I think the first reference was to ocean heat below 300 meters, not the deepest ocean. Will heat from a little below 300 meters come to the surface in the next strong El Niño? How deep is the Pacific warm pool?
This strong current was there all along, and the southern ocean is not emptying out, so there is also more incoming water than previously thought, and it is probably not from the very deepest ocean but not just a surface current either. If this water gets just a bit warmer what might happen? It might undermine the Pine Island Glacier: Observations beneath Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and implications for its retreat, see also this. In broad terms the ocean is our great heat reservoir, evidently a heat sink except during El Niño. But putting heat in the ocean is not a free pass to get out of global warming.
A bigger flux into the deep ocean, slows the progress to the new equilibrium and implies we have more warming in the pipeline (given constant forcings).
So how much the surface will eventually warm simply depends on the top-of-atmosphere imbalance, not on how much heat goes into the ocean.
No hurry, though—anything that might slow the surface warming from the unprecedented-and-likely-catastrophic rates we’re looking at sounds good to me. But how much might we be talking about? I don’t have Nature Climate Change access, alas, but the ScienceDaily story on Meehl et al. mentioned that
one simulation showed the global average rising by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) between 2000 and 2100, but with two decade-long hiatus periods during the century.
That doesn’t sound like all that much of a break to me.
ldavidcookesays
Re:301
Hey Pete,
I had been researching the NOAA Triton buoys for over 8 years now. Considering select buoys that have been in place since about 1996 I have reviewed the various measures across an array both North and South of the Equator from abot 92deg. W through 154deg.W. Through out that time the greatest depth of the 20deg. isotherm appears to be the 97-98 year. Yes, there have been years with near equivalent levels; (IE: 2005); however not as wide spread. If we look at the SST variables there have been a number of peaks that were equivalent to the 97-98 record, though the values do appear to return to normal seasonality with a slight upward trend and then a trouth occurs and the trend resets.
As the data sets there are nearing statistic significance it suggests that there appears to be a normal variation with little to no trend based on a 0.5 deg. trend resolution. Does this invalidate the ARGO system, no, it just seems to demonstrate there is a flux in the values and to a large extent track with the ENSO.
If by the same token we monitor the NCAR SST monthly anomolies there does appear to be a similar pattern in the Pacific. I think the issue is the rate of change from one state to the other will likely be our biggest indicator of a probale warming condition with the warmer condition being dominant.
It is entirely likely that during a negative PDO/ENSO cycle that conditions could feed warmer water to the poles enhancing ice melt, which cools the ocean waters. During periods of positve PDO/ENSO may concentrate the heat along the equator driving Tropical Storm transport of ocean heat towards the poles at an elevated altitude, (NASA did an expedition that observed very warm moisture laden air over the polar regions several years ago.), where the latent heat could more readily radiate out. It would appear the main issue is the intermodal or neutral condition whether moving positive from a negative or negative from a positive state that most of the heat appeared to increase in the temperate region which appears to be incorporated in the THC currents.
In short, yes, there appears to be warming; yet, at the same time offsets that reduce the heat. During intermodal states it appears that much of the heat is incorporated in the THC; however, the added salinity of evaporation during these periods appears to support the THC current though at an elevated heat content. I think the question of mixing or thermal emission is very small, hence, deep ocean sequestration of the heat appears to be a reality.
BTW I was in error in a earlier statement regardong the NOAA/Woodshole measurements @2003-05 deep ocean temperature measures were cooling between 1700-2300 meters not feet.
Dave (#303), I have no idea what this means: “the added salinity of evaporation during these periods appears to support the THC current though at an elevated heat content.”
ldavidcookesays
Re:304
Hey Kevin,
During intermodal or neutral ENSO conditions moving from a positive to a negative mode usually results in a region of High Pressure in the Norwegian/Barents Seas during the Spring and Summer months. Higher temperatures drive high amounts of evaporation resulting in high levels of salinity.
Of course you are familiar with how cooling of the sea surfaces cause super cooled brine to precipitate out of the surface waters and sink to the basin depths. Likewise evaporation increases salinity; (However, it is also warmer so at lower latitudes it does not precipitate out.)
However, as this more saline water pulse enters the Barents it quickly loses its heat and sinks. The difference is that it is pre-concentrated if you will, hence it will precipitate out earlier and warmer the normal saline sea water. This then incorporates greater heat in the THC at an equivalent salinity.
The remaining fresher, warmer surface water then rapidly moves across the cooler saline water driven by the elevated Easterlies, increasing melt in the region. Of course I am stating this as though it is an absolute which it is not.
This is just based on a study of observations and study regarding papers written over the last 8 years which has led me to this conclusion. My apologies if I have misrepresented the data.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
ccposays
@270 Cooke:
Mumbo jumbo. The problem is not with the science, it is with your interpretation of it. That you claim it can’t be, or is unlikely to be, GHGs is just ridiculous. The primary driver of warming is, and this comes straight from the science, “unambigous”ly GHGs.
When you start with an obviously false premise, as you are, much BS can be made to seem diamonds, but wishing isn’t proving. And, given your premise is so obviously incorrect, I simply do not believe you don’t understand this, which begs the question, why would you make such easily falsified claims? And if you cannot understand the most basic element of climate science, discussing anything beyond that threshold cannot possibly be productive because the foundation is nothing but fallacious thinking.
For the last time, please stop pretending you are discovering something important that is not being fairly considered. It’s just a form of dishonesty. Our good hosts here and the fine scientists elsewhere are diligent, serious and meticulous. Quit insulting their efforts and our intelligence. You are not here to learn, imo. You are a denialist thrilled to be taking up so much space here and exposing unsuspecting newbies to your fallacies wrapped in scientific sounding jargon.
#305–Thanks for expanding. That’s a bit easier to parse.
ldavidcookesays
Hey Kevin,
It kind of tracks with why the 2005 and 08 papers suggesting the stopping of the THC by high SSTs did not bear out. Though the “Chimneys” the scientists were expecting had dropped in count/flow the total flow of saline brine was not reduced, just less centralized.
Cheers!
Dave
CMsays
“When there’s a news story about a study overturning all of physics, I used to urge caution, remind people that experts aren’t all stupid, and end up in pointless arguments about Galileo…”
Hey, I bet it’s the neutrinos that are doing the warming, I mean, they interact with cosmic rays, or something, don’t they?!
siddsays
A model for methane release from hydrates
“…strongly suggest that hydrate dissociation and methane release as a result of climate change may be a real phenomenon, that it could occur on decadal timescales, and that it already may be occurring.”
I’m having some diffisulty in understanding just how the excess heat is deposited in the so-called deep ocean. I suppose deep means below the mixed layer.
ldavidcookesays
Re:312
Hey David,
There are likely multiple paths, about the most probable pathway is the Thermohaline overturn in the N. Atlantic. I have not seen any references for the Pacific though. The salinity and thermal differences pretty much limit mixing there. Likely there is a similar event near the Western Antarctic region that has a similar characteristic.
I was a little confused myself for a while as most papers are not focused on the hows as much as on the whats. Radiant penetration appears limited to the top 300 meters and evaporation or vaporization at the interface barrier, “skin effect”, then strong convection would appear to remove a large amount nto the atmosphere. To a much lesser degree tropical storms remove some of the added heat.
The end result is generally a broad pool in the tropics and sub- tropics of highly saline surface water. The higher temperature keeps this bouyant as the THC current carries the water towards the poles, the briney water drops like sheets into the depths. This is a slight change from years past where stagnant pools of warmer waters would cool and then drop into the depths in so called “Chimineys”.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
jyyhsays
David B. Benson, I’ve been on the impression it’s just a cascade. Warmer surface water can displace warmer downwelling water, and this happens at every boundary layer (Antarctic, Arctic bottom water, mixed layer, surface layer, can’t say much of physical processes involved (salinity differences). So it would be driven by the temperature diff between layers. This is probably too simplistic view.
Pete Dunkelbergsays
# 331 “…and that it already may be occurring.” Of course it is, but is it increasing?. Global atmospheric methane is increasing but this is accounted for by human sources is it not?
# 312, If the currents that go deep (see for instance 301 above)are just slightly less cold (warmer, not warm) then heat is taken deep isn’t it? The overall process of ocean circulation and overturning is complex, and driven partly by tidal energy but since it happens and indeed the deep sea is kept oxygenated how could all the heat be kept out of the depths? How exactly might La Niña cause more heat to go deep? And how much? That’s complicated.
For Dave Cooke: I’ve been making the effort to find science sources for some of the things you’ve been saying, which mostly seem to make sense — but I can’t find what you’re talking about in the journals. I wonder if you’re confusing several different sources.
