First, Gavin, thank you for your response repeated here:
[Response: The ‘fudge factor’ calculation was an attempt to see if the calibration statistics were affected by the MXD post 1960-decline and were written up for publication but never actually published. It was a vaguely interesting calculation perhaps, but has no implication for anything else. The numbers themselves were calculated as a principle component of the divergence pattern. The “trick” was to get around the problem of wanting to produce a smoothed picture of the long term temperature trends when you have a discontinuity in the middle. Jones used a splice before smoothing in one figure in a WMO brochure 10 years ago that I had never seen prior to last month. Again, an issue of rather minor importance. We should however put up an FAQ on these kinds of things though to save time in the future. – gavin]
However, this is still not quite the kind of soundbite I’m seeking.
The goal is an assertion that will withstand scrutiny yet can be used to counter some spurious claim in a chaotic *political* debate.
As an example of what I’m after, would you agree with these, or are they misleading in any substantive way?
* The ‘fudge factor’ calculation was in “what-if” code that was never actually used for anything.
* The “trick” was simply the use of a splice function to bridge old and new temperature data derived from different sources.
(but this doesn’t explain “hiding the decline” or whatever was written)
You say these are of “minor” importance, but the right wing is killing you with these unanswered accusations.
They are waging a FUD campaign against you, so ALL bogus claims in their echo chamber need to be debunked swiftly and decisively. After a few days of currency, these claims begin to damage your credibility among the public at large (the ones who elect the people who allocate research funds). And each day they are not rebuked, those spreading them are embolded to intensify the signficance of their unanswered claims. Just ask Al Gore, Max Cleland, John Kerry, etc. what happens after a month or two.
dhogazasays
I wonder what the solution is?
If the continued burning of fossil fuels will cause untold damage to the planet via potential runaway “Greenhouse Effect”, what is the answer?
Well, climate science doesn’t support the notion of a “runaway greenhouse effect” (ala venus or whatever), so perhaps it is better to focus on what climate science *is* telling us.
Which is a relatively yet extremely expensive and painful rise in global temperatures unless we take action soon to reduce CO2 emissions. If we don’t, it gets more expensive and painful.
No need to exaggerate by raising strawman “runaway greenhouse effects”. The reality of the science message is scary enough.
Prof T Heidricksays
The problem is we don’t have resources to do all. So we must focus on the immediate problem first. It won’t do any good to spend resources on the long term if the Arctic disappears in the interim.We also know particulates kill people so this truly is the highest priority.
Patrick 027says
Re 134 Edward Greisch –
Just a small clarification in terminology – a supervolcanic eruption tends to cause global cooling via aerosols, and is short-lived at least relative to geologic time if not even shorter time periods.
The volcanism that may have caused the end-Permian extinction is flood-volcanism.
Rattus Norvegicussays
Lady in Red, I’ll try and answer as many of your questions as I can.
1. Regarding Deep Climate’s post. Yes, it does not directly call into question the conclusions of the Wegman report, but it does call into question the quality of the scholarship behind the report. This very site has replies to the MM criticisms here and here. Both of these links show, to my satisfaction at least, that the problem with the original analysis made no difference to the conclusion. In the CRU emails Mann himself said that McIntyre “almost had a point about the PCA stuff, if it had made any difference to the conclusion”.
As far as a chronology of climate science goes, Tyndall in 1856 identified CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Arrhenius in 1896 identified anthropogenic releases of CO2 as being a factor in warming the climate. This hypothesis was strengthened by the work of Guy Callender in the 1930’s. By the 1950’s the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere was pegged to man by Seuss. In the 1960’s Manabe built the first climate model. I would guess that it might be difficult to get data and code going back even 50 years, much less 150 years. However, the papers are available.
Climatology as a discipline takes in many disciplines. As the systematic nature of the study of the climate system became clearer, more and more scientific disciplines were taken in. Like ecology or evolutionary biology climate science is an intensely interdisciplinary field.
The first IPCC report was released in 1991. I can’t answer the rest of this question.
As far as the 1970’s “ice age myth” I suggest you read this. I think that by the time this hit the popular press Schneider had already corrected his paper which started this myth. The 1979 NAS “Charney” report predicted the possible extent of global warming as being about 3C. The fallout from the basic theory of how the climate works was pretty well established by 1980, and the estimates of temperature change due to a doubling of CO2 have not changed much in the last century.
The last decade is the warmest in the history of the instrumental record. The 90’s are the second warmest, etc. etc. When GISS corrected their analysis explained well here 1934 was in a statistical tie with 1998 for the warmest year in the lower 48. Of course prior to the correction, 1934 was in a statistical tie with 1998 for the warmest year in the lower 48. Globally, the correction made no difference, and in GISS 2005 is still the warmest on record. CRU still has 1998 as the warmest on record, but CRU and GISS use different methods for analyzing global temperature. Specifically, GISS attempts to estimate the temperature in the high arctic by interpolating temps based on a result which Hansen published in the mid 1980’s showing that temperature anomalies have spatial coherence at a 1000km scale.
As far as blogs go, I would avoid WUWT and TAV. Steve occasionally has a point to make, but he is far more often off base. The latest example of this is his Yamal accusations in which he used an incorrect method for constructing a regional RCS chronology. If you are interested in a blog which discusses time series analysis I would follow Open Mind. Tamino does this for a living and publishes in the peer reviewed liturature. He is no dummy and is a very good writer who can communicate well on a variety of levels. I have learned a lot from reading him (although the higher math in some of his posts loses me. I only took differential and integral calculus and haven’t had to use it in my career at all over the last 30 years.
Toby Thalersays
Norman (291) asks the right questions. I have no answer, but some observations:
I’ve worked on the law and policy of natural resource management for over thirty years, mostly forestry in the NW U.S. In the 70s scientists who were interested in salmonids started coming up with very strong work showing that forest practices harms fish, primarily (but not exclusively) as a result of the roads and sediment produced by them. Forty years later, we, as a society, have yet to stop trashing fish habitat with crappy forest roads. The timber industry made sure of that. And a political system that is controlled by “representatives” bought by the corporatists and a few weak “liberals” perpetuates “business as usual.”
I have seen the same story repeated time and again. The scientists point out an impact on public health or the environment, and it takes years and huge effort to make changes that address the problem. Public health issues get a bit more traction, perhaps because people “get it” easier; the impacts are more directly relevant to their own lives and experience. Like the asbestos mining disaster in Libby, Montana.
The same sorry story with climate change is playing out. Too many people, too many lacking in intellectual curiosity or sufficient education to understand the science, even if explained, or the consequences of “business as usual.” Too much greed and shortsightedness. Too much fear, which leads directly to denial.
The current debate feels a lot like the nastiness around the Obama – McCain campaigns. And the “liberals” actually won, and what did we get? Business as usual. The liberals aren’t really liberal, they’re just slightly less corporatist in their outlook, but that doesn’t move the masses on the need to change our economic, cultural, technological paradigms. Susann (293) has it right; the “filthy lucre” wins out over ethics and critical thinking.
My answer: I believe we’re toast–unless some plague takes our population down fairly quickly, there will be no effective societal response that can avoid all sorts of miseries for the entire biosphere. But my cultural and ethical background drive me to keep plugging away. What choice do we have? As the word magnets on my refrigerator say: “Teach courage or be lost.”
Toby Thalersays
297, re: nuclear power as part of the answer. I have been one of those “hippies and greens” for decades because the cost/risk and waste issues were never adequately addressed (can you pronounce WPPSS?). I now agree that nuclear may be part of the answer due to the current crisis from burning carbon. HOWEVER, I think we would be far better off if we invested in diminishing our need for electricity through conservation and, more importantly, by reducing our need to consume so many material goods. We need to stop producing so much “stuff” that requires large amounts of power, and takes more power to deal with as a “waste stream.” How much crap do we need to give each other for Xmas/Hanukah/Kwanza in order to be happy?
How about more distributed generation? If we spent as much R&D on that as we have on centralized power and moving carbon around, I suspect we’d be well on the way to having an economy that works well without being linked to GHG emissions.
Rattus Norvegicussays
In reading my previous comment, it might be good to have a page with links to seminal papers in the study of the climate system. Easier just to point to that than to keep answering the same stupid questions over and over.
siddsays
Re: Suggestion for future post
Ice sheet models
John Masheysays
re: #277 Lady in Red
before you commented about
“does not negate the report’s conclusions, in particular, that the climate science peer-review process is, at least, inbred and that climate scientists need more cross-disciplinary mathematical expertise in their work.”
Were you aware of the composition of the Wegman committee and those thanked for help? I.e.:
“This report was authored by Edward J. Wegman, George Mason University, David W. Scott, Rice
University, and Yasmin H. Said, The Johns Hopkins University. We would also like to acknowledge the
contributions of John T. Rigsby, III, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and Denise M. Reeves, MITRE
Corporation.”
1) WEGMAN is a distinguished statistician @ George Mason.
