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2040 Responses to "The Bore Hole"
Shelamasays
Tony Watts, unfortunately exposes this model hoax part of the hoax for what it is…
[edit]
Too bad, RealClimate: back to the drawing boards.
vukcevicsays
Most of the Northern Hemisphere is under strong influence of the North Atlantic SST. Its natural variability can be calculated from product of solar and geo-magnetic oscillations. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
However both of the above are shown in the de-trended form. The decadal up-trend is more difficult proposition: both natural and anthropogenic forms are considered. Climate model designers should be made aware that the N. Atlantic SST has degree of correlation with tectonic activity at its most northern reaches, which of course is unpredictable, but it does precede the SST change by half a dozen or so years: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAP-SST.htm
Since none of the above comes from a climate scientist, it may be considered with condescension, but then that is the blog’s editor choice.
Jim Steelesays
Most of the warming on the western peninsula has been caused by northerly winds that compress the ice and generate more open waters in the winter while most of the warming on the eastern peninsula has been caused by those same winds flowing over the peninsular range creating foehn storms. (massom 2005, 2008). Most of the increased winds associated with the SAM seems connected to the PAcific Decadal Oscillation. I am surprised to see you make a pitch for ozone because in your 2012 paper you described such connections as problematic. It is just as probable that warming over the peninsula and WAIS is natural oscillations because the south pole
Paulsays
(Re #4)
1. Thanks for your reply and clarifying here that the WAIS has cooled over the past 2000 years. I did read your paper and did not find any mention of this, leaving it for the reader to infer from looking at the trend of δ18O in fig 3.
2. If the WAIS has cooled over the past 2,000 years due to Milankovitch, and Milankovitch forcing will continue to decline at 65S for several thousand more years, why the cause for alarm about collapse of the WAIS?
2. The abstract says “δ18O anomalies comparable to those of recent decades occur about 1% of the time over the past 2,000 years”, but fig 3 shows δ18O anomalies comparable to the highest levels of the 1990’s have occurred at least 30% of the time over the past 2,000 years, and much higher percentages for δ18O anomalies comparable to the average value of the past 50 years. Your paper states, “Before 1,000 years ago modern decadal average δ18O values are reached more frequently” – perhaps around 50% of the time.
Likewise, the paper says “Decadal average δ18O anomalies comparable to the 1990’s in the WAIS Divide record are reached on only four occasions in the past 1000 years,” but this happened many more times in terms of the absolute values of δ18O.
3. Why isn’t the mean cooling “relevant to the question of atmospheric circulation and glacier anomalies”?
4. What do you calculate the change in annual mean insolation forcing at the WAIS was over the past 2000 years? Your paper does not mention this, and the single sentence mentioning Milankovitch references paper #13, which itself does not have a single mention of Milankovitch forcing.
5. δ18O anomalies have declined since the 1990’s – what is the explanation for this despite a steady increase in greenhouse forcing?
Could you reinstate and answer, please, or is the question considered irrelevant or off topic?
Thank you
Jens Raunsø Jensensays
I posed a question to Dr Kaufman 2 days ago (#8). If Dr Kaufman is out of reach, perhaps one of the many reaearch team members could answer my question. Given the significant overestimation of global temperature in recent decades by the reconstructed temperatures, documented in the supplementary material, it may not be surprising that the reconstructed temperatures during the recent 30 year period may be found to be at the higher end of the reconstructed temperature curve. Do you still consider it a “likely” reality, that temperatures during “1971-2000” was higher than at any time > 1400, or could this be an artifact associated with a bias in the temperature reconstruction?
In my theory the solar system is passing through dense cloud of neutrinos (dark matter), which are accelerating the decay of radioactive elements at the Earth mantle and ocean water, thus initiating geomagnetic instability and global warming at both Earth, both other parts of solar system. Actually this scenario has been illustrated quite exactly at the 2012 movie, which has been “accidentally” labeled as the “most absurd science-fiction movie” ever with NASA… IMO the concentration of anti-neutrinos are responsible for changes of human mood during solar eruptions, full moon or conjunctions of planets and they’re responsible for part of Lense-Thirring and gravitational lensing effects.
DocMartynsays
Rob, the temperature gradient in the oceans is a function of two inputs. Firstly solar radiation arrives at the surface, heating he the water. The waters at the bottom of the oceans got there from cold dense saline chilled at the poles. There is a well described temperature gradient and the two fluxes, solar energy warming the surface and cold polar waters flowing to the bottom are what causes the temperature gradient.
An analogy is a metal rod placed in a coal fire. It is heated at one end and heat is transferred along its length. However the shaft of the rod radiates heat away and so one end is red hot and the other cool enough to hold.
If one raises the temperature of the fire, the overall heat of the rod increases, but the tip heats up more than mid-shaft. One cannot, by increasing the temperature of the heat source, increase the amount of heat in the middle of the shaft greater than one heats the tip in the hot coals.
The observation that the amount of HEAT in the 300-700m fraction of the oceans has risen, per unit volume, greater that the 0-300m layer is no physical, if the proposed mechanism of increased radiative flux at the surface is accepted.
If you are proposing that that large scale transfers of water from 0-300m have exchanged with waters at 300-700m then one should provide mechanistic evidence and also report a decrease in the pO2 at 0-300m and an elevation of pO2 of the normally hypoxic 300-700m layer.
Zeitgeistsays
So the ocean is getting warm 700m below the ocean’s surface. Interesting discovery, but then again it also hints at how little we know about these systems we’re looking at, and how we really don’t understand the mechanisms at work – which the Carbon Cult is loath to admit.
The Argo system has been deployed for ten years, that is the total size of the hard data sample – and already its the Warmer’s last straw, to validate models already wrong because they didn’t incorporate this effect in the first place. Its almost comical.
Between satellites showing no surface warming and Argo buoys showing deep ocean warming, the only thing I can say for sure is the more real data from real instruments the better – because we’re always surprised what we find when we turn off the simulator video games and actually look at what we’re allegedly studying.
Isotopioussays
rasmus,
the sealevel data in 1998 shows an increase in height, due to an El Nino. So there is an ENSO signature in the data, however, isn’t this related to distribution of precipitation, rather than heat content? And even if it was in someway related to heat content (which I think it is), doesn’t this show the opposite to what you are suggesting? If what you are saying is true, then during La Nina events overall heat content should go up. Sure there is some deep ocean warming, stirred by La Nina, but caused by El Nino?!
I think the simplest explanation is that neither GHGs nor ENSO are the main culprits responsible for the increase in OHC, manifest by sea level rise. ENSO balances out, and ocean mixing is a strong negative feedback. Both facts negate the “warmist” argument.
Matthew Lsays
Rob Painting says:
1 May 2013 at 3:17 PM
No. You did not understand the heat capacity comment that you made earlier. The same amount of energy going into the ocean will result in a smaller change in temperature than would be the case if that energy was going into the atmosphere.
No, I fully understand the point. What I am getting at is that if there is a temperature difference between two bodies, regardless of the thermal mass of those bodies, energy will tend to flow from the one at the higher temperature to the one at the lower temperature – provided there is a route for that energy to travel down, such as conduction, convection or radiation (in this case I am not quite sure of the mechanism by which heat gets from atmosphere to ocean).
Obviously the body with the higher thermal mass will change in temperature much less for a given energy input than the body with the lower thermal mass, meaning that if energy is transferred from the atmosphere to the ocean that the atmosphere will drop in temperature much further than the ocean will rise in temperature. I have no idea of the actual figures but as a thought experiment it could be that if the ocean is at, say, 12c and the air at 15c, the equilibrium temperature might be around 12.2c – in other words if the heat travels from atmosphere to ocean that it will make very little difference to the temperature of the ocean.
I also understand the comments here on the fact that the oceans will always have a vertical temperature gradient and most of the temperature change will occur in the top 200m “well mixed” layer. Presumably if there is a transfer of heat from atmosphere to ocean then it is this layer that will be absorbing the heat and expanding.
Hardy Crosssays
I don’t see a way to dismiss geothermal and submarine volcanoes as a source of tiny ocean temperature changes, particularly in the highly active west pacific – coincidentally (?) the geographic source of the temperature plume that travels eastward. There is sparse data on the total heat emitted by these sources. To omit this source from consideration seems foolish and invites skepticism of the strength of climate studies.
simon abingdonsays
#36 Ray Ladbury “I agree that there is no evidence either way”.
So what would a scientist say to that? Looks like you just threw in the towel Ray.
In any case is it not rather more reasonable to draw the natural conclusion from Fermi’s comment, that although “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (a tiresome cliche in my opinion) it is none the less a very sensible guiding principle in most situations.
simon abingdonsays
#61 Phil Scadden “Simon, which no. on the Drake equation do you think is most limiting? Ie do you think the probability of a suitable planets is very low; or that probability that life would form on them is very low”.
Phil, not sure if you’re addressing me (I’m already in the bore-hole after commenting on Ray Ladbury’s startling admission at #36 “Simon, I accept that there is no evidence either way”).
