Correlation is not causation. With large data sets you can identify matching patterns easily that have not causal relationships. That does not mean there is not connection though.
You have to add in all known relevant factors to identify more strongly relationship and then identify mechanism.
Otherwise the work, in relation to climate change, is out of scope cherry picking until it can be substantiated by maths, models, mechanisms, and observations in consideration of all known forcings. That is of course if you are trying to make the case that a geomagnetic/solar relationship are significant factors in current and past climate change. Is that what you are trying to do?
Otherwise it remains speculation in tentative hypothesis. Or as the Taco Bell chihuahua would say… You’re going to need a bigger (model) box.
vukcevicsays
#150 Ray Ladbury says: We understand the geomagnetic field–it is generated by convection of molten iron in the outer core and staibilized by the solid inner core,…
Vukcevic,
From your own reference: “The strongest contribution, by far, is the magnetic field produced by the Earth’s liquid-iron outer core, called the “core field”.”
It goes on to say that other factors (magnetic minerals in the crust or mantle, saline currents…) have only local influence. So, yes, the magnetic field is due to the convection of the core, and yes, the convection is relatviely vigorous.
vukcevicsays
#151 Reisman (OSS Foundation) No, that is not what I am trying to do
Perhaps you should read my post again.
Paleo “proxies” as tree rings, ice cores, sediments, coral reefs etc may record climate change, but they are unlikely to tell us why there are natural oscillations.
From 1700 or so there are very extensive worldwide geomagnetic records see:
Fig1. page 6/34 of http://www.epm.geophys.ethz.ch/~cfinlay/gufm1/Jacksonetal2000.pdf
Since the geomagnetic field is not affected by the climate, and looks like climate is not affected by the GMF and they are correlating to a satisfactory degree, than it is not unreasonable to assume a common cause. The science of the Earth magnetism is well advanced, so if the GMF on occasions can be used as proxy for the temperature, than it may be possible to identify cause of natural temperature variation. That is what I am trying to do
Gordon Cutlersays
Doug @ 108
Loved your epitaphs! Sent them off to friends with links to your blog and RC.
Thought of a few of my own that aren’t nearly as elegant:
Were we ever sentient?
You mean that corporatizing our civilization was a maladaptation?
Honey, we shrank the ecosystems!
Whaddya mean Mother Nature doesn’t take American Express?
I shorted O and went long CO2 and made a fortu….
vukcevicsays
Dr. Ladbury
I have read and understood my ‘own references’, and there is an important and applied in practice science, which is not covered by those references. Perhaps you should consider, however remote possibility, that I know what I am talking about.
This is an example of original work (not available anywhere else) I did some time ago: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC23.htm http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC6.htm
So let’s give it a rest.
Steve Fishsays
Vukcevic, just a hint. I and many other inexpert learners here don’t pay any attention to scientific information that is not published in a peer reviewed journal with a good reputation unless recommended by experts such as our generous hosts here. It is simply not worth my time. Please stop offering unsupported information and get busy and publish. Steve
Sorry, I have not read all your previous posts as I possibly foolishly just jumped right in to ask a few questions about what you are saying.
That is an interesting line of inquiry though. Have you identified a mechanism or are the inferences as a proxy for temperature merely coincidental at this time?
To be used as a proxy for temperature you would have to have more than coincidence, you would have to have mechanism and answer the ‘how much’ influence question. Any progress of substance?
vukcevicsays
Hi Steve
The host/s of the website is/are generous indeed, and he/they has/have my thanks. I appreciate your freedom and the desire to ignore any post prefixed with my name, but even more I value my freedom of thought. Thanks for your kind advice.
On Anonymous Blokesays
The Cornell U study Methane and the Greenhouse-Gas Footprint of Natural Gas from Shale Formations (the subject of the “Fracking Methane” post from last April) has received criticism: they are preparing a response as outlined on the PSE Healthy Energy blog: http://www.psehealthyenergy.org/ – scroll down to read the statement.
Vukcevic @156
You say “I have read and understood my ‘own references’,”
I should hope you have!
“,and there is an important and applied in practice science, which is not covered by those references.”
Steady now! This is verging on the discourteous. Science expects its pratitioners to be open and not to hide “..important.. .. science.. ..which is not covered by the those refereneces.”
So when you say “Perhaps you (Ray Ladbury) should consider, however remote possibility, that I know what I am talking about.” you jump from science to homeopathy, phrenology or what ever bumpy nonsense you care to describe it as. At a stroke, consideration that ‘you know what you are talking about’ is dealt a final mortal blow.
And in doing so, I feel that perhaps the phrase you use “So let’s give it a rest.” should then apply more to your own speculative theorising rather than those who criticise you for those overly-assertive speculations.
[Response: This is an odd statement. First of all, these are both huge numbers – there is no ‘just’ about it. And the heating being caused by CO2 and the other Greenhouse gases is a continuing process and it will continue to add heat into the system regardless of whether some of that is used to melt ice (which in fact only a very small amount is). What is your point in posting this? – gavin]
I post this because i did not read elsewhere about quantifying of sea ice albedo lose (except of one study, but which did not got very specific because it could not account for non-linear ice sheet behavior) and in general to learn more about sea ice lose global warming potential.
Then this is a rather new interview with Lovelock (i just watched). Also i post it here to get feedback from climatologist to put things in better prospective. Also because sea ice lose is progressing faster than previously thought ( then a few years ago) so i guess other people like to know more too, when people like Lovelock say something impact wise.
wilisays
I don’t know what prok was getting at, but I have certainly wondered what happens to sea temperatures when essentially all the ice is melted. Melting is an endothermic process. So when there is no such process to absorb heat in the oceans, what then? Do we get some kind of super-heating? What are the consequences of that?
A p says, no one thought this was possible as of a few years ago, but now we are looking down the barrel of a possible ice free Arctic ocean (or essentially ice free–does it really matter if there is a fjord somewhere with a bit of ice left in it?). So, what does the model say about this major planetary change in phase shift, where there is no more ice left in the NH to shift into water soaking up lots of heat in the process?
