Some parts of the blogosphere, headed up by CEI (“CO2: They call it pollution, we call it life!“), are all a-twitter over an apparently “suppressed” document that supposedly undermines the EPA Endangerment finding about human emissions of carbon dioxide and a basket of other greenhouse gases. Well a draft of this “suppressed” document has been released and we can now all read this allegedly devastating critique of the EPA science. Let’s take a look…
First off the authors of the submission; Alan Carlin is an economist and John Davidson is an ex-member of the Carter administration Council of Environmental Quality. Neither are climate scientists. That’s not necessarily a problem – perhaps they have mastered multiple fields? – but it is likely an indication that the analysis is not going to be very technical (and so it will prove). Curiously, while the authors work for the NCEE (National Center for Environmental Economics), part of the EPA, they appear to have rather closely collaborated with one Ken Gregory (his inline comments appear at multiple points in the draft). Ken Gregory if you don’t know is a leading light of the Friends of Science – a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group based in Alberta. Indeed, parts of the Carlin and Davidson report appear to be lifted directly from Ken’s rambling magnum opus on the FoS site. However, despite this odd pedigree, the scientific points could still be valid.
Their main points are nicely summarised thus: a) the science is so rapidly evolving that IPCC (2007) and CCSP (2009) reports are already out of date, b) the globe is cooling!, c) the consensus on hurricane/global warming connections has moved from uncertain to ambiguous, d) Greenland is not losing mass, no sirree…, e) the recession will save us!, f) water vapour feedback is negative!, and g) Scafetta and West’s statistical fit of temperature to an obsolete solar forcing curve means that all other detection and attribution work is wrong. From this “evidence”, they then claim that all variations in climate are internal variability, except for the warming trend which is caused by the sun, oh and by the way the globe is cooling.
Devastating eh?
One can see a number of basic flaws here; the complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales, the common but erroneous belief that any attribution of past climate change to solar or other forcing means that CO2 has no radiative effect, and a hopeless lack of familiarity of the basic science of detection and attribution.
But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we’ve discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc. I’m not quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four rounds of international scientific and governmental review of the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports….
They don’t even notice the contradictions in their own cites. For instance, they show a figure that demonstrates that galactic cosmic ray and solar trends are non-existent from 1957 on, and yet cheerfully quote Scafetta and West who claim that almost all of the recent trend is solar driven! They claim that climate sensitivity is very small while failing to realise that this implies that solar variability can’t have any effect either. They claim that GCM simulations produced trends over the twentieth century of 1.6 to 3.74ºC – which is simply (and bizarrely) wrong (though with all due respect, that one seems to come directly from Mr. Gregory). Even more curious, Carlin appears to be a big fan of geo-engineering, but how this squares with his apparent belief that we know nothing about what drives climate, is puzzling. A sine qua non of geo-engineering is that we need models to be able to predict what is likely to happen, and if you think they are all wrong, how could you have any faith that you could effectively manage a geo-engineering approach?
Finally, they end up with the oddest claim in the submission: That because human welfare has increased over the twentieth century at a time when CO2 was increasing, this somehow implies that no amount of CO2 increases can ever cause a danger to human society. This is just boneheadly stupid.
So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that’s the best they can do, the EPA’s ruling is on pretty safe ground.
If I were the authors, I’d suppress this myself, and then go for a long hike on the Appalachian Trail….
Steve, #377, just look at the IPCC Fourth Assessment – but first, keep in mind these points:
1) The transient climate response is what we are currently experiencing. For that, here’s an excerpt:
The ‘transient climate response’ is better constrained than equilibrium climate sensitivity. The TCR is very likely larger than 1°C and very unlikely greater than 3°C based on climate models, in agreement with constraints from the observed surface warming.
the ‘transient climate response’ (TCR; Cubasch et al., 2001) is defined as the global annual mean surface air temperature change (with respect to a ‘control’ run) averaged over a 20-year period centred at the time of CO2 doubling in a 1% yr–1 compound CO2 increase scenario.
2) The main issue in calculating the transient climate response lies in ocean modeling efforts, which seem to need improvement:
It is likely that the relatively poor Southern Ocean simulation will influence the transient climate response to increasing greenhouse gases by affecting the oceanic heat uptake. When forced by increases in radiative forcing, models with too little Southern Ocean mixing will probably underestimate the ocean heat uptake; models with too much mixing will likely exaggerate it. These errors in oceanic heat uptake will also have a large impact on the reliability of the sea level rise projections.
That’s why it is so important to have a good understanding of how the oceans really behave. For example, do climate models simulate a Deep Western Boundary Current in the Atlantic? Is that matched by real data? This is a touchy subject, apparently, as are several other postulated ocean-related issues, which must be discussed elsewhere. Nevertheless, this is probably the central issue in decade-scale projections of global warming. See the DePreSys approach for more.
3) The equilibrium climate sensitivity is the global temperature when the Earth reaches a new steady-state radiation balance point, and temperatures stabilize. The complete equilibrium response involves the melting of ice sheets and sea level rise – so it will probably take hundreds of years to reach that equilibrium point, as the response time of ice sheets is relatively slow – again, another area of uncertainty. Thus, a simple temperature number doesn’t really capture the whole picture. On top of that you have new precipitation regimes due to Hadley Cell expansion, subtropical drying, shifting jet streams and water vapor feedback issues. That plays central roles in the extreme weather / drought / flood projections.
Since the TAR, the levels of scientific understanding and confidence in quantitative estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity have increased substantially. Basing our assessment on a combination of several independent lines of evidence, as summarised in Box 10.2 Figures 1 and 2, including observed climate change and the strength of known feedbacks simulated in GCMs, we conclude that the global mean equilibrium warming for doubling CO2, or ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, is likely to lie in the range 2°C to 4.5°C, with a most likely value of about 3°C.
