The Oxburgh report on the science done at the CRU has now been published and….. as in the first inquiry, they find no scientific misconduct, no impropriety and no tailoring of the results to a preconceived agenda, though they do suggest more statisticians should have been involved. They have also some choice words to describe the critics.
Carry on…
Gavin,
I await for your response to the following:
“Doug Keenan has received a favorable decision from the FOI Commissioner”
The Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7102743.ece
“However, the lead scientist involved, Michael Bailee, said that the oak ring data requested was not relevant to temperature reconstruction records.
Although ancient oaks could give an indication of one-off dramatic climatic events, such as droughts, they were not useful as a temperature proxy because they were highly sensitive to water availability as well as past temperatures, he added.
“It’s been dressed up as though we are suppressing climate data, but we have never produced climate records from our tree rings,” Professor Bailee said.
“In my view it would be dangerous to try and make interpretations about the temperature from this data.””
[edit]
#705 Loyd flack
Also, we do not estimate the sensitivity to changes in forcings of the climate is not estimated by calulating the rate of change and projecting it forward for a given period. Climate models are run for a period till their output fluctates about the mean values in the same way that the actual climate does. They are then run witht changed inputs in the same way until they fluctuate around new mean values. The difference between the outputs gives us the sensitivity to the changes. What we are looking at is changes in long term equilibrium conditions. The accuracy of these estimates will me more accurate as conditions have more time to reach new eqilibria.
*****************
Actually the values need a lot of tweaking. No one is capable of starting with a blank sheet of paper and calculating the temperature of the earth.
We can put in everything we know then adjust the answer with a fudge factor.
We back cast by running the model to show how it matches the past.
Since we are 1/3 of the way to a doubling and current models show 6 o C for a doubling we should have experienced 2 o C warming already. Unless the heat is hiding somewhere and don’t suggest the oceans since it hasn’t been detected there.
[Response: You are completely wrong. The ocean heat content has been increasing over the last few decades – see Domingues et al, 2008; Levitus et al 2009. Models do not ‘show’ that a doubling of CO2 leads to 6 degrees warming. The canonical number is closer to 3 deg C, and that is the long term equilibrium. – gavin]
To correct for that the models add a fudge factor of aerosols which are unknown and so can be any value the coder wants them to be, and magically it fits.
[Response: There is nothing magic about aerosols. Or are you suggesting that they be set to zero with no uncertainty? – gavin]
Run it forward and it doesn’t predict the future at all so we add more aerosols etc.
[Response: Wrong again. See Hansen et al 1998, or our last post on the subject. – gavin]
The point is the more wrong the original estimate of forcing is the more fudge factor is needed. The longer you let the error run the further from the truth you get.
It is therefore harder to predict 100 years than 10 years.
[Response: None of your logical steps make any sense, but perhaps this discussion could help you. – gavin]
“Does anyone understand this? I realize English isn’t his first language.
”
If you realize that just now, I’m flattered ;)
I meant changing the temperature distribution. There is no law of physics that imposes a constant relative temperature distribution, even in latitude. There can exist limit-cycle at any period – and multi secular cycles cannot be excluded since the characteristic timescale for thermohaline circulation is about 1000 years for instance. Limit-cycle are notoriously difficult to predict quantitatively since they depend crucially on non linear feedbacks that cannot be described precisely. No model of the sun can reproduce the 11-years cycle for instance. So the argument of comparison with computer models is very weak. I don’t think the Earth system is simpler. We know cycle with short timescales like ENSO just because we had time to study them, but you cannot precisely measure any cycle whose characteristic period would be comparable with your timespan, or clearly distinguish it from a linear trend.
Does “varying” mean “noticing variations in” or “altering”?”
Resisting the science. Some food for thought maybe.
Propagandists understand this as they attempt to create an illusion of popular support for their ideology in order to build more support. Trying to force reason to give way to the herd.
re:698
Why would you expect a Gaussian distribution?
“Run it forward and it doesn’t predict the future at all. . .”
And you know this how, exactly?
SecularAnimist
Just so, as well as not recognizing that value being what got us in this fix in the first place.
#623 Ray, if these models were so perfect, why are they re-iterated?
