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.
Bishop Hill actually found a real publisher in the UK to publish it.
Interesting.
Well, libel laws in the UK are favorable to the libeled, but I have no idea if Mann would want to sue over this public claim that he’s guilty of scientific misconduct.
But there’s no better country in the English-speaking world, at least, to do so.
FurryCatHerder (787), You get all of that superfluous stuff with the imported connector only because the connector is coincidentally imported — probably because it’s cheaper. If we tariffed it out of existence, domestics would start producing it… and deliver it with the same amount of superfluous stuff: no gain for the landfills.
I’m not necessarily against the tariff stuff. But I don’t know enough to be for it, either, which was my point. Tariffs come with tons and tons of secondary effects, some with near disastrous effects (read Smoot-Hawley), many of which we can’t even predict. This is even more critical with China which pretty much owns us — well, has tremendous leverage over our finances. I only suggested this tariff idea get great analysis and thought before we yell YaHoo as we jump off the edge without knowing the consistency and depth of the abyss.
Citizen actions are a huge complement to progressive government’s efforts to forestall dangerous climate change.
In case you haven’t seen these….
Hopi and Navajo Residents Stop Peabody’s Coal Mine Expansion on Black Mesa
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2010/black-mesa-01-08-2010.html
Interior Department Judge Vacates Permit for Peabody’s Black Mesa Mines
January 8, 2010
see also:
Scientists say mountaintop mining should be stopped
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010702530.html
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 8, 2010
And the resistance…
North Dakota Threatens Suit Against Minnesota, For Even Thinking About Future Carbon Cost
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/north_dakota_thnn.php
The illusion of a problem with the Hockey Stick is evidence of malpractice in those proposing it.
“The ‘energy’ area is much less certain, than the climate in my opinion and being ambiguous does not help. ”
Geoff, you’re wandering off the point.
Your point I was responding to was your assertion that the link said that there was less than the amount of power needed to power britain.
I corrected you.
The possible power production for offshore *only* for the UK is not what you quoted. You quoted the amount of production being created in the current round of offshore windfarm production.
Re:801
“The Hockey Stick Illusion is a remarkable tale of scientific misconduct …”
Montford has gone too far. With such a strong defense I’d sue the bejesus out of the s o b. Too many people that I otherwise respect actually push the drivel he publishes. I’m sure we can raise the funds. Silence is consent.
801 dhogaza,
It won’t be just Mann. It will be everyone whose taken any part in the work supporting MBH98 and the later similar findings. How can it not be?
Amazon are taking advance orders for the book, BTW.
806 Tim,
I agree. I’ve been surprised by the apparent unwillingness to take action against those who are repeating defamatory libel of the most despicable kind. I’m sure many of us would put a few £ or $ into a legal fund to deal with the filth merchants.
But then, how on Earth are Steven Milloy and Marc Morano free men? It’s not just science either: Morano attempted to subvert the democratic process in the USA, and may have succeeded to some extent (the Swift Boat campaign).
806 Tim,
Who are the people you otherwise respect? I find that hard to understand.
#781 Gavin: Your reference to METAR and SYNOP data in particular. I am a bit surprised if these data are not used.
Could the ECMWF provide some contribution in this respect? I seem to remember that a couple of years ago ECMWF mission was formally broadened a bit to include climate analysis (or was it?). There was recently some mention of their work by the U.K. Met Office, but the ECMWF homepage does not discuss climate at all.
http://www.ecmwf.int/
http://www.ecmwf.int/about/overview/
For those less familiar with ECMWF: It was established in 1975 to do specialized research and produce medium range weather forecasts (5 to 15 days ahead), supported by 31 member states. It enjoys an excellent reputation as one of the leading international centers in that rather narrow field. ECMWF is equipped with quite powerful computing resources.
ECMWF daily receives and archives huge amounts of data from various sources. Part of their fame comes from a leading edge ability to merge data from a wide range of observation systems, such as many types of satellite sensors, surface based networks and aircraft. ECMWF also maintains a readiness to evaluate quantitatively the contributions of individual observation systems to forecast accuracy, and they run extensive data quality monitoring and reporting routines.