However my answer to your question is it doesn’t matter since they each belong in the lengthy concatenation of necessary improbabilities required for a such an eventually successful biological outcome. But for now (and remembering that evolution is not directed) I consider the biological question itself.
The number of stars in the universe has been estimated on the low side of 10^24 which approximates to 2^80. If our own example of intelligent life has has had to survive more than 80 potentially negative bifurcations in its Earthly evolution over 4 billion years (that’s an average of just 1 every 500 million years) then it’s unlikely there can be anything comparable elsewhere in the universe, regardless of the availability of suitable planets.
But while we don’t know (can’t know?) we all have our preferred opinion. Which might depend on whether you are asberger’s or herd-mentality.
Patricksays
@79 Life has already found a way, and it is here now to do the fantastic amazing higher-order activity called climate science, which is far more interesting than most of what passes for science fiction–which is, guess what, just plain techno-superstition. If that’s exciting, try sci-fi comics or Michael Crichton. It’s o.k.
@92 Glad to know that I react to Sharov and Gordon like an evolutionary biologist, not to mention like Ray Ladbury @88. Thank you both for the utterly amazing link with the great graphics, the fantastic information, and one good laugh. It’s better than comics!
vukcevicsays
When cooling sets in the NW Europe over next decade or two, you could well do to remember this one http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NVa.htm
Print it and put away.
It really does beg the question, if climate change is associated with considerable uncertainly, then why are there so few negative results published?
Isotopioussays
Here is my go at answering my question, since I think it is worthy of discussion.
My position, given the peer reviewed literature, is that GHGs reduction policy should be based on the fact that the issue is uncertain, rather than certain. For example, say there was a pesticide that was being used, and at the same time all the bees where dying, yet there was no solid proof that the compound was the direct cause of the bees demise, surely the most prudent action would be to reduce the use of the compound? A precaution.
But with climate science, to a degree the opposite has occurred. Action on reductions is not viewed as an insurance problem due to uncertainty. Why would a scientist challenge the view that the pesticide is not the primary cause? Even though it could be an introduced pest that is having the greatest impact on the bees, which, ironically, could be controlled by a pesticide?
Jbarsays
Statistically global temperatures are still within the rising 35 year trend channel, and it has been a while since we had a bona fide El Nino, but 5 more years of this and we’ll officially have broken out of the 35 year rising trend.
indigosays
And I thought the science was settled. Silly me.
Olaf Koenderssays
“In addition, they found that the deep ocean has warmed over the recent years, while the upper 300m of the oceans have ‘stabilised’.”
That’s just silly. ARGO can’t find it. You seem to suggest that hot water doesn’t rise. There’s even a comment here from someone stating “heat is not temperature”. WHAT?!
Notably your “chart” above doesn’t show any acceleration whatsoever and, there’s no Y-scale. Are you measuring this in phlogistons?
Sea levels have been rising for tens of thousands of years, since the last deep ice age ended. There’s no acceleration evident today. Have you taken land subsidence into account? Have you even noticed charts of where it’s slowed?
How did the Australian Aborigine cross the oceans to get here? Maybe you should see this:
You seem utterly convinced that man-made CO2 (still a tiny trace gas in our atmosphere at 0.0397%) is going to burn the planet to hell tomorrow. Of course, when it comes to doomsayers, it’s always tomorrow, next week or in the future. That just continues until the next fearmongering “fad” comes along to be likewise always “predicted” in the future. Some questions for you:
Every exhalation is around 4% CO2 (40,000ppm – atmospere now 397ppm). How is it you don’t burn your tongue in the sun when you exhale that ENORMOUS 4% of CO2?
How is it that delicate aragonite corals evolved when CO2 was some 20x higher than today?
With CO2 so much higher in the past and you expecting a LINEAR scale to CO2 heat trapping effect, why was there never a runaway greenhouse, ever?
How is it that CO2 was many times higher than today even during deep ice ages?
You understand that CO2 is necessary for photosynthesis and farmers actually pump CO2 into their greenhouses to increase yields, right?
Do you know that Viking graves in Greenland now are in permafrost – something you can’t dig without hydraulics? Vikings colonised and farmed Greenland 1000 years ago, why did they leave 300 years later?
The Little Ice Age is documented in paintings from the 1600’s where the Thames and Hudson rivers froze 10ft thick and the locals held fairs on them. Are you aware of this at all? Are you aware this was caused by the “Maunder Minimum”, a time when very few Sunspots and Solar activity occurred?
Do you remember when an imminent “ice age” was predicted in the 70’s?
Are you aware that Global temps rose sharply between 1910 and 1940, then fell sharply between the 40’s to the 70’s? Did Man have something to do with it or is my next question the answer?
Do you understand the cycles of the oceans (PDO, AMO, ENSO) and their impact from warm to cool and back again over regular decadal scales?
Why is it that in a desert, you can fry during the day and freeze at night, but not in the tropics? What magical atmospheric component is missing in a desert to cause this and therefore, is CO2 actually trapping any catastrophic heat at all? A clue – notice how the night is usually warmer when it’s overcast?
Have you noticed that CO2 continues to climb but Global temps have flatlined for the last 17 YEARS? Why the disconnect?
Are you aware that according to well understood physical parameters, the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing concentration and from the current level of ~397 ppm, accordingly only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas remains beyond the current level?
Do you understand that warm water outgasses CO2 – try opening a warm and a cold bottle of soda water. Do you now understand that the oceans could never become “acidic”, considering their pH ranges from 7.9 to 8.3, depending on where you measure it and, that the pH scale is also logarithmic?
How do you explain the findings of ancient tools and tree stumps under retreating glaciers?
Have you seen the geologic records that show CO2 rising AFTER temp rises by some hundreds of years?
Have you discovered Milankovich Cycles – how the Earth has cyclical wobbles in its orbit being tugged on by other planets causing major changes in our distance from the Sun?
Have you discovered that on very regular cycles, the Earth suffers a major ice age about every 100,000 years lasting many times longer than our current interglacial? Do you think that’s connected to my previous question?
Why is it that some 90+% of species live around the Equator?
Figures are readily available to show winters kill more people than summers – have you looked into them and why do you think retirees look forward to living in warmer climates?
Are you aware that the Arctic ice extent is now the same as the 1979 annual mean? Do you really think it’s going to be “ice free” at all this NH summer?
Does it make sense that “climate scientists”, being largely (if not totally) government funded, need to continue blaming Man for CO2 ills since governments want to tax us on it and, if they say it’s not, they’ll lose their job?
Frankly, all of the tip-toeing, cherry-picking and completely unscientific (if not impossible) explanations I see on this site in support of AGW are truly far-fetched wonders of the age. You seem to suggest that surface winds are somehow stopping hot water from rising? Nonsense. All that rubbish and referencing to desperately try and explain-away the now 17 year warming pause.
If you get all the charts and scale them by whole degrees (something we might physically feel – maybe) then they’d be a straight line not even resembling static.
People, have a good look around and you’ll find there are more questions that require answering before spouting for certain that Man is to blame for climate change. It’s been doing it for billions of years and will continue to do so. There’s NO peer-reviewed study out there that can scientifically and unequivocally state that they can filter out Man’s warming signal from the natural noise.
If you keep believing point-blank the government and the lamestream media, you’ll look like a fool (you’re rapidly getting there) and have a lighter wallet to boot. Don’t be a puppet or a parrot to them. Remember this:
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic”.
If you refuse to publish this post or delete it, the volumes about your “science” will have been spoken.
Moreover, it doesn’t appear to have much to do with the content of the article, and one wonders what exactly is the point to lead with such a poor demonstration of scientific aptitude.
Maybe you can give me some helpful Google Search tips that will give me the definitive explanation for the origin of life. You know the sort of standard coursework stuff that I must have missed.
On a lighter more climatic note, I have observed that during the Cambrian Explosion CO2 was at 4500 ppm and temperature 7 C higher than present. So maybe diversity isn’t so threatened after all by global warming.
“Recent studies confirm that the effects of elevated CO2 on plant growth and yield will depend on photosynthetic pathway, species, growth stage and management regime, such as water and nitrogen (N) applications (Jablonski et al., 2002; Kimball et al., 2002; Norby et al., 2003; Ainsworth and Long, 2005). On average across several species and under unstressed conditions, recent data analyses find that, compared to current atmospheric CO2 concentrations, crop yields increase at 550 ppm…” from AR4
The above doesn’t factor in any detrimental effects for temperature increase. The assessment basically concludes modest crop yield increases with lower temperature increase ranges and decreasing yields with higher ranges.
However,
“Adaptive capacity with respect to current climate is dynamic, and influenced by changes in wealth, human capital, information and technology, material resources and infrastructure, and institutions and entitlements.”
In other words, any number of things could derail the predictions and things could be worse or better.
Steven Moshersays
hank
‘t’s starting to seem like science needs an infrastruture that takes all the archived papers and code and models, and when a new discovery like this would change the underlying base numbers — reruns the paper automagically and flags any likely change in the conclusions based on the new numbers.”