Or is this yet another thing that we shouldn’t be worrying our pretty little heads about?
vukcevicsays
#161 MARodger
Thanks for the note, I had to google homeopathy the other day.
The logarithmic potency scales are in regular use in homeopathy.– wikipedia
Logarithmic laws are common through many branches of science including the climate.
Wili @164
There are 2 things under discussion here. Lovelock (his quote out of context isn’t that clear) & Prokaryotes are talking about the extra energy absorbed by an ice-free Arctic Ocean which would otherwise be reflected into space by an ice-covered ocean. The technical description for this is ‘reduced albedo’. The other thing is the energy required to melt the ice which, as you say, when the ice is all gone will remain as ‘sensible’ heat and so add to global temperatures.
The scale of the second one is small(ish) on a global scale but big regionally. So it is far from insignificant. From memory, the PIOMAS annual sea ice volumes shrank 600 cu km in recent few years (not this year though) which takes about 0.2 zetta-Joules of energy. (GRACE suggests similar levels of ice loss from Greenland & also from Antarctica.) The Earth’s annual increase in total energy is about 6 zetta-Joules.
Also from memory (of back-of-fag-packet calcs – I’ve never seen it written), the warming due to reduced albedo from an ice-free Arctic Ocean is similar to the present forcing from CO2. But that would be the result of an ice-free ocean from March to September which is a very different prospect to the ice-free summer (ie ice free by September each year when the sun is about to set) which is predicted to happen in a few years/decades time.
vukcevicsays
@ #158 158John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation) Have you identified a mechanism or are the inferences as a proxy for temperature merely coincidental at this time?
Yes indeed I have (August 2010), and it is well known process (I referred in the earlier post #156 there is an important and applied in practice science, which is not covered by those references), there are data available, my processing may not be as rigorous as some perfectionists would desire, but it is good enough to give a clear idea what is happening in the North Atlantic, the area of my interest. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP-SSN.htm
You may also consider last graph in: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAOn.htm
Offered ‘mass of accumulated data and analysis’ publicly for a co-authorship to any renown university or climate research unit, but no serious takers. My offer still stands, but current ‘climate’ isn’t particularly benevolent.
Advice: there is no point of asking what is NAP data.
Vukcevic, As you seem to prefer to communicate by vague allusions rather than by stating your point clearly, I have little choice but to peruse the references you cite in search of clues to the point to which you may be trying to allude.
As nearly as I can tell, you seem to be in love with finding correlations between diverse phenomena. Consider this, though: The number of possible correlations in a system of time series increases roughly quadratically with the number of series considered. The law of large numbers shows us that we are bound to find statistically significant correlations in the data–whether the correlations exist in nature or not. That is why it is so essential to have a mechanism in mind before blundering off into correlation land. The human brain loves correlations, and once a good one is found, it will imagine all sorts of mechanisms, fall in love with them and fight to preserve them regardless of how many epicycles it takes.
Ron R.says
Ray Ladbury – The human brain loves correlations, and once a good one is found, it will imagine all sorts of mechanisms, fall in love with them and fight to preserve them regardless of how many epicycles it takes.
That’s how we’ve leared to make sense of the world, by finding, or trying to find, patterns and connections. Sometimes it’s imaginary.
vukcevicsays
@ #170 R. Ladbury I have little choice but to peruse the references you cite in search of clues to the point to which you may be trying to allude.
Dr. Ladbury
Thanks for the comment and the brief but helpful personality assessment. Everything I graph is based on data from reliable sources, which you can reproduce yourself, except of course the NAP, which describes the mechanism linking the CET temperatures, the AMO, the NAO and partially the SSN. This is not strictly regional affair, as you know that the AMO also has a bit to do with the global temperature too: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GT-AMO.htm
If you are more interested in science, and a fraction as inquisitive how nature works as I am, than running into ground any controversial but possible idea, I suggest you do a good look at http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP-SSN.htm
(as I suspect you may have not looked as yet) and wish to know more my email address (inert) is on the top of the first graph.
If you consider my ‘ideas’ irelevant or a ‘danger to society’ as ones described by a prominent top USA university scientist, you are welcome to do your worst, or as you may think the best to discredit what I do.
Google currently finds upwards of 9,000 links posted to v’s blog.
Any bets on when he reaches 10K posts?
(perhaps including mentions, did anyone else ever mention them)
Has anyone got the numbers to see if there’s a trend detectable?
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” — Phineas T. Barnum
vukcevicsays
Hank
Google isn’t to be relied on, here is the correct stats to date:
CET/LFC GRAPHS 76,745
SELECTION FORMULAE 7,911
VUKCEVIC.co.uk 12,884
VUKCEVIC .com 3,435
Vukcevic.TT 410
TOTAL 111,385
The various pieces on climate science and the history thereof are now pushing 11,000 page views total. It’s not in Vukcevic’s league, but hey, I do what I can.
Thanks to RC and readers for support and/or toleration. . . not to mention ‘eddication.’
Kevin McKinney @168/9
Thank you for the links on melted sea ice forcing. My old back-of-the-fag-packet calculation turned out pretty close to the numbers in the study but what my calculation lacked was any confidence in its answer. As I recall the reason the calc was done was because of Lovelock making the same statement as he does now the clip linked @162 Although my memory of back then was him saying it would be more warming than CO2 to date (rather than today’s as much as), in both cases it appears he was less than accurate.
free access (for a while) to these ‘Interdisciplinary Reviews’
Content includes:
“Article types are designed to cater to a variety of end users
Editorial Commentaries provide an opportunity for WIREs Editors to offer their own syntheses of broad areas of research in a less formal and more flexible style.
Opinions provide a forum for thought-leaders to offer a more individual perspective.
Overviews provide a broad and non-technical treatment of important topics suitable for advanced students and for researchers without a strong background in the field…..”
I can’t say anything about the content; happened on them while browsing.
