Open thread

by Judith Curry

It’s your turn to introduce topics for discussion.

From my twitter feed this past week:

Patrick Moore:  One must absolutely read this from the Spectator on Nigel Lawson banned from BBC on climate. Orwell rolling in grave

brad plumer: Insightful piece on how enviros quietly shaped the EPA’s carbon rules for power plants: Link

Alex Trembath: Could Consuming MORE Energy Help Humans Save Nature? link

David Spiegelhalter:  wow, a report on the future of statistical science!  link

Stian Westlake Do research metrics help? @SPRU’s submission to @HEFCE’s review is a superb, detailed response. Link

Nature Geoscience :The slow drowning of Miami  link

Helen Pallett: V interesting review + discussion in comments of Mike Hulme’s new (free) essay ‘Climate change & virtue’  Link

Kate Morant: On the history of the word “scientist”. Look at the institutions still refusing to use it 90 yrs after first coined! Link

peter gluckman: Interesting discussion on the dilemmas is association, causation & complex science & impact on policy formation – Link

Alice Bell:  Catching up. There are peer review rings now? FFS.  Link

394 responses to “Open thread

  1. “Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models. This difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and internal [natural] climate variability. … Global mean surface temperature over the past 20 years (1993–2012) rose at a rate of 0.14 ± 0.06 °C per decade (95% confidence interval)1. This rate of warming is significantly slower than that simulated by the climate models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). To illustrate this, we considered trends in global mean surface temperature computed from 117 simulations of the climate by 37 CMIP5 models (see Supplementary Information). These models generally simulate natural variability ­ including that associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and explosive volcanic eruptions ­ as well as estimate the combined response of climate to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol abundance (of sulphate, black carbon and organic carbon, for example), ozone concentrations (tropospheric and stratospheric), land use (for example, deforestation) and solar variability. By averaging simulated temperatures only at locations where corresponding observations exist, we find an average simulated rise in global mean surface temperature of 0.30 ± 0.02 °C per decade (using 95% confidence intervals on the model average). The observed rate of warming given above is less than half of this simulated rate, and only a few simulations provide warming trends within the range of observational uncertainty. . .”
    ( http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309 )

    According to these findings, the average decadal prediction error of the CMIP5 climate models over the 1993-2012 interval is 0.16C (i.e., 0.30C – 0.14C.) This is the same average prediction error that would have occurred if someone had suggested the average decadal surface temperature change over that interval would be NEGATIVE 0.02C. A suggestion that surface temperature would be UNCHANGED would have outperformed the CMIP5 model simulations with an average decadal prediction error of 0.14C.

  2. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics has a Special Issue: Complex network approaches to analyzing and modeling nonlinear systems in geosciences

    Hlinka, J., Hartman, D., Jajcay, N., Vejmelka, M., Donner, R., Marwan, N., Kurths, J., and Paluš, M.: Regional and inter-regional effects in evolving climate networks, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 21, 451-462, doi:10.5194/npg-21-451-2014, 2014.

    Abstract. Complicated systems composed of many interacting subsystems are frequently studied as complex networks. In the simplest approach, a given real-world system is represented by an undirected graph composed of nodes standing for the subsystems and non-oriented unweighted edges for interactions present among the nodes; the characteristic properties of the graph are subsequently studied and related to the system’s behaviour. More detailed graph models may include edge weights, orientations or multiple types of links; potential time-dependency of edges is conveniently captured in so-called evolving networks. Recently, it has been shown that an evolving climate network can be used to disentangle different types of El Niño episodes described in the literature. The time evolution of several graph characteristics has been compared with the intervals of El Niño and La Niña episodes. In this study we identify the sources of the evolving network characteristics by considering a reduced-dimensionality description of the climate system using network nodes given by rotated principal component analysis. The time evolution of structures in local intra-component networks is studied and compared to evolving inter-component connectivity.

    Deza, J. I., Masoller, C., and Barreiro, M.: Distinguishing the effects of internal and forced atmospheric variability in climate networks, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 21, 617-631, doi:10.5194/npg-21-617-2014, 2014.

    Abstract. The fact that the climate on the earth is a highly complex dynamical system is well-known. In the last few decades great deal of effort has been focused on understanding how climate phenomena in one geographical region affects the climate of other regions. Complex networks are a powerful framework for identifying climate interdependencies. To further exploit the knowledge of the links uncovered via the network analysis (for, e.g., improvements in prediction), a good understanding of the physical mechanisms underlying these links is required. Here we focus on understanding the role of atmospheric variability, and construct climate networks representing internal and forced variability using the output of an ensemble of AGCM runs. A main strength of our work is that we construct the networks using MIOP (mutual information computed from ordinal patterns), which allows the separation of intraseasonal, intra-annual and interannual timescales. This gives further insight to the analysis of climatological data. The connectivity of these networks allows us to assess the influence of two main indices, NINO3.4 – one of the indices used to describe ENSO (El Niño–Southern oscillation) – and of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), by calculating the networks from time series where these indices were linearly removed. A main result of our analysis is that the connectivity of the forced variability network is heavily affected by “El Niño”: removing the NINO3.4 index yields a general loss of connectivity; even teleconnections between regions far away from the equatorial Pacific Ocean are lost, suggesting that these regions are not directly linked, but rather, are indirectly interconnected via El Niño, particularly at interannual timescales. On the contrary, on the internal variability network – independent of sea surface temperature (SST) forcing – the links connecting the Labrador Sea with the rest of the world are found to be significantly affected by NAO, with a maximum at intra-annual timescales. While the strongest non-local links found are those forced by the ocean, the presence of teleconnections due to internal atmospheric variability is also shown.

    Molkenthin, N., Rehfeld, K., Stolbova, V., Tupikina, L., and Kurths, J.: On the influence of spatial sampling on climate networks, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 21, 651-657, doi:10.5194/npg-21-651-2014, 2014.

    Abstract. Climate networks are constructed from climate time series data using correlation measures. It is widely accepted that the geographical proximity, as well as other geographical features such as ocean and atmospheric currents, have a large impact on the observable time-series similarity. Therefore it is to be expected that the spatial sampling will influence the reconstructed network. Here we investigate this by comparing analytical flow networks, networks generated with the START model and networks from temperature data from the Asian monsoon domain. We evaluate them on a regular grid, a grid with added random jittering and two variations of clustered sampling. We find that the impact of the spatial sampling on most network measures only distorts the plots if the node distribution is significantly inhomogeneous. As a simple diagnostic measure for the detection of inhomogeneous sampling we suggest the Voronoi cell size distribution.

    Rehfeld, K., Molkenthin, N., and Kurths, J.: Testing the detectability of spatio–temporal climate transitions from paleoclimate networks with the START model, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 21, 691-703, doi:10.5194/npg-21-691-2014, 2014.

    Abstract. A critical challenge in paleoclimate data analysis is the fact that the proxy data are heterogeneously distributed in space, which affects statistical methods that rely on spatial embedding of data. In the paleoclimate network approach nodes represent paleoclimate proxy time series, and links in the network are given by statistically significant similarities between them. Their location in space, proxy and archive type is coded in the node attributes.

    We develop a semi-empirical model for Spatio-Temporally AutocoRrelated Time series, inspired by the interplay of different Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM) systems. We use an ensemble of transition runs of this START model to test whether and how spatio–temporal climate transitions could be detectable from (paleo)climate networks. We sample model time series both on a grid and at locations at which paleoclimate data are available to investigate the effect of the spatially heterogeneous availability of data. Node betweenness centrality, averaged over the transition region, does not respond to the transition displayed by the START model, neither in the grid-based nor in the scattered sampling arrangement. The regionally defined measures of regional node degree and cross link ratio, however, are indicative of the changes in both scenarios, although the magnitude of the changes differs according to the sampling.

    We find that the START model is particularly suitable for pseudo-proxy experiments to test the technical reconstruction limits of paleoclimate data based on their location, and we conclude that (paleo)climate networks are suitable for investigating spatio–temporal transitions in the dependence structure of underlying climatic fields.

    Tupikina, L., Rehfeld, K., Molkenthin, N., Stolbova, V., Marwan, N., and Kurths, J.: Characterizing the evolution of climate networks, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 21, 705-711, doi:10.5194/npg-21-705-2014, 2014.

    Abstract. Complex network theory has been successfully applied to understand the structural and functional topology of many dynamical systems from nature, society and technology. Many properties of these systems change over time, and, consequently, networks reconstructed from them will, too. However, although static and temporally changing networks have been studied extensively, methods to quantify their robustness as they evolve in time are lacking. In this paper we develop a theory to investigate how networks are changing within time based on the quantitative analysis of dissimilarities in the network structure.

    ur main result is the common component evolution function (CCEF) which characterizes network development over time. To test our approach we apply it to several model systems, Erdős–Rényi networks, analytically derived flow-based networks, and transient simulations from the START model for which we control the change of single parameters over time. Then we construct annual climate networks from NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data for the Asian monsoon domain for the time period of 1970–2011 CE and use the CCEF to characterize the temporal evolution in this region. While this real-world CCEF displays a high degree of network persistence over large time lags, there are distinct time periods when common links break down. This phasing of these events coincides with years of strong El Niño/Southern Oscillation phenomena, confirming previous studies. The proposed method can be applied for any type of evolving network where the link but not the node set is changing, and may be particularly useful to characterize nonstationary evolving systems using complex networks.

    • Matthew R Marler

      AK: Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics has a Special Issue: Complex network approaches to analyzing and modeling nonlinear systems in geosciences

      Thank you. That looks good.

    • Sorry, everybody, I didn’t even notice I hadn’t included the link

      • Matthew R Marler

        AK: Sorry, everybody, I didn’t even notice I hadn’t included the link

        thank you. They can be downloaded for free.

    • Causal discovery for climate research using graphical models Presented by
      I. Ebert-Uphoff
      Electrical and Computer Engineering
      Colorado State University

      and

      Y. Deng
      Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
      Georgia Institute of Technology

      at The Third International Workshop on Climate Informatics
      National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, September 26-27, 2013 https://www2.image.ucar.edu/event/ci2013

      1 Introduction: Causal discovery is the process of identifying cause-and-effect hypotheses from observational data. The purpose of this document is to demonstrate the great potential of using causal discovery algorithms in climate science, by showing how they can be applied for two climate science applications

      Causal Discovery for Climate Research Using Graphical Models by I. Ebert-Uphoff, and Y. Deng, Journal of Climate, Vol. 25, No. 17, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00387.1, Sept 2012, pp. 5648-5665.

      ABSTRACT: Causal discovery seeks to recover cause–effect relationships from statistical data using graphical models. One goal of this paper is to provide an accessible introduction to causal discovery methods for climate scientists, with a focus on constraint-based structure learning. Second, in a detailed case study constraint-based structure learning is applied to derive hypotheses of causal relationships between four prominent modes of atmospheric low-frequency variability in boreal winter including the Western Pacific Oscillation (WPO), Eastern Pacific Oscillation (EPO), Pacific–North America (PNA) pattern, and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The results are shown in the form of static and temporal independence graphs also known as Bayesian Networks. It is found that WPO and EPO are nearly indistinguishable from the cause– effect perspective as strong simultaneous coupling is identified between the two. In addition, changes in the state of EPO (NAO) may cause changes in the state of NAO (PNA) approximately 18 (3–6) days later. These results are not only consistent with previous findings on dynamical processes connecting different low-frequency modes (e.g., interaction between synoptic and low-frequency eddies) but also provide the basis for formulating new hypotheses regarding the time scale and temporal sequencing of dynamical processes responsible for these connections. Last, the authors propose to use structure learning for climate networks, which are currently based primarily on correlation analysis. While correlation-based climate networks focus on similarity between nodes, independence graphs would provide an alternative viewpoint by focusing on information flow in the network.

    • Weakening of atmospheric information flow in a warming climate in the Community Climate System Model by Y. Deng, and I. Ebert-Uphoff, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, doi:10.1002/2013GL058646.

      Abstract: We introduce a new perspective of climate change by revealing the changing characteristics of atmospheric information flow in a warming climate. The key idea is to interpret large-scale atmospheric dynamical processes as information flow around the globe and to identify the pathways of this information flow using a climate network based on causal discovery and graphical models. We construct such networks using the daily geopotential height data from the Community Climate System Model Version 4.0 (CCSM4.0)’s 20th century climate simulation and 21st century climate projection. We show that in the CCSM4.0 model under enhanced greenhouse gases (GHGs) forcing, prominent midlatitude information pathways in the midtroposphere weaken and shift poleward, while major tropical information pathways start diminishing. Averaged over the entire Northern Hemisphere, the atmospheric information flow weakens. The implications of this weakening for the interconnectivity among different geographical locations and for the intrinsic predictability of the atmosphere are discussed.

  3. A door to door vacuum cleaner salesman came to my door last week. He didn’t have a vacuum cleaner to demonstrate but he did have a colorful hockey-stick looking graph to show me how much more effective his product had become recently.

    I then produced a hockey-stick looking graph that a different vacuum cleaner salesman had left me the week before. I compared the two and salesman said “yeah, but we use novel cutting edge statistical techniques to make our graphs and our squiggly line shows more effectiveness.”

    Eagerly awaiting vacuum cleaner delivery any day now.

    Andrew

  4. Stupid question probably, but land temperatures at night seem to imply infinite loss of energy to space.
    In the desert, it doesn’t matter if the day temperature is 40 or 50 degrees centigrade. The night temperature (cloudless) is always 0,0 degrees.
    Doesn’t this imply that land temperature have an almost limitless ability to remove wxcess energy from the system ??

    • Just curious as to what kind of engineer you are to ask this kind of question?

      “…infinite loss of energy to space…”?

      And how could “land temperatures” have any ability at all to remove “excess energy”. What in the name of all that is holy and sacred are you talking about?

    • I think this is talking about radiative loss, and yes, if the earth stopped rotating, the night side would get colder than the coldest Antarctic winter after a few days to weeks, through radiative loss. It is only sunrise that prevents this happening.

      • Like on Venus?

      • More like Antarctica.

      • More like Antarctica.

        Open mouth, insert foot!

        Antarctica is insulated from better sunlit areas by the geostrophic effect. If the Earth didn’t rotate, this effect wouldn’t exist. There would be continuous atmospheric transfer of heat from warmer to colder areas.

      • AK, you could ask why the desert gets so cold at night, and what would happen if that night continued, like in the original question. Circulations would change. The farside tropics would be cold. More like Mercury than Venus, with how thin the atmosphere is here.

      • The farside tropics would be cold.

        The tropics experience a strong geostrophic effect, if not so strong as the polar regions. How many deserts are there within 1-2 degrees of the equator? And if you look, you’ll discover those that exist are isolated by high blocking mountains.

        Temperature differences on Venus are only few degrees, and that’s what there’d be on Earth is it didn’t rotate.

      • if it didn’t rotate.

      • If it didn’t rotate, there would be no geostrophic effect. The dominant temperature gradient would be across the dayside terminator. The nightside surface would cool like Antarctica due to a lack of air motion bringing warm air in. Things would freeze, water vapor would reduce with its own greenhouse effect declining in the process.

      • The nightside surface would cool like Antarctica due to a lack of air motion bringing warm air in.

        No. Air would flow from dayside to nightside in the upper atmosphere, and from nightside to dayside in the lower. This would be the result of heating from below on the dayside, which would produce a warmer column, with lower density gradient with height. The upper atmosphere on the dayside would have a higher pressure than nightside, so air would flow to nightside. At the surface, the pressure would be higher on nightside than dayside, so air would flow from nightside to dayside, cooling it. Adiabatic compression would warm the descending air on nightside, and that warm air would warm the surface.

        Of course, GHG’s and condensible gases would complicate things…

      • AK, yes, there would be a large-scale circulation, but much weaker than the jet-streams we have, and subsidence would lead to clear skies and dry conditions and a lot of radiative cooling of the surface that way. It would be very much like a desert at night, but getting more extreme with time. Only the oceans would delay the cooling for a while before they freeze over.

      • […] there would be a large-scale circulation, but much weaker than the jet-streams we have, […]

        Not once the temperature fell below freezing. If it did.

      • As I said, not much like Venus then.

      • Like Venus in that there would be only a few degrees difference in temperature between dayside and nightside.

      • To which I can only say, huh?

      • To which I can only say, huh?

        From the Wiki article on Venus:

        Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of the Venusian surface does not vary significantly between the night and day sides, despite the planet’s extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, […]

        From the Wiki article on Atmosphere of Venus:

        The atmosphere is in a state of vigorous circulation and super-rotation.[4] The whole atmosphere circles the planet in just four Earth days, much faster than the planet’s sidereal day of 243 days. The winds supporting super-rotation blow as fast as 100 m/s (~360 km/h or 220 mph).[4] Winds move at up to 60 times the speed of the planet’s rotation, while Earth’s fastest winds are only 10% to 20% rotation speed.[5] On the other hand, the wind speed becomes increasingly slower as the elevation from the surface decreases, with the breeze barely reaching the speed of 10 km/h on the surface.[6] Near the poles are anticyclonic structures called polar vortices. Each vortex is double-eyed and shows a characteristic S-shaped pattern of clouds.[7]

        All this powered by only a few degrees temperature difference.

      • An “infinite” loss of energy is both unscientific and absurd.

      • AK, so it is amazing how the deserts can cool so much at night with all that going on (like on Venus?). Plainly a different situation when the surface radiates to space (unlike the shielded Venus surface). I say, if you give the deserts a continuous month of nights like that, it gets very cold.