I believe I called this ‘recompiling the science”some years ago on Climate Audit. I think the idea was dismissed as a denier plot when in truth its just reproduceable research
Tom Adamssays
398 The NCAE advice on debate suggested written internet debates and said that creationists tend to avoid this format.
I found some written internet debates of AGW here:
These are rule-based debates. It looks like a promising format to me.
I find it hard to accept the premise that AGW is not debatable. Does Gavin and other climate scientist believe that AGW is not debatable? Perhaps they just reject the format of the Stossel show, or reject debating Spence. Seems to be that a debate even with Spence in the proper format might be acceptable.
Anonsays
WTF is this?
Has the website been hacked and defaced?
Alan Millarsays
Science is about making accurate predictions and the average warming rate for the 21st Century has been predicted to be 4-5 times the 20th Century rate.
By which years is it predicted that the warming rate will hit the 4, 3, and 2 times the 20th Century rate? Indeed which year is it predicted that this centuries warming rate will hit the 20th Century rate as it is currently well short of this?
Alan
Tietjan Berelulsays
I dont get it. Is the cartoon supposed to mean that agw supporters always show up for debates, but no skeptic wants to debate them in ?
Even the most hardcore agw believer wouldnt claim that whenever agw believers show up, skeptic scientists hide in the crowd.
AndyLsays
Ray Ladbury says “if you do not have a model you are not doing science”. Rubbish. Consider an analogy from physics. Experimental physicists do not produce models, yet no-one disputes whether they are doing science. They test whether models produced by theoreticians are correct.
Where this cartoon falls down is that sceptics do not need to promote an alternative model. The burden of proof lies with people making predictions or demanding actions based on the output of the climate models.
To counter the models, all that is needed is either 1) identify some mechanism where the model is sufficiently ‘wrong’ for instance because of mistakes or elements that are missing; or 2) show that predictions from the models have not turned out to be correct.
Tom Adamssays
#41 All counterpoints can, in a sense boil down to “you suck”, even if they have substance and even if they are put forward in the spirit of seeking a better understanding, and even if they are not expressed in crude terms.
which seems to be somewhat open-minded about the idea of a skeptical model based on clouds.
Tom Adamssays
#42 Not our fault? The skeptics (Lindzen as least) blame us just as much as you do for the positive forcings from fossil fuels. They are just pushing the notion that clouds are a larger negative feedback than the upper bound in the climate models.
It’s counter-productive to blatantly misrepresent their position.
Climate_Science_Researchersays
Why it’s not carbon dioxide
If you believe that planetary surface temperatures are all to do with radiative forcing rather than non-radiative heat transfers, then you are implicitly agreeing with IPCC authors (and Dr Roy Spencer) that a column of air in the troposphere would have been isothermal but for the assumed greenhouse effect. You are believing this because you are believing the 19th century simplification of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which said heat only transfers from hot to cold – a “law” which is indeed true for all radiation, but only strictly true in a horizontal plane for non-radiative heat transfer by conduction.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics in its modern form explains a process in which thermodynamic equilibrium “spontaneously evolves” and that thermodynamic equilibrium will be the state of greatest accessible entropy.
Now, thermodynamic equilibrium is not just about temperature, which is determined by the mean kinetic energy of molecules, and nothing else. Pressure, for example, does not control temperature. Thermodynamic equilibrium is a state in which total accessible energy (including potential energy) is homogeneous, because if it were not homogeneous, then work could be done and so entropy could still increase.
When such a state of thermodynamic equilibrium evolves in a vertical plane in any solid, liquid or gas, molecules at the top of a column will have more gravitational potential energy (PE), and so they must have less kinetic energy (KE), and so a lower temperature, than molecules at the bottom of the column. This state evolves spontaneously as molecules interchange PE and KE in free flight between collisions, and then share the adjusted KE during the next collision.
This postulate was put forward by the brilliant physicist Loschmidt in the 19th century, but has been swept under the carpet by those advocating that radiative forcing is necessary to explain the observed surface temperatures. Radiative forcing could never explain the mean temperature of the Venus surface, or that at the base of the troposphere of Uranus – or that at the surface of Earth.
The gravitationally induced temperature gradient in every planetary troposphere is fully sufficient to explain all planetary surface temperatures. All the weak attempts to disprove it, such as a thought experiment with a wire outside a cylinder of gas, are flawed, simply because they neglect the temperature gradient in the wire itself, or other similar oversights.
The gravity effect is a reality and the dispute is not an acceptable disagreement.
The issue is easy to resolve with a straight forward, correct understanding of the implications of the spontaneous process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Hence radiative forcing is not what causes the warming, and so carbon dioxide has nothing to do with what is just natural climate change.
Tom Adamssays
I suppose this new paper (or editorial?) will get some interest:
What Are Climate Models Missing?
“A deeper understanding and better representation of the coupling between water and circulation, rather than a more expansive representation of the Earth System, is thus necessary to reduce the uncertainty in estimates of the climate sensitivity and to guide adaptation to climate change at the regional level.”
The battle isn’t “Climate Models vs. Skeptic Models”. It’s “Climate Models vs. Observations”, and right now, the climate models appear to be taking a serious beating.
Tom Adamssays
56 Cris G says: ‘clouds are a negative feedback’ is not a model in the sense that it is not quantified in any way. Without some quantification of what changes to expect in clouds (and why) and quantification of how that will affect the energy balance of the system, it can not be incorporated in a model.
Quoting a ad hoc study group, Bjorn Stevens says:
“Existing parameterizations of cloud amounts in general circulation models are physically very crude … It must thus be emphasized that the modeling of clouds is one of the weakest links in the general circulation modeling efforts”
Seems that clouds are quantified in some way so that they add to the uncertainty of the model results. Perhaps that are not simulated or crudely simulated? Not sure.
[Response: Just in case you didn’t just inadvertently leave out the sarc/\sarc tags – you could read the responses thelast two times Lu has proposed the same exact thing. – gavin]
rogersays
Climate change is a given, the climate over time has involved many extremes. Many of them man was not present for, so even though you can make the argument that man is affecting climate change, climate change happened before man and will continue to happen after man. As far as skeptic models go I can imagine the reason they dont exist is because they are not being funded by billion dollar organizations that are trying to profit from the “Green Revolution”.
So many times in science, “average” people view science as fact when in effect it is mainly little more than very complex theory. As the facts change scientists will re-manipulate their complex theories in order to make the universe align with mans self centered position in it. You see it all the time, the Universe is 11 billion years old… wait it is 11.8 B years old… Wait it is 13.8 B years old etc, etc, etc. It reminds me of something Adolph Hitler once said, Tell a lie, make it big, keep repeating it and they will believe it.
As long as the debate exists (no matter what it is about)there will be organizations that are raping the coffers to prove or disprove a plethora of scientific rhetoric. This is all about money, period. They sell you on the value of the human race and will continue to soil our nest until extinction is no longer a complex theory but a simplistic fact. Extinctions have happened before and are happening as we speak, it is Lion King thing.
In the end the debate is null and void, why you might ask? Because there is so much argument and so much division that people have basically become disgusted with the whole process and have stopped listening.
Killiansays
You and others are so bizarre here. I am as close to an ally as you have, yet you persist in being complete tools.
These are serious time for serious people. Indulging your ego is not serious, ad kind of gross. Did you not get enough of this in junior high?
WHY ARE YOU ALL SO AFRAID OF TRUE SUSTAINABILITY?
(Rhetorical question. Please visit your local deserted Mayan village to commune with the ghosts there about technology, complexity, climate and buh-bye!)
Tom Adamssays
@56 Cris G. If cloud feedback is not quantified in any way, does that mean that it has to be omitted from the estimate of climate sensitivity from CO2 doubling (typically estimated at 3 degree C +/- 1.5 degrees C)?
vukcevicsays
Yamal is important not because of the ‘tree rings’, but because of the two great rivers, Ob and Yenisey discharging ~32,000 m3/s of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean. Some 12 years later portion of these waters will pass through the Denmark Strait as the East Greenland Current, one of the main contributors to the sub-polar gyre -SPG, affecting salinity and thermo-haline circulation. The SPG is the home of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscilation and the AMO.
There is a direct correlation of the AMO (the SPG) with geomagnetic changes 12 years earlier, at the delta of the two great Siberian rivers 6,000km away. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/YAMAL-GMF-AMO.htm
Further away the correlation progressively weakens.
If Dr. Schmidt is interested in the data file I would be happy to forward it.
A “skeptic climate model” would be a grave mistake, for the modelling paradigm itself, as it is practiced in contemporary climate science, is wrong.
Fitting various computational models of high Kolmogorov complexity to a single run of a unique physical instance is not science, never was and never will be.
What science does is just the opposite. It seeks a single mathematical model of low Kolmogorov complexity (a.k.a. “simple” one) fitting multiple runs of a wide class of physical instances.
