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Comments 61851 to 61900:

61851. Composer99 at 23:06 PM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       Fairoakien: Given the wealth of empirical evidence showing that global warming is unambiguously occuring: - temperature trends - unabated ocean heat content build-up - expansion of Hadley cells - melting of land and sea ice globally - shortened winters - changing migration and seasonal behaviours of animals - changing areas of plant growth - increased frequency and severity of warm severe weather events - and so on and so forth And given the empirical evidence unambiguously shows humans are responsible for the greenhouse gas forcing causing the warming: - changing CO2 isotope ratios in the atmosphere - decreased atmospheric oxygen from fossil fuel combustion - tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling - increased greenhouse gas forcings as shown by satellite and surface measurements of longwave infrared radiation - known physics theory (blackbodies, quantum properties of CO2, &c) supporting atmospheric greenhouse effect - and so on and so forth Why is it that you appear to assert a single graphic comparing a 1990 surface temperature projection to the actual surface temperature record is making you a "non believer"? When you examine all the evidence, why is belief even coming into the picture?
61852. JMurphy at 22:57 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       I did email and ask for a list of notable attendees from the organisers but they refused. They probably (like all other so-called skeptic groups) believe in open-ness for all but themselves. But from various sources, it seems there were two MPs there (Peter Lilley and Sammy Wilson), and I only know of one 'journalist' - Delingpole. Seems it was just mainly a gathering of the Lindzen fan-club.
61853. Composer99 at 22:53 PM on 7 March 2012
       Newcomers, Start Here
       Yes, using m2 rather than km2 would have been a good idea. My mistake.
61854. JMurphy at 22:12 PM on 7 March 2012
       It's not bad
       mohyla103 wrote : "I didn't read the full paper of any of those three as I don't have free access to them. However, the figures are right in the abstracts." OK, so firstly, when you wrote : "After checking the three sources for these figures, I find this claim to be very misleading!", you hadn't actually checked the sources - you read the abstracts and decided that was enough to make your 'misleading' claims. That seems to be very strong and yet insubstantial, as far as I can see, especially when you haven't read the details in the papers themselves. Anyone would need to be very sceptical of your claims, especially (with regard to Singh & Bengtsson) when you previously claimed "[c]areful reading" of that source allowed you to "deduce that glacier melt itself is only a fraction of 60% of annual flow, not a full 60%." Who claimed it to be "a full 60%" ? With regard to that "fraction", how have you worked out that fraction ? The abstract states : Under warmer climate, a typical feature of the study basin was found to be reduction in melt from the lower part of the basin owing to a reduction in snow covered area and shortening of the summer melting season, and, in contrast, an increase in the melt from the glacierized part owing to larger melt and an extended ablation period. Thus, on the basin scale, reduction in melt from the lower part was counteracted by the increase from melt from upper part of the basin, resulting in a decrease in the magnitude of change in annual melt runoff. I.E. Less from snow and more from the glaciers, leading to decrease in magnitude of annual change - in no way misleading or wrong with regard to Barnett et al's claim : "...but there is little doubt that melting glaciers provide a key source of water for the region in the summer months: as much as 70% of the summer flow in the Ganges and 50–60% of the flow in other major rivers." (My bold) If you still think that is misleading, provide the evidence for a figure you think is more valid, i.e. under 50%.
61855. Lazarus at 21:29 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Is there any record or list of who attended this meeting?
61856. Ari Jokimäki at 20:56 PM on 7 March 2012
       New research from last week 9/2012
       Thanks, gpwayne. For those who want to follow these things themselves (and it might be worth it as I only include a small fraction of published papers), here is a list of climate science journals (although this list could use updating).
61857. Sapient Fridge at 20:33 PM on 7 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       That article states that "Earthquakes, Tsunami's, Volcanic Eruptions. Obviously not related to the weather or climate" but I've recently read in Focus (the BBC's lightweight science magazine) that their frequency could increase due to weight changes of water/ice on different parts of the crust. Sounds plausible. There is even a book on the subject called "Waking the Giant" although I haven't read it so I don't know if it's based on real research or not. Maybe this explains why the "Geophysical event" line in the re-insurer's graph also had an upward trend?