      • I say, if you give the deserts a continuous month of nights like that, it gets very cold.

        Not without the geostrophic effect to prevent cold air from blowing away and adiabatically heated warm air from warming the surface.

      • Looks like Jim D drew weekend duty from the CAGW arseholes.

      • Bob, no one has mentioned Mars yet. Maybe you can.

      • Bob, no one has mentioned Mars yet. Maybe you can.

        Thus proving Bob’s point.

      • I felt I had to live up to Bob’s expectation. The thread up to that point didn’t, being just on science. If he wants skeptic science, let’s talk about Mars.

      • If he wants skeptic science […]

        Your “science” is just as bad.

    • I think here it’s important to differentiate between the direct surface radiation to space, which doesn’t warm the atmosphere at all, and other means of surface cooling (evaporation, convection and radiative heat exchange between surface and atmosphere), which warm the atmosphere while cooling the surface.

      When the thermal resistance for the direct surface flux to space is low, like in the desert at night, surface cools without much warming the air above it. When the direct radiation resistance is very high (basically infinite), like at a cloudy night, surface can only cool via the atmosphere, by warming it. This doesn’t necessarily means less surface cooling overall.

      • This also explains Venus. A Venus day is 116 earth days. Cooling in its long nights would be confined to the upper atmosphere while the surface doesn’t see space at all (more like a cloudy night), so it is shielded from cooling much.

      • Thanks for your reply Edim – which seems to be the only one which comes close to my question. If we assume two single nights – one 50 years ago and one today – both cloudless – one with 300 ppm CO2 and the second with 400 ppm. At night there is NO sunshine. The earth loses energy. How much energy does the earth lose on the night side on the second night relative to the first ?
        70 % ocean – 30% desert.

      • re: Venus. Is extra special. The first and strongest gravity/magnetic node ring, around the sun. The balance point between the sun, and all other matter/energy in the solar system. All the inbound and outbound gravity waves, between the sun, and the universe are balanced right there. It is “in phase” with the core of the sun. The counter point to the sun’s barycenter (I think is the right word).

        You could say

        __3 billion years__
        Since
        Last
        Accident.

      • Remember that at night, you and the atmosphere experience the full gravity of the sun and earth. During the day, you and the atmosphere are in between the earth and the sun. The difference being 2 sun’s worth of gravity between night and day. Affecting pressure. And therefore temperature. This same effect doubles the gravity on the ground below you during the night. Increasing it’s temperature.

        In fact, now that I think about it, the heating phase of the crust of earth, would be stronger at night, than during the day. It is not affected by sunlight, but is affected by gravity/pressure.

        That is a good way to show the inverse impact of weak solar cycles.

    • The Engineer,

      Maybe related: Kinetic energy mostly not lost to space because gravity pulls molecules back to earth. A very few manage to randomly bounce off each other just right, to achieve “escape velocity”. They leave the earth. I’ve heard the excess estimated at 3.5 kg (lol can’t remember per second or per hour?). And that the rate is insignificant.

      I have wondered whether it increases as global temperature does. And what the variation in kinetic energy loss might be?? But then I do not know that escape molecules are “energy lost” or not, because I don’t know if they make it through the magnetosphere, or are just part of a cycle. Part of an enclosed energy return system.

      Along those lines, I also don’t know if the magnetosphere reacts to increases in all types of radiation. Perhaps gaining “charge” the way clouds do, in a sense, and cycling it back at the poles. I don’t think our satellites measuring aspects of earth’s atmosphere are flying high enough to track and return that information??

      I don’t know whether we “know” or assume, or dismiss, changes to the magnetosphere, from internal and external causes?

      I think we dismiss Aurora’s and CME’s as not affecting climate, and I don’t know why.

      So there are lot’s of questions.

      :-)

    • Deserts are dry. The air over the desert tends to be very dry. When the sun goes down the air cools very fast because air has a low heat capacity. This doesn’t happen in other areas where the air is humid. The low humidity also helps the ground lose energy very fast. And the ground in general, being dry, doesn’t have much heat capacity either.

      However, the temperature doesn’t necessarily drop to 0 degrees C. It seems to drop to a dew point which allows the bugs to get some water and survive. This is the reason why even in dry deserts they have these really nasty flies and scorpions and those face eating spiders we see in Somalia and places like that.

  5. I’d give a lot to be a journalist at one of Barry’s press conference. My question might be, “So Mr. President, given that 60 percent of the American public don’t agree with you that the debate is settled, do you stand by your statement that such doubts are akin to believing the moon is made of cheese? And if you do stand by it, are you at all worried that you’re calling almost 2/3 of the country “stupid?”

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/11/rasmussen-poll-63-say-the-debate-about-global-warming-is-not-over-60-pan-bbcs-decision-to-exclude-skeptics/#comments

    Anyone else?

    • Not sure about the 2/3s but enough people voted for the clown (twice!) to unleash his incompetence where it could do its worst.

      The ridicule directed at world academia re AGW will be nothing compared to the fourth estate and Chairman Zero.

    • Significant numbers of US people are also offended by the scientific consensus on evolution and earth’s creation, but that shouldn’t stop us from saying that these debates are settled in science. You can’t go by public polls to say what is or is not settled in science. You do the polls among the scientists to see what is settled, and you are allowed to report them as the press and a non-expert like the President does.

      • You do the polls among the scientists to see what is settled, and you are allowed to report them as the press and a non-expert like the President does.

        And the result is that you find out how solidly the paradigm is entrenched. You don’t find out whether it’s correct, or whether it won’t be obsolete in 10 years. Witness plate tectonics.

      • Real Science is never settled. Real Science is always questioned. The Scientists who vote that any Science is Settled are not Real Scientists.

        Once a Consensus is established, the only effort the people put in is to maintain it.

      • But did he say …settled… PERIOD?

  6. This bit from the Trembath piece:

    “Environmental researcher Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado argued, moreover, that large increases in energy consumption are required to eradicate the poverty that still afflicts a large proportion of humanity.”
    ——
    This is surely an endless loop, until if course this particular
    Universe grinds down into heat death. More energy consumption leads to more people who need to consume energy leading to more energy consumption, and so forth. It’s all played out before and so shall it henceforth. So where are the other civilizations in the universe who have faced this ever expanding need for energy? The Fermi Paradox looks for an answer.

    • Not endless, just for ramping up. It’s quite conceivable that lifestyle could continue improving endlessly without any significant increase in per capita energy usage over what’s seen in the US.

      • The idea that the per capita energy usage should be limited is a green idea with no scientific support and no merit.

      • Perhaps, but improving a lifestyle wouldn’t necessarily require higher per capita energy. A smart robotic vacuum cleaner could easily be just as energy efficient as one run by hand. Same for washing machines, dishwashers, etc.

        And as for computers, and the lifestyle they support…

    • With nuclear energy, there is no limit that we can reach to stop us from enjoying this endless loop.

      • Well, there’s thermal pollution, if you generate too much nuclear energy on the surface. And if you’re in space, you might as well use that big nuclear reactor in the sky. In fact, you might as well anyway.

      • You are right.

        Aston told us in the last paragraph of his 1922 Nobel Prize Lecture about “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction” in the nucleus.

        But JosePH’s PHunny PHysics took away that dream.

      • Well, there’s thermal pollution
        Well, there is temperature regulation.
        If we add more heat, earth will add more snow.
        The bounds of temperature has been regulated in the same bounds for ten thousand years.

    • k scott denison

      “It’s all played out before…”

      Really? Citation? Where? When?

      • So where are the other civilizations in the universe who have faced this ever expanding need for energy?

        And you thought red supergiants occurred naturally.

      • The rather non-unique position of humans in space and time is proven by fundamental physics. That civilizations get to this point seems more and more likely. That they don’t seem to go much further is the point of the Fermi Paradox. The Great Filter might indeed be related to energy, entropy, and the ever increasing energy consumption by a civilization as it expands. Times arrow only flows one way, and thus the energy available in each particular universe is constrained.

      • The rather non-unique position of humans in space and time is proven by fundamental physics. That civilizations get to this point seems more and more likely.

        Nonsense! The probability that a form of intelligence capable of manipulating theory in the way humans do will evolve in any planetary situation is unquantifiable.

        That they don’t seem to go much further is the point of the Fermi Paradox.

        Which may well be due to not looking in the right place. Or insisting on explaining observed phenomena without invoking human-style intelligence.

        The Great Filter might indeed be related to energy, entropy, and the ever increasing energy consumption by a civilization as it expands.

        The assumption that a civilization’s energy consumption must be ever increasing is totally unwarranted. 1/2 or more of the total energy output of a star ought to be more than enough for any civilization. Intelligence is about problem solving, and once a civilization turns its attention to problems that don’t require huge amounts of energy, there’s no reason to suppose it has to go farther than that.

      • “The assumption that a civilization’s energy consumption must be ever increasing is totally unwarranted.”
        _____
        Perhaps as technology advances the civilization can vastly improve efficiencies, and find more and more renewable resources. There is certainly hope in that. Most urgently is that the destruction of the local ecological support systems that gave rise to any great civilization must stay operational, either through advanced stewardship or bioengineering and/or geoengineering. As an advanced species and its activities will inevitably come to dominate a planet in all facets, great care must be take at about the point that humans are right now– we can vastly overwhelm natural processes due to our dominance. Stewardship and/or outright manipulation of Earth’s complex support systems will be required henceforth. Stewardship is a better course, though bioengineering is already spreading and geoengineering is certainly a near-term possibility as well.

        Still the Fermi Paradox is valid, and the more habitable planets, or potentially habitable planets we discover the greater the probability that the Great Filter solution for the paradox is the correct solution– which leads to discussion of the nature of that filter.

        Thus, the discovery of a non-human intelligent species elsewhere in the universe would be a great day for many reasons– not the least of which is that it would provide an immediate answer and nullification of the paradox.

      • Perhaps as technology advances the civilization can vastly improve efficiencies, and find more and more renewable resources.

        Or perhaps they’ll just use more energy, without bothering to improve efficiency, but taking it from sources that don’t impact their planetary surface. Such as the 99.99…% of sunlight that streams past the Earth, and other planets etc., into interstellar space.

        Most urgently is that the destruction of the local ecological support systems that gave rise to any great civilization must stay operational, either through advanced stewardship or bioengineering and/or geoengineering.

        A bit confused, but if I understand your meaning, the best approach, IMO, is to move industry, and the energy transformations to power it, to locations where they don’t impact “the local ecological support systems”. TransLunar orbital space is the ultimate answer, but for shorter terms, something like half the planet’s surface is made up of ocean-desert: regions of ocean surface with essentially no “local ecological […] systems” to be impacted. (Of course, emissions of water vapor would still have to be controlled to fit them to the planetary eco-climate systems.)

        Still the Fermi Paradox is valid, […]

        As I said above, they/you may not (probably aren’t, IMO) looking in the right place. We may well have seen thousands of stable, mature, civilizations, but don’t recognize them for what they are because early astronomers built their theories with a fundamental assumption that any observed phenomenon had to have a “natural” explanation: that is one that didn’t include the activity of intelligent creatures.

        If you do a simple Carnot calculation of the ratio of energy that could be collected at (essentially) zero entropy (e.g. electricity) through a heat engine whose hot side was the ultraviolet-hot temperature of the highest dense layer in a red giant, and the cold side is the dark red “surface” (made up of gases at about the same concentration as in a simple vacuum tube), you’ll discover that something around half of the total energy production, perhaps as much as 10 times the total production of a main-sequence star could be diverted for industrial or other civilized uses.

        The creation of plasma “engines” capable of performing that conversion/diversion is certainly beyond the abilities of our current civilization, but we don’t even know how far: it could be that within a century our species will have the capability to transform our sun, or any main-sequence star, into a red giant wherein around half the total energy deriving from fusion/gravity reactions in the deeper layers is actually output in an effectively zero-entropy state: at effectively infinite temperature (for Carnot calculation purposes) in the way regular electrical energy is.

        A look at the Wiki article linked above will show you that there are many stars that don’t fit into any simple categorization. These may well be civilizations that followed a rarer path towards energy harvesting from their star. And if somebody really wants a lot, they can create a red supergiant:

        The radius of most red supergiants is between 200 and 800 times that of the Sun. They […] are sometimes found in clusters. Luminosities can exceed 500,000 times that of the Sun.

        And half, or perhaps even more, of the total energy production could be available for powering a technological civilization. An amount perhaps equal to the total radiated from the “surface”.

      • David Springer

        What civilizations are you talking about, Gates? I swear you CAGW dorks can’t distinguish between your imaginations and reality. Despite 50 years of ongoing effort to discover life, any life at all, aside from that on the earth the result is a big zero. There is no other known life in the universe to say nothing of intelligent life. Duh.

      • Springer “smartly” noted;

        “Despite 50 years of ongoing effort to discover life, any life at all, aside from that on the earth the result is a big zero. ”
        ——
        Which begs the question as to whether he was following the conversation at all or simply scanning for another chance to insert his trademark caustic ad homs.

        Your point Mr. Springer is exactly the basis of the Fermi Paradox we were discussing and the fact that the more potentially habitable planets we discover, the greater the potential that the Great Filter solution is the correct solution to this paradox, and moreover, that the Great Filter is potentially very near in front of us in time. Here’s a nice article on this topic for those who’d rather discuss more interesting things than simply observe Mr. Springer’s caustic insertions into the conversation:

        http://theconversation.com/habitable-exoplanets-are-bad-news-for-humanity-25838

      • David Springer

        When Drake created the equation it was presumed that life formed spontaneously whenever conditions were suitable. That has far less credibility now that no one has either identified any other form, location, or manner in which life arises from non-life. Those are the facts.

      • the natural path of all matter is to roll/spin against one another, while travelling through space.

        as naturally as snowflakes form, are not the patterns of dna a natural “crystalization” pattern of this motion, thereby increasing the likelihood that life exists elsewhere to a, likely natural occurrence, and not a fluke “miracle”.

        communication, ability to perceive communication, and existence, are three entirely different subjects.

    • Time For An Ob

      Right.

      Energy use per capita peaked forty years ago:
      http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Enerrgy-use-PerCapita.png

      And the declining natural population in almost all of the developed world indicates that “More energy consumption leads to FEWER people”

      Understanding this is key.

      We should be FOSTERING energy use in Africa in order to help them develop economically which will end the population growth in the one place it’s still occurring.

      • k scott denison

        Yep. Unfortunately Gates doesn’t believe in data.

      • Time. Population is also increasing in the middle east, India, southeast Asia, Oceana, in Latin and south america, and north America. It is only stable to declining on average in the EU, Russia, and Japan. Africa is not the biggest contributor, because infant mortality is so high there. It is south America and southeast Asia, which have better health care.

        The best current UN plus US Census bureau estimates are for between 9.1 and 9.3. Billion in 2050, up from roughly 7.1 billion today.
        The first chapter of my first book lays all this out in graphic detail. Including a partial disproof of the economic development means slower population growth meme the UN uses. Ponder Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, and Malaysia for example.

    • David Springer

      I find Randy Gates Simpson advocating energy poverty as a means of population control to be offensive.

      • As the people living and dying in poverty are brown and tend not to speak English some people have a problem believing they are fully human.

      • I find Mr. Springer’s mischaracterization of things that people say to be offensive.

      • David Springer

        I find Randall Gates Simpson taking advantage of the people of Aurora by blogging all day long when he should be working to be highly offensive. Write the mayor Steve Hogan shogan@auroragov.org to complain.

      • @David Springer.

        Really??

        Maybe it’s time you gave it a rest?

      • David Springer

        I’m pretty sure the citizens of Aurora aren’t aware they’re paying Randy to be a climate change warrior instead of program director for Aurora’s municipal TV station. Public employees taking advantage of the public trust offends me deeply.

      • “a climate change warrior instead of program director”

        He’s both rolled into one: A Global Warming Propagandist.

        Andrew

      • David Springer

        Alistair Riddoch

        Really?

        Maybe it’s time you stopped turning a blind eye to government employees violating the public trust?

      • David Springer, if you need to discuss non-climate related issues, or need to question me, you can do so privately, and not waste the time of people who are here for a higher purpose. Alistair.Riddoch@Don’tBother.com
        (I tease, it’s really alistair.riddoch@gmail.com) :-)

        p.s. I think most of us are HERE because we do not turn a blind eye to governments violating the public trust. and I think mots of us would prefer to focus thus.

        but I could be wrong, perhaps people here enjoy it, if so, I am sure many will speak up, suggesting you continue as you have.

        in the meantime, for non-climate response, at least directed toward myself, use alistair.riddoch@gmail.com. Please.

      • David Springer

        Allistair Riddoch

        Your opinion could not possibly mean less to me. Shove it.

      • that’s a fair and expected response. will do.

        cheers.
        :-)
        A.

    • “So where are the other civilizations in the universe who have faced this ever expanding need for energy?”

      So the absence of human contact with aliens is evidence that civilization is doomed without decarbonization? This is silly in so many ways I can’t begin to count.

      On the other hand, I suppose it’s as good as any of the other “X is consistent with CAGW” arguments. You can’t disprove it; it has nothing to do with science; and it tells you absolutely nothing about reality.

      It should make it into the AR6.

  7. David Wojick

    I am amazed that the skeptics are not attacking the Obama Administrations incredible Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) scientific claims. It is the entire claimed basis for their regulation of CO2, which is proceeding rapidly. It turns out they use climate and economic projections to 2300 to get their damages. Imagine claiming to know what 2300 will be like, and gutting an industry now on that basis. That is the unbelievable measure of US climate policy today.

