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.
>>>#534 FedUp: 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.”
Which, all other factors equal, increases the sales of steel vehicles, increasing the demand for steel, increasing the competitiveness of Talbot, increasing their need for production. To wit, from the Western Mail: “Production at the Corus Port Talbot Works is expected to rise by a quarter with the launch of a new continuous caster at the steelworks. Continuous Caster 3 (CC3) will be formally opened today by First Minister Rhodri Morgan. Steel slab output at the plant is expected to rise by one million tonnes, moving Port Talbot Works from a 3.7 million tonne operation to a 4.7 million tonne one.”
If steel becomes cheaper to produce, demand increases, if it’s goes low enough, it will replace other materials in other uses. You don’t decrease people’s desire for the things that power produces by making power more efficient, you decrease the price side, which, all things remaining equal, increases the demand side. People, yourself included, like power and use it as much as they can. This is in large measure why we have the highest standard of living in history – power.
Ray, it’s not worth getting into a deep assessment of individual psychology. Sure, if asked, everyone would wish for AGW to not be happening. But to think a person, after spending his career analyzing and supporting AGW, would be just elated and overjoyed right after finding out his efforts were all wrong is just nonsense – even though he would have been included in the “wish it wasn’t so” crowd. No, I don’t think Hansen would (or should) be fired in this scenario.
jyyh says: 7 January 2010 at 1:53 AM
“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.”
It’s a weather thing but all the same I wondered if the seeming swerve in the current might have something to do w/the cold snap in the UK. Looking at the sea surface temperature visualizations on the same site, I don’t see any dramatic difference between the same period in 2008 (when the current seemed to follow its more typical path) and the display _silence_ called out.
Whatever the case, if you’re a visualization maven you’ll definitely want to check the animations. Really cool.
Link straight to juicy stuff for North Atlantic:
http://bulletin.mercator-ocean.fr/html/produits/psy2v3/ocean/global/bull_ocean_g_en.jsp?nom=psy2v3_20091216_21899
>>>#535 Ray: “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.”
Yes. Precisely. Energy use is effected by price, not efficiency, that’s my point. And price is determined by supply and demand. Demand for power is near infinite, so price is the main determinate.
>>>”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?”
The free market is about a lot of things, mostly people freely determining the value of good and services and maximizing economic activity and therefore, historically, the overall standard of living.
But you are on the right track. The only way to reduce use is to increase price. If you do this arbitrarily or wrongly (your definition of “wrong” here may vary) then an unintended consequence is a reduced economy. This is the usual result of centralized dictated markets.
In a nutshell this is the crux of where you are with climate change. A majority think some action is warranted; a majority think government will do more harm than good about it, or at least that it should not be the top concern for government action – which is where your price increase will have to derive from, given the supply situation.
Jim Eager(483), said, “…dare pull out the “CO2 lagging temperature increases” in the ice core canard here when you know very well what causes that lag and that it most definitely does not mean that CO2 plus feedbacks do not cause warming after the lag.”
Fine and dandy, ‘cept it was you that said it does prove that CO2 increases do cause warming. You’re just wrong because your facts and logic are wrong. And what do you men by “canard”? Are you implying that temperature increases didn’t ever lead CO2 increases? Or do you just wish it is a canard so you can continue to use it as a “proof” in bass-akward logic that increasing CO2 later increases temperature?
Overposting.
But here’s an article that really caught my eye, seeing as Mt. Rainier looms over us in this part of the world. Shrinking glaciers have knock-on effects that are beginning to be felt many miles from the main pimple as riverbeds become choked with freshly liberated glacial till.
“The fallout from Mount Rainier’s shrinking glaciers is beginning to roll downhill, and nowhere is the impact more striking than on the volcano’s west side.
“This is it in spades,” said Park Service geologist Paul Kennard, scrambling up a 10-foot-tall mass of dirt and boulders bulldozed back just enough to clear the road.
