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.
My feeling on what I’ve read on the science and the Gulf Stream is that you can find pretty much any answer you want as to whether a change is due to it changing permanently, just “one of those things”, or nearly any other answer you want to find.
It’s here where “science is settled” is wrong, the problem with those who parrot that statement (to knock it down) is that they think that they are the only ones saying the science is not settled and they think where it is not settled is in the places where we, oddly enough, have greatest confidence.
Realclimate is under a zombie attack. Every day, I see the same thrice-killed zombie arguments being trotted out in search of “brains…brains”. And then the regulars all say, “Oh Jeebus, not this again,” and trot out the same explanation of why the argument is wrong and the zombie dies yet again–usually with much blood and spillage of brains. And the denialist/ignoramus/contrarian slumps off to CA or WUWT or some other dark dungeon and complains about what meanies all the scientists are.
Well, folks, let’s make a deal. Everybody trot on over to Skeptical Science and read about all the zombies that have been killed already. And when somebody unearths a zombie and reanimates it, we can just quote the number and give them a link.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
This resource isn’t perfect, but hopefully we can ask John Cook to add entries as we slay new zombies. For instance, maybe John could link to the AMS paper John Pearson linked to and Tamino’s “How Long” post as justification for the definition of 30 years being climate. Zombie #83
Contrarian-types, please save us all a lot of trouble, and read up so you’ll know if you are posting a zombie argument. If you have legitimate questions about the answer, fine, but don’t reanimate zombies if you don’t want to be abused.
J: have a butchers over at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8443865.stm
“According to the British Wind Energy Association, the UK has potentially the largest offshore wind resource in the world, with relatively shallow waters and a strong wind resource extending far into the North Sea.”
“The UK has been estimated to have more than 33% of the total European potential offshore wind resource, which is enough to power the country nearly three times over.”
“According to figures released by the winning licence bidders, the smallest will be able to produce around 600 megawatts and one, based at the Dogger Bank zone, will have a capacity of 9,000 megawatts.”
“To put this into context, an average coal or gas powered station produces between 1,000 and 1,500 megawat”
Ray (#652) worse is that there then turn up the Vampire Squad saying “you’re all very rude to people who are just asking questions”.
Rinse, lather, repeat unto the heat death of the universe…
On another topic altogether, thanks to Martin Vermeer and others on RC who provided help with my article on Nils Ekholm and his “CO2 theory” paper!
That article is now up; you can check it out at:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Global-warming-science-press-and-storms
Ekholm led an interesting life generally. But the most interesting science tidbit to me was that he gave a very clear statement of the multi-layer atmosphere idea. In effect, he answered Angstrom’s saturation argument even as it was being put forth. But (AFAIK) there was no mathematical treatment, and the implications seemingly went unrecognized.
Pale’s climate science WIki has Ekholm’s paper here:
http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/PALE:ClassicArticles/GlobalWarming/Article5
Pielke Jr. and The Breakthrough Institute succeeded in removing his name from my 15 Most Heinous Climate Villains article, which appeared yesterday on Alternet. It’s not the 14 Most. Pielke, Nordhaus, and Schellenberger richly deserved to be on this list, of course. The fair and balanced act that they tout is about as persuasive as Fox News, but apparently they still believe that there are still a lot of suckers out there. In any case, censorship of an article that has already appeared- and in a consolidator at that- is a bad precedent. The original can be found at buffalobeast.com.
I don’t know the date of your quote.
April 2, 2009 – Arctic could go ice-free within decades: http://www.canada.com/technology/Arctic+could+free+within+decades+Study/1457742/story.html
Here is a direct quote from the article I linked
That’s not a direct quote. A direct quote would’ve been the words that came from David Barber’s mouth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8437703.stm
Bubble bubble off the coast of Siberia. Methane release from clathrates is ramping up.
>>#653 FedUp
From your link: “Offshore farms are weather dependent. Whereas a nuclear power station operates all the time, a wind farm only operates when the wind is blowing.”
They also cost more and take up more space. Solar has a similar problem at night and in some climes, and imagine the land area necessary for enough panels to feed the nation’s power grids. Then there’s the peak demand problem.
