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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 61801 to 61850:

  1. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    @Tom Curtis #80: Do you have any information about the individuals comprising the group who produced the forecasts? Did the group include economists? Did they use an economentric model and forecasts developed by another global organization such as the World Bank?
  2. PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    "It's a sign of the times when there's a sense of gratitude here for not publishing the authors' names (there's too much downside)." Certainly that is true. There was discussion about publishing any of our full names because of potential ramifications. However I felt obliged to share mine since right from the beginning on SKS I have shared my name, and also I have already criticized the Harper Government vigorously in the past, so it's nothing new. I suppose my applications for government funding may complicate things from time to time though.
  3. PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    "Environment" Minister Peter Kent responded to critical questioning about the decisions to close down PEARL by saying "I don't have a million and a half dollars in my back pocket." However, it appears possible that ordinary Canadians of good will just might: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/03/04/arctic-research-station.html It should be noted that this is not due to extreme financial pressure; Canada's net debt ratio is lowest in the G-7, and the last deficit was a very manageable $33 billion. http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr-rfa/2011/report-rapport-eng.asp Sadly, the video does seem to accurately encapsulate the true attitude of the Harper government toward science--and especially science that is in some way environment-related.
  4. PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    It's a sign of the times when there's a sense of gratitude here for not publishing the authors' names (there's too much downside). The Conservative Party is a relabelled tea-party revolt called The Alliance. It sabotaged the Canadian response to Kyoto - and turned the pollution problem first into 'we don't need a tax or a foreign solution', and then into 'Green Shift is just expensive, job-costing greenwash'. Add: 2009 - 500 Scientists submit a protest document to the PM. Scientists Protest 2012 - Tar Sand players form an environmental response common front - Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance. COSIAll 2009-29011 - The teaching of the pro-pollutionist case at Carlton U is the latest inroad by anti-Science Syndrome. CASS Report-1.7meg PDF (special notes - p.7 connection to Heartland; and a very disturbing note about fast-food science - pp. 10ff Student Feedback). To any American that wants to consider what a Tea Party in power could do to the USA ... look north, and add tar.
  5. PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    From robo-calling to stymie democracy, to censoring scientific research, the Harper government is the worst thing that has happened to Canada recently. I for one, think it's time we start electing scientists to office. Instead of these goons with a cheer-leading degree in free-market economics, and a penchant for profits before people.
  6. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #9
    @JH - suggested SKS wanted to follow up on it. SKS rebuttal topics are one of the main reference sources in the report. Your response has an implication that you didn't look at the report.
    Moderator Response: [JH] You are making a false assumption. I did read the report and did see the multiple references to SkS. I still don't know what specific "follow-up" action you want SkS to take in this matter.
  7. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    John Hartz @79, thank you for the question. Prompted by it, I looked at the annexe of the IPCC FAR, and found the graph of the concentrations of key GHG in the scenarios in figure 4.3. Using those graphs, and the graphs of actual concentrations from NOAA above, I made a comparison of 2010 concentrations. The first figure is the IPCC FAR BAU scenario concentration, while the figure in brackets is the actual figure. The final figure is the percentage of the projected concentration which was actually achieved: CO2: 400 ppmv (394 ppmv) 98.5% CH4: 2250 ppbv (1800 ppbv) 80% NO2: 328 ppbv (323 ppbv) 98.5% CFC 11: 417 ppbv (246 ppbv) 40% CFC 12: 734 ppbv (534 ppbv) 73% So stated, this underestimates the impact of the relatively low emissions in the 1990s. Because of thermal lag, the reduced forcings in the 1990s will result in reduced temperatures in the following decades. For comparison, in 2000 the projected BAU CO2 concentration was 384 ppmv, while in real life the concentration was only 368 ppmv, or 96% of the projected value.
  8. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    @Tom Curtis #76: The first sentence of the PDF document you quote from reads: "The Steering Group of the Response Strategies Working Group (Working Group III) requested the USA and The Netherlands to develop emissions scenarios for evaluation by the IPCC Working Group I." Is there another document that details how the USA and the Netherlands developed the four scenarios?
  9. Warming to Ignite the Carbon Bomb
    DMarshall, smoke and soot in the air block incoming sunlight and cause cooling, while dark soot on the ground absorbs more sunlight and causes warming. That being said, smoke and soot are transient effects. Ten years after the event their impact is effectively non-existent. Thus, in the immediate aftermath of a fire smoke and soot are a net cooling forcing, then as the soot settles to Earth it is a net warming forcing for a few years, until the soot is washed away and it becomes a net zero forcing. In the long run smoke and soot don't matter. On the other hand, the carbon released into the atmosphere by the burning may stay there contributing to warming for centuries.
