by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
North American mega droughts in the Common Era [link]
Ice sheets interact with the atmosphere, ocean, lithosphere, sea ice, and biosphere. How does it all work? Via @AGU_Eos [link]
A fresh take on ancient climate change in the North Pacific [link]
New Science Affirms Arctic Region Was 6°C Warmer Than Now 9000 Years Ago [link]
Evaluating the accuracy of seasonal forecast predictions [link]
Collection of Nature papers on forests and climate [link]
The impact of stratospheric circulation extremes on minimum arctic sea ice extent [link]
John Kennedy blog post on sea surface temperature measurements [link]
Choice of a priori aerosol-forcing time-series has a strong effect on the estimated climate sensitivity [link]
A new study finds that the ground underneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet region is rebounding, or rising, at an extraordinarily rapid rate.[link]
“Land Surface Air Temperature Data Are Considerably Different Among BEST‐LAND, CRU‐TEM4v, NASA‐GISS, and NOAA‐NCEI” [link] …
Embracing an uncertain future: importance of natural internal variability [link]
Investigating the transient response to Arctic sea ice loss in a coupled atmosphere-ocean model. Ocean dynamics are important in evaluating the response. [link] …
It’s challenging to represent natural climate variability in regional model projections. [link] …
“Effect of recent minor volcanic eruptions on temperatures in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere” [link] …
New study assessing the projected narrowing and less-wavy North Atlantic wintertime jet. This results from the tug-of-war between upper-troposphere tropical warming and Arctic amplification . [link] …
Previously unsuspected volcanic activity confirmed under West Antarctic Ice Sheet at Pine Island Glacier [link]
Planting carbon storage [link]
New paper on climate modes and sea level [link]…
Influence of radiative forcing factors on ground-air temperature coupling during the last millennium: implications for borehole climatology [link] …
US landfalls “a statistically significant downward trend since 1950, with the percentage of total Atlantic ACE expended over the continental U.S. at a series minimum during the recent drought period” [link] …
How many water droplets are in a cloud? And why it matters. [link]
This paper is a nice example of why climate modeling is so hard. The fact that most ice-crystals have complicated structures means they have more than 1 Wm-2 greater cooling than if they were symmetric [link]
When environmental forces collide: multiple factors in extreme weather events [link]
The land ice contribution to sea level during the satellite era [link]
New study finds volcanic activity under the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. [link]
What can the internal variability of climate models tell us about their sensitivity? [link]
Sunlight, clouds, sea ice, albedo, and the radiative budget: the umbrella versus the blanket [link]
Arctic warming hotspot in the northern Barents Sea linked to declining sea-ice import [link]
Atlantic impacts on the tropical Pacific on multidecadal timescales. [link] …
Impact of aerosol and water vapour on SW radiation at the surface: Sensitivity study and applications [link]
Social science and policy
Not perfect – but lots of good: What we can learn from China’s fight against environmental ruin [link] …
Pielke Jr: Climate denial of the second kind. How UN climate policies are inducing myopia in terms of actually dealing with the issue. [link]
Water scarcity in Pakistan: conspiracy or mismanagement? [link]
Google.gov: the quiet alignment between “smart government” and the information engine [link]
The problem with solving problems: causes people to redefine problems as they are reduced [link]
Building Back Better: How to reduce global disaster losses by 31 percent?? [link] …
Nordhaus: The Earth’s carrying capacity is not fixed [link]
Heuristics and public policy. [link] …
Perspective: The ability of societies to adapt to twenty-first-century sea-level rise [link]
If we want to overcome the systemic issues behind today’s problems, we need to change the thinking that led to them.” [link] …
Rethinking the river [link]
About science and scientists
Cargo-cult statistics & scientific crisis [link] …
The slippery math of causation [link]
Daniel Sarewitz on the scientific method [link]
How to use behav sci to work with people and tell stories that open minds, rather than reinforce certainty. [link]
Cmmemoration of Keith Briffa’s contributions to Dendroclimatology published online in The @HoloceneJ [link]
Bonfire of the academies: two professors on how leftist intolerance is killing higher education [link]
This is a long read. But what a cesspit academic existence has become. A truly depressing tale [link]
Wow, using a weather ballon to make a suicide look like a homicide. [link]
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Re: “Land Surface Air Temperature Data Are Considerably Different Among BEST‐LAND, CRU‐TEM4v, NASA‐GISS, and NOAA‐NCEI”
When you cited that paper from the relevant tweet, was there some reason you conveniently left out the other paper?
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1016121729171804160
Roberts paper was great. fun to work on.
‘We thank all the staff at the Climate Research Division of
Environment Canada who has helped to make the Homogenized
Environment Canada data available and also readily
accessible to the research community. The authors sincerely
thank Steven Mosher for helping to develop an
approach for processing HTcan data automatically. We
acknowledge numerous fruitful discussions with Caitlin
Lapalme, Dr. Kevin Cowtan, Dr. Victor Venema, Zeke
Hausfather, Peter Jacobs, Dr. Robert Rohde, Dr. Peter
Thorne, Ross Brown and many others who have helped
us to better understand the intricacies of analysing station
data, particularly in high latitude environments. RGW
and AEV are funded through grants from the Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
and the University of Ottawa. We thank three anonymous
reviewers w”
We also did some work in labrador. I will have to look for that paper.
Things to look for in the future
1. Recovered data. More and more data is being recovered due to hawkins work. But to use this data you probably have to give up on anomaly approaches
2. I’m reviewing some work a graduate student is doing on one of the biases we have in our approach. Pretty cool work ( we may underestimate arctic warming)
Re: “2. I’m reviewing some work a graduate student is doing on one of the biases we have in our approach. Pretty cool work ( we may underestimate arctic warming)”
To be expected, since a number of papers have pointed out under-estimated Arctic warming leading to under-estimated global warming. For example, see (the first two papers are from Cowtan and Way):
“Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends”
“Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends. UPDATE COBE-SST2 based land-ocean dataset”
“Recently amplified arctic warming has contributed to a continual global warming trend”
“Arctic warming in ERA‐Interim and other analyses”
The paper below helps validates the procedures used for some of these higher estimates of Arctic warming:
“An investigation into the impact of using various techniques to estimate arctic surface air temperature anomalies”
Robert Way pointed out some of this work to Curry in a series of comments gone over here:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708577
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708694
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708882
Particularly relevant was Way’s reference to ERA-I [ECMWF Interim Reanalysis] from this paper:
“Arctic warming in ERA‐Interim and other analyses”
As shown in that paper, ERA-I’s result support the results of Cowtan+Way’s analysis, confirming under-estimate of Arctic warming. And on page 1148 of that paper, the ERA-I team notes that Curry’s critique of Cowtan+Way’s work under-estimates the relevance of re-analyses such as ERA-I, and does little to effectively utilize re-analyses.
The following paper also confirms that ERA-I shows that Arctic warming is being under-estimated in a number of analyses:
“An investigation into the impact of using various techniques to estimate arctic surface air temperature anomalies”
Of course, some people might defend Curry by saying that re-analyses like ERA-I are useless in this discussion. But Curry’s own words block that option:
“This paper is also important in that it establishes the ECMWF Interim Reanalysis as a useful data set for examining regional and temporal climate variability in recent decades.”
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/01/assessing-atmospheric-temperature-data-sets-for-climate-studies/
“I agree with Ryan Maue that with regards to recent (post 1990’s), we should be looking at the reanalyses, which provides the basis for a dynamically and thermodynamically sensible ‘interpolation’ into the data sparse region of the Arctic.”
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708590
Curry’s latter above comment is particularly poor, since she made it after Way had already cited re-analysis results to her here:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708577
So, to recap:
1) There’s plenty of evidence that a number of surface temperature anomaly analyses [such as HadCRUT4] under-estimate Arctic warming, causing the analyses to under-estimate global warming.
2) The ERA-I re-analysis supports point 1.
3) Curry disputes point 1 and lambastes Cowtan+Way’s evidence that supports point 1.
4) Curry lauds the ERA-I re-analysis and claims it should be examined, while conveniently ignoring the fact that evidence from ERA-I supports point 1. She evaded this point, even after Way cited the evidence directly to her. Thus Curry ignores evidence that undermines both her critique of point 1 and her critique of Cowtan+Way’s work.
I think points 1 and 2 will be the most pertinent for the work you mentioned. Point 4 is one of the many reasons I place next-to-no credence in Curry’s non-peer-reviewed claims on climate science.
Maybe there are some who follow Atomski’s tweets with breathless anticipation. I can’t see Judith in that number. Nor does an earlier paper on the Canadian north preemptively discount the later comparison of anachronistic surface temps.
I note Emperor Mosh waxing lyrical – if cloyingly self aggrandizing – about readjusting Arctic temps upward yet again. That seems likely to be met with deserved derision. The real question is what contributed to modern warming – and the answer is assumed always to be greenhouse gases.
weird.
a smart grad student finds an issue.
when Way asked for help, i helped.
another guy thinks he found something. its quite cool and got me thinking about other biases. Note, these biases are all small. they dont change the science.
It is fun when people work to improve things. you should try it RE.
The surface record captures a couple of percent of global energy – and the fundamental bias of the inherent inability of thermometers to measure latent heat is never addressed.
You wrote some code for file reading of thermometer results and were not even an author. For God’s sake get over it.
weird.
judith pionts out a good critical paper
atom points out another one.
i point the possibility of more improvements,
and you seem to be stuck on your own personal issues.
if you would like help doing sone meaningful work let me know.
if you would like to help improving the surface record, let me know.
glad to help you. glad to listen to good constructive criticism.
the rest?
miss me with petty stuff.
The second older paper tweeted by Atomski was not remotely critical in my estimation – and was just the common logical fallacy in the service of a meme by Atomski of weirdly moving the goalposts. Science is not a monolith – Emperor Mosh’s assistance notwithstanding.
Re: “Maybe there are some who follow Atomski’s tweets with breathless anticipation. I can’t see Judith in that number. “
Don’t know where you got that “breathless anticipation” nonsense from. Do better, Robert.
Curry does follow me on Twitter, and she did like that tweet I posted (though she conveniently retracted that like later). So no, Robert, she was aware of that tweet I posted, and there’s a good chance she learned of said paper from that tweet. Thus I’m justified in asking why she left out the other paper.
Very unlikely.
Robert I Ellison: Maybe there are some who follow Atomski’s tweets with breathless anticipation.
…
I note Emperor Mosh waxing lyrical – if cloyingly self aggrandizing
Couldn’t you just stick to the science? Those were interesting posts.
You have a very weird idea of interesting.
Re: “Couldn’t you just stick to the science?”
There’s no reason to falsely assume that he can cogently discuss scientific research.
There is no evidence that Atomski is capable of anything but copying tweets from a climate activist perspective. No balance – no sense of the beauty and complexity of the Earth system. .
“The second older paper tweeted by Atomski was not remotely critical in my estimation ”
1. It found we underestimate the warming
2. It recomended that people not use the product min/max
not remotely critical?
weird.