When I’ve tried to figure out what you’re relying on for what you write, I find very strange stuff. Is there another person with the same name as you who hosts conversations about climate but mostly expresses disbelief in the IPCC, and talks about anything else as possible reasons for warming?
Or is this guy actually you?
Seriously, I’m trying to look up what you write and see if I can find good information that can be cited to science journals.
When I start searching variations on your name +”carbon dioxide” +warming looking for science cites you’ve found, instead I find this kind of stuff:
“We want to remember that just because there may be more carbon being introduced to the current bio-sphere the annual carbon cycle between land and sea exchange about 201 Giga Tons emitted by non-human sources with about 208 Giga Tons taken up by non-human sources. (Keeping in mind the approximate 7.5 Giga Tons of fossil carbon being introduced to the surface annually by human processes.) This would suggest that the earth is fully capable of handling the current annual amount generated by human activity. The possibility for problems occur when the total annual emissions exceed the total annual uptake rates. Were this to occur you might get an increase of carbon in a gas form in the atmosphere. Where scientist have difficulties is defining if the apparent build up is caused by excessive generation by human and non-human sources or is it caused by a reduction long term uptake by human and non-human carbon sinks….” Dave Cooke (Mar 4, 2008 | post #30) http://www.topix.com/member/profile/ldavidcooke
If this is what you think this is the right topic for it. It’s when you post in the other threads that I try to find cites to sources — and don’t find much.
Where are you getting this stuff?
ldavidcookesays
Hey Hank,
To put it simple one, the statement in regards to the total annual carbon flux was in error. The inabilty to edit postings made via topix will likely make it a poor example of the basis of my references. For one, the values I input were the total flux as documented at the CDIAC at the time wrt the Carbon Cycle. The values were approxmately 1/2 of those values for the natural emissions whether land/sea. Of which fossil fuel emissions accunted for approximately 3.5% of the land totals.
If you are looking for long term references tied to scientific papers, there are at least 100 URLs I had attached to prior posts made here . Along with a stern warning against postings full of links by Dr. Schmidt a few years back. As many of the urls are referenced data sets that have been examined here or within papers referenced here, it is obvious that many of the longterm posters here do not need their reitteration.
However, if you are interested in some of the references I have employed there are roughly 10-20 that I find very influential rangeing from NCDC SRRS data sets, the various NOAA weather patterns, the 60skyrad data set at arm.gov and of course the CDIAC data sets. There are roughly 3600 posts at UKww with the majority of reference under the Climate Discussion and Analysis which was set aside for serious discussions outside the public eye, yet assessable to any serious contributor. If you would like to discuss a specific point feel free to use my public mailbox at yahoo. If the intent is to highlight my errors that is fine as well, if either of us can achieve value from the discussion.
“… This paper considers, first, climatic changes over the past 30 000 years, as indicated by plankton and their effects on plankton. Only fossilizable plankton can be observed: principally foraminifera, radiolaria, and pteropods in the zooplankton, and their food, principally coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinoflagellate cysts, in the phytoplankton. The soft-bodied zooplankton species—especially copepods—that lived with them can only be inferred. Large, abrupt climate changes took place, aided by positive feedback. Second, this paper attempts to predict how human forcing in the form of anthropogenic climate change is likely to affect marine ecosystems in the future….”
“WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Stop Global Warming by shutting down the coal industry.
If we do not stop Global Warming [GW] now, the desertification will continue and increase. Some time between 2050 and 2055, the land surface will be 70% desert and agriculture will collapse. Collapses due to small climate changes have happened many times before. If agriculture collapses, civilization collapses. If civilization collapses, everybody or almost everybody dies. We must prevent this by shutting down the coal industry. Let the electric companies figure out how to make electricity without making CO2, as long as they do so. Set a time limit of the end of 2015 to reduce the CO2 from a power plant by at least 95%.
Whitehouse petitions: It is too difficult to sign a petition. Creating an account is necessary, and the password thing is too difficult. I have so informed the whitehouse. Not that they pay attention to me. Be careful with the password they give you. They told me that the password that they assigned was too weak. So sign in carefully. But do sign in. This petition thing could be a great help to RC.
Richard Birdsays
‘Eric’ Hi. I posted in 297: … {it is] given that generally accepted reconstructed temperature records for period 900 – 1850 AD from various sources indicate natural variations of approx +/- 0.5 deg C either side of average (approx 14 deg C).
Running current models with no Co2 variation over the period 900 – 1850, can they demonstrate variations of that order? If so may I be directed to relevant papers? Thanks.
[Response was: Yes, the models give a very reasonable ‘natural variability’ compared with measurements. There are many papers on this, but one particularly clear one that comes to mind is Crowley, 2000, in Science.–eric]
Crowley T J, in Science, 14 July 2000, Causes of Climate Change over past 1000 years: Abstract: “Comparisons of observations with simulations from an energy balance climate model indicate that as much [sic] as 41 to 64% of preanthropogenic (pre-1850) decadal-scale temperature variations was due to changes in solar irradiance and volcanism.”
That would mean,if I read it correctly, that for a +/- 0.5 deg C variation models can only account for +/-0.2 – 0.3 deg C due to natural forces.
It appears to leaves 36 to 59% of variations pre 1850 un-accounted for by the models. A further 0.2 – 0.3 deg C, say 50%.
That is quite a big gap between model simulation and data. I think my original qusestion remains unanswered. Are there any more papers you could refer me to?
Comment headline: Polar Cities Redux: Stranger than Fiction?
As many of you here know, I have been on a one-man campaign since 2006 to get people to seriously
consider a worst-case prediction of the British chemist and inventor
James Lovelock: life in “polar cities” arrayed around the shores of an
ice-free Arctic Ocean in a greenhouse-warmed world, as Dot Earth blogged
about in March of 2008.
Most of you here mocked me and made fun of me, par for the course, and no hard feelings at all. But now I have teamed up with science ficiton writer in Texas to write a sci fi novel about a family
survival
saga in a fictional polar city set in 2080 in northern Alaska.
Thinking that a novel about polar cities might be useful as art,
rather than science,
I am putting the the book — as it is wriiten, chapter by chapter — online for
free for anyone to read and comment on. Here are the first three
chapters, with
another 27 to go:
I told Andy Revkin back in 2008 that my intent with my polar cities media campaign back then
was to conduct a thought experiment that might prod people out of
their comfort zone on climate — which remains, for many, a someday,
somewhere issue. But since my media outreach never
got very far, and met mostly with derision, even here at Real Climate, since I of course have no academic background
or science credentials, I decided to take the polar cities meme and
turn it into a sci fi novel, a kind of “the day after” “The Day After
Tomorrow.”
It’s not Cormac McCarthy level writing, as he did so well in ‘The
Road” which won a Pulitzer,It’s more of an airport
paperback
‘polar western’ survival story, and only the Texas author’s name will
appear on the cover, as I am serving here as the book’s producer and
will
get no byline or money from the sales. It’s his book entirely, and so
far from what I’ve read, it’s the kind of sci novel that polar
opposites such as Marc Morano and Joe Rommm could both enjoy. It’s
just a story, a yarn, and it’s set in a polar city.
Mayasays
Good article. Not a scientific study or anything, but it’s out there, from the Associated Press, and so hopefully picked up by newspapers and news feeds. It hits the highlights and doesn’t pull punches.
At issue in my lack of understanding is how can an increase of 135ppm of CO2 (…) demonstrate an effect that is only vis[i]ble in the paleo or fossil records at about a 1500 or 1250ppm above the current CO2 level? It is unlikely that by its self the influence of 135ppm of CO2 is as dramatic as the changes of recent note.
This sounds like an issue you should be able to resolve. There are easily visible, even dramatic, temperature changes in the paleo record for CO2 changes of merely ~100 ppm: ice ages.
More generally, the CO2 forcing depends on the fractional change of the CO2 concentration (for a very wide range of CO2 concentrations, anyway):
So any doubling of CO2 results in the same amount of forcing. Whether a 135 ppm change (whatever that refers to) is a little or a lot, then, depends where you start from. Does this help?
If you’re saying man-made global warming will be on the same order as solar maxima, you need to check your math. The peak-to-peak TSI variation over recent solar cycles is about 0.1%, or 1.4 W/m2; half of that – the quantity you referred to – is 0.7 W/m2. Divide by four to average over the spherical surface of the Earth, and subtract a 30% albedo. That’s 0.12 W/m2.
By comparison, the forcing from a doubling of CO2 is 3.7 W/m2, some 30 times more.
Thanks, though I am aware of the participants in the AR4. The confidence in some were low and of late I have not seen any measures that have improved their values.
I’m mystified. What participants? Whose confidence? What are you talking about?
