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…
#946–“the reason why the debate surrounding the hockey stick *is* important is that is has been rammed down our throats as justification for potentially dramatic policy measures which are going to cost us taxpayers and energy consumers a great deal of money in the coming years.”
Well, no, I don’t agree that it has. It “caught on” as a memorable image, no doubt, but it has never been presented as “the justification.” (Yes, I watched AIT.)
The “ramming down the throat” WRT the hockey stick has been done (or attempted) by deniers who tried to use it as a reason for not engaging the scientific evidence comprehensively. The Wegman report–which we are now finding, thanks to Deep Climate, to have been a set-up from the start (and heavily plagiaristic besides)–was treated as if it discredited the whole science.
Meanwhile, what has happened with the “hockey stick?” It’s been shown to have been essentially correct by multiple replications, now often presented together as a “spaghetti graph.”
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png
#930 John, how long and how much ice thickness data would you get hauling a “freeboard” across the Arctic? How much info has been published by US subs under the ice. Guess we will see what the new CryoStat satellite will give. Ice extent/area on the 1979-2006 average,
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
John, with all humility, the people I made those presentations to, probably had more smarts then you and me combined, and I still kept my job.
BPL: I just regressed Hadley CRU dT on year (i.e., elapsed time) for 1850-2008.
you can regress it against Pluto anomaly as well…. again I’m NOT claiming that temperature is not increasing ! it is just the question of what precisely you have to prove before drawing any conclusion about what we should do. You know , I have always been disturbed by the kind of religious reasoning starting with “you don’t know why we are on Earth and how the Universe has been created” and ending with “… hence you must go the church every Sunday” !
Roger,
I have also not read Velikovsky. I have not read Michael Behe on Intelligent Design, nor have I bothered to delve into William Shockley’s theories about race (though I have read his original papers on semiconductors).
My question is this: Why publish your criticisms in a book? Why not air them in front of a knowledgeable audience of experts in the peer-reviewed literature? Do you honestly think that if the criticisms had merit that they would not receive a fair hearing among precisely those people who are most passionate about understanding Earth’s climate? Do you really think that even if somehow a particular community of thousands of scientists managed to wall itself off from reality that the claims could not get a fair hearing from prestiegeous independent scientific bodies like the Royal Society or the National Academies? Do you really think that professional societies would buy into faulty conclusions even when they threaten to diminish funding to the members of those very societies as we develop strategies to combat climate change? Do you really think that a paper over a dozen years old merits such focus? Do you perhaps wonder what the author is trying to draw your attention away from in asking such focus from you?
You talk about data being withheld from the “other side”. Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, there is no other side for the simple reason that they do not publish. “It’s anything but CO2,” is not a credible scientific position. It is not a testable hypothesis. Climate science stands up quite well as science. It does so because no important conclusion is supported by only one paper or line of analysis, but rather by many independent lines of evidence. That, Sir, is precisely how you do reliable science–not by publishing screeds on line or in obscure books.
Sam wrote: “If you guys want to separate people from their money and their freedom you’re gonna need to bring your A game.”
You know something, Sam:
ExxonMobil and Koch Industries have certainly brought their “A game” to the table — an “A game” of deceit and denial and obstruction and delay which has very effectively kept lots of people like yourself misinformed about and hostile to the science of anthropogenic global warming — precisely in order to separate you from your money and your freedom.
Want to talk about money? ExxonMobil alone rakes in over ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS PER DAY IN PROFIT from the consumption of fossil fuels. Every single day that they can keep people like you confused about AGW and thereby delay the urgently needed phase-out of their products, another $100 million in profit. Coming out of your pocket.
Want to talk about freedom? How about freedom FROM dependence on costly, toxic, dangerous fossil fuels? How about freedom TO harvest a vast and endless supply of FREE wind and solar energy? How about freeing individuals, communities, businesses, factories and farms from endless indentured servitude to the fossil fuel corporations by accelerating the deployment of today’s powerful and rapidly improving renewable energy and efficiency technologies, so they can harvest their own supply of free energy from the wind and sun?
