claim that the Sun will rise tomorrow can be a scientific statement as you conceive science.
I think this shows a problem with how you conceive science, some of which we called natural sciences, and not the laboratory sciences.
can’t, not can, of course.
Jim excludes from science everything that’s interesting. He accepts only almost trivial measurements of quantities that are already rather well known.
Nothing that’s of real scientific interest is so simple and so well understood that it could be studied using the narrow approach that’s the only one acceptable to him.
Willard, you write “Do you know of any controlled experiment validating that the Sun will rise tomorrow, Jim?”
Who cares. What I am talking about is a controlled experiment to measure climate sensitivity. Which you completely ignore.
Pekka, you write “Jim excludes from science everything that’s interesting”
That I deeply resent. There is general agreement that when discussing CAGW, the most important issue is the value of climate sensitivity, however defined. That is what I am talking about. If you can name another issue that is more important than the value of climate sensitivity, on this subject of CAGW, what is it?
> What I am talking about is a controlled experiment to measure climate sensitivity.
Who cares. What I’m after is your conception of science.
Jim,
On one point I agree. Climate sensitivity in some form is the key. (Transient climate response may be the most relevant of the alternative measures of climate sensitivity.)
What i don’t accept at all are your views on what’s known about climate sensitivity. Your arguments are generic enough to justify claims like the one of my previous comment. You haven’t been able to present anything more specific and for that reason you resort to false generalities.
Generalities are almost always wrong when applied to a controversial matter. They are a poor excuse for not knowing enough about the subject to discuss more relevant issues.
Willard
Mirriam Webster gives this definition for science:
Note the reference to general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
Mirriam Webster gives us this definition for scientific method:
Jim Cripwell has emphasized the need for the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
The CAGW premise as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report is based on a hypothesis, which has been formulated, but has yet to be tested through observation and experiment.
I’d agree with Jim that CAGW is therefore an uncorroborated hypothesis at this time, until it can be tested and either corroborated or falsified through observation and experiment.
Seems pretty straightforward to me, Willard.
Do you see this differently? If so, how (specifically)?
Max
We’ve been through this a few times already, MiniMax.
That science collects evidence does not entail that you should ask evidence for every freaking abstracta scientists find useful to devise.
Here’s how speed of light was measured for the first time:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/measure_c.html
Olaus might have had a tough time answering Jim’s request to clarify the emphasized part.
Willard and those of like mind,
I assume the Sun will rise tomorrow. So do you. No one can “prove” what will happen in the future.
I also assume that the “climate sensitivity” to atmospheric CO2 is negative, but unable to be quantified given present limitations of measurement techniques.
My assumption is based on the interaction between light and matter (as used by Feynman).
Even using your figures, atmospheric CO2 concentrations are rising, surface temperatures are not. There is no “missing heat”. Heat is not a physical entity – anyone who thinks so probably needs a course of reality readjustment.
Weather changes moment to moment. Climate is the average of weather. In order to change the climate, you first have to change the weather, by definition. I see no volunteers for this first step – why not? How hard can it be?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
> I assume the Sun will rise tomorrow. So do you. No one can “prove” what will happen in the future.
Thanks, Mike. That’s good enough for me.
The Humean predicatment is the human predicament.
***
You might like this thought experiment:
https://twitter.com/nevaudit/status/363737563569205248
Foxgoose tries the same trick as Jim and MiniMax.
May the Force be with you,
w
Mike,
Note that you need to click on the date of the tweet to see the conversation.
I’ll try to make a Shortify story about that point.
Willard,
I’m not sure whether you are agreeing with me or not.
I looked at your link, but my non tweeting history made the format of the exchange a little confusing.
If I choose to leap out of the way of a car on the assumption that our paths will intersect in the future, I am not foretelling he future. Nor is the goalie defending a penalty shot. Indeed, his assumptions, even though based on years of expertise gained at the highest levels of the game, prove to be wrong more often than not.
And so with “scientists”. How sound are their assumptions? Nobody knows. A track record of previous success is no guarantee of future performance. Bending the weather to our will hasn’t worked all that well to date, so predictions or assumptions about future averages don’t seem well founded.
Given that the longest average of surface temperature that we have shows a decrease from molten to non molten (cooling), it would take some new facts to engender a change of mind on my part. To each his own, but I would not be unhappy if the Warmists would apply their own assets to the Cause, and leave me to go to perdition if I wish.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
willard no fair stealing my speed of light examples without a hat tip
Mike Flynn,
Who cares if I agree with you or not?
You’re in front of a wobbling car that seems to be coming at you. You have people behind you. They don’t see the car.
You feel that moving away from the car would be a good idea. Yet, the people behind you are keeping you from moving. They ask for evidence of the car’s impact before moving.
What do you do?
The point is not to solve this, but to think. This is why it’s called a thought experiment. If you don’t like this, it’s OK: nobody forces you to pump your intuition with this kind of tool.
***
If we had Earth holodecks, you’d have a point about the scientists’ assumptions. Just test them all. But we just can’t.
This is a decision problem under uncertainty, but we don’t have to evaluate the risk of dumping CO2 into the atmosphere like there’s no tomorrow. In the very long run, we’re all dead. The uncertainty lies in the middle or long run. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
We have to find ways out of this mess without ever having dealt, as a specie, with such a big challenge. Hammering requests for an evidence that lie in the future is plain silly: nobody can’t see the future. When coupled with sceptikism about any kind of evidence, these requests can quickly becomes abusive.
This looks uncool to me.
> willard no fair stealing my speed of light examples without a hat tip
Sorry about that. Had I recall it, I would not have to reinvent it along.
H/T Moshpit.
Willard,
I see. When your “thought experiment” is shown to be flawed, you introduce new assumptions. Well done. A bit like coming up with “missing heat” when you can’t point to any actual “warming”.
But in response to your question, what would I do?
Well, nothing really. Unbeknown to the people you have just introduced, and yourself, I can see that the wheels are falling off the wobbly Global Warming car, and it is about to plunge into a chasm. No danger to me, or the panicking crowd you have placed behind me.
As you say, the point is to think.
If 97% of scientists believe the same thing, I test that thing. If it is false, then the 97% belief is nonsense. Global warming due to CO2 is being tested. CO2 is rising, temperatures are not. “We” don’t have to do anything. You may do as you wish, but don’t expect me to pay for it!
Please note that I haven’t asked for evidence for anything in the future. Your assumptions about the future suit you. Mine suit me.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
> When your “thought experiment” is shown to be flawed, you introduce new assumptions.
Hmmm. Yes, and no.
1. There’s no such thing as a flawed thought experiment. And I did not need to introduce new elements in the story to show that to rely on evidence alone can’t even move you away from a wobbling car in front of you. In fact, you did admit to such limitation when you said:
> No one can “prove” what will happen in the future.
The first step of the thought experiment only establishes that.
If you see a flaw, please spell it out. For now, you’re begging a question about which you already stated the opposite of your current presumption.
That’s the no part.
***
2. A thought experiment is simply a way to envision parameters of a model. Since all you do is to tell a story, you’ve got to assume its elements. Unless, of course, your point is to show that assuming them leads to a contradiction, like Putnam’s brains in vats:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/
I introduced new elements to the story of the car for three reasons. The first is that for Twitter to keep track of a conversation, you need to mention the names of everyone. So I made Wott and Richard Betts a part of the story. The second is that a tweet is short, so I had the leasure to construct my story as I tweeted.
More importantly, I wanted to introduce new elements that I think are relevant to our current predicament:
– many persons;
– people with no direct connection with the evidence;
– people that are asking for direct evidence;
– a driver (wink wink);
– a car that wobbles.
The two last elements may be unessential, but not the first three. We do have a collective decision to make. People that have no direct connection with the evidence are asking for future evidence.
As you can see, if I introduced new elements in the thought experiment, it is not to cover for any special flaw.
***
In fact, this thought experiment is just a way to model what you can read over there:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evidence/
If you read that page, you’ll see that there are two important notions of evidence. The thought experiment deals with one of them, i.e. what makes direct contact with sense organs. The only plausible alternative would be to consider evidence like a “piece of evidence”. This alternative leads to a conception of science that is inductive or abductive, i.e. non-deductive.
I don’t think Jim or MiniMax want to go where this leads. This leads to a conception of science that goes around the time of Whewell, which was Darwin’s favourite epistemologist. If you accept the idea that science proceeds like any investigation, then you have to admit that to ask for “proof” and “direct evidence” may very well be suboptimal.
In fact, Darwin’s favourite reply to the Jim and MiniMax of his times was to point at the wave theory of light:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens–Fresnel_principle
We don’t see light waves, and yet positing that light is made of waves helped understand and explain light.
***
Now, in a social gathering, would you try the thought experiment, or would you lecture on the philosophical notion of evidence?
Hope this helps,
May the Force be with you,
w
Willard,
I will attempt to answer the question you have posed.
“Now in a social gathering, would you try the thought experiment, or would you lecture on the philosophical notion of evidence?”
The answer of course, is “Neither.”
As we agree, the future is unknowable. So when you say that we have to make a decision, I am merely pointing out that my decision may be to take no action at all about the “global warming” that some people are convinced will : –
a) occur, and
b) be bad for me, and
c) need me to contribute time, effort or money, or all three, to the cause of averting something that may or may not occur at some time in the future.
I don’t wish to offend, but most of the “thought experiments” bandied about seem to be poorly thought out, and usually contain many unstated assumptions, which may or may not affect the result.
So the results of the “thought experiments” are about as valid as the results of the “computer model experiments” relating to future weather patterns and averages (referred to as climate by the climatologists).
Spend freely of your time, effort, and money. I’ll spend mine as I see fit.
If you understand, no explanation is necessary.
If you don’t, no explanation is possible.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
My pleasure, Gorgias:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgias#On_the_Non-Existent
Jim,
What is the question to this answer?
‘Catastrophic’ is not a defined quantity or a measurable metric by controlled experiments of any kind, so it is impossible to define or measure what CAGW means therefore making it a meaningless term.
The questions? Oh, I’ll give it to you…
Why is using ‘CAGW’ a meaningless term when discussing climate science?
BTW, CS has been empirically measured using paleo data.
John, you write “BTW, CS has been empirically measured using paleo data.”
Garbage. Paleo data cannot meausre CS. It is impossible to prove in the paleo data, that the rise in temperature is caused by the rising levels of CO2. It is impossible to measure time with sufficient accuracy to determine whether the observed rise in temperature preceeds of follows the rise in CO2. The evidence suggests that, in fact, first temperature rises, and then CO2 levels rise; c.f. Murry Salby
John, to follow up on the issue of paleo data, you can read the paper by Hansen and Sato, and not find that they use the word “measure” when to come to CS. They use the weasel word, “infer”.
I always feel slightly adrift and even a little forlorn on these weekend open threads. . I need structure. And adult guidance.
start with basic conversation
Hello, good bye, thank you, Im sorry
Milankovich makes earth cold and then adds ice at the tails of glaciers. Ewing and Donn puts ice on top of glaciers and use the weight of ice to advance the glaciers. The piles of debris that are left behind when the ice melts does support the Ewing and Donn Theory.
I read Tony B’s current article on sea level rise and found I’m in agreement with him on “measuring sea level is problematic.” I’m guessing because I’m not a scientist that problematic means close to meaningless, is that true?
I refer to
http://www.thegwpf.org/benny-peiser-europe-pulls-plug-green-future/
One wonders whether Sir Paul Nurse and the Royal Society realize just how much damage they have done, and are still dong, to the British economy, by maintaining their completely unscientific statement of CAGW.
Great article. Maybe the market will in fact win this one?
The news isn’t the possible cooling so much, as many of us are aware of that possibility, but that such an article has been printed by a main stream paper in a very green country…Denmark. I think this is tremendously important. Yet another brick has loosened in the increasingly shaky edifice of global warming induced climate change. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/10/denmark-gets-a-dose-of-global-cooling-in-major-newspaper/
Heh. Bricks loosened. Final stakes. Last nails.
Seems to be an endless supply of all three, eh? Either that or you’re guilty of premature articulation.
Keep snoozing, Josh. Much easier than having to admit you’ve been taken in by this nonsense. The facts are the facts, a respected paper that’s done nothing but support the “consensus” in bright green Denmark, comes out with an article that dares to question the status quo, and in quite a dramatic way.
“a respected paper that’s done nothing but support the “consensus” in bright green Denmark”
What’s your evidence of that? Please tell me you aren’t just swallowing that line from WUWT or some other skeptic blog. These blogs always exaggerate stuff like this to persuade readers that their posts are more important than they actually are. The thinking presumably being that people like you thinking the story is earthbreaking will go around the internet breathlessly posting it to places like climate etc.
Lolwot,
ironic your asking for evidence when to date you have never provided evidence for any of the bad impacts we are supposed to expect from warming.
I find that the “skeptics” keep asking for evidence from and proof of the future. This request, they should know, makes no sense.
Jim D | August 10, 2013 at 5:44 pm |
I find that the “skeptics” keep asking for evidence from and proof of the future. This request, they should know, makes no sense.
=======
No need to get evidence about the future JimD. We will be happy to hear all the evidence of harm to the planet that has come from the warming to date. You know, facts about climate refuges, crop yield declines, land lost to sea level rise, populations displaced by rising seas, polar bears lost, etc.
…and if they are not asking for proof of damage in the future, they are asking for proof of damage with 0.7 C warming. Even the skeptics agree there won’t be much damage at 0.7 C warming and the foot of sea-level rise we have had so far. However, 4 C and a meter is more of a concern at this point.
Ah, I see. Your argument is basically, then, “trust me, we’re going to see 4C and a meter and its going to be bad!”
Pardon me if I don’t trust you or your cry of “wolf!”. Been there, heard the predictions of doom before.
Scott you have to put 4C warming (or even 2C) in context of how much climate has typically warmed and cooled over the past few thousand years.
2C or 4C in a matter of centuries would be a massive jump to not only a temperature level not seen for millions of years, but a possibly unprecedented fast change to get there.
The danger here is pretty obvious, to anyone who understands climate changes impact the environment and species (including us)
lolw0t | August 11, 2013 at 8:37 am |
Scott you have to put 4C warming (or even 2C) in context of how much climate has typically warmed and cooled over the past few thousand years.
=========
Actually, I don’t have to put 4C in any context given that I don’t believe there is scientific evidence that 4C will happen anytime soon. To me, it’s just like the Y2K “the world is going to end if we don’t do something now” meme. Just another group crying “wolf!”
ksd, it doesn’t look like you have attempted to understand the science, so we can take your opinion for what it is worth.
Jim D | August 11, 2013 at 9:07 pm |
ksd, it doesn’t look like you have attempted to understand the science, so we can take your opinion for what it is worth.
===================
Which science is it you think I’m not understanding?
What was prematurely articulated was CO2 as a climate control knob. They knew not what they did. Sorcerer’s Apprentices, the lot.
================
All the evidence is that CO2 is a climate control knob.
Even if we go with 1C warming per doubling of CO2, and CO2 rises from 280ppm (preindustrial) to a future level of 800ppm (if we keep burning it all), that’s 1.5C warming.
Almost twice the total warming of the 20th century and a lot of that would have been due to CO2.
So then natural variation is much smaller than the effect of CO2. Natural variation is a few tenths of a degree C up or down each century. CO2 is 1.5C upwards.
The control is obvious, and this assumes a low climate sensitivity of 1C per doubling.
lolwot
Go right ahead and believe in the CO2 control knob dogma.
Doesn’t say too much for your smarts, though.
Max
Max seems unable to understand the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’.
Does say an awful lot about his ‘smarts’.
It all depends upon the meaning of ‘smarts’.
===========
Someone is struggling with the condensable or non condensable properties of various greenhouse gases.
With an effectively infinite reservoir of water vapor (the ocean), only the temperature acts as a lid for the amount in the atmosphere because it condenses. Rising temperatures raise this lid in a predictable way following Clausius-Clapeyron. CO2 raises the temperature 1 degree per doubling. The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.
JimD, “The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.”
No it doesn’t. If you have a closed system where you can ensure a uniform rise in temperature yes, but the oceans are not a closed system. Most of the evaporation is in the tropics/lower latitudes and most of the temperature increase is in the higher latitude/ dryer regions. Ocean heat content is increasing the average deep ocean temperature by ~1 C every 400-500 years which is not adding to evaporation significantly with an average deep ocean temperature of ~4C degrees. Average “surface” temperature is just about meaningless. You seem to have a great deal of misplaced confidence.
Now if you want to considered the regions were most of the evaporation takes place, changes in precipitation are generally associated with ENSO, AMO and PDO phases so regional SST would be more meaningful, not some “global” temperature that doesn’t capture the dynamics.
http://www.kent.edu/news/newsdetail.cfm?newsitem=A7AEAD67-9129-E56B-3FDB39BA8BB24555
News release for a Pacific SST study which does tend to drive atmospheric water vapor and precipitation.
http://instaar.colorado.edu/~marchitt/reprints/tmmscience10.pdf
There is the whole paper.
Or you could just look at Chief’s ENSO/SOI stuff.
captd, try it at home (or in a lab). A one degree rise in water temperature increases the amount of vapor above it. Your obfuscations can’t deny the basic physics that happens over water surfaces.
JimD, “captd, try it at home (or in a lab). A one degree rise in water temperature increases the amount of vapor above it. Your obfuscations can’t deny the basic physics that happens over water surfaces.”
JimD, learn to read. If the one degree rise in the water temperature is in a lab, yes. At 2000 meters below the surface no. If the one degree already has a saturated vapor pressure you get something different than if the surface rH is 50% or 10%. You are not in a lab and averaging the “surface” temperature for 350 million square kilometers in an open system is nearly meaningless.
You note that diurnal temperature change reversed trend then mumble some nonsense about when the precipitation catches up with land warming then everything will fit again. The trend shifted nearly 30 years ago. The ocean surface warming since 1995 has been near zero. The stratosphere trend flatted in 1995. It is almost like the thermostat kicked in isn’t it?
read the marchitto paper
captd, I don’t know why you keep talking about below the surface. CO2 raises the surface temperature, which is also the part that determines atmospheric H2O. Is it that hard to understand?
