Alert readers will have noticed the fewer-than-normal postings over the last couple of weeks. This is related mostly to pressures associated with real work (remember that we do have day jobs). In my case, it is because of the preparations for the next IPCC assessment and the need for our group to have a functioning and reasonably realistic climate model with which to start the new round of simulations. These all need to be up and running very quickly if we are going to make the early 2010 deadlines.
But, to be frank, there has been another reason. When we started this blog, there was a lot of ground to cover – how climate models worked, the difference between short term noise and long term signal, how the carbon cycle worked, connections between climate change and air quality, aerosol effects, the relevance of paleo-climate, the nature of rapid climate change etc. These things were/are fun to talk about and it was/is easy for us to share our enthusiasm for the science and, more importantly, the scientific process.
However, recently there has been more of a sense that the issues being discussed (in the media or online) have a bit of a groundhog day quality to them. The same nonsense, the same logical fallacies, the same confusions – all seem to be endlessly repeated. The same strawmen are being constructed and demolished as if they were part of a make-work scheme for the building industry attached to the stimulus proposal. Indeed, the enthusiastic recycling of talking points long thought to have been dead and buried has been given a huge boost by the publication of a new book by Ian Plimer who seems to have been collecting them for years. Given the number of simply made–up ‘facts’ in that tome, one soon realises that the concept of an objective reality against which one should measure claims and judge arguments is not something that is universally shared. This is troubling – and although there is certainly a role for some to point out the incoherence of such arguments (which in that case Tim Lambert and Ian Enting are doing very well), it isn’t something that requires much in the way of physical understanding or scientific background. (As an aside this is a good video description of the now-classic Dunning and Kruger papers on how the people who are most wrong are the least able to perceive it).
The Onion had a great piece last week that encapsulates the trajectory of these discussions very well. This will of course be familiar to anyone who has followed a comment thread too far into the weeds, and is one of the main reasons why people with actual, constructive things to add to a discourse get discouraged from wading into wikipedia, blogs or the media. One has to hope that there is the possibility of progress before one engages.
However there is still cause to engage – not out of the hope that the people who make idiotic statements can be educated – but because bystanders deserve to know where better information can be found. Still, it can sometimes be hard to find the enthusiasm. A case in point is a 100+ comment thread criticising my recent book in which it was clear that not a single critic had read a word of it (you can find the thread easily enough if you need to – it’s too stupid to link to). Not only had no-one read it, none of the commenters even seemed to think they needed to – most found it easier to imagine what was contained within and criticise that instead. It is vaguely amusing in a somewhat uncomfortable way.
Communicating with people who won’t open the book, read the blog post or watch the program because they already ‘know’ what must be in it, is tough and probably not worth one’s time. But communication in general is worthwhile and finding ways to get even a few people to turn the page and allow themselves to be engaged by what is actually a fantastic human and scientific story, is something worth a lot of our time.
Along those lines, Randy Olson (a scientist-turned-filmmaker-and-author) has a new book coming out called “Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style” which could potentially be a useful addition to that discussion. There is a nice post over at Chris Mooney’s blog here, though read Bob Grumbine’s comments as well. (For those of you unfamiliar the Bob’s name, he was one of the stalwarts of the Usenet sci.environment discussions back in the ‘old’ days, along with Michael Tobis, Eli Rabett and our own William Connolley. He too has his own blog now).
All of this is really just an introduction to these questions: What is it that you feel needs more explaining? What interesting bits of the science would you like to know more about? Is there really anything new under the contrarian sun that needs addressing? Let us know in the comments and we’ll take a look. Thanks.
James (#219),
I think that I am posing a problem for Hansen’s opinion that burning essentially all available carbon leads to Venus-like conditions. He argues that slow negative feedbacks can’t work, I think, because the change in the atmosphere is so rapid. However, to get Venus-like conditions, you need to get rid of the hydrogen which is done by dissociating water and allowing the hydrogen to escape from the top of the atmosphere. Neither the Earth nor Venus are massive enough to retain hydrogen as a gas. But, it does take a while for this to happen since most of the water will be in the oceans rather than in the air for some time and so is not converted to hydrogen by solar UV radiation) for a while.
