Week in review – science edition

Posted on April 14, 2019 by | 159 Comments

by Judith Curry

A few things that caught my eye this past few weeks.

Why did the trend of loss accelerate after about 2000?” Meehl et al. (2018) offer an explanation.

Antarctica’s iceberg graveyard could reveal the ice sheet’s future. [link]

Latif: Decadal Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowing events in a climate model [link]

Koutsoyiannis: Extreme-oriented selection and fitting of probability distributions. [link]

Strengthened linkage between midlatitudes and Arctic in boreal winter [link]

Scientists discover evidence of long ocean memory [link]

Less ice in Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago [link]

How badly is humanity’s growing acoustic footprint damaging ocean life? [link]

Solar geoengineering is projected to decrease, not increase, harmful UV radiation. [link]

Influence of global warming on the rapid intensification of western North Pacific tropical cyclones 

A new study ( ) has found the Larsen C ice shelf in experienced a recent 3-year spike in late season surface in part due to warm winds coming from the peninsula’s mountains.

Intensification of the Northern Hemisphere land CO2 sink in 2000s, while declines from the SH.  Press Release Paper

Why California burns – its forests have too many trees [link]

Backward and forward drift trajectories of sea ice in the northwestern Arctic Ocean in response to changing atmospheric circulation

New analysis technique for  systematic evaluation of simulated extratropical variability. 

Atmospheric Circulation Response to Anomalous Siberian Forcing in October 2016 and its Long‐Range Predictability –

Predictable hydrological and ecological responses to Holocene North Atlantic variability [link]

the link between dry season rainfall and the PDO in NE India.

2 years of mooring data along the West Ice Shelf finds new controls for the flow of very warm water. [link]

 “The contribution of global to western U.S. loss has in reality been large and widespread since the 1980s, but mostly offset by natural variability in the system.”

Reassessing California’s overdue earthquake [link]

Mid-latitude net precipitation decreased with Arctic warming during the Holocene [link]

Jakobshavn Isbrae has been thickening since 2016, after two decades of thinning and retreat

A deposit of teeth and bones recently discovered in an island cave in the Philippines may have belonged to a newly identified species closely related to humans and “unknown previously to science [link]

Arctic warming is causing a 60-fold increase in permafrost landslides [link]

SWEDEN GLACIERS GAINED MASS From 1970-2001 After Rapid 1920s-’60s Retreat [link]

The day the dinosaurs died. [link]

Synoptic weather patterns that bring light winds, clear skies and high humidity, result in reef scale meteorology that appears to have a greater influence on coral bleaching events than the background oceanic warming trend. [link]

Assessing the robustness of Antarctic temperature reconstructions over the past 2 millennia using pseudoproxy and data assimilation experiments (open access)

Polar warming: even east Antarctica is starting to melt [link]

The Recovery Glacier will be Antarctica’s biggest contributor to a global rise in sea level. We’re starting to understand what controls its melting.  

What climate models get wrong about future water availability [link]

Historical record of floods in Midwest

Trees release flammable methane—here’s what that means for climate

How confident are predictability estimates of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation?

Essential gaps and uncertainties in the understanding of the roles and functions of Arctic sea ice

“To learn where is vulnerable to shelf loss, we divided it into 14 sectors, applied extreme melting to each sector [&] ran our ice flow model 1000 years into the future.”  

The renaissance of hydrology [link]

The Effect of El Niño on Flood Damages in the Western United States

“we conclude that historical European LULC change which took place over a relatively short duration (20 years) likely had an impact on the water and energy balances at regional to continental scales”

Cluster‐Based Evaluation of Model Compensating Errors: A Case Study of Cloud Radiative Effect in the Southern Ocean.

Air pollution from corn production might contribute to thousands of deaths each year. [link]

Ice drove past Indo-Pacific climate variations: Uncovering the drivers of Indo-Pacific regional climate during the Last Glacial Maximum is important for understanding how hydrologic cycles might change in the future.

Research Spotlight: The tropical Pacific’s “global warming hiatus” is over — it’s been shifting toward El Niño–like conditions since 2011.

Size matters–The size of particulate matter in the atmosphere determines how it deposits in the body and leads to different health challenges. [link]

New, high resolution dataset: *71 Climate Extremes Indices *from 1970 till 2016 suited for sectoral impacts assessment and hot spot analyses. – *Data here: *More info here:

New paper: Urbanization has increased minimum temperatures 1.7K in the UK

Radiative Forcing by Dust and Black Carbon on the Juneau Icefield, Alaska

New research article: Impact of millennial-scale oceanic variability on the Greenland ice-sheet evolution throughout the last glacial period

Heat transport pathways into the Arctic and their connections to surface air temperatures (open access)

Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Human‐Perceived Temperature Extremes and Underlying Uncertainties

Northern Hemisphere Snow-Cover Trends (1967–2018): Comparison between Climate Models & Obs – CMIP5 “climate models were found to poorly predict observed trends” 

What ancient rivers on mars reveal about its ‘great drying’ [link]

Assessment of contemporary satellite sea ice thickness products for Arctic sea ice (open access)
.

Social Science, Technology & Policy

The levees protecting will be too low in 4 years- because putting weight onto delta soils accelerates subsidence. [link]

New thermal battery could be game changer for storing renewable energy [link]

Dealing with the concrete – CO2 problem [link]

Robust abatement pathways to tolerable climate futures [link]

Localities in the delta that is predicted to be hardest hit by climate change have shifted 40,000 ha of farming land to aquaculture and growing fruit trees as part of efforts to make climate-smart agriculture.

EPA scientists price out the cost of climate change [link]

What do we know about cities and climate mitigation? [link]

When Does “It Will Hurt the Poor” Outweigh “It’s Good for the Environment?”

Why not thorium? A forgotten war technology could safely power Earth for millions of years. Here’s why we aren’t using it. [link]

Why the Green New Deal is financially lethal [link]

Let nature heal climate and biodiversity crises [link]

The dirty secret of Electric Vehicles : cobalt mined by exploited children in the Democratic Republic of Congo and how to dispose of used lithium batteries [link]

Storing electricity with pumped hydro [link]

A lawsuit was filed recently at the Court of Justice seeking to stop the European Union from counting wood grown in the United States and elsewhere as a renewable energy source. [link]

Solution to the nuclear waste problem [link]

Climate chaos is coming – and the Pinkerton’s are ready [link]

Reflecting on 50 years of geoengineering research [link]

The “indigenous depopulation” of the Americas during the 1500s may have contributed to one of the Little Ice Age’s chilliest cold snaps.

Are you biased against nuclear power? Yup, say scientists

On the use and misuse of climate change projections in international development [link]

Inexpensive heating reduces winter mortality [link]

North Carolina has ordered Duke to excavate all of its coal ash ponds in the state:

New reports offer solutions to protect agains recent surge of climate liability lawsuits [link]

Ocean plastic pollution: A convenient but distracting truth? [link]

Heaven or high water: selling Miami’s last 50 years [link]

Flood insurance reform won’t be pleasant. But it’s necessary.

Climate change as anarchy: The need for a new structural theory of international relations [link]

The hidden air pollution of our homes [link]

About Science & Scientists

Insightful new article about the IPCC: “the legitimacy of deliberation relies on its presentation of a greater breadth and variety of relevant knowledge and information”

The new science of how to argue – constructively [link]

How diverse teams produce better outcomes [link]

Excellent overview of the college admissions scandal [link]

Duke Univ: The untold story of how students risked their careers to fight a cover-up [link]

Garth Paltridge: Climate’s Uncertainty Principle

Larry Kummer:  The noble corruption of climate science [link]

On trying to get Camille Paglia fired from her university position [link]

Mathematicians have discovered the very fastest way to multiply. [link]

Schools need to teach kids how not to be offended.  Giving offense is the price of diversity, not an impediment to diversity [link]

Science activism: Direct link to Letter in Science now signed by over 4500 scientists supporting the young climate protesters

Activists must stop harassing scientists [link]

Pluto has been officially reclassified as a planet [link]

In quantum games, there is no way to play the odds [link]

Gender: is gender a mere tool of the patriarchy? or is it hardwired before birth? [link]

Climate change and the 10 warning signs for cults [link]

Lincoln on how to handle criticism [link]

Although we’ve been told that peer review has been essential part of science since 17th century, it’s really only been widely used since late 20th (e.g., Nature started in 1973).

Is it right to campaign to collect signatures for what is a scientific method and statistical inference? The answer is not so simple

Proof finds that all change is a mix of order and randomness [link]

How ideological bias in academia hampers the search for truth

Why we need the Knightian uncertainty hypothesis [link]

The twitterization of the academic mind [link].  Social media has made scholars impatient, vicious and dull.

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159 responses to “Week in review – science edition”

  1. Barn E. Rubble | April 14, 2019 at 3:57 pm |

    RE: “Pluto has been officially reclassified as a planet [link]”
    As a Scorpio this is good news . . .

    • edimbukvarevic | April 14, 2019 at 4:23 pm |

      “Their reasoning was that too many people would confuse Pluto (the doggy of Disney fame) with Pluto (the planet, of space and stuff).”

      “In addition to Pluto’s reclassification, Dr. Joggy has also proposed that the IAU create a new category of planet called a “hyper-planet.” These hyper-planets, according to Dr. Joggy, are like regular planets but at least two times as awesome (thanks to the fancy, fancy name).”

  3. RiHo08 | April 14, 2019 at 5:29 pm |

    When you go to sell your house, the real estate lady says: before showing the house, you should bake some bread and set out a bouquet of flowers.

    Not so fast says this New Yorker article: “The hidden air pollution of our homes [link]” as indoor air quality has been reduced by these olfactory and visual attractive agents and by our choice of foods, personal care products, cleaning agents and cooking fuels and preparation methods.

