As a physician, if we treat the earth as an “organism” with an addiction (to oil/coal/energy) then an SBIRT (screeing, brief intervention, referal to therapy) model applies…….for which the screening is positive – we have adverse effects. But are we really willing to take any interventions? Drive cars less? live smaller? From the human addiction model, its usually only when a person really is hurting that change happens. In this vein – it seems Hansen’s Carbon tax is the best proposal eg a “stick”. Then we can start using the generated capital to create transit/bike/alternatives all to help reduce our use. We’ll likely see how much “pain” it requires in the form of negative impacts, major climate events (droughts, fires, hurricanes, heat waves) and human suffering. Hopefully we embrace the need for change before the organism (the Earth) suffers irreversibly.
Reviewers are selected by editors of the journal to which the paper was submitted. These editors are mainly unpaid. For example most (all?, not sure) of the editors of PNAS (Proceedings of the Academy of Science of the United States of America) are members of the academy. They will select reviewers that they feel are competent to review a given article. Their belief that a given scientist is competent to review an article would be based on their knowledge of that scientists work which is generally a matter of public record. One way to find reviewers is for the editor to quickly read the paper and find the key references and select authors of the key references. Are reviewers remarks avaialble to the general public? No. Occasionally a journal will publish a very controversial paper and make some qualifying remarks regarding the work. I believe this has happened during the last two decades with regard to “cold fusion” and also to a paper or two that purported to show a scientific basis for homeopathy. That is the editorial board of the journal making a statement which is substantially different than making public the reviewers remarks. However, scientists can comment in a variety of ways on published papers. The most common way to comment on a paper that one doesn’t agree with is simply to ignore it. Most scientific papers are doomed to obscurity; the vast majority are never cited.
Ken Rogerssays
Inferred from your concern about the planet’s temperature going up, you believe there is an optimum, (cooler), temperature for the planet. Could you provide the optimum temperature.
[Response: You infer incorrectly. The problem is change, not value. – gavin]
Jiminmplssays
#487 Does CO2 enhance plant growth?
Yes. This has been well-established in both controlled greenhouse and (to a much lesser extent) field studies. Increased CO2 levels also enhance drought resistance.
As with most things of importance, however, it is not that simple. Plant growth may be limited by nitrogen availability – enough to make planting trees as carbon offsets ineffective. Growth may actually be slowed with increased precipitation and/or ozone. Nutrient density may be substantially reduced (though improved in some plants.)
This is an area of intense study and the articles and papers make for interesting reading.
“Gavin 512:
But why would glaciers be retreating due to heat, if temperatures have been flat for 10 years?
[Response: Even if they had (which they haven’t), the glaciers integrate over time (decades or longer). They are therefore reacting to the long term change in temperature and in many places have not come close to coming into equilibrium with current conditions. – gavin]”
This is simple: the glaciers were built in a colder world. The past decade has been the warmest for a very, very long time, so think of it this way:
Take an ice cube out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator. You can even turn your fridge to the lowest setting, which should still be above zero. What happens to the ice cube? (Hint: it melts because the temps, while still cold, are not cold enough.)
Ron R.says
Joe Blanchard #478: What Gavin said.
Punksta #512: See Comment #401. Glaciers melting are just one part of the GW picture.
B Sueksdorfsays
No Gavin (#556) It is the rate of change locally in time that is important not the absolute number.
[Response: That’s what I said. – gavin]
anonymoussays
What strikes me most – as a climate change agnostic – is that the whole debate, politically speaking, revolves around consensus and appeals to authority. And you know what the problem with this is? I can’t reproduce Mann’s results. Granted, I understand that I have a lot to understand regarding climate change, but even a cursory analysis of temperature data shows cooling in the last decade. Had the political proponents of AGW not pinned their arguments on the “consensus” of scientists, but rather, evidence based methods, the CRU leak would mean little, if anything. Instead, I must look at the actual data because both sides have well-articulated, convincing, opinions. How else would a laymen know whom to trust? Or perhaps we should not trust anyone, and those scientists arguing for AGW should phrase their arguments in such a way that the average layman can reconstruct their results for themselves…
[Response: What result are you trying to reproduce? Mann et al 2008 and 2009 are that groups latest papers and all the code is available on line. And none of it has anything to do with temperatures over the last 10 years. I applaud your desire to learn things for yourself, but I strongly suggest starting with the actual papers and the IPCC reports rather than online sources that don’t appear to be too reliable. – gavin]
B Sueksdorfsays
Let me restate that ,It is the 2nd derivative that is important not the first.
Ben Fsays
Suggestion for an ongoing thread: “Climate Change in the Media”.
Rationale: I think a lot of people (including me) are coming into the climate debate and trying to understand the issues enough to make intelligent personal and political decisions. We read popular science accounts and try to figure out (a) If the information is accurate, and (b) If we’re understanding the implications correctly. I would love to have a place where I could put a link to the story up along with my understanding of the implication and get intelligent comments (and hopefully a minimum of politics/name-calling).
Here’s an example of the kind of story I would love to get a perspective on: About a month ago ScienceDaily ran an article that said in part:
“A new study indicates that major chemicals most often cited as leading causes of climate change, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention.
Purdue University and NASA examined more than a dozen chemicals, most of which are generated by humans, and have developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appear in a special edition of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry A, released Nov. 12.
The compounds, which contain fluorine atoms, are far more efficient at blocking radiation in the “atmospheric window,” said Purdue Professor Joseph Francisco, who helped author the study.”
I don’t have access to the original study and probably couldn’t understand most of it if I did, but the article leaves me with several questions: Is this getting reported accurately? If so, is the information in the study accurate? Is the study saying that current warming is mostly caused by the chemicals they talk about, or that these chemicals will become a more serious problem than CO2 at some point in the future?
There have been a lot of things like that in the news lately and I would love to have a place to go to get intelligent scientific comments on some of them.
#556 and #560 Gavin only gives a partial answer to the “Could you provide the optimum temperature” which is perhaps the denialist meme which makes me angriest. perhaps that is the intention. The implication of course is that there is nothing more involved in the temperature of the planet than there is in moving a thermostat up or down by a degree or two. And if the denialists and their friends want the temp moved up by a degree or two or three, then who are we to say that this is too warm? The “optimum temperature” is about what it was say 100 years ago or thereabouts. This is the temp (and its consequences) that all the present day plant and animal species have in effect adapted to. This is the temp (and its consequences) that has allowed agriculture to feed 7 billion people. It is the temp (and its consequences) that has resulted in the current pattern of occupation (mainly around coasts) of those 7 billion humans. It is the temp that allows them water supplies. It is the temp (and its consequences) that allows them to gain a large proportion of their food from the sea. It is the temp (and its consequences) that allows the forests and oceans and ice caps to act as stabilisers for climate.
Turn up the thermostat and the consequences aren’t just a few warmer days in winter in Chicago, but dust bowls in grain growing areas of Australia and Africa and, yes, America, and dying coral reefs and forests. Turn up the CO2 and you are not adding “plant food” but acidity to already overstretched ocean ecosystems. Turn up the warmth and melting glaciers remove water supplies from billions of people. Raise the sea levels (and increase storm activity) and life on the coasts will become deadly for hundreds of millions of people. Do all of those things and the massive loss of plant and animal species, unable to adapt fast enough, will ruin ecosystems that are millions of years old. Ecosystems that in turn have helped to support human life.
Here is another anecdote to add to the others. I farm in Australia. The changes already are making it clear to anyone with half a brain that agriculture in Australia, especially the southern half, is going to become impossible. So this is not just some academic clever clever little jest about these funny scientists and how they presume to judge where we should set the Earth’s thermostat. This is real life. And real death.