The mass of the hydrosphere is about 1.4×1021 kg and the surface area of the Earth is about 488×1012 square meters so that comes to about 3 million kg/m2 or 30 atmospheres of pressure to keep that mass aloft. At 30 atmosphere’s you’d need a surface temperature of 230 C or so to assure that all that water is vapor. This does not seem like such a high temperature compared to Venus which gets about twice the solar energy that the Earth receives. So, there might be chance of raising the oceans after all. But, Venus does its high temperature with a much more massive atmosphere than even the oceans could add to our atmosphere so I’m not sure we’d get the needed optical depth to compete and you still need to convert the water to hydrogen. Anything that takes some extra time seems to me to counter the argument that rapid buildup is key to the result since one can then allow slow processes to work as they usually do.
#241 Peter Houlihan … No people with such qualifications exist, I’m afraid, most of the biologists have enough to do with the on-going ecosystem changes, that happen because of many reasons, and while they do report these, most are not willing to tie their studies to climate change, as it means a whole lot of additional work with regular measurements of weather in the study areas… which varies even more than climate. The hobbyists such as me may talk of the survival of certain species after some extreme event (or a ‘bad year’ for a species), but as there are no unequivocal projections (apart from the arctic amplification) of regional changes during a global climate change, we’re not (mostly) quite ready to attribute changes in the ecosystem solely to climate change (though it may well be a factor). For most this is simply too much work, I don’t know if there has been many (there have been some) interdiciplinary studies between ecologists and meteorologists, and in any case I don’t know what a meteorologist would get out of routine measurements. Add to that, some boundary die-off conditions would have to be artificially measured, and the animal rights activists might have something to say to it… Making such a study is not an easy task, but might be possible.
Most people are probably interested in the agricultural side of biology (symbiosis between humans and other organisms), so such a person should have some clue what Monsanto and other agricultural businesses are doing, and also keep a track of the spontaneous mutations in natural species, that might allow it to spread in new areas. In addition he should to have a ‘Tamino-like’ understanding in complex statistics. These are (I guess) some of the reasons most of the reports in ecological papers are so vague in relation to GW. I’m certainly not qualified.
On the windspeed issue, I’ve seen indications of the mean oceanic windspeed having increased over recent decades (eg http://coaps.fsu.edu/scatterometry/meeting/docs/2006/yu.pdf)
The windspeed product being used in that study is obtained by “objective synthesis of surface wind fields from
− Satellite retrievals (SSM/I, NSCAT, QuikSCAT),
− COADS ship observations
− Atmospheric reanalysis and operational model outputs (NCEP, ECMWF)”
Numerous caveats and uncertainties of course, and at this point it merely adds to the complexity of the issue. An interesting hypothesis is whether global warming led to increased oceanic windspeed, which in turn could influence evaporation and the hydrological cycle, as well as the production of sea salt aerosol (which is known to be a function of windspeed). Of course, such a hypothesis is prone to being abused by the ‘usual suspects’, but that doesn’t make it less interesting.
Yes, and add a couple more ‘probables’ to the last post. But I’ve thought about this, as I’m nuts, and imho (very much so), in an ideal study, you’d have to have a couple (10 or so) widespread (as one climate is quite an area) species, follow up their numbers, in very many locations (Was it at least 100 observations to get a good, reliable result?) at least weekly (to compare the numbers to transient weather phenomena), track their relations to parasites and competitive species, relation to land use changes (in order to rule out other factors), take weather measurements of the study areas, check artificially how these species respond to some weather phenomena, and ultimately consider if the weather conditions during the study agree to a local projection of climate projections. A quite a heavy load for one researcher.
#246: “Climate measurement” is a topic of frequent confusion. It is, in fact, two quite different requirements.
In the olden times surface station networks were classified in several categories, with rather clear standards and requirements.
“Climatological station” was the lowest quality (accuracy) category. Investment in equipment was about 200 dollars. They were manned by voluntary observers, taking down the readings twice daily on an observation form. Purpose of these stations was to provide local statistics in support of farmers and city planners. The form was mailed in monthly, so it was no use for forecasting. Accuracy requirement was fit for purpose.
In most countries these “climatological stations” were supervised and maintained by meteorological office personnel. A notable exception to this rule was the U.S., where the state climatologists provided this function. Some of them were full time, but many were also part-time, university professors and similar with varied primary interests. Many of the U.S. climate stations and their sitings quite obviously reflect these other interests. A rather flexible organization structure resulted in a somewhat variable standardization of sitings, equipment and observer training.
