A place for comments that would otherwise disrupt sensible conversations.
Reader Interactions
2040 Responses to "The Bore Hole"
Thomas T S Watsonsays
Yes!, I agree. The IPCC has only drawn off information that it believes applies to their overal plan to say that Humans are responsible for this climate to change. I was an approved reviewer of the AR5 paper to be released in 2013, but after reading several chapters of this report and the belief I have of the fact that our seasons have changed, naturally, I declined to report, for I would need a staff of many to overcome the discrepancies I found in their general reporting of information.
Re the Cosmic Ray statements above, this is just one area that has not been fully investigated, for as the Swedish scienctist has reported, Cosmic Rays convert in our atmosphere, Nitrogen, to carbon14, to Carbon Dioxide as they travel through our atmosphere, (This has been happening since time began)and you are aware of the atomic weight of the Carbon Dioxide Molecule is 44. So end of story. How can it rise up to cloud level to trap heat there. Impossible.
Thomas T S Watsonsays
I enjoy the spirit of your site. It is gererating statements expressing, similar scientific outlooks.
Why the secrecy in the first place? It seems like asking for noise like this about what should be nothing.
simon abingdonsays
A propos the Alec Rawls kerfuffle, does climate science recognise a significant unexplained correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature (or not)?
pikestaffsays
try reading climate depot, this guy gives daily updates, and is not afraid to air different views to the IPCC.
anyone know how CO2 at less than one half of one percent of the atmosphere can have such a huge effect?
Hugosays
Question, what caused the temp increase from 1880 to 1940? CO2 emissions were small at that time yet the temp increased by as much as between 1940 and 2010.
simon abingdonsays
@Susan Anderson #221 “yet to make a substantive comment based on accurate science here”. How about “you can’t keep a corpse warm with a blanket”. Disagree with that?
Jeff Idsays
Oh, come on.
oneuniversesays
O’Donnell et al., used in the plotted graph, is missing from the references.
O’Donnell, Ryan, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Condon: Improved Methods for PCA-Based Reconstructions: Case Study Using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic Temperature Reconstruction. J. Climate, 24, 2099–2115, doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1 (2011)
Henry_says
OK, let me see if I understand this; At -27C the temps only need to warm another 48F for the ice to start melting? When is that likely to happen??
Isotopioussays
I am still waiting for my references, Eric?
The 100,000 year problem?
It’s O.K if you don’t remember, the ability to remember absolutely everything is reserved for the super human.
Of course, I’m not super human, only super independent..
Brettsays
More smearing the heat around and bungled data analysis. Quit while you’re behind already. ;)
Yanchosesays
Why is it considered a “Chrismas present” to have proof that the world is warming if it’s so castastrophic ?
If, according to astronomers, a meteorite is schedule to hit the earth in 3 years, would they consider it a 2015 “Christmas present” if it has the same trajectory 3 yrs later ?
Every times there’s new proof that the world is warming, there seems to be more happiness than anxiety. Why ?
DDsays
Don’t you think you should include an explanation why Antarctic ice is on track to reach a record maximum this year and why there is so much ice there? Otherwise it looks like an elephant in the room.
Former Believersays
Sure we all want what’s good for “our” “shared” planet but can we all at least agree that climate change was a CO2 death threat to our children, a tragic exaggeration and not sustainability or cute little kids planting trees? Continued support of the climate change mistake isn’t helping anyone or the planet and so if it’s belief in the sanctity of science you really want, then just get a bible and blindly surrender yourself to a higher authority.
Not one single IPCC warning isn’t qualified with “mabyes” and it’s been 26 years of research. Do the math. Be glad a crisis wasn’t real.
REAL planet lovers are former believers and believers selfishly condemn our children to their greenhouse gas ovens of their climate change crisis. History is watching this Reefer Madness.
Jim Crosssays
Not this argument again.
The quote has people on the skeptic side excited is this:
“The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”
Please notice the “such as” part of the statement.
However, whether the mechanism is GCR, ultraviolet, or something else, nobody would reasonable expect that effects from short-term variation in one solar cycle or FD events would necessarily be detectable in temperature or cloud trends. It would probably be washed out by the longer term solar trend that only now is beginning to turn down from a multidecadal upswing.
vukcevicsays
Forbush events of sufficient strength are infrequent and may not make a significant contribution to the natural variability. Variability of the heliospheric magnetic field at the Earth’s orbit is one order of magnitude below variability in the Earth’s dipole magnetic intensity.
In addition Earth’s Magnetic Field spectrum as calculated from the Jackson-Bloxham geo-magnetic data, contains most of the decadal components found in the climate’s natural variability.
Paul Vaughansays
GCR time series are being seriously misinterpreted. The unacceptably poor job done on the recent solar-terrestrial-climate threads at WUWT convinced me to consider defecting from association with intolerably intransigent members of that community. The question is: To where? So I come here to ask: Will I find here fair minds that respect the laws of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum? If so, I have observations to share and a request for assistance.
Berényi Pétersays
What Bromwich at al. have shown is that Byrd Station is actually cooling in the last 2 decades. Warming, if any, happened in the 1980s. It is inconsistent with other studies showing recent warming at the same location.
Gyronsays
Well, at least there hasn’t been any warming at Bird for over 20 years.
