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.
Doug Bostrom #940:
I’m sorry Doug, what you’re missing is that glacial isostatic adjustment isn’t just the surface moving up, it is a deep flow of mantle rock from outside the uplift area inward. Slow viscoelastic deformation, time scale thousands of years. So yes, it’s both rock and ice changing.
Like here :-)
933, Completely Fed Up: Nope, because the time of selection to show such a decline is not long enough to prove it.
*
Note also that your modification is not taken on board by MOST denialists and MOST (self-assigned) skeptics.
I think those are fair statements. If the current “non-warming” persists as long as the 1940-1980 (appx) and 1885-1915 (appx) non-warmings, then it might be considered “proved”. Latif acknowledges recent apparent non-warming with warming expected to resume about 2015; Tsonis acknowledges apparent non-warming with noticeable warming to resume about 2030. The selection of the time is not completely arbitrary because it fits with the periodicity of alternate warming/non-warming since 1855 and fitted by some mathematical models.
WUWT today notes that January 2010 to date is the warmest January on record, with a temp of about -17C. That does not suggest any “cooling”.
> WUWT today notes … a temp of about -17C
Meaningless number, as stated, without more information
Citation needed, and not to WUWT; know what they’re talking about?
I’d bet it’s http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Re:951 Martin Vermeer says
“I’m sorry Doug, what you’re missing is that glacial isostatic adjustment isn’t just the surface moving up, it is a deep flow of mantle rock from outside the uplift area inward. Slow viscoelastic deformation, time scale thousands of years. So yes, it’s both rock and ice changing.”
The additional mass from outside the uplift is still offset by a loss of ice over what’s being uplifted. Does it make a difference as to whether the mantle is rebounding from beneath or from the sides regarding the GRACE finding of a loss of crustal mass?
Wouldn’t “both rock and ice changing” indicate even more loss of ice?
Tim Jones (954) — Prepare a shallow pan of jello. When set, dig out a dramge channel and ponding area. Then place an ice cube in the middle and observe for some time.
Martin Vermeer says: 15 January 2010 at 4:36 PM
“I’m sorry Doug, what you’re missing is that glacial isostatic adjustment isn’t just the surface moving up, it is a deep flow of mantle rock from outside the uplift area inward. Slow viscoelastic deformation, time scale thousands of years. So yes, it’s both rock and ice changing.”
Ooh, picky, picky!
Yes, rebound needs to be accounted for, which the investigators do. Indeed, if there’s a weakness to this approach it’s the assumptions that have to be made surrounding PGR.
In this case, as with many GRACE experiments the timescale makes rebound due to the specific phenomenon under observation of little significance. The existing “background” PGR is removed from the signal, leaving a fairly robust result. Even working at the extremes of the error bars– thus attributing most apparent mass loss to unrelated PGR effects– significant mass is unaccounted for, that missing mass coming down to one guilty party, vanishing ice.
I’m sure this is vastly disappointing to the holdouts who have been using their Antarctic Ice Fortress as one of the last redoubts in defense of doubt. Tsk. For doubters, my suggestion would be to attack the paper via PGR, but if you want to have any influence amongst the grownups who do policy you’ll need to do some actual science, instead of whining about bad data. And if the word “model” is a dirty word for you, don’t bother; you can’t discuss the mantle without using models, ok? Just get over it or stay mum. Finally, you’ll need to figure out how to overcome mutual confirmation of the method and observations by two sets of investigators.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5768/1754
ftp://ftp.csr.utexas.edu/pub/ggfc/papers/epsl_ant_preprint.pdf
953, Hank Roberts: Meaningless number, as stated, without more information
Citation needed, and not to WUWT; know what they’re talking about?
Sorry, it was only 1 day, the warmest January day yet recorded. Just a little factoid.
AMSU has a very pretty Javascript presentation here
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/
But when you click on the “trends” link (left sidebar) you get — daily temperature numbers for various elevations.
Odd. Anyone see a way to get a trend out of that presentation?
Re: 955 David B. Benson says:
15 January 2010
Tim Jones (954) — Prepare a shallow pan of jello. When set, dig out a dramge channel and ponding area. Then place an ice cube in the middle and observe for some time.
Sterling idea, David. A 3D model!
Be my guest. Let me help.