Daily forecasting work was supported by higher level networks (NOAA, FAA or military operated in the U.S.), notably the synoptic stations where readings were taken at 3 hour intervals by trained full time observers. Aviation meteorology was supported by hourly or half-hourly observations. These data were coded and transmitted near real time and then plotted as weather maps. Standardization and accuracy of measurement were primordial requirements as the whole forecasting process is based on differences between readings from the various stations.
“Global climate monitoring” requires standardization and consistent measurement accuracy over extended periods of time. This is an additional requirement, mere consistency within a network at a given time is not good enough for this application although it could meet the minimum requirement for forecasting. Consequently changes in instrumentation became very important considerations (i.e. change from naturally ventilated thermometer screen to a fan ventilated one).
Global climate monitoring is rather a new requirement. There are only very limited measurements made specifically for that purpose. Generating reliable long term time series from the existing raw data (collected for various other purposes) has taken a lot of study and effort. Elaborate statistical checks based on understanding the history of instrumentation and the relevant organizations allows removal of most errors from the data. Extensive literature exist on this matter.
Over the past 15 years the WMO has defined a Global Climate Observation System (GCOS), including a selection of surface observation stations. The selections are primarily based on length of record and considerations of geographic distribution. Details can be found at:
http://gosic.org/gcos/GCOS-dev.htm
New electronics technology has now partly made obsolete the classifications. Yet some inheritance exists in organizations and probably continues to have an impact on data quality.
And that was some thoughts of entomology, looks like I didn’t say that. The temperature has an effect also to larger species, but I don’t know how to measure the amount of sweat discreetly, to end this rant of a hobbyist in biology, MSc in biochemistry.
Ray Ladbury #246. Seems like you have things ass about. The critical factor that Watts has now demonstrated is the unreliability of the data itself. Having 4 times more data doesn’t help if it contains a lot of garbage that is not sorted through. The findings call into question some of the basic assumptions about errors used for instance by Brohan et al (2006-doi:10.1029/2005JD006548) to put together global ave temps. If Watts’ work results in better data he should be applauded for it.
Ray Ladbury
@ 246 – I think that your harsh and flawed criticism of the surface stations project deserves a slap from Gavin himself.
It is disingenuous to dismiss the work of someone just because you don’t like what he stands for.
There is no doubt that there are issues with ground station sites and this does introduce a problem. Over the years as paved areas, automobiles and more recently air conditioning, airports and increasing urban sprawl have swallowed what were once rural areas and introduced bias in monitoring stations errors have crept in.
These stations are used in the records and there is no special selection and algorithms to correct this data as you suggest accept for a modest adjustment for those stations that are deemed to be urban. Ease of use is all very well and the rough trend will still be evident but the degree of change is put in doubt. How can we compare the records of 50 or 100 years ago with todays in this situation? We can’t.
The average temperature and weather over a period of time is climate so you lost me on that one. What then is used to measure climate may I ask?
What analysis are you referring to? There has until now been no survey to investigate “badly sited” stations however I believe that just such an analysis is now being conducted. The result should be interesting.
Hank Roberts #239:
<It is common for folks to be confused or to discount current climate change by referring to paleoclimate events…Medieval warm spell, CO2 lagging temperature-increase in ice cores, Little Ice age, etc. The inference seems to be that all sorts of things cause climate change, and CO2 has not been the primary cause of past changes, so current changes and the role of CO2 don’t look all that convincing.>
I think that the reasoning behind this is often somewhat simpler than you suggest. In most cases, it’s very straightforward: climate changed in the past without SUVs, therefore SUVs can’t cause climate change. Case closed.
I came up with a response for this reasoning that has worked better than anything I’ve tried previously:
“Humans have been dying of natural causes for millenia. This doesn’t mean you can’t get shot.”
I get many fewer responses to this than anything I’ve tried in the past (paleocomments?), which I’m assuming means that they have no response for it.
Re #258 Press:
It would become you to investigate before pontificating.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1987/Hansen_Lebedeff.html
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1999/Hansen_etal.html
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2001/Hansen_etal.html
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/gistemp.html
etcetera…
Press and ilajd, did you even bother to read my comment? Let’s go through it point by point and see what specifically you disagree with:
1)The main purpose of the stations is weather, not climate. The stations are run by NWS and were “selected according to factors such as record longevity, percentage of missing values, spatial coverage as well as the number of station moves and/or other station changes that may affect data homogeneity.”
2)Do you disagree that there are many more stations than are needed to adequately sample temperatures?