Helgo Gerbrandsays
The Bromwich paper shows no warming for Byrd for over 20 years.
[Response: This is in the borehole because it scarcely deserves a response. Still, you can read this, this or this if you don’t get it. –eric]
Aaron Lewissays
Ninety percent of the heat from global warming goes into the oceans. The real questions are:” Is the system close enough to equilibrium that air temperatures are a proxy for the total heat of the system?”, and: “Is the heat partition between phases similar in all time periods?” (For example, were all air temperatures taken at the same relative humidity?)
Ice’s heat of fusion, and water’s heat of vaporization make air temperatures a very poor proxy of how much heat is in the system. Air at 10C and 1%RH contains less heat than air at 10C and 99% RH, and yet they have the same temperature. Air at 0C can be in equilibrium with ice at 0C or with water at 0C, and thus air temperatures even in an equilibrium system may not indicate how much energy is in the system. That is a very large amount of error in heat measurement that is not accounted for in the statistical error.
Even with perfect statistical technique to reject all noise, the air temperatures are a poor estimate of how much heat has accumulated if the system is not in equilibrium.
Paul Vaughansays
Is the blinding light of clear observation welcome here?
Let’s see…
Observations well-constrained by the LAWS of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum:
but how can a broken dataset from only 1 station be valid throughout a complete continent. that makes no sense at all. it would be like putting 1 station in Paris and then saying, this is the reference for Europe, from Norway to Malaga. A second point is, the datasetis broken, with very much gaps in between. Trying to calculate what the temperatusres WOULD have been, is very tricky, for you wont know, would you ?
most of the discussion about climate change avoids mention of one of the principal dynamics
population growth and per capital resource use and consequent ghg emission
this is like discussing the evils of excess drinking without mentioning teetotaling
the historical record shows that ghg started rising after the convents in the west were destroyed by protestant reformation and in the east after buddhist monachism was destroyed by islam
it is very difficult to raise this topic in the current hedonistic culture but when the party gets out of hand on Mother Gaia’s boat this will be an even greater difficulty – extinction like diamonds is forever
Iansays
This may ot see the light of day on this blog but really it ought. In WUWT today there is an article on the temperature values for the contiguous US fromm two different data sets. It is claimed that the data reported are from the SOTC system rather than from the new CONUS system. The rationale for this given in the piece is that SOTC values are higher than those from CONUS. It is also claimed that a longstanding temperature record for July of 77.4F was in fact greater than the CONUS temperature of 76.93F for July 2012 despite the previous claim by the NCDC that July 2012 with a temperature, from the CONUS data, of 77.6F was the highest on record. Then apparently the jJuly temperature for 1936 was changed to 76.41F and for July 2012 to 76.92F. Now why is that? It is this sort of article that give the sceptics (or deniers or whatever) a lot of ammunition. It blogs such as this can address articles such as these explaining why the conclusions drawn my be incorrect, a lot of oxygen to the sceptic cause would be curt off
Dan H.says
Ray,
The most vulnerable ice has already melted. The remaining ice is further from the inflow of warm waters, and closer to the Greenland glaciers. This ice is no thinner than the ice that melted previously. There never was a true linear trend, only an approximation. Going forward, it is likely not to melt linearly, but less so, as the ice becomes harder to melt.
Tom Scharfsays
“Here I have put forth a different viewpoint to that of Gregory et al. (2012): process models have improved and now underpredict the 20th Century sea-level rise to a lesser extent than they used to. As a consequence they also predict a much greater sea-level rise for the future”
Call me cynical, but this is par for the course with climate science. When the current observations don’t pan out to expectations (altimeter readings show no acceleration.at.all.), then an attempt to use less reliable (and infinitely more adjustable tidal gauges) data is then done, past observations are either disregarded em masse, or else efforts to “fix” past observations are put in place.
I cannot believe how little weight is placed on altimeter readings here in these posts. Does the author really give these this little weight? What are the implications of the lack of acceleration in altimeter readings to his models same estimations during this same time period?
Dan H.says
Kevin,
Yes, nobody knows what path the volume will take in the coming years. In fact, nobody forecast the exceptionally large area decrease this year. Granted the ice loss is an empirical question, and one not well-modeled at the present. The mathematical does hold; volume decreases will occur in proportion to the existing volume, whereas area changes are less so. This is not grandstanding, but simple geometry. Forecasts of volumic decreases accelerating to zero in three years, while area continues on a somewhat linear trend, are just impractical. Volumetric declines must slow.
Alex Harveysays
Is “a deep-seated desire to help the planet” compatible with the dispassionate objectivity required of scientists?
vukcevicsays
Global temperatures are about to take a rapid fall towards values recorded in the 1970s. Most Universities teach the AGW, but in the view of the forthcoming change, whole theory will need revision. Oceanography is the most important thing in the future climate research; write to the WHOI and find out about their current requirements.
Tim Jenveysays
To quote: “I am someone with a deep-seated desire to help the planet remain as habitable as possible in the face of the trials humanity is putting it through”
I’d reverse this and say the planet needs some help to save it from itself.
It naturally produces earthquakes and tsunamis creating utter and indiscriminate destruction. It spills out its oil over land and sea beds. Its rivers and oceans wash away and continually reshape the landscape. It sets off fires destroying vast swathes of vegetation. Its storms flatten and destroy the landscape.
