Its also true that ice on Mt Kilimanjaro is receding. All due to deforestation.
Chief Hydrologistsays
I have recently been commenting more broadly on climate sites. Assessing the state of play. WordPress is logging me on under my old Climate etc handle. I quite like it – so let’s stay with it. If you look at my comments at hotwhopper – you will find dozens of ‘cites’. Although this seems way over the head of Sou – and the response is aggressive and misguided.
‘First we construct a network from four major climate indices. The network approach to complex systems is a rapidly developing methodology, which has proven to be useful in analyzing such systems’ behavior [Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Strogatz, 2001]. In this approach, a complex system is presented as a set of connected nodes. The collective behavior of all the nodes and links (the topology of the network) describes the dynamics of the system and offers new ways to investigate its properties.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/full
The system is represented as nonlinear oscillators and behaves in ways consistent with synchronous chaos – hence resonant.
‘First we construct a network from four major climate indices. The network approach to complex systems is a rapidly developing methodology, which has proven to be useful in analyzing such systems’ behavior [Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Strogatz, 2001]. In this approach, a complex system is presented as a set of connected nodes. The collective behavior of all the nodes and links (the topology of the network) describes the dynamics of the system and offers new ways to investigate its properties.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/full
The system is represented as nonlinear oscillators and behave in ways consistent with sy nchronous chaos – hence resonant. The following is from the US Academies of Science in 2002 – from doyens of climate science – and can be taken at face value.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ Richard Alley, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus, Jonathon Overpeck, Dorothy Peteet, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Roger Pielke Jr, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Michael Wallace.
It is how the terrestrial climate system actually works – small changes in control variables such as greenhouse gases push the globally resonant system past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Abrupt climate change – every 20 or 30 years and as much as 16 degrees C in a decade – provides serious added impetus to mitigation of destabilising pressures in an inherently unstable system.
Although a broader response involving population and development, multiple gases and aerosols and conservation and restoration of ecosystems and agricultural soils is much preferable to a narrow focus on fossil fuels. The latter is 57% of greenhouse gas emissions – and equivalent to black carbon. We cannot address emissions without a broad approach. A glance at my site might reveal a clearer picture of my views than Hank’s caricature.
Most people are still at mode 1 and 2 thinking – see comment 11 – the 2 degree target and equilibrium climate sensitivity are diagnostic. Climate is thus likely to confound all of them – leading to profound policy confusion when maximum clarity is required.
Chief Hydrologistsays
‘A growing number of studies have found biases and uncertainties due to nonspatially representative influences in the assessment of multidecadal surface temperature trends [e.g., Pielke et al., 2007a, 2007b; Christy et al., 2006, 2009; Davey and Pielke, 2005; Davey et al., 2006; Hale et al., 2006, 2008; Mahmood et al., 2006; Rogers et al., 2007; Kalnay and Cai, 2003; Kalnay et al., 2006; Makowski et al., 2008; Vautard et al., 2009]. These biases include poor exposure of observing sites (see also http://www.surfacestations.org/), effects on temperature trends of concurrent multidecadal trends in the local surface air humidity; microclimate, nonspatially representative land use change over time, movement of temperature measurements closer to buildings, changes in the turbulent state of the nocturnal boundary layer by surface development and aerosols, alterations in levels of sulfur dioxide emissions, and the sampling of temperature data at single heights.’ http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/klotzbachetal2009.pdf
There is every reason to suspect that the differences between satellite and surface records have very real physical origins – and that the satellite record provides an intrinsically batter way of monitoring changes in the lower atmosphere.
‘Using a new measure of coupling strength, this update shows that these climate modes have recently synchronized, with synchronization peaking in the year 2001/02. This synchronization has been followed by an increase in coupling. This suggests that the climate system may well have shifted again, with a consequent break in the global mean temperature trend from the post 1976/77 warming to a new period (indeterminate length) of roughly constant global mean temperature.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037022/full
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
At the very least it suggests that the newer methods of network math are a better approach.
Chief Hydrologistsays
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.’ IPCC TAR 14.2.2.2
There is a quite incomprehensible inability to see that scientists have been saying this in many ways for a long time. Of course this is not consistent with the 2 degree target, equilibrium sensitivity and the utility of models narratives. Go figure. But it is quite obvious – and widely reported – science
‘These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of the size and complexity of the climate system.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/abstract
There is abundant science on dynamical complexity in climate.
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.’ IPCC TAR 14.2.2.2
The following is from the US Academies of Science in 2002 – from doyens of climate science – and can be taken at face value.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ Richard Alley, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus, Jonathon Overpeck, Dorothy Peteet, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Roger Pielke Jr, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Michael Wallace.
It is how the terrestrial climate system actually works – small changes in control variables such as greenhouse gases push the globally resonant system past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Abrupt climate change – every 20 or 30 years and as much as 16 degrees C in a decade – provides serious added impetus to mitigation of destabilising pressures in an inherently unstable system.
I have provided dozens of ‘cites’ here and elsewhere. As for responses – it requires a broad strategy involving population and development, technological innovation, multiple gases across sector and aerosols.
Resonance brings chaotic oscillators into synchronous chaos. The mechanism is dynamical complexity. Climate change is abrupt – changing state dynamically in response to an internal realignment every 20 to 30 years – and with the potential for extreme and rapid change. This is a paradigm – like it or not – understand it or not – that will inevitably dominate thinking about climate.
‘First we construct a network from four major climate indices. The network approach to complex systems is a rapidly developing methodology, which has proven to be useful in analyzing such systems’ behavior [Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Strogatz, 2001]. In this approach, a complex system is presented as a set of connected nodes. The collective behavior of all the nodes and links (the topology of the network) describes the dynamics of the system and offers new ways to investigate its properties.’ https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kswanson/www/publications/tsonis_GRL07.pdf
The following is from the US Academy of Sciences in 2002 – Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises – written by doyens of climate science – and can be taken at face value.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies…
Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.’ Richard Alley, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus, Jonathon Overpeck, Dorothy Peteet, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Roger Pielke Jr, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Michael Wallace.
Not understanding the science is not the same as there not being any by any means. If we ever get past this point – rational policy responses may follow.
For number of centuries as data shows, the Earth’s natural tendency to cool has been countered by the more active sun.
More active sun, as in strength and frequency of its Coronal Mass Ejections flung at the Earth, or more precisely at the Arctic, and not in the sunspot numbers count as such.
During even numbered solar cycles the Earth’s magnetic shield offers very little resistance, while during odd numbered cycles a ‘threshold’ of resistance is active, its level depending on the strength of both the Earth’s and the incoming solar magnetic fields.
To our benefit, at this time of a weaker sun, the Earth’s magnetic shield has lost about 12% of its strength since the depth’s of Maunder minimum, allowing the CME’s impacts to be more effective in triggering and sustaining the Earth’s warming mechanism. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SEC.htm
Nicolas Nierenbergsays
Dr. Cook, I certainly don’t wish to be a denier or labeled as such. What is the scientific definition? What tenets must I agree with to make it clear that I am a believer and not a denier? Or am I a denier now just by asking that question?
Does a non-specialist have the right to question the findings of highly trained climate scientists and physicists who obviously know a lot more about the technical aspects of this issue than I? For me the answer is a resounding “yes, of course.” And in this particular case, where so much is at stake for so many, more than just a right, but a responsibility. In my defense, let me cite some excerpts from a particularly insightful Scientific American article titled Evaluating scientific claims (or, do we have to take the scientist’s word for it?) (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/evaluating-scientific-claims-or-do-we-have-to-take-the-scientists-word-for-it/ ):
“Scientific knowledge is built on empirical data, and the details of the data . . . can vary quite a lot in different scientific disciplines, and in different areas of research within those disciplines. However, there are commonalities in the basic patterns of reasoning that scientists in all fields use to compare their theories with their data. . .
In other words, even if I can’t evaluate someone else’s raw data to tell you directly what it means, I can evaluate the way that data is used to support or refute claims. I can recognize logical fallacies and distinguish them from instances of valid reasoning. Moreover, this is the kind of thing that a non-scientist who is good at critical thinking (whether a journalist or a member of the public consuming a news story) could evaluate as well.”
Your article is a masterpiece of soft-pedalling, but it remains that you excuse every data adjustment which helps the AGW “cause” and bad-mouth any contrary result. Clearly you are pushing an agenda, and your claim of scientific integrity is just a phony political stance.
The Sahara was green in the prehistory. The Greenland was green at the time of the Vikings 1,000 years ago. There was a heat period at the end of the 18th century and a cold period at the beginning of the XXth century.
It is not proved that the present increasing temperature is man made.
#36 “You really need to get over your obsession with (totally unsurprising) blips in the trend.”
Thirty years is an awfully long time for a “blip.” And since it appears smack in the middle of your “long term trend” the reality of such a trend is certainly questionable, statistics or no statistics. (The problem with statistics, by the way, is that one can always tweak the statistics to demonstrate whatever one likes — thus statistics per se are not necessarily the most reliable indicator of the underlying meaning behind any dataset.)
I’m assuming also that the point of long-term trend claims is to demonstrate the influence of fossil fuel emissions on global temperatures. However, even if one would want to conveniently ignore a 30 year “hiatus” (not to mention the more recent 15 year “hiatus), and insist that temperatures have trended upward steadily since 1910, it would be difficult to attribute the entire trend to fossil fuel emissions, which would not have been all that substantial during the entirety of that initial 1910-1940 warming trend.
In the words of geologist Don Easterbrook (http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/research.html), “Global temperatures rose steadily in the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s. By the mid 1940s, global temperatures were about 0.5 °C (0.9° F) warmer than they had been at the turn of the century (Figure 1). More high temperature records for the century were recorded in the 1930s than in any other decade of the 20th century (Fig. 2). Glaciers during this period retreated and, in general, followed the warming climate pattern. All of this occurred before CO2 emissions began to soar after 1945 (Fig. 3), so at least half of the warming of the past century cannot have been caused by manmade CO2.” (http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/CO2_past-century.pdf)
The only trend I see that appears strongly correlated with the rise in ff emissions begins ca. 1979 and ends ca 1998, a period of only 20 years — looks to me like THAT could be a “blip,” according to the definition preferred on this blog.
“It’s most tiresome trolling on this blog.”
What’s tiresome are the continual attempts to label anyone questioning the orthodox view as a “troll.” These are perfectly legitimate questions. If you can respond to them meaningfully, fine. If not, then please refrain from the usual ad hominems, they won’t help your case.
“Smoothing creates artificially high correlations between any two smoothed series. Take two randomly generated sets of numbers, pretend they are time series, and then calculate the correlation between the two. Should be close to 0 because, obviously, there is no relation between the two sets. After all, we made them up.