As receding glaciers expose crumbly slopes, vast amounts of gravel and sediment are being sluiced into the rivers that flow from the Northwest’s tallest peak. Much of the material sweeps down in rain-driven slurries called debris flows, like those that repeatedly have slammed Mount Rainier National Park’s Westside Road.
“The rivers are filling up with stuff,” Kennard said from his vantage point atop the pile. He pointed out ancient stands of fir and cedar now up to their knees in water.
Inside park boundaries, rivers choked with gravel are threatening to spill across roads, bump up against the bottom of bridges and flood the historic complex at Longmire. Downstream, communities in King and Pierce counties are casting a wary eye at the volcano in their backyard. There are already signs that riverbeds near Auburn and Puyallup are rising. As glaciers continue to pull back, the result could be increased flood danger across the Puget Sound lowlands for decades.
“There is significant evidence that things are changing dramatically at Mount Rainier,” said Tim Abbe, of the environmental consulting firm ENTRIX. “We need to start planning for it now,” added Abbe, who helps analyze Mount Rainier’s river systems.
Similar dynamics are playing out at all the region’s major glaciated peaks, from Mount Jefferson to Mount Baker, said research hydrologist Gordon Grant, of the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis, Ore.”
More:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010689013_rainiergravel04m.html
How about a variation on a an old saw?
“A warmist is a denier whose basement was just filled with glacial till”
Jim Galasyn(499), why do you debunk (appropriately) the use of individual weather activities that refute global warming by using individual weather activities that seemingly support global warming?
J says: 7 January 2010 at 11:56 AM
“Yes. Gas use per capita. The factor that decreases use is increased price, not efficiency.”
And does that take into account that vehicles are being introduced into markets where they previously did not find much penetration? Run the numbers on China, for instance.
J:
“People, yourself included, like power and use it as much as they can.”
Wrong in my case J, and I have no reason to think I’m exceptional.
It sounds as though you’re signed onto an ideology as opposed to an attachment to facts.
Not sure if this is the right place to post this question, but I’ll go ahead anyway…
I’m struggling to understand the distinction between “weather” and “climate”.
As I understand it “weather” is what is happening at the moment. If it’s colder than usual at the moment, and that continues for a few weeks, it’s still just weather.
But if it’s warmer than usual for, let’s say, fifty years, that’s the climate that changed. [I think]
My question: At what point on the timescale do fluctuations of temperature stop being variable weather and start being a change of climate?
My guess is that it’s more than one year but less than ten years. But my searches have failed to clarify this point.
Thanks for any enlightenment.
[Response: There are two answers, the first (standard) response is that if you average over 30 years, that’s the climate, and anything on shorter timescales is the weather. But the second response is actually a little more subtle and is tied to the issue of climate drivers. The main issue that is being addressed is to what extent changes in temperatures, ice rainfall etc. can be said to have been caused by changes in climate drivers (CO2, volcanoes, the sun, the orbit or whatever). We know that weather forecast models indicate that the weather is chaotic – it has a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. So if you change the smallest thing, a month later, the weather pattern is completely different. We also expect that the small year on year increment of CO2 is not large enough to show up on a year by year basis. A big volcano though does have a large enough effect to show up in one year. Thus the distinction between weather and climate in the context we discuss here, is a question of signal to noise for the part of the climate system that is driven by some external factor. For a very big signal (a volcano), you can see a climate change quite quickly, but for the current trends in greenhouse gases, you need 15 or more years (at least in the temperature field). – gavin]
Hank, “septic/skeptic” is a cute pun. Intentional, not Freudian, I presume?
>>Doug: “And does that take into account that vehicles are being introduced into markets where they previously did not find much penetration?”
Per capita. If vehicles are introduced to new capita, per capita still goes up, and totals go up. When vehicle use cost goes down, people use vehicles more. Same for airline fuel cost, ticket prices and per capita use of airline travel.