3)Do you disagree that having 4x as many stations as are needed for adequate sampling allows temporal and spatial characterization and filtering of bad data?
4)Do you disagreee that Watts’ methodology did not take into account the specific algorithms used for such filtering?
5)Do you disagree that the analysis of JohnV on a subset of the data showed zero effect when the bad stations were eliminated?
Watt’s study does not reflect any understanding of how the data are used. As such, he would not even recognize a significant error if he saw one–and more to the point, he would not know which errors are trivially remedied. As I said, it’s at the level of a piss poor third grade science project.
ilajad, if you have two numbers:
2,9
the average is 5.5
If they go up a little
4,10
the average is 7. An increase over time of 1.5 or 27%.
But if we have 8 numbers:
2,3,2,4,2,1,2,2,9
We now know that the 9 was wrong. So the average is 18/7 ~ 2.6
And when the dataset change is applied to the increase
4,3,5,3,5,6,4,6,6,10
We can remove the 10 and get an average of 42/7 ~ 6
An increase of 3.4 or 130%.
So having more data helps you remove bad data.
Of course, I’m expecting you to wave your hand and say “this is not the answer I was looking for”.
Building a robust product from this imperfect source of data is the whole point of the adjustment process done by the GISS people.
That’s the point.
You need to prove the output wrong, not merely confirm that the input suffers from quality control, as was known long before Watts became involved.
Then you get to explain why the satellites also suffer from a/c exhaust contamination, making the trend they report match the surface trend so closely …
“However the agency running the stations is taking it seriously, and adjusting their stations to improve them”
And this proves a problem, HOW?
I have a bit of hard skin next to my cuticle. Someone points it out and I remove it with my teeth.
Does this prove that the hard skin was a medical danger to me???
“I think that the reasoning behind this is often somewhat simpler than you suggest. In most cases, it’s very straightforward: climate changed in the past without SUVs, therefore SUVs can’t cause climate change. Case closed.”
Though you might find people putting forth this simplistic argument, it’s a bit of a straw man – the logical argument is “climate warmed significantly in the past without the presence of anthropogenic CO2, thus anthropogenic CO2 is not necessary to cause significant warming”. There exist other causes of warming, and we observe that historically those other causes have in fact caused warming. It doesn’t have to be the result of man-made CO2.
The standard reply to this is of course that we’ve looked at every other cause, and none of them could possibly cause this level of warming, thus it must be CO2. Which is well and good. Then which of those other non-CO2 warming factors caused historical warming?
[Response: We have discussed this particular straw man extensively. Please see the “Index” and scroll down to “Paleoclimate”. There are many natural factors that can cause warming and cooling on a variety of timescales. We can rule out those factors as being responsible for the overall warming of globe over the past century. – mike]
Ray (246), In your opinion is that “four times as many stations as needed” global-wide for the period in question?
Chris (#251),
The basic theory for a runaway greenhouse by evaporation of a condensible gas (from memory) is that there is a threshold at which the temperature becomes very sensitive to the net shortwave radiation so that the oceans can evaporate quickly (as compared to the evolution of the star). Once you get to this threshold, the greenhouse effect from the evaporating oceans can indeed be sufficient to support a huge surface temperature increase.
But the process Hansen is talking about is apparently different because it would be triggered by a very small amount of CO2 (compared to the amount of H2O) rather than by an increase in the amount of shortwave radiation absorbed by the planet.
The current state of Venus, which has lost most of its water and which has an enormous amount of CO2 in its atmosphere, is something else.
The runaway H2O greenhouse being contemplated here would boil away the oceans but would not turn the earth’s atmosphere into something like Venus’. It would be a separate process enabled by the lack of liquid water.
But do not rely on me and my memory: I believe there are a couple of RC articles on Venus, there’s Pierrehumbert’s book you could skim and so on.
Ray, Mark, dhogaza, Press
Thanks for kind of making my point here and beginning an argument that may become rather important in the public discussion in the near future. Let me play the devil’s advocate here and raise a few points in advance.
If the trends for the last n years already are at the lower end (or even outside) of model prejections, then shaving off another .1 or .2 C from the record would make arguing against models easier and help promoting the idea that the current models generally exaggerate. (Just remember the discussion about which start- or end-year to pick in order to have the measured trend inside or outside of the projections a couple of weeks ago – and still ongoing at “The Blackboard”).