However, that all assumes that at 2X CO2, CO2 will stop increasing. There is no good reason to assume that. Even if we halt all fossil fuel combustion and deforestation at 2X CO2, you still have the warming permafrost to think about, which could easily release vast amounts of methane, driving the effective forcing well past 2XCO2.
All in all, it’s a mistake to emphasize a single number when talking about global warming, as it glosses over many important issues – it’s just a model benchmark number. If you look at the bigger picture, you see that pretty clearly – and the only practical solution is the elimination of fossil fuels from the global energy mix and their replacement with renewables.
#363 Phil Felton
You say: “About this time of year at ~80ºN and noon (where the edge of the ice might be) the angle of incidence will be fairly close to Brewster’s angle (~56º) where the perpendicularly polarized light will have a reflectivity of ~15% and the parallel polarized will have a reflectivity of 0%.
Shortwave radiation in the vicinity of the pole at this time of year averages around 300 W/m^2 whereas IR radiation is also around 300W/m^2 however the angle of incidence of the IR will average ~0º.”
I reply:
(1) Brewsters angle for sea water seems to be more like about 7 degrees, according to mike-willis.com/Tutorial/PF8.htm. I do not know if he did it right, but it roughly agrees with my lower frequency data from Radar Reflectivity of Land and Sea, Long, Artech House.
(2) You pick the extreme of the longest day and the lowest edge of ice to get an angle where reflections are lower. Surely, we are interested in average cases for global warming thinking.
(3) Are we interested in vertically incident IR at the poles? Yes there is some from the cold sky, but that must not be very much compared to the IR from the sun.
(4) Your quote of 15% for perpendicularly polarized reflectivity for sea water sounds more like the number for the refracted energy.
In general, the argument turns out to be more complicated than I originally expected from rough recollections, the fact seems to be that a lot of energy is specularly reflected from sea water in polar regions. Add to this the 15% to 20% albedo and it seems fairly certain that the originally criticized assertion from the Synthesis Report, that most of the energy is absorbed by the polar sea water, is not correct.
On top of that, the albedo of sea ice is as low as .5 and new smooth snow is .9. It looks unlikely that there is a large net difference in the radiative energy balance due to melting of Arctic Ice.
#374 Anne van der Bom
Please see my last two paragraphs.
Thanks for the NASA definition. That is a surprisingly unscientific way of defining things, but it probably is ok if they use properly cataloged albedo numbers. However, it introduces perpetual obfuscation, since the definitions are in disagreement.
I was not looking to get into the climate modeling business, with clouds and all that. I simply noted a statement in the “Synthesis Report” from Copenhagen that appeared to be incorrect.
From my #159 here on this thread,
In the Synthesis Report from Climate Change, Univ of Copenhagen, page 10, the statement is made regarding Arctic Ice:
“This decreasing ice coverage is important for climate on a
larger scale as ice and snow reflect most of the radiation from the sun back into the atmosphere while seawater absorbs most of the radiation reaching it from the sun. Thus, an ice-free ocean absorbs more heat than an ice-covered ocean, so the loss of Arctic sea ice creates a “feedback” in the climate system that increases warming.”
My conclusion: Due to a combination of arctic water albedo reflection and specular reflection, most (easily more than half) radiation reaching polar sea water from the sun is reflected, not absorbed. On balance it looks like the loss of the high albedo ice (.5 to .9 ??) is about balanced by the incident energy reflected by the sea water. So if there is a feedback resulting from ice melting it seems unlikely to be calamitous.
(Anne, Sorry for not being sufficiently informed. One of my past careers related to Naval radar systems, so I have some residual instinct in subjects regarding electromagnetic waves and sea surfaces. Extrapolating this to optics requires some cautions, but I rely on Maxwell’s proof that all EM frequencies are electromagnetic waves. On this basis I am comfortable raising questions, but I can not quickly access a lot of information about light processes to allow me to do a real study. I am still hoping that someone knowledgeable will chime in, but that would be a matter of luck. What you are asking for would require some work, so maybe nobody has the time to help us on this. My main interest is in finding engineering solutions, and to that end I try to understand the problem with these discussions. That seems to lead me into interesting things, but I want to avoid getting too far from my main purposes.)
Jim Galasyn writes:
“Responding to Steven Andrew, Tom Fuller has a new post, What if the climate scientists are right about global warming? Part 2, which might be a bit more conducive to interesting discussion.”
Sorry Jim, but It’s a horrible piece of dreck, full of ludicrous over-generalizations and assumptions. More evidence that the guy has spent virtually no time learning the issues.
Mark wrote: “It’s also been shown that going back to old-style farming with no oil based fertilisers and oil based weedkillers produced just as much food as the farmland had done with them.”
Modern organic agriculture is not “old-style farming”. It certainly does use techniques that have been empirically validated and used sustainably and successfully for thousands of years, for example composting, companion planting, “green manure” cover crops, etc. But it goes well beyond that, incorporating modern scientific knowledge of soil biology, integrated pest management, etc.
And multiple scientific studies have shown that organic agriculture is as productive as so-called “conventional” chemical-industrial agriculture, and is even more productive under difficult conditions, e.g. drought. Moreover, because it uses local, natural resources such as compost for soil improvement and pest control, it is well suited to sustainably improving agricultural productivity in the developing world where farmers cannot afford costly chemical inputs.
Moreover, studies by the Rodale Institute and others have shown that organic farming techniques can successfully sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide in soils, while simultaneously improving soil fertility.
Good points from Ike, and a good pointer that quickly leads to much interesting reading.