CMsays
Richard Bird #322,
Pointing you to more articles is unlikely to help until you get what this one is saying. The salient bit of the abstract is:
Removal of the forced response from reconstructed temperature time series yields residuals that show similar variability to those of control runs of coupled models, thereby lending support to the models’ value as estimates of low-frequency variability in the climate system.
I understand the ratio of forcing in a pure radiant or as can be demonstrated in a lab experiment. What happens in a dynamic real world dynamic is not quite the same based on many conversations held here and elsewhere. The issue is how much is “inteference” playing into the radiant budget?
As to the historic or paleo reference of 1500ppm it was related to the PETM. The rise in the polar temperature record appeared to rise approx. 7C, (Though since I have seen 14C raised as a peak value. I wonder if that could be related to current thermal latitude differences with around 0.35-1C at the equator and 5-7C at the poles.) With a sediment record suggesting a 1500ppm CO2 variation.
Looking at the references that were provided in the conversation at a similar site, it suggested that it appeared to be related to an Arctic Methane Hydrate outgassing which decayed to CO2 @ roughly 55mya. In which it appeared to take 13ky to resolve based on biotic uptake.
As to the solar maximum issue, ToA variation being roughly 2.75w/m^2. At 77% to account for obliquity at the Solstice and 90% at the Equinox the average annual would roughly be what, 83-85%. With a 30% albedo if Cloud distribution did not change, or cleared Earth/desertification did not permenantly increase 20% since mid 17th century (increasing albedo further, possible LIA link?_. Would this not mean a value of 1.6w/m^2 over 1/2 the globe? Or 0.8w/m^2 not accounting for the indirect radiance on a sphere suggesting roughly another 30% reduction max. or roughly 0.56 w/m^2 globally or roughly a 30% variation due to solar deviation without the CO2 added, if the intent was to split hairs. The primary point being if we look at patterns is there or is there not a indication of the direction the added energy could be manifest in the synoptics pre-1950.
Also when we add the total anthropogenic modifications to the current era, historic values may not track the same as in the pre-20th century past.
In AR4, (the 4th IPCC report) both the “executive” synopsis and the actual report contained a table of elements that are considered forcing participants some positive, some negative, the error bars on some of the participants were bounded and noted that the science supporting there contribution may not be as well defined as would normally be expected in a report having 90-95% confidence of anthropogenic contribution to Climate Change. Hence, the indications to many is that there may be some hidden, or confounding process that science has not addressed, which there isn’t of course.
As I stated I am concerned to see a polar attributed warming of 5-7C with CO2 at 135ppm over the Holcene average, when the most recent past equivalent suggested a 14C change with 1500ppm or 2.5 factorial the Holcene average or minimum.
Given the roughly 15C increase in Earths TSI at the surface compared to the ToA, how much should be attributed to wv and how much to CO2? Then the next question is if CO2 at 135ppm or a 30% increase, not a doubling, is responsible for a polar 7C increase. How much then do we get for a true doubling at 500-560ppm. How does doubling 2.5 times get a maximum 14C at the poles? Like I said it does not appear to match up well. Obviously the error has to be mine, I just can not find it. Unless I am confusing the 0.7C GAT value attributed with a 7C GAT at 1500ppm suggesting much more then the 14C polar record if things were to change like for like.
Hence, the boost supplied to my understanding that CO2 is not directly responsible for the heating; but, for changing the synoptic patterns. With it being the changes there that both heat the poles quickly and moderate the heating later. At issue is I have not even seen speculation in this regard.
Your numbers and your calculations for solar variability are nonsense. Your comment is such nonsense that it’s really incomprehensible. In fact, that seems to be the general state of your comments.
You have a choice. Either accept the fact that you don’t even comprehend the basics sufficiently to critique the science, or remain a victim of Dunning-Kruger.
Believe it or not, I don’t say this to insult you. There is hope for you to understand — but the first step to recovery is to admit that you have a problem.
CMsays
Dave, #327,
If you’ll pardon my saying so, your vague references to conversations instead of serious source references, and your idiosyncratic use of language, make it difficult for others here to engage with you. You could have more productive discussions—and save other readers some time scanning the threads—if you tried to wrap your head around the basic concepts involved in man-made climate change, instead of applying your extensive weather lore to non-problems; and if you tried to express your arguments/questions/speculations so clearly and specifically that people could give feedback without having to spend a lot of time guessing your meaning. As to specifics:
– I thought that by “participants in the AR4” you were referring to the scientists taking part in the IPCC process; now I gather you meant the principal components of radiative forcing. Glad we have that cleared up.
– Comparing the CO2 increase over the PETM to the Holocene average is nonsense — the ‘P’ in PETM is for Paleocene, meaning that the initial CO2 concentration was much higher than at present. As I pointed out above, the forcing does not depend on the absolute magnitude of the increase, but on the fractional change in CO2. You need to read this: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/08/petm-weirdness/
– I don’t know what you mean by “interference playing into the radiant budget”.
– I don’t follow your solar variation numbers and calculations at all.
– Your question: “Given the roughly 15C increase in Earths TSI at the surface compared to the ToA, how much should be attributed to wv and how much to CO2?” just fails to compute. Total Solar Irradiance is not a measure of temperature, hence is not measured in degrees C, nor does it increase at the surface compared to the Top Of the Atmosphere, nor does this speak to the respective forcing contributions of CO2 and water vapor, which is not what we were discussing anyway.
wilisays
Up thread there was discussion of a team of US and Russian scientists who “on short notice” sailed up the the Arctic to study reported “dramatic” increases of methane release. Reports are now starting to trickle back:
“Joint Russian-American expedition found a large release of methane in the Eastern Arctic in the north of the Bering Sea and the Laptev Sea. According to Professor Igor Semiletov, which is the leader of the expedition, the methane in large quantities in the ocean comes from the cracks in the crust on the bottom, a sign of amplification of seismic activity in the Arctic. Methane emissions result in higher average temperatures in the Arctic, because of what the area is reduced Arctic ice faster, than in any comparable period over the last eight thousand years. Joint Russian-American expedition sailed on the ship “Akademik Lavrentiev” from Vladivostok, Russia in early September 2011, takes part in the expedition about 28 scientists from Russia and the United States. Until mid-November 2011, scientists will conduct research in the Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea.”
“Until recently, it was believed that underwater permafrost, 90 percent of which is located in the seas of Eastern Arctic, is stable and blocks the ascendant movement of any gases or liquids. But that is not exactly the case, Russian scientists found out, estimating that the region’s sea shelf spews as much methane as registered in all other seas taken together. Even this data may be lower than reality and needs to be verified. For this purpose, the key objective for those involved in the expedition is to examine the entire shelf of the Laptev Sea, the East Siberian Sea and the Russian part of the Chukotsk Sea. This is the widest and shallowest shelf of the World Ocean. The thickness of its sedimentary strata accounts for nearly 20 kilometers, while the hydrocarbon potential of this area is equal to three or even five Persian Gulfs, Igor Semiletov goes on to say.
We are living through a warm period, whereas during the Ice Age, the global ocean level is known to have been about 120 meters below what we have today. This means that it used to be a mainland tens of thousands of years ago. Temperatures inside that permafrost were 10-12 degrees higher than now. At the beginning of the warm period, the ocean level was constantly rising, eventually flooding this up to 800-meter-thick permafrost. In the course of time, it started coming to a thermodynamic balance with bottom water temperatures standing at about 1 degree below zero. Underwater permafrost is supposedly degrading nowadays, with a number of islands being formed on it. There are no doubts therefore that gas migration canals do exist after all, explains Igor Semiletov.
The Arctic shelf contains billions of tons of methane. Any massive emission is fraught with catastrophic consequences for our planet’s climate. A jump in its concentration will lead to considerable strengthening of the greenhouse effect. The scientists’ attention is therefore locked on the Arctic. The EU is even creating its own alternative program to study the Russian Arctic shelf. According to Igor Semiletov, research conducted by the present-day expedition will help the world estimate all potential threats and possible development scenarios.”
This sounds very serious to me. Could we please have a sustained, serious conversation about it, either here or on a thread devoted to it, without being constantly side tracked by obvious trolls?
ps for David Cooke, please take ASCII text as an attempt meant to help. Your flood of ideas needs editing. Nobody likes to hear ‘slow down and check what you think’ — I’m often enough hoist on that petard. We amateurs sometimes get sharp and caustic corrections — but not like real hard argument; the scientists replying to us amateurs here are relatively gentle.
Public “science writing” rarely cites sources, but Sturgeon’s Law applies to that.
Science writers who do cite sources develop some credibility over time.
Listen to real scientists going at one another face to face sometime. That gets harsh.
“This is how it works: you put your model out there in the coliseum, and a bunch of guys in white coats kick the shit out of it. If it’s still alive when the dust clears, your brainchild receives conditional acceptance. It does not get rejected. This time.
…
Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones….”