The argument that siting is irrelevant for the trend and therefore meaningless for climate observations can be dismissed rather easily, because siting issues like airconditioners, rubbermats, tarmac, streets etc. act as amplifieres and don’t merely shift the measurements by a fixed amount – so one shouldn’t use that particular argument out of the blue only to be eventually proven wrong.
Then we have to remember, that the entire surface record consists of more than just the US and the US stations are, despite all he issues, still considered being the best and “most reliable”.
In an all together sane world, probably none of this would make much of a difference but this isn’t such a world. We’re in a recession, we see people being bored with the warming story, we see politicians who’re looking for a way out of having to make increasingly unpopular and expensive decisions for the sake of a warming that can’t be seen or felt in most parts of the world (after all, we had a long and cold winter and the summer so far has been even more rotten). And now somebody took a look at all the stations in the US and found out, that most of it was all about measuring in the wrong places – and looking at the most graphic examples on Watts’ website, one can’t help wondering why data from a screen standing on a black rooftop next to the airvent of a cellphone-tower is used at all and not simply discarded.
re 266. That’s sort of a red herring since we have other temperature proxies to use regardless (satellite data, tree rings, glaciers, coral reefs, etc.)
Chris Dunford misattributed Jim Bishop’s response to me above, to be clear who’s who.
MikeN, you don’t need to use logic on this. Use facts, they’re more reliable if you bother to look them up.
WTF went out photographing old stations and comparing them to the criteria for the next generation network and you claim this shows the weather station system takes WTF seriously?
The criteria were public — and the new stations already going in — before WTF got started.
Go photograph some old and new cars and claim this proves the car designers listen to your design advice. See who you can fool.
“because siting issues like airconditioners, rubbermats, tarmac, streets etc. act as amplifieres and don’t merely shift the measurements by a fixed amount”
They do? How?
If I have AC running at 2kW, it will cause increasingly increasing warming near the AC outlet? HOW??? If it did, would not the older AC units now have nuclear fusion occurring outside their exhaust?
“And now somebody took a look at all the stations in the US and found out, that most of it was all about measuring in the wrong places”
Climate monitoring stations or weather monitoring?
Ah, there’s the rub…
PS — folks, always, when someone posts a claim without a cite and says it’s a fact then reasons from it, like taking WTF seriously above:
— don’t believe their ‘fact’ and leap in to argue on their logic.
— Check the fact claims first. Often they’re wrong.
No use proving you can reason better than the guy who fooled you on the facts, eh?
First rule: _don’t_ take the bait and swallow the hook. Sniff first.
That’s not the argument. Sorry, I don’t dance with strawmen, nor strawgirls for that matter.
Mark #271
Normally you set you AC not to 2kW but to, say 21 C. So on a normal summer day you’ll have maybe 24 C plus whatever 1kW produce from an AC running on low power and on a warmer day, you’ll have 35C plus whatever 3kW produce from the very same AC running full speed. On a day with 21C you’ll likely have nothing from the AC at all. What’s your problem with that simple logic?
Bob Berger, let’s just throw out GISS and use the satellite trend, instead.
Happy, now?
In celebration of your newfound happiness, may I recommend reading this thread, in which Watts and his acolyte Steven Goddard not only demonstrate their scientific illiteracy, but flaunt it?
The “denial depot” spoof site isn’t 10% as goofy-wrong as the denialist crowd is in that thread …
Bob Berger, the entire point boils down to this: Local events/changes do not create a global signal. AND Events which take place at particular times at particular locations will be distinguisable from global trends affecting the entire dataset. Or would your devilish advocacy go so far as to contend that everybody just spontaneously decided to pave the area under every station on the same day at the same time?
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to have perfect data. However, given the choice between PERFECT data and MORE data, I’ll take more data. Having more data tells you more not only about the trends you’re looking for but also about the imperfections that exist in the real world. Finally, let me say that I am not against documenting problems. What I’m against is random (or worse, cherrypicked) photos taken without any consideration for what constitutes a problem and what does not. It’s the uneducated, cowboy, yee-haw, ignorant, anti-expertise, pass-the-beer idiocy of the project I object to. Had they bothered to take the time to understand that they need to be looking for correlated problems at multiple stations, the effort might have yielded something worthwhile. As it was, it was worse than worthless, but then, that was the intent.