They’ve published:
and
A noodle, hockey stick, and spaghetti plate: a perspective on high‐resolution paleoclimatology
Opinion
David Frank, Jan Esper, Eduardo Zorita, Rob Wilson
Published Online: May 14 2010 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.53 http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WiresArticle/wisId-WCC53.html
Okay, you’ve got some data. Now, what are you saying or inferring that data means in relation to the current increase in radiative forcing and current global warming trends in relation to that data?
And, if you are inferring it is a major driver in current trends, do you have attribution and mechanism regarding it’s total contribution?
In other words, I really want to know what you are trying to say by posting this data?
Ah, I see Ray Ladbury (#170) is asking the same question I am asking. What are you trying to say and please speak very clearly without ambiguity.
Re. your comment in #172 What I and Ray and possibly others would like to know is what does this have to do with current global warming? Have you actually got something or are you just inferring like so many other incredibly lame attempts (even when they originate form those whom should know better) to distract from the real problem of human induced climate change.
vukcevicsays
@ #180
There is no value in my opinion to you or to anyone else, without being in possession of all the relevant facts.
vukcevicsays
Addressed to #180 John P. Reisman
John, hi again
Central England Temperature (the CET) is correlated to the atmospheric pressure’s the North Atlantic Oscillation (the NAO), this broke down to a significant degree in the early 1990s. The index I devised (the NAP) for the North Atlantic non-temperature related oscillations correlates and advances the NAO by 8-9 years, as I referred to in the previous post addressed to you (post # 167: you may also consider last graph in: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAOn.htm )
then if you go back to the first graph titled the ‘CET anomaly’; the divergence between the CET and the NAO by 2010 of order 0.6C for 15 year period 1990-2010.
You can look also at the second graph in http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP-SSN.htm
but this may give misleading impression due to normalisation over very long period; there is a reasonable agreement from 1900 to the late 1980’s (blue line follows the CET’s ‘peak average’) and since then there is divergence of about 0.5C.
I have no interest in one or the other side of the argument, leave that to those who are better informed on all the facts, or more passionate about the matter. I only look for the data imbedded information, and possible correlations.
I am not really in position to make any judgments, the NAP index has not been verified by science, you might say I am overwhelmed with disinterest from all around the world, except for few cranks and occasional loony.
Ray Ladburysays
Vukcevic, I am not trying to discourage you. I’m really not. I am trying to tell you what you have to do to increase the viability of your work. In looking at historical it is very easy to get false correlations, and the more series you look at the more false correlations you will get. There are only 2 ways around this:
1)consider mechanisms that are operant (preferably before you look at correlations, since a posteriori consideration is really just rationalization, not prediction)
2)make clear falsifiable predictions based on your correlation–and wrt climate this takes years.
The human brain spots patterns whether they are there or not. That is an advantage when those patterns may be caused by a hungry leopard. It is less advantageous in sceince.
Johnsays
Dr. David Whitehouse won the bet. I’m sure people will be none to pleased.
vukcevicsays
Dr. Ladbury
Thanks for the note. Judging by current response the limes of viability of my work is zero.
I do not dispute your assessment of the correlations addictive attractions, it may come to you as a surprise but I do it for fun, since currently I have nothing better to do.
Some 6 year ago your and Dr. Schmidt’s colleague at the NASA, Dr. Hathaway and I had correspondence disagreement about the future course of the sunspot activity. You know of his prediction and the results, I used two simple equations (worked out in about a few days after reading my primary school daughter’s science project on the sunspots), the equations extrapolation and my result are here: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm
Once one beat professionals at their own game, even by chance, the attraction to try to do it elsewhere appears to be irresistible.
John says: Dr. David Whitehouse won the bet. I’m sure people will be none to pleased.
Hmm. Perhaps I should have taken a SC24max.bet with the NASA in 2004.
Ray Ladburysays
John, The real question is how stupid do you have to be to bet on the weather. It’s like buying lottery tickets for your retirement investment.
Septic Matthewsays
184, vukcevic: I am not really in position to make any judgments, the NAP index has not been verified by science, you might say I am overwhelmed with disinterest from all around the world, except for few cranks and occasional loony.
Speaking as a candidate for the title of occasional crank and loony, I’d like to suggest that you publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal. Even if the paper is not published at first, the reviewers are likely to give you helpful suggestions to improve the work.
Septic Matthewsays
Hank Roberts, about your interchange with Dan H., is it fair to say that current research supports:
1. where CO2 concentration is the limit to plant growth, doubling CO2 concentration will increase net primary productivity;
2. where N, P, K or something else is the limit to growth, doubling CO2 concentration will have no effect;
3. where H2O is the limiting factor, doubling CO2 concentration will improve drought tolerance and thereby increase net primary productivity;
4. consistent evidence for a net negative effect of doubling CO2 concentration on plant growth has not been produced.
?????
[Response: (1) Depends on water and temperature regimes, will vary wildly among species and functional groupings, and must be qualified by a time scale. No flat summaries possible. (2) As with (1); too ill specified. (3) Not necessarily at all, because C uptake is typically reduced. It will however, likely be greater than had CO2 not increased, in many cases. But same contingencies as before. (4) Correct if you are referring strictly to the chemical effects of CO2 on photosynthesis and not including the indirect effects of climatic change. I’ll find a good open access article or two and links in a bit–Jim]
SM, I doubt you can cite current research to support any of that list of vastly oversimplified general claims. Why do you imagine such could be true?
“If you have the choice between a hypothetical situation and a real one, choose the real one.”
– Joan Baez (to Michael Krasny, KQED radio, Feb. 4, 2003)
SM, the list you extracted from Dan H.’s line of argument resembles the propositions offered the charming and well-dressed people who knock on my door from time to time and want me to share their beliefs.
It’s not science.
Science isn’t single papers. Science is process.
You know this, right? Haven’t you said that you’re a statistician yourself? Or something along those lines. How do you treat that list you posted?
To Jim’s inline list of open-access articles @ 188, I’ll repeat my pointer to
Chmura et al. 2011. Forest responses to climate change in the northwestern United States: Ecophysiological foundations for adaptive management. Forest Ecology and Management 261:1121-1142. http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2011chmura001.pdf
which I found to be a useful review of multiple factors, including increased CO2.