But start smoothing those series and then calculate the correlation between the two smoothed series. You will always find that the correlation between the two smoothed series is larger than between the non-smoothed series. Further, the more smoothing, the higher the correlation.”
ben dussansays
It appears that the Pope has been grossly misguided on the global warming /climate change “issues”, which in my opinion are for the most part unsubstantiated opinions presented as facts. I just ask one question: How come that water [vapor, gas and or ice] does not appear to be taken into account in the models of the biosphere, when in fact water is not only the strongest green house gas [warming] but it also reflects incident solar radiation [by clouds – cooling effect], and its concentration in the atmosphere varies over a wide range at any given location? And, the truth of the matter is that nobody neither fully knows nor fully understands what is the magnitude of the net effect of water on the thermal balance of the biosphere with time.
As to the humane idea of eradicating poverty it appears that the Pope fails to take into account what would be the consequences as the poor become more and more affluent, thus increasing the demands not only for more food but also for more energy consumption. Getting to the point, the Pope fails to address the real problem facing humanity: OVERPOPULATION, which slowly but surely is leading to the depletion of our natural resources, to the poisoning of the biosphere and our food supplies, the arable lands, and to overcrowding and eventual global warfare.
davesays
The data is wrong. We must “fix” it. Now, where have we heard that before?
Salamanosays
So hold on a second… I thought that Bristlecone Pines were not supposed to be used as valid temperature proxies– especially prior to AD 1700, let alone AD 1000.
Is this not in the literature?
How is it then that not only are these valid, but now being used re-date ice cores? The earlier paper itself admits that its research can’t “prove” its conclusions, but then says it offers a coherent argument for re-dating.
Is this kind of like the early MBH studies of the late 90s (ironically also using Bristlecones), where its conclusions were an early salvo using not-the-best methodology and all that, but just the same arrived at a conclusion that was later to be borne out by more robust methodologies?
1. I don’t recall Lomborg claiming to be a scientist. I believe he identifies himself as a statistician.
2. RCP 8.5 is not a scenario. It borrows from an earlier SRES. The narrative for RCP 8.5 is being written as we correspond here.
3. Sea level rise is contentious. The NOAA writes ‘the absolute global sea level rise is believed to be 1.7-1.8 millimeters/year.’ (http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/globalregional.htm). If Lomborg is incorrect when writing “The inescapable point is that sea levels are not escalating out of hand – if anything, they are doing the exact opposite right now” he certainly has good company.
4. What the Economist said. Science doesn’t need protecting from Lomborg. It may, perhaps, need protection from those who attack him.
5. Kare Fog’s attacks on Lomborg have been responded to by Lomborg. Why do you not say so and provide a link?
This article is a classical example of Sagan’s scientific baloney alert. Whenever someone attacks that arguer and not the argument, they have diverged from scientific reasoning. How many other researchers cite Lomborg’s papers tells us nothing about the accuracy or value of what he has published. Under the current political climate of science, a skeptical argument creates a far greater probability of never getting published, whether or not their arguments are correct or not. Rhamstorf is once again engaging in a political hit piece, NOT science!
I stumbled upon this site and am not educated on this subject, but have been reading articles on this website that I think you’d be interested in reading. Dane Wigington has been following “climate change?” for 12 years and has gathered a lot of statistics and water/soil tests in his state of California. He has about 18 million hits on his site. I apologize if I’m way off base here, but I believe we’re talking about the same issue. He believes we are in earth’s 6th extinction because of the CO2 pollutants (geoengineering being the biggest contributor). geoengineeringwatch.org
average joesays
Shukla anyone? Really I just want you and yours disappeared. Truth be told, there is not a lick of value in ANY of the handful of climate science papers I have viewed. I’m going to extrapolate and say that this applies to virtually all of them. They are nothing but conjecture. There is no way to get valid data to judge validity of hypothesis, without waiting a lifetime (or two or three…). Thus they instead rely on climate models, which themselves are not proven (in fact early indications are that they are crap!). It’s freakin unbelievable! How the morons administering grants don’t see this – oh wait, I forgot, they are in on it. All the way to the top, obummer and his bozo chief science advisor. The good news is, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This is a deep and incestuous rathole, and the Rightous Right is going to rain a holy shitstorm down on them, leaving no orifice unexplored. Mainstream media will finally figure out they have been had. And that’s when all hell breaks loose on climate science as a whole. Federal funding goes to zero overnight for this malignant field. No more cli sci papers. No more funding for any universities supporting this crap field. The whole lot of them having to get real jobs where they actually produce something of value (burgers anyone?). The only thing anyone will notice is how nice it is to not have to listen to these chicken littles anymore. Oh man, this is better than a wet dream!
Victorsays
#138 – 140 Kevin McKinney
Thanks so much, Kevin, for your lucid and sensible response.
“IOW, the theory was, and is, based upon physical understanding, not correlation. And it’s noteworthy that as such, it stands as a successful ‘prediction’ writ rather large.”
You are right to challenge my assertion that there was never any case for AGW to begin with. On the basis of the older physical evidence you’ve cited, I concede that you are correct, at least to the extent that yes, there was an a priori case made for AGW by some of the pioneers in this field.
I’ve studied some of the physical explanations, notably this very thorough “Tutorial on the Basic Physics of Climate Change” (http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm). Now obviously I’m not in a position to evaluate either the physics or the math contained therein (nor, I would imagine, would most of those posting here), but what comes across very clearly is the enormous complexity of their explanation, which according to the authors themselves is incomplete. It’s hard to imagine such an explanation satisfying Occam’s razor, but even if we forget about Occam for a moment, it seems clear that there is an awful lot of room for errors, false assumptions, and misunderstandings to creep in during the course of such a complex and actually rather convoluted assessment. I get the same impression from the many papers I’ve read purporting to refute the notorious “hiatus,” where things get very complicated very quickly.
Since I’m not a physicist, let me invoke the opinion of one of the most respected physicists of our time, Freeman Dyson, who makes essentially the same point: the physical problems associated with the assessment of climate change are simply too complex. And he is certainly not alone. It seems to me that such a tutorial can, at best, establish (assuming it’s correct in every detail) that AGW is consistent with the physical evidence, but that’s not the same as putting it forward as proof.
Kevin: “The ‘hypothesis’ that the mainstream is wrong does not constitute a separate hypothesis. It’s just a statement of the falsifiability of the mainstream. As such, Occam’s does not apply to it. IOW, we’re still awaiting a competing explanation which would enable Occam to be applied usefully.”
Again you make a valid point. Occam’s razor applies to competing hypotheses and I don’t offer a competing hypothesis, hence it would seem unfair of me to invoke Occam. Not bad!
But others HAVE invoked such hypotheses, no? Notably the hypothesis rejected in the tutorial, that solar variations are the primary cause. And if you look at the literature produced by supporters of the solar hypothesis you’ll find similar attempts to bolster that theory with “elaborate competing explanations, called saving hypotheses.” Are your “saving hypotheses” more convincing than theirs? Or are you both wrong? As I see it both are wrong. Because saving hypotheses are consistent with Occam only if the necessity of such hypotheses can be demonstrated, and on this point I fail to see the necessity of either. Both appear to be based on unproven assumptions and to at least some extent wishful thinking.
If we look at the historical record, however, we see, for example, a period of dramatic warming during the Medieval Warming Period, and global or local, there must have been some reason other than AGW for that. So that’s my hypothesis I suppose — why not? Whatever caused that warming may well have caused this one.
Victorsays
#140 Thanks for citing that wikipedia article on Occam’s razor, Kevin. It’s interesting and the author makes some useful points. But I don’t see anything in it that contradicts any of the arguments I’ve presented. It’s important to distinguish between parsimony and Occam’s razor, while in several instances this article confuses them. So yes, the simplest explanation can very well be wrong, as I’ve stated, because what’s required by Occam is the simplest explanation necessary to account for all the evidence. And yes, Occam’s razor is incapable of offering a definitive solution to any problem because there is always the possibility of new evidence coming to light that can’t be explained by the more parsimonious theory.
This is in fact precisely the problem I have with AGW, which is in fact the most parsimonious explanation ever offered for 20th century warming. Yet, as time has gone by, it’s become clear that AGW can no longer account for all the evidence and thus no longer satisfies Occam’s razor. Which does not mean that at some future time more evidence could become known that revives this theory. I’m not arguing that it’s been proven wrong, I’m arguing that in its current state it violates Occam’s principle. As do all the other attempts to account for the warming by invoking alternative forcings or factors, admittedly. But this does not rule out the possibility of some factor yet unknown that’s produced this effect, just as factors unknown produced similar warming (and cooling) effects in the past.
Thanks to the Moderator for placing my comment back up after removing it last night. I was beginning to wonder if the Post author treats his own inaccurate climate forecast results in the same way he treats unwelcome comments, by deleting them.
My assumption is that these people would retort that using RSS or other satellite data would show they were right. Certainly more right than those who claimed a linear increase in temperature.
Maybe you could point me to articles which show why we shouldn’t assume satellite data is infinitely more reliable as NASA itself said 10 years ago than adjusted sparse and in-homogeneous land data sets taken from diverse devices that have numerous unexplained movements and devices that fail regularly or have exogenous events occur near them constantly?
Let’s let the child games of playing with data alone and just look at the big picture. We have 75 years of data since 1940. Around 1940 CO2 production tripled rapidly and industrialization rose exponentially. Using the satellite records and assuming no increase in temperature from 1945-1979 or the start of satellite data which is a “conservative” estimate considering almost all analysis shows a declining temperature between 1940-1979 we can say with almost surety the total temperature change from 1/3 of a doubling of CO2 and 75 years or half the time to 2100 is 0.3C roughly. If you use the adjusted surface records its closer to 0.6C. Wow. How do you explain that?
Anyway my point is that since CO2 acts logarithmic-ally 1/3 of the CO2 translates to roughly half the total effect expected. This 0.3C includes all the feedbacks and transient effects as well as any exogenous events like volcanoes which the IPCC ignores.
There could be tipping points. There could be other exogenous events that happen however none of these have the attribute of being known and there are as many or more that might lead to a drop of temperature as increase. Therefore all we can expect realistically, scientifically, provably in temperature change to 620ppm (double the 1940 CO2 density) is about another 0.3C.
Increasing temperature by CO2 requires burning or producing somehow exponentially greater and greater quantities of CO2 to the point of absurdity seen as the downfall of all other catastrophy theories. Whereas the public is led to believe that CO2 could go up indefinitely and heat the eath 6, 10, 20 degrees as was broadcast this last week about the middle east hitting 170 degrees soon the actual reality is that it is harder and harder to achieve the amount of CO2 to continue to raise temperatures meaning it is extremely unbelievable that this is a long term sustainable phenomenon to whatever extent it exists.
Lastly, the IPCC argues that short term periodicities are irrelevant (weather) and long term periodicities are non-existant (the hockey stick falsity) so therefore we are left with the only possible thing that changed in the time period to ascribe the temperature change to. This is based on these false assumptions.
The fact is anyone can see that there are periodicities in the historical record up the ying yang. We can’t explain them but no model reproduces them and there is no known cause for these things yet it is clear that there are periodicities. So, given this it is impossible to state that some of these periodicities did not contribute to the last 100 years temperature history in a substantial way.