The earlier arti8cle found that BEST underestimated Canadian warming – the recent paper found inconsistencies between the various surface records globally. How this is anything but a trivial tribal diversion is beyond me. Then he starts whining that Judith has for propaganda purposes ignored the earlier paper that somehow invalidates the later. Then he doubles down on the claim that Judith deliberately left out mention of the earlier study. Emperor Mosh adds to the nonsense with cloyingly self laudatory remarks that appears to have no larger purpose. There is a weirdness here – but it is not mine.
Re: “The earlier arti8cle found that BEST underestimated Canadian warming – the recent paper found inconsistencies between the various surface records globally. How this is anything but a trivial tribal diversion is beyond me.”
Then actually try to think and read.
I know full-well that Curry is aware of both papers, since she liked the tweet both papers appeared in, before she retracted the link. So I want to know why she didn’t include the other paper.
That’s not that hard to grasp for honest people who know how to think.
Re: “Then he starts whining that Judith has for propaganda purposes ignored the earlier paper that somehow invalidates the later. Then he doubles down on the claim that Judith deliberately left out mention of the earlier study.”
Learn not to pretend people said things they didn’t actually say. It’s deceitful.
There was a bald faced claim that Judith ignored the earlier and seriously irrelevant paper in Atomski’s tweet for political reasons. Because that’s what skeptics do of course. He then waffles on at lerngth about Judith following his tweets, liking this one in particular and then unlikeing it. A seriously discombobulated point to show first of all that the earlier study invalidated the latter – albeit that each had a radically different emphasis – second that Judith accessed the later study via his tweets and thirdly that she ignored the earlier study to obscure the real science of AGW. Atomski is not about science at all but point scoring in a culture war. He is not the most extreme of them – but he is up there. .
yawn.
For tweets that I want to come back to, i flag with a ‘like’. These are then considered for week in review. Once i’ve added the links to week in review, I then unlike the tweet. This allows me to keep my list of likes manageable and useful for future week in review.
Invariably, I have too many items for week in review, and need to cull them. the final list includes items i find interesting or important, or otherwise want a record of to come back to for future reference.
Conspiracy theories about my ‘liking’ or unliking on twitter, and what I include or don’t on week in review are … well … These conspiracy theorists need to get a life.
Re: “Invariably, I have too many items for week in review, and need to cull them. the final list includes items i find interesting or important, or otherwise want a record of to come back to for future reference.”
So you didn’t choose the article on how the research team you used to work with (Berkeley Earth) under-estimated warming in Canada. Because you didn’t find it “interesting or important”. How convenient. I guess that is in line with your practice of unjustifiably evading or lambasting research on under-estimated warming:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/07/14/week-in-review-science-edition-83/#comment-877053
Re: “Conspiracy theories about my ‘liking’ or unliking on twitter, and what I include or don’t on week in review are … well … These conspiracy theorists need to get a life.”
It can’t be a conspiracy theory if it involves only one person, Curry. Nor can it be a conspiracy theory if you were just asked why you did what you did. Please look up what a “conspiracy theory” is.
If you want an example of a conspiracy theory, then look no further than what you’ve written about the climate science community. You’ve resorted to conspiracy theories. For example:
“When I refer to the IPCC dogma, it is the religious importance that the IPCC holds for this cadre of scientists; they will tolerate no dissent, and seek to trample and discredit anyone who challenges the IPCC. Who are these priests of the IPCC? Some are mid to late career middle ranking scientists who have done ok in terms of the academic meritocracy. Others were still graduate students when they were appointed as lead authors for the IPCC. These scientists have used to IPCC to gain a seat at the “big tables” where they can play power politics with the collective expertise of the IPCC, to obtain personal publicity, and to advance their careers. This advancement of their careers is done with the complicity of the professional societies and the institutions that fund science. Eager for the publicity, high impact journals such as Nature, Science, and PNAS frequently publish sensational but dubious papers that support the climate alarm narrative.”
https://judithcurry.com/2010/11/03/reversing-the-direction-of-the-positive-feedback-loop/
What you wrote is basically what is described here:
“Conspiracy Theories and Selective Distrust of Scientific Authority
[…]
Deniers argue that because scientists receive grant money, fame, and prestige as a result of their research, it is in their best interest to maintain the status quo [15]. This type of thinking is convenient for deniers as it allows them to choose which authorities to believe and which ones to dismiss as part of a grand conspiracy. In addition to being selective, their logic is also internally inconsistent.
[…]
Portraying Science as Faith and Consensus as Dogma
Since the ideas proposed by deniers do not meet rigorous scientific standards, they cannot hope to compete against the mainstream theories. They cannot raise the level of their beliefs up to the standards of mainstream science; therefore they attempt to lower the status of the denied science down to the level of religious faith, characterizing scientific consensus as scientific dogma“
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256
“A constant refrain coming from the denial campaign is that climate scientists are “alarmists” who exaggerate the degree and threat of global warming to enhance their status, funding, and influence with policy makers. The contribution by William Freudenburg and Violetta Muselli provides an insightful empirical test of this charge and finds it to lack support.”
http://www.okepscor.org/sites/default/files/u6/Dunlap.ABS_.Intro_.2013.pdf
Wow, a real conspiracy theorist.
I happen to know that BEST uses limited data set in the arctic, data that are in the official archives. There is a whole body of other data (arguably research quality) used by specialists in the Arctic climate (e.g. Polyak, others). So I didn’t find this article about what BEST is doing in the Arctic to be very interesting
Re: “Wow, a real conspiracy theorist.”
Yes, you are.
Re: “I happen to know that BEST uses limited data set in the arctic, data that are in the official archives. There is a whole body of other data (arguably research quality) used by specialists in the Arctic climate (e.g. Polyak, others). So I didn’t find this article about what BEST is doing in the Arctic to be very interesting”
Again, what you say on this doesn’t carry much weight when you claimed you were interested in re-analysis data on the Arctic, right after you ignored Robert Way citing you the results of the ERA-I re-analysis in the Arctic. The ERA-I re-analysis, Cowtan+Way’s work, and a number of other papers are in line with the idea that BEST, HadCRUT4, etc., under-estimate Arctic warming. This is precisely the conclusion you’ve been avoid for years, as I discussed elsewhere:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/07/14/week-in-review-science-edition-83/#comment-877053
Please let me know when you’ve actually read the ERA-I paper Way pointed out to you years ago. Paying lip-service to ERA-I (without addressing their results or reading their papers) isn’t good enough:
“Simmons, A. J., & Poli, P. (2014). Arctic warming in ERA‐Interim and other analyses. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.”
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708577
“I agree with Ryan Maue that with regards to recent (post 1990’s), we should be looking at the reanalyses, which provides the basis for a dynamically and thermodynamically sensible ‘interpolation’ into the data sparse region of the Arctic.”
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708590
“This paper is also important in that it establishes the ECMWF Interim Reanalysis as a useful data set for examining regional and temporal climate variability in recent decades.”
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/01/assessing-atmospheric-temperature-data-sets-for-climate-studies/
Sorry, still not interested in BEST or Cowtan’s Arctic analysis. Because I am aware of better data sets and analyses.
Re: “Sorry, still not interested in BEST or Cowtan’s Arctic analysis. Because I am aware of better data sets and analyses.”
*sigh*
I don’t know how many times this needs to be explained to you.
Once again:
1) You repeatedly ignored the results of the ERA-I re-analysis when Robert Way cited them to you.
2) You then said the ERA-I re-analysis should be examined to evaluate other analyses.
3) You then continue to willfully ignore the ERA-I analysis when it is cited to you, including when I cite it to.
Seriously, how can you think what you’re doing is OK?
I mean, what you’re doing is painfully transparent, since you’ve been doing it for at least 3 years. It’s so predictable that I know I can literally post the ERA-I paper again, and you’ll just repeat the same exact process of ignoring it…
“Simmons, A. J., & Poli, P. (2014). Arctic warming in ERA‐Interim and other analyses. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.”
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-708577
Re: “Sorry, still not interested in BEST or Cowtan’s Arctic analysis.”
Sure. That’s why you co-wrote this:
DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0667.1
“Results are also presented using a globally complete version infilled by kriging (Had4_krig_v2: Cowtan and Way 2014)”
Never sure what his point is – other than quibbling for ideological purposes about antiquated ideas he doesn’t understand for ininventing data that does not exist. There is not remotely sufficient data to be definitive or – importantly – to capture decadal to centennial change. Satellites are the future – just not anytime soon.
http://nsidc.org/soac
Pingback: Climate And Science | Transterrestrial Musings
There it is, right at the top. The very first link uses that term. The term that is never used in polite society. The term that ensures ostracism. It’s supposed to be banned. Why? Because there is no such thing. And yet in hundreds of papers it continues to be used.
What is it? Medieval Climate Anomaly.
I guess the authors of this excellent paper didn’t get the memo.
Re: “There it is, right at the top. The very first link uses that term. The term that is never used in polite society. The term that ensures ostracism. It’s supposed to be banned. Why? Because there is no such thing. And yet in hundreds of papers it continues to be used.
What is it? Medieval Climate Anomaly.
I guess the authors of this excellent paper didn’t get the memo.”
Provide a shred of evidence of a “memo” that says that terms like “medieval climate anomaly” cannot be used. Because I suspect you simply fabricated that claim in order to act as if 1 implies 2:
1) The medieval warm period was not as warm as today, and modern, anthropogenic warming occurred much more rapidly than medieval warming.
2) One cannot use words like “medieval climate anomaly” and “medieval warm period”.
Even Mann was discussing the medieval period back in the late 1990s, though many Internet contrarians love to pretend otherwise:
“as in in Lamb’s [1965] original concept of a Medieval Warm Epoch, there are episodes of cooler as well as warmer conditions”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/1999GL900070
So I suggest you go do some reading. The following should help gt you started:
“The [Medieval Climate Anomaly] and [Little Ice Age] are climate anomalies that were caused by natural forcing (e.g., solar variability and volcanic emissions), but the [Current Warm Period] is linked to anthropogenic factors (e.g., industrialization and land-use changes)”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JC012458/full
“Critics have argued that, if temperatures were as warm or warmer than current conditions before the onset of anthropogenic forcing, this would provide evidence that “natural” fluctuations alone could explain current conditions, since greenhouse gases were only ~280 ppmv during Medieval time (versus 400 ppmv today).
[…]
With the increase in irradiance and a decline in explosive volcanism in the early 20th century, global temperatures might then have returned to an unperturbed level similar to that of the MQP [Medieval Quiet Period], but the rapid rise in anthropogenic greenhouse gases propelled temperatures well beyond that level, as positive anthropogenic radiative forcing overwhelmed natural variability (Myhre et al., 2013).”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291523102_The_Medieval_Quiet_Period
You go ahead and believe all that as much as you want. I deal in reality. I assume you are fairly young and not attuned to a little facetious humor.
Re: “You go ahead and believe all that as much as you want. I deal in reality. I assume you are fairly young and not attuned to a little facetious humor.”
Actually, you don’t deal in reality. You instead deal in claims you fabricated, and then back away from the moment you’re challenged on them. I assume you have next-to-no experience reading peer-reviewed scientific papers, and so just invent politically-motivated claims you then post online.