“… in a time when polar ecosystems are on the verge of large changes over an unprecedentedly short timescale (Moline et al., 2008), it is of paramount importance to understand how and why organisms in the system function and interact in order to be able to gain insight into how the system might change as a direct consequence of the ongoing climate change. During the times of the baleen whales, an estimated one to four million tons of these valuable [copepod] prey species were consumed each year by bowhead whales …. We argue that the predator perspective provided herein offers an analogy with other systems changed by anthropogenic removal of, for example, megafauna (Janzen and Martin 1982), key predators (Estes et al., 1998) or fish stocks (Jackson et al., 2001), and how selection pressure might change ….”
“… the decline of phytoplankton standing stock has been greatest at high latitudes, in equatorial regions, in oceanic areas and in more recent years. Trends in most areas are correlated significantly to increasing ocean warming, and leading climate indices.” — editor’s summary for http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/466569a.html
You have a projection for cooling. Cooling of what?
That actually looks like a claim. To get to that claim you must have a model of some sort, right? Have you had that model examined by qualified eyes?
Rather than repeatedly linking us to your graphs, maybe you really should write your paper and submit it to a qualified journal with sufficient peer review process.
You mentioned in your comment in #167 that you have no serious takers for co-authorship. It may be possible that your work is not mature enough in its development, or that those with more experience in whatever it is you are claiming, already see relevant holes in your thinking or work. But submitting your work to a solid peer review would likely help you in identifying any problems as may already exist. Give it a try.
Ray Ladburysays
vukcevic,
I, too would add my voice to John’s and suggest you publish. Publishing is a pain in the posterior, but it forces you to get your thoughts together to the point where someone else can understand them. Really, only then do you understand them fully. You might want to work with someone who knows the science, and that might help you develop a mechanism and some definitive predictions. Good luck.
Craig Nazorsays
SM,
I have told this all to Dan before, and it is in addition to all the great information that Jim has provided.
Individual species (and groups of related plants with similar photosynthetic pathways) will react differently to rising levels of atmospheric CO2. Since humans rely on just a relatively small number of species for our basic needs, it may seem that we might be able to understand the true ramifications of CO2 levels on the productive abilities of these species. But this is ignoring some very important information that we already have available to us.
The monoculture on which humans increasingly rely already requires increasing amounts of physical resources, energy, and technology to keep increasing productivity to match increasing population, and the damage that all of this is doing to the environment is also increasing. And this is before the affects of CO2 and the changes these effects will have on our horticultural technologies are all taken into account.
If we don’t rely on monoculture, then the changing relationships of species to each other becomes very important, and the possibility for severe problems increases dramatically.
And since we also continue to rely on large areas of intact ecosystems to do such basic tasks as clean our air, clean our water, provide resevoirs for pollinators and beneficial predators, turn waste into useable material, protect biodiversity, and enrich our quality of life, and since there is no way to tell how increasing CO2 levels will change all of that except to say that it definitely WILL change all of that, are you really sure that you want to run such an experiment in real time on the only planet we have?
I don’t.
We haven’t even come close to being able to scientifically predict the full effects of rising atmospheric CO2 levels on the earth’s ecosystems for me to feel comfortable about continuing to do nothing about the problem of anthropogenic global warming, and neither you nor Dan “H.” have posted anything to challenge that.
Claims that AGW “will be good” for human civilization are AT BEST extremely premature, and much more likely fall into the category of gross stupidity:
(Have a stiff drink with you if you follow that link!)
vukcevicsays
Hi John
You say: You have a projection for cooling. Cooling of what?
Cooling in the North Atlantic; here is an example in the long term forecast for Reykjavik, Iceland, based on the NAO’s seasonal northern component : http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/RF.htm
More details can be found in the article associated with: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/theAMO-NAO.htm
I currently concentrate on the North Atlantic, which may or not be of interest to the contributors and possibly to an inquisitive reader or poster of this blog.
Peer review?
Names appearing on this blog’s roll-call put in the shade any peer review, comments are public and instant; why would I bother with long drawn anonymous road to the recycling bin? Science publications are meant for the ‘brand names’, not for an ageing would-be know it all.
Dr. Ladbury, thanks for the note, ‘forces you to get your thoughts together’ is more of an aspiration than achievable reality.
Happy New Year’s day to all, celebrating or not, by the old Julian calendar.
Dan H.says
SM,
While Craig has mentioned that some species may not benefit from increases, the scientific literature supports your summaries. Similar to what Jim mentioned, an increase in the limiting factor, whether it be water, temperature, CO2, N, or any other ingredient, will promote growth. An ecellent modern day example is a typical greenhouse. Enter inside, and you enjoy a comfortable temperature (unless it is tropical, where it may be too hot and humid), ample water supply, plenty of fertilizer, and a high CO2 atmosphere (some at 1000 ppm).
There are those here who wish to dismiss all these results, because they fear that people will then believe that AGW will be good for society. These are very one-sided views. However, they are as one-sided as those who only emphasize the negative. Then there are those who will refer to anyone who disagrees with them as either ignorant or stupid. This is usually done when they cannot refute their argument with reason or logic.
#149 vukcevic
Correlation is not causation. With large data sets you can identify matching patterns easily that have not causal relationships. That does not mean there is not connection though.
You have to add in all known relevant factors to identify more strongly relationship and then identify mechanism.
Otherwise the work, in relation to climate change, is out of scope cherry picking until it can be substantiated by maths, models, mechanisms, and observations in consideration of all known forcings. That is of course if you are trying to make the case that a geomagnetic/solar relationship are significant factors in current and past climate change. Is that what you are trying to do?
Otherwise it remains speculation in tentative hypothesis. Or as the Taco Bell chihuahua would say… You’re going to need a bigger (model) box.
#150 Ray Ladbury says:
We understand the geomagnetic field–it is generated by convection of molten iron in the outer core and staibilized by the solid inner core,…
Nearly.