  10. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #9
    Fran Barlow++
  11. Fran Barlow2 at 23:01 PM on 5 March 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #9
    A jscipt text-tip-based glossary would probably work best, especially if there were a link to a dBase with fuller explanation
    Moderator Response: [JH] For the benefit of our non-tech-savy readers, please explain what a "jscipt text-tip-based glossary" is and how it would work. Thank you.
  12. Lindzen's London Illusions
    UPDATE: Frustrated by my failure to hitherto get the British media to take up this story - and realising I had made a reply from Professor Lindzen very unlikely by making unsubstantiated "contentious assertions" - I have now apologised for the latter. However, I would still like - indeed I think the World deserves - an explanation for all of the things Dana and I (and no doubt many others) have noticed about Professor Lindzen's talk that were, to say the least, "strange"... No cause for alarm? – You cannot be serious! (5 March 2012).
  13. Doug Hutcheson at 19:17 PM on 5 March 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #9
    A glossary would be very useful to me, as I am not familiar with the terms used and references are often made in places where I cannot work out meaning from context.
  14. Rob Painting at 18:28 PM on 5 March 2012
    Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
    Owl905 - "The PETM was an epochal event featuring the effect of the Indian subcontinent grinding into the southern borders of the Eurasian continent. It produced repeated stress fracturing all around the Eurasian continent. The result was oceanic-driven toxic acidity over millennia." That doesn't seem very likely. The PETM carbon isotope excursion happened in less than 20,000 years, there is no plausible volcanic/tectonic mechanism that could have caused such an abrupt event. I know James Hansen has made the same claim, but it does not stand up to scrutiny. It is, however, probable that the exposure of new rock, through India smashing into Asia, helped in rapid draw-down of atmospheric CO2 through the process of chemical (silicate/carbonate) weathering. "The KT boundary featured oceans.......... The Great Dying of the Permian" An interesting feature of the very latest research emerging from these extinctions events is that ocean acidification may have been a common 'kill mechanism". It's likely that other factors, such as ocean anoxia, played a part, but it's remarkable that so many different researchers are zeroing in on ocean acidification. SkS will cover many of these studies in the not-too-distant future.
  15. Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    Thanks for the comments - most of which I accept - which is why my description of the 'model' is littered with caveats. For example, I state explicitly that the use of “natural climatic oscillations” as independent variables is “questionable”. Such a simple ‘model’ cannot of course trace the transfer of heat and, for that matter, CO2, into and out of the oceans. It cannot handle water vapour feedback. All I claim to have done is to show that temperature variations for the last 150 years can be easily simulated if you included GHGs; if you exclude them you have to postulate some other undefined alternative forcing mechanism. When Kevin Trenberth suggested that the null hypothesis should be that humans are changing the climate I did not agree with him; now I am starting think that he might be right.
  16. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    We also discussed the role of CFC emissions reductions in Patrick Michaels Continues to Distort Hansen 1988, Part 1 and the Advanced rebuttal to "Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong". As also discussed in those posts, climate scientists are not in the business of predicting how GHG emissions will change. That is primarily a policy question, decided by policymakers and the public. That's why climate scientists create so many potential emissions scenarios, and create climate projections for those scenarios.
  17. Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
    The PETM was an epochal event featuring the effect of the Indian subcontinent grinding into the southern borders of the Eurasian continent. It produced repeated stress fracturing all around the Eurasian continent. The result was oceanic-driven toxic acidity over millennia. The KT boundary featured oceans drenched in the downpour of atmospheric dust from the Chicxulub impact. Ocean poisoning was a key feature. The Great Dying of the Permian sea-featured one of three extinction processes - a massive oceanic die-off from ubiquitous dead-zones. Now industrial civilization beats the rate of disruption from any of those events ... and it won't have much effect. Okay, not much other than reef collapse, shell dissolution, reproductive cycle inhibition, and weakened resistance to disease and predation. Congrats, the winning ticket in the Great Bonehead Lottery is 'collapse due to pollution'. Best supporting perp award goes to - 'did nothing with the knowledge for half a century'.
