Sorry for the low rate of posts this summer. Lots of offline life going on. ;-)
Meantime, this paper by Hourdin et al on climate model tuning is very interesting and harks back to the FAQ we did on climate models a few years ago (Part I, Part II). Maybe it’s worth doing an update?
Some of you might also have seen some of the discussion of record temperatures in the first half of 2016. The model-observation comparison including the estimates for 2016 are below:
It seems like the hiatus hiatus will continue…
“Compared to normal conditions, the Arctic ice cap was missing a Texas-sized slab of ice in May. ” and “an area 224,000 square miles smaller than the previous low record for the month set in 2004.”
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-sea-ice-breaks-may-record-20415
AJ: We tend to focus on the fall minimum, but scientifically it’s pretty minor. Far more important are the 24-hour days of (relatively) high in the sky May, June, and July.
The quote is misleading. The accompanying graph shows perhaps a 1,500,000 square mile lower 2016 May extent as compared to 1981-2010. I trust the graph more than a reporter’s word, so: (hopefully I’ll keep the math straight…)
1,500,000 mi2 = 4,000,000,000,000 meters2 * .4 (since sun is at about 23 degrees) * 1 kw/m2 * 22 hours/day (fudging downwards) * 90 days * .8 (my guess of water vs ice solar absorption) = 2,700,000,000,000,000 KWH. At 120 KWH/ft3 for ice melt, that’s 22,000,000,000,000 ft3, or 150 cubic miles of extra late spring/early summer melt. (or equivalent water heating)
– and that’s not including melt ponds.
Gavin headlines the Q&A story with his live tweets @ClimateOfGavin :-)
“It probably takes a lot to faze Gavin Schmidt, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, but the outlandish views of Malcolm Roberts, the newly elected One Nation senator, can do it from half a world away.”
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/malcolm-roberts-leaves-nasa-'flummoxed'-with-q&a-climate-claims-20160815-gqt9a4.html
Worth noting that Gavin confirms that July 2016 is the hottest month in the GISS record. Would be great if the monthly offsets were published so we could make book on the slim chance that August could make a new record this year.
GISTEMP has posted for July with an anomaly of +0.84ºC, the hottest July on record & the 10th month in a row to be hottest (or equal hottest) for its month. The July anomaly was warmer than June but it was not as warm as back in May. July stands as the 19th warmest month on record. The average anomaly for 2016-to-date is running at +1.06ºC. This compares with the average for the last 12-months of +1.02ºC and the average for the last calendar year (also the record calendar year) of +0.87ºC. The remainder of 2016 would have to average above +0.61ºC to gain the ‘warmest calendar year’ accolade.
The anomalies for 2015/16 and their rankings within the full record are as follows:-
2015.. 1 … +0.82ºC … = 20th
2015.. 2 … +0.87ºC . = 15th
2015.. 3 … +0.91ºC . = 11th
2015.. 4 … +0.74ºC . = 50th
2015.. 5 … +0.79ºC . = 26th
2015.. 6 … +0.79ºC . = 26th
2015.. 7 … +0.73ºC . = 54th
2015.. 8 … +0.79ºC . = 26th
2015.. 9 … +0.82ºC . = 20th
2015. 10 … +1.07ºC … 6th
2015. 11 … +1.02ºC … 7th
2015. 12 … +1.10ºC … 4th
2016.. 1 … +1.16ºC … 3rd
2016.. 2 … +1.32ºC … 1st
2016.. 3 … +1.28ºC … 2nd
2016.. 4 … +1.08ºC … 5th
2016.. 5 … +0.94ºC … 9th
2016.. 6 … +0.79ºC . = 26th
2016.. 7 … +0.84ºC . 19th
Ed,
You said, “Since we are already above 400 ppm CO2 and the maximum safe level is 350 ppm, we have already exceeded the limit. We have to produce ZERO CO2 and ZERO other greenhouse gasses and take CO2 back out of the air already. That is not the same as reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85%. We can’t get to 100% reduction, but we must do better. We can get over 95% reduction. We DO NOT fire up fossil fuel plants when the wind stops blowing on a dark night in February”
Your argument is fundamentally flawed. I believe due to a lack of understanding fluxes. It’s a stocks and flow problem. There are huge fluxes of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and huge fluxes out of the atmosphere back into the rest of the biosphere. The only thing that matters is the net flux one way or the other. Currently that net flux into the atmosphere is positive. So atmospheric CO2 is rising, and as you correctly stated currently over 400ppm. To restore a net negative we can either reduce emissions or increase sequestration, or a combination of both. Theoretically we could even increase emissions as long as we increased sequestration even more, giving a net negative flux. Not realistic, but theoretically possible.
So no we don’t necessarily need to reduce emissions to zero. Rather we need to change the net balance to negative. The only technology currently available at a large enough scale with the ability to do this and not bankrupt world economies is ecosystem services restoration to soils over vast areas of the planet. But it needs to be a worldwide effort to be effective. Do that and no we don’t need to bring FF use to zero immediately. And yes, without that, zero emissions probably won’t be fast enough. Too much land and water with degraded ecosystem function due to mankind’s use.
Thomas @186. Thanks for coming up with this link to a 1930’s artical: http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/83885551 Hope to see more of these. My encyclopedias aren’t showing yet.
So now you have some references pointing to times early last century that Arctic ice is similar to what we have today. My encyclopedias expand and confirm this knowledge. Also, in your link it has reference to similar times in the 16th century.
Now, here’s your challenge (and everybody else on the post for that matter). When a comment is presented challenging unprecedented low levels of Arctic ice please reference this information. I have been called ‘denier’, ‘skeptic’ and now ‘conspiracist’ for providing these now historically confirmed reports.
Can you handle that?
David B. Benson: 175: “If CO2 is removed from the atmosphere some of it in the oceans will replace some of that removed.”
Yes and no, David. Yes, you have the point, when we talk about the storage of surplus CO2 in the surface waters – which picks atm CO2 when pCO2 in atm. rises, but would degass CO2 if the pCO2 began to fall.
No, for this part of the oceanic uptake of CO2 that is caused by two other mechanisms – dissolution of CaCO3, and removal into the deep ocean. Here dropping atm. CO2 would decrease these two uptakes only gradually, and no reversal as in the case of surface waters.
As for the land’s net uptake (which is equivalent to roughly half of the total ocean uptake) in form of increased biomass, increased soil C and increased dissolution of Ca and Si minerals – the situation would be similar to dissolution of CaCO3 in the ocean – i.e. not much decrease in the uptake when we begin to lower atm CO2.
To sum it up – yes, you are right that reducing our emissions by 50% won’t be enough to stop increase in atm CO2 (because the uptake by surface waters would no longer be there), but neither do we have to reduce our emissions to ZERO just to stabilize atm CO2 – the sweet point for stabilization is probably somewhere halfway – say, 75% reduction in emissions to stabilize atm. CO2; and 85% to start reducing it by ca. 0.5 ppm per yr (with reduction gradually decreasing as atm CO2 decreases).