Prepare a glass aquarium, the bottom representing the Core. The Jello should be floating on water to represent the Mantle floating on the Outer Core. Separate water and colored Jello with Saran Wrap. You’d want to see the deformation of the Mantle so there should be a layer of clay resting on the Jello to represent the Crust floating on the Mantle. Then have the ice cube representing melting glaciers resting on the clay. I’m not sure it matters where the water goes as long as not all in one spot.
Carefully place horizontal and vertical colored pins in the jello near the ice to indicate movement of isostatic and viscoelastic rebound.
Photograph before and after ice melts.
Oh, yeah, AMSU at http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/ also has this text over their temperature chart:
> During global warming, the atmosphere in the lower atmosphere (called
> the troposphere) is supposed to warm at least as fast as the surface
> warms, while the statosphere above the troposphere is supposed to cool
> much faster than the surface warms.
NOTE: All Royal Society content is currently free to access in celebration of the Royal Society’s 350th Anniversary.
e.g.
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/466/2114/303.abstract
Solar change and climate: an update in the light of the current exceptional solar minimum– Mike Lockwood
Tim Jones #954
It sure does… and in Fennoscandia this has been a subject of active study, like in the paper I linked to. Having 3D rebound patterns on the surface from GPS gives you a handle on the 3D viscoelastic deformations going on in the mantle — unfortunately with a lot of ambiguity.
To be clear, I don’t think the finding of ice mass loss itself is in question, it’s just that GIA remains an important confounding factor contributing to the error bars.
Weatherman Watts has an amazing and comforting explanation on his site describing why none of us should ever have to worry about increases in average global temperature. What a relief. Here I was getting all worried, now it turns out that via the magic of statistics everything’s going to be ok after all.
Here it is. Read it, then let’s all relax:
“So while it may be fun to watch the global temperature – a meaningless game that many people began to play in recent years because of the AGW fad (and yes, your humble correspondent only plays these games because others do, not because it is scientifically important) – it is very important to realize that the changes of the global mean temperature are irrelevant for every single place on the globe. They only emerge when things are averaged over the globe – but no one is directly affected by such an average.”
See how easy that was? Cool. That means we don’t need airbags in our cars, or for that matter seatbelts. Nobody is affected by statistical improvements in morbidity and mortality, after all. Forget penicillin also; for you personally, penicillin is useless.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/15/uah-satellite-data-has-record-warmest-day-for-january/
He says not to worry about this, either:
“By the way, it’s almost certain by now that January 2010 will also be the globally warmest January on the UAH record – the anomaly will likely surpass 0.70 °C. It may even see the highest (or at least 2nd highest) monthly UAH anomaly since December 1978.”
So much for cooling. Who ever said anything about cooling, anyway?
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/01/13/rspa.2009.0434.full?sid=5c390383-dc22-4c29-af60-4f551f0523a7
Stability of ice-sheet grounding lines
Richard F. Katz, and M. Grae Worster
doi: 10.1098/rspa.2009.0434
Full Text Free
961, Hank Roberts
Good to know. I downloaded it. Thanks.
Martin @962,
Given its dependence on the geoid, could they use detailed patterns in sea level rise to constrain the GIA?
Doug@963, That sounds like “Micro” Watts trying unsuccessfully to yack back up what R. Pielke, Sr. has been arguing of late. Roger has been saying that averages are irrelevant, because nobody lives the average.
I would propose that we engage these gentlemen n a little game of chance–it doesn’t matter which game as long as the expectation value of the game is positive for us and negative for them. After all, what is the expectation value but an average, and they know averages are unimportant, right?
See I figure if folks are going to live in these little fantasy worlds, we in the reality-based community ought to be able to benefit somehow. After all, as W. C. Fields said, “Never give a sucker an even break.” And these guys suck in the worst way imaginable.
“The Jello should be floating on water to represent the Mantle floating on the Outer Core.”
And compared to the stiffness of jello and water, the ice is far too dense.
Therefore it won’t work.
Unless we have neutron star matter as ice on the real earth…
Martin: “Slow viscoelastic deformation, time scale thousands of years. So yes, it’s both rock and ice changing.”
And we’re measuring on a timescale thousands of times smaller, therefore the change is thousands of times smaller.
Plus, you forget, that it is the relative densities that would make a change in the gravitational anomaly. Not the movement alone. So scale it down there too.
