. However it is seemingly impossible to carry out experimental verification of the derived Co2 forcing model in the field without eliminating all other factors such as water vapour, other gases, etc. In this regard CLOUD currently seems to have the advantage in terms of potential for experimental verification. Are any plans in progress to overcome this difficulty wrt co2 forcing models?
I would heartly recommend working through a textbook first.”Principles of Planetary Climate” from Raymond Pierrehumbert is first class if You want to connect to the physics, IMHO
Cheers,
Marcus
CMsays
Richard,
If you explain what you mean by the “derived CO2 forcing model”, perhaps progress may be made. It will probably turn out to be either (a) apples to oranges or (b) well understood and long since experimentally verified when compared with what CLOUD is about.
SecularAnimistsays
Radge Havers wrote: “… one of the things that makes the propaganda so intractable is that it’s tailored to fit into people’s already existing blind spots and faulty thinking …”
That’s important to remember. The denier talking points don’t just arise spontaneously. They are the result of a lot of research, polling, focus group testing and other sophisticated tools that the most insidious minds of Madison Avenue have spent decades developing precisely to exploit “people’s already existing blind spots and faulty thinking”.
ExxonMobil and Koch Industries don’t give millions of dollars to those propaganda mills a.k.a. “think tanks” for nothing.
Mayasays
Congratulations, Gavin, on the quotes in USA Today. Nice that they took a couple whole paragraphs instead of trying to squash you into a one-sentence soundbite, like usual.
I agree with what you said, though I think sometimes the propagandists must take advantage of stuff that’s already out there and pounce on any opportunity to pound it home.
I’ve sat in fairly innocuous meetings where somebody suddenly and heroically pulled some piece nonsense out of their backside, only to watch it go from garbage to gospel in less than 0.5 sec. flat. This usually involved either avoiding work, shifting responsibility for something outside the group, or scapegoating.
Humans seem to be a b.s. emitting species. And of course science is the best remedy for that so far…
Did you say lately about climate “My thinking has evolved.” If so, what did you mean?
[Response: It was in response to the possibility of fractionally attributing extreme events to anthropogenic forcings. I used to think this was too difficult to do, but I now think that, at least in some cases, it can be done reasonably. Some more thoughts on this are available here. – gavin]
wizofaussays
Unrelated sorry but I wasn’t sure where else to post…does anybody here have the time and expertise to review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period ? There are a number of links to peer-reviewed articles in particular that on first glance don’t obviously seem to be relevant references to the points made in the article. Thanks.
Susan Andersonsays
I’d add that some of those who accept the anti-factoids proliferating in the reverse-science hotairosphere are unable to face an unbearable reality. I suffer a bit from that myself, but it doesn’t push me to lie to myself. However without specific education most people find the available and plausible looking alternative explanations comforting and don’t want to look closely at the possibility they might not be truthful.
I should like to thank Susan Anderson for alerting me to the existence of an improbable addition to to ‘the reverse-science hotairosphere- the section of Naomi Oreskes book that , while quarrying my 1987 narrative of the nuclear winter controversy , refuses to communicate its conclusions, electing instead to misrepresents them by ellipsis so extreme as to recall the better efforts of Marc Morano.
If Susan would care to compare Oreskes anti-historical tirade with the primary source it traduces , I will cheerfully send along a pdf so she may judge for herself.
The copy provided Oreskes weeks ago has thus failed to appear on the Corrections page of her book’s website. I hope to have it resurrected from the publisher’s pre-electronic archive and scanned for posting on The National Interest website before the year is out.
[Response: Claims of anyone ‘refusing’ to do something usually say more about the claimant than the accused. Care to be more specific about what you allege Naomi gets wrong? We have a great deal of local expertise on nuclear winter around here, so it will be easy for us to check up on the facts.–eric]
J Bowerssays
@ wizofaus 157. In case it’s something to do with Romans growing vines in Britain, have a read of The Agricola by Tacitus, Book 1 [10], written around 98 AD.
“With the exception of the olive and vine, and plants which usually grow in warmer climates, the soil will yield, and even abundantly, all ordinary produce.”
By the 3rd Century it looks like they were cultivating vines in Britain, but that’s near the end of the “RWP”, and the evidence from the ground goes as far as the Midlands in England last I read.
—-
… One physicist, S. Fred Singer of George Mason University in Virginia, went so far today as to suggest that unappreciated warming effects would overwhelm the cooling effects, leading to a net warming trend. Explosions and fires would send vast amounts of water vapor into the upper stratosphere, causing a greenhouse effect, he said, and smoke clouds would add to the heating by absorbing infrared rays.
Dr. Schneider dismissed that possibility, calling it the “infrared herring.”
—-
#156, Gavin’s thoughts are online, clear, concise and evolving, but always maintaining the inevitable results which actually have happened within the lifespan of RC. However I rather hear the thoughts from Texans, right in the middle of their worst drought in history. Have they evolved? Or is the majority of anti AGW Texans stuck in the mud turned into in deep denial drought cement? I think its important that nature’s signals are properly understood. It is easy for me in the way Northern world to report dramatic climate changes they are as clear as black on white, rocks revealed in the water wakes from once bright in the sun glaciers. It is exceedingly maddening to observe recent events of mass Arctic melts and relate them to only those with ears, especially not busy confusing themselves with political stupid backwards nonsense. Like we live on a different planet, so few people in the Arctic, hardly a match for the billions down south with a few seconds of our time seen world wide during any given year. Not so few folks in Texas though, I would rather just read if they the lone star contrarians got the proverbial message making them more susceptible to accept climate science as a little more than a con job? We tried to convince, but I suspect mass calamities a bit more stimulating for thinking. At least the warnings abound, what we do with them is a matter of action from reasoning.
wilisays
Wayne, mass calamities do not stimulate thinking, in general. They are more likely to produce fear, hate, and falling back on basic intuitions, superstitions, religious comforts…
Look at the letters to get an idea of what the average tone of the people from the area.
David B. Bensonsays
Earlier there was at least one question about projected sea levels. One possible answer is by looking in the past: The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3 Ma–3 Ma) was 2–3 °C higher than today[1], global sea level 25m higher … from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate
which offers a potential prognostication.
Russellsays
160
That’s an extraordinary claim, Eric. Perhaps you should examine the evidence first.
Having challenged what Sagan called his ‘Apocalyptic conclusions ‘ in Foreign Affairs, in 1984, and Nature in 1985 and 86, and participated in the Defense Nuclear Agency follow-up to TTAPS, in 1987 , while at Harvard’s CFIA I wrote a lengthy essay in The National Interest reporting what I had learned not only about the underlying model and the attendant scientific controversy – specifically the iteration of often unrealistic worst-case parameters to yield enormous optical depths and radiative forcings , but also about how a lack of transparency, that would scandalize those used to IPCC best practices , withholding the 1-d model software , for instance , and the misrepresentation of a 1-D model as ’sophisticated’, was compounded by accelerated peer review and the hiring of a PR firm to put political spin on the science before the fact of its publication.
