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.
David: There’s lots of farm land idle these days due to plentiful supply and the resultant low price for crops.
There’s not much reason for optimism about the future of arable land (UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025). In the context of climate change, sea level rise threatens low-lying cropland in at least three ways: coastal erosion, salt intrusion, and storm surge.
1245 Completely Fed Up says:
23 January 2010 at 6:57 AM
What does this have to do with CO2, Climate Change?”
Because if the climate changes enough, Mexico City will have to move.
You’ve already said they’ll do that.
Now, how expensive and difficult would that be?
Answer.
I think we see the answer in Haiti right now, as the population of Port-au-Prince flees to the countryside. It will require extensive assistance from the UN, NGO’s, and the US, and it will be expensive.
1231, Ray Ladbury: In reality, the numbers of such events are best described by a Poisson distribution about some mean value. The mean may change somewhat slowly as the energy in the system changes.
I doubt that you are wrong. However, the movement of the magnetic poles is semi-periodic, and the underlying dynamics could produce semi-periodic changes in the near-surface magma in some places.
> We really don’t have enough valid proxies
Can you tell us, in your own terms, even one valid proxy?
Somebody strongly inclined to argue but less firmly attached to facts said:
“The IPCC proposes to tax the well fed industrious nations in order to pay starving, underdeveloped nations so that they will limit their industrial development…”
Dripping with Wrong, yet so effective: Make everybody into a victim.
What’s amazing about this statement is how it arrives wrapped in a flag of sympathy and benevolence.
Remarkably uninformed or cynical. The person who wrote it is either genuinely ignorant of the topic under discussion, or is manipulative in a way resembling an ugly pathology.
Really embarrassing for compatriots, in any case.
This David Wright fellow is showing himself to be quite successful at wasting people’s time.
Other commenters may want to ask themselves whether engaging with the willful ignorance, obstinate sophistry, malicious dishonesty, and vapidly callous disregard for massive human suffering that comprise his discourse is a worthwhile use of their time.
David Wright (1239) — Its the CO2. Please read climatologist David Archer’s “The Long Thaw”.
And, by the way, Mark Lynas’s “Six Degrees” is required reading in his class for non-majors.
“Can you tell us, in your own terms, even one valid proxy?”
For determining the average global temperature thousands of years ago within a couple of degrees? No, can you?
“What’s amazing about this statement
is how it arrives wrapped in a flag of sympathy and benevolence.”
In the same way that the following quote is for the benefit of our grandchildren?
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”
I get chills every time I see this. Over-represent so that we can come up with a solution to the over-representation. What utter nonsense.
I would prefer that my grandchildren have their science education based on sound scientific principles, using facts which truly are facts, so that their generation can better innovate, create and survive any eventuality that nature may bring.
That’s not just knee jerk “feel good” benevolence.
[Response: I think this is a typical example of where you are reading some whole agenda into a perfectly innocent statement. How can you even have too many facts? What he is addressing was people asking why (then) he didn’t talk much about solutions. That was then of course, and now his latest book is chock full of them. Why this should give you a chill is completely beyond me. – gavin]
“I think we see the answer in Haiti right now, as the population of Port-au-Prince flees to the countryside. It will require extensive assistance from the UN, NGO’s, and the US, and it will be expensive.”
Indeed, a strong economy is the best insulation against any eventuality, seismic and climate change included (but not exclusive).
Were they not so poor, they would be much less vulnerble.
Septic@1253,
I’ve actually written a popularized account on Gary Glatzmaier’s work on magnetic reversals–it’s actually pretty cool. The geomagnetic field is generated by the circulation of molten iron in the outer core (the geodynamo). Because the liquid iron is magnetic, the circulation tends to align to produce a dipole in a given direction. It turns out that the question is not why the poles reverse, but why they don’t do so more often. The reason is because the solid inner core forms an inductor that resists such flips. Over time (roughly 100-400 thousand years), though, more of the energy begins to flow into the higher poles of the magnetic field, the dipole becomes less stable and eventually the orientation of the field and the circulation of the iron flip.