The electrons, however, are the same size.
From Alternet:
> Editor’s note: The original article was a list of 15, but after
> researching the #14th “villain” Roger Pielke Jr after complaints
> from an affiliated organization, we concluded that he shouldn’t
> be on the list.
“Affiliated” — with what? Citation needed.
Are there any “unaffiliated” organizations?
My recommendation: make Breakthrough #1 on the next list– of organizations. The individuals won’t primarily be blamed in looking back at this era, it’s the organizations that used them that provided the force and the leverage behind the blunt human instruments.
tamino (595), Admittedly I wasn’t sure if I read the “30-year” part correctly; hence the “(??)” in my 585 post. Thanks for the correction.
I never claimed “The Arctic isn’t warmer than it was 70 or so years ago” as you charge. I claimed the analyses in 542 and 543 do not prove that it is warmer. I’m still of that assessment, even with your correction.
Ray, your continuing non-response and name-calling (“Zombies”? Seriously? Are we still in grade school?) speaks volumes. What in the peer-reviewed literature you love so well (as opposed to the pseudonymed literature) lays out the physical basis for the 15-year or 30-year climate standard? I know you do not wish to countenance any view of the flat decade being a, well, flat decade, and that you are loath to believe it could possibly represent a trend of any sort, but Trenberth’s lament and subsequent rationalization – we know it’s there, but we can’t find it – matters.
You and others would have me go to:
So to summarise, Trenberth’s email says this:
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
After reviewing the discussion in Trenberth 2009, it’s apparent that what he meant was this:
“Global warming is still happening – our planet is still accumulating heat. But our observation systems aren’t able to comprehensively keep track of where all the energy is going. Consequently, we can’t definitively explain why surface temperatures have gone down in the last few years. That’s a travesty!”
What in that explanation would lead you to believe there is no further explanation necessary or that “Tamino” or any other entity has offered up a good enough explanation to keep us zombies underground? I agree with you regulars that you have answered the 30-year question to your own satisfaction many times over. What you have not accomplished, of course, is to explain it well enough to those who are not so credulous. The easy thing, of course, is to make us go away by deriding intellect and lamenting a refusal to learn. That’s not exactly what I would call good teaching, but then again, the regulars at RC could hardly claim that to be their real mission here.
Plenty of direct quotes from David Barber here:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/08/arctic-multiyear-sea-ice-nsidc-david-barber/
Apparently we are already ‘almost’ ice-free.
32GW of offshore wind turbines projects approved for UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/goahead-given-to-develop-offshore-wind-farms-1861981.html
I like the idea of the North Sea being exploited for this purpose; a giant physical metaphor as gas and oil production there declines and is replaced with something more modern.
Add in nuclear plants for base load, pumped hydro to help with demand swings on inclement days, etc. and the UK is a decent way to meeting goals.
Pragmatism rules today, but I wonder who’ll be the first to file lawsuits to stop these projects?
J wrote: “… imagine the land area necessary for enough panels to feed the nation’s power grids.”
Your comments indicate that you prefer fact-free discussion of whatever you “imagine” reality to be, but in fact, that question has been studied.
Concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) plants on less than 5 percent of the USA’s desert lands could generate more electricity than the entire country uses.
And with low-cost thermal storage, CSP can provide 24×7 baseload power.
And that is only one small part of the USA’s vast solar and wind energy resources. For example, the commercially exploitable wind energy resources of just four midwestern states could also generate more electricity than the entire country uses. PV installed on existing commerical rooftops could provide many tens of gigawatts of power.
And, multiple studies in the USA and Europe have found that a diversified regional portfolio of renewable energy sources (e.g. wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass), managed and distributed with smart grid technologies, can provide 24×7 power that is at least as reliable as coal or nuclear — even without storage.
Walter Manny says: 8 January 2010 at 12:51 PM
May I offer that the appropriate time period for examining an aggregate collection of signals depends on what you’re looking for? If I want to roughly understand the character of diurnal swings in temperature, I might look at year of records. If I’m interested in annual characteristics, I might look at 5 years’ data. When it comes to climate, the period I choose will again depend on what sort of drivers I’m examining.