2) David W. SCOTTt is a distinguished statistician @ Rice, obviously asked by Wegman. In reviewing his C.V.:
a) His C.V. references Wegman 6 times besides the Wegman Report:
2 book chapters he wrote for Wegman-edited books, 1986 and 2005.
4 sessions he organized in which Wegman was an invited speaker: 1987, 1987, 1989, 1990.
b) Among his industrial consulting clients are Exxon and Dresser Industries (gear for oil&gas industries.) Of course, given his Houston location, that wouldn’t be odd. However, if one ranked cities in their concern about AGW, I suspect Houston would not be high on the list.
All of this may be totally irrelevant, and Scott is certainly a distinguished statistician … but I’d think any useful social network graph would strongly connect him and Wegman, even if there are no co-authored papers.
5) DENISE REEVES (MITRE) did her final PhD Defense @ GMU May 19, 2009. Her dissertation advisor was Wegman.
How strong a link is 2 senior people having know each other for 20+ years? Does a senior professor have any influence over a recent PhD student, a then-current PhD student, and a recent MS student with whom he had already written one paper? Maybe the Lady in Red might draw us the social network graph of the authors criticizing the climate scientists for having a tight social network?
REGARDING INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES:
1) In my experience, the complaint that some other scientists did not get enough involvement from statisticians … is not rare, and it’s sometimes even appropriate. (It is quite analogous to the complaint by software engineers that a lot of other engineers and scientists fail to consult them when writing code.)
On the other hand, I’m curious if Lady in red has any real-world experience of the realities of this?
Let me offer 2 university examples, which I have good reason to believe are reasonably representative, and one (unusual) industry example, which is not, but is educational.
a) Stanford University has ~30 {Professors of various flavors, research associates}, etc, and they do try to provide internal consulting, mostly by grad students. Stanford has about 1900 faculty total (~60:1), of whom I’d guess about half might be helped by statistics advice now and then. Let’s say that’s about a 30:1 ratio, somewhat of a barrier to getting a lot of help. In addition, in any field, journals have some ranking by prestige, and publication in better ones may not be so helpful, especially if rarely/never read by statisticians. Except for those statisticians who particularly relish team efforts in application areas, the incentives do not encourage them to be looking to spend much time on other areas. [This is too bad, especially for a lover of interdisciplinary things, but universities can easily become stovepiped unless senior people work very hard against that.]
b) At my alma mater, Penn State, the Stat department is about 30 people, but the total academic staff is ~6000, so that’s about 200:1, and even half need statistics help now and then, that’s 100:1, and again, the academic incentives do not overly encourage statisticians to spend a lot of time helping people publish articles in non-stats journals.
c) Now, the odd case, Bell Labs, circa 1980. We had roughly 25,000 employees, probably 80% in R&D.
We had a Mathematics&Statistics Research Center, of about 60 people, run by the (impressive, I heard him speak when I was in high school) Henry O. Pollak, and about half that group had some kind of stats-label. This included folks like Joseph Kruskal, and John Chambers (who did S, from which R came, oddly the reverse order from B->C). However, the Associate Executive Director above this was a fellow named John Tukey, and if someone doesn’t recognize this name, they might want to rethink any strong opinions they have about statistics.
So, these folks did statistics research, and in some sense, they were a much smaller fraction of the total staff (say 21,000:30 = 700:1), BUT:
– there were of course other departments focussed on statistical work. In Bell Labs, large $$$ rode on good statistical analysis, so people cared.
– part of their job was explicitly to promulgate better statistics methods among the staff at Bell Labs. Hence, they built stat packages, S, etc.
– they were supposed to be responsive, and supposed to be involved with other areas, and BTL-internal publications counted, not just external stat journals.
and finally:
– inside BTL, if you were going to publish a paper externally, it first had to go through internal peer review, which meant that it had to go to at least 2 Divisions outside your own line of management. You sent the paper up through your line of management to your Executive Director, who sent it to two others, who got reviews from people inside their organizations, and sent them back to *your* ED, from whence it worked its way down.
Scathing comments to your ED were viewed as career-limiting moves … so of course, if doing anything unusual, people knew it was a good idea to go over and ask for some help, and expect to get it.
Maybe some university works this way, but if so, I haven’t seen it.
===
For what it’s worth, I offer an opinion, based on Tukey’s general approach (like EDA), internal reputation, and public quotes, that he might have niggled a little at MBH98 and MBH99, but generally would have approved of them as good early attempts to extract signal from the noise. I rather doubt he would have thought much of endless torturing of data that seems to impress some people. Of course, since he is deceased, we can’t ask him, which is too bad, as he tended towards pithy comments.
PeteBsays
I thought this was quite interesting (not that I was much reassured that we could end up at 600ppm) – Any comments – (somebody claimed this included tar sand extraction etc)
The studies published so far that take into account both peak oil and climate change are a truly minuscule number in comparison to the total number of papers that deal with climate change. This says a lot on how the problem was neglected so far. Nevertheless, a consensus seems to be emerging. Even with different models and different assumptions, it appears that geological constraints pose an important limit on CO2 emissions. All the studies discussed here arrive at the conclusion that, even without policy interventions, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will stabilize in a range that goes, approximately, from 450 to 600 ppm. These values are far below those of the “business as usual” (bau) scenario of the IPCC that predicts a CO2 concentration of about 1000 ppm by the end of the century.
Based on these studies, peak oil (and, in general, peak fossils) is going to have a strong effect on the climate issue. For one thing, it may well make the Kyoto treaty obsolete. There would be no need for policy measures to enforce the Kyoto targets. The emission limits that today are often seen as an insufferable set of constraints on the economy, could become, in the near future, just a consequence of the reduced supply of fossil fuels coupled with a contracting economy. On the other hand, the targets of the Kyoto treaty might well turn out to be insufficient to counter global warming.
At this point, there is no consensus among the authors in terms of policy recommendations relating to these results. Some of the authors cited here conclude that peaking of fossil fuel production will be sufficient to maintain CO2 at a level below that considered dangerous by many climate experts. But this conclusion is not shared by other authors who maintain, instead, that even if we could be sure that CO2 concentrations would remain in the 450-550 ppm range, we would still face dangerous levels of global warming. Clearly, this is a difficult issue to solve, given the uncertainty in the scenarios and in the calculations of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the temperature effects. Furthermore, there are several phenomena that the climate models don’t consider and that could make warming much more serious than currently believed. Among these, the saturation of the CO2 sinks, the positive feedback of the methane hydrates and those of the ice/albedo system. We just don’t know enough to be able to say whether depletion is enough to “save” us from global warming.
Roger Tansays
Hello, i am looking for studies that show connection between human activity and climate change. So far i could not find any that would actually show such connection. Could anyne please help me by pointing me towards one?
Thanks,
Roger T
Anne van der Bomsays
venge #297
its blatantly obvious that only switching to nuclear will allow us to meet the 2°C target without bankrupting our economy
If it is so blatantly obvious, show us your research. I don’t believe you:
The US consumes ~4000 TWh anually. If they switched to electric cars and electric heating (heat pumps), let’s say that would double it to 8000 TWh anually. You would need ~3 TW of wind power to supply that. The cost would be roughly 5,000 billion dollars. That is 250 billion per year over a period of 20 years. 250 billion is 1.5% of GDP.
This calculation is not complete, but at least suggests that it is not ‘blatantly obvious’.
Bankrupt the economy? That’s alarmism.
Bill Ksays
@300: Or you could just do geoengineering, which RC.org has a unscientific, kneejerk reaction against. The fact that RC.org refuses to even consider geoengineering is one of the reasons this is a politics site, not a science site.
Edward Greischsays
Spaceman Spiff: You have reminded me of the idea that I would like RC to bring in other kinds of scientists to talk about their own research:
Paleontologists to talk about previous extinction events.
MDs to talk about what climates humans could take, how much H2S in the air etc.
Archaeologists to talk about who survived previous collapses. Like when the Canaanite Empire collapsed and the survivors became the Israelites, was it the rich, the poor, the ones with long legs or the fat ones who survived? I bet on the fat ones with long legs.
Somebody to talk about the range of climates humans could survive in, hotter or colder? In which climate would more food grow? In the ice age was there more farmable land than now, since the continental shelves were above water? Were there more fish in the sea during the ice age?
Somebody who can say whether there are already more people than the planet can support.
Giant asteroid impacts. An explosion of 100 Million Megatons is an Extinction Level Event.
I heard that we prosper more when there are more sunspots, because the sun is brighter then. Is this true? Do crops grow better with more sunspots? So we need cold and bright?
How slowly do we need the climate to change? How tightly do we need to control the climate, both hotter and colder?
Mathieu Rouaultsays
I would like to see a debate on science in developing country. I feel the international community of scientists do not do enough to help their brothers. Some countries do not have enough scientists, some have none in many important fields. Education is lagging. I would like to see a developing countries science perspective here. I would like reaclimate to ask George Philander who recently wrote a piece on an African perspective on climate change to write a piece on realclimate.