Of course no one is saying that CO2 is the only driver of climate change. But the denialists want to say that the IPCC is saying that, while asserting that other influences are being ignored… and then leap to the conclusion that other forcings are more important. (Always spinning in such a way so as to reduce the importance of CO2 emissions.) Lately, topics that have been seized on include the role of black carbon, and uncertainty about the effects of water vapor in climate models.
Another is the perennial “it’s cold outside” argument. For this one there’s a good response: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20091208_globalstats.html
>>#559 Doug: “Wrong in my case J, and I have no reason to think I’m exceptional.”
Well you are an exception then. Fuel use goes up and down with price, not efficiency. And unless you put your fuel savings in a sock, you’ve got some other power use compensation to calculate.
>>>”It sounds as though you’re signed onto an ideology as opposed to an attachment to facts.”
No, the facts are that fuel efficiency does not decrease fuel use in the aggregate. Your mileage may vary.
>>>#558 Doug: “Run the numbers on China, for instance.”
Which brings up a major monkey wrench in the works. Since China and India are definitely not going to be onboard, and since their increase in CO2 output dwarfs ours, what would be the requirement for our carbon-based energy use reduction in order to result in any effective change in warming – according to the models?
536 Ray Ladbury: Weather is weather. Climate is climate. Learn the difference.
Sure, climate is composed of weather. If the weather recurs regularly, then the climate isn’t changing. Warm transients, such as the warm Nov 2009 and Hurricane Katrina, are always taken as evidence of global climate change by AGW proponents, even when they are localized.
543, tamino; 542 spilgard: thanks for the links.
526 Timothy Chase: especially given your earlier underestimate of the rate of sea level rise by a factor of 3.
That was Matthew L. Some day perhaps I’ll choose a different name, perhaps “Septic Matthew”.
I like your “Bingo!”
Lost the comment, but FWIW the idea that 25,000-30,000 polar bears is somehow a large enough number to “guarantee” their survival is a pure non sequitur.
By the 1830s, the “buffalo” (AKA American Bison) were being killed at a rate of about 200,000 annually. An initial population that may have been in excess of 60 million was reduced to possibly 300-3000 by the 1890s. And to save them required not only stopping the hunting, but also saving their habitat by setting aside protected lands.
Polar bear habitat–ie, Arctic sea ice–appears to be in big trouble. How are we going to “set aside” sea ice?
Climate vs. Weather:
“There are two answers, the first (standard) response is that if you average over 30 years, that’s the climate…”
“…but for the current trends in greenhouse gases, you need 15 or more years (at least in the temperature field)”
I am not trying to play “gotcha” here (as in “Aha, you say 30 AND 15 — were you lying then or are you lying now? Mwah-ha-ha.”)
What I am wondering, though, is: What is the distinction between the 15 and the 30, and the inference (should the distinction remain unexplained) that we don’t really know what the difference is between unpredictable, chaotic weather and predictable climate change. Otherwise stated, what is the physical theory driving the 15 and/or the 30?
“No, the facts are that fuel efficiency does not decrease fuel use in the aggregate.”
That isn’t what you said before J.
You said energy efficiencies *never* resulted in less energy being used.
Have you changed it because you’re wrong?
J says: 7 January 2010 at 1:17 PM
You’re running aground on a shoal of dogma, J.
For instance, my gasoline usage has not tracked fluctuations in price. My requirement for gasoline is fairly well tuned to my needs; I have little or no flexibility in how much gasoline I consume. If I bought a car with better efficiency, I can’t imagine how I’d drive it farther than I drive my present car. If my circumstances changed, so might my driving requirements but that has nothing to do with efficiency of my vehicle.
So your statement is controversial on its face.
Here’s another example. My electrical consumption has dropped dramatically over the past few years because I moved from a place where electricity is not only more expensive but I also used central air conditioning about 9 months of the year. The climate here does not require a compensatory increase in heating consumption. Now I’m in a place where electricity costs about 1/3 less but I’m using less electricity. According to your curious generalization I should be using more electricity. I’m not.