What about going for a general theory of closed non-equilibrium quasi steady state thermodynamic systems, ones with a huge number of internal degrees of freedom, radiatively coupled to their environment? That is, shedding some light to one of the persistent twilight zones of semi-classical physics. Some members of this class (unlike the terrestrial climate system) could be realized and studied in the lab, making verification of said (as yet non existent) theory straightforward.
Former Believersays
So what has to happen now for the scientists to say that their crisis is as real as they like to say a comet hit crisis is real, not just possible, potentially and likely and….. Why can’t they call their crisis inevitable or eventual or imminent or just WILL be a real crisis. Only a comet hit could be worse. You can’t have a little tiny catastrophic climate crisis outside of Harry Potter movies.
They only have consensus that “climate change” is “real and happening” but do not believe or agree that climate change will be a real crisis as they have never said it.
28 years of maybe a crisis proves it won’t be a crisis. Deny that!
Steven @43 : The Internet as we know it really took off with the Web in about 1993 – 20 years ago. The Web was invented at CERN, taken up further by NCSA – but it was Netscape that caught public attention.
Marco@43 : The new data shows about half the 20th century warming compared to the 2000 result.
Kevin@42 : If nothing else changes in the meantime, CO2 levels look likely to double from pre-industrial levels in about 50 years time. Recent results (Otto et al) imply TCS < 2C and ECS ~ 2.5C These are not catastrophic so long as by then we have developed non carbon energy sources. The only current long term solution is Nuclear Fusion. I don't know about the US – but the UK spends ~4 billion on subsidizing low density renewables, but only ~50million on Nuclear Fusion research.
Doug Proctorsays
Many good responses here to think about. The concept that 35-37 responses are interesting.
The “style” refer to is increasing temperatures of Yamal, reflected in Yamalia, while the quantum is reduced: so we can see in individual studies that temperatures are going up (or down) locally to a large or small extent, it doesn’t mean that beyond the specific study area the temperatures are rising or falling by a similar or proportional amount.
The problem we face is deducing the global from the regional, even the regional from the local. The “style”, i.e. rising or falling, may very well be correct, but the significance on a hemispheric, if not global sense, if far from sure. This updated work appears to show that the quantum of change was exaggerated in the first study (presuming the second study was “better” than the first).
As for all the other evidence of global warming, we are not concerned with global warming per se in all this climate change dispute, but with the attribution of human generated CO2 as being the primary, i.e. >70% cause of the warming. Other evidence of warming, like melting ice, is evidence of warming, not CO2-caused warming. Most of what is touted in the mainstream or even in alarmist peer-reviewed literature is the effect of warming, not the cause of it, but the distinction is lost most of the time. That is why I counter the comment about why I argue about one study when there is the other “evidence” to consider: most of this other evidence is not evidence of CO2 cause but that there IS warming.
And the comment that ALL of the recovery from the LIA is a result of anthropogenic CO2 is just silly: the initial increase in CO2 was so minimal that no laws of physics even by IPCC hardliners can say that it was responsible for the rise out of the LIA. If the CO2 increases in the 1890s caused the temperatures to rise, the post-1980 CO2 rise, and the post 1995 CO2 rise would be broiling us today.
There is nothing wrong with tree-ring analysis. I did a minor amount of my own interest in the Rocky Mountains and was impressed with the “style” as I called it. But my experience living in western Canada, the Canadian Rockies and the Arctic tell me that regions may undergo very large changes that are not equally seen in other regions. The Arctic exaggeration is seen in the GCMs, after all. The problem with the current studies in in their socio-political uses. Just as contrarians go on about historical climate changes that are immaterial to the present if the previous reasons were not the same (i.e. CO2 driven) as that considered for today, warmists can go on about the lack of historical relevance to the present day. Both sides come from the same circular reasoning: since I know the warming is CO2/not CO2-driven, whatever I see as warming is proof that CO2/not CO2 is responsible.
As for the Precautionary Principle invoked by one commenter: how can I choose to avoid the CO2 connection if, in fact, it later shows to be correct, and the planet is in peril? Well, because first I don’t think the evidence after 25 years of determined study has shown the probable temperature growth to be at any but the lower end of sensitivity (unless GCMs grossly underestimate the natural, countervailing forces, a mistake that undermines the certainty of outcome and the settledness of climatology). And second, and more importantly perhaps, that I believe the societal damage through energy cost increases is more certain than that of a degree or two of global temperature rise. (It is noteworthy that this opinion is shared by precisely the societies that are said by the developed west to be the ones that will suffer the most: India, China, Africa and the tropical South American governments are much more concerned with providing widespread, cheap energy to their peoples than they are in curbing their CO2 emissions. If you are looking for consensus on net benefit or impairment, you will find that the world is much more on the benefit to increased fossil fuel usage than on impairment.)
Now, Tim: arguing that we don’t have a good understanding (or one at all) on why we came out of the LIA for supporting CO2 is that old argument from ignorance. Nor do we know why we entered into full glacial cycles or came out of them. We live in a universe that has multiple solutions and causations of similar problems and phenomena – which is why the warmist can dismiss historical warm periods as being irrelevant to the special situation of today. I do not know why one friend got a brain tumour while I didn’t, but I am not arguing that either Lucifer or his predilection for gummy bears was responsible just because I can see no other correlation than his lifestyle or candy preference. We entered into the LIA without a CO2 attribution, but something caused it to happen: coming out of the LIA seems more likely to come from the same place as the entry did, and as happened numerous times in the past. Positing a brand-new, human-based caused for this recovery (in the late 19th century) strikes me more as an anthropomorphic vanity harkening back to Old Testament considerations of sins of the flesh than scientific reasoning.
Again, I am sorry that the socio-political environment has made such a tempest out of all this wonderful tree-ring study. We overreach ourselves, I am afraid, when we try to be the overlords of creation. Our imaginations get beyond our knowledge and our desire to act gets beyond our ability to understand well enough to act appropriately.
We have time, recent history is not moving at a calamatous rate or in a catastrophic direction by obserevation, only by model, and additional work consistently takes us away from, not closer to, an unfolding disaster worthy of shutting down the economic activity of the world (as any effective CO2-suppressed activity MUST include the developing world, not just the US, Canada, the UK and the EU).
Evesays
I can’t believe anyone is still arguing about global warming since it has been cooling for the last 12 to 13 years. Arguing about those silly models? Robert G. Brown said it best, “why are the models in such terrible disagreement with each other, even when applied to identical toy problems that are far simpler than the actual Earth, and why we aren’t using empirical evidence (as it accumulates) to reject failing models and concentrate on the ones that come closest to working, while also not using the models that are obviously not working in any sort of “average” claim for future warming.
Billsays
To Ragwodd @ 65 – I believe you have it wrong and have have a misunderstanding of economic models or all models for that matter. If we include mathematics under the heading of science, then all models can be viewed as being based on scientific theories. True economic models are based on hundreds of years of observations of varying data and attempt to identify some relationship that can then be used to forecast future outcomes. The same goes for climate models or any other model for that matter. All models are created to help understand relationships and to make some sort of forecast based on that understanding. Forgetting the potential errors in the data being used in any model (hence the term “garbage in garbage out”), one might classify all models as representing a closed system. In other words the only aspects that are important in generating model outcomes and interpreting them are those that are included within the model itself. When it comes to science, it is well known that observations and conclusions derived from lab work can be quite different when the same experiment is undertake away from a lab environment.
I propose to you the same problem is applicable to climate models in that the outcomes generated by those models are predicated on the factors included in them; on the way those factors inter relate with one another; and on the final interpretation of the results (the human factor). Hence the argument to say that climate models must be accurate because they are based on decades of experimental work simply is nonsensical. In order to create any model one needs to carry out substantial experimental work so that the inter-relationships that take place are correctly modeled. Therein lies the problem with models. At best they MAY be able to identify a trend, but to identify the cause of that trend? Well that is based on how the inter-relationships are used in the model.
When it comes to climate models, I do not care how big, how intricate or how complex they are; I simply do not believe them because I do not believe that we know all of the science involved with climate change and that a few decades of experiments is so insufficient for us to model processes that have been in existence for billions of years.
The only other type of model that is similar to a climate model is one that meteorologists use to forecast weather. Despite the tens of thousands of days of weather information and despite the fact that our scientific knowledge of weather patterns and formation far exceeds out knowledge of climate change, we still cannot accurately forecast the weather for the next day or next week. I happen to live in an urban area with four national tv broadcasters that have a local presence. Each station has a meteorologist on staff who determines their forecast based on four different weather models. If such models were accurate, you would expect them to have the same forecast – but they don’t! Some days they are way off the mark and I am sure that is repeated elsewhere around the world.
Finally your statement that ” Climate models differ from the dominant economic models because they start from the premise of evidence, which is lacking in most economic models.” is totally inaccurate. Economic models are based on years and years of evidence and over those years economists are always working at refining them in order to increase their accuracy.
Tony Watts, unfortunately exposes this model hoax part of the hoax for what it is…
[edit]
Too bad, RealClimate: back to the drawing boards.