I’d recommend to the students to get a more objective and pragmatic view before they get started.
Jim Larsensays
55 Hank said, “I refute it thus:
“We dodged a bullet” — Crutzen, in his Nobel Prize speech.
We need more scientists to tell us what’s unanticipated.”
I unrefute it thusly: :-)
Really? 1984? Back when we were barely out of slide rules and into satellites…
The bottleneck isn’t a lack of climate scientists, but a lack of data and computing power. Since 1984 supercomputer power has gone up by a factor of 10,000,000. Assuming the same slope, in a decade they’ll have 100 times their current power. Plus, some El Nino will leave the 1997 temperature spike in the dust. That’ll probably up the funding for hardware by a factor of 10. So by the time a new student graduates and matures in the field, scientists will have 100-1000 times current computing power (maybe even a bit of quantum) and another decade of observations and study under the belt. Models will mature and the bullets will be defined. Dodging them will require other fields.
Plus, climate science is now immensely attractive. I’m betting it’s getting to be like marine mammal biology. Employers’ in-boxes will surely be over-stuffed with applications from newly-minted graduates. It’s hard to make a difference if you can’t get a job in the field.
My advice is the is if it is your intent to ” help the planet remain as habitable as possible in the face of the trials humanity is putting it through”, you should steer clear of the hard sciences so as to avoid your innate biases. Hard sciences are about understanding, not necessarily to be helpful.
Jim Larsensays
163 Killlian O said, “We do not need better models. All they can do is tell us how much more certain extinction is.”
Heavens no. They COULD tell us that climate sensitivity is 2C and we’ve got not terribly much to worry about at all, assuming we get off fossil fuels in a sedate fashion. 560ppm is a LOOONNNNGGGG ways away. Remember, the ocean will still suck carbon even as we reduce emissions.
171 Killian O said, “You go trying some dopey technofix adaptation and it goes wrong, you are very possibly in deep trouble. Natural fixes, not so much.”
Or the opposite. Simply stop the technofix adaptation and it’s effects reverberate softly to nothing in a couple months or perhaps a year. To stop a natural adaptation, you might need to sterilize an entire continent.
Dan H.says
Secular,
Are those the same food shortages predicted in the Population Bomb over 40 years ago? That was before the large increase in food productivity, which has occurred during one of the greater periods of warming. Just an old theory rehashed?
Dan H.says
Killian,
Yes, the food price spikes were caused by the oil price hikes, not by food shartages. That is seperate from Secular’s contention that food shortages will be caused by global warming. Global food production has increased several fold since the Population Bomb was first published over 40 years ago:
This has occurred during a time of global warming. While there are several factors involved beyond climate-related issues, there is clearly no evidence of a downward spiral occurring today.
Killian, my apple and pear trees suffered the same fate last year, due to the early warmth and late freeze (also in Michigan). This comes a year after a bumper crop. One year does not a trend make.
nvwsays
You folks don’t seem to get it:
Regardless of whether La Nina/ocean variability or nature has a greater influence, if CO2 sensitivity is smaller than hyped and natural fluctuations are larger, then the problem of human impact on climate disappears.
There is a reason carbon trading prices are collapsing – everyone is running for the door as the bubble bursts.
Dan H.says
Killian
When someone cannot refute a statement with evidence, but resorts to inane phrases, it is a clear indication that they cannot refute the statement. Cherry-pick is usually meant as a reference to a smaller timeframe in a larger sample, and is usually used by those lacking sufficient evidence to counter the claim.
SA did not provide supporting evidence for his claim, but here it is. While shortages do affect grain prices, the recent oil spike has dwarfed these effects.
Using one-year trends like Russian wheat or U.S. corn to bolster your claim is akin to extrapolating temperature declines based on last month’s precipitous drop.
Not sure that I understand how a price rise can lead to a shortage. Typically rising prices lead to increased production to reap extra profits.
You should practice what you preach, if you truly hate it, and stop denying the facts regarding agriculture.
Dan H.says
John,
I think that the issue is that climate sensitivity cannot be reduced to a single value. More than anything else, that is what the research is showing. There are simply too many variables to make such a simplistic claim.
Dan H.says
Killian
Scientists prefer to refute a statement with evidence, not resorts to inane phrases. Cherry-pick is usually meant as a reference to a smaller timeframe in a larger sample, and is usually used by those lacking sufficient evidence to counter the claim. Once again, you offer no counter.
SA did not provide supporting evidence for his claim, but here it is. While shortages have affected grain prices, the recent oil spike has dwarfed these effects.
Using one-year trends like Russian wheat or U.S. corn to bolster your claim is akin to extrapolating temperature declines based on last month’s precipitous drop.
Not sure that I understand how a price rise can lead to a shortage. Typically rising prices lead to increased production to reap extra profits.
You should practice what you preach, if you truly hate it, and stop denying the facts regarding agriculture.
As you said earlier, it could cost lives.
Carbomontanussays
Yes!
If I was to disturb or to ruin the very trade of Climate research, I would look carefully over what I can do with the clouds. For instance, find some tendency Theta , that makes it clear up at night and come clouds again at daytime or vice versa. And show that this tendency theta has been changing in recent time, so that the very CO2- theory is now kaputt and dis- qualified.