  18. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #9
    Pity SKS didn't think my e-mail forward was worth a topic - the CASS report is a pretty comprehensive reubattal to Tom Harris's pro-pollution sludge at the University of Carlton. This was the e-mail: "Skeptical Science just moved up the charts to front and centre. The debate about Tom Harris teaching at Carlton has produced a scathing report response from CASS. Their report extensively quotes from Skeptical Science. It starts here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/03/01/environment-climate-change-carleton-course.html The organization: http://www.scientificskepticism.ca/ The report about Tom Harris and honest science: That's a "Wow" signal, eh?" Anyone else can catch up and join the dots from Heartland's supposedly 'phony 2012 memo' and seeing it in the viewfinder.
    Response: [JH] What specific action had you requested SkS to underatake?
  19. Warming to Ignite the Carbon Bomb
    Question to the knowledgeable here: Is there any negative feedback from extensive fires? Does the smoke and soot act as positive or negative?
  20. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    Tom Curtis and GreenCooling - Thank you for that very relevant data. We are perhaps quite fortunate that the economy and the Montreal Protocol have acted to reduce warming as much as they have. This does point to some shorter term mitigation strategies, I will note: CHC/HCFC reductions, soot reductions, and other short-lived GH influences. Those are the low-hanging fruit, the easy pickings, and may have a strong effect as we address over a longer term the baseline issue of CO2 emissions.
  21. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    Further to GreenCooling @73, this is what the IPCC FAR had to say about their emissions scenarios:
    "The scenarios cover the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), chlorolluorocarbons (CFCs), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from present up to the year 2100. Growth of the economy and population was taken as common for all scenarios. Population was assumed to approach 10.5 billion in the second half of the next century Economic growth was assumed to be 2-3% annually in the coming decade in the OECD countries and 3-5 % in the Eastern Euiopean and developing countries. The economic growth levels were assumed to decrease thereafter. In order to reach the requued targets, levels of technological development and environmental controls were varied."
    (Note: The PDF is obviously a scanned document, and scanning has introduced minor spelling and grammatical errors which I have corrected in this and following quotes.) They go on:
    "In the Business-as-Usual Scenario (Scenario A) the energy supply is coal intensive and on the demand side only modest efficiency increases are achieved. Carbon monoxide controls are modest, deforestation continues until the tropical forests are depleted and agricultural emissions of methane and nitrous oxide are uncontrolled. For CFCs the Montreal Protocol is implemented albeit with only partial participation. Note that the aggregation of national projections by IPCC Working Group III gives higher emissions (10-20%) of carbon dioxide and methane by 2025."
    Unfortunately, they do not provide either graphs or tables of expected GHG concentrations. It is, however, possible to infer that they expected CO2, CH4 and NOx emissions to increase in line with economic activity based on the fact that they assume no measures to counteract that trend. That is, they expected an annual increase of CO2 (and other GHG)emissions of 2% per annum through the 1990s. That, however, is not what happened: The very sharp reduction in CO2 emissions in Eastern Europe (light blue on the graph) contrasts starkly with the expected 3% plus economic growth, and presumably emissions growth assumed in the IPCC FAR model. That greatly reduced emissions growth in the 1990's has been followed by above expected emissions growth in the 2000s due to the rapid growth in India and (especially) China. The net effect, however, has been a near linear growth over the two full decades rather than the exponentially increasing growth expected by the IPCC FAR Business As Usual scenario. A similar pattern is found with NOx, but Methane (CH4) has not only failed to grow as expected, but has flat lined. CFCs are a special case. The IPCC FAR clearly expects some reduction in CFC concentration based on the "partial" implementation of the Montreal Protocol. Implementation of that protocol has been far from partial, however. The resulting reduction in CFC-11 concentrations, and flat lining of CFC-12 concentrations would be a far greater reduction than projected by the IPCC FAR. The relevant GHG concentrations are shown by NOAA: The net effect of all these emission reductions has been a significant decrease in GHG forcings relative to 1990 expectations. Total forcings have not even maintained the linear trend from 1978-1990, let alone the ongoing growth expected by the IPCC FAR in the Business As Usual model: (Radiative Forcing relative to NOAA, modified to show continuation of 1978-1990 trend for comparison. Original image is found here.)
