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.
“we can say with utter confidence that the physics which determines CO2 forcing will not change in the future.”
Agreed. No one is arguing about that.
It’s the other forcings that are the subject of debate. There are positive ones and there are negative ones. What they are, how they relate to one another and what they add up to is uncertain.
“Very much like we look today, given that we don’t look much different than we did when our species first evolved.”
One would be uninclined to mate with a specimen of homo sapiens from 30,000 years ago. Think about it.
“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.”
See, it’s a good analogy!
1274, Completely Fed Up: Please define semi-periodic.
Inter-event intervals are constrained to be within an interval (not too long, not too short), and successive inter-event intervals are negatively correlated. Lots of chaotic mathematical processes have these characteristics (as you can see in phase-plane graphs and Poincare’ graphs), and so does human heartbeat. El Nino and solar sunspot cycles are semiperiodic. Poisson processes and stationary time series are not periodic. However, a Poisson process with a periodically varying rate parameter is the sum of a periodic function and a random variable.
Timothy Chase says :”Gavin, that is how the deniers/skeptics handle it.”
Nope, deniers don’t use truth.
Some would consider that quite a different ball of fish.
“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.”
Which is what happened to the IPCC.
You know, correcting errors because it turns out you were wrong and the cite you thought you had was a typo.
PS when did you ever use facts in your discussions, David.
DW: “there will be increased desertification”
Didn’t Gavin himself write that regional effects were not predictable?
BPL: It’s a GLOBAL effect. Global warming means more droughts in continental interiors. Please read:
Battisti, D. S., and R. L. Naylor. 2009. “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” Science 323: 240-244.
Dai, A., K.E. Trenberth, and T. Qian 2004. “A Global Dataset of Palmer Drought Severity Index for 1870–2002: Relationship with Soil Moisture and Effects of Surface Warming.” J. Hydrometeorol. 1, 1117-1130.
12% of Earth land surface “severely dry” by Palmer Drought Severity Index 1970. 2002 figure 30%.
UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025
Published by Jim on Monday, October 5, 2009 at 4:15 PM
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) — Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet’s soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned.
“If we cannot find a solution to this problem… in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected,” Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday.
Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report.
“There will not be global security without food security” in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital.
Marco: want to bet when Anthony Watts openly admits that his surfacestations-project did NOT show the warm bias he has been claiming for years?
Which has already been shown, by the way:
U.S. surface temperature data are reliable – no bias from station siting
I just came across this report from the AGU meeting indicating that the submerged grounding line of the Pine Island glacier has lifted, allowing the entry of warmer water into the deep basin behind. This seems to be very significant, yet I have seen no reaction to the news. Any comments?
http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/AGU-2009-briefs-Kerr2.pdf
DW: One would be uninclined to mate with a specimen of homo sapiens from 30,000 years ago. Think about it.
BPL: Speak for yourself. Get me a nice Cro-Magnon girl, I’ll take a shower with her and feed her breath mints, then I’ll slowly put my hands on her [CENSORED] [The rest of this post has been deleted for reasons of national security]
Dudes, a human woman from 30,000ybp would be indistinguishable from a woman anywhere in the world today. Dress her in a smart business suit, teach her English, and she could be the next Carly Fiorina.
Septic Matthew (1303) — The usual usage in the literature is pseudoperiodic (as in sunspot cycles) and quasi-periodic (for which just possiblely ENSO qualifies). The difference is the dgree of predictability.
Ron Taylor (1308) — Maybe because becoming jaded? Atually, this is not much of a surprise, given earlier studies, but the eventual outcome is quite worrisome.
Barton Paul Levenson (1309) — Don’t forget the delousing session first.
Jim Galasyn (1310) — Probably one heck of a lot sharper in a practical sort of way. Some indication that average human intelligence is on the decline recently.
Other than perhaps the benefits of modern hygiene and dentistry, but the former certainly applied to the spanish who stunk up Montezuma’s palace and the latter might still be true of the Brits :)
Nothing to do with evolution, though …
David Wright,
All the forcings and feebacks have to do with either
1)How much sunlight gets in (Insolation, albedo, clouds, aerosols…)
2)How much infrared radiation gets out (temperature, GHGs, clouds,…).