Given that we are already past 400ppm, even if we reduced our emissions by 85% overnight – would take well over a century to bring us back to 350 ppm, and that’s hoping the feedbacks won’t reduce the remaining sinks.
Well, I ignored the question because I figured it was rhetorical, as you’ve asserted what you believe about models.
You can look this stuff up.
If you have looked it up — and then ask a question that shows you’ve done some work to see what’s known — you’re then in a position to ask questions the smart way.
You’re far more likely to interest a scientist, or someone who’s read the science, if you’ve made some effort yourself and tell people how much you found and what you still don’t understand.
The above is my paraphrase of this piece, written some years back by a fellow I understand is currently a gun-totin’ conservative who doesn’t believe in gummint or climatology. Nevertheless it’s good advice on how to find out answers to questions, if you want to get good answers from knowledgeable people. Be interesting:
Now admittedly, it didn’t work for him on some politically charged questions. But the method is still worth trying — applying it has convinced me my ignorance knows no bounds, but it’s also filled in some of the gaps.
Seriously. Most of us here participating are amateur readers. Going over the same questions repeatedly wears people out, and they do get ignored when they’re asked by new people.
Try this: https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+model+predict+sea+ice+loss%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=climate+model+predict+sea+ice+loss%3F&tbs=qdr:y
(search “verbatim” and limit the results to the past year, in that example)
Just the results on Google’s first page there provide some answers to your question.
Roger H. from 8/2, & Post # 13 – Hi all, Cody here, pinch hitting for your former correspondent @ UV, Dave Peters. (D. fell asleep @ the wheel of his family’s old Buick N-bound on Old CA Rt. 99 last August, about mid-night, after spending more than a month in the S. San Juaquin Valley, & seeing what the Actual Unmistakable Arrival of AGW looks like, up close & quite personal. I have been with him since he got back to The Springs last Fall, following his life-altering accident, but am not familiar with either the US politics or the Great Climate Discussion, for most of the past year. More on Dave, in a week or two, Lord willing.)
We have had quite a few long into the evenings discussions, on your comment topic. You are 1,000% ONTO A Great Unmet Need. Here, & @ sites like Judith’s and that of Mr. Watts.
An ultra bright CalTech economist who worked with us @ the Federal Energy Administration, both in the Ford/Rummy/Cheney days, as well as the early Carter years, once called our end of the 12th & Penn. 3rd floor Energy Policy Crowd: “Analysis Sales.” Dr. N. was something of a wag, but it was quite frustrating for the econometricians who developed the first Grand Linear Programming Optimization Models of the Post ’73 Embargo, US Energy Economy, to be forbidden from direct access to the Capitol Hill crowd, where multi-Trillion dollar issues were hanging up from sheer size.
Our group did NOT actually know linear programming, partial differentials, or even a good “Black Box,” from a poor one. But, in order to avoid exchanges with Congressmen, or engaged staffers such as: “Well, in our latest Runs, the endogenous heuristics on the left hand side, are behaving quite robustly…” & the like, we ignorammouses performed our interpretive liasson role, as COMMUNICTORS. Expositors. Facilitators.
I can hear Dave for the thousandth time, in my sleep, griping about Fahrenheit vs. Celcius/C-grade. In recent years I have heard him muse about an altogether NEW AGW thermal Metric: Where the discussion is steared towards a Rankine, Delta-Percentage “Planetary DEGREE.” Thus, The Science could state the Average Delta T across the now destroyed Pleistocene’s 28 conventional Milankovich Cycles (reported as data set pairs with combined Antarctic and Greenland core CO2 values), & the Mann-type Paleo data as well as the newly unfolding NASA/GISS & Hadley assessments could be stated in Hundredths of the Average difference between Pleistocene Ice Mode, versus Tropical Mode. This could side-step, once and for all, the intrinsic undersell which Scientists, who so favor the Logic and cleanliness of the Napoleonic metrics, but hence are dug in with “under ringing the Alarm Bell,” because the Rush listeners think, and will always ONLY THINK, in Fahrenheits.
The Science has NOT materially changed since 1979, and the Academy’s Charney Assessment–yet the Sale (that we are in Deep Doo Doo), has not been made.
So, spot on, Mr. Hallstead!
194 MA Rodger, excellent. Well done. Communication and sharing always helps, even when it seems that it often doesn’t. Communicate anyway.
188 Geoff Beacon, A GOOD POST. Encourages discussion.
198 Alfred Jones, yes I get that ‘zero net carbon’ is an ideal goal.
Things get lost in translation when/if it’s overlooked that my response was specifically to Ed G. (not the whole group/world)
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/08/unforced-variations-aug-2016/comment-page-4/#comment-658871 and previously
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/08/unforced-variations-aug-2016/comment-page-2/#comment-658538
I surely do not blame china nor chinese people for agw nor the current UNFCCC agreements out of Paris either. AGW/CC is a human problem for all humans to deal with. I said earlier this month “everything is connected”, because it is a truism that works. Ed’s railing about a “battery” and “solar/wind” loses sight of the holistic reality of what’s really going on and the multiple causes for that.
Complex solutions cannot be simplified or they become nonsensical. The present reality cannot be ignored. No solution is a solution unless it is holistic, realistic and practical at an individual Human level. The UNFCCC Paris agreement is no solution where future global Carbon emissions predict a net growth, not a reduction, and light years from Net Zero. Talking about “net zero” is counter-productive. It ignores reality. imo.
A useful google exercise is to find out how many motor vehicles China is producing each year today. Compare that to the USA and EU numbers.
CHINA is only an example that tells a greater much longer “story”.
ANECDOTAL DATA SNIPPETS – very short vids for a historical perspective of change.
Shanghai forty years ago 1973
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb3dyPgv5vU
streets of shanghai 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_eeTPJq0p4
China In the streets of Beijing 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyAitnoeuDA
China Guangzhou 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Pnw1hjD2A
100-km Chinese traffic jam enters Day 9 in 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKhsPO6yYko
China’s Traffic Madness During Golden Week 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-TQFwC-vhc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUWdgZLrdfE
Red Alert in Beijing: Street View Sept 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTEIL_QQ9E
Traffic in Beijing City Centre – November 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ScxSox0b7Q
Those on the bridge of the Titanic saw the Iceberg. They couldn’t turn the ship around fast enough. But the Titanic wasn’t sunk by what they could see. The unseen ice under the water did that. That makes much more sense with the benefit of hindsight and our increased knowledge of Icebergs post the Titanic.
The passengers on the Titanic had no idea what they were getting into. I think it’s a really appropriate parable for where we are at with agw/cc today. It’s ok if you disagree or think this comment is ‘trolling’. Each to their own.
Yet she speaks of a collective anxiety that is insidious, even if we haven’t managed to connect all the dots.