As to the effect, it won’t change estimates by 0.1 degrees or 0.01 degrees. It will have no effect whatsoever, because it was ill-conceived from the very beginning
Ray Ladbury #246:
Ray, it depends entirely on what you want. Globally, if all you’re interested in is the long-term global trend (what we’re here all fixated on ;-) ), you don’t need actually more than some 60 stations. See, e.g.,
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/inpress/Schmidt.html Figure 4.
Now if you want more than that — like interannual variations or what not –, you need more than that number of stations, but for the trend only, redundancy is very, very high. Especially on land, where those pesky urban heat islands are supposed to live.
Re: #268
bobberger,
Your last paragraph helps to confirm what the purpose of Watts’ project and website. Start with some compelling photos of weather stations, make some scientifically invalid conclusions based on them (explained why repeatedly here), routinely cherry-pick some stories of cold weather events somewhere in the world, spread fear over any proposed actions to reduce emissions and claim the public is on your side and Watts has himself a clever political message.
Although it’s the sort of thing that would get multiple invention, I think I’m the one who started calling the climate debates groundhog day. I’m actually sympathetic to the denialists politically and even think they raise interesting issues. It’s just that after 4 years of watching them make way more heat than light (for instance McIntyre has only written one “real paper” the GRL05…and no EnE does not count nor do replies to comments), I get a real downer from the whole kerfuffle.
To address your basic point, what I’d like to see more of:
1. More technical posts of a Climate Audit type level.
2. Less of a teacher to the masses type style of discussion and more of a peers canoodling things type discussion. For instance look at Volokh.com, where the writers are equivalent experts to you all (in their field) and as smart or smarter than you all (not meant as a slight, they are incredibly brainy).
3. Free-er and more rapid discussion. Stop the pre-moderation. Eschew the inline “voice of God” replies.
4. More interaction and debate (less pre-coordination) between the blog authors. For instance, Volokh.com has more disagreement between the principles.
It would be really nice if you guys that are being abusive and quite frankly somewhat childish could listen to what I have to say.
Climate science is in its infancy. We do not know all there is to know and there are many theories out there that need testing and validation “if possible “. There is no point in being closed minded and dogmatic.
I have every respect for the researchers out there including Gavin but there is no guarantee that they are on the right track. That should be no problem for a true scientist and no shame either, if they find that the evidence is pointing elsewhere.
We have to learn and accept that all is not always as it seems. What we really need to do is pool our knowledge and resources without dismissing evidence out of hand because it does not agree with our belief.
Take account of what is said and what is being observed together with the theory, collate and decide what you think is going on.
Again I say that there is no shame in being wrong, all scientists are wrong at some point.
MarkB #278
> “Start with some compelling photos of weather stations, make some scientifically invalid conclusions based on them (explained why repeatedly here), routinely cherry-pick…”
Yes, that’s how it all started, obviously. Now that 3/4 of the stations have been evaluated, it will probably take a very long time to somehow quantify the findings into anything you could use as meaningful metadata – apart from the rough categorization already done. In scientidic terms, Watts will only get anywhere with this, if he can show a systematrical error. In terms of public attention, he won’t need that unless debunked so completely, that no journalist would touch the matter.
dhogaza #275
“Happy now?
Lets say “happier” ;)
The agreement with Satellite data is of course a powerful argument. However I have two questions (and be patient with me here if this is obvious – I didn’t find it when simply googling for the words).
1) As I understand it, the satellites measure temperature not directly but through interpretation of microwave measurements. If these interpretations somehow rely on the surface stations for calibration and if this calibration is an ongoing process or included a timeseries rather than a single moment in time (it would have to, I guess) then that agreement could mean that a surface station bias has actually transferred into the satellite record.
2) Your example shows the entire record from 1979 between RSS and GISTEMP. If I chose UAH NSSTC instead, I get a lower trend – so comparing only GISTEMP and RSS is probably not sufficient to make that point without further explanation.
About the winds. There are many simple contemporaneous examples, which can help extrapolate possible climate scenarios. A warmer world simply put, is summer, given that it is known that less winds occur in summer at least in the USA continent, is a strong indicator or confirmation of the cited paleo climate wind estimate. But if we sum up all wind events, the average , may be the same, given stronger hurricanes from a warmer ocean. Therefore the complexity of climate is attached to regions which may not be used to extrapolate the climate scene world wide. But given that the contiguous US has less winds during summer, means that paleo climatic regions during a warmer world, had similar events, droughts, different less windy ecosystems…
Likewise ENSO effects during summer not being alike during winter reveals ENSO mechanisms
affecting world wide climate. It is pretty important to get a grasp present day events in order to go back, or forward, in time.