  22. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    P.S. -- want a prediction? ftp://ftp.ingv.it/pub/pietropaolo.bertagnolio/o3/shindell98-o3climchange.pdf "... increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations alter planetary-wave propagation in our model, reducing the frequency of sudden stratospheric warmings in the Northern Hemisphere4. This results in a more stable Arctic polar vortex, with significantly colder temperatures in the lower stratosphere and concomitantly increased ozone depletion. Increased concentrations of green- house gases might therefore be at least partly responsible for the very large Arctic ozone losses observed in recent winters6–9. Arctic losses reach a maximum in the decade 2010 to 2019 in our model, roughly a decade after the maximum in stratospheric chlorine abundance. The mean losses are about the same as those over the Antarctic during the early 1990s, with geographically localized losses of up to two-thirds of the Arctic ozone column in the worst years. The severity and the duration of the Antarctic ozone hole are also predicted to increase because of greenhouse-gas-induced stratospheric cooling over the coming decades." _________ Right on schedule: Scientists Detect First-Ever Arctic Ozone Hole October 3, 2011 It marks the first time that ozone loss in the Arctic region has matched ozone loss above Antarctica, both they and Postmedia News are reporting. According to LiveScience Senior Writer Wynne Parry, the researchers discussed their finding in this Sunday’s edition of the journal Nature, writing, “”For the first time, sufficient loss occurred to reasonably be described as an Arctic ozone hole.”
  23. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    > "few or no steps were taken to limit the emission of GHG's". Nonsense. 7(h) The Greenhouse Effect www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7h.html May 7, 2009 – Artificially created chlorofluorocarbons are the strongest greenhouse gas per molecule.
  24. Nordhaus Sets the Record Straight - Climate Mitigation Saves Money
    Tom Curtis.
    Bernard J. @9, Fairoakien explicitly asked about the costs "to Canada".
    Fair point. I always have my ecologist hat on and thus I tend to think across national borders, but yes, Canada's overall agricultural range may increase. Having said that, I have a few references tucked away from years ago that note that Canada's agricultural output might not necessarily increase with a doubling of CO2, and especially so in non-irrigated regions - if I have a few spare minutes I'll dig them up. Further, optimistic forecasts are predicated on a future industrial approach to agriculture in continuation of the current style, and the small issue of Peak Oil will make such an assumption rather dubious... If humans do not come up with a viable (and sustainable) alternative to fossil fueled agriculture, the optimism of increased production is somewhat misplaced. There's another fly in the ointment too, which I usually tend to skirt around as it's somewhat politically sensitive... During my PhD fieldwork I had the pleasure of spending some time with a Canadian senior staff member of a well-known international NGO. His expertise was in water resources, and he noted that amongst certain government circles the US was projecting future water shortages as a consequence of human-caused global warming. The expectation apparently is that such a shortfall will be in part made up by water sourced from over the border. I'm not sure that the Canadians have been/are to be consulted on the matter, but it seems that there is a south-of-the-border expectation (by some officals, at least) that such will happen. I'm sure that Canada would be thrilled to export water to the States, but doing so might affect their own agricultural productivity...
  25. GreenCooling at 12:15 PM on 5 March 2012
    Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    Keith, (I hope this is not too off topic, and more interesting than debating Anteros) I just wanted to say many thanks for your highlighting of the contribution of the CFC phase out to reducing emissions, it's very poorly recognised that the Montreal Protocol has been around 5 times more effective at reducing radiative forcing emissions than the Kyoto Protocol ( Velders et. al. PNAS, 2007), and every bit of attention to this is most welcomed. Lamentably the climate benefits achieved by the Montreal Protocol to date are in dire threat of being eroded by the continued growth in the use and emissions of HFCs (and HCFCs - although these are being phased out atmospheric concentrations are still growing). This is entirely avoidable as genuinely climate friendly future proof natural refrigerant solutions exist, and are becoming more widely available and used, but face stiff resistance from some sectors of industry. Additionally the need for transition in developing countries in particular is lacking in support, training and awareness. A recent paper by Velders et.al. 2012 in Science reinforces the 'world avoided' by phasing out CFCs and calls further attention to the need to address HFCs by including them in the Montreal Protocol. Although very useful in setting the scene for 25th anniversary negotiations (of 1987 Vienna Convention) in Bangkok in July and in Geneva in November, far more attention to the HFC threat is required to move the intransigent Parties towards consensus on the now much-debated HFC amendment proposals. Here's the new graph: "Projected radiative forcing by ODSs, HFCs, low-GWP substitutes, and CO2 (12). The blue hatched region indicates what would have occurred in the absence of the Montreal Protocol, with 2 to 3% annual production increases in ODSs [data taken from (5)]. Added to the radiative forcing from ODSs [data from (9)] are the contributions from HFCs from the upper-range scenario [data from (11)]. Also shown are the radiative forcing from alternative sce- narios in which substitution is made with chemicals having shorter lifetimes (lower GWPs); their contri- bution is calculated using methods described in (11) with the parameters from (16). Under the Montreal Protocol, use reductions started in 1989 for CFCs and in 1996 for HCFCs." The 2011 UNEP report "HFCs: A Critical Link In Protecting Climate and the Ozone Layer" published in time for but overlooked by Durban is another useful resource, as is the paper by Molina M., Zaelke D., Sarma K., Anderson S., Ramanthan V., & Kaniaru D., Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions, Proc Nat. Acad. Sci. (2009). Recovery and destruction of the bank of old CFCs and HCFCs is another useful contribution the Montreal Protocol could make if much more effective measures could be agreed and acted on. PS - my favourite T-shirt: "Is that the truth, or was your News Limited?"