#643 BPL says “You start with that, the Earth in a particular known state, and then time-step away from it, modifying the parameters according to physical laws written in as equations.”. Modifying the parameters? Hhhhhmmmmmmmmmm, that sounds like “tweeking”. Remember many physical “constants”, or parameters, are based on empirical or experimental data. As far as “statistical fits”, nothing was said about that. However did you ever wonder how many great discoveries were based on direct observation , as compared to “statistical fits”? We could start with the discovery of controlling fire, domestication of animals and plants, and work our way up to penicillin.
#649 Hi John, I’m a patient person. We will see what happens in late summer, but so far the ice area & extent are running the highest in about 8 years.
#680 Eli, one of the reason winds tunnels are being closed is the lack of aircraft companies and fewer aircraft are being designed. Also wind tunnels are now being shared by various companies as a cost savings. It is far easier, and cheaper, to test a car in a wind tunnel, rather then build a math model of the car. In about a hour, and a rotating tilt table, one can have the primary coefficients and flow patterns documented, with greater confidence then approximating turbulent flow.
“And profiteering is pretty sleazy, whether it’s climate scientists or Microsoft …”
Profiteering?
So tell me, is Dr Phil Jones selling CRU data on the black market?
No.
What IS happening is that, to reduce the tax burden on the ordinary public paying that government, the met services have to SELL stuff.
Profiteering my arse.
Who is profiteering is Piers Corbyn.
Who is profiteering are those who never paid a penny towards the CRU work.
Who is profiteering are those who waste my taxes answering questions that have NO PURPOSE but to waste my taxes.
WHO is profiteering by using a paywall for papers?
And how is that sleazy?
And how is that making the science incorrect?
It doesn’t.
“I will call my Congressman and Senator and ask that they vote against AGW legislation, and similarly pressure the White House to not cooperate with the UN over climate change.”
Now THERE is someone who is out of control.
So pissed off with being wrong he’s willing to sink the world just to spite others.
#677 Phil Scadden
“something wrong with a 30-year average of global temperature as an indicator for global climate?”
Well to start with I really have no idea what you want your definition of global temperature to mean. For example, is it supposed to include the upper atmosphere, the deep ocean and the earth’s interior?
And why do you see temperature alone as defining climate? (OK, you did add precipitation for regional). Why not also sunshine, cloud, wind, humidity etc (parameters that the public usually associate with the word “climate”, for example when planning their holidays)?
And you suggest averaging over 30 years (presumably because “they” have said so). Why not over just one year so taking necessary account of seasonal variations? Then the influence of ENSO, AMO etc, even Milankovitch cycles (perhaps not) on climatic changes over longer periods might become more readily apparent.
I hesitate to say it, but it does seem to me that the science of climatology is currently obsessively focused on showing that temperatures are rising dangerously due to our CO2 emissions (hence the insistence that climate only exists in 30-year chunks), rather than studying the wider subject of climate and all its manifestations for its own sake. (Maybe climatologists think that at the moment that’s the only important thing they should be doing, but I’d like them to say so).
CM #708 – I can vouch for the drought in New Zealand scenario, many regions are now falling into drought and where I live it has been that way for 6 months. Record low rainfalls in a few regions. Quite a change from the norm – it rains a lot here. I wonder if it has anything to do with the anomalous pool of warm water that formed in the lower Pacific during this El Nino?. One of the commenters here drew attention to it last year.
Titus says:
Anyone scientist involved in climate research who says this, as does Spencer:
Is flat-out lying. There’s not a climate “expert” in the world who has difficulty grasping the concept of natural climate cycles. In addition to lying about this, he’s planting the seed for you to imagine that since natural cliamte cycles exist, human change to the atmosphere can’t change climate.
Which is another lie.
Now, Titus, what exactly is reasonable about lying? Did we grow up with different value systems, perhaps?
“There can exist limit-cycle at any period”
Uh, makes no sense.
” – and multi secular cycles cannot be excluded ”
multi what?
It’s not that english is not your first language, but that you have before exhibited NO rigour in your thought or arguments and you now seem to be running the Manuel defense (Faulty Towers) so that you can talk gibberish. If you’d exhibited some sanity earlier, it would be worth the effort of finding out what you’re on about, but as it is, it’s likely going to end up with you changing your argument yet again and complain that it’s our fault.