    Living indoors may be worse than breathing the air of the great out of doors, to which I have a solution: central heating/air conditioning air filters. The air filter that originally came with your HAVC system usually was to remove lint from the air to keep the blowers bearings clean. Today, there is a gradation of increasingly pollutant removing air filters including a MERV 16. That is, Minimum Efficient Reporting Value, removing bacteria, cooking oils, smoke, most insecticides, VOCs and many more. Removed also is your aerosolized skin oils and other stuff your body produces that doesn’t necessarily smell all that great.

    So, instead of giving up your breakfast toast, or Thanksgiving’s turkey, or stir-fry, or Indian seasonings, tinker with your furnace, add MERV 16 filter and enjoy the great-in-doors.

  4. David Wojick | April 14, 2019 at 5:53 pm |

    Looking ahead:
    https://www.cfact.org/2019/04/05/2020-climate-madness-looms/

    Climate is heating up. The children are marching. What a show! With many months to go.

  5. RiHo08 | April 14, 2019 at 6:12 pm |

    “Size matters–The size of particulate matter in the atmosphere determines how it deposits in the body and leads to different health challenges. [link]”

    The link led me to yet another link to the original article. Now, I have trouble with models in general, basically because I don’t understand how they are constructed and in particular, their use to explain very complex issues like airborne particles and respiratory health. This leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. To their credit, the authors try to use particulate measurements obtained in Eastern US and Europe and model particulates in regions of the world that have few measurements. They then attempt to explain particle size and deposition in the respiratory system and eventually go onto human health impacts like heart disease etc. Some of the original article’s references I have been familiar with for a long time. Many are epidemiology studies like Dockery’s Six City Study, etc. Causation does not equal correlation.

    We breath in particles of all sizes, shapes and composition every day until our last. There are effective defense mechanisms all along the respiratory tract that removes these particles: the mucocilliary escalator system, and it operates 24/7. Then there is the cellular defense systems including macrophages, lymphocytes and leukocytes then an array of circulating and fixed molecular forces. This formidable defense system can be somewhat overwhelmed by smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day or something similar. For air pollution to be effective in impacting human health, there is to be sure a range of people’s sensitivity and effectiveness of their defenses, but, the most important, is the concentration of airborne products that the respiratory system is exposed to and…for how long. Brief episodes verses prolonged episodes matter.

    Living in highly polluted air does negatively impact health in general and respiratory health in particular. An observation of this truism, at the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th Century here in the US, consumption, ie, Tuberculosis (Tbc) was rampant and highly communicable. Our cities were highly polluted in part, by homes burning coal for heating. Incomplete combustion and high air particle numbers. Within a brief period of time, in the 1920s homes were rapidly converted to using natural gas for indoor heating and the outdoor air quality dramatically improved. What was observed and not really explained: the incidence and then prevalence of Tbc plummeted in the US, prior to the invention and use of effective anti-Tbc drugs in the early 1950s. The Tbc sanitariums were closed.

    Today, the incidence and high prevalence of Tbc occurs where? In the locations in the world where there is the highest air pollution. The use of natural gas for cooking and heating will drive down the human toll of Tbc.

  6. Peter Lang | April 14, 2019 at 6:13 pm |

    Climate’s Uncertainty Principle

    By Garth Paltridge

    “Whether we should do anything now to limit our impact on future climate boils down to an assessment of a relevant cost-benefit ratio. That is, we need to put a dollar number to the cost of doing something now, a dollar number to the benefit thus obtained by the future generations, and a number to a thing called “discount for the future”—this last being the rate at which our concern for the welfare of future generations falls away as we look further and further ahead. Only the first of these numbers can be estimated with any degree of reliability. Suffice it to say, if the climate-change establishment were to have its way with its proposed conversion of the global usage of energy to a usage based solely on renewable energy, the costs of the conversion would be horrifically large. It is extraordinary that such costs can even be contemplated when the numbers for both the future benefit and the discount for the future are little more than abstract guesses.”

    https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/04/climates-uncertainty-principle/

  7. Peter Lang | April 14, 2019 at 6:15 pm |

    Dealing with the concrete – CO2 problem

    What problem? CO2 is not a problem. It’s beneficial!

  8. Peter Lang | April 14, 2019 at 6:23 pm |

    Why not thorium? A forgotten war technology could safely power Earth for millions of years. Here’s why we aren’t using it.

    Here’s the real reason we aren’t using thorium: its many decades away from being viable. To get it to the point of being commercially viable would require building as much thorium power station capacity as current existing world nuclear capacity.

    Comparison of thorium and uranium fuel cycles UK National Nuclear Laboratory
    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/65504/6300-comparison-fuel-cycles.pdf

    • nobodysknowledge | April 15, 2019 at 4:06 am |

      Thank you for the reference P L. Look like the practical technology of Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) hasn`t been developed yet (2012).
      “The Technology Readiness Level of the MSR fuel cycle should be regarded as low, because it has never been demonstrated as a whole and experience to date has been limited to small scale laboratory experiments. “

  9. Stephen Heins | April 14, 2019 at 6:43 pm |

    Judy,

    “Thanks for information” to quote Van Morrison.

    Yikes, there is so much stinking information today! And you are linking it. Thanks, I think.

    Steve

    “I’m on the road again and I am searching for the philosopher stone.”

    Van Morrison

    Stephen Heins Business writer, Published Poet, Precise, Proactive The Word Merchant, LLC steve@heins.net http://www.twmheins.com 920-918-8098

    >

  10. brentns1 | April 14, 2019 at 7:52 pm |

    Lying with science: a guide to myth debunking
    Pseudoscience is on the rise – and the media is completely hooked
    ‘The whole aim of practical politics,’ wrote H.L. Mencken, ‘is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’ Newspapers, politicians and pressure groups have been moving smoothly for decades from one forecast apocalypse to another (nuclear power, acid rain, the ozone layer, mad cow disease, nanotechnology, genetically modified crops, the millennium bug…) without waiting to be proved right or wrong.
    Increasingly, in a crowded market for alarm, it becomes necessary to make the scares up. More and more headlines about medical or environmental panics are based on published scientific papers, but ones that are little more than lies laundered into respectability with a little statistical legerdemain.
    https://spectator.us/lying-science-myth-debunking/

  11. Wagathon | April 14, 2019 at 9:37 pm |

    Influence of global warming on the rapid intensification of western North Pacific tropical cyclones https://buff.ly/2KxIdkj

    Amazing finding– global warming (GW) doesn’t just cause more tropical cyclones but also, GW causes a ‘rapid intensification’ of them, but essentially… the destabilization of the tropical atmosphere, due to GW, essentially cases changes variation in ENSO events such that changes in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, due to GW, there’s no more than the usual number of tropical cyclones, despite GW.

  12. alankwelch | April 15, 2019 at 3:53 am |

    Sorry Judith but this is more “Week in Preview”.
    On Thursday, 18th April the UK BBC1 Television Channel will be broadcasting a programme “Climate Change: the Facts” presented by Sir David Attenborough. Listed as two of the main climatologists appearing are Dr James Hansen and Dr Michael Mann. Do I
    1 Hide behind the sofa
    2 Watch the 25th repeat of “Everybody loves Raymond” instead
    3 Give up debating Climate Change and take up patchwork.
    Unfortunately, I cannot refuse to pay for my TV license as I am old enough to be given a free one!!
    So, I will be watching in trepidation and trying not to shout at the television too much.
    Seriously, I fear the programme will be very biased and with Sir David Attenborough’s decades of excellent work, including his work on natural history and pollution he is very well respected. But any debate, in this instant, will probably be rather one sided. I predict 97% of the viewers will believe every word Hansen and Mann say.

    • David Wojick | April 15, 2019 at 2:12 pm |

      Here in the US roughly half the adult population are skeptical of climate alarmism. I suspect that fraction is somewhat greater than 3% in the UK. Have there been no polls on this?

      A real shame about Attenborough. Gone down the rabbit hole.

      • alankwelch | April 15, 2019 at 5:47 pm |

        My 97% was a bit of tongue in cheek. Unfortunately skepticism/acceptance of GW is confused with skepticism/acceptance of AGW but I image the UK is similar number wise as the US. Interesting to see the response after the programme as Sir David Attenborough is considered a British Icon along side the Queen, Big Ben and Fish and Chips.

    • scotts4sf | April 15, 2019 at 8:23 pm |

      Go ahead and shout at the television.

      It makes one feel better.

      Same impact as Paris climate treaty.
      Scott

  13. Dr. Strangelove | April 15, 2019 at 5:28 am |

    Part 2 of my foundation of quantum mechanics

    Strangelove spin algebra

    New math revolutionized physics. Newton used calculus to formulate classical mechanics. Einstein used Riemannian geometry to formulate general theory of relativity. I invented Strangelove spin algebra to reformulate quantum mechanics. The axioms of Strangelove spin algebra:

    Axiom 1: Spin is a positive rational number or zero
    Axiom 2: Anti-spin is a complex number of spin (s) and imaginary number (i)
    a + b i = 0 + s i
    Axiom 3: The vector sum of 2 spins and 1 anti-spin is a spin
    s͞ + s͞ + s͞ i = s͞
    Axiom 4: The vector sum of 2 anti-spins and 1 spin is an anti-spin
    s͞ i + s͞ i + s͞ = s͞ i
    Axiom 5: Spin angular momentum (S) is the product of spin and a factor (F)
    S = F s
    F = (1 + 1/s)^0.5 h’, where h’ is reduced Planck constant
    Axiom 6: Anti-spin angular momentum is the product of anti-spin and a factor (F)
    S i = F s i

    Problems of spin quantum number

    To understand the significance of Strangelove spin algebra, I have to discuss the problems of spin quantum number:
    1) Group theory
    I use group theory, the study of mathematical symmetries, to explain the problem. The spin in classical mechanics has orthogonal group O(3) symmetry. This can be represented by real numbers in 3-space. For example, if we look at Earth’s spin at the North pole, the spin direction is anti-clockwise. Rotate the Earth 180 degrees and we see the South pole. The spin direction is clockwise. Hence, we reversed the spin direction by rotating the object 180 degrees. Rotating it 360 degrees, we see the North pole again and the original anti-clockwise spin. Hence, the object has symmetry in 360-degree rotation. This is the O(3) symmetry.