“There isn’t the slightest shred of doubt in my mind, that everyone on some level is anxious, deeply anxious, about climate change,” the forensic psychiatrist says.
She attributes her belief to decades of experience with people who have difficulty knowing what they are feeling on a deeper level, and she understands that anxiety comes from many headwaters.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/are-we-feeling-collective-grief-over-climate-change/
The 5 stages of Grief – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
Titus, I’ve read the article in question with some care, and it quite simply does not do what you claim that it does. It does show that there was navigation in the Kara Sea area in the first third of the 20th century, but I’m afraid that is not news. There is no quantitative information whatever given by which we can draw conclusions about the state of the ice. One simply can’t say from such a story whether there is more ice, less ice, or about the same. (Though I can’t help but wonder whether one would really need ‘two powerful icebreakers’ in August these days. Currently pretty much the entire Kara coastline is completely ice-free, with open water extending far, far out to sea. Admittedly, the Laptev Sea, is still fairly choked this year, though the “Northabout” seems to have threaded their way through the iciest bits.)
http://polarocean.co.uk/tracking/
They were the ones ridiculed by a UK denialist shill back in July–apparently he didn’t (doesn’t?) know that July is still early in the navigation season in the high Arctic:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/263591/environmentalists-voyage-show-arctic-ice-shrinking-daniel-greenfield
There is, however, decent quantitative information available, and it has been published in the professional scientific literature:
There’s more, but have a look for yourself. It’s Mahoney et al., 2008, here:
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/publications/mahoney/Mahoney_2008_JGR_20thC_RSI.pdf
Citation: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, C11005, doi:10.1029/2008JC004830, 2008
May I ask a simple question? Weather conditions in the Atlantic have not favored the generation of hurricanes for many years. It seems logical to me that the heat, the energy that gives rise to hurricanes is still there in the atmosphere and ocean. It cannot organize into a hurricane….then how does the heat, the energy organize? In what form does that energy form, other than a hurricane?
The extraordinary rain event over south Louisiana (my family home), how much energy is organized in that event, compared to a hurricane?
What is it called, the ACE? Accumulated Hurricane Energy?
That energy is all still in the system? Yes? Where is the energy? How is it organizing? Can it be measured in a way similar to the ACE? If that energy cannot organize, maybe because of shear, then wouldn’t the shear also represent a measurable amount of energy?
The energy that would organize into hurricanes is all still there, the atmospheric/ocean/climate system. What is it doing, how do we see that energy? record temperatures? Record rainfall? Wind?
The battery conversation is trying to carry the entire system load on a battery for a week.
I submit that this battery is not necessary. A system designed to be low carbon (we can emit a certain amount of CO2) would start by eliminating waste. I could write the book on how we blindly waste energy and how to eliminate that waste.
1. A carbon tax would encourage and finance low carbon solutions.
2. Either, The single rider automobile is a dinosaur or the automobile doubles as generator/storage capacity for the home. A single person driving a 6000lb car to work every day is insane.
3. All essential manufacturing, medical, networking that require constant steady reliable power will be powered by fossil fuels and nuclear. Aluminum smelting is done in Iceland and other places with unlimited geothermal energy.
4. Homes and other nob-critical loads are powered by PV, Wind, etc. All home are built to net-zero carbon/energy standards. If there is no sun for a week then you may not get water, etc. Heating should be solar or cogen.
You get the idea. Implement every low cost solution first. High cost solutions (grid scale batteries) last!
Being a layperson and having other interests, I haven’t been keeping up. There is much of value here, and much that is a great waste of time. Even scrolling past repetitive complaints and repetitive answers takes up time, and devalues the many points of interest that appear from time to time.
However, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about communication, and from Trumpworld as well, and I have a basic rule of thumb that doesn’t require sophisticated backup (nobody will read it and it won’t change minds). It may be satisfying, but it’s not worth it to be part of the in crowd. We need vast numbers of people who are not on board to accept that a major change in how we do things will happen and the more we collaborate, the less difficult it will be.
So please, avoid temptation:
DO NOT SNEER! (caps intended)
Corollary: don’t react. If falsehoods are are promoted, point past them, not at them.
bk from couple of days in rivers and creeks around Washougal. So lovely and great way to stay cool. Meanwhile CA is reported to be burning. July continued the streak of hot/hot/hot months, I think that’s at 15 now. I don’t think it matters if each month/year now is the hottest on record, or third hottest, etc. If the record hot years are all in the past 3 to 10 years, it is possible to read the writing on the wall for those of us who can slow down and peek at the wall for a few.
MAR at 194 – good to have CO2.earth using numbers with less wobble. Well done. I appreciate your attention to the details.
GB at 188 – I share your dream and like the Brussels website. I think it makes sense to act as if our actions matter.
A new article by James Hansen.
Advanced Nuclear Power, 17 August 2016
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2016/20160817_NuclearPaperScience.pdf
plus a Aug 5th Paper I missed in a previous comment
Cao, J, A. Cohen, J. Hansen, R. Lester, P. Peterson and H. Xu , 2016: China-U.S. cooperation to advance nuclear power. Science, 35, 547-548.
doi: 10.1126/science.aaf7131
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/547.full?ijkey=7.4C0Yg90r8G.&keytype=ref&siteid=sci
SPACE, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND THE REAL MEANING OF THEORY
By Piers Sellers (astronaut)
“As a scientist, I would like to think that the political discussion of climate change and how to mitigate its worst effects would be sober and fact-based.
“Unfortunately, this is not the case. Climate-change deniers in the United States have done a first-class job in spreading confusion and misinformation. As a result, many prominent politicians insist, and get away with insisting, that climate change is a hoax, a mantra that has gained some credibility through sheer repetition. Climate deniers are also fond of saying that global warming is not resolved in science or is “just” a theory.
“This is a perfect example of Orwellian Newspeak which also flies in the face of three hundred years of scientific progress, in which intellectual argument and conviction must be based on facts and substantiated theories, rather than personal beliefs or biases.
“It is also dangerous.”
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/space-climate-change-and-the-real-meaning-of-theory
206 titus says: “So now you have some references pointing to times early last century that Arctic ice is similar to what we have today.”
Nope Titus. You are dead wrong there. It is not similar – no where near it. fwiw a newspaper report does not, repeat NOT, equate to the scientific data and evidence and the reality of today. That newspaper report does not, repeat NOT, equate to this graph in 2016 http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Nor Greenland, nor the Antarctic, nor temperatures and wild fires globally. It wasn’t 54C and higher in Iraq in the 1920s Titus. You’re fooling yourself if you believe it does. And you do seem to believe this. You’re dead wrong Titus.
You were have also been wrong about your false belief that such information was not available on the internet. You were also wrong about your false claims about my ability to find factual truths on the internet.
How many more times will you need to be proven wrong in your false beliefs before you start listening to others who are a million times more qualified and correct than you are my kiwi mate??? ie the climate scientists not myself.