In fact, this is the first thing that struck me when the University told on a festival that global warming is to be taken serious. “What about the clouds? Have they got any control of that?”
It would be the most efficient systematic error out of control if the task was to disturb climate research or to commit climate denial or republican war on science. I do actually find them stupid because they haven`t done it this rather obviousa and compulsory way. Simply introduce and postulate that day / night cloudy tendency Theta that is changing over time.
“Analysis of the CMIP5 models (which will come at some point!) will be a better apples-to-apples comparison since they go up to 2012 with ‘observed’ forcings. ”
What are the aerosols “observed forcings” in 2012?
Maybe you know that the “observed aerosol forcing” is smaller in AR5 than in AR4, although AR5 is not still peer-reviewed.
So how CMIP5 will react with this value?
Still a time, a 3°C climate sensitivity should be more and more unlikely.
Tom Scharfsays
Although this comment will be anything but popular in this forum, I find the inclusion of “adjusted data” temperature graph to be self serving.
My point is mainly that where was this graph during the the run up of temperatures after 1980? There was no evident “search for the truth” of how natural variability was affecting the temperature trend during the good times. Now that we have a plateau, there is a significant effort to explain it away. This is the very definition of confirmation bias. Natural forcings are now embraced, when previously they were dismissed as insignificant. While this should be seen as the natural advancement of science, it is also another sign that the we simply don’t yet have a good grip on climate projections.
I would have a lot more respect for this type of effort if it had been part of the standard graph set from the beginning. The fact that it is trotted out now is self serving, I think everyone here knows this intuitively.
I’m also not a big believer in the ability to unwind these natural forcings from the temperature trend accurately. If the primary and secondary effects of ENSO, et. al. were known, we wouldn’t be maintaining such a wide range in the PDF of sensitivity, and the models predictive skill would be better than it is.
If ENSO is so important, than why aren’t they accounted for in the models already? Because the models can’t do it, yet. But this shouldn’t be used as a get out of jail free card for poor performance.
In my opinion, subtracting out a calculated “estimated error” and concluding your initial results were right all along needs to be viewed with a grain of salt.
Dan H.says
Yes Martin,
Sometimes they trend up (1990s) and sometimes they trend down (2000s). But to ignore these effect or consider them insignificant, leads to modelling errors. Probably the reason that the original predictions are running rather high.
Dan H.says
Simple physics tells us that an exponential rise in CO2 will generate a linear rise in temperature. The deviations from the linear rate result from a complex climate system. Alternately, the original assumption could be wrong.
PAbersays
As I noted several discussions before, I am extremely cautious with respect to Fig.2 (Adjusted data).
The methodology of multiple regression analysis (the base of the cited papers) is purely statistical one – not physical.
And it certainly follows the principle of “**** in, **** out”. No, I do not mean “garbage” – I mean “linear”.
The method looks for the best coefficients to fit the observed, RAW data with combination of 4 factors: MEI, volcanic and solar activity – and … the linear growth of the temperatures due to CAGHG.
No wonder that after such fitting, if one removes the “natural variability” (MEI, volcanic and solar) the remains look linear!
Should the assumed function of the “underlying”, long term phenomena be chosen in other form, the coefficients of the multiple regression would look different. Maybe even leading to a better R^2.
The second remark is on the problems with the variables chosen for the multiple regression analysis. First, simple eye inspection shows that the recent “stalling” of the RAW temperatures within the multiple regression framework is due to solar activity. This is actually good news for checking the validity – as we expect a rather smooth changes in the nearest future. But the key problems with multiple regression are in the general choice of variables (and especially in the omitted variables). Second, while the volcanic and solar activity are, as causes, independent of the climate state of the Earth to a high degree, the ocean behavior is not. ENSO behavior may (I guess would) depend on the climate state.
Lastly, as has been noted above, the presence of multiyear oscillations in the “adjusted data” indicates some missing element – judging by the size, quite an important one. Thus my conclusion: relying on multiple regression statistical analysis, especially to derive “nicely looking linearly growing temperature”, without actual calculation WHY the coefficients are as they are, without showing the mechanism is not good enough for me. I would stick with the RAW data.
vukcevicsays
@Chris Colose
Agree, individual ENSO events may be unpredictable since it ‘appears’ that they may be linked to the geological activity in the Central Pacific area, but a 60ish year natural cycle may be also present. Only significant correlation failure is for a short period around 1950 http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ENSO.htm
You’re right that effects are much harder to model, but it will be hard to convince anyone to take actions on global warming if you can’t model effects. no matter how good the models are for modeling temperature and Arctic ice.
No matter what certainty you believe exists with man-made global warming the certainty for any effects is bound to be much less.
T Marvellsays
About my post 60, the report seems to include sulpher compounds, as co-emitted arosols (see p. 136, 181 (tables 3-6), and 280 (figure 10)). It would be odd if it did not include them.
Small coal burning plants tend to emit a lot of soot.
Again, evidence for the idea that Chinese polution has a cooling effect is slight. It would be awful to think that anything good comes out of polution.
The warming impact of soot is especially large for the Artic. Maybe that is one reason why predictions about ice loss have been too modest.