JimD, “captd, I don’t know why you keep talking about below the surface. CO2 raises the surface temperature, which is also the part that determines atmospheric H2O. Is it that hard to understand?”
CO2 does not uniformly raise surface temperatures and definitely does not raise “surface” temperatures as much in the presence of saturated water vapor. If it did, the tropical oceans would be warming at the same rate as the northern high latitudes, is that so hard to understand?
The reason I talk about below the surface, is because the mean temperature of the SST is actually the mean temperature of the sub surface mixing layer. If you use the wrong temperature you get the wrong result ala K&T who underestimated latent cooling by nearly 10 Wm-2.
If you compare the “actual” SST by hemisphere where “actually” is approximated by satellite at the actual surface, the SH oceans average ~17 C from 70S to Equ and the NH is ~21.6C from equ to 70N. Then if you really want to get serious you can compare the eastern and western hemispheres. Pay particular not to the western hemisphere which includes the Atlantic using the prime meridian.
Then you might understand why I provided the Marchitto 2010, as in more recent peer reviewed literature, that attempts to explain the ocean dynamic thermostat.
captd, you are probably not realizing we are talking about equilibrium conditions, not transients, or are you thinking the tropics won’t warm by 1 degree with CO2 doubling? You have a block somewhere, and I can’t see what it is.
JimD, “captd, you are probably not realizing we are talking about equilibrium conditions, not transients, or are you thinking the tropics won’t warm by 1 degree with CO2 doubling? You have a block somewhere, and I can’t see what it is.”
I am talking about a limit aka thermostat. For each theoretical degree of “average” SST warming there is an associated amount of latent cooling based on the absolute temperature not anomaly. When the latent cooling equals the surface forcing, warming stops. That energy is transferred to the lower atmosphere and its surface impacts depends on poleward transport, the shifting westerlies.
You and Webster focus on fat tail possibilities instead of diving into the fun part of the problem, the complex negative feed backs.
captd, unfortunately your cooling doesn’t stop the CO2 warming effect. The CO2 will warm the surface temperature until it has risen by the required amount to balance it radiatively. It doesn’t matter what goes on between. It is a given in the first step.
JimD, “The CO2 will warm the surface temperature until it has risen by the required amount to balance it radiatively. ”
Right, ~ 0.8C from a moist air boundary layer at ~316 Wm-2, the planetary boundary layer. If you actually consider that there was a little ice age event that had a “global” impact impact of ~0.9 C, we are back at the upper bound or strange attractor if you prefer, the Planck response ~316-340 Wm-2. Without adding mass to the atmosphere or snow/land based ice for positi8ve feed back, you have hit the upper “normal” limit.
That was another K&T mistake. They estimated an atmospheric window radiation of 40Wm-2 as being from the :”surface” where Stephens et al. more accurately estimated the :”surface” window as being 20 Wm-2. Half of the CO2 potential warming was an accounting error. The Sky Dragons said K&T violated the second law and it did because of that mistake.
Estimates of TCR and ECS are dropping like a brick for a reason. Natural internal variability research is increasing for a reason. The reason is “Persian Flaws” belong in rugs not science.
captd, it is also said that GCMs are closer to Stephens than to K&T, but it is not correct to say that K&T had an error of any significant magnitude. Measurements can refine things, and Stephens did that refinement years after K&T. No basic ideas changed. Science advances by refinement.
JimD, “captd, it is also said that GCMs are closer to Stephens than to K&T, but it is not correct to say that K&T had an error of any significant magnitude. Measurements can refine things, and Stephens did that refinement years after K&T. No basic ideas changed. Science advances by refinement.”
Years? You mean like 2-3 years? The FTK 2009 had the same error even though they admitted to a “minor adjustment”. The error, ~18Wm-2 would be significant versus CO2 forcing and thermonuclear war. Still FTK professed a “certainty” of 0.9 +/- 0.15 Wm-2 while whining about missing heat. The whole object of ERBS and CERES was to reduce uncertainty which FTK ignored.
So now since science advances by refinement, it would be nice if science blog commentors could as well. Better yet, wouldn’t it be nice if FK&T followed Wikipedia’s lead and pulled their old Persian budgets so science could march on?
captd, from the abstract the only significant things they mention are that there is more precipitation than previous estimates and they increased the back radiation from the atmosphere to the surface (more GHG effect). These don’t seem to be related to anything you said about it. Where are you getting that stuff?
JimD, Where am I getting this stuff? From their budget. It doesn’t balance with 40 Wm-2 of window flux. Stephens et al. estimate the window flux at 20 +/-4 Wm-2 and Stevens ans Schwartz at 22 Wm-2 which agrees with my original 18Wm-2 estimate. Water/ice/water vapor in the atmosphere absorb solar energy at ~75 Wm-2 making up half, 1/2, 50% of the DWLR of 334 Wm-2 +/- 15.
If you look at the Stephens et al budget they use the terms “latent heating” and “sensible heating” because the “surface” that responds to WMGHG forcing is above the planetary boundary layer. There is no Tropical Troposphere Hot Spot for a reason, CO2 does not impact the tropical SST to any significant degree. Atmospheric water/ice shields the surface. That is Solar’s wheelhouse which Marchitto et al. notices has century to millennial scale responses to solar forcing.
Here, compare a day/night budget.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/08/it-is-as-simple-as-night-and-day-day.html
captd, how do you get that the GHG effect is weaker when they have a higher back radiation?
JimD, “captd, how do you get that the GHG effect is weaker when they have a higher back radiation?”
By considering an Atmospheric Effect and a Greenhouse Effect. The well mixed GHGs help the atmosphere maintain its energy level. Basically, the GHE reduces the DTR. Increasing GHGs will help the atmosphere retain more energy but not produce any more energy than the atmosphere can hold. Since water/ice/water vapor, ozone, absorb solar energy, that portion is not due to the WMGHGs. If you don’t consider when and where solar is absorbed you over estimate the WMGHG portion of the effect.
The total impact doesn’t change, just the attribution.
captd, I don’t know about what you said, but increased downward IR at the surface makes the atmosphere a better insulator, which some regard as the greenhouse effect, so Stephens has emphasized this insulation effect more than K&T. Few skeptics would be happy with this direction Stephens went, if they realized, especially the skydragons.
JimD, “captd, I don’t know about what you said, but increased downward IR at the surface makes the atmosphere a better insulator, which some regard as the greenhouse effect, so Stephens has emphasized this insulation effect more than K&T. Few skeptics would be happy with this direction Stephens went, if they realized, especially the skydragons.”
I doubt the Sky Dragons would ever be happy, but the Stephens et al. approach is more illustrative of the combined effects. Based on the simplistic Greenhouse Effect analogy, all of the solar penetrates a transparent atmosphere and is absorbed by a single “surface”. You only have one surface and one “sensitivity”. In reality a portion, 150Wm-2, is absorbed in the atmosphere and 330 Wm-2 is absorbed at the surface during “Day” mode with some portion absorbed below the “surface”. You have three surfaces to consider with three “sensitivities” to consider due to solar. One of the reasons “sensitivity” is non-linear.
Since energy is absorbed at different levels of the atmosphere, you have the added problem of the upper 25% of the atmospheric mass, not included AFAIK, which provides another layer of insulation which is more greatly impacted by solar max/min cycles which should also have some magnetic field orientation impacts. That should be negligible, but with “sensitivity” being lower, it can play a larger than expected role.
Climate Models as the stand now are a lot like taking a knife to a gunfight.
I’ll just end where I started. Good try at obfuscation, but basically off the subject which is just basic physics, captd. I said…
With an effectively infinite reservoir of water vapor (the ocean), only the temperature acts as a lid for the amount in the atmosphere because it condenses. Rising temperatures raise this lid in a predictable way following Clausius-Clapeyron. CO2 raises the temperature 1 degree per doubling. The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.
JimD, “I’ll just end where I started. Good try at obfuscation, but basically off the subject which is just basic physics, captd. I said…
With an effectively infinite reservoir of water vapor (the ocean), only the temperature acts as a lid for the amount in the atmosphere because it condenses. Rising temperatures raise this lid in a predictable way following Clausius-Clapeyron. CO2 raises the temperature 1 degree per doubling. The H2O lid rises by 7% per degree. Therefore CO2 is the control knob, but this just comes from physics.”
Not if the water vapor intercepts the incoming solar. with 150/330 you have a ratio of 0.45 with 88Wm-2 of surface evaporation. If the latent increases, the ratio changes so more solar is absorbed in the atmosphere as well as scattered and reflected. You are assuming that the same solar keeps making it to the surface. It doesn’t. That also comes from physics. You have two reservoirs, one near infinite and the other finite.
That is not obfuscation, that’s just the facts Jack.
captd, you are inventing a new mechanism that doesn’t make sense. I think you work backwards from trying to get a negative feedback from water vapor, don’t you?
JimD, “captd, you are inventing a new mechanism that doesn’t make sense. I think you work backwards from trying to get a negative feedback from water vapor, don’t you?”
No, I was curious how K&T could miss 18Wm-2 and started digging. Most of the 18Wm-2 was due to mixed phase clouds, primarily in the Arctic and water vapor absorption at lower angles, the lower angles increase the effective path length allowing more solar to be absorbed. Both of those can be a positive feed back or a negative feed back depending on time of day. The biggest negative feedback is the diurnal cloud formation cycle. When clouds form earlier they absorb/reflect more of the solar energy and burn off/ rainout earlier allowing more radiant cooling. That is why Callandar considered clouds a neutral to negative feed back.
His model is working pretty good by the way.
K&T was about an energy budget, not climate change feedbacks. Energy budgets have to consider clouds too, but not how they would vary in a forcing change. I don’t know if Stephens proposed a cloud feedback, but that would be interesting because it was just current observations in their abstract.
The 2 linked articles here. Perhaps it’s a bit too much to expect of the media to be able to hold its position and concern over the last so many years of flattening temperatures or however you want to describe it.
As i said on the previous thread, I deny the pause in climate change. Climate is 30-year averages. This is the 30-year average and how it is changing (up to date) from two global temperature sources.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/mean:360/plot/gistemp/from:1850/mean:360
The latest trend is 0.17 C per decade and this looks steady. The ‘pause’ is an illusion of a more rapid rise followed by a correction that evens out in 30-year trends. The pause is just a feature of natural decadal variability, not present in climate change.
For the sake of humoring you, fine. Many of the more rabid warmists are now conceding the pause, but if you want to hang on by your fingernails, that’s your prerogative. Nonetheless, even giving you this, the models on which this whole rube goldberg contraption is built, have almost all wildly over-estimated any warming…during a period of much increases co2. Even you can’t get around that.
I don’t agree with him but he does have a valid point in that how many years do you use to compute an average? Shouldn’t this be agreed upon before using the data to support whatever premise you may have?
It’s long amused me that one phase of the PDO is around 30 years. So, you got your 30 year trend, and boom! a new phase and new climate.
==============
The pause is natural variation on short time scales, so I agree with people who say that. It doesn’t show up in climate trends, so I disagree with people who relate it to climate change.
Web:-
” If one looks at the Law Dome CO2 proxy data, it appears that as much of 0.25 C of the warming may be due to CO2 if one assumes a 2C per doubling of CO2 as a global sensitivity number”
If your position is that the climate sensitivity is only 2 degrees, then I am afraid that you are going to be classified as a ‘Denialist’.
The 2C per doubling is a rough transient value that doesn’t apply to the eventual steady state, which would be about 3 degrees per doubling of CO2.
This is not just a theoretical exercise since the 3C sensitivity does apply to land regions but without the long lag of ocean temperatures. I use 2C per doubling because the chart of temperature rise shown used both ocean and land data, and ocean contributes 70% of the weighting.
This is a hard concept for the 3% to grasp.
Here ya go Webster,
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-D5O-pgo6B64/Uganj34OMcI/AAAAAAAAJKE/Lj19Xm_yWvg
/s581/edc%2520dome%2520c%2520c02%252011000.png
Maybe you can see that better. ~20 ppmv so the “globe” must have warmed ~.0.2 C over the past 7000 years. Good thing too, when CO2 drops below 265 there has to be an ice age. The great and power Carbon says so.
opps link broke,
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-D5O-pgo6B64/Uganj34OMcI/AAAAAAAAJKE/Lj19Xm_yWvg/s581/edc%2520dome%2520c%2520c02%252011000.png
What’s the matter Webster? Did Catastrophic divergence get your tongue?
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/–0GOSdvyhU0/UgeRp5D9AkI/AAAAAAAAJKo/KGwMm4ingWQ/s757/Antarctic%2520CO2%2520and%2520the%2520Equatorial%2520Pacific.png
Since you are the guy that has all the CO2 answers, noting how “global” CO2 is joined to the IndoPacific Warm Pool hip, that compares the Antarctic Dome C Co2 record to the equatorial Pacific. Other than that nasty 2000 year CO2 lagging temperature at the start of the interglacial, the fit is not that bad. Stott btw is one of those CO2/Temperature not so linear relationship guys. He is also keen on the solar processional cycle and Calcium Compensation Depth drift.
Cappy Dick says over 7000 years that there has been about a 20 PPM change in atmospheric CO2 levels, which is a very, very gradual change of 0.3C at high sensitivity or about 0.0004C per decade.
Are you seasick or something?
Webster, “Cappy Dick says over 7000 years that there has been about a 20 PPM change in atmospheric CO2 levels, which is a very, very gradual change of 0.3C at high sensitivity or about 0.0004C per decade.
Are you seasick or something?”
Nope, that 20 ppm is 22 percent of the 190 to 280 ppm range that gradually increased well after the start of the Holocene and correlates with the gradual warming of the tropical pacific oceans. With the “global” cooling supposedly for the past 7000 years CO2 should have been reducing. The Holocene appears to be a little bit special since a typical interglacial would have continued cooling with the cooling accelerating once CO2 fell below 265 ppm.
“The reconstructed CO2 record shows that the Northern Hemisphere glaciation starts once the long-term average CO2 concentration drops below 265ppmv after a period of strong decrease in CO2 . Finally, only a small long-term decline of 23ppmv is found during the mid-Pleistocene transition, constraining theories on this major transition in the climate system. The approach is not accurate enough to revise current ideas about climate sensitivity.”
http://epic.awi.de/25382/4/vandewal2011cp.pdf
It is unlikely that the 20 ppm rise caused warming but was more likely caused by warming. Cooling while CO2 increases, like Marcott implies, doesn’t seem to make sense. Of course, there are numerous issue with Marcott, but that’s you reference for cooling for the past 7000 years with no MWP period and no LIA worth considering.
Many would suggest that the climate record is relatively flat for the past 10000 years. CO2 increased by 5% and that would effect the temperature by 0.2 to 0.3 degrees assuming the 3C climate sensitivity.
Not a large dynamic range to draw conclusions over, which I think is the point of the hockey stick metaphor.
Jim, just wondering how the rise from 1900-1940 is explained?
I would say half of it was solar because the sun was much less active in 1910 than in 1950, and the other half CO2, so about 0.2 degrees due to each.
That’s about right, JimD. If one looks at the Law Dome CO2 proxy data, it appears that as much of 0.25 C of the warming may be due to CO2 if one assumes a 2C per doubling of CO2 as a global sensitivity number.
Here is a quick curve:
http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/7527/7be.gif
Note that CO2 changed by more than 25 PPM during this period (starting from a base of 283PPM) which translates as significant on the log sensitivity scale.
3*ln((283+25)/283) = 0.25C
Jim D
Good point about the sun (being responsible for around half the past warming). Several solar studies have also come to this conclusion.
The unusually high level of 20thC solar activity (highest in several thousand years according to some solar studies) certainly had an impact.
For example, the average Wolf number of:
– SC 10-15 (1858-1928) was around 90, and
– SC 18-23 (1945-2008) was around 148 (peaking in SC19 at 190)
(i.e. a 64% increase)
SC23 was already much lower and it appears that SC24 will be even lower yet.
So the sun has very likely played a significant role in the past warming and may be playing a role in the current lack of warming.
All makes sense to me, Jim.
Max
3*ln((283+25)/283) = 0.25C
3*ln(2)=2.08 C per doubling.neglecting any other factor that may have contributed, like ~0.9C recovery from a cooler period to be renamed later.
The global average temperature has been on a decline since 7000 years ago, so your compensation has the wrong sign.
So when it comes to attribution for the 0,7 C rise in the 20th century, 0.2 C is from a solar increase, 0.9 C is from CO2 and -0.4 C is from aerosols. “Skeptics” often forget aerosols even though they are looking actively for negative effects.
Webster, “The global average temperature has been on a decline since 7000 years ago, so your compensation has the wrong sign.”
Nope, NH was on a decline, Tropics slight increase and SH on an upswing. There is a see saw effect related to the ~20ka precessional cycle more strongly evident near the poles. Since the game has shifted from “surface” temperature to OHC, which orientation do you think has more impact on SST and ocean heat content?
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0Ljwh9NTkS0/Ubx9dAfZtAI/AAAAAAAAInM/UROadZys8_k/s800/giss%2520and%2520ersst%2520with%2520ipwp%2520from%25200%2520ad.png
btw, if temperatures “globally” were in decline, why has CO2 in the Antarctic Ice cores risen for the past 7000 years? Natural CO2 should have peaked 7000 years ago, not started increasing again.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/04/playing-with-proxy-reconstructions.html
Over 7000 years, not much of a change in CO2 PPM.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tm33tTS2iZc/SFLM7JmPaQI/AAAAAAAAA9I/hcB8NXW_zYo/s400/pangburn-pic-02.jpg
Webster, could you make that the full 800ka so it would be really hard to see the past 7ka? There is not much change, but what is the direction of change?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZXYGCinDDjA/UV4chQtZLII/AAAAAAAAHt8/gXV5p40qYG4/s1600/21ka+reconstruction+with+CO2.png
That is ~20ka, the CO2 is in red.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | August 10, 2013 at 4:20 pm said: ”Over 7000 years, not much of a change in CO2 PPM”
wrong! for the last 7 000y most of the planets forest were turned into the today’s deserts. Uncontrollable bush-fires by rubbing two sticks – just the ”environmentalist brainwashing books” avoid reality. That’s when most of CO2 was released
Jim D
IPCC AR4 has made it easy for us to attribute the various pieces of anthropogenic forcing.