61858. Rob Painting at 20:16 PM on 7 March 2012
       Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
       Trent1492 @ 11 - funny how ancient ocean acidification episodes have exterminated many calcifying (calcium carbonate shell/skeleton-building) marine life though eh? Evolution does not confer upon species magical invulnerability to rapid change. We are seeing that already off the Pacific Coast of North America, where large natural variations in pH are common. Shellfish have adapted to these conditions, but are presently struggling with ocean acidification. Pacific oyster larvae now being dissolved by the corrosive waters there.
61859. Doug Hutcheson at 19:37 PM on 7 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       Humans have continuously occupied Australia's land of 'Drought and flooding rains' for, IIRC, over 40,000 years. I wonder by how much the enlightened westerners who invaded this peaceful land two hundred-odd years ago have materially contributed to most of the country eventually becoming uninhabitable due to increased severity of those floods and droughts? As long as Australia remains the world's coal quarry and gas producer, we Australians will punch above our weight in the race to change the composition of the atmosphere. Not a legacy to be proud of.
61860. Tom Curtis at 19:33 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Real Climate has waded in on Lindzen's London presentation. They show a clear misrepresentation of the differences between different versions of the GISSTEMP Land Ocean Temperature Index. While Lindzen claims revisions between 2008 and 2012 have added 0.14 degrees C per decade to the trend, Real Climate shows the greatest change is 0.04 C per century, and that Lindzen was probably comparing apples with oranges.
61861. Jose_X at 19:27 PM on 7 March 2012
       Radiative Balance, Feedback, and Runaway Warming
       @Michele #94, thanks for the details. I'll look at it carefully later. @Chris and anyone else, I want to address the observations I posted @#41 contrasting feedback in engineering systems with climate feedback analysis. I have now had time to read over half of Roe09 and key parts of a feedback/controls book I have. This update will partially clarify and/or correct some of my earlier comments (mostly comments #30 and 36). If double-checked, the contents of this comment may be useful to a new article addressing misconceptions an engineer might have. Engineering view: The main idea is to cheaply add feedback to improve the response of an existing plant/process without having to remake the costly plant itself. The main plant/process block is sampled to see how far a signal lies from the reference value ("negative" feedback describes this difference calculation.. the "how far") and have this difference define the driving force (eg, the amount of current applied to a heating coil in the plant depends on how far the measured signal is from the desired value). Isolated blocks: I had wondered if the climate system analysis relied on *isolated* blocks, which is a principle justifying the (Laplace Transform based) transfer function math used in traditional feedback analysis. The answer is that this isolation can be created through careful modeling used to describe each block, including the existence of a buffering mechanism across adjacent blocks; an engineer/scientist can use transfer function analysis incorrectly if on a model that couples across blocks strongly or instead correctly if on one that allows the blocks to be accurately treated independently. Although Roe09 (up to page 11) did not detail any model frequently used as a feedback block, it's not too hard to imagine that a computer model subblock would rely on one or more inputs, like sampled temperature values, to arrive at an effect/output (like increase in temperature or increase in radiative forcing value) that are passed on without any immediate "back-coupling" effect, affecting the next pass through that same block and its equations only indirectly via the well-defined high-level input mechanism in a subsequent algorithmic cycle. For example, the engineer deals with automatic sensors that measure temperature or other signals in the main block without destroying or changing such signals. Meanwhile, the climate scientists also deals with similar measurements (if at different time scales and using manual intervention) that themselves also don't impact the measured condition of the climate to any significant extent and can then be used to derive an accurate result in another submodule (eg, in an ocean effects model). So there is no problem here. Yes, a series of climate equations that would link together tightly all the earth components cannot be spliced down the middle arbitrarily for analysis, but a model based on submodules designed to hopefully fairly accurately model parts of the climate and then combine the results into a whole coherently and accurately can in fact be analyzed across those module points. Again, the climate scenario poses no inherent problems here. Engineers and climate scientists use different diagram structures and meanings of terms (explaining negative/positive feedback and runaway confusion): A) The engineering system's "negative feedback" describes a key block model junction in the block diagram and represents the subtraction of the reference signal minus the result of a sensor measurement (after this measurement has been translated into a form compatible with the reference signal). This is where the "negative" comes from. This difference is then modified to suitable form and size and used to drive the