This led to an extraordinary media spectacle that elevated statistically implausible outliers to the status of hard scientific facts in the popular imagination. It also seems extraordinary that , despite the controversy , the original authors were called upon to write a review article summarizing it the journal in which it originally appeared. Although many of the harshest criticisms of the media hype surrounding ‘Nuclear Winter came from indignant peace movement activists loathe to see disarmament predicated on mythology, and some , e.g. senior Science writer Eliot Marshall’s essay ‘The Little Chill ‘ appeared in liberal journals, Oreskes remains in deep denial as to the bipartisan nature of the critique.
Accusing me of rejecting science in general while failing to quote one intact sentence out of a 7,000 word article seems to me prima facie evidence of the corrosion of Naomi’s ordinary respect for historiography by her book’s clearly polemic intent. It is ironic that the unfortunate example of serial media hype and scientific stonewalling that began on an earlier battlefield of the Climate Wars should recrudesce in the parallel PR tactics of today. Instead of learning the lessons of the ‘nuclear winter ‘ fiasco many seem to view it as a potentially profitable example of how to sell science , good or bad.
I expect you will now refer us to Alan Robock’s Comment piece in Nature. (Nature 473, 275–276; 2011). I suggest you read my reply in the July 7 issue as well.
Let me add that find his invocation of solar heating induced soot cloud buoyancy at low optical depths about as compelling as Spencer’s views on cloud feedback, But then, at least Alan got the sign right. Unless the rebarbative reality of positive forcing by tropospheric black carbon comes into play– some things remain intrinsically pretty uncertain.
including the optical depth of the fog of the Climate Wars
158 Susan Anderson: Most people do lie to themselves. See 164 willi.
Richard birdsays
Ray Ladbury: post 147. I must correct, I am not ‘arguing about the physics’. I have gone to Start Here and followed many of the links. I have read the relevant IPCC publications, in fact that was my starting point some months ago. I can well understand the reaction in these pages to what may appear to be ‘familiar denialist arguments’. My questions do not arise from reading skeptic websites, but from occasional questions which have arisen in my own mind. I am sorry if they have been asked before.
As for my role in the Ski Club, (raised by someone else) we are all volunteers. I am not a spokesman for the Club. My role is to coordinate the work of the working group. We deal with many environmental issues. Global warming is just one of them. The Club annually donates funds to support worthy environmental projects. These include ‘concrete’ projects such as installation of hydroelectric and solar systems to reduce the fuel needs of mountain refuges, and ‘academic’ projects examining aspects of climate change and its possible effect upon snow sports. We are also concerned with local pollution, protection of habitat and wildlife, the future of alpine communities dependent on snow sports, and many other issues. Climate change is one issue amongst many. I make no apologies for not being a qualified climate scientist.
Re experimental verification, I took this up from one of the links given in Start Here, or one of the sub-links (sorry I can’t trace which one right now). The intentionally flippant point was made there that it would be “ideal” to do a field experiment to verify the predictions of models in terms of net heat energy released to space in relation to varying Co2 concentrations, but removing all other elements from the atmosphere to do that was rather difficult, to say the least. Accepted that observations correlate with the model predictions, but in terms of scientific knowledge there is usually great value arising from controlled experiments, even perhaps some surprises. CLOUD seems to present an opportunity to carry out controlled experiments to test the basis of a particular theory in a simulated atmosphere. Hence my question as to whether there have been, or any plans for, similar controlled experiments to test the predictions of the NET warming effect of Co2 and/or to see what comes out of the testing. All part of the knowledge base, I can’t personally conceive of how that could be done in practice,but maybe others can or have.. it’s just a question, not a ‘ denial’ of anything. I hope that clarifies my question.
Nick Gottssays
Wayne, mass calamities do not stimulate thinking, in general. They are more likely to produce fear, hate, and falling back on basic intuitions, superstitions, religious comforts… – wili
I think this is a matter for empirical investigation, which AFAIK has not been done – I’d be interested to learn details if I’m wrong. I suspect that the psycho-social effects of a “mass calamity” (and BTW, on the global scale, the Texas drought and wildfires are pretty small beer, scant consolation though that will be to those who have lost relatives or homes) are highly dependent on both the nature and scale of the calamity, and the economic, political and cultural context.
Pete Dunkelbergsays
Wili @ 164, and others who generalize that way about people:
Over decades put planet has kept warming, oceans, air, boreholes, melting ice …. could it all be just an internal variation of the climate system? No, the system can not be warming itself. Conservation of energy. Where is the energy coming from? Greenhouse gasses are increasing and thus trapping more of the solar energy stream.
Likewise, people in general are not in this case driving themselves nuts, they are being driven (forced, a climatologist might say) by the disinformation industry.
My questions do not arise from reading skeptic websites, but from occasional questions which have arisen in my own mind. I am sorry if they have been asked before.
The chance that you’ve independently come up with a smorgasbord of common denialist themes on your own from your studying of the information on this site and IPCC documents is nil.
I think you’re just trolling.
Ray Ladburysays
Richard Bird,
We knew CO2 was a greenhouse gas in the 1850s. That means we could measure the fact that it trapped radiation even if we didn’t know exactly what that radiation was.
In 1896, we knew enough for Svante Arrhenius to proclaim confidently that burning of fossil fuels by humans would raise Earth’s temperature–that’s 115 years ago.
It is quite easy to measure the IR radiation absorbed by CO2 or by any mix of gasses under controlled laboratory conditions. We have measured the response of the atmosphere to increasing or decreasing energy. Likewise the oceans, ice caps, etc. We know how the climate responds to CO2 and we can follow the carbon cycle with pretty good precision. We even have over a dozen independent lines of evidence that allow us to quantify climate sensitivity–and amazingly, the results are quite consistent for all these lines of evidence.
So, we have done carefully controlled experiments and analyses of all the pieces to the puzzle. What we cannot do is reconstruct Earth in the lab so we see how all those pieces interact. To do that we have to reconstruct Earth in a global climate model. We put in all the physics that we have measured in those controlled experiments and turn the damn thing on. Because Earth’s climate is such a complicated system, it is extremely unlikely that we will get something that looks like Earth by accident. If our model looks Earth-like, it is a very good indication that we are getting the most important pieces of the model right. It does and we are.
I stress: None of this is at all controversial for anyone who knows jacksh** about Earth’s climate. It is all established science. What is more, CO2 as a well mixed, long-lived greenhouse gas has very obvious fingerprints in both current climate and in the paleoclimate. It sticks out like a sore thumb.
Richard, I want you to think about this. Over 97% of climate scientists agree with the consensus model of Earth’s climate and its inescapable conclusion that we are warming the planet. Denialists try to make it sound like they are committing fraud to get funding. This is not just a lie, it is absurd. And even this absurd accusation would not explain why every National Academy, every relevant professional and honorific society of scientists also buys into the consensus. These are people who not only understand the science, but who are directly harmed if climate change is true, since mitigating it will take money away from their fields of study.
The controversy surrounding climate science is not about science. We know the science. The controversy is there because the denialists are lying.
.