I would suggest to you that not only have you been misled about the scientific reality of anthropogenic global warming and climate change, you have also been misled into believing that climate science is a threat to “your money and your freedom”, when in reality it is the very same fossil fuel corporations that are misleading you that are “separating you from your money and your freedom”.
And they are threatening much more than “money and freedom” by perpetuating the use of their products — they are threatening the lives and well-being of billions of human beings, and indeed the survival of modern human civilization.
CFU —
Okay, so you’re perfectly content with Springer-Verlag profiting from tax-payer funded climate research, and thereby keeping the information FROM the tax-payers, and preventing the information from being disseminated?
Because one of my big gripes about climate research is that it seems like a closed little club where one of the longer term objectives is encouraging the train wreck, then saying “See, we told you so!” No other set of facts explains the existing behavior — including paywalling research papers and the fact-set associated with the present thread.
Cracked: World’s Saddest Internet Argument Techniques
Gavin I was wondering what you think about all the new papers that are getting publiced about the MWP not being confined to the Nothern Hemispere?
Further someone sent me this book about the arcticwich makes an interesting read:
http://tinyurl.com/33jwdvr
Sam: Come, let’s reason together, forgetting the crap language.
If climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is very low, then climate is much _less_ stable than we think.
The forcings we know add up fairly well and getting better, for current events and in the paleo work.
If it wasn’t greenhouse gas feedback that caused, say, the PETM excursion, as a recent worst case — then what did?
And will it come back? And where is it hiding?
You’re using a “devil is in the gaps” argument. It’s a scary idea.
But it’s not likely the science is wrong. Look at the research.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/lindzen-and-choi-unraveled/
Could the tide be turning back to the average climatologists’ opinion? Good on him then.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/youtube-climate-change-scepticism
• “Your series on climate change is by far the best scientific, non-sensational piece I’ve ever seen on the subject. It clears up a lot of things that I’d been hearing about that I now realise were purposefully leaving things out. I can only hope more people adopt your non-partisan style of reporting facts in the future.”
Ray Ladbury @945:
So based on what you think about a persons beliefs and what your authorized list of folks say about the content of his latest work you make your pronouncement on it as being “execrable”.
Okay. I can accept that.
Sam wrote @911: “the measured average yearly worldwide surface temperature has only changed less then one degree over the course of 100 years….. If I took a group of people and put them in a room and raised or lowered the temperature by 1 degree I doubt most of them would detect a change.”</em"
The increase of "less than one degree" is the average of the increase over the entire surface of the globe, which means the increase has not been uniform everywhere on that surface. There has been much less than a one degree change in the tropics, for instance. Meanwhile, the increase at the poles has been several times higher than “less than one degree,” which is why we are observing the rapid decline of Artcic sea ice, the breakup of long-stable ice shelfs in the Arctic and Antarctic, and ice mass loss in Greenland and parts of Antarctica.
Your hypothetical frog…., er, people, in the room may or may not notice a “less than one degree” change in am bient temperature, but they would certainly notice a change of ~4 degrees, which is what has been observed in the Arctic and is not quite as “minute” as you make it out to be.
It is this kind of oversimplification and understating of the observed changes that causes people to conclude that you do not know much climate or science.
Roger …
Has it dawned on you that perhaps Montford is LYING TO YOU? Has it ever dawned on you that, for instance, the tobacco industry has lied for decades regarding the science showing the harmfulness of their product? That creationists lie about how the science of evolutionary biology is conducted, and the evidence in support of modern understanding of the subject?
Why do you take a book by someone like Montford at face value?
Rather than read his book and then respond that gee, no doubt there’s another story that could be told, why not steer away from such crap in the first place? Conspiracy theories are rarely right, but quite frequently argued in terms that seem reasonable to people who are ignorant of the subject under discussion.