Jim Eager@733
Worth repeating.
Walter Crain (736) — Thank you. I don’t know how to make the matter any simplier, I fear.
FurryCatHerder (748) — Hunter-gatherers do not and have never had civilizations. The closest I know about were in Jomon hunter-gathers who lived in permanent settlements but never cities. They practiced proto-agriculture; seed selection but no tilling. Their population density is considered to be quite high for the times before actual agriculture, a requirement for having cities and hence, by definition, civlizations.
> Cmopletely
typo?
————-
Gavin, I hope you don’t mind our using this for a misc. thread til the next open thread comes along, since there seems nothing much new about CRU.
————-
Ah, an ugly theory slain by beautiful facts for a change:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=green-investments April 22, 2010
Do Green Investments Spur Growth or Emission Cuts?
Two reports from the federal government …
By Douglas Fischer and The Daily Climate
“… Green investments are spurring significant growth across the U.S economy while decreasing industry’s overall emissions per dollar of goods and services, according to two reports released Wednesday by the federal government.
Meanwhile households have replaced industry as the country’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, according to government data….”
Do note — at the original source, the headline writer got it wrong. The article says “decreasing industry’s overall emissions per dollar” — that does NOT mean “decreasing industry’s overall emissions” — this is at best unclear wording, they’re talking about “energy intensity” — so still an increasing emissions problem, one they say is increasing less rapidly.
Neil says at #738:
“2)We know that CO2 accounts for more than 7 of the 33 degrees of greenhouse warming that keep Earth from turning into a snowball.”
If we get 7 deg warming from current levels of C02 then we should get 7 deg additional warming for a doubling if there was a linear relationship and we exclude any feedback effects.
I’m not sure where the 7/33 number came from, but you need to take a couple more things into account. The first is that CO2 effects are approximately logarithmic above some value (100 ppm IIRC) and approximately linear below it. It would be a logical error to take the combined linear + logarithmic effect and extend it as if it were logarithmic.
So would I be correct in stating that if we double current levels of C02 (from ~380ppm) the logarithmic relationship gives us 3 deg? i.e. the more CO2 we pump in the less (by proportion) the temperature increases?
Yes. That’s true. Unfortunately, however, that doesn’t mean we can burn all we want because it matters less and less; a 4C warmer world is much more alarming than a 3C warmer world. And 6C of change is much more than twice as bad as 3C.
Think of it this way: the ice ages were around 5-6C cooler than now. That world was a whole lot different than our current world.
I thought I heard somewhere that a significant factor in the 3 deg increase in temperature was based on the ice core analysis? i.e. when analysing past temperature changes and comparing them with levels of CO2 and factoring in the various known natural cycles it was estimated that the doubling of CO2 from ~100 ppm to 200 ppm created a warming of 3 deg? But if that is the case and the relationship is logarithmic then how can going from 100 to 200 give you 3 deg and going from 380 to 760 also give you 3 deg?
Guess I must be missing something – I am sure you will put me right ;-)
Well, what you’re missing is the meaning of logarithmic. I suspect you’re thinking linear: if 100 ppm difference was 3 degrees from 100-200, 380 ppm should be 3.8 times 3 degrees.
Or maybe you thought it should be 3.8*3.8 ? We really can’t tell.
You had it right when you said 3 degrees each time CO2 doubles (as an approximation, above some minimum value)
Dhogaza #761
Why is the idea that climate may not even need external forcing (co2, solar, orbital, cosmic ray, etc) to have long term patterns and fluctuations so crazy?Look at the great red spot on Jupiter. (which is actually not that red through a telescope btw). How can long term storms and weather develop on that planet which has basically no surface and a much simpler composition? Look at the distribution and structure of galaxies? Not perfect examples I know but something to think about.
Ray (#729)
Yes, it did occur to me, after, that arable land might be a fair proxy for land able to sustain high densities of hunter-gatherers. Anyway, I didn’t mean to argue that the world could sustain a larger h-g population than you say. To the contrary, if the climate were to become too inhospitable for agriculture throughout the world, I wouldn’t give much for our prospects as hunter-gatherers either. (I might be wrong, of course — if unpredictable variability were the main issue, the opportunist, diversified h-g strategy might carry the day.)