Completely Fed Upsays
#287 what sex is Vicky Pope?
Completely Fed Upsays
“we are embracing nuclear power as the only reasonable way to generate the energy needed”
Done to death many times, but if Wall Street and the Nuclear industry itself WILL NOT build new power stations unless underwritten to guarantee a profit by government, then nuclear cannot be the only reasonable way to generate the energy needed.
Vincent van der Goessays
This has probably been mentioned before, but I would be highly interested in a post on best current estimates of future methane release (and its impact) from melting permafrost and clathrates.
Paul UKsays
Re: 297 and nuclear energy vs renewables.
Erm – complete junk. Heard of the phrase ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’?
Greens aren’t fanatically opposed to nuclear. They just like to point out that wind turbines don’t produce radioactive waste, or can cause big accidents that render many square miles of land useless of many decades.
I can do the math ‘venge’, in fact I did a wind turbine analysis for my employer. The World Nuclear Association has done the maths as well and they think wind energy and other renewables are OK to.
Uranium reserves, like all reserves, are reported as ammount of uranium extractable at a given price. Historically, the U price has been low- tens of dollars per pound- since the end of the arms race. As a result, reserves are calculated using these numbers.
Because the price of fuel is a very small cost of operating a nuclear plant, they can be cost effective at fuel prices substantially higher than the historical ones. Once you reach about $100 per pound, it becomes economically viable to extract uranium from phosphates mined for fertilizer, and the amount of available uranium in the ground becomes the phosphate reserve divided by about 20,000 or so- orders of magnitude larger than the current uranium reserve.
Disclaimer: I worked as an exploration geologist for a company that targeted both uranium and phosphate deposits(along with other resources) in 2007 and 2008.
Question:
Is the stratospheric ozone layer a significant greenhouse contributor?
[Response: Yes (though not very large). Depletion of stratospheric ozone is a small negative forcing (fgure 2.20 in IPCC AR4). – gavin]
And a followup, is Ozone depletion over Antarctica keeping it cool?
[Response: A little. This seems to be mostly a dynamic effect (via changes in the winds because of the colder polar vortex aloft) rather than a radiative effect (i.e Shindell and Schmidt, 2004). – gavin]
Ray Ladburysays
Norman@293, Wow, so many red herrings in one post. Anybody bring rye bread, mayo and red onions?
First, we are not talking ruinous penury as a result of mitigation. We are talking on the order of 1-2% of GDP–less than the cost of the Iraq war or the bailout. What is more, this is not money thrown down the drain, but rather money invested in energy savings, clean energy and responsible development in the third world.
Yes, we face tremendous challenges as the global population crests toward 9-10 billion people. Yes, addressing climate change does add to these challenges. The real threat comes if we do nothing. I presume you want specifics:
1)Conserve as much as possible while still living a decent life
2)Support politicians (or whatever party) who embrace reality and the challenges it poses. Reject ideologues of all stripes.
3)Support policies designed to conserve energy and develop clean energy
4)Educate yourself–both about climate and energy, but also how science in general works. This will make you less vulnerable to astro-turfers and scam artists.
5)Come up with ideas yourselves!!!
This isn’t impossible if we approach it realistically. Our progeny will thank us. It’s time for us to step up and be the greatest generation–or at least yet another greatest generation.
Ray Ladburysays
Do-u-get-it, says “Breaking News!”
From Whirled Nut Daily, more like “Breaking Wind!”
Nick O.says
I should like to construct a thread of three components.
First, let’s see a review of the climate model forecasts/predictions made over the last 30 years or so, starting with the simplest models and bringing us up to the present day with the most sophisticated ocean-coupled models. The review is to include a comparison of the predictions with how the climate has actually turned out, with regard to average temperature and so on; it should also include how the forecasts made with the older, simpler models compare with those obtained from the later, more physically complete ones.
I should then like Real Climate to lay down a challenge. This should be open to all comers, but particularly to experts in virtually any other formal discipline, whether from the social, political or engineering sciences: show us any model forecast made by your discipline 25-30 years ago that has turned out to be correct, or at least as nearly correct as the forecasts made in climate science have turned out to be, with regard to the behaviour of large, complex systems.
The challenge should then be followed up with a question, particularly pertinent I think to commentators from economics and politics who seem to treat climate science with so much distrust or contrarianism: given the record of your own discipline with regard to long term forecasting, on what is your critique of the climate science community and its work based?
I think this could turn quite neatly into a case – or cases – of ‘the biter bit’, and not before time either.
I dismiss parapsychology, and at the same time I believe in ESP! I have HAD such experiences myself. What I have NOT had is experiences of that sort that could be independently verified. And none of the experiments on ESP so far have come up with that kind of evidence. A century of null results means there’s going to have to be some kind of major change in the approach before parapsychology can be considered a “science.”
Yes, I know about the randomizer experiments. Same statistical sloppiness as Rhine’s, just more subtle. The fact that believers get good results and nonbelievers using the same methods don’t should be a clue.
[Response: This OT even for an open thread. -gavin]
Completely Fed Upsays
Just perusing but J’s attempt to scorn RC and some robust comments made by AGW proponents to denialists made me think.
Have a look at the google results for:
Al Gore interior of the Earth is several million degrees
and the results for
ian plimer sun is made of iron
and see the difference in tone.
Note also that Al Gore isn’t putting himself as a scientist but Ian Plimer is.
Completely Fed Upsays
“The cost would be roughly 5,000 billion dollars. That is 250 billion per year over a period of 20 years. 250 billion is 1.5% of GDP.”
Additionally, that 250 billion would be pushed through the economy. The workers building the turbines would buy gifts and toys and more essentials, stimulating the economy.
Since there is a highly competitive market for making such items as wind turbines and solar arrays, there is a greater proportion of the workforce employed and more competition keeps costs down. Remember, the majority of employers in any robust economy is employed by the small and medium business sector.
Being smaller companies, the executives will be paid less and hoarding of wealth will be less prevalent, ensuring that the money keeps moving through the economy rather than squirreled away or used for “makework” inve stments that only concentrate more wealth in the wealthy.
What, after all, was the reason for the loa ns to banks? To keep the economy moving by making sure money MOVED.
This spend could increase GDP easily outweighing the costs.
Completely Fed Upsays
“Uranium reserves, like all reserves, are reported as ammount of uranium extractable at a given price.”
There is also the rate at which extraction can be made.
Easy oil is gone. Easy Uranium if not gone, going.
“Peak Oil” isn’t “there is no more oil” it’s “the oil we can get out cannot expand to fill demand”.
And the demand increases whilst supply doesn’t increase as much, what happens next?
Prices rise.
What have oil prices done for the last 15-20 years? Gone up dramatically.
Completely Fed Upsays
“Or you could just do geoengineering, which RC.org has a unscientific, kneejerk reaction against. ”
I think you pointed the unscientific kneejerk reaction the wrong way.
Sulphur smokestacks? An eternal and increasing burden. Guaranteed income for the companies doing it, though. And that’s ignoring the problems of acid rain.
Carbon trees? How about a hovercar too?
And the ZERO COST solution for a large reduction? USE LESS POWER. Sweden use 1/3-1/4 the US average yet they are in a colder and darker clime than the US. They also have a better standard of living.
Completely Fed Upsays
“* The “trick” was simply the use of a splice function to bridge old and new temperature data derived from different sources.
(but this doesn’t explain “hiding the decline” or whatever was written)”
Yes it does.
It doesn’t seem to to those pushing “it’s a conspiracy” because they want (and unless you’re one of them, to apparent good effect) that the statement means
“hide the decline in temperatures”
It doesn’t. It means hide the decline in the issue being talked about: the thickness of the tree rings.
PS: Please answer how you figure you can hide the decline (in temperatures) by using the real temperature data?
Brian Schmidt: My two post requests would be first, the clearest explanation of stratospheric cooling from GHGs that you can give (I find it confusing)
BPL: Good absorbers are equally good emitters (Kirchhoff’s Law). In the stratosphere, there is little thermal infrared (4-200 microns) around, but a lot of ultraviolet. There’s ozone there, and that absorbs the UV, heating it. The ozone collides with everything else, including CO2, heating that. The CO2 radiates in the infrared, cooling the stratosphere. The heat balance in the stratosphere is between ozone UV heating and carbon dioxide IR cooling.
When CO2 increases, there’s more efficient radiation of IR from the stratosphere, and it cools. At the same time, the greenhouse effect near the ground is increased because of all the IR flying around there.
There is also some stratosphere cooling from ozone depletion, but not enough to account for observations.
John Mashey has a good idea there–a big, conspicuous link to “COMMENT POLICY–PLEASE READ” might help things slightly. If someone violates it and then complains when they get called on it, Gavin or somebody could say, “Didn’t you read the comments policy?”
David Furphysays
Maybe this is outside the boundaries of Real Climate but…
Many people I talk to sort of get that there’s a problem but have absolutely no idea about the magnitude of the challenge we face trying to limit to 2 degrees C. Which means they don’t really care or see the urgency.
