Continuation of the open thread. Please use these threads to bring up things that are creating ‘buzz’ rather than having news items get buried in comment threads on more specific topics. We’ll promote the best responses to the head post.
Knorr (2009): Case in point, Knorr (GRL, 2009) is a study about how much of the human emissions are staying the atmosphere (around 40%) and whether that is detectably changing over time. It does not undermine the fact that CO2 is rising. The confusion in the denialosphere is based on a misunderstanding between ‘airborne fraction of CO2 emissions’ (not changing very much) and ‘CO2 fraction in the air’ (changing very rapidly), led in no small part by a misleading headline (subsequently fixed) on the ScienceDaily news item Update: MT/AH point out the headline came from an AGU press release (Sigh…). SkepticalScience has a good discussion of the details including some other recent work by Le Quéré and colleagues.
Update: Some comments on the John Coleman/KUSI/Joe D’Aleo/E. M. Smith accusations about the temperature records. Their claim is apparently that coastal station absolute temperatures are being used to estimate the current absolute temperatures in mountain regions and that the anomalies there are warm because the coast is warmer than the mountain. This is simply wrong. What is actually done is that temperature anomalies are calculated locally from local baselines, and these anomalies can be interpolated over quite large distances. This is perfectly fine and checkable by looking at the pairwise correlations at the monthly stations between different stations (London-Paris or New York-Cleveland or LA-San Francisco). The second thread in their ‘accusation’ is that the agencies are deleting records, but this just underscores their lack of understanding of where the GHCN data set actually comes from. This is thoroughly discussed in Peterson and Vose (1997) which indicates where the data came from and which data streams give real time updates. The principle one is the CLIMAT updates of monthly mean temperature via the WMO network of reports. These are distributed by the Nat. Met. Services who have decided which stations they choose to produce monthly mean data for (and how it is calculated) and is absolutely nothing to do with NCDC or NASA.
Further Update: NCDC has a good description of their procedures now available, and Zeke Hausfather has a very good explanation of the real issues on the Yale Forum.
Ray Ladbury says:
…I’ve known some of them, and being a scientist, I understand what motivates us (it ain’t money, believe me).
Never. It’s strictly about the babes and the fame.
Or perhaps there’s only so much arctic cold to go around … from the NSIDC:
Hmmm … and further (and this should help Dwight):
This pattern has been seen before, and it will be seen again, and each time it does we’ll hear all about the end of global warming from Watts and The Mob.
#444 Matthew L
Huh? Eyeballing the graph, it looks like a ~45mm rise since 1992 – or about 3mm per year.
It amazes me that people can look at a graph or read an article and see/read things that just aren’t there! If someone has a better and more polite term than “brainwashed” to describe this bizarre phenomenon, let me know.
Oh, and Matthew, please tell us, which model has predicted the end of the Arctic Oscillation? Please tell us how the continued existence of this is “way out of line” with model results, while you’re at it.
484: I’d seen that, but what I am wondering about is the incorporation of that data into a global mean temperature estimate. My understanding is that the HadCrut and gisstemp records look different because of how they treat the arctic and antarctic regions for which there is little data recorded in real time. I read that the Arctic buoy data takes longer to download and process but that eventually it will go into a temperature estimate. I would think that once the data from the buoys is downloaded and processed and incorporated into global mean temperature estimates that if Hadcrut and gisstemp estimates are generated that use that data that they’d be much closer to each other than the current ones are?
#479, Matthew L.:
You wrote, “…I think there is a place here for an instant response “sub-blog” (if there can be such a thing) to counter the current themes showing up in the Sceptic / Denialist blogs. It does not need to comment much but should be a summary of the counter arguments and links to relevent papers.”
You should check out: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
which clearly presents and debunks (with relevant links) the most popular 82 denialist arguments on the web. It might take a bit of time before it picks up a new topic – but most of what is on the web are recycled talking points anyway.
Matthew says “Really large random transients are evidence that AGW proponents are over-optimistic in their beliefs about the accuracy and adequacy of their quantitative theories.”