    We also have “adjustments” to work with. The models used in the first, 2010, SCC suddenly projected 20-30% greater damages in the 2014 update, just in time for EPA’s coal killing proposed rules. This is alarmist science personified as Federal policy. Here are the basic SCC documents:
    SCC 2010 doc
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/for-agencies/Social-Cost-of-Carbon-for-RIA.pdf
    SCC 2014 doc (damage estimates much higher)
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/inforeg/technical-update-social-cost-of-carbon-for-regulator-impact-analysis.pdf

    Imagine someone in 1700 demanding major economic change because of what will happen in 2000. That is just where we are today with SCC and it is working! What a world.

    • The craziness of Washington starts on the campuses of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. It is there that students with super high SATs cluster and form consensus minds. After graduation they move to clustered communities, essentially shut off from those of lesser prominence, in the cities of New York, Washington, San Francisco, and LA. – “Coming Apart” by Charles Murray.

    • I am amazed that the skeptics are not attacking the Obama Administrations incredible Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) scientific claims.

      We are, but the Alarmist Media does not cover it. Go to heartland.org and see what the Skeptics do say. Look in the many Blogs to see what the Skeptics say about the Social Cost of Carbon.

      The International Conference on Climate Change has not been covered in the Houston Chronicle. Maybe they will say something on Sunday.

      • David Wojick

        I have yet to see anything on this or any other skeptic blog. Can you point to a recent blog discussion of SCC? It was not discussed at the Heartland Las Vegas conference, not in all those presentations. It is like the skeptics are oblivious to what the US is doing, which is regulating CO2. Once these rules become final all discussion becomes academic. The skeptics seem to have gone into the self congratulatory echo chamber, while the warmers win.

        The US is regulating CO2 based on SCC, but the skeptics are too busy talking to notice.

      • David Wojick

        Yes, nine months ago when SCC was just an interesting academic exercise. Now it is the basis for US regulation of CO2 and no one is looking at the goofball science. 300 years of damages?

      • David Wojick

        Note too that a Federal Judge just ruled that SCC must be part of every federal environmental impact analysis that in any way involves CO2 production. This is incredibly serious but completely unnoticed by the skeptics. We are within a few years of losing the battle to the warmers, completely, in the US. And no one has noticed this apparently, too busy saying the same old things.

      • The battle is over, the war continues.

        or

        The trial ends, the appeals begin.

      • David Springer

        There’s a lot in the news about SCC. Below is a google search link.

        http://tinyurl.com/p3elkov

        And Wojick you’re wrong about Heartland not covering it in Vegas:

        http://climateconference.heartland.org/breakout-2-streaming/

        Tuesday, July 8

        10:00 AM – PANEL 2: Carbon Taxes and the Social Cost of Carbon
        Ken Haapala, Marlo Lewis, and Dr. David Kreutzer

        Pretty incompetent of you to have not read the conference schedule before making claims about what’s not on it.

      • David Wojick

        Dr. Curry, here is your conclusion from the prior analysis:
        “The use of these model results to drive policy in an optimal decision making mode, such as what seems implied by the White House doc, does not seem defensible given these analyses of uncertainty and areas of ignorance.”
        http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/27/social-cost-of-carbon-part-ii/

        Clearly Obama and EPA think it is defensible to justify controlling CO2 now based on what the hot models they choose say will happen hundreds of years from now. An absurd situation.

      • David Wojick

        Springer, I do not consider being a partial topic in an abstract breakout session important coverage. You have missed my point. The convention should have focussed on EPA’s use of SCC to justify controlling CO2.

        Alistair, the battle is far from over. EPA is taking comments until October, which it must answer and which form the basis for litigation. The House is trying to stop EPA by law and it needs public support. We are at the height of the battle but the skeptics are just not in it.

      • Hello David,
        Do you have links for how to send comments to the EPA? Is that an open invitation, or U.S. citizen only?
        Sending the EPA questions that force them to think, sounds like incredibly good fun.

      • David Springer

        Are you too old to learn how to use google?

        The following google for

        “social cost of carbon” heartland

        http://tinyurl.com/p5t29zz

        gets 221,000 hits. The house isn’t providing any funding for the EPA power grab. EPA is biting off more regulatory burdens than it can chew. Don’t worry about it so much.

      • David Wojick, I was not disagreeing, just restating using an old adage.

        I was suggesting the battle to determine CO2’s vileness, ended when government started acting. With action was implied decision. Question answered, Battle lost.

        But that efforts to repeal that decision, are the task of deniers and skeptics. To win and end the war.

        I would suggest that in Australia, the secondary battle has taken place, and requirement for evidence prevailed over groupthink. CO2 was declared innocent. Not because of new evidence, but because the retrial decided there was not enough evidence at the first trial. The battle is won at least temporarily in Australia, yet the war continues, and threaten’s to continue to so them harm. The war continues.

        New battles emerge, and are fought.

        The war is not over.

        Not until one side or the other, provides an explanation for the climate, that is plausible, irrefutable, and understandable by a five year old.

        Until then, only battles.

      • David Wojick

        Alistair, here is the link to comment on the EPA proposal. Every skeptic should comment because the warmers are sure to pile on.
        http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/how-comment-clean-power-plan-proposed-rule

        This proposal is especially open to comments from non-Americans (although all are) because EPA’s claim of benefits, which supposedly justifies this very expensive rule, is based on preventing global damage over the next 300 years. Claiming global benefits is a new twist in US regulatory impact analysis, but the benefits to the USA do not equal the cost. Of course predicting damages up to 300 years in the future is just preposterous.

      • Thank you David Wojick,

        That was a kind follow up. Appreciated.

        It sounds like fun. It sounds like it has potential to make a difference. That would be fun.

        And good practice, quick, concise, clear, plausible, confirmable, compelling, interesting, and a twist of funny never hurts. Throw in a few recognizable anomalies, and the job shoulf go just fine.

        Cheers,
        Alistair

    • David Wojick the US doesn’t need coal anymore. Shale gas replaces coal. Time to shut down those dinosaur plants and mines.

      • David Wojick

        Lolwot. You must be a big fan of shale gas. Do you realize that the present US coal burn equals the present gas burn in energy production. Roughly one billion tons of coal a year. This means to replace coal with gas you need to double gas production, and infrastructure. Is this what you are proposing? And without raising the price of the gas? Get serious.

        There is nothing dinosaur about modern coal plants and mines. They are engineering marvels.

      • David no one is suggesting we do it overnight. It will be a gradual process with renewables, nuclear, and efficiency improvements all in the mix.

      • Eventually we will run out of shale gas. Then we can move to more expensive gas sources, and we will deplete those as well. Eventually we have to find a renewable replacement of some kind. Any ideas?

      • While it makes sense to realize we will run out of any non-renewable energy source, we have already found nuclear energy and the amount of fuel we have for that type of energy will last for eons, not decades or centuries, and we make significant use of Hydro electricity, which is most cases is perpetually renewable.

      • David Wojick

        Joseph, the first EPA target period is just six years away, with all to be done in just sixteen years. Not gradual.

      • David, the target doesn’t require we shut down all coal fired power plants.

      • “David, the target doesn’t require we shut down all coal fired power plants.”

        I’m not arguing that being the case, but I do notice the irony, of having policy that is based on reacting to the premise of the likely demise of humanity (runaway temperatures, rising sea levels, millions dying from heat related issues.

        And then policy that let’s you pay to circumnavigate the restriction, and targets that are soft.

        Embarrassing time to be a human.

  8. Climate scientists are like this. .
    And when you feel that way, you’ve got a problem to solve, which is, how are you going to explain all of those people who disagree with you? It turns out, most of us explain those people the same way, by resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions. The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they’re ignorant. They don’t have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they’re going to see the light and come on over to our team. When that doesn’t work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they’re idiots. (Laughter) They have all the right pieces of the puzzle, and they are too moronic to put them together correctly. And when that doesn’t work, when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes.

  9. HUMILITY: Reality is what I observe. E.g., Einstein: E = mc^2

    PRIDE: Reality is what I calculate. E.g., von Weizsacker: Nuclear binding energy equation

    • HUMILITY: Reality is what I observe. E.g., Einstein: E = mc^2

      EXCEPT that E=mc^2 leads to phenomena that does NOT match observed reality. Time dilation. We can watch a GPS satellite exist for exactly 24 hours with our own two eyes. But the clock on board is set 38ms different, per day.

      And then (and this should be humbling as a human to accept that your society believes it), we attribute the discrepancy, not to the impact of varying gravity/magnetic variations. No. Our society believes, and engineers based upon, a belief that our eyes are wrong, and the clock is 100% functional, and accurate.

      Don’t know about the binding energy guy much. But pretty sure he had to operate in an environment limited in conceptual freedom by the burden of the false belief in Einstein’s infallibility.

      • Alistair: Einstein’s special theory of relativity also requires consideration of mass when designing particle experiments; that mass increases toward infinity as the particle increases toward c.

      • I appreciate the effort. But I am not sure I understand.

        The mathematics do not match observations. The satellite can be viewed for 24 hours.

        I can understand that the atoms might all be stretched out in lower gravity, therefor electrons have farther to go to so the same “work” and slow a clock down.

        I can’t understand why we trust our calculations instead of our eyes.

        It seemed related to the original thought.

      • and if gravity waves are the creator of all motion, I could understand there being different “frequency” of gravity when in orbit.

        but how we believe the clock, to the eye, that is where I keep getting held up.

        the “why do we believe that” problem.

      • Perhaps there will be greater understanding of time and mass when there is greater understanding of the 11 dimensions of space – unserious.

        Also, on a previous comment, you were describing the likely existence of life, and it reminded me of a quantum physics lecture. The professor said that quantum physics is not difficult to understand, but when 10E27 particles equals cheese; that is difficult.

      • I’ve heard that “the bend in time/space” is the most difficult to visually conceptualize. (could be because it is wrong, slightly).

        Because. Gravity must be almost equal everywhere (or things would fly apart), yet gravity must be slightly imbalanced everywhere, or nothing would move.

        Since everything moves slightly, in relation to everything around it, gravity must equal a slight imbalance, with reciprocity . lol. didn’t know that word existed till spell check verified it.

        eg: despite the massiveness of earth, the air would rather go around it, than sink to it. the pull of the universe, in our atmosphere, balances out the pull of the earth. Creates the effect of pressure, as the counterpoint to gravity.

        I think/believe.

        :-)

  10. JustinWonder

    >It’s all played out before and so shall it henceforth.

    Where and when?

  11. Pope’s Climate Theory, explained another way
    Pope’s Climate Theory is based on some basic things that I believe are facts that are known from historic records, proxy and other records, and Ice Core Data from Greenland and Antarctica.
    In the past million years and in the MOST RECENT, MOST IMPORTANT, TEN THOUSAND YEARS, I believe these things are true:
    Ice Extent and therefore Albedo are higher during cold periods. Ice Extent and therefore Albedo are lower during warm periods. When oceans are warm, Polar Oceans are less frozen. When oceans are cold, Polar Oceans are more frozen. The temperature that Polar Sea Ice melts and freezes is the thermostat for Earth Temperature Regulation. When oceans are warm and thawed, there is more snowfall. When oceans are cold and frozen, there is less snowfall. Oceans are huge, they circulate, they warm and cool slowly and they warm and cool globally. Land does warm and cool quickly. You can see that in day and night, summer and winter and cloudy and clear. If you look at the Roman, Medieval and Modern Warm Periods the Polar Ice Cycle is about 800 years long. When oceans are warm, there are centuries of more snowfall. When oceans are cold, there are centuries of less snowfall. Sometime during the period of more snowfall, Ice stops retreating and starts advancing. Sometime during the period of less snowfall, Ice stops advancing and starts retreating. This explains the ice core temperature data that suddenly stops its direction and goes the other way. The Milankovitch Cycles change slowly and cannot explain this sudden change. Solar Cycles can make small changes to heat balance and cannot explain these large changes in temperature direction. Consensus Climate Theory and most Skeptic Climate Theories consider the ice extent to be a result of temperature change caused by “something else”.
    Maurice Ewing and William Donn determined, in the 1950’s, that the Ice Extent was driving and was not being driven. Tom Wysmuller taught me the Ewing and Donn Theory that the Ice Extent was driving and was not driven. He explained that to our JSC NASA Alumni Group in 2008 at a retiree Social. Since that time, I have studied Climate and developed my own Theory, which is not different than Ewing and Donn Theory. Someday, I hope to attend an Award Ceremony that honors Ewing and Don.
    Some of that group that listened to Tom formed our Right Climate Stuff Climate Study Team. Others have joined us.
    Consider the Theory that Ice Extent is a driver of Temperature and not a result of other correlations that seem to only work right sometimes and do not cause enough change to energy balance to work without “ unknown feedbacks that cannot be explained” or Model output that shows no skill in forecasting real data.

    • Pope’s climate theory:

      Please let me know when the summertime NH snow cover starts to increase. It’s been going the opposite for many years and until that turns around, the possibility of a new glacial advance is very close to 0.

      • The albedo of earth has been steady during the pause. Ice Extent has stopped declining. That is why Temperature stopped rising. Snow cover is not the thing you should watch for. The ice fields and glaciers are growing ice volume. They will advance and cool the earth. This part of the Polar Ice cycle does occur over hundreds of years. The ice advance comes later. Look at the cooling after the Roman Warm period. Look at the cooling after the Medieval warm period. The cooling after this modern warm period will proceed on a similar schedule. Ice fields will expand and glaciers will advance after the snow that is falling on top gets heavy enough. Ice fields always expand and glaciers always advance. Ice fields always lose ice at the edges and glaciers always lose ice at their tails. When the snow is heavy enough, ice advances faster than ice is lost. When the snow is not heavy enough, ice advances slower than ice is lost.
        Snow cover that is not on old ice is different ice and it does melt in summer.

      • ummmm, I think that would be now.

        Ramara Ontario, the same snow was on the ground from November to May. Unprecedented in my lifetime, that I am able to recall.

        (joking that it is a sign of a glacial onset).

      • Pope’s Climate Theory said:

        “The ice fields and glaciers are growing ice volume.”

        —-
        Well then the laws of physics seem to have changed since oceans are gaining mass. We must ask ourselves where that mass is coming from if not glacial mass. Also of course satellite readings show net glacial mass loss on a global basis.

      • maybe mass is not the right term.
        perhaps we measure mass relating to current local gravity strength,
        taking a measurement of weight
        and then maybe we mislabel it mass.
        maybe.

        example. moon between the sun and us, will minimize weight in day, and maximize it at night.
        us between moon and sun, maximum weight during the day, minimum weight at night.

        Conversely consider inside the earth, in terms of heat generation, it IS weight that matters, not mass.

      • Hi R. Gates. Also, this year, for the first time in many years, Niagara Falls froze over, the great lakes froze to 90 or 95%. These are unprecedented since I was a kid, 40 years ago. The snow that landed in my back yard in late october of last , is the same snow that finally melted May 6th of this year. No full melt in between. That is the same snow was on the ground for 7 months. The snowfall this year, was so long and much, that in late February it just seemed to STOP. (the air on average only has 10 day supply of water. with the lakes frozen over, and much snow captured on the ground, there wasn’t much left in the air). As spring approached, VERY SLOWLY, there were several times when it warmed enough to cause sublimation, and the next day, we would have a small snow fall, and that would be it. No snow storms. Not enough moisture in the air.

        regional weather is NOT a global indicator. But the weather across this part of North America, was undeniably, unseasonably, long, and cold. Like the late 60’s. (I’ve been there).

        CERTAINLY, there was NO evidence of global warming in this neck of the woods.

        CERTAINLY, there was NO evidence of climate that was unprecedented, in this neck of the woods.

        And now Australia, in their version, of our winter, are having a cold one, too.

        When we are colder than normal, elsewhere will be warmer than normal, and vice versa. The reverse should be true.

        And it makes sense. Our cold spell captured moisture, that normally would have migrated away more. Now we are having a late, but hot and humid summer. Hmmmmmm. :-)

        it seems almost like they are all related. :-D

  12. A fan of *MORE* discourse

    James Hansen  communicates:
    The Wheels of Justice:
    Legal actions, multi-front strategy,
    young people & the end-game

    Leaders of the United States and other major nations are not crooks. However, the deception they practice, probably unwittingly in some cases, is so consequential that they may as well be.

    The deception is their presumption that they can solve the problem via “caps” on emissions. They avoid exposing the impossibility that this approach will work by diverting attention to discussion to a barely relevant “goal” for a limit on global temperature rise.

    Young people, please listen and think about this matter. It is not rocket science. If you do not understand what is needed, and demand it, the planet and you are in deep trouble.

    As climate change becomes obvious, it is crucial that actions to address it not be left to politics—as—usual controlled by vested interests.

    You must influence the course of events. Whether fair or not, it’s the task you have at hand.

    Do not assume that old geezers are taking care of it for you.

    Climate Etc’s aging out-of-touch cohort of libertarian market fundamentalists just don’t get it, do they?

    MORE BREAKING NEWS  Relax, Outer Banks: North Carolina state legislature outlaws sea level rise

    Sigh.

    Conclusion  It’s no wonder that the entire world’s STEM professionals universally abhor and reject the demagogic ignorance ideology-driven climate-change denialism.

    That’s obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh 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}

    • “Socrates is guilty of crime in refusing to recognise the gods acknowledged by the state and importing strange divinities of his own; he is further guilty of corrupting the young.”