No, you missed the thrust of my comments (and apparently a number of sub-thrusts). If a phenomenon doesn’t exist why are so many climate scientists including it in their peer reviewed papers. This calls for a full throated investigation as to why something that doesn’t exist is treated in so many papers as if it does.
Of course, at one time contributions to GMSLR from West Antarctica geothermal activity didn’t exist either. But a re-evaluation about reality never hurt anyone. Such is science.
It exists in earlier NH proxies, but went away in later more comprehensive global proxies. Does that mean it did or did not exist to you? It exists conditionally on incomplete global coverage.
It also existed in New Zealand and Chilean climate reconstructions from proxies so your definition of Northern Hemisphere may need refining.
It was in a different century in the SH. The term MWP was deliberately vague to capture all these, but it turned out to confuse a number of people.
No it wasn’t Jim There were a large number of proxies and they covered that central time period. Depends on how the data is smooth, they are consistent with the Northern Hemisphere stuff
I would go with PAGES2k who say otherwise. The warm periods did not coincide, so the global average has the MWP as a small blip in the general cooling.
http://www.pages-igbp.org/products/latest/10529-the-third-phase-of-the-pages-2k-network
PAGES 2 was rubbish Jimmy as well you know. It specifically used the Oroko data post 1957 despite the paper saying not to because the data was rubbish.
They make the data available. You would think some skeptic by now would have picked and chose to provide their own version of it. It’s just too much data to make a dent with one proxy you don’t like. You need more, maybe a hundred more as they construct it from 700 time series.
Different centuries? There are lags and leads throughout the climate system – including polar anti-phases locking. Call it a stadium wave ya drongos.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/pages2k.png
Jimmy – All the faults with the PAGES2 proxies have been well detailed on Climate Audit. You haven’t even acknowledged there were any problems, Who is in denial? And what is wrong with using Oroko pre 1957 for the SW Pacific? – MBH used one tree in Siberia and a couple of bristlecones to represent the world!.
Sceptics don’t need to publish any papers for the MWP. It is the proponents of the hockey stick that need to show that their proxies represent what they say it does – the average temperature of that part of the planet. And do it by not post data collection selection and dodgy maths. The Sagan aphorism is in play here. So far, the hockey stick is broken, it has been a miserable failure. IPCC won’t even mention it..
No less than Wally Broecker, royalty in the consensus climate science community:
Was the Medieval Warm Period Global?
Broecker’s paper has 382 cites in scientific literature.
That was from 2001 in the early days of proxies that go back 1000 years. Only a little after Mann’s first efforts in that area. Lots has been done since, including the needed global collaboration of PAGES2k of the last few years.
It would be exceedingly easy for skeptics to write a paper that demonstrates the MWP was both global and warmer than the 20th century, maybe even the 21st century. The reason they don’t is the MWP warming was global, but there is no data demonstrating the MWP was ever, at one time period, warmer than late 20th-century temperatures, let alone 21st-century temps.
They already know that, so they just use it as a cheap-shot, smear tactic.
The MWP is referred to in consensus papers a huge number of times.
No less than Wally Broecker, royalty in the consensus climate science community.
LMFAO at this Procrustean bed of climate memes. Science is really not a monolith.
You want to know what Wallace Broecker thinks of you? Joke.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04122015/medieval
http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/07/05/human_cause-4/
And a ringing endorsement. Some regions of a Hemisphere when compared to a few nearby centuries:
“Period of relative warmth in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere in comparison with the subsequent several centuries.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
And while the phrase at issue is global warming. Let’s talk about regional warming instead like I want to talk about the temperature only in Minneapolis or at most, the Corn Belt. Yes, what about the Corn Belt?
To continue the realclimate link above:
“…arguments that such evidence supports anomalous global warmth during this time period is based on faulty logic and/or misinterpretations of the available evidence.”
What the faulty logic is, you can figure that out on your own.
“As with the LIA, numerous myths can still be found in the literature with regard to the details of this climate period.”
Numerous myths of what?
cerescokid: There it is, right at the top. The very first link uses that term. The term that is never used in polite society. The term that ensures ostracism. It’s supposed to be banned. Why? Because there is no such thing. And yet in hundreds of papers it continues to be used.
What is it? Medieval Climate Anomaly.
I guess the authors of this excellent paper didn’t get the memo.
…
No, you missed the thrust of my comments (and apparently a number of sub-thrusts).
You buried your message in snark. Start over with clear propositions.
“If the underlying bedrock rises fast enough, it could halt the loss of ice from this region, the study, out today in the journal Science, finds.
New measurements found that the ground under the rapidly melting Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica is rising at the astonishingly rapid rate of 41 millimeters, or more than 4 cm, per year.
If this trend increases as the study projects, then the grounding line, which is the spot where the marine-based ice shelf of the Pine Island Glacier meets bedrock, will have risen by 8 meters, or 26.2 feet, in 100 years, according to an Ohio State University press release.”
The piece about the rising ground under the West Antarctica Ice Sheet is one of the fascinating I’ve read in years.
+cerescokid that’s similar to the rate of Laurentian Shield rebound.
“They also note that volcanic activity could be increasing the rate of collapse of the Thwaites Glacier, which is adjacent to the Pine Island Glacier.”
That little gem was also included in the article about geothermal activity under the Pine Island Glacier.
It wasn’t very long ago that the consensus questioned whether the geology had any influence on the glaciers.
But just as in the article about rising Bedrock under West Antarctica, progress in science opens a few eyes. Of course, anyone who saw an overlay of the rift system with the areas of instability in West Antarctica should have deduced the obvious. But the true believers are a little slow on the uptake occasionally.
It wasn’t very long ago that the consensus questioned whether the geology had any influence on the glaciers.
Lol.
“While no hypothesis has been definitively rejected, and no GCM has accurately reproduced all features (e.g., timing, duration, and extent) of any spe- cific megadrought, their persistence suggests a role for processes that impart memory to the climate system (land surface and ocean dynamics).”
“While no hypothesis…” we provide our warning about anthropogenic CO2 emissions leading to more and even more severe mega droughts lasting centuries and…
We don’t know but that doesn’t stop us.
Over shorter time frames.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071978
Over longer time frames.
http://faculty.fiu.edu/~rburgman/index.html#
Whether intrinsic or anthropogenic we do know that it will happen again. Greenhouse gases put a wedge under the complex, nonlinearly oscillating system with unknowable risk of abrupt and adverse hydrological changes.
Robert I Ellison
“Results show that when satellite estimates of low cloud, isolated to the eastern Pacific, are prescribed as an added forcing in the coupled model, much of the recent changes in the Pacific ocean and atmospheric circulation can be reproduced.”
This paper feels like: data mining. They narrowed down to a specific correlation and then said: ah ha!
Certainly clouds are the unknown, and, after reading this paper, remain to me an unknown.
Do you expect to know everything from a
single study? I figure however that having a clue is better than not.
Rayleigh–Bénard convection happens in a fluid (the atmosphere) heated from below.
e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973593
Robert I Ellison
The rburgman reference was not what I thought you were addressing.
Just because one study says something doesn’t mean it’s Gospel.
Robert I Ellison
The aip paper is informative for me by giving words to concepts with regards to clouds.
Thank you
“Evaluating the accuracy of seasonal forecast predictions [link]”
Tim Cook, the environmental reporter for this story uses a picture of the water level rings in Lake Mead to headline a paper addressing forecasting difficulties. The image and the story don’t jive. Using data from both Lake Mead and the reservoir above, Lake Powell, and the inflow and outflow data to each, one can observe that both reservoirs are being used primarily to generate electricity. After a banner year for snow fall last year, and plentiful rainfall and snow fall this year, one can see that this bounty is being used to run air conditioners in Southern California as Californians don’t want fossil nor nuclear fuel to bridge the shortfalls in their solar and wind portfolio. So the turbines of Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams provide the electricity. This is the story in my mind: waste water on a wasted mind.
RE: The slippery math of causation
From a link in the referenced article:
“To Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect”
Artificial intelligence owes a lot of its smarts to Judea Pearl. In the 1980s he led efforts that allowed machines to reason probabilistically. Now he’s one of the field’s sharpest critics. In his latest book, “The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect,” he argues that artificial intelligence has been handicapped by an incomplete understanding of what intelligence really is.
Three decades ago, a prime challenge in artificial intelligence research was to program machines to associate a potential cause to a set of observable conditions. Pearl figured out how to do that using a scheme called Bayesian networks. Bayesian networks made it practical for machines to say that, given a patient who returned from Africa with a fever and body aches, the most likely explanation was malaria. In 2011 Pearl won the Turing Award, computer science’s highest honor, in large part for this work.
But as Pearl sees it, the field of AI got mired in probabilistic associations. These days, headlines tout the latest breakthroughs in machine learning and neural networks. We read about computers that can master ancient games and drive cars. Pearl is underwhelmed. As he sees it, the state of the art in artificial intelligence today is merely a souped-up version of what machines could already do a generation ago: find hidden regularities in a large set of data. “All the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting,” he said recently.
I don’t know if our fragile grasp of reality can handed AI that can predict outcomes and explain why. We usually rely on humans to explain and interpret what AI systems tell us.
RE: The impact of stratospheric circulation extremes on minimum arctic sea ice extent [link]
This paper highlights the role Sudden Stratospheric Warming events have on Arctic sea ice and the Arctic Oscillation (AO). If the claim is SSW events affect sea ice and polar vortex anomalies it would be helpful if someone (I’m looking at you Dr. John Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer) could explain how to predict and quantify SSW events.
I think Jennifer Francis has studied this phenomenon in her research too.
Deglacial floods in the Beaufort Sea preceded Younger Dryas cooling
Could current and recent Greenland meltwater also be choking off North Atlantic deep water formation? And thus account for the current slow-down of the AMOC? My own theory is that the AMO is nothing more or less than periodic excursions of the AMOC (impelled by the salinity-downwelling feedback) all eventually terminated by resulting Greenland ice melt.
“Embracing an uncertain future: importance of natural internal variability [link]”
Is this for real? A climate scientist discovers natural variability? And is doing a postdoc theses on it?
Thesis
What is oversimplified about this issue?
Reducing climate change to anthropogenic changes in a limited set of poorly constrained radiatively active compounds.
How has this conflict affected your life?
In 2003 it intersected with my readings in Pacific oceanography and emergent global rainfall regimes. Been a pain in the arse ever since.
What do you think the other side wants?
They want to show how modern, smart and cool they are – compared to the deplorables.
What’s the question nobody is asking?
Given that science questions cannot be answered definitively – is Earth system science relevant to policy?
What do you and your supporters need to learn about the other side in order to understand them better?
We’d like them – both sides – to move onto restoring and conserving global systems, modernizing productive capacity and building prosperous and resilient communities globally.
Questions from – https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63
“Given that science questions cannot be answered definitively – is Earth system science relevant to policy?”
–
of course it is. Policy is not driven by definitive answers but by the aims of the policy makers. Almost always. Hence it matters not whether one has an answer to a question if policy is dictating it’s own direction in response to the aims of the policy makers. The relevance of the questions is still can they be used or not to support the policy as it gives a seeming scientific imprimatur or authority to the policy
If a scientific argument partly debunks a policy then the result is the argument is banned, blacklisted, ignored, disparaged, argued against and when all this fails the policy makers resort to attacking the messenger, scientifically and personally. The object being to cut the person, and hence the argument out of consideration.