plant's related controlled parameter. We note specifically that (a) a negative feedback value can lead to (b) a same sign (or opposite sign) driving force whose size likely has been diminished (or potentially augmented if the system is unstable) and can certainly be a positive value (eg, the new slightly lower "positive" current passing through heating coils). The differencing is highlighted as "negative feedback" while the sign and other features of the applied plant signal are not thus highlighted. This highlight makes sense for the primary engineering problem at hand, to tame a plant parameter in order to give improved performance of some sort (and avoiding instabilities). Smaller positive feedbacks might exist elsewhere in the diagram. What you generally don't want is for this primary differencing to instead end up being effectively an addition or otherwise leading to unstable runaway conditions. B) In the climate system, the focus is reversed. The differencing against the reference signal does essentially occur but is transparent and implicit inside most (or all) feedback submodules (ie, is not a focal point of the analysis) while the sign value of the net changes made to the main signal (eg, temperature or radiative forcing increase or decrease) is the focus and defines the "positive" or "negative" feedback attribute. To repeat, we have this same exact negative effect and corresponding potentially positive driving value we see in engineered systems, but the differencing is not modeled at a key block junction while the focus shifts instead to the sign of the contribution the feedback path makes to the reference module/parameter. One example of the hidden differencing in climate analysis would be the subtraction within a submodule's heat equation calculations on two temperature values (a delta step). Three examples of the unimportance (to the engineer) of the final sign of the contribution made from a particular feedback path to the driving signal in the engineering problem are (a) a heating coil works the same regardless of the direction of electron flow, (b) alotting piecemeal contributions from different feedback paths may be impossible to do accurately given the time scales in effect and lack of measurement capabilities, and (c) the systems are purposely engineered to specs that adhere decently to understood models so there are usually more interesting and important questions than details of transient responses already understood well from derived model solutions. So, the engineer and climate scientists are usually talking about different "positive" and "negative" feedback effects. When Roe09 says on page 6, "note also that the not-uncommon misconception that a positive feedback automatically implies a runaway feedback is not true," he is sort of comparing apples to oranges to the extent the "misconception" comes from engineers' discussion of negative vs positive feedback effects. The engineers would be having a different discussion than the positive/negative feedback discussion two climate scientists might have. Of course, this isn't to say two engineers might not at times find it worthwhile to analyze the same sort of positive/negative feedback effect climate scientists discuss (the sign of the contribution to the signal), but that would not be where the "misconception" comes from. [In my opinion.. based on my recent "study" of this point. blah blah.] A few more notes: Diagrams would have made this discussion easier to follow.. sorry. on runaway: Many process/plant reference blocks likely already model an automatic regulating mechanism that, akin to Stefan-Boltzmann, naturally counters rises in the signal (temperature) and fights runaway to some extent; however, for (eg) electronic circuits (effects can happen very fast), this natural counter effect (like resistance) might be very weak and can possibly be overpowered rather easily and quickly by the driving forces (like transistors). Meanwhile, digital circuits (which function as perfect mathematics abstractions) may not even have a natural block against runaway effect unless added explicitly as digital "code". on frequency/Laplace: This model doesn't appear to be used by climate modelers since the main questions are different than what an engineer faces. The "transfer functions" I saw on Roe09 were mostly just gain values: (a) they did not have a lag/lead component as you'd see with frequency analysis or specify the gains as a function of frequency; (b) multiplication in frequency domain is not needed, as the convolution in time domain is effectively performed within each submodules; and (c) the combination of submodule transfer functions include only real-valued gains independent of "s", so I believe the math works out fine. [may think about this last point more later] Climate view: Obviously (today), the main difference between the climate system and an engineering system is that we are merely analyzing the climate and not trying to both analyze it and then significantly engineer an improved system response (eg, by purposely regulating up/down CO2 levels). Roe09 explains that different analyses might consider different reference systems, but probably almost always the reference system will include the no atmosphere earth Stefan-Boltzmann reaction. ..vs engineered system: The time scales are rather different. Our confidence in the models are also rather different. Manual and automatic roles are rather different. Sorry this comment may be hard to understand, but it might help some determined soul.. who might be able to leverage parts of it to help others struggling with the feedback issue.