      Xenophon; Memorabilia

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      The single most comprehensively heretical (and enjoyable) essay known to FOMD — against mighty tough competition from Socrates, Jesus, Rhazes, Spinoza, Tom Paine, Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Jane Goodall, and Edward Abbey — is Wendell Berry’s lecture at the Georgetown College Conference for Pastors and Ministers, Following the Call of the Church in Times Like These (2013).

      Regrettably, the title of Berry’s lecture offends Climate Etc‘s spam filters … but the title makes no essential difference, as Berry’s lecture is concerned to set forth concrete foundations ample to support the broadest span of human enterprises: economic, social, familial, political (and even scientific).

      If *ANY* Climate Etc reader — of *ANY* intellectual or political persuasion — is so impoverished in intellect and passion as to discern nothing offensive in Berry’s lecture … then FOMD’s most sincere condolences are extended to that person.

      Conclusion  We are all us lucky (as it seems to FOMD) to be alive the same age as Wendell Berry: a heretical gadfly who ranks among the greatest that humanity has ever produced.

      Although we disagree on much, DocMartyn, still I am optimistic that we both can appreciate the inspirational challenges that Wendell Berry so generously proffers.

      \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}

  13. A fan of *MORE* discourse

    David Wojick requests  “Imagine someone in  1700  2014 demanding major economic change because of what will happen in  2000  2034. That is just where we are today with SCC and it is working! What a world.

    Request by David Wojick, fulfillment by FOMD.

    Sometimes, you just can’t make this stuff up.

    It’s really embarrassing for me to write this, but the legislature of my native North Carolina has made it illegal for public officials to consider current rates of sea level rise as they plan for the future.

    And, no, I did not get this from The Onion.

    What a world, indeed!

    \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}

    • It’s really embarrassing for me to write this, but the legislature of my native North Carolina has made it illegal for public officials to consider current rates of sea level rise as they plan for the future.

      I am not from North Carolina, but I know better than that.
      That is not what North Carolina Did. They said that the flawed Model Forecasts could not be used. They said only real data could be used.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      BREAKING NEWS: Denialism’s Economic Tragicomedy

      North Carolina lawmakers
      reject sea level rise predictions

      “Backed by real estate developers, the Republican-led General Assembly [of North Carolina] passed a law requiring that projected rates of sea level rise be calculated on historical trends and not include accelerated rates of increase.”

      ——

      Sea Versus Senators

      Could nature be mocking North Carolina’s law-makers?

      Less than two weeks after the state’s senate passed a bill banning state agencies from reporting that sea-level rise is accelerating, research has shown that the coast between North Carolina and Massachusetts is experiencing the fastest sea-level rise in the world.

      Sometimes, you just can’t make this stuff up, eh 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}

      • David Springer

        Crank alert!

      • Fan

        Surely north Carolina is subject to hurricanes and storm surges? In 1954 300 homes at long Beach were destroyed.

        This followed a devastating hurricane in 1893 in south Carolina which wreaked havoc when a giant wave swept over the islands .

        It all seems very low lying and it seems daft to continue building in an area vulnerable to harsh weather, whatever it’s cause, natural or man made.

        However, i don’t pretend to know that part of the world so perhaps that was all some distance from the places in the article?

        Tonyb

      • A fan of *MORE* discourse

        For scientific details, wee reply to ordvic [below]

        Best wishes for continued & enjoyable learning are extended to all 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}

      • Don’t you love it, FOMBS. People acting rationally.

    • David Wojick

      FOMD, the SCC is based on 300 year global damage predictions. Benefits (from avoided damages) in 2034 are trivial according to their models, compared to the cost of the rule, which is why the Obama folks had to go out 300 years. In fact some of the economic models show the CO2 increase being beneficial in 2034, and beyond for that matter. They have to get to 3.4 degrees of global warming to get the big damages and that takes a long time. You might actually look at this stuff.

  14. It is perhaps telling that Judith didn’t see this week’s Heartland Conference on her radar in this Open Thread list of topics. A sign of knowing where to draw the line perhaps, or the subject of a future post? The keynotes I saw from Monckton, Spencer and Bastardi who gave simple-minded talks that lacked any scientific content, and were aimed at a lay audience who lap up conspiracies and suggestions of fraudulence. I always find Heartland very entertaining.

    • Actually, I’ve looked for things on Heartland, not much other than some tweets. I don’t see the ppt presentations available (and I don’t have time to actually listen to presentations).

      • Judith

        Heartland does not even figure on my radar and I take no notice of them whatsoever.

        Are they reckoned to have some genuine influence on the climate debate in the States?
        Tonyb

      • I don’t think Heartland is very influential. I said as much during the hey day of the Gleick affair, and Bast responded by writing an essay outlining the influence that they have. I think their greatest impact may be in lobbying. I don’t think they have anywhere near the influence in the US that the GWPF has in the UK

        Here is previous CE Heartland thread, including response from Bast
        http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/24/why-target-heartland/

      • Their leaders, Bast and Taylor, give briefings to local politicians against going to renewable energy, so I would say they are relevant. Showtime’s Years of Living Dangerously series had one episode outlining how Taylor earns his living being a door-to-door salesman for his funders.

      • You should check out the videos. The audience reaction is an important part of what they attempt to do. It’s a show. These are posted.

      • Judith

        I re read the previous thread on heartland and am pleased to see i am being consistent as I called it ‘irrelevant.’

        I saw you as being more important than heartland though it seems to me that you have become steadily more sceptical over the last couple of years.

        http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/24/why-target-heartland/#comment-175200

        Tonyb

      • TonyB,

        I see Heartland as a positive influence on the climate debate, but not because of any original content they produce, or even as a source of skeptical/conservative thought.

        What you have to understand is that there was a drone-like uniformity in “journalism” and “media” in the US for decades. Before there were hundreds of cable channels, there were three main networks, all of which were charter members of the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil (of progressives) media.

        For years as far as mass media, there was only Rush Limbaugh and (on matters other than immigration) the Wall Street Journal editorial page. All other wide circulation print media (including the “news” pages of the WSJ), were strong progressive.

        Then there was Fox News. Not nearly as conservative a voice as progressives thing. There were and are more progressive commentators at Fox than conservatives. The difference was that Fox gave voice to some conservatives, which was a first.

        Heartland is just a later addition. Not as cerebral as Heritage of Cato, but still an outlet for those who dissent from the Borg consensus. I suspect that if you took a poll of conservative voters, you would find a very small percentage had heard of Heartland, or the GWPF for that matter. And only slightly more will have heard of Heritage and Cato.

        But poll conservative activists and politicians, and the name recognition for all would probably sky rocket. The service Heartland provides to conservatism is not unlike the service the IPCC does for progressive governments. It provides another outlet for the opinions of those who dissent from the climate consensus.

        I can tell you it was frustrating spending decades not hearing anyone voice opinions that I knew I, and many other conservatives, held. There is a broad debate. The left is entitled to their NBCABCCNSMSNBCCNNNYTimesWashPostTimeRealClimateClimateProgress. Don’t begrudge (or diminish) the efforts of the right to combat this deluge of group think with alternatives.

      • Gary

        I don’t mean to disparage Heartland. As I said, they have absolutely no influence on my thinking. However I guess they are not addressing a British audience but want to influence the domestic market Which seems to have lacked the sort of voice they now provide.

        However it was interesting to read Judith’s comment above that she doesn’t think they are very influential.

        Do you think they are getting the message over to the ordinary joe, or, more importantly, the decision makers?

        Tonyb

      • Tonyb,

        I don’t see Heartland making much of an impact directly on “the ordinary joe.” But indirectly, I think they help remind the activists and politicians that there is a growing array of outlets for conservative/skeptical thought, who can then funnel that info down to the grass roots.

        In the US, even the Republican Party is lead by relatively progressive politicians. So in my opinion, an organization like Heartland has great value in just being another voice for conservative positions.

        One of the most effective propaganda tools of the left is the “the argument is over” – only liars, fools and the deranged disagree with the consensus. The more coherent voices on the right, the easier it is to fight such rhetoric. What’s Up With That is not a peer reviewed journal. Rush Limbaugh is not a political philosopher. Fox News is not a paragon of journalistic virtue. And Heartland is not a research university.

        But all are influential in giving a voice to views and facts that would never see the light of day through the filter of progressive “journalism.”.

      • it was an grossly negligently oversimplified analogy that got us into this mess.

        It will probably be another over-simplified analogy that will get us out.

    • …who gave simple-minded talks that lacked any scientific content, and were aimed at a lay audience who lap up conspiracies and suggestions of fraudulence.

      Heartland probably has a pretty good idea of its target audience. In general, include the middle of the bell curve. There are some on the Consensus side that might fit your description with a little rewording.

    • Jim D, I for one am glad it wasn’t. There is an indelible taint about Heartland. Not just the Unabomber billboard incident. Second hand smoke lobbying. An ID lobbying group giving an award to Roy Spenceratnthis recent meeting, since has been a very prominent ID advocate.
      CE is about climate science and policy. Let’s hope Judith keeps it that way as much as possible. Dragging in other agendas just because those other folks/ organizations are also skeptical of CAGW is not helpful at all in my view.

    • “I always find Heartland very entertaining.”
      _____
      Indeed it is, and the fact that their conference was held in the entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas, is exceptionally fitting. I probably would have gone if it worked into my schedule.

    • I almost went to Heartland. But the lack of eclectic climate heretics, and the excess of stuffy Republican politicos dissuaded me. Nils Axel Morner and Abdussamatov were the only ones that stood out for me on the speaker list. As a green anarcho former apocalyptarian (the first on this blog!?! ;-), it would have been a fun exercise in cognitive dissonance. Oh well.

      It’s definitely been an interesting experience hanging out on this blog & WUWT. My social values haven’t particularly changed but have def fallen into the ranks of Doubters.

  15. Now, brought to you by the Department of BS …
    …Environment
    US to face multibillion-dollar bill from climate change: Report
    Tuesday, 24 Jun 2014 | 5:55 AM ETReuters

    Annual property losses from hurricanes and other coastal storms of $35 billion; a decline in crop yields of 14 percent, costing corn and wheat farmers tens of billions of dollars; heat wave-driven demand for electricity costing utility customers up to $12 billion per year.

    These are among the economic costs that climate change is expected to exact in the United States over the next 25 years, according to a bipartisan report released on Tuesday. And that’s just for starters: The price tag could soar to hundreds of billions by 2100.

    Commissioned by a group chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Secretary of the Treasury and Goldman Sachs alum Henry Paulson, and environmentalist and financier Tom Steyer, the analysis “is the most detailed ever of the potential economic effects of climate change on the U.S.,” said climatologist Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University.

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/101783867

  16. From the article:
    Domestic energy boom in infancy: Pro

    http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000291904

  17. From the article:

    Not so fast, say other energy watchers. In data issued this week, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the U.S. produced only 8.1 million barrels per day of crude during the first quarter. Even when including other petroleum-based sources, the amount produced still doesn’t put the U.S. close to surpassing the Saudis, some say.

    “If we take the EIA numbers, then for the U.S. to surpass [Saudi Arabia] next year, we’d need to increase production by 1.7 million bpd in a year,” said Chris Nelder, an independent energy analyst.

    “That’s absolutely not going to happen,” Nelder said in an e-mail, citing the trend of the last three years, which have seen the U.S. add about 1 million bpd per year. “We won’t add a million barrels per day in 2014. This year we’ll probably have more like a 500-700,000 bpd increase.”

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/101822560

  18. From the article:

    North Dakota Production Tops 1 Million Barrels a Day
    By Dan Murtaugh Jun 17, 2014 4:32 PM CT

    North Dakota, home to the Bakken shale formation, became the fourth state in U.S. history to produce more than 1 million barrels of oil a day in April.

    Output increased by 2.5 percent from March to 1,001,149 barrels a day, the state’s Department of Mineral Resources reported today. Texas, California and Alaska have crossed the million-barrel mark. Only Texas remains above it, at almost 3 million barrels a day.

    Production will increase through the summer as better weather allows crews to finish more wells, Lynn Helms, the department’s director, said during a conference call with reporters today.

    “Permitting and drilling activity indicates that we’ll continue to see production grow and build well above 1 million barrels a day,” he said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-17/north-dakota-production-tops-1-million-barrels-a-day.html?cmpid=yhoo

  19. The real cost of Saudi oil.
    From the article:

    During a televised speech to a tense nation, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz announced to his rapt audience that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, by royal decree, would give to all civil servants and military personnel two months of salary. University students would receive a two-month stipend. Job seekers would receive the equivalent of $533 a month while hunting for work. Minimum wages were increased; 60,000 law enforcement jobs were created; and 500,000 new houses were to be built across the kingdom at a cost of nearly $70 billion. And that was just the beginning of a $130 billion spending program…

    For you see, the costs that King Abdullah imposed on Saudi Arabia that March day suddenly changed the dynamics of the oil market. A new cost structure was added to each barrel of oil pulled from beneath the desert sands – a social cost. And so long as tensions exist across the region between Arabic leaders and local populations that feel oppressed, that social cost is going nowhere but up.

    In Russia, oil generates more than 45% of government revenues. In Saudi Arabia, it’s up near 75%.

    Leaders in both countries have no choice but to rely heavily on oil to fund the civic largess … which means they have every incentive to manipulate oil prices through production.

    Prior to its $130 billion social-spending spree, Saudi Arabia needed oil prices somewhere north of $70 to balance the kingdom’s budget, according to the International Monetary Fund. Now the per-barrel cost is reportedly approaching $100. Russia needs something close to $120.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/2307925-the-hidden-cost-of-oil

  20. From the article:

    The Permian Is Once Again Booming

    After peaking at over 700 million barrels of oil in 1975, production fell to 270 million barrels in 2010 and the basin was thought to be largely tapped out. Despite uncertainties, however, production is now once again climbing and will likely exceed 500 million barrels this year. Higher oil prices, improvements in carbon dioxide flooding, and technological advances such as that in horizontal drilling are fueling the surge.

    How much oil is left in the Permian? The short answer is a lot. The long answer is, as always, more complicated.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/2273363-permian-oil-bonanza-or-hype

  21. The numbers since 1950 indicate 2 C per doubling, just using CO2 and temperature trend. The lowest skeptical estimates of 1 C per doubling say that this is 50% CO2 plus some other effect that accounts for the other half that they insist is some unrelated 60-year trend and not just a feedback. This is the difference in a nutshell, unrelated coincidental 60-year trend or feedback.

    • Curious George

      Could you please be more specific – what numbers? With how many adjustments?

    • CG, HADCRUT4, probably underdoes the polar warming a bit, but we’ll go with it.
      The trend gives 0.69 C since 1950. CO2 has changed from 310 to 396 ppm. You get higher than 2 C per doubling if you start from 1960 or 1970, but 1950 gives you 1.95 C. This trend in the sensitivity probably comes from global dimming early in the period where the aerosol growth was faster. I take the skeptical value to be 1 C per doubling which only accounts for half this temperature change, so those skeptics are now presumably looking for a non-feedback effect that accounts for the rest. The residual 60-year warming above what they predict is 0.3 C which is three times any AMO or PDO effect they have found so far, so it is a big missing piece in their “natural variability” that they need to fill in. It will be a challenge to find this.

    • Curious George

      Wikipedia: HadCRUT4 was introduced in March 2012. It “includes the addition of newly digitised measurement data, both over land and sea, new sea-surface temperature bias adjustments and a more comprehensive error model for describing uncertainties in sea-surface temperature measurements”. Overall, the net effect of HadCRUT4 versus HadCRUT3 is an increase in the average temperature anomaly, especially around 1950 and 1855, and less significantly around 1925 and 2005.

      Yes, you are entitled to your own data.

      • I only used the part after 1950. The skeptics now don’t have a long temperature record that they can trust, having backed away from BEST, GHCN, etc., which leads to major problems for them when it comes to actual data-based arguments where they are now reduced to hand-waving. I noticed that they are not even daring to post a surface temperature record longer than 17 years these days for fear of other skeptics taking their membership card away.

      • Curious George

        Fair enough.

      • Curious George

        There is an excellent reason why HADCRU2 or HADCRUT3 are not available after 2012. That way skeptics and alarmists alike have to use the latest ingenious adjustment algorithms. I concede that they are not unique to HADCRUT, but I still have a hard time to understand why the adjustments have to cool the past and to heat the present. But that will be discussed in a separate post, I hope.

      • Jimd

        It is interesting that you say sceptics have backed away from BEST.

        Do you think people are more or less likely to believe it following zekes very long thread?

        Tonyb

      • To the extent that BEST and USHCN have independently supported each other, using different methods and data, I would say Zeke’s detailed post supported both.

      • I’m not confident in the temperature record created from such crappy raw data, but I am satisfied with the explanation why the adjustments make the trend increase – at least for Tob and instrument changes.

    • Jim D,

      You need to re-read the memo. Surface temps are so uncool (because they are too cool). :-) . Ocean heat content is where it’s at. You have to come out of your Pacific island cave and stop fighting the last war.

    • David Springer

      Baseless handwaving.

  22. CET is the best known and the longest regional data set. It may come as a surprise to many that its 360 year long record conclusively shows that increased insolation suppresses long term temperature up-trend ( see link )
    This would suggest that if the natural variability is the ‘solar originated’ it isn’t likely to be via irradiance (not to be confused with insolation).
    As far the CO2 induced warming is concerned, the advocates of hypothesis may or may not be able to provide an adequate rationalization.