Most of the Northern Hemisphere is under strong influence of the North Atlantic SST. Its natural variability can be calculated from product of solar and geo-magnetic oscillations.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
However both of the above are shown in the de-trended form. The decadal up-trend is more difficult proposition: both natural and anthropogenic forms are considered. Climate model designers should be made aware that the N. Atlantic SST has degree of correlation with tectonic activity at its most northern reaches, which of course is unpredictable, but it does precede the SST change by half a dozen or so years:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAP-SST.htm
Since none of the above comes from a climate scientist, it may be considered with condescension, but then that is the blog’s editor choice.
Most of the warming on the western peninsula has been caused by northerly winds that compress the ice and generate more open waters in the winter while most of the warming on the eastern peninsula has been caused by those same winds flowing over the peninsular range creating foehn storms. (massom 2005, 2008). Most of the increased winds associated with the SAM seems connected to the PAcific Decadal Oscillation. I am surprised to see you make a pitch for ozone because in your 2012 paper you described such connections as problematic. It is just as probable that warming over the peninsula and WAIS is natural oscillations because the south pole
(Re #4)
1. Thanks for your reply and clarifying here that the WAIS has cooled over the past 2000 years. I did read your paper and did not find any mention of this, leaving it for the reader to infer from looking at the trend of δ18O in fig 3.
2. If the WAIS has cooled over the past 2,000 years due to Milankovitch, and Milankovitch forcing will continue to decline at 65S for several thousand more years, why the cause for alarm about collapse of the WAIS?
2. The abstract says “δ18O anomalies comparable to those of recent decades occur about 1% of the time over the past 2,000 years”, but fig 3 shows δ18O anomalies comparable to the highest levels of the 1990’s have occurred at least 30% of the time over the past 2,000 years, and much higher percentages for δ18O anomalies comparable to the average value of the past 50 years. Your paper states, “Before 1,000 years ago modern decadal average δ18O values are reached more frequently” – perhaps around 50% of the time.
Likewise, the paper says “Decadal average δ18O anomalies comparable to the 1990’s in the WAIS Divide record are reached on only four occasions in the past 1000 years,” but this happened many more times in terms of the absolute values of δ18O.
3. Why isn’t the mean cooling “relevant to the question of atmospheric circulation and glacier anomalies”?
4. What do you calculate the change in annual mean insolation forcing at the WAIS was over the past 2000 years? Your paper does not mention this, and the single sentence mentioning Milankovitch references paper #13, which itself does not have a single mention of Milankovitch forcing.
5. δ18O anomalies have declined since the 1990’s – what is the explanation for this despite a steady increase in greenhouse forcing?
Current monthly CET regional trend is about 1.3 degrees C below 20 year average (1990-2010)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/F10,7-CET.htm
Dr Steig,
Paul @ #4 asked a relevant question which was answered by yourself. His follow up question has mistakenly been sent to the borehole here:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/the-bore-hole/comment-page-25/#comment-331795
Could you reinstate and answer, please, or is the question considered irrelevant or off topic?
Thank you
I posed a question to Dr Kaufman 2 days ago (#8). If Dr Kaufman is out of reach, perhaps one of the many reaearch team members could answer my question. Given the significant overestimation of global temperature in recent decades by the reconstructed temperatures, documented in the supplementary material, it may not be surprising that the reconstructed temperatures during the recent 30 year period may be found to be at the higher end of the reconstructed temperature curve. Do you still consider it a “likely” reality, that temperatures during “1971-2000” was higher than at any time > 1400, or could this be an artifact associated with a bias in the temperature reconstruction?
In my theory the solar system is passing through dense cloud of neutrinos (dark matter), which are accelerating the decay of radioactive elements at the Earth mantle and ocean water, thus initiating geomagnetic instability and global warming at both Earth, both other parts of solar system. Actually this scenario has been illustrated quite exactly at the 2012 movie, which has been “accidentally” labeled as the “most absurd science-fiction movie” ever with NASA… IMO the concentration of anti-neutrinos are responsible for changes of human mood during solar eruptions, full moon or conjunctions of planets and they’re responsible for part of Lense-Thirring and gravitational lensing effects.
Rob, the temperature gradient in the oceans is a function of two inputs. Firstly solar radiation arrives at the surface, heating he the water. The waters at the bottom of the oceans got there from cold dense saline chilled at the poles. There is a well described temperature gradient and the two fluxes, solar energy warming the surface and cold polar waters flowing to the bottom are what causes the temperature gradient.
An analogy is a metal rod placed in a coal fire. It is heated at one end and heat is transferred along its length. However the shaft of the rod radiates heat away and so one end is red hot and the other cool enough to hold.
If one raises the temperature of the fire, the overall heat of the rod increases, but the tip heats up more than mid-shaft. One cannot, by increasing the temperature of the heat source, increase the amount of heat in the middle of the shaft greater than one heats the tip in the hot coals.
The observation that the amount of HEAT in the 300-700m fraction of the oceans has risen, per unit volume, greater that the 0-300m layer is no physical, if the proposed mechanism of increased radiative flux at the surface is accepted.
If you are proposing that that large scale transfers of water from 0-300m have exchanged with waters at 300-700m then one should provide mechanistic evidence and also report a decrease in the pO2 at 0-300m and an elevation of pO2 of the normally hypoxic 300-700m layer.
So the ocean is getting warm 700m below the ocean’s surface. Interesting discovery, but then again it also hints at how little we know about these systems we’re looking at, and how we really don’t understand the mechanisms at work – which the Carbon Cult is loath to admit.
The Argo system has been deployed for ten years, that is the total size of the hard data sample – and already its the Warmer’s last straw, to validate models already wrong because they didn’t incorporate this effect in the first place. Its almost comical.
Between satellites showing no surface warming and Argo buoys showing deep ocean warming, the only thing I can say for sure is the more real data from real instruments the better – because we’re always surprised what we find when we turn off the simulator video games and actually look at what we’re allegedly studying.
rasmus,
the sealevel data in 1998 shows an increase in height, due to an El Nino. So there is an ENSO signature in the data, however, isn’t this related to distribution of precipitation, rather than heat content? And even if it was in someway related to heat content (which I think it is), doesn’t this show the opposite to what you are suggesting? If what you are saying is true, then during La Nina events overall heat content should go up. Sure there is some deep ocean warming, stirred by La Nina, but caused by El Nino?!
I think the simplest explanation is that neither GHGs nor ENSO are the main culprits responsible for the increase in OHC, manifest by sea level rise. ENSO balances out, and ocean mixing is a strong negative feedback. Both facts negate the “warmist” argument.
Rob Painting says:
1 May 2013 at 3:17 PM
No, I fully understand the point. What I am getting at is that if there is a temperature difference between two bodies, regardless of the thermal mass of those bodies, energy will tend to flow from the one at the higher temperature to the one at the lower temperature – provided there is a route for that energy to travel down, such as conduction, convection or radiation (in this case I am not quite sure of the mechanism by which heat gets from atmosphere to ocean).
Obviously the body with the higher thermal mass will change in temperature much less for a given energy input than the body with the lower thermal mass, meaning that if energy is transferred from the atmosphere to the ocean that the atmosphere will drop in temperature much further than the ocean will rise in temperature. I have no idea of the actual figures but as a thought experiment it could be that if the ocean is at, say, 12c and the air at 15c, the equilibrium temperature might be around 12.2c – in other words if the heat travels from atmosphere to ocean that it will make very little difference to the temperature of the ocean.
I also understand the comments here on the fact that the oceans will always have a vertical temperature gradient and most of the temperature change will occur in the top 200m “well mixed” layer. Presumably if there is a transfer of heat from atmosphere to ocean then it is this layer that will be absorbing the heat and expanding.
I don’t see a way to dismiss geothermal and submarine volcanoes as a source of tiny ocean temperature changes, particularly in the highly active west pacific – coincidentally (?) the geographic source of the temperature plume that travels eastward. There is sparse data on the total heat emitted by these sources. To omit this source from consideration seems foolish and invites skepticism of the strength of climate studies.
#36 Ray Ladbury “I agree that there is no evidence either way”.
So what would a scientist say to that? Looks like you just threw in the towel Ray.
In any case is it not rather more reasonable to draw the natural conclusion from Fermi’s comment, that although “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (a tiresome cliche in my opinion) it is none the less a very sensible guiding principle in most situations.
#61 Phil Scadden “Simon, which no. on the Drake equation do you think is most limiting? Ie do you think the probability of a suitable planets is very low; or that probability that life would form on them is very low”.
Phil, not sure if you’re addressing me (I’m already in the bore-hole after commenting on Ray Ladbury’s startling admission at #36 “Simon, I accept that there is no evidence either way”).
However my answer to your question is it doesn’t matter since they each belong in the lengthy concatenation of necessary improbabilities required for a such an eventually successful biological outcome. But for now (and remembering that evolution is not directed) I consider the biological question itself.