Hunt Janinsays
Re sea level rise:
Having studied and written about this subject full-time for 1 1/2 years now, it is clear to me that (with the likely exception of the Netherlands and the partial exception of the United Kingdom) no national government is going to anything significant about sea level rise until and unless there is a major sea level rise disaster somewhere. The reason is that it will take a disaster to generate the political will needed to spend time and money on this problem.
If anyone has any contrary views, I’d like to hear them.
Might I suggest Skeptical Science as an appropriate venue for you to air your questions? Over 4,000+ comment threads exist there on virtually every subject related to climate science.
The skeptic argument rebuttals contain 3 levels of technical presentation, so there is an understanding available for everyone.
Susan Andersonsays
Russell, thanks for the update, I’ll have to take a look. I don’t claim perfection for anyone, least of all myself (and including Oreskes and Russell), and I enjoy your writing. I would not condemn Oreskes’ overall conclusions based on a part she might have over- or misstated. Certainly each of us knows our own narrative better than any outsider, and if she misrepresented you it must be galling.* Personally, I found Mooney’s Republican War on Science most informative on that line of country. If you are who I think you are I know you are a conservative, and I am aware that the narrative around nuclear winter was miscast by all sides at various points (I may have read about this in Stephen Schneider?).
You interest me not least because you appear to stand for science and have accepted reality, unlike many to the right, and therefore represent a principled stance as far as I’ve been able to discern. I step gingerly, sometimes unwisely, because of my lack of higher-level science training – that part of the brain does not get better as one ages. Like you, I am related to a world of science and it is interesting to see when I can make valid contributions and have interesting conversations, and when it is beyond my ken. The area I am best at is drawing, intuition, and truth-finding; my years of teaching forced me to find ways to introduce high-level science students to their blind spots and because life drawing is such a great reality check.
*On misrepresenting others, I’d like to discourage those of us who know how a lot of money goes into the massive underpinnings of the fake skeptic movement from assuming that anyone regurgitating that information is paid or dishonest. They may be, or they may not be, but in most cases I believe they are just deceived and inadequately skeptical of the “side” they’d like to be right. Once a person who knows their own motivations has been miscast, it strengthens their resistance to real and useful information they need to look at, digest and absorb. Few people have enough amour propre to take false insults in their stride.
We don’t want to close doors. I agree with you on most issues, just not the approach. The choir is too small to promote effective action if we exclude any history we dislike.
#164 wili, “mass calamities do not stimulate thinking” , if true that is the problem.
Rain is a matter of cooler air, I suspect winter will end this drought, at least partially.
#170-171, we are doomed if mass climate calamities dont bring an iota of reasoning. Praying is good, but being responsible for what we do to our atmosphere would be, in the long term, a far better step in avoiding what we already told would happen.
Salutations from the Arctic, already transformed, when at this time Arctic cod have no other place than shore lines to feed and hide, no more multi-year pack ice homes for algae and everything feeding on it, In the Arctic where scenes of change are everywhere, we wish nothing like that to you wherever you may be.
#172 J Bowers, I like Nielsen-Gammon assessment, it turns out to be simple, more heat = more droughts, even next to the Gulf of Mexico with all sorts of water vapor.
Nuclear winter: science and politics
Brian Martin
Science and Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 5, October 1988, pp. 321-334. http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/88spp.html
The appendix reports on spin-checking of purported quotes, cautionary.
At a 1987 debate entitled ‘ Is ‘Nuclear Winter’ real and relevant ?’ , moderated curiously enough , by both Al Gores. Sr. & Jr., I remarked to Steve Schneider that the stability of strategic deterrence aside, Sagan was playing a joke on policy analysts at the expense of the credibility of climate modelers on the eve of the greenhouse debate.
When propaganda begets counterpropaganda, science tends to get caught in the crossfire, and though K Street can raise a formidable racket at the Koch’s behest, it sounds like a kazoo compared to the Soviet Union playing the peace movement full blast at the height of the Cold War.
[Response: Russell, you’re assuming your reader know all the details of the history here, but they don’t. If you want to bring up the nuclear winter question, fine. But if so, then cut out the obtuse statements and explain what you think the scientific issues are, for heavens sake. As for your previous comments, what ‘extraordinary claim’ did you think I made?
In any case, I’ve read Robock’s commentary and your reply, and I’m confused. Robock’s ~1°C drop is for a limited nuclear conflict; the TTAPS calculations were for a global nuclear war. It seems to me you are comparing apples with oranges (or rather MT with GT). Am I missing something? (Note, I’m not defending (nor attacking) Oreskes here; I have not gone and re-read what she wrote in her book about all this.)–eric]
flxiblesays
And a little good news about climate science and education: COBWEB, soon available at a school near you courtesy of Environment Canada and AIRS
siddsays
Mr. Wayne Davidson: Can you inform if remnants of the recent hurricanes produced rain over Greenland ?
The FBI is warning scholars to be wary of propaganda, but they end up being the ones to spread ignorant propaganda.
The book Comrade J quotes the “physicist” Russell Seitz who claims that nuclear winter research is based on “a notorious lack of scientific integrity” (176). However, Seitz does not have a Ph.D. in physics. [See Lawrence Badash, A Nuclear Winter’s Tale, page 249.]
I think it is possible that Seitz’s ideas about nuclear winter were attributed to the KGB defector Tretykov in order to give Seitz’s views credibility.
An Internet article titled “Debunking Pete Earley’s Comrade J” claims:
Most of Earley’s account is directly lifted from “The Scandal of Nuclear Winter” by Brad Sparks published in National Review (November 15, 1985), and “The Melting of ‘Nuclear Winter’” by R. Seitz published in The World [Sic?] Street Journal (December 12, 1986). [See page 10, “General Remarks.]
The author (above) may have confused his dates, because this copy on the Internet of Seitz’s article is dated November 5, 1986. I will try to sort out the confusion.
Strange that the FBI would malign Dr. Crutzen right when he was leading the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ workshop on the melting glaciers.
I do wonder what happened to the Russian scientist Vladimir Alexandrov.
“Gov. Nathan Deal has removed University of Georgia professor David Stooksbury as state climatologist, a position he has held for more than a decade.
Stooksbury only learned he had been booted Wednesday, the day after Deal appointed a meteorologist at the state Environmental Protection Division to the post, he said.
“There was word in June they were considering having the state climatologist report to EPD, but as far as what happened this week, I was totally blindsided,” Stooksbury said.
Deal announced his decision via an executive order posted Tuesday.
The office of the state climatologist has been headquartered at UGA for decades, but Deal believes it makes more sense to centralize the office in state government at the Environmental Protection Division, spokesman Brian Robinson said today.
“They just wanted to consolidate those functions at EPD,” Robinson said.
Assistant state climatologist Pam Knox will also lose her appointment, Robinson said.”
#188 sidd, entirely possible, happened before , didn’t follow up on them, its the cloudy season now. Wide open water and cool air dominates the Arctic, weather is foggy cloudy almost always, but I will keep an eye on the future ones, Irene was heading well North though.
Russian, U.S. scientists set to study methane release in Arctic
Professor Semiletov has been studying methane seepage in the region for the last 15 years, and leads the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS), which has launched a number of expeditions to the Arctic Ocean.