  26. funglestrumpet at 11:52 AM on 5 March 2012
    Warming to Ignite the Carbon Bomb
    Regardless of whether the global warming that is currently in play is due to human beings and is thus AGW or not due to human beings and is thus just plain old GW, can there be any argument that we as a species absolutely must do whatever we can to reduce our contribution to the greenhouse effect? Anyone who thinks that there is an argument for not taking action needs to re-read the above post and if they still feel the same, they need to find out what is meant by the term ‘tipping point’. We know what the greenhouse gases are and how much of them we are releasing into the atmosphere. We also know how to minimize that release. Surely it is a crime against humanity to deliberately hinder any action towards their reduction. (Cue some smartarse to say that I am calling for a cull in the population of human beings, seeing as we emit greenhouse gases. Some more than others in my experience.) Future generations are going to look back at what we knew as a species and wonder why on earth we did not take the action the scientists are screaming for. Mind you, five minutes spent looking at archive material of the WUWT website and they will get some idea as to where the problem lies. It is not all WUWT’s fault, of course; in the U.K. we have Lord Monckton, the well known >snipping< >snip<, Lord “We can adapt to global warming” Lawson, columnists such as Peter “The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist” Hitchins and Melanie “Climatology is a global fraud” Philips, among many others who seem to speak from positions of appalling ignorance, yet deliberately try to stop action that is intended to combat global warming and thus their children’s suffering and that of their grandchildren. The comments policy prohibits my giving an opinion of such people. As for America’s contribution to the issue, well ...!
  27. Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
    The Feely article linked by JosHag is OK but there is a better one (also by Feely and written for a general audience) here. It is part of a special issue devoted to ocean acidification. Closer to home, if you mean 'recent' = 'last few years' then we gave a plot here at SkS based on the same data as the Feely plot. The plot, (second figure in the post, labelled Figure 6) shows (as do the Feely papers) measured and 'calculated' pH for the Hawaii Ocean Time Series (HOTS). (We just thought their figure was a bit ugly and we wanted to check their calculations using our own program). It is important to note that 'calculated' pH does not mean a guess. As we explained in the post, the marine carbonate system can be completely described with any two of the 4 marine carbonate parameters. The parameters are 'total carbon', 'total alkalinity', 'total pH', and pCO2 (or fCO2). (see note 1, note 2) These carbonate parameters are a bit like using trigonometry to solve a right angle triangle. Sometimes you might measure the hypotenuse and other times you might calculate it using the sine of an angle. But it would be foolish to say that because you had not directly measured the hypotenuse that any calculation was dodgy. Similarly, pH can be calculated from other measured carbonate parameters. (see note 3) pH for other definitions of 'recent' will be discussed in our next series (I know, I know, it is taking a while). Note 1: 'total pH' (pHT) refers to one of several pH scales – kind of like oF and oC are different scales for temperature (interconversion is possible between pH scales but is not as simple as temperature conversions). Note 2: alkalinity has a complex definition but it is not the opposite of 'acidity' – see our OA series for details. Note 3: There are several sets of internally consistent constants used in the calculations. The different sets perform better or worse depending on the input parameters (e.g. pH or alkalinity)and other environment describing factors (like salinity and temperature).
  28. Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use
    I just came across this Science Daily article that found a minimum impact of land cover change on the glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Here is the original article from Nature Climate .
  29. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #9
    Glossary is absolute necessity. For example I remember having hard time understanding Dana's articles when I was newbie. I was even repulsed from them, because they were loaded with strange acronyms like TSI, OA, GSS, etc. Now I'm used to it and appreciate Dana's skills as one of the most accomplished SkS authors. However, I still find that Dana uses those acronyms without explanation. That must be hard for new readers.