Another major activity is to do research and testing to improve their weather forecasting software. For test purposes they re-analyse past data quite extensively. Maybe ECMWF data collection, quality control and archiving activity could be seen as a parallel channel to the climate analysis data chain. They may cover more resources with independent data collection and processing procedures. I have no idea if they presently have any scientists to do climate related work.
(I suppose the results will be substantially the same, anyway. ECMWF is very heavily model driven, so it provides no solution for the “all models are crap” or “simple explanations only, please” crowds).
Best regards, your efforts are very valuable indeed.
Thanks all for a very informative site – I had one question that I was curious about
From AR4 chapter 8
“Using feedback parameters from Figure 8.14, it can be estimated that in the presence of water vapour, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9°C ± 0.15°C (ignoring spread from radiative forcing differences). The mean and standard deviation of climate sensitivity estimates derived from current GCMs are larger (3.2°C ± 0.7°C) essentially because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback (Figure 8.14) but strongly disagree on its magnitude.”
So without the positive cloud feedback it seems that the ‘physics’ gives an unrealistically small climate sensitivity (compared with the observation based estimates in chapter 9) and I guess wouldn’t be able to successfully hindcast the various observations mentioned in chapter 9
Sorry – this next bit is a clumsily worded because I don’t really understand enough to ask the question precisely.
I know cloud feedback is one of the uncertain areas – do the models start off with the observational based climate sensitivity and then come up with a cloud ‘model’ that has properties that ‘make up the difference’ or is their enough observations of the cloud ‘parameters’ themselves to compare the cloud ‘model’ itself with observations.
Well, TS, Peilke Sr has had a few moments where grandstanding was put second place behind accuracy. Junior’s sometimes done the same.
It’s not much, but if you’re stuck in the Sahara, any water will do.
Rod B @ 802:
I think that companies could figure out how to stop wasteful packaging if they were being taxed on imported packaging.
A lot of times secondary effects happen because the thing that is desired is what’s being taxed. Unless someone really, really has to have half a pound of packaging for a couple of grams of USB WiFi adapter, I don’t think we’re going to see weird and unpredictable secondary effects.
Rod B says: 11 January 2010 at 10:47 AM
“You get all of that superfluous stuff with the imported connector only because the connector is coincidentally imported…”
Oh, my goodness, I’m agreeing with Rod again.
Consider, there is an army of salesman pushing packaging products on manufacturers. These folks take their commissions and don’t have to worry about what happens downstream to the stuff they’re selling.
So, push the costs of disposal upstream.
Another example: everyday, my mailbox is filled with garbage by various marketers. I have to remove it, sort it into recycling, and then pay to dispose of it. It’s a hell of a mess both in my mailbox and systemically, but I have to pay for dealing with it. Why do I have to support the many business plans of the intricate industrial system that sees to it that garbage is stuffed into my mailbox? Because they don’t have to consider the costs they’re imposing on other people. So, they need to be reminded, with a monthly bill, same as I’m reminded of my downstream costs via my garbage fee.
Sorry, memory lapse. It was more likely the EUMETSAT, not ECMWF that got its mission broadened to include climate work.
Still, ECMWF probably holds the premier collection of world weather measurement data. How to access it is another issue. Simple perhaps for the 31 member governments.
Re 808
“I was only ruined twice in my life; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.”–Voltaire
Pekka, how long would it take you to download 4 petabytes of data over ADSL?
You also need a lot of disk space.
This is one reason why it would be simple for 31 member governments.
It is also the reason why it would be forbidden: 31 governments would need to fork out several million to store it, and ask the taxpayers to pony up for it.
And ECMWF’s internet bill would go up a lot too: needing more money from those member governments. Which they’d have to get from …
PeteB, both.
The physics can only come up with so much and you can use microclimate models (resolution of 10’s of cm, even!) to give you a handle on it.
But there’s still a lot of uncertainty.