Given that climate scientists have been “surprised” by the PDO/AMO periodicity you would think any scientist embarassed this way would do an extensive analysis of such periodicities now that they were proven wrong. Yet we still see climate models ignoring, denying periodicities in spite of being unable to explain any of them.
Victorsays
When you and your team announce your bias to the world ahead of time, as in the GEC paper “Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community,” then it’s no longer possible to claim lack of bias simply because you conducted a “blind test.” The true “gold standard” is not “blind,” but “double blind.” If you are already biased then it’s impossible for you to conduct a true “double blind” experiment. Also, the graph you displayed to the economists you tested is already biased, as the 5 year trend line, in red, all but obliterates the actual data, a dashed line in light gray. And the scale you’ve chosen minimizes the effect of the 21st century data to the point that it already seems negligible ahead of time.
One has to wonder, moreover, whether you’d have been willing to publish the results of this test if the outcome hadn’t conformed to the biased view you so clearly hold. Also, there is no way your readers can tell whether this was the only such test you ran — or the only one whose outcome suited you. The only way to meaningfully conduct such a test would be to have it conducted by a neutral party, with the understanding, ahead of time, that the results be published regardless of the outcome.
Victorsays
As I see it, the real issue is not whether there has been a “pause” in warming (there clearly hasn’t), but whether a correlation between CO2 emissions and warming actually exists, as implied by the AGW meme. As is clearly evident from the graph you display (https://www.realclimate.org/images/Figure15.jpg), the correlation that seemed so evident during the last 20 years of the 20th century has ceased to hold during the first 15 years of the 21st. Since eyeballing a graph can be misleading, let’s concentrate only on the numbers. Counting from the first year displayed on your graph to 1998, we see a temperature increase of ca. .6 degrees Celsius. From 1998 to present, we see a much lower increase of less than .1 degree. And if 1998 (the El Nino year) doesn’t suit you, then take 2002 instead. The result is essentially the same, a 6-fold difference. Yet, during the 21st century CO2 emissions were significantly higher than the last 20 years of the 20th. If there were a true correlation, temperatures would be expected to rise by at least the same amount during both periods, but clearly they did not. THAT is the hiatus.
Here we see three scatter plots shown side by side, representing the relation between CO2 emissions and temperature during three different periods, both before and after the period beginning with the mid-70’s and ending with the late 90’s. As we can see, the central region is the only one where a correlation is displayed. Both before and after this period there is none.
BTNsays
I think this website is helpful in terms of related news stories and commentaries:
And it’s fairly balanced instead of the typical one-sided political arguments.
Sewi Müllersays
All the discussions are about the CO2 in the atmosphere how the climate does change…
CO2 is not an FCKW that can be simply reduced.
Burning carbohydrates to water and CO2 is the basic energy source for human applications on this planet.
If you feed a horse with carbohydrates or a steam engine, it is the same chemical process.
Even if you build a “renewable Energy plant” that does produce electricity, the steal, concrete, silicium or what else is produced by emitting CO2… And if the CO2-footprint is even improved is highly questionable. But a lot of money is spent… and after 10-25 years, the system has to be renewed…
Also is the current strategy questionable: nuclear plants. Well, if CO2-footprints are that important, it is the only realistic way to reduce the CO2 footprint.
There is one myth that is not true about CO2 and Industry: that the Industry is responsible for the CO2 increase:
If you compare the amount of humans living on this planet, with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, both graphs do correlate with each other… That means, the CO2-footprint in the atmosphere per head is since 400 years constant. Check the data… We all know how the human population developed in the last years.
If a constant is the same 400 years ago, i don’t believe humans can change it.
Maybe it is time to face the facts… And look for better things to do, and there are many things…
Storing CO2 with technical installations?
In my opinion not the best idea… To compress CO2 and save it, will also require a lot of energy.
I would suggest an much older technology: a tree. Ever heard about it??
There are two very important cycles on this planet: the water cycle (H2O), the carbon cycle (CO2, CxHx). (And many other cycles).
In all of them, the human has a footprint.
As I tried to explain, there is no technical way to reduce CO2 Emmissions… Thats the truth…
But humans can change the counterpart of atmospheric CO2. By influencing the water cycle. (so called watering)
Bring water for plants to dry areas. Let the trees grow.
This will have more positive side effects, like the albedo value…
And Biomass as renewable material source.
You cannot talk about atmospheric CO2 without discussing the water and the plants and the soil.
No one can change the physics. Some things humans can change, other things not. It is important to try to change the things you can, not the things you cannot change…
gallopingcamelsays
Gavin believes that the atmospheric CO2 concentration is a major driver of “Global Warming”. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that he is right.
So how do you reduce mankind’s thirst for cheap fossil fuel energy? The most perfect solution is nuclear power as advocated by Edward Greisch and this camel.
Instead of encouraging a healthy debate of the NP solution to the CO2 problem Gavin imposed censorship. Some of you saw the EG’s comment #161 on the previous thread before Gavin deleted it. Please feel free to forward it to info@gallopingcamel.info.
@gishgallopingcamel (comment #4 above),
As you so rightly point out one is defined by the company you keep although I can’t imagine why you find “Freedom and Prosperity” objectionable. From EG’s comments it is obvious that he is a gentleman and a scholar. I would be honored to earn his approval.
Likewise it follows that one is defined by one’s enemies. If this comment does not survive Gavin’s “Moderation” I will preserve it elsewhere.
If I am successful my next major post will model the Venusian atmosphere “as is” while speculating on the effect of replacing some of the CO2 with nitrogen. Carl Sagan did this in 1967.
Two types of pseudoscience
There are two types of pseudoscience, distinguishable by the following assumptions:
1) Valid science is indicated by consensus
2) Valid science is obvious
The first tends to be associated with people who are politically liberal.
The second tends to be associate with people who are politically conservative.
Very often these two groups are at odds with each other on a particular issue. But when it comes to undermining the credibility of science they play for the same team.
About ten years ago I confronted the “settled science” of global warming. My examination revealed it as plainly inept. That brought me to wonder if there were not other, deeper, ineptitudes. I found myself examining the foundational assumptions of meteorology and, deeper still, core issues regarding the physical chemistry of H2O. And then I made a discovery:
BREAKTHROUGH: Hydrogen Bonding as The Mechanism That Neutralizes H2O Polarity https://goo.gl/Hrb6Sb
Victorsays
Even if 2015 was the warmest year in history, and even if subsequent years are warmer still, that doesn’t negate the fact that there has been no consistent correlation between CO2 emissions and planetary warmth. For a very clear statistical analysis, see the scattergrams reproduced here: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/clip_image0062.jpg
Clearly, the notion that somehow a period of increased warming will constitute proof positive that those demanding serious cutbacks in fossil fuel emissions were “right after all” is seriously misleading. No one knows whether future temps will increase, decrease or remain steady. We do know, however, that the alarming correlation between CO2 and temperature that seemed so evident during the last 20 years of the 20th century, can no longer be maintained.
The above analysis is based on EPICA dome studies by Luethi et al and Jouzel et al. The correlation is striking but there are some problems.
1. These studies have decadal temporal resolution making it obvious that temperature leads [CO2] by about 500 years. Thus temperature drives [CO2] which makes perfect sense given Henry’s law concerning the solubility of gasses in water.
2. Temperature variations over the last seven glacial cycles can be explained in terms of CO2 if the sensitivity constant is 16 K/doubling.
3. To explain temperature variations since 1850 in terms of CO2 you need a sensitivity of 1.6 K/doubling.
Hopefully Gavin or someone else here can resolve these paradoxes.
PS how come there is such a descrepancy between RSS – UAH data and the ground measured data? Could it be caused partly by the urban island effect?
Dan H.says
This storm was similar to past storms that hit the east coast. Was the snowfall totals determined by the water temperatures or the slowing down of the storm system over the ocean, just off the eastern coast, allowing snowfall totals to accumulate much higher than a faster moving storm? Has this been compared to past east coast storms, such as the 1993 storm, 1996, or the great blizzards of 1888 and 1899? These did not all occur during strong El Ninos.
Dan DaSilvasays
By any kind of warming I mean that I am skeptical that anybody knows.
Look how badly climate models are performing. There does seem to be some bias toward making the long past colder and the near past warmer.
Atmospheric Physicistsays
Lukes and warmists have no proof from physics and no physical evidence for their underlying assumption (as Roy Spencer also wrote) that there would be isothermal conditions in a planet’s troposphere but for “greenhouse” gases. As Dr Hans Jelbring pointed out, even the large gas planets exhibit a temperature gradient close to -g/cp and yet have no water vapor or carbon dioxide. Nikolov and Zeller said likewise.
The temperature gradient is a direct result of the force field acting on molecules in flight between collisions, and the process of entropy maximization described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I have cited about half a dozen others who have agreed in writing about this, and there are hundreds, maybe thousands more who don’t speak up but have probably understood the explanation based on standard physics. There is also evidence of similar radial temperature gradients due to centrifugal force, such as in any vortex cooling tube.
It is surely a fundamental requirement of any hypothesis that it be proven from the laws of physics and supported by empirical evidence which never refutes it.
Every planetary troposphere and every vortex tube and the Second Law of Thermodynamics all refute the basic underlying assumption of the radiative forcing greenhouse conjecture.
The other assumption that solar and atmospheric radiation can be compounded is also false and easily refuted with simple experiments. The conclusion that water vapor warms by about 20 degrees for each 1% in the atmosphere is easily shown with real-world data to be incorrect.
Theo van den Bergsays
Re wili @21: Right from the start, I have only had the one question, but then when it keeps being ignored or people pick on my grammar, I get a bit cocky in my comments. Specially when the whole site swings to discuss the exact value of some energy stocks. My question is very RC on-topic, very ClimateChangy:
CO2 is labelled as a greenhouse gas. Lots of it, creates the greenhouse effect. Early Hansen and others are full of it. But the focus of the world in 2015, like COP21 is higher temperatures. Sure a greenhouse effect captures heat, but does not nessesarily break max temperature records.
At my location, I feel I am experiencing the greenhouse effect. Over the last 4 or 5 years, during the day temperatures ‘seem’ lower, at night ‘seem’ higher and there ‘seems’ to be an increase in humidity.
Example: I used to have low-40s often. That was hot but managable. Now I fear 37 degree days, cause I end up pouring with sweat and breathing is constricted i.e. not nice. I have had 48 before, if I had that today, I will be dead.
Even ignoring Watt, I think that the run-of-the-mill temperature records around the world are not capable of capturing this greenhouse effect. They focus on MAX and MIN and dare to average these over a whole month or year. A simple calculation shows that if you average lots of very highs and very lows, they may come to similar values as averaging not so highs and not so lows. Sure, breaking high temperature records is of great concern, but it is not greenhouse effect as such.
So for the future viability of me at my location, I thought I would put this question to some experts. Surely they can dismiss my concerns or paint a picture where my climate goes from here.