Conspiracy theorists thrive on such ignorance, i.e. the argument that “jet fuel doesn’t burn at a temperature high enough to melt structural steel and the experts aren’t telling you this in their effort to hide the conspiracy that government agencies planted explosives that brought down the WTC and that the airplane was just a diversion” depends on the reader not understanding that the temperatures found within such a structural fire easily reach temps that weaken structural steel by 50% or more, which is sufficient to cause collapse.
But the original statement sounds reasonable if you’re ignorant that you don’t have to actually melt structural steel, or even come close to that temperature, to cause it to fail to bear its designed load.
People like Montford likewise prey on their reader’s ignorance of climate science.
Don’t be so gullible.
Rather than ask for people to spoon-feed you a rebuttal, why don’t you go read enough about the subject so you can rebut him yourself? Finding lies in Montford’s book isn’t likely to be hard, I first read his blog a couple of years ago and it was chock-full of them. Haven’t looked since. Won’t bother. But it’s not like he’s a particularly skilled liar.
“919 Ray Ladbury says:
24 April 2010 at 7:13 PM
Sam,
1)Energy is conserved. When you see temperature in a VERY LARGE system like the climate rising even just a wee bit over an extended period of time, it says that very large amounts of energy are being added. “It just happened,” is the excuse of a teenager, not a scientific theory.”
That is abnsolute twaddle and if you are the scientist you say you are you must know it. Why say it then? I hope you don’t actually believe that because it would indicate a very poor understanding of cyclical processes in dynamic systems.
Are you claiming that glacial cycles and the significant changes in near surface temperatures are due to very large changes in energy input to the Earths system? Twaddle!
Alan
#911 Sam
Weak signal? Radiative forcing has increased 3.6 W/m2 since pre-industrial time. How is that amount of energy added to the climate system weak?
As to the steaming pile of dung you mentioned. You obviously have no clue what you are talking about, which also may explain why you are just another anonymous poster saying it’s all BS. The A game is on the table. But you have to bring something to the table also, a brain capable of understanding the contexts. Until you can bring that to the table you won’t understand much of anything.
As far as material that is a steaming pile of dung take a look at your posts. Anonymous posters, such as yourself, that don’t have the guts, honor, or integrity, to use their legal names while posting garbage such as your words without any evidence whatsoever, other than your opinion.
#926 Sam
Pot meet Kettle.
You clearly know very little about the relevant contexts involved. You have not looked at everything obviously and certainly not in context of reality.
You see estimates are helpful. What if you car had variable gas mileage somewhere between .5 mpg and 23 mpg. And you have a 10 gallon tank, and you work 80 miles away. And the mileage varies at complete random, so some days you can make it to work and others you can’t.
But that is not the way that works is it. You know generally how many mpg you can rely on even though mileage may vary.
Estimates are not worthless.
But what you are really missing is the observations. We are losing the Arctic multi-year ice. Glacial ice mass is dropping globally and rapidly on a geological time scale. Drought events are increasing and we are getting more named storms and storm strength of those storms is edging upward and we are getting more cat 5’s.
Generally your entire post is confused with what looks like misinformation. GHG’s block infrared. Adding more, blocks more. Warmer oceans evaporate more water. H2O is a GHG.
It seems that what you are trying to say is even though it is happening and it is observable, it is not happening because scientists use estimates.
WEIRD, to say the least.
You wisely realize that those more knowledgeable than yourself will disagree with the steaming pile of dung you have presented in your posts.
—
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Understand the delay and costs of Cap and Trade
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http://www.climatelobby.com
Sam: What I have seen so far, especially that steaming pile of dung of an IPCC report is not even close.
Ah, Sam isn’t here for the education, he’s here for hate.
“927 Edward Greisch says:
24 April 2010 at 10:53 PM
911 Sam: If you had read the rest of the comments on the “Second CRU inquiry reports”, you would have received the answer to your question. The answer is: “It only takes a small change in the global average temperature to shift the wind and therefore the rainfall enough to disrupt agriculture. If agriculture is disrupted, people starve. When there is no food, civilizations collapse. When there is no food and civilization collapses, everybody or almost everybody dies.”