#267,
Yes, the enourmous mass of Venus’ atmosphere is provided by carbon dioxide which, on Earth, is locked up in carbonate rock such as limestone. And, the most important slow negative feedback to increased carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is increased weathering of silicate rock to release metal ions to form carbonates. This absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It happens that most limestone formation is mediated biologically but it can also happen through precipitation from solution.
It seems to me that while this process is happening, carbon should be leaving the atmosphere. If the process is halted or reversed, then that would not happen and eventually volcanic activity would convert much limestone to carbon dioxide as the Earth resurfaces itself. Surface limestone might also be attacked by acids. Barring that, as soon as we completely run out of hydrocarbons, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should begin to fall owing to the formation of carbonates and, so long as not all water is lost through the loss of hydrogen, which would take quite a while, there should be cooling and a return to “normal” conditions. If by “normal” we mean life re-evolving from extremophiles and such.
Perhaps also I am misreading Hansen and he does not mean a permanent conversion but only a temporary one until the slow feedbacks can catch up.
It is quite a vision, huge trucks lumbering along filled with black goo as the atmospheric pressure at sea level rises to 1.2 atmospheres owing to the vapor burden in the tropics. People watching the price of oil to see if more investments in trucks makes good sense. Then nothing.
But that is not so different from what we are doing now as the price of oil rises above $70/barrel. It seems to me that we should be forcing the price of oil down so that no more of those truly monster trucks are built. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2008/06/oil-is-too-expensive.html
Press wrote:
“What we really need to do is pool our knowledge and resources without dismissing evidence out of hand because it does not agree with our belief.”
What about dismissing beliefs that do not agree with the evidence?
They don’t.
UAH has had a long history of making errors. I choose RSS because of their overall better track record (after all, the RSS folks were involved in uncovering some of the early UAH errors).
I also don’t like the blatant politicization of the UAH team, who allowed their first results to be trumpeted as showing “the world is cooling, not warming!”, if not actively promoting the view. Roy Spencer posts absolute garbage on his website which is no more than anti-AGW FUD.
I don’t think their political views cause them to intentionally skew their results, but their track record is what it is.
Bobberber writes:
> – I didn’t find it when simply googling for the
> words)… If … and if …or …rather than… I
> guess) … could mean … bias has actually
> transferred into the satellite record.
Or you could look it up. What terms did you search for that you couldn’t find this for yourself and had to post your whatever that is?
Try:
http://www.google.com/search?q=satellite+temperature+calibration
or
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=satellite+temperature+calibration
Notice the difference in the quality of the results.
Chris (#283),
You are apparently assuming that the oceans could be boiled by the forcing from the combustion of fossil fuels and the known feedbacks.
But if what we had been told previously is correct, that is a bit more CO2 would only make the planet a bit hotter and if a good bit more solar radiation is required for the oceans to boil no matter the amount of fossil fuels burned, then it follows that another forcing is required for Hansen’s scenario to unfold.
So consider this: Hansen may not be overturning what was previously theorized about a runaway greenhouse on Earth. He may instead be proposing the emergence of some self-sustaining super-feedback of doom capable of keeping ever growing amounts of outgoing longwave radiation from cooling the planet as the oceans boil away.
In that case, the weathering of CO2 (which I assume would indeed be expected to occur as long as some water remains) might not stop the runaway once the super-feedback has been triggered and the planet would never become habitable again.
But I hate to speculate about Hansen’s doomsday scenario and I wonder if anyone knows whether he has been more explicit elsewhere about the mechanism which would enable it.
AC, when you get the upper atmosphere hot enough, hydrogen boils off. That’s, last I recall reading, what happened to Venus. Lose the hydrogen and you can’t make water. So to speak.
> “They don’t.”
Yes, found it. Thanks. So unless there was an airconditioner flying along with every radiosonde…
> “… had to post your whatever that is?”
I’d call it a question. Maybe a question based on wrong or misunderstood information and certainly one I could have answered myself without pestering this blog – but a question no less.
Gavin, I’m looking at your book, “Picturing the Science” – and let me tell you, the “Getting Our Technological Fix” chapter by Frank Zeman is atrocious, as is the foreward.