— Peter Watts, http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886
Hello all. This is my first time posting, and here is my question.
In the RealClimate essay from 18 February 2005, “Dummies guide to the latest ‘Hockey Stick’ controversy,” there appear to be some minor typos and editorial shortcuts, and I was wondering if someone here might help me clear them up. One sentence in particular is puzzling me. I think it would be easy to grasp if my confusion is due to a word used in error by the author. Here’s the sentence:
In Part I, Section 3, second paragraph, it seems that the correct wording would be “The blue line is the result from the REAL data, while the blue dots are the PC results for the real data.” Unless it’s written that way, the fifth sentence in that same paragraph doesn’t make sense. (In other words, the author intended to say: the color of the line is the same as that of the data points from which the line was derived.)
With this change, it seems the first paragraph of Part II, Section 4 would make better sense as well. (By the way, in reading *this* paragraph, it occurs to me that the colors for the graph in Part I, Section 3 were well chosen–the red crosses are the Republican data, and the blue circles that of the Democrats.) ;-)
RealClimate is a wonderful site. I cannot praise it enough.
I’ll keep this brief for now. I have a few more questions about the “Dummies” essay, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll hold them for a later post, as appropriate.
Tom Swartzsays
Please disregard my post from yesterday (#333). I’m one of the dummies, but I misunderstood the graph. ;-)
For the “Dummies” page version of the graph, it might help to clarify in the caption that what distinguishes the two colors from each other is the centering/normalization convention applied (either MBH or MM). As well, it might help to clarify in that same caption that the red crosses also correspond to real data.
Mayasays
In case you want to be nauseous this morning, check out Heartland’s latest foray into the mainstream media. Gavin, you get a mention.
[Response: I love the way Heartland is so environmentally conscious. Why come up with new arguments relating to discussions of science and data (that might involve, you know, actually knowing what you were talking about), when instead you can simply recycle and reuse the same points you’ve made before? – gavin]
mesays
Re #335, it would be interesting to hear Gavin’s side of the event that led to the Forbes article. Are the facts presented (a shift from support to skepticism of AGW by the audience) true? If so, can Gavin explain why he thinks that is? I am somewhat skeptical that the Forbes article is (a) accurate in the facts it presents; and (b) isn’t omitting facts that a reasonable person would want to know.
[Response:This is what I wrote at the time. – gavin]
SecularAnimistsays
Re: “Heartland’s latest foray” (May #335) …
I would have to say that the fossil fuel corporations are indeed the “indisputable winner” of the global warming “debate” since they have successfully blocked any action to reduce fossil fuel use and the resulting CO2 emissions for an entire generation, raking in trillions of dollars in profit thanks to their denial, deceit, obstruction and delay.
[Response: I love the way Heartland is so environmentally conscious. Why come up with new arguments relating to discussions of science and data (that might involve, you know, actually knowing what you were talking about), when instead you can simply recycle and reuse the same points you’ve made before? – gavin]
Yes, heated air is an underutilized resource. . . now if only they would “co-generate” some truth, too.
How anyone could trust Forbes/Heartland to get facts right is beyond me.
Forbes claims they provide reliable information for business.
Didn’t they call themselves a “capitalist tool”?
Forbes must trust their customers not to check their “facts” — sad.
Look at the older Taylor column at Forbes, from last May.
He’s lying — intentionally maligning Stephen Schneider.
Taylor points to a newspaper (at Goddard’s blog of all places).
Taylor lies about a direct quote there.
Taylor — lying — described what’s there thus:
“Steven Schneider, who for the past 30 years was one of the most prominent global warming alarmists, claimed the west Antarctic ice sheet could melt before the year 2000 …. Obviously, the west Antarctic ice sheet was not raptured away last century ….”
Schneider in the newspaper article is directly quoted — not saying it would all be melted.
Schneider said that “initiation” of melting could begin.
And it has begun.
I’d call James Taylor of Heartland scum
–but that would insult cyanobacteria.
We should try to do better than this.
Jeffrey Davissays
re: 335
“…the debate truly is over and the victor is indisputable.”
Wouldn’t it be great (or something) if we could vote on reality? We could vote away sickness, old age, and death!
J Bowerssays
From the Forbes piece: “Without an objective audience vote on winners and losers, our best way of determining who won and who lost will be determined by post-debate polls, who is able to continue raising money and compete in the months ahead, and who drops out of the race.”
Wow. Deceive and lie to the electorate and you, too, can be a winner. Use performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics and you, too, can be a winner. Do as Bernie Madooff did and you, too, can be a winner.
Dansays
re: 335.
What will also be interesting is to see how quickly the MSM (especially the Associated Press, like last time) picks up the “story” and regurgitates it as “fact” as opposed to it being anti-science, denialist propaganda.
Pete Dunkelbergsays
@ 340: “We could vote away sickness, old age, and death!”
The way elections are going,the reality disoriented majority would vote away sane people.
I remember watching the debate online a year ago or so (you can still find it on youtube I am sure). It is hard to watch these things as an “audience member” when I have familiarity with all the arguments being presented, but if I was just a regular laymen, I’m not sure my opinion would have changed walking out from whatever it was when I walked in.
The problem with these type of debates though is that the “winner” generally boils down to who is better skilled with the audience than who has the better scientific content, and it is especially hard being on the side that needs to caveat everything they say rather than the ones that can get away with sweeping talking points. That said, I’m not sure why this is “news” or why anyone should care.
isotopioussays
BRIAN LEHRER
We’re into “he said”-“he said.” But— [LAUGHTER] But Gavin
Schmidt, you seem to suggest that the other side does not have a
real scientific argument, but a culturally or politically
constructed one. You don’t think they’re sincere?
GAVIN SCHMIDT
That’s a very difficult question. I think—I— no, I, I do think that
they’re sincere—
BRIAN LEHRER
You as much as said it.
GAVIN SCHMIDT
I don’t think that they are completely…doing this on a level
playing field that the people here will understand. And, there
are…
AUDIENCE MEMBERS
[MOANS, VOICES, ETC.]
—————————————————————————
It seems you were rudely interrupted, Gavin. Are you saying they are sowing the seeds of doubt because they are unable to use genuine scientific arguments? Please continue.
[Response: The three people involved here were sincere in their political stand, but in arguing for that, they used many fallacious arguments that they likely knew (and certainly Lindzen knows) were weak. None of Crichton’s arguments were relevant to the main issue – what connection is there between the modes of travel of Hollywood mega-stars and the radiative impact of CO2? It was good rhetoric, but bad science. There was lots of that. – gavin]
Susan Andersonsays
Any attempt to delicately point out that the truth lies elsewhere will be cherry picked – no doubt something like “the truth lies” would work.
We need media of all kinds to provide the kind of compelling evidence that is being produced by the planet in a gradually accelerating crescendo.
In 1845 The Northwest passage was so clogged with ice, it took 2 years for ships as sturdy as possibly made with propellers from steam engines to sail from Lancaster Sound to Northern King William Island.
Today, these same ships, even much smaller ones , can make the same journey in a day, with the channels, even during late September still wide open dark blue, with no ice in sight. From a true North perspective, contrarians look like fools. They are deranged away from crucial notions of science by their political and financial motives, fused with a fake reality they feed to people desperate to hear that their ways are not transforming the Earth’s climate. I disagree with Gavin, The Lindzen’s of this world are willfully ignorant, surely have not witnessed the changes any Arctic person has seen, nor to they believe any from here nor dare their own curiosity to look. Were they reluctant in admitting a warmer world is on them, they still deny science by refuting greenhouse gases, offering no alternatives but the pending cooling surely to come from their intuitions, not the winds.
The scenery from long ago death by all 105 men, many raked by scurvy dying in a long frozen march in April 1848, transformed as ghosts to this day, Franklin sailors seeing all this water, freed from their executioner at last…..
FYI, the animation Susan referenced is a .mov file, so you’ll need QuickTime to play it. If you don’t have it, it’s worth downloading it just so you can see … it’s a visceral experience, to see all the ice melt and the Northwest Passage open up entirely.
I think the first reference was to ocean heat below 300 meters, not the deepest ocean. Will heat from a little below 300 meters come to the surface in the next strong El Niño? How deep is the Pacific warm pool?
The currents of the world ocean are all interrelated. Take this one for instance:
Fukamachi et al. 2010 in Nature Geoscience “Strong export of Antarctic BottomWater east of the Kerguelen plateau”.
This strong current was there all along, and the southern ocean is not emptying out, so there is also more incoming water than previously thought, and it is probably not from the very deepest ocean but not just a surface current either. If this water gets just a bit warmer what might happen? It might undermine the Pine Island Glacier: Observations beneath Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and implications for its retreat, see also this. In broad terms the ocean is our great heat reservoir, evidently a heat sink except during El Niño. But putting heat in the ocean is not a free pass to get out of global warming.