  23. From everything we know can anyone seriously claim the climate change during our lifetimes has been, “unprecedented?” Clearly not.

    In business, sometimes the best decision you can make is to discontinue a project. Otherwise, it’s just unending good money after bad. That is where we’re at when it comes to continued spending on the global warming science and policy-making business: more good money after bad.

    • Agreed Waggie. The single most important thing for this monster climate industry is to establish modern climate exceptionalism, and to do so it must twist and turn relentlessly.

      What we know of Australia’s climate since the 1790s is more than enough to shatter the manufactured myth of “unprecedented” events. However the people who can devote prime time TV to reports about a “collapsing” Antarctic without mentioning the current very high levels of sea ice (I won’t use that manipulative term “record”) will scarcely be interested in the long and disturbing history of extremes which constitute actual Australian climate. Alarmists don’t state there was ever a stable era…they just imply it. This implied absurdity is the lynch pin.

      Many skeptics think that a pause or period of cooling will put paid to the climatariat. My own impression is that nothing, short of massive hard knowledge we are nowhere near to acquiring, will stop the speculation train. There is no reason why temps should not go higher. There is no reason why sea levels should not rise more (given that a short ten thousand years ago you could walk from Victoria to Tasmania). But pauses or coolings, if they occur, will simply expand the climate industry to pausists, lukewarmers and coolists. Not to mention the counter-intuitivists (sorry about the grotesque word, but I couldn’t find anything as new and nifty as “dissensus”).

      Since so little is known, climate “science” is due to continue as a free-for-all where people can selectively ignore without showing ignorance. In a few decades we may have a plague of coolists, some of them today’s warmies.

      We make fun of jet trails to Cancun and Rio, but the fact is a great many people are hooked on the sexiness, sensation and moral crusading. Who wants to be exposed to dreary old weather when they can be romancing indoors with the hottie called Climate?

  24. Miami takes a bath!
    I don’t understand why green alarmists would complain about this? Not because it’s the perfect example to point to, but because it could be the first step in eradicating this foul species. Just think how great it would be if we could stop each of Hansen’s grandchildren from piling up skyscrapers worth of garbage the filthy slugs. Humans are a zillion times worst than any locust plague. Denuding the earth and raping it’s resources. Paving over paradise. Erecting ugly steel and glass architectural monstrosities and peppering it with slum ridden city centers and the pathetic looking ginger bread houses of suburbia full of deadly chemicals all of which foul gorgeous natural landscapes. Polluting land and sea with their poisonous waste products. Spewing out plastic products that is blighting natural space for centuries to come. Be rid of this obnoxious blight on nature and the beautiful earth. Strive and pray for the eradication of this destructive beast.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      ordvic is blithely ignorant  Miami takes a bath!

      Thank you, ordvic, for illustrating so plainly that denialism is associated to willful ignorance. In this case, willful ignorance that Florida’s karst/porous geology makes dikes useless in defending against sea-level rise … because the water pours through underground.

      Scientific Conclusion  The Netherlands is no kind of role model for Florida.

      Economic Corollary  However worried the Netherlands is about sea-level rise, Floridians should be hundreds of times *MORE* concerned.

      As for Greens, Climate Etc readers are well-advised to reject ordvic’s caricature of them … because Greens can speak for themselves.

      It is a continuing pleasure to inform your scientific, economic, historical, and moral thinking, ordvic!

      \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}

      • Fan,
        I don’t know how you could seperate out the denialists for all that destruction. Do you drive a car? Do you live somewhere like a house or an apartment? Do you throw out garbage? Use electricty, obviously your blogging? It will take some special kind of Hitler to figure out who to put in the consentration camps.

        I have a lot of solutions [like terrain architecture (no outside walls or roofs)]. Underground transit in individual modules. 100% recycling, no garbage. Renewable energy with carbon sequestration.

        Care to fund me? Just send to the Ordvic Foundation for perfect living. Maybe you should stop lecturing and start doing. You’ll probably have to talk your buddies Gates and Buffett and some hollywood hypocrites to help. You also might mention to tell Elon Musk and Richard Branson to quit messing around with mega carbon producing space planes and get busy with the hyperloop before Brown bankrupts California with his slow train envior hazard.

        Conclusion: Take heed, I’m the only hope you have!!!

      • God bless ya, FOMBS. You seem to have been born without a gene for shame. Enjoy it why you can.

      • A fan of *MORE* discourse

        Folks whose shame-gene is inactive contribute much to civic discourse (as it seems to FOMD!)

        \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}

      • Fan, I did go to your link to Wendell Berry (and saw Bill Moyers) however my tablet didn’t pick up the audio. FWIW my shame gene may be missing too! OMG!! Birds of a feather ….

      • Also look on the bright side (well maybe) read the NYTs 12/31/2013 Spared Winters Freeze, Florida’s Mangroves Are Marching North. Perhaps making up for nasty ol Miami destroying their space.

  25. You have to watch “The Armtstrong Lie”. Reminds one of the Team and climategate and projecting and protecting their power.

  26. Good description of the Plan by Hulme at the link:

    “…if a strong enough scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change could be forged and sustained, then the compelling force of such rationality would over-ride the differences in worldviews, beliefs, values and ideologies which characterise the human world.”

    “…the compelling force of such rationality would over-ride the differences in worldviews…”

    “Scientific consensus would forge political consensus and political consensus would yield victory. And victory would be the Salvation of the planet.”

    Scientists as the bridge between varying political interests. Consensus based arguments don’t seem to have worked. Hulme uses the phrase, forged and sustained. This doesn’t seem to fit with the idea of Scientists, though some do at times seem to argue for the ideas of forged and sustained.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Ragnaar quotes “…if a strong enough scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of  anthropogenic climate change  fishery failure could be forged and sustained, then the compelling force of such rationality would over-ride the differences in worldviews, beliefs, values and ideologies which characterise the human world.”

      What good for fish is good for people, eh Ragnaar!

      *EVERYONE* appreciates *THIS* common sense, eh 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}

    • “…then the compelling force of such rationality would over-ride the differences in worldviews, beliefs, values and ideologies which characterise the human world.” Not the world I live in, Mike, come down from Cloud Nine, look beyond the Ivory Tower.

  27. ‘A growing body of scholarly and scientific studies finds that fear-based appeals around climate change backfire, resulting in increased climate skepticism and fatalism among much of the public.

    This post summarizes scholarly and scientific articles published in peer-reviewed publications on the psychology of climate change.

    Many of the same studies indicate that liberals and conservatives respond to fear-based appeals about climate change differently. Efforts, for example, to link current natural disasters to climate change motivate liberals and environmentalists, but alienate moderates and conservatives.

    On a positive note, many studies show that framing climate solutions around technological and economic progress and solutions increases belief in global warming.’

    http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/the-psychology-of-climate-change

    • Chief,

      That may be the best post you’ve done, although I enjoy reading most of your arguments. Fear mongering has only led to Climate McCarthism.

  28. From the main post:
    brad plumer: Insightful piece on how enviros quietly shaped the EPA’s carbon rules for power plants: Link
    *****
    Everyone knows this can’t be right. Environmentalists haven’t pushed up the price of energy – just ask the CAGWers.

  29. Kent Draper

    You know there nothing wrong with smoking dope……….. What
    were we talking about ?

  30. Today, over one billion people around the world—five hundred million of them in sub-Saharan
    Africa alone—lack access to electricity. Nearly three billion people cook over open fires fueled by wood, dung, coal, or charcoal. This energy poverty presents a significant hurdle to achieving development goals of health, prosperity, and a livable environment. The relationship between access to modern energy services and quality of life is well established.
    Affordable and reliable grid electricity allows factory owners to increase output and hire more workers. Electricity allows hospitals to refrigerate lifesaving vaccines and power medical equipment. It liberates children and women from manual labor. Societies that are able to meet their energy needs become wealthier, more resilient, and better able to navigate social and environmental hazards like climate change and natural disasters.

    Faced with a perceived conflict between expanding global energy access and rapidly reducing
    greenhouse emissions to prevent climate change, many environmental groups and donor institutions
    have come to rely on small-scale, decentralized, renewable energy technologies that cannot meet the energy demands of rapidly growing emerging economies and people struggling to escape extreme poverty. The UN’s flagship energy access program, for example, claims that “basic human needs” can be met with enough electricity to power a fan, a couple of light bulbs, and a radio for five hours a day.

    A reconsideration of what equitable energy access means for human development and the environment is needed. As this paper demonstrates, a massive expansion of energy systems, primarily carried out in the rapidly urbanizing global South, in combination with the rapid acceleration of clean energy innovation, is a more pragmatic, just, and morally acceptable frame – work for thinking about energy access. The time has come to embrace a high-energy planet.’

    http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/the-psychology-of-climate-change

    • wrong lin – file:///C:/Users/Robert/Documents/Technical/Climate/Our-High-Energy-Planet.pdf

    • Rob Ellison

      Links are still not working at least in support of embracing a high-energy planet, which, by the way, I support.

      Your link: http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/the-psychology-of-climate-change

      “The likelihood of ‘converting’ climate change deniers using scientific evidence is limited because these attitudes increasingly reflect ideological positions.”

      Denier’s religion clashes with our religion. Facts be damned, full speed ahead.

      Now, have I got that right?

      • Sorry – having browser problems – belatedly running a system scan now.

        ‘Although it has failed to produce its intended impact nevertheless the Kyoto Protocol has performed an important role. That role has been allegorical. Kyoto has permitted different groups to tell different stories about themselves to themselves and to others, often in superficially scientific language. But, as we are increasingly coming to understand, it is often not questions about science that are at stake in these discussions. The culturally potent idiom of the dispassionate scientific narrative is being employed to fight culture wars over competing social and ethical values. Nor is that to be seen as a defect. Of course choices between competing values are not made by relying upon scientific knowledge alone. What is wrong is to pretend that they are.’ http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchandexpertise/units/mackinder/pdf/mackinder_wrong%20trousers.pdf

        Full steam ahead where is what counts.

      • Now I have had a chance to read both essays with the help of AK and yourself

        With the USA EPA promulgating rules and regulations on CO2 without the ascent of Congress, Obama has resurrected the modern US “imperial Presidency”. The sword that he wields, will be used by those who follow him no mater their political stripe.

        For the EPA to succeed in enforcing their CO2 related rules and regulations, EPA will need a larger bureaucracy located either in Washington DC itself, or, more likely, via the States monitoring systems. More money for EPA has to come from Congress, which already slices and dices the small discretionary monies available, or EPA will have to cannibalize itself from other programs or a combination of both. Congress is an unlikely source for more money to EPA. The Clean Air Act has long ago bypassed its mandate and popular support. The demographics of an aging population are driving the entitlement payments for the near and far future.

        EPA’s rules and regulations are driving up the cost of home energy, soon to rank as the new major, overwhelming and necessary budget item limiting consumer discretionary spending as it did this last winter. The squeeze on the economy of EPA’s rules and regulations from both entitlement payments and home energy costs will be seized upon by some astute politician as a boogy-man for their trip to the White House and their turn to wield the sword of Imperial Presidency for a few terms in office.

        Obama will be remembered for what he did and not what he said. Another cold winter in the near future, particularly in the regions of the corridors of power, will mark him as not being a particularly effective President at best, and a mediocre President (Warren G. Harding) at worse.

      • RiH008

        I don’t think it wise to include religion in an argument against denial.

        Consider:

        Deniers are the ones without religion. the ones who are less likely to believe on faith. The one’s less likely to have been indoctrinated since childhood to believe the possibility that earth can affect the climate, has in the past, and was almost eradicated as a result, by a benevolent God.

        To believe in religion, and NOT believe religions stories makes no sense. So religious followers have to believe, where there is smoke, there is fire. Maybe the bible isn’t the full truth, but there must be some, otherwise what would be the point in believing in God.

        Christians, may be psychologically incapable conceiving that humanity is incapable of changing the climate. In a cult, that would be called “brain washing”. That Christianity requires believing without proof.

        America/Canada/Britain, all have courts that do, or recently did, ask witnesses to swear on a bible.

        America/Canada/Britain, leading the charge addressing climate change.

        Hmmmm.
        Christianity.
        Belief in God.
        Requires belief on faith.
        Requires some respect for the Bible.
        Encouraged to impart their belief on others.
        Convinced we are “stewards of the planet”
        Convinced of the inherent “guilt” of mankind.
        Convinced of the need for redemption.
        Devout in their beliefs.
        Heavily tied to many major governments.

        Yep, religion definitely does not help the alarmist point of view.

  31. From the article:

    The six states that allow people to carry concealed handguns without a permit
    have much lower murder and violent crime rates than the six states with the
    lowest permit rates. Indeed, the murder rate is 23 percent lower in the states
    without permits. The violent crime rate is 12 percent lower. The murder and
    violent crime rates are also lower in the 25 states with the highest permit rates
    compared to the rest of the US.

    Using this new state level permit data from 2007 on, our analysis suggests
    that each one percentage point increase in the percent of the adult population holding permits is roughly associated with a 1.4 percent drop in the murder rate.
    7

    End quote.
    (References are included in the article)

    http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Concealed-Carry-Permit-Holders-Across-the-United-States.pdf

  32. How about a little crowd sourcing.
    Here are the pdf’s of actual official US surface temperature records:-
    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/lcd/lcd.html

    Pick a state, a location and find the records for a year before 1975. Make sure you have the data for a full year and convert degree F to degree C. Then and only then put the station location into BEST and look up the RAW data (like Texas).

    http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/texas

    Tell me if the RAW data used by BEST is the same RAW data recorded by the people who submitted the temperature data.

    We all do one; if you find a perfect match, post
    Your Name, perfect, station location year.
    If you find less than a match, post
    Your Name, porkies, station location year, PROBLEM
    links

    • Steven Mosher

      Make sure you get the Lat/Lon/elevation from the paper form
      otherwise you cannot insure you are comapring the same stations.

      Opps, the paper form may not contain the actual station name, station identifier, lat, lon, elevation, or instrument.

      So comparing it tells you one of two things

      1. Its data record matches a data record found in the level 1 data.
      2. Its data record does not match. In which case you know nothing.

      In short you need traceability from from the paper form.. which may not have metadata to an digital file which does have metadata.

      You realize that many of these forms may have never been put into an electronic file.

      • Sure Steve, anything you add can only be of aid.
        I just want to be sure that the RAW data you use is BEST is the same RAW data that was transcribed by some schmuck 70 years ago.

      • Steven Mosher

        Huh
        why would you assume they would be the same? I wouldnt.

        You have two records.
        1. One purporting to be the raw written record ( its not, its been keyed in from a paper copy)
        2. One ( actually SEVERAL) purporting to be raw in a digital form.
        its may or may not be raw

        Now, you actually dont know how #1 or #2 are prepared. or what their relationship is. You might get a description that 2 derives from 1, but you really have no proof of that if you want to be truely skeptical.

        The written records you see are probably ( but one cant be sure) captured in this data source.

        Note.

        http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/downloads/Sources/Monthly%20Climatic%20Data%20of%20the%20World/TAVG/LATEST.zip

        In the end. I will repeat what I have said ad naseum on “raw” data.
        philosophically it doesnt exist. What we have is a “first report”
        and we call it raw IF there is no documentation that says its adjusted.

        Jones for example had an issue with us calling one dataset raw.
        Why? he claimed it was adjusted

        In the end we stage that data last

        So what we do is collect the data that is IN FILES that anyone can go to.
        That data is then categorized as raw/adjusted and raw data is used first
        there will be cases where some stations ( a small number) use data where it ‘rawness’ is ambigous. Holding that out or including it doesnt change the GLOBAL answer.. what we care about, but it can change local detail.

        when you find errors, as you must, given the heuristic approach taken to de duplication, mail them to me. Just like other folks do and the issue gets addressed.

      • “I will repeat what I have said ad naseum on “raw” data.
        philosophically it doesnt exist.”

        Believe me, I believe you.

        Andrew

    • Steven Mosher

      for example..

      The sample file DOES have the metadata

      http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/images/lcdsample.pdf

      But not all of these types of archives will.
      So folks need to copy down all the metadata.
      you have to insure that you are comparing the same two stations.

    • I’m having trouble finding NCDC stations that match BEST stations in the 5 or so I have tried so far.

      Andrew

  33. Is Rich Matarese alive?

  34. Is the Southern Polar Vortex??
    From the article:
    If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years.

    Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.

    At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.

    Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.

    “If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/brisbane-hits-coldest-temperature-in-103-years/story-e6frg6n6-1226986116278?nk=9fe3cbf4f5bf37a6dc3f771dfd4654b8

  35. How statistically unlikely is it that the Arctic temperature will for the second year in a row stay completely under the long term average of the last 34 years. Temperatures are not supposed to do that. There should be at least 1 spike above the average in 4 months.
    No- one trying to touch an explanation.
    Inconceivable.

    • And even if it does, the Arctic is only 4% of the surface of the Earth while the Pacific and Atlantic oceans cover about 53%.

    • Angech,

      I would suggest you go to:
      http://geoid.colorado.edu/grace/dataportal.html
      choose smoothing radius 25km
      choose monthly anomaly maps

      This is NASA’s mission to detect changes in gravity on earth, monthly.

      Review the gravity anomaly maps especially from ANY month of 2002, 2008, and 2013, paying particular attention to Greenland in the those three years.

      See if it interests you.

    • Since it spent the first 100 days above the long term daily climate values, I would say completely unlikely.

      But check the graphs for 2004, 2005 and 2006.