For more details see:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/WMM/data/WMM2010/WMM2010_Report.pdf
If you whish to check out any locality there are data available here:
http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/portal/gfz/Struktur/Departments/Department+2/sec23/topics/models/CALSxk/CALS7K
in mean time you can look at secular variation at
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/data/mag_maps/pdf/Z_map_sv_1900.pdf
by increasing number 1900 in the above by 10. i.e. 1910, 1920 etc., you wouldn’t be blamed to conclude that the Earth’s core must be a very restless creature.
Vukcevic,
From your own reference: “The strongest contribution, by far, is the magnetic field produced by the Earth’s liquid-iron outer core, called the “core field”.”
It goes on to say that other factors (magnetic minerals in the crust or mantle, saline currents…) have only local influence. So, yes, the magnetic field is due to the convection of the core, and yes, the convection is relatviely vigorous.
#151 Reisman (OSS Foundation)
No, that is not what I am trying to do
Perhaps you should read my post again.
Paleo “proxies” as tree rings, ice cores, sediments, coral reefs etc may record climate change, but they are unlikely to tell us why there are natural oscillations.
From 1700 or so there are very extensive worldwide geomagnetic records see:
Fig1. page 6/34 of
http://www.epm.geophys.ethz.ch/~cfinlay/gufm1/Jacksonetal2000.pdf
Since the geomagnetic field is not affected by the climate, and looks like climate is not affected by the GMF and they are correlating to a satisfactory degree, than it is not unreasonable to assume a common cause. The science of the Earth magnetism is well advanced, so if the GMF on occasions can be used as proxy for the temperature, than it may be possible to identify cause of natural temperature variation.
That is what I am trying to do
Doug @ 108
Loved your epitaphs! Sent them off to friends with links to your blog and RC.
Thought of a few of my own that aren’t nearly as elegant:
Were we ever sentient?
You mean that corporatizing our civilization was a maladaptation?
Honey, we shrank the ecosystems!
Whaddya mean Mother Nature doesn’t take American Express?
I shorted O and went long CO2 and made a fortu….
Dr. Ladbury
I have read and understood my ‘own references’, and there is an important and applied in practice science, which is not covered by those references. Perhaps you should consider, however remote possibility, that I know what I am talking about.
This is an example of original work (not available anywhere else) I did some time ago:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC23.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC6.htm
So let’s give it a rest.
Vukcevic, just a hint. I and many other inexpert learners here don’t pay any attention to scientific information that is not published in a peer reviewed journal with a good reputation unless recommended by experts such as our generous hosts here. It is simply not worth my time. Please stop offering unsupported information and get busy and publish. Steve
#154 vukcevic
Sorry, I have not read all your previous posts as I possibly foolishly just jumped right in to ask a few questions about what you are saying.
That is an interesting line of inquiry though. Have you identified a mechanism or are the inferences as a proxy for temperature merely coincidental at this time?
To be used as a proxy for temperature you would have to have more than coincidence, you would have to have mechanism and answer the ‘how much’ influence question. Any progress of substance?
Hi Steve
The host/s of the website is/are generous indeed, and he/they has/have my thanks. I appreciate your freedom and the desire to ignore any post prefixed with my name, but even more I value my freedom of thought. Thanks for your kind advice.
The Cornell U study Methane and the Greenhouse-Gas Footprint of Natural Gas from Shale Formations (the subject of the “Fracking Methane” post from last April) has received criticism: they are preparing a response as outlined on the PSE Healthy Energy blog: http://www.psehealthyenergy.org/ – scroll down to read the statement.
Any thoughts?
Vukcevic @156
You say “I have read and understood my ‘own references’,”
I should hope you have!
“,and there is an important and applied in practice science, which is not covered by those references.”
Steady now! This is verging on the discourteous. Science expects its pratitioners to be open and not to hide “..important.. .. science.. ..which is not covered by the those refereneces.”
So when you say “Perhaps you (Ray Ladbury) should consider, however remote possibility, that I know what I am talking about.” you jump from science to homeopathy, phrenology or what ever bumpy nonsense you care to describe it as. At a stroke, consideration that ‘you know what you are talking about’ is dealt a final mortal blow.
And in doing so, I feel that perhaps the phrase you use “So let’s give it a rest.” should then apply more to your own speculative theorising rather than those who criticise you for those overly-assertive speculations.
“Just the melting of all the floating ice in the arctic ocean, will add as much heat to the earth, as all the Co-2 we put in the atmosphere to date.” Dr. James Lovelock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-v5UGK9Ajc&feature=player_embedded#t=610s
[Response: This is an odd statement. First of all, these are both huge numbers – there is no ‘just’ about it. And the heating being caused by CO2 and the other Greenhouse gases is a continuing process and it will continue to add heat into the system regardless of whether some of that is used to melt ice (which in fact only a very small amount is). What is your point in posting this? – gavin]
I post this because i did not read elsewhere about quantifying of sea ice albedo lose (except of one study, but which did not got very specific because it could not account for non-linear ice sheet behavior) and in general to learn more about sea ice lose global warming potential.
Then this is a rather new interview with Lovelock (i just watched). Also i post it here to get feedback from climatologist to put things in better prospective. Also because sea ice lose is progressing faster than previously thought ( then a few years ago) so i guess other people like to know more too, when people like Lovelock say something impact wise.
I don’t know what prok was getting at, but I have certainly wondered what happens to sea temperatures when essentially all the ice is melted. Melting is an endothermic process. So when there is no such process to absorb heat in the oceans, what then? Do we get some kind of super-heating? What are the consequences of that?
A p says, no one thought this was possible as of a few years ago, but now we are looking down the barrel of a possible ice free Arctic ocean (or essentially ice free–does it really matter if there is a fjord somewhere with a bit of ice left in it?). So, what does the model say about this major planetary change in phase shift, where there is no more ice left in the NH to shift into water soaking up lots of heat in the process?
Or is this yet another thing that we shouldn’t be worrying our pretty little heads about?
#161 MARodger
Thanks for the note, I had to google homeopathy the other day.
The logarithmic potency scales are in regular use in homeopathy.– wikipedia
Logarithmic laws are common through many branches of science including the climate.