Gavin @ 291, re: ocean heat flux, Meehl 2011, Pielke Sr.;
So how much the surface will eventually warm simply depends on the top-of-atmosphere imbalance, not on how much heat goes into the ocean.
No hurry, though—anything that might slow the surface warming from the unprecedented-and-likely-catastrophic rates we’re looking at sounds good to me. But how much might we be talking about? I don’t have Nature Climate Change access, alas, but the ScienceDaily story on Meehl et al. mentioned that
That doesn’t sound like all that much of a break to me.
Re:301
Hey Pete,
I had been researching the NOAA Triton buoys for over 8 years now. Considering select buoys that have been in place since about 1996 I have reviewed the various measures across an array both North and South of the Equator from abot 92deg. W through 154deg.W. Through out that time the greatest depth of the 20deg. isotherm appears to be the 97-98 year. Yes, there have been years with near equivalent levels; (IE: 2005); however not as wide spread. If we look at the SST variables there have been a number of peaks that were equivalent to the 97-98 record, though the values do appear to return to normal seasonality with a slight upward trend and then a trouth occurs and the trend resets.
As the data sets there are nearing statistic significance it suggests that there appears to be a normal variation with little to no trend based on a 0.5 deg. trend resolution. Does this invalidate the ARGO system, no, it just seems to demonstrate there is a flux in the values and to a large extent track with the ENSO.
If by the same token we monitor the NCAR SST monthly anomolies there does appear to be a similar pattern in the Pacific. I think the issue is the rate of change from one state to the other will likely be our biggest indicator of a probale warming condition with the warmer condition being dominant.
It is entirely likely that during a negative PDO/ENSO cycle that conditions could feed warmer water to the poles enhancing ice melt, which cools the ocean waters. During periods of positve PDO/ENSO may concentrate the heat along the equator driving Tropical Storm transport of ocean heat towards the poles at an elevated altitude, (NASA did an expedition that observed very warm moisture laden air over the polar regions several years ago.), where the latent heat could more readily radiate out. It would appear the main issue is the intermodal or neutral condition whether moving positive from a negative or negative from a positive state that most of the heat appeared to increase in the temperate region which appears to be incorporated in the THC currents.
In short, yes, there appears to be warming; yet, at the same time offsets that reduce the heat. During intermodal states it appears that much of the heat is incorporated in the THC; however, the added salinity of evaporation during these periods appears to support the THC current though at an elevated heat content. I think the question of mixing or thermal emission is very small, hence, deep ocean sequestration of the heat appears to be a reality.
BTW I was in error in a earlier statement regardong the NOAA/Woodshole measurements @2003-05 deep ocean temperature measures were cooling between 1700-2300 meters not feet.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
Dave (#303), I have no idea what this means: “the added salinity of evaporation during these periods appears to support the THC current though at an elevated heat content.”
Re:304
Hey Kevin,
During intermodal or neutral ENSO conditions moving from a positive to a negative mode usually results in a region of High Pressure in the Norwegian/Barents Seas during the Spring and Summer months. Higher temperatures drive high amounts of evaporation resulting in high levels of salinity.
Of course you are familiar with how cooling of the sea surfaces cause super cooled brine to precipitate out of the surface waters and sink to the basin depths. Likewise evaporation increases salinity; (However, it is also warmer so at lower latitudes it does not precipitate out.)
However, as this more saline water pulse enters the Barents it quickly loses its heat and sinks. The difference is that it is pre-concentrated if you will, hence it will precipitate out earlier and warmer the normal saline sea water. This then incorporates greater heat in the THC at an equivalent salinity.
The remaining fresher, warmer surface water then rapidly moves across the cooler saline water driven by the elevated Easterlies, increasing melt in the region. Of course I am stating this as though it is an absolute which it is not.
This is just based on a study of observations and study regarding papers written over the last 8 years which has led me to this conclusion. My apologies if I have misrepresented the data.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
@270 Cooke:
Mumbo jumbo. The problem is not with the science, it is with your interpretation of it. That you claim it can’t be, or is unlikely to be, GHGs is just ridiculous. The primary driver of warming is, and this comes straight from the science, “unambigous”ly GHGs.
When you start with an obviously false premise, as you are, much BS can be made to seem diamonds, but wishing isn’t proving. And, given your premise is so obviously incorrect, I simply do not believe you don’t understand this, which begs the question, why would you make such easily falsified claims? And if you cannot understand the most basic element of climate science, discussing anything beyond that threshold cannot possibly be productive because the foundation is nothing but fallacious thinking.
For the last time, please stop pretending you are discovering something important that is not being fairly considered. It’s just a form of dishonesty. Our good hosts here and the fine scientists elsewhere are diligent, serious and meticulous. Quit insulting their efforts and our intelligence. You are not here to learn, imo. You are a denialist thrilled to be taking up so much space here and exposing unsuspecting newbies to your fallacies wrapped in scientific sounding jargon.
#305–Thanks for expanding. That’s a bit easier to parse.
Hey Kevin,
It kind of tracks with why the 2005 and 08 papers suggesting the stopping of the THC by high SSTs did not bear out. Though the “Chimneys” the scientists were expecting had dropped in count/flow the total flow of saline brine was not reduced, just less centralized.
Cheers!
Dave
“When there’s a news story about a study overturning all of physics, I used to urge caution, remind people that experts aren’t all stupid, and end up in pointless arguments about Galileo…”
Enjoy: http://xkcd.com/955/
Hey, I bet it’s the neutrinos that are doing the warming, I mean, they interact with cosmic rays, or something, don’t they?!
A model for methane release from hydrates
“…strongly suggest that hydrate dissociation and methane release as a result of climate change may be a real phenomenon, that it could occur on decadal timescales, and that it already may be occurring.”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JC007189.shtml
sidd
I’m having some diffisulty in understanding just how the excess heat is deposited in the so-called deep ocean. I suppose deep means below the mixed layer.
Re:312
Hey David,
There are likely multiple paths, about the most probable pathway is the Thermohaline overturn in the N. Atlantic. I have not seen any references for the Pacific though. The salinity and thermal differences pretty much limit mixing there. Likely there is a similar event near the Western Antarctic region that has a similar characteristic.
I was a little confused myself for a while as most papers are not focused on the hows as much as on the whats. Radiant penetration appears limited to the top 300 meters and evaporation or vaporization at the interface barrier, “skin effect”, then strong convection would appear to remove a large amount nto the atmosphere. To a much lesser degree tropical storms remove some of the added heat.
The end result is generally a broad pool in the tropics and sub- tropics of highly saline surface water. The higher temperature keeps this bouyant as the THC current carries the water towards the poles, the briney water drops like sheets into the depths. This is a slight change from years past where stagnant pools of warmer waters would cool and then drop into the depths in so called “Chimineys”.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
David B. Benson, I’ve been on the impression it’s just a cascade. Warmer surface water can displace warmer downwelling water, and this happens at every boundary layer (Antarctic, Arctic bottom water, mixed layer, surface layer, can’t say much of physical processes involved (salinity differences). So it would be driven by the temperature diff between layers. This is probably too simplistic view.
# 331 “…and that it already may be occurring.” Of course it is, but is it increasing?. Global atmospheric methane is increasing but this is accounted for by human sources is it not?
# 312, If the currents that go deep (see for instance 301 above)are just slightly less cold (warmer, not warm) then heat is taken deep isn’t it? The overall process of ocean circulation and overturning is complex, and driven partly by tidal energy but since it happens and indeed the deep sea is kept oxygenated how could all the heat be kept out of the depths? How exactly might La Niña cause more heat to go deep? And how much? That’s complicated.
For Dave Cooke: I’ve been making the effort to find science sources for some of the things you’ve been saying, which mostly seem to make sense — but I can’t find what you’re talking about in the journals. I wonder if you’re confusing several different sources.
When I’ve tried to figure out what you’re relying on for what you write, I find very strange stuff. Is there another person with the same name as you who hosts conversations about climate but mostly expresses disbelief in the IPCC, and talks about anything else as possible reasons for warming?
Or is this guy actually you?
Seriously, I’m trying to look up what you write and see if I can find good information that can be cited to science journals.
When I start searching variations on your name +”carbon dioxide” +warming looking for science cites you’ve found, instead I find this kind of stuff:
“… we have yet to establish as fact that the increase in CO2 can be related to human activities…. we really are such a small participant in contrast to the natural events that our participation is little more then added heat energy we would add to a lake if we were to urinate while swimming. (Not to be gross; but, to make the point.) Even the heat added by our bodies being in the lake, where we emit 100 watts of energy, is not sufficient in contrast to the amount of energy that the natural events drive the lake temperatures.”