“The studies are reaching a more serious level. Many Russian and U.S. universities have joined the [ISSS] program bringing in the most advanced equipment which will allow us to study the structure of underwater permafrost with more precision,” Semiletov said. http://en.rian.ru/science/20110902/166364635.html
White Paper GeoPRISMS Planning Workshop for the Alaska Primary Site,
September 2011, Portland, Oregon
Linking arc volcanic fluxes and growth rates with Pleistocene climate change:
Marine tephrostratigraphy of the Aleutian‐Alaska volcanic arc
Susanne M. Straub and Gisela Winckler
Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, U.S.A.
The long‐standing observation that the frequency of arc volcanism changes
periodically in intensity has led to many hypotheses and models as to cause‐and‐effect
relationships and feedbacks mechanisms with the global climate (Cambray and Cadet,
1994; Jegen et al., 2010; Jicha et al., 2009; Kennett and Thunell, 1975; Prueher and Rea, 1998; Prueher and Rea, 2001). For example, global cooling has been proposed to follow the enhanced injection of climatically‐active gases and aerosols into the atmosphere (Jicha et al., 2009; Kennett and Thunell, 1975; Prueher and Rea, 1998; Prueher and Rea, 2001), that may possibly be followed by positive feedbacks, such as an increased albedo of snow covers and ice sheets, or the biological drawdown of CO2 driven by the release of nutrients from dissolving ash into the oceans (e.g. Jones and Gislason, 2008). In a recent study, Huybers and Langmuir (2009) proposed that glacially induced volcanism, triggered by the depressurization of the upper mantle increased the frequency of volcanic eruptions worldwide, and thus plays a key role in the atmospheric CO2 balance and ice‐age cycles. A link between arc volcanism and the 41 ka Milankovitch periodicity also emerges from a statistical evaluation of macroscopically visible marine tephra deposits near circum‐Pacific arcs (Jegen et al., 2010). On a more immediate scale, Tuffen (2010) concluded that ongoing glacier recession likely will result in intensification of eruptions worldwide, with a corresponding increase in associated hazards.
While these studies suggest causal links between volcanic frequency and climate
change, the global approaches remain inconclusive as to magnitude, causes and
feedback mechanisms. Testing time‐cause relationships between arc volcanism and
climate needs an integrated approach where reliable data on the frequency of arc
volcanism can be combined with data on volcanic emissions of climatically active
volatiles and arc growth rates, and in addition can be directly related to the other
parameters of climate change, such as ice volume data, IRD (ice‐rafted debris) input, etc..
We propose that the Pleistocene Aleutian‐Alaska arc system provides these
characteristics and therefore represents an ideal system for addressing a key question of the GeoPRISMS Draft Science Plan (Subduction and Deformation cycles): ‘How do surface processes and climate modulate volatile inputs and outputs at subducting margins and vice versa’ http://www.geoprisms.org/images/stories/documents/Alaska/Whitepapers/straub_and_winckler.pdf
Doug Bostromsays
Pete Dunkelberg says:
10 Sep 2011 at 3:38 PM
“GA State Climatologist dismissed.”
How convenient to have a state climatologist who can be silenced or fired at the whim of Georgia’s governor.
“Former Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) is a global warming conspiracy theorist, filing a “Climategate” petition against the EPA finding that greenhouse pollution endangers the public health and welfare: First, Climategate reveals a serious lack of integrity in the underlying data and models, such that it is doubtful that any process can be trusted until the data and models are validated and their integrity assured. Second, Climategate shows that the processes of peer review, consensus building, and scientific evaluation were fundamentally corrupted to the point that EPA should reconsider its reliance on the reports and analyses that led to the Endangerment Finding. Third, Climategate reveals a disturbing, anti-scientific compulsion for mandatory orthodoxy. [Petition for Reconsideration, 12/23/09]”
This is exactly the situation tenure was intended to address, and why a tenured professor at a major university is useful climatologist when reporting to political factions. And of course, that’s exactly why Deal wanted this change implemented.
This sort of eliminationist tactic seems to be a growing phenomenon. Has anybody noticed, CEI is now calling for the elimination of the National Weather Service?
I was noting elsewhere that half the planet’s primary production comes from plankton, and the plankton lives about a week so it’s constantly under selection pressure.
“This sort of eliminationist tactic seems to be a growing phenomenon.”
I wouldn’t be surprised, although as a tactic it’s pretty much business as usual for the crony capital segment of society. For several decades now there have been increased efforts, some more benign than others but all moving in group-think lockstep, to engineer a certain kind of ideological thinking into US institutions. Note the expunging of RINOs, and the activities of lobbyists, the Federalist Society, Fox news, and televangelists just for starters. The scientific community is the about the only major institution left that’s still relatively uncorrupted. That’s even though it’s being attacked left, right and center and already seems to be crumbling around the alt-med edges. Here’s hoping it can hold out.
Richard Birdsays
Daniel Bailey 177: “Might I suggest Skeptical Science as an appropriate venue for you to air your questions? ”
Very good site with well presented information, very clearly set out. Thanks, and I would certainly recommend that site to others with a general interest in climate change.
Hello Richard Bird,
. However it is seemingly impossible to carry out experimental verification of the derived Co2 forcing model in the field without eliminating all other factors such as water vapour, other gases, etc. In this regard CLOUD currently seems to have the advantage in terms of potential for experimental verification. Are any plans in progress to overcome this difficulty wrt co2 forcing models?
I would heartly recommend working through a textbook first.”Principles of Planetary Climate” from Raymond Pierrehumbert is first class if You want to connect to the physics, IMHO
Cheers,
Marcus
Richard,
If you explain what you mean by the “derived CO2 forcing model”, perhaps progress may be made. It will probably turn out to be either (a) apples to oranges or (b) well understood and long since experimentally verified when compared with what CLOUD is about.
Radge Havers wrote: “… one of the things that makes the propaganda so intractable is that it’s tailored to fit into people’s already existing blind spots and faulty thinking …”
That’s important to remember. The denier talking points don’t just arise spontaneously. They are the result of a lot of research, polling, focus group testing and other sophisticated tools that the most insidious minds of Madison Avenue have spent decades developing precisely to exploit “people’s already existing blind spots and faulty thinking”.
ExxonMobil and Koch Industries don’t give millions of dollars to those propaganda mills a.k.a. “think tanks” for nothing.
Congratulations, Gavin, on the quotes in USA Today. Nice that they took a couple whole paragraphs instead of trying to squash you into a one-sentence soundbite, like usual.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/09/climate-report-links-2011-extreme-weather-events-to-global-warming/1
SA @ 152
I agree with what you said, though I think sometimes the propagandists must take advantage of stuff that’s already out there and pounce on any opportunity to pound it home.
I’ve sat in fairly innocuous meetings where somebody suddenly and heroically pulled some piece nonsense out of their backside, only to watch it go from garbage to gospel in less than 0.5 sec. flat. This usually involved either avoiding work, shifting responsibility for something outside the group, or scapegoating.