Everything else is just how the energy flows.
As to human origins, David says, “One would be uninclined to mate with a specimen of homo sapiens from 30,000 years ago. Think about it.”
Dude, we had probably even domesticated the first animal by then (the dog). Humans 30000 years ago were for all intents and purposes identical to us.
http://stratus.astr.ucl.ac.be/textbook/
I know this it OT but what do you think of it as a source of info?
thanks JL
Barton, jim,
Guess we’ve found one common denominator between skeptics and AGW-ers!
LOL
1306 Barton Paul Levenson
BPL: It’s a GLOBAL effect. Global warming means more droughts in continental interiors. Please read:
…
12% of Earth land surface “severely dry” by Palmer Drought Severity Index 1970. 2002 figure 30%.
UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025
Splendid; apparently desertification reduces global warming.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1263147960829
For Ron Taylor, a few prior mentions:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arealclimate.org+pine+island+grounding
As I recall that AGU paper refers to model, one that will be very interesting to check out. I don’t think they’ve gotten data to confirm the situation. Mauri might know what would be useful to find out if there’s still a grounding line in the original position — data from any remotely operated vehicles? radar or seismic profiles?
> Cro-Magnon
Might she not be a bit — intimidating? I thought their overall health was rather better than ours. No question they’re our people though.
http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/
” tall, strong and very muscular, much more so than the modern population of Europe who have ‘gracile’ thinner bones.”
@Jim Galasyn #1307:
I know, but hell will probably freeze over well before Watts admits it…
Joe makes a phone call.
Surprised anyone?
jl, a brief scan looked pretty reasonable.
“Might she not be a bit — intimidating?
” tall, strong and very muscular, much more so than the modern population of Europe who have ‘gracile’ thinner bones.””
However, the gracile ones tend to be the most violent.
The Robust versions of apes anyway are generally the ones who went for the vegetarian option and when you’re REALLY big you’d rather not risk damage by too-frequent fighting, so a lot of display goes on to check out whether it’s really needed.
And some men like big women.
Just watch the Futurama episode “Amazon Women in the mood”
Amazon Women in the mood:
Death by snu-snu!
Martin Vermeer says: 26 January 2010 at 5:56 AM
I never cease to be surprised that journalists will faithfully report rumors when there’s a phone at their elbow.
Martin’s link points to an actual conversation somebody bothered to have with the poor fellow at the crux of the Himalayan teacup tempest.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/25/un-scientist-refutes-daily-mail-claim-himalayan-glacier-2035-ipcc-mistake-not-politically-motivated/#more-17890
FYI, Christopher Monckton makes a little more progress flushing the communists from beneath his bed, issues updated talking points:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/NonProblem_Spun_Into_Global_Crisis.pdf
Look to this for leading indicators of what you’ll be seeing in months to come, for instance that no ice loss has occurred in Greenland and Antarctica: “Provisionally, I conclude that the loss of ice from Greenland and the Antarctic that the scientists are pretending to have observed is fictional.”
The whole drift in the contrarian community these days is “scientists are corrup, data is bad”. We see this w/the focus on IPCC trivia, continued direct attacks on Dr. Hansen. Monckton is quite explicit with his accusations of misconduct.
His conclusion about ice hinges on sticking w/some favorite contrarian memes regarding ocean temperature and sea level, unpacked and binned elsewhere:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/melting-ice-global-warming.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm
Strange though Monckton is, at least he’s prepared to attach his name to his work. Unfortunately his accusations will be repeated by numberless anonymous, unaccountable cowards, including some found on this very site.
Hank, I am familiar with the postings about the PIG on RC, as well as elsewhere. Please read the very brief report at:
http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/AGU-2009-briefs-Kerr2.pdf
Here is the first paragraph:
“An unmanned autonomous submarine has
discovered a sea-floor ridge that may have
been the last hope for stopping the now accelerating
retreat of the Pine Island Glacier,
a crumbling keystone of the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet. The ridge appears to have once protected
the glacier, but no more. The submarine
found the glacier floating well off the
ridge and warmer, ice-melting water passing
over the ridge and farther under the ice. And
no survey, underwater or airborne, has found
another such glacier-preserving obstacle for
the next 250 kilometers landward.”