Uh Matthew, show me the model or the scientist who says weather will end. Jeebus Hiram Jehosaphat Christ, now they’re not content to look at 10 years of data. Instead they want to look at a single month!
> MattL: “That is why I come here and post my ignorant
> musings in the hope that I will get some useful arguments”
Matt, they’re not your ignorant musings, they’re just long refuted claims we’ve seen over and over. New people show up regularly who’ve read assertions on blogs and think “gee, that’s a devastating criticism, I’ll go show those scientists they’re wrong” — like you’ve been doing.
Hint: don’t scrape for ideas on PR opinion blogs. You can look at the science, read the links, and come up with your own questions (and cite your sources) and people will help.
You aren’t likely to find some argument that nobody here has heard by just reading stuff elsewhere. Read _here_.
“Start Here” at the top of the page, for a good place.
Doug Bostrom wrote: “One thing I’ve noted about all ‘alternative’ (shortly to be mainstream) power technology advocates is that as a group we’re entirely too sanguine, falling into the usual traps of not anticipating problems because as humans we’re innately optimistic. All of our schemes face scaling problems once they hit the windshield of existence.”
There is no question that the world’s vast solar and wind energy resources are far more than sufficient to provide ample energy to power a technologically advanced, prosperous and comfortable human civilization indefinitely, using today’s mature technologies that are already being rapidly deployed all over the world (let alone with the much more powerful technology, particularly PV technology, currently in development).
There is no question that we have the technological and economic capability to transition to such a near-zero-emissions, clean, sustainable solar and wind based energy economy very rapidly, if we choose to do so.
Whether we WILL, in fact, choose to do so, is another story.
J says “The free market is not made up of fools.”
I would imagine the free market has a composition roughly comparable to the general population, and as George Carlin said, “The average person is an idiot, and 50% of them are dumber than that.”
[Response: If you are arguing that there are no energy efficiency saving left to be realised …-gavin]
No, of course I’m not. Increased efficiency has never decreased energy use. If you understand why it never does, you’ll have a better understanding of energy and power.
[Response: Not true. I just moved to a better insulated and more efficiently equipped apartment, and my energy consumption has halved. I have not bought twice as much stuff to compensate. People who install roof insulation do not all build extensions. etc. Overall, reductions in demand through efficiency can reduce prices of energy which can increase aggregate use, but efficiency gains combined with some form of carbon pricing could possibly prevent this. – gavin]
I was responding to the foolish comparison of better, cheaper, more productive technology being adopted willingly (computers) to forced use of alternative energy sources – those currently available other than nuclear – which regulation seems currently make unfeasible to propose.
Your $100 bill story seemed to indicate I’m missing an energy source right before my eyes as my butane tank is empty and I’m cold. If you have a non-carbon one I should spend my $100 on instead of butane – or using my electric heater, I’m still open to hear it.
[Response: Well yes. ‘Nega’-watts are cheaper than megawatts, and so if you had the extra $100, you should use it to better insulate your home and buy a more efficient boiler rather than buy more butane. – gavin]
SecularAnimist says: 6 January 2010 at 7:01 PM
Ignoring advice to the contrary I’ve gone on a dismal track.
I agree with you that we have the technical knowledge needed to sort things out. I’d even argue we’ve had it for a while but have ignored our possibilities; one of the inefficiencies of the “magic market” is the paralyzing effect it can have on actually deploying “the good and sufficient” as opposed to “but wait, it can be even better”. It would have been a big help if the market had some serious and persistent guidance a few decades ago but that was not to be and so now we’re standing on the stern of a ship already deeply down by the bow. There’s not a lot of time available and we’ve got a lot of planks to lash together before we have something on which we can continue floating.
I’m doubtful about the scaling of manufacturing capacity needed to bring sufficient amounts of any mix of any selection of replacement energy sources online rapidly enough to substitute even for the fraction of our energy coming from liquid and condensible petroleum products. This has nothing even to do with C02. Even the gullible or greedy consumers of climate change doubt are facing the same problem: our supply of petrochemicals is going to be overwhelmed by demand despite handwaving by optimists bearing magically linear upward-sloping prognostications of production. This is going to happen faster than we can calmly deal with it. We’ll ultimately accommodate while not necessarily solving that problem because we have to, but not without noticeable dislocations and not without notable changes in the landscape of what we consider to be the “developed world”.