That is why the discussion of these issues at most blogs is almost completely separate or orthogonal to the science involved. People like Nick and ATTP push their policy and Tony Heller his and they both dismiss scientific arguments outside their value fields. Sites like this are valuable in allowing some conflict to occur, usually when a precious article of faith is challenged.
“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.49 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
Given the invariant silliness and relentless repetition of most antagonistic climate talking points – thank God public policy doesn’t depend on it.
Worst article, ever… A blog from AGU’s journal editors? I hope US tax dollars aren’t going toward this 501(c)(3).
Fingering the real lying liars of the Global Warming Debate is a difficult topic to broach and harder still is knowing the global warming debate is just the tip of the iceberg — just a subset of the real problem: the increasing irrelevancy of government-funded education (at least at the federal level). No one wants to be honest about it yet but if it’s not addressed it’ll drag us down like a stone.
Nothing explains the level of certainty about AGW theory in the field of climatology that ultimately is not merely, cosmological. AGW theory can never be reduced to a falsifiable hypothesis and therefore it has no practical utility outside of making something that is unimaginably complex appear to be insanely simple: like modeling nature by fitting a least squares trend-line to a haze of points.
Previously unsuspected volcanic activity confirmed under West Antarctic Ice Sheet at Pine Island Glacier
“…this study provides the first geochemical evidence of a contemporary volcanic heat source, emphasizing the need to detect and understand volcanism, including in models of ice-sheet behavior. The greater understanding of volcanism could alter scientists’ perception of the mechanics of ice-sheet loss, including in the areas where the glaciers meet the sea…They also note that volcanic activity could be increasing the rate of collapse of the Thwaites Glacier, which is adjacent to the Pine Island Glacier…A complete collapse of the Thwaites Glacier could significantly affect global sea levels…The Thwaites already drains an area roughly the size of the state of Florida, accounting for about 4 percent of global sea level rise — an amount that has doubled since the mid-1990s.”
The article underscores that there’s still a great deal to learn about volcanic activity, its material effect on SLR, ocean currents, CO2, heat. The science of plate tectonics didn’t materialize until the mid 20th century; the science of the oceanic conveyor system wasn’t described until later in 20th century.
It’s interesting how naturally occurring discovery articles like these get buried in science journals; conversely, concerns about anthropomorphic warming effects on glaciers and the conveyor system are plastered on newspaper front pages, or presented prominently, and also in other media outlets. So why be cynical? Who chooses what to emphasize, not scientists? How is the money parsed between natural variability science and AGW science? Political science answers many of these questions. I saw an article about AGW and its effects on plate tectonics recently, it seemed rather esoteric; absurd.
There’s a lot to be learned about volcanic activity around deep ocean rifts. Most divergent plate boundaries are mid oceanic, not easily accessible, and very deep. It’s not just a question of CO2 and heat, but can a large deep sea anomalous volcanic event effect profound changes on the conveyor system? What’s the frequency of large mid oceanic volcanic events? Plate tectonics and understanding the oceanic conveyor system is still nascent science.
But we do know some things. Paleoclimatologists have discovered periods when the great ocean conveyor slowed or stopped. We can tell how long water has been deep by measuring its oxygen content. But who’s to say that a major volcanic event wasn’t the change agent that effected the conveyor system thousands of years ago, and that we’re still feeling the effects from this since the ending of the LIA? What exactly is the “normal” speed for the conveyor system? Science knows it effects the climate profoundly, but there’s a lot of missing context relative to understanding natural variability, causation from vulcanism, and the conveyor system.
It’s now known that the LIA wasn’t just one monolithic chill, but that temperatures abruptly rose or fell many times. Sudden shifts occurred approximately every 1500 years, and were out of sync in the two hemispheres. In a matter of decades temperatures plummeted in the north, while the Southern Hemisphere heated up. Science only recently implicated these changes to the conveyor belt as being the overarching mechanism instigating these changes. These discoveries have come about because of much higher data resolutions bringing forth granularity that provides insights to causes and effects. This is a wonderful example of remediating the lying eyes of course raw data that I believe is used by many to manipulate the AGW narrative. There’s a great deal of coarse data used to make sweeping judgements. Peaks and valleys in charts are easily wiped out when averaged with fewer data points over long periods of time where data points are much fewer.
Oxygen is not conserved in deep water.
RIE, I appreciate your post. I’ll defer to your expertise in describing age methodology. If I post specific science commentary it’s almost certainly based on strong source material which I simply relay, mostly the case here. If I do post such it’s normally used as a base to frame anecdotally inspired concepts or to describe policy ideas; otherwise it’s not in my wheelhouse and I don’t try to pretend it is. Specifically my reference here described analyzing the dissolved oxygen in the sample to determine age, it’s a detail where unfortunately I misplaced the actual source for my note.
Here are my latest, looking at the adverse impact of the climate change scare on foreign aid to poor developing countries.
Rejecting Carbon Colonialism
With Paul Driessen, July 14, 2018
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2018/07/14/rejecting-carbon-colonialism-n2500194
Multilateral Anti-Development Banks
With Paul Driessen, July 7, 2018
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2018/07/07/multilateral-antidevelopment-banks-n2498044
USAID puts fear before farming
July 11, 2018
http://www.cfact.org/2018/07/11/usaid-puts-fear-before-farming/
The Colonialism one was good. Then they say, You never cared about the poor in Africa before.
So we both say we care now. Now we need to pick what does the most good for them.
Putting together two of these reports, first this one:
Previously unsuspected volcanic activity confirmed under West Antarctic Ice Sheet at Pine Island Glacier [link]
And then this:
A new study finds that the ground underneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet region is rebounding, or rising, at an extraordinarily rapid rate.[link]
You get increased volcanic activity and rapidly rising ground level in the West Antarctic Peninsula.
Rising volcanism and rising ground. Where have I heard that discussed before? O yes – at Yellowstone, where it could herald a caldera and once in a hundred million years supervolcano.
Interesting to consider the consequences of a supervolcano under Antarctic ice. Maybe someone should install some CO2 scrubbers over the peninsula to limit CO2 emissions associated with such a hypothetical event. Sounds like a nice contract for Halliburton.
OK maybe a hundred thousand rather than hundred million years. Getting carried away.
Embracing an uncertain future
“Though natural variability introduces irreducible uncertainty into climate
projections, its influence can be accounted for.”
No. It cannot be counted. We can count it in the past, to know what it was. No.
synonyms of ‘account’:
consider, regard as, reckon, hold to be, think, look on as, view as, see as, judge, adjudge, count, deem, rate
A lot of things that look like someone counted something.
“Embracing an uncertain future: importance of natural internal variability.”
” It’s challenging to represent natural climate variability in regional model projections. ”
It would be good to have an article on natural variability and how great it actually might be statistically with the amount of information we have available.
In regard to the above two comments [articles]. The future is not that uncertain in that we can have confidence [be certain] that there will always be a little bit of uncertainty in the future.
And we can be fairly certain that some things can occur quite surprisingly. And we certainly know that some things that are quite nasty,or nice can occur without us ever expecting or needing to expect that event.
The importance of small things that happen often is equanimity [not very important] eg compliments. More unusual things are annoying or delightful, flat tire, car crash no injuries, Old girlfriend turns up etc, moderately important nice to have girlfriend insurance. Lastly catastrophic events like the vikings invading or winning the lottery. Not going to happen, remember? so not important.
The need for an article is to clarify the wide range of natural variability that is possible in a human awareness lifetime, perhaps 30-60 years.
“natural climate variability in regional model projections.”
Observations. The one thing Climate Models are really good at is defining balance, averages, normality. They are not very good at their job yet but they are getting better and they are all we have [M]. They provide the perfect skeleton for the knowledge and assumptions we put in to give a balanced forward projection of what should happen.
Hence, by default, they show up the true range of natural variability in all its colors.
Even better when you take smaller areas or time frames you speed up the amount of natural variability that can exist. And there are then three ways to take this. Average down.
Prime example medieval warm period MWP, does not agree with expected so claim it is a regional anomaly. Lower the Natural variability range.
Average across, this would say MWP happened locally hence happened everywhere at just this range brings the anomalies up to the MWP average and increases the Natural variability range.
Thirdly extrapolate upwards giving every local area similar upper extreme ranges even if they were already high. result a massive increase in the possible Natural Variability.
Previous posts reference the Global Sea Ice extent as showing 7-8 SD range change in 4-5 years recently. Just not mathematically possible unless we accept that natural variability in earth systems is massively underestimated.
Best of all?
We can see this from the models in every sphere that we collect data.
angech.
imagine mwp proxies were actual thermometers.
Q:please specify the number of locations required to establish that the mwp was global?
30. As you add locations from about 2 – 5 you get big gains in narrowing the margin of error or whatever it is called. The difference between 30 and 31 locations is small. You’re getting diminishing returns at that point.
Somewhat related is someone says, We used to have 1200 global weather stations and now only have 850. It doesn’t matter. The difference to the knowledge provided about the GMST is small. Less than a 10% difference.
If you put temperature sensors all over a coal fired power plant, how many do you need? You need enough to maximize returns and no more.
Now I said 30 are needed above. I’d accept 5. Life is short. Be bold.
My son flew back to his college last night from a family gathering. The pilot looked at I am guessing 20 readings that said take off. They did.
It’s more than just number of thermometers it is also the length of the time period involved and also how long ago the time period was.
I think I read somewhere * a thermometer reading could be extended 1000 km? So 12 1/2 around the equator, 10 1/2 around through the poles (2 duplicated) toss another 10 1/2 around at 45 degrees left and right perhaps 44 stations Steven.
Of course 2/3 would be at sea which does not leave very good temp proxies so just use the ones on land? Therefore 15.
Of that 15 local variation could still cause issues so if say 13 out of the 15 had reasonably correlated figures that might just do it.
As you know the law of diminishing returns means that the further back you go the less ability physical proxies give us to determine actual yearly temperature variations.
*
NASA’s GISTEMP temperature record (Hansen et al. 2010) attempts to address the coverage issue by extrapolating temperatures into unmeasured regions by means of kernel smoothing using a conical kernel of radius 1200 km. The BEST project has adopted an optimal interpolation method (‘kriging’), although only for land temperatures at this stage (Rohde et al. 2013a
Isn’t O18 an accepted proxy for a global temperature?
Pielke Jr.: “Fudged assumptions about the future are hampering efforts to deal with climate change in the present. It’s time to get real.” (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GrcmbqnQ89GfaXY7gvO1O4-YzderjiXJ/view).
He’s almost certainly right about why false assumptions underlying current UN policies are an obstacle to global emission reduction. But there’s a fudged assumption he doesn’t mention: that the newly industrialised countries have any serious intention of cutting their emissions. They don’t.
Projected squeezing of the wintertime North-Atlantic jet:
“The future response of the atmospheric circulation to increased anthropogenic forcing is uncertain, in particular due to competing influences of the large projected warming at the surface in the Arctic, and at upper-levels in the tropics.”