Yes!, I agree. The IPCC has only drawn off information that it believes applies to their overal plan to say that Humans are responsible for this climate to change. I was an approved reviewer of the AR5 paper to be released in 2013, but after reading several chapters of this report and the belief I have of the fact that our seasons have changed, naturally, I declined to report, for I would need a staff of many to overcome the discrepancies I found in their general reporting of information.
Re the Cosmic Ray statements above, this is just one area that has not been fully investigated, for as the Swedish scienctist has reported, Cosmic Rays convert in our atmosphere, Nitrogen, to carbon14, to Carbon Dioxide as they travel through our atmosphere, (This has been happening since time began)and you are aware of the atomic weight of the Carbon Dioxide Molecule is 44. So end of story. How can it rise up to cloud level to trap heat there. Impossible.
I enjoy the spirit of your site. It is gererating statements expressing, similar scientific outlooks.
Why the secrecy in the first place? It seems like asking for noise like this about what should be nothing.
A propos the Alec Rawls kerfuffle, does climate science recognise a significant unexplained correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature (or not)?
try reading climate depot, this guy gives daily updates, and is not afraid to air different views to the IPCC.
anyone know how CO2 at less than one half of one percent of the atmosphere can have such a huge effect?
Question, what caused the temp increase from 1880 to 1940? CO2 emissions were small at that time yet the temp increased by as much as between 1940 and 2010.
@Susan Anderson #221 “yet to make a substantive comment based on accurate science here”. How about “you can’t keep a corpse warm with a blanket”. Disagree with that?
Oh, come on.
O’Donnell et al., used in the plotted graph, is missing from the references.
O’Donnell, Ryan, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Condon: Improved Methods for PCA-Based Reconstructions: Case Study Using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic Temperature Reconstruction. J. Climate, 24, 2099–2115, doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1 (2011)
OK, let me see if I understand this; At -27C the temps only need to warm another 48F for the ice to start melting? When is that likely to happen??
I am still waiting for my references, Eric?
The 100,000 year problem?
It’s O.K if you don’t remember, the ability to remember absolutely everything is reserved for the super human.
Of course, I’m not super human, only super independent..
More smearing the heat around and bungled data analysis. Quit while you’re behind already. ;)
Why is it considered a “Chrismas present” to have proof that the world is warming if it’s so castastrophic ?
If, according to astronomers, a meteorite is schedule to hit the earth in 3 years, would they consider it a 2015 “Christmas present” if it has the same trajectory 3 yrs later ?
Every times there’s new proof that the world is warming, there seems to be more happiness than anxiety. Why ?
Don’t you think you should include an explanation why Antarctic ice is on track to reach a record maximum this year and why there is so much ice there? Otherwise it looks like an elephant in the room.
Sure we all want what’s good for “our” “shared” planet but can we all at least agree that climate change was a CO2 death threat to our children, a tragic exaggeration and not sustainability or cute little kids planting trees? Continued support of the climate change mistake isn’t helping anyone or the planet and so if it’s belief in the sanctity of science you really want, then just get a bible and blindly surrender yourself to a higher authority.
Not one single IPCC warning isn’t qualified with “mabyes” and it’s been 26 years of research. Do the math. Be glad a crisis wasn’t real.
REAL planet lovers are former believers and believers selfishly condemn our children to their greenhouse gas ovens of their climate change crisis. History is watching this Reefer Madness.
Not this argument again.
The quote has people on the skeptic side excited is this:
“The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”
Please notice the “such as” part of the statement.
However, whether the mechanism is GCR, ultraviolet, or something else, nobody would reasonable expect that effects from short-term variation in one solar cycle or FD events would necessarily be detectable in temperature or cloud trends. It would probably be washed out by the longer term solar trend that only now is beginning to turn down from a multidecadal upswing.
Forbush events of sufficient strength are infrequent and may not make a significant contribution to the natural variability. Variability of the heliospheric magnetic field at the Earth’s orbit is one order of magnitude below variability in the Earth’s dipole magnetic intensity.
In addition Earth’s Magnetic Field spectrum as calculated from the Jackson-Bloxham geo-magnetic data, contains most of the decadal components found in the climate’s natural variability.
GCR time series are being seriously misinterpreted. The unacceptably poor job done on the recent solar-terrestrial-climate threads at WUWT convinced me to consider defecting from association with intolerably intransigent members of that community. The question is: To where? So I come here to ask: Will I find here fair minds that respect the laws of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum? If so, I have observations to share and a request for assistance.
What Bromwich at al. have shown is that Byrd Station is actually cooling in the last 2 decades. Warming, if any, happened in the 1980s. It is inconsistent with other studies showing recent warming at the same location.
Well, at least there hasn’t been any warming at Bird for over 20 years.
The Bromwich paper shows no warming for Byrd for over 20 years.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/belette/8308813948/lightbox/
[Response: This is in the borehole because it scarcely deserves a response. Still, you can read this, this or this if you don’t get it. –eric]
Ninety percent of the heat from global warming goes into the oceans. The real questions are:” Is the system close enough to equilibrium that air temperatures are a proxy for the total heat of the system?”, and: “Is the heat partition between phases similar in all time periods?” (For example, were all air temperatures taken at the same relative humidity?)