The number of stars in the universe has been estimated on the low side of 10^24 which approximates to 2^80. If our own example of intelligent life has has had to survive more than 80 potentially negative bifurcations in its Earthly evolution over 4 billion years (that’s an average of just 1 every 500 million years) then it’s unlikely there can be anything comparable elsewhere in the universe, regardless of the availability of suitable planets.
But while we don’t know (can’t know?) we all have our preferred opinion. Which might depend on whether you are asberger’s or herd-mentality.
@79 Life has already found a way, and it is here now to do the fantastic amazing higher-order activity called climate science, which is far more interesting than most of what passes for science fiction–which is, guess what, just plain techno-superstition. If that’s exciting, try sci-fi comics or Michael Crichton. It’s o.k.
@92 Glad to know that I react to Sharov and Gordon like an evolutionary biologist, not to mention like Ray Ladbury @88. Thank you both for the utterly amazing link with the great graphics, the fantastic information, and one good laugh. It’s better than comics!
When cooling sets in the NW Europe over next decade or two, you could well do to remember this one
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NVa.htm
Print it and put away.
Found a very interesting read here:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33968/title/Opinion–Publish-Negative-Results/
It really does beg the question, if climate change is associated with considerable uncertainly, then why are there so few negative results published?
Here is my go at answering my question, since I think it is worthy of discussion.
My position, given the peer reviewed literature, is that GHGs reduction policy should be based on the fact that the issue is uncertain, rather than certain. For example, say there was a pesticide that was being used, and at the same time all the bees where dying, yet there was no solid proof that the compound was the direct cause of the bees demise, surely the most prudent action would be to reduce the use of the compound? A precaution.
But with climate science, to a degree the opposite has occurred. Action on reductions is not viewed as an insurance problem due to uncertainty. Why would a scientist challenge the view that the pesticide is not the primary cause? Even though it could be an introduced pest that is having the greatest impact on the bees, which, ironically, could be controlled by a pesticide?
Statistically global temperatures are still within the rising 35 year trend channel, and it has been a while since we had a bona fide El Nino, but 5 more years of this and we’ll officially have broken out of the 35 year rising trend.
And I thought the science was settled. Silly me.
That’s just silly. ARGO can’t find it. You seem to suggest that hot water doesn’t rise. There’s even a comment here from someone stating “heat is not temperature”. WHAT?!
Notably your “chart” above doesn’t show any acceleration whatsoever and, there’s no Y-scale. Are you measuring this in phlogistons?
Sea levels have been rising for tens of thousands of years, since the last deep ice age ended. There’s no acceleration evident today. Have you taken land subsidence into account? Have you even noticed charts of where it’s slowed?
How did the Australian Aborigine cross the oceans to get here? Maybe you should see this:
http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/objects-through-time/essays/50000-years-before-present/attachment/map-of-ice-age-aust
You seem utterly convinced that man-made CO2 (still a tiny trace gas in our atmosphere at 0.0397%) is going to burn the planet to hell tomorrow. Of course, when it comes to doomsayers, it’s always tomorrow, next week or in the future. That just continues until the next fearmongering “fad” comes along to be likewise always “predicted” in the future. Some questions for you:
Every exhalation is around 4% CO2 (40,000ppm – atmospere now 397ppm). How is it you don’t burn your tongue in the sun when you exhale that ENORMOUS 4% of CO2?
How is it that delicate aragonite corals evolved when CO2 was some 20x higher than today?
With CO2 so much higher in the past and you expecting a LINEAR scale to CO2 heat trapping effect, why was there never a runaway greenhouse, ever?
How is it that CO2 was many times higher than today even during deep ice ages?
You understand that CO2 is necessary for photosynthesis and farmers actually pump CO2 into their greenhouses to increase yields, right?
Do you know that Viking graves in Greenland now are in permafrost – something you can’t dig without hydraulics? Vikings colonised and farmed Greenland 1000 years ago, why did they leave 300 years later?
The Little Ice Age is documented in paintings from the 1600’s where the Thames and Hudson rivers froze 10ft thick and the locals held fairs on them. Are you aware of this at all? Are you aware this was caused by the “Maunder Minimum”, a time when very few Sunspots and Solar activity occurred?
Do you remember when an imminent “ice age” was predicted in the 70’s?
Are you aware that Global temps rose sharply between 1910 and 1940, then fell sharply between the 40’s to the 70’s? Did Man have something to do with it or is my next question the answer?
Do you understand the cycles of the oceans (PDO, AMO, ENSO) and their impact from warm to cool and back again over regular decadal scales?
Why is it that in a desert, you can fry during the day and freeze at night, but not in the tropics? What magical atmospheric component is missing in a desert to cause this and therefore, is CO2 actually trapping any catastrophic heat at all? A clue – notice how the night is usually warmer when it’s overcast?
Have you noticed that CO2 continues to climb but Global temps have flatlined for the last 17 YEARS? Why the disconnect?
Are you aware that according to well understood physical parameters, the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing concentration and from the current level of ~397 ppm, accordingly only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas remains beyond the current level?
Do you understand that warm water outgasses CO2 – try opening a warm and a cold bottle of soda water. Do you now understand that the oceans could never become “acidic”, considering their pH ranges from 7.9 to 8.3, depending on where you measure it and, that the pH scale is also logarithmic?
How do you explain the findings of ancient tools and tree stumps under retreating glaciers?
Have you seen the geologic records that show CO2 rising AFTER temp rises by some hundreds of years?
Have you discovered Milankovich Cycles – how the Earth has cyclical wobbles in its orbit being tugged on by other planets causing major changes in our distance from the Sun?
Have you discovered that on very regular cycles, the Earth suffers a major ice age about every 100,000 years lasting many times longer than our current interglacial? Do you think that’s connected to my previous question?
Why is it that some 90+% of species live around the Equator?
Figures are readily available to show winters kill more people than summers – have you looked into them and why do you think retirees look forward to living in warmer climates?
Are you aware that the Arctic ice extent is now the same as the 1979 annual mean? Do you really think it’s going to be “ice free” at all this NH summer?
Does it make sense that “climate scientists”, being largely (if not totally) government funded, need to continue blaming Man for CO2 ills since governments want to tax us on it and, if they say it’s not, they’ll lose their job?
Frankly, all of the tip-toeing, cherry-picking and completely unscientific (if not impossible) explanations I see on this site in support of AGW are truly far-fetched wonders of the age. You seem to suggest that surface winds are somehow stopping hot water from rising? Nonsense. All that rubbish and referencing to desperately try and explain-away the now 17 year warming pause.
If you get all the charts and scale them by whole degrees (something we might physically feel – maybe) then they’d be a straight line not even resembling static.
People, have a good look around and you’ll find there are more questions that require answering before spouting for certain that Man is to blame for climate change. It’s been doing it for billions of years and will continue to do so. There’s NO peer-reviewed study out there that can scientifically and unequivocally state that they can filter out Man’s warming signal from the natural noise.
If you keep believing point-blank the government and the lamestream media, you’ll look like a fool (you’re rapidly getting there) and have a lighter wallet to boot. Don’t be a puppet or a parrot to them. Remember this:
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic”.
If you refuse to publish this post or delete it, the volumes about your “science” will have been spoken.
Your leading graphic, besides leaving out the Y axis, as another commentor noted, also has an incorrect title. The data you have plotted is not “Global Sea Level Height” but rather it is of
“Sea level anomalies relative to 1961-1990:” (http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/2009/global-data-sets/SEALEVEL_sveta.txt)
Moreover, it doesn’t appear to have much to do with the content of the article, and one wonders what exactly is the point to lead with such a poor demonstration of scientific aptitude.
#290
Hank,
Maybe you can give me some helpful Google Search tips that will give me the definitive explanation for the origin of life. You know the sort of standard coursework stuff that I must have missed.
On a lighter more climatic note, I have observed that during the Cambrian Explosion CO2 was at 4500 ppm and temperature 7 C higher than present. So maybe diversity isn’t so threatened after all by global warming.
#344 deconvoluter
“Recent studies confirm that the effects of elevated CO2 on plant growth and yield will depend on photosynthetic pathway, species, growth stage and management regime, such as water and nitrogen (N) applications (Jablonski et al., 2002; Kimball et al., 2002; Norby et al., 2003; Ainsworth and Long, 2005). On average across several species and under unstressed conditions, recent data analyses find that, compared to current atmospheric CO2 concentrations, crop yields increase at 550 ppm…” from AR4
The above doesn’t factor in any detrimental effects for temperature increase. The assessment basically concludes modest crop yield increases with lower temperature increase ranges and decreasing yields with higher ranges.
However,
“Adaptive capacity with respect to current climate is dynamic, and influenced by changes in wealth, human capital, information and technology, material resources and infrastructure, and institutions and entitlements.”
In other words, any number of things could derail the predictions and things could be worse or better.
hank
‘t’s starting to seem like science needs an infrastruture that takes all the archived papers and code and models, and when a new discovery like this would change the underlying base numbers — reruns the paper automagically and flags any likely change in the conclusions based on the new numbers.”