According to AR4, the past radiative forcing from all other anthropogenic factors other than CO2 (other GHGs, aerosols, etc.) cancelled one another out, so that forcing from CO2 = total anthropogenic forcing.
But IPCC had problems with natural forcing, conceding that its level of scientific understanding of natural (solar) forcing was low.
It also conceded that clouds remain the largest source of uncertainty.
Fortunately there have been several solar studies, which show us that around 50% of all the past warming can be attributed to the unusually high level of 20th C solar activity (highest in several thousand years).
This was higher in the early 20th C warming cycle than in the statistically indistinguishable late 20th C warming cycle, where anthropogenic forcing played a greater role. It is even lower now.
The role of clouds is still unclear and being debated.
So you see that there is still a high amount of disagreement regarding anthropogenic versus natural attribution of past warming.
Max
The science is quite clear that the anthropogenic forcing is much larger, order of magnitude, than the solar forcing.
lolw0t |
The science is quite clear that the anthropogenic forcing is much larger, order of magnitude, than the solar forcing.
For “science”, read “models contradicted by measurements”.
Jim D August 10, 2013 at 12:10 pm: “As i said on the previous thread, I deny the pause in climate change. Climate is 30-year averages.”
I am not sure you are saying what you mean. The climate is always changing so everyone would agree that there is no “pause in climate change.” I don’t think many would agree that climate respects a “30-year average.” Best I can tell the 30 years was chosen based on modern global temperature measurements and that 30 year period conveniently begins during the low point of a 70 year cycle. That is just as arbitrary as when some one picks the past 1,000 years. I have read more statistical justification for a 15 year period than I have for an arbitrary 30 year period.
Incidently your reference covers 140 years beginning at the end of the little ice age and ending in 2000 before the pause.
With 22-year filters (as Vaughan Pratt used recently) or 30-years you get a similar two-rise pattern in the 20th century. This is the real climate change. The first rise is possibly half solar, half CO2, the mid-century pause may be an aerosol growth and global dimming (if you look spatially where that cooling was), and the late century rise was CO2-dominated being largely in the northern continents and Arctic.
You’re in denial now,
Behind a farting cow,
Discovered your niche,
To kvetch, moan, and bitch,
You’re in denial now.
Jim D
When you discuss a “trend of X degrees C per decade, you should look at the change per decade.
And that was slight cooling of around 0.05C for the most recent decade (where IPCC had predicted GH warming of 0.2C per decade.
30-year averages are tiny “blips” in the overall record.
Look at the entire 160+ year average for a better picture.
Or, better yet, using CET as a proxy, for example, at the past several hundred years.
It will tell you more than a mere 30-year “blip”.
Max
The 30-year running average has increased by 0.17 C over the last decade. No small potatoes.
Jim D | August 10, 2013 at 12:10 pm | Reply
As i said on the previous thread, I deny the pause in climate change. Climate is 30-year averages.
========
Why 30 JimD and not 28 or 32 or 100 for that matter? What science supports your assertion that climate is 30-year averages?
Is it just me or has anyone else notice that way the wind has changed?
We now have ‘warmistas’ declaring that variations in solar output are able to change global temperature. This is of course complete nonsense, as anyone with a background in realclimate science knows; the Great Gavin himself has stated time and again that variations in solar output have contributed between nothing and close to nothing to the Earths temperature
:-
” I think that the solar variations are indeed a factor in driving climate change, though my opinion is that it is a relatively small factor over the last century. It’s difficult to assign a specific number because of the uncertainties in solar and other forcings particularly early in the century and in even working out the correct calculation to do – i.e. since there are multiple positive and negative forcings it will depend on how you group them. If you lump them as ‘natural’ forcings vs. ‘anthropogenic’ forcings, you end up with something like 20% natural from 1900 to 1940 (note that I haven’t done this calc exactly), and even less since then. There is the potential for some wiggle room there though. You can do the calculations yourself based on the forcing fields available at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/simodel/F.indiv.data.txt. -gavin
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
“What we see is how science often works – increases in knowledge by increments and independent studies re-affirming previous findings, namely that changes in the sun play a minor role in climate change on decadal to centennial scales. After all, 2009 was the second-warmest year on record, and by far the warmest in the southern hemisphere, despite the record solar minimum. ”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/more-on-sun-climate-relations/
The greatest mathematician and climate statistician of all time also poo-poo’s solar as a drive of natural variability.
“The cooling effect of man-made sulfates also helps explain the hemispheric asymmetry in temperature history. Most industrial activity is in the northern hemisphere, so most of the anthropogenic sulfate cooling should be there too. The northern hemisphere has warmed faster than the southern because there’s more land in the north than the south, and land has far less thermal inertia than ocean. But if sulfates are mostly in the northern hemisphere, that means that there should have been a stronger mid-century cooling effect in the north than in the south — and that’s exactly what we observe:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/antrhopogenic-global-cooling/
So begone foul solar energy flux changes, you can’t have it both ways. Now all you have to do is explain why there is a long lag between the increase in CO2 levels changes and the Earths temperature coming to steady state (i.ie. why you talk about ‘transient’ and ‘equilibrium’ climate sensitivity), but an instantaneous changes in temperature with aerosols or solar changes.
You guys are so much fun, its like watching the look of horror on the face of a man juggling chainsaws when he realizes he is about to sneeze.
The number of sunspots tripled between 1910 and mid-century. That has got to have an effect. There have always been irradiance proxies, such as Lean et al. that use this, but some chose not to believe them.
As soon as someone defines what a pause is, then I can decide if I deny it or not.
Bob Droege
You write:
Merriam Webster gives the first definition for “pause” as:
Starting with the most recent decade, we have observed (HadCRUT4) that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” (a.k.a. “global temperature” indicator) has not warmed (as it did for the previous three decades), but has actually cooled slightly.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1972/to:1981/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1982/to:1991/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1992/to:2001/trend
This constitutes “a temporary stop” (or “pause”) in the previous warming trend, according to the Merriam Webster definition..
If one prefers to use the “land only” temperature anomaly (BEST) rather than the global average, the same “pause” can be observed:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1972/to:1981/trend/plot/best/from:2002/trend/plot/best/from:1982/to:1991/trend/plot/best/from:1992/to:2001/trend
Hope this helps clear it up for you, Bob.
Max
If it is temporary, what is all the fuss about? Soon enough, we’ll be back in the warming mode.
Clear as mud max, as usual someone brings a dictionary to a scientific discussion. I want a scientific definition of the pause, like a trend of x with uncertainty less than y degrees.
Nice use of wood for trees, but what is the uncertainty of your cooling trends and does it exclude the “about 0.2 C per decade trend from the IPCC?”
What about adjusting for ENSO?
Bob Droege, “What about adjusting for ENSO?” What a novel idea? We can “adjust” for ENSO and Volcanoes without really knowing how to properly do that so we can get another 0.05 C of possible warming to make a trend just under significant, significant.
Bob, you have a natural knack for statistics.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/more-on-estimating-the-underlying-trend-in-recent-warming/
Knock that out then we can hook you up with “Dimples” Marcott for some ground breaking paleo.
Jim D
Is “climate change denial” rearing its ugly head here?
For shame!
Max
What are your thoughts on this commentary, Judith?
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/storm-chasers/
I think the gentleman is referring to this comment in the reference: “After two busy hurricane years in 2004 and 2005, many of the world’s leading experts (including Judith Curry and Roger Pielke) concluded that global warming was making major hurricanes hit more often.”
Based on prevailing data, at one point or another most of us were believers in AGW. My observation has been that our hostess has adhered to the adage “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”. There are some, however, who have their reputations and income stream invested to the point that they can’t follow the data.
This thread has meandered, as any weekend thread will do. I’d like to get back to a point which has gotten a bit lost, please forgive for repetition from above:
Having just reviewed Judith’s post on (Ir)responsible advocacy by scientists, After Climategate, Himalayan melt impacts, I would like to express my admiration for her all over again.
Despite all the personal attacks people in her position get, she has decided she will pursue science, real science unpolluted by societal trends, to wherever it goes, at whatever personal cost. Thank heavens that we have people like Judith, even if we don’t have quite enough of them. Roger Pielke Jr. also falls in this category, I’ve seen him get smeared by the likes of Chris Fields on TV, and I saw his emotional reaction. But he kept his cool, stated the science, instead of reacting in kind. His analyses of historical records of damage from tornados and hurricanes is crucial to a full and unbiased understanding of historical trends, not available anywhere else. Hats off to those scientists who do what Judith and Roger do, despite all the personal abuse they get.
We actually have some real heros and heroines to look up to here. Let’s put our hands together for Judith and Roger.
I don’t agree that Judith pursues the science “unpolluted by societal trends,” (an impossible standard) but I will join you in expressing appreciation for her attempts to do so.
RPJr., IMO, is different kettle of fish. He’s just as much of a climate warrior as anyone else.
Without commenting on his science per se, or the specific incident you’re characterizing, he “smears” on a pretty regular basis on his blog,.
Joshua, I will not let your unsubstantiated smear of Roger Pielke, Jr. stand uncontested. I have never seen him engage in anything that could reasonably be called a “smear” of anyone. In fact, unlike so many in the climate debates he seems to be remarkably evidence-driven. I don’t know the man beyond reading some of his blog writings, but unless you have evidence to offer your “smear” comments are most unworthy of this forum.
Skiphil –
I guess it depends on what you consider to be a smear.
As one example, he has insinuated that he was released from editorial responsibilities because of the content of his science and not the reasons as stated by the officials who released him. He offered no concrete proof, and instead insinuated unethical behavior of others based on nothing other than circumstantial speculation. He uses terms like “climate chickens” to describe those who disagree with him.
I don’t think that Roger should be condemned in some fashion for the way that he engages this debate – as it is no different than the fashion in which many engage in this debate. Further, his manner of engagement is not (necessarily) directly relevant to his science. But I also see no reason to pretend that his manner of engagement is distinct in character than that of myriad others, on both sides – or that somehow he stands outside the circle of science affected by “societal trends.”
Joshua
Just saying it doesn’t make it true.
Max
manaker,
you should go read the thread where Joshua tried everything to pin bad motives on Jr.
Very telling
> I have never seen him engage in anything that could reasonably be called a “smear” of anyone.
Perhaps this:
http://arthur.shumwaysmith.com/life/content/character_assassination_in_climate_science_the_michael_tobis_story
If that’s not strong enough, I can find other honestly broke episodes with Junior.
Steve, Josh is the most level headed poster here; he has a chip on each shoulder.
A smear is exemplified by the yellow streak that runs down Joshua’s back.
Doc – good line at 7:59. I’m
stealingborrowing it.As I said in the thread, steven Roger asks “When did you stop beating your wife?” and then says that he never said that you beat your wife.
It’s kind of a specialty of his. ‘
Hey, just another day in the climate blogospohere. Same ol’ same ol,.’ Not really a big deal. But IMO, if you’;re going to play those games then own up to it, and don’t pretend that somehow you’re above the fray.
It takes rare courage to resist the relentless, merciless onslaught of those aboard the global warming bandwagon, particularly in the US. Judith Curry has it in heaps, obviously, otherwise she would not have prevailed. But moreover, it takes an extraordinary clarity of purpose and a fiercely independent intellect to pierce through the veil of poor science, pseudoscience and outright propaganda masquerading as concerned advocacy science and remain steadfast in a position of scientific authority. So great respect to Judith and other outspoken career scientists doing similar. I have a feeling their lives are going to get easier – though I would prepare for a last-minute barrage of hatred and vitriol from those aboard the ‘good’ ship CAGW as it starts to sink beneath the waves of an ignominious history.
That’s my job, see http://tinyurl.com/ClimateClowns
The pseudoscience by the commenters on this blog is about as bad as it gets. Yet, no one on the mildly skeptical side challenges any of this stuff.
—
My advisor’s advisor is Robert Park, who writes the long-running What’s New blog (since long before a blog was called a blog) and is the author of “Voodoo science: the road from foolishness to fraud” and “Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science”. He is my inspiration for pointing out poor science and pseudoscience.
I hope Dr. Park recovers from his recent health problems and resumes his writing.
Maybe you can get Dr. Park here to help you challenge stuff. I agree you’re doing a piss poor job of it by yourself.
Ahh, David Springer, the accolyte of William Dembski of Intelligent Design fame. Springer moderated Dembski’s ridiculous Uncommon Descent blog for some time.
The connection to Park here is that Robert Park said this about Dembski being given the Trotter Prize :
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn040805.html
Springer is the same type of pseudoscientist as his buddy Dembski. Congrats to you Springer.
Does that mean you can or can’t get Dr Parks here to help you out?
P.S. That’s the Reverend Doctor Doctor Dembski to a lowly single PhD like Parks. LOL Pass it on.
Robert Park is past president of the American Physical Society, of whose members would laugh hysterically should someone like Dembski try to apply for the position.
Field Guide to Climate Clowns is broken with every browser I tried. Can read the blog but the guide is a blank window.
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/01/field-guide-to-climate-clowns.html
Your http://tinyurl.com/climateclowns doesn’t do jack schit either. Did you fall the internet turnip truck yesterday or what?
Trotter prize recipients would laugh hysterically at bragging about being an American Physical Society president.
By the way whut Robert Park was not an APS president.
http://www.aps.org/about/governance/presidents.cfm
What is your major malfunction?
I have a very simple question to which I don’t know the answer:
What caused the Little Ice Age and why did we recover from it?
A second question:
If we had modern instrumentation during the LIA would we understand it better?
My personal favorite is evil europeans brought their filthy diseases to the pristine new world. Millions of natives died. Their previously cleared land quickly reverted to forest. This sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere, and the weakened GHE resulted in rapid cooling.
It snags me in a mire of guilt, and I like that.
There are millenial scale changes the causes of which we know not. They were ignored in the rush to ‘Hockey Stick’ and supporting the narrative of man’s guilt. It’s not the first time we’ve embraced a mistaken narrative nor will it be the last. We have ears and ignorance, and that is enough.
=================
I agree its a good question. i think that there is some speculation that it was due to the Maunder solar minimum. It’s really a stretch to say it was due to CO2 as ice cores show very little change.
Even Leif Svalgaard thinks a Maunder Minimum may be on the way, but he doesn’t have the mechanism for it to cool the globe, despite spending a long productive career looking for it.
========================
The authors of this paper think they may have found a mechanism.
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/soon_legate.pdf
Amplified but dampable. Hmmmm.
================
I’m glad to see that this question has provoked a response.
To quote AP Herbert: “If no one were to open their mouths without knowing exactly what they were talking about, a deadly hush would fall upon the World”!
I agree that the modern warming period could be a random fluctuation and I wrote a post about it:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/19/autocorrelation-and-trends/
This was damned with faint praise by the good lady herself and the thread was dominated by WebHubTelescope giving his insights. I realise in retrospect that I should have recalculated the statistics assuming an underlying trend representing recovery from the LIA (whatever it was).
One upshot of the analysis, which was a response to Ludecke et al, based on the idea of a system lag, i.e.: storage of thermal energy and a random forcing is that a high temperature predisposes to an increasing temeperature trend and a low temperature predisposes to a low temperature trend. In this case the LIA could conceivably have been a random fluctuation.
However, I don’t believe that this model is correct and in the post I was “flying a kite”.
RC Saumarez
I think I was on holiday when you posted the original article. Yes, WHT did dominate it but he was being quite helpful.
I wrote an article that encompassed the whole of the main period of the LIA that you might find has useful background data.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
it was written from a British perspective but CET has a wider proxy relevance than merely England.
The LIA was episodic not one continual extended era. Its first phase can be traced to around 1215 to 1290 when the warmer periods of a further phase of the MWP then predominated again. .
As you probably know the LIA was characterised by some very extreme weather (storms/floods/droughts etc) and also by hot summers that often counterbalanced the cold winters.
Its cause? Prof Fagan doesn’t know and nor do I. Perhaps it was solar related or perhaps solar related with blocking highs and changes in circulation in both the air and ocean.
Hope you will feel able to write a follow up to your original article.
tonyb
R C Saumarez.
Why did we recover? The ice melted :) Probably with a little help from agriculture. Why did it happen? These guys have a few thoughts.
http://instaar.colorado.edu/~marchitt/reprints/tmmscience10.pdf
Climatereason
Thanks for the link.
The reason I posed this question was simply that this (LIA, recovery) seems to be one of the biggest climate events in relatively recent history. Its seems to be roundly ignored and nobody, as far as I can tell, can account for it. My instinct is that it is most likely to be related to the sun or astronomical effects.
However, if we cannot account for an event of this importance, there seems to be something missing from an overall theory of climate. Can the modelling boys account for it through hindcasting? I suspect not.
RC Saumarez
I wrote about noticeable climate effects here
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
(see figure 4 in particular)
The recovery in 1700 from the coldest period of the ice age was by far the biggest hockey stick in instrumental history.
Historical climatology has become unfashionable in recent times although. 30 years ago such as Hubert Lamb and Ladurie investigated hundreds of events covering the LIA. In recent decades we seem so beguiled by the modern hockey stick that the bigger ones in the past are overlooked.
Our knowledge of the climate is still at a very primitive stage although we like to believe we have a good grasp on how it works.
The recovery from the LIA and then a decades long period of considerable warmth seem to be of little interest to modern funded researchers. That temperatures have been on the rise for 350 years also seems to be forgotten with the belief that it is a recent concern.
tonyb
RC to try and answer your questions, together. I think the honest answer is that no-one knows what caused the LIA, which coincided with the Maunder minimum. So no-one knows why we recovered from it. There are all sorts of ideas as to how the sun controls our climate, but nothing that is much more than a hypothesis, at present. And very knowledgable people like Leif Svalgaard dispute some of the ideas.
I believe that the sun’s magnetic properties are are the root of what caused the LIA. And what we are hoping, and I wont be around unfortunately, is that when the Eddy Minimum gets into full gear, then modern instrumentation might well be able to answer some of the questions. I have no doubt that if such instrumentation, and our current knowledge as to how the sun works, had been around in the 17th century, we would not be guessing nearly as much as we are now.