NOTE: if Sweden is going up 1cm/year then over the last 12000 years, it would have gone up 120m.
I don’t think it has.
Therefore there’s some large delay for isostatic rebound that is somewhat analogous to internal friction and inertia. A delay of some thousands of years to get to full speed, at least.
Since significant ice loss is within the last 50 years or so, so how big an effect can it be?
“See I figure if folks are going to live in these little fantasy worlds, we in the reality-based community ought to be able to benefit somehow. After all, as W. C. Fields said, “Never give a sucker an even break.” And these guys suck in the worst way imaginable.”
How does one sign up for this “reality based community”?
Is there an initiation ritual?
[Response: You just need to remove the blinkers. – gavin]
Re:968
Completely Fed Up says:
“And compared to the stiffness of jello and water, the ice is far too dense.”
Ice is LESS dense than water! Ice floats, remember?
Water has a specific gravity, a density of 1. Ice has a specific gravity of 0.9168
Re:934
Completely Fed Up says:
“So why did your original comment include the unrealistic of a 10-Pinatubo eruption for 10 years?”
Not what I wrote. It was not one eruption of a magnitude of 10 Pinatubos as you suggest. Nor did my original comment #877 include “10 years.”
How about you getting your facts straight?
“What a load of tripe. We should give prizes for the biggest number of factual errors, logical errors and complete non sequitors that readers can find. Just in the first segment, they get the provenance of the ice cores wrong (Antarctica, not the Arctic), the grant Monckton and D’Aleo PhDs they have not earned, they insinuate strongly that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas (despite this being known since the 19th Century), they steal video from the Great Global Warming Swindle, they still can’t seem to get their heads around the fact that temperature can cause the carbon cycle to change at the same time that CO2 causes warming because it’s a greenhouse gas, and… someone else can continue – I haven’t got the stomach for it. – gavin]”
Ad Hominem aside, I would like an explanation of the film’s “smoking gun” claim that, for example, in California more recent temperature data is culled so that measurements along the coast are extrapolated long distances, to the Sierra Navada in their example. The film states that no data points from the Sierra Nevada or the central valley are used to establish more recent temperature anomolies from the old baseline, which uses stations at locations such as the Sierra Nevada.
It makes logical sense that old temperature data which included the Sierra Nevada would tend to average lower, and that the removal of same for later timeframes would tend to average higher.
You cannot make such selections without imparting a bias. You cewrtainly could confirm a bias by malipulating data in such a way. It seems that the “auditors” are simply truying to point out these flaws. It is not a good policy to resist an audit.
[Response: This ‘smoking gun’ is not even a dripping water pistol. Their claim is apparently that a coastal station absolute temperature is being used to estimate the current absolute temperature in the mountains and that the anomaly there is warm because the coast is warmer than the mountain. Well, if anyone was doing that, the temperature anomalies would be a lot larger than a few tenths of a degree! 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 – this just underscores their lack of understanding of where the GHCN data set actually comes from. They could just try reading 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 from WMO GCOS. 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 NODC or NASA. These claims are based on nothing but ignorance and prejudice. PS. You appear to be unaware of what ‘Ad hominem’ means. – gavin]
> Septic Matthew says: 16 January 2010 at 3:01 AM
> 961
[Lockwood paper]
Always remember–check for prior discussion of an author’s work, e.g.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arealclimate.org+lockwood+frohlich
will get you a start, then use search within results and add keywords to reduce the (huge) total number of hits, over 1400 at RC on that search.
If David Wright is this network news guy
http://www.google.com/search?q=“David+Wright”+climate+ABC
please keep asking for clarification on details and don’t be put off by some of us, me included, who do get cranky at times at old familiar questions.
News people especially won’t have time to ‘do the reading for themselves’ — for example, the difference between an absolute temperature and an anomaly measurement is obvious to me by now as a longtime reader on the site. It leaps off the page and it’s clear the assertion is just meant to confuse new readers.
For someone new to the subject and particularly if you’re that ABC guy and in a rush to a news deadline–the two words look much the same, and do often cause people to get confused.
On this area you can’t just report what other people are saying–without having a good staff looking very skeptically at it–or you end up reporting pure bafflegab.