As I have had no answers here or on other sites, it looks like I have to do the analysis myself. I have now obtained 10 years of half-hour data from the closest 40km weather station. Done IT for 45 years, so I think I am capable, but I am far to busy keeping my place comfortable.
For me, the most usefull feature on a climate website would be a simple state of the climate. Not lots of politically correct complex IPCC words and not the wild guesses of the alarmists or deniers. And yes, it can be as technical as it gets, pointing to supporting valid peer reviewed research if you want prove or more detail. So far for me, the only consistently reliable indicator is the NSIDC Arctic melt.
So it only needs one of you to respond (by email if you want to keep it out) like Theo, you are seeing things or missing this or that or yes, you are onto something. Cheers.
Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. #8220;This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
The first thing you notice about the monthly surfac temperature data is the annual to inter-annular variance. Which is largely down to the state of the Pacific Ocean. The annual temperature owes much to the persistence of the ocean state throughout any particular year and so is an artifact of data smoothing and quite irrelevant to identifying the underlying temperature trend.
The surface temperature reflect in the balance of sensible and latent as landscape is relatively wetter or drier. In principle the satellites more consistently measures changes in total heat in the atmosphere – however let’s stick to the surface record for argument sake.
The second thing you notice is that there is no obvious increase – even in GISSTEMP -in peak monthly temperature in recent times.
Now the real cleverness is to notice that these ‘regimes’ persist for 20 to 30 years – suggesting that the current non warming of the surface may persist for a while yet.
Is it not the least bit ironic that this paper on “learning from mistakes” was itself rejected many times from many journals, until they finally found a place and way to get it published?
Rapiersays
As simply a non scientific observer it’s unfortunate that there is no simple description of the science. In the end it probably makes no difference if a better description is produced because rhetoric, an non pejorative term here, is rhetoric and scientific results are science and sometimes the twain won’t meet.
The only hope for a significant reduction in CO2 production is probably a sad one and not political. That would be a severe reduction in economic activity which is a non trivial probability. In which case the cure will be worse than the disease for billions of people on a shorter term.
Sorry to interrupt the technical discussion.
Mike Flynnsays
Barton Paul Levenson #82
Couple or three minor points re GHE.
Moon with no atmosphere gets considerably hotter than Earth at equivalent length of exposure, distance from Sun, and comparative surface absorptivity. Conclusion might be that atmosphere reduces maximum surface temperatures.
GHE doesn’t seem to work at night.
Highest terrestrial temperatures occur where there is a distinct lack of the most prevalent GHG – water.
After four and a half billion years of supposed GHE, Earth’s surface is no longer molten. There’s no radiative balance – at TOA, surface, abyssal depths – nowhere. The Earth has cooled. More energy out than in
Things warm up, things cool down. No heat hiding in the oceans, or in solid CO2.
Rising temperatures probably due to seven billion people furiously producing heat 24/7 for all sorts of reasons. Wipe out humanity, no doubt temperatures will drop a little. Not my preferred option. CO2 is plant food. Notice the greening of the planet as levels increase from the perilously low levels of recent geological times. Surely a good thing, wouldn’t you agree?
Cheers.
Victorsays
#79 Sorry Chuck. Guess I missed the sarcasm in your earlier post. Please forgive me.
What bothered me most in Alley’s presentation was its total irrelevance. The undermining of Thwaites began at least a thousand years ago. Certainly not as a result of the Industrial Revolution. If it’s going to collapse completely there is clearly nothing we can do to prevent that. I watched most of his presentation and heard no reference to any such measures, though I’m assuming he’s still in favor of cutting back on fossil fuel emissions. It would be nice if such a cutback could make a difference for Thwaites, but it’s hard to see how that could happen. So the coming collapse he’s gotten himself so worked up over is clearly going to happen regardless of what anyone does about it. Meaning his breathless presentation was of purely academic interest, with NO social relevance whatsoever. Natural disasters happen. Sometimes they can be prevented, usually not. At least this one can be predicted, at least in very general terms. So yes, it’s nice to know that in anywhere from 100 to a few thousand years, sea levels could rise drastically. During that time all sorts of other things will happen, including more earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc. We can’t do much about those either. So what’s his point?
Physicists Speak Upsays
You cannot add back radiation to solar radiation and use the total in Stefan Boltzmann calculations to explain the mean surface temperature.
The 324W/m^2 of back radiation is overstated because the wrong emissivity value of the atmosphere has been used in calculating that back radiation from measurements. On Venus, using emissivity of 0.19 for carbon dioxide, the atmosphere would have to be over 350 degrees hotter than the surface for its radiation to support the surface temperature.
Even if you use the 324 figure (as is implied in the energy diagrams which show 168+324-102 = 390W/m^2 into the surface) that 390 figure (being a mean of variable flux) gives you a mean temperature close to zero C, not 15C.
So it’s all totally wrong and the whole radiative forcing greenhouse conjecture fails to explain reality.
If you genuinely want to hear explained what really happens in the equivalent of a 43 minute live presentation, watch the full video as over 1,100 others have done in its first 6 months.
Victorsays
#84
“We’re not going to burn our way through our FF supply and suddenly be in trouble from a lack of fossil fuel Victor. We’re in trouble now and the question is can we make a clean transition to renewable energy before it’s too late.”
Too late for what, Chuck? You actually believe “a clean transition to renewable energy” is going to stabilize West Antarctica? Is that the message you got from Alley’s talk? It’s not what I got. What I got is a classic “sky is falling” type message. The guy’s eyes were literally popping out of his head with enthusiasm. As far as the crackpot aspect is concerned, no I don’t see him as a crackpot. He’s a typical academic, in love with his own findings and oblivious to anything else. What is that anything else? Check this out:
“Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it’s being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. . .
Using radar techniques to map how water flows under ice sheets, UTIG researchers were able to estimate ice melting rates and thus identify significant sources of geothermal heat under Thwaites Glacier. They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.
The geothermal heat contributed significantly to melting of the underside of the glacier, and it might be a key factor in allowing the ice sheet to slide, affecting the ice sheet’s stability and its contribution to future sea level rise. . .
The findings of lead author Dusty Schroeder and his colleagues show that the glacier sits on something more like a multi-burner stovetop with burners putting out heat at different levels at different locations. “It’s the most complex thermal environment you might imagine,” said co-author Don Blankenship, a senior research scientist at UTIG and Schroeder’s Ph.D. adviser. “And then you plop the most critical dynamically unstable ice sheet on planet Earth in the middle of this thing, and then you try to model it. It’s virtually impossible.”
That’s why, he said, getting a handle on the distribution of geothermal heat flow under the ice sheet has been considered essential for understanding it.”
Alley says exactly nothing about geothermal heat in his presentation, and when asked about it, simply dismisses it with some vague references to its being too localized to really matter. As the UTIG research demonstrates it is not localized at all: “They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.”
Regardless of its significance you’d think he would at least have discussed it. Instead he omits it entirely and when challenged dismisses it. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the “climate change” paradigm, obviously.
“In his 1968 paper, Mercer called the West Antarctic Ice Sheet a “uniquely vulnerable and unstable body of ice.” Mercer based his statement on geologic evidence that West Antarctica’s ice had changed considerably many, many millennia ago at times when the ice sheets of East Antarctica and Greenland had not.”
Some sort of collapse seems inevitable, but when that will happen is simply unpredictable. According to most accounts it’s most likely thousands of years away, but Alley’s emphasis is on the near future, since that’s far more likely to get attention. And of course it has.
chuck at 184: yes, I knew you were kidding. I was re-presenting in the frame of bad possibilities. I think it would be helpful if folks that use the term alarmist could stretch a bit and recognize the bad possibilities, the fat tail outcomes per 181.
Instead of considering the bad possibilities, we often get treated as alarmists – like killian at 180 clarifying the impact of El Nino on the CO2 levels, like 405 or 408 ppm is nothing to get excited about, when in fact, the current level is already proving to have significant consequences. No offense, Killian, but the rate of increase is continuing to increase. The number is upward-sticky as they say, we need downward sticky and the sooner the better. (playing with fire? poking the climate system with a stick?)
I like to watch and cite the actual CO2 level because I think it is a real number that has real world consequence. If we buy in to promises that carbon emissions have been reduced, when they have not, or when new, secondary sources of carbon dioxide emissions have started to move the needle in the wrong direction, then we have pinned our climate future on a chimera.
Dr. Mann says the carbon emissions is the right number to watch. I repeat my questions to Dr. Mann:
Dr. Mann is quoted as saying “Emissions have stabilized somewhat in recent years and dropped slightly in 2015, reflecting human progress in transitioning away from a fossil fuel economy, he said.
“Those are the numbers to keep a close eye on,” he said. “If they continue to decline, we will see carbon dioxide concentrations beginning to stabilize.
1. How accurate do you believe the numbers are for actual carbon emissions? What data are you using to calculate the actual carbon emissions and how do you keep a close eye on the actual carbon emissions?
2. When you look back at the numbers that were accepted as “actual carbon emissions” over any discrete period of time in the past and then factor in the time lag before you see a corresponding change in ppm concentration of CO2, do the estimates of “actual carbon emissions” match well with the MLO CO2 level measurements?
3. Are you willing to project a year and CO2 level that we should hit to confirm your position that we will see the MLO CO2 levels stabilize based on the stabilized emissions that you think have occurred in recent years and the drop in emissions that you believe occurred in 2015?
MLO says CO2 was 404.08 on Mar 10 2016. Good number I guess. Nothing to get concerned about. I like 350, but I am not going to see that number again in my lifetime. Hope my grandkids see 350 in their lifetime. That would validate all our various efforts to address this problem.
Titussays
The question that comes to my mind is: what is the natural optimum concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere?
I know from experience that plants do best in double to treble the current concentration. They also use less water.
If, as seems plausible from some research, that CO2 sensitivity is low to temperature change are we doing over kill with our reaction and potentially ignoring benefits?
Dowden “The definition of science here seems to be based only on defending climate science against deniers rather than describing science in general”.
So apologetics would be a better description of this course than education?
Its also true that ice on Mt Kilimanjaro is receding. All due to deforestation.
I have recently been commenting more broadly on climate sites. Assessing the state of play. WordPress is logging me on under my old Climate etc handle. I quite like it – so let’s stay with it. If you look at my comments at hotwhopper – you will find dozens of ‘cites’. Although this seems way over the head of Sou – and the response is aggressive and misguided.
‘First we construct a network from four major climate indices. The network approach to complex systems is a rapidly developing methodology, which has proven to be useful in analyzing such systems’ behavior [Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Strogatz, 2001]. In this approach, a complex system is presented as a set of connected nodes. The collective behavior of all the nodes and links (the topology of the network) describes the dynamics of the system and offers new ways to investigate its properties.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/full
The system is represented as nonlinear oscillators and behaves in ways consistent with synchronous chaos – hence resonant.