So go away and do some study, little man, and stop with the denialist talking points of “optimum temp”. I’m too hot, and too concerned about bush fires, to respond gladly to fools.
Gavin: give us a thread where we can create a “buzzword bingo” game for RC threads.
For instance: a square for when someone says “you believe there is an optimum, (cooler), temperature for the planet. Could you provide the optimum temperature.”
Another square for “cooling in the last decade.”
Another for “cyclical.”
“Urban Heat Island.”
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc…
Chantssays
Skeptics and the rest of us agree that CO2 is a GHG, and it contributes to global warming, and that it has caused warming. What would be interesting is a discussion on an the current scientific discussion regarding the positive feedback of CO2.
Tom Daytonsays
R. Hayley #487 regarding increased CO2 helping plants grow:
The generalization of Jiminpls’s #557 response to you is that plants can’t grow any better than their limiting factor, which might be not CO2, but nitrogen, water, light,…. Even if they do grow “better,” the betterment often is not to the advantage of farmers; for example, the extra mass can go into non-consumable woody stalk, which makes the crop more expensive to process than any extra grain/fruit value. And weeds such as poison ivy and kudzu respond much “better” to increased CO2 than do many crops, but “better” is not better for people, and not better for plants that those weeds compete with.
Some plants grow worse at higher temperature, offsetting gains from CO2 spurring growth. For details see the USDA report I linked to in my earlier comment.
Tom Daytonsays
TRY #496 wrote “Ultimately, looking at the planet from space, you would see a different emitted radiation pattern with CO2 vs without CO2?”
> Is this getting reported accurately?
Close enough
> If so, is the information in the study accurate?
Time will tell, but probably
> Is the study saying that current warming is mostly caused
> by the chemicals they talk about,
No
> or that these chemicals will become a more serious problem
> than CO2 at some point in the future?
Not likely anytime soon
That’s just my opinion from what I’ve read in the past, someone will come up with a cite to the actual paper, then we can look for it.
I’m looking for some kind of study of the systematic errors in the global surface trend that might arise from disappearing stations. I have discussed this with Tom Drayton, but I can’t find anything in the literature. See here for graph of surface trend with number of stations in each year. (Tom: have been generating the graphs you asked for.)
Rattus Norvegicussays
The press release seems about right, at least as you quote it. This does not seem to be particularly original research, perhaps the ranking is what got it published?
The one thing that is left out are the amounts released into the atmosphere. If the amounts are small, the effect is small. And the amounts are vanishingly small. There was some discussion of this earlier this year in blogworld, I believe the culprit being discussed was NF, but I could well be wrong.
dhogazasays
“anonymous” said …
What strikes me most – as a climate change agnostic – is that the whole debate, politically speaking, revolves around consensus and appeals to authority. And you know what the problem with this is? I can’t reproduce Mann’s results.
This could be evidence of "fraud" on Mann's part …
Or sheer incompetence on yours. Since Mann's results have been substantiated by many other researchers working with other proxy results, etc …
I'd suggest that a second deduction – you're incompetent – is more likely.
But if you're not incompetent, publish, save the world, win a reputation much like Michael Jordan's, and save us.
Go for it.
Before you've crossed your i's and t's though – don't waste our time, finish up and publish.
We'll still be here when you do … I mean don't.
dhogazasays
Skeptics and the rest of us agree that CO2 is a GHG
“…the whole debate, politically speaking, revolves around consensus and appeals to authority.
…
“How else would a laymen know whom to trust?
…
perhaps we should not trust anyone, and those scientists arguing for AGW should phrase their arguments in such a way that the average layman can reconstruct their results for themselves…”
Trouble is, even if scientists bend over backwards to simplify the necessary descriptions, the layman is going to need an “E” for effort. So your choices are, do work, or rely on authority. If you don’t make your brain burn the necessary glucose, you’re going to be at the mercy of authority. If you do the work, you’ll find out soon enough what’s what. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck at “agnostic”, and not a very good one, either.
My my, weren’t you just waiting to pounce. As always, context is key. The discussion is climate, so weather is noise. You simply can’t look at the weather on a given day and tell anyone how much of it has to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming and how much of it is just weather. Gavins ENSO example is a perfect illustration of context.
Try to remember, this web site is called RealClimate not RealWeather.
Spaceman Spiffsays
anonymous @561 said:
“Granted, I understand that I have a lot to understand regarding climate change, but even a cursory analysis of temperature data shows cooling in the last decade. Had the political proponents of AGW not pinned their arguments on the “consensus” of scientists, but rather, evidence based methods…”
….
This is the latest posting of global average temperatures from NASA/GISS since 1880. 2009 is expected to arrive somewhere near that empty box at the far upper right of the plot. What sort of “cursory analysis” indicates cooling over the last decade? Other than the fact that 1998 had a granddaddy of an El Nino event, how do the past 10 years differ from any other 10 year period, in terms of the up-and-down-about-the-trend?
Look what happened in the decade 1980-90 (look at the yearly data points not the running average in red). It went up for two years, then down for a year, then back up for a year, and then back down for two years, then back up for 3 years, then back down the next, and finally up in 1990. Go back 1 decade and repeat. Go forward 1 decade and repeat. The short term behavior stuff looks pretty much the same.
Q: So is the Earth cooling or is it warming?
Answer — we cannot tell on any baseline less than ~10 years or so, because the signal in global changes in climate can accumulate to overwhelm the “noise” only on longer time scales. Much of that 1-2 year up-down business is the background hiss of annual-scale sloshing of energy within ocean and atmospheric currents (e.g., ENSO, volcanoes, and other such shorter term effects). It is the long-term trend that is telling us something different. Can you see the big picture?
There are apparent medium-term events as well. For example, you might wonder about about the ~25 year plateau in temperature, ~1945-1970. There are many other factors besides injection of CO2 in the atmosphere that act as important climate forcings. Aerosols from “dirty” industrial/power-generation sources of combustion can and did dim the Sun before most of the industrialized world cleaned up their smokestack emissions (this is likely over-simplified, but hopefully useful nevertheless — the experts can chime in). The excess aerosols did so directly and indirectly by acting as cloud seeding nuclei. The Sun has ~11-year oscillations in total irradiance, as well as gentler longer term trends upward or downward — as illustrated here. And the climate scientists can provide you with a list of various climate forcing agents that act on various time scales, both at present and times past. Some are better understood than others.
These and other climate forcing signals sum together both destructively and constructively, using an analogy. And yet despite all of that going on, the green markers tell the story of interest here — a long-term, if non-monotonic, trend upwards.
Tamino illustrates the story in pictures and maths better than I can in words.
Doug Bostromsays
Ray Ladbury says: 23 December 2009 at 6:49 PM
Fortunately NOAA-N Prime is indeed in polar circular orbit, ~102 minutes. Even better, equipped w/multi-channel hi-res radiation sensor.
Now, hopefully it’ll last long enough to be of value!
For an article may I suggest a “Pitfalls of Discussion” entry?
I am American, Southern, and a Republican – the very image of the most common slurs found on this and every other Global Warming site, and its gotten me more than a little disgusted at stereotypes thrown my way.
What’s missing is a Do and Don’t list in discussions, as well as some basic education. My suggestions:
1) Clarify what “peer review” really is. Unless its changed or is different in climatology, I was taught peer review is inherently skeptical. The casual tossing about of the word “consensus” seems to drive right over my assumption that peer review starts with one scientist looking at another’s work in an error checking fashion, from starting assumptions to data set to forumula and techniques right on to the grammar used in the summary. Skepticism and science were explained to me to be very close cousins. The villification of the word “skeptic” sends up a huge red flag to me and others, as it should be an alien concept when science is concerned.