I find that really worrying and can’t understand why there has been no reaction. Maybe I have missed something, but I don’t think so.
Excellent article describing how the insurance industry is integrating scientific results w/regard to climate change into their risk equations:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/26/ipcc-scienceclimate-change-is-the-single-greatest-risk-facing-the-insurance-industry/#more-17946
Comforting somewhat to see that folks with an enormous fiduciary responsibility not dependent on fossil fuel sales don’t let themselves be fooled by silly distractions. Money on the scale of that entrusted to insurers has a powerful way of forcing people to do their absolute best to choose wisely.
Question on the OP,
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)
What is pairwise correlation exactly, in lay detail? And how it refutes the charges?
Please note that the reference to the Pine Island Glacier I gave above is from the January 22nd issue of Science. It is not the model study recently reported in Science News.
Jonesy, I’m not a statistician; I can try a poetry-grade explanation.
Take pairs of cities like the examples Gavin gave you, and look at how their weather changes. Those pairs are close enough that big weather systems going through, and seasonal changes, affect them at around the same time (compared to the other cities named, which are so far away their results won’t match up).
—–
Good new study on ocean pH change — confirming it, widespread– blogged here:
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/oceanacidity012010
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GL040999.shtml
“Money on the scale of that entrusted to insurers has a powerful way of forcing people to do their absolute best to choose wisely.”
Glad to see that you suppot the free market Doug. Refreshing.
1311, David P. Benson: The usual usage in the literature is pseudoperiodic (as in sunspot cycles) and quasi-periodic (for which just possiblely ENSO qualifies). The difference is the dgree of predictability.
Yes. But there are lots of uncategorical cases. The Poisson process with a rate parameter that varies according to a van der Pol model that has random shocks on a nearly periodic schedule (sunrise synchronizing circadian clocks) is an uncategorical case. So is the stochastic dif eqn version of the Brusselator.
Dai, the free market requires that there be equal power.
Yet with capitalism, power goes with money. The more power you have, the more power you have.
And so the capitalistic system does away with a free market when it allows money to pool.
Therefore in a capitalist system you MUST have government regulation of it else you don’t have a free market.
Doug has never argued against a free market, just for government action that doesn’t kill it.
So your snide attack is incorrect, unwarranted and unsupported.
Jonesy,
In addition to the statistics, which are based on empirical observations, there is also the nature of the drivers, which tend to be fairly consistent across large distances and over time. It’s the same thing that makes climate more predictable than weather.
BPL: 12% of Earth land surface “severely dry” by Palmer Drought Severity Index 1970. 2002 figure 30%.
UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025
DS: Splendid; apparently desertification reduces global warming.
BPL: What part of “complete collapse of world agriculture” do you not understand?
Completely Fed Up, a pretty decent and accurate post (1333); How’d that happen? :-)
For a clarification, other than in the most extreme situations, capitalism and free market enterprise are pretty much the same thing.
“And so the capitalistic system does away with a free market when it allows money to pool.”
Ever heard of a little company called Google?
My remark may have been pointed, but it was not a snide attack, unless you interpret anything that threatens your paridigm as a snide attack.
David Wright says: 27 January 2010 at 12:18 AM
Without some form of consensus on acceptable behaviors, a “free market” is strictly an ephemeral phenomenon.
Since you don’t appear to be engaged on the climate issue, David, let me ask, did you ever notice that by most managerial and operational metrics the more “successful” are private business enterprises, the more they begin to assume the characteristics of centrally planned economies, featuring especially command and control governance?
Why is that?
The convergence of private enterprise to command and control central planning leads to all sorts of interesting questions.
What is the appropriate role of private central planning in the free market? Is it good that central planners can update retail prices, in real time, even at retail locations notionally “independent” of central governance?
When it comes to shaping public opinion, what is the appropriate role of private central planners?
Really, can we trust the petroleum industry to carry the ball for us?
Are private command and control economies truly immune from the same limitations that have led to sometimes disastrous results in the public arena?
“Ever heard of a little company called Google? ”
Yeah.
And?