Then there’s electricity and the coal filth, another enormous problem.
Somebody (here) I think did a compelling little treatise on the industrial capacity needed to produce nuclear plants in sufficient numbers to make a serious dent in our demands for coal-fired generation. The numbers don’t add up, we can’t do it in a reasonable amount of time. Well, that is to say, we could but we won’t because we’re not really very rational animals at the end of the day; for some reason we don’t like living in wartime economic conditions which is what would be required to divert adequate resources to nuclear construction programs with sufficient intensity to ameliorate our problems during a useful period of time.
But what about wind and solar? As the real estate agent says, it’s all about location, location, location. For an example of how wind and solar are going to get hung up on rationality issues, see the fiasco at Cape Cod, where First Americans have apparently decided they’d prefer to watch the sunrise through periscopes from underwater rather than allow wind turbines being built. In the Mojave, it’s “environmentalists” who happen to have backyards or favorite hiking trails situated overlooking where PV and solar thermal plants could go. In Scotland, every single council along the path of the transmission upgrade needed to bring major wind online into the grid has opposed that construction because “it’ll spoil the view”.
As if our own suicidal aesthetic considerations were not enough there are natural resources issues and more rationality problems. How about neodymium? Here’s a arresting bit of news: almost all of our current known neodymium resources are located in a bit of the world that sometimes has problems playing nicely with others:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/concern-as-china-clamps-down-on-rare-earth-exports-1855387.html
Problem, eh? How about this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/concern-as-china-clamps-down-on-rare-earth-exports-1855387.html
Meanwhile, we’re going to jack the population up still further.
I’m not among those who say the human race will be eliminated by all this, far from it. Indeed the biosphere will weather the mess we’re creating, though it’ll look different. Worse things have happened to both. But it’s going to be a hell of a mess.
Historians will probably conclude that the various bits of our brains did not evolve in a sufficiently synchronized way.
Whoops, stuffed my second link in previous post:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/precious-metals-that-could-save-the-planet-1855394.html
That really was a nasty little bit of negativity, my last post. I’m not saying everything’s hopeless, I guess more that we may face abandonment of our affections for technologies with a particular personal appeal, certain stretches of beautifully unsullied landscapes, dare I say even some notions of national sovereignty that are probably outmoded on a planet that is wall-to-wall people and where borders only really signify differences in local laws.
We’ve never really gotten anything of this size right before, but here’s a fresh chance.
Regarding the high stuck over Greenland and the weather anomaly driving the arctic cold down over the US:
I can’t help but wonder whether this has something to do with all the extra open water over the arctic.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png shows us tracking the remelt after the 2007 record low extent with something like a million square km more open water than the 79-2000 average.
[Response: Well yes. ‘Nega’-watts are cheaper than megawatts, and so if you had the extra $100, you should use it to better insulate your home and buy a more efficient boiler rather than buy more butane. – gavin]
Again, increased efficiency has never resulted in less energy use. Your mileage may vary, but overall, that’s the history of energy efficiency gains. More efficient cars result in more power per gallon – and more miles driven, bigger engines, more cars bought. Personally, my home is insulated, and had I gained even more efficiency I would have had the heater on more this last month, as well as having it on now instead of a coat and hat.
People use as much energy as they can afford to do things, power is power – power to travel, create things, do more. If they can afford more they will find new ways to use the more they can afford. As you no doubt have. Or put it in the bank for others to borrow to do more things, using more power.
As for the example of the switch to computer power. Computers “waste” more energy than less delicate machines – a heating coil for example. It takes more power “wasted” to do get the the power pure enough for semiconductors to work. In this case “efficiency” of energy is decreased, while the value increases. Future computing innovations most likely will “waste” even more power – while saving power in another area.