Among a dozen recent interesting papers citing the DePreSys approach (the one Ike Solem links to above — click it in his posting) is this one, found in the list from ISI Web):
Western Europe is warming much faster than expected
CLIMATE OF THE PAST Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-12 Published: 2009
Among the related items listed in the Science page at
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/317/5839/796 is this one from Knutti — Gavin has recommended his papers in earlier threads at RC:
Should we believe model predictions of future climate change? by Reto Knutti
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1885/4647.abstract
See also:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/february18/aaas-field-global-warming-ipcc-021809.html
“Working Group 2 Report” for the IPCC fifth assessment, which will be published in 2014.
“In the fourth assessment, we looked at a very conservative range of climate outcomes,” Field said. “The fifth assessment should include futures with a lot more warming.”
Jim Galasyn wrote: “Tom Fuller has a new post, What if the climate scientists are right about global warming? Part 2 …”
In which Tom Fuller predictably retreats from “global warming is a hoax” to “global warming won’t be too bad and adapting is cheaper than preventing”. It’s just more denialist propaganda.
Remember, the point of AGW denialism is to obstruct and delay any action to reduce GHG emissions that would negatively impact the profits of fossil fuel corporations, industrial agribiz, etc. The denial is only a means to an end. If denying that global warming exists helps to obstruct and delay action, then use that. If that isn’t working, then denying that global warming will be a serious problem is fine too.
In his new post, Fuller writes:
“Is predicted” … by whom? Based on what assumptions and what data? Probably not based on the “increased productivity” that (for example) Australian agriculture has been experiencing recently.
“It is estimated” … again, by whom? Based on what assumptions and what data?
And what is the estimated cost of phasing out fossil fuels? How does that compare with the cost of “adaptation”? According to the IPCC:
Commenters here have occasionally debated whether the term “denier” or “denialist” is appropriate to characterize the phony, propagandistic pseudo-skeptics.
I would suggest that the most appropriate term might be obstructionist, because their purpose and their goal is not denial and deceit in and of themselves — their purpose is to obstruct and delay any action to reduce GHG emissions, particularly actions that would reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.
PPS:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_id=864d3319-802a-23ad-46a0-15d3b819178d
“… As you know, I regularly serve as a disseminator of information on the latest science that is not being reported in the mainstream media.”
— James M. Inhofe
#404 Secular and Mark too,
It is hard to explain how “studies” come up with the conclusions that they do.
One clue is the talk about composting. I wonder if they ever saw a manure spreader. Ah, such fond memories. Now that is composting as it really was done on farms in the early half of the last century. A corn yield of 100 bushels per acre was considered fantastic in those days.
Then the tractors grew and the ammonia fertilizer injectors came along, urea fertilizer from natural gas and so on, and the yields started to get a lot higher. Then the chemical weed control started and the yields got even higher. Now, 200 bushels per acre is considered normal. And there is nobody out there dragging a manure spreader around and there is nobody fussing around with compost of any kind.
I suspect that the compost studies do not count the labor cost of composting. And I suspect that the studies are done on some little backyard acreage, not a 640 acre combined farm that is now fairly frequently handled by a single farmer. (640 acres is a square mile aka a section) That represents a lot of compost.
Here’s a parallel case from Canada of industry PR used in official agency recommendations:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4009/125/
“May 28, 2009
The Conference Board of Canada has just announced that it is recalling all three IP reports that it issued last week…. Anne Golden, CEO of the Conference Board of Canada … admits that the digital economy report was plagiarized.”
#407 SecularAnimist:
“Commenters here have occasionally debated whether the term “denier” or “denialist” is appropriate to characterize the phony, propagandistic pseudo-skeptics.”
I suspect the genuine obstructionists are probably very few in number, relatively speaking. But by perpetrating their hoax on a vast army of credulous chumps and suckers with loud mouths and lazy minds they immeasurably amplify their efficacy.
Think of Bernie Madoff and his microscopic crew of co-conspirators. You’re looking at a tiny handful of people who managed to enlist the unwitting help of legions of salesmen for their Ponzi scheme. Madoff’s pathetic helpers didn’t do due diligence on Madoff’s claims. Now they’re exposed as fools, but their own humiliation pales in comparison to the harm they’ve caused.
At the risk of sounding too dramatic, the publicists being paid to design and execute their clients’ deception campaign really ought to consider their position should the IPCC estimates prove as overly conservative as some believe. Scapegoats will be in popular demand if events turn that way.
Ya know, when there’s a big kerfluffle in the septic edge of the bogusphere (TM Stoat), it’s always worth looking behind it or around it or in the other direction to see what they may be drawing attention away from.
Like:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/2009/06/report-on-climate-change-impacts-in-the-us.html
Which begins:
“On June 16, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released the NOAA-led study, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” – which it describes as a “state of knowledge” report about current and project impacts of global warming on the US. (Climate-impacts-report full copy PDF) The report is based on the accumulated body of scientific information from 21 US synthesis and assessment reports as well as the IPCC assessments. (Executive-summary of climate impacts report) The report includes separate assessments of various US regions (regional analyses) as well as various aspects of society such as human health, transportation, energy supply and use, water resources, agriculture and ecosystems (sector analyses).”
(Parentheticals are hot links to full text, at the original blog page linked above)
________________
Michael Says (29 June 2009 at 15:04):
“Life expectancy has dramatically risen alongside fossil fuel use. The ball is in the court of people who argue we will decrease one without decreasing the other.”
As Mark noted earlier, correlation != causation, so the ball is really in the court of those who claim that increased life expectancy is a result of increased fossil fuel use. So where’s your causal link?