And if Leonardo da Vinci had known calculus, the theory of relativity, and the know-how to build a wafer fab and a nuclear power plant, no telling how far advanced we would be now.
… roll my eyes at the genius of the 3%
Jim Cripwell
And no-one knows what caused the early or late-20th C warming, what caused the period of slight cooling in between and what is causing the current period of slight cooling (which Jim D still denies).
Lots of hypotheses out there, though.
Max
The pause is “natural variability” that averages out to essentially nothing on 30-year time scales.
Yeah.
And if Webby were really only 3% as intelligent as he thinks he is, he might post some relevant comments.
Max
Jim D
Nope.
It doesn’t “average out to zero over 30-year time scales”.
The observed multi-decadal cycle is around 60 years (warming plus slight cooling) for a complete cycle.
The late 20thC IPCC “poster period” is only a half-cycle (just like the statistically indistinguishable early 20th C warming cycle before it).
You have to look at longer periods, Jim, to get an understanding of what is happening.
Max
There is no observed 60 year multi-decadal cycle
Besides CO2 is driving climate now. See my post earlier about the control knob.
manacker, I have looked at 60-year averages and there you just get an increasing upwards trend like the CO2 curve. Skeptics would complain even more about that. Anyway, I think the 30-year trend is not showing PDO much because the mid-century cooling was due to aerosols if you check where it occurred (e.g., east US and north west Atlantic, not places where you look for PDO). On the other hand, there is a long-term PDO cooling phase now affecting this decade, and it could be as much as 0.1 C in the global average.
lolwot
Huh?
Check:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1993/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2003/trend:2013/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1983/to:1993/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1973/to:1983/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1973/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1913/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1973/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1883/to:1912/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1853/to:1882/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1853/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2013
– latest decade (since 2002) shows cooling
– prior three decades (1973-2002) show warming
– prior three decades (1943-1972) show slight cooling
– prior three decades (1913-1942) show similar warming to 1973-2002
– prior three decades (1883-1912) show cooling
– prior three decades (1853-1882) show warming
– all on a slight overall warming trend of 0.7C over 150+ years
Got it now?
Max
That graph includes a lot of human induced warming which doesn’t follow a 60 year cycle. So any 60 year cycle overall is a coincidence and nothing more.
Jim D
Whether one attributes the 60-year warming + cooling cycles to PDO or whatever cause, the fact of the matter is that they are there in the observed record of the globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly (HadCRUT4).
It is also very unlikely that they are caused by human GHG emissions, because there are no such cycles in these.
And underneath it all we have a slight warming trend of around 0.7C since the record started 160+ years ago.
Since there were hardly any human GHG emissions prior to the end of WWII, we can safely conclude that this warming was caused primarily by natural factors.
Since 1959 we have actual measurements of atmospheric CO2 and these have increased at a fairly constant exponential rate of increase since at least the mid 1970s.
The latter 20th C saw a 30-year period of warming that is statistically indistinguishable from a period of similar length in the early 20th C, before much human CO2.
So if we make the WAG that most of the late 20thC warming and a smaller % of the early 20th C warming were caused by human factors (let’s say CO2), we arrive at a 2xCO2 temperature response of around 0.8C.
Adding in what IPCC in AR4 estimated to still be hidden “in the pipeline” (= 0.6C), we arrive at a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity at equilibrium of 1.4C.
This seems to be in the same range as the estimate of several recent observation-based estimates, and around half of earlier model-based predictions cited by IPCC in AR4.
If the current pause continues for several decades (as some studies project) despite unabated human GHG emissions and CO2 levels continuing to rise exponentially, we might need to revisit these observation-based estimates of 2xCO2 climate sensitivity.
On the other hand, if the warming resumes at the past long-term rate, this would tend to corroborate the latest ECS estimates.
That’s how I see it, anyway, based on the facts on the ground.
Max
manacker, and I could show you that land sensitivity since 1980 works out to be near 4 C per doubling, no pipeline, no equilibrium assumption, no deep ocean response, just a land temperature change over a CO2 change. Land warming faster than the ocean is a signature of fast forcing changes because the land can respond more quickly. In these decades the land-only warming is twice the global rate.
Jim D
IPCC has consistently used the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” (HadCRUT 3 and 4) as the key indicator of manmade global warming.
Don’t move the goalpost on us, Jim, now that this indicator is in a stall.
Makes you look kind of silly.
Max
I find it significant scientifically that the land is warming twice as fast as the global average. Perhaps you don’t want to think what this entails, and that is fine. These kinds of details help to untangle what is going on in a global average.
For example, I find it interesting that the ocean has a muted and lagged response relative to land. This is consistent with an external forcing driving both and the ocean having a higher thermal inertia.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:360/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:360
RCSaumarez
I can quote prof Brian fagan who asked exactly that question. He wrote; ‘did small changes in the earths axis affect global temperatures for five centuries, or did cyclical fluctuations in solar radiation lead to greater cooling? The answer still eludes us, largely because we have barely begun to understand the global climatic system and the interactions between atmosphere and ocean that drives it.’
That comes from page 55 of his book’the little ice age.’
As regards modern instrumentation transposed to the lia. Digital automatic stations that have been properly set up are accurate within their stated parameters. All manually read thermometers have problems associated with them to a greater or lesser degree. My site climatereason.com carries instrumental records from 1659 and thereby covers much of the most severe phases of the little ice age, which was intermittent rather than continuous and could have summers every bit as hot as today’s but often had very much colder winters. However all manual instrumentation-ancient and modern- should be taken with a pinch of salt and are not accurate to fractions of a degree.
Tonyb
Little Ice Age?
Didn’t you get the hocket schtick memo? There is no Little Ice Age.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/images/Fig.final_11.jpg
Yet the hockey stick shows a colder period around the little ice age.
That it wasn’t as cold as climate skeptics claim has also been established by subsequent work.
Funny no one even mentions volcanoes.
Bob
You just did! What else do you want to say about them? I am quite well up to speed on the 1258 one that Dr Mann thought so important he wrote a paper about it.
Tonyb
Bob,
I have mentioned them.
As in people might be better concerned about the impact of Iceland ‘s volcanoes erupting or the Yellowstone caldera blowing than what a warming climate might bring.
“I have a very simple question to which I don’t know the answer:
What caused the Little Ice Age and why did we recover from it?”
Well, Little Ice Age is mostly about a period of global glacier advance.
And past glacial advancement or retreat can be measured at the present time. One could also do what we commonly do today and discuss weather rather than climate.
So Little Ice can be detected due glacier advance and retreat, proxy temperatures, and past cold weather- rivers freezing, crops not growing, etc.
What can cause glacier advance could have to do with rainfall patterns- does snow when it’s cold, does it rain when it’s warm, though generally it about average yearly temperature changes- it’s a marker of average global temperature.
Our current interglacial period has a very slight cooling period over the last 8000 years, and the severity of Little Ice Age might have something to do with this long term trend. What is apparent over such a long period of time, is there are centuries periods of warming and cooling- and warming periods tend to last longer than cooling period, though Little ice Age tended to be cooler and longer.
What is known about LIA is there were a few very large volcanic eruptions- much larger than we have had in 20th and 21 century. Next we know yearly number of sunspots were unusually low these may added to a longer cycle of warming/cooling or be the reason for such cycles.
“A second question:
If we had modern instrumentation during the LIA would we understand it better?”
We would have had better resolution in the measurements. The modern El Nino peak in global temperature of 1997 and 1998 would been hard to accurately “see” during the LIA.
And there is problem “splicing” these different ways of measuring average global temperature. There problem even modern record or splicing different time period with merely the number and locations of weather stations recording temperatures. And it England’s long record keeping of temperature which has helpful in splicing these temperatures records together, but if we had to rely solely on England’s measuring earth current average temperature, one could see “problems” with that idea.
We really haven’t been measuring global temperature very accurately, before the the beginning of satellite record. And the Argos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_%28oceanography%29
Marks the beginning of accurately measuring the ocean’s temperature.
The ice core data is more than sufficient to understand what caused and ended the Little Ice Age and all the other Little Ice Ages in the past ten thousand years. The ice core data is more than sufficient to understand what caused and ended the Roman and Medieval and Modern Warm Period and all the other Warm Periods in the past ten thousand years.
The temperature has been bounded tightly around a set point for the most recent ten thousand years. That is different and new.
Continents drifted, ocean levels changed. ocean currents changed and Polar Ice Developed. The Polar Ice has become the new and wonderful thermostat for earth. When the Polar Ice is melted because earth is warm, it snows like crazy and builds ice that advances and cools earth. When the oceans get cold and the Polar Water freezes the snowfall is turned off and earth can warm.
If you disagree, propose your own theory to explain the modern set point for temperature and the tight bounding around that set point that has always worked for ten thousand years.
The set point and tight bounding is in the actual data. This is what has always happened for ten thousand years.
Earth temperature and sea level has cycled up and down in tight bounds for ten thousand years. If you believe my Theory is Wrong, tell me your theory that could possibly be better.
“The temperature has been bounded tightly around a set point for the most recent ten thousand years. That is different and new.
Continents drifted, ocean levels changed. ocean currents changed and Polar Ice Developed. The Polar Ice has become the new and wonderful thermostat for earth.”
[If by new you mean within millions of years, I am assuming. Or in terms of billions of years, millions of years could be called “new”. And changes of continental effects are on the order of ten million years]
“When the Polar Ice is melted because earth is warm, it snows like crazy and builds ice that advances and cools earth. When the oceans get cold and the Polar Water freezes the snowfall is turned off and earth can warm. ”
Yes, I am to some extent aware of your theory. And that is part of why I said growing/advancing glacier “could have to do with rainfall patterns”.
I leave it as possible that a summertime ice free polar ocean may be significantly changing rainfall [and snow] patterns. I also leave it as a possibility that other factors could be affecting rainfall patterns.
But I believe the evidence of volcanic and solar activity correlating the LIA, should not be ignored.
I don’t feel confident about what causes cooling periods, and I believe what causes cooling periods, is far more important than what causes warming periods- as cooling periods are far more consequential.
The idea that we should panic about warming, when have lived in ice box climate for millions of years is a humorous and sad state of the pseudoscience which is commonly associated with climate science.
“If you disagree, propose your own theory to explain the modern set point for temperature and the tight bounding around that set point that has always worked for ten thousand years. ”
As for my theories or thoughts about the issue. I tend to believe the tropics is major element in global climate. I also think oceans are where vast majority of heating from Sun occurs and is stored. So I think a major factor of global climate is related warming of the tropical oceans. So I tend to think the variation of cloud cover over the tropical ocean is probably major factor. And generally I think it more about a “greenhouse” liquid than greenhouse gases.
It’s possible that changes in polar regions could effect tropical conditions, and to extent it does, it would affect global temperatures.
Though it’s possible that if one concerned about century or less time periods related of global climate changes, that how much is snows where and when, could more important than average global temperature. As said the changing rainfall patterns could be casual factor, rather merely an effect of cooling or warming.
But if throw more than 100 cubic km of volcanic dust into the atmosphere, it seems it’s going to have some global cooling effect- and other kinds of effects.
_______________________
Solar-Terrestrial-Climate 101
A / B / C
How very Kim-like — no context and irrelevant.
Congrats.
huh “sunspot integral”?
Does that mean what I think it means? How can an integral taken over a century possibly represent anything real?
Ice integrates over a century and even more.
Media Matters enumerates (with examples) five ways that denialists suborn public debate:
• Denialism Method #1 Present Contrarians As “Objective” Experts
• Denialism Method #2 Denigrate Peer-Reviewed Science And Scientific Institutions
• Denialism Method #3 Equate Science With Simply A Liberal Opinion
• Denialism Method #4 Claim That Scientists Distort Data In Order To Obtain Funding
• Denialism Method #5 Characterize Climate Science As Simply A “Religion”
Question How many regular posters here on Climate Etc practice the Five Methods of Denialism?
Answer There’s no shortage of “Denialist Five Steppers” here on Climate Etc!
Fortunately, it’s easy to identify denialist “Five Steppers”, because they invariably stay 100% on-message.
Conversely, “Five Steppers” *NEVER* comment upon the sobering scientific conclusions of recent studies like Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level, and Atmospheric CO2
Summary It’s not complicated, folks! Just keep in mind the sobering reality, that even the fanciest Faux News “Five Stepping” can’t fool Mother Nature.
Conclusion Denialist “Five Step” practices are non-scientific, irrational, and morally wrong.
Hansen:-
“Our calculated global warming in this case is 16°C, with warming at the poles about 30°C. Calculated warming over land areas averages ~20°C. Such temperatures would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world . Increased stratospheric water vapor would diminish the stratospheric ozone layer .
More ominously, global warming of that magnitude would make much of the planet uninhabitable by humans.”
Interesting that Hansen ignores aerosols in his ice core data analysis, yet most modelers are captivated by the ability of modest changes in aerosols to drop global temperatures. Oddly, the dust levels recorded in the ice cores show that the levels vary by three orders of magnitude, with high levels during the ice ages, global dimming, and levels equal to those at present during the warm ages.
One gets the impression that Hansen is a big a fraud as Fan.
“Interesting that Hansen ignores aerosols in his ice core data analysis”
Does he?
“Oddly, the dust levels recorded in the ice cores show that the levels vary by three orders of magnitude, with high levels during the ice ages, global dimming, and levels equal to those at present during the warm ages.”
Sounds like a positive feedback to me then. Less dust as it gets warmer. If it’s a feedback then it’s part of the climate sensitivity Hansen has calculated. It actually makes climate sensitivity higher!
I wonder if this is a positive feedback the current generation of models don’t include.
Fanny’s “5 steps of obfuscation”
• Obfuscation Method #1 Present Rational Skeptics as Irrational “Contrarians”
• Obfuscation Method #2 Denigrate any Scientists And Scientific Studies that conflict with the forced “Consensus” position
• Obfuscation Method #3 Equate Rational Skepticism of the “consensus” dogma With Simply A Conservative Opinion
• Obfuscation Method #4 Claim That Skeptics obtain funding from Oil and Coal companies
• Obfuscation Method #5 Avoid Discussion of Specific Issues, but Characterize Skeptics of the forced “Consensus” As Simply “Kooks”
Question How many regular posters here on Climate Etc beside Fanny practice Fanny’s Five Methods of Obfuscation?
Lolwot? Joshua? Webby? Jim D?
Let’s guess.
Max
Max smartly bulleted his list so we can debunk his claims one by one.
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #1 Present Rational Skeptics as Irrational “Contrarians”
Not on this site. The amount of comments by kranks outweighs rational skeptics considerably. You want a list and stats?
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #2 Denigrate any Scientists And Scientific Studies that conflict with the forced “Consensus” position
Name the scientists please. If they happen to be like Murry Salby who have somehow flipped out, we have no choice but to debunk them.
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #3 Equate Rational Skepticism of the “consensus” dogma With Simply A Conservative Opinion
Some of us can hear the dog whistles and interpret what they mean.
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #4 Claim That Skeptics obtain funding from Oil and Coal companies
Lots of names I can point out. It gets worse if you start bringing in oil cornucopians. Personally, I don’t really care that they get backing, as the objective facts and reasoning beat propaganda money in the line of work I am in.
• Max’s claimed Obfuscation Method #5 Avoid Discussion of Specific Issues, but Characterize Skeptics of the forced “Consensus” As Simply “Kooks”
You are repeating yourself from point 1, unless you think a Kook is different than a Contrarian. Please name anyone that comments on this blog site that has a formal reasoned arguments on specific issues published or posted somewhere else. Your fallback is always Principia Scientific ….
Media Matters
renowned for having no bias or ever trying to present a certain viewpoint.
Do a little more work and you could make it a real 12-step program
“Conclusion Denialist “Five Step” practices are non-scientific, irrational, and morally wrong.”
As opposed to the Pope to whose authority you often appeal, who considers himself infallible. Lacking the funny hat and prestigious address, people can find themselves locked up for that kind of thinking
Pokerguy, please allow me to commend to your attention the illuminating survey So I asked the Vatican about global warming … Special Report
The Gist In recent centuries, Popes have learned (the hard way) to speak ex cathedra solely in regard to matters of faith; never in regard to matters of science, for the simple reason that Nature is utterly inflexible in her strict respect for science.
And so in matters of science, the Pope himself yields to the considered opinion of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science … an opinion that amounts to “James Hansen is right”.
Needless to say, precisely *NONE* of the denialist “Five Step Race-to-the-Bottom” claims apply to the Vatican’s sober-minded morally-centered climate-change assessments!
Now, ain’t that the plain and simple truth, pokerguy?
Pokerguy, please allow me to commend to your attention the illuminating survey So I asked the Vatican about global warming … Special Report
The Gist In recent centuries, Popes have learned (the hard way) to speak ex cathedra solely in regard to matters of faith; never in regard to matters of science, for the simple reason that Nature is inflexible in her strict respect for science.
And so in matters of science, the Pope himself yields to the considered opinion of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science … an opinion that amounts to “James Hansen is right”.
Needless to say, precisely *NONE* of the denialist “Five Step Race-to-the-Bottom” claims apply to the Vatican’s sober-minded morally-centered climate-change assessments!
Now, ain’t that the plain and simple truth, pokerguy?
Predictable how ridiculous and petty Dave Springer appears.
I mention my earth science modeling blog http://ContextEarth.com and he thinks he is some super-sleuth in hacking for my name, even though all he had to do is open any one of the 4 PDFs of papers that I have written in the last year that are linked via the top-level menu.
Should we call him SuperDave or IntelliDave, what works better?
Webby, you are looking more ridiculous with each comment.
You are in a hole.
Your best bet: stop digging.
Max
I disagree. I thought it was bizarre that someone would go off and background check a domain name and then paste the result here.
Thanks for the interest in the site, Max. The blog is a spin-off from open-source research that I was involved with in the last year.
At the heart of the project is a semantic web server that provides a knowledgebase and a modeling and simulation engine which can be used to provide an environmental “context” to solving problems or for general analysis.
What is important about the knowledgebase is that it won’t link to pseudoscience of the 3% type, so I suppose that will make Max kind of sad and weepy.