Just one example of the ludicrous alarmism comments that are allowed to go unchallenged on this science (fiction?) site.
Even if temperatures rise as much as forecast why is it disaster nearly everywhere on the planet?
It will be an overall slightly warmer and slightly wetter planet, with increased CO2 all conditions which tend to be better for most carbon based lifeforms.
For instance the Sahara, the largest ‘warm’ desert on the planet will become a much greener and pleasanter place for life. Just one example, there are many others.
http://www.medindia.net/news/Climate-Changes-And-Increased-Rainfall-Greening-the-Sahara-Desert-Becoming-Green-Due-to-Climate-Change-55735-1.htm
Alan
919, Ray Ladbury: 2)There is no “theory of anthropogenic CO2 forcing”.
And yet, humans have been recommended to reduce anthropogenic CO2. Perhaps you meant something nuanced like “the accepted model encompasses all CO2, and the theory is that anthropogenic CO2 is the fraction of CO2 that is increasing most rapidly, and that humans can delay and reduce warming by reducing their output of CO2.”
845, Ray Ladbury: Second, intelligent design is not science. It can never be science. I can prove mathematically that it can never be science.
There’s lots of empirical evidence that the living things on earth do not conform to any articulated notion of intelligent design that can stand up to evidence and measurement. The statement that ID can be proved mathematically not to be science is hubristic: other mathematicians have proved that God exists, God is omnipotent and omniscient, and therefore that living things are intelligently designed. It’s all in the assumptions, such as (a) God doesn’t throw dice vs (b) God does throw dice. Newton proved the identity of the Anti-Christ, but that doesn’t impinge on his laws of motion, which are stated without proof.
“I am not a denier, but the reason why the debate surrounding the hockey stick *is* important is that is has been rammed down our throats as justification ”
By denier propoganda.
Not by the IPCC.
“for potentially dramatic policy measures which are going to cost us taxpayers and energy consumers a great deal of money in the coming years.”
Again denier propoganda. How can you complain of the hockey stick being rammed down “our” throats when you then ram down our throats the lie that this will cost us a great deal (which by inference means more than is justified)?
Sam asks (926):
“Why do you guys seem to equate my not agreeing with your theories about climate to me not knowing anything about climate or science?”
and responds himself:
“..the estimates of climate sensitivity seem to be well… Estimates!”
and:
“The “consensus” estimate is 3 degrees….. Consensus?! Is this like a beauty pageant where judges get to vote on the value of a constant??”
Do you really think, that these statements indicate you know science or climate?
Sam, on estimates and consensus, read: http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
That is a review, just in case you don’t realize it. Would you want to check, if the review is a correct summation of the science, go ahead, read the original articles. Have you really understood enough? What part of climate sensitivity is obscure to you?
After reading, consider whether your with the explanatory remark “My stubborn refusal to be convinced by AGW theory does not stem from not understanding enough about it.” is credible?
Alan Millar says: 25 April 2010 at 11:39 AM
very much hmmmm on that Med-India news items… yes the KNMI sats see greening in the Sahel and those on the ground know why… hundreds of years old water retention and fertilizing techniques being re-introduced having led to crops that produced food for about 20 million… it started in Burkina Faso.
Titus, I see you bring to the table the same talent for selective reading that your fellow denialists do. I said precisely why I think Spencer’s screed is excrable–namely, it indicts all of science, not just the field of climate science based on claims that contradict peer-reviewed research, but cannot themselves be found in peer-reviewed literature. It is an attempt merely to preach to an ideological choir who are determined to oppose science whatever it says. The real problem with this work is that it is an attempt to hoodwink the naive rather than an appeal to convert the experts. THAT is what makes it excrable. Would you have preferred if I’d called it odious? That works, too.
Alan Millar, I’m sorry, Alan, but it takes about 10^19 kJ to raise the temperature of the atmosphere–just the atmosphere–a degree C. To see a sustained rise over 30 years, we are talking a thermal mass about two orders of magnitude greater. Now, Alan, to me, anything that has 19 zeros after it is pretty big, and if it has 21 zeros, it’s kind of hard to argue that isn’t big. But, hey, maybe you are more comfortable with zeros than I am–I never saw your homework.