The story obscuring the difference between absolute and anomaly measurements is typical of stuff that will fool a reader and sucker a reporter
This David Wright?
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=9296468….
973, Hank Roberts
Thanks again.
Gavin,
Thanks for the response. Sorry for the misuse of term “ad hominem”, but I percieved the language as a personal attack upon a group, so to speak. I see a form of prejudice againsts “skeptics” or “septics” here. For example, we are typically lumped in with creationists, religious right or flat earthers. This could not be further from the truth in my case, as science is one of my passions (recognizing that I am but an amateur, simply fascinated by nature).
I did not take from the video any implication that data had been destroyed, but that it has been used inappropriately (apples to oranges). I remain skeptical that the data is being properly applied and that models are appropriate forecasting tools (as it is being applied for public climate policy). I’m all for research.
IMHO the public in general will continue to be more and more skeptical until renowned scientists such as yourself publicly discuss the methods of your field in some sort of neutral forum. I can see how you might not want to lend credibility to the skeptical viewpoint by associating with it’s proponents
in in such a way, but common folks, particularly in the developed world, really want to understand issues that affect them. We do not take well to folks who simple ask us to trust them. This trust has been abused far to often in the past, particularly when it comes to matters involving public funds. You have to admit that, for better or worse, the public has a much greater ability to air it’s collective view than it has at any other time in history. Public debate is more than simply great sport, it serves a very useful cultural purpose.
IMHO the polarized media we see today will eventually settle down and trusted sources will rise to the top by natural selection. Hopefully scientists will adapt to the change toward a more open source form of communication with the public at large. Why not be on the forefront of this movement? It would take a great deal of courage, but if your science is sound, you have everything to gain.
Cheers!
“This David Wright?”
Nope.
David Wright says: 16 January 2010 at 10:33 AM
It’s also helpful to remember that for many locations historical weather records are available for purchase by resellers, or in some cases even can be obtained for free, with sufficient elbow grease. The records are not state secrets, though some weather agencies seem to believe they have intrinsic value.
So if somebody is truly concerned about how things would look without interpolation, they could actually acquire these records and then do the work required to find out what happens when they’re included.
I’m puzzled that this simple and obvious step has not been taken by doubters.
Bolivia’s impact was recently under discussion at a favorite site for doubters; all sort of speculation was being flung around concerning massaging of data. It took me about an hour to find 20 years of records for two sample locations in Bolivia. Not enough data to form any firm conclusions and in any case I don’t have the skill to use it properly, though from my dull perspective I did not see any surprises. The point is, if it took me so little time to do this, why don’t the doubters do so as well? They don’t trust climate scientists so I doubt their worries will diminish until they’ve gone through the process on their own, which they apparently choose to avoid.
Ray Ladbury says: 16 January 2010 at 7:39 AM
“I would propose that we engage these gentlemen in a little game of chance–it doesn’t matter which game as long as the expectation value of the game is positive for us and negative for them. After all, what is the expectation value but an average, and they know averages are unimportant, right?”
Trouble is, we’re in a game now, it’s called “Global Russian Rou_lette”, there’s a shell in the cylinder, we keep going “klick, klick, klick…” Just a question now of what bits will be blown away.
Watts’ site is really quite abysmal. He writes well, but his followers are an entire grade below the folks at CA.
Completely Fed Up — Too picky. The ice on jello is a conceptual model of isostacy, not to scale. Doesn’t even handle all lateral aspects.
“IMHO the public in general will continue to be more and more skeptical until renowned scientists such as yourself publicly discuss the methods of your field in some sort of neutral forum.”
I hate to mention ’em again, but this has been tried repeatedly w/creationists, it has not an iota of effect.
Anyway, there is a “neutral forum” for discussion, it’s called academic publication.
Unfortunately the doubt industry is beavering away at deceiving the public about the academic publication arena, busily constructing imaginary conspiracies and the like. Take a look at Steve McIntyre’s site. The only “research” being performed there has to do with raking email sediment for “code” from the “team”.
This meta discussion about climate research is not about science. It’s about preserving cash flow. Trying to interpret it any other way is futile.
Doug #979
“It took me about an hour to find 20 years of records for two sample locations in Bolivia. Not enough data to form any firm conclusions and in any case I don’t have the skill to use it properly, though from my dull perspective I did not see any surprises.”