@lolwot | August 10, 2013 at 4:37 pm |
lolwot – please tell me you seriously have never heard of the whois internet service. I’m having a lot of trouble believing that. It’s like ping, dig, traceroute, and others. These are used by people and equipment on the internet. They are not only legal, they are vital to the operation of the internet.
Here is a link.
http://centralops.net/co/
It’s the pasting that’s strange, jim2:
http://who.is/whois/contextearth.com
I swear that the 3% are some of the dumbest people on the planet.
I have a website called http://ContextEarth.com. On the top-level menu, I have 4 papers linked that each have have my name plastered on the first page.
I was being sarcastic when I said that the genius Dave Springer thought he had to do a whois to discover someone’s name.
Who could have thunk it that someone who was involved in a multi-million dollar research project would not put their name on papers associated with said research project.
A domain name lookup at whois.net is “hacking”?
http://whois.net/whois/contextearth.com
Wow. Who knew?
> Who knew?
The same who opened Web’s pdfs, Big Dave.
I didn’t happen to see name, address, email, and telephone number on the pdfs. Thanks for illustrating your ignorance, Wee Willie. Not that it needed further illustration mind you.
You can’t even keep track of the subject of this conversation, Big Dave.
Go ahead, give Web a call. Go pay him a visit.
Hacking? Well there are a number of Hack’s who post here but the ability to cut and paste a website address into ‘who.is’ does not constitute a cyber super-sleuth. Unless of course I am also computer security bypass expert.
http://who.is/whois/contextearth.com
Could it be that Dr. Martyn Sharpe is as dumb as the 3%?
All that the good doctor has to do is open up the PDFs of papers linked at the top-level menu of http://ContextEarth.com to find out my name.
It’s like when he gets handed a research paper at a conference. You can bet that the Doc would go to the trouble of dusting for fingerprints and doing a match with the FBI instead of simply looking at the name at the top of the paper.
You see, they think all this sleuthing makes them look super-intelligent and capable of fighting crime instead of just like silly little punks hoping for others of the 3% team to pat them on the back.
DocMartyn,
You could indeed subject yourself to the cost, both in download charges and time, and boost WebHubTelescope’s web page readership statistics, or you could use Whois.
Your method seems more efficient. If WHT put his statistics on his web page, instead of trying to force visitors to read his “papers”, then looking at his web page would win, I guess.
I cannot guess as to his reason for not showing his statistics in the most user friendly manner. Why obscure that which could be as easily made clear?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Go to Mike Flynn for instructions on how to attract spam.
Statistics is what Google Scholar is for. Once you register your name with Scholar, it keeps track of all your publications and does citation statistics. Why re-invent the wheel?
Springer thinks he’s a super-sleuth in figuring out who I am, details of my personal life, etc.
He’s wrong, of course, but that’s what you get when you deal with “skeptics.”
I like SuperDave.
I’m wrong? Good. Then you won’t mind me emailing the fiance with a polite inquiry asking if her betrothed might possibly be the misogynist harassing Judith Curry night and day.
Fiancée, Big Dave.
What was it you said about ignorance, again?
I think the finance is very happy with the abuse.
=============
Spinger –
I couldn’t care less. I will suggest, however, that sending such an email might land you in some kind of problem for harassment. You see, Springer – you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, and sending such an email to the wrong person might get you in legal trouble, I would imagine.
You are confident about something for which you have misinterpreted whatever evidence you think you have.
And if you really think you’re right, lets arrange a bet. I will give you 2 to one odds on a 100,000 bet (you put up $50k. We’ll pay someone mutually agreed upon 10k to handle the money for us. I suggest Captain Dallas if he’ll agree. He seems to me like an honest bloke. If you want someone else, make a suggestion.
So what do you say, Springer? Deal? Or are you afraid to stand behind your reasoning ability?
If you say merdre, you must say phynances, Koldie.
Are we back to bargaining about the price of your courage? That didn’t turn out well for you last time. But it was fun. I’ll bet you one dollar I’m correct.
And just so you know, sending a stranger an email is no more or less illegal than sending them a letter by US mail, calling them on the phone, or knocking on their door. People selling stuff from credit cards to Jehovah do it all the time. Does your ass get tired from pulling ignorant comments out of it?
Springer is trying to prove that Springer is the logical endpoint of Intelligent Design. He has all the answers and that is what the original “Designer” intended apparently.
Springer –
You ducked the bet last time.
The point was you are threatening to send an email to a woman and making false, and arguably slanderous, claims about her fiance – not a generic case of sending someone an email.
Heh.
So you go back to what you wrote a while back rather than what you’ve written in the interim.
For example:
You see, Springer – one of the telltale signs of a “skeptic” is a selective approach to certainty. First you’re not certain. Then you’re certain. And when I point out your inconsistency, you suddenly aren’t certain once again.
Ask Chief to explain it to you. He’s an expert.
Do we have a bet or not, Springer?
That is a yes or no question. The terms are clear. Why not just put this all to rest now, and just admit that you’re going to just duck the bet. You obviously don’t have the balls to stand behind your words (and your threats as I excerpted above). Why drag out the obvious over numerous threads.
Just pull off the band-aid. It hurts real bad at first, but you’ll get over it.
Good first step.
Met Office:
Global mean surface temperatures rose rapidly from the 1970s, but there has been little further warming over the most recent 10 to 15 years to 2013.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/q/0/Paper2_recent_pause_in_global_warming.PDF
The Age of Global Warming is Over
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2013/7-8/the-age-of-global-warming-is-over
Seriously, from a strictly scientific point-of-view, if global warming is over, then when will sea-levels start declining?
QUestion Girma and Kim and Peter Lang, why are you all three linking, over and over again, to a science-free fact-free ideology-driven denialist screed?
There is one source of even relatively accurate ocean heat and salinity data – and that is entirely consistent with the most accurate methods to date for measuring toa radiant flux over the period.
You make much of highly inaccurate data – but reject data on toa radiant flux that goes to causation.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=15
This seems consistent with overlapping 10 year averages of the rate of sea level increase.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/msl_satellite_10yrs.jpg
I note that WUWT graph at the end is missing the decade 2003-2012
Hmm I wonder why it only goes up to 2011…what happened since 2011…
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
One year makes a difference in a 10 year average? I suppose I could calculate it.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 5:45 pm: “Seriously, from a strictly scientific point-of-view, if global warming is over, then when will sea-levels start declining?
You are conflating two definitions:
The referenced article states “ I refer, not to any warming of the planet that may or may not be occurring, but to the world’s apparently serious and broadly shared belief in dangerous, man-made global warming”
The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause.
The AGW proponents won a PR point when they were successfully able to conflate these two issues. The 97% is a classic illustration. By associating any climate warming with anthropogenic climate warming they have confused the public into believing that anyone who concurs that the climate is worming is automatically endorsing AGW.
You are not making a serious scientific point; you are making a PR point.
And the globe *may* be only 8,000 years old, having been created at that time divine force, isn’t that right PMHinSC?
And respectable scientists can be found who believe *both* hypotheses, isn’t that correct PMHinSC?
But neither opinion reflects in any way the broad and widening, strong and strengthening, scientific consensus that AGW is real and serious.
Isn’t that objectively true, PMHinSC?
Nowadays, more-and-more ordinary folks are seeing climate-change plainly with their own eyes.
And that means denialism is fated for extinction, right PMHinSC?
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm : “PMHinSC claims ‘The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause.’ And the globe *may* be only 8,000 years old, having been created at that time divine force, isn’t that right PMHinSC?”
Sarcasm is PR not science.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm: “And respectable scientists can be found who believe *both* hypotheses, isn’t that correct PMHinSC?”
I would hope that you would consider the following (who disagree with your absolute position that only manmade CO2 is causing global warming) to be respectable scientists:
Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever Doctorate in Physics,
Freeman Dyson Emeritus Professor of Physics (widely considered one of the world’s most distinguished scientists) at Princeton,
William Happer Professor of Physics at Princeton.
Dr. James Lovelock (god farther of Manmade Global Warming and guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism) who has renounced his support of AGW
Dr. Judith Curry our Hostess.
These are only a few among thousands.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm: “But neither opinion reflects in any way the broad and widening, strong and strengthening, scientific consensus that AGW is real and serious.
Isn’t that objectively true, PMHinSC?”
I find just the opposite; that more scientist are hedging their previous support. Dr. James Lovelock is just one of many examples. You will find that saying something over and over again isn’t enough to make it true. In the end the scientific process will tell us if it is true.
A fan of *MORE* discourse | August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm |, “Nowadays, more-and-more ordinary folks are seeing climate-change plainly with their own eyes.”
No matter what your long term position is, there has been nothing to see for at least 15 years. People cannot see what does not exist so that is a PR statement.
A fan of *MORE* discourse August 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm: “that means denialism is fated for extinction, right PMHinSC?”
I couldn’t disagree more and am siding with our hostess when she says “Well, so far the uncertainty monster is winning the debate, I am putting my money on the uncertainty monster.”
Please notice that you have not provided any scientific support for your belief. You have used sarcasm, PR, and made unsupported statements. Do you really believe that there are not respected scientists on both sides of this issue? Do you really believe that over the last 15 years “people are seeing climate change plainly”? Belief is a religious concept not a scientific concept.
Watch as PMHinSC moves the goalpost
After claiming: “The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause”
He backs this up with: “I would hope that you would consider the following (who disagree with your absolute position that only manmade CO2 is causing global warming”)…
See what he did there?
He then digs into quite a hypocritical appeal to authority (for a climate skeptic, but then climate skeptics are hypocrits when it comes to authority) by citing such people as Ivar Giaever and Freeman Dyson.
These people might have titles, but they are only as good as their arguments. It’s quite revealing that supposed skeptics like PMHinSC are willing to promote people like Ivar Giaever.
Here are some quotes by Ivar Giaever which show he has less clue about climate than me.
Ivar Giaever: “How can you measure the average temperature of the Earth? I don’t think that’s possible”
Ivar Giaever: “Water vapor is a much much stronger green[house] gas than the CO2. If you look out of the window you see the sky, you see the clouds, and you don’t see the CO2”
I mean, really.
lolw0t August 11, 2013 at 8:17 am: “PMHinSC moves the goalpost.
After claiming: The planet may be naturally warming without any significant anthropogenic cause.He backs this up with: would hope that you would consider the following (who disagree with your absolute position that only manmade CO2 is causing global warming”)…See what he did there? He then digs into quite a hypocritical appeal to authority”
You have created a catch 22 situation for me. In response to a claim that all “reputable scientists” support AGW I listed several reputable scientists who (whether you agree with them or not) do not agree that CO2 is the main driver of climate. If I provide a list I am “appealing to authority”, if I don’t provide a list I am conceding the point. All of the evidence has yet to be presented and consequently neither your list or my list can claim absolute authority.
An odd question.
Here is the seal level data
http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/SeaLevelRise/slr/slr_sla_gbl_free_txj1j2_90.png
Just why do we have the dip in the 2011-2012 period.
Seriously, can anyone here tell me what the hell happened?
This dip appeared in the tide gauges the world over.
Call it 6 mm.
So we have 0.6 cm of ocean, across 3.6×10^8 km2 disappearing, which is a weight of just over 2 teratons of water, 2×10^12 Tons.
Seriously, where does 2 teratons of water hide for 15 months and then slouch back without anyone noticing where it went, where it hide, and where it came back.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/nasa-satellites-detect-pothole-road-higher-seas
Doc
Iolwot has provided a good link but it needs amplification. Firstly the level of accuracy of the combined passes of the monitoring satellites is around 2cm (the handbooks are much less certain and quote a margin of error of up to 15cm but practice makes better)
In addition there is up to 4cm of water suspended in the air -assuming the whole globe measurement not just the ocean area.
As Jason 1 was decommissioned so the opportunity was taken to make various adjustments.
Due to tides, waves , land movement, difficulty of judging heights around coasts, atmospheric vapour and that not all ocean basins are at the same height, the Colorado university methodology of judging sea levels is somewhat uncertain.
If you were involved with a local project-such as sea defences-you would rather take a tide gauge with a long and authenticated history -which is not the same as that used by the IPCC in Chapter 4.
Sea levels are a whole can of moving worms-the 3mm increase per year is highly averaged, some areas show a much greater increase, whilst in other areas sea levels are dropping.
Someone-not me-really needs to write a piece on the usefulness or otherwise of our ongoing desire to average global climate parameters. Its not really very helpful and disguises regional differences
tonyb
@ Fan of more d……. and lolwot.
These two are argumentitive cretins with nothing much to say. From their general tone, they are clearly liberal arts/sociology types who have no education or interest in parsing a scientific argument.
The trouble with blogs such as this is that they attract intellectually challenged cretins who a dazzled by what they consider to their own brilliance.
And I would guess you are an engineer, not a scientist.
Engineers have a history of wandering into other fields and getting it wrong.
Heh. Yeah, and not only that, they’re elitists also!
Fan, that is a good question, when will sea levels start declining. According to some reconstructions, Marcott comes to mind, the world has been cooling for thousands of years. What about sea levels?
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/post-glacial_sea_level.png
“Germany is a Green basketcase:
German’s electricity bills have doubled since 2000. (Germans pay about 40c a KWH.)
Up to 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because they couldn’t pay their bills.
Germany’s renewable energy levy rose from €14bn to €20bn in one year as wind and solar expanded. German households will pay a renewables surcharge of €7.2bn this year alone.
Germany has more than half the worlds solar panels. They generated 40% of Germany’s peak electricity demand on June 6, but practically 0% during the darkest weeks of winter.
Seimens closed it’s entire solar division, losing about €1bn. Bosch is getting out too, it has lost about €2.4bn.
Solar investors have lost almost about €25bn in the past year. More than 5,000 companies associated with solar have closed since 2010.
Germany has phased out nuclear, but is adding 20 coal fired stations. Gas power can’t compete with cheap coal or subsidized renewables and 20% of gas power plants are facing shutdown.
Despite the river of money paid to renewables, emissions have risen in Germany for the last two years.
It’s a case of lose-lose all around, everyone — taxpayers, investors, renewables companies, gas companies — all lost. Waste and stupidity on a colossal scale.”
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/08/the-price-of-moral-vanity-a-catalogue-of-green-economic-disaster-unfolds-across-europe/
John Cook : Rats Cause Global Cooling – https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/john-cook-rats-cause-global-cooling/
Chief: The Black death showed the potential power of rats.
Speaking of potential,. can we return to our previous discussion of the internal energy of CO2? you mention electron dynamic energy. I call it vibrational; you call it potential. I think we are both right, But the electron is so light that it’s contribution to total molecular internal energy is negligable. Consider the degrees of freedom of the COI2 nolecule. It has two heavy outrigger oxygen atoms, each side of the central carbon atom. These can and do vibrate in the molecule bending mode at low IR frequencies, but not at 25C, or 13C: it takes a much higher temperature to excite them. That is the point I am trying to make. What do nyou think?
Kinetic energy is the vibrational and translation components. Potential energy is in the molecular bonds, the energy contained in the mass of the molecule and energy in energy states of electrons.
Anything that has heat – including at 25 degress C – has kinetic energy. Electron energy states are an utterly different consideration. In the atmosphere – I am told – about 7% of IR photons in the right frequency are absorbed an emitted.
The future of American conservatism: Conservation Hawks
Folks who visit Conservation Hawks are visiting the future of American Conservatism.
Good!!!
In 15 or 20 years humans I greatly doubt that CO2 emissions will make the top 25 harms that humans will have done,
Ah yes. A CAGW group that counts the father of modern progressivism, Teddy Roosevelt, as their inspiration, is the future of modern conservatism.
Here’s the future of modern progressivism.
http://www.sarahpac.com/
Fan of More BS – I see you have found a crock of BS … again.
We have already hosed our grandchildren by running up more debt than we, their parents, and them can ever pay back. The idea that burning fossil fuels is our biggest problem is BS. It is based on models that even the modelers admit to be wrong, but the “best” we have, so this is just more alarmist BS piled higher and deeper. And I can assure you it has squat to do with conservatives.
“It (the mistaken belief in AGW) is likely to prove the costliest learning process in human history.”
Paul Collits
LOL … All right! Now Pokerguy’s in the club!
The Climate Etc denialist club, that is!
Do you know any maths?
I thought skeptics didn’t deny AGW?
Ah, smell the ‘skepticism’ !! ;
PG quotes an economist/poltical scientist who’s written an opinion piece in an obscure and dogmatic political journal, where his primary source on climaye science is a book by an investment banker, who is also tied in to fringe conservative political think-tanks.
That’s ‘climate skeptics’ for you.
Sorry, Fan, I don’t link and rarely post URLs.
Michael can’t address the article for spleen venting.
=====================
Koldie understands what fan said with “POKERGUY…..links”, despite the absence of any hyperlink.
Why understand when one can cry – ‘look, squirrel!’
Yes the renowned Todd Tanner, founder and sole member of Conservation Hawks. The future of American Conservatism. Please visit his blog and leave a random comment. So far he’s only gotten about 6. And please make a donation. George Soros is about to cut him off.
LOL yeah, Conservation Hawks is today’s front-page link on Season’s End, the anti-AGW conservation site that is supported by its partner organizations:
• Ducks Unlimited
• Trout Unlimited
• BASS/ESPN Outdoors
• Izaak Walton League of America
• Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies
• Coastal Conservation Association
• American Sportfishing Association
• Pheasants Forever
• Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
• Wildlife Management Institute
• Delta Waterfowl
• Boone and Crockett Club
Say, just how huge *IS* this-here CAGW “conspiracy”???
Or do yah think, Don Monfort, that just maybe folks are starting to see AGW with their own eyes?
In which case, denialism is slated for extinction, ain’t that right?
You are just another hysterical Chicken Little clown. CAGW is near the bottom, or at the bottom, of most folks’ lists of things that they are most concerned about. The CAGW scare has jumped the shark. The greenie Eurocrats are backing out of their ill-conceived abatement schemes. The green energy subsidy gravy train is running out of steam. How are you doing in the carbon market? The Aussie greenie carbon tax dummies are about to get dumped. The pause is killing your cause. Denialism is triumphant. I think that covers it. Get some rest.
Join the bandwagon!