Humans seem to be a b.s. emitting species. And of course science is the best remedy for that so far…
Surprising NCAR finding: shift from coal to natural gas would slightly *accelerate* climate change through at least 2050: http://bit.ly/NgasCC
Dear Dr. Schmidt:
Did you say lately about climate “My thinking has evolved.” If so, what did you mean?
[Response: It was in response to the possibility of fractionally attributing extreme events to anthropogenic forcings. I used to think this was too difficult to do, but I now think that, at least in some cases, it can be done reasonably. Some more thoughts on this are available here. – gavin]
Unrelated sorry but I wasn’t sure where else to post…does anybody here have the time and expertise to review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period ? There are a number of links to peer-reviewed articles in particular that on first glance don’t obviously seem to be relevant references to the points made in the article. Thanks.
I’d add that some of those who accept the anti-factoids proliferating in the reverse-science hotairosphere are unable to face an unbearable reality. I suffer a bit from that myself, but it doesn’t push me to lie to myself. However without specific education most people find the available and plausible looking alternative explanations comforting and don’t want to look closely at the possibility they might not be truthful.
For John Burgeson, estimates vary:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22sea+level%22+%2Bgreenland+%2Bantarctica&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2011&as_vis=0
Older, typical: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm
Newer: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110728144727.htm
I should like to thank Susan Anderson for alerting me to the existence of an improbable addition to to ‘the reverse-science hotairosphere- the section of Naomi Oreskes book that , while quarrying my 1987 narrative of the nuclear winter controversy , refuses to communicate its conclusions, electing instead to misrepresents them by ellipsis so extreme as to recall the better efforts of Marc Morano.
If Susan would care to compare Oreskes anti-historical tirade with the primary source it traduces , I will cheerfully send along a pdf so she may judge for herself.
The copy provided Oreskes weeks ago has thus failed to appear on the Corrections page of her book’s website. I hope to have it resurrected from the publisher’s pre-electronic archive and scanned for posting on The National Interest website before the year is out.
[Response: Claims of anyone ‘refusing’ to do something usually say more about the claimant than the accused. Care to be more specific about what you allege Naomi gets wrong? We have a great deal of local expertise on nuclear winter around here, so it will be easy for us to check up on the facts.–eric]
@ wizofaus 157. In case it’s something to do with Romans growing vines in Britain, have a read of The Agricola by Tacitus, Book 1 [10], written around 98 AD.
“With the exception of the olive and vine, and plants which usually grow in warmer climates, the soil will yield, and even abundantly, all ordinary produce.”
By the 3rd Century it looks like they were cultivating vines in Britain, but that’s near the end of the “RWP”, and the evidence from the ground goes as far as the Midlands in England last I read.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/17/science/science-and-politics-nuclear-winter-clash.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm
—-
… One physicist, S. Fred Singer of George Mason University in Virginia, went so far today as to suggest that unappreciated warming effects would overwhelm the cooling effects, leading to a net warming trend. Explosions and fires would send vast amounts of water vapor into the upper stratosphere, causing a greenhouse effect, he said, and smoke clouds would add to the heating by absorbing infrared rays.
Dr. Schneider dismissed that possibility, calling it the “infrared herring.”
—-
#156, Gavin’s thoughts are online, clear, concise and evolving, but always maintaining the inevitable results which actually have happened within the lifespan of RC. However I rather hear the thoughts from Texans, right in the middle of their worst drought in history. Have they evolved? Or is the majority of anti AGW Texans stuck in the mud turned into in deep denial drought cement? I think its important that nature’s signals are properly understood. It is easy for me in the way Northern world to report dramatic climate changes they are as clear as black on white, rocks revealed in the water wakes from once bright in the sun glaciers. It is exceedingly maddening to observe recent events of mass Arctic melts and relate them to only those with ears, especially not busy confusing themselves with political stupid backwards nonsense. Like we live on a different planet, so few people in the Arctic, hardly a match for the billions down south with a few seconds of our time seen world wide during any given year. Not so few folks in Texas though, I would rather just read if they the lone star contrarians got the proverbial message making them more susceptible to accept climate science as a little more than a con job? We tried to convince, but I suspect mass calamities a bit more stimulating for thinking. At least the warnings abound, what we do with them is a matter of action from reasoning.
Wayne, mass calamities do not stimulate thinking, in general. They are more likely to produce fear, hate, and falling back on basic intuitions, superstitions, religious comforts…
http://photoblog.statesman.com/dry-season-the-texas-drought-of-2011
Look at the letters to get an idea of what the average tone of the people from the area.
Earlier there was at least one question about projected sea levels. One possible answer is by looking in the past: The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3 Ma–3 Ma) was 2–3 °C higher than today[1], global sea level 25m higher … from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate
which offers a potential prognostication.
160
That’s an extraordinary claim, Eric. Perhaps you should examine the evidence first.
Having challenged what Sagan called his ‘Apocalyptic conclusions ‘ in Foreign Affairs, in 1984, and Nature in 1985 and 86, and participated in the Defense Nuclear Agency follow-up to TTAPS, in 1987 , while at Harvard’s CFIA I wrote a lengthy essay in The National Interest reporting what I had learned not only about the underlying model and the attendant scientific controversy – specifically the iteration of often unrealistic worst-case parameters to yield enormous optical depths and radiative forcings , but also about how a lack of transparency, that would scandalize those used to IPCC best practices , withholding the 1-d model software , for instance , and the misrepresentation of a 1-D model as ’sophisticated’, was compounded by accelerated peer review and the hiring of a PR firm to put political spin on the science before the fact of its publication.
This led to an extraordinary media spectacle that elevated statistically implausible outliers to the status of hard scientific facts in the popular imagination. It also seems extraordinary that , despite the controversy , the original authors were called upon to write a review article summarizing it the journal in which it originally appeared. Although many of the harshest criticisms of the media hype surrounding ‘Nuclear Winter came from indignant peace movement activists loathe to see disarmament predicated on mythology, and some , e.g. senior Science writer Eliot Marshall’s essay ‘The Little Chill ‘ appeared in liberal journals, Oreskes remains in deep denial as to the bipartisan nature of the critique.
Accusing me of rejecting science in general while failing to quote one intact sentence out of a 7,000 word article seems to me prima facie evidence of the corrosion of Naomi’s ordinary respect for historiography by her book’s clearly polemic intent. It is ironic that the unfortunate example of serial media hype and scientific stonewalling that began on an earlier battlefield of the Climate Wars should recrudesce in the parallel PR tactics of today. Instead of learning the lessons of the ‘nuclear winter ‘ fiasco many seem to view it as a potentially profitable example of how to sell science , good or bad.
I expect you will now refer us to Alan Robock’s Comment piece in Nature. (Nature 473, 275–276; 2011). I suggest you read my reply in the July 7 issue as well.
Let me add that find his invocation of solar heating induced soot cloud buoyancy at low optical depths about as compelling as Spencer’s views on cloud feedback, But then, at least Alan got the sign right. Unless the rebarbative reality of positive forcing by tropospheric black carbon comes into play– some things remain intrinsically pretty uncertain.
including the optical depth of the fog of the Climate Wars
Russell@160 would be Russell Seitz? I thought discussion of his “1987 narrative” was published in Science and Public Policy.