Any clues as to where to find said data, or what they show?
Thanks in advance.
“The point is, if it took me so little time to do this, why don’t the doubters do so as well?”
The public pays for this information to be gathered by its institutions. We should not have to pay for it twice.
It seems to me that if complete datasets are collected, then complete, unprocessed datasets should be archived and made available to the taxpayers for audit purposes.
I’m still confused as to the reason we are using a much smaller dataset than is available, and extrapolating it to areas where real data is available (in the US). It also seems that data which is for sale and proprietary should not be used for public purposes since it cannot be audited publically.
I’m also wondering if it is true that historic tree ring data should not be used as a temperature proxy. That is my understanding of the “hide the decline” issue, not that temperatures are declining, but that the proxies are unreliable.
> “Global Russian Rou_lette”
I think it was Feynmann who observed that if the first time you pull the trigger you just get a ‘click’– this doesn’t mean you should feel confident nothing will happen and keep pulling the trigger.
For David Wright — recommended for clarification of the word:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/01/septic_arguments.php
Yesterday I was in my ski shop and naturally the talk turned to weather. I explained that I didn’t really believe in long range weather forecasting but that the forecast for 3 weeks had been predicting a break in the dry spell we’d been having and the prediction was starting to look believable. The guy I was talking to says something like: “especially climate change, right?” I looked at him and said, “Climate change is easy. Predicting climate change is you turn up the heat on the pot you’re cooking and you predict that it gets hotter. Predicting weather is predicting how the temperature changes with time everywhere in the pot.” I don’t know that I had an immediate convert but he did say that no one had ever explained that to him so simply before.
Time’s headline’s pretty scary if the think about what a treasure wetlands are. But Bryan Walsh fleshes out the subject pretty well, gets it, and ends on the right note. It might be noted that traditional wetlands contribute to the natural carbon cycle and important wildlife habitat and shouldn’t be replaced with coal fueled power plants.
How Wetlands Worsen Climate Change
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1953751,00.html
By Bryan Walsh Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010
[excerpts)
Now there’s new focus on a pair of methane sources that we usually don’t think of as natural polluters: wetlands and rice paddies.”
[…]
“…but a new paper in the Jan. 14 issue of Science has provided some hard numbers. Using satellite data, investigators determined that wetlands contribute from 53% to 58% of global methane emissions and that rice paddies are responsible for more than a quarter of that output. The study could help make climate-change models more accurate, and help scientists understand whether increasing temperatures will lead to even higher methane emissions down the road. “It’s all about more accurately describing climate in these models,” says Paul Palmer, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh and a co-author of the Science paper.”
[…]
“Indeed, many scientists worry that we could reach a tipping point at which warming could begin to melt the Arctic permafrost and unleash masses of buried methane — which would then further warm the atmosphere, releasing more methane and continuing in a dangerous feedback cycle. But if we’re going to prevent that from happening, we’re going to have to find a way other than reducing methane emissions from wetlands. Global food requirements mean that we can’t cut back seriously on rice paddy cultivation, and wetlands are far too important to the environment as groundwater filters and buffers against coastal floods. “I just don’t see any way to control methane emissions from wetlands,” says Palmer. Instead, we’ll need to focus on methane emissions from man-made sources — like landfills or natural gas drilling — and cut what is still greenhouse gas No. 1: CO2.”
Hear hear. It hope “350” does the trick. I’m not convinced this level of diminished CO2 forcing is sufficient to turn round the feedbacks we see, where man’s contribution to CO2 warming is just the fuse on the canon.
“Anyway, there is a “neutral forum” for discussion, it’s called academic publication.”
The general public, for whom policy is being affected, does not read academic publications. That’s more of a forum between scientists, and rightly so.
Any consensus required for public policy is a matter for public debate beyond the academic debate.
That’s why, more than ever, scientists need to be ready to debate one another publicly, at least where “soft science” (forgive me for calling it as I see it) relates to public policy.
There needs to be more clarity from the science community as to what the “settled science” really is. At the moment, we are given the impression that the settled science is a 20 foot rise in sea level and more catastrophic storms. Most folks here know that that is not really what the settled science indicates. Let’s hear it publicly, from real scientists willing to stake their reputations on it, not from some politician.