    The spin in quantum mechanics has special unitary group SU(2) symmetry. This is the symmetry of complex numbers. It cannot be represented by real numbers in 3-space. For example, we see an electron with anti-clockwise spin direction. Rotating it 360 degrees, we see the spin reverses to clockwise direction. To restore the anti-clockwise spin, we have to rotate it 720 degrees. Hence, electrons have symmetry in 720-degree rotation. This is the SU(2) symmetry. The problem is spin quantum numbers are real numbers (integers and non-integers). They cannot represent the SU(2) symmetry.

    2) Vector analysis
    Spin has magnitude and direction. Therefore, spin is a vector. Vectors in 3-space can be expressed as the sum of 3 component vectors. This is a general rule in vector analysis. The vector summation must give the spin quantum numbers. Spin (s) can be an integer or non-integer. Let’s try all possible combinations of an integer spin (s = +/- 1):
    (1^2 + 1^2 + 1^2)^0.5 = 3^0.5
    (-1^2 + -1^2 + -1^2)^0.5 =3^0.5
    (1^2 + 1^2 + -1^2)^0.5 = 3^0.5
    (-1^2 + -1^2 + 1^2)^0.5 = 3^0.5
    Not one combination gives an integer spin.
    Let’s try all possible combinations of a non-integer spin (s = +/- 0.5):
    (0.5^2 + 0.5^2 + 0.5^2)^0.5 = 3^0.5 /2
    (-0.5^2 + -0.5^2 + -0.5^2)^0.5 = 3^0.5 /2
    (0.5^2 + 0.5^2 + -0.5^2)^0.5 = 3^0.5 /2
    (-0.5^2 + -0.5^2 + 0.5^2)^0.5 = 3^0.5 /2
    Not one combination gives a spin of +/-0.5
    Spin is a vector but it does not obey vector addition. Something is wrong. We can obtain the spin quantum numbers by changing the values of the spin components. But this violates the rules of quantum numbers that require spin to have only specific integer or non-integer values.

    3) Spin angular momentum
    Spin angular momentum (S) is a conserved quantity in particle physics. Entangled particles have opposite spins (+s and –s). They should cancel out to zero. The quantity is conserved when the sum of two opposite quantities is zero. Let us check if this is true for spin angular momentum:
    S = (s (s + 1))^0.5 h’
    Let’s try an integer spin (s = +/- 1):
    S1 = (1 (1+1))^0.5 h’ = 2^0.5 h’
    S2 = (-1 (-1+1))^0.5 h’ = 0
    S1 + S2 = 2^0.5 h’≠ 0
    S is not conserved. The sum of the opposite quantities is not zero.
    Let’s try a non-integer spin (s = +/- 0.5):
    S1 = (0.5 (0.5+1))^0.5 h’ = 3^0.5 /2 h’
    S2 = (-0.5 (-0.5+1))^0.5 h’ = i/2 h’
    S1 + S2 = (3^0.5 – i) h’/2 ≠ 0
    Again, S is not conserved. To fix this problem, a clever mathematical trick was devised. Use only the positive spin quantum number so that S1 and S2 are equal and rotate the spin axes at angles A and B such that:
    cos A = -cos B
    S1 = h’ s/(cos A)
    S2 = h’ s/(cos B)
    S1 + S2 = h’ s/(cos A) + h’ s/(cos B)
    S1 + S2 = h’ s/(-cos B) + h’ s/(cos B) = 0
    Neat trick but it violates the rules of vector analysis. The spin angular momenta are added as scalar quantities. It is a legitimate mathematical operation if the vectors are on the same axis. But the spin axes at angles A and B with respect to the y-axis. They are not on the same axis. It is a false vector summation.

    4) Conservation of angular momentum
    The conservation of angular momentum is one of the most important laws of physics. It is obeyed in classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. The total angular momentum (J) of particles is given by:
    J = (j (j + 1))^0.5 h’
    j = l +/- s
    Where: j is angular momentum quantum number, l is orbital quantum number and s is spin quantum number. Free particles do not have orbital quantum number (l = 0) because they do not orbit the atomic nuclei. Hence, for free particles:
    j = s
    J = (s (s + 1))^0.5 h’ = S
    Total angular momentum equals the spin angular momentum. As discussed in Item 3, spin angular momentum is not conserved, unless a false vector summation is employed. Therefore, the conservation of angular momentum is violated.

    Solution to the problems of spin

    The Strangelove spin algebra solves the four problems of spin:
    1) In Axiom 2, anti-spin is a complex number. It represents the SU(2) symmetry which is a symmetry of complex numbers.
    2) Axioms 3 and 4 give the 3-vector combinations that give the spin quantum numbers. Note that in Strangelove spin algebra, these are s and s i. Below are the vector summations:
    (s^2 + s^2 + (s i)^2)^0.5 = s
    (s^2 + (s i)^2 + (s i)^2)^0.5 = s i
    Now the spins obey the law of vector addition, without changing the spin components to have different values from the spin quantum numbers.
    3) Axioms 5 and 6 give the conservation of spin angular momentum. The vector summation of spin angular momentum (S) and anti-spin angular momentum (S i):
    S = F s, S i = F s i
    (S^2 + (S i)^2)^0.5 = ((F s)^2 + (F s i)^2)^0.5 = 0
    The sum of two opposite quantities is zero. Hence, spin angular momentum is conserved.
    4) The total angular momentum (J) of free particles is given by:
    J = (s (s + 1))^0.5 h’ = S
    In Axiom 5:
    F = (1 + 1/s)^0.5 h’
    S = F s = (1 + 1/s)^0.5 h’ s
    Put s inside the square root by squaring it (s^2):
    S = (s^2 (1 + 1/s))^0.5 h’
    S = (s (s + 1))^0.5 h’ = J
    Hence, I obtained the total angular momentum from Axiom 5. I already proven that Axioms 5 and 6 obey the conservation of spin angular momentum (S). Since S = J, therefore the conservation of angular momentum is also obeyed.

    Strangelove’s theorem

    Recall that Bell’s theorem does not apply to 1 spin in 1 spin axis. Experimental evidence indicates only 1 spin axis for particles. Therefore, Bell’s theorem cannot test the realism or non-realism of spin. Strangelove’s theorem is a revision of Bell’s theorem by applying Strangelove spin algebra in order to test the realism of spin.

    Recall that Bell’s theorem calculates the probability of similar spin in 2 spin axes of a particle. It is invalid because there is only 1 axis. However, if we postulate that 1 spin is real, then we can test this postulate since a vector can be expressed as a sum of 3 component vectors. The 3 spins in Bell’s theorem are replaced by 3 spin components of 1 spin in Strangelove’s theorem. The postulate “1 spin is real” means objective reality. The spin exists whether we are looking at it or not. This is the opposite of Bohr’s non-realism that asserts the spin we see exists only while we are looking at it.

    Recall that difference in the predicted outcomes of Bell’s theorem and probability theory is due to common elements in sets A, B and C that contain similar spin in x y, x z and y z axes. I proved mathematically that without the common elements, the sets are mutually exclusive and the probabilities follow the theory of probability. Axioms 3 and 4 of Strangelove spin algebra give the possible combinations of spins. The combinations exclude similar spin in 3 axes. Hence, the common elements in the sets are excluded. Given this condition, it trivial to show that the probabilities of sets A, B and C follow the theory of probability:
    P (A) = P (s, s, s i) + P (s i, s i, s) = 1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3
    P (B) = P (s, s i, s) + P (s i, s, s i) = 1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3
    P (C) = P (s i, s, s) + P (s, s i, s i) = 1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3
    ∑ P = P (A) + P (B) + P (C) = 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1

    Experimental results follow the predicted outcomes of probability theory. Therefore, the postulate that 1 spin is real is true.

    Resolution of Bohr-Einstein debate

    When Strangelove spin algebra is applied to Bell’s theorem, the experimental results are as predicted by realism and probability theory. This is Strangelove’s theorem. It makes Bohr’s non-realism unnecessary. It is a superfluous assumption that is not required to explain the experimental results. Occam’s razor demands it should be cut out of the theory. With non-realism out, non-locality is also cut out of the theory. The entangled particles in the EPR thought experiment do not have to communicate faster than light. Their spins are correlated from the start before they were separated.

    Strangelove spin algebra is based on the algebra of complex numbers. In essence, complex numbers replaced the non-realism of Copenhagen interpretation. Non-realism is not math, it’s not physics. It is metaphysics. Non-realism originated from Berkeley’s empiricism in the 18th century. Berkeley argued the moon does not exist when we are not looking at it. Reality is only what we perceive. There is no reality outside our perception. It is a denial of objective reality. Berkeley also called Newton an infidel mathematician and Newton’s calculus as the “ghosts of departed quantities.” Bohr replaced the moon with electron spin and we get the Copenhagen interpretation, a modern version of Berkeley’s empiricism.

    On the other hand, complex numbers are well-established in math and physics. Complex numbers have been part of algebra since the 16th century. The greatest mathematicians Euler, Gauss and Riemann established complex analysis. In physics, complex numbers are essential to quantum mechanics. Mathematically, the difference between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is the former uses real numbers and the latter uses complex numbers. The wave function and Schrodinger’s wave equation are complex functions. Von Neumann used the complex projective space, a coordinate system for complex numbers, as the mathematical foundation of quantum mechanics. Pauli spin matrices also contain complex numbers.