One way to manage that is to run it with several values of feedback.
Whichever one fits the observations best is most likely the right one.
This is no different than Kepler’s work on the orbits of the planets.
You could start with Newton’s laws of motion and get ellipses, but you wouldn’t know a priori exactly how elliptical each orbit is, so you’d fit the data and project where it would go. The eccentricity that best fits would be the considered correct value.
It doesn’t matter how good the maths: if it’s meant to show something real, reality gets the last laugh.
Re: #801
“Hockey Stick illusion” by A Montford a.k.a. Bishop Hill, published by Stacey International.
It’s not clear which category of Stacey’s catalog this book falls in. Categories seen at the Stacey website include:
– Archaeology & Geology
– Cookery
– Fiction
May I suggest there’s enough of this going around that RC may want to do a post on it?
“A leading scientist has hit out at misleading newspaper reports that linked his research to claims that the current cold weather undermines the scientific case for manmade global warming.
Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he “cannot understand” reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on climate change.
He told the Guardian: “It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming.”
He added: “There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases.”
A report in the Mail on Sunday said that Latif’s results “challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs” and “undermine the standard climate computer models”. Monday’s Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph repeated the claims.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate-change-global-warming-mojib-latif
Re:809
I find it hard to understand myself. It’s with immense disappointment that I know what I know.
To name just two…
Lars Jonsson, a world famous ornithologist and water color artist from Sweden. He’s a fascinating and incredibly informed naturalist, but who’s quoted as saying “Global warming is nothing but a hoax and a scare tactic.” He has impugned Michael Mann’s credibility as per M&M.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8872.html
Lauri Dexter, an expedition leader who’s led expeditions to both the North and South Poles and performed other amazing feats of endurance, who showed the film “The Great Global Warming Swindle” on board ship on expedition to the Antarctic in 2009.
http://www.quarkexpeditions.com/our-people/expedition-staff/expedition-leaders/laurie-dexter
I’m certainly not claiming these folks are unstudied dupes. But I’ve argued with both to no avail. They do need to see we won’t take Moncton’s crap …and be educated to the truth of the science to date as would come out in court. Their current views are being reinforced by lies. We just cannot let this stand.
Both these fellows are admirable and likable. I mean them no ill will.
A lawsuit would give Moncton wanted exposure. Too bad. He should be sued for at least every penny of profit made off the book.
#805 CFU (UK’s wind)
“Your point I was responding to was your assertion…. ”
No I did not make the assertion that you saw in my comment. It is true that I had not realised that you were correcting me, but that was not the only misunderstanding. In my experience, when people on a thread start to misunderstand each other; it tends to lead to an amplification effect and it gets boring for the other readers. For example “you quoted” is another pitfall.
No more contributions from me to this dialogue even though this is an important topic. Anyone else interested in it, should look up David McKay’s book and write to his web site if they can demonstrate that it is wrong about estimated wind capacity. As for the other topic, they can compare (for consistency) the various interpretations of the UK government’s announcement.In David’s words: Every big step counts . The question is how big is this one?
Tim @ 821:
I think it’s the same reason that I have problems. The weather charts I keep are pointing about as “down” as temperature can get. I said a couple of years ago, if SC24 is a fizzle, we’re in for cold weather. SC24 is a fizzle — SSN is 25 for today. Yawn. But each time I say “GCR!” I get told “No”.
Perhaps if the message was a bit less rigid and absolute people would have fewer problems. Meanwhile — the heater here is running more than the AC ran last summer. And that means it isn’t just cold, but positively frigid outside.
re 816:Voltair obviously never divorced…
Or married…
:-)
821 Tim,
Thanks for the examples. This reinforces my belief(!) that AGW Denial is a religious, not a rational, stance.
I’ve got used to the fact that many people can be supremely rational and intelligent in every other way, and yet believe the most bizarre, ridiculous, and just plain nasty stuff when it comes to religion or “faith”. I just have to let it pass, as it’s “just the way it is”.
