Week in review

by Judith Curry

A few things that caught my eye this past week.

Global warming and winter weather

Science has published a letter from Mike Wallace, Isaac Held, David Thompson, Kevin Trenberth and John Walsh titled Global warming and winter weather.  Punchline:

The research linking summertime Arctic sea ice with wintertime climate over temperate latitudes deserves a fair hearing. But to make it the centerpiece of the public discourse on global warming is inappropriate and a distraction. Even in a warming climate, we could experience an extraordinary run of cold winters, but harsher winters in future decades are not among the most likely nor the most serious consequences of global warming.

Thank you Mike Wallace et al.

Andy Revkin has an article on this  Global warming, winter weather and the Olympics – five leading climate scientists weigh in  that includes additional comments from the authors.

NBC news on climate models

John Roach of NBC news has a good article Global Warming Pause? The Answer Is Blowin’ Into the Ocean.  Read the article for the main gist, these statements in particular caught my eye:

“If you let the models do what they want to do without constraining them by observations, then they will not reproduce the hiatus,” he told NBC News. “And they don’t do that because … they do not reproduce this cooling over the past 10 or 20 years in the tropical Pacific. Instead they show, on average, warming.”
The picture is further muddled by the fact that “longer-term climate models have these winds weakening over the 21st century; that is to say 100 years from now they should be weaker. The fact that they have gotten stronger over the past 20 years, I think, is a surprise,” England said, adding, “It suggests that there is something that is happening in the real system that is not quite captured in the models.”
.
The shortcomings of the climate models highlighted in this new paper feed into larger criticism that the models play down the importance of natural variability in the global climate system. That this shortfall is highlighted in the new research, he added, “is quite a nice result, but in a sense it is bad news for the climate research community because it does point to a potential problem for the climate models.”A problem with the models, in turn, could erode trust in climate science, noted England. But “that would be akin to writing off the medical profession for finding out something new about an illness that they didn’t know about earlier,” he said.

Consensus and trust(?)

Graham Wayne has written a post Climate change science, consensus, and the matter of trust.   Excerpt:

Attacks on the consensus among climate scientists are designed to destroy trust – in the scientists and their claims of cohesive support for the theory of climate change, and in those who champion both the consensual opinions of scientists, but also – and more importantly – the consensual nature of the research, for nobody is bothering to research ‘alternative’ theories except the 3% working out of the deep trench they’ve dug for themselves and don’t have the courage or integrity to climb out of.

While the article is thoughtful and well written, I think it stems from a flawed premise.  The greatest source of trust destruction in climate science has been the premature  manufacture of consensus on the magnitude of anthropogenic climate change, and the linking of this consensus with mitigation policies.

Mark twain on the climate debate

Paul Matthews has an entertaining post The Shakespeare debate as an analogy for climate?  Excerpt:

The so-called Shakespeare authorship question has some similarities to the climate debate. The vast majority (97%?) of academics working in the field have no doubt that the author of the plays was the actor from Stratford, though there are some exceptions. But many people, including prominent Shakespearean actors such as Mark Rylance, are doubtful.

Familiar tactics are employed by the two sides. The mainstream side has difficulty deciding whether to ignore the sceptics, or to criticise them at the risk of giving them publicity. When they do respond, they tend to characterise the doubters as nutters.  Some of the sceptics oblige by coming up with bonkers theories.  The mainstream refuses to accept that the sceptics have simply looked at the facts and found them unconvincing, but ascribes to them unusual personality traits or flaws that cause them to think this way. The sceptics argue that the mainstream academics have a lot to lose, and are therefore biased. Sounds familiar?

Trial of the century?

Mark Steyn continues to hammer Michael Mann with the following posts:

RealClearPolitics (one of the major news aggregators in the U.S.) has picked up on this with an article Mann vs Steyn: The trial of the century.  Excerpts:

In other words, Steyn’s evaluation of Mann’s scientific claims can be legally suppressed because Steyn dares to question the conclusions of established scientific institutions connected to the government. On this basis, the DC Superior Court arrives at the preposterous conclusion that it is a violation of Mann’s rights to “question his intellect and reasoning.” That’s an awfully nice prerogative to be granted by government: an exemption against any challenge to your reasoning.

I said before that I don’t know how the rest of us skeptics escaped being sued along with Steyn. Now we know. Mann is attempting to establish a precedent for climate censorship. If he wins this suit, then we’re all targets.

Mann has made a lot of noise about setting himself as some kind of modern Galileo, a persecuted scientist. This analogy was all wrong from the beginning. Galileo was not the enforcer of the prevailing scientific “consensus” but its caustic critic. And now it is Mann who is trying to dictate what others can and cannot say about scientific facts and reasoning. So no, he’s not a modern Galileo. He’s a modern Cardinal Bellarmine.

Or perhaps there is a better historical analogy. Mann is attempting to install himself as a kind of American Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko was the Soviet scientist who ingratiated himself to Joseph Stalin and got his crackpot theories on genetics installed as official dogma, effectively killing the study of biology in the Soviet Union. Under Lysenko, the state had an established and official scientific doctrine, and you risked persecution if you questioned it. Mann’s libel suit is an attempt to establish that same principle here.

Mann has recently declared himself to be both a scientist and a political activist. But in attempting to intimidate his critics and suppress free debate on global warming, he is violating the fundamental rules of both science and politics. If it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science. If it is a crime to dissent, then there is no politics.

Mann vs. Steyn may be the trial of the century. It may determine, not merely whether the environmentalists can shut down industrial civilization, but whether they can shut down the independent thinking of skeptical dissidents. 

Barry Bickmore takes issue with the RealClearPolitics article in a piece entitled The Free Speech Brigade Suppresses Free Speech. Concluding statements from this lengthy article:

What will the result of all this be?  Mann will very likely win in court, and it’s even more likely that the defendants will settle out of court.  The Steyns and Tracinskis, and even the Prof. Carters, of the world will convince some of their readers that this case is really some Free Speech “Trial of the Century,” and so when Mann wins, these people might be afraid to voice their ignorant opinions about climate change or climate scientists.  Ok, maybe that’s not all bad, but for people who actually do care about preserving free speech and unhampered debate, this is not a good outcome.  What’s certain is that it won’t be Mike Mann’s fault.  The fault will lie squarely on the shoulders of the Free Speech Brigade.

And finally James Delingpole envies Mark Steyn for getting sued by Mann.

690 responses to “Week in review

  1. From the article:

    ND pumps record 313.5M barrels of oil in 2013
    North Dakota pumps record 313.5M barrels of oil in 2013; tops previous high by 70M barrels
    Associated Press
    By James Macpherson, Associated Press 23 hours ago

    BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota produced a record amount of crude oil in 2013 — 313.5 million barrels, about 70 million more than the previous high mark a year earlier, state data show.

    The tally, up nearly 29 percent from 2012, marks the sixth consecutive record year for oil production in North Dakota, which is the nation’s No. 2 oil producer behind Texas.

    http://news.yahoo.com/nd-pumps-record-313-5m-194645643.html;_ylt=AvdRIz7TVFYeATaCUqVjiLLQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBsb21manVyBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwM1BHNlYwNzcg–

    • More from the same article:
      Helms said North Dakota continues to be on track to surpass 1 million barrels of oil daily this year. More than 95 percent of drilling in the state is being done in the rich Bakken and Three Forks formations in western North Dakota, Helms said.

    • looks like the rate of increase is starting to level off at about 190 new wells per month. Bakken may peak at 1.55 million barrels/day in nine years time based on an optimistic estimate of reserves. The USA at one time consumed over 20 million barrels a day and that number is down to 19 million due to scarcity and the beginnings of demand destruction.

      So in another 9 years, the Bakken could supply about 8% of the total supply as long as demand destruction does not continue. If all goes well, the Bakken may generate a 25-year interval in which it produces an average of 5% of our oil consumption needs.

      Handy to have this information for planning.

  2. This might be of interest, there was a workshop this week at the Open University, organised by Dr Joe Smith (OU)

    Entitled – An Inconvenient Tweet:
    How social media is transforming the communication of, and engagement with, climate change

    On the panel were Dr Tamsin Edwards, Dr Mark Brandon, Dr Warren Pearce and (!) Barry Woods,

    each gave a 5 minute presentation and then discussion was opened.
    Tamsin went first, and I had to follow (a hard act to)

    event details here (th evideo is linked at the bottom)
    http://www.open.ac.uk/researchcentres/osrc/events/mediating-change-workshop.

    1 hour of talking to somebody like Dr Joe Smith (afterwards), is worth 10,000 tweets)

    • Thanks for linking to this very interesting constructive session. The brief presentations by each panellist were excellent – including yours, Barry!

      Warren Pearce’s twitter analysis was also v. interesting. UK sceptics and non-sceptics talk most to each other on Twitter – compared to (I think) US or Australia.

  3. A fan of *MORE* discourse

    BREAKING SCIENTIFIC NEWS
    Parallels: Environmental CO2 vs Environmental Neurotoxins
    Multi-Generational Harms Trump Annualized Profit-Margins

    Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity

    Summary  Neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and other cognitive impairments, affect millions of children worldwide, and some diagnoses seem to be increasing in frequency. Industrial chemicals that injure the developing brain are among the known causes for this rise in prevalence.

    In 2006, we did a systematic review and identified five industrial chemicals as developmental neurotoxicants: lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene. Since 2006, epidemiological studies have documented six additional developmental neurotoxicants—manganese, fluoride, chlorpyrifos, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, tetrachloroethylene, and the polybrominated diphenyl ethers. We postulate that even more neurotoxicants remain undiscovered.

    To control the pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity, we propose a global prevention strategy. Untested chemicals should not be presumed to be safe to brain development, and chemicals in existing use and all new chemicals must therefore be tested for developmental neurotoxicity.

    To coordinate these efforts and to accelerate translation of science into prevention, we propose the urgent formation of a new international clearinghouse.

    Conclusion  As with environmental neurotoxins, so with climate-change: public common sense is now showing everyone that short-sighted profit-first neo-libertarian ideologies are (1) bankrupt scientifically, (2) impoverishing economically, and (3) utterly wrong morally.

    That’s why environmental denialism is just plain stupid.

    These priorities aren’t complicated, eh Climate Etc readers?

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    • Another twisted, inept analogy by FOMBS.

    • your comments are an untested chemical that make my head hurt

      Ban the fan

    • Steven Mosher: “Ban the fan”
      Consult Mann.

    • As you know I work in the field and am trying to find the environmental triggers of Autism.
      I examined the study and can see why FOMD is so happy to endorse it.
      This work is very weak indeed, the authors may have, by chance, have identified modulators of brain development, but they are performing ‘graphology’.
      I am also drawn to examining chlorpyrifos, but the linkage to geographic and temporal usage, and changes in rates of neurological conditions is by no means obvious.

      Usage of chlorpyrifos.
      http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/pnsp/usage/maps/show_map.php?year=2011&map=CHLORPYRIFOS&hilo=L

      ADAH by state
      http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/images/adhd_prevalencedatachart.jpg

      Autsim by state
      http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2011-12/66679609.JPG

      This represents the worst sort of science by headline, where very weak evidence is presented to the public in far stronger terms that it deserves.

      On a personal level I find the authors description of dyslexia as a disorder arising from neurotoxity highly insulting.
      Processing information in different ways form the ‘norm’ is not a disease, and although Dyslexic’s had all manner of problems in converting sounds to icons, and vice versa, we have strengths in other areas.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Steven Mosher advocates “Ban the fan

      My name is Ayn Rand, and I approve this message!

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    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      DocMartyn  “I am also drawn to examining chlorpyrifos”

      Your opinion regarding chlorpyrifos has rational scientific foundations, DocMartyn! In Neurobehavioural Effects of Developmental Toxicity we read:

      A recurring theme was that early warnings of subclinical neurotoxicity were often ignored or even dismissed. David P Rall, former Director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, once noted that

      “if thalidomide had caused a ten-point loss of intelligence quotient (IQ) instead of obvious birth defects of the limbs, it would probably still be on the market”

      Many industrial chemicals marketed at present probably cause IQ deficits of far fewer than ten points and have therefore eluded detection so far, but their combined effects could have enormous consequences.

      52  Rauh V, Arunajadai S, Horton M, et al. 7-year neurodevelopmental scores and prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos, a common agricultural pesticide. Environ Health Perspect 2011; 119: 1196–201.

      53  Bouchard MF, Chevrier J, Harley KG, et al. Prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides and IQ in 7-year old children. Environ Health Perspect 2011; 119: 1189–95.

      54  Engel SM, Wetmur J, Chen J, et al. Prenatal exposure to organophosphates, paraoxonase 1, and cognitive development in childhood. Environ Health Perspect 2011; 119: 1182–88.

      55  Rauh VA, Perera FP, Horton MK, et al. Brain anomalies in children exposed prenatally to a common organophosphate pesticide. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2012; 109: 7871–76.

      Far-right/neo-libertarian organizations such as Heartland Institute vociferously dismiss both the science of climate-change and the science of toxicity.

      How convenient … for this year’s profits … if not for the world’s next generation of children … eh Climate Etc readers?

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    • You have to ask yourself three questions
      1) Why has the Flynn effect been universal during the period when these man-made chemicals been introduced into the environment?
      2) Why use the term ‘neurotoxin’, when we know these agents are not toxic toward neurons at realistic concentration ranges, but the most likely postulated mechanism of action of these compounds is in disruption of neuronal signaling.
      3) Why do you think that cutting and pasting from things you have just discovered is going to persuade anyone that you know anything about neuroscience?
      To have a firm grounding in neurochemisty takes a couple of decades, which is why it isn’t a pretty popular research area. If you insist on working with human astrocytes and neurons, then publications are slow, and not particularly well cited.
      ‘Proving’ that a compound causes a problem in human neurological development is incredibly hard, whereas frightening people with phantom menaces is rather easy.

      BTW Thalidomide and Valporate are the only two compounds we know that cause Autism. This effect was noted in both cases.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      DocMartyn opines  “‘Proving’ that a compound causes a problem in human neurological development is incredibly hard, whereas frightening people with phantom menaces is rather easy.”

      Plenty of scientists are dismayed — with ample reason — by the increasing prevalence of ideology-driven denial of scientific evidence, eh DocMartyn?

      Conclusion  The ultra-simple ideologies of the far-left, far-right, and libertarian political movements alike deal irrationally/immorally/inefficiently with global-scale multi-general environmental degradation.

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    • “Plenty of scientists are dismayed — with ample reason — by the increasing prevalence of ideology-driven denial of scientific evidence, eh DocMartyn?”

      Ok Fan, I’’l bite. How do you tell the difference between rational objections and those which are “ideology driven?” I like you Fan (although I honestly can’t say why at times), but it’s clear that you consider almost all arguments that contradict your own world view to be Ideological hence irrational. Seems to me that’s a lot for you to take on, the role of final arbiter about who’s got a clue and who doesn’t. It makes me tired, just to think of it.

      Lord Charnwood in his fine biography of Lincoln wrote of the strident Horace Greely , that “he was too opinionated to be quite honest.” Your world is way too black and white to be trusted, Fan. it’s a world I wouldn’t want to live in.

      There’s something hostile in the very act of holding opinions that can’t be changed. I’ve seen you continue to defend Mann’s hockey stick despite strong objective evidence that it’s bad science. That you can’t even get that right doesn’t bode well for your fitness and ability to make discernments as to what’s likely true, and what’s likely not true.

    • Well we do know that organo-mercury is the most likely candidate for triggering autism and that lead is a good candidate for an ADHD trigger.
      We have spent 40 years restricting the dumping of mercury into the environment, that is until very recently.
      The introduction of mercury containing domestic light-bulbs is reversing the long standard policy of making sure that mercury isn’t dumped into the environment. Much of the mercury in these bulbs is going to end up in landfills, where the anaerobic bioconversion of mercury in methyl mercury; methyl mercury is a real, long lived and potent neurotoxin.
      The reason these bulbs are going into homes is politics, rather than wait a decade for non-toxic LED’s to mature, fluorescent bulbs were pushed as a means to drop the amount of CO2 generated by the power industries.

      As you say, ‘environmental denialism is just plain stupid’, but shorted sighted policy stunts are good Green politics.

    • “Plain stupid” is clinging to serially incorrect former scientists like saran wrap while quoting studies that have nothing to do with “climate change.” Yet ironically you refer to ideologies that are “(1) bankrupt scientifically, (2) impoverishing economically, and (3) utterly wrong morally.” which are precise descriptions of moribund “consensus” climate theory which is contradicted nearly every day by new peer-reviewed studies, impoverishes millions by highly regressive increased energy costs, and damns the poor of the world to poverty and disease by denying them the benefits of cheap and plentiful carbon-based energy.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      pokerguy (aka al neipris) opines  “I’ve seen you continue to defend Mann’s hockey stick despite strong objective evidence that it’s  bad science  real and serious.”

      Claim by pokerguy, evidence by FOMD.

      Of course, *SOME* folks are 100% sure, too, that neither cigarette smoke, nor environmental toxins pose substantial public-health risks.

      Ideology-driven cognition is a funny-thing, eh pokerguy?

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    • Xing A Paragrab

      *MORE*, I think you’ve got the analogy wrong. Increased CO2 levels are like increased levels of fiber, omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants in a healthy diet. Their multi-generational benefits trump attempts of warmists who plot to enrich themselves via cap-and-trade with their unsupported theories.

      Conclusion As with healthy foods, so with climate-change: public common sense is now showing everyone that totalitarian redistributionist warm mongering ideologies are (1) bankrupt scientifically, (2) impoverishing economically, and (3) utterly wrong morally.

      That’s why warmist alarmism is just plain stupid.

      These priorities aren’t complicated, eh *MORE*?

    • Matthew R Marler

      Xing a Paragrab:That’s why warmist alarmism is just plain stupid.

      That post was done well.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “Increased CO2 levels are like increased levels of fiber, omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants in a healthy diet. Their multi-generational benefits trump attempts of warmists who plot to enrich themselves via cap-and-trade with their unsupported theories.”
      ____
      Well, that’s certainly a new twist for a comparison. You know of course that everything in the right amount can be a poison, right? Including CO2 in your blood. There is a range in which CO2 in your blood is just right. Go too low and you can die, go too high and you can die. Now that we are seeing the highest CO2 levels since our Australopithecus ancestors were roaming about we are simply gambling that higher levels will have “multi-generational benefits”. Specifically, can the vast grain fields across the planet that feed the 7+ billion of us be sustained under higher CO2 and the related altered climate? A reasonable question indeed.

    • Xing A Paragrab

      R. Gates, you do know that CO2 is not a neurotoxin, correct? I’m not sure you caught the gist of the analogy of *MORE*’s that I was responding to. He was comparing the ecosystem to the human body, and I was pointing out that, similar to the way the human body is a system containing feedback loops and homeostatic mechanisms, the ecosystem contains similar mechanisms that carbon dioxide plays a role in, similar to nutrients in the body. You are aware that CO2 plays a critical role in the photosynthesis that takes place in plants and algae, correct? I think perhaps you are confused about the level at which the analogy is taking place.

      Or maybe you’ve mixed up CO2 and CO? That’s one reason I’d never listen to Al Gore or John Kerry deliver a speech in a confined space like a garage. Not the most painless way to go, despite popular belief.

  4. The UK has it’s own version of the free speech debate. The Green Party has called for all skeptics in government positions or advising government departments to be removed. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100259728/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-a-climate-change-sceptic/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

  5. Everybody knows the Shakespeare plays weren’t written by Shakespeare but by a guy with the same name (is that what Twain said?)

    It’d be ironic to figure out in a few years it wasn’t CO2 that caused the warming, rather a molecule with the same name :)

  6. Also related to NBC is this upcoming program tomorrow. HuffPost is not so keen on the way they are addressing climate change here.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/15/meet-the-press-climate-change_n_4794206.html

    • Jim D

      HuffPost hasn’t gotten the word yet: the science is NOT settled.

      Max

    • Apparently ABC and CBS also have programs on severe weather, but their “skeptic” is a Republican politician, while they have invited qualified scientists to talk about it. Not a debate, per se, because the Republican won’t know much about the subject he is talking about.

    • I checked out the Sunday morning news shows where weather and climate were topics for discussion because of the long drought in California, the east-US interminable winter (for connected reasons), warm Sochi, apparently England dealing with unusual stuff too.
      Relevant here is that Judith’s name came up twice. First on ABC, she was quoted (with a picture) as not trusting models. That was it, nothing else. On NBC, Republican Marsha Blackburn briefly mentioned her in a sentence with Lindzen as skeptics, to which David Gregory responded you can bring up a few skeptics, but what about the majority of scientists. Bill Nye, science guy, was on the other side. Did OK, but not compelling. Heidi Cullen on ABC gave a good set of remarks. Marshall Shepherd (AMS) focused more on the weather aspects, and wasn’t drawn into climate change.
      No, knock down, drag out, points on either side. The growing expense of just dealing with the weather was something they could have pushed on. How do we fund this? It was side-stepped by Blackburn. Gov. McCrory (NC) on a couple of these programs just talked about wanting a cleaner environment (Mom and apple pie stuff).

    • I watched the NBC report. David Gregory could not get his mind to understand that there can be a real greenhouse effect from adding CO2 to the atmosphere, but the magnitude is negligible. The Republican congresswoman did not know enough to tell him what the science indicates.


    • On NBC, Republican Marsha Blackburn briefly mentioned her in a sentence with Lindzen as skeptics, to which David Gregory responded you can bring up a few skeptics, but what about the majority of scientists.

      JD, I listened to that and of course the context was uncertainty.

      The politicians and majority of pundits don’t seem to understand that getting off fossil fuels is only tangentially related to climate change. Most of the world is crippled due to declining access to crude oil. See Pakistan. And many regions are dealing with the fact that they have to pay through the nose for it, as they have no native supply. See Korea and Japan.

    • Web, yes, Gregory went from that straight to the point that even some in the natural gas industry acknowledge that carbon emissions must be reduced. It was a bit hurried at that point of the discussion, so people may have missed the connection.

    • Pakistan

      As of 2009, Pakistan stands 19th in the world in terms of total technically recoverable shale gas reserves. Pakistan has about 51 trillion cubic feet of shale gas reserves. Pakistan consumes 100% of natural gas that it produces, so shale gas may be an area of future growth in Pakistan.[34]

      The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has estimated shale gas at 586 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) against its 2011 estimates of 52 Tcf for Pakistan. [35]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_by_country

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas_by_country

    • David L. Hagen

      Hear the pain:

      The energy situation in Pakistan generally is dire, even more so than in India where blackouts in the summer of 2012 left much of the country in darkness. Pakistan used to depend on cheap hydroelectric power for at least 50 per cent of its needs, but a combination of government neglect and a lack of major new dams left the country relying far too much on expensive oil from Kuwait. This put the country’s balance of payments under pressure, weakening the rupee and pushing inflation up to 8 per cent.

      See: Pakistan’s world-class businesses held back by energy crisis

  7. Robert I Ellison

    This came to my attention – I commented in the last thread. But let’s repeat it.

    This one has been recently updated.

    http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/tsireconstruction_zps0ee199b5.png.html?sort=3&o=58

    The new one can be found here.

    http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/data/tsi-data/#plots

    The new one seems more consistent with satellite measurements. The long term TSI reconstruction uses annual means and the ACRIM daily values – hence the apparent differences.

    http://www.acrim.com/RESULTS/Earth%20Observatory/acrim_composite_TSI.pdf

    • Robert I Ellison

      This is an older study – but links solar UV to the polar vortex.

      Are cold NH winters associated with low solar activity?

      ‘Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature. We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic. We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activity has declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK and Europe could experience more cold winters than during recent decades.’ http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024001

    • Chief-
      “Are cold NH winters associated with low solar activity?”

      I dont know the answer, but everyone seems to be eager to dismiss the possibility way to easily.

    • In five years time all the plots you have presented will be quite different, just like they were five years ago.
      This is climate science, the past changes all the time.

  8. Curious George

    Beware of false prophets. Especially when a senior adviser on science and technology issues has an almost spotless record of incorrect predictions.

    • Whether auguring?

      Hey, it’s ants climbin’
      ter higher land,
      and moths swarmin’
      and especially
      climate scientists
      flyin’ ter tropical
      waterin’ places,
      that tell yer witch
      way the wind’s
      blowin’ regardin’
      globul warmin’.

      Whenever evidence
      is light upon
      the ground or
      in the atmosphere,
      and there’s opportunity
      fer power or fer
      money changing hands,
      then myth steps in and
      chanting priests and
      hindcast-modellers
      abound.

  9. “In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian Period, must a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have their streets joined together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
    investment of fact.”

    Mark Twain

  10. “England. But “that would be akin to writing off the medical profession for finding out something new about an illness that they didn’t know about earlier,” he said.”

    Wrong England. No one in the medical profession threatened to re-do the world economy based on this lack of knowledge.

  11. I don’f see how Mann is changing the rules of science by requesting those who dissent from his views to provide evidence. Steyn needs to provide evidence that Mann is a fraud, or shut up.

    • Bob Droege

      Steyn needs to provide evidence that Mann is a fraud, or shut up.

      McIntyre and McKitrick, the Wegman committee, the NAS panel and “Mike’s Nature trick” already did that.

      Max

    • Yeah and Deep Climate, Tamino and others tore that to shreds.

      Call me when you have taken a basic statistics course, but here are the basics.

      M&M did a massive cherry pick by selecting 24 out of 10,000 runs of the random data and picked tiny hockey sticks.

      Wegman claimed he redid the M&M work but he just copied the same cherry picks.

    • Curious George

      Please compare with Prof. Muller’s take on the subject. Wisely, he did not use any names, but you will recognize the hockey stick graph:

    • Bob Droege

      Let’s correct that statement of yours.

      To your statement:

      Steyn needs to provide evidence that Mann is a fraud, or shut up.

      I pointed out:

      McIntyre and McKitrick, the Wegman committee, the NAS panel and “Mike’s Nature trick” already did that.

      To which you retorted:

      Yeah and Deep Climate, Tamino and others tore that to shreds.

      Let’s correct that:

      Yeah and Deep Climate, Tamino and others tore unsuccessfully attempted to tear that to shreds.

      There. That should put some reality back into it.

      Thanks for playing.

      Max

    • You mean, instead of a fraud, he may only have been an incredibly stupid Penn State professor who refused to share his work because he wanted to hide his ignorance?

    • To put the hockey stick controversy into perspective, it does not prove or disprove global warming. It is about the long flat handle. A lot of skeptics believe there should be a medieval warp. McIntyre and McKictrick prove neither one. They show that Mann’s long straight handle is not robust. Showing that a claim is not robust is science. At the risk of pulling a “Tamino”, don’t just take my word for it. Take the word of PCA expert and McIntyre-McKitrick peer reviewer, Ian Jolliffe:

      I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics.

      http://climateaudit.org/2008/09/08/ian-jolliffe-comments-at-tamino/

    • “Bob Droege

      M&M did a massive cherry pick by selecting 24 out of 10,000 runs of the random data and picked tiny hockey sticks.”

      Over the last two weeks claims of this sort have been surfacing all over the warmistosphere.

      Just where is you evidence that Steve’s code was corrupted to give such a blatantly false result?

    • Max,
      You can’t argue with stupid. You can’t reason with the unreasonable. If there’s one thing fair minded, objective people should be able to agree on it’s that MAnn is either a fraud or a spectacularly poor scientist.