If we can’t farm, we’ve lost. We’d better figure out the triple challenge of getting 1) high-yield, 2) low-input farming 3) adapted to climate change, and get the transition under way. We need some serious investment in sustainable agriculture R&D, and I’m all for instilling a sense of urgency about it. I too like to point out that no-one has ever farmed in the climate we’re headed for.
But the visceral morbid stuff posted on this thread (not by you) about how we’ll be eating each other and envying the dead strikes me more likely to either cause despondency or attract ridicule. Where cities choked with corpses are concerned, I prefer Stephen King.
PS.
You may find the below paper interesting. It argues that high climatic variability, aridity, and low CO2 made agriculture impossible before the Holocene. (I’m confused over the CO2 argument. I’d have thought photosynthetic limits would make energy needs harder to satisfy regardless of strategy, farming or h-g. Perhaps someone could enlighten me?)
Richerson, Peter J., Robert Boyd, and Robert L. Bettinger. 2001. Was Agriculture Impossible during the Pleistocene but Mandatory during the Holocene? A Climate Change Hypothesis. American Antiquity 66, no. 3 (July): 387-411. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2694241
Ray, commented on early agriculture as a result of stable climate:
I’ve read similar things: I think Hansen suggests the rise of civilization due in part to stable sea levels allowing (my paraphrasing) higher productivity in growth from river floods and abundant fish.
I’ve also read the opposite; agriculture as a response to changing climate conditions where tribes were forced to grow crops in addition to hunting/gathering.
In the end it’s mostly academic. Whether agriculture formed in response to a stable climate or a changing one, or a changing climate following a stable period doesn’t change the fact that we’re at or beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet. I think that if agricultural output declines by a mere 20% for a few years major wars will result. Almost certainly a 50% decline would end civilization as we now know it.
I don’t have any cites handy, but as they say in “climate wars”:
“People always raid before they starve”
Response to response #752
Since we are 1/3 of the way to a doubling and current models show 6 o C for a doubling we should have experienced 2 o C warming already. Unless the heat is hiding somewhere and don’t suggest the oceans since it hasn’t been detected there.
[Response: You are completely wrong. The ocean heat content has been increasing over the last few decades – see Domingues et al, 2008; Levitus et al 2009. Models do not ‘show’ that a doubling of CO2 leads to 6 degrees warming. The canonical number is closer to 3 deg C, and that is the long term equilibrium. – gavin]
[Response to response. I believe that you are wrong. The ocean heat has been decreasing since 2005 when we began measuring correctly with argo network.. Prior to that we used hull sensors and bathythermographs (XBTs). Both give a biased result because they over sample shipping lanes and unde sample the rest of the world’s oceans.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Where is the heat hiding out ? If for 5 years the ocean is cooling when we have been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and the satellites don’t show warming either?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2005/to:2009/plot/uah/from:2005/to:2010/trend
The UAH reading shows cooling at a rate of -.0356 per year.
So the heat isn’t going in to the air and it isn’t in the sea where is it?
How can models predict 100 year warming accurately when they can not adequately model heat movement. Answer they can’t.
I have seen many claims of 6 degrees C and more warming when the climate alarmists want to be alarming which is always unless they want to prove how accurate their models are. NetDR]
[Response: And it’s warmer today than it was yesterday. Relevance to long term trends? Similarly zero. You are free to make things up however you like, but if you want to have any credibility, I would suggest not doing so. Look up our previous discussions on climate sensitivity (see the index button above) and see what scientists actually say. – gavin]
Scotland has 78,772 square kilometers and in Neolithic times supported but one tribe of 200–400 individuals. That’s a population density of but 0.0025–00050 persons per square kilometer. Huneter-gathering was land-intensive, it seems.
Sam, if you look stuff up before you post what you believe are facts, you’ll have newer information than the last time you learned the subject.
It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward — but it’s all we have. To make up for that, use Google or Scholar.
Example, you posted “How can long term storms and weather develop on [Jupiter] which has basically no surface and a much simpler composition?”
Google finds among much else:
“Jupiter radiates 1.6 times a much energy as falls on it from the Sun. Thus, Jupiter has an internal heat source….”