I would be interested to learn more on emission trajectories that might actually meet such a target – especially since that was the only solid comittment in the Copenhagen Accord. Andrews and Bows (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2008) suggest stabilising at 650 ppm CO2e and 3 to 4 degrees *might* be feasible but 450ppm and 2 degress probably isn’t.
I guess I’m interested in the science of the policy/political options. Is a developed world target of 80% reduction by 2050 enough. How long before China and India *must* reduce emissions. Is 350 ppm possible? Will my next car have to be my last? Is there any place for coal in a 2 degree constrained world. How will Australia survive from 2020 to 2040 with zero coal power and coal exports? No that last one is just too hard!
Thorium-based fission is not necessary for burning weapons-grade plutonium. Uranium-based reactors will, and are even now, work. Some uranium-based reactors designed and constructed in the 1960s and 1970s were designed to be able to use 100% MOX.
Don’t forget, too, that we have knowledgeable, articulate women posting here fairly frequently, such as Anne van der Bom and Lynn Vincentnathan.
Blair Dowdensays
Joel and Ray (#214 and #215), thanks for the response about the Cretaceous. The piece of the puzzle I missed was that runoff from the erosion of silicate rocks provides the calcium for the marine organisms that remove it and the attached carbon dioxide from the ocean. A warmer climate causes more runoff, which removes more carbon dioxide.
There are other differences in the Cretaceous. The ocean was more stratified. Also, the chemistry was different, it was a calcite ocean rather than the present day aragonite ocean. I do not know what difference this makes to shell formation and pH levels.
Norman: Are the[re] plans to get rid of 80% of the current population (odds would be that I would be in that 80%) to make things more manageable?
BPL (sitting in a wheelchair, obsessively stroking a white Persian cat): Yes. We decided on that in 1973 at the first meeting of the Cabal to Reorganize and Unify Society and Humanity (CRUSH), a secret organization of wealthy, Satan-worshipping, Jewish liberals who secretly control everything. At the end of the meeting, we sacrificed nine black puppies to Hecate and went home to our underage gay live-in companions and goat concubines. Your attempts to resist us are futile! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Bobsays
A Simple Change in Behavior
I’m often frustrated at the people that declare that any attempt to address the climate problem will destroy our economies, particularly when I look at all of the simple lifestyle changes that would garner a 10% to 40% reduction in individual (not total, obviously) fossil fuel consumption. Not all of them can be undertaken unilaterally by individuals, but certain societal changes would make it easier, or even required, and have huge effects. In particular:
1) Trips to the store… if people simply organized their errands better, and stopped running to the store for just bread and milk, this would have a noticeable impact.
2) 9-5… in today’s global economy, with business partners in multiple time zones, and 24-7 customer service for 24-7 lifestyles, there is very little reason for most businesses to operate 9-5. Spreading the working hours both within and among businesses would dilute everyone’s commute, which would have many benefits… less time spent idling in traffic and producing CO2 without progress, less construction required for smaller, less congested roadways, and more time for people as individuals to enjoy their lives (with less frustration).
3) Telecommuting… here it is, almost 2010. I myself have been telecommuting for 15 years, but I still meet resistance from employers/clients that want me on-site 5 days a week (often 10 hours a day). Yet with so may of today’s jobs being information and technology dependent, along with the power of the Internet, I think that a large number of people in a variety of industries could work from home 1-2 days a week, if not more, using the same amount of electricity at home as they would at work, but completely eliminating their commute, which both eliminates that chunk of fossil fuel usage, and reduces the congestion that increases the fossil fuel usage of other commuters.
4) Internet deliveries… I feel horribly sinful when I buy something through the Internet, usually something costing $15 to $50, with a $6 shipping charge. Then you realize you need it for a birthday or holiday, so you overnight it for $10 more. All around you, dozens of neighbors are doing the same thing. The CO2 charge for this isn’t too much more than if the product had been shipped to a nearby store, and you drove to pick it up, but imagine if we took advantage of this. Imagine if Internet deliveries to your neighborhood were bundled, so that for example “Internet Delivery Day” in your own neighborhood was every Wednesday. If you took that as an option, both your shipping charge and fossil fuel use is greatly reduced (the one shipping company driver is making one trip to your neighborhood instead of 5 different shipping companies making 20 distinct trips that week). Regional, shared warehouses of products would further reduce cross country shipping requirements (instead of requiring every company to organize and run their own warehouses, collectives run by the shipping companies could be used to optimize fuel usage — let’s stop shipping individual boxes that are 80% air and packing all over the country). This should allow products to be shuttled around the country using more fuel efficient methods than air freight.
5) Regular neighborhood deliveries can even be extended to options that are currently available but rarely used. Most people still do their own grocery shopping, even while many grocery stores offer a shop-and-deliver service that only the old and infirm take advantage of. But there are fuel savings there, too, if one delivery truck can drop off all of the groceries for hundreds of families, eliminating hundreds of individual car trips to and from the store.
Interestingly, there would probably be some cascading effects due to these changes. The increased use of small delivery vans to neighborhoods would begin to make it cost effective to use higher mileage hybrid versions of such vehicles, or their eventual replacement with electric versions powered by electricity delivered by large scale clean energy sources). Many of these savings result in more time spent at home, which becomes an impetus to make our homes more energy efficient, and reduces the office space (and therefore energy consumptions) required at places of work.
I’m sure that others can think of similar areas where all we need to change is our behavior, and perhaps some of the attitudes and organization of society around that behavior.
[Side note: In any cap and trade scheme, all businesses should be eligible for credits if they take significant steps to reduce employee fossil fuel usage by using flex hours, work-at-home options, and the like).
If we could just get beyond the black-and-white, all-or-nothing, death-by-warming-or-death-by-poverty line of thinking, we could get some of these things done.
Wildlifersays
@331 … should that be to “hide the decline” in the proxy’s reaction to temperature – ie density, not width?
Wildlifersays
A post explaining more of this “pre-pub” release:
“The first analysis of emissions from commercial airline flights shows that they are responsible for 4-8% of surface global warming since surface air temperature records began in 1850 — equivalent to a temperature increase of 0.03-0.06 °C overall.”
“Hello, i am looking for studies that show connection between human activity and climate change. So far i could not find any that would actually show such connection. Could anyne please help me by pointing me towards one?
Thanks,
Roger T”
Start with the report of WOrking group I in the 4th assessment report of the IPCC. Once you’ve read the 800 or so pages let us know if you need further assistance. You’re welcome. John P.
Anne van der Bom (313), so $5 trillion is just chump change, even over 20 years? And we can build nation-wide wind power for less than $2/watt?
HCGsays
A skeptic acquaintance tells this story:
Will Happer was appointed a DOE director by the first George Bush. When he was with the government all of the climate scientists in the government reported to him. He told me that they were different from all the others who reported to him. They resented being asked questions and often refused to answer his questions.
Now having seen his highly ideological performance at the Congressional hearings in February, does anyone on this list have more information about his tenure at DOE?
Assuming that his version is accurate, one hypothesis is that he behaved ideologically while at DOE and the scientists there were trying to protect themselves.
Can anyone illuminate this?
David Millersays
I’d be interested to hear more about ozones role as a GHG and whether levels are likely to go up or down in the next century.
Can O3 oxidize CH4 or are OH radicals required?
Lady in Redsays
Rattus Norvegicus wrote to me:
“As far as the 1970’s “ice age myth” I suggest you read this. I think that by the time this hit the popular press Schneider had already corrected his paper which started this myth. The 1979 NAS “Charney” report predicted the possible extent of global warming as being about 3C. The fallout from the basic theory of how the climate works was pretty well established by 1980, and the estimates of temperature change due to a doubling of CO2 have not changed much in the last century.”
Spaceman Spiff also referred me to the same article, “The Myth of the 1970’s Global Cooling Consensus.”
[edit]
I did find these original, popular press reports, however, from both Time and Newsweek. Please re-read them. I would suggest that these articles below are not easily dismissed as “myth” and it does appear that, in the 1970’s, there was a scientific consensus about a coming ice age.
Which leaves me with the question: what changed?
I will work through the other suggested references and, actually, I will read Connolley’s article about the Ice Age Myth. I would be interested in how he handles dismisses all the perceived concern below. Best. …..Lady in Red
[edit – use links instead of cut and paste. And please be aware that changing user names in order to pretend to be new to the ‘debate’ is not good practice.]
Completely Fed Upsays
#344. Yes. If you have proofs or figuring that shows otherwise, please tell, don’t just snide away at someone else who has posted their workings.