Kevin M, yes, and the current attempt isn’t the first. Back in 2010 two teams circumnavigated the Arctic.
From Wiki’s circumnavigation page, “Børge Ousland in the yacht Northern Passage July–October 2010[51] and Daniel Gavrilov in the yacht Peter I; June–November 2010; first circumnavigation of the Arctic in a single season.[52][53] ”
And they didn’t even have two icebreakers de-paving the way! It’s gone from a couple-years-if-you-survive to get through one side “back then” to a fun little cruise (you can buy a ticket!) to go through one side, and soon all the way around.
When folks are convinced that all scientists are just money-grubbers fighting to turn their high IQs into a life of working in a cinderblock office for middle-class money, well, it’s not like evidence matters. Yes, they actually believe that essentially all climate scientists became climate scientists because of the lure of cash. (I’ve heard it’s far more lucrative than managing a hedge fund)
Serious question here:
How much time do we have before sh*t REALLY hits the proverbial fan? With this unprecedented flooding in Louisiana and now this raging Blue Cut Fire in California and just a nonstop series of incredible weather events happening one after another…. How soon before we’re overwhelmed with crisis, billion dollar damage and mass migration? 70,000 people registered for FEMA assistance in Louisiana alone.
I understand that may sound like a silly question but I’m betting a lot of people are wondering the exact same thing. 4000 billion gallons of water dumped on Southern Louisiana from August 14-16! That’s 14,000,000,000,000.
Now the Middle East is predicted to become unlivable…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aQl73cp8eQ
I’m not sure why anyone is defending Richard Lindzen’s body of research work. Isaac Held said here that he had studied under Lindzen and found him smart but highly contrarian and a fringe scientist.
Mike at 191
I would argue that some of your frustrations are related to what Hank at 208 has discussed…but also because the models are so damn complex – most people don’t know how they work, and therefore, how they should be interpreted.
Gavin probably was referencing the statistician George Box when he said ‘all models are wrong’ (full quote from wiki “essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”). The context of the original statement is that to simulate a physical process that occurs in reality, you can not avoid making simplified assumptions. Using this definition of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, there is no model that exists of any process that you can say ‘is right.’
You mention that GCMs are in some ways, ‘shite.’ Obviously you are welcome to your opinion, but I would argue not to give-up so easily. The real issue is, can we understand what is occurring in our climate without them? The answer, I believe, is no.
I think it is useful to understand where GCMs come from. GCMs are governed by the same* equations that give us the 5-day weather forecast. The main distinction between weather forecast models and GCMs is the underlying mathematical problem (initial value problem vs. boundary value problem). Of course, you may interpret this as further proof that GCMs are ‘shite’, but I bring it up to point out that GCMs are historically related to numerical weather prediction models.
*this statement is not entirely true, but true enough for the general public (i think). An example where this is absolutely true, is the German Weather Forecast Model ICON, which can be ran in GCM mode. (http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/en/science/models/icon.html)
NOAA has also posted for July with an anomaly of +0.87ºC, the hottest July on record & the 15th month in a row to be hottest for its month. The July anomaly was a mite cooler than both May and June. July stands as the 15th warmest month on record. The average anomaly for 2016-to-date is running at +1.03ºC. This compares with the average for the last 12-months of +1.00ºC and the average for the last calendar year (also the record calendar year) of +0.90ºC. The remainder of 2016 would have to average above +0.72ºC to gain the ‘warmest calendar year’ accolade.
The anomalies for 2015/16 and their rankings within the full record are as follows:-
2015.. 1 … +0.82ºC . = 22nd
2015.. 2 … +0.88ºC . = 11th
2015.. 3 … +0.90ºC . = 9th
2015.. 4 … +0.77ºC . = 32nd
2015.. 5 … +0.86ºC . = 17th
2015.. 6 … +0.88ºC . = 11th
2015.. 7 … +0.81ºC … 24th
2015.. 8 … +0.87ºC . = 15th
2015.. 9 … +0.92ºC … 8th
2015. 10 … +0.99ºC … 6th
2015. 11 … +0.96ºC … 7th
2015. 12 … +1.12ºC … 3rd
2016.. 1 … +1.05ºC … 5th
2016.. 2 … +1.19ºC … 2nd
2016.. 3 … +1.22ºC … 1st
2016.. 4 … +1.07ºC … 4th
2016.. 5 … +0.88ºC .. = 11th
2016.. 6 … +0.90ºC .. = 9th
2016.. 7 … +0.87ºC .. = 15th
AJ wrote: “Closing down zero-carbon electrical generation systems (nuclear) and thus increasing (or lowering the reduction) of fossil fuel burning is stupid … are you for shutting down zero carbon systems before shutting down carbon-intensive systems?”
Shutting down existing nuclear power plants is not “stupid”. It is necessary and inevitable. Nuclear power plants are not designed to last forever. Many of the USA’s existing fleet of nuclear reactors are already running well past their original designed lifetime and are increasingly unsafe, and increasingly costly to operate and maintain. Sooner or later, they must be decommissioned. Which will be VERY expensive, and nobody wants to pay for it, least of all the corporations that own the power plants.
Since these power plants are currently providing a significant amount of non-fossil fueled electricity, I think that with regard to reducing CO2 emissions from electricity generation, phasing out fossil fueled generation, especially coal, is the more urgent priority.
And I think there is a reasonable case to be made for extending the operating lifetime of existing nuclear power plants when and where that can be done safely and where it makes economic sense. It’s interesting to compare and contrast the recent decisions in California and New York regarding the role of existing nuclear power plants in those states’ emission reduction plans. (Or it would be interesting to do so on a blog where nuclear power is not off-topic as it is here.)
Whether building new nuclear power plants is a necessary, desirable or effective way to address global warming, is an entirely different question. I think it is very clearly unnecessary, undesirable, and by far the least effective, most expensive, most time-consuming and most dangerous way to reduce CO2 emissions from electricity generation. And it is clearly not going to happen on any significant scale in the USA.
Kevin McKinney @212 and Thomas @219.
Thank you for replies. So from your posts we have evidence of two periods of decline in last 100yrs. 1930-1950 and 1980 to present (the references I have take it back to 1910). After 1950 the ice returned and the sea routes became increasingly un-navigable. This is basically what I presented 10 years ago to folks in response to the wild claims of the time who denied this ever happened. That was what my reference was to and apology it got us off topic.
It’s definitively looking up for increasing data on the internet. Encouraging.
#221 Chuck Hughes: “How much time do we have before sh*t REALLY hits the proverbial fan? With this unprecedented flooding in Louisiana and now this raging Blue Cut Fire in California and just a nonstop series of incredible weather events happening one after another…. How soon before we’re overwhelmed with crisis, billion dollar damage and mass migration? 70,000 people registered for FEMA assistance in Louisiana alone.”