AMO & Arctic warming is a negative feedback to reduced solar wind pressure/temperature. It actually demonstrates how comparatively small the opposing increase in CO2 forcing must be.
“Models with dominant tropical warming (i. e. narrower and stronger eddy-driven jet) exhibit less decrease in cold extremes with climate change, due to the maintenance of cooler conditions in the subpolar North Atlantic and subarctic seas compared to models with a predominance of Arctic warming.”
A meridional jet stream pattern would increase both Arctic warming and cold extremes in the mid latitudes. We have a warmer Arctic and we have been seeing a raft of 120-130 year regional cold and snow records, because it’s a solar minimum again.
The problem with solving problems
“”Another way to say this is that solving problems causes us to expand our definitions of them,” he said. “When problems become rare, we count more things as problems. Our studies suggest that when the world gets better, we become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn’t actually gotten better at all. Progress, it seems, tends to mask itself.””
“”Expanding one’s definition of a problem may be seen by some as evidence of political correctness run amuck,” Gilbert said. “They will argue that reducing the prevalence of discrimination, for example, will simply cause us to start calling more behaviors discriminatory.”
I’ll suggest the world has gotten better. We are sold problems such as polar bears and butterflies and coral. As the planet greens, it’s worse. As corporations pollute less, pollution is more of a problem. When we ran out of pollution, we created carbon pollution.
There are people that point out problems, never solve them even if they exist, and live their lives being offended.
“While the German double-structure strategy aims at contributing to the solution of a worldwide public-goods problem, it is uneconomical from a national point of view. The reason is that, without taking ecological considerations into account, wind and solar plants pay off if, and only if, their average cost is below the marginal cost of producing electricity from fossil fuels. Given that conventional plants are needed as buffers, their fixed costs cannot be spared. It is only their running hours, i.e., the marginal production costs including the direct energy cost that can be reduced by wind and solar power to the extent that this power is available. In 2016, the marginal cost of producing electricity from lignite was about 0.6 cents per kWh, and 2 cents from hard coal. Adding 0.8 cents per kWh or 0.7 cents per kWh, respectively, for the emission rights at 2015 average prices (7.5 euros per ton of CO2) gives a marginal cost of 1.4 cents per kWh for lignite and 2.7 cents per kWh for hard coal.20 By contrast, the feed-in tariffs for electricity from new wind and solar plants, which are presumably just large enough to cover the average cost, are about 9 cents per kWh, as mentioned above. Thus, for the German strategy to be economical from a national point of view, the average cost of wind and solar energy would have to fall by over two thirds. Nevertheless, of course, a potential reduction in CO2 emissions and world-wide learning effects might well justify the extra cost from a global perspective.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292117300995
I think he is looking at costs in the correct way. Are you going to drop your coal power plants? If not, the fixed costs will remain. You can deceptively blame big coal and say they had it coming, but if you want their back up, you have to pay for it. If not, they will walk away and the grid will fail.
This isn’t some tin horn dictator country we’re talking about. If any country can do this, it’s Germany. The paper is quite good. It accepts pumped hydro storage units as not someone else’s problem like the charlatan renewable cheerleaders do. It calculates thousands of them. Then as a reality check, guess how many we’ll build in the United States in the next 10 years?
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-environment-and-google-announce-ground-breaking-partnership
New York, 16 July 2018 – UN Environment and Google announced today a global partnership that promises to change the way we see our planet. Combining environmental science, big data and unprecedented accessibility, this joint effort aims to expand what the world knows about the impacts of human activity on global ecosystems.
The La Nina Pump Willis at WUWT is interesting
” in all cases, the temperature drop associated with the La Nina phenomenon began in November, and ended in the following November. “”
I guess you cannot show it now, too early, but there should be a new shaded area starting last November 2017 under way with the last La Nina?
Good news for me as I keep telling JCH there will be a lag and continuing fall in temps for a few months.
The other thing is that there always could be be a third La Nina starting this November?
Re the talk by John Kennedy about sea surface temperature, SST, adjustments.
Three fundamental questions need to be asked.
1. What firm criteria have been set to answer the question of when more adjustments – or even past ones – are so lacking in metadata that reconstruction is futile and wrong?
2. Should the error attached to a final homogenization also envelop all of the previous estimates, because each has a large component of subjective adjustment aka guesswork and cannot be proven better than any preceding effort?
3. What at this time, are the full error estimates of SST by year, incorporating all errors, formally calculated according to a stated, known standard method?
Geoff
Cargo-cult statistics and scientific crisis “science has become a career, rather than a calling”
Science is now a competitive sport with cash prizes rather than trophies for those who garner the most government grants and technical societies are primarily marketing agencies.
Prof. Curry, I think you missed one:
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/17/delingpole-i-wish-id-never-had-my-daughter-because-climate-change/
A must read!
From the megadrought preprint, Unintended Irony dept.:
“This drying is robust across models and multiple drought indicators,
but major uncertainties still need to be resolved.”
*Robust* across models. The climateers favorite term. Good to know that!
“In both scenarios existing coal-fired power stations close, either on their planned closure date (for those where such a date has been announced), or once they are 50 years old. Around 14 gigawatts (GW) of a total 23GW of coal-fired generation capacity will retire by 2040. As these plants close, a mixture of gas-fired generation, renewable energy, and storage (particularly pumped hydro) is projected to be the lowest-cost way to replace them.”
http://theconversation.com/aemos-new-electricity-plan-is-neither-a-death-knell-nor-a-shot-in-the-arm-for-coal-100096
New Australian energy regulator plan. Wind and solar can work with pumped hydro – but there are still capacity limits. Gas is mentioned – but Australia’s prices are international and then some. Keep coal going for as long as technically feasible. What then? If we are lucky some of the modular nuclear people will start building some.
Things Are Getting Better, So Why Are We All So Gloomy?
“The bookshops are groaning under ziggurats of pessimism. The airwaves are crammed with doom. In my own adult lifetime, I have listened to the implacable predictions of growing poverty, coming famines, expanding deserts, imminent plagues, impending water wars, inevitable oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, mad-cow epidemics, Y2K computer bugs, killer bees, sex-change fish, global warming, ocean acidification and even asteroid impacts that would presently bring this happy interlude to a terrible end.”
https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1084
I Facebook. Humanprogress can be followed like a million other things. At times they’ll use a Cato author.
Most of us are skeptics. We can be optimistic. We can produce value. We can be happy.
I’m coming to appreciate negativity bias.
It might be interesting to profile the biases of those interested in climate change.
Negativity bias is fairly widespread, but I imagine climate change enthusiasts have more negativity bias. ( those opposing government intrusion no doubt have other stronger biases ).
Steven Pinker, who unfortunately labors under some faulty climate change assumptions, never-the-less has identified how good things are contradicted by negativity bias of those imaging worse in Enlightenment Now.
TE
always appreciate your comments and insight.
My long career started with dumping toxins into bays as normal process and am thrilled with improvements of clean water and air in USA.
Plenty of room in 3rd world to tackle that before minor Carbon increase and fraction of degree temps increase and 7 in per century SLR.
Scott
Hi Scott
Thought you might be interested in this
https://www.exploredevon.info/activities/geology/slapton-ley/
The photo is of slapton ley in Devon near where I live and which I visited today to see the road which was destroyed in a storm last winter.
. The lagoon is separated from the sea by a huge pebble bar which was created when the sea levels rose sharpl,y after the last ice age and were left high and dry about 3000 years ago when the sea levels fell again.
This sea level rise and fall is chronicled in the information boards in the car park. This possibly also relates to various stories of drowned villages off the coastline here that lie in an arc of submerged land that stretches to the scilly isles.
Just visible in the car park in the foreground of the photo is a Sherman tank. This commemorates the disastrous aftermath of operation tiger, when large scale preparations for D day we’re literally torpedoed by a lurking u boat just off the coast here, when many hundreds of American troops were drowned
The catastrophe was hushed up until decades after the war In case it affected morale.
Tonyb
Re: “I’m coming to appreciate negativity bias.”
Not really. You’re just using it as a cover for you misrepresenting science, often via you repeating nonsense you saw on garbage blogs (instead of you reading the scientific literature). You’ve already been caught doing this with a fabricated image from JoAnne Nova’s blog:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/07/03/the-hansen-forecasts-30-years-later/#comment-876287
https://judithcurry.com/2018/07/03/the-hansen-forecasts-30-years-later/#comment-876727
Re: “Steven Pinker, who unfortunately labors under some faulty climate change assumptions”
Or maybe like much of academia, he actually defers to the scientific community on scientific topics (or reads peer-reviewed scientific research), instead of doing what you do: misrepresenting science based on fabrications you saw on garbage blogs.
ProTip, Eddie: actually read the primary literature, for once.
Thanx Atmosk, you never fail to motivate.
It’s fun to point out other’s bias.
Among others, you have some confirmation bias ( citing Sherwood but ignoring contradictory evidence, including the IPCC ). But so too must I have bias.
Hume said bias is not such a bad thing because it is what motivates us.
That’s good, because it appears bias is how humans think – there is not pure rationality.
As long as there are enough voices heard ( not shut out ), exposing maximal range of biases more truth and more motivation and more understanding of the evidence which withstands the scrutiny of external biases.
There’s a lot of psychological research on negativity bias. It’s not the only bias and perhaps not so pervasive ( see Las Vegas ). But it’s probably what accounts for public and even institutional perception of catastrophe.
https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress-ebook/dp/B075ZGBY6Q
The problems with Pinker:
Clueless.
During World War 2 my Uncle’s scientific team created lightweight armor plate that allowed pilots and aircrew to survive the pessimists who predicted they were going get hit with anti-aircraft fire.
We’ll dismiss your response as negativity bias that negativity bias can explain anything.
“Clueless…During World War 2 my Uncle’s scientific team created lightweight armor plate that allowed pilots and aircrew to survive the pessimists who predicted they were going get hit with anti-aircraft fire.”
His efforts were a worthy endeavor, but I’m not not sure how you filter the pessimism you describe, is it the antithesis to happiness in general, meaning, is someone inherently unhappy if they show any pessimism? Or can someone be happy even as they are expressing pessimism? Were the critics arguing that protection wouldn’t save lives? Or that many aircraft were going to get hit by anti-aircraft fire and it might save more lives if crews were protected by more speed? It’s hard to evaluate. Aircrews had the highest mortality rates in WWII.
My point in general, pessimism isn’t equivalent to unhappiness, but if one were pessimistic about everything they could be very unhappy, unless perhaps their gig was to enjoy being an antisocial malcontent whenever they weren’t fishing.
JCH
|”During World War 2 my Uncle’s scientific team created lightweight armor plate that allowed pilots and aircrew to survive the pessimists who predicted they were going get hit with anti-aircraft fire.”
?
It’s a big sky.
“It’s a big sky.”
There’s a lot of big pies in it.
Sluggish Atlantic circulation could cause global temperatures to surge
Sluggish Atlantic circulation could cause global temperatures to surge
Prediction? Or just another unsubstantiated speculation?