Increasing efficiency, while a wise engineering goal, is a very unskillful way to look at the needs and consequences of human power usage.
RE Matthew L
Glad I could help. I wouldn’t be so sure that some bloggers would benefit from reading the papers that I cited. Advocates are really not swayed by the evidence. You can see many examples here of posters who bring up debunked points again and again, which is why similar arguments brought up by new posters often get less than warm receptions.
The climate sensitivities are not just based on recent events, so I don’t understand Spencer’s point. His calculations are one of many – we should not be eager to jettison all the other studies in favor of one calculation, which I am not sure has even been published.
@ Ray Ladbury
Thanks for the reply.
Re. the meaning of ‘significant’.
Do you think that the word ‘significant’ in Q. 2 of this survey only shows a consensus that AGW exists but not nec. a major feature of the observed warming?
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
I am not a skeptic but I think the question is too vague, to be evidence for AGW causing most of the observed warming.
Thanks.
RE Matthew L
With a little poking, a lot of papers are available. Many authors will post the published manuscript, proof or accepted paper on their web sites. If you Google the title (with quotation marks) you can sometimes avoid the pay-wall. Also, public libraries may have subscriptions to Science and Nature or may get other articles by interlibrary l o a n. Or you may get a PDF directly from the author by writing a nice e-mail.
We’re a lot better off than we were ten or fifteen years ago when we were pretty much limited to getting reprints from the authors via snail mail or having access to a university library.
John Cook published a series of articles in SkepticalScience starting on September 28, 2009 that go through the basics step-by-step. Whenever possible, he links to PDFs of the articles he cites. We’re all here to learn, and I find his work to be pretty understandable.
502, dhogaza: This pattern has been seen before, and it will be seen again, and each time it does we’ll hear all about the end of global warming from Watts and The Mob.
On the whole, that was a good post. If large enough areas are cold enough often enough, then they discredit the AGW predictions. If the earth returns frequently enough to levels of cold characteristic of ca. 1885, then global warming isn’t happening.
However, it was recently noted that Nov 2009 was the warmest on record. That transient was taken as supporting AGW, though it could be a random transient.
The increasing Arctic summer thaw in 2003-2007 was taken as confirming AGW, but the successively reduced summer Arctic thaw from 2007-2009 was taken as incidental to global warming. The nearly constant Arctic summer thaw from the 70s to the late 90s was taken to be less informative than the thaw from 2003-2007. The Arctic isn’t warmer than it was 70 or so years ago.
Possibly off-topic, one of Phil Jones’ emails in the stolen CRU emails comments that no more than 20% of the grids show statistically significant warming across the 20th century. As I understand it, the warming occurs most toward the poles, mostly in winter, and mostly at night. If the regions that are warming are currently breaking low temp records set 50-150 years ago, then earth can’t have warmed very much. If, as you forecast, this recurs again 30 and 60 years from now, then the earth will not have warmed as much as predicted by the AGW models. If the earth is really warming, then the intervals between equal cold snaps have to increase.
> You should check out:
> http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
> … It might take a bit of time before it picks
> up a new topic
You can sign up there to submit new sources and check off what you see in them — it’s meant not for adding repetitive copypaste stuff but for contributing a pointer to anything that actually is new writing, that might belong on the list. That speeds along how quickly new arguments show up in the survey there
Re J @515: Again, increased efficiency has never resulted in less energy use. Your mileage may vary, but overall, that’s the history of energy efficiency gains.
But before now the drivers of increased energy efficiency have been general improvements in technology and the need to cope with increases in energy cost or shortages of supply or threats to supply. Never before in that history has there been the need to reduce energy use in order to reduce CO2 emissions in the face of a clear and present danger to Earth’s climate system.
History amply demonstrates that human populations are willing to voluntarily use fewer resources when properly motivated and educated about an imminent threat. Perhaps that’s why the denial industry is working so furiously to undermine that education.
Matthew, you use a lot of passive tense, statements without sources.
“Citation needed” isn’t harassment, it’s “show your source for this belief.”