“968
Septic Matthew says:
25 April 2010 at 12:05 PM
919, Ray Ladbury: 2)There is no “theory of anthropogenic CO2 forcing”.
And yet, humans have been recommended to reduce anthropogenic CO2”
Nothing to do with what Ray said. In fact you get it when later on your statement is about how there’s a theory of CO2 forcing and that the current change in CO2 is anthropogenic in origin.
“Even if temperatures rise as much as forecast why is it disaster nearly everywhere on the planet?”
Because we will have the collapse of civilisation. Look at what happened in Florida with one of the most affluent and technologically advanced countries when there was a mere tiny flood.
When the Midwest Corn Belt is dead and the wide open wheat fields of the Russian plains are dead to intensive farming, you will starve, even though you live a thousand miles distant.
“That is abnsolute twaddle and if you are the scientist you say you are you must know it”
Not unless you tell someone why it’s twaddle. Absent that the twaddle is all from you, millar.
“Okay, so you’re perfectly content with Springer-Verlag profiting from tax-payer funded climate research,”
FCU your assertion was that Springer making money was somehow costing me tax monies.
Apparently now you’re merely pissed off that someone else is making money.
Septic Matthew, You have utterly misunderstood my entire post.
There simply is no “theory of anthropogenic warming”. Instead there is a theory–a single working theory–of Earth’s climate. That humans will warm the planet if they dump CO2 into the atmosphere an inevitable corollary given that theory. Period.
As to Intelligent Design, again, you misunderstand. ID posits that an almighty (for all practical purposes) designer has intervened in the natural processes governing speciation, etc. at least a few times. If this is true for any occasion, we must consider it as a possibility for every occasion. Thus, if a development is considered impossible under some theory, the proponents of that theory can merely posit GODDIDIT, and thereby save their theory. By positing a mechanism that can explain everything, they have precluded the possibility of every predicting anything. If you view each decision by the “designer” as a parameter in the theory, the number of parameters is unlimited. Thus, by any information criterion you choose, ID has zero information content, and it cannot be a scientific theory. That is not hubris. It’s merely understanding what science is.
Ray (954), what do you have against books? Has there never been a valuable informative non-peer-reviewed book about science? Or are peer reviewed papers the be-all and end-all?
For the record, your assertion that our ‘estimates are good’ does not refute the assertion that “climate sensitivity figures are… estimates.’
SecularAnimist (955), “…endless indentured servitude to the fossil fuel corporations…” exceeds even your usual hyperbole. “Endless”? Indentured”? Servitude”? Wow!
Gavin: Please post a new article. This one is getting tedious, especially Gilles and Sam. Gilles and Sam could get me to stop caring and just work on the Space Elevator full time so that I could move to Mars and leave them here.
967 Alan Millar: Here are some more “ludicrous alarmism comments” from peer reviewed literature or derived from peer reviewed literature:
The book “Six Degrees” by Mark Lynas says: “If the global warming is 6 degrees centigrade, we humans go extinct.” See:
http://www.marklynas.org/2007/4/23/six-steps-to-hell-summary-of-six-degrees-as-published-in-the-guardian
Lynas lists several kill mechanisms, the most important being famine and methane fuel-air explosions. Other mechanisms include fire storms.
The following sources say H2S bubbling out of hot oceans is the final blow at 6 degrees C warming:
“Under a Green Sky” by Peter D. Ward, Ph.D., 2007.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00037A5D-A938-150E-A93883414B7F0000&sc=I100322
http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2003/prPennStateKump.htm
http://www.astrobio.net is a NASA web zine. See:
http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=672
http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1535
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article2509.html
http://astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2429&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
“Climate Code Red” by David Spratt and Philip Sutton says the following:
Long term warming, counting feedbacks, is at least twice the short term warming. 560 ppm CO2 gets us 6 degrees C or 10.8 degrees F. We will hit 560 ppm before mid century.