Again, the system is not really periodic, but another example of self-organized criticality. You have to realize though that the forces due to the geomagnetic field aren’t all that strong. They are extremely unlikely to significantly influence things like the mean rate of volcanic eruptions.
FWIW, there are dynamo’s in several of the planets–Earth, Jupiter and to a lesser extent Saturn. Jupiter’s moons Io and Europa also generate a magnetic field. It’a s pretty cool field.
DW: The IPCC proposes to tax the well fed industrious nations in order to pay starving, underdeveloped nations so that they will limit their industrial development (remain impoverished). That’s a crime IMHO.
BPL: It’s also incorrect. Limiting fossil fuels is not the same thing as limiting development. Period.
David Wright says, “Ray, a scientist would attack the argument, not the man. Still disappointed.”
Great, David, make an argument I can attack! ‘Cause all this, “Oh, it’ll be all right,” ain’t working for me!
David: “I was arguing that the irreversable tipping point is only theory.”
Funny, the National Academy disagrees.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/irreversible-does-not-mean-unstoppable/
David: “Obviously permafrost has been exposed in the past. The planet has warmed in the past, but it recovered. There are obvious mechanisms which limit the planet to certain extremes, because Earth has descended from warm conditions to ice ages many times.”
Yes, and they operate on timescales of thousands of years!! A bit long to last through a dry spell.
David: “What makes you think the idle land is barren? Much of the unused land is returning to wild land.”
David, I am not saying the land is necessarily barren, although there will be increased desertification in the US West, Western Oz, Africa and parts of Asia. There is also the problem that many of the crops we rely on now for calories and protein will not grow unless they reach a minimum temperature–e.g. winter wheat.
David: “We need to address problems locally, not globally.”
Sorry, David, but the problem is global. Different areas can address it in different ways, but the atmosphere does not care whether a CO2 molecule came from the US or India or China or Africa. This is everybody’s problem. We need to learn that if we play this as a zero-sum game, it will very quickly become a less-than-zero-sum game.
David Wright (#1249): “Back to the argument…I did not disagree that warming can result in outgassing of GHG in permafrost (should such local conditions exist to allow it). I was arguing that the irreversable tipping point is only theory. Obviously permafrost has been exposed in the past. The planet has warmed in the past, but it recovered. There are obvious mechanisms which limit the planet to certain extremes, because Earth has descended from warm conditions to ice ages many times.”
David might be interested to know that there are isotope records that clearly show that whenever there are large volcanic CO2 emissions, the ice age-interglacial cycle is replaced by a runaway greenhouse effect. This is more than just a theory. In the most extreme of these events there were tropical animals living in the arctic, and sea levels were 70 m higher than they are today. How did the earth return to colder climates? Reduced CO2 emissions from volcanoes definitely was a factor.
Well, this certainly is a surprise.
Water Hits and Sticks: Findings Challenge a Century of Assumptions About Soil Hydrology
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121173452.htm
“How can you even have too many facts?”
I don’t see how you can.
The Gore quote was not even an important point, just my personal knee jerk reaction to another poster implying sinister intent to one of my more pointed (arguably hyperbolic) posts.
Time to cool it perhaps.
> any eventuality that nature may bring.
You dismiss any concern about the eventualities caused by what we’re doing now.
Why waste time here, just witnessing your beliefs?
Name just one proxy you understand and consider reliable for climatology, eh?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121164011.htm
“… while an increase in summer minimum ice extent in the past 2 years could give the impression that Arctic ice is recovering, these new results show that multiyear ice in fact is still declining.
The results have implications for climate science and marine vessel transport in the Arctic.
The research appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.”
Ah, David Wright now resurrects the ‘ole “this lump of rock will continue to orbit the sun, regardless”.
Mr. Wright. This is a strawman. The argument isn’t over whether or not this lump of rock will continue in orbit around the sun in 2100.