      It is not designed to represent the average temperature of the Arctic either.

      You should click on the more information link at the bottom.

      I’ll give an explanation, the graph is based on modeled information on 1/2 degree grid cells, so it is heavily biased on the areas closest to the north pole, where there is more long term ice which keeps the temperatures from going to much above freezing.

  36. From the press release:

    Joule First to Gain US EPA Clearance for Commercial Use of Modified Cyanobacteria for Fuel Production
    07/01/2014
    Bedford, MA

    Joule today announced that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has favorably reviewed the company’s Microbial Commercial Activity Notice (MCAN) for Joule’s first commercial ethanol-producing catalyst. This clears the catalyst for commercial use at the company’s demonstration plant in Hobbs, New Mexico. Notably, this also marks the first time that EPA has allowed the commercial use of a modified cyanobacterium.

    MCAN filings are required by the EPA prior to commercial use of certain modified microbes, including for biofuel or bio-based chemical production. In its review of Joule’s MCAN, EPA had no health or safety objections to use of the modified strain at the Hobbs facility. Joule and EPA have entered into a voluntary consent order which allows Joule to use this catalyst strain commercially at the Hobbs facility, while also providing EPA with further data resulting from such use.

    “The favorable review of our first MCAN is an important step,” said Paul Snaith, President and CEO of Joule. “This work will help us not only meet or better EPA regulations beyond our plant in Hobbs, but also outside the US as we industrialize our solar, CO2-to-fuels platform.”

    http://www.jouleunlimited.com/joule-first-gain-us-epa-clearance-commercial-use-modified-cyanobacteria-fuel-production

    • Jim2, a small, positive step. But if you dig into Joule, you will realize all the commercialization issues they have slipped under the rug. Their ‘home run’ was to have been diesel alkanes, not ethanol. Joule is probably not competitive with cellulosic ethanol via whichever process route, given what they have published to date.

      • Rud, it is called Grandfathering, if you get permission to use organism for process A, it is then much easier to get it accepted for process B.

      • Rud – the plan all along was to make ethanol first. They can also make gasoline and diesel. You have to be patient. After all, they have to deal with the Federal Government every step of the way.

        And, their ethanol is competitive. I’ve not see a decent cellulosic ethanol scheme.

    • @ jim2

      Don’t forget, in all the hoopla about biofuels, the central data point is that biofuels are merely an extremely inefficient method of harvesting solar energy.

      Using any known method of producing biofuels from plants, how many net watts/m^2 would be delivered to the grid from a biofuel powered generator, divided by the total watts that fell on the same m^2 in the process of growing the plants?

      It may make sense to process waste plant material for biofuels; after all, some energy is (maybe) better than NO energy, but devoting agricultural land to biofuel production, using bacteria or any other process is inefficient solar collection.

      For comparison, IBM claims to have a hybrid solar power system that has an 80% conversion efficiency ( http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/ibm-solar-collector-magnifies-sun-2000x-without-cooking-itself.html ). Growing plants and turning them into liquid fuel doesn’t. And won’t.

      • This is for liquid fuels for vehicles, not an electrical power plant.

      • @ jim2

        “This is for liquid fuels for vehicles, not an electrical power plant.”

        Ok by me; I’ll rephrase the question.

        Given that the Europeans routinely quote the power of their automotive engines in kilowatts, how many kw-hrs of net biomass Bimmer power is produced from a square meter of farmland divided by (kw-hrs of solar energy that fell on the square meter of farmland in the growing of the biomass + kw-hrs necessary to grow and harvest the biomass and convert it into liquid fuel)?

        No matter how you slice it, growing something and converting it to liquid fuel is always going to yield dramatically less net useful energy for a given collector area than converting the solar energy that falls on that same area directly to useable energy.

        Plus you have the additional negative that growing biomass for liquid fuel takes an enormous area of land that is by definition ‘farmland’, that could otherwise be used for growing food, while solar arrays (never mind their actual practicality) can be installed on otherwise barren land and have no impact on our food supplies.

  37. Judith, Matt Ridley has an excellent piece on Lawson and the BBC: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-bbc-and-balance.aspx

    Faustino

    • The BBC statement contains this:
      “Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research.”

      Ridley and others comment on the computer modelling part of that, but what I find astonishing is that the BBC thinks it can decide on what is supported by scientific research. When and how did that happen?

  38. The Arctic is about to make a a big step sideways in it’s sea ice extent. This is partly due to the large areas of ice normally off the west coast go Greenland and off Northern Canada that melt early in recent years but still have area recorded for them in the average. The real September extent is due only to those areas of sea ice that are melting early off the open edges of the Arctic and off the land edges of Alaska and Russia. These are behind schedule for melting hence a higher level of Arctic Sea ice extent again this year and no doubt this will produce further gains in 2015.
    The Arctic, Antarctic and the loss of heat in the phoney El Niño means this year will again be down at 10th lowest continuing the pause.

    • When you say sideways, I assume you mean a cessation of ice loss?

    • The opposite of what we were hearing previously.

      • WUWT seemingly mozzed the Arctic by predicting an increase in Arctic sea ice a month ago by August but some of that prediction may be right with the thick multi year ice reducing the extent of the daily falls in the areas that count.
        Yes, I meant a slowing down or cessation of ice loss over the next 2 weeks. If it occurs should help balance the recent Antarctic slow down from its record levels.
        BTW, record June low Antarctic temp at a French base since records began in 1850’s.
        Does a coldest record in the coldest place mean more against global warming thana coldest record on the warmest place?

      • Angech, you really should know by now that warm records means global warming, record cold temperatures mean global warming, record breaking sea ice minima equals global warming and record breaking sea ice maxima equals global warming. Stubbing your toe on the bathroom carpet is a sure fire result of global warming.

    • Dave Peters

      A — You are one committed minimalist, and leaning where your heart is, with your anticipation. I am a committed warmist, and while my primal lesson with all of meteorology is: “Don’t Never bet the weather!” — I see the tea leaves quite differently, at this juncture.

      I think the stake is about to be driven through the heart of the whole of this “pause/hiatus” fandango. GISS data for the 90-day sequence MAM of ’14, when compared with the same interlude of 1998, achieves fully half of the expected trend warming, over and above that master cherry pick’s prior peak. The 90 day thing is a counter cherry, true, but all along, the minimalists have danced wildly about the ’97-’98 El Nino. In twelve months, that event added thirty-five year’s worth of typical 20th Century warming. So, when you use “noise” that is nearly two orders of magnitude greater than the signal, as all visitors to the 1997-8 watering hole have, to paint your depiction, you run the risk of the future embarrassment that can come along with another, similar El Nino.

      On your basis for “tenth” for 2014, the sheen float ice at both poles did not keep the May 2014 anomaly from setting the peak, all time May GISS record. As for the “phoney” El Nino, the world’s experts anticipate a 70% expectation for emergence for Fall, and 80% for Winter. As for “loss of heat,” compare the ten-day thermosteric average anomaly for 6/10/14, with 7/05/14.

      https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/latestdata/archive/

      Lastly, even if an anticipated El Nino does fizzle, two other large oceanic surface warm anomalies are likely to continue to drive the world to post monthly records this summer:

      http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?ctlfile=monoiv2.ctl&ptype=map&var=ssta&level=1&month=jun&year=2014&proj=default&plotsize=800×600&dir=

      One is located in the Northeastern Pacific, which popped up in June and July of 2013, and has lingered and warmed for the past 13 months. Another is in the far North Atlantic, east of Greenland. Additionally, most of the world’s ocean surface between 30 N. & 30 S., is biased with slight warmth, excluding the East Pacific, south of the equator, and the Atlantic, north of it. The Indian Ocean is almost entirely warm, and its warm anomaly intensifies all the way to 30 S., as does the Western Pacific, to 60 S, All in all, aside from the poles and two spots off Newfoundland and Japan, the oceans are the warmest they have ever been observed. 2014 is setting up thus, less likely to be run-of-the-mill, and more likely to be a Duesy.

  39. John Vonderlin

    Water, water, everywhere. Makes me stop to think. While I have only read summaries of this paper, and am somewhat skeptical of its conclusions, I was once again amazed at the unknowns about our planet that still exist.
    “A battered diamond that survived a trip from “hell” confirms a long-held theory: Earth’s mantle holds an ocean’s worth of water.
    “It’s actually the confirmation that there is a very, very large amount of water that’s trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth,” said Graham Pearson, lead study author and a geochemist at the University of Alberta in Canada. The findings were published today (March 12) in the journal Nature.”
    One summary of this article claimed that this diamond made its trip from hundreds of miles deep in the mantle to the site underground where it was eventually found in perhaps ten hours, powered by a phenomenon called a kimberlite explosion.
    Whether this is true or not, it certainly increases my skepticism that ARGO’s short span of, and widely-spaced measurements of, some of the ocean’s depths has given us the full and accurate picture of the energy balances that control the ocean’s temperature. Is a parts per million increase in an atmospheric trace gas completely responsible or could massive currents in dense rock thousands of miles thick be responsible for some of the change that some posit? I don’t know, do you?

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      What ARGO sees  sustained ocean-heating, without decadal pause or upper-bound.

      Perhaps even some recent acceleration?

      What scientists see  strong affirmation of the energy=balance climate-change worldview.

      What denialists see  proof of a serpentine web of doomsday prophets.”

      What *EVERYONE* sees  an aging cohort of climate-change denialists that’s bankrupt of ideas, unable to recruit young people, and (therefore) slated for extinction.

      \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}

      • @FOMD — Where is the record of ocean heat content prior to ARGO? Do we have ANY baseline against which to compare readings of the last couple decades? Even if some crude surface records exist I doubt they have any kind of resolution comparable to current ARGO. This sounds similar to other metrics, like CO2 spike of the last 100 years spliced on top of pale CO2 records that are spliced where 100 year increments make up the datapoints.

      • ‘Comparisons of global steric height trends based on different gridded fields of Argo in situ measurements show a range of 0–1mm/yr which can be lead back to data handling and climatology uncertainties. Our results show that GOIs derived from the Argo measurements are ideally suitable to monitor the state of the global ocean, especially after November 2007, i.e. when Argo sampling was 100% complete. They also show that there is significant interannual global variability at global scale, especially for global OFC. Before the end of 2007, error bars are too large to deliver robust short-term trends of GOIs and thus an interpretation in terms of long-term climate signals are still questionable, especially since uncertainties due to interannual fluctuations are not included in our error estimation.’ http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf

        I’d suggest that Argo ‘climatologies’ are far from conclusive.

        This one from Eric Leuliette gives an Argo steric sea level rise of 0.2mm+/-0.8mm/yr. Effectively zilch heat expansion. And if oceans aren’t warming there is no radiative imbalance.

        This is an example of the precision of the system being much less than the changes being measured. Eventually Argo may provide significant data if there are large trends over decades.

      • Skippy Ellison said:

        “And if oceans aren’t warming there is no radiative imbalance.”
        —-
        And the contrary is true as well. If the oceans are gaining energy there is a radiative imbalance. You are correct to point out the need for more data to confirm which is most likely true. The majority of current data would suggest the later.

      • Randy ‘the video guy’ Gates opines that – what – if the oceans aren’t warming and the atmosphere isn’t warming there is no radiative imbalance? That’s what I said.

        I suppose that’s it’s ‘most likely true’ in Randy’s the video guy’s deeply informed scientific opinion – despite recent Argo ‘climatologies’ saying something else – so that’s OK

        I suppose all this other evidence consists of the oceans not getting fresher from all the melting?

        http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/map3_zps6226a166.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2

        Or outgoing energy not trending?

        http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/HadCRUT4vCERES_zpse5107cfd.png.html?sort=3&o=84

      • Sorry for the poorly formed comment above – was from a cell phone.
        Maybe I had this past JC post in the back of my mind:

        http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/01/pacific-ocean-heat-content-for-the-past-10000-years/#more-13583

        Numerous commentators pointed out that the sample rate for the past 10K years was (for? in?) shorter intervals than the period ARGO has been measuring.

        I’m sure there must have been *some* measurements of close to surface sea temps, but probably not anything like the various levels and attempted resolution being measured by ARGO. As is ever the case with climate issues, unless you have some kind of (very) long-term baseline, a blip in whatever direction of 30 years or so doesn’t mean much. In this case it happens to correlate with a claim, so it gets focus. Certainly the media/activist version of CAGW is guilty of constantly waving numbers in the air with no historical context.

        My favorite being the 3-9 gigatons of CO2 added by humans every year. Somehow the 150-200 gigatons of annual CO2 flux from natural sources is never mentioned. (Also happens to be one of the starting points for my own process of doubting CAGW, when a friend was shouting those numbers like they were inherent proof of something. Without knowing the estimated totals I knew those could only be a fraction… & I started digging…).

        (BTW ‘rhyzotika’ = ‘xypatia’ – slipped between wordpress accounts.)

      • Fan,
        I have corrected your false (out of date) statement. The reply went to the bottom of the thread. Please review least you give out any more false info. (I was succer enough to believe it)

      • Bob Ellison: After seeing the term Argo on this blog many times, got curious. Looked at a map of the buoys being used and was surprised that they are mostly located near coasts. Are there enough buoys and are they sensing all the metrics necessary for research?

      • • What ARGO sees sustained ocean-heating, without decadal pause or upper-bound. Perhaps even some recent acceleration? • What scientists see strong affirmation of the energy=balance climate-change worldview. • What denialists see proof of a “serpentine web of doomsday prophets.” • What *EVERYONE* sees an aging cohort of climate-change denialists […]

        Bob Ellison: After seeing the term Argo on this blog many times, got curious. Looked at a map of the buoys being used and was surprised that they are mostly located near coasts. Are there enough buoys and are they sensing all the metrics necessary for research?

        no, and no. :-)

    • Hi John,

      I think you are probably correct about gravity/pressure waves that travel through the crust. Even setting up an interference pattern (sphere dynamics) on the surface. Check out the gravity anomalies and the patterns they unveil here at NASA’s GRACE mission dataportal:
      http://geoid.colorado.edu/grace/dataportal.html
      I recommend using smoothing radius of 25km and I think you will be interested in what you see.
      I also recommend taking a peak at Greenland in 2002, 2008, and 2013.\

      Hope you like it.

      Cheers,
      Alistair

    • Randy ‘the video guy’ Gates opines that – what – if the oceans aren’t warming and the atmosphere isn’t warming there is no radiative imbalance? That’s what I said.

      I suppose all this other evidence consists of the oceans not getting fresher from all the melting?

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/map3_zps6226a166.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2

      Or outgoing energy not trending?

      http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/HadCRUT4vCERES_zpse5107cfd.png.html?sort=3&o=84

      There is very little from these people but misguided, ill conceived and data less posturing and immature invective.

    • @John Vonderlin – “could massive currents in dense rock thousands of miles thick be responsible for some of the change” – do you means currents of liquid water, or do you mean electrical charge flowing THRU water, whether as reservoirs or micro-distributed in rock?

      http://water.usgs.gov/edu/electrical-conductivity.html

      I have an earlier comment in the moderation queue in response to this. Probably crazy.

      But given the many different possible phases of water under extreme conditions, carrying large electrical flows should be conceivable.

      • rhyzotika

        I am not endorsing the theory regarding electrical flows, but did you see that study a couple of weeks ago that said that more water was embedded in rocks deep below the surface than were present in the oceans?

        tonyb

    • Further thought (since this “Open Topic”): if the core is not 100% nickel-iron, as it is *believed* to be, how does H20 behave as you move away from pressure of the crust & mantle overhead to zero G at the center?

    • Graphite doped with H2O acts as room temp superconductor?
      [Ice has hexagonal structure, similar to graphene (not graphITE?). Gerald Pollack theorizes that “Fourth Phase” or “EZ” water also has hexagonal structure.]

      “Researchers in Germany have claimed a breakthrough: a material that can act as a superconductor — transmit electricity with zero resistance — at room temperature and above. Superconductors offer huge potential energy savings, but until now have worked only at temperatures of lower than about -110 °C. Now, Pablo Esquinazi and his colleagues at the University of Leipzig report that flakes of humble graphite soaked in water seem to continue superconducting at temperatures of greater than 100 °C1. Even Esquinazi admits that the claim “sounds like science fiction”, but the work has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Materials, and other physicists contacted by Nature say that the results, although tentative, merit further scrutiny.”

      http://www.nature.com/news/tantalizing-hints-of-room-temperature-superconductivity-1.11443

      • “Ice has hexagonal structure, similar to graphene (not graphITE?)”

        Ice has a tetrahedral structure, like carbon diamond, and is completely unlike the trigonal structure of graphene

      • John Carpenter

        Ice has hexagonal symmetry with tetrahedral bond angles.

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

        This is what makes it less dense as a solid than liquid at 4 C. Hence it floats. Also why water forms crystals like snow flakes in hexagonal structures.

      • David Springer

        Did Nature get bought out by National Enquirer?

      • David Springer

        Ice also has interesting infrared AND thermal radiation properties too. ;)

      • True dat.

        I read each free water molecule is estimated to have been drank and peed out by a dinosaur, an average of 60 times.

        Like the ice internal ice mountains within some glaciers on Greenland, that exhibit massive melts/rapid refreezes, due to shifting amounts of pressure above them.

        Like the properties of pure water cooled to -20 in a sealed container. You gotta check out related youtube videos. You whack a bottle of water, and it turns to ice! Or pour it, and it is water, until you stir it. Cool stuff.