158 Susan Anderson: Most people do lie to themselves. See 164 willi.
Ray Ladbury: post 147. I must correct, I am not ‘arguing about the physics’. I have gone to Start Here and followed many of the links. I have read the relevant IPCC publications, in fact that was my starting point some months ago. I can well understand the reaction in these pages to what may appear to be ‘familiar denialist arguments’. My questions do not arise from reading skeptic websites, but from occasional questions which have arisen in my own mind. I am sorry if they have been asked before.
As for my role in the Ski Club, (raised by someone else) we are all volunteers. I am not a spokesman for the Club. My role is to coordinate the work of the working group. We deal with many environmental issues. Global warming is just one of them. The Club annually donates funds to support worthy environmental projects. These include ‘concrete’ projects such as installation of hydroelectric and solar systems to reduce the fuel needs of mountain refuges, and ‘academic’ projects examining aspects of climate change and its possible effect upon snow sports. We are also concerned with local pollution, protection of habitat and wildlife, the future of alpine communities dependent on snow sports, and many other issues. Climate change is one issue amongst many. I make no apologies for not being a qualified climate scientist.
Re experimental verification, I took this up from one of the links given in Start Here, or one of the sub-links (sorry I can’t trace which one right now). The intentionally flippant point was made there that it would be “ideal” to do a field experiment to verify the predictions of models in terms of net heat energy released to space in relation to varying Co2 concentrations, but removing all other elements from the atmosphere to do that was rather difficult, to say the least. Accepted that observations correlate with the model predictions, but in terms of scientific knowledge there is usually great value arising from controlled experiments, even perhaps some surprises. CLOUD seems to present an opportunity to carry out controlled experiments to test the basis of a particular theory in a simulated atmosphere. Hence my question as to whether there have been, or any plans for, similar controlled experiments to test the predictions of the NET warming effect of Co2 and/or to see what comes out of the testing. All part of the knowledge base, I can’t personally conceive of how that could be done in practice,but maybe others can or have.. it’s just a question, not a ‘ denial’ of anything. I hope that clarifies my question.
Wayne, mass calamities do not stimulate thinking, in general. They are more likely to produce fear, hate, and falling back on basic intuitions, superstitions, religious comforts… – wili
I think this is a matter for empirical investigation, which AFAIK has not been done – I’d be interested to learn details if I’m wrong. I suspect that the psycho-social effects of a “mass calamity” (and BTW, on the global scale, the Texas drought and wildfires are pretty small beer, scant consolation though that will be to those who have lost relatives or homes) are highly dependent on both the nature and scale of the calamity, and the economic, political and cultural context.
Wili @ 164, and others who generalize that way about people:
Over decades put planet has kept warming, oceans, air, boreholes, melting ice …. could it all be just an internal variation of the climate system? No, the system can not be warming itself. Conservation of energy. Where is the energy coming from? Greenhouse gasses are increasing and thus trapping more of the solar energy stream.
Likewise, people in general are not in this case driving themselves nuts, they are being driven (forced, a climatologist might say) by the disinformation industry.
John Nielsen-Gammon gives a good and clear appraisal of the Texas drought at his blog, sparked by the response to his outlier post.
Richard Bird:
The chance that you’ve independently come up with a smorgasbord of common denialist themes on your own from your studying of the information on this site and IPCC documents is nil.
I think you’re just trolling.
Richard Bird,
We knew CO2 was a greenhouse gas in the 1850s. That means we could measure the fact that it trapped radiation even if we didn’t know exactly what that radiation was.
In 1896, we knew enough for Svante Arrhenius to proclaim confidently that burning of fossil fuels by humans would raise Earth’s temperature–that’s 115 years ago.
It is quite easy to measure the IR radiation absorbed by CO2 or by any mix of gasses under controlled laboratory conditions. We have measured the response of the atmosphere to increasing or decreasing energy. Likewise the oceans, ice caps, etc. We know how the climate responds to CO2 and we can follow the carbon cycle with pretty good precision. We even have over a dozen independent lines of evidence that allow us to quantify climate sensitivity–and amazingly, the results are quite consistent for all these lines of evidence.
So, we have done carefully controlled experiments and analyses of all the pieces to the puzzle. What we cannot do is reconstruct Earth in the lab so we see how all those pieces interact. To do that we have to reconstruct Earth in a global climate model. We put in all the physics that we have measured in those controlled experiments and turn the damn thing on. Because Earth’s climate is such a complicated system, it is extremely unlikely that we will get something that looks like Earth by accident. If our model looks Earth-like, it is a very good indication that we are getting the most important pieces of the model right. It does and we are.
I stress: None of this is at all controversial for anyone who knows jacksh** about Earth’s climate. It is all established science. What is more, CO2 as a well mixed, long-lived greenhouse gas has very obvious fingerprints in both current climate and in the paleoclimate. It sticks out like a sore thumb.
Richard, I want you to think about this. Over 97% of climate scientists agree with the consensus model of Earth’s climate and its inescapable conclusion that we are warming the planet. Denialists try to make it sound like they are committing fraud to get funding. This is not just a lie, it is absurd. And even this absurd accusation would not explain why every National Academy, every relevant professional and honorific society of scientists also buys into the consensus. These are people who not only understand the science, but who are directly harmed if climate change is true, since mitigating it will take money away from their fields of study.
The controversy surrounding climate science is not about science. We know the science. The controversy is there because the denialists are lying.
.
Re sea level rise:
Having studied and written about this subject full-time for 1 1/2 years now, it is clear to me that (with the likely exception of the Netherlands and the partial exception of the United Kingdom) no national government is going to anything significant about sea level rise until and unless there is a major sea level rise disaster somewhere. The reason is that it will take a disaster to generate the political will needed to spend time and money on this problem.
If anyone has any contrary views, I’d like to hear them.
@ Richard Bird
Might I suggest Skeptical Science as an appropriate venue for you to air your questions? Over 4,000+ comment threads exist there on virtually every subject related to climate science.
The skeptic argument rebuttals contain 3 levels of technical presentation, so there is an understanding available for everyone.
Russell, thanks for the update, I’ll have to take a look. I don’t claim perfection for anyone, least of all myself (and including Oreskes and Russell), and I enjoy your writing. I would not condemn Oreskes’ overall conclusions based on a part she might have over- or misstated. Certainly each of us knows our own narrative better than any outsider, and if she misrepresented you it must be galling.* Personally, I found Mooney’s Republican War on Science most informative on that line of country. If you are who I think you are I know you are a conservative, and I am aware that the narrative around nuclear winter was miscast by all sides at various points (I may have read about this in Stephen Schneider?).