On the other side, even a moment’s thought should show that most improvements in fact expectancy are due to things which don’t in fact require any large input of energy (whether derived from fossil fuels or not). They are the result of increased medical knowledge, and range from simple public health measures (such as not putting the outhouse next to the well), through vaccination and antibiotics.
“Let’s say we were able to fast track the developing countries of the world and instantly give them decent jobs, houses, agriculture, transportation, medical services, security etc. I could argue that CO2 emissions would increase.”
This of course strongly depends on your definition of the word “decent”. If you’re simply equating it to “a US/Western European lifestyle”, then of course you’re right. But I would turn around and argue that the lifestyle of the majority in the West does not in fact qualify as decent. They are forced by circumstance to live crammed in cities & suburbs, often in multi-storey tenements or close-packed housing developments, without any access to fresh air, open space, or a natural environment. Their “decent transportation” enables them to spend an hour or two crawling along freeways to get to jobs far distant from their homes. (Many of which could as well be done by telecommuting.) Their “decent agriculture” has led to an epidemic of obesity…
“Therefore the argument moves into “What are these restrictions and are they justified?” Can we agree on this much?”
Apparently not :-) But to carry the discussion much further would mean getting into philosophical discussions about what exactly constitutes a good life. I’ll just remark that in spite of all the “improvements” in the standard of living, I don’t know very many really happy people.
Rod,
1988-2008 is two decades, not one. And you can’t find the trend by drawing a line from the start point to the end point. You have to use all the points.
Jim Bullis wrote: “It is hard to explain how ‘studies’ come up with the conclusions that they do … I suspect that the compost studies do not count the labor cost of composting. And I suspect that the studies are done on some little backyard acreage …”
It is easy enough to look up the studies, by the Rodale Institute and the United Nations Environment Program for example, rather than “suspecting” stuff based on what you think you know.
As is often the case, Wikipedia is a start.
RE: 322, 357.
The ex hypothesi red-herrings you mention are just the human condition. Yes, diseases have always existed and always will exist. BUT, what’s important are the pathologies unique to the type of late-phase capitalism you recommend, which are too numerous to list. Global-warming included. Such are the requirements to build the contemporary-utopia of, Wal-Mart’s, Pizza-Hut’s and the Playboy Channel much ballyhooed by the peak-oil decadent and the Austrian Economics School of magical thinking…
As for an alleged increase in life-span, according to a study by Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital: “Medical measures (both chemotherapeutic and prophylactic) appear to have contributed little to the overall decline in mortality in the U.S. since about 1900 – having in many instances been introduced several decades after a marked decline had already set in and having no detectable influence in most instances.” John B. McKinlay and Sonja M. McKinlay, “A Refutation of the Thesis That the Health of the Nation Is Improving.” Milbank Memorial Fund (to Boston University).
Barton Paul Levenson Says (30 June 2009 at 3:34):
“Considering that people kept pouring into the cities to obtain factory work in that period, life in rural areas must have been even worse. Google “enclosure” to start to understand why.”
The question you aren’t asking, though, is whether they went willingly. After all, in the same period many rural Africans wound up doing farm labor in the Americas.
You might also consider that a lot of those people who were forced off the land wound up emigrating to places such as the American frontier, where they could take up land of their own. Others hoped to make their fortunes in the cities, and those who did almost invariably bought country houses with their new wealth. Something that continues even today: what Wall Street millionaire didn’t have his/her place in the Hamptons or Catskills?
Steve (377)
There’s different sensitivity numbers depending on the timescale…the commonly cited IPCC number is probably not incredibly relevant this century since it occurs at equilibrium (at least many decades after the CO2 doubling when the outgoing radiation equals the incoming radiation). 3 C is a good central estimate, but there’s also a large uncertainty range of roughly +/- 50%, much of which is due to cloud responses. This range is consistent with paleoclimatic and observational constraints, and although some papers have estimates lower than 2 C or higher than 4.5 C, they are outliers and should be judged with caution. Knutti and Hegerl 2008 note
“[There are a few studies that] deviate substantially from the consensus range, mostly towards very low values. These results can usually be attributed to erroneous forcing assumptions (for example hypothesized external processes such as cosmic rays driving climate66), neglect of internal climate variability67, overly simplified assumptions, neglected uncertainties, errors in the analysis or dataset, or a combination of these68–71.
That paper also serves as an excellent review of the current understanding of Earth’s equilibrium sensitivity
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
There’s also the transient response (which assumes CO2 rises at 1% per year and then defines the response after the first doubling). The range for the transient response in the CMIP3 archive is roughly 1.3 to 2.6 C. There’s also the much longer-term response which takes into account slow feedbacks such as ice sheet responses, long-term poleward changes in vegetation, etc that are relevant on timescales of many centuries to millennia. Estimates of this are greater than the equilibrium response, with appropriate values near a 5 or 6 C range, see
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008/Hansen_etal.html
Hope that helps
“What’s your point? He isn’t a climate scientist, he’s an expert in environmental economics” (Gavin)
Gavin, I find this constant bickering on the lack of specia… (I can’t write this word because of the silly spam filter) in climate science superfluous and annoying. You as a climate scientist do statistics (many), mathematics (every day), physics (continuously), programming (a lot), paleontology (may be)… without being THE world authority in statistics, programming etc. Your job needs multiple skills, without being a mandatory heavy writer of peer reviewed papers in statistics or on programming. The “normal” physicist (or simple “scientist” should be able to understand the climate debate, and should not be silenced or denied voicing his opinions, just because he is not the full blown specia…. Sure, working every day on climate affairs will give you a broader knowledge, a quicker grasp, possibly a more cautious reasoning.., but it does not give you the authority to deny other scientists or educated women/men speaking out.
Would you silence Freeman Dyson, because he lacks any formal climate science education?