With regard to climate research, as I understand it from Weart’s history there are two objectives at play in the field, one deriving from the other. The primary and original aim for most if not all of the scientists scrutinizing climate was and still is satisfaction of curiosity, like most pure research; it was not originally an arena of scientific inquiry offering application as an outcome. However, as the field progressed, an application did in fact emerge; the path of curiosity lead to a possible conclusion and result that could have a significant impact on human society.
With the realization that climate research had stumbled on a potential problem further research into the topic has evolved to more thoroughly incorporate and understand the original dim realization that we might ourselves be affecting the climate. Looking at the anthropogenic facet of the research, results and predictions so far seem to converge, indicating a problem does exist, is likely of high impact, and is sensitive to timing.
Looking at it from a more nuts and bolts R&D perspective, “time to market” is a factor here.
You mention the word “credulous”, often used in a pejorative sense. I can’t tell from whether by “credulous” you mean the period of 30 or 15 years is too short or too long. I’m not even sure why you chose that word when “prudent” or “cautious” might be more descriptive. What I do believe is that while it’s probably better from a purely scientific perspective to go with as long a period as possible, that ivory tower approach is not appropriate in this case. There’s a market for conclusions and the market won’t wait for too much dithering. We need results as fast as possible in order to calibrate our response to what we’ve discovered.
Walter Mitty:
“Ray, your continuing non-response and name-calling (“Zombies”? Seriously? Are we still in grade school?) speaks volumes”
a) Why is it you’ll only listen to ray and not anyone else who has answered your question?
And
b) isn’t “are we still in grade school?” ***ALSO*** name-calling?
J wombles on: “From your link: “Offshore farms are weather dependent. Whereas a nuclear power station operates all the time, a wind farm only operates when the wind is blowing.””
It also produces THREE TIMES the UK needs.
This is DESPITE only giving power when the wind blows.
I mean, do you think you are the ONLY person IN THE WORLD who thought that the wind doesn’t always blow???
Truly your intellect knows no bounds.
It’s not the only thing it doesn’t know…
Thanks Gavin at https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/unforced-variations-2/comment-page-13/#comment-153646
My sloppy typing I should have said an observed ocean forcing of 0.85 W/m2 not heat content. Pielke Snr’s argument is at http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/reply-to-andrew-dresslers-guest-post-on-water-vapor-feedback/ in response to a guest article by Andrew Dessler. Rgds Terry
[Response: I don’t follow his reasoning at all. The net imbalance is always going to be less than the initial forcing – and as the planet re-equilibriates the imbalance will go to zero. The rate at which it does is related to the ocean heat content rise, not to the magnitude of the feedbacks. – gavin]
Completely Fed Up says: 8 January 2010 at 2:14 PM
Also good to remember that from an economic perspective nuclear plants really operate best at or near 100% capacity. Disregarding other considerations, they’re appropriate for base load, not so much for variations in demand. Building a grid around 100% nuclear generation would be needlessly expensive, even if we had the industrial capacity and money to do it.
> operates all the time
False, and easy to check. Don’t make economic arguments based on fiction, eh?
Heat, cold, drought, flood–all conditions that have required shutdown.
Jim Eager (596), this may seem like a nitpick argument but I think it’s more significant than just semantics and such. You said (413), “…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,” which meant in the context of (413), “Earth’s paleohistory shows that the… doubling of CO2 [produces a 4-6K increase.]” I said the paleohistory proves no such thing, which it doesn’t, for the reasons I stated in (469). Then you said you couldn’t effing believe that I would call out facts (which you called a canard) to disrupt what you certainly felt might have been just a little overstatement of the situation, or maybe simply not what you meant (which I have no way of responding to).
You didn’t notice (too busy perhaps), but I never did nor have refuted the physics where sometimes temperature increase precedes CO2 rise. I simply said that that situation in no way proves the physics of going the other way — CO2 preceding temperature, as you did. The logic shouldn’t be that difficult to comprehend. Nor have I ever said that CO2 can’t precede and cause temperature increase. Before you accuse me of that “meme” you ought to at least first hear me say it.