61862. owl905 at 18:17 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       'Please note that all of these things were predicted as early as 1988' "A recent set of calculations indicate that if the present carbon dioxide level should double, the over-all temperature of the Earth would rise by 3.6dC. If it were to halve, the temperature would drop 3.8dC" - Isaac Asimov, "No More Ice Ages?", 1959.
61863. gpwayne at 17:23 PM on 7 March 2012
       New research from last week 9/2012
       This is very handy - it's hard for many of us to keep up with research (even knowing where to look sometimes). Thanks for the effort, which I think is really worth it, and keeps us all up to date with what work and research is being done.
61864. mohyla103 at 16:30 PM on 7 March 2012
       It's not bad
       JMurphy, I didn't read the full paper of any of those three as I don't have free access to them. However, the figures are right in the abstracts. Singh, Bengtsson: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.1468/abstract Singh, Jain, Kumar: www.jstor.org/stable/3673913 Singh, Jain: http://www.mendeley.com/research/snow-and-glacier-melt-in-the-satluj-river-at-bhakra-dam-in-the-western-himalayan-region/
61865. Martin Lack at 16:11 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Further update: Hopefully by now my email to 300 people has gone viral but, if not, you simply must read this!!! And I am particularly fond of this too (which I have just posted further down the page): ...I am not seeking to act as either judge or jury. All I have asked for is an explanation for Lindzen's unwarranted optimism on climate sensitivity; and his insistence that we should ignore a genuine, well-established consensus of scientific opinion - that is continually being re-validated by ongoing observations of ice caps, ice shelves, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ocean acidification, salinity and temperature; with the latter now giving rise to increased frequency of extreme weather events of all kinds* - based solely on his tranparently "contrarian" views. * Please note that all of these things were predicted as early as 1988 but were deliberately left out of all IPCC reports (so as not "to scare the horses") - resulting in under-reporting of the nature, scale and urgency of the problem we now face: Biello, D (2007), 'Conservative Climate: Consensus document may understate the climate change problem', Scientific American, March 18, 2007.
61866. Martin Lack at 16:03 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Owl905 #3 "...underestimating an opponent leads to defeat." You are spot on there - this was Lindzen's mistake.
61867. Tom Curtis at 15:40 PM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       Fairoakien: 1) The graph shown by Albatross shows total heat gain by the Ocean, and by Land, atmosphere and ice. Because the Oceans occupy two thirds of the Earth's surface, and have an average depth of 3.75 km. Therefore they can absorb much more heat than the land surface and atmosphere, even though land surface and atmosphere increase in temperature at a faster rate. It is quite frankly unclear to me whether the land or ocean is heating (gaining energy) at a faster rate when compared on a m^2 basis, cubic meter basis of effected areas, or per tonne basis of effected volume. As others have indicated, a link to, or full citation of a paper which discusses any of these would be interesting. 2) You raise an interesting point about figure (4). Examining it, it appears to me as though Keith Pickering to the 1989 to 2011 linear trend and then drew in the FAR projection (Best estimate of climate sensitivity, best approximation of actual change in forcings) in with the same origin to enable easy direct comparison. That strikes me as an appropriate way of proceeding. The only more appropriate way is to normalize both projection and temperature record over the period 1969 - 2011 and adjust the means to match. It is important to note that, contrary to your description, the graph does not simply originate from 1989 as the trend lines do not pass through the 1989 temperature record. In other words, Pickering did not use the same absurd technique used be the WSJ 16 except in reverse. Given your condemnation of Pickering's method (as you mistakenly take it to be), I expect an equally strenuous condemnation of the WSG 16's actual technique. Finally, the IPCC FAR did not predict 1990 temperatures. The models were run from 1765 and result in inconsistent temperatures for 1990. The clear intention is to predict trends from 1990 rather than to predict absolute temperatures. Therefore Pickering's (or the alternative I described) are the only appropriate methods of comparison.
61868. dana1981 at 15:37 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Utahn - thanks for the link. When I saw that particular slide I really had no idea what Lindzen was talking about. Looks like Gavin has caught him just plain flat out screwing up and wrongfully basically accusing NASA GISS of fraud in the process. I'm sure Lindzen will apologize to the scientists at NASA GISS and the audience that he misinformed any day now.