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MBABvFtIjewJ:www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp%3Ftid%3D17574%26start%3D1+%2B%22ldavidcooke%22+%2B%22carbon+dioxide%22+%2Bwarming&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
or this one?
“We want to remember that just because there may be more carbon being introduced to the current bio-sphere the annual carbon cycle between land and sea exchange about 201 Giga Tons emitted by non-human sources with about 208 Giga Tons taken up by non-human sources. (Keeping in mind the approximate 7.5 Giga Tons of fossil carbon being introduced to the surface annually by human processes.) This would suggest that the earth is fully capable of handling the current annual amount generated by human activity. The possibility for problems occur when the total annual emissions exceed the total annual uptake rates. Were this to occur you might get an increase of carbon in a gas form in the atmosphere. Where scientist have difficulties is defining if the apparent build up is caused by excessive generation by human and non-human sources or is it caused by a reduction long term uptake by human and non-human carbon sinks….” Dave Cooke (Mar 4, 2008 | post #30)
http://www.topix.com/member/profile/ldavidcooke
If this is what you think this is the right topic for it. It’s when you post in the other threads that I try to find cites to sources — and don’t find much.
Where are you getting this stuff?
Hey Hank,
To put it simple one, the statement in regards to the total annual carbon flux was in error. The inabilty to edit postings made via topix will likely make it a poor example of the basis of my references. For one, the values I input were the total flux as documented at the CDIAC at the time wrt the Carbon Cycle. The values were approxmately 1/2 of those values for the natural emissions whether land/sea. Of which fossil fuel emissions accunted for approximately 3.5% of the land totals.
If you are looking for long term references tied to scientific papers, there are at least 100 URLs I had attached to prior posts made here . Along with a stern warning against postings full of links by Dr. Schmidt a few years back. As many of the urls are referenced data sets that have been examined here or within papers referenced here, it is obvious that many of the longterm posters here do not need their reitteration.
However, if you are interested in some of the references I have employed there are roughly 10-20 that I find very influential rangeing from NCDC SRRS data sets, the various NOAA weather patterns, the 60skyrad data set at arm.gov and of course the CDIAC data sets. There are roughly 3600 posts at UKww with the majority of reference under the Climate Discussion and Analysis which was set aside for serious discussions outside the public eye, yet assessable to any serious contributor. If you would like to discuss a specific point feel free to use my public mailbox at yahoo. If the intent is to highlight my errors that is fine as well, if either of us can achieve value from the discussion.
Cheers!
Dave
Pielou, E. C. 2008. Plankton, from the last ice age to the year 3007. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 296–301.
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/3/296.short
“… This paper considers, first, climatic changes over the past 30 000 years, as indicated by plankton and their effects on plankton. Only fossilizable plankton can be observed: principally foraminifera, radiolaria, and pteropods in the zooplankton, and their food, principally coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinoflagellate cysts, in the phytoplankton. The soft-bodied zooplankton species—especially copepods—that lived with them can only be inferred. Large, abrupt climate changes took place, aided by positive feedback. Second, this paper attempts to predict how human forcing in the form of anthropogenic climate change is likely to affect marine ecosystems in the future….”
Above link is to the abstract; the full text is available: http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/3/296.full
Sign my petition at http://wh.gov/gtV and forward, please.
“WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Stop Global Warming by shutting down the coal industry.
If we do not stop Global Warming [GW] now, the desertification will continue and increase. Some time between 2050 and 2055, the land surface will be 70% desert and agriculture will collapse. Collapses due to small climate changes have happened many times before. If agriculture collapses, civilization collapses. If civilization collapses, everybody or almost everybody dies. We must prevent this by shutting down the coal industry. Let the electric companies figure out how to make electricity without making CO2, as long as they do so. Set a time limit of the end of 2015 to reduce the CO2 from a power plant by at least 95%.
Created: Sep 24, 2011
Issues: Energy, Environment”
And go to
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions?utm_source=092311&utm_medium=graphic&utm_campaign=daily
and start another petition.
and tell me how to improve my petition by a comment here.
Whitehouse petitions: It is too difficult to sign a petition. Creating an account is necessary, and the password thing is too difficult. I have so informed the whitehouse. Not that they pay attention to me. Be careful with the password they give you. They told me that the password that they assigned was too weak. So sign in carefully. But do sign in. This petition thing could be a great help to RC.
‘Eric’ Hi. I posted in 297: … {it is] given that generally accepted reconstructed temperature records for period 900 – 1850 AD from various sources indicate natural variations of approx +/- 0.5 deg C either side of average (approx 14 deg C).
Running current models with no Co2 variation over the period 900 – 1850, can they demonstrate variations of that order? If so may I be directed to relevant papers? Thanks.
[Response was: Yes, the models give a very reasonable ‘natural variability’ compared with measurements. There are many papers on this, but one particularly clear one that comes to mind is Crowley, 2000, in Science.–eric]
Crowley T J, in Science, 14 July 2000, Causes of Climate Change over past 1000 years: Abstract: “Comparisons of observations with simulations from an energy balance climate model indicate that as much [sic] as 41 to 64% of preanthropogenic (pre-1850) decadal-scale temperature variations was due to changes in solar irradiance and volcanism.”
That would mean,if I read it correctly, that for a +/- 0.5 deg C variation models can only account for +/-0.2 – 0.3 deg C due to natural forces.
It appears to leaves 36 to 59% of variations pre 1850 un-accounted for by the models. A further 0.2 – 0.3 deg C, say 50%.
That is quite a big gap between model simulation and data. I think my original qusestion remains unanswered. Are there any more papers you could refer me to?
Comment headline: Polar Cities Redux: Stranger than Fiction?
As many of you here know, I have been on a one-man campaign since 2006 to get people to seriously
consider a worst-case prediction of the British chemist and inventor
James Lovelock: life in “polar cities” arrayed around the shores of an
ice-free Arctic Ocean in a greenhouse-warmed world, as Dot Earth blogged
about in March of 2008.
Most of you here mocked me and made fun of me, par for the course, and no hard feelings at all. But now I have teamed up with science ficiton writer in Texas to write a sci fi novel about a family
survival
saga in a fictional polar city set in 2080 in northern Alaska.
Thinking that a novel about polar cities might be useful as art,
rather than science,
I am putting the the book — as it is wriiten, chapter by chapter — online for
free for anyone to read and comment on. Here are the first three
chapters, with
another 27 to go:
http://nelsonmandelacom.blogspot.com/
I told Andy Revkin back in 2008 that my intent with my polar cities media campaign back then
was to conduct a thought experiment that might prod people out of
their comfort zone on climate — which remains, for many, a someday,
somewhere issue. But since my media outreach never
got very far, and met mostly with derision, even here at Real Climate, since I of course have no academic background
or science credentials, I decided to take the polar cities meme and
turn it into a sci fi novel, a kind of “the day after” “The Day After
Tomorrow.”
It’s not Cormac McCarthy level writing, as he did so well in ‘The
Road” which won a Pulitzer,It’s more of an airport
paperback
‘polar western’ survival story, and only the Texas author’s name will
appear on the cover, as I am serving here as the book’s producer and
will
get no byline or money from the sales. It’s his book entirely, and so
far from what I’ve read, it’s the kind of sci novel that polar
opposites such as Marc Morano and Joe Rommm could both enjoy. It’s
just a story, a yarn, and it’s set in a polar city.
Good article. Not a scientific study or anything, but it’s out there, from the Associated Press, and so hopefully picked up by newspapers and news feeds. It hits the highlights and doesn’t pull punches.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hchUFDTcFVXkIzVWWH9iYGIXmCtw?docId=d837de45d0f44d3e8d178949d13b180c
That’s an ugly link, so if it doesn’t work, google “The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why?”
Hi, Dave Cooke,
I’ll comment here on some questions you raised on the Unnoticed Melt thread, where this would be off topic.
Re #160:
This sounds like an issue you should be able to resolve. There are easily visible, even dramatic, temperature changes in the paleo record for CO2 changes of merely ~100 ppm: ice ages.
More generally, the CO2 forcing depends on the fractional change of the CO2 concentration (for a very wide range of CO2 concentrations, anyway):
So any doubling of CO2 results in the same amount of forcing. Whether a 135 ppm change (whatever that refers to) is a little or a lot, then, depends where you start from. Does this help?
Re #162:
If you’re saying man-made global warming will be on the same order as solar maxima, you need to check your math. The peak-to-peak TSI variation over recent solar cycles is about 0.1%, or 1.4 W/m2; half of that – the quantity you referred to – is 0.7 W/m2. Divide by four to average over the spherical surface of the Earth, and subtract a 30% albedo. That’s 0.12 W/m2.