Completely Fed Upsays
re 341, yes, it is density rather than thickness. Had to read up, though. I don’t do biology. It’s just applied physics anyway…
First, Gavin, thank you for your response repeated here:
[Response: The ‘fudge factor’ calculation was an attempt to see if the calibration statistics were affected by the MXD post 1960-decline and were written up for publication but never actually published. It was a vaguely interesting calculation perhaps, but has no implication for anything else. The numbers themselves were calculated as a principle component of the divergence pattern. The “trick” was to get around the problem of wanting to produce a smoothed picture of the long term temperature trends when you have a discontinuity in the middle. Jones used a splice before smoothing in one figure in a WMO brochure 10 years ago that I had never seen prior to last month. Again, an issue of rather minor importance. We should however put up an FAQ on these kinds of things though to save time in the future. – gavin]
However, this is still not quite the kind of soundbite I’m seeking.
The goal is an assertion that will withstand scrutiny yet can be used to counter some spurious claim in a chaotic *political* debate.
As an example of what I’m after, would you agree with these, or are they misleading in any substantive way?
* The ‘fudge factor’ calculation was in “what-if” code that was never actually used for anything.
* The “trick” was simply the use of a splice function to bridge old and new temperature data derived from different sources.
(but this doesn’t explain “hiding the decline” or whatever was written)
You say these are of “minor” importance, but the right wing is killing you with these unanswered accusations.
They are waging a FUD campaign against you, so ALL bogus claims in their echo chamber need to be debunked swiftly and decisively. After a few days of currency, these claims begin to damage your credibility among the public at large (the ones who elect the people who allocate research funds). And each day they are not rebuked, those spreading them are embolded to intensify the signficance of their unanswered claims. Just ask Al Gore, Max Cleland, John Kerry, etc. what happens after a month or two.
Well, climate science doesn’t support the notion of a “runaway greenhouse effect” (ala venus or whatever), so perhaps it is better to focus on what climate science *is* telling us.
Which is a relatively yet extremely expensive and painful rise in global temperatures unless we take action soon to reduce CO2 emissions. If we don’t, it gets more expensive and painful.
No need to exaggerate by raising strawman “runaway greenhouse effects”. The reality of the science message is scary enough.
The problem is we don’t have resources to do all. So we must focus on the immediate problem first. It won’t do any good to spend resources on the long term if the Arctic disappears in the interim.We also know particulates kill people so this truly is the highest priority.
Re 134 Edward Greisch –
Just a small clarification in terminology – a supervolcanic eruption tends to cause global cooling via aerosols, and is short-lived at least relative to geologic time if not even shorter time periods.
The volcanism that may have caused the end-Permian extinction is flood-volcanism.
Lady in Red, I’ll try and answer as many of your questions as I can.
1. Regarding Deep Climate’s post. Yes, it does not directly call into question the conclusions of the Wegman report, but it does call into question the quality of the scholarship behind the report. This very site has replies to the MM criticisms here and here. Both of these links show, to my satisfaction at least, that the problem with the original analysis made no difference to the conclusion. In the CRU emails Mann himself said that McIntyre “almost had a point about the PCA stuff, if it had made any difference to the conclusion”.
As far as a chronology of climate science goes, Tyndall in 1856 identified CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Arrhenius in 1896 identified anthropogenic releases of CO2 as being a factor in warming the climate. This hypothesis was strengthened by the work of Guy Callender in the 1930’s. By the 1950’s the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere was pegged to man by Seuss. In the 1960’s Manabe built the first climate model. I would guess that it might be difficult to get data and code going back even 50 years, much less 150 years. However, the papers are available.
Climatology as a discipline takes in many disciplines. As the systematic nature of the study of the climate system became clearer, more and more scientific disciplines were taken in. Like ecology or evolutionary biology climate science is an intensely interdisciplinary field.
The first IPCC report was released in 1991. I can’t answer the rest of this question.
As far as the 1970’s “ice age myth” I suggest you read this. I think that by the time this hit the popular press Schneider had already corrected his paper which started this myth. The 1979 NAS “Charney” report predicted the possible extent of global warming as being about 3C. The fallout from the basic theory of how the climate works was pretty well established by 1980, and the estimates of temperature change due to a doubling of CO2 have not changed much in the last century.
The last decade is the warmest in the history of the instrumental record. The 90’s are the second warmest, etc. etc. When GISS corrected their analysis explained well here 1934 was in a statistical tie with 1998 for the warmest year in the lower 48. Of course prior to the correction, 1934 was in a statistical tie with 1998 for the warmest year in the lower 48. Globally, the correction made no difference, and in GISS 2005 is still the warmest on record. CRU still has 1998 as the warmest on record, but CRU and GISS use different methods for analyzing global temperature. Specifically, GISS attempts to estimate the temperature in the high arctic by interpolating temps based on a result which Hansen published in the mid 1980’s showing that temperature anomalies have spatial coherence at a 1000km scale.
As far as blogs go, I would avoid WUWT and TAV. Steve occasionally has a point to make, but he is far more often off base. The latest example of this is his Yamal accusations in which he used an incorrect method for constructing a regional RCS chronology. If you are interested in a blog which discusses time series analysis I would follow Open Mind. Tamino does this for a living and publishes in the peer reviewed liturature. He is no dummy and is a very good writer who can communicate well on a variety of levels. I have learned a lot from reading him (although the higher math in some of his posts loses me. I only took differential and integral calculus and haven’t had to use it in my career at all over the last 30 years.
Norman (291) asks the right questions. I have no answer, but some observations:
I’ve worked on the law and policy of natural resource management for over thirty years, mostly forestry in the NW U.S. In the 70s scientists who were interested in salmonids started coming up with very strong work showing that forest practices harms fish, primarily (but not exclusively) as a result of the roads and sediment produced by them. Forty years later, we, as a society, have yet to stop trashing fish habitat with crappy forest roads. The timber industry made sure of that. And a political system that is controlled by “representatives” bought by the corporatists and a few weak “liberals” perpetuates “business as usual.”
I have seen the same story repeated time and again. The scientists point out an impact on public health or the environment, and it takes years and huge effort to make changes that address the problem. Public health issues get a bit more traction, perhaps because people “get it” easier; the impacts are more directly relevant to their own lives and experience. Like the asbestos mining disaster in Libby, Montana.
The same sorry story with climate change is playing out. Too many people, too many lacking in intellectual curiosity or sufficient education to understand the science, even if explained, or the consequences of “business as usual.” Too much greed and shortsightedness. Too much fear, which leads directly to denial.
The current debate feels a lot like the nastiness around the Obama – McCain campaigns. And the “liberals” actually won, and what did we get? Business as usual. The liberals aren’t really liberal, they’re just slightly less corporatist in their outlook, but that doesn’t move the masses on the need to change our economic, cultural, technological paradigms. Susann (293) has it right; the “filthy lucre” wins out over ethics and critical thinking.
My answer: I believe we’re toast–unless some plague takes our population down fairly quickly, there will be no effective societal response that can avoid all sorts of miseries for the entire biosphere. But my cultural and ethical background drive me to keep plugging away. What choice do we have? As the word magnets on my refrigerator say: “Teach courage or be lost.”
297, re: nuclear power as part of the answer. I have been one of those “hippies and greens” for decades because the cost/risk and waste issues were never adequately addressed (can you pronounce WPPSS?). I now agree that nuclear may be part of the answer due to the current crisis from burning carbon. HOWEVER, I think we would be far better off if we invested in diminishing our need for electricity through conservation and, more importantly, by reducing our need to consume so many material goods. We need to stop producing so much “stuff” that requires large amounts of power, and takes more power to deal with as a “waste stream.” How much crap do we need to give each other for Xmas/Hanukah/Kwanza in order to be happy?
How about more distributed generation? If we spent as much R&D on that as we have on centralized power and moving carbon around, I suspect we’d be well on the way to having an economy that works well without being linked to GHG emissions.
In reading my previous comment, it might be good to have a page with links to seminal papers in the study of the climate system. Easier just to point to that than to keep answering the same stupid questions over and over.
Re: Suggestion for future post
Ice sheet models
re: #277 Lady in Red
before you commented about
“does not negate the report’s conclusions, in particular, that the climate science peer-review process is, at least, inbred and that climate scientists need more cross-disciplinary mathematical expertise in their work.”
Were you aware of the composition of the Wegman committee and those thanked for help? I.e.:
“This report was authored by Edward J. Wegman, George Mason University, David W. Scott, Rice
University, and Yasmin H. Said, The Johns Hopkins University. We would also like to acknowledge the
contributions of John T. Rigsby, III, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and Denise M. Reeves, MITRE
Corporation.”
1) WEGMAN is a distinguished statistician @ George Mason.
2) David W. SCOTTt is a distinguished statistician @ Rice, obviously asked by Wegman. In reviewing his C.V.:
a) His C.V. references Wegman 6 times besides the Wegman Report:
2 book chapters he wrote for Wegman-edited books, 1986 and 2005.
4 sessions he organized in which Wegman was an invited speaker: 1987, 1987, 1989, 1990.
b) Among his industrial consulting clients are Exxon and Dresser Industries (gear for oil&gas industries.) Of course, given his Houston location, that wouldn’t be odd. However, if one ranked cities in their concern about AGW, I suspect Houston would not be high on the list.