    What is the physical interpretation of complex numbers? In geometric representation, a complex number cannot be placed in axes containing real numbers. An additional axis must be created for complex numbers. For instance, if the geometric representation is 2-dimensional, the additional axis is a 3rd dimension. I interpret the complex numbers in Strangelove spin algebra as an extra dimension. The SU(2) symmetry represents a higher dimension spin symmetry. This symmetry is not possible for 3-dimensional objects in 3-space. An n-dimensional complex projective space corresponds to (n+1)-dimensional complex vector space. In other words, the 3-D complex projective space of quantum mechanics has 4-space vectors. There’s an extra dimension.

    Extra dimension is found not only in quantum mechanics. Einstein spent the last 40 years of his life searching in vain for the unified field theory of relativity and electromagnetism. Kaluza unified Einstein’s theory of relativity and Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory in a 5-dimensional metric tensor. The key to unification is the 5th dimension. This is the Kaluza-Klein theory. The 5th dimension is subatomic in scale that’s why we cannot observe it. However, it may influence subatomic particles because they are the same scale. I hold that all the so-called quantum weirdness and non-realism nonsense are just the interactions of particles with the 5th dimension. That’s why we only see quantum effects on atomic scale and not on large objects. Atoms can be in superposition. Schrodinger’s cat is not a living dead zombie.

    Strangelove’s theorem proved realism and objective reality. It is not quite the reality that Einstein thought. He favored the 4-dimensional spacetime of his theory of relativity. Rather, it is the 5-dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory.

  14. tedms | April 15, 2019 at 6:02 am |

    “Solution to the nuclear waste problem [link].” Perhaps foreshadowing the article’s claim, the link is devoid of content.

  15. cerescokid | April 15, 2019 at 8:20 am |

    https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IPCCSkiing1995_shadow.jpg

    Nearly 25 years ago predictions were being made for the demise of the ski industry.

    Meanwhile, in realityville, Squaw Valley got 45 feet of snow this ski season, Colorado has near record of snowpack and a study found increases in mean snow cover and snow days in China. Xuejing et al 2019.

  16. cerescokid | April 15, 2019 at 8:38 am |

    Besides the articles on the decades of historic flooding in the Missouri River watershed, it should be noted that in 1543 DeSoto was confronted with massive flooding at the confluence of the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers that lasted 40 days.

    Along with the many other links above, this post is a tour de force for natural variability. But should we be surprised there is so much evidence that finding a signal for AGW is difficult.

    • JCH | April 15, 2019 at 8:49 am |

      Dams. How many dams were there when DeSoto was there?

      • cerescokid | April 15, 2019 at 10:52 am |

        How many dams?
        My grandfather owned a DeSoto in the early 1950s. Whenever he spoke about his DeSoto I heard him say many damns.

      • JCH | April 15, 2019 at 11:37 am |

        The DeSoto reference is absolutely meaningless.

        In 1952 there was a huge Missouri flood. JFK dedicated the last of the big Missouri River dams. They are no longer able to control the flooding: 2011-12, and now 2019.

      • cerescokid | April 15, 2019 at 5:10 pm |

        It’s not meaningless. We have a younger generation and those easily susceptible to brainwashing who believe every weather event is unprecedented and only occur because of global warming. They need a little education. Ancient history did not start with Elton John. Stuff happened well before AGW.
        Plus because of their illiteracy with history, it might do them good to know who DeSoto was. And that there were automobiles named DeSoto. Nothing is meaningless.

      • JCH | April 15, 2019 at 5:51 pm |

        Meaningless.

        The Arkansas River flows into the Mississippi. As do the Missouri River, the Ohio River, the Illinois River, and the Red River.

      • cerescokid | April 16, 2019 at 4:56 pm |

        Thanks for the geography lesson. All irrelevant to the larger point that every weather event that has been happening for thousands of years is portrayed by the cultists as proof of AGW.

        Some get faint at a summer breeze.

      • JCH | April 16, 2019 at 5:46 pm |

        And weather events you have almost no data about are taken to be something they aren’t. You don’t know from where the additional water came. You don’t know how much there was. You don’t know what amount of water was required stall a bunch of men in the year 15whatever. But you have a lot of confidence.

      • cerescokid | April 16, 2019 at 10:06 pm |

        Nice try

  17. cerescokid | April 15, 2019 at 9:07 am |

    Knightian uncertainty hypothesis

    At least in economics there are logical and timely ways to test hypotheses. Behavioral Economics was barely in its infancy and the Phillips Curve was sacrosanct 50 years ago. The profession has learned its limitations and is constantly seeking to make sense out of its failures.

    Given uncertainties about issues on a millennial timescales, instead of generational rethinking, it could be that climate science will be rethought on a succession of civilizations basis.

  18. matthewrmarler | April 15, 2019 at 1:15 pm |

    Thanks again for assembling these:

    Koutsoyiannis: Extreme-oriented selection and fitting of probability distributions.

    Wow! There’s a topic for further study. Excellent.

  19. David Wojick | April 15, 2019 at 2:17 pm |

    Speaking of dams, here is my latest:
    https://www.cfact.org/2019/04/15/heres-the-dam-deal-build-more-dams/.

    More floods, more dams. More drought, more dams. More renewables, more dams. But even without climate change, the US Flood Control Program is only half built, hence the floods.

  20. Joshua | April 15, 2019 at 2:47 pm |

    Re the article on recognizing climate change cults, I offer an alternative approach:

    1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.

    So let’s look past the sweet irony that an “expert” on recognizing cults was the reference point for the analysis, even though, of course, the “expert” wasn’t asked to evaluate the application of his work.

    Might such an accountable reference to an “expert” from within a complaint about “authoritarianism” be a sign of a cultist?

    The leading advocates of the Climate Change movement are politicians, entertainers, and even children. Climate preachers such as Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio lack any formal scientific training whatsoever, and live personal lives of unparalleled luxury while prescribing carbon austerity for the masses. Yet no one is permitted to point out their scientific ignorance or call attention to their hypocritical lifestyles.

    Really? How is it determined who the “leading” advocates” are? By what standard? By the standard of the rhetorical and politically expedient leveraging of certain figures by “skeptics?”

    Perhaps the sign of a cultist?

    “Unparalleled luxury, “as opposed to say, Donald AGW is a Chinese Hoax Trump?

    Perhaps selective culling of examples so as to send up signals to ideological compatriots is a….sign of a cultist?

    Child advocates such as Greta Thuneberg and the crudely indoctrinated children of the “Sunrise movement” are essentially sock puppets for their shameless activist handlers. Refuse to bend the knee to these tiny fascists, as Diane Feinstein most recently did, and the mainstream left will relentlessly attack you as an accessory to mass murder.

    “Crudely indoctrinated”? Perhaps alarmism, and making assumptions about the agency of people to make up their own minds, is a sign of a cultist?

    “Tiny Fascists?”

    Perhaps name-calling and polemics are signs of a cultist?

    Ugh…and on and on. Same old same old. Perhaps playing the same games over and over is a sign of a cultist?

  22. cerescokid | April 15, 2019 at 4:02 pm |

    “Our wide sampling of actual 2000 to 2010 changes shows that glacier acceleration across the ice sheet re- mains far below these estimates, suggesting that sea level rise associated with Greenland glacier dynamics remains well below the low-end scenario (9.3 cm by 2100) at present”

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ian_Howat/publication/224897517_21st-Century_Evolution_of_Greenland_Outlet_Glacier_Velocities/links/56a3fa8508ae1b65113091c1.pdf

    Rethinking Greenland’s contribution to GMSLR

  23. potsniron | April 15, 2019 at 4:43 pm |

    The Thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR) has run for five years continuously. See the Thorium Energy Alliance. China is hot on developing it commercially. US problem is three-fold. It needs to reclassify the radioactive designation of Th, there is lobbying against it from fossil fuel industry, and there is no influential power promoting it. Cheaper than coal, intrinsically safe, no proliferation problem, needs little water, etc. Better than sliced bread.

    • Peter Lang | April 15, 2019 at 6:06 pm |

      “Cheaper than coal”

      Nonsense. Where’s the evidence?

      BTW, promoters’ and advocates’ estimates and projections are not evidence. Evidence is decades of operational experience in many commercially operating power plants, and evidence that they are winning contracts in competitive tenders. Please provide such evidence.

      • potsniron | April 16, 2019 at 12:12 pm |

        Robert Hargraves in 2012 wrote the book ‘Thorium energy cheaper than coal’. On page 97 he cites ‘Small modular LFTRs can be factory produced. Capital costs for LFTR electric power plants can be about $2/watt. Recovering capital expenses will cost about 2 cents per kWh for a plant operating 90% of the time with money borrowed at 8%. Thorium fuel cost is insignificant compared to coal costs. LFTR can produce power at about $0.03/kWh, cheaper than coal.’
        Peter Lang calls for operational experience to provide evidence. So, let’s build some such reactors and we have evidence.

      • Peter Lang | April 16, 2019 at 9:14 pm |

        potsniron

        I have Robert Hargraves book. He commonly claims that “Thorium is cheaper than coal”. He misuses the verb “is”. He has no operational evidence to support his claim. He should say:

        “Our estimate suggests” or
        “One day thorium may be a cheaper way to generate electricity than than from coal or uranium fission.”

        But there is no valid operational evidence to support his claim, as I clearly pointed out in my comment.

        Your reply suggests you did not understand the point I made in my reply to you.

      • potsniron | April 17, 2019 at 12:01 pm |

        Peter Lang, I am glad you are knowledgeable on LFTRs. More people should be. Rather than quibbling over the ‘what is is’, we should realize that we have a proof of concept established to start planning and making sensible future cost projections. Surely at the present the comparative electricity generation assessment vs. coal must be a coarse one. Too much depends on the regulatory ‘squeeze’, time to develop commercially, black swans popping up, the future international market forces, etc. But, if I was a venture capitalist with a $1Billion to offer, I’d go for it.