[Response: You confuse criticising someone’s ill-thought out musings with silencing them. That’s ridiculous (though not unexpected). Just so that you don’t misunderstand me – Dyson, Carlin and anyone else you like have the perfect right to say whatever they want and submit their thoughts to whatever request for public comments exist. But I retain the right to point out that they don’t know what they are talking about. Presumably you’d support my rights to do so? I actually keep wishing for a substantive critique from one of these guys – it would be more fun to deal with something new and interesting rather than these half-warmed up leftovers from the Heartland ostrich-fest. – gavin]
@#285 # Mike Nilsen Says:
“Perhaps the “cheap” energy that powers our lifestyle is not actually cheap. We’ve just been ignorant of the true cost all along. Climatological catastrophe is a pretty high price.”
Or as Wendel Barry put it,
“We thought that we were getting something for nothing,
but we were getting nothing for everything.”
#412 Hank Roberts:
As a snapshot–particularly for U.S. readers– would make an excellent addition to the RC resource list, even a topic for a top-level post…
For folks like myself who have extolled the climate change legislation emerging from the house last week but need some of the caveats pointed out, try this article by George Monbiot:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jun/26/us-obama-climate-monbiot
“You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work.”
As he says, until we deal with corruption it really ain’t happening for us. All the same, I’m -still- pleased it passed.
Jim Bullis (#402) re albedo (last time, I promise),
If you want someone knowledgeable to address your objection to a line in the Copenhagen report, perhaps try the “Warning from Copenhagen” thread — more on-topic.
You missed the point of Anne’s reference to the NASA albedo definition. You still say “the fact seems to be that a lot of energy is specularly reflected … add to this the 15% to 20% albedo.” But as noted (at #373), since the cited albedo in question was probably defined to include both specular and diffuse reflection, adding means counting it twice. (That won’t get you to 50% though.)
And you do have to “get into clouds and all that” (including wind speed and plankton) to get ocean albedo right. You may want to look up Jin et al. 2004 and test-drive their online Ocean Surface Albedo Lookup Table.
Bubkes
So if you really believe global temps are rising, then i have some easy money for you.
Let’s bet 50K on it. Since you are so absolutely sure of your position, you should give me 10-to-1 odds.
We can settle up on July 1, 2019. By that time, we should really know.
If you are not willing to take the bet, the just shut up.
[Response: Lot’s of people will line up to take your money if terms can be agreed. Talk to Brian Schmidt for instance. – gavin]
Mr. Bullis writes:
“And there is nobody out there dragging a manure spreader …”
o dear me. Clearly the manure spreader i see, and the smell thereof, and the tractor hauling it, and my neighbour driving the tractor over yon five hundred acres are all figments of my imagination. And why, when i travel through the neighbouring five counties, i must be very mistaken; those are not manure spreaders at all! I must inform my neighbour soon of this revelation, and perhaps a letter to the local farm paper might be in order…
i must say that some of the comments on this thread do evoke manure spreaders tho…
Oh yes, the deniers are getting more and more desperate as their nonsense is failing and president Obama at least takes the first tentative steps for the USA to tackle thier oil imports as a good proxy for dealing with their fossil fuels usage. Its not so easy for coal and gas but it could all come under the umbrella of this legislation.
Gavins patience is astounding on this site and I really hope it is not interupting his more important work of science, something that the denialists have no idea about, nor being courteous and intelligent either.
Aaron (#397), good point, but perhaps try it with Galileo and the moving Earth instead. For interesting but totally off-topic reasons Newton and the Pope did not cross paths, and if they had, gravity would have been one of the safer conversation topics…
Sadly, the Physics Convention of 1707 never happened either, yet its spirit lives on; Fuller’s “warmists” and “lukewarmers” may have replaced “uppers” and “downers”, but you never know when Inhofe will call for Congress to amend Stefan’s Law or repeal Clausius-Clapeyron.
:)
1. “In the physical science world, it’s possible to send a spacecraft only a few miles above the surface of a moon orbiting a planet many millions of miles distant and then have that spacecraft smoothly take a course for another destination with excellent confidence it’ll arrive.” Doug Bostrom 29 June 2009 at 1:58 PM
A.”The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W mР2.”( IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis….)
2. A true skeptic would note that the problems of gravitational orbital mechanics with the number of bodies equal to or greater than three tend towards chaos and, in general, are impossible to solve. “Specific solutions to three-body problem result in chaotic motion with no obvious sign of a repetitious path. A major study of the Earth-Moon-Sun system was undertaken by Charles-Eugène Delaunay, who published two volumes on the topic, each of 900 pages in length, in 1860 and 1867. Among many other accomplishments, the work already hints at chaos, and clearly demonstrates the problem of so-called “small denominators” in perturbation theory.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_body_problem
B. “The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO (Section 2.4). Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.” http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf (or “indirect solar variability or “urban heat island effect” or “Global temperatures have declined” or “other significant natural effects on global temperatures that we do not yet understand” or “water vapor … feedback is actually negative.”)
3. So the idea that so-called rocket scientists could send spacecraft reliably and predictably to the moon is a mathematical impossibility, therefore the so-called moon landing must have been faked in a studio.&;>)
C. “The issue is rather whether the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis meets the ultimate scientific test-conformance with real world data. What these comments show is that it is this ultimate test that the hypothesis fails; this is why EPA needs to carefully reexamine the science behind global warming before proposing an endangerment finding.” ibid. Or, let’s study the science some more and wait even longer before actually doing anything.