Helpful hint: taking exaggerated editorial license actually hurts your cause rather than aids it, IMO.
Walter, First, the zombies I am referreing to are the same tired arguments that denialists like you keep resurrecting, only to have them killed again by the same argument. Do you have a suggestion for a better term for a thoroughly discredited argument that a disputant refuses to admit has passed on. Fergodsake, feel the frigging pain and let it go!
Second, I guess you missed the article John Pearson posted showing the basis for 30 years as a standard for climate trends:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0477(1989)070%3C0602%3ASDOC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
More to the point, there is a pretty well defined are to determining how much data you have to have to have confidence in a trend. Tamino’s analysis illustrates how this works. I would urge you to read it
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/
Here is the deal–Trenbreth made it clear that he was concerned with short-term variation. That includes things like volcanoes, ENSO, PDO. These occur with a variety of strengths and durations. However, the important thing about all of these factors is that their influence is short term (of order a few years at most). Now contrast that with the influence of CO2, which persists for hundreds of years. CO2 will win. It is what will change the climate, while the short-term influences will peter out.
Yes, we want to understand all the short-term influences. They are interesting. They are not, however, a threat. That is where we are, Walter. Climate change has simply followed the same basic procedures of all the other sciences. It has developed a model of its subject that does a very good job of explaining observed behavior and predicting new behaviors. If that were all it did, it would be just one more interesting subfield of the geo-sciences. However, climate science identified a threat. It showed that the threat was credible. And now it is being attacked by people who don’t want to hear about threats that demand action. That is the difference.
The problem, Walter, is that all the folks who are attacking climate science bring nothing with them that helps us understand climate better. They have no constructive ideas, no evidence, no new techniques. All they can do is attack the theory and the evidence and the scientists and science itself. That is how we know that they are anti-science. We know the patterns from the attacks on science that came before–on evolution, on the dangers of smoking, etc.
The problem you have learning has nothing to do with intellect and everything to do with ideological blinders. However, the threat doesn’t care what you believe. So that, ultimately is the issue: Is science strong enough to make us confront a threat to our civilization or will it sucumb to wishful thinking and ideological purity.
Re: SecularAnimist and FedUp:
The problems of wind and solar power are not unknown just often ignored here. These are being implemented where feasible and of course I’m all for that. It’s being done in favorable areas in my state, and new problems are also arising. Certainly there is enough power from the sun, wind, ocean, geothermal; the problem is converting it to electricity in an economical and reliable manner.
When the U.K. shuts down its non-windpower sources and maintained energy prices at the same or lower level, you’ll have proved your point with regard to the North Sea project. There are still major problems to be tested.
Again, I’m all for what works reliably and economically, and there’s a lot of activity in these areas because of the inherent value. I’m not pro-nuclear but pro-whatever works (reliably and economically), and I’m anti-cold and dark.
Unless we want repeats of California’s power policy nationwide, large scale power projects that work now have to move forward.
BPL, before putting heavy tariffs on Chinese exports to the US, e.g., one ought to think through the global economic situation very very carefully first. China being our sugar daddy and all…
An example of problems with large solar projects:
“Large alternative energy projects planned for the Mojave Desert are running into conflicts with efforts to protect pristine lands in California.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/green-power-projects-face-new-hurdle-2009-12-22
J says: 8 January 2010 at 3:40 PM
It’s going to take people a while to grow up. What are the odds many of the same people are vehemently opposed also to nuclear and coal generation schemes? In fact are suffering from a complete absence of big-picture considerations?
How about a qualifier for participating in this sort of obstruction: “If you live within sight of the thing you’re worried about despoiling, you’re not allowed to complain because the opposite view features you”?
Quick question, hopefully someone has an answer – how long has “30 years” been used in the standard definition for climate?
634, Doug Bostrom; OK, that’s better: a line parallel to the X-axis intersecting the Y-axis halfway up.
Ice cover right now is below its seasonally-characteristic mean.