Maybe it’s time we go back to sacrificing virgins. Because cutting back on fossil fuels won’t do much, that’s for sure. Not for another 100 years at least, even assuming climate change “is real.”
A couple of thoughts:
mar at 224: 2015 has a decent chance of holding the “hottest year” crown thanks to the El Nino bump. I am sure you know this, but others may need a reminder. Like the cherry pick year of 1998, a really hot EN year creates a spike that takes time for the upward-sticky trend to absorb and overcome. If we continue to have a succession of “hottest year” records year after year, we should all be very worried, but then, I think we should all be very worried anyway, hard to know what to say when the needle is pegged and pedal is to the metal. Thanks for your steady statistical presentation and attn to detail.
SA at 225 makes a sane argument about nuclear power. Since we continue to have no reasonable plan to manage the waste it makes sense to me to ramp down and decommission any energy source that is as dangerous as this one. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be required to vacation at Chernobyl or Fukushima. I stay away from the nuclear argument, but I am willing to chip in for the airline ticket to Chernobyl for the nuclear fans.
Adam at 223: I agree that some of the GCMs are useful, but my question at this moment is: does anyone know of a GCM that has done a reasonable accurate job of matching the observed ice and glacial loss around the planet? If anyone has a link directly to a model that has done a good job on ice loss match, provide the link. I would like to spend a little time looking at that model. I don’t think it exists. I was sorry to see the GCM pose in this month’s UV thread. That whole argument is fraught and I am generally misunderstood with my reservations about GCM science. I think the Hourdin piece with its frank discussion of tuning and the looseness of numerous critical parameters make GCM science too sloppy for my tastes. But hey, that’s just me. If you like GCM science, have at it.
CO2 daily readings have been running in the 2 ppm year to year increase range for the past few days, but jumped back to 3.4 for Aug 18. I have switched to weekly observations. It works just fine for my purpose – to detect the general trend of the entire carbon cycle on the planet and it is noisy, but less noisy than daily where the spikey and outlier days are too easily posted and misunderstood. 3.64 ppm increase was last week posted. That is not a good number.
don’t feed the trolls or rise to the bait. We improve the discussion by staying on even keel and ignoring folks who cannot do that.
Warm regards,
Mike
Paul Pukite, currently #222, cites a 2006 WaPo article by Isaac Held, something of a round-up of skeptics, with emphasis on colorful characters. Bill Gray has passed on, presumably unrepentant, without seeing his prediction come true that cooling will begin in “three, five, maybe eight years”. Unless of course he was dishonestly referring to brief fluctuations. Richard Lindzen’s contrarian theories are not catching on with his younger colleagues. The late Fred Singer was never more than a loud crank. As ever, the “hoax” crowd (yes, according to Held, Gray was part of it) is never held to any predictions, while minor inconsistencies and open questions within mainstream climate science are howled at for allegedly disqualifying any sane conclusions.
Christopher @213,
An answer to your “simple” question.
The value ACE – Accumulative Cyclone Energy – is not a measure of energy. It is rather a comparative measure of the power and duration of a tropical storm. A hurricanes ‘category’ (using the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale) is determined from its maximum sustained wind speed, Cat 1 74-95mph, Cat 5 above 257mph.. ACE also uses maximum sustained wind speed, but specifically sustained over a 6 hour period. ACE is the sum of the square of these speeds over the life of the storm. Being the square of the speed, it sort of stands for the wind energy in the storm but does not attempt to take account of the size of the storm. So even for a single six hour reading, ACE can never be proportional to the energy in the storm
Calculation of the energy dissipated in a single day by a single exemplar hurricane (see here) gives wind energy of roughly a terawatt. This is about a quarter of the electricity generating capacity of the world. (The NOAA web page is a bit behind the times with its use of such a comparison.)
But most of the energy in a hurricane is down to the condensation of the rain and that is measured in hundreds of terawatts per day for an individual exemplar storm.
While there are globally many storms in a year and they last many days, the total energy in tropical storms is not very significant in climate terms. The energy accumulating on Earth due to AGW is now about ten million terawatts. And this is small (although still enough to pose a climatic problem) when compared with the energy fluxes within the climate. The condensation of rain globally (rain averages about 1,000mm per year globally) takes 1,000 million terawatts from the surface up into the atmosphere.
The Louisiana storm I read averaged some 300mm over “57 areas” in four days but I have no idea how big an “area” would be. But the rainfall rate averaged over those “57 areas” was half the 150mm/day used in the exemplar hurricane calculation on that NOAA webpage linked above.
Chuck Hughes: How much time do we have before sh*t REALLY hits the proverbial fan?
AJ: Just my opinion, but I’d say that will likely happen when Arctic sea ice stops its slow decline and starts its nosedive into summer blues… Talk about re-rolling the meteorological dice! A couple decades ago I estimated that that’s going to happen around 2020-2025, and nothing I’ve seen since has altered my guesstimate a whit.
Of course, since sea ice is a tipping point that’s reversible, at that time we’ll have to choose whether to just lay down and die or fight for our lives by brimstoning the arctic each spring…
I’m amazed at how many folks prefer mass death via blind geoengineering (CO2, CH4, aerosol pollution) to scientific attempts to counter that blind geoengineering. “Yes, we’ve been geoengineering for over a century, but since it has been without intent, it’s O.K. To study doing it with intent would be wrong. Heck, even acknowledging that it’s a possibility is pure-t-evil. It’s much better to let the biosphere implode.”
We’ll see how that plays out. My guess is that folks will become way less ideologically pure once grave-digging becomes a major employer and refugees start swarming…
———-
SecularAnimist: Shutting down existing nuclear power plants is not “stupid”. It is necessary and inevitable … And I think there is a reasonable case to be made for extending the operating lifetime of existing nuclear power plants when and where that can be done safely and where it makes economic sense.
AJ: Yep, that’s what I said, though I just used “safely” as opposed to your “safely and economically”. (IIRC you’d have to go back to my original comment to see the word “safe”)
The economic side is a bit more complex. If an area had one coal plant and one nuke and the coal plant would be 10% cheaper to keep online, and you’re only keeping one and both are “safe enough”, then I’d say economics be damned… (or fix the economics by taxing carbon instead of labor – I’d like to get rid of the payroll tax and replace it with a rising tax on carbon.)
On future generators of whatever stripe, that’s a topic for a different venue.
227 Victor says: “Maybe it’s time we go back to sacrificing virgins.”
Only if you’re a virgin Victor. Then I’m all for it and you’ll be first. :-)
Victor: “even assuming climate change “is real.””
You know, if I had a lower IQ I could enjoy this conversation.
226 titus says: “This is basically what I presented 10 years ago to folks in response to the wild claims of the time who denied this ever happened.”
That’s SOP Titus for humanity. No one knows everything already. On hearing unexpected news the default is to reject it out of hand and scoff.
The more serious issue is when some people continue to deny that news when it is true and proven be true beyond doubt … based on rigorous cross-checked scientific research and analysis by the brightest minds humanity possesses.