Look at this, edited down. Each of these merits a cite to your source, something saying why you believe what you wrote to be true. Otherwise these are just assertions looking for homework help from others, or attempts to find some argument nobody can refute. But people just get tired of doing the work for you, if you keep making assertions without citations. Look at the recent runs by others who came here pasting their beliefs but never being able to give cites to sources. It goes nowhere.
Matthew says: 6 January 2010 at 9:31 PM:
If …, then they discredit the AGW predictions.
If …, then global warming isn’t happening.
… it was recently noted …
…That transient was taken as supporting ..
… was taken as confirming AGW, but
… was taken as incidental to global warming.
… was taken to be less informative…
The Arctic isn’t warmer…
… one of Phil Jones’ emails in the stolen CRU emails comments…
If …, then earth can’t have warmed very much.
If… , then the earth will not have warmed as much as predicted by the AGW models.
If…, then the intervals between equal cold snaps have to increase.
Says who? Some guy on a blog?
Don’t know if Rasmus has seen the Calogovic et al. “Sudden Cosmic Ray Decreases: No Change of Global Cloud Cover” paper yet (GRL, in press, doi:10.1029/2009GL041327). The short and sweet of it is that Calogovic et al. can’t replicate the Svensmarks’ findings from their most recent paper using reasonable criteria for Forbush decrease selection. Shocker, I know.
“Again, increased efficiency has never resulted in less energy use. Your mileage may vary, but overall, that’s the history of energy efficiency gains. More efficient cars result in more power per gallon – and more miles driven, bigger engines, more cars bought.”
How exactly do you ascribe increased sales of vehicles to improved efficiency?
Do your observations take into account that for the entire time we’ve been improving efficiency, the number of consumers of vehicles has increased?
Did the creation of suburbs and exurbs come about as a result of improvements in efficiency?
Sloppy. Very sloppy.
What’s going on with the gulf stream? It appears to be following a rather unusual course. How common is this? What are the consequences if it continues?
Matthew wrote in 518:
It might help if you had an exact quote and reference — especially given your earlier underestimate of the rate of sea level rise by a factor of 3. In any case, I believe that what you have latched on to is a great deal less “significant” than you might think.
The majority of global warming has taken place in the northern hemisphere and land warms more rapidly than water. So just looking at the northern grids you are considering 50% of the total grids, and looking at land you are considering 31% percent of the total grids. So at this point by 20% of all grids he could easily still be referring to every grid of land in the northern hemisphere.
More importantly, I would assume that by “grid” he is referring to the grids used by climate models in their calculations. Models during the 1990s were using 2°x2°. Last I heard, today’s models are using 1.25°x1.25°.
So if these are the grid cells that he is speaking of no wonder the noise would tend to overwhelm the signal at that scale. But by the law of large numbers if you start putting those grid cells together and what was drowned out by the noise becomes a strong signal.
If you are interested, Tamino has plotted the temperature trends from 1975 to 2007 for land for the following latitudes in the northern hemisphere : 64°N-90°N (5.7±1.8°C/century), 44°N-64°N (3.8±1.0°C/century), 24°N-44°N (2.9±0.8°C/century), and Equator-24°N (2.1±0.7°C/century) All of these are highly significant, not simply for an entire century, but for a 33 year period which according to climate skeptics has seen temperatures remain flat for at least 1998-2007 or 2001-2007 of the period for which the trends were calculated — depending upon the skeptic you are listening to at the time.
Please see:
Hit You Where You Live
January 11, 2008
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/hit-you-where-you-live/
He has also done temperature trends for the corresponding bands of latitude here:
Down Under
January 17, 2008
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/down-under/
… which is where I got the statistical significance from for both the northern and southern bands of latitude.