  30. JosHagelaars at 10:25 AM on 5 March 2012
    Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
    The paper can be found at: http://instaar.colorado.edu/~marchitt/reprints/hoenischscience12.pdf The supporting online material here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6072/1058/suppl/DC1 I found the figure 3 very illuminating, it tells the story of the response time of the oceans. The end conclusion of the article: "However, in additionally driving a strong decline in calcium carbonate saturation alongside pH, the current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical changes potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 My of Earth history, raising the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.". Is there a warm and maybe sour future that lies ahead of us? @TheNucleus For a graph look here: http://www.mcbi.org/publications/pub_pdfs/feely_etal_2008_pices.pdf
  31. Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
    I read the paper and I understand the implications, but it doesn't include a graph showing the recent, rapid change in ocean pH. The graph of ocean pH that it does show (figure 3) is on the scale of millions of years. Figure 2 shows their model of how the time course of atmospheric CO2 influences ocean pH. Does anyone know where I can find a graph showing recent ocean pH measures on the a finer time scale?
  32. Warming to Ignite the Carbon Bomb
    As holes are melted here and there through permafrost, surface water from the boggy northern areas drains through the holes, drying out the bogs. The peat exposed becomes very vulnerable to burning.
  33. Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    Ron, Your method of estimating sensitivity assumes the system was always in equilibrium.
  34. michael sweet at 05:52 AM on 5 March 2012
    It's the ocean
    hjm, You need to think it through before you talk. If you phrase your statements as a question you will not look like someone who is not serious about answers. The ocean loses heat to the atmosphere above it since it is warmer (as you point out). When the atmosphere warms, the ocean loses heat more slowly (according to the theory of thermodynamics as you referred to). When the ocean loses heat more slowly it warms. This is obvious to people who do not have an agenda to to discount the real problems caused by AGW. Summary: the ocean loses heat more slowly to a warmer atmosphere so the ocean increases in temperature.
  35. Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    I posted this comment at Bickmore's blog too, but I thought I'd run it by everyone here to get more opinions and feedback about it: "Yet the IPCC refuses to accept that the global warming (or cooling) on time scales of thirty years or more can also be caused by Mother Nature. ...The IPCC has taken for granted that there are no natural variations in global average temperatures once one gets beyond a time scale of ten years or so." I think Dr. Spencer might need to learn the difference between "refusing to acknowledge" something and "having no good evidence" that something is real. Perhaps the IPCC "has taken for granted" that natural variability has little to no impact on longer timescales because there isn't any reason in the literature to assume otherwise, and their process merely reflects that reality. The IPCC can't very well take into account the vague notion of unquantified long-term noise that hasn't been established to exist at all. Given the lack of support for such things in the literature, even if we take Spencer's papers at face value, it's unlikely that his conclusions would be well-vetted, tested, and supported enough to make it into the IPCC's considerations. As I understand it these kind of things that are inconsistent with the existing literature would need more than one or two papers to be considered strong enough evidence. Spencer himself said that such alternatives have received relatively little research. Even if Spencer thinks he has uncovered such long-term natural variability (and so far it doesn't seem likely), it's not a fair criticism because his papers claiming it were first published after the last IPCC report. I think that counts as missing the deadline for inclusion. What exactly does he expect the IPCC to do? Invent a time machine to include papers published after their report, and credulously promote the very little bit of his research that claims to have found something to the status of other, better-supported conclusions that say the opposite?
  36. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    funglestrumpet: Oh, I totally agree that Murdoch is evil. I was just pointing out that the editorial policy of the WSJ was to blatantly misrepresent or lie about science long before Murdoch bought it. He's certainly done nothing to improve the accuracy or reduce the ideological pandering of the editorial board of the paper ...
  37. Rob Painting at 05:25 AM on 5 March 2012
    It's the ocean
    h-j-m@43 - the same greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere also trap heat in the ocean, via longwave forcing of the 'cool skin' layer of the ocean surface. See SkS post: How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean.
  38. It's the ocean
    various gases (mostly CO2) emitted by our industrial society are heating up the atmosphere due to the so called greenhouse effect. So far so well? Not quite. The GHGs reduce the amount of heat escaping into space. Over 90% of this heat takes up residence in the oceans. We focus on the extra heat kicking around in the atmosphere because it matters more to us (to the first order at any rate). It's also easier to measure surface temperatures and we've been measuring them for a long time.