Here’s a problem with this:
Q: What would happen if circulation decreased?
A: Meridional mixing would decrease, so temperature gradients would increase. Increased temperature gradients imply increased pressure gradients , which imply increased velocity, which implies more efficient transport from waves in the circulation.
Decreased circulation causes increased circulation.
They imply that decreased circulation allows the surface ocean to warm more because it is not progressing to cooler and downwelling regions so fast. This leads to more of the added heat content staying near the surface. Makes sense to me.
Let’s say they had 2 decades to agree on how it works. The AMOC fits into the climate like this. How are they doing? All things being equal, CO2 warms. Let’s assume the trend hasn’t changed hardly and the paws was a figment. Scrap their paper then.
“Ryan Maue (via TR on Twitter): Compared to last year, sea surface temperatures (SST) between 60°N and 60°S are on average 0.14°C cooler — over the past 28-days. What this shows is that SST can be incredibly volatile irrespective of energy uptake.”
We can get a crystal ball view of where El Niño La Niña is going for about 3 months at the best before the crystal ball is completely clouded. Quoting Judith, much as I admire her, or your own interesting and innovative ideas, does nothing to help clear away the fog. No one knows, no one knows JCH, in a parody of Lister (Their all dead, Dave). You have 50% chance, a toss of the coin, but an absolute no idea chance all the same.
They are volatile both ways. To get what you’re praying for you have to have volatile one way. That’s easy to predict. It won’t happen.
Ask skeptic tool Ryan how big a La Niña would be required to take the 30-year trend back to the depth of the pause (the resumption of the PAWS!)
wacko claimed the 30-year trend is going down. It’s not. With the addition of the June anomaly, the GISS anomaly has topped .19 ℃ per decade.
Lol.
ENSO is described by three states: neutral; La Niña; El Niño. 50-50?
“wacko claimed the 30-year trend is going down. It’s not. With the addition of the June anomaly, the GISS anomaly has topped .19 ℃ per decade.“
GISS anomaly has fallen 0.14C in last 3 months, including 0.06 June. Precisely how a falling end point can suddenly lead to an increase in a trend escapes maths and logic but fits with prayer.
As to the return of the pause. 0.06C monthly for 10 months would likely do it, ie just 10 flips in a row. I can see another 3 in the immediate future. After that?.?
It always falls after an El Niño. Good gawd.
To get to a pause, it has to fall enough to start dropping the 30-year trend.
Month by month, as we leave the end of the 15-16 El Niño in the rearview mirror, the 30-year trend keeps getting higher. Up! It’s going up.
It is now above .19 ℃ per decade, and that trend actually goes back beyond 30 years. The PAWS was killed one dozen ways to Sunday and now the weak back-to-back La Niña events are tossing deeper and deeper dirt on its grave.
How much worse for you can it get? LMAO.
“Month by month, as we leave the end of the 15-16 El Niño in the rearview mirror, the 30-year trend keeps getting higher. Up! It’s going up.“
JCH you are living in a parallel universe. The addition of the June 2018 anomaly, and the 2 months before that all drop the 30 year trend. It is no use changing your statement to the end of the 2016 El Niño and using the following warming event while conveniently ignoring the cooling events.
If you had wanted credibility you would have made made accurate statements in the first place rather than shooting rom the hip and trying to change targets.
Let us be quite clear. If GISS is over 0.19C a decade it could not have done it just now with the aid of 3 dropping anomalies in a row. The trend must have had to fall over the last 3 months, not go up
LMAO:
https://i.imgur.com/Xtz1fSJ.png
https://i.imgur.com/g2TNI3j.png
“This is a long read. But what a cesspit academic existence has become. A truly depressing tale”
The important part to me is:
should we automatically believe her?
I have three examples to consider:
Harvey Weinstein. At least three women have alleged rape or abuse. The media has already tried and convicted him based on a said/she said basis. Where is the old adage innocent until proven guilty? If the the women had hard evidence such as a rape kit, contemporaneous witnesses or circumstantial evidence then they should IMO be believed.
Tom Brokaw. He said she invited him up. She said he just stopped by. She alleges that he asked he out for coffee. Since when is asking a women out considered sexual abuse or a crime? Should we believe her or him. IMO neither and besides where ‘s the crime? So Brokaw is cast as another #metoo predator by the very media he used to be a part of.
Juanita Broaderick alleged Bill Clinton raped her. He said he didn’t. She said she told a friend that the Attorney General raped her. He had invited her up to his room so the media wouldn’t bother them. She had a swollen lip and her friend witnessed it. I was at a seminar a little after Broaderick had an interview with ABC news, The Forensic Dentist presenting the program said biting is either fight or flight. The rapist will often control the women by biting her. The victim will often bite the perpetrator in an attempt to get away. Often times they won’t even remember the biting. Is there enough to corroborate her story? Or enough circumstantial evidence to believe her?
It should be no surprise that the liberal academic world pile on a totally innocent person.Why should they care it’s optics they care about. Who cares if someone gets hurt? No one will question their ethics anyway.
A paper highlighted at WUWT:
Global surface warming enhanced by weak Atlantic overturning circulation
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0320-y
“Evidence from palaeoclimatology suggests that abrupt Northern Hemisphere cold events are linked to weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)1, potentially by excess inputs of fresh water2. But these insights—often derived from model runs under preindustrial conditions—may not apply to the modern era with our rapid emissions of greenhouse gases.”
And still it’s not the monster Godzilla PDO. So if and when the AMOC slows, sea ice recovery.
As far as the paws being paws up, it does appear in their work as far as I know:
http://www.washington.edu/news/2018/07/18/atlantic-ocean-circulation-is-not-collapsing-but-as-it-shifts-gears-global-warming-will-reaccelerate/
It’s 2018. I’d thought we’d have a consensus by now on there not being a pause.
The PAWS-hiatus thing is so easy. It’s hilarious to see you muck it up.
The AMOC has already slowed.
To the extent it was very little, part of the paper’s logic fails and their plot of the GMST is wrong.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uw-s3-cdn/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/07/18102147/new_image-750×782.png
It’s from a news article, but what is wrong with the plot?
I would say this is just another “looks like that Atlantic” that lacks a credible physical mechanism. The North Atlantic is too small to bully the GMST like a rag doll.
Fine. It’s not from the paper. The caption to it reads: Ka-Kit Tung/University of Washington. What else? Can’t say pause. So have to use the word slowdown. What was the slowdown above from 1950 to 1975? What’s wrong with the plot? From 2003 forward there is a horizontal line that hadn’t appeared since 1975. They are bamboozling. They can’t say pause, they don’t, but they say a word that means the same thing. No one objects. Which is fine with me. I think all climate scientists should be cornered into communicating via the bamboozle.
https://i.imgur.com/9SYOEVF.png
To be a flat spot all it has to do is look like a flat spot.
To be a pause in global warming, it has to jump a hurdle. It failed to do so. If it had lasted longer, it would have succeeded. That’s apparently a bitter pill to swallow. It did not last long enough. It went PAWS up before the leap to skeptic glory. It was killed before it blossomed. That does not mean it did not exist; it means there was no pause in global warming. There was a flat spot. It generated a lot of discussion. Ultimately, it got run over before it crossed the highway. It fell short. It’s roadkill. Why did it try to cross the highway? That’s an interesting question.
JCH:
Karl was right.
“If we continue to use the temporary slowed surface warming as an excuse to delay climate action, we’ll regret that decision when the surface warming kicks in with a vengeance.” – Dana
Vengeance is the climate’s sayeth Dana. Recent unprecedented records are that Geico soccer player sliding on his knees doing the funky robot. Climate vengeance is the new normal.
The pause flag has been doused with lighter fluid, lit with a Zippo, dropped onto the ground, kicked and posted on youtube.
Yet, the brave Xianyao Chen & Ka-Kit Tung put forth a ‘slowdown’ and suggest the AMOC can turn the GMST like a rider turning a stampeding herd.
Of course they discuss slowdown; pause; hiatus; PAWS, etc. There’s a flat spot. Those are the common names of the period. The mechanism is something to explore.
Good grief.
Why discuss something weak and inconsequential? It was nothing more than wisp clutched with fervor by people not bright. As suggested, the CO2 super hero is so powerful there is no story. There was never any doubt the flea of the pause would last more than 2 rounds. It was the Super Bowl champion Eagles playing the Little Sisters of the Poor.
pause from what?
I have no idea. The enhanced greenhouse effect?
Pause in the rise of the GMST because of increased joules crossing the the TOA in the upwards direction and/or increased joules crossing downwards below the SST level.
The GHG effect is fine. The marginal rate varies or we can say the effect has varying traction levels with respect to the GMST. This is illustrated by the wide range of the ECS.
There are ups and downs and flat spots. The claim that there was a pause in the rise of the GMST fails.
There was a slowdown in warming at decadal timescale.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/gallery/mohippo/images/migrated-image/d/gmst_obs_vs_cmip5_historical_rcp45_for_web_med.png/gmst_obs_vs_cmip5_historical_rcp45_for_web_med.png
The warming accelerated again with the latest strong el nino (and with new versions of temperature indices). However, the slowdown will back, stronger than before. I predict hadcrut4 20-year no trend by ~2023 and 30-year trend by ~2031.
Lol. No La Niña in there. Just global cooling and a big El Niño. Too funny.
A La Niña does cool anything; an El Niño doesn’t warm anything; a neutral doesn’t neutralize anything. Add them all up you basically get zero, and are left with ~.19 ℃ per decade going on more than 30 straight years in a row.
I like 30 years even though it’s arbitrary:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1988/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1988/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/trend
This is all we get? Since Hansen warned us, we got a slight increase in the rate of warming. We’ve had about 0.14 C per decade since 1958.
We increased annual CO2 emission by about a third since 1988 and this is all that happens? A slight increase in the trend. This is stability.
The 30-year trend in 1988 was .06 ℃ per decade:
https://i.imgur.com/4UbcOqa.png
https://i.imgur.com/7I0VKae.png
30-year trends already peaked (the trend through 2004 was the maximum, ~0.2 K/decade). The trends will decrease now steeply, like in the 50s/60s.
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/RF30.png
During back-to-back La Niña events the 30-year trend continuously went up. If Professor Curry’s El Niño forecast for late 18/early 19, a 20-year trend equal to or above .2 ℃ would be virtually unavoidable.
Especially if OHC for 2nd 1/4 18 is way up. Should know soon,
20 should be 30.
JCH, just curious, do you think the ~60-year temperature cycle is real or just a coincidence?
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle_files/image004.jpg
The AMO song:
Hiding behind AMO? Well, it’s not AMO, it’s global temperatures.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:240/mean:192/mean:144/derivative/scale:1200/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:360/mean:288/mean:216/derivative/scale:1200/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:480/mean:384/mean:288/derivative/scale:1200/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:720/mean:576/mean:432/derivative/scale:1200/plot/hadcrut4gl
The amplitude of the 60-year cycle is about a tenth of a degree, so even if it is a real solar cycle or otherwise, it doesn’t account for most of the warming.