      • Peter Lang | April 17, 2019 at 10:34 pm |

        You’d lose you money. All of it.

    • Curious George | April 15, 2019 at 8:26 pm |

      I am surprised how many apparently intelligent peoplenever bother to read a nice writeup:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment

  24. Steven Mosher | April 15, 2019 at 11:29 pm |

    Less ice in Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago [link]
    of course the paper doesnt make such a black and white claim.
    forget the uncertainty monster
    https://sci-hub.tw/10.1126/science.1202760

    • edimbukvarevic | April 16, 2019 at 2:30 am |

      From the abstract:

      “Multiyear sea ice reached a minimum between ~8500 and 6000 years ago, when the limit of year-round sea ice at the coast of Greenland was located ~1000 kilometers to the north of its present position.”

      From the text:

      “In general, our sea-ice record for North Greenland follows the Holocene climate development, with an early warm period followed by declining temperatures, which were punctuated by relatively warmer and colder intervals.”

      “In this exercise, our records would correspond in the model to an Arctic Ocean sea-ice cover in summer at 8 ky B.P. that was less than half of the record low 2007 level. The general buildup of sea ice from ~ 6 ky B.P. agrees with the LOVECLIM model, showing that summer sea-ice cover, which reached its Holocene maximum during the LIA, attained its present (~2000) extent at ~ 4 ky B.P. (fig.S3).”

    • edimbukvarevic | April 16, 2019 at 2:37 am |

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoglaciation

      Ignore the anthropogenic/anthropocene vanity.

      • phil salmon | April 16, 2019 at 5:09 pm |

        edim
        That won’t last long – expect this posting on neoglaciation to be promptly espunged from the warmist-alarmist wiki-creed-ia.

  25. Steven Mosher | April 16, 2019 at 12:14 am |

    Why California burns – its forests have too many trees [link]

    Opinion is now science

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Why-California-burns-its-forests-have-too-13385872.php

    • chrism56 | April 16, 2019 at 1:42 am |

      The article is written by someone who is”professor emeritus of forest science at Texas A&M University ” so yes, his opinions carry the weight of his qualifications and experience. Which is more than can be said for many other opinion pieces on climate related subjects.

      • Steven Mosher | April 18, 2019 at 3:48 am |

        “The article is written by someone who is”professor emeritus of forest science at Texas A&M University ” so yes, his opinions carry the weight of his qualifications and experience. Which is more than can be said for many other opinion pieces on climate related subjects.”

        Err no. he presents no data to back up his opinion. Mike Mann has opinions too.

        Notice this is a Week in Review SCIENCE edition. not opinion, edition

        You skeptics need to be more skeptical.

        Emeritus can also mean…. hasnt kept up on the science

      • chrism56 | April 19, 2019 at 3:38 pm |

        “Emeritus can also mean…. hasnt kept up on the science” Is that a verifiable fact, or just an opinion that should be labelled as such?
        And Steven, it would help if you actually did what you said you do and read the links. In one from the US Forest Service, they say:
        “Since 1992, the use of the clearcutting method of regeneration harvest was de-emphasized on the national forests. This change, coupled with a general decline in timber sale program levels, led to sharp reductions in regeneration harvest practices and associated K-V receipts on many national forests. These reductions led to a general decline in reforestation needs that continued through the late-1990s.
        As a result of the buildup of hazardous fuels over the last 100 years, unnaturally intense wildfire has become the predominant causal factor giving rise to reforestation needs on many national forests, particularly in the West. The scale and severity of these events is of a magnitude that often leads to devastating impacts to forest resources and a variety of post-fire recovery needs and has resulted in sharp increases in reforestation needs on many national forests in recent years. ”
        The second paragraph looks very much like what the professor said.
        On the same USFS site, there is a link to this document:”
        https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/documents/strategy/strategy/CSPhaseIIINationalStrategyApr2014.pdf
        It says, in summary, that there is too much vegetation and that is why the fires are so severe.
        So Bonnicksen did support his opinion with checkable facts, just some didn’t read them.

    • cerescokid | April 16, 2019 at 5:54 am |

      SM

      There is a consensus among forest management professionals (those that are the experts) that poor forest management practices over decades increased the probability of major forest fires. This is not rocket science. Consult any true forest management professional and they will tell you the same thing. They neglected best practices for too long and it caught up with them.

      • Russell Seitz (@RussellSeitz) | April 16, 2019 at 1:55 pm |

        It seems the forest mamagement professionals have only just discovered that their charges emit more methane than all the world’s cows.

        Cue facepalm by Smokey the Bear

        https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2019/04/this-is-forest-primeval.html

      • Steven Mosher | April 18, 2019 at 3:50 am |

        “There is a consensus among forest management professionals (those that are the experts) that poor forest management practices over decades increased the probability of major forest fires. This is not rocket science. Consult any true forest management professional and they will tell you the same thing. They neglected best practices for too long and it caught up with them.”

        I see nothing in his opinion piece that allows me to check any of his claims. I dont buy AGW because there is a consensus. I buy it because
        I can check for myself. He gives me nothing to check, therefore he makes no claims.

      • Turbulent Eddie | April 18, 2019 at 9:45 am |

        I dont buy AGW because there is a consensus.
        I buy it because I can check for myself.

        Yes, reproduceable results matter, even though we can’t run the control experiment and in terms of global mean, have only one observation.

        But that’s also why we don’t buy high temperature sensitivity, changes in tropical cyclones, drought, floods, blizzards, changes in jet stream, extreme temperatures, et. al., because we can check for ourselves and the observations don’t support such ideas.

    • Joshua | April 16, 2019 at 9:42 am |

      Classic that in response to Steven’s comment, we have “skeptics” go with an appeal to authority and an ad populism/appeal to consensus.

      Beautiful.

      • cerescokid | April 16, 2019 at 8:10 pm |

        Sometimes it’s so self evident it doesn’t matter. I worked with Forest Management professionals who administered millions of acres of public lands for decades. As I said, this is not rocket science.

      • Joshua | April 17, 2019 at 6:01 am |

        Followed by appeal to self-authority.

      • cerescokid | April 17, 2019 at 11:11 am |

        Try common sense. You don’t need a scientist to tell you not to store highly combustible materials in your basement.

        Not self authority. Just having worked for years with those who are in the best position to know.

        One of the first program briefings I received when I became budget director in the 1970s was from our forest fire protection managers. They asked for a large increase in staffing given increased risks of forest fires from changes in tree species and growth of the housing/forest interface. They didn’t receive the increase, not because of a lack of need, but rather a higher priority at the time being given to toxic waste sites and groundwater issues. I had confidence in their knowledge and competency. Much more than any academic who only reads textbooks or someone cloistered in a cement block cellar.

      • chrism56 | April 17, 2019 at 7:43 pm |

        Joshua – it is not an appeal to authority. It is just noting that it is an eminently qualified person giving his opinion which was clearly labelled as such.
        The simple definition of appeal to authority seems to be: “Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered.”
        We are not quoting him or saying what he said is true..
        As usual, you are twisting words and distorting meanings. Please stop it.

      • Steven Mosher | April 18, 2019 at 3:52 am |

        Joshua

        ‘Followed by appeal to self-authority.”

        Its hilarious.

        anonymous dude appeals to his own anonymous experience.

        We need a better brand of skeptics

      • JCH | April 18, 2019 at 7:15 am |

        I own a forest. My property is adjacent on two sides with a state park that is a virgin hardwood forest – never cut. On a 3rd side there is another large private stand of very old oaks. In total, it’s a lot of big trees. We have a thick layer of debris on the forest floor, including fallen limbs and leaves and twigs and blow-down trees: heavy logs. There is not enough money in the world to “manage” that. Forests like mine last for centuries because that stuff is actually not that easy to burn. Last year there was a prolonged summer drought, and I was the first member of my family in well over a hundred years to have any concern at all about having a forest fire on the family land.

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 2:36 pm |

        Some of you are talking Mediterranean climates.

        “The Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome mostly occurs in, but not limited to, the Mediterranean climate zones, in the mid-latitudes:
        the Mediterranean Basin; the Chilean Matorral; the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California and the Baja California Peninsula and the Western Cape of South Africa.”

        There is extensive research on Mediterranean woodlands and fire regimes. Less facile commentators might consult some.

      • cerescokid | April 18, 2019 at 8:53 pm |

        Hilarious. It’s acceptable to make an opinion about how AGW was the cause of the fire but not acceptable for a forest scientist to have an opinion. Both views are overly simplistic. Perhaps, the good professor knows what the AGW battalion falls for and he wanted to keep it simple for them.
        It certainly looks like there is a weak basis to say that California hasn’t been down this road before. Is the real cause AGW?
        Or could it be that several variables are at play and it’s nearly impossible to determine a chain of causality from a single cause.
        There are common sense views in the forest management profession that sensible timber harvest and fire suppression practices including proscribed burns will keep the risk of catastrophic fires down. But they also know the wildland/urban interface has increased the risks of major fires as well as activities within the forests that increase the probability of setting fires over what might have occurred many decades ago.
        And yet, even with all of these other variables some want to have an opinion, without scientific foundation, that it must have been AGW that caused it.

      • Steven Mosher | April 18, 2019 at 10:43 pm |

        “Hilarious. It’s acceptable to make an opinion about how AGW was the cause of the fire but not acceptable for a forest scientist to have an opinion. Both views are overly simplistic. ”

        1. You never saw me saying it was acceptable to pass off an AGW
        opinion as science.
        2. Both are simplistic, why did you defend one of them?

        my complaint is simple.

        The post is titled SCIENCE EDITION.

        The article is an opinion.

        I’d object if it was opinion piece about AGW or GND, because it would be opinion.