‘First we construct a network from four major climate indices. The network approach to complex systems is a rapidly developing methodology, which has proven to be useful in analyzing such systems’ behavior [Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Strogatz, 2001]. In this approach, a complex system is presented as a set of connected nodes. The collective behavior of all the nodes and links (the topology of the network) describes the dynamics of the system and offers new ways to investigate its properties.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/full
The system is represented as nonlinear oscillators and behave in ways consistent with sy nchronous chaos – hence resonant. The following is from the US Academies of Science in 2002 – from doyens of climate science – and can be taken at face value.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ Richard Alley, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus, Jonathon Overpeck, Dorothy Peteet, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Roger Pielke Jr, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Michael Wallace.
It is how the terrestrial climate system actually works – small changes in control variables such as greenhouse gases push the globally resonant system past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Abrupt climate change – every 20 or 30 years and as much as 16 degrees C in a decade – provides serious added impetus to mitigation of destabilising pressures in an inherently unstable system.
Although a broader response involving population and development, multiple gases and aerosols and conservation and restoration of ecosystems and agricultural soils is much preferable to a narrow focus on fossil fuels. The latter is 57% of greenhouse gas emissions – and equivalent to black carbon. We cannot address emissions without a broad approach. A glance at my site might reveal a clearer picture of my views than Hank’s caricature.
Most people are still at mode 1 and 2 thinking – see comment 11 – the 2 degree target and equilibrium climate sensitivity are diagnostic. Climate is thus likely to confound all of them – leading to profound policy confusion when maximum clarity is required.
‘A growing number of studies have found biases and uncertainties due to nonspatially representative influences in the assessment of multidecadal surface temperature trends [e.g., Pielke et al., 2007a, 2007b; Christy et al., 2006, 2009; Davey and Pielke, 2005; Davey et al., 2006; Hale et al., 2006, 2008; Mahmood et al., 2006; Rogers et al., 2007; Kalnay and Cai, 2003; Kalnay et al., 2006; Makowski et al., 2008; Vautard et al., 2009]. These biases include poor exposure of observing sites (see also http://www.surfacestations.org/), effects on temperature trends of concurrent multidecadal trends in the local surface air humidity; microclimate, nonspatially representative land use change over time, movement of temperature measurements closer to buildings, changes in the turbulent state of the nocturnal boundary layer by surface development and aerosols, alterations in levels of sulfur dioxide emissions, and the sampling of temperature data at single heights.’ http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/klotzbachetal2009.pdf
There is every reason to suspect that the differences between satellite and surface records have very real physical origins – and that the satellite record provides an intrinsically batter way of monitoring changes in the lower atmosphere.
There is a very real hiatus as well – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/ – and it may persist for the rest of the decade at least.
‘Using a new measure of coupling strength, this update shows that these climate modes have recently synchronized, with synchronization peaking in the year 2001/02. This synchronization has been followed by an increase in coupling. This suggests that the climate system may well have shifted again, with a consequent break in the global mean temperature trend from the post 1976/77 warming to a new period (indeterminate length) of roughly constant global mean temperature.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037022/full
The dynamical mechanism is fairly obviously the basis of how climate works – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/abstract
Does this make climate an intractable problem?
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
At the very least it suggests that the newer methods of network math are a better approach.
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.’ IPCC TAR 14.2.2.2
There is a quite incomprehensible inability to see that scientists have been saying this in many ways for a long time. Of course this is not consistent with the 2 degree target, equilibrium sensitivity and the utility of models narratives. Go figure. But it is quite obvious – and widely reported – science
‘These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of the size and complexity of the climate system.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/abstract
There is abundant science on dynamical complexity in climate.
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.’ IPCC TAR 14.2.2.2
The following is from the US Academies of Science in 2002 – from doyens of climate science – and can be taken at face value.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ Richard Alley, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus, Jonathon Overpeck, Dorothy Peteet, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Roger Pielke Jr, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Michael Wallace.
It is how the terrestrial climate system actually works – small changes in control variables such as greenhouse gases push the globally resonant system past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Abrupt climate change – every 20 or 30 years and as much as 16 degrees C in a decade – provides serious added impetus to mitigation of destabilising pressures in an inherently unstable system.
I have provided dozens of ‘cites’ here and elsewhere. As for responses – it requires a broad strategy involving population and development, technological innovation, multiple gases across sector and aerosols.
Resonance brings chaotic oscillators into synchronous chaos. The mechanism is dynamical complexity. Climate change is abrupt – changing state dynamically in response to an internal realignment every 20 to 30 years – and with the potential for extreme and rapid change. This is a paradigm – like it or not – understand it or not – that will inevitably dominate thinking about climate.
‘First we construct a network from four major climate indices. The network approach to complex systems is a rapidly developing methodology, which has proven to be useful in analyzing such systems’ behavior [Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Strogatz, 2001]. In this approach, a complex system is presented as a set of connected nodes. The collective behavior of all the nodes and links (the topology of the network) describes the dynamics of the system and offers new ways to investigate its properties.’ https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kswanson/www/publications/tsonis_GRL07.pdf
The following is from the US Academy of Sciences in 2002 – Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises – written by doyens of climate science – and can be taken at face value.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies…
Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.’ Richard Alley, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus, Jonathon Overpeck, Dorothy Peteet, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Roger Pielke Jr, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Michael Wallace.
Not understanding the science is not the same as there not being any by any means. If we ever get past this point – rational policy responses may follow.
http://watertechbyrie.com/2015/05/20/a-global-iriai-in-place-of-the-ecomodernist-neologism/
For number of centuries as data shows, the Earth’s natural tendency to cool has been countered by the more active sun.
More active sun, as in strength and frequency of its Coronal Mass Ejections flung at the Earth, or more precisely at the Arctic, and not in the sunspot numbers count as such.
During even numbered solar cycles the Earth’s magnetic shield offers very little resistance, while during odd numbered cycles a ‘threshold’ of resistance is active, its level depending on the strength of both the Earth’s and the incoming solar magnetic fields.
To our benefit, at this time of a weaker sun, the Earth’s magnetic shield has lost about 12% of its strength since the depth’s of Maunder minimum, allowing the CME’s impacts to be more effective in triggering and sustaining the Earth’s warming mechanism.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SEC.htm
Dr. Cook, I certainly don’t wish to be a denier or labeled as such. What is the scientific definition? What tenets must I agree with to make it clear that I am a believer and not a denier? Or am I a denier now just by asking that question?
Does a non-specialist have the right to question the findings of highly trained climate scientists and physicists who obviously know a lot more about the technical aspects of this issue than I? For me the answer is a resounding “yes, of course.” And in this particular case, where so much is at stake for so many, more than just a right, but a responsibility. In my defense, let me cite some excerpts from a particularly insightful Scientific American article titled Evaluating scientific claims (or, do we have to take the scientist’s word for it?) (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/evaluating-scientific-claims-or-do-we-have-to-take-the-scientists-word-for-it/ ):
“Scientific knowledge is built on empirical data, and the details of the data . . . can vary quite a lot in different scientific disciplines, and in different areas of research within those disciplines. However, there are commonalities in the basic patterns of reasoning that scientists in all fields use to compare their theories with their data. . .
In other words, even if I can’t evaluate someone else’s raw data to tell you directly what it means, I can evaluate the way that data is used to support or refute claims. I can recognize logical fallacies and distinguish them from instances of valid reasoning. Moreover, this is the kind of thing that a non-scientist who is good at critical thinking (whether a journalist or a member of the public consuming a news story) could evaluate as well.”
From a new book: The Unsettled Science of Climate Change — http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YOARTPQ
Your article is a masterpiece of soft-pedalling, but it remains that you excuse every data adjustment which helps the AGW “cause” and bad-mouth any contrary result. Clearly you are pushing an agenda, and your claim of scientific integrity is just a phony political stance.
The global warming is more than 10,000 years old.
The Sahara was green in the prehistory. The Greenland was green at the time of the Vikings 1,000 years ago. There was a heat period at the end of the 18th century and a cold period at the beginning of the XXth century.
It is not proved that the present increasing temperature is man made.
#36 “You really need to get over your obsession with (totally unsurprising) blips in the trend.”
Thirty years is an awfully long time for a “blip.” And since it appears smack in the middle of your “long term trend” the reality of such a trend is certainly questionable, statistics or no statistics. (The problem with statistics, by the way, is that one can always tweak the statistics to demonstrate whatever one likes — thus statistics per se are not necessarily the most reliable indicator of the underlying meaning behind any dataset.)
I’m assuming also that the point of long-term trend claims is to demonstrate the influence of fossil fuel emissions on global temperatures. However, even if one would want to conveniently ignore a 30 year “hiatus” (not to mention the more recent 15 year “hiatus), and insist that temperatures have trended upward steadily since 1910, it would be difficult to attribute the entire trend to fossil fuel emissions, which would not have been all that substantial during the entirety of that initial 1910-1940 warming trend.
In the words of geologist Don Easterbrook (http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/research.html), “Global temperatures rose steadily in the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s. By the mid 1940s, global temperatures were about 0.5 °C (0.9° F) warmer than they had been at the turn of the century (Figure 1). More high temperature records for the century were recorded in the 1930s than in any other decade of the 20th century (Fig. 2). Glaciers during this period retreated and, in general, followed the warming climate pattern. All of this occurred before CO2 emissions began to soar after 1945 (Fig. 3), so at least half of the warming of the past century cannot have been caused by manmade CO2.” (http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/CO2_past-century.pdf)
The only trend I see that appears strongly correlated with the rise in ff emissions begins ca. 1979 and ends ca 1998, a period of only 20 years — looks to me like THAT could be a “blip,” according to the definition preferred on this blog.
“It’s most tiresome trolling on this blog.”
What’s tiresome are the continual attempts to label anyone questioning the orthodox view as a “troll.” These are perfectly legitimate questions. If you can respond to them meaningfully, fine. If not, then please refrain from the usual ad hominems, they won’t help your case.
#33
Quoting statistician William M. Briggs (http://wmbriggs.com/post/735/):
“Smoothing creates artificially high correlations between any two smoothed series. Take two randomly generated sets of numbers, pretend they are time series, and then calculate the correlation between the two. Should be close to 0 because, obviously, there is no relation between the two sets. After all, we made them up.
But start smoothing those series and then calculate the correlation between the two smoothed series. You will always find that the correlation between the two smoothed series is larger than between the non-smoothed series. Further, the more smoothing, the higher the correlation.”
It appears that the Pope has been grossly misguided on the global warming /climate change “issues”, which in my opinion are for the most part unsubstantiated opinions presented as facts. I just ask one question: How come that water [vapor, gas and or ice] does not appear to be taken into account in the models of the biosphere, when in fact water is not only the strongest green house gas [warming] but it also reflects incident solar radiation [by clouds – cooling effect], and its concentration in the atmosphere varies over a wide range at any given location? And, the truth of the matter is that nobody neither fully knows nor fully understands what is the magnitude of the net effect of water on the thermal balance of the biosphere with time.