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/jupiter/interior.html
This is an exercise we all find we have to go through over and over, if we’re going to post more than our own opinion based on something we think we remember learning sometime in the past.
Science changes every day; the habit of looking things up is the only way to know what’s going on in any field.
pardon me, netdr,
are you saying it’s been cooling lately? really? referencing “trends” from 2005 to now? really?
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/stupid-is-as-stupid-does/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/dont-get-fooled-again/
Hank #775,
I was not commenting on the source of energy for the great red spot, I was commenting on it’s persistence. How does the fact that Jupiter radiates more heat then it receives contribute to it’s longevity? My post was on “climate not needing EXTERNAL forcing” for long term trends ie great red spot…. You noted that Jupiter produces it’s own internal heat. How does that contradict or correct what I said?
Simon – okay, I will be more precise and say average surface temperature. And why?, because the looking deeper, climate is driven by energy flows. If there is a positive energy imbalance, then surface temperature will rise till there is a balance. Weather is distribution of energy around an unevenly heated globe. While temperature isnt the sum of climate, if temperature rises (indication of energy imbalance), then the other indicators will change as well. For local effects, these are important but in the context of AGW, temp will do.
“And you suggest averaging over 30 years (presumably because “they” have said so). “
Because I can do statistics too? The internal variability due to energy flows within the system matters a lot to weather and seasonal forecasters but not that relevant to the overall energy balance which is where the prediction from AGW are relevant. This is tests of what models predict against data from real world. It seems to me that you are trying to insist on climate models predicting the weather, which they dont, only the average weather.
“I hesitate to say it, but it does seem to me that the science of climatology is currently obsessively focused on showing that temperatures are rising dangerously due to our CO2 emissions (hence the insistence that climate only exists in 30-year chunks)”
How about because human-induced forcings on climate are currently the most important thing coming out of climate research from perspective public knowledge sharing. Increasing temperature affect everything else. And actually, the long term expected average for precipitation, temperature etc ARE the definition of climate as opposed to weather. How would define climate?
simon abingdon says:
And you suggest averaging over 30 years (presumably because “they” have said so).
See this for the reason: Results on deciding trends
It always blows me away to check in at RC and read the utter gibberish that denialists post with such utter confidence.
JBob, What part of “modifying the parameters ACCORDINT TO PHYSICAL LAWS” sounds like “tweaking” to you. And here thay always taught me that physical laws were deterministic.
And what the hell do you even mean by a model being “reiterated”? Do you even know what a dynamical model is?
Sam, ever hear of conservation of energy? It says that the energy for a steadily rising temperature has to come from somewhere. And Jupiter has a very different climate than Earth. It probably does have a solid surface–probably metalic hydrogen. And since its energy is mainly produced internally, or via tides with its inner satellites (Io, Europa, and to a lesser extent Ganymede and Callisto), it is not surprising that many of its patterns are long-lived.
You know, you’re not exactly wowing us with your depth of understanding. Maybe you want to start learning a while rather than pontificating. Anyone here would be happy to help you out. However, you need to understand that the purpose of this site is to learn about climate science. If all you are interested in is claiming that your inability to understand climate science invalidates it, you may find a more convivial home elsewhere. If on the other hand you want to learn, Wilkommen, Bienvenue…
Sam, Jupiter’s red spot isn’t a “trend” — unless you know of some measured change over time (size? temperature? location?) that I haven’t found; as far as I know it’s a storm, a cold one, though with a warm heart:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/jupiter-spot-weather-100316.html
Frank Giger:
It might help if you actually followed a thread and understood what people are talking about before you start threatening to call politicians and ask them to vote based entirely on your own ignorance. Your complaint at 745 about people discussing “[m]ass extinctions” and possibly “95% of the human population [being] destroyed” is entirely predicated on your own failure to find out why that conversation had begun in the first place.
Whatever your reason for not doing so, I do hope that you will perhaps take away from this that your own bias can cause you to react hastily and to therefore reach incorrect conclusions — not to mention that it makes you look intellectually lazy.
So, here is where I believe the discussion started:
I could be wrong, but I would have thought it fairly obvious that if we do absolutely nothing and continue to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, a point will likely come in the future where the earth is too warm for humans to inhabit in large numbers?