I know far less about economics than the pittance that I know about climate science, so this may be a case of Dunning Krueger effect, but I think that a fundamental problem that economists(Carlin, CEI, Heartland, your favorite conservative economic think tank/pundit) have with analyzing global warming is the premise of “discounting”, that a dollar spent today on dealing with global warming is worth more (higher cost) than a dollar spent in the future. The concept of “discounting” is so ingrained in economic theory that delaying action has become a knee-jerk reaction, and they fail to consider nuances- such as, discounting usually assumes a constant rate, but the real future costs of mitigation or climate change probably have highly variable discount rates, including the possibility of changing sign. Another underlying component of much economic analysis is the assumption of continued economic growth, which implies continued growth in consumption of resources – but we may not have enough oil/coal/steel/food/water/etcetera available in fifty years to “fix” global warming, and it only takes one weak link to break the chain.
(And yes, I am snarkily comparing Carlin to the kind of crackpots who believe that space travel is fake.)
(speaking of manure, Recaptcha says “stenches Legaions”)
“If you are not willing to take the bet, the just shut up.”
Oh look, another microwattbot shows up with a scientific argument. [Not.]
I’m sure you’d love nothing better, but sorry, not a chance.
Deal with it.
Re: #288 (RodB), #414 (BPL)
BPL, Rod’s saying 1988 was just a typo; the numbers he quotes are for 1998 and 2008. And they’re for GISS’s GLB.Ts data set (based on meteorological stations only), not for the GLB.Ts+SST data set (land+ocean).
Rod: during the same 1998-2008 time period, for the same data set, the slope of a linear regression line is positive. Is that rising or falling?
The choice to start with 1998 was made deliberately for the purpose of minimizing temperature increase. That’s called “cherry picking.” And using only 10 years to attempt to identify a trend in global temperature is foolish. This has been discussed, demonstrated, even proved so many times (not just here but elsewhere) that we’re getting sick of having to repeat it every time the same old bunk is repeated.
Rod, you can no longer claim ignorance as an excuse.
#363 Phil Felton
You say: “About this time of year at ~80ºN and noon (where the edge of the ice might be) the angle of incidence will be fairly close to Brewster’s angle (~56º) where the perpendicularly polarized light will have a reflectivity of ~15% and the parallel polarized will have a reflectivity of 0%.
Shortwave radiation in the vicinity of the pole at this time of year averages around 300 W/m^2 whereas IR radiation is also around 300W/m^2 however the angle of incidence of the IR will average ~0º.”
I reply:
(1) Brewsters angle for sea water seems to be more like about 7 degrees, according to mike-willis.com/Tutorial/PF8.htm. I do not know if he did it right, but it roughly agrees with my lower frequency data from Radar Reflectivity of Land and Sea, Long, Artech House.
No way, Brewster’s angle is tan(∅b)=n2/n1, n2≈1.34 for sea water, n1=1.0 for air, from air into any liquid there’s no chance that it could be below 50º.
(2) You pick the extreme of the longest day and the lowest edge of ice to get an angle where reflections are lower. Surely, we are interested in average cases for global warming thinking.
I picked a location where the ocean is adjacent to the seaice, what would be the point of picking somewhere where this was not the case. The impact of the differential absorption of energy on the rapid melting phase of seaice retreat would be there!
(3) Are we interested in vertically incident IR at the poles? Yes there is some from the cold sky, but that must not be very much compared to the IR from the sun.
There is none from the sun and the total IR from the warm sky (inversion) equals the total radiation from the sun. Those numbers I gave were actual measurements not made up!
(4) Your quote of 15% for perpendicularly polarized reflectivity for sea water sounds more like the number for the refracted energy.
Not to anyone who knows anything about optics.
In general, the argument turns out to be more complicated than I originally expected from rough recollections, the fact seems to be that a lot of energy is specularly reflected from sea water in polar regions. Add to this the 15% to 20% albedo and it seems fairly certain that the originally criticized assertion from the Synthesis Report, that most of the energy is absorbed by the polar sea water, is not correct.
You’re double counting here and your estimate is way too high for the reasons listed above.
313 – Darren – The basic rule we used in evaluating a statistical analysis was “The more complex the analysis, the more suspicious the results”. That’s why “How to Lie with Statistics” is still being sold.
#422 CM, also #373 CM and #374 Anne van der Bom
I did not explain adequately, but I thought that 15% to 20% for polar sea water albedo was so small that it could not include the specular reflection part. But CM, I was not trying to handle the whole Arctic albedo question. I was only reacting to the sea water statement in the cited report.
The definition Anne van der Bom provided from NASA seems to be the same as at http://www.eoearth.org/article/Albedo, but their Fig. 1 (also said to be from NASA) seems to show that the specular part is not included, even though the definition would suggest otherwise. If it was included, the albedo for middle regions of both Atlantic and Pacific would not be so close to the zero values shown. Sunrise and sunset and 20 degrees therefrom each have to involve substantial specular reflection energy, and the daily average would have to come up.
Wave action certainly causes reduced reflections, but the general average of Sea State 3 does not involve local angles that are all that steep. I did not mean to brush aside the subject, but was just generally relying on the average situation to get a rough sense of things.
#424 sidd
I will take your word for it. I have not smelled the “fresh country air” (as my mother used to say sarcastically) for many years.
As I recall however, pictures of those big farms producing corn for ethanol did not show the kind of methods you talk about. Maybe your neighbor’s 500 acres is more typical.
This site is a joke, and you climatists along with it. Don’t worry, you’ll all eventually come around and see the light.
Humans are a blessing to this planet, and the CO2 we release is only going to invigorate all life and its diversity. I emit as much CO2 as I possibly can, as I am an environmentalist and I want to do the right thing for the future of this planet and our species.
If you think there are too many humans, please depopulate yourself.
re: #375, #394
LIVE SCIENCE/ANTI-SCIENCE DEBATES ARE DUMB
I think live debates between science and anti-science are really silly. It is far easier to produce doubt&confusion than clarity. It is all to easy to throw out masses of errors to befog an issue, and it usually takes at least 10X longer to show them wrong, and all one side has to do is create doubt.