Wili @164
There are 2 things under discussion here. Lovelock (his quote out of context isn’t that clear) & Prokaryotes are talking about the extra energy absorbed by an ice-free Arctic Ocean which would otherwise be reflected into space by an ice-covered ocean. The technical description for this is ‘reduced albedo’. The other thing is the energy required to melt the ice which, as you say, when the ice is all gone will remain as ‘sensible’ heat and so add to global temperatures.
The scale of the second one is small(ish) on a global scale but big regionally. So it is far from insignificant. From memory, the PIOMAS annual sea ice volumes shrank 600 cu km in recent few years (not this year though) which takes about 0.2 zetta-Joules of energy. (GRACE suggests similar levels of ice loss from Greenland & also from Antarctica.) The Earth’s annual increase in total energy is about 6 zetta-Joules.
Also from memory (of back-of-fag-packet calcs – I’ve never seen it written), the warming due to reduced albedo from an ice-free Arctic Ocean is similar to the present forcing from CO2. But that would be the result of an ice-free ocean from March to September which is a very different prospect to the ice-free summer (ie ice free by September each year when the sun is about to set) which is predicted to happen in a few years/decades time.
@ #158 158John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation)
Have you identified a mechanism or are the inferences as a proxy for temperature merely coincidental at this time?
Yes indeed I have (August 2010), and it is well known process (I referred in the earlier post #156 there is an important and applied in practice science, which is not covered by those references), there are data available, my processing may not be as rigorous as some perfectionists would desire, but it is good enough to give a clear idea what is happening in the North Atlantic, the area of my interest.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP-SSN.htm
You may also consider last graph in:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAOn.htm
Offered ‘mass of accumulated data and analysis’ publicly for a co-authorship to any renown university or climate research unit, but no serious takers. My offer still stands, but current ‘climate’ isn’t particularly benevolent.
Advice: there is no point of asking what is NAP data.
#166–Some published numbers on the forcing due to sea ice loss:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD015804.shtml
. . . and a PDF of the entire paper is available here:
http://www.npolar.no/npcms/export/sites/np/en/people/stephen.hudson/Hudson11_AlbedoFeedback.pdf
Vukcevic, As you seem to prefer to communicate by vague allusions rather than by stating your point clearly, I have little choice but to peruse the references you cite in search of clues to the point to which you may be trying to allude.
As nearly as I can tell, you seem to be in love with finding correlations between diverse phenomena. Consider this, though: The number of possible correlations in a system of time series increases roughly quadratically with the number of series considered. The law of large numbers shows us that we are bound to find statistically significant correlations in the data–whether the correlations exist in nature or not. That is why it is so essential to have a mechanism in mind before blundering off into correlation land. The human brain loves correlations, and once a good one is found, it will imagine all sorts of mechanisms, fall in love with them and fight to preserve them regardless of how many epicycles it takes.
Ray Ladbury – The human brain loves correlations, and once a good one is found, it will imagine all sorts of mechanisms, fall in love with them and fight to preserve them regardless of how many epicycles it takes.
That’s how we’ve leared to make sense of the world, by finding, or trying to find, patterns and connections. Sometimes it’s imaginary.
@ #170 R. Ladbury
I have little choice but to peruse the references you cite in search of clues to the point to which you may be trying to allude.
Dr. Ladbury
Thanks for the comment and the brief but helpful personality assessment. Everything I graph is based on data from reliable sources, which you can reproduce yourself, except of course the NAP, which describes the mechanism linking the CET temperatures, the AMO, the NAO and partially the SSN. This is not strictly regional affair, as you know that the AMO also has a bit to do with the global temperature too:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GT-AMO.htm
If you are more interested in science, and a fraction as inquisitive how nature works as I am, than running into ground any controversial but possible idea, I suggest you do a good look at
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP-SSN.htm
(as I suspect you may have not looked as yet) and wish to know more my email address (inert) is on the top of the first graph.
If you consider my ‘ideas’ irelevant or a ‘danger to society’ as ones described by a prominent top USA university scientist, you are welcome to do your worst, or as you may think the best to discredit what I do.
Google currently finds upwards of 9,000 links posted to v’s blog.
Any bets on when he reaches 10K posts?
(perhaps including mentions, did anyone else ever mention them)
Has anyone got the numbers to see if there’s a trend detectable?
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” — Phineas T. Barnum
Hank
Google isn’t to be relied on, here is the correct stats to date:
CET/LFC GRAPHS 76,745
SELECTION FORMULAE 7,911
VUKCEVIC.co.uk 12,884
VUKCEVIC .com 3,435
Vukcevic.TT 410
TOTAL 111,385
Well, speaking of stats and links, I want to celebrate a milestone–my article on Andrew Weaver’s “Keeping Our Cool” just passed its 500th page-view:
http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/Keeping-Our-Cool-a-review
The various pieces on climate science and the history thereof are now pushing 11,000 page views total. It’s not in Vukcevic’s league, but hey, I do what I can.
Thanks to RC and readers for support and/or toleration. . . not to mention ‘eddication.’
Kevin McKinney @168/9
Thank you for the links on melted sea ice forcing. My old back-of-the-fag-packet calculation turned out pretty close to the numbers in the study but what my calculation lacked was any confidence in its answer. As I recall the reason the calc was done was because of Lovelock making the same statement as he does now the clip linked @162 Although my memory of back then was him saying it would be more warming than CO2 to date (rather than today’s as much as), in both cases it appears he was less than accurate.
http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-398148.html
free access (for a while) to these ‘Interdisciplinary Reviews’
Content includes:
“Article types are designed to cater to a variety of end users
Editorial Commentaries provide an opportunity for WIREs Editors to offer their own syntheses of broad areas of research in a less formal and more flexible style.
Opinions provide a forum for thought-leaders to offer a more individual perspective.
Overviews provide a broad and non-technical treatment of important topics suitable for advanced students and for researchers without a strong background in the field…..”
I can’t say anything about the content; happened on them while browsing.