By comparison, the forcing from a doubling of CO2 is 3.7 W/m2, some 30 times more.
Re #164:
I’m mystified. What participants? Whose confidence? What are you talking about?
Richard Bird #322,
Pointing you to more articles is unlikely to help until you get what this one is saying. The salient bit of the abstract is:
([cite ref="Crowley 2000"]10.1126/science.289.5477.270[/cite])
RE:325
Hey CM,
I understand the ratio of forcing in a pure radiant or as can be demonstrated in a lab experiment. What happens in a dynamic real world dynamic is not quite the same based on many conversations held here and elsewhere. The issue is how much is “inteference” playing into the radiant budget?
As to the historic or paleo reference of 1500ppm it was related to the PETM. The rise in the polar temperature record appeared to rise approx. 7C, (Though since I have seen 14C raised as a peak value. I wonder if that could be related to current thermal latitude differences with around 0.35-1C at the equator and 5-7C at the poles.) With a sediment record suggesting a 1500ppm CO2 variation.
Looking at the references that were provided in the conversation at a similar site, it suggested that it appeared to be related to an Arctic Methane Hydrate outgassing which decayed to CO2 @ roughly 55mya. In which it appeared to take 13ky to resolve based on biotic uptake.
As to the solar maximum issue, ToA variation being roughly 2.75w/m^2. At 77% to account for obliquity at the Solstice and 90% at the Equinox the average annual would roughly be what, 83-85%. With a 30% albedo if Cloud distribution did not change, or cleared Earth/desertification did not permenantly increase 20% since mid 17th century (increasing albedo further, possible LIA link?_. Would this not mean a value of 1.6w/m^2 over 1/2 the globe? Or 0.8w/m^2 not accounting for the indirect radiance on a sphere suggesting roughly another 30% reduction max. or roughly 0.56 w/m^2 globally or roughly a 30% variation due to solar deviation without the CO2 added, if the intent was to split hairs. The primary point being if we look at patterns is there or is there not a indication of the direction the added energy could be manifest in the synoptics pre-1950.
Also when we add the total anthropogenic modifications to the current era, historic values may not track the same as in the pre-20th century past.
In AR4, (the 4th IPCC report) both the “executive” synopsis and the actual report contained a table of elements that are considered forcing participants some positive, some negative, the error bars on some of the participants were bounded and noted that the science supporting there contribution may not be as well defined as would normally be expected in a report having 90-95% confidence of anthropogenic contribution to Climate Change. Hence, the indications to many is that there may be some hidden, or confounding process that science has not addressed, which there isn’t of course.
As I stated I am concerned to see a polar attributed warming of 5-7C with CO2 at 135ppm over the Holcene average, when the most recent past equivalent suggested a 14C change with 1500ppm or 2.5 factorial the Holcene average or minimum.
Given the roughly 15C increase in Earths TSI at the surface compared to the ToA, how much should be attributed to wv and how much to CO2? Then the next question is if CO2 at 135ppm or a 30% increase, not a doubling, is responsible for a polar 7C increase. How much then do we get for a true doubling at 500-560ppm. How does doubling 2.5 times get a maximum 14C at the poles? Like I said it does not appear to match up well. Obviously the error has to be mine, I just can not find it. Unless I am confusing the 0.7C GAT value attributed with a 7C GAT at 1500ppm suggesting much more then the 14C polar record if things were to change like for like.
Hence, the boost supplied to my understanding that CO2 is not directly responsible for the heating; but, for changing the synoptic patterns. With it being the changes there that both heat the poles quickly and moderate the heating later. At issue is I have not even seen speculation in this regard.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
L David Cooke:
Your numbers and your calculations for solar variability are nonsense. Your comment is such nonsense that it’s really incomprehensible. In fact, that seems to be the general state of your comments.
You have a choice. Either accept the fact that you don’t even comprehend the basics sufficiently to critique the science, or remain a victim of Dunning-Kruger.
Believe it or not, I don’t say this to insult you. There is hope for you to understand — but the first step to recovery is to admit that you have a problem.
Dave, #327,
If you’ll pardon my saying so, your vague references to conversations instead of serious source references, and your idiosyncratic use of language, make it difficult for others here to engage with you. You could have more productive discussions—and save other readers some time scanning the threads—if you tried to wrap your head around the basic concepts involved in man-made climate change, instead of applying your extensive weather lore to non-problems; and if you tried to express your arguments/questions/speculations so clearly and specifically that people could give feedback without having to spend a lot of time guessing your meaning. As to specifics:
– I thought that by “participants in the AR4” you were referring to the scientists taking part in the IPCC process; now I gather you meant the principal components of radiative forcing. Glad we have that cleared up.
– Comparing the CO2 increase over the PETM to the Holocene average is nonsense — the ‘P’ in PETM is for Paleocene, meaning that the initial CO2 concentration was much higher than at present. As I pointed out above, the forcing does not depend on the absolute magnitude of the increase, but on the fractional change in CO2. You need to read this: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/08/petm-weirdness/
– I don’t know what you mean by “interference playing into the radiant budget”.
– I don’t follow your solar variation numbers and calculations at all.
– Your question: “Given the roughly 15C increase in Earths TSI at the surface compared to the ToA, how much should be attributed to wv and how much to CO2?” just fails to compute. Total Solar Irradiance is not a measure of temperature, hence is not measured in degrees C, nor does it increase at the surface compared to the Top Of the Atmosphere, nor does this speak to the respective forcing contributions of CO2 and water vapor, which is not what we were discussing anyway.
Up thread there was discussion of a team of US and Russian scientists who “on short notice” sailed up the the Arctic to study reported “dramatic” increases of methane release. Reports are now starting to trickle back:
http://hainanwel.com/en/unusual-world/959-arctic-methane.html
“Joint Russian-American expedition found a large release of methane in the Eastern Arctic in the north of the Bering Sea and the Laptev Sea. According to Professor Igor Semiletov, which is the leader of the expedition, the methane in large quantities in the ocean comes from the cracks in the crust on the bottom, a sign of amplification of seismic activity in the Arctic. Methane emissions result in higher average temperatures in the Arctic, because of what the area is reduced Arctic ice faster, than in any comparable period over the last eight thousand years. Joint Russian-American expedition sailed on the ship “Akademik Lavrentiev” from Vladivostok, Russia in early September 2011, takes part in the expedition about 28 scientists from Russia and the United States. Until mid-November 2011, scientists will conduct research in the Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea.”
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/09/01/55512419.html
“Until recently, it was believed that underwater permafrost, 90 percent of which is located in the seas of Eastern Arctic, is stable and blocks the ascendant movement of any gases or liquids. But that is not exactly the case, Russian scientists found out, estimating that the region’s sea shelf spews as much methane as registered in all other seas taken together. Even this data may be lower than reality and needs to be verified. For this purpose, the key objective for those involved in the expedition is to examine the entire shelf of the Laptev Sea, the East Siberian Sea and the Russian part of the Chukotsk Sea. This is the widest and shallowest shelf of the World Ocean. The thickness of its sedimentary strata accounts for nearly 20 kilometers, while the hydrocarbon potential of this area is equal to three or even five Persian Gulfs, Igor Semiletov goes on to say.
We are living through a warm period, whereas during the Ice Age, the global ocean level is known to have been about 120 meters below what we have today. This means that it used to be a mainland tens of thousands of years ago. Temperatures inside that permafrost were 10-12 degrees higher than now. At the beginning of the warm period, the ocean level was constantly rising, eventually flooding this up to 800-meter-thick permafrost. In the course of time, it started coming to a thermodynamic balance with bottom water temperatures standing at about 1 degree below zero. Underwater permafrost is supposedly degrading nowadays, with a number of islands being formed on it. There are no doubts therefore that gas migration canals do exist after all, explains Igor Semiletov.
The Arctic shelf contains billions of tons of methane. Any massive emission is fraught with catastrophic consequences for our planet’s climate. A jump in its concentration will lead to considerable strengthening of the greenhouse effect. The scientists’ attention is therefore locked on the Arctic. The EU is even creating its own alternative program to study the Russian Arctic shelf. According to Igor Semiletov, research conducted by the present-day expedition will help the world estimate all potential threats and possible development scenarios.”
This sounds very serious to me. Could we please have a sustained, serious conversation about it, either here or on a thread devoted to it, without being constantly side tracked by obvious trolls?
ps for David Cooke, please take ASCII text as an attempt meant to help. Your flood of ideas needs editing. Nobody likes to hear ‘slow down and check what you think’ — I’m often enough hoist on that petard. We amateurs sometimes get sharp and caustic corrections — but not like real hard argument; the scientists replying to us amateurs here are relatively gentle.
Public “science writing” rarely cites sources, but Sturgeon’s Law applies to that.
Science writers who do cite sources develop some credibility over time.