Per “Climate Code Red”, we need ZERO “Kyoto gas” emissions RIGHT NOW and we also need geo-engineering because we have already gone way beyond the safe CO2 level of 300 to 325 ppm. We are already at 455 ppm equivalent and we have tripped some very big tipping points. We aren’t dead yet, but the planet needs critical intensive care if we humans are to have a chance of survival.
A more comprehensive look at Sahara “greening”:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Greening_of_the_Sahel
Not sure there’s any evidence that the “Sahara will become a much greener and pleasanter place for life.”
Sam (926) — You could actually study the last 13 decades of the instrumental record:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/unforced-variations-3/comment-page-12/#comment-168530
and you could actually study a recent review about climate sensitivity:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
Both of which I linked in an earlier comment (addressed to another poster), suggesting something about your study habits, I fear.
967 Alan Millar: Here is one more “ludicrous alarmism comment” from Gavin’s old boss, James Hansen: If we burn all of the fossil fuel, Earth will become a hot dead rock just like Venus.
Climate Threat to the Planet:* Implications for Energy Policy and Intergenerational Justice
Jim Hansen
December 17, 2008
Bjerknes Lecture, American Geophysical Union San Francisco, California
Page 22: “Climate Threat to the Planet
The Venus Syndrome
The Venus syndrome is the greatest threat to the planet, to humanity’s continued existence.
[The temperature on Venus is over] 450 degrees C
BPL: I just regressed Hadley CRU dT on year (i.e., elapsed time) for 1850-2008.
Gilles (953): you can regress it against Pluto anomaly as well…. again I’m NOT claiming that temperature is not increasing !
BPL: You said significance was the question. I showed that the increase was significant, and over a period of 159 years. If you regress it against CO2, it’s even more significant. If significance is the question, AGW theory is pretty well confirmed.
FurryCatHerder — 25 April 2010 @ 10:19 AM
You’re really complaining about scientific publishing in general, since there’s nothing in your complaint that’s specific to climate research. However, nowadays your complaint doesn’t have so much merit. Many scientific papers are now published as “Open Access” (everything from NASA Giss for example; and in other scientific subjects, everything funded by Medical research charities and organizations like the National Institutes of Health). Everyone has access to journal tables of contents and abstracts. If you want to read a paper just send an email to the author. A surprising amount of the climate science literature, whether paywalled or not, can now be found by Googling and downloaded. Sites like “skepticalscience.com” provide links to virtually all the papers that are cited or discussed there….major journals (Nature; Science) can be bought through pretty reasonable personal subscription or found in local libraries or local Uni libraries…..
I’m sure all scientists would like their publications to be freely available. That they often aren’t is due to the nature of the publishing business and has got little to do with the scientists. In fact the changes in scientific publishing (Web based; Open Access etc.) are arising in large part due to the efforts of scientists. Of course someone has to pay for scientific publishing. Nowadays, if I publish a paper on research funded by a biomedical charity, this is likely (depends on the charity) to be done under Open Access conditions. However this doesn’t mean it’s free….it means that the charity has to pay of the order of $1000 for the privilige; one might question whether that’s a good use of the charities funds.
Things cost and have to be payed for. The funding model may evolve…but it still costs. Personally, I think the present system isn’t too bad. Paywalling allows the publishers to run a business through offsetting costs and making a profit through subscription charges (some of which the public ultimately pays for). However it’s increasingly easy for anyone to access papers that they might be interested in (see above); and of course, whether or not papers are paywalled, the information in them is disseminated….
Incidentally I don’t understand how you consider climate research can be “encouraging the train wreck”. Surely finding out what is going on (aka “science”) is part of how we avoid “train wrecks”.
#946 Roger
“the hockey stick *is* important is that is has been rammed down our throats as justification for potentially dramatic policy measures”
How can you expect to be taken seriously when you use such inflammatory and, quite frankly, offensive language?