    • Bob Droege@4:12pm:

      M&M did a massive cherry pick by selecting 24 out of 10,000 runs of the random data and picked tiny hockey sticks.

      You have not provided a context. From MM05 [emphasis mine]:

      The simulations nearly always yeilded PC1s with a hockey stick shape, some of which bore a quite remarkable similarity to the actual MBH98 temperature reconstruction – as shown by the example in Figure 1.

    • Isn’t Muller describing fraud, in that video? My guess is that Steyn’s lawyers will show that clip to the jury and ask why Mann has not sued Dr. Muller. This case turns on what kind of jury is seated in D.C. Steyn is likely to to be facing a gaggle of EPA employees and at least one clown from the Dept. of Big Government Silliness.

    • Canman,

      Look at the scale of the y-axis in your precious figure 1. Pat Kane would miss the puck 95% of the time with a hockey stick like that.

      And I look at what Ian Jolliffe says and I wish he would make up his mind

      “It is possible that there are good reasons for decentred PCA to be the technique of choice for some types of analyses and that it has some virtues that I have so far failed to grasp, but I remain sceptical.”

      doesn’t sound so damning to me. He is skeptical but not so convincing.

      Wagman,

      You know Mann gave an excel spreadsheet to McIntyre the first time he asked for it don’t you?

      any of you guys think Mann’s hockey stick has a straight handle should get their eyes examined, it doesn’t look very straight to me, and I can see a MWP and a LIA.

      Doc, read M&M’s paper, that is where the evidence for the cherry pick is.
      Old news.

      And Lastly, what’s been happening with Wegman and Said et al, lately?
      Been fired as editors is what I heard.

    • David Springer

      The ultimate defense against a charge of libel or slander is the truth. If Mann goes to trial with Steyn then Steyn gets to subpoena just about anyone he wants or any evidence in anyone’s possession that could potentially support his accusation of scientific misconduct by Mann.

      Stock up on popcorn. Steyn can easily turn this into a huge circus digging deep into every corner of Mann’s professional life. Steyn has enough popular support and Mann enough enemies that it isn’t going to end by Steyn not being able to afford to pay for his half of the circus.

    • David,

      You are correct that the possible witness lists for the trial could be very interesting. A parade could happen and much longer than the short list of clowns on Steyn’s side.

      But I think Steyn has to prove he already had that information that proves Mann’s work was fraudulent, I don’t think the judge will put up with endless fishing expeditions.
      The worst thing you can convincingly argue is that Mann used the wrong methods and got the right answer, and that falls so short of fraud.

      But you can all contribute to Steyn’s defense fund, but popcorn futures would be a better investment.

    • “You know Mann gave an excel spreadsheet to McIntyre the first time he asked for it don’t you?”

      McIntyre never asked Mann for an Excel Spreadsheet containing the data he used in his paper.

      Mann never passed an Excel Spreadsheet containing the data he used in his paper to McIntyre.

      Mann has stated that one of his junior colleagues sent McIntyre an Excel Spreadsheet that did not contain the data he used in his paper.

      Therefore one has to assume that you know nothing about what you write.
      One looks forward to the ‘discovery phase’ of the court case and if you are an example of informed opinion, the trial itself is going to be a hoot.

      You can be sure that Steve McIntyre has a record of everything.

    • David Springer

      It’s going to trial unless Mann rolls over which he might very well do to avoid having climategate emails and things like that read into the record for the jury to consider. I wonder what they’ll think was meant by “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline?”

      Update from Steyn:

      http://www.steynonline.com/6093/the-future-is-another-country

      ~Barry Bickmore, armed with his trusty “online legal dictionary”, has been patiently explaining to us rubes for some weeks why yours truly is destined to lose to Michael E Mann. He fell quiet for a while, but it turns out it was because he was stalking Yale Law School prof Stephen Carter, who had made the mistake of expressing misgivings about Mann’s suit. Carter rose to the bait and initially responded to Bickmore, and the latter has published parts of their correspondence. Before the put-upon Prof Carter decided to bail, he made a couple of interesting points. First on the recent ruling by the new judge:

      The trouble is (to put on my lawyer’s hat), the judge didn’t hold that the charges against Dr. Mann were libelous per se. He ruled that a jury could reasonably find them to be so. That’s where the danger arises. The exceptions the Supreme Court has carved out for commentary about public figures is intended to keep such questions from the jury in cases touching the public interest.

      I don’t think I’m meant to comment on the judge, am I? So let’s move on to Professor Carter’s other insight:

      Even if Dr. Mann wins the case (and I’m quite confident it will be settled; nobody wants to put it in front of a jury), the tenor of debate won’t change.

      Well, I can’t speak for Dr Mann or my co-defendants, but I want to put it in front of a jury – in part because I loathe “settling” and regard it as a malign and corrupting influence on the American “justice” system. Nobody’s guilty or innocent any more, are they? It’s all about the settling. But the pressure to “settle” means that, for a litigious goon like Dr Mann, simply launching suits relieves him of the need to win them. Nuts to that. He wanted this case, so he can have it and take it to a jury.

    • Bob Droege@10:48

      Look at the scale of the y-axis in your precious figure 1. Pat Kane would miss the puck 95% of the time with a hockey stick like that.

      And I look at what Ian Jolliffe says and I wish he would make up his mind

      “It is possible that there are good reasons for decentred PCA to be the technique of choice for some types of analyses and that it has some virtues that I have so far failed to grasp, but I remain sceptical.”

      doesn’t sound so damning to me. He is skeptical but not so convincing.

      Whether or not there is an issue with scaling, your charge of cherry picking ignored the context. If there were any good reasons for short centered PCA, someone like Deep Climate or John Mashey would most likely have dredged up an example.

      any of you guys think Mann’s hockey stick has a straight handle should get their eyes examined, it doesn’t look very straight to me

      It’s so long and straight that Al Gore mistook it for an ice core record in An Inconvenient Truth, and he got his scale upsidedown.

    • Jolliffe damns with ironic praise, and Droege does not get it.
      =========

    • On the PCA centering issue, if you use the correct selection rule, you get the same result no matter which centering convention is used.

      That is what the North report concluded,

      If Kim can measure the difference between the centering conventions, I would like to see it, but he/she has never provided more than a one-liner to any discussions on this site.

      It will be a hoot if the best witness for Steyn is McIntyre, I would like to see that cross.

      We have so many subsequent studies showing the same thing as Mann, so shouldn’t Steyn accuse all of them of fraud as well?

    • Heh, Bob and his pitiful ‘many subsequent studies’. Yes, StevieMac might be useful in showing the effect of split-bark bristlecones and upside down Tiljander’s on those many subsequent studies. Whipped cream on top would be show the re-emergence of the LIA and the MWP in the many subsequent studies, despite stealth hockey stick work by the topsy-turvy varves and split pines.
      ================

    • Bob Droege | February 15, 2014 at 4:12 pm |
      Yeah and Deep Climate, Tamino and others tore that to shreds.

      That’s a good clue that you don’t understand the arguments (or math) from either side. Best, sometimes, to listen and try to understand before revealing your ignorance.

  12. One of the things I admire about our hostess, and Climate Etc, is the way it attracts really eminent scientists to post comments. On the thread Magical Theories, we had a comment from Prof. Donald Rapp.

    @@@@@
    Donald Rapp | February 13, 2014 at 8:29 pm | Reply

    There are many phenomena in nature that, for one reason or another, are not susceptible to verification by independent testing.
    @@@@@

    Prof. Rapp then goes on to describe, very eloquently, how CAGW has become a religion. However, he neglects the most important part of this issue; namely why have the eminent scientific societies, led by the Royal Society and the American Physical Society, ALLOWED CAGW to claim it is science, when it isn’t? And why have the senior scientific advisers to just about all the G8 governments, parroted the dogma of the Church of CAGW?

    Once one realizes just how serious it is that the religion of CAGW is masquerading as science, then it brings up the key issue. Who is going to stand up to all these eminent scientific organizations, and, in public, and in words of one syllable, say that they are dead wrong?

    Who is going to bell the cat?

    • ?
      Maybe the Royal Society and the American Physical Society know what they are talking about and Rapp is a nut.

      One cannot rule out that explanation. Hundreds of scientists forget what science is and one nut and an old man in canada hold the keys to truth.

      ya, thats it.

    • Steven, you write “Rapp is a nut”

      I do hope Prof. Rapp is a regular reader of Climate Etc.

    • Steve, King George II was going to appoint General Wolfe to a command in Canada, but one of the King’s advisors stated
      “the gentleman (Wolfe) is by no means eligible for so important a station, being positively mad.”

      King George II replied;
      “Is he?
      He shall go for all that, and before he sets out I wish to my God he would bite some of my Generals, and make them mad too.”

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Mosher, the Lew Fan

    • You guys call urselves skeptics and yet none of you can
      Get the fact there are multiple explanations for the same facts. Yes. Rapp might be a nut. Or the whole of the royal society is nuts. Yes mass delusion is possible. So is personal delusion. As in DUH.

    • Get the fact there are multiple explanations for the same facts

      As there are an infinite set of solutions,there are by logic an infinite quality of facts.

    • Thems climate scientists is crazy like a fox – keep that moola rollin’ in!

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Mosher says:
      “You guys call urselves skeptics and yet none of you can
      Get the fact there are multiple explanations for the same facts.”
      Multiple explanations for the fact you mention that there are multiple explanations.
      One explanation of the fact that you presented Rapp as a nut and the Royal Society as sane, is because that is what you meant to convey, regardless of the fact that the Society has obviously been perverted to become a tool for disinformation.

      Why the fact is that you do these things to try and discredit skeptics at every opportunity is not something that requires any explanation.

    • Springer.
      Rapp calling agw a religion is outside his scientific expertise.
      Pointing to his science publications is retarded. You would need to point to his expertise in classifing and identifying religious thought. So perhaps if he had a theology degree or a philosophy publication record then he might have standing. You basically proved my point. Hes got no expertise in defining what is relgious and what is not.
      Neither do you.

      • David Springer

        My point wasn’t that Rapp is an expert in religion but rather to show you’re not an expert in science in comparison to Rapp. Or in comparison to anyone for that matter. Rapp certainly knows what science is so he’s qualified to say that AGW is not science. Would you object to calling it non-science and what are your credentials for judging what is and is not science, Stevie boy?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Mosher said

      “Rapp calling agw a religion is outside his scientific expertise.”

      He could simply use a dictionary definition. Not something you accept? We can remember that for next time, Steven Mosher!

      • David Springer

        You bet he could use a dictionary. See my example using Merriam-Webster below.

        Ironically Mosher is an english major and his knowledge of the english language is even more deficient than his knowlege of science and logic. Go figure.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Religion is a body of doctrine around the central tenet of faith in the existence of God. Most people who believe experience the presence of God.

      AGW is more akin to a space ship cult than mainstream religion. It is a groupthink with a different basis in human psychology.

      • David Springer

        There are more definitions of religion than that, Ellison. Your loathing of dictionaries is showing again. Let’s check out Merriam-Webster for possibilities that fit the context Dr. Rapp was using:

        http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion

        4. a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

        Hockey is a religion in Canada.
        Politics are a religion to him.
        Where I live, high school football is religion.
        Food is religion in this house.

        May I now expect you to launch into your usual tirade of personal abuse for having the temerity to correct you?

    • Steven Mosher | February 16, 2014 at 7:07 pm |

      Rapp calling AGW a religion is outside his scientific expertise.
      Pointing to his science publications is retarded. You would need to point to his expertise in classifying and identifying religious thought. So perhaps if he had a theology degree or a philosophy publication record then he might have standing….

      Oh, c’mon Mosher, you old pedant.

      It ain’t rocket science, and nor is it theology.

      You know exactly what was meant by that and how closely the description fits. Hence the bluster.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      David Springer.

      Don’t you know that Steven Mosher is an expert on holding double standards? He needs Rapp to have a degree in order to MENTION a subject, but Mr Mosher needs no degree to list himself as a scientist working at Berk!

      But then, Mr. Mosher defines science as what a scientist does. WIth or without degree.
      Mr Rapp may well be quite familiar with religion, and so what he says as a scientist is science…but only according to the standards Mr Mosher applies for himself.

      Too bad for Rapp that these things are always always double-standardized!

      • David Springer

        Hah. Even some climate scientists liken it to religion…

        http://judithcurry.com/2010/10/25/heresy-and-the-creation-of-monsters/

        Curry writes (my bold):

        “And because of the high relevance of our field, we need to figure out how to provide the best possible scientific information and assessment of uncertainties. This means abandoning this religious adherence to consensus dogma.”

        http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dogma

        1 a: something held as an established opinion; especially: a definite authoritative tenet

        b: a code of such tenets

        c: a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds

        2: a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church

        Calling it dogma is bad enough given definition 1C but putting it in a context of “religious adherance” makes it even more cutting. One of the best catch phrases I’ve heard, and I used it myself back when I started climate change blogging (2007) is “The Church of Carbon Sin”. ROFL

        http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/angry-old-fat-man-the-algorecalypse/

      • David Springer

        My mentor for several years Professor Wm. Dembski:

        Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Postdoctoral work in mathematics), University of Illinois at Chicago (B.A., M.S., PhD),
        Princeton University (postdoctoral work in computer science),
        University of Chicago (M.S., PhD, postdoctoral work in physics),
        Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div.)

        is certifiably an expert in philosophy (of science), mathematics (statistics), and theology. He had this to say in a comment defending a blog article of mine (I was an author and primary administrator of his blog for several years) on global warming:

        http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/father-of-climatology-calls-manmade-global-warming-absurd/#comment-120304

        We discuss lots of things at UD. Global warming is important to the discussion over intelligent design because the same bag of tricks used to invalidate ID get used to invalidate criticism of man-made global warming. Certain sectors of science are notoriously corrupt, inventing threats and then setting themselves up as saviors so that anyone who resists their salvific efforts is branded as evil. This is an abuse of science, and UD will stand against it in whatever form it takes.

        So while Mosher has a valid point that I’m not an expert on religion I’m probably the closest thing to one around here.

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.[note 1] Many religions have narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that are intended to explain the meaning of life and/or to explain the origin of life or the Universe. From their beliefs about the cosmos and human nature, people derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.[1]’ Wikipedia

      Thus doctrine and is there a religion anywhere where God(s) don’t come into it? My description was succinct rather than pedestrian and pedantic – in contrast to your inevitable sophomoric, soporific sophistry. As was my comparison of AGW to a spaceship cult – based on the commonality of groupthink. Sp@ce c@det is – naturally -shorthand for the Borg Collective Cult of AGW Groupthink Sp@ce C@dets. I think it apt and funny.

      If you notice – mosh – my ‘tirades’ are aimed at empty headed twits who are aggressive and abusive. You remain at the level of snide and smarmy.

      Wow – I am way into alliteration today.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Romans
      [14}For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
      [15] Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
      [16] In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

      Kings James version of course. The laws of God are written in the heart. This is other than dogma, ethics or doctrine. This is an exploration of the multi-dimensional human condition. Just thought I would correct the trivial objectivism of Wikipedia.

    • Generalissimo Skippy

      I’ll correct that.

      There are 4,200 religions springer. Didn’t you read that far? Typically superficial twit that you are. I quoted from Wikipedia – if you check there are quotation marks – the source mentioned – everything. What else do you phucking need other than a phucking brain transplant.

      I can’t say I am familiar with all of them – but I am assuming they have some common ground and maybe a belief in God(s).

      • David Springer

        Yeah I’ll correct that too. THREE abusive tirades to mail to Curry. I hadn’t pressed the send button on the email yet so I was able to add that last one. Care to add one or several more? It’s so intellectually stimulating, civil, and all that on your part donchaknow? LOL

        By the way, the term “redneck” is racist. You’ve called me that racist term on several occasions ironically at least once while calling *me* a racist. Calling a white person a redneck is equivalent to calling a black person a n*gger. You’re a real piece of work, Ellison.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck

        The term Redneck is chiefly used for a poor rural white person of the Southern United States. It can be a derogatory slang term[1][2] similar in meaning to cracker (especially regarding Georgia and Florida), hillbilly (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks),[3] and white trash (but without the last term’s suggestions of immorality).[4][5][6]

        By the 2000s, the term had expanded in meaning beyond the poor Southerner to to refer to bigoted, loutish reactionary Americans who are opposed to modern ways.[7] It is often used to attack white Southern conservatives. The term is also used broadly to degrade working class and rural whites that are perceived by urban progressives to be insufficiently liberal.[8] At the same time, some white Southerners have reclaimed the word, using it with pride and defiance as a self-identifier.[9

    • Generalissimo Skippy

      ‘Racism is generally defined as actions, practices or beliefs, or social or political systems that are based in views that humans can be divided into races with shared traits, abilities, or qualities (e.g., personality, intellect, morality) which are inherited and that this means that races can be ranked as inherently superior or inferior to others, or that members of different races should be treated differently.’ Wikipedia

      Unless you are claiming that rednecks are a distinct race – it doesn’t quite qualify. But your sanctimonious whines are pretty funny anyway.

      • David Springer

        Redneck is a sub-culture of white Americans. Emphasis on the word white. Unless white is not a race in your undoubtedly highly esteemed opinion then yes, it’s racist because it refers only to white people.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_White#Identity

        Throughout American history the Poor White have regularly been identified in differentiating terms;[8] the majority of which are often considered disparaging. They have been known as rednecks (especially in modern context), hillbillies in Appalachia, crackers in Georgia, and poor white trash.

        Of course I should probably consider the source. My ancestors who came to America in the 1600’s were tradesmen fleeing religious persecution in England while yours were thieves and murderers exiled from England to a penal colony on the other side of the planet.

        You might be interested in this book:

        http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0415924944/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

    • David Springer

      No, it actually started here with your passive-aggressive references to me. Unless you care to deny it was me to whom you were referring in the bolded parts below.

      Robert I Ellison | February 17, 2014 at 3:40 am |

      ‘Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.[note 1] Many religions have narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that are intended to explain the meaning of life and/or to explain the origin of life or the Universe. From their beliefs about the cosmos and human nature, people derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.[1]‘ Wikipedia

      Thus doctrine and is there a religion anywhere where God(s) don’t come into it? My description was succinct rather than pedestrian and pedantic – in contrast to your inevitable sophomoric, soporific sophistry. As was my comparison of AGW to a spaceship cult – based on the commonality of groupthink. Sp@ce c@det is – naturally -shorthand for the Borg Collective Cult of AGW Groupthink Sp@ce C@dets. I think it apt and funny.

      If you notice – mosh – my ‘tirades’ are aimed at empty headed twits who are aggressive and abusive. You remain at the level of snide and smarmy.

      Wow – I am way into alliteration today.

      One little dig in return from me and you launched into a string of personally abusive tirades.

      Granted I could have ignored your passive-aggressive jabs but why should I when I can easily make the passive part go away and thereby reveal to everyone here how abusive you become at the drop of a hat.

      • Generalissimo Skippy

        Springer dropped an abusive comment in response to harmless alliteration that I admit was not quite in the spirit of ‘spew’ – which is after all the height of rational and civil critique at the morass of CE – but his comment is gone now gone now as I predicted. Whereas my original comment remains. No need to repeat it springer.

        He seems now to be continuing his sanctimonious, whining post facto justifications. It is all a bore. He actually didn’t get that it wasn’t directed to him. I made a mistake. I was thinking of mosh. How he could think that sophomoric, soporific sophistry applied to him is incomprehensible. Mosh maybe. Such a prickly customer.

        As for tirades – isn’t reasonable force defense in any court in the land? Where is natural justice at CE? Taken a way back seat to the bland and the colourless – because otherwise all we get is the crude and the obnoxious.

      • Generallismo Racist

        I hate rednecks.

      • Generalissimo Skippy

        We seem to have another outbreak of Generalissimo madness from springer. Did we not get past this blogospheric indemnity theft nonsense? Did not Judy delete false Generalissimos when this last occurred on the very real justification that such imposture held the real possibility of deliberately creating a confusion in the minds of denizens with the object of discrediting the original?

        I wonder what set him off this time? Boredom, a proclivity for inanity, gnawing at the bone of discontent, mean spirited resentment?

        You can tell the real Generalissimo – one by getting the spelling right. But more by the cultured and dulcet tones, the great erudition and the blue horse called Shibboleth.

        ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
        Or close the wall up with our English dead.
        In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
        As modest stillness and humility:
        But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
        Then imitate the action of the tiger;
        Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
        Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage…’

        In the climate war battles are fought with words in the blogosphere and with ideas that capture the spirit of the future. Such as spinger has little enough wit or poetry to carry any day. This is why he is a grunt and not a Generalissimo. .

      • Generalissimo Skippy

        Something about “forceful responses”. I can do more than simply confuse if you want to go there.

        JC note: David Springer – using someone else’s blog identify is definitely a violation of blog rules

      • Generalissimo Skippy

        Judy,

        The comment above is from Dave Springer – as are a number of other variations in a newly renewed campaign of harassment.

        I am concerned that you are allowing both blogospheric indemnity theft and serial harassment to proceed without sanction.

      • Generalissimo Skippy

        This is springer.

        Generalissimo Skippy | February 21, 2014 at 8:09 am | Reply

        Something about “forceful responses”. I can do more than simply confuse if you want to go there.

        This is me.

        The comment above is from Dave Springer – as are a number of other variations in a newly renewed campaign of harassment.

        I am concerned that you are allowing both blogospheric indemnity theft and serial harassment to proceed without sanction.

        springer is a moron and a redneck –
        I have had more enough of the nonsense you allow on your site.

    • Generalissimo Skippy

      That is funny – I thought I was talking to mosh.

      Still – I will go with a defense of truth. And it was hardly a tirade – more alliterative licence.

    • A strange word, “redneck”.
      Apparently, it refers to Caucasians working in the fields, bent over under a hot sun, cultivating crops with which to feed their families and others.
      That sounds like honorable work.
      Derogatory usage, by folks in air conditioned offices, seems to changed “redneck” into a term of disparagement. Something like “denier”.

  13. HP as usual adds to their hyperventilating, hysterical arsenal of extreme weather stories with this about Lake Michigan. Indeed if you are under 30 it would be “a once in a lifetime” event, but then who is under 30. The pictures are beautiful. And the ice cover will hopefully slow down evaporation and the lakes can return to more normal levels and I can more quickly say to my Liberal compatriots “see just natural variability”.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/15/lake-michigan-ice-caves_n_4782719.html

  14. “…but in a sense it is bad news for the climate research community because it does point to a potential problem for the climate models.”A problem with the models, in turn, could erode trust in climate science, noted England. But “that would be akin to writing off the medical profession for finding out something new about an illness that they didn’t know about earlier,” he said.”

    The twisted logic and motivated reasoning is as obvious as it is sickening.Oh no, it could erode trust in climate science. How tragic, since we all know A PRIORI, that even when they’re wrong they’re still right.

  15. Who is going to stand up to all these eminent scientific organizations, and, in public, and in words of one syllable, say that they are dead wrong?

    Probably someone who is not profiting directly or indirectly from the multibillion dollar CAGW big business and yet still has the necessary climatology gravitas (and I do not see this person).

    Richard Lindzen?

    Roy Spencer?

    John Christy?

    Our hostess here?

    (or, even more likely, Mother Nature?)

    Max

    • “Who is going to stand up to all these eminent scientific organizations, and, in public, and in words of one syllable, say that they are dead wrong?”

      Without going back over the thread, I’m guessing that question is from Jim C. Whoever it’s from, it’s a cry in the wilderness and deeply sympathetic. And yet one voice….a dozen voices….a hundred voices won’t be enough….

      Like that old joke about how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb, we could ask how many qualified, credentialed scientists would it take to convince the climate establishment they’re wrong.

      In both cases the answer Is “None. They have to want to change themselves.”

      I don’t see that happening for at least a generation. Of course as Max points out, maybe nature will settle the issue for them.

    • Max, there may be method in my madness. I hope Prof. Rapp is a regular reader, and he might just try and respond himself. I can always hope.

  16. How is that sea ice area and extent doing these days?

    Somebody has to go out on a limb, so I’ll call it, the max has already been reached in either area or extent. On with the melt season.

    How are those arctic temperatures doing?

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      I would be careful about calling the seasonal maximum. A shift in the wind over the Bering could rapidly add to sea ice extent. But to your point, NH sea ice growth has stalled and a comparison to longer term levels for this data indicates how very unusual and low the level is.

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘What makes sea ice in this particular region so fundamental
      to the wave’s existence? Sea ice in the Northern
      Hemisphere is uniquely exposed to open ocean (the North
      Atlantic) in the Eurasian Arctic. This juxtaposition governs
      sea ice growth by giving the Atlantic Ocean dominant
      constructive or destructive influence over the feature
      mostly responsible for wintertime sea ice cover, the halocline.

      The halocline is a subsurface zone, approximately
      150 m thick, where salinity concentration changes rapidly
      with depth; in the North Atlantic sector of the Arctic,
      salinity values decrease with depth. Formation of the halocline relies upon the interaction between layers of water
      with contrasting properties: Overlying cool, desalinated
      Arctic surface water mixes with warm, saline water below.
      The halocline’s resulting vertical density structure, in turn,
      maintains separation between the two water masses and
      prevents ocean heat at depth from reaching the surface.

      Where a strong halocline exists, sea ice growth is promoted
      (Zakharov 1997; Frolov et al. 2009 and references within).
      Ice extent influences large-scale wind patterns, which
      influence long-term temperature trends (e.g. Outten and
      Esau 2011). Thus dynamics that either build or destroy the
      halocline in the North Atlantic sector of the Arctic have a
      marked influence on climate-regime evolution as the stadium-wave propagates through the network.’ Role for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying
      hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century
      Marcia Glaze Wyatt • Judith A. Curry

      Maximum ice extent seems fairly unlikely – http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ – but at any rate minimum ice extent contains the seeds of decadal (at least) reversal.

    • Bob Droege

      Globally (Arctic + Antarctic) sea ice is up by 2.7% over the 1979-2000 baseline (end-January).

      So the south is growing faster than the north is shrinking.

      Why (if man-made global warming is supposed to be the culprit)?

      A dilemma.

      Max

    • R Gates, cut the silly alarm. Your longer term is 35 years, about one half of the short 60 year pseudo-cycle, of course the ice decreased. Don’t worry, the ice will follow the temperature when it cools.

      By the way, it’s not the seasonal max 100%.

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:1975/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/normalise

    • Bob, you write “How is that sea ice area and extent doing these days?”

      What an interesting question, which omits one important issue. Some years ago, when Arctic sea ice first started it’s dramatic decline, and then apparently recovered, we were told that sea ice area and extent where not important. What mattered was sea ice volume.

      Now, all of a sudden, the interest is in extent and area, and not in volume. I wonder why. Could it be that in October 2013, according to Cryosat 2, Arctic sea Ice volume was 50% greater than last season? Or that in January, for the first time since, IIRC, 2009, sea ice volume is above the linear trend line?

      Enquiring minds want to know.

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “R Gates, cut the silly alarm. Your longer term is 35 years, about one half of the short 60 year pseudo-cycle, of course the ice decreased. Don’t worry, the ice will follow the temperature when it cools.”
      —-
      Not sure what you mean by “when it cools”. The melting of Arctic sea ice comes mainly from below and is more dictated by water temps than air temps. There is no sign of cooling ahead and only a continuation of the many decades ahead of warming and melting leading to a seasonal ice free arctic.