I’m pleased that Dr. Hansen has softened his stance against fossil fuel, but I’m not pleased that he recently sat nodding in agreemnent as David Letterman implied that his young child faces doom. Sure, Letterman is a comedian, but sitting idly by without so much as a “but seriously folks” cheapens the image of a renowned scientist. IMHO Dr. Hansen missed a great opportunity to display real courage.
Sorry if I’m overworking the issue and OT.
Cheers!
Re my previous post –
“It hope…” should read “I hope.”
Chris S. says: 16 January 2010 at 3:08 PM
“Any clues as to where to find said data, or what they show?”
I’m sorry, I know it’s anti-science but I really would like the doubters to move off their shiftless bums, stop whining and flinging accusations and instead do some work. I will say that Bolivia’s METAR records can be found on the web, I’m sure many other places as well. And as I mentioned, there are resellers, which I did not use.
As to conclusions, the only thing that struck me was that evening temperatures -appeared- to have a more positive supposed trend than day temperatures. But again, the data I looked at was scanty and I’m not really clued in on statistics so take it with a mountain of salt.
David Wright says: 16 January 2010 at 3:15 PM
“The public pays for this information to be gathered by its institutions. We should not have to pay for it twice. ”
Just as one example, you’re not Bolivian, are you? What individual countries choose to do w/their data is up to the citizens or despots locally in charge. We’re fortunate to have grownups around who understand which principles are important, which are not and thus are prepared to make arrangements to get the data under NDA or whatever.
“It seems to me that if complete datasets are collected, then complete, unprocessed datasets should be archived and made available to the taxpayers for audit purposes.”
Which would be pointless, because the mentality that sees conspiracy behind homogenization is going to see a conspiracy if the unprocessed records do not agree with prejudice.
David: “There needs to be more clarity from the science community as to what the “settled science” really is. ”
Maybe you mean well, but this is just rubbish.
It’s only a problem because denialists pop it out when they have nothing better to do and use it as a strawman.
There’s a complete thread on it here:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
Yup, it’s on RC.
“I looked at him and said, “Climate change is easy. Predicting climate change is you turn up the heat on the pot you’re cooking and you predict that it gets hotter. Predicting weather is predicting how the temperature changes with time everywhere in the pot.”
This appears to be a septic argument in reverse. Way oversimplified.(thanks for the def. link Hank)
Yes the pot will get hotter, but how much? Convection increases, more energy is released.
“I think it was Feynmann who observed that if the first time you pull the trigger you just get a ‘click’– this doesn’t mean you should feel confident nothing will happen and keep pulling the trigger.”
reverse septic as well…not necessarily analogous…the comfort and safety we all enjoy by virtue of industry and cheap energy does not equate to a suicidal tendency.
IMHO we suffer from some sort of collective guilt syndrome due to our relative comfort in relation to our forefathers and our poorer brothers in other lands. Hence the propensity toward pennance. IMHO our efforts and resources could be better channeled.
Anyway, ‘scuse the flood of posts. It’s rainy & clammy here, waiting for the Saints game. Who dat…….
Thanks, see ya later!
David Wright (989) — Using CO2 concentrations, paleoclimate studies suggest Pliocene (Pli on the linked graph, toward the left) to mid-Miocene (Mio) conditions: Some substantial portion of Antarctica melts and then 3 meters sea level rise is the least to expect. This seems as good a prediction as it is currently possible to make, although I am in no position to declare “settled science.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
Less settled is how long it might take for a 3 meter sea level rise; rather unlikely this century, maybe half that.
More serious storms? In a heating world seems likely to me; again I am in no position to state “settled science”.
The issues are better expressed in terms of unknown, but real, risks and arranging for risk avoidance. Such as stop using fossil fuels or else removing the excess carbon expressed from active carbon cycle.
“the comfort and safety we all enjoy by virtue of industry and cheap energy does not equate to a suicidal tendency. ”
But counting the comfort TODAY for the comfort TOMORROW is very much a base animal thing.
We’re supposed to be sapiens sapiens.
Read Dune?
The Gom Jabbar is the trap that separates humans from animals.
AGW is our species real Gom Jabbar.
Will we act, or just react?
David Wright says: 16 January 2010 at 4:25 PM
“IMHO we suffer from some sort of collective guilt syndrome due to our relative comfort in relation to our forefathers and our poorer brothers in other lands. Hence the propensity toward pennance. IMHO our efforts and resources could be better channeled.”