  39. It's the ocean
    As KR pointed out in post 36 I would like to restate my concern to clarify what I see as a problem. Sorry to be a year late but more urgent personal affairs occupied my time meanwhile. First I am not supposing that the oceans are driving global warming but it hits me quite queer that a measured warming of the oceans is put up as proof for anthropogenic global warming over and over again. Unless my understanding is completely screwed up AGW (climate change) is based on the fact that various gases (mostly CO2) emitted by our industrial society are heating up the atmosphere due to the so called greenhouse effect. So far so well? Now I completely fail to understand what this has to do with rising oceanic temperature unless there is a physical process allowing for the atmosphere to heat up the ocean. Looking around I just found that on average ocean temperatures are higher compared to the atmosphere above which (according to the theory of thermodynamics) would not allow for such a process. But this in turn leads tho the conclusion that AGW and rising ocean temperature are unrelated and the so are the effects of the latter. But of cause if you leave out all the effects of rising ocean temperature you loose a lot of the most scaring predictions of AGW.
  40. Bob Lacatena at 04:03 AM on 5 March 2012
    Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    As a quick point before anyone says it... the MEI as a measure of ENSO strength uses 6 variables: sea-level pressure (P), zonal (U) and meridional (V) components of the surface wind, sea surface temperature (S), surface air temperature (A), and total cloudiness fraction of the sky (C). Only a few of those are temperatures, and they are based on a very, very small area of the globe, so they are representative of the state of a known mechanism rather than simply being copies of global temperatures. Using the MEI is an entirely different matter than using AMO or some other completely temperature based proxy, and so is not a case of forcing the right answer in to make sure you get (or stumble into) the right answer at the end.
  41. Bob Lacatena at 04:00 AM on 5 March 2012
    Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    Ron, I think the problem with your analysis is that you are predicting temperatures based on temperatures (AMO). That is, the AMO index is computed directly from observations of SST, so by including that as a term, you are by default forcing your model to conform to temperature measurements which in turn over the long term parallel global temperatures. It also, IMO, is not a valid proxy for ENSO events, because AMO and ENSO are not related (ENSO is a small-period Pacific cycle, while AMO is a longer period Atlantic cycle). It is also not a valid input because it clearly is not entirely global in nature... it's Atlantic. And last, but not least, there is no known mechanism behind the AMO, and not a long enough series of observations to determine if it is actually an independent cycle with a physical cause or merely an artifact of how things turned out in the past century. Bottom line... as you aptly point out, all it winds up being is climastrology. It is just curve fitting, but by choosing three known, physically relevant variables (solar irradiance, aerosols and CO2) and one direct-temperature-observation (AMO) as core components, you are of course getting a reasonable answer... if you put the right answer into the equation, of course you'll get that back. The trick would be to find some non-temperature based measure of long-term variability, and still have it all work out correctly.
  42. Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    RonManley: You said:"a sensible value for CO2-equivalent sensitivity (0.89 °C for a doubling of CO2-equivalent)" Isn't that too little? Most climate analysis found a climate sensitivity around 3ºC for a doubling of CO2.
  43. Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    Can natural oscillations explain the climate? Roy Spencer would seem to argue that this is the case. Recently (Scaffeta’s Widget Problem) you had an article on Scafetta’s claims to be able to model climate just using natural cycles. At that time I produced two versions of a very simple regression model: the first using only sun spots (as a proxy for radiation), optical mean depth (for aerosols) and the Atlantic Multi-decadal oscillation (as a representative oscillation): the second model added CO2 as a fourth independent variable. The first model was hopeless – it represented some of the variations but none of the trend. The second model was much better – it represented both the variations and the trend, and was actually more accurate than a 23 model IPCC ensemble. At that stage I made a tentative estimate of CO2 sensitivity which I now realise was in error (I multiplied the CO2 coefficient by the number of years of data (156) not the increase in CO2 (105 ppm)). Since then I have tried replacing CO2 with CO2-equivalent. This model has slightly improved accuracy (r2 = 0.90) and a sensible value for CO2-equivalent sensitivity (0.89 °C for a doubling of CO2-equivalent). You can see the model herehere. I fully realise that it is dangerous to read too much into a regression type model but it would be an interesting challenge to see if anyone can model the temperature from 1856 to the present as accurately as this model with a 4 independent variables and without invoking CO2.
  44. Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    The Foster and Rahmstorf study, along with other attribution studies ar of course powerful evedence that Spencer is quite mistaken. Furthermore, the entire issue of deeper ocean heat content is not even considered. The greater thermal inertia and energy storage capacity of the deeper ocean makes it a much better metric for seeing what actually was occurring during the past decade with Earth's energy balance. The troposphere has a far lower heat capacity and lower thermal inertia and is far more subject to the noise of short-term natural variations, and thus requires filtering to see any underlying trend. In looking at the energy storage of the deeper ocean over the past decade we see it stored more energy than any 10 year period out of the past 40. Hardly a sign of a planet that is cooling.