They’ve published:
Climate models as a test bed for climate reconstruction methods: pseudoproxy experiments
Focus Article
Jason E. Smerdon
Published Online: Dec 15 2011 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.149
http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WiresArticle/wisId-WCC149.html
and
A noodle, hockey stick, and spaghetti plate: a perspective on high‐resolution paleoclimatology
Opinion
David Frank, Jan Esper, Eduardo Zorita, Rob Wilson
Published Online: May 14 2010 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.53
http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WiresArticle/wisId-WCC53.html
Most welcome, sir–glad to be of assistance.
Romm hearts Archer.
#167 vukcevic
Okay, you’ve got some data. Now, what are you saying or inferring that data means in relation to the current increase in radiative forcing and current global warming trends in relation to that data?
And, if you are inferring it is a major driver in current trends, do you have attribution and mechanism regarding it’s total contribution?
In other words, I really want to know what you are trying to say by posting this data?
Ah, I see Ray Ladbury (#170) is asking the same question I am asking. What are you trying to say and please speak very clearly without ambiguity.
Re. your comment in #172 What I and Ray and possibly others would like to know is what does this have to do with current global warming? Have you actually got something or are you just inferring like so many other incredibly lame attempts (even when they originate form those whom should know better) to distract from the real problem of human induced climate change.
@ #180
There is no value in my opinion to you or to anyone else, without being in possession of all the relevant facts.
Addressed to #180 John P. Reisman
John, hi again
Central England Temperature (the CET) is correlated to the atmospheric pressure’s the North Atlantic Oscillation (the NAO), this broke down to a significant degree in the early 1990s. The index I devised (the NAP) for the North Atlantic non-temperature related oscillations correlates and advances the NAO by 8-9 years, as I referred to in the previous post addressed to you (post # 167:
you may also consider last graph in:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAOn.htm )
then if you go back to the first graph titled the ‘CET anomaly’; the divergence between the CET and the NAO by 2010 of order 0.6C for 15 year period 1990-2010.
You can look also at the second graph in
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP-SSN.htm
but this may give misleading impression due to normalisation over very long period; there is a reasonable agreement from 1900 to the late 1980’s (blue line follows the CET’s ‘peak average’) and since then there is divergence of about 0.5C.
I have no interest in one or the other side of the argument, leave that to those who are better informed on all the facts, or more passionate about the matter. I only look for the data imbedded information, and possible correlations.
I am not really in position to make any judgments, the NAP index has not been verified by science, you might say I am overwhelmed with disinterest from all around the world, except for few cranks and occasional loony.
Vukcevic, I am not trying to discourage you. I’m really not. I am trying to tell you what you have to do to increase the viability of your work. In looking at historical it is very easy to get false correlations, and the more series you look at the more false correlations you will get. There are only 2 ways around this:
1)consider mechanisms that are operant (preferably before you look at correlations, since a posteriori consideration is really just rationalization, not prediction)
2)make clear falsifiable predictions based on your correlation–and wrt climate this takes years.
The human brain spots patterns whether they are there or not. That is an advantage when those patterns may be caused by a hungry leopard. It is less advantageous in sceince.
Dr. David Whitehouse won the bet. I’m sure people will be none to pleased.
Dr. Ladbury
Thanks for the note. Judging by current response the limes of viability of my work is zero.
I do not dispute your assessment of the correlations addictive attractions, it may come to you as a surprise but I do it for fun, since currently I have nothing better to do.
Some 6 year ago your and Dr. Schmidt’s colleague at the NASA, Dr. Hathaway and I had correspondence disagreement about the future course of the sunspot activity. You know of his prediction and the results, I used two simple equations (worked out in about a few days after reading my primary school daughter’s science project on the sunspots), the equations extrapolation and my result are here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm
Once one beat professionals at their own game, even by chance, the attraction to try to do it elsewhere appears to be irresistible.
John says:
Dr. David Whitehouse won the bet. I’m sure people will be none to pleased.
Hmm. Perhaps I should have taken a SC24max.bet with the NASA in 2004.
John, The real question is how stupid do you have to be to bet on the weather. It’s like buying lottery tickets for your retirement investment.
184, vukcevic: I am not really in position to make any judgments, the NAP index has not been verified by science, you might say I am overwhelmed with disinterest from all around the world, except for few cranks and occasional loony.
Speaking as a candidate for the title of occasional crank and loony, I’d like to suggest that you publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal. Even if the paper is not published at first, the reviewers are likely to give you helpful suggestions to improve the work.
Hank Roberts, about your interchange with Dan H., is it fair to say that current research supports:
1. where CO2 concentration is the limit to plant growth, doubling CO2 concentration will increase net primary productivity;
2. where N, P, K or something else is the limit to growth, doubling CO2 concentration will have no effect;
3. where H2O is the limiting factor, doubling CO2 concentration will improve drought tolerance and thereby increase net primary productivity;
4. consistent evidence for a net negative effect of doubling CO2 concentration on plant growth has not been produced.
?????
[Response: (1) Depends on water and temperature regimes, will vary wildly among species and functional groupings, and must be qualified by a time scale. No flat summaries possible. (2) As with (1); too ill specified. (3) Not necessarily at all, because C uptake is typically reduced. It will however, likely be greater than had CO2 not increased, in many cases. But same contingencies as before. (4) Correct if you are referring strictly to the chemical effects of CO2 on photosynthesis and not including the indirect effects of climatic change. I’ll find a good open access article or two and links in a bit–Jim]
[Response:These are open access and cover a lot of ground, have a look:
Cao et al., 2010
Lukac et al., 2009
Leakey et al., 2009
Jim]
1, Hank Roberts,
Retraction Watch turned out to be more interesting than I thought when I first read your post. Thank you for the link.
SM, I doubt you can cite current research to support any of that list of vastly oversimplified general claims. Why do you imagine such could be true?
“If you have the choice between a hypothetical situation and a real one, choose the real one.”
– Joan Baez (to Michael Krasny, KQED radio, Feb. 4, 2003)
SM, the list you extracted from Dan H.’s line of argument resembles the propositions offered the charming and well-dressed people who knock on my door from time to time and want me to share their beliefs.
It’s not science.
Science isn’t single papers. Science is process.