        Like water in a comet. Letting “go” of the comet, only to reform on the body when the gravity balance affecting the comet, is no longer being over-ridden by incoming solar radiation.

        Thermal layering in the oceans, (and my swimming pool, although it is not part of an argument).

        Like hot water freezing faster than cold water.

        NOTE: I saw somewhere this past week they had managed to explain the fast freezing hot water phenomena. Odd that it takes longer to figure out a unique property of water, than it took the consensus to pretend to have climate figured out. Make me wonder if the climate models should be suspect? LOL!!

      • Graphene is made up of sheets of carbon atoms with trigonal symmetry

        http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Graphen.jpg

        ice has lovely tetrahedral symmetry

        https://crystallography365.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/ice1.gif

        NOT THE SAME AT ALL

      • “I saw somewhere this past week they had managed to explain the fast freezing hot water phenomena”

        Atmospheric gasses dissolve in water.
        Gasses are typically at their highest solubility at 4 degrees and lowest at boiling point.
        When ice forms these gasses cause problems in crystal formation, which is why you get bubbles in ice cubes. The more gas, the more difficult it is for crystals to form.
        Boiled water has less gasses dissolved and so ice crystals form more rapidly and in a more ordered manner.

      • as an added bonus, the hot water, having undergone some h2o loss to evaporation, would have a resulting increase in impurities, and I have seen how that affects things. it comes together better in my mind now. Thanks DocMartyn.

      • David Springer

        It is quite specifically graphite not graphine they are talking about in the Nature article.

      • David Springer

        They don’t mention graphene either. :-)

      • True, I substituted graphITE to graphENE. But I looked up graphITE on the wiki & it says it too has a hexagonal structure, at least in some forms:

        “Graphite has a layered, planar structure. In each layer, the carbon atoms are arranged in a honeycomb lattice with separation of 0.142 nm, and the distance between planes is 0.335 nm.[9] The two known forms of graphite, alpha (hexagonal) and beta (rhombohedral), have very similar physical properties, except that the graphene layers stack slightly differently.[10] The hexagonal graphite may be either flat or buckled.[11]”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite

        @ DavidSpringer – are you talking about the BOND angles being tetrahedral?

      • David Springer

        http://www.nature.com/news/tantalizing-hints-of-room-temperature-superconductivity-1.11443

        Does not mention graphene one single time. It’s doped graPHITE not graphene that exhibits the magnetic properties usually found in superconductors. The article mentions graphite ten times.

        Whoever brought up graphene at all made a mistake.

        From the article in Nature:

        “They placed 100 milligrams of pure graphite powder made up of flakes a few hundredths of a millimetre long and tens of nanometres thick into 20 millilitres of distilled water. ”

        Graphene is a sheet of graphite 1 atom thick. The powder they used were flakes 10’s of nanometers thick which is far, far removed from a single atom.

        Capisce?

      • Al, if you are doing any reactive oxygen or reactive nitrogen chemistry it pays to boil your buffers just before you start. You appear to precipitate out all sorts of artifactual, metal catalyzed, reactions.
        In the old days labs ran double distillation apparatus, with chromic acid in the first distiller to oxidize away all the crap. However, the CrCl3 gas side product is a carcinogen and we don’t do it any more.
        Thing is our deionized water is full of crud, much worse than distilled. The reactions of peroxynitrite in deionized drawn from cities (and having gone through lots of kidneys) is different for deionized water drawn from well water.

  40. John Vonderlin

    FOMD,
    That’s a confusing graph you linked to. Given the paucity of measurements pre-ARGO, I think you’ll agree it is speculative guesswork for most of the period graphed. Even with the recent ARGO measurements down to 2,000 meters that leaves a large volume of the deep ocean unmeasured, perhaps missing the possible effect of outgoing planetary warmth variations that I was curious about.
    However, my confusion concerns what it actually shows. It says on the left, Heat Content, (10/22 joules) but has a left axis starting at minus ten and going up to plus twenty. Has Ocean Heat Content increased by a factor of twenty from 10 to the 22nd power joules since the 1970 and 1980 periods when it was estimated at zero? Or has it just gone up to 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,020 joules since 1980? Or is that a percentage increase of 20% from 1980? Of course, none of these can be true, so what are the graph’s creators trying to share with a common man like me (who doesn’t even know how to type powers on a keyboard) by creating and sharing this graph? And why did they make a graph that seems to obfuscate rather than enlighten?
    I guess I’m mainly curious if you have an easier to interpret graph that shows when this layer of the world’s oceans had an estimated heat content value of 10 to the 22nd power joules and what is it now? If it were to include the uncertainty values of measurement and infilling estimation I’d be even happier.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      John Vonderlin wonders  “FOMD, that’s a confusing graph you linked to.”

      John Vonderlin, your interest is appreciated! That graph appears in-context on NOAA’s (outstanding) resource web-page Global Ocean Heat and Salt Content.

      —————–
      How Scientists See It

      The way scientists appreciate this climate-data is simple:

      • Humanity’s present carbon-energy economy is radically increasing CO2 levels.

      • Acting as a greenhouse gas, that CO2 initiates year-on-year energy-imbalance.

      • Acting thermodynamically, the sustained energy-imbalance initiates year-on-year increases in ocean heat-energy, sea-level, and ice-mass loss.

      • Observed globally, satellites affirm the CO2 increase, the ocean heating, the sea-level rise, and the ice-mass loss.

      • The palaeo record affirms that present climate-change amounts to a “hockey-stick blade” of unprecedented length (a “hockey-stick blade” that is extending decade-on-decade).

      The Scientific Worldview  The more accurately and globally we measure, the more plainly and strongly we see that global warming is real and serious.

      —————–
      How Denialists See It

      The way denialists appreciate the increasing power of climate-data is simple:

      The Denialist Axiom  “The asserted global warming crisis has been an unmitigated fraud perpetrated by people who no longer have the right to be called scientists. Their collective goal has been to alter society’s future while enriching their own personal lives.”

      The Denialist Worldview  Year-on-year, decade-after-decade, the international global warming conspiracy has become more-and-more-vast, such that the conspiracy now corruptly controls every major climate-data project of every nation in the world..

      —————–
      How YOUNG Scientists See It

      Needless to say, *YOUNG* scientists (who participate in climate-change research at the lowest levels), perceive that Heartland-style denialism is just plain cuckoo.

      And that’s why Heartland-style conspiracy-theoretic denialism is slated for extinction — an utter incapacity to recruit young scientists.

      *EVERYONE* appreciates *THAT*, eh 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}

    • Anyone who says the oceans have warmed over the last century is suspect. Either a lack of brains or a lack of honesty.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      jim2 sees stupidity *AND* cupidity  “Anyone who says the oceans have warmed over the last century is suspect. Either a lack of brains or a lack of honesty.”

      Yowzah! And it will be named … The Steric Conspiracy (what a *GREAT* name!).

      Needless to say, young scientists (especially) appreciate the thermodynamical reasons why the denialist worldview is cuckoo.

      Conclusion  Science marches on … denialism not so much.

      *THAT’S* obvious to *EVERYONE*n … young scientists especially!

      \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}

  41. Warmest April and May in recorded history and yet some claim global warming has paused. Odd.

    • An early El Nino that has already run out of steam resulting in months that might be in the warmest 10 – give or take error bounds?

      Sure – whatever you reckon.

      • Your lithe spot on the earth is not an argument.

      • Hi JCH.

        Agreed. But it can’t be denied, it is part of an argument.

        The climate “record” is not one hit wonder! It is an LP, with many tracks on it.

        A couple of my favorites are “The April’s and May’s” by Eemian and Holsteinian. (100,000 and 400,000 yrs ago).

        They are “on the record”.

        ;-)
        Alistair

    • David Springer

      Eric is your shoe size this year among the largest for you?

      • Yes. You are now saying my shoe size causes the warmest months in recorded history. Interesting David Springer. Anything but CO2?

      • David Springer

        Presumably, unless your mother still dresses you in the morning, you can answer the question.

        Is your shoe size this year among the largest for you?

      • Already answered it. Perhaps try reading the response. Aah, but reading might lead to learning.

      • David Springer

        Sorry. Your wrong inference following the response to a yes/no question was distracting.

        So your shoe size is a large or close to as large as ever. Like global average temperature.

        Followup question:

        Are your feet still growing?

      • Yes.
        Now let me ask you. Why do you think my shoe size is the cause of the warmest May and April in recorded history?

        Follow up question
        Does the continued warming give you pause about denying the role of CO2 in the warming?

      • David Springer

        I never said it was the cause. If your feet are still growing them I’m speaking to a child. I meant to make an allegory that just because the magnitude of a thing is at a high point it doesn’t follow that the thing is still growing higher. I suppose I should have realized you were a child needing larger shoes each year. Mibad.

      • I like the analogy. When I first got a size 7 shoe, it was loose on my foot. I wore a size 7 until it was tight, too tight. I then got a size 8. Did my feets growth pause from the time I got my size 7 to the time I got my size 8 or did my feet continue to grow? Was the apparent pause in foot growth merely an artifact of the way in which growth was mesured (shoe size)?

  42. Brandon

    Thanks for posting that Nasa/Best data.

    As you can see it agrees pretty well with CET

    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/

    In the last 15 years Temperatures rose half a degree C and then dropped back by the same amount. They are currently slightly below the warm 1730’s decade.(the data for which I previously posted)
    tonyb

  43. ICCC9 and Watts: Final Report of Weather Stations of USA. Say something about it, please.

  44. Coldest month in Antarctica in 164 years of records at a French base, largest sea ice extent anomaly in records.
    But neither gets a guernsey in the R Gates list of observable changes that might show the earth is warming,
    Still two down, the pause to become a fall and Arctic ice to increase, will not be long.
    Then we just need a couple of mm fall in the sea level and the flood gates will open.
    always wanted to say that.

    • What base has been in Antarctica for 164 years?

      • David Springer

        Thanks for asking. Dumont D’Urville. Named after Jules Dumont d’Urville whose expedition landed there in 1840.

      • Thanks for the reply David. From what I read, the base has only been since the 1950’s.

  45. My personal collection of home-made memes, some attempts at humour….. Hope you like.

    Climate Science 101 – http://www.shbew.com/?p=220
    Evolutionary Proof – http://www.shbew.com/?p=221
    Evolutionary Proof 2 – http://www.shbew.com/?p=257
    Climate Change The Motion Picture – http://www.shbew.com/?p=211
    Climate Change TWO The Sequel – http://www.shbew.com/?p=217
    Climate Change THREE The Triquel – http://www.shbew.com/?p=218
    Al Gore – http://www.shbew.com/?p=222
    Cancer or Carbon – http://www.shbew.com/?p=214
    Hunger or Carbon – http://www.shbew.com/?p=208
    Cola Miner’s Bad Day – http://www.shbew.com/?p=210
    GroundHog’s Day – http://www.shbew.com/?p=207
    Understanding – http://www.shbew.com/?p=209
    Anthropogenic Hydro Rate Hike – http://www.shbew.com/?p=258
    Colour Scale Maps – http://www.shbew.com/?p=257
    Humanity Ending in – http://www.shbew.com/?p=257

    • David Springer

      At least it was brief and that appears to be the only identifiable virtue.

  46. Imperial Presidency / Imperial Academia: contemptuous of the constitution and science, condescending to the people, anti-energy AND PRO-BIG GOVERNMENT, PRO-GLOBAL WARMING ANTI-BUSINSS POLICIES.

    • Jim D: The following was provided by Willard on October 12, 2012:

      What About The Latest Trend?
      The best answer to this question has been put fofrward by John Nielsen-Gammon:
      A flat trend over any time period only shows that other forcings or natural processes are canceling the warming effect of Tyndall gases over such a period. There are lots of time-varying forcings and natural processes with a variety of periods: ENSO (2-7 years plus longer-term variations), solar (11 years plus longer-term variations), PDO (50-70 years), for example. Any of those could be strong enough to cancel the Tyndall gas effect during half its phase. We know for certain that ENSO is more than strong enough to do that, but yet, over the long haul, the magnitude of global warming has recently exceeded the magnitude of ENSO variability. So, in addition to a flat trend over some period of years, The best answer to this question has been put forward by John Nielsen-Gammon:
      A flat trend over any time period only shows that other forcings or natural processes are canceling the warming effect of Tyndall gases over such a period. There are lots of time-varying forcings and natural processes with a variety of periods: ENSO (2-7 years plus longer-term variations), solar (11 years plus longer-term variations), PDO (50-70 years), for example. Any of those could be strong enough to cancel the Tyndall gas effect during half its phase. We know for certain that ENSO is more than strong enough to do that, but yet, over the long haul, the magnitude of global warming has recently exceeded the magnitude of ENSO variability. So, in addition to a flat trend over some period of years, I’d want evidence that it was not merely a temporary flat trend. In the absence of such evidence, I’d settle for a trend longer than half a PDO cycle, or 35 years or so. With such evidence, the trend could be as short as a year, because I’d be swayed not by the trend but by the evidence.I’d want evidence that it was not merely a temporary flat trend. In the absence of such evidence, I’d settle for a trend longer than half a PDO cycle, or 35 years or so. With such evidence, the trend could be as short as a year, because I’d be swayed not by the trend but by the evidence.
      Jim – Do you not believe that the search for evidence is needed. Or should climate scientists merely emulate the economic “scientists”

      • rls, natural variation by its random non-secular nature averages out to smaller and smaller effects over longer trend periods. By the time you get to 30 years it appears to be essentially 0.1 C over 30 years, or 0.03 C per decade, being very small compared to the actual 30-year trend of 0.17 C per decade, which is why 30-year-trend plots such as the one I showed make natural variability hard to see. The diminishing effect of natural variability over longer time scales should not be forgotten.

      • Good to see that global warming alarmists are no longer indulging in hiatus-hiding anti-science and are gaining respect for the common knowledge of natural variability, including changes in solar activity. But, this awareness it is not something the sacrifice of the productive should be usurped by government and academia to pay for.

  47. During 1980, in the US, every night the evening news would start with a number “___ days since the capture of US Embassy Staff in Iran”. Just thinking – could that start happening with length of the pause? Nah.

    Another thought/question: Been reading one of the 2012 posts here, on the pause. As comments smoothed out (thanks largely to willard) there became an agreement between most of the commentators, on both sides, that there is a pause but uncertainty as to reason. My question; is there any research in the pipeline to reduce that uncertainty?

  48. David Springer

  49. David Wojick

    The House republicans are trying to stop EPA from controlling CO2:
    http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/211552-house-funding-bill-would-cut-epa-rules

    Skeptics should support this effort. EPA’s proposed rules are based on absurd modeling.

  50. John Vonderlin

    FOMD,
    Your response to my question about what the vertical axis of the graph was showing was not helpful. NOAA doesn’t seem to be interested in helping either, based on surveying the link you posted, but that’s probably me. However, I was looking elsewhere and in a discussion of ARGO found this:
    “Surface water temperatures obviously change from season to season and year to year, but the whole ocean has warmed about 0.1 degree Fahrenheit (0.055 degree Celsius) in the past 30-50 years.”
    That would seem to indicate that that amazing rising line in the graph you posted is using a statistical technique whose purpose is not to inform, but rather to accentuate the significance of a .055 degree Celsius rise over decades. I noted a similar graph on SkepticalScience that used 10/23 joules on the vertical axis instead of 10/22. Can somebody explain to me what is going on here?.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      John Vonderlin complains  “NOAA doesn’t seem to be interested in helping [clarify my confusion]”

      John Vonderlin, please note that NOAA’s resource web-page Global Ocean Heat and Salt Content includes (at its very top) a link to the explanation-in-full article World Ocean Heat Content and Thermosteric Sea Level change (0-2000 m), 1955-2010.”

      Alternative  In the event that what you seek is the scientific community’s confession to centuries of sustained willful ignorance, conspiracy, and peculation, then perhaps Tom Ball’s book will suffice for you.

      Bonus  Tim Ball places minimal demands on the reader in regard to “rationality” and “mathematics” and “physical science.”

      *EVERYONE* appreciates *THAT*, eh 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}

  51. Why is it that the fewer measurements we have of a particular portion of the climate, the stronger the reported warming trend?

  52. Cheap shot artists, and arguers that make it personal…..
    Please grow as individuals.
    It will make the world a better place.
    It will make this site a better place.

  53. David Springer

    A picture paints a thousand words.

    http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1998/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1998/trend/detrend:0.157/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2015/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2015/trend/detrend:-0.074/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1979/to:2015/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2015/trend/detrend:0.44/offset:1

    1979-1998 satellite global temp trended up +0.157C
    1998-2015 satellite global temp trended down -0.074C

    1979-2015 total trend up 0.44C or 0.13C/decade

    According to the only instruments we have that approach global coverage at the accuracy and precision necessary to examine so-called AGW we find for 35 years of that record a warming trend of 0.13C/decade which is not cause for alarm.

    About 75% of the warming happened in a 1998 step-change associated with the strongest El Nino on record. I overlaid the Pacific Decadal Oscillation Index which you can see goes from mostly positive to mostly negative in the transition year. Unless we understand what drives ocean oscillations

    Further un-alarming for CO2 is that CO2 gas is only 50% of the positive anthropogenic forcings. See here:

    http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-spm-2.html

    Adding insult to injury is that cutting back on CO2 emission means cutting back on the cooling aerosols produced at the same time during fossil fuel combustion.

    CO2 is the designated scapegoat gas and the United States the designated scapegoat producer of it. It has nothing to do with science everything to do with progressive global village politics.