*
Matthew wrote in 518:
Bingo! I believe you just made much of the case for an enhanced greenhouse effect…
Polar amplification is expected partly as the result of albedo feedback, but it is also a sign of an enhanced greenhouse effect. Increased solar insolation would result in more warming at the equator, whereas an enhanced greenhouse effect would decrease the rate at which heat can be radiated by the climate system and will be stronger at the higher latitudes. Likewise, a stronger warming trend during the night is a signature of an enhanced greenhouse effect, and a stronger warming trend during the winter rather than the summer is indicative of an enhanced greenhouse effect. And of course another important signature of an enhanced greenhouse effect is the warming of the troposphere occuring simultaneously with a cooling of the middle and upper stratosphere. (I assume your omission of this was unintentional? However, the cooling of the lower stratosphere has been predominantly the result of ozone depletion — where ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation from sunlight and some wavelengths of infrared from the earth’s thermal radiation.)
*
Matthew wrote in 518:
When you speak of breaking temperature records, you are speaking of a particular day or night for a particular station. It shouldn’t be at all surprising that when you are looking at things on that small a scale you have difficulty seeing anything of climatic importance. For the same reason as the grids. But even then, there is a signal.
Just looking at the United States — only about 2% of the earth’s surface — during the period of northern hemisphere cooling attributed to aerosols from combustion prior to the enactment and enforcement of clean air laws record highs to record lows were 0.77:1. By the 1990s record highs to record lows were 1.36:1. By the 2000s this became 2.04:1. Under business as usual, by mid-century this is projected to be 20:1 and by end of century 50:1.
Please see:
Record high and low temps: An interesting trend
November 12, 2009
James Hrynyshyn
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/record_high_and_low_temps_an_i.php
Still, that’s the trees, not the forest.
A day that is 5 or 10°C warmer than usual in one city isn’t particularly significant. If you are talking about an entire summer or year for the same city that is 2 or 5°C warmer than usual in one city that is a great deal more significant — as it could mean failed harvests. But that isn’t climatic. 2-5°C on average higher than what temperatures used to be for an entire country or for several years? Decades? We may be speaking about a more or less permanent state of drought. Warmer winters and springs mean reduced snowpack during the growing season. Warmer summers mean increased rate of evaporation – with the rate of evaporation increasing 8% for every 1°C and doubling for every 10°C.
Consider the glaciers of the Tibetean Plateau. They are the source of water that feeds the ten of the major rivers of of Asia — including the Yangtze and Yellow rivers of China, the Indus in Pakistan, the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers of India and Bangladesh, and the Mekong in Southeast Asia.
They are disappearing at an alarming rate:
At that rate less than 7 percent will be left in 40 years.
So far, the consequences have included sandstorms reaching as far as Korea and Japan:
But the gravest consequences would appear to be in terms of water supply.
Please see:
And in time – mid-century, judging from the above? —
This may not seem that important to people in the United States — until one stops to consider that much of the water in that part of the world is used not simply as drinking water but for the production of food — and if food can no longer be produced there then it will raise food prices throughout the world. Moreover, mid-century consequences of global warming are at this point more or less unavoidable. In degrees they are however quite tame compared to business-as-usual projections for later in this century — and like the rate of evaporation, the consequences of further degrees are essentially an exponential function of temperature. By that time, according to our best projections, the consequences of business-as-usual will be devastating even to US agriculture — such that we will no longer be able to grow even wheat here. But those consequences are still largely avoidable.
silence says: 7 January 2010 at 12:38 AM
I don’t know what’s up with the Gulf Stream but that site has some really great visualizations!
Just above I had suggested that the destruction of wheat production in the United States was still avoidable, but it appears I was somewhat overly optimistic…
silence says: 7 January 2010 at 12:38 AM
Huh. It does seem rather drastically different, at least compared over snapshots of the past year.
Timothy Chase — 7 January 2010 @ 12:56 AM
Excellent response, Timothy. Let me add (I skimmed, so you may have stated this) that the low temps currently being experienced are due to:
“The cause of what one weather service refers to as these “upside down” conditions is an extreme of the Arctic Oscillation (AO).
Essentially, air pressure is measured at various places across the Arctic and at the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere – about 45 degrees north, roughly the latitude of Milan, Montreal or Vladivostok.
The difference between the average readings for the two latitudes gives the state of the Arctic Oscillation index.