Don Monfort posts:
Gosh Don, your list makes it plain that the Denialist Creed holds within it no elements of rationality, science, foresight, or morality.
That is why denialism is fated for extinction.
Even mainstream Republicans can see that!
Ain’t that right, Don Monford?
Also we have this news item today. I can only hope this time he means it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-his-second-term-obama-becomes-bolder-on-the-environment/2013/08/10/1e65239e-f9f5-11e2-a369-d1954abcb7e3_story.html
Kentucky is trying to decide whether to teach climate change and evolution to their children. They passed one hurdle apparently, now on to the state house.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/kentucky-science-standards_n_3732650.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.’
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
This paper has been discussed on another thread.
Let’s deconstruct it.
Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27).
Look guys – you have stuffed up and the planet is cooling for decades at least – a cooling planet has potential to make us look like idiots and set back carbon mitigation for generations.
However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.
To be honest the planet might warm or cool and we don’t have a freaking clue which – but we still don’t think changing the atmosphere without having a freaking clue as to potential outcomes is the best idea ever.
To be honest the planet might warm or cool and we don’t have a freaking clue.
Actually we have better than a clue. We have actual data.
We have data for the past ten thousand years. Earth warms, then cools, then warms, then cools, then warms, then cools. That is much better than a clue. We warmed, we cooled, we warmed, we cooled, we have now warmed again, we will next cool again.
Hard to tell what you think you mean by data – but repeating we warm – we cool over and over again doesn’t mean a damn thing. Assume we got it already and that no one gives a rat’s arse but Jabberwocky.
I think you are a deluded ‘blog scientist’ with a simplistic and misguided one dimensional blog theory for a system with many degrees of freedom.
Try reading some actual science over a broad spectrum and build a picture that has depth and complexity. Either that say something else occasionally. Show you have a sense of humour. Quote some poetry. Do a song and dance.
“If global warming is over when will the sea levels stop rising”
Probably within 10 to 30 years given that there will be some retained heat inertia like the poles continuing to melt for a little while after mid summer.
There should then be a pause (wow) and then a downslope.
Jim D how do you tell a pause from a natural variation? Clue no one knows . It is only in hindsight when it continues down that you can say that was a pause (or the other).
Your claim that there is no pause has no merit other than showing your position on AGW. However a pause has to start somewhere and when it does there will be a hiatus. I can always argue that any hiatus is the start of a pause. And be right or wrong. On the other hand you can only be wrong when you say there is no pause as your argument is yet to be tested by time, whereas my argument has already started.
A pause is irrelevant to climate unless it shows up in a 30-year average. It hasn’t even made a dent yet. We can wait and see if it shows up, but it could be a long wait, so I’m not holding my breath.
“If global warming is over when will the sea levels stop rising”
Sea Level goes up when earth is warming and goes down when earth is cooling. We have been warming. That is over, or almost over and sea level rise is over or almost over. It will start down again as the cooling occurs.
“We have been warming. That is over, or almost over and sea level rise is over or almost over. It will start down again as the cooling occurs.”
Heh come on this is transparently nonsensiccal.
By your own argument warming is not over if sea level continues to rise. So why do you say “We HAVE been warming. That is over,”
Then you backpeddle a bit and say “or almost over”
Well which is it? You mean you don’t know? Are we warming or not? Is it over or not?
angech writes: “Probably within 10 to 30 years given that there will be some retained heat inertia like the poles continuing to melt for a little while after mid summer.”
But but but
I have been told by skeptics that the poles are not melting!
You know you guys keep switching argument. One second you are telling me the ocean is not heating up (the world has stopped warming!)
The next you claim Greenland melt isn’t as bad and Antarctic isn’t melting.
Now you claim oh yes sea level rise is continuing because Greenland and Antarctica are melting. Thermal Inertia.
But if you really believe the world has stopped heating up, then that requires greenland and antarctic melt to have accelerated in recent years to be able to explain why sea level is still rising fast (or faster?) as ever.
Oh dear, it’s getting hard for climate denial.
And continually shifting the goalposts does not help
Some people think it is a 13 year pause, some say it is 17 if you draw the line right, but ignore that cliff before it.
‘Skill is improved significantly relative to predictions made with incomplete knowledge of the ocean state, particularly in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans. Thus these results point towards the possibility of routine decadal climate predictions. Using this method, and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing, we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged. Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.’ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html
‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27).’ ttp://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
Some have both theories and models – although temporary in a wild climate may be over egging the chaotic pudding.
Just as some have practical and pragmatic responses to carbon emissions and some have magical, space cadet solutions.
I agree, it’s a cliff. The greater the cliff, the less you should ignore it.
Maybe this: Agreeing it can be described different ways and it’s better to keep as many different descriptions of it in one’s head as possible. Therefore not shutting down lines of thought that might aid in understanding. As long as I am not expected to keep an open mind…
So Swanson’s paper says large natural variability also implies large climate sensitivity to forcing. Interesting that the models underestimate this variability, because it has implications.
No Jim – it says that climate shifts. This is a significantly different concept to that of sensitivity.
‘Sensitive dependence nonetheless does exist in the climate system, as well as in climate models — albeit in a very different sense from the one claimed in the linear work under scrutiny — and we illustrate it using a classical energy balance model (EBM) with nonlinear feedbacks. EBMs exhibit two saddle-node bifurcations, more recently called “tipping points”, which give rise to three distinct steady-state climates, two of which are stable. Such bistable behavior is, furthermore, supported by results from more realistic, nonequilibrium climate models. In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point. We discuss briefly how the distance to the bifurcation may be related to the strength of Earth’s ice-albedo feedback.’ http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0253
Empahsis mine.
You can tell an objective method by one that is not sensitive to start and end points. Decadal averages fit the bill, e.g. 2003-2013 minus 1993-2003, which gives 0.14 degrees warming robustly even changing the end points by a year or so.
CH, now you are not quoting the Swanson paper you did before where it mentions sensitivity and variability. Do you want to go back and find it, or should I quote it for you?
Jim D: “So Swanson’s paper says large natural variability also implies large climate sensitivity to forcing.”
I think you are correct.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/04/scenarios-2010-2040-part-iii-climate-shifts/#comment-28100 – Tomas Milanovic on Tsonis 2007.
Once there: Find: genuflexion
I found that interesting. I don’t know much about chaos theory and Milanovic’s comments helped me with that.
Then when you look at SkS’s reaction to Tsonis, I think I see that, they can’t decide if they have to attack or not?
No – I am quoting another highly credentialed scientist in Michael Ghil describing exactly what is meant by ‘sensitivity’ in a coupled nonlinear system. It is a bifurcation parameter. The system shifts abruptly and out of proportion with the initial forcing. It is not a constant – it is large in the vicinity of a phase shift. It may be negative or positive and of varying strength. There are a number of control variables in the system – not just CO2.
Observation shows a ‘Momentous Pacific Climate Shift’ to a cool mode in 1998/2001. These last for 20 to 40 years. Ignore the models, the theory and the observations as much as you like Jim. It doesn’t change reality.
Ragnaar, I am not sure I believe that large sensitivity goes with large natural variability in models. I have to see the reasoning for that. It is not obvious to me, but I can maybe see how it relates to how quickly the ocean surface temperatures can change.
CH and Ragnaar, Swanson says this: ” …theoretical arguments suggest that a more variable climate is a more sensitive climate to imposed forcings (13). Viewed in this light, the lack of modeled compared to observed interdecadal variability (Fig. 2B) may indicate that current models underestimate climate sensitivity. ”
Gulp.
I see your point Jim B about end points. I like break points. If we entertain the thought that they might be significant then waiting longer before we recognize them, has some downside. It’s a trade off either way, I think.
Ragnaar, if you are looking for steps, you’ll find those too, but they are always upwards. It is connect the dots.
‘… as the future evolution of the global mean temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum due entirely to internal variability that lie well outside the envelope of a steadily increasing global mean temperature.’
ftp://starfish.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/pub/ocean/CCS-WG_References/NewSinceReport/March15/Swanson%20and%20Tsonis%20Has%20the%20climate%20recently%20shifted%202008GL037022.pdf
It is still not sensitivity as you understand it Jim. It is the potential for abrupt and nonlinear change.
‘ In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point.’
Jim D:
Yes I believe he said that. My other post suggested a reason for that. I didn’t rule what he said out, I don’t know enough about the whole subject.
CH, in the sentence I quoted, there doesn’t seem to be another way to interpret sensitivity except the standard one. I am not ready to believe this quote yet, but I just mentioned it because it was in that paper.
‘ In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point.’ – Chief’s post.
This I can follow.
Yes, tipping points often go with large albedo changes. I think the Arctic sea-ice loss is one such tipping point that we are in the middle of.
Jim D: “I am not sure I believe that large sensitivity goes with large natural variability in models.” If there is natutal varibility and the models don’t recognize it enough, downward natural varibility if it is happening, could be suppressing some of the effect of CO2. Masking it.
A small change in a control variable results in an abrupt shift in system behaviour. Exactly the behaviour that Ghil described.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/bifurcations.png.html?sort=3&o=51
This is the new climate paradigm in which the old ideas of ordered climate responses and constant sensitivity cease to have any meaning at all.
BTW – decreased albedo in the Arctic is probably not a factor.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/detection-images/climate-cloud-mamseries.jpg
Jim D:
As I struggle with chaos theory I see steps. You pointed out the last step was up earlier. I agree. As the temperature did step higher, and then seems to have plateaued since then. I can’t reconcile things at this point.
Chief:
Did someone change the definition of feedback from its classical one? Engineers have made this comment. If you say that X is 3X because of feedback. You are saying some feedback process holds it at 3X instead of accelerating it out of control. Is this shortcutting things instead of understanding them? It might have been Hansen in 1984. Saying X is 3X is saying that first the feedback is positive, then it’s negative when you reach 3X. Maybe it makes sense because of Plank’s law.
“Jim D
You can tell an objective method by one that is not sensitive to start and end points”
Or you fit to a nth order polynomial and then integrate the polynomial, which is the typical way one gets rates of complex wave functions.
That’s how the morons outside climate science do it.
Gerald Roe:
The more positive the feedbacks are, the greater the variance: Anomalies are stored up and remembered over longer periods of time, leading to larger excursions. Again, this reflects the integrative nature of a system that does not eliminate perturbations efficiently. This is one reason
why the claims that the global temperature record primarily reflects natural variability and not anthropogenic forcing miss the mark a little in regard to the implications for global warming. If the temperature reconstructions reflect high natural variability of global mean temperature,
then odds are that the climate system is even more sensitive to external forcing (i.e., the positive feedbacks are even larger).
[Response: Wayne, please note that this is Kyle’s article not mine, though I did encourage him to write it for us. I think the interesting question raised (though not definitively answered) by this line of work is the extent to which some of the pause in warming mid-century might have been more due to decadal ocean variability rather than aerosols than is commonly thought. If that is the case, then a pause or temporary reduction in warming rate could recur even if aerosols are unchanged. Learning how to detect and interpret such things is important, lest a temporary pause be confused with evidence for low climate sensitivity. –raypierre]
Roe makes 2 assumptions. All watts are created equal and do not have different feedbacks, and all variation is forced. Neither assumption is very supportable.
I’m not sure what Pierre was thinking. Of course an extended pause would reduce sensitivity estimates. That which can dampen can amplify.
A chaotic system has control variables and multiple positive and negative feedbacks.
There are multiple controls variables – most of them quite naturally creating responses in ocean and atmosphere circulation that change substantially change the Earth energy budget. CO2 is superimposed as another control variable on an already abruptly changing complex dynamical system. Let me know when we have a handle on all of the multiple feedbacks and all of the interactions.
I suggest that sea surface temperature is inversely related to cloud formation. And that SST is driven by top down modulation by UV/ozone interaction in he stratosphere. So a positive feedback to solar intensity. Again – warming in the Arctic melts ice – thermohaline circulation decreases – snow and ice increases. A negative feedback to warming that has been central to climate in the past 2.58 million years.
@Jim D,
Sensitivity will be a non-linear function in a system near its bifircation. Away from this the sensitivity can be linearised.
The loss of Arctic sea-ice would be a bifurcation, because it is a positive feedback that adds to the others, and is also not easily reversed. The climate has a hysteresis effect with regard to these ice areas. There is the old idea of catastrophe theory that applies here. Perhaps that is where the C in CAGW comes from, because it implies these tipping points that are not reversible with just CO2 reductions to recent levels.
I agree with all of these, Thanks for listing them so conveniently fan:
Scientists are hysterical Chicken Little clowns.
• CAGW is near the bottom of most folks’ lists.
• The CAGW scare has jumped the shark.
• Greenie Eurocrats are backing out.
• Green energy subsidies are running out of steam.
• How are you doing in the carbon market?
• The Aussie greenie carbon tax dummies are about to get dumped.
• The pause is killing your cause.
• Denialism is triumphant.
“The CAGW scare has jumped the shark.” When?
Perhaps when it was said, the Science is Settled.
Seriously Ragnaar, you just exposed your underwear. It’s true believer brand.
JCH:
I thought I was just having a little fun.
Perhaps it was I who jumped the shark.
pokerguy,
@ August 10, 2013 at 11:07 pm
good summary
Unusual activity of the Sun during
recent decades compared to the
previous 11,000 years
According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Interesting, figure 3, it looks like they’ve spliced instrumental data onto proxy data.
Clearly signed and referenced. There’s your late 20th century warming by the way (sunspot numbers, red curve).
lolwot, there is nothing wrong with doing that, only in the way your heroes, dishonest climate scientists, did it.
Edim, Hoyt and Schatten is the first reference.
========
Right there’s nothing wrong with doing it, until climate scientists do it, then it’s wrong. I could swear someone on an earlier thread was telling me instrumental and proxy data must never be compared like that
They can if there’s sufficient overlap to demonstrate equivalence.
that does makes sense
And in your heroes’ case there was sufficient overlap to demonstrate non-equivalence. So they chose to hide the non-equivalence.
Are you beginning to understand the corruption now?
==================
Sorry to ruin the fun, but Little Ice Age cometh:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:360/from:1910
Let me bring this out as a new part.
@@@@@
Pekka Pirilä | August 10, 2013 at 6:04 pm |
Jim,
On one point I agree. Climate sensitivity in some form is the key. (Transient climate response may be the most relevant of the alternative measures of climate sensitivity.)
What i don’t accept at all are your views on what’s known about climate sensitivity. Your arguments are generic enough to justify claims like the one of my previous comment. You haven’t been able to present anything more specific and for that reason you resort to false generalities.
Generalities are almost always wrong when applied to a controversial matter. They are a poor excuse for not knowing enough about the subject to discuss more relevant issues.
@@@@@
My original statement was
“With respect to CAGW, one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.”
Now let me ask you. What are your objections to this statement? Is it a “false generality”? Is it wrong? Is it too general? Is it a “poor excuse for not knowing enough about the subject to discuss more relevant issues”? What?
Jim,
Let me see if this analogy can show you where you are wrong.
Since we can’t do a controlled experiment on adolescent drug use, we can’t demonstrate that drug use is bad for children.
The point being that we can take data and measure effects even without having any control over any of the variables we measure.
We know drought is bad for crops even knowing we can not cause drought.
Do you consider a change from “climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero” to “climate sensitivity has never been and can not be measured” to be significant?
Bob, you write “Let me see if this analogy can show you where you are wrong.”
Your analogy is irrelevant, and nothing to do with the issue. Overly simplistic, the scientiifc method in physics requires that you observe something, form a hypothesis, deduce what else should happen if the hypothesis is correct, and then go out and measure this. For CAGW, we observe that when CO2 rises, global temperatures rise, and hypothese that the rise in temperature is caused by the rising CO2. To show that this hypothesis is correct we need to measure climate sensitivity. We cannot measure climate sensitivity, so CAGW remains a hypothesis. Simple.
You also write “Do you consider a change from “climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero” to “climate sensitivity has never been and can not be measured” to be significant?”. You are misquoting me. The two statements I have written are not what you claim. The second one is correct; the first is wrong. The first ought to be “What little empirical data we have, gives a strong indication that the climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero”. When written correctly, both statements are completely accurate, and neither needs changing..
> [T]he scientiifc method in physics requires that you observe something, form a hypothesis, deduce what else should happen if the hypothesis is correct, and then go out and measure this.
This last this needs to be clarified.
That science can be done without “weasel words” (Jim’s epithet) like infer has yet to be shown.
Willard, you write “This last this needs to be clarified.”
Please note that you omitted my “Overly simplistic”. I am not writing a long learned thesis. For CAGW, I have defined it. The “this” is climate sensitivity.
> For CAGW, I have defined it. The “this” is climate sensitivity.
You described what you call the scientiifc method in physics, and yet you can’t think of any other example than CS to reject CS, Jim.
Fancy that.
Willard, you write “yet you can’t think of any other example than CS to reject CS, Jim.”
I dont NEED any other example except CS. If CS cannot be measured, then CAGW cannot be validated. Period. Simple
Jim
“the scientiifc method in physics requires that you observe something, form a hypothesis, deduce what else should happen if the hypothesis is correct, and then go out and measure this.”
Talk to me about Larnder’s analysis of the weakness in American bombers and his work that lead to the placement of the mid Canada line. There was no testing of the hypothesis. They used the best information and their understanding of what might happen to make decisions.
In short, you know from your own work in OR that we very often cannot go out and measure things.
We look at the loss rates of our aircraft. We hypothesize that if this loss rate continues we will be out of planes in 1 month.
we do not go out and measure whether this really happens or not.
we advise the general that he needs to act. we dont wait for disaster
to test our hypothesis.
We predict that our missile defense can handle a threat from North Korea.
We test what we can, but we dont ask the Korean’s to launch a full blown attack so we can test our hypothesis.
And there are examples from physics if you like.
We observe that an asteroid has a certain mass. We predict that if it strikes the earth and hits new york, that the city will be flattened. We do not go out and measure this. Even if we could we would not. And if we knew that an asteroid was interceptable before it hit new york, we would not wait and say ” first we test the hypothesis”
Physics is not all we know. And lab physics is an even smaller universe of all we know. When you make labratory physics the measure of all knowledge you end up not being able to say much of anything that really matters.