  54.  

    …across the globe, there are about one million square kilometres more sea ice than 35 years ago, which is when satellite measurements began.

    It’s unprecedented. (See, Ibid.)

  55. The NOAA PDO has reversed its recent run into positive territory.
    http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/pdo-5-pg.gif
    Looks like from +1.2 to -0.13 in June.

  56. Fan,
    You are not up to date with your ocean data. I will correct your (now) false assumption “sustained ocean heating without decadal pause or upper bound.” Since early this century ocean teperatures have been flat or on a downward trend. Please read this up to date literature before you give out any more false information. Even John Cook admits the oceans are cooling. My first link has links to articles in Nature, Science and The American Meteorological Society all written in 2014 that all show ocean cooling as driving the current hiatus:

    http://blog.ucsusa.org/ocean-cooling-effect-global-warming-459

    If you look carefully at the most recent data you will see why scientists from Nasa and JPL are now down playing what an El Nino will look like this fall and winter (if there is one at all):

    https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/latestdata/

    Notice the topical Pacific and Indian Ocean around Australia.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Energy-balance physics and energy-budget observations strongly agree: it’s time for denialists to switch gears.

      Good luck with that, ordvic!

      \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}

      • The old ‘look over there’ diversionary tactic! I know your not a lawyer!

        Claims that the ocean has been cooling are correct.
        — John Cook Aug 2013

      • SkS really did say the oceans are cooling. On the page where it says that, it was updated in 2013.

      • A fan of *MORE* discourse

        ordvic and Ragnaar reminds Climate Etc readers SkS really did say ‘Claims that the ocean has been cooling are correct. Claims that global warming has stopped are not.'”

        Begung by ordvic and Ragnaar, finished by FOMD!

        Observation  Wealthy Republicans are extraordinarily likely to approve ordvic’s and Ragnaar’s shameless quibbling and cherry-picking!

        Of course, *EVERYONE* appreciates that *ALREADY*, eh Climate Etc readers?

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      • Matthew R Marler

        a fan of *MORE* discourse: (energy-budget observations link) Observed increases in ocean heat content (OHC) and temperature are robust indicators of global warming during the past several decades. We used high-resolution proxy records from sediment cores to extend these observations in the Pacific 10,000 years beyond the instrumental record. We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades. Although documented changes in global surface temperatures during the Holocene and Common era are relatively small, the concomitant changes in OHC are large.

        How does that support a claim that recent warming has been caused by CO2?

      • I never said global warming has stopped nor do I believe it. That was not the issue we were discussing. I corrected an error you made (that I believed). You didn’t have all the facts. If I am in error I will admit it. I’m not a republican or a denialist so you don’t need to point in irrelevant directions. Just make your point and show me your facts. It will make you more credible to me.

  57. Steve McIntyre asks, “Was Lawson Right about the UK Floods?”
    http://climateaudit.org/2014/07/13/was-lawson-right-about-the-uk-floods/#more-19350

    And answers.

    But clearly, inspired at least in part by Hoskins’ fellow Grantham Institute employee Bob Ward, the BBC has arrived at a factually incorrect and unfair decision in respect to the complaint against Nigel Lawson. Perhaps the person best placed to remedy the situation is Hoskins himself. Hoskins surely knows that Lawson was correct in his statement about the linkage between the floods and global warming ( the issue is “marginal exacerbation”). And in his statement about tropical cyclones. And about Chinese emissions. And that he has a legitimate argument on wind turbines.
    [ … ]
    It is, of course, vanishingly unlikely that Hoskins would do anything so gracious. Hoskins was the go-to person for the University of East Anglia when the Royal Society laundered the list of articles for the Oxburgh inquiry: although Hoskins himself had no informed knowledge of the literature, he immediately endorsed the UEA. Later, he acted as a supporting authority for refusing FOI requests.

  58. John Vonderlin

    FOMD,
    Thank you for the link to the paper. It helped clarify to me what the graph was conveying. It also clarified the sausage-making details of the corrections and estimates that went into its creation. I think it might be wise to wait for a few more years of ARGO data before coming to any firm conclusions about what is happening in the ocean, let alone what is causing any change measured.
    I also note that the paper guesstimated that the other half of the volume of the ocean not covered by ARGO might be contributing 5% of the theorized increase in OHC. That was the focus of my original posting, which to clarify I’ll restate as: Do large scale magma movements within the mantle, such as kimberlite explosions, or increases in undersea volcanoes contribute to the variations of heat content of the deepest layers of the ocean?

  59. Brandon posted the SkS forums:
    https://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/the-skeptical-science-forum-easy-access/
    Now anyone can check on what was actually said. Various denizens here who refused to take the quotes seriously will have to do so now, if they are honest enough to deal with reality.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      BREAKING NEWS
      Denialists Suddenly Switch Gears

      The Climate Optimists
      “It’s real, but it’s nothing to worry about!”

      Don’t call them climate deniers.

      Call them climate optimists.

      Over the past few years, a concerted campaign by climate scientists and environmentalists, backed by mountains of evidence, has largely succeeded in branding climate change denial as “anti-science” and pushing it to the margins of public discourse.

      There are, however, a few pitfalls for conservatives who would embrace climate optimism as an alternative to climate change denial.

      Shifting the climate change debate from causes to outcomes will put the “skeptics” in the Panglossian position of continually downplaying the costs of extreme weather events—like, say, the Las Vegas drought—even as their constituents are suffering from them.

      It’s one thing to tell people global warming isn’t the source of their misery. It’s a lot harder to look them in the eye and tell them their problems aren’t that bad — especially if you’re relying on them to vote you into public office.

      Citizen-scientists and citizen-conservationists especially eloquently say “no” to earth-destroying Big Carbon protectionism.

      That’s obvious to *EVERYONE* — young scientists and young voters especially — eh Climate Etc readers?

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      • Rob Starkey

        What is obvious is that you take many words to write little to no substance.

        Yes the climate changes- it always has.

        You BELIEVE that more CO2 will lead to a worsening of conditions sufficiently to warrant preventing millions of people from gaining access to electricity and hundreds of millions more people to pay much more for the electricity they already have. You BELIEVE this without any reasonable evidence to justify this you belief.

        What exactly are the conditions that are going to get so bad and where and when??? Oh yea–decades or hundreds of years in the future and we should just trust your system of beliefs.

      • the burden of proof is on the non-believers at this point.

        so, we dig, until we figure out the climate better than has been accomplished so far, with plausible, tangible reasons that get confirmed.

      • Fan

        I have said before that I have no brief for heartland but the core of the story is about a drought in las Vegas.

        This is a rapidly growing desert community that uses vast quantities of water. Like the Carolina story yesterday it just illustrates that humanity, backed by developers, will build in absurdly inappropriate locations whether a flood pain or a desert, and neither of that has anything to do with climate change.

        Tonyb

      • Like the Carolina story yesterday it just illustrates that humanity, backed by developers, will build in absurdly inappropriate locations whether a flood pain or a desert, and neither of that has anything to do with climate change.

        Sad…but extremely true.

      • A fan of *MORE* discourse

        Alistair Riddoch notes “Humanity will build in absurdly inappropriate locations …”

        That’s why cheap carbon energy’s forced evacuation of low-lying communities is a GOOD thing, eh Alistair Riddoch? And I for one welcome the 21st century’s self-deluded globalized-market fundamentalists!

        Conclusion  Young scientists and young voters alike stand adamantly against “deluded denialism.”

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      • When the Maldives start complaining then Florida might start to have a concern. Until that time, it is regional water accumulation (as the sea level satellite images would tend to show. Not sea level rise. Gulf of Mexico, or south Atlantic rise, perhaps. But the Maldives are A-OK. And that to me, says so are the Floridians. Not that they aren’t precariously built up in some places I wouldn’t choose to. But the dangers are not increasing because of Carbon or because of humanity. At least not based on any “supposed” evidence I have seen.

    • I don’t expect it to change anyone who has been defending the Skeptical Science group’s behavior. My hope is it will mean more people who heard those defenses will disbelieve them. For example, when responding to Richard Tol with a 20+ page document, Cook et al claims quotes were taken out of context and misrepresented. Now, it will be easy for anyone to see if that’s true.

      • That’s a fact, Mr. Brandon Shollenberger.

      • A fan of *MORE* discourse

        Precisely who here on Climate Etc has been “defending SKS behavior” (whatever *THAT* means).

        The *MAIN* news here on Climate Etc is the dawning acceptance by mainstream conservatism that consensus climate-change science is broadly correct.

        This fundamental (and accelerating!) political meme-shift is plainly evident to *EVERYONE* — especially young scientists, young voters, and young Miami real-estate agents — eh Brandon Shollenberger?

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      • Lay off the mushrooms, FOMBS.

      • Fan:
        You concern for the real estate agents of Florida is admirable.
        “And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand”
        http://www.dep.state.fl.us/geology/geologictopics/geohist-2.htm
        Sage words of advice don’t you agree?

      • A fan of *MORE* discourse

        Ragnaar praises FOMD’s acumen  “Your concern for the real estate agents of Florida is admirable.”

        Real-estate agents are merely instruments of the market, Ragnaar! And in turn, the market is year-by-year becoming ever-more-respectful of climate-change science:

        South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. “Imagine Swiss cheese, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like,” says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

        This means water moves around easily — it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below.

        “Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,” says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas. “Protecting the city, if it is possible, will require innovative solutions.”

        If Dutch engineers cannot imagine how to protect Florida, then who can?

        The world wonders, eh Ragnaar?

        And the market wonders too!

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      • maksimovich

        If Dutch engineers cannot imagine how to protect Florida, then who can?

        The dutch cannot seem to find an accelerate rate of sea level rise,they are seemingly unperturbed for what would be a crisis for Holland

        http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00169.1

      • Matthew R Marler

        a fan of *MORE* discourse: The *MAIN* news here on Climate Etc is the dawning acceptance by mainstream conservatism that consensus climate-change science is broadly correct.

        “broadly correct” entails lots of error and ignorance in details and projections. CO2 absorbs lwir? check! water vapor change is a positive feedback? Not known! Warming will produce more drought? There is no case for that at all! Hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and floods have increased in magnitude over the last 100 years? Not according to the historical record. Climate changes? check! Humans can prevent future climate change by cutting fossil fuel use? The “case” is full of holes! Hansen correctly forecast global climate change in 1982? Not even close! A decrease in insolation can’t cool the Earth? It looks like we are about to find out!

    • Posting others private correspondence still has not changed the reality that the Earth continues to warm (warmest April and May in recorded history just happened).

  60. What is the worth of any global temperature (a measure) outside of the political arena? At this time I suspect, very little. It is easy to talk about a temperature going up or going down; there are numerous paths to arriving at a such temperature but agreement is unlikely and in any case such temperatures are mathematical constructs utilizing incomplete data of variable quality. What can it be used for? The norm in physical science is that as a discipline matures it moves away from lumped parameters to more complex formulations, yet here much effort is expended over how best to generate a lumped parameter. Even worse, that parameter, a global temperature, has no apparent use beyond being an icon. Why chase something so useless? Give me a reason why science needs a global temperature–what processes in nature require it? Better yet tell me why science can even tolerate the imposition of such a conceptual impediment.

  61. From the article:
    People who claim to worry about climate change use more electricity than those who do not, a Government study has found.

    Those who say they are concerned about the prospect of climate change consume more energy than those who say it is “too far into the future to worry about,” the study commissioned by the Department for Energy and Climate Change found.

    That is in part due to age, as people over 65 are more frugal with electricity but much less concerned about global warming.

    However, even when pensioners are discounted, there is only a “weak trend” to show that people who profess to care about climate change do much to cut their energy use.

    The findings were based on the Household Electricity Survey, which closely monitored the electricity use and views of 250 families over a year. The report, by experts from Loughborough University and Cambridge Architectural Research, was commissioned and published by DECC.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/10965887/People-who-claim-to-worry-about-climate-change-use-more-electricity.html

    • Jim 2.

      Would it make sense that there is a perceived sense of conservation inherent in the belief you are unfairly burdened with an unnecessary financial burden?

      Kind of a “they are getting too much already” attitude.

      That drives some restraint?

      Perhaps??

  62. Find the problem somewhere from Land to Sun below:
    “So like an obsessive accountant, Trenberth pores over the energy budget, tallying up the joules accumulating in various parts of the climate. A global energy imbalance of 0.9 W/m2 means the planet is accumulating 145 x 1020 joules per year. The following list gives the amount of energy going into various parts of the climate over the 2004 to 2008 period:

    Land: 2 x 1020 joules per year
    Arctic sea Ice: 1 x 1020 joules per year
    Ice sheets: 1.4 x 1020 joules per year
    Total land ice: between 2 to 3 x 1020 joules per year
    Ocean: between 20 to 95 x 1020 joules per year
    Sun: 16 x 1020 joules per year (eg – the sun has been cooling from 2004 to 2008)
    These various contributions total between 45 to 115 x 1020 joules per year. This falls well short of the total 145 x 1020 joules per year (although the error bars do overlap). Trenberth expresses frustration that observation systems are inadequate to track the flow of energy. It’s not that global warming has stopped. We know global warming has continued because satellites find an energy imbalance. It’s that our observation systems need to be more accurate in tracking the energy flows through our climate and closing the energy budget.”
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kevin-Trenberth-travesty-cant-account-for-the-lack-of-warming.htm

    Other than the Sun, everything is minor compared to the oceans, and 20 to 95 per year is of minimal value. What if told you you have from $25000 to $95000 of income for the year. If that was the best I could do, I would call it an accounting disaster. I’d prefer to tell you, I am unable to provide any help here. Perhaps you can find another accountant who is not so conservative. Also consider what banker who is considering loaning you money, would accept such a broad range of income estimates? A loan shark maybe?

    What SkS knows about the TOA, the energy imbalance, I am not following that part:
    http://images.quickblogcast.com/40776-37448/CERESTOA.png?a=73110666
    It’s flat. As is the GAT.

    • Hi Ragnar, your analysis sounds good to me. May I suggest a tweak?

      I think there is a non-considered impact by magnetism, as suppressed and released (or interfered with more, and interfered with less), on earths gravity, and therefor climate in a way not yet popularly considered.

      One way to visualize it’s likelihood, is to consider increases and decreases in the size of the magnetic belts as size of “energy consumption” of one nature or another, by the magnetic belt. A backlash from the “running with, or running against, activity.

      Maybe?

  63. Climate change advocacy is more about central planning ideology but the money and rent seeking have reached biblical proportions;

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/07/on-global-warming-follow-the-money.php

    It’s never talked about directly on this blog as subject headings.

  64. Law Professors to House Panel: “Race to the Bottom” Is a Myth (so why does EPA exist?)
    http://www.globalwarming.org/2014/07/15/law-professors-to-house-panel-race-to-the-bottom-is-a-myth-so-why-does-epa-exist/

  65. From the article:

    House debate on the IRS and Treasury Department funding bill was to resume Tuesday. A companion Senate measure has stalled in the Appropriations Committee, hung up in part over a looming amendment by GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky aimed at blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing new regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. McConnell appears likely to prevail in the committee, which is stocked with pro-energy Democrats who are up for re-election.

    A fight over those EPA rules extended to the House Appropriations Committee, which approved by a mostly party-line vote a separate measure funding the Interior Department and the EPA on Tuesday. A Democratic bid to preserve the EPA rules failed by a 29-18 vote. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., labeled the measure “an ideological dumping ground of short-sighted environmental policies.”

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_SPENDING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-07-15-12-25-57

  66. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/16/rip-australias-carbon-tax/
    Legislation to scrap the carbon tax has passed the Federal Parliament in a major win for the Abbott Government.

  67. Child’s Play May Spur Fight against Global Warming
    Augmented and virtual reality games focused on the environment are increasingly making their way into schools

    The tree-cutting study is one of many that Stanford University has conducted in its Virtual Human Interaction Lab over the last several years in an attempt to figure out the extent to which a simulated experience can affect behavior. And it’s part of a growing body of research that suggests virtual experiences may offer a powerful catalyst for otherwise apathetic groups to begin caring about issues and taking action, including on climate change
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/child-s-play-may-spur-fight-against-global-warming/

  68. Obama opens East Coast to oil search

    The approval opens the outer continental shelf from Delaware to Florida to exploration by energy companies preparing to apply for drilling leases in 2018, when current congressional limits are set to expire.
    http://news.yahoo.com/ap-newsbreak-obama-opens-east-coast-oil-search-141008479.html

  69. ‘I didn’t expect to like this book so much but this has everything I want in a sci-fi book. This is a collection of stories following Ijon Tichy’s adventures across the galaxy. I loved the one about the mutant potatoes: “Thus far observations show that man has mashed potatoes millions of times, but it is not inconceivable that one time in a billion the situation could reverse itself, that a potato could mash a man.” People in Poland must really like this one, too. ‘

    It’s record of travels through time and space. The journeys are out of order and some earlier ones haven’t happened yet in his personnel timeline. He’s laugh out loud hilarious.

    I have been watching a few old movies on Youtube. John Carpenter’s Vampires is a classic of the genre. But the name of the writer on this one got my attention.

  70. Has anybody reviewed the information at this site, and care to comment if so?

    It relates geomagnetic strength to solar magnetic field strength, and thereby to sunspot cycles, and from there to the orbit of earth and jupiter combined, with a lot of math, and a lot of graphs.

    I am wondering whether the more mathematically technically inclined in the crowd had/would take a look and provide feedback.

    http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC5.htm