All of this may be totally irrelevant, and Scott is certainly a distinguished statistician … but I’d think any useful social network graph would strongly connect him and Wegman, even if there are no co-authored papers.
3) YASMIN SAID (Johns Hopkins) … got her PhD in Statistics from GMU, PhD Advisor = Wegman.
http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=90582
4) JOHN T. RIGSBY III (Naval Surface Weapons Center) was doing his MS in Statistics 2001-2005 @ GMU, likely part-time while @ NSWC.
http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/colloquia/ColloquiaFall2004.html
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-rigsby/6/4b1/917 says he was doing MS then.
Google Scholar: wegman rigsby yields
King, Rigsby, Bernard, Wegman 2004
Said, Wegman, Sharabati, Rigsby 2008
5) DENISE REEVES (MITRE) did her final PhD Defense @ GMU May 19, 2009. Her dissertation advisor was Wegman.
How strong a link is 2 senior people having know each other for 20+ years? Does a senior professor have any influence over a recent PhD student, a then-current PhD student, and a recent MS student with whom he had already written one paper? Maybe the Lady in Red might draw us the social network graph of the authors criticizing the climate scientists for having a tight social network?
REGARDING INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES:
1) In my experience, the complaint that some other scientists did not get enough involvement from statisticians … is not rare, and it’s sometimes even appropriate. (It is quite analogous to the complaint by software engineers that a lot of other engineers and scientists fail to consult them when writing code.)
On the other hand, I’m curious if Lady in red has any real-world experience of the realities of this?
Let me offer 2 university examples, which I have good reason to believe are reasonably representative, and one (unusual) industry example, which is not, but is educational.
a) Stanford University has ~30 {Professors of various flavors, research associates}, etc, and they do try to provide internal consulting, mostly by grad students. Stanford has about 1900 faculty total (~60:1), of whom I’d guess about half might be helped by statistics advice now and then. Let’s say that’s about a 30:1 ratio, somewhat of a barrier to getting a lot of help. In addition, in any field, journals have some ranking by prestige, and publication in better ones may not be so helpful, especially if rarely/never read by statisticians. Except for those statisticians who particularly relish team efforts in application areas, the incentives do not encourage them to be looking to spend much time on other areas. [This is too bad, especially for a lover of interdisciplinary things, but universities can easily become stovepiped unless senior people work very hard against that.]
b) At my alma mater, Penn State, the Stat department is about 30 people, but the total academic staff is ~6000, so that’s about 200:1, and even half need statistics help now and then, that’s 100:1, and again, the academic incentives do not overly encourage statisticians to spend a lot of time helping people publish articles in non-stats journals.
c) Now, the odd case, Bell Labs, circa 1980. We had roughly 25,000 employees, probably 80% in R&D.
We had a Mathematics&Statistics Research Center, of about 60 people, run by the (impressive, I heard him speak when I was in high school) Henry O. Pollak, and about half that group had some kind of stats-label. This included folks like Joseph Kruskal, and John Chambers (who did S, from which R came, oddly the reverse order from B->C). However, the Associate Executive Director above this was a fellow named John Tukey, and if someone doesn’t recognize this name, they might want to rethink any strong opinions they have about statistics.
So, these folks did statistics research, and in some sense, they were a much smaller fraction of the total staff (say 21,000:30 = 700:1), BUT:
– there were of course other departments focussed on statistical work. In Bell Labs, large $$$ rode on good statistical analysis, so people cared.
– part of their job was explicitly to promulgate better statistics methods among the staff at Bell Labs. Hence, they built stat packages, S, etc.
– they were supposed to be responsive, and supposed to be involved with other areas, and BTL-internal publications counted, not just external stat journals.
and finally:
– inside BTL, if you were going to publish a paper externally, it first had to go through internal peer review, which meant that it had to go to at least 2 Divisions outside your own line of management. You sent the paper up through your line of management to your Executive Director, who sent it to two others, who got reviews from people inside their organizations, and sent them back to *your* ED, from whence it worked its way down.
Scathing comments to your ED were viewed as career-limiting moves … so of course, if doing anything unusual, people knew it was a good idea to go over and ask for some help, and expect to get it.
Maybe some university works this way, but if so, I haven’t seen it.
===
For what it’s worth, I offer an opinion, based on Tukey’s general approach (like EDA), internal reputation, and public quotes, that he might have niggled a little at MBH98 and MBH99, but generally would have approved of them as good early attempts to extract signal from the noise. I rather doubt he would have thought much of endless torturing of data that seems to impress some people. Of course, since he is deceased, we can’t ask him, which is too bad, as he tended towards pithy comments.
I thought this was quite interesting (not that I was much reassured that we could end up at 600ppm) – Any comments – (somebody claimed this included tar sand extraction etc)
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5084
The studies published so far that take into account both peak oil and climate change are a truly minuscule number in comparison to the total number of papers that deal with climate change. This says a lot on how the problem was neglected so far. Nevertheless, a consensus seems to be emerging. Even with different models and different assumptions, it appears that geological constraints pose an important limit on CO2 emissions. All the studies discussed here arrive at the conclusion that, even without policy interventions, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will stabilize in a range that goes, approximately, from 450 to 600 ppm. These values are far below those of the “business as usual” (bau) scenario of the IPCC that predicts a CO2 concentration of about 1000 ppm by the end of the century.
Based on these studies, peak oil (and, in general, peak fossils) is going to have a strong effect on the climate issue. For one thing, it may well make the Kyoto treaty obsolete. There would be no need for policy measures to enforce the Kyoto targets. The emission limits that today are often seen as an insufferable set of constraints on the economy, could become, in the near future, just a consequence of the reduced supply of fossil fuels coupled with a contracting economy. On the other hand, the targets of the Kyoto treaty might well turn out to be insufficient to counter global warming.
At this point, there is no consensus among the authors in terms of policy recommendations relating to these results. Some of the authors cited here conclude that peaking of fossil fuel production will be sufficient to maintain CO2 at a level below that considered dangerous by many climate experts. But this conclusion is not shared by other authors who maintain, instead, that even if we could be sure that CO2 concentrations would remain in the 450-550 ppm range, we would still face dangerous levels of global warming. Clearly, this is a difficult issue to solve, given the uncertainty in the scenarios and in the calculations of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the temperature effects. Furthermore, there are several phenomena that the climate models don’t consider and that could make warming much more serious than currently believed. Among these, the saturation of the CO2 sinks, the positive feedback of the methane hydrates and those of the ice/albedo system. We just don’t know enough to be able to say whether depletion is enough to “save” us from global warming.
Hello, i am looking for studies that show connection between human activity and climate change. So far i could not find any that would actually show such connection. Could anyne please help me by pointing me towards one?
Thanks,
Roger T
venge #297
If it is so blatantly obvious, show us your research. I don’t believe you:
The US consumes ~4000 TWh anually. If they switched to electric cars and electric heating (heat pumps), let’s say that would double it to 8000 TWh anually. You would need ~3 TW of wind power to supply that. The cost would be roughly 5,000 billion dollars. That is 250 billion per year over a period of 20 years. 250 billion is 1.5% of GDP.
This calculation is not complete, but at least suggests that it is not ‘blatantly obvious’.
Bankrupt the economy? That’s alarmism.
@300: Or you could just do geoengineering, which RC.org has a unscientific, kneejerk reaction against. The fact that RC.org refuses to even consider geoengineering is one of the reasons this is a politics site, not a science site.
Spaceman Spiff: You have reminded me of the idea that I would like RC to bring in other kinds of scientists to talk about their own research:
Paleontologists to talk about previous extinction events.
MDs to talk about what climates humans could take, how much H2S in the air etc.
Archaeologists to talk about who survived previous collapses. Like when the Canaanite Empire collapsed and the survivors became the Israelites, was it the rich, the poor, the ones with long legs or the fat ones who survived? I bet on the fat ones with long legs.
Somebody to talk about the range of climates humans could survive in, hotter or colder? In which climate would more food grow? In the ice age was there more farmable land than now, since the continental shelves were above water? Were there more fish in the sea during the ice age?
Somebody who can say whether there are already more people than the planet can support.
Giant asteroid impacts. An explosion of 100 Million Megatons is an Extinction Level Event.
I heard that we prosper more when there are more sunspots, because the sun is brighter then. Is this true? Do crops grow better with more sunspots? So we need cold and bright?
How slowly do we need the climate to change? How tightly do we need to control the climate, both hotter and colder?
I would like to see a debate on science in developing country. I feel the international community of scientists do not do enough to help their brothers. Some countries do not have enough scientists, some have none in many important fields. Education is lagging. I would like to see a developing countries science perspective here. I would like reaclimate to ask George Philander who recently wrote a piece on an African perspective on climate change to write a piece on realclimate.
#287 what sex is Vicky Pope?
“we are embracing nuclear power as the only reasonable way to generate the energy needed”
Done to death many times, but if Wall Street and the Nuclear industry itself WILL NOT build new power stations unless underwritten to guarantee a profit by government, then nuclear cannot be the only reasonable way to generate the energy needed.