Again, your statement becomes controversial when compared with real world data.
Faced with a lack of data, your theory is apparently still so compelling for you that you must imagine that I’ve increased my energy consumption in some mysterious way of which I’m not aware, rather than accept that you may be over-applying an economic concept found in freshman textbooks but which is not actually descriptive of the real world, as is the case with so much economic theory.
As to my exceptional qualities, can you quantify those? Does your theory explain all of the myriad exceptions you’ll find as you get to individual cases?
J, I agree that energy use tends to track price. However, the price of fossil fuels is ridiculously subsidized. If they reflected their true environmental and security cost, people would make rational decisions.
Martin Roydack, here’s a pretty good analysis
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/
Basically the thing to remember is that there are many, many influences that can have a big effect on climate for a short time–days, months, a few years, even a few decades (e.g. grand solar minima). The influence of CO2 persists for centuries. No matter how these short-term influences play out, CO2 eventually wins.
Gavin – #560 –
Many thanks. I think I get it.
There is the underlying stochastic process that generates the day-day variation that we call the weather. If the climate did not change at all, then at a given location, this would be a cyclo-stationary random process with parameters varying cyclically with a period of 12 months.
But in reality, the characteristics of the underlying process are themselves varying in an unknown way due to changes in greenhouse gases, volcanic dust emissions, variation in solar output, geomagnetic field variations, and who know what else, but probably on a time scale in which the change over 12 months is small. Unless, as you point out, something changes the statistics abruptly – such as a Krakatoa for example. The statistics of the weather are the result of modulating a cyclostationary process with variations on a longer timescale, so that it’s no longer stationary in any sense.
So, from observations, you are trying to separate out normal variations due to randomness from longer term changes in the underlying stochastic process. If you have inside information that the underlying process have changed, you can say at once that the observed change in temperature (or rainfall or whatever) is because the climate has changed. Otherwise, you would have to apply some sort of statistical test on oberservations over a period and finally say “ok, it’s now pretty certain that what we are seeing is more than just random variation – it seems that the climate itself has changed xxx much”.
I think what you have told me is that, if there is a consistent change over a thirty year period, then the conclusion is that the climate has changed. But over a shorter period, it’s just the weather.
Thank you for the elucidation.
[Response: Wow. Yes. – gavin]
Kevin, I keep forgetting to write that term properly, it’s
“septicTM Stoat” (the TM should be superscript)
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascienceblogs.com%2Fstoat+septic
Rod B. says “But to think a person, after spending his career analyzing and supporting AGW, would be just elated and overjoyed right after finding out his efforts were all wrong is just nonsense – even though he would have been included in the “wish it wasn’t so” crowd. ”
Then you don’t understand what it is to be a scientist. First, the most exciting time to be in a field is when a major theory is overturned. Second, it is unlikely that everything in the old theory will be trashed, and since the leaders who promoted the old theory are probably among the brightest and most forceful in the field, they will probably become leaders in promoting and developing the new theory.
Rod, what matters is understanding how things really work.
J says: 7 January 2010 at 1:22 PM
>>>#558 Doug: “Run the numbers on China, for instance.”
Which brings up a major monkey wrench in the works…”
No numerical analysis on my question forthcoming?
Have people spotted this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8437703.stm How worrying is this?
Matthew says, “Warm transients, such as the warm Nov 2009 and Hurricane Katrina, are always taken as evidence of global climate change by AGW proponents, even when they are localized.”
Not by the scientists unless they are taken as an illustration of an ongoing trend. Listen to what the scientists are saying, not the blowhards (left or right).
Jay says, “Since China and India are definitely not going to be onboard, and since their increase in CO2 output dwarfs ours, what would be the requirement for our carbon-based energy use reduction in order to result in any effective change in warming – according to the models?”