It’s the same in the case of ‘world history’ too, you given one example of that here. When substantial evidence is placed in front of people’s eyes still they can reject it out of hand.
So, Climate science is not the only field where this occurs. It’s been happening since ‘Adam was a boy’. It’s part of the collective human experience. iow very normal and/or natural. The scientific method (as I understand it) was designed to minimize this natural human default of reliance upon personal beliefs and instilled cultural norms from birth.
Science cannot overcome this reality all by itself. It helps but is far from perfect because humans are the ones who do science. It’s a catch 22. Nothing’s perfect. It doesn’t need to be either. Only better than the alternative which leads to things like burning witches at the stake.
Or in Victor’s case “sacrificing virgins.” He probably believes that’s a rational argument against climate science outputs and funny. :-)
225 SecularAnimist says about nuclear development: “And it is clearly not going to happen on any significant scale in the USA.”
Not in the short term. By 2030 I suspect that will reverse in double quick time. From what I have seen 99% of the historical barriers and concerns have already been solved. That last 1% is people’s collective beliefs. Always the hardest and the last thing to move. AGW/CC science being a classic example of that truth.
eg Positive discussions and Govt funded research about making South Australia the globes repository for all nuclear waste is finally happening. There isn’t a better place on earth imo for such a facility and the deployment for the latest technology engineering to make it happen ‘relatively’ soon. The jigsaw puzzle pieces are moving and changing all under the radar of most people’s daily awareness.
Not for another 100 years at least, even assuming climate change “is real.”
Comment by Weaktor — 19 Aug 2016 @
Hahahahaha! (gasp) Hahahahaha…
For those interested:
“Nuclear has the lowest deathprint” relative to the amount of energy it produces. In coming years we are going to see the construction of even safer meltdown-proof nuclear reactors in China. (Shidaowan due to be online Nov 2017)
Once the nuclear plants are built, the power they provide is typically quite cheap. In the US, electricity from existing nuclear power is the second cheapest after hydro. France has among the lowest electricity rates in Europe. (with several refs)
http://climatechangenationalforum.org/why-we-need-nuclear-power-to-fight-climate-change/
https://neutronbytes.com/2016/04/09/progress-report-on-htgr-reactors-in-china-and-u-s/
https://www.rt.com/news/332254-china-meltdown-free-reactor/
HTG reactors will process even weapons grade radioactive material bringing it’s half life back down to ~200 years for safer storage. Don’t discuss it here (off-topic) but don’t ignore what is really going on in this field either. It’s 2016 now and not 1966. :-)
V: even assuming climate change “is real.”
BPL: And trying to educate Victor won’t do much, even assuming Victor “is real.”
MARodger,
A couple of places to be careful: 1) July 2016 is the hottest month on record, but not the hottest anomaly. 2) Power×duration is proportional to energy. So the phrasing on that seems to be right.
@alfred Jones,
You said, “I’m amazed at how many folks prefer mass death via blind geoengineering (CO2, CH4, aerosol pollution) to scientific attempts to counter that blind geoengineering”
What amazes me is how many otherwise thoughtful people leave off the biosphere from that definition of geoengineering whether blind engineering we do now, or purposeful geoengineering to mitigate the damages.
In fact on another forum where I posted my potential mitigation plan for comment, I received this reply, “I agree with what you have presented. But I would encourage you not to refer to it as geoengineering.” Another well respected poster presented a diagram on that thread completely omitting the entire biosphere from the long term carbon cycle.
Ooops!!!
Christopher @213.
The wheels rather fell off as I was scrunching numbers @230. Too many numbers running round in different units, coupled with the idea that it’s a big old world & hurricanes can’t be so big, has led to a complete horlicks in the last couple of paragraphs @230. The millionths should have been an alarm call that the numbers were wrong, but they didn’t.
So, take two:-
As per #230, the wind energy expended by a hurricane is very roughly a terawatt. The thermal energy generated from condensation of the rain is hundreds of terawatts. This means a warming of the atmosphere of something like 0.05zettajoules/day/hurricane (zetta = 10^21) with a commensurate cooling of the ocean. With ~50 hurricanes on average globally/year (annual numbers graph) lasting say 10 days as a hurricane, that would represent 25zettajoules/year. That makes the cooling via hurricanes globally as big as the warming from AGW.
Correcting the last paragraph @203, the Louisiana storm at 75mm/day would be then five times wetter than the average for a hurricane (which is the average for the whole storm covering 1.3 million sq km).
As the energy liberated by the rain within global hurricanes appears roughly the same amount as AGW accumulates heat, this makes the question @213 worth an answer. What happens when there are fewer hurricanes (either regionally or globally)? Global ACE may be a better measure of annual variation in tropical-storm-activity than the simple ‘number of hurricanes’ as ACE provides a measure for storm longevity and a factor for storm power. ACE(global ACE values graphed here) shows variability is quite large.
A hurricane will suck heat from the ocean but if the hurricanes don’t form so often, the uncooled ocean will cooled by other means. The question is – How good are those other means at cooling an uncooled ocean, relative to a hurricane? Mind, hurricanes don’t just assist energy transfer from surface ocean to atmosphere but also have the opposite of mixing the warmer surface waters sown into the deeper waters, cooling the surface & warming the depths. So this is no simple question.
But given hurricanes are only discussed because of storm damage, I would have thought the answer probably is that the level of hurricane activity is not a significant factor on global sea surface temperature/ocean heat content.
Then, As I demonstrated so well @230, I could be wrong.
@231 – Alfred Jones
Looking at Louisana now I’ve heard several locals admit that they cannot afford to rebuild and will be forced to relocate. Of course that entails finding other employment etc. It’s not just LA. Those folks in Southern California will also be making hard choices and there are plenty of other hot spots around the globe. Then there’s the Zika virus heading North along with other lovely microbes and no telling what’s coming out of the ground in Siberia. What will it look like ten years from now if we’re still kicking the can down the road?
Factor in a few more Trump’s and a party full of Weaktor’s…
Want to play whack-a-mole, eh? You’d be the judge of “reasonable accurate job of matching” here?
It’d be boring, Mike.
You do understand that models don’t predict?
See if you can agree with this. I’m oversimplifying in few words:
Models generate scenarios. Plural. Multiple.
Each run of any given model gives different results. Multiple runs generate a spread of results.
The spread of the results over multiple runs gives a range of ideas of how climate may behave.
PS for Mike: see if this helps:
https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+model+scenario+spread&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiridaK6NDOAhVE8WMKHTm6Cm8Q_AUICCgB&biw=1239&bih=794&dpr=1.09#imgrc=BVQ-tfm_N7r05M%3A
One of the results there is a climate model primer, worth reading.
So is much else.
As always with image search, there will be a lot of links to denier sites, they’re really big on posting pictures.
So be careful what you read.