    • Jim,
      You are correct that the arctic sea ice volume is above the linear trend for the first time in like 5 years, but you realize that linear trend goes to zero in like 2040 or so?

      I have always trusted the area and extent over the sea ice volume as the volume is quite uncertain, but a 50% increase is a big increase, we will see how long it lasts.

      Looks like arctic temps are running 10 C hotter than average too.

      The winds could blow it out the bering straight and compress it from the other side, so it could indeed be the max.

      Max, if you really think the expansion of sea ice in the antarctic means it is cooling down there, well I have a bridge for sale.

      Look where all the antarctic sea ice is right now and where all the big ice shelves have been cracking up and tell me it is a coincidence.

    • Bob, you write “I have always trusted the area and extent over the sea ice volume as the volume is quite uncertain,”

      I think this is a little out of date. I agree that is volume WAS quite uncertain, until Cryosat 2 became operational. The October 2013 data and comparison is by no means uncertain. Yes, PIOMAS is still an estimate.

      As to the rest of the discussion, we understand each other’s position. It is just a question of waiting to see what Mother Nature gives us in the way of empirical data.

    • Bob:

      Looks like arctic temps are running 10 C hotter than average too.

      Or rather, more accurately, 10C less cold.
      I suppose all that energy which evidently hasn’t been warming the atmosphere over North America had to be warming the atmosphere somewhere else, so as not to mess up the global average by cooling it. And, as that 10C ‘warmer’ still doesn’t bring the temperature anywhere near the melting point of ice, exactly what effect do you imagine it’s having, other than being 10C less cold?

    • Bob:

      Look where all the antarctic sea ice is right now and where all the big ice shelves have been cracking up and tell me it is a coincidence.

      You seem to suffer from a lack of perception on issues such as scale and seasonality

  17. Yes it does remind me of the shakespear authorship debate.

    Even to the point where some have employed statistical programs on the authorship of Gliecks forgery ( hehe, guess who suggested that )

    • The whole Glieck episode is pathetic. In some ways I wish I’d never gotten interested in the climate question. More than anything else, I find it a profoundly depressing indictment of human nature. I’m a month away from my 63rd birthday, and I have less and less hope that mankind isn’t going to find a way to destroy ourselves. Think about how narcissistic we can be, to the point where people aren’t even hiding that they’re lusting for a ruinous warming to prove to themselves and the world that they were right.

      You know who was right? Mosher’s aformentioned Shakespeare:

      “Vanity, insatiate cormorant,
      Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

      William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act II, scene 1, line 38.

    • @pokerguy

      Yes indeed.

      Vanity, homo sapiens indelible feet of clay

    • pokerguy, your very young!. But wise!

      In some ways I wish I’d never gotten interested in the climate question. More than anything else, I find it a profoundly depressing indictment of human nature. I’m a month away from my 63rd birthday, and I have less and less hope that mankind isn’t going to find a way to destroy ourselves. Think about how narcissistic we can be, to the point where people aren’t even hiding that they’re lusting for a ruinous warming to prove to themselves and the world that they were right.

      I saw this comment on ‘Online Opinion’ and thought it relevant:

      “I believe that the MAIN reason our society in general does not discuss (and is even a taboo subject, like nationalism or Aus culture) Nuclear Energy possibilities rests in the utter insanity of the LEFT mindset.

      It is not, as most think, because people “fear risks” like Chernobyl, that is not even the reason the average “Lefty” supports the anti-open policy on the topic. Like everything with the Left and their motives, they act in herd-form, group-think and tribalistic, bullying mentality and simply follow the others and what is already being done or not done.

      That is to say, they simply ARE against the topic being considered. The numerous reasons they use to support themselves like the Chernobyl risks etc. are absolutely pathetic when one actually considers the dangers and real possibilities as well as the actual benefits of one day finding a safer nuclear way which CANNOT occur in such a culture of “taboo” surrounding the issue.

      Despicable MOB, HERD, bigots!

      The left have invaded even our learning institutions such that the average university in Australia (especially in ARTS) feels like being in some middle-ages church run by the Nazi intelligence for propaganda.

      Young people are drilled and brainwashed into thinking that the left’s entire agenda and views are JUST CORRECT (absolute TRUTH) like some religion. The slightest hint of rebellious words can be career ending, but at least will eternally brand you in ALL eyes to be some stupid, right-wing bigot who hates non-white people and poor people, and who fears difference and change.

      This intellectual poisonous disease is the culprit behind the taboo on Nuclear power talk”
      http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16024#277853

    • Hi Peter,

      I don’t feel young, that’s for sure. “Old age is the biggest surprise in a man’s life” said Tostoy….or maybe it was Trotsky of all people. I see it variously reported. But truer words were never spoken.

      OTOH, there’s a beautiful piece by Roger Angell, renowned essayist who’s now 93, in the current New Yorker on old age. So, can’t take myself too seriously.

      Not long ago I’d have considered that quoted passage an hysterical screed. Now I feel its painful burden of truth. The tyranny of the Left…the self-righteous, pious, intolerant Left is certainly to be feared.. The biggest mistake of my life, not counting my first wife, was voting for Obama. Hard to fathom my own ignorance at this point.


    • pokerguy (aka al neipris) | February 15, 2014 at 4:34 pm |

      ….
      . In some ways I wish I’d never gotten interested in the climate question.

      Good for you PG. As far as I am concerned, getting involved in climate science research as an amateur has been one of the best educational decisions of my life. The amount of information that I have been able to distill and hopefully instill into others rather boggles my mind.

      So as advice, keep up whatever you have been doing. On blogs, they call declarations similar to what you made GCW.

      Cheers.

    • Keep up the fight guys. To Pokerguy, Peter’s small scale nukes and Mosher’s YF-23:

  18. David L. Hagen

    Mark Steyn launched the challenge vs Mann with: Football and Hockey
    He quoted Rand Simburg:

    perhaps it’s time that we revisit the Michael Mann affair, particularly given how much we’ve also learned about his and others’ hockey-stick deceptions since. Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.

    Steyn further opined:

    Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.

    Steyn just published: The One-Party State of Climatestan
    by Mark Steyn • Feb 12, 2014 at 1:05 pm

    You can figure out my real legal strategy by piecing together every seventh word, and then dividing by the first tree ring on the left in the Yamal peninsula.

    On the Keystone XL Pipeline Interior Secretary Mr. Salazar declared:
    “It would be in the national interest to build the pipeline for our energy security, and enhance that national interest with the preservation of the Dakota Grasslands Conservation Area and the Prairie Potholes Region. In so doing, the carbon sequestration functions of these conservation areas will be preserved, wildlife and ranching heritage is supported, and energy security is enhanced.”
    “At the end of the day, we are going to be consuming that oil.” “So is it better for us to get the oil from our good neighbor from the north, or to be bringing it from some place in the Middle East?”

    • The oil oi the Canadian Tar sand is going to be consumed by the world. It will go to the highest bidder.

      If the pipeline is not built to the USA it will be sent to a port on the west coast of BC and shipped to Asia.

      Who will be more effective at encouraging and facilitating the development of the Canadian tar sands to minimise environmental impacts – the USA or Asian customers?

    • The Key to the full set of the CRU Emails is in the hands of people with an interests in the machinations of the ‘Team’.
      I wonder if the full database of the CRU emails will be made livable to the defense?
      Is it just me, or has Steve slowed up on posting on his own blog recently?

    • Doc.

      Ahem.

    • David L. Hagen

      Michael Mann, by replacing the scientific method with environmental extremism, and seeking to chill public expression has caused great harm to climate science and the body politic.

      National Review editor Jack Fowler writes: No, National Review Is Not Doomed

      Because we are determined to prevail in this case, and to have the kind of expert legal counsel necessary to make sure that happens. And it will happen.

      Notable in all these reports is the sense of glee at the prospect of a conservative magazine of commentary and opinion kicking the bucket. They have a death wish on our behalf. So much for tolerance and intellectual debate. And a culture of free speech.

      I wish them well as they address the serious issues of our day.

  19. I wonder if I’m the one who started the Mann/Lysenko thoughts back on Feb 5 with the first two comments on a post at Rand Simberg’s blog.

  20. From the article:
    Guest Michio Kaku, a physics professor from New York City College–not a climatologist, but a physicist–claimed that the “wacky weather” could get “even wackier” and its all because of global warming. “What we’re seeing is that the jet stream and the polar vortex are becoming unstable. Instability of historic proportions. We think it’s because of the gradual heating up of the North Pole. The North Pole is melting,” professor Kaku said.

    “That excess heat generated by all this warm water is destabilizing this gigantic bucket of cold air… So that’s the irony, that heating could cause gigantic storms of historic proportions,” the prof explained.

    This was all because of global warming, Rose insisted.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/02/13/Horrible-Winter-CBS-Says-Blame-Global-Warming

    • If the North Pole melts won’t compasses quit working?

      *weighing in on climate science*

    • You may have a point about the Earth’s magnetism. Maybe that’s why the magnetic poles are in the process of shifting.

      On another note, I kind of like the “wacky weather” thing. Maybe climates scientists could trade in “climate change” for “wacky climate.” It has zing and people can remember it. Also, it doesn’t sound like business as usual like “climate change.” Even most stoners on welfare know climate changes.

    • Climate weirding has been used.

    • Climate weirding sounds too supernatural. But OTOH, that might work for climate scientists.

  21. English is not my forte, and so I am having trouble with Professor Matthew England’s usage of the word; unprecedented.

    “an unprecedented strengthening of the equatorial trade winds appears to be largely responsible for the hiatus in surface warming observed over the past 13 years”.

    Does this mean that the equatorial trade winds have never had this velocity before, or never blown for the same length, or that the average velocity over 13 is greater than any time in the past?
    What historical measurements do we have of the equatorial trade wind strength that allows him to use the claim unprecedented?

    • “What historical measurements do we have of the equatorial trade wind strength …”

      Why, the opinion polls of course

    • Robert I Ellison

      When talking equatorial Pacific trade winds we are talking Walker Circulation.

      e.g. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/misc/hxsoi.html

      Here’s a link to an SOI graph – http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/ENSO/soi-shade-ncep-b.gif

      The SOI is an index of pressure between Tahiti and Darwin – the proximate cause of changes in Walker Circulation – and one measure of ENSO. In La Nina there is low pressure at Darwin and relatively higher pressure at Tahiti – strengthening Walker Circulation – as we have seen in the current cool Pacific mode post 1998/2001.

      ENSO varies a lot more than we have seen in the past hundred years.

    • Ignore what Chief says. The average global temperature can be estimated from forcing factors and other thermodynamic factors. This is a page which contains links to the CSALT model
      http://contextearth.com/context_salt_model/

      As it is, the CSALT model can accurately project temperatures based on training data:
      http://imageshack.com/a/img812/74/abh.gif

      The SOI is an important variational factor but it is not the only one. Moreover, it is bounded and reverts to the mean. It has some character of a red noise Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process and some character of a elliptical oscillation. It is leaning toward the latter as I show in the recent post on my blog.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Well – that’s one way of doing it. A conceptually better approach is to use a cumulative SOI to account for ENSO persistence in various modes.

      e.g http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1828v1.pdf

      The decadal modes persist for 20 to 40 years – which is the main reason for anticipating persistence of the hiatus for another decade to three in the current cool mode.

      But as I suggested above there are far longer periods of persistence in the proxy records.

      Centennial. More salt in the Law Dome ice core is La Nina.

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=138

      Millennial. The red shift is El Nino – due to higher flood flows.

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=197

      The science is all very clear and abundant.

    • Like I said, don’t listen to a thing that Chief says. His “cumulative SOI to account for ENSO persistence” is a completely misguided approach, and that was likely fabricated by deniers to hang on to the vain hope that they can pin an upward warming trend on an integral.

      The problem in their krank theory is that the SOI reverts to a mean of zero because it has to, as it is simply a sea-level pressure differential and all pressure differentials have to eventually revert to zero. The integral of a value that reverts to a zero mean is also zero (plus an additive constant).

      QED.

      Now you know why I said not to listen to what the Chief says.

    • Robert I Ellison

      The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”

      Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

      http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703

      Of course – he could always try summing it instead of p_ss_ng in everyone’s pockets.

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/SOI-GHD_zpsd6f54d3d.png.html?sort=3&o=42

    • When it comes to talking about ENSO and anything else for that matter, the Chief/Skip is way out of his element.

      The SOI can be modeled using the equations for elliptical waves. This is a training model that uses annual harmonics from 6 years and up that resonate with the Mathieu function for the ocean basin
      http://imageshack.com/a/img836/8159/c9uc.gif
      Annual harmonics below 6 years do not show up because they are forbidden according to the wave equation. The training interval is from 1960 to 2000, and notice how the model does a passable job of hindcasting and forecasting.

      I have a start of an explanation in the following post, but I will be posting more on this soon.
      http://contextearth.com/2014/02/10/the-southern-oscillation-index-model/

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘The patterns of Pacific Decadal Variability (PDV) are very similar to those of ENSO. When SST anomalies are positive in the tropical eastern Pacific, they are negative to the west and over the central North and South Pacific, and positive over the tropical Indian Ocean and northeastern portions of the high-latitude Pacific Ocean. Many mechanisms have been proposed for explaining PDV…

      Another view of ENSO is that El Niños are a series of discrete warm events punctuating periods of neutral or cold conditions (La Niñas). That is, ENSO can be characterized as a stable (or damped) mode triggered by stochastic atmospheric/oceanic forcing (e.g., Lau, 1985; Pendland and Sardeshmukh, 1995; Moore and Kleeman, 1999; Philander and Fedorov, 2003; Kessler, 2003). This hypothesis proposes that disturbances external to the coupled system are the source of random forcing that drives ENSO. An attractive feature of this hypothesis is that it offers a natural explanation in terms of noise for the irregular behavior of ENSO variability…

      In addition to year-to-year variations associated with the ENSO phenomenon, SSTs in the tropical Pacific also fluctuate on timescales of decades and longer (e.g., Mantua et al., 1997; Zhang et al., 1997; Power et al., 1999; Deser et al., 2004; Guan and Nigam, 2008). These tropical Pacific decadal SST variations, henceforth referred to as “Pacific Decadal Variability” or PDV (also called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO in the literature), are organized into large-scale spatial patterns with linkages to other ocean basins and to other climate parameters such as rainfall, wind, and cloudiness.’ http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/cdeser/docs/submitted.wang.enso_review.pdf

      ‘A new chronology of large magnitude rainfall events derived from the continuous high-resolution Lake Tutira storm sediment record covers the last 6800 years and provides the first insight into changes in El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnections to the higher southern latitudes to be obtained from New Zealand. Synthesis with independent paleoclimate records from the tropical Pacific and Antarctica also reveals a millennial-scale waxing and waning of the teleconnections that were not visible in the narrow historical window previously used to view interactions between ENSO and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Consistent with modern ENSO behaviour, we find teleconnections to the Southwest Pacific varied throughout the middle and late Holocene, depending on the strength and phase of ENSO and the phase of the SAM. We suggest that precession-driven changes in the seasonal cycle of solar radiation exert a first-order control on the interaction between the two climate modes. Consequently, their present status may neither be indicative of conditions that prevailed earlier in the Holocene, nor of those that might be associated with future climate changes in the Southern Hemisphere extratropics.’ http://hol.sagepub.com/content/22/1/23.full.pdf

      I don’t waste much time looking at webby’s incompetent blog science. He used Eureqa? e.g. – http://hol.sagepub.com/content/22/1/23.full.pdf

      Big deal. It provides no hint of what the near future will bring – let alone in the very long term.

      The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation looks like this – http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/diagram/7788/interdecadal-pacific-oscillation-1920-2000

      You should be able to see a step change in SOI in the late 1970’s – http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/graph/7783/southern-oscillation-index-1955-2005

      More easily seen in the MEI of Claus Wolter. A change in ENSO behavior known as the ‘Great Pacific Climate Shift’ in the late 1970’s. As well as another shift to La Nina conditions post 1998.

      http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif

      Excuse me but wtf did he do to smooth these step changes in the SOI?

      Mojib Latif has been to model Pacific Ocean climate shifts.

      ‘The use of a coupled ocean–atmosphere–sea ice model to hindcast (i.e., historical forecast) recent climate variability is described and illustrated for the cases of the 1976/77 and 1998/99 climate shift events in the Pacific. The initialization is achieved by running the coupled model in partially coupled mode whereby global observed wind stress anomalies are used to drive the ocean/sea ice component of the coupled model while maintaining the thermodynamic coupling between the ocean/sea ice and atmosphere components. Here it is shown that hindcast experiments can successfully capture many features associated with the 1976/77 and 1998/99 climate shifts. For instance, hindcast experiments started from the beginning of 1976 can capture sea surface temperature (SST) warming in the central-eastern equatorial Pacific and the positive phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) throughout the 9 years following the 1976/77 climate shift, including the deepening of the Aleutian low pressure system. Hindcast experiments started from the beginning of 1998 can also capture part of the anomalous conditions during the 4 years after the 1998/99 climate. The authors argue that the dynamical adjustment of heat content anomalies that are present in the initial conditions in the tropics is important for the successful hindcast of the two climate shifts.’
      http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00626.1

      As he says somewhere – it is about as accurate as tossing a coin. But webby’s stuff you should toss out entirely.

    • WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | February 15, 2014 at 11:27 pm |

      “…The average global temperature can be estimated from forcing factors and other thermodynamic factors. …

      Surely ye jest, lad. The changes in the forcings themselves are calculated from temperature changes…. and that can then be used to calculate the global temperature?

      Well, if you are correct we can soon scrap those pesky Argo floats and a heap of satellites. Not needed.

    • Hi Doc,

      Pretty simple; unprecedented means, ‘never seen or done before’.

      ….. except in climate science, where it means, ‘not seen since the last time it happened’.


    • Surely ye jest, lad. The changes in the forcings themselves are calculated from temperature changes…. and that can then be used to calculate the global temperature?

      Serious as a heart attack. That’s why denialists get so upset. We use their own theories to prove them wrong.

      So we get agreement like this:
      http://imageshack.com/a/img812/74/abh.gif
      And naturally, this causes lots of OWN GOAL scoring on their own account as they dig themselves a deeper hole.

    • WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | February 18, 2014 at 1:37 am | sasi:

      So we get agreement like this:
      http://imageshack.com/a/img812/74/abh.gif

      Ah! So you noted the 0.2°C rise between 1880 and 1960, noted the rise in CO2 in that time, then calculated the rise to 2012, taking into account the rise in CO2 subsequent to 1960.

      Marvelous. An excellent result.

      I’d advise continuing to use that model, it seems pretty accurate. You can probably throw the other few dozen away, they ain’t working.

  22. The Graham Wayne article is good, plain common sense.
    One excerpt which I think is key is this.
    “Not without some irony, we can also trust the competitive nature of science, for no scientist with an eye to his or her own success, to their place in the history of science, to the long-term value of their work and its merit, will subscribe to a theory or cite the work of others, if there is a reasonable chance that citation is wrong, that subscription is worthless.
    It would be a very foolish scientist who would spend his career pursuing research founded on a house of cards, ready to collapse at any moment. In this respect, science is essentially self-validating – given enough time and data, the wrong-headed science must fall by the wayside, and it will be the scientists themselves throwing out the trash. ”

    In other words, in the field of science being proven wrong doesn’t make your name go down well in history. It is this major deterrent that keeps true scientists moving in the right direction. Their role models are only the ones that have been proven right.

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘As for your question: at the end of the century we were sitting on the highest global temperature value of the modern record. Since then we have leveled off and we may in fact be cooling. “We have reached the top of the mountain”, therefore it’s not surprising that the last decade is one of the warmest on record. Think about it! The important aspect is that the warming of the 80s and 90s has stopped and the models missed it completely! The important issue is that we have entered a new regime in global temperature tendency. In fact, I find it very misleading that scientists will present “the warmest decade” argument to justify their beliefs (or failures).’ Anastasios Tsonis

      There are 2 fundamental problems with AGW – dynamical complexity and clouds. But perhaps clouds are merely feedbacks to dynamic shifts.

      ‘Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.

      The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1

      Needless to say – the new paradigm is not part of the sp@ce c@det memeplex.

    • Jim D, you stated:-
      “In other words, in the field of science being proven wrong doesn’t make your name go down well in history”
      Might I suggest that you cast your eye over the history of HTLVIII/HIV research, errors and questionable attribution, then look at the career profile of the US researchers who made mistakes and published work now known to be highly flawed?
      Then revisit your opinion.

    • DocM, I don’t know what you are referring to, but there is being flawed but advancing over previous theories, and being flawed and going down a dead end while criticizing work that was going the right way. The former may be regarded as progress (you could view a lot of early ideas as flawed in retrospect), and the latter is where you don’t want to be.

    • OK Jim, something more recent.
      Have the scientists who published very alarming projections for a vCJD epidemic, and also got enormous funding for studying prions, been professionally damaged by be completely wrong?

    • As far as I know, those of us who lived in the UK in the early 80’s still can’t donate blood in the US because of this, so has it been proven flawed yet, out of personal interest? When will they relax this restriction? On the matter itself, have they had to retract their work, or was it a best guess based on evidence at the time, or did others have evidence in the opposite direction that was ignored? I guess I can’t judge them, not knowing what they were seeing when they made their claims. If they neglected clear contrary evidence at the time, I would certainly fault them.

    • “In other words, in the field of science being proven wrong doesn’t make your name go down well in history.”

      Their primary concern is to avoid being proven wrong, until they can get their pensions. If CAGW doesn’t pan out soon, the climate science will return to the backwater of esoteric academic research and compete for funding with the geeks who are laboring in obscurity studying the sex lives of the common blue eared gnat.

      Jimmy, can you tell us why you think that 1958 to 2005, is the last 50 years? Surely, you can at least see that it isn’t 50 years.

    • donnie mo, you seem to believe that academic scientists are only in it for the pay and university pension. A scientist would laugh at that misconception. In science you have a publication record, which is your legacy, like it or not, and that lives on after retirement. Scientists are well aware of the reputations of previous scientists in their field, and those are the role models, positive and negative. It’s not just a job to do until retirement, then have your name wiped from the record, like some jobs are.

      For the 50 years thing, I believe Overpeck was referring to the approximately 50 years data that went into AR4 attributions, which was a subject of his video, but your guess is as good as mine. Check out what he said for yourself.

    • Get in touch with reality, jimmy. If not for the CAGW scare, the climate science would be uninteresting and unimportant. If climate doesn’t change much and we can’t do anything about it anyway, who would pay the billions and billions to be continually informed that it’s natural variation? How many climate science jobs would exist, if not for the CAGW scare? Climate scientists need the CAGW scare. Simple as that, jimmy dee.

    • And jimmy, I know what the last 50 years means. It means the last 50 years, which ain’t 1958 to 2005.

    • donnie, so now I see that you are complaining about the correlation plot I posted for 1958-2005 not being the exact 50 years that I said. The point of the plot was to show someone that the correlation with CO2 was higher than they thought. You can add later years to bring it up to 50 if you want, but I suspect it won’t affect the correlation much. Certainly 0.89 will be close to the 50-year correlation.

    • Don’t try to shine it on, jimmy. You said the last 50 years. If you want to be taken half-way seriously, get your doo-doo straight. At least, the simple stuff. What is the correlation in the last 15 years, jimmy deedee?

    • Robert I Ellison

      The recent warming (1977-1998) – and the current hiatus – correlates with cloud change much better than CO2.

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=84

      Just saying. .

    • Jim D:

      …for no scientist with an eye to his or her own success, to their place in the history of science, to the long-term value of their work and its merit, will subscribe to a theory or cite the work of others, if there is a reasonable chance that citation is wrong, that subscription is worthless.

      For much the same reason that we still have so many clergymen entering their field – they believe.
      How can scientists know whether or not their beliefs pan out before they’ve done the work?
      And if their theories are already established then why spend years trying to re-prove them?

    • phatboy, in most cases science is building on existing blocks and gaining knowledge from more observations or better techniques (including models). Scientists want to find new ideas, or new consequences of old ideas or use new techniques for exploring nature. Discovery is how they make their name. Explorers of the knowledge frontier, you could say.

    • Jim D, science is not a popularity contest – the truth or otherwise of any hypothesis cannot be judged by the number of people who subscribe to it. In any case, climate scientists needn’t fear for their pensions – nature takes a very long time to show her hand.

    • phatboy, it is not popularity, but credibility of the ideas that matters. Yes, skeptics may be unpopular because they have been wrong in the past or appear to cherry-pick their “facts”, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore them every time, and they are being listened to, especially in Congress.

    • Climate catastrophe is becoming incredible, except for government mismanagement of the weather. That’s predictable and immediate.
      ==================

    • Jim D, the credibility of an idea is not proof that it’s correct.
      Lots of credible ideas in the past have been shown to be wrong.
      Your attempt at diversion didn’t go unnoticed, though!

    • phatboy, the, perhaps too subtle, point was science is not about popularity, but credibility. Only credible ideas become popular. Skeptic ideas of little or no CO2 impact don’t match the physics or historical data, and for reasons of not fitting with the big picture, where we also understand distant paleoclimate and Ice Age temperatures based on consensus sensitivities, they haven’t become popular.

    • It’s neither about credibility nor popularity. You’re trying to divert again.

    • phatboy, then I am not going to try to guess what you were saying, but the 12:56pm ‘popularity contest’ one was the one I addressed. You brought up popularity, and now say it is not about that. Fine, don’t bring it up then.


    • Robert I Ellison | February 16, 2014 at 2:08 am |

      The recent warming (1977-1998) – and the current hiatus – correlates with cloud change much better than CO2.

      Don’t listen to anything that the RIE Chief Dingo says. It is totally misguided. Anything having to do with clouds is likely a feedback factor that is tracking the changes that are already occurring. More heat leads to greater absolute humidity, which leads to differences in cloud distributions.

      Whereas, the real correlation with CO2 is unmistakeable
      http://imageshack.com/a/img37/5748/v69.gif

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      Webby,

      In your simple model, how have you accounted for the huge role that the IPWP plays in global weather?:

      http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/regsatprod/ipwp/sh_ts.php

      As we can see from the data given in the link, the IPWP goes through cycles, but over the past several decades has been going up in total heat content and net energy.

    • Robert I Ellison

      The Indo-Pacific warm pool occurs as trade winds – stronger in La Nina – push warm surface water up against Australia and Indonesia – resulting in higher sea levels. This pushes through the Indonesian Throughflow to the Indian Ocean elevating sea surface temperatures there. It is ENSO related so of course sea height have increased in the past decade. Duh.

      I wouldn’t ask webby about decadal ENSO variability – it all to zero remember?

      Clouds change with SST – that’s pretty obvious – but also with wind – in complex ways that you ignore only if you want to embrace ongoing ignorance.

    • Jim D, the whole point is that neither popularity nor credibility, consensus, plausibility, belief, whatever, are the final arbiters of the truth.
      The truth is down to what science can show, rather than what scientists can postulate.


    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist | February 16, 2014 at 3:48 pm |
      In your simple model, how have you accounted for the huge role that the IPWP plays in global weather?:

      I incorporate the SOI in the model. This covers the forcing that comes out of that region.
      http://contextearth.com/2014/02/10/the-southern-oscillation-index-model/

      good question.