Ice’s heat of fusion, and water’s heat of vaporization make air temperatures a very poor proxy of how much heat is in the system. Air at 10C and 1%RH contains less heat than air at 10C and 99% RH, and yet they have the same temperature. Air at 0C can be in equilibrium with ice at 0C or with water at 0C, and thus air temperatures even in an equilibrium system may not indicate how much energy is in the system. That is a very large amount of error in heat measurement that is not accounted for in the statistical error.
Even with perfect statistical technique to reject all noise, the air temperatures are a poor estimate of how much heat has accumulated if the system is not in equilibrium.
Is the blinding light of clear observation welcome here?
Let’s see…
Observations well-constrained by the LAWS of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum:
1. From annual earth rotation:
http://i50.tinypic.com/11he49z.png
2. From semi-annual earth rotation:
http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png
Clear warning to potential forces of dark ignorance &/or deception: You will NOT be able to hide from these clear observations.
I call on the administrators of this site to be fair & honest. Understand very clearly that your credibility is at stake.
Sincerely,
Paul L. Vaughan, B.Sc., M.Sc.
—
submitted December 30, 2012 to:
“A review of cosmic rays and climate: a cluttered story of little success
Filed under: Climate Science Instrumental Record Sun-earth connections — rasmus @ 25 December 2012”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/12/a-review-of-cosmic-rays-and-climate-a-cluttered-story-of-little-success/
but how can a broken dataset from only 1 station be valid throughout a complete continent. that makes no sense at all. it would be like putting 1 station in Paris and then saying, this is the reference for Europe, from Norway to Malaga. A second point is, the datasetis broken, with very much gaps in between. Trying to calculate what the temperatusres WOULD have been, is very tricky, for you wont know, would you ?
most of the discussion about climate change avoids mention of one of the principal dynamics
population growth and per capital resource use and consequent ghg emission
this is like discussing the evils of excess drinking without mentioning teetotaling
the historical record shows that ghg started rising after the convents in the west were destroyed by protestant reformation and in the east after buddhist monachism was destroyed by islam
it is very difficult to raise this topic in the current hedonistic culture but when the party gets out of hand on Mother Gaia’s boat this will be an even greater difficulty – extinction like diamonds is forever
This may ot see the light of day on this blog but really it ought. In WUWT today there is an article on the temperature values for the contiguous US fromm two different data sets. It is claimed that the data reported are from the SOTC system rather than from the new CONUS system. The rationale for this given in the piece is that SOTC values are higher than those from CONUS. It is also claimed that a longstanding temperature record for July of 77.4F was in fact greater than the CONUS temperature of 76.93F for July 2012 despite the previous claim by the NCDC that July 2012 with a temperature, from the CONUS data, of 77.6F was the highest on record. Then apparently the jJuly temperature for 1936 was changed to 76.41F and for July 2012 to 76.92F. Now why is that? It is this sort of article that give the sceptics (or deniers or whatever) a lot of ammunition. It blogs such as this can address articles such as these explaining why the conclusions drawn my be incorrect, a lot of oxygen to the sceptic cause would be curt off
Ray,
The most vulnerable ice has already melted. The remaining ice is further from the inflow of warm waters, and closer to the Greenland glaciers. This ice is no thinner than the ice that melted previously. There never was a true linear trend, only an approximation. Going forward, it is likely not to melt linearly, but less so, as the ice becomes harder to melt.
“Here I have put forth a different viewpoint to that of Gregory et al. (2012): process models have improved and now underpredict the 20th Century sea-level rise to a lesser extent than they used to. As a consequence they also predict a much greater sea-level rise for the future”
Call me cynical, but this is par for the course with climate science. When the current observations don’t pan out to expectations (altimeter readings show no acceleration.at.all.), then an attempt to use less reliable (and infinitely more adjustable tidal gauges) data is then done, past observations are either disregarded em masse, or else efforts to “fix” past observations are put in place.
I cannot believe how little weight is placed on altimeter readings here in these posts. Does the author really give these this little weight? What are the implications of the lack of acceleration in altimeter readings to his models same estimations during this same time period?
Kevin,
Yes, nobody knows what path the volume will take in the coming years. In fact, nobody forecast the exceptionally large area decrease this year. Granted the ice loss is an empirical question, and one not well-modeled at the present. The mathematical does hold; volume decreases will occur in proportion to the existing volume, whereas area changes are less so. This is not grandstanding, but simple geometry. Forecasts of volumic decreases accelerating to zero in three years, while area continues on a somewhat linear trend, are just impractical. Volumetric declines must slow.
Is “a deep-seated desire to help the planet” compatible with the dispassionate objectivity required of scientists?
Global temperatures are about to take a rapid fall towards values recorded in the 1970s. Most Universities teach the AGW, but in the view of the forthcoming change, whole theory will need revision. Oceanography is the most important thing in the future climate research; write to the WHOI and find out about their current requirements.
To quote: “I am someone with a deep-seated desire to help the planet remain as habitable as possible in the face of the trials humanity is putting it through”
I’d reverse this and say the planet needs some help to save it from itself.