        Note, no one has a substantive or convincing reply to my objection.

        you are welcomed

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 11:24 pm |

        So Mosh is beating this drum again. Why? Sorry – this piece is much more science than anything he thinks about climate. We may regard his comments as a simplistic and symbolic buttressing of bias – commonly defining unilaterally skeptic shortfalls based on his exposure to the climate blogosphere. And suggesting that they pull up their socks. Not remotely scientific – yet he seems capable of little more. It makes of science a tool for limiting understanding rather than a process of discovery.

        Fire regimes – however – is established science. Seen here in the public policy arena.

    • Curious George | April 16, 2019 at 1:54 pm |

      It IS an opinion – what makes you think of science?

    • Hans Erren | April 16, 2019 at 5:10 pm |

      Must have been that pesky co2 what done it.

  26. Steven Mosher | April 16, 2019 at 12:32 am |

    Interesting result from JEG

    https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/04/09/1809959116

  27. ccscientist | April 16, 2019 at 1:37 pm |

    On the “indoor air pollution” article: In chicago I used to drive by the candy factory and smell chocolate all the time (it was wonderful). then EPA told them that this was pollution and it had to be controlled. No more wafting of heavenly vapors. Same with baking bread: NOT the same as household cleaning agents.

  28. phil salmon | April 16, 2019 at 5:05 pm |

    Check out figure 6 of this paper showing new satellite data on Arctic ice thickness since 2011. It doesn’t look much like a death spiral to me:

    https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/1187/2019/

  29. john321s | April 16, 2019 at 6:14 pm |

    Leave it to New York Magazine to presume it’s positioned to teach bona fide scientists how to argue constructively.

  30. Robert I. Ellison | April 16, 2019 at 8:01 pm |

    “A new method of creating concrete actually pulls C02 out of the air, or directly out of industrial exhaust pipes, and turns it into synthetic limestone.” https://grist.org/sponsored/the-breakthrough-that-could-actually-reverse-climate-change/

    Find out how much it costs to make and sell some at auction? I would suggest no more than $10-20/tonne CO2. And funding up to 80% of prototype facilities.

    Koutsoyiannis had me fooled. As if probability distributions played much part in extreme flood forecasting. More extreme events multiplied by X. But despite niggles about WMO methods for extreme flood forecasting – I’d be happy to get last weeks freshet right.

    I am working on a hydrological analysis – quantity and quality – of the Fitzroy River Queensland in QGIS. I have uploaded a 25m DEM. Hardly even a start.

    https://watertechbyrie.com/hardcore-water-technology/

    • matthewrmarler | April 17, 2019 at 1:16 pm |

      Robert I Ellison: Koutsoyiannis had me fooled. As if probability distributions played much part in extreme flood forecasting.

      It’s good paper, with a testable hypothesis: if you know the underlying distribution accurately enough, then you can do a better job predicting extremes than if you only know the (limiting) extreme value distribution estimated from the history of extremes. And if you know the underlying distribution accurately enough, then you can do a good job forecasting percentiles, such as the 99th and 95th percentiles. From his theoretical developments and illustrative computations arise the practical questions: Which estimation regimes produce the more accurate forecasts? Should the new methods replace the old methods? Should there be extensive comparisons in the future?

      I recommend the Koutsoyiannis paper (poster, actually; or powerpoint) to interested readers willing to slog through it.

      • john321s | April 17, 2019 at 4:01 pm |

        [I]f you know the underlying distribution accurately enough, then you can do a better job predicting extremes than if you only know the (limiting) extreme value distribution estimated from the history of extremes.

        That’s a highly doubtful premise. There are many geophysical processes (e.g. sea-surface elevation) that are closely gaussian or log-gaussian, but prove more severely range-limited by physics. The history of long-term extremes seems to be the best guide to their distribution, as recognized decades ago by Gumbel and Weibull. K. is a relative novice in the field.

      • matthewrmarler | April 17, 2019 at 10:27 pm |

        john321s: That’s a highly doubtful premise.

        It is testable, as I wrote. Can you know the underlying distribution well enough? Is the accuracy of the limiting extreme value distribution poor enough?

        K. is a relative novice in the field.

        He is very good, and has more data and computational power at his disposal. Most progress in science has been led by relative novices.

      • john321s | April 18, 2019 at 7:04 pm |

        Most progress in science has been led by relative novices.

        Oh, really?

    • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 3:32 am |

      “These issues are covered in Koutsoyiannis (2020).
      Koutsoyiannis 2019

      Koutsoyiannis is very much in the forefront of analysis of hydrological extremes. I could throw away another line – but given the risk of amateur pontification won’t bother.

      • john321s | April 18, 2019 at 7:09 pm |

        Koutsoyiannis is very much in the forefront of analysis of hydrological extremes.

        Alas, hydrology has never been in the forefront of geophysical analytics.

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 8:40 pm |

        The statistical distributions used by hydrologists over the years are many and varied. The intention of course is to extend short records. This paper by Koutsoyiannis is another and yet more accurate effort.

        e.g. http://www.mathwave.com/articles/extreme-value-distributions.html

        But it all about design and not climate change. And maximum values are not derived by WMO methodology in this way. It is rather by recorded rainfall extremes converted to runoff and multiplied by factors peculiar to specific catchments. Not can it factor in climate change. It is about the past and not the future.

        Aside from the crass and superficial reference to hydrology at large – a couple of points suggest that John understands little of the subject he is pontificating about at the level of metaphysics rather than geophysics. As I suggested – we do not have long term records for the vast majority of catchments. That is the fundamental point. Koutsoyiannis used a 200 odd year record to evaluate his new distribution. In that way short records can be extended to longer periods of design interest – 500 years say.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/nile-e1527722953992.jpg

        The second point is rather more subtle. Nile River records show ranges increasing with the duration of record. But you would need to understand Hurst dynamics. This reality seems at odds with John’s metaphysics.

      • john321s | April 19, 2019 at 4:54 pm |

        It requires no metaphysics, only informed experience, to recognize the difference in analytic sophistication between bona fide geophysics and the poor cousin of hydrology as taught to civil engineers. That glaring difference is evident here in the gratuitous assertion that extreme-value statistics are “all about design and not climate change” and the ostensibly “subtle” point that simplistic “Hurst dynamics” are required to understand the elementary property of ranges increasing with the duration of record. The likes of Cartwright, Preisendorfer and Tukey must be rolling over laughing in their graves.

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 19, 2019 at 7:11 pm |

        And still he doesn’t manage to say anything substantive.

        Hydrology is nonsense is his ill informed opinion? So what. Extreme value distributions – described at mathwave in the link I provided – and including a couple of well known but old and not hugely accurate methods he deemed the gold standard. He suggests that Gumbel and Weibull – whose distributions we are taught in hydrology school – are about something other than extending short records to derive estimates of infrequent flows for practical purposes. But again it is not clear just what he does claim. Except that he knows better than Dimitris Koutsoyiannis in some vague way. Risible nonsense.

        Climate change is about anthropogenic change in future – runoff records are of past events – distributions are a statistical construct for the purpose of designing bridges. Can he document any other use in flood hydrology? Trying to claim that these distributions – other than Koutsoyiannis’ – somehow define climate futures is just abject confusion.

        I don’t know what the hell he means at all about this range business.

        “That’s a highly doubtful premise. There are many geophysical processes (e.g. sea-surface elevation) that are closely gaussian or log-gaussian, but prove more severely range-limited by physics.”

        I have suggested he try speaking in English – but this seems at odds with his newest declaration on range and record duration. It is not clear because language is used at such a level of abstraction that there is no clarity – but did he change his mind without acknowledging it?

        Finally he throws in 3 names of statisticians and insists that they are rolling over in their graves. So what?

      • john321s | April 20, 2019 at 3:33 pm |

        I don’t know what the hell he means at all about this range business.

        That’s the whole problem.

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 20, 2019 at 3:57 pm |

        You seem to have two diametrically opposed views on range and record length. Impossible to know wtf you are on about.

  31. robertok06 | April 17, 2019 at 7:40 am |

    Hello everybody:

    this one…

    “Recent global warming as confirmed by AIRS”, J Susskind, G A Schmidt, J N Lee, and L Iredell

    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aafd4e

    … should have made the list.

    “We show in this paper that satellite-based surface temperatures can serve as an important validation of surface-based estimates and help to improve surface-based data sets in a way that can be extended back many decades to further scientific research.
    AIRS surface temperatures have better spatial coverage than those of GISTEMP, though at the global annual scale the two data sets are highly coherent.
    As in the surface-based analyses, 2016 was the warmest year yet.”

    Any comments from the knowledgeable community here??? :-)

    • Phil Salmon | April 17, 2019 at 8:04 am |

      It could be a long time before temperatures reach 2016 levels again.

      • JCH | April 17, 2019 at 8:20 am |

        It’s going to a lot longer before temperature drops below that of 1905.

      • cerescokid | April 17, 2019 at 11:21 am |

        JCH

        For once I agree with you. But dipping below the 1930s wouldn’t be bad, not a difficult task using the graphs produced 30 years ago. Or even having ECS of 1C would be ok. Many, many changes in technology are in store for us before 2100.

    • Turbulent Eddie | April 17, 2019 at 10:08 am |

      This provides some confidence – an independent measure from surface thermometers.

      For all the gnashing of teeth, it’s interesting to see the cooling trend over Greenland:
      https://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/14/4/044030/Full/erlaafd4ef3_lr.jpg

      There is some difference between surface and satellite skin and aerosol interference will probably be a continual source of variance, but good to have independent measures.

      2015-2016-2017 were all marked by greater solar absorption, so will be interesting to see how albedo and surface temperature evolve going forward.

    • curryja | April 17, 2019 at 10:15 am |

      will be on next week’s list, I just spotted it on twitter

    • john321s | April 17, 2019 at 4:24 pm |

      An interesting comparison with skin temperatures, which prove to be somewhat more volatile, as expected, than air temperatures.