821 Tim,
I forgot to add: this is AW Montford (“Bishop Hill”). Nothing to do with Lord Munchkin, other than their shared AGW denial.
#806 #821 Tim Jones.
Person drift?
“A lawsuit would give Moncton wanted exposure.”
This could be true although I think you intended it to be Montford not Moncton or Monckton.
Either way the propaganda machine may provide plenty of exposure without a libel action. As we see every day, it has bought up a large chunk of the web and has a sympathetic press.
Doug Bostrom, 820:
Latif is a co-author on the Keenlyside paper that’s already been the subject of two topics here (“Global cooling, wanna bet?”)
I don’t think the latest noise is about anything new.
Incidentally, I like review articles, and here’s a multi-author overview of decadal predictions and initialisation. Could be of interest.
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/90/10/pdf/i1520-0477-90-10-1467.pdf
[Response: See also Dunstone and Smith (2010) (in press, sub. reqd.). – gavin]
To all you guys salivating over a possible lawsuit, I’ll kinda second Ray Ladbury’s thought with the fundamental law of legal action: the chance of winning a law suit or court case, of any type, or anywhere, is 50/50.
Poor Latif. He was ridiculously misrepresented back in September, and apparently is being so again–despite having flatly stated the fact of the previous misrepresentation on air in an NPR interview.
Ironically enough, Roy Spencer’s site shows AMSU global temps for the start of 2010 running significantly warmer than 09.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Of course, it’s still just weather.
Re:827 et al,
I was distracted. I meant A.W. whatshisname …Montford.
Gavin,
I’m afraid the link you’ve provided twice to Dunstone and Smith (2010) just takes me to an AGU login page and I’ve searched that site to no avail. Can you provide a bit more info with which to try to track it down? Thanks.
[Response: Sorry, it’s ‘in press’ at GRL – you can’t get it without a subscription (unless you email one of the authors of course (Doug Smith at the Hadley Centre perhaps). – gavin]
How is Latif’s expectation of 2 or more decades w/o warming compatible w/ the ideas that (a) it’s warmer now than the late 70s so there is more water vapor in the air,(b)water vapor is a positive feedback to warming, (c) there is more CO2 in the air than in there was in the late 70s and (d) CO2 is the dominant cause of warming?
Re:829
“…the chance of winning a law suit or court case, of any type, or anywhere, is 50/50.”
What’s the chance of a pie in the face?
Except Latif doesn’t hold that expectation. His latest complaint, in response to the Daily Mail piece, is “I don’t know what to do. They just make these things up.” (in an interview with Joe Romm).
So, may I suggest you be a responsible human being, and to STOP MAKING STUFF UP? Or at least to STOP QUOTING THOSE WHO MAKE STUFF UP?
828, 833:
Doug Smith gets some press in this Economist article for his initialised model work.
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15211377
Not sure if it’s been posted before, but it’s nice to see a journalist try a little harder to understand and convey the material. Though the analogy of the portrait is a little strained.
> Septic Matthew says: 11 January 2010 at 6:39 PM
> How is Latif’s expectation …
I wonder if this is the same person who was posting as “Matthew” a while back, now using Stoat’s trademark as a monicker, pushing harder for attention? If so, please get over it. you can do much better than this stuff.
Re:836
Link to:
“FoxNews, WattsUpWithThat push falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC”
http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/11/foxnews-wattsupwiththat-climatedepot-daily-mail-article-on-global-cooling-mojib-latif/
Hank Roberts (838) — He explained that there were now two posters using “Matthew”, so he changed his monicker to differentiate the two…
Septic, OK. Let’s go through it. First, you have more CO2 and water vapor (because it’s warmer) than in 1970. However, you also have several influences that could cool things for a few years (e.g. ENSO or volcanic eruptions) or even a few decades (Grand Solar Minima). When those cooling influences end, whether it is a few decades or a few days, CO2 is there and warming continues. Is that really so hard to grasp, or are you just being a troll?