Alan Millar (964): Are you claiming that glacial cycles and the significant changes in near surface temperatures are due to very large changes in energy input to the Earths system? Twaddle!
BPL: Glacial cycles are initiated by changes in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt which change the distribution of sunlight over the planet’s surface. Ice-albedo feedback materially alters the radiation balance of the Earth, and carbon dioxide release (on warming) or sequestering (on cooling) amplifies the effect, which again changes the radiation balance. So yes, very large changes in energy were involved.
Please… PLEASE… crack an introductory textbook on climatology. Dennis Hartmann’s “Global Physical Climatology” is a good one. If that’s too hard, try Ann Henderson-Sellers and John Robinson’s “Contemporary Climatology.”
“BPL: You said significance was the question. I showed that the increase was significant, and over a period of 159 years. If you regress it against CO2, it’s even more significant. If significance is the question, AGW theory is pretty well confirmed.”
really ? so if Pluto anomaly or anything else increases with time, it proves its anthropogenic origin ?
you have a strange way of using correlations …
oh, BTW : since the climate inertia is relatively long, why should instantaneous temperature be correlated with CO2? shouldn’t it be rather the SLOPE, like for the sea level model of Rahmstorf et al? ? did you try this correlation ?
Alan (967): It will be an overall slightly warmer and slightly wetter planet, with increased CO2 all conditions which tend to be better for most carbon based lifeforms.
BPL: Bzzzzt! Wrong! Global warming causes increasing drought in continental interiors. In 1970 12% of Earth’s land surface was “severely dry” (Palmer Drought Severity Index of -3.0 or lower). In 2002 that figure was 30%, and it’s still climbing. Ask the Australians whether drought is a problem or not.
Edward Greisch #981 and 984. “Here are some more ‘ludicrous alarmism comments’ from peer reviewed literature or derived from peer reviewed literature”
Except of course that the statements that you provide are *not* actually from the peer-reviewed literature. For example, you reference an article in the Guardian (not a peer-reviewed journal) to support the definitive statement, “If the global warming is 6 degrees centigrade, we humans go extinct.” Yet even the article you cited does not make such a definitive claim. The closest it gets is “One scientific paper investigating ‘kill mechanisms’ during the end-Permian suggests that methane hydrate explosions “could destroy terrestrial life almost entirely”. *One* paper *suggests.* Hardly sounds like a definitive consensus, does it. And there is nothing at all ludicrous about worrying that the results of destabilizing methane hydrate deposits could potentially be catastrophic, even if it is not predicted by climate models (which make no attempt to model the behavior of methane hydrates.”
Then you quote James Hansen as saying, “If we burn all of the fossil fuel, Earth will become a hot dead rock just like Venus.” Yet this statement does not appear in the reference you cite. The closest he gets is this: “In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale (a.k.a. oil shale), I think it is a dead certainty.” He’s very careful to indicate that this is his personal opinion, and that it does not come from his climate models, which “blow up” before this point. Yet you’ve distorted it into a statement of certainty.
There certainly is reason to worry that there could be a “tipping point,” and pushing CO2 levels outside of their historical “safe” range is therefore dangerous, so this also is not ludicrous, but neither is it a scientific prediction or consensus–it is at most the best a guess of an experienced climate scientist.
It doesn’t seem likely that Hansen is exaggerating in stating that he holds this opinion, even if he can’t prove it. On the other hand, you are clearly exaggerating in trying to give the impression that these very serious, but uncertain scenarios are being represented as part of the current scientific consensus regarding global warming.
Here’s a modest suggestion: Before you presume to tell people what the peer-reviewed literature says, you might consider actually reading some of it.
#952 J. Bob
To my knowledge, they are still modeling the sonar data and trying to integrate. Read up on freeboard
http://nsidc.org/data/icesat/faq.html#alt6
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/040708.html
Not unsurprising that you still have your job. As long as the status quo is maintained no big deal, until of course you all find out how badly you have screwed up, which won’t be too much longer in your, and their case (at least pertaining to AGW).
So where do you work, I’d like to follow the drama in real time too?