It is easy in a live debate to show a bad graph and have the idea stick with the audience. Only if the other side is ready with a copy of that graph, marked up to show the wrongness, and the correct graph, can the misimpression be reduced. {How does one do that in a live debate?]
A graph is worth a huge number of words, especially if you can get it to propagate.
Google Images: monckton. Look for Viscount Monckton’s graph, debunked here. Notice how much it took to properly debunk it.
Of course, if one side in a debate can just make stuff up, and the other really can’t, it’s much easier. It’s also easier to be on the side with 100% confidence, rather than the side that naturally speaks of error-bars.
SCIENCE, BLOGSCIENCE, LIVE DEABATE, TWITTERSCIENCE
While BlogScience isn’t Science, it’s at least better than live verbal debate, which is not much better than TwitterScience debate:
It’s the sun; climate has changed before; Mars is warming; it hasn’t warmed since 1998; hockey-stick was debunked; …
5 memes, and not yet close to the 140 character limit! Terrific!
(From Skeptical Science, in some sense an antidote for TwitterScience, since one can just reference the numbers, which uses even less characters.)
At least, in a multi-day blog argument:
1) People can cite data, link to relevant graphs, papers, etc.
2) There is time to identify cherry-picking and “how to lie with graphs” tricks in any such used.
3) The *audience* can if they wish check things, ask questions, and thoughtfully evaluate,especially if the moderator is ruthless about keeping on-topic.
4) There is a clear *record* of the interaction, which can be analyzed and referenced afterwards. This might, ofr some people, inhibit behavior you can get away with in a live debate.
AN EXAMPLE OF A DECENT BLOG DEEBATE
About the closest I’ve seen to something like this was:
Bob Ryan Challenged to Climate Change Debate a few months ago.
This turned into a “blog debate” between Bob Ryan (rtyran1) and Brian Valentine (BrianValentine), in a more-or-less neutral venue, with a participation by various bystanders. The actual interactions started ~March 18 and went about a week.
But, if anyone thinks live science/anti-science debates are good … I’d say this is Luddite thinking, get modern and go right to TwitterScience debates… :-)
Let me show a contrast to the Real Climate posters’ style, for the benefit of the Examinerites:
Putting the science aside, Tom Fuller and many other “S. F. Examiner” wannabe tabloid hacks are, at this point, simply blog trolls, and the proper response to them won’t be tit-for-tat articles but pointing out they’re not at a real newspaper and otherwise ignoring them.
When there is no ball where you’re kicking anymore, and you have momentum, you’re sometimes going to step on some toes. But it takes the denialosphere to turn everything into a football match and then start “playing the man,” frankly.
And coming from the people who put an uneducated Young Republican con-man in effective charge at NASA and had him institute Stalin-era-level censorship there top to bottom, this is not a bit much, it’s unspeakable doublethink. Tom Fuller should be forced to say whether he thinks “alleged” or “so-called” or “hypothesized” needs to be prefixed to every mention of the Big Bang. Indeed, I wonder if the “dissident” EPA non-scientists-who-know-more-about-science-by-proxy-than-thousands-of-IPCC-scientists should actually be allowed to talk to anyone without it being first cleared by a Central Committee appointed by the White House with a political commissar standing by in case things get out of hand.
#255 Rod B
Although I don’t watch TV much, I actually saw the PBS news hour last week and said to my wife, wow, look! A news show in America. I doubt many watch it unfortunately.
A sad reminder that science journalism is in trouble in many ways, not just about this little tsurris, and in many places, not just at the Examiner or CBS:
http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/4856
End of the line for science journalism?
Maxine Clarke
Thursday, 18 June 2009 16:33 UTC
“… Many researchers see science journalists as a public-relations service or as an ally in spreading the news about their work, asserts a Nature Editorial this week (459, 1033; 2009
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7250/full/4591033a.html
– free to read online). The Editorial points out that there is a deeper value of journalism: to cast a fair but sceptical eye over everything in the public sphere — science included….”
Francis Massen @419 says “The “normal” physicist (or simple “scientist” should be able to understand the climate debate, and should not be silenced or denied voicing his opinions, just because he is not the full blown specia…. ”
Sure, after all, physicists are born knowing this climate stuff, right? No need to actually, oh, crack a book and become familiar with the methods and literature of a field. Just jump right in! And engineers? Why not–they’re almost scientists,right? Technicians? Send ’em on down. Plumbers and Electricians? Why not? After all, how hard can it be? Lawyers? … Hell, no. We gotta keep some standards!
Dude, the quickest way for a smart person to look like an idiot is to comment outside his area of expertise without doing his homework. Expertise matters. It’s why we make scientists go to grad school and do post docs before they have to quit doing science and write grant proposals for the rest of their life.
Physicists, in the form of their professional organizations, though, have looked at the issue. They specifically formed committees to look at the science. Not one professional organization has dissented from the consensus. Not one. That really OUGHT to tell you something, but I rather doubt it will.
Looks like my previous post got mangled because I used HTML Markup.
It should have read:
A recent paper by Douglas and Christy seems to claim that either 2C02 would lead to less than 1C or if 2C02 leads to greater than 1C then some forcing other than aerosols must be “masking” CO2’s effect….
This appears to be due to the decreasing aerosol optical depth, AOD, which is one of the negative forcings that are used in the models to counteract GHG warming.
I realize Compo and Sardeshmukh is not to do with sensitivity, at least not in the direct sense, but it is to do with attribution. shouldn’t the level of attribution to CO2 then directly affect calculations for sensitivity. As I read it, it attributes the warming observed to oceanic changes but of course that doesn’t rule out CO2 being the main cause of the changes in the oceans. I believe it just says more research is needed.