You know this, right? Haven’t you said that you’re a statistician yourself? Or something along those lines. How do you treat that list you posted?
Hidden hypothetical constraints, right? “nothing else changes” “all else being equal”
Not the real world.
To Jim’s inline list of open-access articles @ 188, I’ll repeat my pointer to
Chmura et al. 2011. Forest responses to climate change in the northwestern United States: Ecophysiological foundations for adaptive management. Forest Ecology and Management 261:1121-1142. http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2011chmura001.pdf
which I found to be a useful review of multiple factors, including increased CO2.
How is a copepod like an avocado?
http://plankt.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/02/plankt.fbr103.short
(Full text available to the public)
“… in a time when polar ecosystems are on the verge of large changes over an unprecedentedly short timescale (Moline et al., 2008), it is of paramount importance to understand how and why organisms in the system function and interact in order to be able to gain insight into how the system might change as a direct consequence of the ongoing climate change. During the times of the baleen whales, an estimated one to four million tons of these valuable [copepod] prey species were consumed each year by bowhead whales …. We argue that the predator perspective provided herein offers an analogy with other systems changed by anthropogenic removal of, for example, megafauna (Janzen and Martin 1982), key predators (Estes et al., 1998) or fish stocks (Jackson et al., 2001), and how selection pressure might change ….”
“… the decline of phytoplankton standing stock has been greatest at high latitudes, in equatorial regions, in oceanic areas and in more recent years. Trends in most areas are correlated significantly to increasing ocean warming, and leading climate indices.” — editor’s summary for
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/466569a.html
Jim, _thank_you_ for the inline response above to SM.
SM, don’t miss Jim’s detailed answer, way better than my reply, which was mere skepticism.
#167 vukcevic
As I had mentioned, you really only have some data, that shows some thing. The age old rule of correlation does not prove causation still stands.
In the science papers I read there are always claims. Do you have any specific claims?
I notice for example in the last graph on this page:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP-SSN.htm
You have a projection for cooling. Cooling of what?
That actually looks like a claim. To get to that claim you must have a model of some sort, right? Have you had that model examined by qualified eyes?
Rather than repeatedly linking us to your graphs, maybe you really should write your paper and submit it to a qualified journal with sufficient peer review process.
You mentioned in your comment in #167 that you have no serious takers for co-authorship. It may be possible that your work is not mature enough in its development, or that those with more experience in whatever it is you are claiming, already see relevant holes in your thinking or work. But submitting your work to a solid peer review would likely help you in identifying any problems as may already exist. Give it a try.
vukcevic,
I, too would add my voice to John’s and suggest you publish. Publishing is a pain in the posterior, but it forces you to get your thoughts together to the point where someone else can understand them. Really, only then do you understand them fully. You might want to work with someone who knows the science, and that might help you develop a mechanism and some definitive predictions. Good luck.
SM,
I have told this all to Dan before, and it is in addition to all the great information that Jim has provided.
Individual species (and groups of related plants with similar photosynthetic pathways) will react differently to rising levels of atmospheric CO2. Since humans rely on just a relatively small number of species for our basic needs, it may seem that we might be able to understand the true ramifications of CO2 levels on the productive abilities of these species. But this is ignoring some very important information that we already have available to us.
The monoculture on which humans increasingly rely already requires increasing amounts of physical resources, energy, and technology to keep increasing productivity to match increasing population, and the damage that all of this is doing to the environment is also increasing. And this is before the affects of CO2 and the changes these effects will have on our horticultural technologies are all taken into account.
If we don’t rely on monoculture, then the changing relationships of species to each other becomes very important, and the possibility for severe problems increases dramatically.
And since we also continue to rely on large areas of intact ecosystems to do such basic tasks as clean our air, clean our water, provide resevoirs for pollinators and beneficial predators, turn waste into useable material, protect biodiversity, and enrich our quality of life, and since there is no way to tell how increasing CO2 levels will change all of that except to say that it definitely WILL change all of that, are you really sure that you want to run such an experiment in real time on the only planet we have?
I don’t.
We haven’t even come close to being able to scientifically predict the full effects of rising atmospheric CO2 levels on the earth’s ecosystems for me to feel comfortable about continuing to do nothing about the problem of anthropogenic global warming, and neither you nor Dan “H.” have posted anything to challenge that.
Claims that AGW “will be good” for human civilization are AT BEST extremely premature, and much more likely fall into the category of gross stupidity:
http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html
(Have a stiff drink with you if you follow that link!)
Hi John
You say: You have a projection for cooling. Cooling of what?
Cooling in the North Atlantic; here is an example in the long term forecast for Reykjavik, Iceland, based on the NAO’s seasonal northern component :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/RF.htm
More details can be found in the article associated with:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/theAMO-NAO.htm
I currently concentrate on the North Atlantic, which may or not be of interest to the contributors and possibly to an inquisitive reader or poster of this blog.
Peer review?
Names appearing on this blog’s roll-call put in the shade any peer review, comments are public and instant; why would I bother with long drawn anonymous road to the recycling bin? Science publications are meant for the ‘brand names’, not for an ageing would-be know it all.
Dr. Ladbury, thanks for the note, ‘forces you to get your thoughts together’ is more of an aspiration than achievable reality.
Happy New Year’s day to all, celebrating or not, by the old Julian calendar.
SM,
While Craig has mentioned that some species may not benefit from increases, the scientific literature supports your summaries. Similar to what Jim mentioned, an increase in the limiting factor, whether it be water, temperature, CO2, N, or any other ingredient, will promote growth. An ecellent modern day example is a typical greenhouse. Enter inside, and you enjoy a comfortable temperature (unless it is tropical, where it may be too hot and humid), ample water supply, plenty of fertilizer, and a high CO2 atmosphere (some at 1000 ppm).
There are those here who wish to dismiss all these results, because they fear that people will then believe that AGW will be good for society. These are very one-sided views. However, they are as one-sided as those who only emphasize the negative. Then there are those who will refer to anyone who disagrees with them as either ignorant or stupid. This is usually done when they cannot refute their argument with reason or logic.