      The major limitation is the very brief time-interval of comparison. Fifteen-year trends are bound to vary enormously in the presence of multi-decadal and longer oscillations. There’s an unwarranted presumption that the high cross-correlation seen in the short term will remain high in the much longer-term climatic scale. It’s precisely at the lowest frequencies of station records in close proximity that cross-spectral coherence tends to break down.

      • Steven Mosher | April 17, 2019 at 8:45 pm |

        The skeptic theory is that the warming is a result of

        A) UHI
        B) Adjustments

        Over the period studied NEITHER of these theories is supported by the data.

        Time for skeptics to modify their theory

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 4:01 pm |

        UHI and surface temperature adjustments are real of course – but like trees and methane are hardly paradigm shattering.

        The new climate paradigm was identified by the NAS in 2002. The climate system changes perpetually in ways that models miss.

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0256-8?WT.feed_name=subjects_cryospheric-science

        https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62

        Natural variability and AGW seem to sum at the surface to about:

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/cowtan-trend.png

        So 8 of 100 or so model runs – because each model has of course 1000’s of plausible and chaotically divergent solutions – show a sensitivity > 5 degrees C?

      • john321s | April 18, 2019 at 7:24 pm |

        UHI and surface temperature adjustments are real of course – but like trees and methane are hardly paradigm shattering.

        The overlooked point is that systematic corruption or manipulation of non-secular “trends” in data is no basis for testing “paradigms.”

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 10:57 pm |

        “Modern hydrology places nearly all its emphasis on science‐as‐knowledge, the hypotheses of which are increasingly expressed as physical models, whose predictions are tested by correspondence to quantitative data sets. Though arguably appropriate for applications of theory to engineering and applied science, the associated emphases on truth and degrees of certainty are not optimal for the productive and creative processes that facilitate the fundamental advancement of science as a process of discovery.” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016WR020078

        More traditional to call it secular variation rather than trend – the latter of which it ain’t. And what should they attempt to test against this unspecified data series with the unspecified distortions?

        I’d suggest a little more subtlety in ideas of hypothesis testing. Really – and a lot more eschewing of metaphysical, pseudo scientific jargon in favor of plain English. I always wonder who they deceive more? The intended victim or themselves? With some people it is more the appearance of having something profound to say – to someone or other – rather than actually having something meaningful in mind.

      • Steven Mosher | April 19, 2019 at 9:36 pm |

        “UHI and surface temperature adjustments are real of course – but like trees and methane are hardly paradigm shattering.

        The new climate paradigm was identified by the NAS in 2002. ”

        Robert, nice try at coat racking

      • Robert I. Ellison | April 19, 2019 at 10:07 pm |

        Thank God for urban dicktionary.

        https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=coat%20rack

        I know it is not in your nature – but you are going to have to be a lot less obscure.

        “The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/2

        There is of course a vast body of literature by now on the dynamical complex climate system. Tell me it’s been falsified.

  32. Phil Salmon | April 17, 2019 at 7:52 am |

    The 2016 transition of the Greenland Jakobshavn glacier from acceleration and thinning to thickening and deceleration and thickening is noteworthy.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0329-3

    The media needless to say have been all over it (not – sarc)

  33. angech | April 17, 2019 at 9:14 am |

    Peter Ridd set free. Worth an article surely?

  34. matthewrmarler | April 17, 2019 at 1:00 pm |

    Less ice in Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago

    10 years old; has it been confirmed by others, or disconfirmed?

    • Steven Mosher | April 17, 2019 at 8:46 pm |

      The actual study doesnt say that, it is much more circumspect.

      • matthewrmarler | April 17, 2019 at 10:22 pm |

        Steven Mosher: The actual study doesnt say that, it is much more circumspect.

        I am not seeing that; do you have a quote? It says “suggests that” there was less ice, and that causal influences may have been different from today.

        Has the paper been disconfirmed?

  35. Pingback: How climate damage costings from EPA Scientists are misleading and how to correct | ManicBeancounter

  36. Canman | April 17, 2019 at 2:29 pm |

    Something that caught my eye, was this profile and interview with Mark Jacobson:

    http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/19-04-SustainEurope.pdf

    There’s a lot of info on his background and his interactions with people like Andrew Cuomo and Josh Fox. There’s stuff about the paper he sued over, without mentioning the lawsuit. His ill conceived suit is not the end of the line for him.

    https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1039587391290232833

    He’s not going away, and if the democrats win the white house, he’ll probably be considered for energy secretary:

    https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/04/what-would-a-left-cabinet-look-like

    Secretary of Energy

    The Department of Energy’s jurisdiction encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, from presiding over the maintenance of the American nuclear weapons system to promotion of and research into energy conservation efforts and new forms of energy production. This is another spot in which the aforementioned Inslee and McKibben (particularly the former given his experience on the House Energy and Commerce Committee) would feel comfortable in. Should Sanders take the route Obama took and appoint a professional scientist to the role, a name like Mark Jacobson, a high-profile Stanford academic who heads the Energy program at the university and is one of the most prominent scientific officials to corroborate the logistical viability of the Green New Deal, might be enticing.

  37. David Wojick | April 17, 2019 at 2:59 pm |

    WashPo says the oceans are rapidly warming and this will cause hurricane problems: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/04/16/oceans-rapidly-warm-due-climate-change-an-urgent-need-improve-hurricane-forecasts/?utm_term=.d7cad7aabbe0

    Urgent!

  38. Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 7:47 pm |

    “Water runs through all three pillars of sustainable development, with water resources
    impacting environment, social and economic development. Development in each pillar is impacted by the availability and management of water resources to provide services and benefits. Today, unsustainable development pathways and governance failures negatively affect the quality and availability of water resources, compromising their capacity to generate social and economic benefits and increasing disaster risk. Driven by growing demands from manufacturing, thermal electricity generation and domestic use, global water demand is projected to increase by 55% by 2050. Unless the balance between demand and finite supplies is restored, the world will face an increasingly severe global water deficit. At this critical moment, the Decade aims to bring a greater focus to sustainable development and a risk-informed integrated management of water resources for the achievement of social, economic and environmental objectives. To this end, the
    Resolution emphasizes the need for stepping up international cooperation and collaboration in science, research and innovation for the sustainable development of water resources at the local, national and regional levels, including through public-private and multi-stakeholder partnerships, and on the basis of common interest and mutual benefit.” http://www.wateractiondecade.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/UN-SG-Action-Plan_Water-Action-Decade-web.pdf

    From the first objective of the current hydrological decade. And here is another ‘opinion’ from the inestimable Koutsoyiannis. For some hydrological change over the past 50 years is attributed to humans. Laughable nonsense. So what is the alternative?

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02626667.2013.804626

    I started a GIS project last week. Busily working out how to do terrain mapping and automated catchment analysis for the Fitzroy River catchment in Central Queensland. . After that many water quality and quantity programs – I have used many – have a GIS backbone. They all should have the same core of parameters involving geology, land use, biology and terrain. In a very simplified form. I am wondering how to anticipate changes in infiltration related to land use changes.

    The future of water requires increasing the infiltration rate and water holding capacity of soils, maintaining ground cover and conserving soil, building swales and sand dams to hold back water in landscapes, nuclear power and desalination, recycling storm water and sewage and yet more water use efficiency. Ironically this is a way forward on AGW

  39. Peter Lang | April 18, 2019 at 8:41 pm |

    Judy,

    Thank you for posting the link to The day the dinosaurs died https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died.

    If not for this event, we probably would not be here now. It also shows the resilience of mammals. They lived through it.

    What a wonderful record of the event of a few hours, 66 million years ago. It is an excellent example of what can be found in the fossil record. It also shows the importance of dedication to field work and of a lifetime of dedication to a subject area. Robert DePaula’s interest in bones began when he was 3 years old. What a wonderful discovery he has made.

    • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 11:31 pm |

      A furtive rat like creature ensconced in a deep burrow?

      Here’s the study – https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/27/1817407116

    • Robert I. Ellison | April 18, 2019 at 11:43 pm |

      Actually – they are thinking that the alacrity with which the wave moved 1000 km is inconsistent with the tectite presence. The claim that the entire site is at the K-T boundary is based on a similarity in tectite composition – and the presumption that it was the same meteorite.

    • popesclimatetheory | April 19, 2019 at 12:15 am |

      What a wonderful record of the event of a few hours, 66 million years ago.

      Few disasters are over in a few hours. I suspect this disaster, or wonderful event, otherwise we might not be here, played out over hundreds and thousands of years and most likely in everything that has happened since then.

      • melitamegalithic | April 19, 2019 at 5:03 am |

        66 Million years is a good – and safe – stretch of time to speculate on. Obviously then, there is no credit given to biblical text, namely Genesis 6-11. That was a lot nearer and there is plenty of evidence if one cares to look.

        5200bce and 3200bce were two dates of mass wipe-outs (the biblical was only one instance). Now what psychological twist drives us to speculate that far away in time, but inhibits from looking nearer. Re-reinforced amnesia?

    • Peter Lang | April 19, 2019 at 2:53 am |

      Obviously some haven’t read it through.

  40. charliebravo92 | April 19, 2019 at 7:17 pm |

    My apologies if these papers have already been posted elsewhere on your site, but they’re interesting.

    Decadal Changes of Earth’s Outgoing Longwave Radiation

    Dewitte and Clerbaux examine various measurements of Earth’s OLR from various sources, covering the period of 1985-2018. They derive a Longwave Feedback Parameter from the data and find evidence of an effect by clouds that differs from most models.