Listen to real scientists going at one another face to face sometime. That gets harsh.
“This is how it works: you put your model out there in the coliseum, and a bunch of guys in white coats kick the shit out of it. If it’s still alive when the dust clears, your brainchild receives conditional acceptance. It does not get rejected. This time.
…
Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones….”
— Peter Watts, http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886
“… this season anyone who hits a brick wall will bounce back before sliding to the floor. ‘It’s more scientifically accurate slapstick …’.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-09-25/Sesame-Street-smarts-science/50548634/1
Hello all. This is my first time posting, and here is my question.
In the RealClimate essay from 18 February 2005, “Dummies guide to the latest ‘Hockey Stick’ controversy,” there appear to be some minor typos and editorial shortcuts, and I was wondering if someone here might help me clear them up. One sentence in particular is puzzling me. I think it would be easy to grasp if my confusion is due to a word used in error by the author. Here’s the sentence:
In Part I, Section 3, second paragraph, it seems that the correct wording would be “The blue line is the result from the REAL data, while the blue dots are the PC results for the real data.” Unless it’s written that way, the fifth sentence in that same paragraph doesn’t make sense. (In other words, the author intended to say: the color of the line is the same as that of the data points from which the line was derived.)
With this change, it seems the first paragraph of Part II, Section 4 would make better sense as well. (By the way, in reading *this* paragraph, it occurs to me that the colors for the graph in Part I, Section 3 were well chosen–the red crosses are the Republican data, and the blue circles that of the Democrats.) ;-)
RealClimate is a wonderful site. I cannot praise it enough.
I’ll keep this brief for now. I have a few more questions about the “Dummies” essay, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll hold them for a later post, as appropriate.
Please disregard my post from yesterday (#333). I’m one of the dummies, but I misunderstood the graph. ;-)
The same (MBH98 vs. MM PCA comparison) graph is shown here (“PCA details”): https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/pca-details/#figure, but with a more explicit caption. This resolves my confusion.
For the “Dummies” page version of the graph, it might help to clarify in the caption that what distinguishes the two colors from each other is the centering/normalization convention applied (either MBH or MM). As well, it might help to clarify in that same caption that the red crosses also correspond to real data.
In case you want to be nauseous this morning, check out Heartland’s latest foray into the mainstream media. Gavin, you get a mention.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/09/28/the-global-warming-debate-produces-an-indisputable-winner/
[Response: I love the way Heartland is so environmentally conscious. Why come up with new arguments relating to discussions of science and data (that might involve, you know, actually knowing what you were talking about), when instead you can simply recycle and reuse the same points you’ve made before? – gavin]
Re #335, it would be interesting to hear Gavin’s side of the event that led to the Forbes article. Are the facts presented (a shift from support to skepticism of AGW by the audience) true? If so, can Gavin explain why he thinks that is? I am somewhat skeptical that the Forbes article is (a) accurate in the facts it presents; and (b) isn’t omitting facts that a reasonable person would want to know.
[Response: This is what I wrote at the time. – gavin]
Re: “Heartland’s latest foray” (May #335) …
I would have to say that the fossil fuel corporations are indeed the “indisputable winner” of the global warming “debate” since they have successfully blocked any action to reduce fossil fuel use and the resulting CO2 emissions for an entire generation, raking in trillions of dollars in profit thanks to their denial, deceit, obstruction and delay.
Yes, heated air is an underutilized resource. . . now if only they would “co-generate” some truth, too.
How anyone could trust Forbes/Heartland to get facts right is beyond me.
Forbes claims they provide reliable information for business.
Didn’t they call themselves a “capitalist tool”?
Forbes must trust their customers not to check their “facts” — sad.
Look at the older Taylor column at Forbes, from last May.
He’s lying — intentionally maligning Stephen Schneider.
Taylor points to a newspaper (at Goddard’s blog of all places).
Taylor lies about a direct quote there.
Taylor — lying — described what’s there thus:
“Steven Schneider, who for the past 30 years was one of the most prominent global warming alarmists, claimed the west Antarctic ice sheet could melt before the year 2000 …. Obviously, the west Antarctic ice sheet was not raptured away last century ….”
Schneider in the newspaper article is directly quoted — not saying it would all be melted.
Schneider said that “initiation” of melting could begin.
And it has begun.
I’d call James Taylor of Heartland scum
–but that would insult cyanobacteria.
We should try to do better than this.
re: 335
“…the debate truly is over and the victor is indisputable.”
Wouldn’t it be great (or something) if we could vote on reality? We could vote away sickness, old age, and death!
From the Forbes piece: “Without an objective audience vote on winners and losers, our best way of determining who won and who lost will be determined by post-debate polls, who is able to continue raising money and compete in the months ahead, and who drops out of the race.”
Wow. Deceive and lie to the electorate and you, too, can be a winner. Use performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics and you, too, can be a winner. Do as Bernie Madooff did and you, too, can be a winner.
re: 335.
What will also be interesting is to see how quickly the MSM (especially the Associated Press, like last time) picks up the “story” and regurgitates it as “fact” as opposed to it being anti-science, denialist propaganda.
@ 340: “We could vote away sickness, old age, and death!”
The way elections are going,the reality disoriented majority would vote away sane people.
me (# 336)
I remember watching the debate online a year ago or so (you can still find it on youtube I am sure). It is hard to watch these things as an “audience member” when I have familiarity with all the arguments being presented, but if I was just a regular laymen, I’m not sure my opinion would have changed walking out from whatever it was when I walked in.
The problem with these type of debates though is that the “winner” generally boils down to who is better skilled with the audience than who has the better scientific content, and it is especially hard being on the side that needs to caveat everything they say rather than the ones that can get away with sweeping talking points. That said, I’m not sure why this is “news” or why anyone should care.
BRIAN LEHRER
We’re into “he said”-“he said.” But— [LAUGHTER] But Gavin
Schmidt, you seem to suggest that the other side does not have a
real scientific argument, but a culturally or politically
constructed one. You don’t think they’re sincere?
GAVIN SCHMIDT
That’s a very difficult question. I think—I— no, I, I do think that
they’re sincere—
BRIAN LEHRER
You as much as said it.
GAVIN SCHMIDT
I don’t think that they are completely…doing this on a level
playing field that the people here will understand. And, there
are…
AUDIENCE MEMBERS
[MOANS, VOICES, ETC.]
—————————————————————————
It seems you were rudely interrupted, Gavin. Are you saying they are sowing the seeds of doubt because they are unable to use genuine scientific arguments? Please continue.
[Response: The three people involved here were sincere in their political stand, but in arguing for that, they used many fallacious arguments that they likely knew (and certainly Lindzen knows) were weak. None of Crichton’s arguments were relevant to the main issue – what connection is there between the modes of travel of Hollywood mega-stars and the radiative impact of CO2? It was good rhetoric, but bad science. There was lots of that. – gavin]
Any attempt to delicately point out that the truth lies elsewhere will be cherry picked – no doubt something like “the truth lies” would work.
We need media of all kinds to provide the kind of compelling evidence that is being produced by the planet in a gradually accelerating crescendo.
In 1845 The Northwest passage was so clogged with ice, it took 2 years for ships as sturdy as possibly made with propellers from steam engines to sail from Lancaster Sound to Northern King William Island.
Today, these same ships, even much smaller ones , can make the same journey in a day, with the channels, even during late September still wide open dark blue, with no ice in sight. From a true North perspective, contrarians look like fools. They are deranged away from crucial notions of science by their political and financial motives, fused with a fake reality they feed to people desperate to hear that their ways are not transforming the Earth’s climate. I disagree with Gavin, The Lindzen’s of this world are willfully ignorant, surely have not witnessed the changes any Arctic person has seen, nor to they believe any from here nor dare their own curiosity to look. Were they reluctant in admitting a warmer world is on them, they still deny science by refuting greenhouse gases, offering no alternatives but the pending cooling surely to come from their intuitions, not the winds.
The scenery from long ago death by all 105 men, many raked by scurvy dying in a long frozen march in April 1848, transformed as ghosts to this day, Franklin sailors seeing all this water, freed from their executioner at last…..
Earth Observatory has an excellent hole-in-one picture (and connected animations) of the clearance at the north pole:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=52230
h/t Richard Pauli for spotting this excellent CBS article:
“The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why?”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/24/ap/business/main20111268.shtml
FYI, the animation Susan referenced is a .mov file, so you’ll need QuickTime to play it. If you don’t have it, it’s worth downloading it just so you can see … it’s a visceral experience, to see all the ice melt and the Northwest Passage open up entirely.
Watts accuses Gore
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/video-analysis-and-scene-replication-suggests-that-al-gores-climate-reality-project-fabricated-their-climate-101-video-simple-experiment/