I believe I called this ‘recompiling the science”some years ago on Climate Audit. I think the idea was dismissed as a denier plot when in truth its just reproduceable research
398 The NCAE advice on debate suggested written internet debates and said that creationists tend to avoid this format.
I found some written internet debates of AGW here:
http://www.debate.org/debates/science/
These are rule-based debates. It looks like a promising format to me.
I find it hard to accept the premise that AGW is not debatable. Does Gavin and other climate scientist believe that AGW is not debatable? Perhaps they just reject the format of the Stossel show, or reject debating Spence. Seems to be that a debate even with Spence in the proper format might be acceptable.
WTF is this?
Has the website been hacked and defaced?
Science is about making accurate predictions and the average warming rate for the 21st Century has been predicted to be 4-5 times the 20th Century rate.
By which years is it predicted that the warming rate will hit the 4, 3, and 2 times the 20th Century rate? Indeed which year is it predicted that this centuries warming rate will hit the 20th Century rate as it is currently well short of this?
Alan
I dont get it. Is the cartoon supposed to mean that agw supporters always show up for debates, but no skeptic wants to debate them in ?
Even the most hardcore agw believer wouldnt claim that whenever agw believers show up, skeptic scientists hide in the crowd.
Ray Ladbury says “if you do not have a model you are not doing science”. Rubbish. Consider an analogy from physics. Experimental physicists do not produce models, yet no-one disputes whether they are doing science. They test whether models produced by theoreticians are correct.
Where this cartoon falls down is that sceptics do not need to promote an alternative model. The burden of proof lies with people making predictions or demanding actions based on the output of the climate models.
To counter the models, all that is needed is either 1) identify some mechanism where the model is sufficiently ‘wrong’ for instance because of mistakes or elements that are missing; or 2) show that predictions from the models have not turned out to be correct.
#41 All counterpoints can, in a sense boil down to “you suck”, even if they have substance and even if they are put forward in the spirit of seeking a better understanding, and even if they are not expressed in crude terms.
#42 I will let you argue with this NASA web page:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Iris/iris3.php
which seems to be somewhat open-minded about the idea of a skeptical model based on clouds.
#42 Not our fault? The skeptics (Lindzen as least) blame us just as much as you do for the positive forcings from fossil fuels. They are just pushing the notion that clouds are a larger negative feedback than the upper bound in the climate models.
It’s counter-productive to blatantly misrepresent their position.
Why it’s not carbon dioxide
If you believe that planetary surface temperatures are all to do with radiative forcing rather than non-radiative heat transfers, then you are implicitly agreeing with IPCC authors (and Dr Roy Spencer) that a column of air in the troposphere would have been isothermal but for the assumed greenhouse effect. You are believing this because you are believing the 19th century simplification of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which said heat only transfers from hot to cold – a “law” which is indeed true for all radiation, but only strictly true in a horizontal plane for non-radiative heat transfer by conduction.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics in its modern form explains a process in which thermodynamic equilibrium “spontaneously evolves” and that thermodynamic equilibrium will be the state of greatest accessible entropy.
Now, thermodynamic equilibrium is not just about temperature, which is determined by the mean kinetic energy of molecules, and nothing else. Pressure, for example, does not control temperature. Thermodynamic equilibrium is a state in which total accessible energy (including potential energy) is homogeneous, because if it were not homogeneous, then work could be done and so entropy could still increase.
When such a state of thermodynamic equilibrium evolves in a vertical plane in any solid, liquid or gas, molecules at the top of a column will have more gravitational potential energy (PE), and so they must have less kinetic energy (KE), and so a lower temperature, than molecules at the bottom of the column. This state evolves spontaneously as molecules interchange PE and KE in free flight between collisions, and then share the adjusted KE during the next collision.
This postulate was put forward by the brilliant physicist Loschmidt in the 19th century, but has been swept under the carpet by those advocating that radiative forcing is necessary to explain the observed surface temperatures. Radiative forcing could never explain the mean temperature of the Venus surface, or that at the base of the troposphere of Uranus – or that at the surface of Earth.
The gravitationally induced temperature gradient in every planetary troposphere is fully sufficient to explain all planetary surface temperatures. All the weak attempts to disprove it, such as a thought experiment with a wire outside a cylinder of gas, are flawed, simply because they neglect the temperature gradient in the wire itself, or other similar oversights.
The gravity effect is a reality and the dispute is not an acceptable disagreement.
The issue is easy to resolve with a straight forward, correct understanding of the implications of the spontaneous process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Hence radiative forcing is not what causes the warming, and so carbon dioxide has nothing to do with what is just natural climate change.
I suppose this new paper (or editorial?) will get some interest:
What Are Climate Models Missing?
“A deeper understanding and better representation of the coupling between water and circulation, rather than a more expansive representation of the Earth System, is thus necessary to reduce the uncertainty in estimates of the climate sensitivity and to guide adaptation to climate change at the regional level.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6136/1053.full
Also see: Why aren’t climate models getting better?
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~bstevens/downloads/BjornStevens.pdf
This comes to mind: “You call that precision? You suck!”
This is why I remain a skeptic with regard to climate models:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78507292/Climate%20Models.xlsx
The battle isn’t “Climate Models vs. Skeptic Models”. It’s “Climate Models vs. Observations”, and right now, the climate models appear to be taking a serious beating.
56 Cris G says: ‘clouds are a negative feedback’ is not a model in the sense that it is not quantified in any way. Without some quantification of what changes to expect in clouds (and why) and quantification of how that will affect the energy balance of the system, it can not be incorporated in a model.
Quoting a ad hoc study group, Bjorn Stevens says:
“Existing parameterizations of cloud amounts in general circulation models are physically very crude … It must thus be emphasized that the modeling of clouds is one of the weakest links in the general circulation modeling efforts”
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~bstevens/downloads/WCMWTalk.pdf
Seems that clouds are quantified in some way so that they add to the uncertainty of the model results. Perhaps that are not simulated or crudely simulated? Not sure.
You are all wrong
http://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/global-warming-caused-cfcs-not-carbon-dioxide-study-says
[Response: Just in case you didn’t just inadvertently leave out the sarc/\sarc tags – you could read the responses the last two times Lu has proposed the same exact thing. – gavin]
Climate change is a given, the climate over time has involved many extremes. Many of them man was not present for, so even though you can make the argument that man is affecting climate change, climate change happened before man and will continue to happen after man. As far as skeptic models go I can imagine the reason they dont exist is because they are not being funded by billion dollar organizations that are trying to profit from the “Green Revolution”.
So many times in science, “average” people view science as fact when in effect it is mainly little more than very complex theory. As the facts change scientists will re-manipulate their complex theories in order to make the universe align with mans self centered position in it. You see it all the time, the Universe is 11 billion years old… wait it is 11.8 B years old… Wait it is 13.8 B years old etc, etc, etc. It reminds me of something Adolph Hitler once said, Tell a lie, make it big, keep repeating it and they will believe it.
As long as the debate exists (no matter what it is about)there will be organizations that are raping the coffers to prove or disprove a plethora of scientific rhetoric. This is all about money, period. They sell you on the value of the human race and will continue to soil our nest until extinction is no longer a complex theory but a simplistic fact. Extinctions have happened before and are happening as we speak, it is Lion King thing.
In the end the debate is null and void, why you might ask? Because there is so much argument and so much division that people have basically become disgusted with the whole process and have stopped listening.
You and others are so bizarre here. I am as close to an ally as you have, yet you persist in being complete tools.
These are serious time for serious people. Indulging your ego is not serious, ad kind of gross. Did you not get enough of this in junior high?
WHY ARE YOU ALL SO AFRAID OF TRUE SUSTAINABILITY?
(Rhetorical question. Please visit your local deserted Mayan village to commune with the ghosts there about technology, complexity, climate and buh-bye!)
@56 Cris G. If cloud feedback is not quantified in any way, does that mean that it has to be omitted from the estimate of climate sensitivity from CO2 doubling (typically estimated at 3 degree C +/- 1.5 degrees C)?
Yamal is important not because of the ‘tree rings’, but because of the two great rivers, Ob and Yenisey discharging ~32,000 m3/s of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean. Some 12 years later portion of these waters will pass through the Denmark Strait as the East Greenland Current, one of the main contributors to the sub-polar gyre -SPG, affecting salinity and thermo-haline circulation. The SPG is the home of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscilation and the AMO.
There is a direct correlation of the AMO (the SPG) with geomagnetic changes 12 years earlier, at the delta of the two great Siberian rivers 6,000km away.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/YAMAL-GMF-AMO.htm
Further away the correlation progressively weakens.
If Dr. Schmidt is interested in the data file I would be happy to forward it.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/YAMAL-GMF-AMO.htm
Natural variability or even Bore hole, yes.
Deletion is depriving readers of an insight into role of Yamal peninsula in the climate change.
A “skeptic climate model” would be a grave mistake, for the modelling paradigm itself, as it is practiced in contemporary climate science, is wrong.
Fitting various computational models of high Kolmogorov complexity to a single run of a unique physical instance is not science, never was and never will be.