Actually, both the Indian and Chinese governments are on board with the scientific consensus, and they are among the nations that will suffer the worst later this century. The thing is that they face an immediate crisis of increased expectations and population that threatens the viability of the government. What must happen is development of alternative means of meeting energy demand, especially in India and China. Both nations are capable of deciding in their interests as long as the choice is not suicide now or suicide later.
Manny, you’ve been told before why it’s 30 years.
Why do you need to keep being told?
Ray Ladbury says: 7 January 2010 at 2:21 PM
“J, I agree that energy use tends to track price. However, the price of fossil fuels is ridiculously subsidized. If they reflected their true environmental and security cost, people would make rational decisions.”
Oh, boy, let’s not depend on rationality. It’s never there when we need it.
I believe the problem for J. is that he’s doing a variant of the old no-no, associating correlation with causation. In this case it’s not entirely false but I think it’s temporary.
At the same time as we’ve been exploding our population, we’ve been improving the efficiency of our machinery. From a certain perspective I have to concede that for a certain period of our history J. is correct because much of the population explosion is thanks to our machinery and to the extent our machinery’s efficiency is improved it helps to feed runaway population growth, resulting in increased demand.
However, it seems to me this is a temporary association. In a world with a stable population size, overall efficiency gains will result in reduced overall energy consumption, unless that society dreams up entirely new requirements for energy and very large requirements at that. Maybe time travel, space folding or the like? We can wish.
On a scale of individual cases J.’s concept falls completely apart and helps to illustrate my hypothesis about stabilizing demand. My personal world is “fully developed”; I have if anything an excessive amount of machinery requiring energy inputs and there’s nothing I can think of that I really need to add to the roster. Lately I’ve been on an efficiency kick, resulting in plucking a lot of low-hanging fruit around the house in terms of energy consumption. When I unplug any given little-used device driving parasitic consumption I’m not adding consumption somewhere else. My efficiency has improved and because the population of the tiniest governmental domain I rule is not changing I will not be adding consumption due to increased numbers of people.
This does not seem like a very controversial notion, but perhaps I’m missing something.
>>>>#570 Doug: “For instance, my… My… I… I…I…my… my…my.”
No doubt accurate but not significant historically in the overall effect of efficiency and energy use. And, tangentially, what are you doing with your savings?
If you were offered a much better job at a further distance would you drive more – with your more efficient car?
If you travel, does your decision depend on cost of fuel of various means of transportation – or do you stay at home to not use any?
Is your goal to do less, to earn less, to create less, to provide for others less, to communicate less, to produce less, to see less of the world, to be colder, hungrier and thirstier? If not, you seek increased power.
>>> “Does your theory explain all of the myriad exceptions you’ll find as you get to individual cases?”
The per capita use of fuel increases with efficiency, decreases with price, exceptions included.
I think you are missing the large picture. And I think you are assuming energy use = bad. Most other folk’s energy use that is.
“[[…] For a very big signal (a volcano), you can see a climate change quite quickly, but for the current trends in greenhouse gases, you need 15 or more years (at least in the temperature field). – gavin]”
A volcano like Pinatubo 1991 is just noise as ENSO is. You can see the signal if you filter out some well-known noise (ENSO), but if you do that, you don’t need 15 years to see a change in climate either (for global temperatures). Much depends on the spatial scale. For local temperatures, less than 30 years doesn’t make much sense, unless the signal is very strong (e.g. Arctic warming). At the global scale, some weather balances out.
>>>#571 Ray: “J, I agree that energy use tends to track price. However, the price of fossil fuels is ridiculously subsidized. If they reflected their true environmental and security cost, people would make rational decisions.”
We agree that, at least in the short-mid term, price is the only way to affect usage.
I’m not sure what the grand total of subsidies would be. Look at the tax per gallon at the pump. Google search shows $30 billion in taxes for Exxon in 07. Google the horsepower taxes in Europe. Compare with the subsidies for hybrid cars, solar and wind.