It naturally produces earthquakes and tsunamis creating utter and indiscriminate destruction. It spills out its oil over land and sea beds. Its rivers and oceans wash away and continually reshape the landscape. It sets off fires destroying vast swathes of vegetation. Its storms flatten and destroy the landscape.
I’d recommend to the students to get a more objective and pragmatic view before they get started.
55 Hank said, “I refute it thus:
“We dodged a bullet” — Crutzen, in his Nobel Prize speech.
We need more scientists to tell us what’s unanticipated.”
I unrefute it thusly: :-)
Really? 1984? Back when we were barely out of slide rules and into satellites…
The bottleneck isn’t a lack of climate scientists, but a lack of data and computing power. Since 1984 supercomputer power has gone up by a factor of 10,000,000. Assuming the same slope, in a decade they’ll have 100 times their current power. Plus, some El Nino will leave the 1997 temperature spike in the dust. That’ll probably up the funding for hardware by a factor of 10. So by the time a new student graduates and matures in the field, scientists will have 100-1000 times current computing power (maybe even a bit of quantum) and another decade of observations and study under the belt. Models will mature and the bullets will be defined. Dodging them will require other fields.
Plus, climate science is now immensely attractive. I’m betting it’s getting to be like marine mammal biology. Employers’ in-boxes will surely be over-stuffed with applications from newly-minted graduates. It’s hard to make a difference if you can’t get a job in the field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supercomputing-rmax-graph.png
My advice is the is if it is your intent to ” help the planet remain as habitable as possible in the face of the trials humanity is putting it through”, you should steer clear of the hard sciences so as to avoid your innate biases. Hard sciences are about understanding, not necessarily to be helpful.
163 Killlian O said, “We do not need better models. All they can do is tell us how much more certain extinction is.”
Heavens no. They COULD tell us that climate sensitivity is 2C and we’ve got not terribly much to worry about at all, assuming we get off fossil fuels in a sedate fashion. 560ppm is a LOOONNNNGGGG ways away. Remember, the ocean will still suck carbon even as we reduce emissions.
171 Killian O said, “You go trying some dopey technofix adaptation and it goes wrong, you are very possibly in deep trouble. Natural fixes, not so much.”
Or the opposite. Simply stop the technofix adaptation and it’s effects reverberate softly to nothing in a couple months or perhaps a year. To stop a natural adaptation, you might need to sterilize an entire continent.
Secular,
Are those the same food shortages predicted in the Population Bomb over 40 years ago? That was before the large increase in food productivity, which has occurred during one of the greater periods of warming. Just an old theory rehashed?
Killian,
Yes, the food price spikes were caused by the oil price hikes, not by food shartages. That is seperate from Secular’s contention that food shortages will be caused by global warming. Global food production has increased several fold since the Population Bomb was first published over 40 years ago:
http://www.geohive.com/charts/ag_crops.aspx
This has occurred during a time of global warming. While there are several factors involved beyond climate-related issues, there is clearly no evidence of a downward spiral occurring today.
Killian, my apple and pear trees suffered the same fate last year, due to the early warmth and late freeze (also in Michigan). This comes a year after a bumper crop. One year does not a trend make.
You folks don’t seem to get it:
Regardless of whether La Nina/ocean variability or nature has a greater influence, if CO2 sensitivity is smaller than hyped and natural fluctuations are larger, then the problem of human impact on climate disappears.
There is a reason carbon trading prices are collapsing – everyone is running for the door as the bubble bursts.
Killian
When someone cannot refute a statement with evidence, but resorts to inane phrases, it is a clear indication that they cannot refute the statement. Cherry-pick is usually meant as a reference to a smaller timeframe in a larger sample, and is usually used by those lacking sufficient evidence to counter the claim.
SA did not provide supporting evidence for his claim, but here it is. While shortages do affect grain prices, the recent oil spike has dwarfed these effects.
http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/03/charted-together-crude-oil-rice-corn.html
Using one-year trends like Russian wheat or U.S. corn to bolster your claim is akin to extrapolating temperature declines based on last month’s precipitous drop.
Not sure that I understand how a price rise can lead to a shortage. Typically rising prices lead to increased production to reap extra profits.
You should practice what you preach, if you truly hate it, and stop denying the facts regarding agriculture.
John,
I think that the issue is that climate sensitivity cannot be reduced to a single value. More than anything else, that is what the research is showing. There are simply too many variables to make such a simplistic claim.
Killian
Scientists prefer to refute a statement with evidence, not resorts to inane phrases. Cherry-pick is usually meant as a reference to a smaller timeframe in a larger sample, and is usually used by those lacking sufficient evidence to counter the claim. Once again, you offer no counter.
SA did not provide supporting evidence for his claim, but here it is. While shortages have affected grain prices, the recent oil spike has dwarfed these effects.
http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/03/charted-together-crude-oil-rice-corn.html
Using one-year trends like Russian wheat or U.S. corn to bolster your claim is akin to extrapolating temperature declines based on last month’s precipitous drop.
Not sure that I understand how a price rise can lead to a shortage. Typically rising prices lead to increased production to reap extra profits.
You should practice what you preach, if you truly hate it, and stop denying the facts regarding agriculture.
As you said earlier, it could cost lives.
Yes!