2) Scientists should be the first howling down politicians and activists that use specific weather events as proof of AGW. Hurricane Katrina was given poster child status for Global Warming, particularly by German Environmental Minister Tritten (though echoed by many) as a prime example. When the next few years failed to produce hurricanes to match Katrina, much of the dire warnings of Global Warming sounded very hollow. One can’t have it both ways – proclaiming a specific disasterous weather event is a call to action on Global Warming and then stating that a weather event that doesn’t fit the template is irrelevant goes to the heart of credibility.
3) Stop villifying Americans. The USA is no less enlightened than any other Western nation, and we haven’t cornered the market on stupid people. Beginning a conversation with an insult is the least likely way to gain positive influence.
4) Similarly, tying one unrelated belief to another is counter productive and irrelevant. If a Flat Earther is convinced of AGW does it make it bunk science since he clearly has other beliefs that are easily proven false?
5) One can be highly skeptical and opposed to political solutions offered to counter Global Warming without being a “denialist.” Too often being critical of mechanisms to counter Global Warming is written off as irrational denial of the problems before us rather than an invitation to discussion. For example, I am in favor of permissive action before restrictive ones; tax incentives for devices that generate less emissions are far more easy to accept than punishing taxes. We replaced our central air and heating unit for a much more efficient one for self evident reasons; had the government forced us to do so outside of our own financial means with the rallying call of Global Warming it would have been less so.
And so on…
Edward Greischsays
526 Jiminmpls: I gave you the email address at Hyperion. Ask them.
Fuel supply for nuclear: Yucca Mountain holds a plentiful supply. Just recycle as we did in the old days. Coal ashes and cinders also hold a bountiful supply of uranium and thorium. See: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html
There are plenty of places to mine uranium by in situ leaching all over the world.
U239 breeds to trans-uranics which are good fuel. Thorium breeds to U233 which is good fuel. Any price problem is purely artificial.
Edward Greischsays
549 Anne van der Bom: The price of the nuclear power plant has to be averaged over its 40 or 60 year life because, once you build it, the fuel is almost free. Fuel is almost free because so little is needed. You need 100 Million times as much coal as uranium to get the same energy. You buy uranium by the pound and coal by the trainload. Don’t be fooled by up front price.
Edward Greischsays
550 Hank Roberts: Reference: “Google and the myth of universal knowledge” by Jean-Noel Jeanneney 2007 The original is in French.
When you do a Google search, you get “sponsored” links on the right side and “non-sponsored” links on the left. The “NON-SPONSORED” links on Google ARE LISTED IN THE ORDER OF THE HIGHEST BIDDER to lowest bidder. Companies pay dollars to Google to get web sites other than their own that lie in favor of the paying company to be at the top of the “non-sponsored” list. Google search results in your getting nothing but corporate propaganda. Since the coal industry has a $100 Billion per year income at stake, they can and must share a lot of money with Google.
Page 32: 62% of internet users questioned make no distinction whatever between advertising and other information, and only 18% proved capable of telling which data were paid for by companies for their promotion and which were not.”
“92% of users of search engines have full confidence in the results of their search, and 71% (users for less than five years) consider that information from this source [Google] is never biased in any way.”
Suggestion: Use only Google Advanced or Google Scholar. On Google Advanced, specify either the .gov domain or the .edu domain. Otherwise, use only web sites that http://www.RealClimate.org uses or the IPCC.
There should be a law requiring Google to disclose the above and the donors and the dollars for each “non-sponsored” link. Environmentalists should work on Google legislation first.
Robsays
You always say the AGW message stands strong independent of Mann et al. There are no hockey sticks produced that does not depend on either Mann’s Bristlecone pines or Briffa’s Yamal trees. I.e. excluding both and still looks lika a hockey stick.
In another thread eric was referring to this paper showing the Mann “independence”. In what way does this paper show any temperature reconstruction backing Manns claims. Wasn’t evident from the summary at least. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/crowley.html
the other thread:
**********
My main questions revolve around the MWP and LIA. Are there peer reviewed articles other than Jones, Briffa, Mann, etc. that do not depend in any way on any ‘team’ member’s articles that also show flat temperatures trends for the past 2000 years ?
[Response: If you define ‘team’ as Steve McIntyre does, meaning anyone that corroborates these results, then obviously no. But the real answer is, yes, of course. Tom Crowley’s paper in Science from about 10 years ago is a nice example, here. Contrary to claims that this paper depends on Mann et al.’s work, it doesn’t. Nor do several other of the figures shown e.g. here, though there is some overlap in the underlying data used. There is no overlap of people or data in the work by Oerlemans, also shown in that figure (as discussed here.–eric]/
**********
Robsays
Gavin@537
Seems hard yes. Since this thread is a wish-list thread. My wish is that you dedicate a thread explaining how it is possible that CO2 are able to trap more heat though it would be satisfied, or close to, already by the amount of CO2 currently up there. Thanks!
Ray Ladburysays
Anonymous says, “What strikes me most – as a climate change agnostic – is that the whole debate, politically speaking, revolves around consensus and appeals to authority.”
WRONG!!! Climate change is about basic physics and evidence, and anyone who is not too lazy or stupid to learn the basic science can inspect that evidence.
“…even a cursory analysis of temperature data shows cooling in the last decade.”
WRONG AGAIN!!!
The warming trend continues. This was the warmest decade on record.
Look, dude. There’s a “START HERE” button up in the upper right hand corner of this page. Go there. Start learning. But please take one thing with you. Scientific consensus is about evidence, because as scientists we have agreed to side with the preponderance of evidence. This isn’t just some altruistic decision. Our success as scientists depends on our ability to use the evidence to acheive an understanding of what we are studying. In this case, the evidence is overwhelming. Go learn it.
Ray Ladburysays
Ron, blueshift, et al.
Don’t get discouraged. Stratospheric cooling is not that easy to understand. In addition to the figure from Clough and Iacono that Gavin cited, you have to remember the temperature profile of the stratosphere:
In contrast to the troposphere, temperature in the stratosphere increases with height. As a result, you will have more CO2 molecules in their excited vibrational state high in the atmosphere than you will down below. At least some of those molecules will decay radiatively. If you increase the amount of CO2 in the stratophere, that’s more excited CO2, more radiative decays and hence more IR radiation escaping. And so you get a cooling stratosphere.
The cooling with increasing altitude that you get in the troposphere leads to warming with increased CO2. Hopefully that reminder fills in some gaps. If not, ask some more questions, but don’t get frustrated.
Ray Ladburysays
Frank Giger @579,
First let me say that I sympathize with your predicament. Despite being somewhat left of center in my own politics (mainly social issues), I also agree that merely using climate change as a platform for bashing conservatives is counterproductive.
I think it is important to distinguish between the science of climate change–which is very solid–and mitigation and prevention mechanisms which are very much a work in progress. However, accepting the science is a prerequisite to an effective program for mitigation. I agree that skepticism is essential to science, but skepticism must be based on understanding. Merely rejecting the science because it is counter-intuitive–or worse, because one does not like the implications of the science–is not skpeticism, but rather ignorance at best (that’s curable) and possibly denialism.
I will be among the first to applaud the leadership of Lindsey Graham in advocating a vigorous response to climate change. You must admit, though, that Senator Graham is conspicuous among Republicans in this support. Senator Inhofe is much more vocal in his denial of reality, and there is a strident wing of your party that is extremely irresponsible in their rejection of science. While this may bring them temporary success, even adulation, I think it is potentially disastrous, not just for the Republicans but also for the US. For one thing, it makes it very easy for your opponents to paint the party as being anti-scientific, and scientists would have to be superhuman not to be put off by the strident attacks on science (both here and wrt evolution) and scientists.