Regardless, taxes and subsidies are artificial and along with the required centralized forced economies, they tend to have bad, often very bad, consequences. The home run, IMHO, is non-carbon based energy sources – that work and are close to the price of exploration and development of carbon-based ones.
We only have one now, nuclear. IMHO again, this is the only possible way reduced use of carbon-based energy can actually happen. But it needs to start yesterday. Energy production has to be started decades in advance.
Spilgard (542), tamino (543), I suspect you might be correct but your use of extremely loosey-goosey measurements to presumably absolutely prove a point is pushing credibility hard. To prove the Arctic temperatures have increased over the past 70 years, one graph show temperature anomalies between 23.6N and 90N degrees – hardly the Arctic – especially since very few of the measurements came within the Arctic.
Tamino is at least more open because (and but…) he admits he’s looking at 60N degrees and above, but hasn’t much more than 30 years of data (??) – hardly useful in looking at 70-year movements, and the preponderance of the Artic, above 70N has a single grid in his analysis. At least tamino is rigorous and for all I know might be correct. But to claim any of this as irrefutable truth re the Arctic temperatures of the past 70 years shows way too much self-confidence
>>>#579 Ray: “Actually, both the Indian and Chinese governments are on board with the scientific consensus..”
And adamant in their refusal to decrease their output of CO2.
Here’s an idea for future posts, which is already being done now and then on RC: Take some recent climate science (articles, conference presentations, speculations), and explain them in very simple terms for lay persons. Confidence levels can be noted — such as, “this is definitely a possibility since it has happened in the past (or on Venus), but a lot more research needs to be done on it.”
While this site needs to continue debunking denialists false claims, such efforts tend to put the discussion between science (which requires 95% confidence) and industry & other denialism (which require 99% to 101% confidence). Speaking more to cutting edge climate science on speculations of harms and dangers that might not yet be completely accepted by the scientific community, or might not be proven at the .05 level, but have some merit due to theory or “it’s happened before,” would put the discussion more between science and environmentalism/policy-makers.
Here is an example. PNAS had a recent issue on “Tipping Elements on Earth.” See: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49.toc (the articles are open-access). I was reading the abstract for David Archer’s “Ocean Methane Hydrates…” and came across 35 Pg. I asked my niece, a biotech grad student what “Pg” meant, and she said if it’s small case, then picagram; then I found on-line petagram or 1,000,000,000,000,000 grams. That’s quite a lot. The article suggests a .4 to .5C increase due to methane (and the CO2 it degrades into). So the Q for us laypersons is, is 35 Pg a lot, and is .4 or .5 a lot. And does the speed with which that positive feedback warming occur make a difference (say from the past when the warming may have been slower). What does it mean for life on planet earth, and when?
Some posts about the “4 Degrees and Beyond” conference might be nice, as well as the “Copenhagen Diagnosis.”
I mean, if we’re all (scientists and environmentalists alike) going to be labeled “alarmists” for talking about even a 7 cm sea level rise, why worry about such a ridiculous label at all; some folks would just prefer to burn in the theater than be informed a raging fire was consuming the building — they probably weren’t watching AVATAR anyway.
J says: 7 January 2010 at 3:00 PM
“>>>>#570 Doug: “For instance, my… My… I… I…I…my… my…my.”
Rejoined by a lot of “ifs”, heh!
“And I think you are assuming energy use = bad. Most other folk’s energy use that is.”
Excuse me, but -I- think your ideology is showing. Meanwhile, you’re apparently unable to move your generalization into the real world.
Don’t get mad, get even. Show me how I’m exceptional.
Documerf@577, While I’m sure the denialists will just tell us it’s whale farts, this could be the beginning of the tipping point we’ve been worrying about.
Jones on 20%:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=296&filename=1047390562.txt
He used the word “significant”, which I take to mean “statistically significant” as the word “statistically” is usually dropped, but he could be meaning “significant” in the sense of “important” instead of “signaling”. The issue of “synchronicity” that he mentions is obviously important, but so is the comment that most grid boxes show no significant 20th century warming.