I’m no expert, just a reader. What I’m trying to convey — while hoping one of the real scientists finds this interesting enough to comment on your question — is that you’re asking in a way that shows you haven’t read the basics and the question is either just bait for a “gotcha” or a truly naive question based on lack of a place to start asking good questions. I couldn’t speculate.
My answers are — maybe — barely enough to perhaps convince you to read a bit more about climate models and the scenarios they produce and how they’re used.
I think you could get useful answers, if you’d ask questions with more basic understanding.
Seriously, the question you keep repeating just sounds like an invitation to whack-a-mole, nobody’s playing.
mike: does anyone know of a GCM that has done a reasonable accurate job of matching the observed ice and glacial loss around the planet?
AJ: Yes, James Hansen does. While discussing his recent paper about ice sheet dynamics (the exponential loss hypothesis), he noted that one model which did some runs using a much smaller grid-size did a good job. He called for other modelers to try their hand at a smaller grid and see what happens. Don’t know the model he was invoking or whether anybody else did as he requested, but you’re free to watch his youtubes to find out. (IIRC, he was wearing his brown hat in the youtube which mentions the model runs.)
———
Scott S, yeah, “geoengineering” is a toxic term, just like “eugenics”. Folks generally go apoplectic when one mentions eugenics, but I’ve never heard of any woman accepting sperm from a non-family low-IQ donor. Uh, selecting sperm donors by IQ and other traits IS eugenics. We should be promoting voluntary eugenics, not vilifying it. If I were in charge, I’d give every woman the chance to get free “nobel-prize-winning” sperm. But intentional geoengineering? I’d study it now, but wait for the Arctic sea ice to melt out before doing anything significant. Ya gotta show folks the results before they’ll change their minds. So I’ve been cheering on the melt for two decades, and I hope it melts out completely during the next El Nino, and I hope that the melt-out is concurrent with the most horrible droughts and floods imaginable. Unfortunately, the more death and destruction, the better. We’ve got to get folks to give up their testosterone-fueled (and irrelevant) religious fights (we call them “Islamic terrorists” and they call us “Imperialist terrorists”. Well, Monty Python was right, we’re all Bozos on this bus…) and start fighting what’s really gonna nuke us and the planet. Wanna be/thank a REAL hero? Instead of joining/thanking the crowd that kills in service to politicians who disserve your country, serve your country by joining the Peace Corps.
——–
MARodgers, your link to a cyclone energy graph was very interesting. The global ACE and northern hemisphere ACE appear to track in lockstep, which would mean that southern hemisphere ACE is essentially constant. I wonder why they omitted it. To me, such a surprising result is the most interesting part of the story.
Since you’re interested, perhaps you’d like to compare the energy of the Gulf Stream and the overturning currents to hurricanes, or hurricanes to other precipitation events. (I’m sure I’d be even better than you at misplacing decimal points)
A few words and two ‘papers’ about Trolls. Sometimes the word is used inappropriately. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
In my experience ‘real’ trolls do not have a genuine interest in the subject they comment on nor the current discussion. Emotional reaction and disruption is their main intent. Disagreement with the prevailing consensus of a particular subject venue does not in itself define a troll. Emotive Arguments and high passionate debate about a particular belief on forums do not define trolls either. The use of ‘put down’ humour and a blatant disrespect for particular views no matter the degree of perceived ‘insults’ does not define a troll either. A committed person who accepts the science of AGW/CC who visits a site like WUWT to express their views may quickly be labeled as a leftie greenie liberal troll, but that doesn’t make them one.
Use of the word ‘denier’ will get one banned on WUWT. That’s a “site rule” but it still doesn’t make that person a ‘troll’ by definition. The opposite is equally true of ‘deniers’ who visit RC et al and use words like Warmist, Alarmist, or CACC. Of course there comes a point where insults and put downs lose their humorous element and can become harrassment/abuse and would be seen as anti-social in normal circumstances. But even that does not a ‘real’ troll make. A genuine Troll does not care less about the opinions of anyone about anything, including their own. Sincerely held ‘justified’ true beliefs (even those that are falsely held) no matter how loopy, extreme, conspiratorial or not justified of a poster doesn’t make them a “troll” nor their postings trolling, imo. Unwanted yes. A pain in the butt yes. Difficult yes. But that’s what always happens when people with divergent views have an argument. Some fight fair some do not. Some get really emotional, overly reactive, “miss the well meaning joke” completely, and some do not.
So fwiw let “The world’s greatest internet troll explain his craft” and note the difference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us4Eti0UmDI
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll#Psychological_characteristics and the ‘real’ definition that makes one a “Concern Troll”.
A couple of ‘papers’
“We know that online trolls score high on the so-called Dark Tetrad of personality traits—narcissism, sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201608/why-internet-trolls-enjoy-making-you-feel-bad
‘paper’ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916307930
and 2014
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists
‘paper’ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324
My own conclusion is that Victor and others are not ‘internet trolls’ in the normal and original sense of that word. They simply disagree with the prevailing consensus on this site. This site has some basic guidelines (eg off-topic) and those are enforced by the ‘moderator’ of the day. And so many of Victors posts end up in the bore hole where they belong (imho). Others are let through for whatever reason. Some people choose to respond and others suggest ignoring them.
“Each to their own self be true” is how I look at the situation as a whole. I accept that it isn’t going to change much or go away anytime soon. Detractors, conspiracy theorists, and climate science deniers (and real trolls) aren’t going away anytime soon. They are everywhere and as real as AGW/CC is. Sometimes I ignore them and sometimes I do not. It depends. I make a choice on a whole range of competing motivations and the specific situation at the time.
I suspect everyone pretty much does the same. It doesn’t bother me much what choices other people arrive at nor why. It also doesn’t bother me if people misapply the word ‘troll’ either.
I just thought, given I have had experience with real hard boiled trolls and genuine abusers and cyber stalkers, I thought some others might be interested in learning a little more about the details of how that definition came about and how they actually manifest and what’s probably going on behind the scenes psychologically.
Readers here may have come across potholer54 on youtube over the years. Recently a couple of newer vids came to my attention that I thought some here would really enjoy. A little humour and good laugh helps to grease the wheels now and then. AGW/CC and the conspiracies about it all can become too dire and depressing, I thought these would be helpful and raise the spirits a little. :-)
6 dumbest ideas politicians have about science
https://youtu.be/IBIET-uEbXA
go direct to #6 the conspiracy aspects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBIET-uEbXA&feature=youtu.be&t=17m27s
Being an Atheist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re rational
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhQdYvz0VwQ
Mike at 228 “does anyone know of a GCM that has done a reasonable accurate job of matching the observed ice and glacial loss around the planet? If anyone has a link directly to a model that has done a good job on ice loss match, provide the link.”
alright, Ill bite. First off, lets be clear about how the cryosphere is represented in ‘typical’ GCMs. Snow and sea-ice are explicitly modeled, while land-ice is not. Land-ice refers to glaciers, ice sheets and ice caps. The topography and extent of land-ice (e.g. the Antarctic ice sheet) are fixed boundary conditions in GCMs, i.e. advance/retreat of a glacier margin can not occur. Snow falls and melts on these fixed ‘ice sheets’ as it would anywhere else in the model, and so the ‘surface mass balance’ over these ‘ice-sheets’ can be compared to observations, but not the full ‘mass-balance’ required to determine the pattern of retreat/advance.