You may have had a point if your complaint had been about the fact that other people reading this thread might not have known why the conversation had originally started, and so, probably would have gone away the wrong impression. Sadly, that wasn’t your point.
Do remember to get in touch with your “Congressman and Senator” again and tell them that you were a little hasty in your original reaction, and that they should now “vote [for] AGW legislation”, won’t you? It’s a little sad that it only took a few people saying something that you didn’t like for you to react in that way, given that you have previously said that the science is sound.
In neolithic times, there were no domesticated crops in Scotland – they had to rely on hunter-gatherer techniques. It was the bronze age before crops or draft animals arrived there via the east-west axis from the middle east, and well before the spread of foods from South and Central America.
So to say that AGW is going to leave Scotland only able to support 400 people is ludicrous.
You’ll have to come up with a better line than that to bolster the incredibly unsubstantiated claim that AGW is going to kill 95% of everyone on the planet.
More credibility lost.
Rebuttal to 704
VeryTallGuy says:
It can indeed be possible to predict long timescales much better than short ones.
My favourite analogy is tides; it’s next to impossible to predict how far up the beach the next wave will break, but very easy to accurately predict when high tide will be.
Just as next month’s weather may be harder to predict than the 2050 climate.
Then 2050 climate must be devilishly difficult to predict since next month’s weather cannot be predicted with our present knowledge and computing capability. Which is my exact point.
The ocean wave is a poor analogy since each wave is independent of the next and all are driven by well known simple interactions that even ancient people could use to predict the phenomenon approximately.
A better analogy is if each wave in a time period had a positive feedback and tended to cause a larger or more waves in the next period. This could set in motion the events which cause fewer or weaker waves in the next time period. This is perturbed with natural events which can cause extra waves such as storms. The proportions of each are unknown and feed back upon each other so they are chaotic.
That is a much closer analogy to the weather. Even if you can tease out the exact effect of one of these effects you cannot predict how the various effects will interact. That is why long term climate is as difficult to predict as weather.
[Since CO2 alone only accounts for 1 o C of warming without feedback the preponderance of feedbacks and interactions must be positive feedback to produce the 3 to 6 o C warming the models produce for a warming. Balancing this warming exactly so it warmed without running away is a balancing act of the highest order.]
If the wave model with the feedbacks sounds simple to you try to code it sometime. I have created models for a living and I believe that creating a program which exactly simulated the various interactions from first principals is beyond the ability if anyone on earth. Saying that it is doable is easy but I don’t buy it.
I have too much knowledge of coding computer models to just code up the physics and sit back and push the button and magic happens.
#716 Naindj shares my suspicions and with good reason.
[Response: Just feeling that something can’t be done is not a good reason. – gavin]
Now, here’s something that’s very on-topic relative to the CRU tree-ring issue – yes, it’s better to publish ALL your data and not truncate tree-ring records when they start deviating from the temperature trend, yup! (Now, about that drug trial data – where’s the outrage on that lack-of-transparency issue?)
Science Magazine:
Here’s the Perspective summary:
This is one of those complicated issues – how relevant are past climate records to the new CO2 regime we’ve entered? What kind of deviation from such past behavior should we expect under the new forcing?
Regardless, what’s most interesting is that there seems to be a good correlation to sea-surface temperature records. Obviously, predicting the future of the Asia monsoon (which affects the region from Africa to Indonesia) is of great importance…
However, I do wonder if the media will be as excited about this particular tree-ring dataset as they are about the CRU one… I’d say the odds are about 100 to 1 against – but who knows? Maybe the Guardian will publish a dozen articles about it and host a big debate, along with the NYT…
PS for Sam, Earth’s internal heat contributes very little to the surface, and quite smoothly. Boreholes are used to check for changes in the temperature of rock near the surface as an indication of past surface temperatures; the deeper you go, the less variation there is from the steady change in temperature. It’s not like there are pulses of internal heat coming out of the Earth in any large scale, despite all the attention we give to volcanos.