More, by scrutinizing the graph you so kindly provided, we can see that a prediction of improving health of the ice sheet based on the past two years of data is drastically premature. The hypothetical “reasonable man” would probably conclude there’s no reason to expect a sudden reversal of the signal.
“Improving” might be premature; “regressed toward the mean” was accurate; “returned to average” would be false. However, it was premature for scientists (even those quoted in the press instead of writing for peer review) to use the 2003-2007 change as a basis for predicting an “ice-free Arctic summer” any time soon.
And how much respect do you have for the hypothetical reasonable man, anyway? Most reasonable people don’t think highly of AGW once it is pointed out to them how little CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and that most of the warming effect comes from the much more prevalent H2O.
J. — Google would like to be your friend.
The economics are as important as, likely more important than the ecology, for practical politics. It’s another place where a few big players, or many smaller ones, will get the next round of funds and benefits:
http://www.google.com/search?q=California+problems+with+large+solar+projects
finds for example:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/01/04/MNBU1B492N.DTL
“… Distrust and dislike of California’s big utility companies, he says, fuel many supporters of the small-is-beautiful idea.
‘A lot of the distributed power advocates really hate utilities,’ Zichella said. ‘They don’t want utilities to own these facilities.'”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10152459-54.html
“solar-technology company Ausra has dropped plans to make massive solar-thermal power plants in favor of smaller, cheaper units.”
I’m not arguing for any particular fact.
I’m urging looking at what’s really happening, instead of just repeating our personal favorite claims.
What’s real is changing. Look at the rate of change in materials, and costs, and efficiencies of installation for rooftop solar. It’s fast.
Look at long distance power transmission–still done with the finest 1940s technology (okay, that’s unfair, they do use computers — but nobody’s got a smart grid even designed yet. Nobody has disclosed open files for the computer programs that would be needed to run one (besides the risk of attacks on them) Bet they’re proprietary, and I’ll also bet we have more solar flares and surges soon.)
For really serious fat-chewing on evolving electrical generation schemes, may I suggest this fresh thread at Brave New Climate:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/#more-2224
You’ll find a just completed, fairly detailed cost model and description for replacing coal generation with various mixes of other technologies, somewhat locale specific for Australia. Sure to annoy lots of people.
“Most reasonable people don’t think highly of AGW once it is pointed out to them how little CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and that most of the warming effect comes from the much more prevalent H2O.”
If they’re swayed by that sham they’re not equipped with enough information to apply their reasoning skills. If you don’t care about honesty and are prepared to exploit this failing, bad on you.
Don @663, Plenty of direct quotes from David Barber here: … Apparently we are already ‘almost’ ice-free.
Let’s remember where this argument started – with this post @590 by Septic Matthew:
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.
In fact, this is what scientists were saying immediately after Katrina:
That was posted at RealClimate by Stefan Rahmstorf, Michael Mann, Rasmus Benestad, Gavin Schmidt, and William Connolley in September 2005. So Matthew was dead wrong on the first point.
As for his second point, we’ve now shown that scientists actually predict that the Arctic will be ice free within a few decades, and the only exception you’ve shown is a quote from a single scientist who is referring to the multiyear ice-pack, which is a fairly different standard than what you and Matthew are setting. He’s talking about the volume of ice. You are talking about the area covered by it. Far from “returning to the mean” as Matthew puts it, the sea ice volume has continued to decline.
jinchi:
the only exception you’ve shown is a quote from a single scientist who is referring to the multiyear ice-pack…
Summer sea ice likely to disappear in the Arctic by 2015
mongabay.com
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0831-arctic.html
“If current melting trends continue, the Arctic Ocean is likely to be free of summer sea ice by 2015, according to research presented at a conference organized by the National Space Institute at Technical University of Denmark, the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Greenland Climate Center.”
from 2002, though a rather different metric:
:Arctic Summer Sea Lanes Open By 2015 Forecasts ONR
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/arctic-02a.html
“Although recent terrorist events keep our minds occupied elsewhere in the world, what a navigable Arctic means for our national security is significant,” says Dr. Dennis Conlon, Program Manager for Arctic Science at the Office of Naval Research. “Geographical boundaries, politics, and commerce changes would all become issues.”