As to the humane idea of eradicating poverty it appears that the Pope fails to take into account what would be the consequences as the poor become more and more affluent, thus increasing the demands not only for more food but also for more energy consumption. Getting to the point, the Pope fails to address the real problem facing humanity: OVERPOPULATION, which slowly but surely is leading to the depletion of our natural resources, to the poisoning of the biosphere and our food supplies, the arable lands, and to overcrowding and eventual global warfare.
The data is wrong. We must “fix” it. Now, where have we heard that before?
So hold on a second… I thought that Bristlecone Pines were not supposed to be used as valid temperature proxies– especially prior to AD 1700, let alone AD 1000.
Is this not in the literature?
How is it then that not only are these valid, but now being used re-date ice cores? The earlier paper itself admits that its research can’t “prove” its conclusions, but then says it offers a coherent argument for re-dating.
Is this kind of like the early MBH studies of the late 90s (ironically also using Bristlecones), where its conclusions were an early salvo using not-the-best methodology and all that, but just the same arrived at a conclusion that was later to be borne out by more robust methodologies?
1. I don’t recall Lomborg claiming to be a scientist. I believe he identifies himself as a statistician.
2. RCP 8.5 is not a scenario. It borrows from an earlier SRES. The narrative for RCP 8.5 is being written as we correspond here.
3. Sea level rise is contentious. The NOAA writes ‘the absolute global sea level rise is believed to be 1.7-1.8 millimeters/year.’ (http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/globalregional.htm). If Lomborg is incorrect when writing “The inescapable point is that sea levels are not escalating out of hand – if anything, they are doing the exact opposite right now” he certainly has good company.
4. What the Economist said. Science doesn’t need protecting from Lomborg. It may, perhaps, need protection from those who attack him.
5. Kare Fog’s attacks on Lomborg have been responded to by Lomborg. Why do you not say so and provide a link?
This article is a classical example of Sagan’s scientific baloney alert. Whenever someone attacks that arguer and not the argument, they have diverged from scientific reasoning. How many other researchers cite Lomborg’s papers tells us nothing about the accuracy or value of what he has published. Under the current political climate of science, a skeptical argument creates a far greater probability of never getting published, whether or not their arguments are correct or not. Rhamstorf is once again engaging in a political hit piece, NOT science!
I stumbled upon this site and am not educated on this subject, but have been reading articles on this website that I think you’d be interested in reading. Dane Wigington has been following “climate change?” for 12 years and has gathered a lot of statistics and water/soil tests in his state of California. He has about 18 million hits on his site. I apologize if I’m way off base here, but I believe we’re talking about the same issue. He believes we are in earth’s 6th extinction because of the CO2 pollutants (geoengineering being the biggest contributor). geoengineeringwatch.org
Shukla anyone? Really I just want you and yours disappeared. Truth be told, there is not a lick of value in ANY of the handful of climate science papers I have viewed. I’m going to extrapolate and say that this applies to virtually all of them. They are nothing but conjecture. There is no way to get valid data to judge validity of hypothesis, without waiting a lifetime (or two or three…). Thus they instead rely on climate models, which themselves are not proven (in fact early indications are that they are crap!). It’s freakin unbelievable! How the morons administering grants don’t see this – oh wait, I forgot, they are in on it. All the way to the top, obummer and his bozo chief science advisor. The good news is, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This is a deep and incestuous rathole, and the Rightous Right is going to rain a holy shitstorm down on them, leaving no orifice unexplored. Mainstream media will finally figure out they have been had. And that’s when all hell breaks loose on climate science as a whole. Federal funding goes to zero overnight for this malignant field. No more cli sci papers. No more funding for any universities supporting this crap field. The whole lot of them having to get real jobs where they actually produce something of value (burgers anyone?). The only thing anyone will notice is how nice it is to not have to listen to these chicken littles anymore. Oh man, this is better than a wet dream!
#138 – 140 Kevin McKinney
Thanks so much, Kevin, for your lucid and sensible response.
“IOW, the theory was, and is, based upon physical understanding, not correlation. And it’s noteworthy that as such, it stands as a successful ‘prediction’ writ rather large.”
You are right to challenge my assertion that there was never any case for AGW to begin with. On the basis of the older physical evidence you’ve cited, I concede that you are correct, at least to the extent that yes, there was an a priori case made for AGW by some of the pioneers in this field.
I’ve studied some of the physical explanations, notably this very thorough “Tutorial on the Basic Physics of Climate Change” (http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm). Now obviously I’m not in a position to evaluate either the physics or the math contained therein (nor, I would imagine, would most of those posting here), but what comes across very clearly is the enormous complexity of their explanation, which according to the authors themselves is incomplete. It’s hard to imagine such an explanation satisfying Occam’s razor, but even if we forget about Occam for a moment, it seems clear that there is an awful lot of room for errors, false assumptions, and misunderstandings to creep in during the course of such a complex and actually rather convoluted assessment. I get the same impression from the many papers I’ve read purporting to refute the notorious “hiatus,” where things get very complicated very quickly.
Since I’m not a physicist, let me invoke the opinion of one of the most respected physicists of our time, Freeman Dyson, who makes essentially the same point: the physical problems associated with the assessment of climate change are simply too complex. And he is certainly not alone. It seems to me that such a tutorial can, at best, establish (assuming it’s correct in every detail) that AGW is consistent with the physical evidence, but that’s not the same as putting it forward as proof.
Kevin: “The ‘hypothesis’ that the mainstream is wrong does not constitute a separate hypothesis. It’s just a statement of the falsifiability of the mainstream. As such, Occam’s does not apply to it. IOW, we’re still awaiting a competing explanation which would enable Occam to be applied usefully.”
Again you make a valid point. Occam’s razor applies to competing hypotheses and I don’t offer a competing hypothesis, hence it would seem unfair of me to invoke Occam. Not bad!
But others HAVE invoked such hypotheses, no? Notably the hypothesis rejected in the tutorial, that solar variations are the primary cause. And if you look at the literature produced by supporters of the solar hypothesis you’ll find similar attempts to bolster that theory with “elaborate competing explanations, called saving hypotheses.” Are your “saving hypotheses” more convincing than theirs? Or are you both wrong? As I see it both are wrong. Because saving hypotheses are consistent with Occam only if the necessity of such hypotheses can be demonstrated, and on this point I fail to see the necessity of either. Both appear to be based on unproven assumptions and to at least some extent wishful thinking.
If we look at the historical record, however, we see, for example, a period of dramatic warming during the Medieval Warming Period, and global or local, there must have been some reason other than AGW for that. So that’s my hypothesis I suppose — why not? Whatever caused that warming may well have caused this one.
#140 Thanks for citing that wikipedia article on Occam’s razor, Kevin. It’s interesting and the author makes some useful points. But I don’t see anything in it that contradicts any of the arguments I’ve presented. It’s important to distinguish between parsimony and Occam’s razor, while in several instances this article confuses them. So yes, the simplest explanation can very well be wrong, as I’ve stated, because what’s required by Occam is the simplest explanation necessary to account for all the evidence. And yes, Occam’s razor is incapable of offering a definitive solution to any problem because there is always the possibility of new evidence coming to light that can’t be explained by the more parsimonious theory.
This is in fact precisely the problem I have with AGW, which is in fact the most parsimonious explanation ever offered for 20th century warming. Yet, as time has gone by, it’s become clear that AGW can no longer account for all the evidence and thus no longer satisfies Occam’s razor. Which does not mean that at some future time more evidence could become known that revives this theory. I’m not arguing that it’s been proven wrong, I’m arguing that in its current state it violates Occam’s principle. As do all the other attempts to account for the warming by invoking alternative forcings or factors, admittedly. But this does not rule out the possibility of some factor yet unknown that’s produced this effect, just as factors unknown produced similar warming (and cooling) effects in the past.
Thanks to the Moderator for placing my comment back up after removing it last night. I was beginning to wonder if the Post author treats his own inaccurate climate forecast results in the same way he treats unwelcome comments, by deleting them.
My assumption is that these people would retort that using RSS or other satellite data would show they were right. Certainly more right than those who claimed a linear increase in temperature.
Maybe you could point me to articles which show why we shouldn’t assume satellite data is infinitely more reliable as NASA itself said 10 years ago than adjusted sparse and in-homogeneous land data sets taken from diverse devices that have numerous unexplained movements and devices that fail regularly or have exogenous events occur near them constantly?
Let’s let the child games of playing with data alone and just look at the big picture. We have 75 years of data since 1940. Around 1940 CO2 production tripled rapidly and industrialization rose exponentially. Using the satellite records and assuming no increase in temperature from 1945-1979 or the start of satellite data which is a “conservative” estimate considering almost all analysis shows a declining temperature between 1940-1979 we can say with almost surety the total temperature change from 1/3 of a doubling of CO2 and 75 years or half the time to 2100 is 0.3C roughly. If you use the adjusted surface records its closer to 0.6C. Wow. How do you explain that?
Anyway my point is that since CO2 acts logarithmic-ally 1/3 of the CO2 translates to roughly half the total effect expected. This 0.3C includes all the feedbacks and transient effects as well as any exogenous events like volcanoes which the IPCC ignores.
There could be tipping points. There could be other exogenous events that happen however none of these have the attribute of being known and there are as many or more that might lead to a drop of temperature as increase. Therefore all we can expect realistically, scientifically, provably in temperature change to 620ppm (double the 1940 CO2 density) is about another 0.3C.
Increasing temperature by CO2 requires burning or producing somehow exponentially greater and greater quantities of CO2 to the point of absurdity seen as the downfall of all other catastrophy theories. Whereas the public is led to believe that CO2 could go up indefinitely and heat the eath 6, 10, 20 degrees as was broadcast this last week about the middle east hitting 170 degrees soon the actual reality is that it is harder and harder to achieve the amount of CO2 to continue to raise temperatures meaning it is extremely unbelievable that this is a long term sustainable phenomenon to whatever extent it exists.
Lastly, the IPCC argues that short term periodicities are irrelevant (weather) and long term periodicities are non-existant (the hockey stick falsity) so therefore we are left with the only possible thing that changed in the time period to ascribe the temperature change to. This is based on these false assumptions.
The fact is anyone can see that there are periodicities in the historical record up the ying yang. We can’t explain them but no model reproduces them and there is no known cause for these things yet it is clear that there are periodicities. So, given this it is impossible to state that some of these periodicities did not contribute to the last 100 years temperature history in a substantial way.
Given that climate scientists have been “surprised” by the PDO/AMO periodicity you would think any scientist embarassed this way would do an extensive analysis of such periodicities now that they were proven wrong. Yet we still see climate models ignoring, denying periodicities in spite of being unable to explain any of them.
When you and your team announce your bias to the world ahead of time, as in the GEC paper “Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community,” then it’s no longer possible to claim lack of bias simply because you conducted a “blind test.” The true “gold standard” is not “blind,” but “double blind.” If you are already biased then it’s impossible for you to conduct a true “double blind” experiment. Also, the graph you displayed to the economists you tested is already biased, as the 5 year trend line, in red, all but obliterates the actual data, a dashed line in light gray. And the scale you’ve chosen minimizes the effect of the 21st century data to the point that it already seems negligible ahead of time.