PS You are not humble, you are arrogant by definition, you constantly ignore relevance to favor your preconceived notions and rely on inappropriate contexts to support your opinion (well, that’s government isn’t it.). You seem to have a mental block on extent v. thickness. And as to them being smarter (context will get you relevance) than you and I combined, speak for yourself. And don’t worry, they won’t fire you until they get fired.
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987 (Jerry)
“How can you expect to be taken seriously when you use such inflammatory and, quite frankly, offensive language?”
Agreed, and I assume you will be noting that across the board regardless of the point of view of the poster. Or is it OK to be inflammatory as long as you hold the correct view? Kind of takes us back to the original topic of this thread, eh?
Tee-hee! Watch Fox News much, Roger?
Rod B., The issue is not with non-peer-reviewed books. Many popularizations are quite good (though not a substitute for the peer-reviewed literature). The problem comes when you publish a book that runs counter to accepted science, could not pass peer review and is intended for an unsophisticated lay audience. That verges on scientific misconduct.
Alan Millar says: the Sahara, the largest ‘warm’ desert on the planet will become a much greener and pleasanter place for life.
And yet: Desert spreading like ‘cancer,’ Egypt conference told.
Does this make sense? Let me rephrase it?
“Are you saying that the huge energy changes involved in the melting and freezing of large ice sheets and the associated changes in sea levels are due to large energy changes in energy input?” [and output].
Lets assume that the alternative is the case i.e that this was merely an internal exchange between two energy reservoirs. We are deep in an ice age with low sea levels and a dry atmosphere. How to escape? Perhaps a giant global super El Nino might come to the rescue? If you can justify such a mechanism , while also avoiding energy entering and leaving the system I suggest that you try to get it published.
But whats wrong with the standard explanations roughly based on the Milankovitch effect amplified by positive feedbacks which cause large energy inputs into or outputs from the system?
Can the intelligent minds on this sight explain the data on this website…
http://www.climate4you.com/
Go to Global Temperature, then inside this click on Global Longwave Radiation. It has numerous charts of the outgoing long wave radiation.
Under scatter graphs, which show increasing carbon dioxide Vs Outgoing Long Wave radiation, the compiler of these graphs raises the question.
“Climate models predict that when the amount of atmospheric CO2 increases the natural greenhouse effect will be enhanced, so less less radiation leaves the earth to space, thereby leading to global warming. From this decreasing OLR should be expected as the amount of atmospheric CO2 increases, in contrast to the development since the CO2-concentration passed c. 360 ppm. The diagram above thereby suggests a more complicated association, where the theoretical effect of CO2 on OLR apparently is subordinate to one or several other factors. See also Lindzen and Choi (2009), as well as the diagram below.”
Can anyone explain the graphs in a way other than what the above conclusion reaches?
#991 John, you might want to use more up to date info, instead of picking something two years old. Use this one
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html
You know, looking at the above referenced image, it sure looks close to average, or zero anomaly. But I’ll give you credit, John, I was using a old definition, the way they used to measure thickness, manual drilling. But we will see when we get data from CryoStat.
And John, like a true “pro”, I left them smiling, and they paid me. Cheers.
Hank Roberts:
Clearly, the fact the Koch Industries and Exxon sponsored a wildly deceptive PBS NOVA special on California energy reform is an on-topic discussion. Attempts to portray me as “bristling” or “angry” are amusing – I just asked you a simple question, which you’ve so far refused to answer – why do you think discussion of the PBS issue is “off-topic for this thread?” I suppose if I had used all capitals… but here – :) – is that better?
Another discussable topic is the fact that the U.S. media completely blacked out any discussion of the Cochabamba global climate conference – recall, this is the same media that gave quite a bit of coverage to the Heartland Conference sponsored by the usual crowd of denialist fossil fuel interests.
Sigh… Joe Bastardi won’t answer my emails anymore, either… he doesn’t want to talk about the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the basis of his “cooling Pacific ocean cycle”… what a shame. I thought he liked to talk to people?