1335: Barton Paul Levenson: UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025
That’s 15 years from now. Is that a credible prediction of AGW? Latif’s model forecasts no or very little additional warming by 2015, and Tsonis’ model forecasts no or little additional warming before 2030. A complete collapse of world agriculture isn’t even within the range of model predictions, is it?
“private central planners”
You’re harboring a conspiracy theory.
Matthew: That’s 15 years from now. Is that a credible prediction?
Believe it:
Graph of the Day: Global Soil Degradation
Graph of the Day: 24-month Precipitation Surplus/Deficit for Texas
Graph of the Day: Projected Freshwater Supply Shortfall to 2030
Graph of the Day: Vegetation Decline Due To Drought in California’s Central Valley
Graph of the Day: Melbourne Water Shortages, 1990-2009
Graph of the Day: Rainfall Deficits in East Africa, November 2009
China desert advances 1,300 square miles per year; dust circles the globe in two weeks
Satellite images show dramatic retreat of Aral Sea
160 Syrian villages deserted ‘due to climate change’
Syria drought causes 50% drop in agricultural output
The vanishing marshes of Mesopotamia
Argentina declares farm emergency amid worst drought since 1930s
Lake Mead could dry up by 2021 amid Western water shortages
Yemen: ‘Sanaa will be the first capital in modern history to run dry’
Climate change depletes Saudi surface water by 30 percent
Fleeing drought in the Horn of Africa
Nile Delta: ‘We are going underwater. The sea will conquer our lands’
Exodus of dairy farmers threatens River Murray communities
New South Wales: Everything’s dried up and communities begin to crack
After 10-year drought, rivers and dams fail Australia towns
Has anyone read the paper published in Nature and reported on the BBC website? David Frank is the lead author.
The paper is reported by the BBC as saying that temps won’t rise as much as the highest model projections. I cannot follow the argument too well, either I don’t understand it or some steps are left out in the BBC article, which states:
“The team’s calculations are based on a probabilistic analysis of climate variation between the years 1050 and 1800 – that is, before the Industrial Revolution introduced fossil carbon into the atmosphere.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8483722.stm
Comments from anyone who’s read the paper would be good.
SM,
We’ll see, won’t we?
I expect world agriculture to collapse somewhere between 2020 and 2050. I don’t know when. Call it 2035 +/- 15 years.
Unless, of course, we make a massive switch away from fossil fuels and deforestation in the next 5-10 years.
If we don’t, we’re toast.
Any info on the significance of this? How does this affect predictions (or is this uncertainty already contained in the uncertainties of the different estimates?)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
Climate warming tends to cause a net release of CO2, which in turn causes an amplification of warming. Estimates of the magnitude of this effect vary widely, leading to a wide range in global warming projections. Recent work suggested that the magnitude of this positive feedback might be about 40 parts per million by volume of CO2 per °C of warming. David Frank and colleagues use three Antarctic ice cores and a suite of climate reconstructions to show that the feedback is likely to be much smaller, with a median of only about 8 p.p.m.v. CO2 per °C.
Burt Rutan is a global warming denialist — who knew?
Burt Rutan: The maverick of Mojave
And a JFK conspiracy theorist:
Comment by David Wright — 27 January 2010 @ 7:36 PM
“You’re harboring a conspiracy theory.”
LTV, et al.
“I expect world agriculture to collapse somewhere between 2020 and 2050. I don’t know when. Call it 2035 +/- 15 years.
Unless, of course, we make a massive switch away from fossil fuels and deforestation in the next 5-10 years.”
For the record, I’m all for preserving the rainforest, but not sure how to convince other nations that it’s in their own interest.
How will we plant, harvest and deliver food in sufficient quantites without fossil fuel? This just seems like a self fulfilling prophecy.
Pardon the test post — wondering if there’s a way to make a quoted string post properly
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arealclimate.org+“double+quote”
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arealclimate.org+%22double+quote%22
Jim Galasyn says: 28 January 2010 at 4:41 PM
“Burt Rutan is a global warming denialist — who knew?”
Kind of like Tesla. Brilliant when working in his own area of talent and expertise, but out there when it comes to extra-curricular musings?