As liberals and conservatives, there are areas where we can agree to disagree, but there are areas where we must find common ground. I hope that you will agree that acceptance of sound science is one of these areas. By all means, you should advocate for solutions that are acceptable to you politically, but these solutions must be effective against the threat. Acceptance of the science must be the start.
The strategies for dealing with climate change are being developed even as we speak, and true conservatives (as opposed to reactionaries) are under-represented at the bargaining table. I hope that reasonable conservatives such as yourself will realize that the threat is real and bring constructive suggestions to the dialog.
Douglas Wisesays
re #578 Spaceman Spiff
You suggest that the temperature plateau between 1945 and 1970 can be explained by polluting aerosol dimming which has subsequently been rectified. I am familiar with this explanation and have tended to accept it. However, to what extent have the Indians and Chinese cleaned up their acts? Are their aerosols less severe than ours were? Alternatively, should we expect much more warming if they clean up or are their black carbon emission effects swamping those of SO2 such that a clean up would cool?
2. Interest. At a modest 4% interest rate, an investment of 26 billion will cost you $1 billion per year in interest payments. At an estimated 80% lifetime capacity factor a 2.4 GW plant will produce ~17 TWh anually. The interest alone then sets a minimum price of $0.06 per kWh.
Ben F–the story means each molecule of those chemicals blocks a lot more IR than a molecule of CO2. It doesn’t mean they’re a major influence on climate because there’s a lot more CO2 out there than other greenhouse gases.
1. Any suggestions for books the library could buy? The only books they seemed to have in stock were the above text and a book by Nicholsa Stern the others all sounded like ones by deniers. They did say they had some money to buy new books and if I could suggest some good ones they might buy them. I live in th UK and think the best books would be ones that were reasonably acessible to people with little or no scientific knowledge.
Louise, for a lay audience, a couple of books stand out: Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (if you do some searching, you can find her New Yorker articles entitled “The Climate of Man” on which the book was based) and Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe’s Climate Change: Picturing the Science. I would also consider David Archer’s The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate, which has an excellent explanation of the science and Joe Romm’s Hell and High Water, which has more details on the political side, including possible solutions. Books that are focused on the dire consequences include Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas and Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future by Peter Ward.
All of these books are at our public library, and I found them all to be pageturners. There are other good books recommended by other posters here, but I haven’t had the chance to read them yet. Gavin’s book is pretty recent and might get the slight edge, and it has pictures.
Jiminmplssays
#582
I’m sorry Ed, but you are misinformed. Fuel cost does matter – not as much as for coal or natural gas, but it does matter. For every doubling in uranium fuel costs, the cost of electricity production will increase by 7%. Uranium fuel costs have and will continue to increase far more rapidly than the cost of oil.
Construction costs of new nuclear plants does indeed matter. FPL customers will be paying 30% higher rates for ten years BEFORE the new Turkey Point plants even come online – and that’s with a 50% federal subsidy.
4th generation plants – including Hyperion’s mobile reactors – will be game changers, but they are years if not decades off. Westinghouse and Areva made grandiose promises about their third generation designs that have proven false. Even in China, the overnight costs for new nuclear power plants is over $2.5k per kW.
[edit – no personal attacks]
Ray Ladburysays
Hi Douglas @589, The aerosols that caused the dimming from 1944-1975 were caused by burning high-sulfur fuels. That was where the clean air legislation made the biggest difference. China and to a lesser extent India are relatively new to the energy-intensive economy game. However, they have at least been somewhat sensitive to the issue of high-sulfur fuels. In India, they were worried about damage to the Taj Mahal due to acid rain and restricted power plants around Delhi-Agra. And it may be that sulfate aerosols are having a dimming effect. It is just that CO2 levels are high enough now that we are overcoming that effect.
Rob: There are no hockey sticks produced that does not depend on either Mann’s Bristlecone pines or Briffa’s Yamal trees.
BPL: Dead wrong. Mann et al. got the same results in 2008 excluding ALL the tree ring data. Go read the paper:
Mann, Michael E.; Zhihua Zhang, Malcolm K. Hughes, Raymond S. Bradley, Sonya K. Miller, Scott Rutherford, and Fenbiao Ni 2008. “Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia.” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 105, 13252-13257.
Didactylossays
Anne van der Bom:
Any honest comparison of energy costs will use full lifecycle costs, from building to decommissioning and waste management. Trying to nickel and dime the outcome by questioning line items is, therefore, a waste of your energy.
It irritates me no end when people try to argue that nuclear power is not economical. Clearly it is! France makes a lot of money selling surplus electricity to other countries.
The problem with wind isn’t economic either (although presently it is, on average, more expensive than some other forms of energy). It is simply a matter of finding places to build, and dealing with all the obstructionist NIMBYs. Really, wind has exactly the same problem as nuclear. People!
I would like to see a discussion on which solar reconstructions should be used. Older studies are still given more citations than newer, probably due to publishing lag. There are quite a few TSI reconstructions in print and all the newer ones (TMK) indicate less variation of TSI in the past.
[Response: Oddly enough, I just finished putting a lot of these together for the paleo-component of the set of model runs being done for the next IPCC report. Comments welcome! – gavin]
Dwightsays
I agree with the general suspicion regarding the usefulness of anecdotal data, even if it is related to the kind of thing which makes a majority of the population go thumbs up or thumbs down on AGW. If people don’t FEEL that it is getting warmer (that really hot summer which gave Pat Robertson a Road to Damascus experience; or so I have heard) then they will be hard convince to dig into their pockets or inconvenience themselves.
But something like Thoreau’s Journal, with its recording of flowering dates of many species, and often first and last frosts, is a more substantial kind of record and very convincing that we have warmed (especially in relation to growing season) since the 1850’s. Obviously, there is still a lot of noise in that he can be describing a winter thaw on a given date, while we are experiencing bitter cold and vice versa.
I have read a number of journals from the period and always try to connect descriptions of storms, first frosts, last frosts, etc. I know from reading someone else’s journal that Thoreau’s first summer at Walden was exceptionally hot and have wondered if that fact, unmentioned by him in Walden (which, unlike the journals is NOT a good weather indicator, since he models his data considerably, even includes incidents which happened long after he left Walden etc.)
contributed to his deciding NOT to grow beans in his second summer and have to do the related sweaty weeding etc.
Some local professor is doing detailed research with the journal to document the warming. My level of study is simply grounding each of my current days with accounts of that date in the past. On this date in 1854, they had just gotten three inches of snow an then a light rain glaze.
I have spent a lot of time, maybe too much, reading stuff on this site, lately, but I am learning. I still have questions about why the Viking graves are in perma-frost, if current melting has supposedly gone beyond what happened then, but also realize that it does not prove much conclusively in the bigger picture, one way or the other.
KeithGuysays
BPL: This meme is like a vampire that just refuses to die, but keeps getting up from the grave. It is NOT COOLING!!!
Since we’re approaching the Pantomime season:-
OH YES IT IS!
Climate Wizard — web tool
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/climate-wizard/1000419.article
As a physician, if we treat the earth as an “organism” with an addiction (to oil/coal/energy) then an SBIRT (screeing, brief intervention, referal to therapy) model applies…….for which the screening is positive – we have adverse effects. But are we really willing to take any interventions? Drive cars less? live smaller? From the human addiction model, its usually only when a person really is hurting that change happens. In this vein – it seems Hansen’s Carbon tax is the best proposal eg a “stick”. Then we can start using the generated capital to create transit/bike/alternatives all to help reduce our use. We’ll likely see how much “pain” it requires in the form of negative impacts, major climate events (droughts, fires, hurricanes, heat waves) and human suffering. Hopefully we embrace the need for change before the organism (the Earth) suffers irreversibly.