Rod B @ 829:
A business I’ve been exposed to sent a “take-down” letter to a web-site. The business owner cited Georgia law as the justification. The web-site is in Indiana, the business is in Texas. I’m thinking 0/100 would be the odds in his case.
Kevin @ 831:
Yeah, well, it’s all of January 11th. I don’t know of any denialist who’d insist that 11 days is the correct value for “Climate”. Twenty or thirty days, sure. But 11?
841, Ray Ladbury: However, you also have several influences that could cool things for a few years (e.g. ENSO or volcanic eruptions) or even a few decades
ENSO and volcanoes are recurrent — if they are as powerful as you say, then CO2 isn’t really dominant. As to the other influences that could cool down the earth for a few decades, if they overcome the combined effects of CO2 and positive feedback from water, then CO2 is not dominant. What other influences did you have in mind?
838, Hank Roberts: I wonder if this is the same person who was posting as “Matthew” a while back, now using Stoat’s trademark as a monicker, pushing harder for attention?
I did not know that “Septic” was “Stoat’s trademark”. I thought it was a clever pun when I read it, so I chose it to distinguish me from Matthew L.
I did a post on the latest Latif kerfuffle, and then went back at looked at David Rose’s debut a month ago as a climate science “investigative journalist” (ClimateGate/Steve McIntyre, natch).
http://deepclimate.org/2010/01/11/mojib-latif-slams-daily-mail/
You’ll have to read to the end to see Rose’s fawning comments at ClimateAudit, though. They’re great examples for Deech56’s proposed “CA drinking game”.
Kevin McKinney wrote in 831:
If you plot 1998, 2009 and 2010 near ground, the earlier half of 1998 is missing. I am assuming the data just isn’t there. But in early to mid August 1998 and 2009 are virtually on top of one another, criscrossing. Then from about September 1 forward 2008 it is pretty clear that 2009 is on top except for a short sliver in December. So far 2010 is 0.2-0.5°F above 2009. But as you say, its “just weather.”
Would like it if you could pick temperature anomaly instead of temperature. Do you think he might take a request?
RE:843
“What other influences did you have in mind?”
The phrase Grand Solar Minima describes an influence
that could cool the the planet, or at least keep it from
warming as quite as rapidly.
The Maunder minimum in the 17th century is an extreme example.
AGHG forcing is like the sea. Other forcings are like waves on it.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports//tar/slides/large/06.01.jpg
As you can see volcanoes could be a strong negative forcing,
though transient.
Matthew, have a look over here:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/
Learn the meaning the word has acquired. It’s not likely one you want to adopt, I bet.
Let’s see if the HTML works here:
septic TM Stoat
Er, nope, here’s how it ought to look, just for the record:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/01/cold_and_dark.php#comment-2193301
Seriously, this is one of the blogs listed in the right sidebar; all worth serious reading if you want to join the rest of us amateurs who are trying to understand the science here.
There’s a lot of history to learn along with it, not taught in the schools I attended.
Septic @ 843:
Let’s say that a big volcano is “-20 years of global warming”. In 20 years, assuming another big volcano blows up, instead of the temperatures going back to, say, 1990, they only go back to 2010. In 40 years, instead of it being 2050 weather, it’s 2030 weather, which is 40 years of global warming warmer than 1990 weather.
The risk of your approach is that even if — as I believe is the case — we’re in for another 8 or 10 years of mostly sideways weather, when we get out of the current “sideways” pattern, the warm-up is going to be even stronger because we’ve got another 8 or 10 years of accumulated CO2 emissions. The impact of a volcanic eruption isn’t forever. Accumulated CO2 has the potential to be “forever”, if we don’t knock it off.
Gavin, I am someone who reads this site as well as a few others including CA, TAV, and WUWT since they are the ones most likely to raise contentious issues (some right, some wrong, some just fun). I wonder if this thread or something like it might be usefully set up as a “sticky” or permanent thread. It will be impossible to manage as a single thread but Im sure that it could be made to work with multiple sub-threads that address some of the more useful issues that the other guys raise. Just a thought. Cheers