When the eastern Pacific warms, the upward trend in the GMST gets aggressive; when the eastern Pacific cools, there is a flattening of the GMST; when the eastern Pacific warms again, the upward trend in the GMST gets aggressive. Going on 118 years in a row:
https://i.imgur.com/hovRPIk.png
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1988/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1988/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/to:1988/trend
Today’s math lesson:
The 30 year trend will equal the 60 trend when the first half of the trend is zero. Which makes Hansen a genius. He saw about 30 years where temperature rose 0.1 C and predicted or projected something and it warmed at a higher rate than in the prior 30 years.
This very rate change suggest a sensitivity change. It also suggests a different explanation of variability changes.
When Hansen did his work on 1988, he was well aware of natural variability. Climate science had not yet been plagued with the “it explains it all” AMO, and it had not yet been enlightened by the PDO; still isn’t.
60-year trend: .16 ℃ per decade
30-year trend: .19 ℃ per decade
50-year trend: .18 ℃ per decade
40-year trend: .176 ℃ per decade
First 30-year hiatus: minus .04 ℃ per decade
2nd 12-year hiatus: plus .03 ℃ per decade
https://i.imgur.com/PpbvIEv.png
The Eastern Pacific has been staving off surface warming. Its ability to do that is waning, and that has consequences for climate sensitivity.
Re: “I’d thought we’d have a consensus by now on there not being a pause.”
I suggest you go do some reading:
“Rather, the data are fully consistent with a steady global warming trend since the 1970s, superimposed with random, stationary, short-term variability. All recent variations in short-term trends are well within what was to be expected, based on the observed warming trend and the observed variability from the 1970s up to the year 2000.
[…]
By physical arguments, by model simulations, or by correlation analyses with additional data (e.g. El Niño/Southern Oscillation indices or solar forcing data) it is possible to identify specific physical causes of temperature fluctuations, and this is a fruitful topic of ongoing climate research […] which helps us to understand natural climate variability. However, this is distinct from the question of whether a significant trend change has occurred in the temperature data as such. That is not the case. It is unfortunate that a major public and media discussion has revolved around an alleged significant and unexpected slowdown in the rate of global warming, for which there never was a statistical basis in the measured global surface temperature data.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6825
http://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/12/5/054001/Full/erlaa6825f2_online.jpg
So if I need Grant Foster and two other people to tell me the public and the media is wrong, I’ll know where to look. I wonder who my President is?
Ragnaar –
Pause in the rise of the GMST…
A rise doesn’t pause. A mechanism or action pauses. Since you presumably believe that there is a GHE, then you biwce that there is a mechanism of warning in response to ACO2 emissions. Has that mechanism paused?
IMO, if you want to describe the line on a graph, you might consider using the language one typically uses to describe line on a graph…e. g, “flatten out.”
Using the term “a pause in global warming” is misleading, unless you think that the mechanism of response to ACO2 emissions has “paused.”For the train I described, plus the fact that you aren’t even including OHC.
Better, IMO, to say something in the order of “a relatively short-term decline in the longer-term trend of increase in temperatures, in SATs only.”
What’s wrong with precise language?
Joshua:
An Interlude: A piece of music played between other pieces or between the verses of a hymn. The song of the climate. CO2 warming and only CO2 warming is boring and isn’t even music.
“Has that mechanism paused?”
Variability has at times countered it. And things such as the thermal mass of the oceans will counter the rise in the GMST on timescales of centuries.
Variability has at times countered it.
The point being, “global warming hasn’t paused.” The strength of counteracting mechanisms has varied.
(1) What is wrong with precision in language?
(2) Please describe what those counteracting mechanisms are, and how you have measured their variability.
(3). Please describe the underlying causality that has resulted in that variability.
Joshua:
My apologies for my delayed response.
One: Precise language is generally good.
I said: “Pause in the rise of the GMST…”
I do think it is technically possible for that to happen. It depends on the definition of pause. Interlude is one of many synonyms which I used to try to determine what pause means. We many not agree on what it does mean. First difference references time frame. While precision is good, the world has changed to one more favorable than before to drive by sound bites.
Two: A counteracting mechanism is the thermal mass of the oceans. Like setting a car engine on a glacier. This will cool it. So as the GMST tries to melt ice and warm the oceans… We don’t understand ocean circulations enough but it is generally agreed they do cause the GMST history to be more than a straight line. For decades the rise in the GMST has led the rise in the SSTs and the rise in the oceans temperature to their full depth. As this difference grows because of CO2, the increasing differential will move joules, into the layer below where SSTs are measured, so I say. All things being equal, warmer SSTs move some joules downward. I think we stay out of trouble when saying that no one has adequately measured variability.
One may conclude I made this up and sketched it out on the back of napkin. Al Capone robbed banks because that’s where the money was. The oceans to their full depth is where the money is. I can count well enough to know that.
hehe.
thank you. joshua
Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. #8220;This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8703/la-nina-and-pacific-decadal-oscillation-cool-the-pacific
We could follow the evidence – to be precise.
My curiosity was piqued in a previous thread about warming repercussions from global aerosol removal. I found this recently published research letter describing warming induced from aerosol removal. If it’s accurate then it demonstrates bigger numbers than I would have thought, from both a historical context and the future. I would be interested in the boards take, in judgement of its veracity.
Excerpts:
Here we show the climate impacts from removing present‐day anthropogenic aerosol emissions and compare them to the impacts from moderate GHG‐dominated global warming. Removing aerosols induces a global mean surface heating of 0.5–1.1°C, and precipitation increase of 2.0–4.6%. Extreme weather indices also increase. We find a higher sensitivity of extreme events to aerosol reductions, per degree of surface warming, in particular over the major aerosol emission regions. Under near‐term warming, we find that regional climate change will depend strongly on the balance between aerosol and GHG forcing.
Discussion and Conclusions
We have shown how climate impacts from the expected strong reductions in anthropogenic emissions of BC, organic carbon, and SO2 may compound with those from GHG‐driven global warming. The models simulate an additional global warming of around 0.7°C when fully removing anthropogenic aerosols, with a model range of (0.5, 1.1)°C. This is comparable in magnitude to the 1°C already realized since preindustrial times.
Populated regions see stronger changes in temperature, precipitation, and extremes than the land area mean. In the major aerosol source regions, both temperature, precipitation, and extreme weather indices are more sensitive to a removal of anthropogenic aerosols than to GHG increases, per degree of global mean temperature change. The geographical pattern of changes to the extreme weather indices is also different from that expected from a similar GHG‐driven surface temperature increase, with elevated sensitivities to aerosol changes in the Northern Hemisphere. We highlight East Asia as a region where extreme precipitation is particularly sensitive to a reduction in aerosol emissions.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076079
Mark Lilla points out that the phrase “speaking as an X” is really a claim of privileged position in the debate, one that frames the debate as “the winner of the argument will be whoever has invoked the morally superior identity”
Who is not morally superior? Big oil, corporations, skeptics. I support science, polar bears and butterflies. I therefore have an I win button.
The link covers tribalism. How it is the game in ID politics. The go to. The bread and butter play
https://quillette.com/2018/07/17/what-is-the-tribe-of-the-anti-tribalists/
One of the best articles.
Spring is springing sooner, throwing nature’s rhythms out of whack
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/07/23/npr-spring-springing-sooner-throwing-natures-rhythms-out-of-whack
In whack, out of whack, plain old whack.
Whack – adjective; appalling in nature, unconventional.
Whack is appalling. Out of whack would have to be less appalling. But the climate can be whack and out of whack at the same time. Does nature appall a drought? It abhors a straight line so that would cover trend lines. Trend lines are whack.
“”Germany has spent $200 billion over the past two decades to promote cleaner sources of electricity,” wind and solar supply just 18% of electricity, compared to 43% for coal – mind-blowing because we were told that coal would “go away the fastest.””
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2018/07/15/trump-nato-summit-exposed-germanys-natural-gas-problem/#7ac0af85378f
Germany’s population: 83 million
Ours: 326 million
Germany’s GDP: $3 trillion
Our GDP: $19 trillion
So about a trillion dollars to get to 18% of electricity, that’s more expensive and less reliable. Alley has a phrase, Climate Zombies. How about Renewable Zombies who just keep walking towards an economic cliff?
An IEA chart at the article shows that Germany’s total energy supply is 2% wind and 1% solar. At 3%, Hansen is right. At only 3%, their energy system is wavering, shuddering. Politicians are backing away.
I’ve said I like fracking and pipelines. Germany is finding it needs natural gas not because a capitalist says so. Because it wants to go Green and because of science.
Germany did not spend that money reducing CO2 output. That was never their goal. The goal was to build renewable power. Which they did. About 50 GW solar and 65 GW of wind power. As explained in Rupert Darwall’s Green Tyranny: https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian-Industrial-ebook/product-reviews/B07FZ9C5HT/
Why? Because conventional helicopters are expensive, complicated and inelegant.
https://youtu.be/LeFxjRMv5U8
The first thing to do is swap in an ICE hybrid engine.
Over at WUWT, Comendador opines:
“The reason climate models don’t diverge in the historical record: more sensitive models have less forcing and more heat going into the ocean…”
The context may be that models with higher sensitivities work just as well as those with less sensitivities, to a point, for the past. My question is, How can this be?
I’ve thought this before, the better CO2 insulates, the more it stuffs and keeps in the oceans. It might be a better way to approach to the problem to figure out how well it does that?
I simplified counterpoint is the oceans are a mirror with little heat capacity. And heat not leaving the sea surface because of CO2 is a Godzilla sized monster under the bed which is only about 3 feet away. The Dana/Vengeance quote. You can put a monster under the bed but you can’t make him stay there.
Now as tin foil hatted as this all sounds, the heat trapped in the oceans is of course melting the ice around the Antarctica coasts. So the monster ocean heat is there and trying to do us in. I read that in a peer reviewed study. The heat could just pop out of the oceans for Karl to measure it before it got to the ice. So rather than me dying from heatstroke, I have to stand on a beach for 15 years and watch the sea level rise 3 inches.
While rust never sleeps, so to does sea level rise never stop. It’s just that I am bored to tears waiting for that to happen and this is because of CO2.
Now the two things balance. All the GMST we aren’t going to get will be steric SLR. Which provides some explanation of the term climate change. Global warming is converted to something else, SLR.
I’ll walk out on a ledge. So if the GCMs are correct, and the sensitivity of them can vary and we get the same answer, we have our sensitivity answer. Because the higher it is, the more the ocean offset is. When will CO2 and the oceans stop doing what they’ve been doing since 1950 or 1900 or whenever?
All those claiming the oceans can’t keep up, raise their hands. The differential keeps rising.
Arguing about a “pause” again?
There is no pause.
There is no rise.
There is no fall.
There is deterministic nonperiodic flow.
I don’t see El Niño for Christmas:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/#tabs=Outlooks
Except in 1 out of ~20 projections.
I noticed that. This graph, also BoM, indicates otherwise:
https://i.imgur.com/MRu3RnM.png
Except BoM, course.
Models rely on persistence. But what causes change?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/gyre-impact-e1532565836300.png
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao.mrf.gif
Geophysics of course.