  45. Warming to Ignite the Carbon Bomb
    Owl905, Of course scientists like William Ruddiman would argue that human land use changes beginning with the clearing of forests some 8,000 years ago and agriculture 5,000 years ago already began altering atmospheric chemistry enough to change the temperture profile of this interglacial. Thus, from Ruddiman's perspective the Anthropocene began many thousands of years ago and we created our own conditions for more stable subsequent temperatures. In previous interglacials, human ancestors were not developed nor widespread enough to have altered atmospheric chemistry to the same degree as they did starting with the early Holocene. This alteration of atmospheric chemistry has of course only accelerated as civilization has advanced, and now of course the issue becomes one of excess, as human greenhouse gas emissions can be thought of as a " human volcano" in term of the rate at which they are flowing into the atmosphere, vastly overwhelming any natural mechanisms that might remove them.
  46. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    Tom wrote: "As has already been well established, Anteros understanding of "arguing in good faith" also involves gross misquotation of, and misrepresentation of the IPCC FAR and Gavin Schmidt." Not to mention repeatedly ignoring the presentation of overwhelming evidence directly contradicting his claims and then simply repeating his (blatantly false), 'I am so disappointed that no one has answered me' mantra. When someone is in denial over the content of the discussion itself there really is no point.
  47. Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    Anteros claims at 68 that:
    "Graph A provides a very clear visual image of what the FAR defines as the high sensitivity prediction - 0.5C per decade. You'll note that it is virtually straight."
    For your convenience, here is a graph illustrating that contention: As has already been mentioned by Keith Pickering @58, it is obvious that the slope of the graph prior to about 2020 is less than the slope from about 2020 to 2100. Given this obvious fact, Anteros apparently believes that "arguing in good faith" requires him to use the slope of the line from 2020 to to 2100 as the "IPCC prediction" for the period 1990 to 2011. In this regard, it should be noted that in his post @46, Anteros claimed that:
    "You claim that the FAR prediction comes with an error range. Again, indeed it does, but the limits of that error range (the specified uncertainty) are merely the two other CS's considered - 1.5 & 4.5C/2xCo2."
    The upper limit of the error range was a rise of 1.5 degrees C over four decades, or a trend of 0.375 C per decade. This compares with his current (@68) estimate that the trend rate over that period for scenario A with 4.5 C per doubling of CO2 is 0.5 C per decade. So, apparently Anteros believes that "arguing in good faith" means making contradictory assertions about the same situation in different contexts based on whatever is rhetorically most useful. As has already been well established, Anteros understanding of "arguing in good faith" also involves gross misquotation of, and misrepresentation of the IPCC FAR and Gavin Schmidt. I am certainly glad that none of the SkS regulars "argue in good faith" as Anteros appears to define the phrase. We have far more integrity than that.
  48. Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    Consistency is not an option in some quarters and that's fortunate because it allows us to easily discriminate between good science and bad science. Of the unfortunate side of this story we know.
  49. John Brookes at 20:58 PM on 4 March 2012
    Roy Spencer's Junk Science
    Its very similar to the stock market, which can drop and even not rise over a 10 year period, but the trend is unambiguously up.
  50. funglestrumpet at 20:26 PM on 4 March 2012
    Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    dhogaza @ 66 Agreed. It just seems to me that if we are going to get the public to agree with what is rapidly becoming an urgent need for action on the issue, we cannot continue letting Murdoch and his like have such influence on the issue. While Murdoch might legitimately claim that his editors have editorial freedom, it would be a very unusual editor to be so politically inept as to not pay heed to the views of those responsible for them keeping their job. It calls to mind the probably apocryphal tale of the company chairman saying: “It is only a suggestion, gentlemen, but don’t forget who’s making it.” In the U.K., Murdoch has just lost a lot of influence because the politicians have at last found strength in numbers and given him the finger – a bit like a group of shopkeepers getting together to reject a mafia protection racket; on reflection, a lot more than a ‘bit’ like. Pity we can’t give him the finger globally. Imagine if all the Murdoch owned American media had a completely and genuinely independent editorial policy. They can’t all be single without children or grandchildren who will suffer if we continue with business as usual. Some of them must have learnt that sex is intended to be performed as a duet instead of in solo. I don’t speak American English, but I think the word ‘jerk’ applies somehow.

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