  23. “Attacks on the consensus among climate scientists are designed to destroy trust…”

    Since there don’t seem to be any climate scientists yet – but we’d like to encourage their eventual emergence – pulling the plug on the old Nile priesthood might be a good first step.

    I suggest withholding temple offerings and giving money to those scruffy lay scholars who show too much curiosity about subjects which they confess to find baffling – and for which the Nile priests have too many facile explanations.

    97% (a number confirmed after much careful interrogation and chanting) may prefer the comfort of the temple and of pharaoh’s favour, but somebody’s got to eventually step outside and take a bloody look, don’t you think?

    • That seems to be a cocooned view from the denialosphere. Perhaps just looking outside a little more may help. Judith should be helping these people to emerge by subjecting them to real and current climate science, and has tried sometimes, but you may be helped more by other non-denialist blogs.

    • Curious George

      Jim D – I tried to engage you in a discussion of Earth and Moon temperatures. All you did was to repeat mantras.

    • CG, we had that discussion. Mosher pointed you to a source. The Moon’s temperature operates by the same understood physics as the Earth’s. Which part did you not believe? You shifted the discussion to the Moon when you claimed not to even understand the 255 K (240 W/m2) number for the Earth.

    • Curious George

      You never accepted that the Moon’s measured mean temperature disagrees with a simple model you keep quoting. Use a more realistic model, please.

    • Jim D, as you are so up on this physics stuff, could you help me out with a thought problem?

      What would the average global temperature of the Earth be if
      1) we slowed its rotation rate so one face was always pointed at the sun?
      2) we increased the rate of rotation by a factor of 24?

    • DocM, the point on the equator facing the sun would have 1370 W/m2 continuously minus something for albedo. With no albedo as an extreme case, and no heat transport, it takes 121 C to emit enough to counter this. Other parts of the surface would not be so hot. The dark side would be very cold, and with no heat transport would tend towards the 3 K of space. It is a very wide distribution of temperatures to integrate over. Faster rotating planets are easier, and give more earth-like results where the surface temperature variation is small enough (=/- 10%) that 240 W/m2 can be converted to a fairly representative 255 K.

    • Jim D, I am so confused by all this.
      It seems obvious to me that the speed that the Earth rotates is a kinetic, and not a thermodynamic quality.
      So that in a rapidly rotating planet the Tmax-Tmin will be small, but in a slow rotating planet, Tmax-Tmin will be large.
      However, you also state that the (Tmax+Tmin)/2 will be different for different spin velocities?
      If the average temperature depends on spin rate, how can you calculate the Earths temperature without GHG’s, so that you can work out the GHG ‘forcing’?

    • DocM, the average surface temperature may depend on the spin rate, but the net emission given earth’s albedo is 240 W/m2. Distributed reasonably uniformly this is equivalent to 255 K. Distributed very unevenly you have to integrate something proportional to T^4 to get 240 W/m, but that is the constraint. This is why 255 K is the effective radiative temperature, but not a bad approximation if the temperature stays mostly well within 10% of the mean.

    • The dark side would be very cold, and with no heat transport would tend towards the 3 K of space. It is a very wide distribution of temperatures to integrate over. Faster rotating planets are easier, and give more earth-like results where the surface temperature variation is small enough (=/- 10%) that 240 W/m2 can be converted to a fairly representative 255 K.

      Like Venus? Which doesn’t even have a major phase-changing component to help transfer energy?

      OTOH the upper part of Venus’s atmosphere does rotate, about 1/4 as fast as Earth.

    • AK, as you have noticed, the atmosphere also moderates the temperature variation.

  24. There is a difference between ignorance and purposeful, ideologically-motivated deception–e.g.,

    A problem with the models, in turn, could erode trust in climate science, noted England. But “that would be akin to writing off the medical profession for finding out something new about an illness that they didn’t know about earlier,” he said.

     
    England’s analogy ignores what climatologists really did. They ignored and prevented dissemination of facts that conflicted with ‘climate science’ as they wished it to be. It wasn’t, ‘that they didn’t know about,’ e.g., natural variation. Climatists lied about and went so far as to lose the MWP and the LIA.

    • Turns out natural variation caused the pause, so they haven’t discounted it, but now it is the skeptics that are saying no it can’t be that.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D says things he doesn’t know about, again:

      “Turns out natural variation caused the pause, so they haven’t discounted it, but now it is the skeptics that are saying no it can’t be that.”

      Here’s Jonathan Overpeck insisting that both natural variability and the sun are completely ruled out !

    • thisnot, while it is good you are paying attention to mainstream scientist views like this, you probably didn’t realize that he wasn’t talking about the pause, but the last 50 years when he said it is not natural variation or the sun. Check it out again, and see if you can understand it better.

      • How about the 50 years before that? “The IPCC speaks of attribution for the last 50 years,” says Lindzen. “Before then, we are dealing with natural climate variability. Warming from 1919-1940 almost indistinguishable from the warming 1970-1998.”

    • There just aren’t enough observations to show the solar variation before that. However, from sunspot numbers, there was a slump in 1910 like now, and a rise through 1940. Anyway definitive statements can’t be made due to the poorer observations back then, especially before 1940. Also CO2 was less certain before Keeling’s data started in the late 50’s.

      • If we are looking for a ‘problem’ to solve we better define the problem first. And, if the temperature of the globe is a part of the problem we should find out what causes it first. Over the last 150 years the correlation between CO2 and temperature is only 22%; but, the correlation with sunspots is 79%. So, if we really thought we could change the temperature of the Earth what should we tackle first?

    • For the last 50 years the correlation between CO2 and temperature has been 0.89, and this is in a period when sunspots have not changed much, but temperature rose a lot. Does that change your view, if correlation is your main criterion?
      http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~emamajek/images/co2.jpg

    • k scott denison

      Gee, Jim, what if you pick 49 years? Or 48? Or 51?

      What’s magical about 50?

      How long are the natural climate cycles reported to be?

    • Dunno, 50 years was mentioned in the video, so I picked it just to stay relevant.

    • k scott denison

      Come on Jim, you must have read by now that many people believe there are cycles with periods around 60 years, and some even think there may be some at 100+…

      So what good is a 50 year look?

    • Sure, the IPCC goes back to 1950, which is a complete 60-year cycle, so there is a lot of stuff on that already that we don’t have to repeat.

    • jimmy, jimmy

      From 1958 to 2005, is definitely not the last 50 years. How are we doing in the last 15 years, jimmy dee?

      • Michael Mann had to look back further than 50 years to lose the LIA and MWP. It’s not surprising that global warming alarmists wish to ignore history. The past is prologue and how natural variation reveals itself to scientists.

    • Skeptics like to bring up the foggy past when observations are less certain, as if that is proof of uncertainty, but they ignore more recent periods that can be used to tie down the sensitivity quite well on their own. Just because we don’t know the exact global average temperature in 1000 AD, doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about the global warming that is happening and measured well now.

      • The idea of a global average is jibber-jabber but after spending billions of dollars you get things like, 95% certainty and an exact global average — proving AGW theory — when what has changed is there has been no change for over 17 years going on two decades.

    • When I first started looking at global temperature a few years ago, I couldn’t believe that the data appeared so noisy. But after looking at it and evaluating the physics, I began to realize that every spike and depression in the temperature profile has an explanation which can be modelled by forcings.
      http://imageshack.com/a/img812/74/abh.gif

      And where there are real deviations, such at the heat wave of 1977, and the Cold Sunday of 1982, you really have to look carefully, because these events are surrounded by worldwide fluctuations that swamp these transient conditions:
      http://imageshack.com/a/img37/5748/v69.gif

      It would be good for the denialists to get educated on these matters.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D again talks about what he doesn’t know:

      “he wasn’t talking about the pause, but the last 50 years when he said it is not natural variation or the sun. Check it out again, and see if you can understand it better.’

      Wrong, Jim D. He said the last 100-150 years, and particularly the last 50 years.

      He said that in 2009, Jim D.

      Now he’s saying the sun dimmed and it accounts for some of the pause :)

      Do bone up, Jim D

    • Robert I Ellison

      Not possible that anything was missed? It is al so simple really – I suppose. Much simpler than biology or God forbid – the stock market.

      http://judithcurry.com/2014/02/14/uk-us-workshop-part-iii-strategies-for-robust-decision-making-for-climate-adaptation/#comment-456119

    • Wagathon,

      ninety-five (percent)
      regarding globul
      warming from C O 2
      is to the I P C C
      what number forty-two
      is to The Hitchhikers Guide
      to the Galaxy …
      the ultimate answer
      to …

      • End of story.

      • There is no global warming so what are we fighting? A solution would be to understand that climate changes all the time and there’s nothing we can do about it. Understanding is the real solution because only then can we begin to fight to find the solution to a growing global energy shortage.

        “We don’t have to save the world–the world’s fine! The world has been through five periods of mass extinction. Sixty-five million years ago when, as it seems, a comet hit the Earth at the same time that there were vast volcanic eruptions in India, which saw off the dinosaurs, and something like 90% of the life on the planet at the time. Go back another, I think is 150 million years earlier than that, to the Permian-Triassic boundary, another giant, giant, giant extinction. The world has been through it many many times before. And what tends to happen, what happens invariably after each mass extinction, is that there’s a huge amount of space available, for new forms of life suddenly to emerge and flourish into. Just as the extinction of the dinosaurs made way for us. Without that extinction, we would not be here.

        “So, the world is fine. We don’t have to save the world—the world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about, is whether or not the world we live in, will be capable of sustaining us in it. That’s what we need to think about. ~Douglas Adams

    • thisnotgood, so you seem to agree now that he wasn’t talking about the pause when he discounted natural variability for these longer terms?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D once more says things he doesn’t know about:

      “thisnotgood, so you seem to agree now that he wasn’t talking about the pause when he discounted natural variability for these longer terms?”

      Remember that “the pause” was not being openly admitted, Jim D, so he called it warming :)
      Only now does he say that dimming (of what was ruled out as a driver) accounts for some of the pause.

      I never said he was consistent or not self contradictory :)

      He was talking about up to 2009, therefore what he said was that natural variability and the sun were totally discounted as drivers over the last 50 years. That includes about 10 years of “the pause”.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      Waggy said: “There is no global warming so what are we fighting?”
      ____
      Such simply wave of the hand dismissal of a wealth of data to the contrary does not speak well for your objective and scientific principles.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D,
      Since you insist on saying things you don’t know about, why stop?

      Supply your reasoning on how a flat forcing cannot be a source of warming.

      Go on, at least for the entertainment value!

    • thisnotgood, if there is one thing we agree about it is that no change in forcing leads to no warming in the climate sense. However, I also say that increased forcing leads to global warming. What was the question? Perhaps you disagree?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D now say:

      “if there is one thing we agree about it is that no change in forcing leads to no warming in the climate sense.[/quote]
      Jim D, have you never boiled water without constantly cranking the element higher and higher? Isn’t just setting it on high and leaving it there good enough? You’re suggesting that forcing needs to increase and increase in order to do the job of warming the water.
      And that’s just funny, Jim.
      Ask anyone you know and see if they don’t laugh at your silly supposition.

      :)

    • thisnotgood, maybe you will understand it this way. The Earth is in equilibrium with the heat it receives at its distance from the sun. Crank up the sun by 1%, and the Earth warms to a new equilibrium. Understand, or should I explain it further?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D, that does not explain why you said the silly things, like a flat forcing cannot warm.

      Neither can it explain why, if the sun was not a driver of the warming, that now dimming of it can explain lack of warming.

    • thisnotgood, the sun’s forcing is fairly flat and it keeps us warm, but its variation causes temperature variations. We can even detect the sunspot cycle in the temperature. Not that hard to understand, surely. Doubling CO2 is equivalent to warming the sun by 1% to put it into that context. So we are in a process of cranking up the CO2 forcing towards that 1%, and the temperature is trying to keep up, hence the warming we are seeing. So next time you simmer something on your stove, note how the temperature doesn’t keep increasing, not until you turn the heat up. We are still turning that knob by adding CO2.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D,
      Now you’ve gone to a different topic for some reason. CO2 and warming was not being discussed.
      As to explaining the previously silly things you said, now you offer:

      ” So next time you simmer something on your stove, note how the temperature doesn’t keep increasing, not until you turn the heat up.”

      Jim D, that fails to explain how a flat forcing CANNOT be the cause of warming. Once the dial is set to sufficient amount, even you now show that you understand that if it’s set high enough, it doesn’t need to change to still higher in order to boil the water

    • thisnotgood, maybe you can understand the concept of an equilibrium temperature from simmering. That is the analogy to use. When it has been simmering for a while, how do you change the temperature? You turn the knob. Does the temperature keep changing? No, it reaches a new equilibrium. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you. Try your stove if you don’t believe it. Any questions?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D, failing to extricate himself although changing topic, now says:

      “maybe you can understand the concept of an equilibrium temperature from simmering. That is the analogy to use. When it has been simmering for a while, how do you change the temperature? You turn the knob.[/quote]
      That is certainly true enough, but has nothing to do with you extricating yourself from your foolish statements.

      ” Does the temperature keep changing? No, it reaches a new equilibrium.[/quote]Which does not extricate you from your foolish predicament.
      WHICH WAS that A FLAT FORCING CANNOT CAUSE WARMING.

      Try again Jim D!

    • thisnotgood, I’m sorry you misunderstood. A rising forcing causes warming. Clear?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D, I understand that you’re caught in your predicament!
      So once more for you.

      Do you remember the statement that you are foolishly defending as logical?
      That a flat forcing CANNOT raise temp.

      Jim D tries this ruse:

      “I’m sorry you misunderstood. A rising forcing causes warming. Clear?”
      That is perfectly clear, Jim D. But you are to defend the notion that a flat forcing CANNOT cause warming.

      Remember? :)

    • thisnotgood, I thought we agreed that simmering doesn’t raise the temperature. Perhaps you need to go back to that stove. This is tiresome.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D’s next ruse is:
      “I thought we agreed that simmering doesn’t raise the temperature. Perhaps you need to go back to that stove. This is tiresome.”

      Jim D, you may indeed be overtired, what with struggling to extricate yourself!
      What you are to defend is the silly notion that a flat forcing cannot raise temperature.

      Try again, Jim D!

    • thisnotgood, so you think flat forcing can raise the temperature? Explain. Does the temperature keep rising with flat forcing or will it stop? Does whether it raises or lowers the temperature rely on whether the forcing rose or fell in the past? Flat forcing on its own can’t do anything. It depends on past forcing changes, doesn’t it?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D now asks questions – good move!

      “so you think flat forcing can raise the temperature? Explain.”

      Energy in can raise temperature. If you do not even believe that, how can you believe in global warming, Jim D? :)

      “Does the temperature keep rising with flat forcing or will it stop?”

      See? you do believe it can cause warming!

      Why did you do all that denying that a flat forcing can raise temperature?

      It’s sad, really.

    • thisnotgood, good, we agreed all along. That’s over. The current state is that the forcing is increasing, and everyone agrees that warming will follow, and, yes, even if we stopped emitting today, this flat forcing will have more warming due to past forcing changes that it has to catch up with. Very clear now that you were referring to what is commonly known as pipeline warming or the imbalance. Other skeptics do have trouble with this concept, so, well done to you.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D tries another ruse!

      “we agreed all along. That’s over. The current state is that the forcing is increasing, and everyone agrees that warming will follow, and, yes, even if we stopped emitting today, this flat forcing will have more warming due to past forcing changes that it has to catch up with. Very clear now that you were referring to what is commonly known as pipeline warming or the imbalance. Other skeptics do have trouble with this concept, so, well done to you.”

      Very clear that that we were taking about SOLAR forcing, Jim D.
      Now are you saying that the past solar forcing is still in the pipeline and even more warming is to come from that past solar forcing?

      Then you’ll need to explain why Overpeck now is saying that the drop in solar forcing accounts partially for the pause, Jim D!

      I like the way you never stop digging that grave, Jim D!

    • thisnotgood, OK, you were talking about solar forcing, I was talking about forcing in general. Let’s say the solar forcing rose by 0.2 W/m2 from 1910 to 1940 and then stopped and went down a little before 1950. Its effect would decay over time and probably go to about zero only a few decades later, while GHG forcing added over 1 W/m2 since 1950. Now, which effect do you think caused the warming since 1950? This is what Overpeck means when he says the sun didn’t do much in that period, pipeline and all.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D says

      “OK, you were talking about solar forcing, I was talking about forcing in general.”

      That doesn’t do anything for you, Jim D. You failed to explain how a flat forcing CANNOT warm.

      “Let’s say the solar forcing rose by 0.2 W/m2 from 1910 to 1940 and then stopped and went down a little before 1950. Its effect would decay over time and probably go to about zero only a few decades later, while GHG forcing added over 1 W/m2 since 1950. Now, which effect do you think caused the warming since 1950? This is what Overpeck means when he says the sun didn’t do much in that period, pipeline and all.[/quote]
      No,Jim D, that’s not what Overpeck said.

      He said the warming could not be from the sun or natural variability. That man’s influence totally dominates all, and that it was IMPOSSIBLE that the sun was a driver of the warming…because it had been FLAT.

      So…Jonathan is busy doing the thing you tried to put on skeptics, only in reverse!

      It’s a beautiful thing that happened to you , Jim D.

      Now you see clearly how you’re 100% correct n your accusation… and it’s applying to your own CAGW side!

      Thanks so much for trying so hard and having this breakthrough moment!

    • thisnotgood, so we both agree with Overpeck that the sun has been flat for the last 50 years and therefore the main forcing has been CO2. Are you reading anything I have been saying? This is the same as I said at the start of all this.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D tries again!

      “so we both agree with Overpeck that the sun has been flat for the last 50 years”

      No, Jim D. we already know that you weren’t paying attention. Or you’re all flagged out and were before we started.
      He said flat for past 30 years.

    • thisnotgood, so which part of Overpeck’s talk do you disagree with? If you agree, then we are on the same page. The sun being flat for 30 years was probably in reference to that period being when most of the warming occurred. Do you think the sun played a role, or do you agree that a flat sun couldn’t have done much? The sun has been flat or downwards for at least 50 years, in fact, so even the pipeline doesn’t help you, and meanwhile CO2 added more than 1 W/m2 of forcing to account for the warming that was measured. Anyway, watch Overpeck again and see which parts you disagree with. He seems central consensus in his position, so you might be too, since you keep quoting him without faulting anything, and then I don’t know why I am arguing with you.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D now says:

      “so which part of Overpeck’s talk do you disagree with?”

      Well, the firs thing that I disagree with is that if a forcing is flat that means it cannot warm.
      You’re back to square one, Jim D!

    • thisnotgood, think about it. The sun stops strengthening before 1950, then there is some delayed reaction and rapid warming starts after 1980 due to what stopped 30 years before. Sounds good to you? Or could CO2 which has been accumulating more rapidly, and much more effectively, the whole time have something to do with it? Are you in so much denial about any CO2 effect that this delayed action is the best explanation you have thought of so far?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D now asks me to think about it!

      I’d suggest that first you’d have to know what Jonathan said before you even start thinking about it, Jim D! But let’s see what you came up with this time!

      “The sun stops strengthening before 1950, then there is some delayed reaction and rapid warming starts after 1980 due to what stopped 30 years before. Sounds good to you? ”

      It stops strengthening and then 30 years later rapid warming starts from it stopping strenthening?

      No, not so good, Jim D! But that is not what Jonathan said, Jim D!
      It’s something you made up, which he definitely did not say.
      So Jim, after you made up something even more ridiculous than what Overpeck said, what else have you got up your sleeve?

      “Are you in so much denial about any CO2 effect that this delayed action is the best explanation you have thought of so far?”

      Oh goody! You make up something Jonathan did not say and I did not say or argue for!

      You’re still stuck at square one, Jim D!

    • thisnotgood, only someone with a severe reading comprehension would interpret what I said that way. Once again, Overpeck’s view is that the sun cannot be the cause of the warming especially not in the last 30 years because it was flat, and that I agree with that. Do you know how your view is different from this? If so, perhaps you can explain it. Where do you think the warming since 1950 or 1980 came from? You haven’t said anything with any information content about your own idea yet, which is quite remarkable, and perhaps you have no clue, which is fine, but say it.

    • Billions of dollar have been wasted if the Dec/Jan trend in the US is a better forecaster of future climate change trends than all of the GCMs of Western global warming alarmist climatists.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D in “stumped @square one” mode writes:

      “Once again, Overpeck’s view is that the sun cannot be the cause of the warming”

      Oh so wrong again, Jim D!
      He said it’s impossible that any of those thing are drivers. Which is a different kettle of fish from being THE CAUSE.

    • Good, we agree what he said. What next? You have to say what you disagree with Overpeck about. So far it has been something about flat forcing and warming, but not a delayed warming 30 years after the solar forcing stopped, which would be stupid as you agreed. I think we established that much. Then what are you left with?

      • I think the idea of ‘solar forcing’ is a non-starter from the get-go. It’s like the car that ran you down in the street last night was a forcing factor leading to your demise when in reality, but for the driver of the car, you’d be showing up for work today. But for that hat big independent variable in the sky, we wouldn’t be here. The Sun is not a ‘forcing’ its the beginning and end of anything we know and everything we will ever know.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Now Jim D says:

      “Good, we agree what he said.”

      Nice to see you agree that he didn’t say what you said he said, Jim D.

      ” What next? You have to say what you disagree with Overpeck about. So far it has been something about flat forcing and warming”

      That’s right. The first point is “Square One”, where you remain stumped.

      Even you might agree, that a forcing might DECREASE and yet still it may still be enough to increase temp. Isn’t that right, Jim D?

    • thisnogo, “Even you might agree, that a forcing might DECREASE and yet still it may still be enough to increase temp. Isn’t that right, Jim D?”
      You are talking about an imbalance that remains but decays away after the forcing has stopped. Yes, it is well known. Do you think that the solar forcing from 1910-1940 created an imbalance? How about the equal CO2 forcing at the same time? Did that also add to it? How much of that imbalance was left when the later warming started in 1980? You won’t answer these questions, of course.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D squirms a bit more:

      ” ‘agree, that a forcing might DECREASE and yet still it may still be enough to increase temp. Isn’t that right, Jim D?’
      You are talking about an imbalance that remains but decays away after the forcing has stopped. Yes, it is well known.’
      No, Jim D. I was asking if it’s not true that a forcing might decrease in value, yet still be high enough to be capable of increasing the temperature. I said nothing about it being stopped.

      As to answering your diversion attempts, we first need to get you past Square One if we can, Jim D.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D, your sidetracks are surely meant as diversionary trails into unsupportable speculations, since even you say:

      “There just aren’t enough observations to show the solar variation before that”

    • If trying to get you to say something about what you yourself think is diversionary, yes, that is what it was. Sorry I tried. Clearly your mind is either blank, or you want to keep your thoughts on the role of solar forcing in the last 30 years of warming hidden. I thought that was the point of this discussion, but apparently it wasn’t.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D says:
      “If trying to get you to say something about what you yourself think is diversionary, yes, that is what it was. Sorry I tried. Clearly your mind is either blank, or you want to keep your thoughts on the role of solar forcing in the last 30 years of warming hidden. I thought that was the point of this discussion, but apparently it wasn’t”

      Of course it isn’t Jim D. this discussion is not about my opinions o the subject, but about how a mainstream climate scientist takes your derisive cake!

    • OK, point that out again. I missed it. You probably misunderstood me somewhere if you think that. The original comment was because you thought, or tried unsuccessfully to imply, Overpeck was referring to the pause when he said natural variability didn’t do much, which I corrected for you because he was talking about a longer timeframe, and then you agreed it was a longer timeframe.

    • About imbalance

      The rapid response to day and night and the rapid response to summer and winter and the rapid response to sunshine and cloudy, shows that earth temperature is always balanced, or very near to in balance.

      It does not matter much what CO2 and solar changes cause. They can only cause blips that Mother Nature corrects for.

      Here goes CO2 without temperature and it only got us to 280. http://popesclimatetheory.com/page38.html
      A lot more CO2 since 280 has accomplished nothing more for temperature. There is NO alarmist temperature data. There is only alarmist, unskilled, consensus, model output.

      When earth is too warm, it melts ice on oceans and turns on snowfall. We are near the upper bound and the snowfall has been turned on. Some more warming will turn up the snowfall rates as much as necessary to stop and reverse the warming, again, as it always does.

      When earth is too cold, it freezes oceans and turns off snowfall.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Now Jim D tries a revisionist tactic.

      ” OK, point that out again. I missed it.” My first post, Jim D, with the 2009 video of Overpeck saying that it’s impossible that the sun could be a driver of warming because it has been flat.

      “You probably misunderstood me somewhere if you think that.”
      Jim D, It was based on your own comment, here:
      “If trying to get you to say something about what you yourself think is diversionary, yes, that is what it was. Sorry I tried. Clearly your mind is either blank, or you want to keep your thoughts on the role of solar forcing in the last 30 years of warming hidden. I thought that was the point of this discussion, but apparently it wasn’t”

      Jim D also tries this:
      “I corrected for you because he was talking about a longer timeframe, and then you agreed it was a longer timeframe.”

      He was talking about a timeframe which includes the pause, therefore his comments apply to the pause, Jim D.

      See? It’s not that difficult if you pay attention, and resist the temptation to make up things people supposedly said.

      • Now that you are on a roll see if you can get a global warming alarmist to admit Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ is a scientific fraud.

    • thisnot, I think I see where you went wrong. OK, the earth’s warming rate accelerated between 1950 and 1980. The sun was flat. To accelerate the warming rate, you need the forcing to increase, not stay flat. Overpeck’s statement was right. Understood? Key points: solar forcing flat, warming rate accelerating. CO2 forcing increasing explains warming rate accelerating between 1950 and 1980. Solar forcing flat does not explain warming rate accelerating. Now you will (a) change the subject, or (b) disappear.

      •  
        Facts are facts. The sun was very active throughout the 20th century and, nominally, this has lead to global warming. It’s happened before. Now the sun is anomalously quiet. And, it has been quiet for a while now. It is not surprising to many scientists that the combined satellite and radiosonde temperature data now indicate that there has been a cooling trend for years corresponding with this observed nominal change in solar activity–e.g., there has been a cooling trend in the US over the last 20 years during the Dec/Jan timeframe (see above). This cooling heralded the hiatus in warming across the globe — that we’ve seen over the last 17.5 years — and, perhaps decades to come of global cooling.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D “tries ” again!

      “I think I see where you went wrong. OK, the earth’s warming rate accelerated between 1950 and 1980. The sun was flat.”
      That’s not what Overpeck said. He said it was flat for the past 30 years.
      Try to resist the temptation to make things up that were not said, Jim D.

    • thisisnogood, so how long do you think it was flat? If it wasn’t flat, it might well have been downwards between 1950 and 1980, so that won’t help you.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D tries another diversion:

      “thisisnogood, so how long do you think it was flat? ”
      I don’t know, Jim D. I’m taking Jonathan at his word. :)
      Why won’t you ?

    • thisisnoggo, yes, you will find that the sun doesn’t help with how the warming rate increased in 1980. Don’t take mine or even Overpeck’s word for it. You can just discover things for yourself.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D tries to push down his diversion path :

      “yes, you will find that the sun doesn’t help with how the warming rate increased in 1980. Don’t take mine or even Overpeck’s word for it. You can just discover things for yourself.”

      We need to take Overpeck at his word in this case, not take Overpeck at your word, or mine, Jim D. Sorry, that’s just the way it goes.