If I was to disturb or to ruin the very trade of Climate research, I would look carefully over what I can do with the clouds. For instance, find some tendency Theta , that makes it clear up at night and come clouds again at daytime or vice versa. And show that this tendency theta has been changing in recent time, so that the very CO2- theory is now kaputt and dis- qualified.
In fact, this is the first thing that struck me when the University told on a festival that global warming is to be taken serious. “What about the clouds? Have they got any control of that?”
It would be the most efficient systematic error out of control if the task was to disturb climate research or to commit climate denial or republican war on science. I do actually find them stupid because they haven`t done it this rather obviousa and compulsory way. Simply introduce and postulate that day / night cloudy tendency Theta that is changing over time.
“Analysis of the CMIP5 models (which will come at some point!) will be a better apples-to-apples comparison since they go up to 2012 with ‘observed’ forcings. ”
What are the aerosols “observed forcings” in 2012?
Maybe you know that the “observed aerosol forcing” is smaller in AR5 than in AR4, although AR5 is not still peer-reviewed.
So how CMIP5 will react with this value?
Still a time, a 3°C climate sensitivity should be more and more unlikely.
Although this comment will be anything but popular in this forum, I find the inclusion of “adjusted data” temperature graph to be self serving.
My point is mainly that where was this graph during the the run up of temperatures after 1980? There was no evident “search for the truth” of how natural variability was affecting the temperature trend during the good times. Now that we have a plateau, there is a significant effort to explain it away. This is the very definition of confirmation bias. Natural forcings are now embraced, when previously they were dismissed as insignificant. While this should be seen as the natural advancement of science, it is also another sign that the we simply don’t yet have a good grip on climate projections.
I would have a lot more respect for this type of effort if it had been part of the standard graph set from the beginning. The fact that it is trotted out now is self serving, I think everyone here knows this intuitively.
I’m also not a big believer in the ability to unwind these natural forcings from the temperature trend accurately. If the primary and secondary effects of ENSO, et. al. were known, we wouldn’t be maintaining such a wide range in the PDF of sensitivity, and the models predictive skill would be better than it is.
If ENSO is so important, than why aren’t they accounted for in the models already? Because the models can’t do it, yet. But this shouldn’t be used as a get out of jail free card for poor performance.
In my opinion, subtracting out a calculated “estimated error” and concluding your initial results were right all along needs to be viewed with a grain of salt.
Yes Martin,
Sometimes they trend up (1990s) and sometimes they trend down (2000s). But to ignore these effect or consider them insignificant, leads to modelling errors. Probably the reason that the original predictions are running rather high.
Simple physics tells us that an exponential rise in CO2 will generate a linear rise in temperature. The deviations from the linear rate result from a complex climate system. Alternately, the original assumption could be wrong.
As I noted several discussions before, I am extremely cautious with respect to Fig.2 (Adjusted data).
The methodology of multiple regression analysis (the base of the cited papers) is purely statistical one – not physical.
And it certainly follows the principle of “**** in, **** out”. No, I do not mean “garbage” – I mean “linear”.
The method looks for the best coefficients to fit the observed, RAW data with combination of 4 factors: MEI, volcanic and solar activity – and … the linear growth of the temperatures due to CAGHG.
No wonder that after such fitting, if one removes the “natural variability” (MEI, volcanic and solar) the remains look linear!
Should the assumed function of the “underlying”, long term phenomena be chosen in other form, the coefficients of the multiple regression would look different. Maybe even leading to a better R^2.
The second remark is on the problems with the variables chosen for the multiple regression analysis. First, simple eye inspection shows that the recent “stalling” of the RAW temperatures within the multiple regression framework is due to solar activity. This is actually good news for checking the validity – as we expect a rather smooth changes in the nearest future. But the key problems with multiple regression are in the general choice of variables (and especially in the omitted variables). Second, while the volcanic and solar activity are, as causes, independent of the climate state of the Earth to a high degree, the ocean behavior is not. ENSO behavior may (I guess would) depend on the climate state.
Lastly, as has been noted above, the presence of multiyear oscillations in the “adjusted data” indicates some missing element – judging by the size, quite an important one. Thus my conclusion: relying on multiple regression statistical analysis, especially to derive “nicely looking linearly growing temperature”, without actual calculation WHY the coefficients are as they are, without showing the mechanism is not good enough for me. I would stick with the RAW data.
@Chris Colose
Agree, individual ENSO events may be unpredictable since it ‘appears’ that they may be linked to the geological activity in the Central Pacific area, but a 60ish year natural cycle may be also present. Only significant correlation failure is for a short period around 1950
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ENSO.htm
# 33 Mark B.
You’re right that effects are much harder to model, but it will be hard to convince anyone to take actions on global warming if you can’t model effects. no matter how good the models are for modeling temperature and Arctic ice.
No matter what certainty you believe exists with man-made global warming the certainty for any effects is bound to be much less.
About my post 60, the report seems to include sulpher compounds, as co-emitted arosols (see p. 136, 181 (tables 3-6), and 280 (figure 10)). It would be odd if it did not include them.
Small coal burning plants tend to emit a lot of soot.
Again, evidence for the idea that Chinese polution has a cooling effect is slight. It would be awful to think that anything good comes out of polution.
The warming impact of soot is especially large for the Artic. Maybe that is one reason why predictions about ice loss have been too modest.