We see lab physics as an ideal. but just because its an ideal doesnt mean that other forms of knowing are useless.
> I dont NEED any other example except CS.
Spoken like a true Scotsman, Jim.
Steven, you write “In short, you know from your own work in OR that we very often cannot go out and measure things. ”
You have a wonderful way with words. Of course science, physics. is more that making measurements. But there are times when measurements are essential. There is no use our discussing all the wondeful things that happen in science when measurements are not required. And such discussions have nothing to do with CAGW.
This blog is about CAGW, CAGW is a perfectly viable hypothesis. It will remsain a viable hypothesis, and nothing more, unless and until CS has been measured. Why you and the rest of the alarmists cannot accept this simple truth, I have no idea.
And until CAGW is more than a hypothesis, there is no need to ruin the world economy on the basis that it might be right. Particularly since such little empirical; data as we have gives a strong indicartion that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a negligible effect of temperatures. And the longer we go on adding CO2 to the atmosphere, the more empirical data we are acquiring that indicates that CO2 has no effect on temperatures.
The IPCC has done the world and science an enormous disservice by claiming that CAGW is more than a hypothesis. I doubt I could ever forgive all the alarmisrts, such as yourelf, for bringing science, which I love, down to the level shown by the scientific nonsense statements on CAGW by so many of the learned scientific societies
“Jim,
Let me see if this analogy can show you where you are wrong.
Since we can’t do a controlled experiment on adolescent drug use, we can’t demonstrate that drug use is bad for children.”
Yes, of course.
In fact billions of dollars a spend on drugs for children because it’s considered good for children.
I believe drugs tend to kill more adults than children.
Nor do we know whether whipping children is good or bad for children.
Humans have been taking various drugs for thousands of years- one can’t say whether some use of drugs is good or bad.
I would guess it’s worse to put a human in prison than taking drugs- though taking various types of drugs may be similar in some respects to being in a prison.
Various drugs can make one impaired. One should not drink a lot of alcohol and attempt the operate a one ton vehicle design to drive over
100 mph. Nor should you drink a lot alcohol within a day period of time.
Same could said about salt. Red wine in moderation is suppose to be generally good for one health and emotional state.
It seems one of worst effects of drugs is one can be easily drugged- one can be unaware, that one has being drugged by someone.
This is also true in regard some poisons as well as drugs.
It seems controlling substances which can used against a person, is far more important than controlling substances if which people deliberately choose to use.
And is this deliberate choice which is aspect concerning children and drug use. That’s moral aspect.
One generally can’t expect children to make correct decisions about most things, and parents provide guidance to children. So they don’t fall into swimming pool or some well. Or whatever.
And generally, the matter of whether children takes any kinds of drugs or what they eat is mostly something decided by parents.
And largely because parents don’t want their children taking certain drugs, that we have prohibition against certain types of drug used by anyone. And such laws at a federal level were probably mostly a mistake.
“With respect to CAGW, one cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, so it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity.”
Jim, I think it would be possible to do controlled experiments at least on small ‘parts’ of the atmosphere, by creating artificial CO2 domes at chosen places (off-shore, deserts..) and latitudes. The CO2 domes could be created by relocating emission points of coal-fired power plants to desired locations, or by some other means. The domes would have increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations closer to the emission points. So, we would have variations in CO2 from background (~400 ppm) to some maximum achievable concentration at r = 0. Then we could measure temperatures, CO2 concentrations, humidity, wind, surface heat fluxes etc. This should be cheaper than a single satellite and we could learn something.
Edim, you write “Jim, I think it would be possible to do controlled experiments at least ”
Maybe so, maybe not. But such experiments have not been done, and may be technically infeasible or too expensive. Until such efforts have been completed, my major point has not been addressed. Climate sensitivity, in 2013, has NOT been MEASURED. That is the issue
Ah, but it’s been estimated poorly, the poverty enhanced by bias and dedication to the ’cause’ of the Piltdown Mann, Mike Hulme, and a myriad of other biased advocates wearing lab coats.
=====================
Oh, I agree about that. My point is that if the consensus climate community wanted to measure it, it could be possible.
Bart R is pushing a position that, as I understand it, demands “privatizing” the human contribution to the carbon cycle from fossil fuels by imposing a tax designed to make non-fossil energy competitive with fossil, remitting the receipts to the populace on a per capita basis. The rational for this demand is that adding fossil carbon to the biosphere represents a risk, that should be paid for.
Well, it’s my opinion that windmills and other devices designed to extract energy from moving atmosphere (free air in the environment) represent a similar risk, so I’m proposing a similar solution.
Let me start with the risk. The way the weather works, air masses in different areas have different temperature profiles, which results in different pressure/height relationships. This in turn results in lateral pressure gradients at various altitudes. These gradients are balanced by air movement (wind), and the geostrophic effect of these winds that results from the Coriolis effect. This situation holds throughout most of the troposphere poleward of perhaps 5 degrees of latitude, except for the boundary layers.
The upper boundary layer, the tropopause, is a complex interaction with the stratosphere, which is hyper-stable but also has lateral pressure gradients balanced by geostrophic winds.
The lower layer is what’s important for wind power, as well as its risk. Here, friction with the surface causes the average velocity of air movement to be lower than necessary to balance pressure differentials, resulting in net transfer of air from higher to lower pressure. Note that this only happens at the boundary layer(s), so pressure differences caused by convection, on scales ranging from local (thunderstorms) to planetary (jet streams) are resolved at the boundary.
The average profile of wind velocity in the lower boundary is normally described by the Ekman spiral (normally studied in the ocean, but also present in the atmosphere over both land and sea). The height of the spiral, and the amount of lateral air movement (between air masses), are dependent (AFAIK) on the amount of relief at the surface, which influences the nature of the turbulent “friction” in the boundary layer.
Wind turbines, which extract energy from air movement in the lower boundary layer, will have the effect of increasing the effective relief of the surface, which in turn will raise the height of the Ekman spiral and increase the net flow of air from high to low pressure at the bottom of the Troposphere. This will have a significant effect on the climate, the magnitude and nature of which are unknown.
Pending better modeling, the risk from wind turbines should be considered at least equivalent to the risk from dumping fossil CO2. Just as there are demands to “privatize” dumping rights by having the government charge a fee which is remitted to the populace on a per capita basis, the risk of thickening the boundary layer (raising the height of the Ekman spiral) justifies the demand to “privatize” extraction of energy from the wind.
The gov’mint needs to charge a fee on use of wind power, and remit all the proceeds to the populace on a per capita basis. The amount should be determined by the “Law of Supply and Demand”, in a fashion similar to what Bart R is demanding for fossil carbon. This needs to be done as soon as possible, so as to reduce distortion of the market for wind power by people risking the climate without paying for it.
I want my money!
Had there been a population needing energy near the mountain gap by the Boedele Depression in Africa, and had windmills been placed in that gap to supply it, then the Amazon Basin would be dying for lack of nutrients.
===========================
Thanks kim, I didn’t know about that. Talk about teleconnections! I’ve suspected for many years that climate changes a few thousand years ago might have resulted (partly) from massive African pasturing of domestic goats, as well as perhaps destruction of forests in the Sahara to increase pasture land. This could be a mechanism.
I’ve been touting this point for years, but not as eloquently or wittily as you just did. Granted, there is a huge amount of energy in wind, but once we take significant amounts of energy from it, it will change weather and climate. There is a large class of people downwind, all of us.
========================
AK | August 11, 2013 at 8:54 am |
I was raised that it is kinder to never attribute to actual malice what could be adequately explained by utter incompetence.
You’ve had this explained to you before, and at great length. You have access to the prezi that lays it out in simple terms a child of twelve could follow without great difficulty. You’ve asked questions and had them answered at length. You are capable of following and embracing the faulty ‘cheap energy’ argument, and even demonstrate enough elementary familiarity with the most basic ideas of Economics to differentiate supply from demand.
So I must believe you’re maliciously misrepresenting what I’ve said in so insulting a manner to your readers on purpose as a straw man, to confuse and mislead, to mischaracterize for the sake of interfering with an idea that shows your ironically named ‘cheap energy’ euphemism for state subsidized fossil fuels for the costly communist fraud it is.
Pushing?
Sure. Whatever. Explaining. Setting out. Illustrating. Showing. Delivering. Illuminating. Whatever word turns your crank.
..a position that, as I understand it,
Wow you use a lot of words to say very little. I’m pretty sure you don’t actually understand my position as you assert it to be, since you just can’t be that utterly incompetent.
demands
Huh. Does the position demands it?
The situation demands it?
I’m pushing Capitalism, a reasoned system of Economic thought and methods designed to most efficiently allocate scarce resources fairly among all citizens.
Methodical reasoning shows that what can be made private property, and thereby can be traded in the Market, ought be to allow everyone fair access to limited resources in a way that maximizes utility to every citizen. It is not the matter of joking or games or religion or rhetoric. When you lie to pervert Capitalism, you strike at hardworking Americans and honest businessmen trying to provide for their families.
How do we judge if a thing can be made private, under Capitalism?
There are five tests:
1. Is it commodifiable in lucrative transactions? (Can it be bought and sold?)
So far as CO2E in lucrative exchanges is concerned, commodifiability is already patently true. Where carbon can be sold to burn, everything connected with the burning of the carbon can be treated as part of that exchange at that point of transaction.
2. Is it scarce?
What demonstrates that it decreases with use is scarce. CO2E isn’t decreasing, so it’s just wrong to call it scarce or seek to privatize the CO2E in the air. Unburned CO2 in the Market, which we’ve noted is already a lucrative commodity, can only be intended for burning, and that burning dumps waste into the Carbon Cycle, which performs the scarce service of returning CO2E out of the air. As the level of CO2E in the air is significantly increasing, we know the Carbon Cycle to be scarce. We don’t need to demonstrate a human source for the rise. We don’t care the source of the rise. We care whether the rise shows scarcity, which it does.
3. Is it rivalrous?
If multiple people make use of the same slice of the resource equally and freely, it isn’t rivalrous. We’ve had demonstrated that CO2E level added into the atmosphere takes many years, decades or centuries to be removed by the Carbon Cycle, though individual molecules may recycle faster, the equilibrium level is something no rival may share the same slice of once one party has emitted CO2E into it, at least for a significant portion of a human lifetime.
4. Is it excludable?
Is there a way to prevent access in the Market to the lucrative commodity or service?
At first blush, one observes you can’t really go around blocking up people’s breath. Well, you can. You can dump enough pollution into the air that people stop breathing, but that’s one of the things we’d hope to avoid.
As the sale of carbon-based commodities intended for release into the air as CO2E is excludable, and as the intensity of CO2E in these commodities is well-known (by a treaty signed by all nations, a standard of weights and measures), yes, CO2E is excludable at the point of sale of carbon-containing commodities intended to emit CO2E.
5. Is it administrable?
Yes. Clearly. Nations administer VAT. Nations administer payroll and income tax systems that include returns to citizens. Combine the two systems, and nations in enforcing the standards of weights and measures of the sale of their private citizens’ Carbon Cycle right to use at the level of VAT collection can pay their private citizens their fair share by direct payroll return.
That’s “privatizing” but not as AK falsely and wrongly asserts in his straw man, “the human contribution to the carbon cycle from fossil fuels by imposing a tax designed to make non-fossil energy competitive with fossil,” but the private dumping of CO2E into the air that requires the services of the Carbon Cycle to dispose of. It’s a disposal fee, “remitting the receipts to the populace on a per capita basis.”
The rational [sic] for this is _NOT_ a demand .. that adding fossil carbon to the biosphere represents a risk, that should be paid for. The rationale is that what can be made private, ought be, and people can then decide for themselves as individuals what they want.
That Risk is involved, and consent for the acceptance of that Risk is not sought — since such consent is not administrably feasible — we can justify using the Law of Supply and Demand for all sellers as a single monopolistic entity. There are plenty of alternatives to CO2E-sourced energy, so the Law of Supply and Demand still applies, even with this single seller, and the condition of unconsented expropriation of private property is addressed with fairness and consideration.
Does this work for AK’s absurdly broken wind emissions?
No.
While windmills are commodifiable, there are kites, sailboats, buildings, towers, antennae, utility poles, tall trees, aircraft, balloons, convection due smokestacks in countless conformations outside the Market’s ability to control AK’s broken wind.
Wind further does not demonstrate scarcity, however much AK asserts his broken wind is blocked up by herniation of his large Ekman spirals. As the system of wind is complex and nonlinear, and not predictive, AK’s broken efforts at wordslaw to show scarcity are a mathematical impossibility. In contrast, we know CO2E levels rise, as observed by Keeling and countless adequate paleo proxies.
AK’s wind breaking is not excludable. How are you going to stop someone from planting seeds of tall trees, building kites, launching balloons?
AK’s broken wind is not administrable, too.
So regardless of AK’s broken wind risk argument, there’s no redress for it in Capitalism. He’ll have to go to the EPA and get it to cork up his broken wind by red tape.
Is it readable? Who cares.
No, you’re pushing a bunch of absurd, armwaving, nonsense that you call “capitalism”.
Reasoning, methodical or otherwise, is a method of progressing from assumptions to conclusions. GIGO.
Are you, or are you not, talking about fossil carbon? If yes, how do you deal with mixes, or special cases such as bio-fuels created from CO2 captured from stack emissions? (This applies to administration as well.) If no, well it seems totally unfair, as well as counter-productive, to apply your carbon-tax to renewable carbon fuels as well as fossil.
Energy derived from wind is easibly commodifiable, and other interference with boundary layer friction can be ignored as too little to worry about.
It most certainly does. The total amount of energy in wind is finite, and if we assume that a limited fraction can be extracted without damaging the climate, that’s finite too. It’s also a good parallel with natural sequestration of fossil carbon: we don’t know how much of either limited resource we can use without causing damage. We don’t know to what extent human dumping of fossil CO2 is responsible for the rise in atmospheric CO2, we don’t even know for sure if that rise isn’t due to temperature increases as Salby has suggested. It’s quite plausible that the environment’s ability to absorb fossil CO2 is hundreds of times larger than the amount humans are dumping. Just like wind power.
As long as they don’t extract energy, we don’t bother.
Bottom line, a tax on wind power, with its rate set by the “Law of Supply and Demand” is a very good parallel to a tax on (fossil?) carbon. The proceeds should be distributed to the populace on a per captia basis. As soon as possible.
I want my money!
AK | August 12, 2013 at 9:10 am |
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’ve read. But the sincerest post on CC is still pretty dubious, and you can’t flatter an idea.
If you believe what is being pushed isn’t capitalism, take the idea on its face and use whatever generally accepted definition of capitalism you can defend and use that.
If you think there are garbage assumptions, identify them specifically, and without the glittering generality incumbent in the hypocritical phrase “a bunch of absurd, armwaving, nonsense“; I’d be delighted to get a clear description of your exact rational objection, if you had one.
And yes, I’m saying “carbon”, not “fossil carbon”; I regard biomass as a scam, as generally the carbon being burned would otherwise be sequestered for longer out of the system, buried and composted by microbes at a lower net rate of emission. If an innovator comes up with a net less emissive program for biomass treatment that sequesters more than less — such as if the University of Houston pyoil research (that leaves the majority of biomass residue in the form of biochar and hydrotreats the rest to be lower in carbon intensity) where combined with the university of Arizona study in solar energy to store peak solar as usable octane and diesel — that abstract and unusual case would benefit because, even though the carbon in the mix is still paying the fees, the sequestration is doubtlessly a form of waste disposal that avoids even higher carbon disposal fees.
So your seeming ‘unfairness’ is just not an issue.
Also, you continue to mistake carbon for energy. The idea of privatizing the carbon cycle is not to tax energy. It is not restricted to fuels. Asphalt isn’t ‘energy’, yet emits huge amounts of carbon volatiles into the air that are definitely GHGs. Some industrial chemicals are made to be sprayed on surfaces for various reasons that will then evaporate to GHGs. If it is disposed into the air and is a GHG, it ought pay the service fee.
How are you so hung up on ‘energy’ that you can’t see this isn’t about that?
We’re not talking about carbon ‘energy’, just carbon dumping. A parallel idea wouldn’t discuss wind ‘energy’, but just your broken wind dumping model. Demonstrate a Keeling Curve for broken wind that can be ascribed to windmills (WHICH ARE ALREADY PRIVATE, SO YOUR POINT ISN’T EVEN MOOT) even one percent as significant as the impact on wind of rising CO2E, and you might be able to make a case for broken wind privatization.
Overcome your OCD and focus on what’s being discussed, not some straw man you’ve constructed in your own head.
Because if you need to talk about something I’m not talking about, that’s fine. Just don’t ascribe it to my argument.
So, for instance, if somebody follows the suggestions in my latest blog post, and comes up with a way to bio-convert hydrogen from solar electrolysis to methane using CO2 extracted from the air (or sea, which in turn extracts it from the air with a settling time of ~1 year, IIRC), they’d pay the tax despite the fact that they’re just recycling carbon already in the air? That’s absurd.
Greenhouse gases represent a risk to the climate (among other things). Energy extracted from the wind represents a parallel risk. It is about energy when it comes to wind power.
You forgot burning lime for concrete.
I’ve got work to do, I’ll address the rest as I have time.
AK | August 12, 2013 at 11:17 am |
“.. a way to bio-convert hydrogen from solar electrolysis to methane using CO2 extracted from the air (or sea,..), they’d pay the tax despite the fact that they’re just recycling carbon already in the air?”
Wow. Getting CO2 from the air or sea, where it’s measured in ppmv, is very much the hard way to do this, though I don’t deny it’s possible. (However, it is taking up resources that could be used more advantageously to get CO2 from emissions at flue, but that’s not my issue.)
If you want to sell your CO2 disposal service in competition with the carbon cycle, who am I to stand in the way of that?
Go for it.
Just adjust your prices, and pay the owners of the carbon cycle their share for your use of it. They won’t charge you anything for taking CO2 out of the system. As that’s not commodifiable, scarce, rivalrous, excludable or administrable.
And as explained before you chased your tail, wind mills are already privatized. You’re arguing for doing something that’s already done.
Also, I assure you, lime is always on my mind.