Something on how actual fuel use and emissions are estimated, measured, reported, and verified would be very interesting.
Here’s why:
http://www.sej.org/headlines/half-kids-jewelry-tested-contains-pure-lead-health-canada
Gavin,
I got this in an email from ACM. The link is to a web based tool that may be good for helping people understand climate change.
http://www.climatewizard.org/
508:
Reviewers are selected by editors of the journal to which the paper was submitted. These editors are mainly unpaid. For example most (all?, not sure) of the editors of PNAS (Proceedings of the Academy of Science of the United States of America) are members of the academy. They will select reviewers that they feel are competent to review a given article. Their belief that a given scientist is competent to review an article would be based on their knowledge of that scientists work which is generally a matter of public record. One way to find reviewers is for the editor to quickly read the paper and find the key references and select authors of the key references. Are reviewers remarks avaialble to the general public? No. Occasionally a journal will publish a very controversial paper and make some qualifying remarks regarding the work. I believe this has happened during the last two decades with regard to “cold fusion” and also to a paper or two that purported to show a scientific basis for homeopathy. That is the editorial board of the journal making a statement which is substantially different than making public the reviewers remarks. However, scientists can comment in a variety of ways on published papers. The most common way to comment on a paper that one doesn’t agree with is simply to ignore it. Most scientific papers are doomed to obscurity; the vast majority are never cited.
Inferred from your concern about the planet’s temperature going up, you believe there is an optimum, (cooler), temperature for the planet. Could you provide the optimum temperature.
[Response: You infer incorrectly. The problem is change, not value. – gavin]
#487 Does CO2 enhance plant growth?
Yes. This has been well-established in both controlled greenhouse and (to a much lesser extent) field studies. Increased CO2 levels also enhance drought resistance.
As with most things of importance, however, it is not that simple. Plant growth may be limited by nitrogen availability – enough to make planting trees as carbon offsets ineffective. Growth may actually be slowed with increased precipitation and/or ozone. Nutrient density may be substantially reduced (though improved in some plants.)
This is an area of intense study and the articles and papers make for interesting reading.
“Gavin 512:
But why would glaciers be retreating due to heat, if temperatures have been flat for 10 years?
[Response: Even if they had (which they haven’t), the glaciers integrate over time (decades or longer). They are therefore reacting to the long term change in temperature and in many places have not come close to coming into equilibrium with current conditions. – gavin]”
This is simple: the glaciers were built in a colder world. The past decade has been the warmest for a very, very long time, so think of it this way:
Take an ice cube out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator. You can even turn your fridge to the lowest setting, which should still be above zero. What happens to the ice cube? (Hint: it melts because the temps, while still cold, are not cold enough.)
Joe Blanchard #478: What Gavin said.
Punksta #512: See Comment #401. Glaciers melting are just one part of the GW picture.
No Gavin (#556) It is the rate of change locally in time that is important not the absolute number.
[Response: That’s what I said. – gavin]
What strikes me most – as a climate change agnostic – is that the whole debate, politically speaking, revolves around consensus and appeals to authority. And you know what the problem with this is? I can’t reproduce Mann’s results. Granted, I understand that I have a lot to understand regarding climate change, but even a cursory analysis of temperature data shows cooling in the last decade. Had the political proponents of AGW not pinned their arguments on the “consensus” of scientists, but rather, evidence based methods, the CRU leak would mean little, if anything. Instead, I must look at the actual data because both sides have well-articulated, convincing, opinions. How else would a laymen know whom to trust? Or perhaps we should not trust anyone, and those scientists arguing for AGW should phrase their arguments in such a way that the average layman can reconstruct their results for themselves…
[Response: What result are you trying to reproduce? Mann et al 2008 and 2009 are that groups latest papers and all the code is available on line. And none of it has anything to do with temperatures over the last 10 years. I applaud your desire to learn things for yourself, but I strongly suggest starting with the actual papers and the IPCC reports rather than online sources that don’t appear to be too reliable. – gavin]
Let me restate that ,It is the 2nd derivative that is important not the first.
Suggestion for an ongoing thread: “Climate Change in the Media”.
Rationale: I think a lot of people (including me) are coming into the climate debate and trying to understand the issues enough to make intelligent personal and political decisions. We read popular science accounts and try to figure out (a) If the information is accurate, and (b) If we’re understanding the implications correctly. I would love to have a place where I could put a link to the story up along with my understanding of the implication and get intelligent comments (and hopefully a minimum of politics/name-calling).
Here’s an example of the kind of story I would love to get a perspective on: About a month ago ScienceDaily ran an article that said in part:
“A new study indicates that major chemicals most often cited as leading causes of climate change, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention.
Purdue University and NASA examined more than a dozen chemicals, most of which are generated by humans, and have developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appear in a special edition of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry A, released Nov. 12.
The compounds, which contain fluorine atoms, are far more efficient at blocking radiation in the “atmospheric window,” said Purdue Professor Joseph Francisco, who helped author the study.”
I don’t have access to the original study and probably couldn’t understand most of it if I did, but the article leaves me with several questions: Is this getting reported accurately? If so, is the information in the study accurate? Is the study saying that current warming is mostly caused by the chemicals they talk about, or that these chemicals will become a more serious problem than CO2 at some point in the future?
There have been a lot of things like that in the news lately and I would love to have a place to go to get intelligent scientific comments on some of them.
#556 and #560 Gavin only gives a partial answer to the “Could you provide the optimum temperature” which is perhaps the denialist meme which makes me angriest. perhaps that is the intention. The implication of course is that there is nothing more involved in the temperature of the planet than there is in moving a thermostat up or down by a degree or two. And if the denialists and their friends want the temp moved up by a degree or two or three, then who are we to say that this is too warm? The “optimum temperature” is about what it was say 100 years ago or thereabouts. This is the temp (and its consequences) that all the present day plant and animal species have in effect adapted to. This is the temp (and its consequences) that has allowed agriculture to feed 7 billion people. It is the temp (and its consequences) that has resulted in the current pattern of occupation (mainly around coasts) of those 7 billion humans. It is the temp that allows them water supplies. It is the temp (and its consequences) that allows them to gain a large proportion of their food from the sea. It is the temp (and its consequences) that allows the forests and oceans and ice caps to act as stabilisers for climate.
Turn up the thermostat and the consequences aren’t just a few warmer days in winter in Chicago, but dust bowls in grain growing areas of Australia and Africa and, yes, America, and dying coral reefs and forests. Turn up the CO2 and you are not adding “plant food” but acidity to already overstretched ocean ecosystems. Turn up the warmth and melting glaciers remove water supplies from billions of people. Raise the sea levels (and increase storm activity) and life on the coasts will become deadly for hundreds of millions of people. Do all of those things and the massive loss of plant and animal species, unable to adapt fast enough, will ruin ecosystems that are millions of years old. Ecosystems that in turn have helped to support human life.
Here is another anecdote to add to the others. I farm in Australia. The changes already are making it clear to anyone with half a brain that agriculture in Australia, especially the southern half, is going to become impossible. So this is not just some academic clever clever little jest about these funny scientists and how they presume to judge where we should set the Earth’s thermostat. This is real life. And real death.
So go away and do some study, little man, and stop with the denialist talking points of “optimum temp”. I’m too hot, and too concerned about bush fires, to respond gladly to fools.
Gavin: give us a thread where we can create a “buzzword bingo” game for RC threads.