You interest me not least because you appear to stand for science and have accepted reality, unlike many to the right, and therefore represent a principled stance as far as I’ve been able to discern. I step gingerly, sometimes unwisely, because of my lack of higher-level science training – that part of the brain does not get better as one ages. Like you, I am related to a world of science and it is interesting to see when I can make valid contributions and have interesting conversations, and when it is beyond my ken. The area I am best at is drawing, intuition, and truth-finding; my years of teaching forced me to find ways to introduce high-level science students to their blind spots and because life drawing is such a great reality check.
*On misrepresenting others, I’d like to discourage those of us who know how a lot of money goes into the massive underpinnings of the fake skeptic movement from assuming that anyone regurgitating that information is paid or dishonest. They may be, or they may not be, but in most cases I believe they are just deceived and inadequately skeptical of the “side” they’d like to be right. Once a person who knows their own motivations has been miscast, it strengthens their resistance to real and useful information they need to look at, digest and absorb. Few people have enough amour propre to take false insults in their stride.
167 flxible 11:59 PM:
Please do not assume that people are one-dimensional. re Russell Seitz, I suggest reading these:
http://takimag.com/article/the_rights_science_problem
http://takimag.com/article/a_vast_mass_of_gas
We don’t want to close doors. I agree with you on most issues, just not the approach. The choir is too small to promote effective action if we exclude any history we dislike.
168 Edward Greisch 12:22 AM:
Yes, we are all human and have blind spots. This might be the place to ask you to respond, elsewhere, to my response which I believe you never saw:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/06/02/will-the-ipcc-be-ready-to-communicate-about-its-fifth-assessment-report/#comment-104076
167
Oreskes & Conway also neglected to cite Martin 1988
#164 wili, “mass calamities do not stimulate thinking” , if true that is the problem.
Rain is a matter of cooler air, I suspect winter will end this drought, at least partially.
#170-171, we are doomed if mass climate calamities dont bring an iota of reasoning. Praying is good, but being responsible for what we do to our atmosphere would be, in the long term, a far better step in avoiding what we already told would happen.
Salutations from the Arctic, already transformed, when at this time Arctic cod have no other place than shore lines to feed and hide, no more multi-year pack ice homes for algae and everything feeding on it, In the Arctic where scenes of change are everywhere, we wish nothing like that to you wherever you may be.
#172 J Bowers, I like Nielsen-Gammon assessment, it turns out to be simple, more heat = more droughts, even next to the Gulf of Mexico with all sorts of water vapor.
> Martin 1988
Probably a reference to:
Nuclear winter: science and politics
Brian Martin
Science and Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 5, October 1988, pp. 321-334.
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/88spp.html
The appendix reports on spin-checking of purported quotes, cautionary.
Robock does cite Martin 1988
possible good news vs malaria:
http://www.umm.edu/news/releases/whole-parasite-vaccine.htm
[Response: Terrific. And completely OT–Jim]
177
At a 1987 debate entitled ‘ Is ‘Nuclear Winter’ real and relevant ?’ , moderated curiously enough , by both Al Gores. Sr. & Jr., I remarked to Steve Schneider that the stability of strategic deterrence aside, Sagan was playing a joke on policy analysts at the expense of the credibility of climate modelers on the eve of the greenhouse debate.
When propaganda begets counterpropaganda, science tends to get caught in the crossfire, and though K Street can raise a formidable racket at the Koch’s behest, it sounds like a kazoo compared to the Soviet Union playing the peace movement full blast at the height of the Cold War.
[Response: Russell, you’re assuming your reader know all the details of the history here, but they don’t. If you want to bring up the nuclear winter question, fine. But if so, then cut out the obtuse statements and explain what you think the scientific issues are, for heavens sake. As for your previous comments, what ‘extraordinary claim’ did you think I made?
In any case, I’ve read Robock’s commentary and your reply, and I’m confused. Robock’s ~1°C drop is for a limited nuclear conflict; the TTAPS calculations were for a global nuclear war. It seems to me you are comparing apples with oranges (or rather MT with GT). Am I missing something? (Note, I’m not defending (nor attacking) Oreskes here; I have not gone and re-read what she wrote in her book about all this.)–eric]
And a little good news about climate science and education: COBWEB, soon available at a school near you courtesy of Environment Canada and AIRS
Mr. Wayne Davidson: Can you inform if remnants of the recent hurricanes produced rain over Greenland ?
The fact that the USSR would exploit nuclear winter for propaganda against US missiles in Europe does not make nuclear winter a KGB hoax.
The Russian propaganda was not so loud.
The missiles were put in, and Gorbachev negotiated some reductions.
I think this KGB defector Sergei Tretyakov who wrote about the “hoax” of nuclear winter was full of baloney. I just wonder WHOSE BALONEY it is.
I note that some moron in the FBI seems to think this defector’s book has some merit.
Shouldn’t the FBI check with the NAS and the Pentagon before calling nuclear winter a KGB hoax and Paul Crutzen a unwitting KGB dupe.
The FBI even mischaracterized what the KGB defector’s book actually said.
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2011/06/higher-education-and-national-security.html
The FBI is warning scholars to be wary of propaganda, but they end up being the ones to spread ignorant propaganda.
The book Comrade J quotes the “physicist” Russell Seitz who claims that nuclear winter research is based on “a notorious lack of scientific integrity” (176). However, Seitz does not have a Ph.D. in physics. [See Lawrence Badash, A Nuclear Winter’s Tale, page 249.]
I think it is possible that Seitz’s ideas about nuclear winter were attributed to the KGB defector Tretykov in order to give Seitz’s views credibility.
An Internet article titled “Debunking Pete Earley’s Comrade J” claims:
Most of Earley’s account is directly lifted from “The Scandal of Nuclear Winter” by Brad Sparks published in National Review (November 15, 1985), and “The Melting of ‘Nuclear Winter’” by R. Seitz published in The World [Sic?] Street Journal (December 12, 1986). [See page 10, “General Remarks.]
The author (above) may have confused his dates, because this copy on the Internet of Seitz’s article is dated November 5, 1986. I will try to sort out the confusion.
Strange that the FBI would malign Dr. Crutzen right when he was leading the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ workshop on the melting glaciers.
I do wonder what happened to the Russian scientist Vladimir Alexandrov.
To be clear, Fred Seitz is dead.
GA State Climatologist dismissed.
“Gov. Nathan Deal has removed University of Georgia professor David Stooksbury as state climatologist, a position he has held for more than a decade.
Stooksbury only learned he had been booted Wednesday, the day after Deal appointed a meteorologist at the state Environmental Protection Division to the post, he said.
“There was word in June they were considering having the state climatologist report to EPD, but as far as what happened this week, I was totally blindsided,” Stooksbury said.
Deal announced his decision via an executive order posted Tuesday.
The office of the state climatologist has been headquartered at UGA for decades, but Deal believes it makes more sense to centralize the office in state government at the Environmental Protection Division, spokesman Brian Robinson said today.
“They just wanted to consolidate those functions at EPD,” Robinson said.
Assistant state climatologist Pam Knox will also lose her appointment, Robinson said.”
#188 sidd, entirely possible, happened before , didn’t follow up on them, its the cloudy season now. Wide open water and cool air dominates the Arctic, weather is foggy cloudy almost always, but I will keep an eye on the future ones, Irene was heading well North though.