As for Caldwell and Bretherton, I thought most models response to a warming world was a decrease in Sc or low-cloud cover leading to one of the positive feedbacks from CO2. But isn’t Caldwell and Bretherton saying that the opposite is occurring. i.e. we should see an increase in Sc clouds not a decrease. I would have thought that would act to reduce sensitivity to CO2.
Cheers
Steve
#434 GD:
“I emit as much CO2 as I possibly can…”
Right now you’re emitting mostly natural gas, a powerful GHG but happily with a short half life in the atmosphere. If only it were not mixed with the H2S.
“This site is a joke, and you climatists along with it.”
A powerful argument. You’ve changed my mind, at least, and truly I feel blessed for I was not really happy playing the role of climatis. I personally always wanted to be a wisteria and now I’m free to do so. Thank you.
“May I plaintively repeat my request for more discussion of the peer reviewed literature . . .”
I’d like to see an update on the sea level rise issue, since we hear so much that the IPCC is way out of date on the issue.
Cant really resist wondering what Michael Hall’s terms would be.
Escrow? What exactly is the bet? Allowance for volcanoes? CO2 emission profile?
I sure hope he reads some science rather than just denioblogs before committing this kind of cash.
# John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation) Says:
30 June 2009 at 7:19 PM
#255 Rod B
Although I don’t watch TV much, I actually saw the PBS news hour last week and said to my wife, wow, look! A news show in America. I doubt many watch it unfortunately.
It is a sad commentary on Australian journalism that Newshour (repeated daily on one of our government funded networks) is by far the mot comprehensive and in depth news program in Australia – and we used to have some quality journalism in this country onc upon a time
Humans are a blessing to this planet, and the CO2 we release is only going to invigorate all life and its diversity. I emit as much CO2 as I possibly can, as I am an environmentalist and I want to do the right thing for the future of this planet and our species.
Have you considered vacationing on Venus?
I hear the weather is wonderful this time of year.
#439 Ray Ladbury,
I can understand that you find a lot of the comments here frustrating.
However, I consider this a learning opportunity. I have long known that the opportunity to look foolish comes with the learning process.
Now, is it necessary to be an expert in the field in order to comment and maybe learn something? That would be very neat and would be a lot like the cheering section at a sports event. But it would not help bring about the common cause needed to get something done.
Unfortunately, in trying to put things in a frame of reference that each of us is more or less familiar with, it sometimes involves discussion that sounds critical. I think that is a fair game that can sometimes be useful. And getting trounced in rebuttal is a chance worth taking.
I also do not see why anyone would feel obligated to explain things. But the more we understand it, the closer we can come to making that common cause, and maybe that is worth it.
So sorry Ray, expertise matters, but maybe it will take more than just climate scientists to get things fixed. Machines will not be built without engineers. Projects will not get funded without businessmen. Sensible economic policy needs economists. And laws will not get passed without lawyers.
I appreciate the opportunity for discussion that this site offers. Thanks very much to our hosts.
Hank I have said this many times:
When I was in J School early 90s they taught PR people, ad people and journalists all in the same core classes – and said they were all variants of each other. All “communication.” There’s a certain pragmatic truth there, but it’s like focusing on the exceptions to the scientific method instead of how people have succeeded in sticking to it mostly. So it’s definitely not just science journalism.
One reason the WSJ could do good journalism in the long run was that when it did business stories it cheated – simply rewriting press releases for the majority of them. An analysis someone did once of archived press releases vs. WSJ business stories showed at least 60% of their business stories were sourced only to, and were rewrites of, a single press release.
It really is a Darwinian process, actually. And we all know how many mimics and parasites there are in nature.
Tim, yes the information is already available and it would require a significant amount of work on the part of several individuals. I purposely pointed this out so others would not feel the need to do so.
Yes I suppose a debate does have winners and losers. But is the competition over public opinion not already in place? Are there not already going to be winners and losers? What better way to make sure the ideas are properly presented then in debate form that would certainly attract a lot of attention, probably would be referenced on almost every climate blog, and would allow the participants to place their best arguments foward? The current system is better where the majority of the general populace finds their way to random blogs?
As far as Al Gore goes, I think that having him as a primary spokesman for any endeavor is a serious error. What advertisment company would make a person likely to alienate 30% of the population before he has spoken his first word their product symbol?
BPL (414), sorry “1988” in #288 was a typo. The question and numbers are from 1998 and 2008. Still want to try a yes or no answer, just for fun??
Let me start out with, I am not an environmentalist. I am a Computer Engineer, trained that way and proud of it.
Phew, now that at least is out of the way. Let me just say that neither side is correct. At this stage in the game we simply don’t have a full grasp of the picture. How does everything work? What happens when this happens? What can we expect if this overtakes this?
While we certainly have become much better at understanding how our environment works, we have what I believe is at best a basic understanding of the internal and external processes in our environment.
We don’t have the math down yet to describe every interaction. And frankly due to this, while the debates are good, I think we need to step back and work together. All sides of the debate, taking what you consider bad data or science along with your data and learning from them both. Right now, that is not even happening. All the debating just slows down the real learning and understanding of how our world works.
My humble opinion, is that the report should have been presented, let those who are in power still make the decisions, after all no report is going to change those minds once they are made up anyway. History has shown that Government will only support the reports that currently further its agenda. Unfortunately, real science and real reporting is second .. no more like fourth fiddle to the real issue at hand. Money, Power, and Influence.
So, if you really want to make a difference quickly, understand how you can get the interest of those who are looking to make one of the three items above. Then you will have true movement.