Coal carbon capture is nonsense – none of the technologies described in that chapter have any chance of solving the problem. Considering that both Jeffrey Sachs (author of the forward) and Frank Zeman are at Colombia, one really has to wonder what is going on. That was one of the most distorting energy articles I’ve ever read, loaded down with inaccuracies and false claims – truly unbelievable. It pretty much destroys the book, I’m afraid – highly distorting.
Would realclimate authors be willing to sign a petition asking President Obama to direct the NAS to conduct and independent review of the scientific plausibility of coal carbon capture schemes? Or would that be an assault on academic collegiality? Just curious.
[Response: Do please calm down. If you have an issue with Frank’s chapter, feel free to take it up with him, but you are overreacting. CCS is not nonsense – it’s not imminent either, but the technology to do it is relatively mature – it’s not fusion. Is it used in bad ways politically? Yes. But neither Frank nor myself nor Sachs have ever done so. If you have any specific issues, I’d be happy to look into it. – gavin]
Re # 260 Thanks for the links. Did you check Plate A2 on page 47 of http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1999/1999_Hansen_etal.pdf. It shows that the Rural stations have been cooling and the Rural + Small Town + Adjusted Urban are flat since 1950.
Jim N
Press says, “Climate science is in its infancy.”
Horse Puckey. It’s more than 150 years old!. The role of greenhouse gasses has been known for more than a century, ferchrissake.
I have an idea: why don’t you go out and actually learn the science so you can comment on it intelligently. I am sorry, but if you can say that climate science is in its infancy, it is clear you have made zero effort to understand the science. Try making points that are not ridiculous and you will not face ridicule.
The RC contributors and moderators on occasion post and comment on issues outside the core sciences of climatology, and touch on related fields such as geology, economics, sociology, engineering, politics, etc.
And for good reason, I think.
There is a logic jump between “the Earth is warming” and “so vote for this legislation” for instance. To move the climate change conversation foreward, we need to talk about “the rest of the science”. Maybe guest contributors from other fields?
Bob, what search terms did you try? Seriously, it helps to know what failed to work out.
It’s too easy to make up things that might be true based on a series of what-ifs. Leads people to wish the ideas were true or believe them when they find them later on and don’t read the followups, I suggest.
That’s true on all sides, people worry about things that can’t be happening based on the what-ifs. So learning how people do and don’t check facts is useful.
Hank
Actually I pretty much used the terms you suggested but interpreted the results wrongly. I had a picture in my mind that suggested the calibration must have something to do with direct surface temperature measurements and therefore only browsed through the (rather complex) papers in search of the “and this is how we derive the surface temperature from the microwave flux” chapter – not realizing that it wouldn’t be anything like so easy.
I can confidently say, however, that I wasn’t about to make anything up – hence my questions.
> CCS technology … relatively mature
Gavin, I’d guess Ike’s thinking about capturing CO2 from hot coal plant combustion flue gas — being funded now in the US. Is that mature? How long a baseline do we have on storage (reinjection into wells, I guess, has anyone gone back to look at early reinjection wells to see if they are still holding CO2 gas pressure after they were pumped out of oil?)
Re experience with CO2 storage in reinjection wells (Hank #295):
The IPCC special report on “Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage” noted that “lack of comprehensive monitoring of [Enhanced Oil Recovery] projects … makes it difficult to quantify storage” (p. 203). So I guess it’s hard now to make up for the lack of interest back in the 1970s about what would happen to the CO2 after they got the oil up. But look up these pilot projects: Weyburn in Canada (since 2000), comprehensively monitored by the IEA; Sleipner/Utsira in Norway (injecting into a saline formation under the seabed since 1996).
Ray Ladbury @292, Ray I understand more than you might believe and for that very reason also understand that our fact base is far from complete. The question of feedback “negative and positive”, ocean currents, aerosols, solar influence, magnetic influence, orbital anomalies and a whole bunch more are yet to be answered in any detail. How do various factors interlace?, do cosmic rays have an effect?, what causes ice ages?, why has the climate varied so much over the ages?.
When you can answer these points with authority I will listen and worship – until then – lets try to learn instead.
Looks to me like they’ve gone up by Error 404 degrees …
[Response: I moved the trailing period – gavin]
Ummmm…
Could someone tell me what Groundhog Day is all about? Seems to be something American (?) and being a simple Irish peasant, I could do with some help.
Thanks in advance.