For instance: a square for when someone says “you believe there is an optimum, (cooler), temperature for the planet. Could you provide the optimum temperature.”
Another square for “cooling in the last decade.”
Another for “cyclical.”
“Urban Heat Island.”
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc…
Skeptics and the rest of us agree that CO2 is a GHG, and it contributes to global warming, and that it has caused warming. What would be interesting is a discussion on an the current scientific discussion regarding the positive feedback of CO2.
R. Hayley #487 regarding increased CO2 helping plants grow:
The generalization of Jiminpls’s #557 response to you is that plants can’t grow any better than their limiting factor, which might be not CO2, but nitrogen, water, light,…. Even if they do grow “better,” the betterment often is not to the advantage of farmers; for example, the extra mass can go into non-consumable woody stalk, which makes the crop more expensive to process than any extra grain/fruit value. And weeds such as poison ivy and kudzu respond much “better” to increased CO2 than do many crops, but “better” is not better for people, and not better for plants that those weeds compete with.
See the Skeptical Science posts CO2 is not a pollutant and Global warming is good. For details see the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s report on climate change.
Some plants grow worse at higher temperature, offsetting gains from CO2 spurring growth. For details see the USDA report I linked to in my earlier comment.
TRY #496 wrote “Ultimately, looking at the planet from space, you would see a different emitted radiation pattern with CO2 vs without CO2?”
Yes, it’s been done and seen. See Skeptical Science’s How do we know CO2 is causing warming?
Alas, Tim Lambert’s sceptic bingo has never been more appropriate. It handles all agw critics easily.
> Is this getting reported accurately?
Close enough
> If so, is the information in the study accurate?
Time will tell, but probably
> Is the study saying that current warming is mostly caused
> by the chemicals they talk about,
No
> or that these chemicals will become a more serious problem
> than CO2 at some point in the future?
Not likely anytime soon
That’s just my opinion from what I’ve read in the past, someone will come up with a cite to the actual paper, then we can look for it.
Some history:
http://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+potential+of+chlorofluorocarbons
I’m looking for some kind of study of the systematic errors in the global surface trend that might arise from disappearing stations. I have discussed this with Tom Drayton, but I can’t find anything in the literature. See here for graph of surface trend with number of stations in each year. (Tom: have been generating the graphs you asked for.)
The press release seems about right, at least as you quote it. This does not seem to be particularly original research, perhaps the ranking is what got it published?
The one thing that is left out are the amounts released into the atmosphere. If the amounts are small, the effect is small. And the amounts are vanishingly small. There was some discussion of this earlier this year in blogworld, I believe the culprit being discussed was NF, but I could well be wrong.
“anonymous” said …
This could be evidence of "fraud" on Mann's part …
Or sheer incompetence on yours. Since Mann's results have been substantiated by many other researchers working with other proxy results, etc …
I'd suggest that a second deduction – you're incompetent – is more likely.
But if you're not incompetent, publish, save the world, win a reputation much like Michael Jordan's, and save us.
Go for it.
Before you've crossed your i's and t's though – don't waste our time, finish up and publish.
We'll still be here when you do … I mean don't.
Bull, you people are still arguing that anything and everything is responsible for current warming other than CO2.
anonymous:
“…the whole debate, politically speaking, revolves around consensus and appeals to authority.
…
“How else would a laymen know whom to trust?
…
perhaps we should not trust anyone, and those scientists arguing for AGW should phrase their arguments in such a way that the average layman can reconstruct their results for themselves…”
Trouble is, even if scientists bend over backwards to simplify the necessary descriptions, the layman is going to need an “E” for effort. So your choices are, do work, or rely on authority. If you don’t make your brain burn the necessary glucose, you’re going to be at the mercy of authority. If you do the work, you’ll find out soon enough what’s what. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck at “agnostic”, and not a very good one, either.
#489 simon monckton
My my, weren’t you just waiting to pounce. As always, context is key. The discussion is climate, so weather is noise. You simply can’t look at the weather on a given day and tell anyone how much of it has to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming and how much of it is just weather. Gavins ENSO example is a perfect illustration of context.
Try to remember, this web site is called RealClimate not RealWeather.
anonymous @561 said:
“Granted, I understand that I have a lot to understand regarding climate change, but even a cursory analysis of temperature data shows cooling in the last decade. Had the political proponents of AGW not pinned their arguments on the “consensus” of scientists, but rather, evidence based methods…”
….
This is the latest posting of global average temperatures from NASA/GISS since 1880. 2009 is expected to arrive somewhere near that empty box at the far upper right of the plot. What sort of “cursory analysis” indicates cooling over the last decade? Other than the fact that 1998 had a granddaddy of an El Nino event, how do the past 10 years differ from any other 10 year period, in terms of the up-and-down-about-the-trend?
Look what happened in the decade 1980-90 (look at the yearly data points not the running average in red). It went up for two years, then down for a year, then back up for a year, and then back down for two years, then back up for 3 years, then back down the next, and finally up in 1990. Go back 1 decade and repeat. Go forward 1 decade and repeat. The short term behavior stuff looks pretty much the same.
Q: So is the Earth cooling or is it warming?
Answer — we cannot tell on any baseline less than ~10 years or so, because the signal in global changes in climate can accumulate to overwhelm the “noise” only on longer time scales. Much of that 1-2 year up-down business is the background hiss of annual-scale sloshing of energy within ocean and atmospheric currents (e.g., ENSO, volcanoes, and other such shorter term effects). It is the long-term trend that is telling us something different. Can you see the big picture?
There are apparent medium-term events as well. For example, you might wonder about about the ~25 year plateau in temperature, ~1945-1970. There are many other factors besides injection of CO2 in the atmosphere that act as important climate forcings. Aerosols from “dirty” industrial/power-generation sources of combustion can and did dim the Sun before most of the industrialized world cleaned up their smokestack emissions (this is likely over-simplified, but hopefully useful nevertheless — the experts can chime in). The excess aerosols did so directly and indirectly by acting as cloud seeding nuclei. The Sun has ~11-year oscillations in total irradiance, as well as gentler longer term trends upward or downward — as illustrated here. And the climate scientists can provide you with a list of various climate forcing agents that act on various time scales, both at present and times past. Some are better understood than others.
These and other climate forcing signals sum together both destructively and constructively, using an analogy. And yet despite all of that going on, the green markers tell the story of interest here — a long-term, if non-monotonic, trend upwards.
Tamino illustrates the story in pictures and maths better than I can in words.
Ray Ladbury says: 23 December 2009 at 6:49 PM
Fortunately NOAA-N Prime is indeed in polar circular orbit, ~102 minutes. Even better, equipped w/multi-channel hi-res radiation sensor.
Now, hopefully it’ll last long enough to be of value!
Nice pamphlet here:
http://www.osd.noaa.gov/POES/NOAA-N_Prime_Booklet_12-16-08.pdf
For an article may I suggest a “Pitfalls of Discussion” entry?
I am American, Southern, and a Republican – the very image of the most common slurs found on this and every other Global Warming site, and its gotten me more than a little disgusted at stereotypes thrown my way.
What’s missing is a Do and Don’t list in discussions, as well as some basic education. My suggestions:
1) Clarify what “peer review” really is. Unless its changed or is different in climatology, I was taught peer review is inherently skeptical. The casual tossing about of the word “consensus” seems to drive right over my assumption that peer review starts with one scientist looking at another’s work in an error checking fashion, from starting assumptions to data set to forumula and techniques right on to the grammar used in the summary. Skepticism and science were explained to me to be very close cousins. The villification of the word “skeptic” sends up a huge red flag to me and others, as it should be an alien concept when science is concerned.