I renamed myself “Septic Matthew” to distinguish myself from Matthew L and the other Matthews.
from my own 566: If the weather recurs regularly, then the climate isn’t changing.
I mean not warming uncontrollably or changing in an unprecedented manner. Obviously the long-term cycles like alternating glacial/interglacial periods are changes, and the alternating Roman Warm Period, early Medieval cooling (Possibly the source of the Wasteland legends”), Medieval Warm period, LIA, and the alternating warming/non-warming periods since the LIA are climate “changes”.
578, Ray Ladbury: Not by the scientists unless they are taken as an illustration of an ongoing trend. Listen to what the scientists are saying, not the blowhards (left or right).
Scientists used Katrina as the harbinger of things to come and predicted even worse for subsequent years, but actual hurricane activity has declined, and there has never been evidence of a century-long trend toward greater energy release in tropical storms. Scientists projected the 2003-2007 decline in Arctic Ice as predicting an Arctic ice-free summer by 2015 (more or less), but instead we have recorded a regression toward the previous mean (not yet all the way), which will postpone the ice-free Arctic summer for decades if the regression to the mean continues.
Ray, you say, “…you don’t understand what it is to be a scientist. First, the most exciting time to be in a field is when a major theory is overturned.”
Especially when it is somebody else’s!
And, “…it is unlikely that everything in the old theory will be trashed…”
True, but that isn’t the discussion.
And, “…since the leaders who promoted the old theory are probably among the brightest and most forceful in the field, they will probably become leaders in promoting and developing the new theory.”
I agree fully. Which is why I said Hansen wouldn’t and shouldn’t be fired (in answer to your question, BTW.)
J:
http://www.google.com/search?q=california+energy+voluntary+conservation
Septic Matthew says: 7 January 2010 at 3:43 PM
“Scientists used Katrina as the harbinger of things to come and predicted even worse for subsequent years, but actual hurricane activity has declined, and there has never been evidence of a century-long trend toward greater energy release in tropical storms. Scientists projected the 2003-2007 decline in Arctic Ice as predicting an Arctic ice-free summer by 2015 (more or less), but instead we have recorded a regression toward the previous mean (not yet all the way), which will postpone the ice-free Arctic summer for decades if the regression to the mean continues.”
How about chopping the misinformation into bite-sized chunks so we don’t choke on it?
“Scientists used Katrina …”
Which ones? Any publications on that?
“Scientists projected the 2003-2007 decline in Arctic Ice as predicting an Arctic ice-free summer by 2015…”
Which ones? Any publications on that?
“…instead we have recorded a regression toward the previous mean…”
That one, -again-? You’re hard on the heels of a least two others touting the same vacuous claim. Based on a statistical sample of how many years?
Bzzzt. Where do you find that published? Off-the-cuff remarks to reporters by 1 or 2 persons are one thing, reputation destroying assertions are another, as you’re finding out. Credibility is precious.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2009_outlook/2009_pan-arctic_summary.php
Note: Hamburg uses a 50% sea ice concentration for the extent and NSIDC uses 15%. http://www.ifm.uni-hamburg.de/
“… the question is whether below normal multi-year ice fractions account for a persistence in ice extent anomalies on interannual time scales, or whether the ice pack is now back in a mode with no interannual correlation between extent anomalies (Bitz, personal communication). Lindsay comments, “with nonstationary statistics, the standard error of the fit over past years is not a good measure of the uncertainty in the prediction.”
——–
There’s real fascinating science being done every day in these areas. Could we focus for a while on the researchers instead of always having to repeat things to the rebunkers? Wouldn’t it be good to learn about what’s happening?
Re: #585 (Rod B)
If I only had 30 years data, how is it that the smoothed temperature curve for 70N-90N starts in 1900, while other grids start in 1880?