    • Overpeck’s statement is consistent with the AR5 statement on this.
      “There is high confidence that changes in total solar irradiance have not contributed to the increase in global mean surface temperature over the period 1986 to 2008, based on direct satellite measurements of total solar irradiance.”

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D now says:

      “Overpeck’s statement is consistent with the AR5 statement on this.”

      But is not the same, Jim D.
      For example, Overpeck said “flat for 30 years”.
      And Overpeck now agrees that dimming of it partially accounts for the pause. :)

    • thisisnogo, I would agree that the last weak cycle is contributing to the pause. It is a natural forcing variation that counts among the natural variations going into the pause (as I started in this thread saying, but skeptics didn’t like, remember). This all happened within the last ten years, and it is easy to see the connection. You are trying to squeeze in your own ideas by reading between Overpeck’s lines and taking advantage of what he didn’t say, since he did not rule out every crazy idea with that sentence. Go for it, but state your assumption about what he didn’t say.

      • Overpeck finds that the Earth’s climate can shift 5 to 15 °C in a matter of decades (based on the Greenland isotope record) and yet there are climatists who feel Overpeck supports their position that global warming is caused by changes in atmospheric CO2 levels and other natural causes that are wholly divorced from changes in solar activity? Amazing!

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D again tries:

      “thisisnogo, I would agree that the last weak cycle is contributing to the pause.”

      It’s not about what you think on this matter or that, Jim D.

      “It is a natural forcing variation that counts among the natural variations going into the pause (as I started in this thread saying, but skeptics didn’t like, remember). This all happened within the last ten years, and it is easy to see the connection.[quote] But 2014 is not 2004, Jim D.

      “You are trying to squeeze in your own ideas by reading between Overpeck’s lines and taking advantage of what he didn’t say”

      Sorry, saying things he didn’t say is your purview, Jim D.

    • thisisnogo, you are doing something equivalent to saying Overpeck didn’t mention it couldn’t be unicorns, therefore these are possible.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D now says:

      “you are doing something equivalent to saying Overpeck didn’t mention it couldn’t be unicorns, therefore these are possible.”

      Saying things people didn’t say is what you do, Jim D.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      “thisisnogo, you are doing something equivalent to saying Overpeck didn’t mention it couldn’t be unicorns, therefore these are possible.’

      Show where I did that, if you would, Jim D!

    • thisisno, for example, you know that Overpeck said that the sun has been flat for 30 years and therefore not responsible for the warming, and you are trying to imply that warming can occur when the sun is flat, if only it had been warming just prior, which it hadn’t, but since Overpeck didn’t include that explicitly in his 30 years, you believe it. No?

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D says:

      “for example, you know that Overpeck said that the sun has been flat for 30 years and therefore not responsible for the warming”

      What he said is that it’s impossible that it’s a driver.

      “and you are trying to imply that warming can occur when the sun is flat”
      I’m saying that Overpeck says that it cannot, when obviously it can, IFF dimming can now be held responsible for a cooling effect.

    • thisisnot, you will notice that the dimming and cooling are somewhat concurrent, while the warming and solar flat phase were also concurrent over a much longer period.

      •  
        1 part in 1,000 is what’s got the Left exercised!
         

        On a global basis the average rate of solar energy absorbed by the Earth is estimated to be about 240 Watts per sq. meter. In order for the climate system to stay at the same average temperature year after year, the Earth has to lose exactly the same amount of energy (240 W m-2) to outer space, in the form of infrared energy… Our best estimate of how much the climate system has been perturbed from energy balance comes from the slow warming of the oceans, which since the 1950s equates to a 1 part in 1,000 energy imbalance. ~Dr. Roy Spencer

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D tries again!

      “you will notice that the dimming and cooling are somewhat concurrent, while the warming and solar flat phase were also concurrent over a much longer period.”

      Well, Jim D almost, sort of, tries again.
      And how does this show what you were trying to show, Jim D?

      You were supposed to be showing:
      ” you are doing something equivalent to saying Overpeck didn’t mention it couldn’t be unicorns, therefore these are possible.”

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Jim D’s empty reply said:

      “thisisnot, you will notice that the dimming and cooling are somewhat concurrent, while the warming and solar flat phase were also concurrent over a much longer period.”

      Jim D’s rely said nothing in relation to what he was to show regarding unicorns, and does not contradict any statement that a flat forcing can raise temps, and does nothing to help Jonathan Overpeck’s position that what he said could not be a driver of warming effect because it was flat, can now be said to be a driver of cooling if it decreased.

  25. The greatest source of trust destruction in climate science has been the premature manufacture of consensus on the magnitude of anthropogenic climate change, and the linking of this consensus with mitigation policies.

    One of these days, Judith, you will bother to validate that kind of opinion (stated as fact) with some scientific evidence employed in a scientific manner.

    I will not give up on you.

    • Robert I Ellison

      On the other hand Joshua is a hopeless cause. The manufacture of consensus is around the unspecified anthropogenic contribution to ‘global warming’ – most is extremely likely it seems. Most in fact seems extremely unlikely. It seems extremely likely to have been at most half of recent – 1977 to 1998 – warming.

      With the benefit of hindsight is virtually certain (>99%) that the climate shifted to a cooler ‘mode’ post 1998 and that these ‘modes’ last for 20 to 40 years. With this unfolding year after year – contempt for ‘consensus science’ intensifies.

      ‘AGW’ is inevitably linked to the magical solution of taxes or caps. These are typically justified with dire predictions or ponderous finger pointing at floods, fire and storm. These are always from leftist neo-socialists with the same political agenda – and a need for climate catastrophe to engineer some unspecified – and always in history catastrophic – transition in economies and cultures. Green overreach contains the seeds of it’s own downfall – especially as global temperatures refuse to comply over decades hence.

      This is not to say that emissions are not a potentially problematic – but the solutions for carbon emissions are utterly simple in principle. A comprehensive multi-gas strategy that builds resilience and maximizes economic development at the same time – and accelerated technological innovation. But this is not what the radical left wants to hear.

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “Green overreach contains the seeds of it’s own downfall – especially as global temperatures refuse to comply over decades hence.”
      —–
      The Great Psychic Robert Skippy Ellison! Boldly predicting the future. Perhaps even this year we’ll be able to see if he’s the real deal or a poseur. ,,’

    • Robert I Ellison

      Sp@cw c@dets have difficulty – inter alia – in distinguishing between prediction and hindsight.

      With the benefit of hindsight is virtually certain (>99%) that the climate shifted to a cooler ‘mode’ post 1998 and that these ‘modes’ last for 20 to 40 years. With this unfolding year after year – contempt for ‘consensus science’ intensifies.

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “….the climate shifted to a cooler ‘mode’ post 1998 ”
      —-
      Except the climate did not shift to a cooler mode in 1998. This is the biggest piece of non-scientific propaganda they you seem to feel compelled to constantly drone on about. A shift in the PDO does not represent a shift to a cooler climate but a shift to a cooler troposphere as let net sensible and latent heat flows from ocean to troposphere. But the climate itself, as a whole system is not cooling– the troposphere does not equal the climate or the globe or the world, and only a tiny fraction of the climate energy system. It is only in the Magic Skippy Fairy Dust land that physics works this way.

    • “trust” is probably not a good metric,

      but

      “premature manufacture of consensus on the magnitude of anthropogenic climate change”

      is a good one to measure:

      http://climatewatcher.webs.com/SatelliteEraTemperatures.png

    • Robert I Ellison

      Rather than repeat myself in responding yet again – at some stage the repetition of sp@cw c@det memes becomes mind numbingly pointless – I have put it in context here.

      http://judithcurry.com/2014/02/14/uk-us-workshop-part-iii-strategies-for-robust-decision-making-for-climate-adaptation/#comment-456119

    • “But the climate itself, as a whole system is not cooling– the troposphere does not equal the climate or the globe or the world, and only a tiny fraction of the climate energy system”.

      The ‘whole system’ is cooling. You may believe that the total heat content of the system, averaged over a year, is rising, but proving that is rather difficult.
      You may note that every mm of the surface is warmed and then cools, typically every evening, but towards the poles, annually.
      The system is dynamic, rich and oscillating. The oceans, and to a lesser extent the atmosphere, transports huge amounts of heat upward, downward and to all points of the compass.
      Comparing it to a flat, non-dynamic, equilibrium, to do anything other than a rough approximation is stupid.
      The natural variation in global temperature, that appears to come from rhythmic changes in ocean circulation are causing the rise in [CO2] induced temperature to be masked. It follows, therefore, that part of the rapid rise in temperatures from 1960-2000 were due to the same process of warm and cool waters going their merry way.
      You can ignore both, use the equilibrium approximation and even ignore that you are treating an open system as closed, but you are then just another religious nut, motivated by faith and not analysis.

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      Doc said: “The ‘whole system’ is cooling.”
      —–
      If so, then some sort of new physics had been discovered. Sea level cannot be rising if the whole system is cooling. In this universe that is thermodynamically impossible. Perhaps you inhabit the alternative Fairy Dust universe of Chief Skippy Hydro Ellison.

    • You have no shame, joshie. Where is your evidence that Judith’s statement was offered as a fact? It’s clearly a statement of opinion. What you are doing is stalking, period. Your cheap attention getting stunts are nauseating. Judith should have kicked you to the curb long ago.

    • “R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist | February 15, 2014 at 9:40 pm |
      Doc said: “The ‘whole system’ is cooling.”
      —–
      If so, then some sort of new physics had been discovered”

      No, very old physic’s. This is an open system, the amount of energy going in is equal to the amount going out; with a bit of wobble. Steady State you see, energy fluxes. On Earth an area warms and then it cools; not only that, but things cool as they heat.
      Place a metal poker in a fire. The poker is warming and cooling at the same time, at steady state, the poker is cooling at an identical rate to its heating. This is why you can’t average the heat content of the poker and call it the ‘equilibrium’ temperature, because it is not a equilibrium.

      The climate science field would have condemned Galilao, average the Earths position over the course of a year and it is both stationary and at the center of the solar system; great stuff averaging a dynamic system isn’t it?

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘The large sensitivities of a GOI like global steric height to different data processing techniques are obvious when comparing different products of gridded Argo fields (Fig. 3). Three products have been downloaded from the Argo web-page
      (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu), i.e. two products based on Argo and other hydrographic data (ARIVO delivered by Ifremer, and MOAA delivered by JAMSTEC) and one product including Argo only measurements (delivered by Scripps Institution of Oceanography). Detailed information on the gridded fields can be found on the Argo webpage. We have chosen to evaluate the comparison during the time period 2004 to 2008 for consistency. Amplitudes of interannual fluctuations differ from one product to another. Largest deviations emerge in the beginning of the time series – in particular in the Southern Ocean 15 due to sparse data coverage during that time period (Fig. 1). However, although the evaluation of global steric height in Fig. 3 is more or less based on the same data base, differences are clearly visible. These differences lead to a large spread of the estimation of global steric trends ranging from nearly 0mm/yr to about 1mm/yr. This simple exercise already shows that a sensitivity study due to data handling is vital.’

      http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf

      Unlike the quite obnoxious gatesy – I tend to believe science unless there is conflicting data.

      I think it is quite clear that there was warming between 2004 and 2008.

      e.g http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_Net_zps9f7faaaa.png.html?sort=3&o=9

      Up is warming – and this really is consistent with ocean temp.

      e.g http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n2/full/ngeo1375.html?WT.ec_id=NGEO-201202

      Most of this change was in SW – something quite easily ascertained – and there is no trend over the CERES record from March 2000 to June 2013.

      These are just data – which tell a quite obvious story. Like the ARGO data in the top quote from von Schuckmann and Le Troan – it is all a bit uncertain. Except to sp@ce c@dets.

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      A nice bit of hand waving Chief Skippy Ellison– but all your efforts fall quite short to refute the physical fact of sea level rise as an excellent indicator of greater energy in the system. Combined with the confirmatory data of glacial mass loss and OHC increase, we see a climate system that has very likely been steadily gaining energy for decades. It seems you are bent on denying this basic physical probability.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Handwaving typically involves narrative and no science at all – more your style Randy.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “…the solutions for carbon emissions are utterly simple in principle.”
      ____
      As most things are. The devil is always in the practical details– especially when trillions of dollars and lives are potentially at stake. No one will willingly give up their basic creature comforts and certainly the wealthy whom might happen to have a huge interest in keeping the HCV erupting quite strongly are not going to willingly shut it down. An “utterly simple’ problem becomes a nasty, complex, multifaceted one.

    • we see a climate system that has very likely been steadily gaining energy for decades.

      Duh, we have warmed out of the Little Ice age, we have gained energy for centuries. That is exactly what was supposed to happen. Now we will top out and in a few centuries, we will go into the next Little Ice Age.

      Look at Actual Real Data. Real Data Is not like Climate Model Output.

      Real Data is Real and Climate Model Output is way out of bounds compared to what REALLY HAPPENS!.

    • Except the climate did not shift to a cooler mode in 1998.

      Only actual data shows 1998 was the warmest year and earth has been cooler since.

      The Climate Models prove this was wrong. They will fix the actual data. They have already made some of the corrections, but too many well qualified people are watching and they are limited in what they can get away with with nature tricks and such.

    • About HCV

      The warm parts of the thousand year climate cycle is when ice is replenished on land.

      This year has already seen a lot of that replenishing. There is more to come.

      The cold parts of the thousand year climate cycle is when snowfall is turned off and more ice melts every year than gets replaced by snowfall. We have been in that mode from the cold of the little ice age until recently. Now we are moving into the part of the cycle where more snow falls on land each year than melted.

      This time, we are seeing enough snowfall to make a difference. Much of this snow fell beyond the extent of multi-year ice and melt when warmer weather gets here, as some of you has said. Much of this snow fell on top of multi-year ice and will be here next year when more falls. The weight will increase each year for decades and centuries.

      The warm parts of the thousand year climate cycle is when ice is replenished on land. Look at data. Ice Accumulation Rate is Max when oceans are warmer.
      http://popesclimatetheory.com/page11.html
      http://popesclimatetheory.com/page14.html

      CO2 has risen for 7000 years while Temperature stayed in the same bounds and did not follow CO2 out of bounds.
      http://popesclimatetheory.com/page38.html

      HCV only helps our food supply and cannot drive temperature and sea level out of bounds.

    • Joshua its pretty simple.

      A dominate meme in the promotion of climate science ( not in the science itself) is the fact of consensus. 97% agree. We accept as fact that this is a dominant meme evidenced by the fact that POTUS has tweeted it for example.

      Comes now the claims that the floods in the UK for example are caused by climate change. Then come the denials of this from the same climate science community. Comes now the claims that the intense cold seen the US were caused by climate change. Then come the denials of this from the same climate science community. Then folks recall Dr. Vinters claim of the disappearence of snow.. and the reality. Then recall the claims that we can believe climate models.. and then of course the reality.Roll the clock back to Judith’s entry in this debate and you see where she started to develop this notion in the hurricane debate.

      The problem is that real consensus about C02 warming the planet has been pitched as consensus about everything, or rather, differences in opinions about issues like hurricanes, tornados, have been suppressed or muted so as not to confuse the “consensus” message. Or rather the term “consensus” has been used in a squishy way such that people make of it what they will. In reality the consensus is sharp and well defined. C02 warms the planet. In propaganda the consensus morphs into what it needs to be to support an argument. Differences of opinions have to be “managed”. Read the climategate mails and you will see the management at work. Ask yourself why these guys go to such trouble in managing their disagreements. These differences of opinion are real, some are material. When they arise as they do now in the mass media, there is a consequence. It’s probably too early to say whether the consequence is a measurable lost of trust, but clearly one can have an opinion on that. Even in the absence of firm data one gets to have an opinion and yes present that opinion as fact.

      5 more years of pause and you might see some of the true believers start to question the details of the science.. but I doubt that they will every express doubt in individuals like Hansen or Trenberth. You could have 20 years of pause and no one who believes in climate science today will question or doubt individual scientists like Hansen or Trenberth. They are icons. However, if the stadium wave turns out to be a bust in 20 years
      you can rest assured that these same people will make it a personal matter.

    • The odd thing Steve, is that one can believe that CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming, that the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 to 560 ppm is going to be two degrees or so, and still be called a denier.

    • It is easy to make the case for a transient sensitivity of 2 C just based on past data, and I would put it in that range, but most would regard this as being below a lower limit for equilibrium sensitivity. By the time we reach 560 ppm, maybe in 50 years, we could easily be at that 2 C level, given that we are nearing 1 C already.

    • Joshua

      Look around you. You’ll eventually see what Judith is talking about.

      I will not give up on you.

      Max

    • Steve, couldn’t agree more. Why are people so ready to accept without question any and every scare story about what AGW is supposed to bring about? It’s almost as if they want the worst to happen.

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “CO2 has risen for 7000 years while Temperature stayed in the same bounds and did not follow CO2 out of bounds.”
      ____
      This is absolutely not supported by the data, It is only in the last few hundred years that CO2 has begun to rise with the eruption of the HCV. CO2 had actually reached an Holocene low at around 275 ppm during the LIA, before the eruption of the HCV. Get your facts correct and don’t ignore those that don’t support your theory.

    • Joshua,

      I think you can give up.

      This is Judith’s dogma, and she ain’t letting it go.

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘A new stomatal proxy-based record of CO2 concentrations ([CO2]), based on Betula nana (dwarf birch) leaves from the Hässeldala Port sedimentary sequence in south-eastern Sweden, is presented. The record is of high chronological resolution and spans most of Greenland Interstadial 1 (GI-1a to 1c, Allerød pollenzone), Greenland Stadial 1 (GS-1, Younger Dryas pollen zone) and the very beginning of the Holocene(Preboreal pollen zone). The record clearly demonstrates that i) [CO2] were significantly higher than usually reported for the Last Termination and ii) the overall pattern of CO2 evolution through the studied time period is fairly dynamic, with significant abrupt fluctuations in [CO2] when the climate moved from interstadial to stadial state and
      vice versa. A new loss-on-ignition chemical record (used here as a proxy for temperature) lends independent support to the Hässeldala Port [CO2] record. The large-amplitude fluctuations around the climate change transitions may indicate unstable climates and that
      “tipping-point” situations were involved in Last Termination climate evolution. The scenario presented here is in contrast to [CO2] records reconstructed from air bubbles trapped in ice, which indicate lower concentrations and a gradual, linear increase of [CO2] through time. The prevalent explanation for the main climate forcer during the Last Termination being ocean circulation patterns needs to re-examined, and a larger role for atmospheric [CO2] considered.

      http://www.academia.edu/2949675/Stomatal_proxy_record_of_CO2_concentrations_from_the_last_termination_suggests_an_important_role_for_CO2_at_climate_change_transitions

      And yet what do we know about ice cores? Perhaps that they understate peaks and variability? Odd that sp@ce c@dets have such a one eyed view of science – and such certainty and conviction in their intellectual and moral superiority. Or perhaps not. It has all the hallmarks of groupthink.

    • “The prevalent explanation for the main climate forcer during the Last Termination being ocean circulation patterns needs to re-examined, and a larger role for atmospheric [CO2] considered.

    • Doc,

      In this discussion I am not so interested in the science as I am interested in the positioning of the science.

      The reliance on consensus as a conversation stopper was, I think, misguided. Judith focuses on what she views as a loss of trust. That’s hard to establish from the factual record, but I understand her argument.

      I rather like to look at what the reliance on consensus does to conversations. And there we are dealing with texts primarily and not
      public opinion polls.

      The primary texts here are the liberated documents from CRU and the documents swiped from the skeptical science gang.

      On one hand I heard from climate scientists that if I wanted to be heard I must speak in journals. “publish you own damn science”. In other words the conversation happens in journals. When we turn to the mails and chat logs however, we see a difference science. We see a message being managed, we see journals being managed. we see consensus being managed. we do not see a free wheeling scientific dialogue arbitrated by referees.
      The other thing of note is the recent Slingo debacle. But pick any debacle you want. on one hand when we wanted to speak, we were told to speak through the journals. Publish science. But, when slingo wants to talk, when she as a scientists “sees something” and according to mann has to speak,
      then she gets to speak freely.. with no peer review. Of course she gets busted for speaking beyond the consensus and even here they have to manage the discourse.

      Judith’s own experience being told to stay in line is something he can not fully understand. I’d call it an existential situation. By that I mean one where her self identity as a scientist was put into question. You’re a doctor, you can get the enormity of that kind of situation. Even if the consequencs are small the symbolic nature of it is large.

    • Steven Mosher

      Your comment to Joshua tells it all.

      I hope he takes the time to read it slowly, maybe several times to ensure that he understands it, then reflect on what it tells him and finally see if it can change his viewpoint.

      If his viewpoint remains 100% unchanged, it is probably because it is an unchangeable dogma or belief (as in “blessed are those who have not seen, yet still believe…”)

      Max.

    • Jim D

      560 ppmv CO2 by 2050 seems on the high side (annual increase of 4.6 ppmv or more than twice the recent annual increase), but let’s play your game.

      At 2C TCR this would mean 1C warmer than today or an average increase of 0.28C per decade over the next 26 years.

      Ouch!

      If we keep in mind that the current decade cooled at 0.04C per decade, this is going to require a major shift in the trend.

      I do not believe that there is any evidence pointing toward such a shift.

      Do you?

      If so, what evidence?

      Max

    • manacker, yes that is on the high side, which is why I said in 50 years.

    • 2011 – 2012 saw the 2nd strongest La Nina event in the record. It’s possible it has caused an abrupt regime shift.

      Current ENSO forecasts include discussions of an El Nino developing in the fall of 2014.

      The current rate of warming is .6C per decade. If this were to continue until 2100 the earth would warm by almost 6C!!!!!

    • Steve, I get your point, but I cannot help but think that the term ‘denialist’ is used in a similar manner to ‘racist’, it is a charge that is very difficult to refute. The same with being accused of being ‘anti-science’, as if there were no huge raging arguments in the past, in other areas.

    • Jim D

      Back to your “560 ppmv by 2050” prediction.

      It is grossly exaggerated, and here is why.

      UN and US Census Bureau project that would population will increase to 9.3 billion by 2050.

      Today, humans are “responsible for an annual increase of 2 ppmv CO2.

      This is a per capita CO2 increase of 0.285 ppmv per billion inhabitants

      To get to 560 ppmv would require an average of 4.6 ppmv per year increase, or 7.1 ppmv per year increase by year 2050
      [4.6 = (2 + 7.1) / 2]

      This means a per capita CO2 increase of 7.1 / 9.3 = 0.76 ppmv

      Or an increase in per capita human CO2 generation of 2.7 times – while it increased by only 15% from 1970 to today.

      I’m sure you see how absurd your “560 ppmv by 2050” prediction really is, once one takes a closer look at it.

      Sorry, Jim.

      NO SALE.

      Max

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “Jim D

      Back to your “560 ppmv by 2050″ prediction.

      It is grossly exaggerated,..”
      _____
      Not grossly, just probably high. CO2 growth per year has been increasing over the past decade and is now well over 2 ppm at year, but assuming just a modest growth rate of 2 ppm a year over the next 36 years, that would put us somewhere around 472 ppm. If no serious reductions in the growth rate are forthcoming and we get closer to the 3 ppm a year growth rate we seem to be headed for, then that would put us right about 500 ppm or so. thus, 560 may be high but not “grossly exaggerated, as I usually look for at least one order of magnitude off in an estimate to call it “grossly” exaggerated.

    • manacker read it wrong (as I said at 5:41pm). It was 560 ppm in 50 years. This only takes a doubling of the emission rate by 2064, which given population growth and per capita increases is plausible. Up till now emission rates have doubled every 33 years, so this assumes a slow-down.

    • Robert I Ellison

      I do read the quotes I post. Atmospheric CO2 is of course a warming feedback – and not the primary link in the chain. Did anyone say that carbon dioxide was not a greenhouse gas? Oh – that’s right – those cast into the outer darkness where there will be much gnashing of teeth.

      The point really is that one science is kosher and the other not – go figure.

    • This only takes a doubling of the emission rate by 2064, which given population growth and per capita increases is plausible.

      the population crash is on,the IPCC storybooks (scenarios) are now incorrect ( or at least assumptions are).

      http://www.economist.com/news/21589151-crashing-fertility-will-transform-asian-family-baby-boom-bust

    • Robert I Ellison

      I do read the quotes I post. Atmospheric CO2 is of course a warming feedback – and not the primary link in the chain. Did anyone say that carbon dioxide was not a greenhouse gas? Oh – that’s right – those cast into the outer darkness where there will be much gnashing of teeth.

      The point really is that one science is kosher and the other not – go figure.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      Skippy Chief Hydro Ellison said; “Atmospheric CO2 is of course a warming feedback.”
      ___
      No, actually it an external forcing to Earth’s climate, no different than volcanic activity, solar output, and Milankovitch cycles which affect solar insolation. CO2 can act as a positive-feedback to another external forcing, such as alterations in the Milankovitch cycle, which is very likely exactly what has happened during the past several million years of glacial-interglacial cycles.

    • Jim D

      I hate to keep bashing on you, but you tossed something out there that was so absurd it could not go unchallenged.

      I showed you why 560 ppmv CO2 by 2050 (an 1C warming above today)was an absurd assumption. based on projected population growth rates and current per capita human CO2 generation.

      Now here is something more reasonable.

      Today’s annual increase in CO2 is around 2 ppmv (Mauna Loa)
      Today’s population is around 7 billion
      ASS-U-ME
      a 20% increase in human per capita CO2 emissions from 2014 to 2050
      (it was 15% from 1970 to 2010)
      2050 population = 9.3 billion (UN + US Census Bureau estimates)
      2050 annual increase in CO2 = (2.0 ppmv * 1.2 * 9.3) / 7 = 3.2 ppmv
      Average increase 2014-2050 = (2.0 + 3.2) / 2 = 2.6 ppmv
      2050 CO2 level = 396 + (2.6 * 36) = 490 ppmv

      And at a TCR of 2.0C, warming above today would be 0.6C

      This equals a decadal rate of warming of 0.17C per decade from today to 2050

      This sounds reasonable.

      Your estimates do not.

      Unless you can explain to me why humans would burn 1.7 times as much fossil fuels in 2050 than they do today, your number is a silly pipe dream.

      Max

    • Jim D

      Even if you drag out your forecast to 2063 with a UN projected world population of 9.8 billion, you still need an increase in per capita CO2 generation of 70% from today to reach 560 ppmv by 2063

      I’m sure you can see how absurd this is.

      If not, I cannot help you, Jim.

      Max

    • “R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist
      No, actually it an external forcing to Earth’s climate, no different than volcanic activity, solar output, and Milankovitch cycles which affect solar insolation. ”

      These ‘internal’ and ‘external’ usages, to describe a steady state, open system, are insane perversions of conventional English.
      We all accept that planetry impacts, dust clouds in space and solar variability are external to the system, but CO2? A biotic compound that has the most rapid biological flux of all the atmospheric gasses, is ‘external’ to the system. Completely nuts. If true that ‘Climate Scientists’ claim that atmospheric CO2 and one supposes atmospheric aerosols are ‘external’ to the system, they should be treated with contempt.

    • R. Gates

      I would tend to agree with you that 500 ppmv (or a bit less) is a more reasonable estimate for the year 2063 than Jim D’s 560 ppmv.