Washington – Feb 14, 2002
The Arctic ice cap is shrinking that much is known with certainty. Over the past century, the extent of the winter pack ice in the Nordic Seas has decreased by about 25%. Last winter the Bering Sea was effectively ice-free, which is unprecedented, and if this big melt continues, some say the formerly ice-locked Arctic will have open sea lanes as soon as 2015. By 2050, the summertime ice cap could disappear entirely.”
SepticMatthew’s comment Scientists used Katrina as the harbinger of things to come was inaccurate. He should have said that Vice President Gore used Katrina as a harbinger, and cited research by a climatologist. That is an old argument now. And as I noted, it seems that more recent research suggests he might have been right anyway.
“Quick question, hopefully someone has an answer – how long has “30 years” been used in the standard definition for climate?”
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/wcdmp/documents/WCDMPNo61.pdf
I’ll give you one more:
http://www.earthsky.org/interviewpost/earth/ice-free-arctic-summers-within-a-decade
“Wieslaw Maslowski: We’re suggesting that sometime between 2010 and 2016, we might melt all this multi-year ice cover during summer in the Arctic.”
Just for the record, I’m not necessarily agreeing with SepticMatthew about anything in particular. But he was immediately challenged to find “scientists” who said what he said they said. The rhetorical gambit, of course, was to question his premise. Was SepticMatthew using a straw man? Ice-free arctic: No. Katrina: Maybe.
Is everything I post now spam???
Re:623
Here’s an article on the South Texas Nuclear Project (STNP).
“Costs Cloud Texas Nuclear Plan”
http://www.energiamia.org/news_wallstreetjournal_120509.html
December 5, 2009
By REBECCA SMITH
Wall Street Journal
And, indeed, the “Arctic summer sea lanes” were open in 2009. Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight, two heavy lift freighters, used the Northern Sea Route to transport cargo including heavy generators from South Korea to Novyy, on the Ob in western Siberia, and then sailed on to Rotterdam. They saved hundreds of thousands of Euros by taking that route, and observers expect a lot more ships to do likewise in this and later years.
Don,
You and I seem to be arguing past each other. From your second reference:
In other words, it doesn’t claim the arctic will be ice free in 2015, it claims there will be open sea lanes. Since the both the Northeast and Northwest passages were nearly navigable in 2007, that 2002 prediction was a pretty good one. The article predicts that the arctic will be ice free by 2050 which is an essentially the same estimate than the one I mentioned above.
From your first reference:
To paraphrase, some studies conclude an ice free arctic by 2015. This is not yet the consensus view it’s the lower limit of a 30 year range.
Matthew argued that scientists had jumped the gun by extrapolating the drop in sea ice extent from 2003-2007 (your 2002 reference demonstrates that they were projecting rapid ice loss even before that). Matthew also argued that this conclusion had been falsified when sea ice extent “regressed to the mean”. But sea ice volume continues to drop, not increase, and none of these studies are particularly alarmist nor have they been falsified.
Septic says, “Most reasonable people don’t think highly of AGW once it is pointed out to them how little CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and that most of the warming effect comes from the much more prevalent H2O.”
No, those would not be “reasonable people”. Those would be ignoramuses. a 15 micron photon must pass within a wavelength of roughly 100 trillion CO2 molecules on its way out of the atmosphere, and any one of those molecules could absorb it. Doesn’t sound quite so small now does it, Matthew.
Get serious. If you are going to make arguments like that then why shouldn’t we dismiss you as a troll?
Witgren, there’s not just one “standard definition for climate”
“The nice thing about standards is that we have so many of them.”
30 years is about right (or maybe 15 or 20) for the statistics to detect a real trend but not imagine one in annual average global temperature–it depends on much that statisticians deal with and argue about.
For statistics, each set of data has a measurable amount of variation, and there are ways to decide from that how many measurements are needed for a reasonable chance of detecting a real trend but not imagining one that’s not there in the real world.