Using solar energy to get hydrogen from water would seem to be a better and more practical idea. Carbon-neutral too.
@Jim D…
Far from practical. The technology for storing and transporting hydrogen is very far from “shovel-ready”. Methane technology is mature. I’d be fine with hydrogen if the technology can become mature in time, but IMO methane will have to fill in for a few decades.
The question is whether the bio-technology for tailored methanogens would be quicker to roll out. IMO it would. And it would be carbon-neutral as well, since the carbon would come from the atmosphere in the first place.
@Bart R…
I’m not sure there is any “generally accepted definition of capitalism“, certainly my own working definition while based on older work, has undergone much development during my studies of the Industrial Revolution and other social innovations.
I turned out to be much more effort than I expected, as the original documents from which I got my ideas aren’t easily found on the Web, but I can put together some bits and pieces to back up my own summary:
Capitalism is the ideal of investing wealth in the means of production, rather than simply raw materials or finished products. For instance, from Wiki:
This is one out of a large number of somewhat inconsistent definitions present in the article, which I’ve cherry-picked as representative of my own working definition.
From another, “socialist”, site:
This points up the fact that the current systems of capitalism also include a somewhat “free” market in goods, services, and especially investment capital.
Actually, my own studies suggest, to me that something along these lines existed in the archaic and pre-classical Hellenic “city-state” polities. Whether or not it actually did, it can be used to point up a more general idea of “capitalism”:
If a farmer expends his free time on social activities, he is spending wealth in the form of labor, real or potential. This wealth could also be spent clearing rocks from farmland, investing it in improving the current means of production. I find the story of Deucalion interesting:
It’s interesting that the Greek word for “chest” is “arcos”
This might well be a metaphoric reference to such early capitalism, clearing the stones from farmland.
I would derive the name “Prometheus” through syncope from “pro-ment-theos“, ancient sources equate it with “forethought”, which is certainly embodied by capitalism as the ideal of investing wealth in the means of production.
Note that in my (working) definition, capitalism and relatively free markets were essential to the successful Industrial Revolution, but not identical either to it or each other.
“I’m not sure there is any “generally accepted definition of capitalism“, certainly my own working definition while based on older work, has undergone much development during my studies of the Industrial Revolution and other social innovations.”
Capitalism is not socialism. It’s word coined to distinguish socialism
in contrast to it. So, start religion called Mud, Socialism is Mud, Capitalism
is the infidels. Or socialism is this, and capitalism is the stuff other than that.
One could describe capitalism as self selecting specialization, and free
markets. Socialism is governing specialization and markets.
AK | August 13, 2013 at 8:46 am |
Really? Okay, autodidacts are admirable in a number of ways.. spiraling into crackpottery however is not one of the characteristics some autodidacts are prone to that could be considered admirable.
Awe-inspiringly point-missing?
Maybe.
Admirable?
No.
Wouldn’t it be great if education — including self-education — furnished greater clarity of categorization and organization of thoughts and ideas?
To wander so murkily into haphazard and obtuse understanding of such a simple concept as Capitalism — at least how it works — is bizarre.
What I mean when I say Capitalism is the descendant of Adam Smith’s “Natural Liberty”, which even Wikipedia describes more or less decently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalist_theory#Adam_Smith
http://capitalism.columbia.edu/theory-capitalism makes the argument that, as Capitalism is the subject still of new study today, is a dynamic philosophy that evolves as the Market evolves, that views of the theory change as perspective changes, there will always be innovations. In that sense, AK’s approach is not wrong in premise. But to get to the point where he renders the word less than useless?
That’s not how Capitalism works. It’s not an exercise in investing effort to reduce utility.
As this is what’s happened, we clearly need to take another tack.
For the purposes of this discussion about individual choices of what resources to allocate by private negotiation, what I mean when I say Capitalism is a competitive, fair, stable profit-seeking market economy in preference over command and control regulation or supplements or support or gifts or favors at the expense of taxpayers to a select few telling individuals what to do. Both approaches have their place in the effective allocation of resources necessary to a nation justified by the uplifting of its people, but Capitalism prefers the former.
In this sense, privatization removes these decisions about the object of privatization from the government (or, by default, accident, which is often the same as the effects of government) and hands these decisions firmly over to people in the Market by a minimal set of rules of conduct such as standards of weights and measures, enforcement of currency and laws against false advertising and theft.
Economists find several conditions necessary for a more ideal or ‘perfect’ Capitalist market; I focus only on two:
1. Reduction of barriers to entry and exit of sellers (such as subsidies to some that skew competition, arguably overcome generally by subsidies to new innovators for the short term);
2. So clear information for all sellers and buyers regarding prices and offers as practical.
The rest is quibble. My principle is minimizing the role of government as an actor in the Market by giving people the opportunity to decide what they want for themselves, not letting some expert interfere to tell them what they ought do.
If the government takes resources from people — taxes them — sometimes there’s a valid argument for that, like the defense of the nation. When it does this to decide for people that they ought prefer oil or coal more than they would if they were deciding on price — including price of disposal — alone, with perfect knowledge of the cost of that disposal obscured by failing to put a price on it, that’s not cheap energy: that is subsidized fossil and the opposite of Capitalism.
@Bart R…
What an appropriate comment to make about your own absurd notions.
Many people think “Climate” is a simple concept too. A simple “definition” of “Capitalism” would be “that which won the Cold War – against ‘Comunism'”. Indeed, that’s how many use the word. (See gbaikie above.) Your own link has (IMO) roughly the same functional definition, although I suspect they would object to my saying so.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. What you said is the exact opposite of the hypothetical example I gave, where effort is invested in increasing the utility of the means of production, by transforming poor farmland to good, and (as I didn’t mention) using the rocks extracted to create terracing of hillsides, which happened quite often in Classical era Greece.
If we consider farmland as the “means of production”, which it was in that culture, creation of new and/or better farmland constituted investment in means of production just as creation of new and better factories in the 19th century. As such, it was capitalism in action. Moreover, there was (probably) a similar “free market” approach where land was owned and managed by individual farmers, analogous to European land after Enclosure.
Bart
Sadly you again take far too long to make your basic point- which seems to be:
“When it (government) does this to decide for people that they ought prefer oil or coal more than they would if they were deciding on price — including price of disposal — alone, with perfect knowledge of the cost of that disposal obscured by failing to put a price on it, that’s not cheap energy: that is subsidized fossil and the opposite of Capitalism.”
The issue is your statement “with perfect knowledge of the cost of that disposal obscured by failing to put a price on it”
Please consider that there is never “perfect knowledge” of the costs or even generally accepted estimates of the net costs. If government applies the additional costs you advocate to only segments of the energy market and not all providers then government is distorting the marketplace.
AK | August 13, 2013 at 12:29 pm |
I have to agree with Rob Starkey | August 13, 2013 at 11:41 am | that this has gone on far too long for a basic point.
Arguing the definition of Capitalism is, at this point that drags through ancient Greek farms, like arguing the definition of Thermodynamics with Sky Dragon Slayers, or the definition of temperature with stefanthedenier or Myrrh: an unproductive diversion unlikely to lead anywhere, when commonplace and sufficient definitions are available and well-accepted.
If you want to seek to privatize your broken wind, who am I to stand in your way?
Go for it.
It isn’t as if I hadn’t imagined and considered that many other candidates for privatization might follow in CO2E’s path: aerosol particulates, NOx, SOx, mercury (indeed the whole gamut of heavy metals), and on and on. Of all the cases I contemplated — each of them a thousand times more likely valid than I estimate your argument — CO2E recycling by the carbon cycle alone stood up as a present and patent candidate.
If you can get a non-IPCC body that specializes in broken wind — I suspect the NIPCC to be just the group for you — or even some well-funded tax-exempt lobbyists with expert marketers and seasoned tabloid copywriters on its payroll (call it GiantWindbagPollutionFlatulence.org if you like), and put together studies and make a sound argument, I might even be persuaded to support your argument.
But you have to agree, Carbon Cycle privatization is much more valid on every point than your broken wind.
Don Monfort posts:
The reviews are in!
PokerGuy I agree with all of these. Thanks!
Peter Lang Good summary!
Willard (@nevaudit) Join the bandwagon!
Bob “As long as totalitarian – oriented pissant progressives such as yourself exist we will fight to the death.”
———————————————–
The scientific response:
▶ Recognize that no rational scientific dialog is possible with denialists whose faith asserts “scientists are hysterical Chicken Little clowns.”
▶ Reply with simple scientific questions, e.g., “If global warming is over, then when will the oceans stop rising?”
▶ Reply with simple moral questions, e.g., “How will our grandchildren survive on a too-hot planet?”
▶ Reply with simple natural questions, e.g., “What will happen to Nature if we burn all the carbon?”
▶ Denialists have no rational answers to simple natural questions; and their abusive, irrational, cherry-picking, ideologically driven responses invariably serve to isolate denialists in ever-smaller, ever-more-pure ideological “bubbles”
▶ Once isolated in bubbles of ideological purity, denialism can recruit only stupider-and-stupider adherents; the resulting denialist bubbles thus are loud-but-harmeless; most denialists will not recognize that this isolation process is occurring.
———————————————–
Conclusion Climate-change denialism is fated for extinction.
Conclusion Fan? More like ‘CAGW-climate-change is fated
fer extinctshun and CAGW-skepticism feted fer distinctshun.’
A short-term-predickshun:
First ‘hide the decline’ must give us pause,
and next the ‘pause’ that is killing the cause,
then cometh green Eurocrats closing the doors
on costly renewables’ demonstrable flaws …
Uh-oh- soon the collapse of the climate wars.
Bts
Fan,
That a movement promoting self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity leads to its own undoing has yet to be shown.
Even if one is a sceptic, one could answer your questions if you could put them into an intelligible form.
I suspect that “fan of more….” and “lolwot” are basically sociologists so they are incapable of rational scientific or technical thought.
Fan
please watch gavin
…
“Governments around the world have watched Europe as it has moved to implement generous subsidy schemes like Porter’s to meet ambitious green energy goals and race towards a future free of fossil fuels.
But with skyrocketing costs, major infrastructure challenges and biting austerity measures brought on by the debt crisis, some wonder why Europe has gone through the trouble of promising so much green so soon.
Across the English Channel, Germans consumers are waking up to the costs of going green: As of Jan. 1, they are paying 11% more for electricity than they did last year thanks to government plans to replace nuclear plants with wind and solar power that requires significant and constant public money to be made cost effective.”
…
“But her decision had little to do with the safety of Germany’s nuclear reactors, say analysts. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union were worried over regional elections, and federal elections in September: If she wants to remain chancellor she needed to siphon votes from the Greens and Social Democrats, both anti-nuke.
Dubbed the “energy transition,” the move has become a logistical and financial headache for Berlin. Nuclear power had represented one-fifth of the country’s energy supply, and Environment Minister Peter Altmaier recently estimated the shift to renewables could total up to $1.3 trillion by 2030.”
…
“”Eighty percent of households don’t even know what their electricity bill is,” she added. “A lot of people simply don’t think about it – they know their computer bill, their flat-rate (phone bill), their iPad well, but when you ask about electricity they don’t know.”
Politicians in Germany are worried over consumers, aka voters, waking up and the backlash it could create.
Still, the cost of trying to change the climate by reducing CO2 emissions has become too much to bear for other European nations mired in debt or hobbled by overspending.
As austerity measures take hold from Spain to the Netherlands, governments have been rushing to cut the very subsidies for green energy they once eagerly waved through to help the infant sectors grow.”
…
“European governments have now realized this growth – which saw consumers footing the bill for investors’ soaring profit margins – was out of control: The UK and Czech Republic have already cut their subsidies in half, while Italy imposed a cap on new renewable energy providers. Germany cut subsidies by up to 30% and announced a major overhaul of the program Thursday.
“Germany needed to act,” said Matthias Lang, an attorney with Bird & Bird in Dusseldorf that specializes in energy. “The previous rate was simply not sustainable. There is a limit where even the most willing consumers will object.”
The problem now, says Lang, is that with the shutdown of eight nuclear reactors and more to close, something has to fill the gap quickly. And in Germany, renewables are supposed to do so but no one knows how to do that affordably.
The German government has poured millions of euros in the past two years into trying to update the electricity grid system, and plans to build thousands of miles of electricity lines to accommodate the increasing influx of renewables. But huge gaps still exist because the infrastructure wasn’t in place when the decision to accelerate the nuclear exit was made.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/21/europe-renewable-energy/2006245/
“But, with the levy added to German power bills to help pay for this growth nearly doubling to €0.053 per kWh – and an election looming in September – environment minister Peter Altmaier has unveiled plans to freeze renewable subsidies for two years. He has also said future rises would be limited to 2.5 per cent a year after that. ”
…
“Investors are scared,” Reed Smith’s Stefan Schmitz told a recent Mergermarket conference of renewable energy financiers in London. “A number of very big investors have already decided to pull out of the German market because of the uncertainty.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5f615850-9ddd-11e2-bea1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2bfViNrI6
“Must we really? According to news reports, fiscal pressures in Spain and Germany are causing them to renege on their expensive promises to subsidize solar and wind power. Reuters is reporting:
The Spanish Parliament approved a law on Thursday that cuts subsidies for alternative energy technologies, backtracking on its push for green power.
That measure, along with other recent laws including a tax on power generation that hit green energy investments especially hard, will virtually wipe out profits for photovoltaic, solar thermal and wind plants, sector lobbyists say…
Spain’s Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria defended the law in Parliament on Thursday, saying that the measures were necessary to eliminate the accumulated 28 billion euro ($37.4 billion) tariff deficit in the electricity system…
That deficit, built up through years of the government holding down electricity prices at a level that would not cover regulated costs including renewables premiums, is at the heart of Spain’s energy sector woes…
The problem was that the cost of the subsidies were not passed on fully to consumers because that would have pushed prices to unprecedented highs.
”
http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/19/renewable-energy-goes-bust-in-europe-les
“OSTERATH’S 12,000 citizens are angry. Their quiet backwater in the Ruhr, close to Düsseldorf, is the proposed site for the biggest converter station in Europe. This vast installation will transform high-voltage direct current to alternating current. It will be an important link in Germany’s new “power highway”, a network of transmission lines that will send electricity generated by wind farms in the north of the country, and offshore in the North and Baltic Seas, to the manufacturing belt in the south. Osterath’s residents reckon it will be a monstrous eyesore, and intend to stop it. A bill to determine the outlines of the new power highway is making its way through the federal parliament. Of 3,300 objections from the public, 2,300 are from Osterath.”
…
“Businessmen say the Energiewende will kill German industry. Power experts worry about blackouts. Voters are furious about ever higher fuel bills. The chaos undermines Germany’s claim to efficiency, threatens its vaunted competitiveness and unnecessarily burdens households. It also demonstrates Germany’s curious refusal to think about Europe strategically.”
…
“In recent months efforts to keep a lid on companies’ power costs have led to even more perverse policy shifts. Germany, Europe’s self-professed leader in the fight against climate change, did nothing to stop the collapse of the European carbon-trading system (the EU’s main collective tool for reducing carbon emissions). The market had not been working well, largely because too many permits to emit carbon had been issued. The European Commission proposed reducing their number, but Mrs Merkel refused to support the proposal, mainly to avoid spooking big German firms already worried about power costs. Silence from Europe’s most powerful government helped to sink the commission’s plan in the European Parliament.”
…
“The strategically minded are pushing for more fundamental overhauls. Bold ideas include replacing the pricing distortions with a market based on production capacity rather than output: power producers would be paid by the amount of capacity they had installed rather than the amount of electricity they actually produced. There would also be a greater focus on energy conservation, including more incentives for investment in retrofitting buildings; more public investment into energy-storage research; and, from planning the expansion of the grid to the creation of new renewables capacity, a European, rather than a national, vision for the Energiewende.
Such boldness would be good for German economic rebalancing and for Europe as a whole. After all, Europeans live so close to each other that a national energy policy makes little sense: how safe is a reactor-free Germany when nuclear power stations go on running next door in France, the Czech Republic and, in due course, in Poland? And in a supposedly single European market, is a renewables revolution at national level even possible? Instead of a national Energiewende marked by U-turns and uncertainty, Germany needs to think European. Fortunately it has already begun to do so to manage its second big economic transformation: its looming skills shortage.”
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21579149-germanys-energiewende-bodes-ill-countrys-european-leadership-tilting-windmills
” The problems for the supergrid lie more in the area of whether the participating countries will be inclined to fund such a costly project while they are having such severe financial problems. Eddie O’Connor gave evidence to the UK’s parliament in 2011 that it would cost 200 billion Euros ($275 billion) in total, with a first stage of 28 billion Euros by 2020. Though this sounds like a colossal amount, spread over the decades and between perhaps 20 countries, it is not that a great investment for a major move forward in infrastructure. In addition it is expected to lower offshore wind costs by 25%, and create jobs. The first “nodes” of the Supergrid are likely to be in the North Sea or between the UK and Ireland, where connections either already exist or are planned. If the EU framework is in place then the network can grow organically as more connections are added. It would encompass all forms of renewable energy, but wind turbines would be a major component. The EU wind energy sector installed 11.6 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in 2012, bringing the total wind power capacity to 105.6 GW, according to the 2012 annual statistics from the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), which was 2.2 GW more than was installed the previous year.
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Supergrid territory
Unfortunately the harsh economic conditions are starting to bite and roll-out of new projects is stalling. Overall, the EU is almost 2 GW (1.7%) under its National Renewable Energy Action Plan forecasts. Eighteen Member States are falling behind, including Slovakia, Greece, Czech Republic, Hungary, France and Portugal. It remains to be seen how this will impact on the whole supergrid project. ”
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/876/66/
For the times, they are a changin’. I was particularly amused by the quote that said the big renewable energy investors are already pulling out of Germany. Lucky devils, they must know a better place now to get obscene returns through the malfunction of a market.
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LOL … JimD, it appears that denialists need to look up the definition of monstrous eyesore!
That would be smart, eh Jim2?
And maybe listen to the conservative folks who speak against this monstrous desecration.
Aye, Climate Etc lassies and laddies, that’s the TRUE voice of conservatism yet hear’n!!!