      And this puts warming (at 2xCO2 TCR of 2C) at around 0.7C above today or warming averaging 0.15C per decade.

      This all ASS-U-MEs “all other things are equal” (which the two of us, as “skeptics”, probably would regard with a grain of salt).

      Max

    • manacker, if you were paying attention, you would see Gates’s number of 500 ppm was for 2050, which is close to the rate I would get if emissions doubled by 2064. Doubling emission rates by 2064 can be done with a 40% population increase and a 40% increase in per capita usage. It doubled in the last 33 years, so why not again in the next 50, and this is business as usual, no mitigation.

  26. ”A problem with the models, in turn, could erode trust in climate science, noted England. But “that would be akin to writing off the medical profession for finding out something new about an illness that they didn’t know about earlier,” he said.

    More akin to an outsider discovering that the medical practice of bleeding patients wasn’t justified and having doctors beginning to accept that conclusion after decades of claiming that doctors mostly agreed that bleeding helped 97% of the time.

  27. “It suggests that there is something that is happening in the real system that is not quite captured in the models.”

    Yes, indeed.Between 1910 and 1940 global temperature rose an unprecedented 0.5C. The IPCC missed this as well as the dramatic fall in temperature after 1940, because they delayed starting their investigations to after 1961. Thus they missed a vital part of the climate learning curve

    Had they included the 1940 events in their models, they would have understood the on/off nature of climate change and would have appreciated the. need to model the thermodynamics of the CO2 molecule in more detail.

  28. David Rose’s latest article is hot off the press
    http://linkis.com/www.dailymail.co.uk/HaXtE

    Mat Collins, a Professor in climate systems at Exeter University, said the storms have been driven by the jet stream – the high-speed current of air that girdles the globe – which has been ‘stuck’ further south than usual.
    Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’

    • The equatorward excursions of the jetstreams (and accompanying stormtracks ) is against climate theory ie they are supposed to contract poleward as a response to the expansion of the Hadley cell.

  29. maksimovich: Well, perhaps they have at the South pole. In Australia we are having an unusually hot summer. With the exceptionally cold winter in the North, no one can say that the planet is not doing a good job of balancing its thermals. I wonder if the climate models can reflect this?

  30. Regarding jet streams and changing climate, there are some good videos explaining this. Here is one from Jennifer Francis (at the end of this page by Eli Rabett). If you have seen the Holdren 2-minute polar vortex explanation from January, this is the same idea and predates it, being from last summer.
    http://rabett.blogspot.com/2013/08/getting-knotted-climate-change-and-jet.html

    • I can explain the result of every horse race, but curiously can never predict the winner of a race not run.
      Odd that.

    • Remember, they were already talking about this phenomenon last year before this winter even happened. Will it be a new trend in the jet stream behavior? That is what this hypothesis said last year.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Nothing to do with the last cold winter?

      e.g. http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/01/whats-going-on-with-our-winter-weather/

      And we would like something a little more sophisticated than air flowing downhill at the 500mb geopotential.

    • It’s meteorology, Ellison. Sorry that it is beyond you.

    • k scott denison

      Jim D | February 15, 2014 at 8:28 pm |
      Remember, they were already talking about this phenomenon last year before this winter even happened. Will it be a new trend in the jet stream behavior? That is what this hypothesis said last year.
      ========
      These the same folks who predict that global warming causes more rain, less rain, warmer, colder, less snow, more snow?

    • Well, I would say climate change is a change, as seen in the climate, so yes, all of the above.

    • k scott denison

      Well isn’t that nice? So anything they say, they’re right, just as soon as it happens! What a great, no risk scenario Jim!

      Good thing they don’t have to put their money where their mouths are. They might go broke waiting for their next prediction to come true.

    • Change means at least don’t count on things being as they used to be. It’s a valuable thing to know not to prepare based on just the past, because that no longer represents the future. Kind of a philosophical point.

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘In early January, the polar vortex weakened and broke down*, allowing fragments of cold air to slosh out of the bowl into mid-latitudes. The image on the left shows the weakened vortex formation on January 5, 2014. The high pressure building up in the Arctic slowed down the jet stream, which caused it to buckle into deep folds and flow farther south than usual, introducing cold Arctic air into the central and eastern U.S.

      In recent years, climate scientists have noticed that the jet stream has taken on a more wavy shape instead of the more typical oval around the North Pole, leading to outbreaks of colder weather down in the mid-latitudes and milder temperatures in the Arctic, a so-called “warm Arctic-cold continents” pattern. Whether this is normal randomness or related to the significant climate changes occurring in the Arctic is not entirely clear, especially when considering individual events. But less sea ice and snow cover in the Arctic and relatively warmer Arctic air temperatures at the end of autumn suggest a more wavy jet stream pattern and more variability between the straight and wavy pattern.

      Understanding the connections between the Arctic warming trend and more severe weather in the mid-latitudes remains an active area of research. But even as Earth’s average temperature rises, natural patterns of climate variability are expected to still operate in a warmer world. There have been many other cases of natural climate oscillations influencing our winter weather in recent years. The unusually cold winter of 2009-2010 proved that record-breaking snowstorms can still coexist with global warming, as did the frigid start to 2011, which resulted in another wintry winter for the eastern United States.’ http://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/wobbly-polar-vortex-triggers-extreme-cold-air-outbreak

      Brewer-Dodson anyone.

      http://birner.atmos.colostate.edu/bdc.html

      How about solar UV influences on the AO?

      http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024001

      Why some winters and not others if it is a simple as geopotential heights changing?

      Jimmy Dee – all sorts of things are beyond me including why you believe such simple minded nonsense.

    • David Springer

      Pope’s Climate Theory is looking pretty solid at this point.

      I thought it had merit from the gitgo because I’ve long thought that Arctic Sea Ice acts like the mechanical thermostat in a conventional automotive engine water cooling system.

      http://popesclimatetheory.com/

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘While the Arctic region has been warming strongly in recent decades, anomalously large snowfall in recent winters has affected large parts of North America, Europe, and east Asia. Here we demonstrate that the decrease in autumn Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation that have some resemblance to the negative phase of the winter Arctic oscillation. However, the atmospheric circulation change linked to the reduction of sea ice shows much broader meridional meanders in midlatitudes and clearly different interannual variability than the classical Arctic oscillation. This circulation change results in more frequent episodes of blocking patterns that lead to increased cold surges over large parts of northern continents.
      Moreover, the increase in atmospheric water vapor content
      in the Arctic region during late autumn and winter driven locally
      by the reduction of sea ice provides enhanced moisture sources, supporting increased heavy snowfall in Europe during early winter and the northeastern and midwestern United States during winter. We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters.’ http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/pnas.pdf

      It seems an obvious place to start – amidst complexity.


    • David Springer | February 15, 2014 at 11:14 pm |

      Pope’s Climate Theory is looking pretty solid at this point.

      TRANSLATION: someone’s physics-free gut-feel is preferred over doing the actual science.

      That’s how the denialists roll.

      • David Springer

        What leads you to believe that Pope’s Climate Theory is physics-free? The fact that it’s self-published on the web? No that can’t be it because your pap is self-published on the web too so you have no room to bring that criticism.

        Be that as it may I’ve corrected your mistaken view of climatology before. Climatology is not about physics per se. Climatology is about weather patterns that repeat and environmental conditions surrounding the same. Pope’s Climate Theory is no more or less physics-free than any other climate theory.

        Write that down.

    • TRANSLATION: someone’s physics-free gut-feel is preferred over doing the actual science.

      That’s how the denialists roll.

      Everything that is consistent with Actual Data is much better than Climate Model Output that is always wrong.

      The Consensus People roll with, we need 5 years, oops, we need 12 years, oops, we need 15 years, oops, we need 17 years,oops, we don’t really understand, maybe we need 30 or 50 or 100 or more years, but we are still have 97% consensus, so we are still ok.

      Chicken Little says the sky is falling. The king has no clothes on. What are you people thinking?

      Actually, Clearly, you are not thinking. That is how Consensus People Roll.

    • Pope, your pablum reminds me of chance the gardener.
      I thought it was fiction, but here we have you.

  31. A Modest Proposal:

    Since we know that Science (I.E. Scientism ) is under attack, isn’t it high time that Climate Rabbi Michael E Mann is elevated to the NAS
    (I.E. the National Academy of Scientism)
    Wouldn’t this fit well with the hierarchy’s agenda and Mann could help Gerry North (Enron’s climate advisor) with panels and just “wing it”.
    Also Paul Nurse could use some help as we know from him that the Royal (Scientism) Society is under attack as well.
    Considering the high honours accorded to high school graduate Maurice Strong for his promotion of Scientism, can Michale E Mann deserve any less? /sardonic

    All the Best
    brent

    • sad bit of cloaked anti-semitism there, brent.

      You should also realize that a former Enron principal and speech-writing executive, Rob Bradley, frequently comments on this blog in his denier role.

      So you better stop with the projection of your own team’s inadequacies onto others.

    • Would you have complained, if he had called mikey the Climate Cardinal? BE honest, webby. At least give us that much.

    • Donny, How is your pal and climate denier team-mate Rob Bradley doing?
      Just remember, like you, he is the smartest guy in the room.

    • I don’t know who Bradley is. I would be interested in you explaining why you call his teammate and a climate denier. Is it because I laugh at your spurious curve fitting BS? And you dodged my question. Would you have accused the brent of cloaked anti-Catholicism, if he had said mikey was the Climate Cardinal? Why you don’t answer, webby? Can’t you be honest?

      • David Springer

        “Can’t you be honest?”

        Some readers may not realize that’s a rhetorical question.

    • Webster,
      You have all the capability to understand and do a proper technical assessment if you would get your head out of your behind.
      Michael Mann is the first to shout Denier with it’s connotation of “Holocaust Denial”. Then when called on this by Monckton, Michael protests “But I’m Jewish!!
      Me antisemitic?… Up your behind sideways!!!
      All the Best
      brent

    • Mann: Reality and threats of climate change are clear

      In what is the most personally offensive part of Monckton’s letter, he says that references to climate “ ‘deniers’ and ‘denialists’ would be illegal in Europe as being anti-Jewish, racialist hate-speech.” This is particularly troubling to me both because I am Jewish
      http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/their-opinion/columnists-blogs/guest-columnists/mann-reality-and-threats-of-climate-change-are-clear/article_1983741c-cb17-5764-af49-3814d2dc87f0.html

      Now Webster,
      One would think if being Jewish as claimed, Michael E Mann would be a tad more cognizant of throwing around his Denier labels!!
      For the record, I am very anti-Scientism!
      cheers
      brent
      P.S. If Michael Mann is Jewish, doesn’t that make him a creationist? :) and therefore anti-scientific? :: ))
      We also know he corresponds extensively with Big Oil soaked media :: ))

      Getting Gored: Michael Mann’s Apocalyptic Prophecies and Al Jazeera’s Green Jihad
      In a recent interview, Al Gore lamely defended the sale of his ailing Current TV channel to Al Jazeera because of the network’s strong coverage of Climate Change — something which Al Gore thinks the American media needs to emulate. Shockingly, Gore extolled Al Jazeera as a respectable independent news agency, even though the network is funded by oil-rich Qatar. Qatar belongs to the OPEC cartel, which is a conglomeration of giant state-owned oil companies that manipulate oil markets and help fund Middle Eastern terrorism.
      One of the reasons why Al Gore was impressed with Al Jazeera’s coverage of Climate Change is because Michael Mann, the poster boy for the global warming and/or climate change apocalypse, has been extensively featured by the pan-Arab network
      http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/getting_gored_michael_manns_apocalyptic_prophecies_and_al_jazeeras_green_jihad.html

    • Dr Richard Lindzen’s paper on the current state of climate science

      One could go on at some length with such examples, but a more common form of infiltration consists in simply getting a couple of seats on the council of an organization (or on the advisory panels of government agencies). This is sufficient to veto any statements or decisions that they are opposed to. Eventually, this enables the production of statements supporting their position – if only as a quid pro quo for permitting other business to get done. Sometimes, as in the production of the 1993 report of the NAS, Policy Implications of Global Warming, the environmental activists, having largely gotten their way in the preparation of the report where they were strongly represented as ‘stake holders,’ decided, nonetheless, to issue a minority statement suggesting that the NAS report had not gone ‘far enough.’ The influence of the environmental movement has effectively made support for global warming, not only a core element of political correctness, but also a requirement for the numerous prizes and awards given to scientists. That said, when it comes to professional societies, there is often no need at all for overt infiltration since issues like global warming have become a part of both political correctness and (in the US) partisan politics, and there will usually be council members who are committed in this manner.

      The situation with America’s National Academy of Science is somewhat more complicated. The Academy is divided into many disciplinary sections whose primary task is the nomination of candidates for membership in the Academy [8]. Typically, support by more than 85% of the membership of any section is needed for nomination. However, once a candidate is elected, the candidate is free to affiliate with any section. The vetting procedure is generally rigorous, but for over 20 years, there was a Temporary Nominating Group for the Global Environment to provide a back door for the election of candidates who were environmental activists, bypassing the conventional vetting procedure. Members, so elected, proceeded to join existing sections where they hold a veto power over the election of any scientists unsympathetic to their position. Moreover, they are almost immediately appointed to positions on the executive council, and other influential bodies within the Academy. One of the members elected via the Temporary Nominating Group, Ralph Cicerone, is now president of the National Academy. Prior to that, he was on the nominating committee for the presidency. It should be added that there is generally only a single candidate for president. Others elected to the NAS via this route include Paul Ehrlich, James Hansen, Steven Schneider, John Holdren and Susan Solomon.
      http://www.newshawk.co.uk/2013/11/02/richard-lindzen-current-state-climate-science/

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Hey, brent!

      thank you for your informative and excellent posts.

  32. From the article:
    There are three different forces probably at work here, but scientists still need to do more research, said Derek Arndt, of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. One is just the random natural variability of daily weather.

    Another is a mid-length weather feature called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation – think of it as a cousin of El Nino – that warms the northern Pacific and helps push the jet stream south.

    And finally, a new and controversial theory is that a warmer Arctic region and shrinking summer sea ice from man-made global warming has shifted jet stream patterns, making it wavier and bringing more unpredictable weather.

    http://www.weather.com/news/why-such-nasty-winter-year-20140207

  33. From the article:

    Vattenfall AB, the third-biggest utility operating in Germany, says that stability of power supply is not an issue and the market is so oversupplied that so-called capacity payments aren’t necessary. Statkraft AS, whose power output from German gas-fed plants fell 50 percent last year, said the nation will need to build new plants by 2019 if action isn’t taken to keep existing facilities online.

    Ten of Europe’s biggest utilities mothballed 21.3 gigawatts of gas-fed power stations last year, or 12 percent of the generation fleet, as plants lost money for a second year, according to an Oxford University study. Some countries, including France and the U.K., are preparing measures to pay utilities to keep some of these plants in reserve, while the European Commission says an integrated European power market can resolve concerns over security of supply.

    Utilities have been losing money by burning gas for power since 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Next-year power in Germany, a regional benchmark, fell to 35.80 euros ($48) on Jan. 7, the lowest since 2005, according to data from European Energy Exchange AG. The contract was at 36.55 euros a megawatt-hour at 1 p.m. Berlin time, the data show.

    A German gas plant loses about 20 euros for every megawatt-hour of power it produces according to the clean-spark spread, a measure of profitability based on the year-ahead power price and the cost of fuel and carbon permits compiled by Bloomberg. Such plants will continue to lose money as far ahead as 2018, the data show.

    Germany’s five-fold increase in intermittent renewable energy in the decade through 2012 intensified the need for back up plants. Wind and solar accounted for as much as 49 percent of Germany’s power on Dec. 23, falling to 4 percent two days later, data from the European Energy Exchange compiled by Bloomberg show.

    Implementing capacity payments to keep plants available now means Germany would avoid “having to pay double to turn the market around in 2020 as gas capacity has already exited,” Tzschoppe said in an interview. Germany needs to implement capacity payments this year, Johannes Teyssen, chief executive officer of Germany’s largest utility EON SE, said in November.

    Electricity supply in Germany is set to increase as 11 new coal and gas-fired power plants will start generating by 2016, according to regulator Bundesnetzagentur and plant operators. Renewable energy capacity will rise by 5.1 gigawatts this year, according to Berlin-based consultant, Energy Brainpool GmbH. After that capacity will decline as no new capacity will be built, closing of unprofitable stations continues and Germany exits nuclear power by 2020, Tzschoppe said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/german-power-generators-split-over-state-payments-to-plants.html

    • It’s difficult to envision a bigger mess that Germany’s energy policy. They build out a lot of “green” energy projects, pay nat gas plants to keep running, the switch from nuclear to coal. All the while the generators pay a carbon tax. This is a great example of why government needs to butt out of energy policy.

    • And now, on top of the existing mess, there is this. I have to wonder what price Germans actually pay for energy when all the energy source changes, taxes, and subsidies are summed.

      From the article:
      European Union carbon prices dropped the most in three weeks after a German official said he expected a rescue plan for the region’s emissions market to start in the second quarter at the earliest.

      The EU will probably not begin temporary curbs on supply of carbon permits this quarter, Juergen Landgrebe, head of the department for energy installations, aviation and economic aspects at the German Emissions Trading Authority, said in an interview today. The final decision on the timing of the plan is not in the hands of his organization, he said.

      “It will probably start in the second quarter 2014 at the earliest,” Landgrebe said in Essen, Germany. “I don’t believe it can be done in March.”

      The emergency fix for the carbon market can start after member states end scrutiny of the measure and market participants are notified about changes to the auction calendar, according to EU law. The final approval by governments is scheduled for Feb. 24.

      The market fix envisages delaying, or backloading, the sale of 900 million carbon permits at government auctions between 2014 and 2016. It ties the volumes to be postponed this year to the starting date of the supply curbs, with 400 million allowances to be withheld if backloading begins in the first quarter and 300 million if it commences in the second.

      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-11/eu-carbon-permits-drop-as-german-official-sees-market-fix-in-q2.html

  34. Scientism advocate Bill Nye:

    Bill Nye Says Creationism, Climate Change Denial Makes Kids ‘Scientifically Illiterate’ (Video)
    http://www.opposingviews.com/i/religion/christianity/bill-nye-says-creationism-climate-change-denial-makes-kids-scientifically

    Double-Dealing in Darwin
    Are intellectuals allowing dogma in science but not in religion?
    BY: Michael Ruse

    I am saying that when I hear people with spiritual views accused by scientists of “cowardly flabbiness of the intellect,” I suspect that there is more at stake than factual disagreement. In that context, when evangelicals complain that it is unfair if a secular religion (evolution) is allowed into classrooms but competing theological views are not, I start to feel sympathy. Not for creationism, which is pernicious nonsense, but for stacking the deck against religious thought, by allowing dogma in science but not in theology. If creationism has no place in the classroom, then neither does a secular religion based on evolution. We who care passionately about science should know when to keep the science and religion separate and remember always when it is appropriate to teach the one and not the other.
    http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Science-Religion/2000/01/Double-Dealing-In-Darwin.aspx?p=1

    An Interview With Michael Ruse
    http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/id.3533,content.true,css.print/bookshelf.aspx

    Priests in lab coats
    http://www.salon.com/2005/08/06/ruse/

    The New Divinity
    By Julian Huxley
    http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/31/open-thread-weekend-30/#comment-373005

    • evolution is a religion?

      jesus

    • “evolution is a religion?”

      Lemme fix your punctuation error.

      evolution is a religion.

      Andrew

    • It would be interesting to see the correlation between belief in creationism (or intelligent design) and denial of AGW.

    • Joseph,

      It’s high.

    • It would be interesting to see the correlation of belief in man destroying the planet and CAGW. As very well documented by Michael Crichton before his death, CAGW is but the latest in a long list of things that where supposed to doom us, but never happened.

  35. Visiting Physicist

    The greenhouse radiative forcing conjecture starts with an assumption that there would be isothermal conditions in a troposphere that was free of radiating (so-called “greenhouse”) gases, including water vapour, or free of direct solar radiation.

    There are similar conditions in the Uranus troposphere where there is very little methane except in a layer in the uppermost regions. Virtually all the very weak solar radiation reaching the planet (nearly 30 times the distance from the Sun that Earth is) is absorbed and re-emitted back to space by this methane layer where the temperature is a very cold 60K or so, that being the radiating temperature of the planet. There is no internal energy generation that can be convincingly detected, yet the core is at about 5,000K and the base of the troposphere (where there is no surface being heated by any direct Solar radiation) is hotter than Earth’s surface.

    The existence of isothermal conditions would be in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that a state of maximum entropy will evolve spontaneously. Such as state is isentropic, and so the sum of molecular kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy for each molecular has a propensity to be equal at all altitudes. This means that there is a temperature gradient, because temperature depends upon the mean kinetic energy, not the gravitational potential energy.

    If there were isothermal conditions (an impossibility) then what is the sensitivity for each 1% of water vapour in the atmosphere above any region? Perhaps you would say something like at least 10 degrees of warming. Hence you would say in a dry desert (with say 0.5% water vapour the warming would be 5 degrees, but in a rain forest with 4.5% water vapour it might be 45 degrees, making the rainforest 40 degrees hotter than the dry desert.

    Need I say more about this ludicrous travesty of physics?

    • “The greenhouse radiative forcing conjecture starts with an assumption that there would be isothermal conditions in a troposphere that was free of radiating (so-called “greenhouse”) gases, including water vapour, or free of direct solar radiation.”

      No, it doesn’t.

    • Perhaps I should elaborate. Arrhenius, and most others since him, started with real atmospheric profiles and a radiative transfer theory and perturbed CO2 within that to see its effect on surface temperature and the earth’s energy budget. No one needed to consider isothermal profiles.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Visiting Physicist speaks gibberish  “The existence of isothermal conditions  would be in violation of accords perfectly with the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that a state of maximum Sackur-Tetrode entropy will evolve spontaneously.

      In a gravity field, don’t forget to maximize the ideal-gas entropy by varying both the local N/V (gas density) and the U/V (energy density) … holding both the total gas mass and the total energy of the gas-column constant.

      Folks who carry through this doubly-constrained variation will experience for themselves the great pleasure of verifying that mainstream climate-science got its atmospheric thermodynamics correct more than a century ago.

      Just remember, in a gravitational field there are *two* thermodynamical potentials in-play: inverse temperature *and* chemical potential … such that varying just one will give answers that are superficially plausible … but thermodynamically dead-wrong.

      It is a pleasure to help relieve your thermodynamical confusion, Visiting Physicist!

      Alternatively, it is a great pleasure to exhibit the adamantly non-computational non-rationality of denialist climate-change cognition to Climate Etc readers

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Is there a Visiting Psychiatrist, in da house? Our friend visiting from Uranus needs some help.

    • Visiting Physicist

      Well Jim, Roy Spencer argues here that …

      “6) The tropospheric temperature lapse rate would not exist without the greenhouse effect. While it is true that convective overturning of the atmosphere leads to the observed lapse rate, that convection itself would not exist without the greenhouse effect constantly destabilizing the lapse rate through warming the lower atmosphere and cooling the upper atmosphere. Without the destabilization provided by the greenhouse effect, convective overturning would slow and quite possible cease altogether. “

      Go argue with Dr Spencer and instruct him how you account for the proverbial “33 degrees of warming.”

    • Visiting Physicist

      A fan of more discourse …

      The Sackur–Tetrode equation is inapplicable because the internal energy in the equation does not account for changes in gravitational potential energy. If it did there would obviously be a g in the equation, now wouldn’t there?

      How about you try to follow my reasoning instead of going off at a tangent?

      And when are you going to explain how the necessary energy gets down to the base of the Uranus troposphere where there is no significant internal energy generation, no significant direct solar radiation and no surface, yet it’s hotter than Earth’s surface?

      I await you detailed extra discourse.

    • Visiting Physicist

      In simple terms, fan of more discourse, when considering whether or not there are unbalanced energy potentials it is not relevant to compensate for density. The temperature of a gas, for example, is determined (in Kinetic Theory) from the mean kinetic energy, no matter how many molecules there are. Hence in a horizontal plane (where gravitational potential energy does not vary) we do indeed see heat transfer from warmer to cooler regions, irrespective of any variation in density. You could, for example, have a thin conducting membrane separating two compartments with very different densities, that with the lower density having the higher initial temperature. I’m sure you know which way the heat transfer would be.

      Now, when we introduce a change in gravitational potential energy, we also must consider the mean (per molecule) sum of (KE + PE) and that sum is what becomes homogeneous and of course this state corresponds with the isentropic state. Do you have trouble understanding that maximum entropy is achieved when the state is in fact isentropic? It’s not all that hard to understand – rather like mechanical equilibrium when a lake settles down after a rain storm that added new water, so too does the troposphere, but the equilibrium is not a flat surface, but rather a sloping thermal profile.

      So I shall await your alternative explanation about the energy flow on Uranus presumably based on a non-existent isothermal troposphere on Uranus. When you’re done with Uranus, try explaining how the Venus surface experiences a rise of 5 degrees in its temperature during its 4-month-long day.

      I will not accept any claim that radiation from the colder atmosphere could raise the temperature. Even all the direct solar radiation at TOA could not deliver the required radiative flux, and less than 3% of it gets through the atmosphere anyway.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Lemme help yah, VP! Replace in the Sackur-Tetrode entropy U \to u V and N \to \rho V/m; thus u is the kinetic energy density and \rho is the mass density. Then maximize the total entropy (integrated over the gas column vertical coordinate z) by spatically varying u and rho, while constraining the column-integral of \rho (the total mass) to be constant and simultaneously constraining the column-integral of u+\rho g z (the kinetic+potential energy) to be constant.

      Notice how g enters in the energy constraint? Such that the maximum-entropy equilibrium is isothermal (with exponential pressure-dependence)?

      Result  Now sky dragon all gone.

      It’s not complicated, Climate Etc readers.

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Matthew R Marler

      visiting physicist: The existence of isothermal conditions would be in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that a state of maximum entropy will evolve spontaneously.

      Only in the absence of the inflow of heat. For a system such as Earth which receives continuous radiant energy from the sun, there is no necessary evolution toward maximum entropy.

      Consult my favorite thermodynamics text: Modern Thermodynamics: from heat engines to dissipative structures, by Kondepudi and Prigogine.

      The equilibrium assumption of Pierrehumbert and others is clearly not accurate enough to provide good guidance on the issue of hypothetical CO2-induced global warming, but your post is a kind of a mish-mash.

    • Doug Cotton, this is the same BS you have been spouting for a while. Once you get into very small changes you cannot use ideal models (make a note of that FOMD). Just like the poorly described Greenhouse effect, you are assuming ideal then trying to show how a small temperature difference, 5 C out of 750 C for Venus or 0.7% variation, which is smaller than the accuracy of the measurements, is some proof of something “unprecedented”.

      If you consider Earth, the “surface” is approximately 510 msqkm and the area of the atmosphere (using 100km altitude) is 3% larger. You effectively have a weak lens (convex entering) magnifying some portion of the input energy. For the leaving energy you have a weak concave mirror at approximately 10 to 50 kilometers (0.3% to 1.6% magnification) adding to the amplification. Since neither lens is “fixed”, you have an uncertainty in the ballpark of 4% at the “real” surface. With the “average” return of the outgoing energy in the range of 340 Wm-2, that allows 13.6 Wm-2 of uncertainty or about +/- 7Wm-2 if you happen to know what “normal” might be.