Robert Grumbine has a good series on this, with attention to annual temperatures: http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/results-on-deciding-trends.html — and he won’t tell you “30 years” he’ll show you how to decide for yourself and walk you through how to do it, then you can do it with various data sets. The answer depends on the data set and the statistical test chosen.
Google Scholar will lead you to some wonderful reading if you start looking for an answer to that one (I hope you do, and report back, it’d be an interesting contribution to do the work.
Google doesn’t have a “find the earliest mention” feature that I know of).
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22definition+of+climate%22+%2230+years%22&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001&as_ylo=&as_vis=1
Example:
Annual Review of Phytopathology September 1988)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.py.26.090188.001115)
Variation in Climate and Prediction of Disease in Plants
“Because a sequence of years in the 1970s had more variation than did the previous decade, research on climate expanded to determine if and why the world’s climate might be changing.”
…
“In the 1970s, the definition of climate was expanded from an “average of weather” …”
Or for a different usage
http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~jean/paleo/Rahmstorf_2002.pdf
Ocean circulation and climate during the past 120,000 years
Stefan Rahmstorf, NATURE, VOL 419, 12 SEPT. 2002
“Dansgaard–Oeschger (D/O) events (Figs 3, 4) are perhaps the most pronounced climate changes that have occurred during the past 120 kyr. They are not only large in amplitude, but also abrupt (irrespective of whether one follows a physical definition of abruptness_33 or takes it to mean ‘in less than 30 years’_8).
Don Shor says: 8 January 2010 at 6:07 PM
““Wieslaw Maslowski: We’re suggesting that sometime between 2010 and 2016, we might melt all this multi-year ice cover during summer in the Arctic.””
Now that multi-year thing looks not so far fetched.
“But he was immediately challenged to find “scientists” who said what he said they said. The rhetorical gambit, of course, was to question his premise. Was SepticMatthew using a straw man? Ice-free arctic: No.”
Straw man? Maybe, but lacking further data it depends on perspective. Nobody stuck their necks out and published such an assertion. Speaking as people dismayed with an extraordinary year, yep. The final interpretation depends on what Matthew intended to convey by “Scientists projected the 2003-2007 decline in Arctic Ice as predicting an Arctic ice-free summer by 2015 (more or less)…” Did he mean to imply this was a refuted finding? Only Matthew really knows. Hairsplitting in any case, and transmitted as rhetoric as opposed to inquiry.
Ray, thanks for your clarification on the zombie/denialist business. You know I find both terms distasteful and a distraction from actual argument, but to each his own.
As to the 1989 piece you cite, I could not swear to have read it or not read it in the past, though the following rung a bell; perhaps I only read references to:
p. 602:
Normals are now defined as “period averages computed for a uniform and relatively long period comprising at least three consecutive 10-year periods” (WMO 1984)
p. 604:
The predictive value of normals was extensively studied over two decades ago by Enger (1959), Court (1967, 1968a-c) and Slusser (1968). After his 3-year study, Court (1968d) stated, “Climatic normals… are extremely inefficient for the primary purpose to which they are put: estimating future conditions” and “…the concept of climatic normal should be abandoned in practical climatology.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the 30-year standard, at least insofar as it is used to predict anything, and there is nothing in the paper that I can find that would say there is nothing to see in the last ten years. Obviously, the 30 years is an arbitrary definitional norm and not based on any particular physics – you see no reference to 3 sets of 9 years, or 3 sets of 11, say.
You state with utter assurance that CO2 will win, and I get that – I know everyone here believes the same thing and it is, indeed, the premise upon any argument here is put forward or insult launched. Your belief is so unshakable as to preclude listening to anyone who believes otherwise, who cannot possibly be thinking or taken seriously.
Your reading causes you to believe that significant temperature rise is due to increased CO2 and that nothing else can explain it. Mine takes me to conclude that is pretty unlikely given the number of variables, short- and long-term, well-understood and mysterious, swirling about and responsible for an ever-changing climate. Neither of us is a climate scientist – you choose, reasonably, to believe the majority of climate scientists, and I persist in wondering why the minority continues to question the consensus. You think the history of science shows us that the consensus is proven true the vast majority of the time, and I am fascinated by the heretics whose science has so often won the day or at least changed the consensus.