Our observations of the surface mass balance of Greenland and Antarctica aren’t really that great. So the comparison is not straightforward, but I think the NCAR/DOE community earth system model (CESM) does a reasonable job in simulating the present day surface mass budgets:
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/events/ws.2016/presentations/cross/lenaerts.pdf
http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~lenae101/pubs/Lenaerts2016.pdf
CESM is in the process of being coupled to an interactive ice-sheet model, and so soon we will be able to simulate the advance/retreat of the big ice-sheets in these models. It is still in the development phase so we will have to wait for those results. Other modeling institutions (e.g. NASA GISS) are also in the process of including interactive ice-sheets in their GCMs, and there exists some one-off examples of coupling ice sheets to GCMs over the past decade.
Validation against paleoclimate data can be more useful than comparing to present day observations, since many GCMs are tuned to those same observations. Here are some interesting results from a prior version of CESM in simulating the last glacial termination 21,000 years ago to the present (keep in mind the retreat of the big ice sheets in that simulations are prescribed):
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/TraCE/doc/LiuOtto-Bliesner-Science-2009%2Bsuppl.pdf
And along the same vein, the last millennium ensemble project is another interesting paleo-type validation experiment
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/projects/community-projects/LME/
As for other parts of the cryosphere, like sea-ice, I am not so sure about CESM performance relative to other models, although I’m sure google has that answer.
A while back I mentioned a passing opinion that I do not consider economics as a science, but being more akin to magical religion. This comment is kind of connected to that theme, but more of a short comment to show an intersect between climate science and economics modalities (???).
Richard Ally and many others have noted that the energy market is always about 10% of GDP since the industrial revolution began. Satyajit Das, Yanis Varoufakis, and Steve Keen make up one ex-banker and two economics Professors. Along with the likes of Peter Schiff in the US, at least 3 of these 4 definitively predicted the 07/08 global financial crisis triggered by the asset bubbles etc. while 99% did not, and they were the prevailing consensus at that time.
This in turn, by luck not design, helped the USA and a few others meet their existing Kyoto targets for cuts in their GHG emissions. The connection/correlation is clear – higher GDP/Growth equals higher GHG emissions and other pressures on land use changes. Except for Peter the three mentioned have a distinct Australian connection. They can be easily found online if you’d like to further explore their economics/political/rational evidence based views and ideas.
I want to draw particular attention to Steve Keen. Before now I hadn’t heard an economist saying that ‘economics’ needed to draw upon the expertise of climate scientists and their computer modeling (GCMs) advances and engineers et al. Why he was saying that is really interesting to me.
Now while economics per se is off-topic (sorry) to me everything is connected; even if it it isn;t obvious to everyone how that may be so. Banking practices does in fact influence energy use, which in turn ….. yes affects the climate and the financing of either more FF mines or alternative energy or nuclear energy. Then there is the “economies” of the world. Surely everything interconnects and dissects each other. Personally I like to place some of my attention onto the bigger picture whenever possible… both to see problems arising ahead of time and looking for eclectic longer term solutions. Weird I know but it’s just a hobby not a career nor a religion.
Being off-topic I won’t be talking about any of this further, but simply wish to share a few links to Keen especially for others who may be so inclined. He’s outside the economics consensus, an outlier. So are the other 3 too. Consensus politics/ beliefs doesn’t always work out well. As the two 2005 Australian Nobel medical research prize winners showed the world regarding stomach ulcers. What seems to break down broken consensus though is the scientific method itself … that and the right DATA, and often Data that has been ignored for some reason by the prevailing Group Consensus.
Now this is not a criticism on the climate change consensus, far from it. One point is to be on the look out for a significant global GDP decline soon not dissimilar though not as bad as the 07/08 one. The growth in GHG may slightly ease off a bit, which could buy a little time for the planet and us. Lower or slower growth in CO2 ppm readings ‘could follow’.
The more subtle one is under the radar it is today’s economic/banking systems and especially “financing, loans and credit” that drives/stalls both the economy and funding for energy. What if the current paradigm was turned on it head? How I don;t know exactly, but all these guys are saying there’s something totally out of whack with “reality & the data” in how the current world of economics.
For a start (if interested) hear what Keen has to say about complex systems analysis, computer modelling and accurate data, Lorenz’weather modelling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system, the value of genuine experts in their field, and the predominant ideology of today Neoliberalism interconnecting via Globalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
Steve Keen interview on BBC HardTalk August 2016 (annoying interviewer sorry, see the last 5 mins for a quick summary if short of time)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcNBW9609HM
The Big Idea Nth Ireland about Private Debt (lecture Steve Keen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoNT4cerN9g
https://www.youtube.com/user/ProfSteveKeen
http://www.debunkingeconomics.com/
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/
http://www.economonitor.com/blog/author/sdas3/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyajit_Das
Yanis Varoufakis thoughts for the post-2008 world
https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/building-a-progressive-international-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-07
While all are naturally climate science centric here, you may have some academic statistical friends who may be interested in looking into this further for their own benefit and more. I’m not up to discussing this nor defending/promoting these ideas, merely sharing the info and the names fwiw. They are all much smarter than the average AGW denier and rabid conspiracy theorist that’s for sure. And a change can be as good as a holiday they say. :-)
Thomas @233
You appear to be contradicting yourself e.g. we started discussion when you stated:
“to gain true knowledge via the internet”. To which I objected to ‘true’. You now say:
“No one knows everything already” which I agree with.
Then you say:
“The more serious issue is when some people continue to deny that news when it is true and proven be true beyond doubt”.
That is not science. There is no such term in science when its goal is to encourage and respond to the ‘unknown unknowns’.
I think you need to reset your beliefs and get into the ‘real world’.
Cheers…….
I consider my prediction made in Auugust of last year to be met. The Arctic Sea Ice is in an incredibly poor state everywhere. There is no area of true old pack ice I can find. Everything is popcorn or mush. Mind you, this despite the weather, wind and currents leadin to relativvely low loss via Fram.
Why aren’t the official numbers lower? The instruments and models basically don’t know how to deal with mush. Comparing images from 2012 and 2016 makes the decline incredibly obvious. Use EOSDIS. Look for yourselves. There are areas of ice hanging out in long mushy areas likely being counted that are vapor, prticularly towards the West/Bering. There’s a huge blob of almost nothing, but it seems to be being counted.
It’s an absolute shame the area tools are on the fritz. They would supply vital info this year. Take a look: 2016 vs 2016