Sensitivity of temperature and precipitation to frequency of climate forcing: Doug MacMynowski http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJv4zL1HR70
Russian, U.S. scientists set to study methane release in Arctic
Professor Semiletov has been studying methane seepage in the region for the last 15 years, and leads the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS), which has launched a number of expeditions to the Arctic Ocean.
“The studies are reaching a more serious level. Many Russian and U.S. universities have joined the [ISSS] program bringing in the most advanced equipment which will allow us to study the structure of underwater permafrost with more precision,” Semiletov said. http://en.rian.ru/science/20110902/166364635.html
How active is the alaska seismic?
http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/seis/recenteqs/index.html
What kind of evidence is required to tie earthquake activity to destabilizing clathrates or orogenic rebound?
Rapid viscoelastic uplift in southeast Alaska caused
by post-Little Ice Age glacial retreat
Our observations show that extreme uplift in southeast Alaska began about 1770 AD, with relative sea level (RSL) change to 5.7 m and current uplift rates to 32 mm/yr. This region experienced widespread glacial melting following the Little Ice Age (LIA), with the collapse of the Glacier Bay Icefield alone equivalent to 8 mm of global sea level rise. Geodynamic modelling links the uplift to post-LIA isostatic rebound, with the extreme uplift signal and a priori knowledge of ice load changes requiring the presence of a low viscosity asthenosphere (3.7 Â 1018 Pa s). These crustal deformations are triggered by climate change through glacier wastage. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CFMQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aeic.alaska.edu%2Finput%2Fchris%2Fepsl_larsen.pdf&rct=j&q=geodynamic%20boundary%20climate%20change%20alaska&ei=8RBsTt6yBMXLtAaS_42_BA&usg=AFQjCNH4Jb-lM7kFpGPt6LTVm9vMyO6q0g&cad=rja
White Paper GeoPRISMS Planning Workshop for the Alaska Primary Site,
September 2011, Portland, Oregon
Linking arc volcanic fluxes and growth rates with Pleistocene climate change:
Marine tephrostratigraphy of the Aleutian‐Alaska volcanic arc
Susanne M. Straub and Gisela Winckler
Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, U.S.A.
The long‐standing observation that the frequency of arc volcanism changes
periodically in intensity has led to many hypotheses and models as to cause‐and‐effect
relationships and feedbacks mechanisms with the global climate (Cambray and Cadet,
1994; Jegen et al., 2010; Jicha et al., 2009; Kennett and Thunell, 1975; Prueher and Rea, 1998; Prueher and Rea, 2001). For example, global cooling has been proposed to follow the enhanced injection of climatically‐active gases and aerosols into the atmosphere (Jicha et al., 2009; Kennett and Thunell, 1975; Prueher and Rea, 1998; Prueher and Rea, 2001), that may possibly be followed by positive feedbacks, such as an increased albedo of snow covers and ice sheets, or the biological drawdown of CO2 driven by the release of nutrients from dissolving ash into the oceans (e.g. Jones and Gislason, 2008). In a recent study, Huybers and Langmuir (2009) proposed that glacially induced volcanism, triggered by the depressurization of the upper mantle increased the frequency of volcanic eruptions worldwide, and thus plays a key role in the atmospheric CO2 balance and ice‐age cycles. A link between arc volcanism and the 41 ka Milankovitch periodicity also emerges from a statistical evaluation of macroscopically visible marine tephra deposits near circum‐Pacific arcs (Jegen et al., 2010). On a more immediate scale, Tuffen (2010) concluded that ongoing glacier recession likely will result in intensification of eruptions worldwide, with a corresponding increase in associated hazards.
While these studies suggest causal links between volcanic frequency and climate
change, the global approaches remain inconclusive as to magnitude, causes and
feedback mechanisms. Testing time‐cause relationships between arc volcanism and
climate needs an integrated approach where reliable data on the frequency of arc
volcanism can be combined with data on volcanic emissions of climatically active
volatiles and arc growth rates, and in addition can be directly related to the other
parameters of climate change, such as ice volume data, IRD (ice‐rafted debris) input, etc..
We propose that the Pleistocene Aleutian‐Alaska arc system provides these
characteristics and therefore represents an ideal system for addressing a key question of the GeoPRISMS Draft Science Plan (Subduction and Deformation cycles): ‘How do surface processes and climate modulate volatile inputs and outputs at subducting margins and vice versa’
http://www.geoprisms.org/images/stories/documents/Alaska/Whitepapers/straub_and_winckler.pdf
Pete Dunkelberg says:
10 Sep 2011 at 3:38 PM
“GA State Climatologist dismissed.”
How convenient to have a state climatologist who can be silenced or fired at the whim of Georgia’s governor.
“Former Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) is a global warming conspiracy theorist, filing a “Climategate” petition against the EPA finding that greenhouse pollution endangers the public health and welfare:
First, Climategate reveals a serious lack of integrity in the underlying data and models, such that it is doubtful that any process can be trusted until the data and models are validated and their integrity assured. Second, Climategate shows that the processes of peer review, consensus building, and scientific evaluation were fundamentally corrupted to the point that EPA should reconsider its reliance on the reports and analyses that led to the Endangerment Finding. Third, Climategate reveals a disturbing, anti-scientific compulsion for mandatory orthodoxy. [Petition for Reconsideration, 12/23/09]”
ThinkProgress
This is exactly the situation tenure was intended to address, and why a tenured professor at a major university is useful climatologist when reporting to political factions. And of course, that’s exactly why Deal wanted this change implemented.
This sort of eliminationist tactic seems to be a growing phenomenon. Has anybody noticed, CEI is now calling for the elimination of the National Weather Service?
I was noting elsewhere that half the planet’s primary production comes from plankton, and the plankton lives about a week so it’s constantly under selection pressure.
Today I came across this geoengineering idea from Russell Seitz — modifying the surface of the oceans with persistent white foam to increase the planet’s albedo: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10913404277931488173&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5
Seitz: Bright water: hydrosols, water conservation and climate change
Robock has commented: http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:PyubwKbU96wJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
I’d love to see what the plankton scientists make of the idea.
John Cook, creator of the extraordinary Skeptical Science site, has just won a highly prestigious and well deserved Australian science award. If you are not already familiar with Skeptical Science get over there right now.
Doug Bostrom @ 196
I wouldn’t be surprised, although as a tactic it’s pretty much business as usual for the crony capital segment of society. For several decades now there have been increased efforts, some more benign than others but all moving in group-think lockstep, to engineer a certain kind of ideological thinking into US institutions. Note the expunging of RINOs, and the activities of lobbyists, the Federalist Society, Fox news, and televangelists just for starters. The scientific community is the about the only major institution left that’s still relatively uncorrupted. That’s even though it’s being attacked left, right and center and already seems to be crumbling around the alt-med edges. Here’s hoping it can hold out.
Daniel Bailey 177: “Might I suggest Skeptical Science as an appropriate venue for you to air your questions? ”
Very good site with well presented information, very clearly set out. Thanks, and I would certainly recommend that site to others with a general interest in climate change.