The question is how painful the future will be for Homo sapiens.
Try to do better. You’re really a boor.
“David might be interested to know that there are isotope records that clearly show that whenever there are large volcanic CO2 emissions, the ice age-interglacial cycle is replaced by a runaway greenhouse effect. This is more than just a theory. In the most extreme of these events there were tropical animals living in the arctic, and sea levels were 70 m higher than they are today. How did the earth return to colder climates? Reduced CO2 emissions from volcanoes definitely was a factor.”
That sure sounds like a straight correlation.
Where can I read about this?
“You dismiss any concern about the eventualities caused by what we’re doing now.”
I explicitly stated to the contrary earlier.
“There is also the problem that many of the crops we rely on now for calories and protein will not grow unless they reach a minimum temperature–e.g. winter wheat.”
Won’t the summer growing season lengthen? Might the winter wheat crop move northward? Could we grow two crops of summer wheat? Crop failures, blight and pestillence are nothing new, but they occur less frequently today. Farmers have some very good science behind them now. I’ll bet that if we wanted to we could engineer a more tolerent strain of winter wheat.
Regardless, is our diet so restricted that we would suffer without winter wheat?
“there will be increased desertification”
Didn’t Gavin himself write that regional effects were not predictable?
“Name just one proxy you understand and consider reliable for climatology, eh?”
If I had to pick something for establishing a global baseline, it would be an ensemble of satellite measurements. There is still a problem with the useful life of satellites, and having to calibrate newer ones against the old. Instrument drift has also apparently been an issue with some satellites.
Septic:”However, the movement of the magnetic poles is semi-periodic,”
Please define semi-periodic.
Because I know it’s Quasi-periodic just like earthquakes (which follow a power law and poisson distribution).
If I have a gamma-ray counter and it counts about 1 hit per second from a gamma source nearby, you could call it quasi-periodic because it gets a click about 1 every second.
But it isn’t periodic.
It’s random.
It’s made periodic by averaging out and assuming an interval so we can express it as a rate.
Decay rates are “per second”, but that doesn’t mean they’re periodic, semi-periodic or a period of 0.1-10 second frequencies.
They are random with a scale length of “1/per second”.
Dai: “We need to address problems locally, not globally.”
But locally we don’t have 9 billion people.
“I already said that I am not a creationist, so why do you keep associating me with them?”
Where do you read that in?
Your persecution complex is showing, David.
All that’s been stated is the FACT that “it’s just a THEORY” is a common “pwnd” tool for creationists.
Are you denying they do that?
Are you denying that you too have just done that?
““Name just one proxy you understand and consider reliable for climatology, eh?”
If I had to pick something for establishing a global baseline, it would be an ensemble of satellite measurements. ”
Which
a) show warming
b) require a model and computers to turn energy spectral data into temperature measurements (these are an analogue, and then analogued again into “surface temperatures”).
“1271
David Wright says:
24 January 2010 at 12:42 AM
“You dismiss any concern about the eventualities caused by what we’re doing now.”
I explicitly stated to the contrary earlier.”
But refuse to realise the consequence of them because they mean mitigation of AGW now by reducing CO2 production by humans (because, although we can’t control nature, we SHOULD be able to control ourselves).
“That sure sounds like a straight correlation.
Where can I read about this?”
Here:
http://www.ipcc.ch
and follow up on the papers.
Completely Fed Up:
“Where do you read that in?
Your persecution complex is showing, David.”
1246, Ray Ladbury. I posted the quote.
And now you’re doing it too!
“All that’s been stated is the FACT that “it’s just a THEORY” is a common “pwnd” tool for creationists.”
Evolution is very good science, Genetic study backs it up. It does bring to mind a useful analogy. What will humans look like in 10,000 years, anyone care to make a projection? Care to identify that new species we will discover next year?