This has probably been mentioned before, but I would be highly interested in a post on best current estimates of future methane release (and its impact) from melting permafrost and clathrates.
Re: 297 and nuclear energy vs renewables.
Erm – complete junk. Heard of the phrase ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’?
Greens aren’t fanatically opposed to nuclear. They just like to point out that wind turbines don’t produce radioactive waste, or can cause big accidents that render many square miles of land useless of many decades.
I can do the math ‘venge’, in fact I did a wind turbine analysis for my employer. The World Nuclear Association has done the maths as well and they think wind energy and other renewables are OK to.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/why/default.aspx?id=36&terms=renewables
So the argument is over capacity, not cost, carbon footprints or energy payback and of course the WNA have their own preference.
First, an answer, then a question.
Uranium reserves, like all reserves, are reported as ammount of uranium extractable at a given price. Historically, the U price has been low- tens of dollars per pound- since the end of the arms race. As a result, reserves are calculated using these numbers.
Because the price of fuel is a very small cost of operating a nuclear plant, they can be cost effective at fuel prices substantially higher than the historical ones. Once you reach about $100 per pound, it becomes economically viable to extract uranium from phosphates mined for fertilizer, and the amount of available uranium in the ground becomes the phosphate reserve divided by about 20,000 or so- orders of magnitude larger than the current uranium reserve.
The myth that Thorium is more plentiful is explained on my blog here:
http://lablemminglounge.blogspot.com/2008/05/thorium-uranium-ratios-and-atomic-power.html
Disclaimer: I worked as an exploration geologist for a company that targeted both uranium and phosphate deposits(along with other resources) in 2007 and 2008.
Question:
Is the stratospheric ozone layer a significant greenhouse contributor?
[Response: Yes (though not very large). Depletion of stratospheric ozone is a small negative forcing (fgure 2.20 in IPCC AR4). – gavin]
And a followup, is Ozone depletion over Antarctica keeping it cool?
[Response: A little. This seems to be mostly a dynamic effect (via changes in the winds because of the colder polar vortex aloft) rather than a radiative effect (i.e Shindell and Schmidt, 2004). – gavin]
Norman@293, Wow, so many red herrings in one post. Anybody bring rye bread, mayo and red onions?
First, we are not talking ruinous penury as a result of mitigation. We are talking on the order of 1-2% of GDP–less than the cost of the Iraq war or the bailout. What is more, this is not money thrown down the drain, but rather money invested in energy savings, clean energy and responsible development in the third world.
Yes, we face tremendous challenges as the global population crests toward 9-10 billion people. Yes, addressing climate change does add to these challenges. The real threat comes if we do nothing. I presume you want specifics:
1)Conserve as much as possible while still living a decent life
2)Support politicians (or whatever party) who embrace reality and the challenges it poses. Reject ideologues of all stripes.
3)Support policies designed to conserve energy and develop clean energy
4)Educate yourself–both about climate and energy, but also how science in general works. This will make you less vulnerable to astro-turfers and scam artists.
5)Come up with ideas yourselves!!!
This isn’t impossible if we approach it realistically. Our progeny will thank us. It’s time for us to step up and be the greatest generation–or at least yet another greatest generation.
Do-u-get-it, says “Breaking News!”
From Whirled Nut Daily, more like “Breaking Wind!”
I should like to construct a thread of three components.
First, let’s see a review of the climate model forecasts/predictions made over the last 30 years or so, starting with the simplest models and bringing us up to the present day with the most sophisticated ocean-coupled models. The review is to include a comparison of the predictions with how the climate has actually turned out, with regard to average temperature and so on; it should also include how the forecasts made with the older, simpler models compare with those obtained from the later, more physically complete ones.
I should then like Real Climate to lay down a challenge. This should be open to all comers, but particularly to experts in virtually any other formal discipline, whether from the social, political or engineering sciences: show us any model forecast made by your discipline 25-30 years ago that has turned out to be correct, or at least as nearly correct as the forecasts made in climate science have turned out to be, with regard to the behaviour of large, complex systems.
The challenge should then be followed up with a question, particularly pertinent I think to commentators from economics and politics who seem to treat climate science with so much distrust or contrarianism: given the record of your own discipline with regard to long term forecasting, on what is your critique of the climate science community and its work based?
I think this could turn quite neatly into a case – or cases – of ‘the biter bit’, and not before time either.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Yr to all …
Secular,
I dismiss parapsychology, and at the same time I believe in ESP! I have HAD such experiences myself. What I have NOT had is experiences of that sort that could be independently verified. And none of the experiments on ESP so far have come up with that kind of evidence. A century of null results means there’s going to have to be some kind of major change in the approach before parapsychology can be considered a “science.”
Yes, I know about the randomizer experiments. Same statistical sloppiness as Rhine’s, just more subtle. The fact that believers get good results and nonbelievers using the same methods don’t should be a clue.
[Response: This OT even for an open thread. -gavin]
Just perusing but J’s attempt to scorn RC and some robust comments made by AGW proponents to denialists made me think.
Have a look at the google results for:
Al Gore interior of the Earth is several million degrees
and the results for
ian plimer sun is made of iron
and see the difference in tone.
Note also that Al Gore isn’t putting himself as a scientist but Ian Plimer is.
“The cost would be roughly 5,000 billion dollars. That is 250 billion per year over a period of 20 years. 250 billion is 1.5% of GDP.”
Additionally, that 250 billion would be pushed through the economy. The workers building the turbines would buy gifts and toys and more essentials, stimulating the economy.
Since there is a highly competitive market for making such items as wind turbines and solar arrays, there is a greater proportion of the workforce employed and more competition keeps costs down. Remember, the majority of employers in any robust economy is employed by the small and medium business sector.
Being smaller companies, the executives will be paid less and hoarding of wealth will be less prevalent, ensuring that the money keeps moving through the economy rather than squirreled away or used for “makework” inve stments that only concentrate more wealth in the wealthy.
What, after all, was the reason for the loa ns to banks? To keep the economy moving by making sure money MOVED.
This spend could increase GDP easily outweighing the costs.
“Uranium reserves, like all reserves, are reported as ammount of uranium extractable at a given price.”
There is also the rate at which extraction can be made.
Easy oil is gone. Easy Uranium if not gone, going.
“Peak Oil” isn’t “there is no more oil” it’s “the oil we can get out cannot expand to fill demand”.
And the demand increases whilst supply doesn’t increase as much, what happens next?
Prices rise.
What have oil prices done for the last 15-20 years? Gone up dramatically.
“Or you could just do geoengineering, which RC.org has a unscientific, kneejerk reaction against. ”
I think you pointed the unscientific kneejerk reaction the wrong way.
Sulphur smokestacks? An eternal and increasing burden. Guaranteed income for the companies doing it, though. And that’s ignoring the problems of acid rain.
Carbon trees? How about a hovercar too?
And the ZERO COST solution for a large reduction? USE LESS POWER. Sweden use 1/3-1/4 the US average yet they are in a colder and darker clime than the US. They also have a better standard of living.
“* The “trick” was simply the use of a splice function to bridge old and new temperature data derived from different sources.
(but this doesn’t explain “hiding the decline” or whatever was written)”
Yes it does.
It doesn’t seem to to those pushing “it’s a conspiracy” because they want (and unless you’re one of them, to apparent good effect) that the statement means
“hide the decline in temperatures”
It doesn’t. It means hide the decline in the issue being talked about: the thickness of the tree rings.
PS: Please answer how you figure you can hide the decline (in temperatures) by using the real temperature data?
Brian Schmidt: My two post requests would be first, the clearest explanation of stratospheric cooling from GHGs that you can give (I find it confusing)
BPL: Good absorbers are equally good emitters (Kirchhoff’s Law). In the stratosphere, there is little thermal infrared (4-200 microns) around, but a lot of ultraviolet. There’s ozone there, and that absorbs the UV, heating it. The ozone collides with everything else, including CO2, heating that. The CO2 radiates in the infrared, cooling the stratosphere. The heat balance in the stratosphere is between ozone UV heating and carbon dioxide IR cooling.
When CO2 increases, there’s more efficient radiation of IR from the stratosphere, and it cools. At the same time, the greenhouse effect near the ground is increased because of all the IR flying around there.
There is also some stratosphere cooling from ozone depletion, but not enough to account for observations.
John Mashey has a good idea there–a big, conspicuous link to “COMMENT POLICY–PLEASE READ” might help things slightly. If someone violates it and then complains when they get called on it, Gavin or somebody could say, “Didn’t you read the comments policy?”
Maybe this is outside the boundaries of Real Climate but…
Many people I talk to sort of get that there’s a problem but have absolutely no idea about the magnitude of the challenge we face trying to limit to 2 degrees C. Which means they don’t really care or see the urgency.
I would be interested to learn more on emission trajectories that might actually meet such a target – especially since that was the only solid comittment in the Copenhagen Accord. Andrews and Bows (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2008) suggest stabilising at 650 ppm CO2e and 3 to 4 degrees *might* be feasible but 450ppm and 2 degress probably isn’t.