A couple of pictures from this page
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/determining_climate_record.html
explain it well:
General:
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/borehole_deltaT.gif
Specific:
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/borehole_reconstruction.jpg
Figure 1.9: Borehole temperature profile from Ottawa, Canada (Open Mind, 2007)
774 David B. Benson: 0.0025–00050 persons per square kilometer is an interesting number, but wasn’t Scotland covered by a glacier in those days? I’m not sure when you mean. Do you mean after the ice melted 20,000 years ago and before King Arthur? Neolithic goes back a long ways. I remember from somewhere a number of 70,000 people total during the ice age. That would go back to or almost to the origin of Homo Sap. Spoken language began something like 50,000 years ago. Just a few hundred people in Scotland does seem reasonable for projecting survivors of a collapse of civilization.
710 Hank Roberts: Yes, we know that “45% of Americans in 2008″ etc. We have to start with: “The Earth is not the center of the Universe.” But telling lies isn’t a good idea either. No doubt a “Sign from God” will appear eventually, such as the price of bread reaching $10 per slice, or civilization collapsing. How exactly would you tell the whole truth without telling the whole truth? And how do you have an intellectual discussion while pretending?
734&696&698 Gilles: “where does the figure….. . predict anything like the collapse of all harvest on the Earth in 2050 ? or even in 2100 ?”
ALL harvest doesn’t have to collapse. There is a lesser harvest collapse that will cause a social disaster. There is nothing about it that I know of in the IPCC. So what? We are not prevented from reading other books.
“could you explain what should be done to avoid that and where is the dangerous threshold to avoid, quantitatively , before 2050?”
WE DO NOT KNOW the threshold. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. We do know what should be done: We should quit making CO2.
“Sure, but this kind of variability has always existed.” WRONG. Failure to distinguish weather from climate. The climate WAS predictable until now. The recent variability is MUCH LARGER that previous weather.
And collapses of civilizations have “always” happened. BUT THIS TIME IT IS WORSE THAN USUAL. NO, we can NOT give you an equation. So what? We do know enough to say that changing the climate is very dangerous. That is all we need to say. READ: “Collapse” by Jared Diamond and “The Long Summer” by Brian Fagan.
745 Frank Giger: “Mass extinctions? 95% of the human population destroyed? Really? I haven’t read that anywhere on this site.”
Of course not. That is in the Anthropology and Archaeology Department, not the Climate Science Department. Since Anthropology and Archaeology are not mathematical sciences the way Physics is, you aren’t going to get an equation either. Check the Biology and Paleontology Departments on the subject of extinctions.
782 Ray Ladbury and Sam: This is from my fallible memory: Jupiter’s heat comes mostly from the fact that Jupiter is shrinking, liberating gravitational energy. Not a biggie.
#781 Ray, if you have ever worked with models, you soon realize that to get test results and models to converge, you may have to incorporate things not included in the original model. So you re-iterate the model to incorporate things you did not include, items discovered in the process, or just plain modify he whole model because the original model was wrong.
You commented “Do you even know what a dynamical model is?”, I’m glad you asked, yes. A couple come to mind.
The fist was technical direction of a 3-D conduction/forced convection model. This was a model of a medical diagnostic system to insure temperature in the test enclosure was uniform, to within specified limits, during normal operation. In order to generate the basic steady state flow patterns, it would take about 4-6 hours on a CRAY multiprocessor system. That was just for starters.
The second was technical direction, developing a satellite IR sensor simulator, in the 10 to 40 micron region. This included development of a sensor model, atmospheric and surface characteristics. The computerized simulator was required to run in real time and provide immediate final test results.
I could add other physical models, including 3-D conduction/convection/radiation models, but the above should serve.
781, Ray Ladbury: And here thay always taught me that physical laws were deterministic.
Why on earth did you write that?
Here’s something that you may not have heard of – another U.S. media news blackout, apparently – it’s the alternative conference to the Copenhagen Conference – and no, I don’t mean another Heartland Institute meeting for Andy Revkin of the NYT to attend, but rather the one in Bolivia:
Yes, Hank Roberts, this is on-topic, as the CRU email hack and subsequent overblown media response was all quite nicely timed to have the maximum disruptive effect on Copenhagen – a bit more on-topic than discussions of Jupiter’s red spot, I’d say. I’m also unsure why you claimed that discussion of the Deceptive PBS NOVA program on California renewable energy plans is off-topic – isn’t it clear to you that energy and climate go hand in hand? Fixing the climate problem means replacing fossil fuels with various renewables, doesn’t it?