The name calling and vilification began soon after someone asked for evidence that living trees had been overrun by a glacier in the last 10,000 years. I provide two examples and then it turned ugly. That’s a good example of what is wrong with climatology today. It’s blog vs blog, it’s very unproductive and I’m doing my best to stay away from it.
In response to my suggestion that most environmental problems need to be addressed locally, not globally, Fed up:
“But locally we don’t have 9 billion people.”
Developed nations have lower birth rates.
Fed up,
Do you have a more specific link to those isotope studies that “clearly show that whenever there are large volcanic CO2 emissions, the ice age-interglacial cycle is replaced by a runaway greenhouse effect?”
I wouldn’t ask you to dig through a denier site to find something.
““Name just one proxy you understand and consider reliable for climatology, eh?”
Fed up:
“If I had to pick something for establishing a global baseline, it would be an ensemble of satellite measurements. ”
Your response:
Which
a) show warming
b) require a model and computers to turn energy spectral data into temperature measurements (these are an analogue, and then analogued again into “surface temperatures”).
Agreed, a useful climatological tool.
What do you compare the satellite data aginst to identify the anthropogenic signal?
Warning, the following is a link to a denier website.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/23/nasa-climate-page-suckered-by-ipcc-deletes-a-moved-up-glacier-melting-date-reference/#more-15595
If one can overlook the back slapping and celebration going on over there, the article does appear to show that NASA has altered a statement regarding melting glaciers in the Himalayas. Is it common to edit statements like this on a website without noting the correction? Does the IPCC do this too?
This just doesn’t seem right to me. It increases my level of skepticism.
[Response: Oh please. Correcting errors in informational websites you’ve never even heard of before this week makes you sceptical? What would you rather they do? Not correct them? – gavin]
“What do you compare the satellite data aginst to identify the anthropogenic signal?”
What do you mean?
You don’t calibrate or compare to retrieve an anthropogenic signal, Davey. You find out what forces you have and what their result would be, checking it against the observations.
Whether your observations are satellite or Stephenson screen.
There’s no “this temperature is 0.3C human caused” in your thermometer.
Nor is there one in the satellite. Which isn’t even a thermometer.
Also note that the satellite data does agree with the land based information and we have much longer periods of observation on land than in space.
>David Wright says: 23 January 2010 at 5:13 PM
>> “Can you tell us, in your own terms, even one valid proxy?”
> For determining the average global temperature thousands of years
> ago within a couple of degrees? No, can you?
No, you ____, that’s not what I asked, and it’s not what the word means.
You love moving goalposts, but it gets tiresome. Nor does a ‘proxy’ mean a contemporary measurement, so your ‘satellite’ answer is another move-away.
Can you tell us, in your terms, even one valid proxy
Here, let’s make it easier.
Would you accept any of the proxies discussed here?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/proxies.html
Science is incremental; you keep twisting the thread to argue that there’s no One Big Thermometer to Rule Them All.
So — look at the link.
“What would you rather they do? Not correct them?”
“Correcting errors in informational websites you’ve never even heard of before this week makes you sceptical?”
No, it’s just kind of spooky when you read something one week, and possibly use the facts in a discussion, but then go back the next week to find you were wrong. A statement that the item has been corrected would help with the sanity level of those who rely on the site.
BTW, I visit the NASA websites quite a bit. Admittedly, I’m more fond of the space exploration side of the program, but I know that I visited this page before this week. I cannot say that I remembered the Himalaya prediction, but I probably would have assumed that it was hyperbole or some localized event and moved on.
Most people these days should be well aware that websites can be altered. Wikipedia, for example, is in a terrible fix. Still, the issue probably does not warrant making pdf’s of everything that we read on the web. There’s always the wayback machine!
With regards to isotopes and volcanic CO2: look at the IPCC report, in the chapter on paleoclimate, and the papers cited therein.