Oh, come on, that’s an ideological fling and really too broad.
I thank my lucky stars I was born late enough and in the right place to enjoy Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain’s work in all its efflorescent glory. For most things, better than vacuum tubes and guess what? More efficient, too! What one could call “better channeling of efforts.”
Same deal as fossil fuel versus progress. There’s an ironic term for us: “Fossil fuel”. Stuck in the past.
Oh, good grief. CO2 molecules don’t care about our “collective guilt syndrome”. Whenever science points to problems caused by industrial activity, we always hear arguments like this.
Re: 993
“…the comfort and safety we all enjoy by virtue of industry and cheap energy does not equate to a suicidal tendency.”
Insofar that it amounts to driving a car with bad brakes toward the edge of a cliff it is. We keep putting off fixing the brakes
as they get worse and worse. The cliff (dangerous climate change) gets nearer and nearer and too many of us are stepping on the gas.
We’re being warned every day. Who listens? The problem is we take down much of biodiversity with us as our rainforests are cut down for more beef and more fuel, our plastic trash spins endlessly around in a huge Pacific gyre, we sacrifice wetlands for urban sprawl, our oil spills despoil our shore lands, our mines and our farms poison our rivers, we fry the planet with our emissions, our CO2 is poisoning the ocean, and on and on. We continue to worship the gods of conspicuous consumption. Our religions keep us from getting a handle on overpopulation.
“Unbridled growth is the etiology of a cancer cell. It serves nothing but to kill the host.” “The evolution of every higher mammal but man and his chattel has ceased.” It’s not that that we’re just suicidal, we’re taking down the rest of God’s creatures as well.
It’s called the 6th Extinction. Use Google. Enjoy your game.
David Wright wrote in 977:
Science is neutral and the case for anthropogenic global warming was very strong even in the 1970s.
Please see:
The American Denial of Global Warming
by Naomi Oreskes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio
The scientific consensus on global warming includes every major scientific organization that has seen fit to take a position on the issue. Please see:
The Consensus on Global Warming:
From Science to Industry & Religion
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
However, scientific organizations focus predominantly on science, not public relations. They don’t fund public relations, front or shell organizations, and they don’t engage in astroturfing. They have neither the money for it nor the interest in it.
Doug Bostrom wrote in 981:
I put together a list of 32 organizations with documented involvement in both the tobacco and AGW denial campaigns.
Please see comment 855 of the Unforced Variations
Many of the same organizations that were involved in the tobacco denial campaign were also involved in the denial campaigns surrounding dioxin, DDT, asbestos, nuclear waste and acid rain. Fortunately, tobacco companies were required to make much of their internal documentation publicly available — and has since been put online. You can search it using Google to see what else the denial industry was involved. I have suggested a few searches in the above comment. And as the comment itself makes clear, both http://www.sourcewatch.org and http://www.exxonsecrets.org are real resources.
If you want to track the money that a given individual, company or foundation is giving to a foundation, you might try mediamattersaction.org/transparency. It is possible to show, for example, that the Scaife (Allegheny, Carthage, Scaife Family — no longer controlled by the family, Sarah Scaife), Bradley (Lynde and Harry Bradley), Koch (Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch), Claude R. Lambe), and Coor’s Family “Castle Rock” Foundations have given over a quarter of a billion dollars over the years to organizations that are part of Exxon’s denial network. But to some extent it is difficult to say specifically what this money was for. As one example, Much of the wealth of Richard Mellon Scaife comes from oil. He was also heavily involved in the funding of the Religious Right. He has funded the Heritage Foundation — which was involved in both the rise of the Religious Right and the AGW denial campaign — as well as the tobacco denial campaign.
David Wright: You insist you want a debate. Do you want a public debate about creationism before your kids are taught biology in public school?
Obviously you don’t want to be lumped together with creationists, which you regard as an insult. What you don’t get is that you’re the one doing it to yourself. The case for doubting dangerous man-made global warming is no better than the case for creationism. You regard the analogy as a way to insult the opposing viewpoint, but — truly! — that’s because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Your “smoking gun” comment is, plain and simple, proof of that.
The analogy with creationism is just plain correct. I’m sorry that the truth is so offensive to you.