A “positive” state is defined as relatively high pressure in mid-latitudes and relatively low pressure over the polar region. “Negative” conditions are the reverse.
And what we have at the moment is an unusually extreme negative state.”
The link is here (Climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/01/arctic_conditions_arctic_cause.html
Cheers
I don’t either know what’s up with the Gulf Stream but am of suspicion that might become a textbook example of something yet to be determined.
#760 dhogaza #761 Didactylos
Using Tilo Reber logic, by extrapolation, if winter is cooler than summer in his backyard, then the whole idea of AGW must be false. It’s simple, in the 6 months from summer to winter it got colder, that is, in his mind, significant!
He can’t seem to connect the idea of 30+ years with attribution to climate and still thinks that natural variability on short time scales proves long term trends are not that important.
Of course to do this he has to ignore current total radiative forcing, Pre-industrial radiative forcing, The Milankovitch cycles, Human industrial output of GHG’s, and in general, common sense.
#454 Rod B
If conservation efforts are increasing polar bear population, and climate change is decreasing the population, both are correct in context. One factor is increasing while another is decreasing. Please don’t tell me you don’t understand this?
J: “Again, increased efficiency has never resulted in less energy use. Your mileage may vary, but overall, that’s the history of energy efficiency gains.”
Wrong. Port Talbot Steelworks changed their processes and cut their energy bill massively (80%+). They didn’t produce 5x the amount of steel.
And the steel became cheaper because of efficiency.
Which reduced the price of (mainly steel) vehicles.
“never”, J?
J @515: “Again, increased efficiency has never resulted in less energy use.”
Did it occur to you that the reason for that is because energy costs are absurdly low and the supply of energy has remained high. The example I use is that I can buy durian–a tropical fruit that smells like an open sewer and so is a bit of a niche market–more cheaply than I can buy locally grown apples and pears.
When we save energy in one sector it is used in another. If energy reflected it’s true costs (environmental as well as production), people could then make intelligent decisions. Isn’t that what the free market is supposed to be about?
Matthew says, “If the regions that are warming are currently breaking low temp records set 50-150 years ago, then earth can’t have warmed very much.”
No, I’m just curious. Why don’t you look at what the science says rather than posting completely fabricated bullshit. Weather is weather. Climate is climate. Learn the difference.
Shills@517, I think you have to interpret the question in the context of the entire survey. Not only do the vast majority think warming is significant (well outside of natural variation), they see it as an issue that merits serious attention.
All in all, I would say the survey is a fair snapshot of the consensus. It shows that most scientists think the theory is pretty good, that they see it supported by evidence, are concerned about the trends they are seeing and think we need to do something about it. For a group as contrary as scientists tend to be, that’s pretty strong consensus.
A weather qustion: Is there any relationship between the new Arctic dipole pattern and the current cold weather in the central and eastern United States?
In some areas increased efficiency will lead to greater consumption (Jevons paradox), but this is not at all an absolute. If I replace an old refrigerator with a newer, more efficient model, I’m not going to turn the temperature down further or buy a bigger one. Same thing with a dryer and any number of appliances. I don’t cook more with a more efficient stove, nor do I wear more clothing with a more efficient washer/dryer. Replacing my old, drafty windows with something better will not cause me to crank up the thermostat in the winter. Of course this is just me, but I am hardly alone and I have not seen any figures for these particular examples that would lead me to believe this is not the trend.
RE: J #515: “Again, increased efficiency has never resulted in less energy use.” And, “Increasing efficiency, while a wise engineering goal, is a very unskillful way to look at the needs and consequences of human power usage.”
This argument probably originates in Tom Princen’s “The Logic of Sufficiency.”
Book Review Perspectives
http://ejournal.nbii.gov/archives/vol3iss1/book.princen.pdf
MIT Press, 2005, 401pp, ISBN: 026266190X
and:
http://ejournal.nbii.org/archives/vol3iss1/book.princen.html
(excerpt)
“Princen’s main argument is that to adequately deal with growing environmental problems, we need to move from an economy built around the principles of profit maximization and efficiency to that of sufficiency.”