As cleantechnica notes,
David Benson @ 766:
I’m not referring to individual cities as “civilizations”, but the entire population of the Earth when we were hunter-gatherers. The planet didn’t reach 100 million individuals until about 500BCE, long after plant and animal domestication, the establishment of major city-states, and other “modern” developments, like indoor plumbing.
Cmopletely Fed Up @ 759:
As someone who actually runs, and pays to have run, web servers, I assure you that you’d likely save on those tax dollars if the data weren’t so closely guarded and those paywall sites weren’t, you know, making people pay.
And yes, I consider it to be profiteering when so many of the papers that are referenced here and on other science sites all come with a fairly hefty cost. When I first started reading here, I routinely purchased papers. After spending something well over $100 for a handful of papers I just plain got fed up. Don’t tell me the money from downloading papers pays for much of anything, either — it would take massively huge numbers of downloads to pay for the research, and I’m not the only person who DOESN’T pay for them.
782 “Sam, ever hear of conservation of energy? It says that the energy for a steadily rising temperature has to come from somewhere. ”
Again, average temperature is NOT a physical quantity linked to energy, for an inhomogeneous distribution. If you imagine the SAME average temperature with a different pattern, the effective temperature will be generally different and so the radiative balance won’t be fulfilled anymore. If you correct by the ratio of effective temperature to the power 1/4, then you can adjust again the radiative balance, but with a different average temperature. The relation is not single-valued.
You can argue that the amount of variation allowed by the possibility of different repartitions (by changes for instance in oceanic circulation, cloud coverage, and so on…) is not enough to explain the observed temperature change. But it cannot be demonstrated solely by energy conservation. And in my opinion the evidence that natural cycles cannot explain at least a significative part of the observed warming is still very weak, agreement with computer models is NOT a strong argument.
Hank #783
Interesting link about the imaging of features on the great red spot. What is staggering to me is that this was done with a ground based telescope. The angular size of the GRS in our sky is extremely small. I’ve seen seen some amateurs get surface features on jupiters moons before which is also impressive. Amazing what can be done with good optics, still conditions, and more importantly processing with registax and photoshop. Before I moved to Hawaii I used to be a bit of an amateur solar system photographer. Unfortunately the turbulent skies here (combined with the wife) have pretty much killed that little hobby.
#758 J. Bob
I see you are still hung up on short term natural variability in the trend. You need to understand that the process has non linear realities in the interacting systems.
While this is a continual process here is a comment from Walt Meier at NSIDC:
Summary
– uncertainties exist due to spatial resolution/observation limitations
– measurements have been found to be (relatively) unbiased
– fairly high confidence in overall distribution of ice age types
– very high confidence more first-year ice and much less thick, old multiyear ice
Now here’s where you say, ‘well then we don’t know anything’, right? And then return to your ‘hey look at the current ice extent, it’s really high, as high as in the last 8 years’. But you will continue to ignore the fact that that is irrelevant to the long term trend and inertial forces that virtually guarantee that we will lose the ice in the summer melt within 30 years and quite possibly less.
By the way, even after that happens, the ice extent will still grow back in the winter. In case you had not noticed, it’s really cold in the Arctic in winter.
Context will get you relevance.
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A Climate Minute The Greenhouse Effect – History of Climate Science – Arctic Ice Melt
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Our best chance for a better future ‘Fee & Dividend’
Understand the delay and costs of Cap and Trade
http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/
Sign the Petition!
http://www.climatelobby.com
I just wanted to say this since other threads for this are closed: I have seen several claims here by other posters that PBS is bisased against AGW and other environmental concerns known in science. I could not disagree more with these claims. I have watched PBS my entire life. I read PBS.org all the time. I am watching a special now on the plastics pollution issue and dead zones on PBS. I am also looking at AGW research on PBS.org that is quite clear that it is well established on the science of climatology.PBS is not biased, but rather it has the most accurate and scientific programming on all of television. I watch NOVA all the time and read extras on their website.
Ed Norton: “Carbon Dioxide is changing the chemistry of sea water.”—PBS
“How does the fact that Jupiter radiates more heat then it receives contribute to it’s longevity?”
A storm like the red spot dissipates energy.
If the energy dissipated is not renewed, the storm abates.