David Wright says: “That’s a good example of what is wrong with climatology today. It’s blog vs blog…”
Nope. That’s what’s wrong with blogs, not climate science. To find out what’s really happening in climate science, try browsing the abstracts (and papers when you can get them from Google Scholar) at the AMS journal website:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=index-html
at the journal Science website:
http://www.sciencemag.org/journals/
and at the AGU journal website:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/journals/
Learning about climate science from blogs is like learning how play po_ker by watching “World Po_ker Tour” on TV. OK if you already know what to look for, but otherwise, good luck.
Regarding the CO2-climate connection through the ages, listen to an excellent lecture by someone who actually studies the subject here:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
(Takes about an hour, and it’s worth it.)
@David Wright:
Since you like WUWT so much, want to bet when Anthony Watts openly admits that his surfacestations-project did NOT show the warm bias he has been claiming for years? (au contraire, even…) And when will Roger Pielke Sr do the same? (he actually referenced the project as evidence for a warm bias)
The difference between the ‘skeptics’ and the REAL skeptics will once again be shown: the real skeptics correct false information and admit it was wrong. The ‘skeptics’ will not do so.
David Wright says: 24 January 2010 at 10:52 AM
“The name calling and vilification began soon after someone asked for evidence that living trees had been overrun by a glacier in the last 10,000 years. I provide two examples and then it turned ugly. That’s a good example of what is wrong with climatology today. It’s blog vs blog, it’s very unproductive and I’m doing my best to stay away from it.”
Just for the record, here is David Wright’s first post on this thread:
David Wright says: 13 January 2010 at 8:02 PM
I notice that the RealCliamte editors have seen fit to edit my post #8 in this (closed) thread https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/are-the-cru-data-suspect-an-objective-assessment/
A cute “trick” but my original analogy is much closer to the reality of the situation.
Hope this wasn’t done on government time.
I suggest it is a waste of time to deal with this person.
David Wright (1270) — Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
There is lots more.
David Wright wrote in 1283:
Gavin inlined:
Gavin, that is how the deniers/skeptics handle it.
I believe you and the rest of NASA should be following their lead, don’t you?
Oh, Lord, evolution depends in part on *random* variation and selection, and of course we can’t predict what mutations will occur in the future.
Last time I looked, though, CO2 and electromagnetic radiation and the like don’t mutate, therefore unless one invokes Sky Fairies we can say with utter confidence that the physics which determines CO2 forcing will not change in the future.
No, that’s not what’s wrong with climatology today. That’s what’s wrong with the internet as a medium of information.
Science is always moving forward, never looking back.
The denialists you appear to admire so much, on the other hand, never look forward, but rather are always focused on the past.
At least AR4 is only a couple of years old, that’s an improvement, most of the time they’re stuck on Mann’s original hockey stick paper or Extremely Important Observational Evidence such as a dozen e-mails, most of them years old.
What the heck …
Very much like we look today, given that we don’t look much different than we did when our species first evolved.
Who knows what name a taxonomist might choose in the future? However, odds are about 50-50 that it will be a new species of beetle, with a very limited range, living in some jungle somewhere, and that it will only appear in spec-i-a-l-i-st journals thus neither you or I will hear about it.
#1282 David Wright
Against itself, over time. Described here: http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
The method has its own specific sources of systematic error that require careful processing to remove. These are very different from the surface station error sources, which require their own specific treatment. Choosing between them is misguided: it is the consistency between these two very different techniques that is convincing, much more so than either on its own. Coherence.
“Were they not so poor, they would be much less vulnerble.”
Mathew 26:11
1280 David: “That’s a good example of what is wrong with climatology today. It’s blog vs blog,”
Rubbish. Climatology is found in the peer refereed scientific litterature.
Blog vs. blog is pure politics, very nearly 100% ad-hom now, usual muck-slinging kind. Useless and worse for understanding the science.
Unfortunately the “doubt is our product” propaganda crowd can not be gagged. For some reason the “truth in advertising” regulations do not apply, although they should…
http://akwag.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-of-hypocrisy.html
(hat tip to Barry Brook at
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/17/hypocrisies-of-the-antis/