    Decedal Changes of the Reflected Solar Radiation and the Earth Energy Imbalance

    Dewitte et al. study Earth’s OLR from 2000-2018 and find a decreasing trend in Reflected Solar Radiation, but an increasing trend in Outgoing Longwave Radiation, that nearly cancel each other out. The increase in OLR is slightly larger than the decrease in RSW, but due to uncertainties in the CERES measurements, the trend in Total Outgoing Radiation is not significant. However, when they take decreasing Incoming Solar Radiation into account, they find that the Earth’s energy imbalance has decreased by 0.16W/m2 +/-0.11W/m2

    Now, here’s my question for everyone. In the second paper I linked, they say what we’re all thinking. “At first sight it seems surprising that the EEI is decreasing during a period of continued greenhouse gas emission.” Indeed. By my rough calculations, the rise in CO2 concentration between 2000 and 2018 should decrease OLR by 0.53W/m2. Is it fair to assume that the observed OLR rise would’ve been that much higher without these continued emissions?

    • Quondam | April 20, 2019 at 7:44 am |

      Curiously not noted, (3.7 W/m2)/(2.93 W/m2/K) = 1.26K

      • charliebravo92 | April 21, 2019 at 8:45 pm |

        At first I wondered why they didn’t estimate sensitivity from these observations either. But a closer look reminded me that they’re only looking at the longwave feedback parameter, in this paper, and an estimate of sensitivity from that alone doesn’t take shortwave feedbacks, or other non-radiative feedbacks, into account.

        The other paper DOES look at shortwave feedbacks as well. Unfortunately, since the trend in Total Outgoing Radiation is smaller than the uncertainty, it’s not useful to draw conclusions from it.

        I understand the value of models, but obviously think direct observations are much better. Back in the early 2000’s they said they would need a couple of decades to draw meaningful trends from space-based observations. It’s nearly 20 years later, now, so that time has come. I’m hoping that in the next few years we’ll finally see a reduction in the uncertainty surrounding climate sensitivity.

        I know the journal Remote Sensing doesn’t have the highest Impact Factor, and there was controversy surrounding the Spencer And Braswell paper, but should we expect the IPCC to take these papers into consideration as they write their next report?

    • popesclimatetheory | April 20, 2019 at 9:29 am |

      Dewitte et al. study Earth’s OLR from 2000-2018 and find a decreasing trend in Reflected Solar Radiation, but an increasing trend in Outgoing Longwave Radiation, that nearly cancel each other out.

      They do not cancel each other out, they add together to balance the incoming, except sometimes oceans are thawed and producing ice with IR out to remove the energy and sometimes the ice is thawing and keeping earth cold removing energy. Energy is removed from the internal system in warm times with more IR out and energy is added to the internal system in cold times with less IR out. They tell us that energy is stored in the oceans. Well Duh. except cold oceans get warmer because that is when the energy is being added and warm oceans get colder because that is when the energy is being removed. There is no equilibrium state for the climate, it is always changing. You must understand where the energy is in the oceans and the ice and you must understand which way the energy is flowing and the how and why.

      • popesclimatetheory | April 20, 2019 at 9:33 am |

        More IR out removes energy from the oceans when oceans are warm. Thawing ice removes energy from the oceans during cold times because the IR out does not remove the energy then. Ice is produced and stored in warmest times with thawed oceans in cold places. The ice is used for cooling during the coldest times. This internal cycle has not been properly understood since Ewing and Donn tried to explain it sixty years ago.

  42. popesclimatetheory | April 20, 2019 at 9:14 am |

    Antarctica’s iceberg graveyard could reveal the ice sheet’s future. [link]

    This could be good information about the years before 800 thousand years ago. The ice cores explain what happened since, Antarctica gained more and more ice volume until enough water was removed from the oceans to prevent the continuing of the increasingly larger ice age and warm cycles.
    The ice berg debris could tell us some about when the ice ages were getting bigger and longer. This is a record of internal cycles of water changing to ice and thawing in internal natural cycles with periods that changes as the mass involved changed. Warm times with thawed ocean promoted more ice and more ice promoted more cooling while it thawed and these internal natural cycles evolved as ocean circulations evolved. Most everyone only looks at the atmosphere and external forcing, internal natural cycles are what really happens.

  43. Scott Koontz | April 20, 2019 at 9:49 am |

    Satellite data is in total agreement with ground stations. OK, so slightly higher, but close enough to keep doubters at bay for a short while.

    Not that there was much doubt by most.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/surprise-satellites-show-that-thermometers-dont-lie/

  44. Ron Clutz | April 20, 2019 at 9:57 am |

    Trying again to post: Re the Great Extinction

    And yet, OTOH, the case is building for the role of volcanic eruptions in ending the dinosaur era.
    .https://www.newscientist.com/article/2194550-dinosaur-extinction-lines-up-closely-with-timing-of-volcanic-eruptions/

    As noted here before, the dueling theories (meteor vs. volcano) have led to some vicious scientific exchanges. I’m no expert but do favor underdogs, so I have posted on the volcanic theory, which I think lines up better with the timeline. But, in any case, not settled science, and no energy policy change is proposed. My Post was:
    https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2018/08/17/chicxulub-asteroid-apocalypse-not-so-fast-august-update/

  45. Robert Clark | April 20, 2019 at 10:17 am |

    You are getting closer to the law of nature. Water reflects radiant heat back to the black sky. The surface of the earth looses radiant heat to the black sky. The sun sends radiant heat to the surface of the earth. When the earth looses more heat to the black sky than it retains it takes heat from the ocean, as it is now, It can’t get any simpler than that.

  46. phil salmon | April 20, 2019 at 3:22 pm |

    David Wojick

    WashPo says the oceans are rapidly warming and this will cause hurricane problems:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/04/16/oceans-rapidly-warm-due-climate-change-an-urgent-need-improve-hurricane-forecasts/?utm_term=.d7cad7aabbe0

    Urgent!

    If you study the ocean data at climate4you you will find that:
    – The UAH global temperatures have dropped since 2016 (OK only 3 years but…)
    – Cooling of the North Atlantic started after 2010, increasing sharply from 2018;
    – Equator to pole heat transfer has been decreasing from 2010;
    – The Ocean around Antarctica turned to cooling at mid depths (400-1200m) after 2017;
    – The ocean around the Arctic turned to cooling at mid depths (400-1500m) after 2013;
    – A decline in Gulf Stream started around 2012, dropping more sharply at 2015;
    – The AMO commenced a sharp decline in 2018.

    The warming story is approaching the end of its shelf life.
    Thus the increasing desperation.

  47. Robert I. Ellison | April 20, 2019 at 3:50 pm |

    “A simple energy budget framework is used to show that TOA radiation (particularly in the SW) likely played a dominant role in driving the marked increase in temperature tendency during the post-hiatus period.” https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4.0_anom_toa_shortwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tooctober-2018-1.png
    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4.0_anom_toa_longwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tooctober-2018.png

    Satellite data on TOA flux – from 1979 – shows decreases in reflected shortwave and increases in infrared emissions. The why of it has been the subject of study over decades. Along with an entrenched denial of the potential for intrinsic climate variability.

    “In summary, although there is independent evidence for
    decadal changes in TOA radiative fl uxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability
    of the climate system.” AR4 3.4.4.1

  48. phil salmon | April 22, 2019 at 3:42 pm |

    Here’s a Nature Communication finding that the increase in carbon fixation by plant photosynthesis, due to industrial elevation of atmospheric CO2 (280-408) is 60% more than was previously thought.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08633-z

    It’s better than we thought.
    Or worse than we thought – depending on your perspective.

  49. talldave2 | April 22, 2019 at 4:16 pm |

    “Solar geoengineering is projected to decrease, not increase, harmful UV radiation.” Interesting. One of my favorite far-future sci-fi epics (Wright’s “Goiden Age”) features a man who becomes one of the richest in the solar system by building a ring around the Sun to produce antimatter and exotic new elements but also to stabilize the EM environment in the orbital plane throughout the system (which has huge benefits due to the enormous bandwidth of interplanetary data traffic).

    “A deposit of teeth and bones recently discovered in an island cave in the Philippines may have belonged to a newly identified species closely related to humans and “unknown previously to science ” The location makes sense… the really hardcore Aeta tribes have been up in the mountains rejecting outsiders (with arrows!) for as long as 90,000 years by some estimates. Could easily be some earlier colonies that drifted far enough from humans to be a new species and then died out. We know that of all the ~10-100K humans who lived around Mitochondrial Eve’s time (100-250Kya), only one is still a common ancestor to all of us, and as branches die out that “last common matrilineal ancestor” gradually moves forward in time.

  50. Ulric Lyons | April 23, 2019 at 9:05 am |

    ‘Why did the trend of Arctic sea ice loss accelerate after about 2000?’

    Weaker solar wind driving a warmer AMO via increased negative NAO/AO.
    ————————————————————————————————-

    ‘New analysis technique for systematic evaluation of simulated extratropical variability’

    Is lacking the short term effects of the solar wind variability on the NAM and SAM.

  51. richswarthout | April 26, 2019 at 5:58 pm |

    The DOE has initiated the Exoscale Computing Project (ECP) that will include the world’s most powerful and smartest supercomputer (the IBM Summit at Oak Ridge). Through its INCITE program, it is soliciting scientific research proposals and there is a list of proposals that have been accepted so far.

    The following proposal highlights, to me, a problem in climate science research:

    The title of the proposal (it was accepted) is “High-Resolution Climate Sensitivity and Prediction Simulations with the CESM”

    It states “For 2019, the team has designed a set of three simulation sub-projects to assess parametric and structural uncertainty in earth system models, and to provide efficient guidance for future projects focused on longer timescale predictability.”

    “The first sub-project employs the Cloud-Associated Parametrizations Testbed (CAPT), a framework that provides a computationally efficient method to identify parametrization errors in earth system simulations, so as to investigate error growth in the coupled system.”

    The problem I have with this proposal is that it’s the wrong proposal at the wrong time. With an opportunity to use the most advanced supercomputers, scientists should be seeking to more fully understand cloud dynamics and interactions, rather than seeking new cloud parameters for existing and unsuccessful models. These scientists are jumping the shark and wasting resources!

    Richard