2) Scientists should be the first howling down politicians and activists that use specific weather events as proof of AGW. Hurricane Katrina was given poster child status for Global Warming, particularly by German Environmental Minister Tritten (though echoed by many) as a prime example. When the next few years failed to produce hurricanes to match Katrina, much of the dire warnings of Global Warming sounded very hollow. One can’t have it both ways – proclaiming a specific disasterous weather event is a call to action on Global Warming and then stating that a weather event that doesn’t fit the template is irrelevant goes to the heart of credibility.
3) Stop villifying Americans. The USA is no less enlightened than any other Western nation, and we haven’t cornered the market on stupid people. Beginning a conversation with an insult is the least likely way to gain positive influence.
4) Similarly, tying one unrelated belief to another is counter productive and irrelevant. If a Flat Earther is convinced of AGW does it make it bunk science since he clearly has other beliefs that are easily proven false?
5) One can be highly skeptical and opposed to political solutions offered to counter Global Warming without being a “denialist.” Too often being critical of mechanisms to counter Global Warming is written off as irrational denial of the problems before us rather than an invitation to discussion. For example, I am in favor of permissive action before restrictive ones; tax incentives for devices that generate less emissions are far more easy to accept than punishing taxes. We replaced our central air and heating unit for a much more efficient one for self evident reasons; had the government forced us to do so outside of our own financial means with the rallying call of Global Warming it would have been less so.
And so on…
526 Jiminmpls: I gave you the email address at Hyperion. Ask them.
Fuel supply for nuclear: Yucca Mountain holds a plentiful supply. Just recycle as we did in the old days. Coal ashes and cinders also hold a bountiful supply of uranium and thorium. See:
http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html
There are plenty of places to mine uranium by in situ leaching all over the world.
U239 breeds to trans-uranics which are good fuel. Thorium breeds to U233 which is good fuel. Any price problem is purely artificial.
549 Anne van der Bom: The price of the nuclear power plant has to be averaged over its 40 or 60 year life because, once you build it, the fuel is almost free. Fuel is almost free because so little is needed. You need 100 Million times as much coal as uranium to get the same energy. You buy uranium by the pound and coal by the trainload. Don’t be fooled by up front price.
550 Hank Roberts: Reference: “Google and the myth of universal knowledge” by Jean-Noel Jeanneney 2007 The original is in French.
When you do a Google search, you get “sponsored” links on the right side and “non-sponsored” links on the left. The “NON-SPONSORED” links on Google ARE LISTED IN THE ORDER OF THE HIGHEST BIDDER to lowest bidder. Companies pay dollars to Google to get web sites other than their own that lie in favor of the paying company to be at the top of the “non-sponsored” list. Google search results in your getting nothing but corporate propaganda. Since the coal industry has a $100 Billion per year income at stake, they can and must share a lot of money with Google.
Page 32: 62% of internet users questioned make no distinction whatever between advertising and other information, and only 18% proved capable of telling which data were paid for by companies for their promotion and which were not.”
“92% of users of search engines have full confidence in the results of their search, and 71% (users for less than five years) consider that information from this source [Google] is never biased in any way.”
Suggestion: Use only Google Advanced or Google Scholar. On Google Advanced, specify either the .gov domain or the .edu domain. Otherwise, use only web sites that http://www.RealClimate.org uses or the IPCC.
There should be a law requiring Google to disclose the above and the donors and the dollars for each “non-sponsored” link. Environmentalists should work on Google legislation first.
You always say the AGW message stands strong independent of Mann et al. There are no hockey sticks produced that does not depend on either Mann’s Bristlecone pines or Briffa’s Yamal trees. I.e. excluding both and still looks lika a hockey stick.
In another thread eric was referring to this paper showing the Mann “independence”. In what way does this paper show any temperature reconstruction backing Manns claims. Wasn’t evident from the summary at least.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/crowley.html
the other thread:
**********
My main questions revolve around the MWP and LIA. Are there peer reviewed articles other than Jones, Briffa, Mann, etc. that do not depend in any way on any ‘team’ member’s articles that also show flat temperatures trends for the past 2000 years ?
[Response: If you define ‘team’ as Steve McIntyre does, meaning anyone that corroborates these results, then obviously no. But the real answer is, yes, of course. Tom Crowley’s paper in Science from about 10 years ago is a nice example, here. Contrary to claims that this paper depends on Mann et al.’s work, it doesn’t. Nor do several other of the figures shown e.g. here, though there is some overlap in the underlying data used. There is no overlap of people or data in the work by Oerlemans, also shown in that figure (as discussed here.–eric]/
**********
Gavin@537
Seems hard yes. Since this thread is a wish-list thread. My wish is that you dedicate a thread explaining how it is possible that CO2 are able to trap more heat though it would be satisfied, or close to, already by the amount of CO2 currently up there. Thanks!
Anonymous says, “What strikes me most – as a climate change agnostic – is that the whole debate, politically speaking, revolves around consensus and appeals to authority.”
WRONG!!! Climate change is about basic physics and evidence, and anyone who is not too lazy or stupid to learn the basic science can inspect that evidence.
“…even a cursory analysis of temperature data shows cooling in the last decade.”
WRONG AGAIN!!!
The warming trend continues. This was the warmest decade on record.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/
Look, dude. There’s a “START HERE” button up in the upper right hand corner of this page. Go there. Start learning. But please take one thing with you. Scientific consensus is about evidence, because as scientists we have agreed to side with the preponderance of evidence. This isn’t just some altruistic decision. Our success as scientists depends on our ability to use the evidence to acheive an understanding of what we are studying. In this case, the evidence is overwhelming. Go learn it.
Ron, blueshift, et al.
Don’t get discouraged. Stratospheric cooling is not that easy to understand. In addition to the figure from Clough and Iacono that Gavin cited, you have to remember the temperature profile of the stratosphere:
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter1/vert_temp_strat.html
In contrast to the troposphere, temperature in the stratosphere increases with height. As a result, you will have more CO2 molecules in their excited vibrational state high in the atmosphere than you will down below. At least some of those molecules will decay radiatively. If you increase the amount of CO2 in the stratophere, that’s more excited CO2, more radiative decays and hence more IR radiation escaping. And so you get a cooling stratosphere.
The cooling with increasing altitude that you get in the troposphere leads to warming with increased CO2. Hopefully that reminder fills in some gaps. If not, ask some more questions, but don’t get frustrated.
Frank Giger @579,
First let me say that I sympathize with your predicament. Despite being somewhat left of center in my own politics (mainly social issues), I also agree that merely using climate change as a platform for bashing conservatives is counterproductive.
I think it is important to distinguish between the science of climate change–which is very solid–and mitigation and prevention mechanisms which are very much a work in progress. However, accepting the science is a prerequisite to an effective program for mitigation. I agree that skepticism is essential to science, but skepticism must be based on understanding. Merely rejecting the science because it is counter-intuitive–or worse, because one does not like the implications of the science–is not skpeticism, but rather ignorance at best (that’s curable) and possibly denialism.
I will be among the first to applaud the leadership of Lindsey Graham in advocating a vigorous response to climate change. You must admit, though, that Senator Graham is conspicuous among Republicans in this support. Senator Inhofe is much more vocal in his denial of reality, and there is a strident wing of your party that is extremely irresponsible in their rejection of science. While this may bring them temporary success, even adulation, I think it is potentially disastrous, not just for the Republicans but also for the US. For one thing, it makes it very easy for your opponents to paint the party as being anti-scientific, and scientists would have to be superhuman not to be put off by the strident attacks on science (both here and wrt evolution) and scientists.