What science does is just the opposite. It seeks a single mathematical model of low Kolmogorov complexity (a.k.a. “simple” one) fitting multiple runs of a wide class of physical instances.
What about going for a general theory of closed non-equilibrium quasi steady state thermodynamic systems, ones with a huge number of internal degrees of freedom, radiatively coupled to their environment? That is, shedding some light to one of the persistent twilight zones of semi-classical physics. Some members of this class (unlike the terrestrial climate system) could be realized and studied in the lab, making verification of said (as yet non existent) theory straightforward.
So what has to happen now for the scientists to say that their crisis is as real as they like to say a comet hit crisis is real, not just possible, potentially and likely and….. Why can’t they call their crisis inevitable or eventual or imminent or just WILL be a real crisis. Only a comet hit could be worse. You can’t have a little tiny catastrophic climate crisis outside of Harry Potter movies.
They only have consensus that “climate change” is “real and happening” but do not believe or agree that climate change will be a real crisis as they have never said it.
28 years of maybe a crisis proves it won’t be a crisis. Deny that!
Steven @43 : The Internet as we know it really took off with the Web in about 1993 – 20 years ago. The Web was invented at CERN, taken up further by NCSA – but it was Netscape that caught public attention.
Marco@43 : The new data shows about half the 20th century warming compared to the 2000 result.
Kevin@42 : If nothing else changes in the meantime, CO2 levels look likely to double from pre-industrial levels in about 50 years time. Recent results (Otto et al) imply TCS < 2C and ECS ~ 2.5C These are not catastrophic so long as by then we have developed non carbon energy sources. The only current long term solution is Nuclear Fusion. I don't know about the US – but the UK spends ~4 billion on subsidizing low density renewables, but only ~50million on Nuclear Fusion research.
Many good responses here to think about. The concept that 35-37 responses are interesting.
The “style” refer to is increasing temperatures of Yamal, reflected in Yamalia, while the quantum is reduced: so we can see in individual studies that temperatures are going up (or down) locally to a large or small extent, it doesn’t mean that beyond the specific study area the temperatures are rising or falling by a similar or proportional amount.
The problem we face is deducing the global from the regional, even the regional from the local. The “style”, i.e. rising or falling, may very well be correct, but the significance on a hemispheric, if not global sense, if far from sure. This updated work appears to show that the quantum of change was exaggerated in the first study (presuming the second study was “better” than the first).
As for all the other evidence of global warming, we are not concerned with global warming per se in all this climate change dispute, but with the attribution of human generated CO2 as being the primary, i.e. >70% cause of the warming. Other evidence of warming, like melting ice, is evidence of warming, not CO2-caused warming. Most of what is touted in the mainstream or even in alarmist peer-reviewed literature is the effect of warming, not the cause of it, but the distinction is lost most of the time. That is why I counter the comment about why I argue about one study when there is the other “evidence” to consider: most of this other evidence is not evidence of CO2 cause but that there IS warming.
And the comment that ALL of the recovery from the LIA is a result of anthropogenic CO2 is just silly: the initial increase in CO2 was so minimal that no laws of physics even by IPCC hardliners can say that it was responsible for the rise out of the LIA. If the CO2 increases in the 1890s caused the temperatures to rise, the post-1980 CO2 rise, and the post 1995 CO2 rise would be broiling us today.
There is nothing wrong with tree-ring analysis. I did a minor amount of my own interest in the Rocky Mountains and was impressed with the “style” as I called it. But my experience living in western Canada, the Canadian Rockies and the Arctic tell me that regions may undergo very large changes that are not equally seen in other regions. The Arctic exaggeration is seen in the GCMs, after all. The problem with the current studies in in their socio-political uses. Just as contrarians go on about historical climate changes that are immaterial to the present if the previous reasons were not the same (i.e. CO2 driven) as that considered for today, warmists can go on about the lack of historical relevance to the present day. Both sides come from the same circular reasoning: since I know the warming is CO2/not CO2-driven, whatever I see as warming is proof that CO2/not CO2 is responsible.
As for the Precautionary Principle invoked by one commenter: how can I choose to avoid the CO2 connection if, in fact, it later shows to be correct, and the planet is in peril? Well, because first I don’t think the evidence after 25 years of determined study has shown the probable temperature growth to be at any but the lower end of sensitivity (unless GCMs grossly underestimate the natural, countervailing forces, a mistake that undermines the certainty of outcome and the settledness of climatology). And second, and more importantly perhaps, that I believe the societal damage through energy cost increases is more certain than that of a degree or two of global temperature rise. (It is noteworthy that this opinion is shared by precisely the societies that are said by the developed west to be the ones that will suffer the most: India, China, Africa and the tropical South American governments are much more concerned with providing widespread, cheap energy to their peoples than they are in curbing their CO2 emissions. If you are looking for consensus on net benefit or impairment, you will find that the world is much more on the benefit to increased fossil fuel usage than on impairment.)
Now, Tim: arguing that we don’t have a good understanding (or one at all) on why we came out of the LIA for supporting CO2 is that old argument from ignorance. Nor do we know why we entered into full glacial cycles or came out of them. We live in a universe that has multiple solutions and causations of similar problems and phenomena – which is why the warmist can dismiss historical warm periods as being irrelevant to the special situation of today. I do not know why one friend got a brain tumour while I didn’t, but I am not arguing that either Lucifer or his predilection for gummy bears was responsible just because I can see no other correlation than his lifestyle or candy preference. We entered into the LIA without a CO2 attribution, but something caused it to happen: coming out of the LIA seems more likely to come from the same place as the entry did, and as happened numerous times in the past. Positing a brand-new, human-based caused for this recovery (in the late 19th century) strikes me more as an anthropomorphic vanity harkening back to Old Testament considerations of sins of the flesh than scientific reasoning.
Again, I am sorry that the socio-political environment has made such a tempest out of all this wonderful tree-ring study. We overreach ourselves, I am afraid, when we try to be the overlords of creation. Our imaginations get beyond our knowledge and our desire to act gets beyond our ability to understand well enough to act appropriately.
We have time, recent history is not moving at a calamatous rate or in a catastrophic direction by obserevation, only by model, and additional work consistently takes us away from, not closer to, an unfolding disaster worthy of shutting down the economic activity of the world (as any effective CO2-suppressed activity MUST include the developing world, not just the US, Canada, the UK and the EU).
I can’t believe anyone is still arguing about global warming since it has been cooling for the last 12 to 13 years. Arguing about those silly models? Robert G. Brown said it best, “why are the models in such terrible disagreement with each other, even when applied to identical toy problems that are far simpler than the actual Earth, and why we aren’t using empirical evidence (as it accumulates) to reject failing models and concentrate on the ones that come closest to working, while also not using the models that are obviously not working in any sort of “average” claim for future warming.
To Ragwodd @ 65 – I believe you have it wrong and have have a misunderstanding of economic models or all models for that matter. If we include mathematics under the heading of science, then all models can be viewed as being based on scientific theories. True economic models are based on hundreds of years of observations of varying data and attempt to identify some relationship that can then be used to forecast future outcomes. The same goes for climate models or any other model for that matter. All models are created to help understand relationships and to make some sort of forecast based on that understanding. Forgetting the potential errors in the data being used in any model (hence the term “garbage in garbage out”), one might classify all models as representing a closed system. In other words the only aspects that are important in generating model outcomes and interpreting them are those that are included within the model itself. When it comes to science, it is well known that observations and conclusions derived from lab work can be quite different when the same experiment is undertake away from a lab environment.
I propose to you the same problem is applicable to climate models in that the outcomes generated by those models are predicated on the factors included in them; on the way those factors inter relate with one another; and on the final interpretation of the results (the human factor). Hence the argument to say that climate models must be accurate because they are based on decades of experimental work simply is nonsensical. In order to create any model one needs to carry out substantial experimental work so that the inter-relationships that take place are correctly modeled. Therein lies the problem with models. At best they MAY be able to identify a trend, but to identify the cause of that trend? Well that is based on how the inter-relationships are used in the model.
When it comes to climate models, I do not care how big, how intricate or how complex they are; I simply do not believe them because I do not believe that we know all of the science involved with climate change and that a few decades of experiments is so insufficient for us to model processes that have been in existence for billions of years.
The only other type of model that is similar to a climate model is one that meteorologists use to forecast weather. Despite the tens of thousands of days of weather information and despite the fact that our scientific knowledge of weather patterns and formation far exceeds out knowledge of climate change, we still cannot accurately forecast the weather for the next day or next week. I happen to live in an urban area with four national tv broadcasters that have a local presence. Each station has a meteorologist on staff who determines their forecast based on four different weather models. If such models were accurate, you would expect them to have the same forecast – but they don’t! Some days they are way off the mark and I am sure that is repeated elsewhere around the world.
Finally your statement that ” Climate models differ from the dominant economic models because they start from the premise of evidence, which is lacking in most economic models.” is totally inaccurate. Economic models are based on years and years of evidence and over those years economists are always working at refining them in order to increase their accuracy.