      If you look at the Stephens et al. revised Earth Energy Budget you will notice they include a “surface” uncertainty or +/- 17 Wm-2. That is larger than +/- 7 Wm-2 because of the fluid dynamics of the “lens” and the “object”. You can pull any “Ideal” model you like out of your arse, but you cannot produce any reliable results that don’t include at least a +/- 7Wm-2 range of uncertainty for Earth and much larger ranges for more distant “objects”.

    • Matthew R Marler

      Capt Dallas 0.8 or less: Once you get into very small changes you cannot use ideal models (make a note of that FOMD).

      That was a good post.

    • Visiting Physicist

      Fan makes the mistake of using kinetic energy density instead of mean kinetic energy per molecule. Temperature depends only upon mean kinetic energy, not total kinetic energy or kinetic energy density. This is typical of how many use the equations of physics without understanding the prerequisites for such to apply. The use of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law for Earth’s surface is an example, because Earth’s surface does not meet the definition of a black or grey body that gains and loses energy only by radiation..

      No one here can explain (as I have in the book “Why it’s not carbon dioxide after all”

      (a) How the necessary energy gets down into the base of the Uranus troposphere (where it’s hotter than Earth) but where no significant direct solar radiation reaches and no internally generated energy is convincingly evident and no surface exists.

      (b) Why the core of the Moon is far hotter than the maximum temperature reached on its surface.

      (c) Why Venus hasn’t cooled off when we know that it’s dark side can cool by 5 degrees in a mere 4 months.

      (d) How the necessary thermal energy gets into the surface of Venus during its daytime and raises the temperature from about 732K to 737K

      (e) Why the thermal gradient in Earth’s outer crust is about 20 times steeper than the gradient in the mantle

      (f) Why (as a statistically significant study shows) does an increase in water vapour (and droplets) above a region lead to lower mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures – the exact opposite of what the GH conjecture imagines happens.

      (g) What keeps the Earth’s core hot?

      I am not wasting more time here – it’s all in the book which will be very widely circulated among influential people when available late April.

      If anyone wishes to contact me feel free to write to …
      earth-climate@outlook.com

      Doug Cotton

    • Visiting Physicist, for more relevance to AGW, check how Arrhenius does it. Not an isothermal assumption in sight. Spencer wasn’t talking about the Earth’s atmosphere so that is irrelevant here. If you don’t believe Spencer on the physics of his particular assumed atmosphere, take it up with him. I won’t say why I think he is wrong.

    • Visiting Physicist said @ February 16, 2014 at 4:28 pm

      I am not wasting more time here …

      Promises, promises.

      … – it’s all in the book which will be very widely circulated among influential people when available late April.

      Names. Let’s see the names of these influential people waiting to receive the book.

      tc

    • Visiting Physicist

      Matthew R Marler

      I am not talking about what you are likely to find in textbooks or what Pierrehumbert wrote. Entropy will never decrease in an isolated system.

      May I suggest you consider the seven questions I have referred to in other comments.

    • Visiting Physicist (??) seems to continue here to present his erroneous ideas of physics.

      His complete failing has been discussed at the end of the previous Week in review.

      Physics is mature enough and tested empirically extensively enough to show without any doubt that his ideas are totally wrong.

    • Robert I Ellison

      There is far more than one crazy idea here Pekka. It seems the longer this goes on the wilder the narratives get. It is all just narrative with a simulacrum of symbols and jargon arbitrarily arranged to ‘prove’ something impossible.

      Very White Queen of them.

      ‘“I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Count them, Alice. One, there are drinks that make you shrink. Two, there are foods that make you grow. Three, animals can talk. Four, cats can disappear. Five, there is a place called Underland. Six, I can slay the Jabberwocky.”

      Four is very quantum and the attempt at six I find to be an irresistible compulsion.

    • Enough already!!

      1. The assertion that an isoentropic system represents a state of maximum entropy is not a proof. An elementary physical chemical problem suggests otherwise.

      http://pdquondam.webng.com/Files/Thermal_Profiles.pdf

      For extra credit, calculate the entropy increase when a 10km air column with a lapse rate of 6.7 K/Km at STP relaxes to isothermal equilibrium. Perhaps 30,000 J/K/m2? Then estimate its relaxation time assuming no external (surface) buffering and a dissipation flux of 240W/m2.

      2. The assertion that molecular velocities determine temperature is likewise incorrect. Velocities are meaningless without a frame of reference. Statistical mechanics specifies that the center-of-mass is the appropriate frame. In a uniform gravitational field, all particles, and hence the center of mass, are subject to the same acceleration.

      pdq

    • Quandom, “Velocities are meaningless without a frame of reference.”

      Good effort but I doubt it will sway those that have “discovered” tiny statistical anomalies that fit their agenda.

  36. Mike Wallace et al don’t deserve any thanks. Of course, linking the extreme weather event du jour to climate change is inappropriate. But they don’t say that when it’s a heat wave, or drought, or it’s raining cats and dogs. They know claiming that snowstorms, ice storms and bonechilling cold are caused by AGW is not working for them. Yeah, it’s a distraction. Nobody but Obama believes it. Clowns.

  37. Uh oh:

    The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

    It is hard to underplay the results: The study found correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/02/internet_troll_personality_study_machiavellianism_narcissism_psychopathy.html

    So PG and Don Monford are right about me after all, eh?

    Then again – looks like I have some company:

    What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet.

    • Relatively benign comment, joshie. Anything that doesn’t involve you misrepresenting some random Judith utterance, for the purposes of denigrating her character and intellect is refreshing. It’s still dishonest, smarmy and innocuous, but not so offensive.

    • Hey Don –

      Just came across something I wrote a couple of years ago at Skeptical Science. I’ve written similar comments here since, but you’re such a big fan of mine, I’m thinking you might find it interesting anyway – so I’ll repost it here. Enjoy!

      Joshua at 23:11 PM on 29 August, 2011
      Re: #14

      I’ve been reading Judith’s blog quite a bit lately – and from what I’ve seen, her change in perspective is at least correlated to her interpretation of “Climategate.”

      Judith has indicated that she believes “Climategate” created a “crises” in climate science – in the view of the public in general (although, interestingly, from what I’ve seen has yet to quantify the data that underlies her certainty about the impact of “Climategate”). My interpretation is that her view of a larger reaction to “Climategate” is more a projection (of her own reaction) – as she has stated often that “Climategate” deeply affected her own approach to the “climate community.”

      I am sympathetic to Judith’s concerns about the impact of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias in the debate about climate change; those basic psychological phenomena are fundamental attributes of the reasoning of people (scientists or otherwise) engaged in debate about controversial topics. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, ironically Judith fails to consistently apply similar scrutiny to her own reasoning processes, the reasoning of her “denizens,” or the reasoning of other players in the “skeptical” blogosphere.

      Judith was concerned about phenomena such as “motivated reasoning” both before and after “Climategate” (even if the terminology she used to describe those phenomena evolved over time). I think that the dramatic shift in her own conclusions about the science of climate change, the related political context, and the reasoning process of people that she disagrees with, clearly lies in a shift in the “motivations” behind her own reasoning. I’m not suggesting anything particularly nefarious there; without knowing her personally it would be impossible for me to assess what lies at the root of her motivations. I think that it is “unscientific” for anyone to base conclusions about someones motivations based purely on speculation (although I will note that Judith seems unconcerned with the constant drone of many of her “denizens” attributing nefarious motivations to pretty much anyone who thinks that global warming is 90% likely to be anthropogenic). However, something fundamental changed with respect to what Judith is motivated to prove in her view of the climate change debate. As to whether “Climategate” or something else lies at the root of her shift in motivations may be a chicken/egg enigma – but perhaps the answer to that riddle could be found in “laying bare the underlying causal chain and potential approach to verification” evidenced in her reasoning process.”

      Emjoy!

    • I read a little bit of it, joshie. It’s not interesting. You are only interesting as an irritant. Like a carbuncle.

    • Question. What is a narcissist.

      One Who searches around to read what they wrote before and then posts it again.

      I enjoy making narcissists suffer.

    • Joshie doesn’t search around for what he wrote years ago, Mosh. He has a file. He sits up and re-reads his greatest hits, when we have all gone to bed. How many times has he cajoled us to read some of his old crap? This is his life. Pathetic.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Now that is funny. No one much can be bothered with the new puerile trivialities Joshua indulges in – let alone something dredged from the fetid swamps of skeptical ‘science’.

      Nice to see it blow up in his face though.

    • mosher –

      One Who searches around to read what they wrote before and then posts it again.

      I searched for “Curry” and “crisis in climate science” and that was one of what was returned.

      Wrong again.

    • Cute, Josh:

      You state in your rehashed comment, “… I think that it is “unscientific” for anyone to base conclusions about someones motivations based purely on speculation …”,

      ……yet the whole comment is about nothing else except your ponderings on Judith’s motivations.

    • “You state in your rehashed comment, “… I think that it is “unscientific” for anyone to base conclusions about someones motivations based purely on speculation …”,
      ……yet the whole comment is about nothing else except your ponderings on Judith’s motivations.”

      The trouble with pointing out to Joshua his spectacular own goals, is that he lacks the normal human capacity for shame. All trolls lack this capacity, otherwise they couldn’t go about their day to day troll activities. Also, you have to bear in mind he’s not very bright. Of course on some level he realizes this… which makes him angry…another trait he shares with trolls the world over. Unable to win respectful attention for his insights, or his eloquence, or his cleverness, or his humor, or his integrity, or his poetic sensibilities, or his wide ranging knowledge, or his common sense, or anything else that might be considered a plus in the world of normal people, he settles for the negative attention with which he’s obligingly and liberally showered here in Climate Etc.

      You have to hand it to trolls. They trap us over and over again in the most obvious way, and yet we can’t seem to resist. I guess we need our trolls, just as they need us. It’s a symbiotic relationship, the trolls gaining the negative attention they so desperately crave, while the rest of us gain….what? A punching bag I suppose.

    • OK, judy. I am out of here.

      • I deleted your comment as well as Joshua’s. I am not interested in flame wars on this blog. And Joshua’s motivated reasoning comments are repetitive and in violation of blog rules (an attack on myself or other commenters, when he knows nothing about our motivations) as well contributing to flame wars. So these will be deleted when i spot them

    • markx –

      Looks like Judith saw fit to delete my longer response to you. Maybe she’ll allow to stand a shorter answer: One can question someone’s “motivated reasoning,” in the sense of confirmation bias, w/o questioning their motivations – as in personal motivations.

    • Isn’t it lucky that Judy doesn’t have to go to the trouble of spending a few years in a North Korea re-education camp or joining the Moonies, as Josh is quite happy to point out all her personal flaws, and not cost and at all hours of the day and night.
      I doubt that Charles Manson has been subjected to such deep and long running physiological analysis as Josh devotes to Judy.

    • As with many patients, Joshua’s babbling about the object of his obsession is more revealing about himself than about said object.
      ================

    • Too funny.

      What about confirmation bias, Judith? Or cultural cognition? Would that be acceptable?

      Sheece, Judith – put on your big boy pants.

      • My point is do not label individuals participating in discussion here that relate to their motives, however you choose to refer to that

    • BTW – Judith –

      …an attack on myself or other commenters, when he knows nothing about our motivations.

      First, I don’t “attack” you or others. Being skeptical about your arguments or your reasoning is not “attacking” you. Second, commenting on what looks like confirmation bias and related concepts is not a statement of perspective on your motive. If you’re going to discuss confirmation bias and related concepts, you could at least take the time to understand the concepts.

    • And BTW, steven –

      You’re also wrong about narcissists

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21604895

    • Judith –

      My point is do not label individuals participating in discussion here that relate to their motives, however you choose to refer to that

      It has nothing to to with “motives,” Judith. You’ve used the term. You’ve read at least some related material on the topic. Why do you insist on something that isn’t true? It is not related to people’s motives it is about biases in their reasoning. The adjective modifies reasoning. Ask Kahan.

    • Judith –

      Anyway, whatever. Your blog. You call the shots.

      How about “confirmation bias” or “cultural cognition?” Are those OK? Or do they also violate moderation policy?

      And Judith – have you stopped to consider the % of comments on this blog that discuss the motives of “consensus” scientists in the “climate science community?”

      How about the motives of “liberals,” or “progressives,” or environmentalists, blah, blah? Long diatribes in technical threads and open threads alike.

      In post after post.

    • David Springer

      http://psychcentral.com/cgi-bin/narcissisticquiz.cgi

      I scored 13. Less than average narcissism.

      Hard to believe, isn’t it? I’m arrogant without being narcissitic about it.

      “Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.” ~Frank Lloyd Wright

      Your Total: 13

      Between 12 and 15 is average.
      Celebrities often score closer to 18.
      Narcissists score over 20.

      Authority: 2.00
      Self-Sufficiency: 2.00
      Superiority: 4.00
      Exhibitionism: 4.00
      Exploitativeness: 0.00
      Vanity: 0.00
      Entitlement: 1.00

      Below you will find a brief interpretation of each narcissism trait and what your score relative to that trait may indicate about you.

      Authority

      Authority refers to a person’s leadership skills and power. People who score higher on authority like to be in charge and gain power, often for power’s sake alone.

      Self-Sufficiency

      This trait refers to how self-sufficient a person is, that is, how much you rely on others versus your own abilities to meet your needs in life.

      Superiority

      This trait refers to whether a person feels they are more superior than those around them. You scored particularly high in superiority, suggesting you feel you are superior to most others.

      Exhibitionism

      This trait refers to a person’s need to be the center of attention, and willingness to ensure they are the center of attention (even at the expense of others’ needs). You score particularly high in exhibitionism, suggesting you have a higher need than most to be the center of attention in any group or gathering.

      Exploitativeness

      This trait refers to how willing you are to exploit others in order to meet your own needs or goals.

      Vanity

      This trait refers to a person’s vanity, or their belief in one’s own superior abilities and attractiveness compared to others.

      Entitlement

      This trait refers to the expectation and amount of entitlement a person has in their lives, that is, unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with one’s expectations. People who score higher on this trait generally have a greater expectation of entitlement, while those who score lower expect little from others or life.

  38. “So PG and Don Monford are right about me after all, eh?”

    NOT that hard a call, Joshua.

  39. ‘Trust’ the guys who brought you Climategate?

    Dream on, Graham.

  40. A fan of *MORE* discourse

    Chuck L speaks from la-la-land  “FOMD, now would be an excellent time to remind you of another one of Hansen’s failed predictions:

    “We suggest that an El Nino is likely to originate in 2006 and that there is a good chance it will be a “super El Nino”, rivaling the 1983 and 1997-1998 El Ninos, which were successively labeled the “El Nino of the century.”

    Yah got a verifiable reference for that passage, Chuck L?

    Well, do yah punk? If so, make our day!

    Or yah *COULD* check-fer-yerself the articles that Hansen (and colleagues] actually published that year. (2006).

    Now *THAT* would be rational skepticism, eh Chuck L?

    \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Look it up yourself, you know how to use Google, right?

    • I posted that paper on the bulletin board when Hansen floated it.

      It was never published, but Hansen did author it and it does go to the failed mindset of climate hysterics which Hansen is usually more subtle about ( except when he’s intimating that half of all living species will go extinct*).

    • Here’s Hansen talking to the press about it:

      http://www.abqjournal.com/news/metro/449795metro04-08-06.htm

      which goes also to the hypocrisy of talking up wild ideas which are NOT part of the peer-reviewed literature.

    • Very amusing that fan seemed to know it had not been formally published. fan, does that mean that Hansen now repudiates it? Do you?
      =========================

    • Do you? Go ahead, punk, make our day.
      ======

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Chuck L can’t back-up his claims “Look it up yourself, you know how to use Google, right?”

      •  James Hansen’s publications are a matter of independently verifiable public record, right Chuck L?

      •  But your “quotations” appear in none of them, right?

      •  Unsupported, unverifiable — even bizarre — narratives are characteristic of denialist cognition, isn’t that correct?

      Conclusion  Hansen’s carefully reasoned, independently verifiable, publicly accessible science is well-worth reading … unsupported unverifiable denialist samizdat, not so much.

      Suggestion  Chuck L could profitably study “respect for scientific literature” while Visiting Physicist could profitably study “respect for mathematics” and Climate Etc’s libertarians could profitably study “respect for public discourse”  and all three could profitably study both the mathematics and the economic history relating to “market inefficiency and failure.”

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Dang, he’s wrapped himself in the Invisibility Cloak. You can speak, still, can’t you? Well, do you?
      =================

    • Actually, fan’s been eloquent enough already. I hope for fan’s sake that Hansen doesn’t hear of his back-handed repudiation.
      =============

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Al Bedo, it appears that James Hansen is smart enough to realize when his critics are right!

      Because that draft manuscript *NEVER* saw the light of day, did it?

      Whereas the Hansen articles that *DID* appear that year (2006-7) have proved to be pretty solid, eh? Particularly in light of today’s low-fluctuation, scientifically ascendant planetary energy-balance assessments, eh?

      Question  How many climate-change denialists have demonstrated a comparable intellectual/scientific/creative capacity to learn-and-adapt?

      Visiting Physicist? Chuck L? Peter Lang? Anthony Watts? Lord Monckton? Beuhler? Anyone?

      That’s the common-sense reason why (over the long haul) climate-change denialism is weak relative to climate-change science, eh?

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Schmuck. The fact that it wasn’t “published” is irrelevant since

      “It was sent by Jim Hansen to his email list with the following message:

      Dear Colleague,

      Here ftp://ftp.giss.nasa.gov/outgoing/JEH/bams_29mar20062_all.pdf is a draft paper that I intend to submit for publication within a few days. The order of topics (Crichton, Super El Ninos and Danger) is inverse to their significance. The Crichton part is the response to an editors request. Any criticisms would be appreciated.

      Regards, Jim Hansen”

      http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000771out_on_a_limb_with_a.html

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Chuck L, please let me express the hope that you — along with a clique that includes Visiting Physicist, Peter Lang, Anthony Watts, Lord Monckton, and very many more — accept my math-and-science critiques with the same grace, respect, and intellectual creativity that has brought to James Hansen worldwide recognition, and cross-discipline acclaim, and hundreds of coauthors, students, and colleagues.

      Conclusion  Climate-change skepticism presented more nearly in the impeccably polite, historically respectful, scrupulously reasoned style of James Hansen’s climate-change discourse — climate-change discourse “in width, depth and context” — would greatly benefit everyone, eh?

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Looks like Hansen might figure out that he’s been wrong about pretty much everything:

      http://climatewatcher.webs.com/SatelliteEraTemperatures.png

    • Hansen (1981) is still holding up pretty well.
      http://www.realclimate.org/images/Tglobal_giss_verification.jpg

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      We’ll know that the so-called “pause” is real — and in particular, that James Hansen’s climate-change worldview needs fixing — just as soon as the sea-level stops rising, the polar ice-caps stop melting, and the earth’s oceans stop heating.

      As of right now, there’s *ZERO* evidence that *ANY* of these things are even slowing (much less stopping) … ain’t that a plainly evident scientific reality, skeptics/”Al Bedo”?

      It’s not complicated, Climate Etc readers!

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Rates for the satellite era ( degrees K per century ):

      Hansen A: 3.16
      Hansen B: 2.84
      Hansen C: 1.91
      NCDC: 1.48
      RSS LT: 1.25
      RSS MT: 0.78

      Hansen was wrong – again.

    • BTW, he wasn’t so much wrong about the rate that a specific forcing would warm, but like most others, he failed to foresee that the actual forcing would decelerate:

      http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/GHG_Forcing/dF_GHGs.gif

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      By the modern, thermodynamically well-conditioned metric of planetary energy balance, Hansen’s climate-change worldview nails it.

      Ain’t that how modern science sees it, Al Bedo?

      Denialists, cranks, shills, and politics-first ideologues, not so much.

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • I hope you sent him a Valentine’s card

  41. Sunday Profile

    PHILIP CAMPBELL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, NATURE

    http://www.abc.net.au/sundayprofile/stories/3944965.htm

  42. I hope our hostess will have a thread on John Kerry’s speech on climate change in Indonesia. I would be especially interested in reading her comments. My very cursory ideas are that he has said almost nothing new, from the point of view of the science. But the fact that he said it may have major political implications.

  43. So much for democracy.

    The Green Party of England and Wales has called for a purge of government advisers and ministers who do not share its views on climate change.

    Any senior adviser refusing to accept “the scientific consensus on climate change” should be sacked, it said.

    Party leader Natalie Bennett said the rule must apply to all senior advisers, including those with no responsibility for environmental issues.

    David Cameron says he suspects recent storms are linked to climate change.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26187711

  44. From the article:
    One in four Americans are completely unfamiliar with Nicolaus Copernicus’s 1543 theory that the Earth circles the Sun, according to a study by the National Science Foundation.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10640518/One-in-four-Americans-do-not-know-the-Earth-circles-the-Sun.html

  45. “In other words, Steyn’s evaluation of Mann’s scientific claims can be legally suppressed because Steyn dares to question the conclusions of established scientific institutions connected to the government.”

    Funny, I thought it was a libel case over a fraud allegation…

    Just shows how disconnected from reality right wing news sources and their readers are in the US that they can get away with such story telling.

    • Funny, I thought it was a libel case over a fraud allegation…

      As best I can tell, it’s actually a defamation case over a comparison of Mann with a sex offender. Apparently, all Mann’s other accusations have been withdrawn, although who can tell given the procedural morass the case has descended into?

      Typical of the warmist attack dogs to hide such mis-truths under the cover of vagueness and/or ignorance.

      BTW, Steyn’s filing is funny reading, if you’re willing to plow through the legalese.

    • Well, the pertinent comparison is between Penn State’s treatment of a serial sex offender and their treatment of a serial data offender.

      ‘What is going on here?’, memorable words from Richard Lindzen, speaking of the Penn State inquiry. This should be a focus in the fact-finding for the trial. The same rationale applied in both; protection of the institutional name and of the names of those who apparently brought honor and treasure to the University. Penn State has already paid the bill for the dishonor actually brought by Jerry Sandusky, the invoice for Michael Mann’s dishonor is still in the mail, or email as it were.

      Though I have vast sympathy for the victims of Jerry Sandusky, Penn State’s whitewash of the Piltdown Mann’s misdeeds has had far greater destructive social impact.
      ===============

  46. The peak oilers bleat loudly over the fact that oil is a finite resource, but that’s nothing compared to being in this situation.

    From the article:
    Ironically, the Middle East’s most sought after resource is not crude oil, but water. With precious few rivers and lakes to obtain fresh water for their populaces, Middle Eastern countries have turned to other methods of obtaining water. One such method is to search out and drain deep underground water aquifers. The al-Disi aquifer is a deep aquifer that lies beneath the border between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The al-Disi is a sandstone aquifer believed to be about 320 kilometers long and is the largest of its type in the region. There have been debates by the two countries over the rights to draining, the extent of draining, and the regulation of draining the al-Disi aquifer. As the already arid environment of the Middle East is exacerbated by growing populations and agriculture, the potential for conflict becomes greater. This case study discusses the potential of conflict and resolution between Jordan and Saudi Arabia over the al-Disi aquifer, and its relationship to the environmental conditions of the Middle East.

    The al-Disi aquifer is located in the Arabian peninsula and, although most of its mass lies underneath Saudi Arabia, a section also lies underneath Jordan. It is a deep sandstone aquifer that 320 km long and is the largest in its region. By being locked within non-porous sandstone rock the aquifer is not subject to recharging by rainfall. It is largely unknown how much water the aquifer contains or its archeological history. What is known is that the water in the al-Disi is not rechargeable and is quite old (ie. 20,000-30,000 years old). The al-Disi is currently drained to support the production of agricultural products (ie wheat, discussed later in the case study), but this is a relatively new occurence, as desert production of agricultural goods by both Jordan and Saudi Arabia started in the 1980’s. Furthermore, there is no agreement between the countries concerning the al-Disi and its usage.

    http://www1.american.edu/TED/ice/aquifer.htm

    • Little known is that the action in Halabja was motivated by a fight over control of Upper Tigris water resources, specifically a dam and reservoir. This battle is best known for the accidental slaughter of thousands of innocent villagers when Saddam’s Army and the Persians gassed each other, one of them less carefully than the other.
      ===================

    • I believe one side used nerve gas and the other a respiratory agent. You look at the bodies.
      ==========

  47. Having just returned from a brief sojourn at another blog, I re-read the article of John Roach :Global Warming Pause? The Answer Is Blowin’ Into The Ocean. ”

    Besides author England’s own question of where the other 50% strengthening of the winds is coming:

    “That mode in the Pacific can explain about half of the wind trend,” England said. What explains the other half, at this point, remains a mystery.”

    Not mentioned, but I have a question about: how does the heat in the increased winds get into the oceans?

    Is this analogous to heating a bathtub of cold water with a hair dryer?

    It seems to me there would be competition of heating and evaporative cooling.

    I don’t understand the mechanism. Does someone have a better idea?

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “Not mentioned, but I have a question about: how does the heat in the increased winds get into the oceans?”
      _____
      You are completely misunderstanding the dynamic. The vast majority of heating of the ocean is by SW solar. Increased winds increase Ekman Transport: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekman_transport

      Thus, we see warmer surface waters being transported to greater depths by stronger winds. The winds themselves are not pumping heat into the water. Added to this dynamic is a slower rate of latent and sensible heat flux from ocean to atmosphere with the net result is a very strong gain in ocean heat content across all depths.

    • Robert I Ellison

      The Ekman spiral dissipates over some 100m – e.g. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/currents/05currents4.html

      Heat from the surface mixed layer – which is heated by the Sun – is entrained both in turbulent eddies that penetrate to depth generated by winds and eddies created by flow over uneven bottom topology. There is a balance between turbulent entrainment and buoyant rising of warm water.

      Oceans gain heat from the Sun and lose heat to the atmosphere. The theory is that a warming atmosphere decreases losses from the oceans and the oceans warm. In a non-warming atmosphere the question is?

    • Well, the laboratory answer is the a non-warming atmosphere with rising CO2 would lessen heat loss from the ocean. Gaia only know what on Earth goes on, and on, and on.
      ===============

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “The theory is that a warming atmosphere decreases losses from the oceans and the oceans warm. In a non-warming atmosphere the question is?”
      _____
      This relates back to the issue of the “control knob” function of increased noncondensing GH gases. A control knob does not have to be continually set to a different level (i.e. to ever greater rates of accumulation) in order to continue with accumulation. Many people of course (especially so-called skeptics) hate Dessler’s control-knob analogy, but it is quite appropriate for the actions of increase non-condensing GH gases. We must also remember that there is a negative-feedback going on between the oceans and atmosphere as GH gases accumulate– that is, a warmer atmosphere does alter the thermal gradient, but that also means that there is a net slowdown in the rate of sensible and latent heat flux from ocean to atmosphere leading to even great accumulation of energy in the ocean as the natural energy sink for the planet. The real issue comes back to the rate of noncondensing GH gases– as that rate is higher than the natural negative feedbacks and natural rock-carbon cycle can accommodate, and thus, the natural negative feedbacks are being overwhelmed, hence the system is more likely to exhibit extreme chaotic behavior.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      For those who want a real inside look at a large part of the climate system where energy is accumulating, see this graph:

      http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/regsatprod/ipwp/sh_anm.png

      In looking at this chart, you’ll notice that net energy bottomed out after the huge release of latent and sensible heat from the 1997-98 El Nino and has continued to rise ever since. This energy does not “harmlessly accumulate” in the ocean, but in fact, the energy that is accumulating in the IPWP is released on a seasonal basis, though the longer term is set to accumulate as GH gases continue to accumulate. A warmer IPWP leads to an enhanced hydrological cycle worldwide.