I guess I’m interested in the science of the policy/political options. Is a developed world target of 80% reduction by 2050 enough. How long before China and India *must* reduce emissions. Is 350 ppm possible? Will my next car have to be my last? Is there any place for coal in a 2 degree constrained world. How will Australia survive from 2020 to 2040 with zero coal power and coal exports? No that last one is just too hard!
For previous doom and gloom, see “The Doomslayer”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
Or follow Al Gore on any given day. Or the NYT, WaPo, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR…
re:# 282
Thorium-based fission is not necessary for burning weapons-grade plutonium. Uranium-based reactors will, and are even now, work. Some uranium-based reactors designed and constructed in the 1960s and 1970s were designed to be able to use 100% MOX.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel
Neil,
Don’t forget, too, that we have knowledgeable, articulate women posting here fairly frequently, such as Anne van der Bom and Lynn Vincentnathan.
Joel and Ray (#214 and #215), thanks for the response about the Cretaceous. The piece of the puzzle I missed was that runoff from the erosion of silicate rocks provides the calcium for the marine organisms that remove it and the attached carbon dioxide from the ocean. A warmer climate causes more runoff, which removes more carbon dioxide.
There are other differences in the Cretaceous. The ocean was more stratified. Also, the chemistry was different, it was a calcite ocean rather than the present day aragonite ocean. I do not know what difference this makes to shell formation and pH levels.
Norman: Are the[re] plans to get rid of 80% of the current population (odds would be that I would be in that 80%) to make things more manageable?
BPL (sitting in a wheelchair, obsessively stroking a white Persian cat): Yes. We decided on that in 1973 at the first meeting of the Cabal to Reorganize and Unify Society and Humanity (CRUSH), a secret organization of wealthy, Satan-worshipping, Jewish liberals who secretly control everything. At the end of the meeting, we sacrificed nine black puppies to Hecate and went home to our underage gay live-in companions and goat concubines. Your attempts to resist us are futile! Ha! Ha! Ha!
A Simple Change in Behavior
I’m often frustrated at the people that declare that any attempt to address the climate problem will destroy our economies, particularly when I look at all of the simple lifestyle changes that would garner a 10% to 40% reduction in individual (not total, obviously) fossil fuel consumption. Not all of them can be undertaken unilaterally by individuals, but certain societal changes would make it easier, or even required, and have huge effects. In particular:
1) Trips to the store… if people simply organized their errands better, and stopped running to the store for just bread and milk, this would have a noticeable impact.
2) 9-5… in today’s global economy, with business partners in multiple time zones, and 24-7 customer service for 24-7 lifestyles, there is very little reason for most businesses to operate 9-5. Spreading the working hours both within and among businesses would dilute everyone’s commute, which would have many benefits… less time spent idling in traffic and producing CO2 without progress, less construction required for smaller, less congested roadways, and more time for people as individuals to enjoy their lives (with less frustration).
3) Telecommuting… here it is, almost 2010. I myself have been telecommuting for 15 years, but I still meet resistance from employers/clients that want me on-site 5 days a week (often 10 hours a day). Yet with so may of today’s jobs being information and technology dependent, along with the power of the Internet, I think that a large number of people in a variety of industries could work from home 1-2 days a week, if not more, using the same amount of electricity at home as they would at work, but completely eliminating their commute, which both eliminates that chunk of fossil fuel usage, and reduces the congestion that increases the fossil fuel usage of other commuters.
4) Internet deliveries… I feel horribly sinful when I buy something through the Internet, usually something costing $15 to $50, with a $6 shipping charge. Then you realize you need it for a birthday or holiday, so you overnight it for $10 more. All around you, dozens of neighbors are doing the same thing. The CO2 charge for this isn’t too much more than if the product had been shipped to a nearby store, and you drove to pick it up, but imagine if we took advantage of this. Imagine if Internet deliveries to your neighborhood were bundled, so that for example “Internet Delivery Day” in your own neighborhood was every Wednesday. If you took that as an option, both your shipping charge and fossil fuel use is greatly reduced (the one shipping company driver is making one trip to your neighborhood instead of 5 different shipping companies making 20 distinct trips that week). Regional, shared warehouses of products would further reduce cross country shipping requirements (instead of requiring every company to organize and run their own warehouses, collectives run by the shipping companies could be used to optimize fuel usage — let’s stop shipping individual boxes that are 80% air and packing all over the country). This should allow products to be shuttled around the country using more fuel efficient methods than air freight.
5) Regular neighborhood deliveries can even be extended to options that are currently available but rarely used. Most people still do their own grocery shopping, even while many grocery stores offer a shop-and-deliver service that only the old and infirm take advantage of. But there are fuel savings there, too, if one delivery truck can drop off all of the groceries for hundreds of families, eliminating hundreds of individual car trips to and from the store.
Interestingly, there would probably be some cascading effects due to these changes. The increased use of small delivery vans to neighborhoods would begin to make it cost effective to use higher mileage hybrid versions of such vehicles, or their eventual replacement with electric versions powered by electricity delivered by large scale clean energy sources). Many of these savings result in more time spent at home, which becomes an impetus to make our homes more energy efficient, and reduces the office space (and therefore energy consumptions) required at places of work.
I’m sure that others can think of similar areas where all we need to change is our behavior, and perhaps some of the attitudes and organization of society around that behavior.
[Side note: In any cap and trade scheme, all businesses should be eligible for credits if they take significant steps to reduce employee fossil fuel usage by using flex hours, work-at-home options, and the like).
If we could just get beyond the black-and-white, all-or-nothing, death-by-warming-or-death-by-poverty line of thinking, we could get some of these things done.
@331 … should that be to “hide the decline” in the proxy’s reaction to temperature – ie density, not width?
A post explaining more of this “pre-pub” release:
“The first analysis of emissions from commercial airline flights shows that they are responsible for 4-8% of surface global warming since surface air temperature records began in 1850 — equivalent to a temperature increase of 0.03-0.06 °C overall.”
would be nice.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091221/full/news.2009.1157.html
312: Roger Tan says:
“Hello, i am looking for studies that show connection between human activity and climate change. So far i could not find any that would actually show such connection. Could anyne please help me by pointing me towards one?
Thanks,
Roger T”
Start with the report of WOrking group I in the 4th assessment report of the IPCC. Once you’ve read the 800 or so pages let us know if you need further assistance. You’re welcome. John P.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_wg1_report_the_physical_science_basis.htm
Anne van der Bom (313), so $5 trillion is just chump change, even over 20 years? And we can build nation-wide wind power for less than $2/watt?
A skeptic acquaintance tells this story:
Will Happer was appointed a DOE director by the first George Bush. When he was with the government all of the climate scientists in the government reported to him. He told me that they were different from all the others who reported to him. They resented being asked questions and often refused to answer his questions.
Now having seen his highly ideological performance at the Congressional hearings in February, does anyone on this list have more information about his tenure at DOE?
Assuming that his version is accurate, one hypothesis is that he behaved ideologically while at DOE and the scientists there were trying to protect themselves.
Can anyone illuminate this?
I’d be interested to hear more about ozones role as a GHG and whether levels are likely to go up or down in the next century.
Can O3 oxidize CH4 or are OH radicals required?
Rattus Norvegicus wrote to me:
“As far as the 1970’s “ice age myth” I suggest you read this. I think that by the time this hit the popular press Schneider had already corrected his paper which started this myth. The 1979 NAS “Charney” report predicted the possible extent of global warming as being about 3C. The fallout from the basic theory of how the climate works was pretty well established by 1980, and the estimates of temperature change due to a doubling of CO2 have not changed much in the last century.”
Spaceman Spiff also referred me to the same article, “The Myth of the 1970’s Global Cooling Consensus.”
[edit]
I did find these original, popular press reports, however, from both Time and Newsweek. Please re-read them. I would suggest that these articles below are not easily dismissed as “myth” and it does appear that, in the 1970’s, there was a scientific consensus about a coming ice age.
Which leaves me with the question: what changed?
I will work through the other suggested references and, actually, I will read Connolley’s article about the Ice Age Myth. I would be interested in how he handles dismisses all the perceived concern below. Best. …..Lady in Red
[edit – use links instead of cut and paste. And please be aware that changing user names in order to pretend to be new to the ‘debate’ is not good practice.]
#344. Yes. If you have proofs or figuring that shows otherwise, please tell, don’t just snide away at someone else who has posted their workings.
re 341, yes, it is density rather than thickness. Had to read up, though. I don’t do biology. It’s just applied physics anyway…
:-)
“Can O3 oxidize CH4 or are OH radicals required?”
Wrong question.
OH is formed from O3.
O3 + a photon (jO1D) -> O1D + O2
O1D + H2O -> 2OH
In dry atmospheres, I guess oxygen atoms can react directly with CH4. In the troposphere, however, it’s OH that does all the work.
Two questions about my (former) work in one week! Hurrah!