You view questioning the consensus science as “attacking” the consensus, as have many of the so-called Climategaters. You are forced to argue from analogy (evolution, smoking…) and to question the motives of those with whom you disagree. You inject ideology into it, as though anyone who disagrees with your worldview must therefore be some sort of an ideologue, and that ideology is to be found only in the skeptic camp. There are days, yes, when I am envious of your cocksure view of the current consensus – it would make things simpler, no doubt – but given that I read other than Real Climate, there is no way for me to get there, not that it matters.
Walter, the denial of “evolution, smoking” is more than analogy wrt climate denialism.
In some cases, the same people are making, or have made, denialist arguments more than one of these arena. The poster child would be Fred Singer (though Fred Seitz would also make a good one.) Singer also illustrates the fact that being a scientist-for-hire (a polite term) can be quite lucrative.
The techniques of denialism have not arisen by chance, nor independently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Seitz
http://hubpages.com/hub/Climate-Cover-Up-A-Review
“You think the history of science shows us that the consensus is proven true the vast majority of the time, and I am fascinated by the heretics whose science has so often won the day or at least changed the consensus.”
I’m wondering, just how often have these wins occurred?
More, how often have they been accompanied by massive public relations campaigns that were quite divorced from scientific inquiry?
> How often?
Well studied, well documented, easy to find. Need a list?
http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/tobacco-tactics-in-the-battle-over-bpa/
“… the plastics industry is using tobacco-industry tactics to fight against BPA regulation, but with a 21st-century twist: They’re posting what appears to be neutral, unbiased information on YouTube and blogs without revealing the funding source.
The article … won’t be very surprising for anyone who’s familiar with the history of tobacco, lead, asbestos, or other substances that have only been removed from consumer products after a protracted battle.”
Got that?
Hank Roberts says: 9 January 2010 at 12:24 AM
It boggles my mind.
There is scads of detailed documentation of industrial deception campaigns, not just on the climate issue but repeated all the way into the 19th century, ever since public policy began incorporating research findings. When London closed private city wells supplying what was essentially clarified sewage in response to cholera outbreaks, guess what? A lying campaign was mounted, including all the usual features: “it’ll damage the economy, it’ll disadvantage the poor, there’s no proof that the water is carrying disease, it’s bad air.”
Here in the future, we have ample evidence of industrial vandalism of public policy with regard to climate change, yet doubters are gobbling up conspiracy theories about evil Marxist scientists who want to wreck the economy. Hence the infantile TomskTwaddle affair. Fiction is not only stranger than truth, but apparently far more exciting.
I guess it’s no surprise that confusion about science reigns in certain quarters. Walter says people who don’t buy into bought and paid for bunk “credulous”. What an ironic position.
Matthew(aka SepticMatthew) — 6 January 2010 @ 9:31 PM says
“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.” No. The increasing ice loss started in the 50s; although summer 2009 is higher than summer 2007, it’s still below the long term trend. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2008.jpg
(“global warming” is to “climate change” as “ice loss” is to
A. penguins
B. igloos
C. thaw
D. polar bears)
“As I understand it, the warming occurs most toward the poles, mostly in winter, and mostly at night.” You forgot over land & in the NH.
Try reading Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927)
“On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground”(excerpts) Philosophical Magazine 41, 237-276 (1896)[1]
at http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/arrhenius.html or the excerpt at https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/decadal-predictions/comment-page-2/#comment-136588
Spikade den! (Can you picture Arrhenius interviewed on Jon Stewart?)
WM: What in the peer-reviewed literature you love so well (as opposed to the pseudonymed literature) lays out the physical basis for the 15-year or 30-year climate standard?
BPL: It doesn’t need a peer-reviewed article, WM! It just needs an elementary statistics course! This is the third time I’m going to explain it to you:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/30Years.html
If I see you asking about this one more time, I will assume you are simply trying to cause trouble here out of malice. RTFM!