  48. Looks like the UK floods are due to government mis-management. Typical.

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/2/16/a-ghostly-message.html

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      Typical myopic viewpoint. There was no single cause for the UK floods, but many factors combined to create them and/or make them more likely. Singling out government mismanagement indicates what Bishop Hill would like to focus on and says more about Bishop Hill as a blog than about the reality of situation.

    • Well, there was mismanagement at many levels of government. Sure, manifold causes, and the government ones vastly outweighed the natural ones.
      ===========================

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      Again Kim, your perspective would have you focus on the government side of the equation, rather than the totality of the situation. Rarely do things have just one cause and rarely is a single cause more important than all the others. This gets into complexity theory and chaotic systems. We as humans would like things to be simple – A causes B, when in reality, A + B + C + D + all interactions and feedbacks cause E + F + G + H etc.

    • Change nothing about the weather and change almost anything about the government action, and the flood would not have happened.
      =============

    • A perfect flood of those here to help us.
      ===========

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “Change nothing about the weather and change almost anything about the government action, and the flood would not have happened.
      =============

      Just reverse this, and it is also true– change nothing about the government and almost anything about the weather and the floods would not have happened.

      Conclusion: to prevent such flooding and destruction of infrastructure and property in the future, what is more likely that you can change? The weather, the government, the infrastructure?

    • Looks like the UK floods are due to government mis-management

      Rather remarkable. Once again, we see from a “skeptic” an assignment of causality in a complex phenomenon to a single factor.

      Kind of the basic antithesis of actual skepticism.

    • Changing infrastructure is easiest, changing government is harder, and the alarmists seek to change the weather. Oh, bring us Canute again.
      ========================

    • In fact, RGates, we see that the weather is not unusual, having occurred many times in the past. What’s new is blaming man for the weather.

      Well, it’s not new at all. Climate archeologists have just recently uncovered this long lost weapon of mass destruction of ancient peoples.
      ==================

    • Joshua, what motivates you to so misread the text ‘Sure, manifold causes’?
      ===============

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “Changing infrastructure is easiest, changing government is harder, and the alarmists seek to change the weather. Oh, bring us Canute again.
      ========================
      This is true, but does not mean you don’t work on all three at the same time, but knowing that each has a different timeframe and resource requirement to actually make a difference.

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      “What’s new is blaming man for the weather.”
      _____
      Being “new” does not make it inaccurate. We know for a fact that humans can alter the weather both intentionally and unintentionally. Simply because the human factor and influence on weather has grown over the span of human civilization does not mean it should be discounted now simply because it was less influential in the past.

    • The alarmists sacrifice the first two endeavours for the third, a hopeless one, and the efforts are immediately destructive, see the Thames, the San Joaquin, and the Sacremento River Valleys, for starters.
      ======================

    • Laying fear of dangerous weather at the guilty feet of man was an ancient expression of ignorance and evil. It still is.
      ===================

    • Heh, Josh, guilt. I noticed that after I commented and was sure you’d notice. Does this mean you no longer accuse me of those sins of discourse?
      ==========

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      Yep, if the rain is coming in your leaky roof:

      Fix the leaky roof first.

      Second, figure out why the roof became leaky (lack of maintenance?)

      Figure out if there is anything you can do about the rain, and if not, then move on, and continue to focus on the first two. But suppose you discovered that burning coal to heat your house caused more rain (just an example, don’t take it literally), then you might want to figure out if there was some other way to heat your house, unless you happen to like more rain because it helped your garden grow and you could feed our family better. In that case, again, focus on the first two, but especially on the second.

    • And what motivates you to read jim2’s comment as unicausal. Government is plethoric in its potential for mischief. I almost said ‘many-headed’, but the metaphor was too populous.
      =========

    • kim –

      Joshua, what motivates you to so misread the text ‘Sure, manifold causes’?

      For some reason that seems a cross between hilarious and unfathomable, Judith seems to object to me pointing out that my comment was not directed at you, but at Jim2 – which is why I quoted him at the beginning of my comment.

      So I’m still wondering why you managed to miss that? Any ideas, kim?

  49. Here is a tale of more government mis-management. Once again, environmentalists’ influence on government are to blame.

    From the article:
    The President’s solution to the problem is to throw gobs of taxpayer money at the problem. A: That’s at best short term thinking, and B: it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. California’s central valley used to have a system of reservoirs and aqueducts that were designed precisely for this situation. So what happened?

    In a word, progressives happened.

    From Investor’s Business Daily:

    “We have infrastructure dating from the 1960s for transporting water, but by the 1990s the policies had changed,” said [California Central Valley farmer, lawyer, and representative] Valadao.

    Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of 3 million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.

    Yep, it seems a left-wing federal judge ordered the state to dump its water reserves into the Pacific Ocean as part of an effort to “save” a supposedly endangered breed of smelt. Water that could have seen the central valley though a drought lasting as long as a whopping five years was simply jettisoned.

    California’s system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years. But it’s now inactive — by design. “California’s forefathers built a system (of aqueducts and storage facilities) designed to withstand five years of drought,”

    http://www.caintv.com/global-warming-isnt-causing-ca

    • Again, governmental mismanagement in the face of normal, strike that make it unusual, behaviour by the weather.
      ==================

    • Dang, ‘not unusual behaviour by the weather’.
      ============

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      Ah, it’s those little slips that reveal a greater truth Kim. You’ll chalk it up to accidental, but no one is denying the weather was unusual this winter in GB. It’s okay to admit that even it the fake-skeptical mantra would be to not admit it.

    • Heh, ya know, the Met Office predicted a dry winter.
      ==========

    • R. Gates, a Skeptical Warmist

      I’ve lost my faith in the Met Office to predict anything quite some time ago. In general I’m pretty convinced they haven’t a clue what is going on nor the causes behind it. But to be fair, as much as the atmosphere is being “shaken up” by increased energy levels in the climate system, predicting the weather is like predicting where bits of strawberries will end up when mixing them up with ice in a blender.

    • Sure, seasonal weather is unpredictable, but such a flood was expectable, having happened in the past. This weather was neither ‘usual’ on one time scale, nor ‘unusual’ on another time scale.
      ====================

    • Gates, you write:

      the weather was unusual this winter in GB

      Only if you ignore the weather back when the Roman and Medieval Warm periods were in this phase of warming.

      Our 130 years of instrumented data is a small part of the thousand year temperature cycle that goes from cold to warm to cold to warm. Weather is usual for this part of the warming cycle. The Climate Models don’t do cycles, they just do hockey sticks. They hold temperature close to the average for ten thousand yeas and then hockey stick temperature up.

      Nature does not work that way. Actual data shows temperature had been going up and down in a well bounded repeating cycle.

      Another description of that is natural variability.

      The Vikings moved to Greenland when the cycle was warm and they left when it got too cold again. We are warming and Greenland is warming. It will get too cold again.

      Modern data is well on track with what happened many times before.

    • Gates, you wrote:
      I’ve lost my faith in the Met Office to predict anything quite some time ago.

      ME TOO.

      I lost my faith when the MET Office said that snow would be a thing of the past.

      Warm times, when the oceans are thawed, are the necessary and natural times that it snows enough to rebuild ice volume on land.

      Look at the Data and look at the Snowfall in the News.

      It rains and snows more when oceans are warm and the surface is water rather than ice.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      ” This weather was neither ‘usual’ on one time scale, nor ‘unusual’ on another time scale.”
      ___
      One must go back to a more scientific definition and look at frequency of occurrence and if possible, the climate state or factors during each occurrence. Climate is not a random walk, despite some “skeptics’ wishing it were so.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      popesclimatetheory:

      I understand your theory and your general perspective but two major issues that you face:

      1) We have a current forcing that does not have a negative feedback that can operate on the same time frame. Increaseed GH gases are accumulating far faster than any natural feedback will accomodate or reduce. This will lead to a long-term warming or energy accumulation in the climate system. Increased snowfall in winter wil not mitigate this.

      2) For increased snowfall to make a long-term difference to climate, it must stick around during the summer months if it is going to lead to another glacial advance for example. This is not happening, and with warmer summers,with more rain events at higher latitudes and higher altitudes, is not likely to happen. When the NH summer snow cover begins to increase let me know, but all the data show that it has been decreasing for many years.

      Other than that, your climate theory is probably partially correct on some level. To make it even better, you really should look into the rock-carbon cycle and natural CO2 sequestration. That’s how nature reduces CO2 in the atmosphere, but that process is being overwhelmed by the rapid increase in CO2 brought about by the HCV.

    • The only quarrel I have with HAP is that it is too simple. Ockham’s cleaver is blunted with repetitive hacks at the complex carcass of climate.

      Never forget, RG, that undreamt of negative feedbacks which sequestrate carbon are invoked when atmospheric CO2 rises from the Human Carbon Cornucopia. It’s win, win, win. Don’t worry, be happy. And thankful.
      =============================

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      And as some of you wonder about the appropriateness of calling the massive transfer of carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere the “Human Carbon Volcano” or HCV, consider this:

      http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/volcanoes-co2-people-emissions-climate-110627.htm

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “…undreamt of negative feedbacks which sequestrate carbon are invoked when atmospheric CO2 rises.”
      ____
      Many negative feedbacks arise when CO2 rises– the problem is they happen on timeframes that are 10,000 times too slow.

      Regarding popesclimatetheory: As long as summer snow cover keeps falling, there is no chance it will make any difference in the long-term. Another glacial advance can’t happen until summer snow cover starts to rise dramatically.

    • “MET-dry winter”

      Yes, I think they noted a “slight dry signal”. And they probably used “slight” because they’ve been beaten up so badly they’re afraid to go out to far on a limb.

      Spectacularly enough, out of 14 yearly predictions made by the Met Office, 13 have been too warm. If we assign the probability of being right a 50/50 chance, that’s equivalent to flipping 13 heads out of 14 tries. Anyone want to do the arithmetic on the odds against?

      What seems to be missing in this day and age is the capacity for being embarrassed. They just keep coming out with these…pronouncements…as if they’ve a shred of credibility left.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      Thanks Captn. Yep, the range of estimates in exactly how much CO2 (as well as aerosols and other gases) that volcanoes put out each year is wide and changes a bit year to year, but the entire range still falls far below the output of CO2 by human activtiy (i.e. the HCV). Calling the human caused transfer of carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere the Human Carbon Volcano (HCV) is a quick and easy reference and reminder of the potent and far reaching effects humans are having.

    • If we assign the probability of being right a 50/50 chance, that’s equivalent to flipping 13 heads out of 14 tries.

      One of our high level managers at NASA, Manned Spacecraft Center, later Johnson Space Center, has said, multiple times, when you give them computers, they start believing the computer output, and they stop thinking.

      They keep trying to fix the real data because they believe the models must be 97% right.

    • Gates it is not summer snow cover that makes the difference later. It is the massive snows that are now falling on top of multi-year snow that will pile up and advance and cool earth.

      The large ice extent in the little ice age happened because massive snowfall fell during the medieval warm period and piled up and then advanced.

      The snowfall for the next little ice age has started falling already.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “Gates it is not summer snow cover that makes the difference later. It is the massive snows that are now falling on top of multi-year snow that will pile up and advance and cool earth.”
      ____
      Sorry my friend, but it is physically impossible as well as illogical for glaciers to advance if the summer snow does not stick around to to the following winter. Careful analysis has shown that summer snow cover has been consistently falling over the NH for many years. Yes, warmer winters mean more snow over these months and even into the spring, but warmer summers with increased rainfall at higher latitudes melt all that snow and less of it is sticking around to the following winter. Without snow sticking around THROUGH the summer months, glacial mass cannot accumulate.

      You’ve fallen in love with your own theory, and when that happens, you can’t see the logical flaws in it.

    • The only quarrel I have with HAP is that it is too simple. Ockham’s cleaver is blunted with repetitive hacks at the complex carcass of climate.

      Kim, They do need the chaos to justify the continued huge spending that continues to not bear fruit.

      A simple truth would be a severe blow to Consensus Climate Science. When you don’t match natural data, you just say that it is too chaotic, but you will be 97% right eventually.

      Look at the simple and give it a chance. It is going to win anyway.

      Ewing and Donn explained this in the 1950’s.
      Tom Wysmuller explained this to me in 2008.

      This is not a new simple idea. It is 60 years old.

      Read my newest page on my website.
      http://popesclimatetheory.com/page55.html

    • Spin rate of earth is increasing. That shows that water is coming out of the oceans and building up as ice volume nearer to the spin axis.

      Albedo has stopped decreasing. That shows that overall ice extent has stopped decreasing. Earthshine data will prove this, likely soon.

      The data supports Pope’s Theory. Watch the Data as it comes out each year, more and more in my favor.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “The data supports Pope’s Theory. Watch the Data as it comes out each year, more and more in my favor.”
      ____
      Actually, it doesn’t but your blind belief in your theory is your undoing. An honest scientist would be looking for anything that might cause you to alter or abandon your theory. The failure of the NH summer snow pack to increase over the longer-term would be a huge red flag to anyone who thought the next glacial advance was coming soon.

    • Glaciers don’t advance due to new snow at the tails.
      Glaciers advance due to snow on top of the glacier and the increased weight of ice causes it to advance faster than it melts at the tail. Glaciers always melt at the tails. More or less snow on top determines if the glaciers advance faster or slower than they melt at the tails.

      Consensus people advance and retreat Glaciers by making earth earth cold and warm with stuff they don’t really understand, such as CO2 warming.

      Mother nature causes Glaciers to advance and retreat by putting more or less snow on top. The more snow is put on top during warm times and the less snow is put on top during cold times.

      Glaciers never grow from snow at the tails, always they grow from snow on the tops. Glaciers always grow after a warm period with more snowfall, such as the Roman or Medieval Warm periods. Glaciers always retreat after the snow stops falling in a Little Ice Age. Years after, because when the snowfall stops, the ice volume still causes more advance.

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘While the Arctic region has been warming strongly in recent decades, anomalously large snowfall in recent winters has affected large parts of North America, Europe, and east Asia. Here we demonstrate that the decrease in autumn Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation that have some resemblance to the negative phase of the winter Arctic oscillation. However, the atmospheric circulation change linked to the reduction of sea ice shows much broader meridional meanders in midlatitudes and clearly different interannual variability than the classical Arctic oscillation. This circulation change results in more frequent episodes of blocking patterns that lead to increased cold surges over large parts of northern continents.

      Moreover, the increase in atmospheric water vapor content
      in the Arctic region during late autumn and winter driven locally by the reduction of sea ice provides enhanced moisture sources, supporting increased heavy snowfall in Europe during early winter and the northeastern and midwestern United States during winter. We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters.’ http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/pnas.pdf

      The essential mechanism is right – but it is far from the whole story. I would look for changes in the structure of the halocline and therefore on AMOC – cooling the NH and allowing ice sheets to grow. This can and has repeatedly resulted in runaway ice albedo feedbacks at low levels of NH summer insolation.

      AMOC is declining.

      http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/10/1619/2013/osd-10-1619-2013.html

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “The essential mechanism is right – but it is far from the whole story. I would look for changes in the structure of the halocline and therefore on AMOC – cooling the NH and allowing ice sheets to grow. This can and has repeatedly resulted in runaway ice albedo feedbacks at low levels of NH summer insolation.”
      ____
      The decline of the AMOC is indeed worth watching and does indeed show signs of declining (and has been predicted as a consequence of increased CO2). How this will play out in the long-term remains of keen interest to many climate scientists. Will less latent and sensible heat be transported to the higher latitudes of the full northern hemisphere or will this be more of a regional climate effect? If the AMOC is slowing, and increasing GH gases are the cause, where will the energy go? Will we simply get warmer and warmer equatorial waters or will there be other effects or places for the accumulating energy to be advected to if the AMOC slows? All excellent questions.

    • Ice Advance and Retreat lags behind the Ice Volume max and min cycles. That confuses the Consensus Climate People, because they place Ice Volume max at the same time as Ice Extent Max and Temperature Min and they place Ice Volume min at the same time as Ice Extent min and Temperature Max.

      It can’t work that way. It snows and ice advances later. It stops snowing while ice is still advancing and the ice advances for many years after the snowfall stopped. Think about these things.

      • David Springer

        Gates can’t think about these things. He doesn’t even understand that the greenhouse effect works through increased back-radiation from the atmosphere. He denies that a glacier with surface temperature of -36C has a radiant emittance of 179W/m2. He denies the physical laws of blackbody radiation which is as well tested as the law of gravity. Given that glacier advance and retreat is caused by the force of gravity on the mass of the glacier he’s likely to deny that too if it suits his physically illiterate view of the world.

    • So, it does snow more when oceans are warm and the Arctic Open.
      http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/pnas.pdf

      That is exactly why Earth does not get too warm.

      That is exactly what has set the upper bound on temperature for ten thousand years and is now doing it again!

    • “The data supports Pope’s Theory. Watch the Data as it comes out each year, more and more in my favor.”
      ____
      Actually, it doesn’t but your blind belief in your theory is your undoing.
      _____________________
      Save this for future years to compare data with Theories.
      I will save this somewhere and check back with you.

    • Robert I Ellison

      ‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation. We place strong emphasis on using isotopes as a means to understand physical mixing and chemical cycling in the ocean, and the climate history as recorded in marine sediments.’ Wally Broecker

      It relates more to the structure of the halocline – ultimately related to high winter snowfall and runoff in spring. Abrupt changes in AMOC and NH cooling are indeed possible – with ice sheet feedbacks.

    • Robert I Ellison wrote:
      ‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past.

      Yes it has.
      The last major jump occurred during the last major warming and the current mode has been well bounded and repeating for ten thousand years. We have not jumped again and we likely will not. The cycle of the past ten thousand years is the most likely cycle for our short and long term future.

      Other than CO2, which appears to not make any difference in the other data, everything is in close agreement with past data. We are warm, it will snow for a lot of years, the snow has already started, and we will cool into something similar to the last Little Ice Age. There is no data that shows this to be wrong.

      Model Output disagrees, but the Models demonstrate no skill in generating output that matches real actual data.
      A man-made fraction of a trace gas has a fraction of a trace of a chance to change the current mode into a disaster.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “That is exactly what has set the upper bound on temperature for ten thousand years and is now doing it again!”
      ____
      Unfortunately for popesclimatetheory, the natural cycles and rhythms of the system have been overwhelmed by the HCV. There is no natural feedback process to reduce CO2 at the same rate the HCV is putting it into the atmosphere. The natural rock-carbon cycle just can’t keep up.

    • More CO2 is a very good thing. It can’t cause dangerous warming or sea or dangerous level rise and it makes green things grow better while even using less water.

      The warm parts of the thousand year climate cycle is when ice is replenished on land. This year has already seen a lot of that replenishing. There is more to come.

      The cold parts of the thousand year climate cycle is when snowfall is turned off and more ice melts every year than gets replaced by snowfall. We have been in that mode from the cold of the little ice age until now.

  50. More heh, far seeing Californians planned for this drought nearly a century ago. But the best laid plans of mice and men are cabbages for kings.
    =======

  51. Max_OK, Citizen Scientist

    Roy Spencer’s blog entry on February 7 caught my attention. It was titled “95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong.”

    Spencer said:

    “I’m seeing a lot of wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming…when did it start, is it a full pause, shouldn’t we be taking the longer view, etc.
    These are all interesting exercises, but they miss the most important point: the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.
    I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH):”
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/

    ______
    I’m not sure exactly what Roy Spenser meant by “the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming”, but the last 15 years + 1 month of his own UAH record not only shows no pause, but has about the same warming slope as the record previous to 1999, and the same warming slope as the entire UAH record.
    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/from:1999/trend/plot/uah/to:1999/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/none

    I would disagree with Spenser’s judgement that “the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.”
    Miserable failure would have been predicted decreases in average global temperature. All models forecast increases and an increase occurred.

    Spencer’s judgement about the model’s over-forcasting is premature. While he is correct about nearly all of the models over-forecasting the average global temperature out to 2013, his chart shows the forecast period going out to 2030. That the accuracy of a model’s prediction can vary during the projection horizon is apparent in Spenser’s chart, where we can see the models with the best performance for 2013 previously under-forecast average global temperature.

    • Max Callow, Cub Reporter continues to deny the pause.

    • Max_OK, Citizen Scientist

      poker guy, it’s easy for me to pick pauses in global warming if am careful about starting and ending years. I found the best way to select pause periods is to leave out data for some years, as I have done in identifying two pauses in the UAH series. See the following chart for the pauses from 1978 to 1995 and from 2002 to 2014. Actually the OLS lines slope down slightly for both periods, which should be very pleasing to pause fans.

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/trend/plot/uah/to:1995/trend/plot/uah/from:2002/trend/plot/none

      Pauses are not quite as striking if I use UAH data for all years, but by carefully selecting starting and ending years I again was able to pick periods that should please pause fans, as I have done in the following chart. Note there was little if any warming from 1978 to 1998 and from 1998 forward.

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/trend/plot/uah/to:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/none

      Fans of pauses, however, may be dismayed to learn that despite my back-to-back pauses in warming that cover the complete UAH record (1978-2013), I found this entire period experienced significant warming as evidenced by the OLS line for all the years, which I included in both charts.

      Although it may seem bizarre, we can conclude the two pause in warming resulted in warming, or to be specific

      1978-1997 warming pause + 1998-2013 warming pause = lots of 1978-2013 warming

    • The skeptics will say, but obviously this 17-year pause is different from that one and won’t end in a massive El Nino, because…?

    • Max_OK, Citizen Scientist

      Some skeptics may say climate isn’t ready to shift. They believe natural shifts account for most of the changes in global temperature, and think shifts can be timed.

      Climate shift timing reminds me of stock market timing and bond market timing.
      I think timing is for fools.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Climate shifts are mainstream science – e.g. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00626.1

      People like Maxy are absolutely certain that they have some truth that escapes ‘sceptics’. Usually accompanied by such a superficial understanding of science that would seem suggest that some modesty was in order rather than overweening confidence. Rank amateurs feel entitled to patronizingly lecture renowned scientists in the field on the simple memes of their faith. It has all the hallmarks of groupthink.

      Climate science has moved on – climate is wild and we are staring down a pause of 20 to 40 years. My only concern is that climate is wild but that a 20 to 40 year pause will set back practical and pragmatic mitigation another generation at least. Climate shifts are simple – shifting sp@ce c@dets seems a hopeless task.

    • Max_OK, Citizen Scientist

      I’m afraid you have misunderstood me. I am not critical of attempts to identify patterns. But I think forecasting by trying to time patterns is no better than flipping a coin or just guessing.

      I see you are doing some timing when you say “Climate science has moved on – climate is wild and we are staring down a pause of 20 to 40 years.” I don’t think much of timing.

      As a bond investor, I tried timing moves in interest rates a few times, but I was wrong every time. So here’s my suggestion for you.
      If you guess something is going to happen, presume the opposite will happen, and act accordingly.

  52. A problem with the models, in turn, could erode trust in climate science, noted England. But “that would be akin to writing off the medical profession for finding out something new about an illness that they didn’t know about earlier,”

    The doctors don’t claim to have 97% consensus about anything in which 17 years of data did disagree.

    THAT IS NOT AKIN!

    • Ah, c’mon, it’s their escape hatch from the looney bin. Nevermind that skeptics have been pointing to ‘something new’ for the entire time the world went mad with fear and guilt over imaginary catastrophes. These were the appointed seers, and they were wrong. We’ll just have to see about these seers.
      =================================

  53. Robert I Ellison

    Again with the linky problems?

    I have been reading this – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Trenberthetal2014_zpsea32a49c.png.html?sort=3&o=1

    One wonders what to make of this.

    http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Trenberthetal2014_zpsea32a49c.png.html?sort=3&o=1

    CERES is offset by 0.8W/m2 – the assumed ‘energy imbalance’. Although that should give constantly warming oceans with only the rate of warming changing. This is patently not the case.

    If you recall –

    d(W&H)/dt = energy in (J/s) – energy out (J/s)

    Where W&H is work and heat. Work occurs as enthalpy changes – ice to water – water to vapour – a minor component but included for completeness. Heat is mostly as heat in oceans. So a downturn in OHC says without a doubt – within the vagaries of data – that energy in is less than energy out in the period and the energy imbalance is by definition negative.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Or what would you make of this?

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Trenberthetal2014-Fig4_zpscf3464d4.png.html?sort=3&o=0

      Let’s add Lyman and Johnson (2013) for good measure.

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/LymnaandJohnson2013OHCA_zps703732d0.png.html?sort=3&o=58

      I tend to roll my eyes and recall the von Schuckmann and Le Troan (2011) study I quoted yesterday to the effect that steric sea level rise in ARGO was between 0 and 1mm/yr. This in a period increased water transfer from oceans to land in an enhanced La Nina regime.

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      One does indeed wonder what to make of many things you post Robert, as well as your decision to post under so many different names. Be that as it may, your statement:

      “Although that should give constantly warming oceans with only the rate of warming changing. This is patently not the case.”
      ____
      In fact, the largest pool of ocean energy in the world, the IPWP, shows quite clearly that after releasing a large bit of energy during the 1997-98 El Nino event, the IPWP began a multi-decadal gain in energy, which has continued through to 2014:

      http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/regsatprod/ipwp/sh_anm.png

      I know this kind of data does not sit well with your overall perspective on things Robert, but try to be objective and realize how very important the accumulation of energy in the IPWP is, what the data is telling us, and how that all might affect the global climate considering how influential this large mass of warm water is on the weather around the world. Warming oceans certainly do have a huge impact on the climate!

    • R. Gates, A Skeptical Warmist

      “This in a period increased water transfer from oceans to land in an enhanced La Nina regime.”
      ____
      The direction of the winds and where the moisture leaving the ocean actually falls makes a big difference to the ups and downs of sea level. During La Nina periods, prevailing winds can shift mass from the ocean the land as that is where the rain ends up falling. Thanks to GRACE satellite data, during the 2010-2011 La Nina, we could see exactly where the mass of water had shifted as it evaporated off the ocean and fell on the land:

      http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6082/6076727779_2e4cee07a3_o.jpg

    • Robert I Ellison

      Thanks to ARGO – changes in ocean salinity can be tracked.

      OFC is ocean freshwater content.

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/vonSchuckmannampLTroan2011-fig5PG_zpsee63b772.jpg.html?sort=3&o=109

    • Robert I Ellison

      The Indo-Pacific Warm Pool waxes and wanes with the sub-equatorial trade winds. Stronger trade winds (a combination of Walker and Hadley Circulation) in La Nina push warm surface water up against Australia and Indonesia – elevating sea levels. This flows through the Indonesian Throughflow into the Indian Ocean.

      The sea height (SH) anomalies you point to are wind driven and not thermal expansion. Come back when you understand the basics – pontificating on things you little understand is not a good look.

    • Robert I Ellison

      Steric sea level increases are between 0 and 1mm/yr. The sea height anomalies in the IPWP are plus and minus 100mm.

      It is not even funny – just a neophyte error – not understanding the basics – but accompanied by the usual smarmy, superior, smug pontification. Can we stop it please? Just talk real for God’s sake.