As liberals and conservatives, there are areas where we can agree to disagree, but there are areas where we must find common ground. I hope that you will agree that acceptance of sound science is one of these areas. By all means, you should advocate for solutions that are acceptable to you politically, but these solutions must be effective against the threat. Acceptance of the science must be the start.
The strategies for dealing with climate change are being developed even as we speak, and true conservatives (as opposed to reactionaries) are under-represented at the bargaining table. I hope that reasonable conservatives such as yourself will realize that the threat is real and bring constructive suggestions to the dialog.
re #578 Spaceman Spiff
You suggest that the temperature plateau between 1945 and 1970 can be explained by polluting aerosol dimming which has subsequently been rectified. I am familiar with this explanation and have tended to accept it. However, to what extent have the Indians and Chinese cleaned up their acts? Are their aerosols less severe than ours were? Alternatively, should we expect much more warming if they clean up or are their black carbon emission effects swamping those of SO2 such that a clean up would cool?
Edward Greisch,
24 December 2009 at 3:20 AM
You are omitting two things:
1. Retubing. Nuclear plants need refurbishment every 20 years or so. This can be a costly business as the case for Bruce nuclear plant proves: http://ca.news.finance.yahoo.com/s/04112009/2/biz-finance-transcanada-expects-delay-bruce-nuclear-power-plant-refurbishment.html. If the article is correct, they have spent 3.1 billion already. And it suffers the usual delays. This project runs for years already, during which the plant produces no electricity and generates no income.
2. Interest. At a modest 4% interest rate, an investment of 26 billion will cost you $1 billion per year in interest payments. At an estimated 80% lifetime capacity factor a 2.4 GW plant will produce ~17 TWh anually. The interest alone then sets a minimum price of $0.06 per kWh.
anonymous: even a cursory analysis of temperature data shows cooling in the last decade.
BPL: This meme is like a vampire that just refuses to die, but keeps getting up from the grave. It is NOT COOLING!!!
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Ball.html
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Reber.html
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/VV.html
Ben F–the story means each molecule of those chemicals blocks a lot more IR than a molecule of CO2. It doesn’t mean they’re a major influence on climate because there’s a lot more CO2 out there than other greenhouse gases.
RELouise D.
Louise, for a lay audience, a couple of books stand out: Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (if you do some searching, you can find her New Yorker articles entitled “The Climate of Man” on which the book was based) and Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe’s Climate Change: Picturing the Science. I would also consider David Archer’s The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate, which has an excellent explanation of the science and Joe Romm’s Hell and High Water, which has more details on the political side, including possible solutions. Books that are focused on the dire consequences include Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas and Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future by Peter Ward.
All of these books are at our public library, and I found them all to be pageturners. There are other good books recommended by other posters here, but I haven’t had the chance to read them yet. Gavin’s book is pretty recent and might get the slight edge, and it has pictures.
#582
I’m sorry Ed, but you are misinformed. Fuel cost does matter – not as much as for coal or natural gas, but it does matter. For every doubling in uranium fuel costs, the cost of electricity production will increase by 7%. Uranium fuel costs have and will continue to increase far more rapidly than the cost of oil.
Construction costs of new nuclear plants does indeed matter. FPL customers will be paying 30% higher rates for ten years BEFORE the new Turkey Point plants even come online – and that’s with a 50% federal subsidy.
4th generation plants – including Hyperion’s mobile reactors – will be game changers, but they are years if not decades off. Westinghouse and Areva made grandiose promises about their third generation designs that have proven false. Even in China, the overnight costs for new nuclear power plants is over $2.5k per kW.
[edit – no personal attacks]
Hi Douglas @589, The aerosols that caused the dimming from 1944-1975 were caused by burning high-sulfur fuels. That was where the clean air legislation made the biggest difference. China and to a lesser extent India are relatively new to the energy-intensive economy game. However, they have at least been somewhat sensitive to the issue of high-sulfur fuels. In India, they were worried about damage to the Taj Mahal due to acid rain and restricted power plants around Delhi-Agra. And it may be that sulfate aerosols are having a dimming effect. It is just that CO2 levels are high enough now that we are overcoming that effect.
Rob: There are no hockey sticks produced that does not depend on either Mann’s Bristlecone pines or Briffa’s Yamal trees.
BPL: Dead wrong. Mann et al. got the same results in 2008 excluding ALL the tree ring data. Go read the paper:
Mann, Michael E.; Zhihua Zhang, Malcolm K. Hughes, Raymond S. Bradley, Sonya K. Miller, Scott Rutherford, and Fenbiao Ni 2008. “Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia.” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 105, 13252-13257.
Anne van der Bom:
Any honest comparison of energy costs will use full lifecycle costs, from building to decommissioning and waste management. Trying to nickel and dime the outcome by questioning line items is, therefore, a waste of your energy.
The most comprehensive review of global energy costs I have found so far can be found here: http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/Downloads/PDF/07/0706_TPA_A_Review_of_Electricity.pdf
It explains the methodology, what is included, and what isn’t.
Here is a completely different analysis of mitigation strategies, which concludes that nuclear is cost-neutral when used to reduce carbon emissions: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/strategic-options-for-climate-change-mitigation-global-cost-curve-for-greenhouse-gas-abatement-measu
It irritates me no end when people try to argue that nuclear power is not economical. Clearly it is! France makes a lot of money selling surplus electricity to other countries.
The problem with wind isn’t economic either (although presently it is, on average, more expensive than some other forms of energy). It is simply a matter of finding places to build, and dealing with all the obstructionist NIMBYs. Really, wind has exactly the same problem as nuclear. People!
I would like to see a discussion on which solar reconstructions should be used. Older studies are still given more citations than newer, probably due to publishing lag. There are quite a few TSI reconstructions in print and all the newer ones (TMK) indicate less variation of TSI in the past.
[Response: Oddly enough, I just finished putting a lot of these together for the paleo-component of the set of model runs being done for the next IPCC report. Comments welcome! – gavin]
I agree with the general suspicion regarding the usefulness of anecdotal data, even if it is related to the kind of thing which makes a majority of the population go thumbs up or thumbs down on AGW. If people don’t FEEL that it is getting warmer (that really hot summer which gave Pat Robertson a Road to Damascus experience; or so I have heard) then they will be hard convince to dig into their pockets or inconvenience themselves.
But something like Thoreau’s Journal, with its recording of flowering dates of many species, and often first and last frosts, is a more substantial kind of record and very convincing that we have warmed (especially in relation to growing season) since the 1850’s. Obviously, there is still a lot of noise in that he can be describing a winter thaw on a given date, while we are experiencing bitter cold and vice versa.
I have read a number of journals from the period and always try to connect descriptions of storms, first frosts, last frosts, etc. I know from reading someone else’s journal that Thoreau’s first summer at Walden was exceptionally hot and have wondered if that fact, unmentioned by him in Walden (which, unlike the journals is NOT a good weather indicator, since he models his data considerably, even includes incidents which happened long after he left Walden etc.)
contributed to his deciding NOT to grow beans in his second summer and have to do the related sweaty weeding etc.
Some local professor is doing detailed research with the journal to document the warming. My level of study is simply grounding each of my current days with accounts of that date in the past. On this date in 1854, they had just gotten three inches of snow an then a light rain glaze.
I have spent a lot of time, maybe too much, reading stuff on this site, lately, but I am learning. I still have questions about why the Viking graves are in perma-frost, if current melting has supposedly gone beyond what happened then, but also realize that it does not prove much conclusively in the bigger picture, one way or the other.
BPL: This meme is like a vampire that just refuses to die, but keeps getting up from the grave. It is NOT COOLING!!!
Since we’re approaching the Pantomime season:-
OH YES IT IS!