My latest expose: “The U.S. government is still the UN’s top climate alarmist”
We fund a lot of the IPCC’s scary climate modeling.
http://www.cfact.org/2018/07/24/the-u-s-government-is-still-the-uns-top-climate-alarmist/
Here is part of it:
President Trump and Energy Secretary Perry are both vocal skeptics of climate change alarmism, but the US Energy Department is still running one of the top drivers of alarmist science for the United Nations. This engine of alarmism is obscurely named the Climate Model Intercomparison Project or CMIP. Climate change alarmism is based entirely on computer modeling and CMIP is where the core modeling comes from.
What CMIP does is provide the computer climate modeling for the infamous UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading proponent of alarmist science. CMIP itself is a UN activity, part of the UN’s World Climate Research Program. The modeling is done by major climate modeling centers around the world, including a number of US federal agencies. So while the Trump Administrations says it does not support the IPCC, it is actually doing a lot of free work for it. This should stop.
What the Energy Department does first is to coordinate and oversee all of this global modeling activity. The CMIP office at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the nerve center for all of UN CMIP. It is there that the modeling centers get their instructions and where they deliver their results for IPCC use.
This coordination work is paid for by the US, not the UN, as is the extensive modeling work done by the various US CMIP agencies and their laboratories. This US work involves numerous computer models, funded mostly by DOE, NSF, NOAA and NASA. No figures are available for the cost of all this work, but it must be many millions of dollars. Most of the climate models run on expensive supercomputers. So not only is the Trump Administration supporting climate alarmism via UN CMIP, they are paying heavily for the privilege.
That the modeling results support alarmism is guaranteed by the instructions given to the global modeling centers. These instructions specify which causes can be used to model and explain climate change. All of the significant allowable causes are due to human activity, with CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels being by far the largest.
The IPCC then uses these rigged computer results to claim that humans are causing the climate change. This is a classic case of circular reasoning, which is explained in some detail here:
http://www.cfact.org/2018/03/01/circular-reasoning-with-climate-models/
There is more in the article.
“Some of these had huge Republican support, such as the 45Q tax credits for carbon capture and 45J nuclear-power production credits.”
“The credits should allow the US to restart the stalled construction of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in the state of Georgia, and accelerate the development of advanced nuclear technologies, which include small, modular rectors that produce little or no nuclear waste. “It’ll start a race between nuclear startups to make use of the credits on offer,” Powell says.”
https://qz.com/1203803/donald-trump-signed-a-landmark-bill-to-support-carbon-capture-and-nuclear-power/
The nuke credit is only on the first six gigawatts placed into service. They say the capture credit can be used on depleted oil fields that push out more oil with CO2.
It’s a money hole Ragnaar but the government loves to pick winners and losers.
Story from Bloomberg:
Nobody seems keen to buy the partially built V.C. Summer nuclear plant in South Carolina, so now the state’s biggest power provider is trying to sell off the equipment.
“No other utilities have shown interest in purchasing part or all of the Summer construction project,” Jim Brogdon, interim chief executive officer of Santee Cooper, said in an emailed statement Monday. The board declared the equipment as “surplus property” and authorized the state-owned utility to pursue a sale.
Santee Cooper and its partner Scana Corp. pulled the plug on the project about a year ago after costs ballooned to more than $20 billion and put the two half-done reactors on the block.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-23/who-wants-to-buy-a-pair-of-half-built-nuclear-reactors-nobody
Also in the news:
Japan signals major shift from nuclear to renewable energy.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tepco-seeks-overseas-partners-in-renewable-energy-pivot
Tepco seeks overseas partners in renewable energy pivot
Fukushima operator plans to move away from nuclear and shrinking Japanese market. Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings will pursue renewable energy projects worth tens of billions of dollars in a sharp turn away from nuclear power and an effort that will require finding partners abroad, the power company’s president told Nikkei on Monday.
Tepco aims to develop renewable energy installations in Japan and overseas that produce 6 gigawatts to 7 gigawatts of power.
But the renewable energy sector is falling too.
7/26/2018 First Solar swings to a 49 million dollar loss and Siemas Gamesa (wind) saw revenue fall 21 percent to 2.14 billion euros ($2.49 billion) in the April-June quarter, while adjusted EBIT fell 26 percent to 156 million euros due to lower prices.
Jacksmith4tx:
Vogtle and V.C. Summer may be lost causes. The nuke killers should be studied. They’ve been effective.
If V.C Summer is sold, its price will reset. It’s possible the buyer will make it work. Why else would they buy it?
The economic rationale for first of a kind public/private partnerships is to reduce private risk to facilitate innovation – without which economies are at profound risk.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/smr-foak.png
http://smrstart.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SMR-Start-Economic-Analysis-APPROVED-2017-09-14.pdf
And Jack’s media skimming misses the point in a way that seems habitual.
Robert,
Did you read Judith’s link to the carbonbrief.org article?
You are projecting what might happen but reality is nuclear is struggling. Lots of reasons. As the latest US funding I noticed this:
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/northwest-projects-win-shares-20-million-federal-grants-nuclear-tech/
Speaking of projecting, here’s the latest forecast from NREL. It’s a government report so might be fake.
https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2018/summary.html
Elsewhere; the Chinese and Russians cut a nuclear deal recently which surprisingly happened just after they slashed their solar feed-in tariff and canceled several GW of future projects.
27 June 2018
“The record-setting nuclear deal inked between China and Russia earlier this month is the latest blow to America’s declining influence in commercial nuclear power across the globe.
The deal envisions the construction of four third-generation (Gen 3+) VVER-1200 reactors designed by Russia’s Rosatom Corp., along with the supply of generator parts for China’s ambitious lunar program and the joint development of an advanced CFR600 “fast breeder” reactor. In total, the contract could reach over 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) in construction costs, making it the largest bilateral nuclear deal ever signed between the two countries. The value of the initial set of contracts is estimated to be between $3 and $5 billion.”
www . ensec . org
The point is about economic rationalism and first of a kind deployment. Not superficial analysis of current technologies based on media skimming. You miss the point even when spelled out for you.
I’ll suggest this: Winning the war on Nuclear power in the United States cascades across the world. If we could deploy our own nukes in our country, we could export them. But if can’t do the first thing, we can’t do the second thing.
I am going to blame the Republicans, but not Trump yet. They’ve been sitting on their hands for decades, not wishing to offend anyone. It would be easy to say now, this is what we stand for, Nuclear power. And this is why we stand for it. The list is large and includes reduced CO2 emissions. Then they split the Greens on the issue. They ought to able to see where the Greens are weak.
Japan, big wave, problems. All the snowflake countries melt. We aren’t that. Let’s go Republicans.
Minnesota Commercial Solar Panels
In our tour of SW Minnesota yesterday, I noticed new commercial solar panel installations. Doubled from a year ago I suppose. Does this make sense for us? In Summer, Xcel steps up our rates. You can counter that somewhat with a saver’s switch for your A/C condenser. This indicates maximum load during the Summer. The seasonal load/input factors are only an argument in favor of commercial solar. There are many other factors as well.
I went to Google and typed in your lead sentence, I clicked the AI engine called “I’m Feeling Lucky” and it returned this:
““If the word gets out about the PV rider capacity credit, I do believe developers will move to Minnesota,” he said.
Minnesota has about 850 megawatts of installed solar capacity, 14th in the country, according to the U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association, which projects the state to reach over 1,200 megawatts within the next five years.
The program began June 1.
Source:
https://energynews.us/2018/06/20/midwest/minnesota-adjusts-solar-incentives-to-cover-more-commercial-projects/
If the SEIA is right then that’s about 70MW/yr for 5 years. Multiply that by a couple of $ per watt to install and it might keep a couple of small operators in business.
Just curious, are you using more electricity year over year, about the same or less?
I read the article.
I still find it a bit less than clear what this means:
“…Xcel created a clearer structure for incentivizing solar producers during the daily high demand time frame of 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Most business customers with solar arrays of 40 kW or larger are eligible to receive 7 cents per kilowatt-hour during that time.”
It does mean this. They should pay more in some way during the Summer for systems that orientate to the South West. All of the systems I saw were ground mounted, and most were fixed. Probably all with a South orientation to sell the most juice. They need to sell less juice, but more during prime time for fixed systems.
“Among the 127 segments run on the country’s TV networks about heatwaves this summer, only one mentioned the connection between climate change and extreme heat…”
https://qz.com/1340727/how-can-we-talk-about-heatwaves-without-mentioning-climate-change/?utm_source=qzfb
Winning the battle is not the same as winning the war. Hardly anyone cares. A few barbs thrown at deniers and then back to shaming someone else. Where’s my smartphone? The alarmists hate Trump not over the climate, but for sucking all the attention away from climate change. You’d have burn all of Minnesota’s forests to the ground before the MSM would notice. They’re out stalking voles to see if they are dying while the MSM is trying to take out the President.
India just pushed its booming solar industry into chaos
https://qz.com/1344287/india-has-imposed-a-25-safeguard-duty-on-imported-solar-cells/?utm_source=qzfb
Tariffs because their own solar panel makers can’t compete with cheaper imports. Meaning you can’t have solar panels in a situation of capitalism ever. Some other goal, will intrude like it does into everything else. A tariff should make them more expensive. Making them less economical, but allowing politicians to claim victory while things cost more.
U.S. says no need for better gas mileage, heavy vehicles safer
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/07/31/us-says-no-need-for-better-gas-mileage-heavy-vehicles-safer
Trump’s administration says so. EV makers ought to be happy as they’ll compare better, as well as hybrids.
Carbon ‘leak’ may have warmed the planet for 11,000 years, encouraging human civilization
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-carbon-leak-planet-years-human.html
“…the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose about 20 parts per million (ppm), from 260 ppm in the early Holocene to 280 ppm in the late Holocene, whereas carbon dioxide was typically stable or declined over other interglacial periods.”
So there’s this slow temperature decrease during the Holocene while CO2 levels increase. They have one of the few Figures that show this.
The Problem With The New York Times’ Big Story on Climate Change
By portraying the early years of climate politics as a tragedy, the magazine lets Republicans and the fossil-fuel industry off the hook.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/nyt-mag-nathaniel-rich-climate-change/566525/
“The article tells the tale of three men who, between 1979 and 1989, helped turn climate change into a major political issue. At the beginning of this period, few Washington officials knew much of anything about global warming. By the end, President George H.W. Bush was close to signing a United Nations treaty to address it. Rich writes with gripping, novelistic detail, and he captures the comedy and frustration of scientists struggling to shape the political sphere.”
There’s your science. It’s like training a dog to fight. It doesn’t want to fight, but you can make it fight.
“Some small group of men glimpsed humanity’s tragic flaw—but, woe unto us, they could not convince an intransigent and ignorant public before it was too late…”
Same story, different decade.
The most important hockey stick:
https://d1jn4vzj53eli5.cloudfront.net/mc/ekrayewski/2017_04/gd1.jpg?h=386&w=624
Data as History: Charting the Last 2000 Years of Progress
Test post.
Here is a graph:
https://i1.wp.com/agree-to-disagree.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/graph-21-and-22.png
Here is a link:
https://agree-to-disagree.com