One has to wonder, moreover, whether you’d have been willing to publish the results of this test if the outcome hadn’t conformed to the biased view you so clearly hold. Also, there is no way your readers can tell whether this was the only such test you ran — or the only one whose outcome suited you. The only way to meaningfully conduct such a test would be to have it conducted by a neutral party, with the understanding, ahead of time, that the results be published regardless of the outcome.
As I see it, the real issue is not whether there has been a “pause” in warming (there clearly hasn’t), but whether a correlation between CO2 emissions and warming actually exists, as implied by the AGW meme. As is clearly evident from the graph you display (https://www.realclimate.org/images/Figure15.jpg), the correlation that seemed so evident during the last 20 years of the 20th century has ceased to hold during the first 15 years of the 21st. Since eyeballing a graph can be misleading, let’s concentrate only on the numbers. Counting from the first year displayed on your graph to 1998, we see a temperature increase of ca. .6 degrees Celsius. From 1998 to present, we see a much lower increase of less than .1 degree. And if 1998 (the El Nino year) doesn’t suit you, then take 2002 instead. The result is essentially the same, a 6-fold difference. Yet, during the 21st century CO2 emissions were significantly higher than the last 20 years of the 20th. If there were a true correlation, temperatures would be expected to rise by at least the same amount during both periods, but clearly they did not. THAT is the hiatus.
As for the notion of a “long term” correlation, I’ll refer you to the following graph, produced by Danley Wolfe: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/clip_image0062.jpg
Here we see three scatter plots shown side by side, representing the relation between CO2 emissions and temperature during three different periods, both before and after the period beginning with the mid-70’s and ending with the late 90’s. As we can see, the central region is the only one where a correlation is displayed. Both before and after this period there is none.
I think this website is helpful in terms of related news stories and commentaries:
http://theglobalwarmingtruth.com/
And it’s fairly balanced instead of the typical one-sided political arguments.
All the discussions are about the CO2 in the atmosphere how the climate does change…
CO2 is not an FCKW that can be simply reduced.
Burning carbohydrates to water and CO2 is the basic energy source for human applications on this planet.
If you feed a horse with carbohydrates or a steam engine, it is the same chemical process.
Even if you build a “renewable Energy plant” that does produce electricity, the steal, concrete, silicium or what else is produced by emitting CO2… And if the CO2-footprint is even improved is highly questionable. But a lot of money is spent… and after 10-25 years, the system has to be renewed…
Also is the current strategy questionable: nuclear plants. Well, if CO2-footprints are that important, it is the only realistic way to reduce the CO2 footprint.
There is one myth that is not true about CO2 and Industry: that the Industry is responsible for the CO2 increase:
If you compare the amount of humans living on this planet, with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, both graphs do correlate with each other… That means, the CO2-footprint in the atmosphere per head is since 400 years constant. Check the data… We all know how the human population developed in the last years.
If a constant is the same 400 years ago, i don’t believe humans can change it.
Maybe it is time to face the facts… And look for better things to do, and there are many things…
Storing CO2 with technical installations?
In my opinion not the best idea… To compress CO2 and save it, will also require a lot of energy.
I would suggest an much older technology: a tree. Ever heard about it??
There are two very important cycles on this planet: the water cycle (H2O), the carbon cycle (CO2, CxHx). (And many other cycles).
In all of them, the human has a footprint.
As I tried to explain, there is no technical way to reduce CO2 Emmissions… Thats the truth…
But humans can change the counterpart of atmospheric CO2. By influencing the water cycle. (so called watering)
Bring water for plants to dry areas. Let the trees grow.
This will have more positive side effects, like the albedo value…
And Biomass as renewable material source.
You cannot talk about atmospheric CO2 without discussing the water and the plants and the soil.
No one can change the physics. Some things humans can change, other things not. It is important to try to change the things you can, not the things you cannot change…
Gavin believes that the atmospheric CO2 concentration is a major driver of “Global Warming”. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that he is right.
So how do you reduce mankind’s thirst for cheap fossil fuel energy? The most perfect solution is nuclear power as advocated by Edward Greisch and this camel.
Instead of encouraging a healthy debate of the NP solution to the CO2 problem Gavin imposed censorship. Some of you saw the EG’s comment #161 on the previous thread before Gavin deleted it. Please feel free to forward it to info@gallopingcamel.info.
@gishgallopingcamel (comment #4 above),
As you so rightly point out one is defined by the company you keep although I can’t imagine why you find “Freedom and Prosperity” objectionable. From EG’s comments it is obvious that he is a gentleman and a scholar. I would be honored to earn his approval.
Likewise it follows that one is defined by one’s enemies. If this comment does not survive Gavin’s “Moderation” I will preserve it elsewhere.
@#4(gishgallopingcamel),
When theory diverges from observation I go with the observations. Thus my analysis of lunar surface temperatures is in close agreement with the Diviner LRE data. My model has a diurnal RMS error of 0.6 Kelvin relative to the NASA data.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/a-new-lunar-thermal-model-based-on-finite-element-analysis-of-regolith-physical-properties/
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/extending-a-new-lunar-thermal-model-part-ii-modelling-an-airless-earth/
My review of the EPICA dome data (Luethi et al and Jouzel et al) confirms the impressive correlation between [CO2] and temperature over the last 800,000 years:
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
I was able to confirm Robinson & Catling’s analysis of Titan’s atmospheric temperature. I am currently working to improve the R&C model using Finite Element Analysis with the idea of adding cloud layers.
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/robinson-and-catling-model-closely-matches-data-for-titans-atmosphere/
If I am successful my next major post will model the Venusian atmosphere “as is” while speculating on the effect of replacing some of the CO2 with nitrogen. Carl Sagan did this in 1967.
Richard Alley is a delightful person but after reviewing his work on the Greenland ice cores(GISP2) I could not endorse his theory that “CO2 is the control knob for climate”:
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/dorothy-behind-the-curtain-part-1/
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/dorothy-behind-the-curtain-part-2/
Two types of pseudoscience
There are two types of pseudoscience, distinguishable by the following assumptions:
1) Valid science is indicated by consensus
2) Valid science is obvious
The first tends to be associated with people who are politically liberal.
The second tends to be associate with people who are politically conservative.
Very often these two groups are at odds with each other on a particular issue. But when it comes to undermining the credibility of science they play for the same team.
About ten years ago I confronted the “settled science” of global warming. My examination revealed it as plainly inept. That brought me to wonder if there were not other, deeper, ineptitudes. I found myself examining the foundational assumptions of meteorology and, deeper still, core issues regarding the physical chemistry of H2O. And then I made a discovery:
BREAKTHROUGH: Hydrogen Bonding as The Mechanism That Neutralizes H2O Polarity
https://goo.gl/Hrb6Sb
Even if 2015 was the warmest year in history, and even if subsequent years are warmer still, that doesn’t negate the fact that there has been no consistent correlation between CO2 emissions and planetary warmth. For a very clear statistical analysis, see the scattergrams reproduced here: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/clip_image0062.jpg
Clearly, the notion that somehow a period of increased warming will constitute proof positive that those demanding serious cutbacks in fossil fuel emissions were “right after all” is seriously misleading. No one knows whether future temps will increase, decrease or remain steady. We do know, however, that the alarming correlation between CO2 and temperature that seemed so evident during the last 20 years of the 20th century, can no longer be maintained.
Global temperature over the last 850,000 years correlates closely with the atmospheric concentration of the trace gas we call “Carbon Dioxide”. All you have to do is apply the equation in Arrhenius’ paper (1896):
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
The above analysis is based on EPICA dome studies by Luethi et al and Jouzel et al. The correlation is striking but there are some problems.
1. These studies have decadal temporal resolution making it obvious that temperature leads [CO2] by about 500 years. Thus temperature drives [CO2] which makes perfect sense given Henry’s law concerning the solubility of gasses in water.
2. Temperature variations over the last seven glacial cycles can be explained in terms of CO2 if the sensitivity constant is 16 K/doubling.
3. To explain temperature variations since 1850 in terms of CO2 you need a sensitivity of 1.6 K/doubling.
Hopefully Gavin or someone else here can resolve these paradoxes.
Have we reached or exceeded the temperatures of the medieval warm period yet?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
PS how come there is such a descrepancy between RSS – UAH data and the ground measured data? Could it be caused partly by the urban island effect?
This storm was similar to past storms that hit the east coast. Was the snowfall totals determined by the water temperatures or the slowing down of the storm system over the ocean, just off the eastern coast, allowing snowfall totals to accumulate much higher than a faster moving storm? Has this been compared to past east coast storms, such as the 1993 storm, 1996, or the great blizzards of 1888 and 1899? These did not all occur during strong El Ninos.
By any kind of warming I mean that I am skeptical that anybody knows.
Look how badly climate models are performing. There does seem to be some bias toward making the long past colder and the near past warmer.
Lukes and warmists have no proof from physics and no physical evidence for their underlying assumption (as Roy Spencer also wrote) that there would be isothermal conditions in a planet’s troposphere but for “greenhouse” gases. As Dr Hans Jelbring pointed out, even the large gas planets exhibit a temperature gradient close to -g/cp and yet have no water vapor or carbon dioxide. Nikolov and Zeller said likewise.
The temperature gradient is a direct result of the force field acting on molecules in flight between collisions, and the process of entropy maximization described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I have cited about half a dozen others who have agreed in writing about this, and there are hundreds, maybe thousands more who don’t speak up but have probably understood the explanation based on standard physics. There is also evidence of similar radial temperature gradients due to centrifugal force, such as in any vortex cooling tube.
It is surely a fundamental requirement of any hypothesis that it be proven from the laws of physics and supported by empirical evidence which never refutes it.
Every planetary troposphere and every vortex tube and the Second Law of Thermodynamics all refute the basic underlying assumption of the radiative forcing greenhouse conjecture.
The other assumption that solar and atmospheric radiation can be compounded is also false and easily refuted with simple experiments. The conclusion that water vapor warms by about 20 degrees for each 1% in the atmosphere is easily shown with real-world data to be incorrect.
Re wili @21: Right from the start, I have only had the one question, but then when it keeps being ignored or people pick on my grammar, I get a bit cocky in my comments. Specially when the whole site swings to discuss the exact value of some energy stocks. My question is very RC on-topic, very ClimateChangy:
CO2 is labelled as a greenhouse gas. Lots of it, creates the greenhouse effect. Early Hansen and others are full of it. But the focus of the world in 2015, like COP21 is higher temperatures. Sure a greenhouse effect captures heat, but does not nessesarily break max temperature records.
At my location, I feel I am experiencing the greenhouse effect. Over the last 4 or 5 years, during the day temperatures ‘seem’ lower, at night ‘seem’ higher and there ‘seems’ to be an increase in humidity.