Answer: you didn’t read the post to find information, you only wanted to find fault. Although the current trend rates were based on 30 years data, the long-term temperature curves included all the available data from every station in the GISS analysis north of 60N latitude. The single grid for 70N-90N includes 17 station records, and shows conclusively that your claim “The Arctic isn’t warmer than it was 70 or so years ago” only applies to bizzarro world.
It’s also clear that when you made that claim, you had nothing to back it up — you were just regurgitating.
Rod @555: ‘cept it was you that said it does prove that CO2 increases do cause warming.
Nope, not what I wrote, Rod. I didn’t need to since we know from multiple independent lines of evidence that that increasing CO2 causes warming, whether it is as an amplifying feed back to an initial forcing, or as an initial forcing itself when it is increased independent of some other forcing. You’ve been here long enough to know that, at least.
What I wrote @413 was: “Earth’s paleohistory shows that the chance of a doubling of CO2 producing a 0-2K increase in temperature is not just slim, but zero.”
I’ll admit that I did overstep by saying there is “zero” chance it could be under 2 (I’ll stand by “zero” for 0-1K, though), but it is almost certainly somewhere between 2 and 3C, amplifying feedbacks included.
And by “canard” I mean the denialist meme that the lag in the ice core proves CO2 does not cause warming, and you darn well know it so don’t play dumb.
RodB said:”Tamino is at least more open because (and but…) he admits he’s looking at 60N degrees and above, but hasn’t much more than 30 years of data (??) – hardly useful in looking at 70-year movements, and the preponderance of the Artic, above 70N has a single grid in his analysis. At least tamino is rigorous and for all I know might be correct. But to claim any of this as irrefutable truth re the Arctic temperatures of the past 70 years shows way too much self-confidence.”
From Tamino’s post which you link, the single grid for latitude 70-90 took ALL stations with “At least 30 years of data and at least some data since the year 2000” to answer a question about recent warming. However, there were stations that went back to 1900, which he plotted “For those who want more than just the last 30 years”. Evidently also plotted for those who refuse to look, yet are willing to impute too much self-confidence to OTHERS. Perhaps RodB should get the plank out his eye before trying to remove any imagined motes from tamino’s eye.
Rod: Why do you debunk (appropriately) the use of individual weather activities that refute global warming by using individual weather activities that seemingly support global warming?
Hmm, I don’t think I understand. The graph is all about showing how the ratio of record highs to record lows has been increasing since the 1950s. These are aggregate statistics, so I’m not sure how “individual weather activities” fit into the picture.
The data show that the likelihood of record-breaking highs is increasing, while the likelihood of record-breaking lows is decreasing, which shows clearly that the climate has changed since the 1950s.
>>>>#592 Hank etc.
It could be that Californians will voluntarily limit their energy use. It could even happen elsewhere. Historically however the effect of increased efficiency has resulted in lower price per use and increase usage. In aggregate and per capita. Usuage numbers vary with price, but not with efficiency – historically in aggregate.
Barring green taxes – again a price adjustment, I wouldn’t count on this to change suddenly. Certainly not in any significant amount as regards AGW, and most certainly not in poorer areas.
Airline fuel cost, ticket price and travel correlations are among the most obvious illustrations of this effect. It’s been observed in economics for some time with coal and is known as Jevon’s Paradox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Septic Matthew (590):
“The issue of “synchronicity” that he mentions is obviously important, but so is the comment that most grid boxes show no significant 20th century warming.”
80% of noncoincidental small warming changes (local records, very hard to detect given weather noise) + 20% of medium to large warming changes (easier to detect) = warming (easy to detect on a global basis).
Nothing in that e-mail even remotely suggests that Jones thinks the instrumentation record shows no significant global warming. Quite the contrary, he was expressing his doubt in another paper and their inability to make any conclusions about global temps during the Little-Ice-Age and Medeival Warming Period (with their various regional temperature fluctuations). He knows that without a full record of global temperature records (instrumental or other) it’s nearly impossible to say anything about a global temperature change.