Timothy @528, those familiar with the geology and geography of Canada will recognise the obvious implications of that map: roughly two thirds of the blue shaded area covers exposed Canadian Shield bedrock, boreal forest and muskeg that is incapable of sustaining mechanised agriculture. Good luck feeding the world on what’s left over.
Re #519:
“The Arctic isn’t warmer than it was 70 or so years ago.
Please go here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.B.lrg.gif
Look at the graph for northern latitudes (top graph) and explain how the ‘prox 0.7C increase above the 1940s shows that the arctic hasn’t warmed in 70 years.
Re: #519 (Matthew)
Which planet are you talking about? Here on earth, the arctic is quite a bit warmer than it was back then.
542: Tamino, Have you (or anyone else) incorporated the arctic buoy data into annual global temperature averages? As far as I can tell, the guys who do the work don’t calculate yearly averages from that data. Are there problems in merging station data w/ buoy data?
Re: #544 (John E. Pearson)
I haven’t looked at that data; I don’t know who may have included it in global averages. I’m sure there are problems — as with all data — like the fact that the buoys drift, for instance, but I doubt the problems are insurmountable. It looks like the IABP data don’t start until 1979, but it’s probably still well worth a look.
SecularAnimist, losing trillions of dollars in profits is a major disruption, even if it is happening to people you don’t like.
>>>#521 Jim: “History amply demonstrates that human populations are willing to voluntarily use fewer resources when properly motivated and educated about an imminent threat. Perhaps that’s why the denial industry is working so furiously to undermine that education.”
Well, it hasn’t happened in history. More efficient cars have not reduced gas usage. Perhaps it will in the future, there’s a significant percentage that believes in an imminent threat, hybrids are being sold – though the overall environmental and energy impact (batteries, etc) may be a wash.
Owning a hybrid or small car does not mean he owner isn’t a hypocrite in another area. Ed Begley Jr.’s carbon footprint is significantly larger than mine and I’m not even a believer. Al Gore’s is several orders of magnitude above mine and likely yours.
As for industry, car makers are pushing high mileage and hybrids as fast as the public will buy.
2009 seems to be #2 in GISTEMP, although december (globally +.58 °C) has been very cold in northern Eurasia (calculated with preliminary data, SST up to 2009-12-30):
2005 +.626 °C
2009 +.569 °C
2007 +.567 °C
1998 +.565 °C
2002 +.558 °C
2003 +.550 °C
2006 +.540 °C
2004 +.485 °C
2001 +.478 °C
2008 +.434 °C
1997 +.397 °C
> incorporated the arctic buoy data
I Googled: http://www.google.com/search?q=arctic+buoy+temperature
Found this: http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/ARCSS-SAT/
——excerpt follows——
Which begins:
“Accurate fields of Arctic surface air temperature (SAT) are needed for climate studies (Fig. 1), but a robust gridded data set of SAT of sufficient length is not available over the entire Arctic, e.g. ACIA (2004) report exhibits a “data void” over the Arctic Ocean (Fig. 2).
Over the Arctic Ocean, the SAT data sets with wide spatial coverage begin in 1979 with buoy observations (Fig. 3) and satellite-derived surface temperatures.
We plan to produce authoritative SAT data sets covering the Arctic Ocean from 1901 to present, which will be used to better understand Arctic climate change.
The Problem
However, there are discrepancies between the in situ, satellite-derived, and reanalysis data, e.g. the satellite estimates of trends show cooling over the Arctic during winter where the in situ estimates show warming …
The Plan
• Reconcile the differences between the various SAT data sets obtained from in situ observations (Fig. 5), reanalysis, and satellites. These data will be filtered and bias-adjusted as appropriate…..”
——end excerpt——
Cue the septic response:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/TrickSTRIPdraft.jpg
#254 Doug: “Do your observations take into account that for the entire time we’ve been improving efficiency, the number of consumers of vehicles has increased?”
Yes. Gas use per capita. The factor that decreases use is increased price, not efficiency.