Example: I used to have low-40s often. That was hot but managable. Now I fear 37 degree days, cause I end up pouring with sweat and breathing is constricted i.e. not nice. I have had 48 before, if I had that today, I will be dead.
Even ignoring Watt, I think that the run-of-the-mill temperature records around the world are not capable of capturing this greenhouse effect. They focus on MAX and MIN and dare to average these over a whole month or year. A simple calculation shows that if you average lots of very highs and very lows, they may come to similar values as averaging not so highs and not so lows. Sure, breaking high temperature records is of great concern, but it is not greenhouse effect as such.
So for the future viability of me at my location, I thought I would put this question to some experts. Surely they can dismiss my concerns or paint a picture where my climate goes from here.
As I have had no answers here or on other sites, it looks like I have to do the analysis myself. I have now obtained 10 years of half-hour data from the closest 40km weather station. Done IT for 45 years, so I think I am capable, but I am far to busy keeping my place comfortable.
For me, the most usefull feature on a climate website would be a simple state of the climate. Not lots of politically correct complex IPCC words and not the wild guesses of the alarmists or deniers. And yes, it can be as technical as it gets, pointing to supporting valid peer reviewed research if you want prove or more detail. So far for me, the only consistently reliable indicator is the NSIDC Arctic melt.
So it only needs one of you to respond (by email if you want to keep it out) like Theo, you are seeing things or missing this or that or yes, you are onto something. Cheers.
Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. #8220;This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
The first thing you notice about the monthly surfac temperature data is the annual to inter-annular variance. Which is largely down to the state of the Pacific Ocean. The annual temperature owes much to the persistence of the ocean state throughout any particular year and so is an artifact of data smoothing and quite irrelevant to identifying the underlying temperature trend.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif
The surface temperature reflect in the balance of sensible and latent as landscape is relatively wetter or drier. In principle the satellites more consistently measures changes in total heat in the atmosphere – however let’s stick to the surface record for argument sake.
The second thing you notice is that there is no obvious increase – even in GISSTEMP -in peak monthly temperature in recent times.
Now the real cleverness is to notice that these ‘regimes’ persist for 20 to 30 years – suggesting that the current non warming of the surface may persist for a while yet.
My Scientific Pretensions by Robert Callaghan
https://lokisrevengeblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/no-soil-water-before-100-renwable-energy/
Is it not the least bit ironic that this paper on “learning from mistakes” was itself rejected many times from many journals, until they finally found a place and way to get it published?
As simply a non scientific observer it’s unfortunate that there is no simple description of the science. In the end it probably makes no difference if a better description is produced because rhetoric, an non pejorative term here, is rhetoric and scientific results are science and sometimes the twain won’t meet.
The only hope for a significant reduction in CO2 production is probably a sad one and not political. That would be a severe reduction in economic activity which is a non trivial probability. In which case the cure will be worse than the disease for billions of people on a shorter term.
Sorry to interrupt the technical discussion.
Barton Paul Levenson #82
Couple or three minor points re GHE.
Moon with no atmosphere gets considerably hotter than Earth at equivalent length of exposure, distance from Sun, and comparative surface absorptivity. Conclusion might be that atmosphere reduces maximum surface temperatures.
GHE doesn’t seem to work at night.
Highest terrestrial temperatures occur where there is a distinct lack of the most prevalent GHG – water.
After four and a half billion years of supposed GHE, Earth’s surface is no longer molten. There’s no radiative balance – at TOA, surface, abyssal depths – nowhere. The Earth has cooled. More energy out than in
Things warm up, things cool down. No heat hiding in the oceans, or in solid CO2.
Rising temperatures probably due to seven billion people furiously producing heat 24/7 for all sorts of reasons. Wipe out humanity, no doubt temperatures will drop a little. Not my preferred option. CO2 is plant food. Notice the greening of the planet as levels increase from the perilously low levels of recent geological times. Surely a good thing, wouldn’t you agree?
Cheers.
#79 Sorry Chuck. Guess I missed the sarcasm in your earlier post. Please forgive me.
What bothered me most in Alley’s presentation was its total irrelevance. The undermining of Thwaites began at least a thousand years ago. Certainly not as a result of the Industrial Revolution. If it’s going to collapse completely there is clearly nothing we can do to prevent that. I watched most of his presentation and heard no reference to any such measures, though I’m assuming he’s still in favor of cutting back on fossil fuel emissions. It would be nice if such a cutback could make a difference for Thwaites, but it’s hard to see how that could happen. So the coming collapse he’s gotten himself so worked up over is clearly going to happen regardless of what anyone does about it. Meaning his breathless presentation was of purely academic interest, with NO social relevance whatsoever. Natural disasters happen. Sometimes they can be prevented, usually not. At least this one can be predicted, at least in very general terms. So yes, it’s nice to know that in anywhere from 100 to a few thousand years, sea levels could rise drastically. During that time all sorts of other things will happen, including more earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc. We can’t do much about those either. So what’s his point?
You cannot add back radiation to solar radiation and use the total in Stefan Boltzmann calculations to explain the mean surface temperature.
The 324W/m^2 of back radiation is overstated because the wrong emissivity value of the atmosphere has been used in calculating that back radiation from measurements. On Venus, using emissivity of 0.19 for carbon dioxide, the atmosphere would have to be over 350 degrees hotter than the surface for its radiation to support the surface temperature.
Even if you use the 324 figure (as is implied in the energy diagrams which show 168+324-102 = 390W/m^2 into the surface) that 390 figure (being a mean of variable flux) gives you a mean temperature close to zero C, not 15C.
So it’s all totally wrong and the whole radiative forcing greenhouse conjecture fails to explain reality.
If you genuinely want to hear explained what really happens in the equivalent of a 43 minute live presentation, watch the full video as over 1,100 others have done in its first 6 months.
#84
“We’re not going to burn our way through our FF supply and suddenly be in trouble from a lack of fossil fuel Victor. We’re in trouble now and the question is can we make a clean transition to renewable energy before it’s too late.”
Too late for what, Chuck? You actually believe “a clean transition to renewable energy” is going to stabilize West Antarctica? Is that the message you got from Alley’s talk? It’s not what I got. What I got is a classic “sky is falling” type message. The guy’s eyes were literally popping out of his head with enthusiasm. As far as the crackpot aspect is concerned, no I don’t see him as a crackpot. He’s a typical academic, in love with his own findings and oblivious to anything else. What is that anything else? Check this out:
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-major-west-antarctic-glacier-geothermal.html
Some excerpts:
“Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it’s being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. . .
Using radar techniques to map how water flows under ice sheets, UTIG researchers were able to estimate ice melting rates and thus identify significant sources of geothermal heat under Thwaites Glacier. They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.
The geothermal heat contributed significantly to melting of the underside of the glacier, and it might be a key factor in allowing the ice sheet to slide, affecting the ice sheet’s stability and its contribution to future sea level rise. . .
The findings of lead author Dusty Schroeder and his colleagues show that the glacier sits on something more like a multi-burner stovetop with burners putting out heat at different levels at different locations. “It’s the most complex thermal environment you might imagine,” said co-author Don Blankenship, a senior research scientist at UTIG and Schroeder’s Ph.D. adviser. “And then you plop the most critical dynamically unstable ice sheet on planet Earth in the middle of this thing, and then you try to model it. It’s virtually impossible.”
That’s why, he said, getting a handle on the distribution of geothermal heat flow under the ice sheet has been considered essential for understanding it.”
Alley says exactly nothing about geothermal heat in his presentation, and when asked about it, simply dismisses it with some vague references to its being too localized to really matter. As the UTIG research demonstrates it is not localized at all: “They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.”
Regardless of its significance you’d think he would at least have discussed it. Instead he omits it entirely and when challenged dismisses it. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the “climate change” paradigm, obviously.
According to another source (NASA – http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/antarctic-ice-sheet-20140512/#.VtWyin0rLs2), the undermining of this glacier is nothing new:
“In his 1968 paper, Mercer called the West Antarctic Ice Sheet a “uniquely vulnerable and unstable body of ice.” Mercer based his statement on geologic evidence that West Antarctica’s ice had changed considerably many, many millennia ago at times when the ice sheets of East Antarctica and Greenland had not.”
Some sort of collapse seems inevitable, but when that will happen is simply unpredictable. According to most accounts it’s most likely thousands of years away, but Alley’s emphasis is on the near future, since that’s far more likely to get attention. And of course it has.
The mask is slipping gentlemen.
chuck at 184: yes, I knew you were kidding. I was re-presenting in the frame of bad possibilities. I think it would be helpful if folks that use the term alarmist could stretch a bit and recognize the bad possibilities, the fat tail outcomes per 181.
Instead of considering the bad possibilities, we often get treated as alarmists – like killian at 180 clarifying the impact of El Nino on the CO2 levels, like 405 or 408 ppm is nothing to get excited about, when in fact, the current level is already proving to have significant consequences. No offense, Killian, but the rate of increase is continuing to increase. The number is upward-sticky as they say, we need downward sticky and the sooner the better. (playing with fire? poking the climate system with a stick?)
I like to watch and cite the actual CO2 level because I think it is a real number that has real world consequence. If we buy in to promises that carbon emissions have been reduced, when they have not, or when new, secondary sources of carbon dioxide emissions have started to move the needle in the wrong direction, then we have pinned our climate future on a chimera.
Dr. Mann says the carbon emissions is the right number to watch. I repeat my questions to Dr. Mann:
Dr. Mann is quoted as saying “Emissions have stabilized somewhat in recent years and dropped slightly in 2015, reflecting human progress in transitioning away from a fossil fuel economy, he said.
“Those are the numbers to keep a close eye on,” he said. “If they continue to decline, we will see carbon dioxide concentrations beginning to stabilize.
per http://www.climatecentral.org/news/unprecedented-spike-co2-levels-2015-20125
Questions for Dr. Mann:
1. How accurate do you believe the numbers are for actual carbon emissions? What data are you using to calculate the actual carbon emissions and how do you keep a close eye on the actual carbon emissions?
2. When you look back at the numbers that were accepted as “actual carbon emissions” over any discrete period of time in the past and then factor in the time lag before you see a corresponding change in ppm concentration of CO2, do the estimates of “actual carbon emissions” match well with the MLO CO2 level measurements?
3. Are you willing to project a year and CO2 level that we should hit to confirm your position that we will see the MLO CO2 levels stabilize based on the stabilized emissions that you think have occurred in recent years and the drop in emissions that you believe occurred in 2015?
MLO says CO2 was 404.08 on Mar 10 2016. Good number I guess. Nothing to get concerned about. I like 350, but I am not going to see that number again in my lifetime. Hope my grandkids see 350 in their lifetime. That would validate all our various efforts to address this problem.
The question that comes to my mind is: what is the natural optimum concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere?
I know from experience that plants do best in double to treble the current concentration. They also use less water.
If, as seems plausible from some research, that CO2 sensitivity is low to temperature change are we doing over kill with our reaction and potentially ignoring benefits?