61869. actually thoughtful at 15:28 PM on 7 March 2012
       It's the sun
       Cruzn246 - what is the basis for your statement (ie where is the peer reviewed published research) and how do you explain the cooling since 1918? Other theories match the known data better than the statement "1365.7 seems to be enough to warm". One in particular I would draw your attention to is AGW - it not only incorporate the sun (obviously the primary source of heat energy) but it also includes things like water vapor, CO2, soot pollution, ice cover, volcanoes, etc. Check it out -the good news is the heavy lifting has been done - you can read article on this site that address any question you have.
       Response:

       [DB] You can peruse Cruzn246's litany of comments here, as he has a long history of posting unsupported assertions at SkS going back about a year and a half.  Note the moderator response to this comment over a year ago. 

       Nor is it the first time he has posted such comments on this very long thread.

61870. Tom Curtis at 15:08 PM on 7 March 2012
       Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use
       Trent1492 @8, I have always been suspicious of fake skeptic claims that Kilimanjaro's snows did not melt as a consequence of global warming. As temperature increases, ice sublimates faster. The area around Mount Kilimanjaro shows a 0.5 to 1 degree anomaly relative to the 1951-80 mean for December through to February (GISTEMP), the hottest time of year for Mount Kilimanjaro. (It shows the same anomaly on annual data as well. Clearly, there has been an increase in sublimation due to temperature on Kilimanjaro. Consequently the common fake skeptic claim that the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro is still below freezing, and that therefore global warming is not responsible for the loss of ice is a non-sequitur. Against this, insolation rates and humidity also effect rates of sublimation. Aerosol Optical Depth has increased with time over the twentieth century, although at a much reduced rate between 1975 and 2000, which would tend to reduce sublimation rates. However, this 2004 study, by the same lead author as the paper to which you link, strongly suggests that change is cloud cover is the dominant factor, with reduced cloud cover resulting in greater insolation and hence greater sublimation. Until a study shows the regional change in cloud cover is a consequence of global warming, it is not possible to conclude categorically that global warming is the cause of the ice loss. The paper you linked @5 (actually, the news report for me, as the paper is behind a paywall) is very interesting. From the news report and abstract, it does not rule out Land Cover and Land Use Changes as a cause of the reduced as the cause of the ice melt. It does mean, however, that claims that global warming was not the cause of the ice loss on Kilimanjaro are unproved at best. It shows that LC?LUC are probably not the cause of changes in cloud cover at the peak of Kilimanjaro, but does not show that global warming is. Of course, given that the claim that Kilimanjaro did not lose its snow due to global warming is at best unproved, that certainly means Kilimanjaro is not the counter example to global glacial shrinkage due to global warming that fake skeptics pretend it is.
61871. Utahn at 14:38 PM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Gavin has a post at RC as well on GISTEMP misrepresentations from Lindzen...
61872. KR at 13:02 PM on 7 March 2012
       Newcomers, Start Here
       Composer99 - You need to take the current values, roughly 0.65-0.8 W/m^2, and a surface area of 5.1x10^14 m^2 (not km^2, which is 10^8). That means 313.5 to 408 TW (10^12 Watts), 3.134x10^14 to 4.08*10^14 joules per second - right now.
61873. DMarshall at 12:49 PM on 7 March 2012
       PMO Pest Control: Scientists
       It's not just the Harper Conservatives; the provincial Gov't of Alberta (aka the Oil Patch of Canuckistan) has been right-wing for a long time and there's a rising force, with whom the radical Tea Partites would strongly identify, called the Wildrose Alliance. Needless to say, they ascribe to the same conspiracy theories about climate scientists as the Republicans
61874. Composer99 at 12:41 PM on 7 March 2012
       Newcomers, Start Here
       Here's a newb question: Climate forcings are usually expressed in Watts per square metre (W m-2). So for example, James Hansen in his AGU 2011 Fall Meeting press conference explains that the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing from pre-industrial times to the present is 3 W m-2, where the forcing applies across the entire Earth surface area. Given an Earth surface area of approx. 5.1 x10e8 m2, we get a climate forcing of (3 W m-2)(5.1 x10e8 m2) or approx 1.5 x10e9 W. Given 1 Watt is 1 Joule per second, my question is: Does the climate forcing given mean that, on average 1.5 billion Joules is accumulating in the Earth climate system every second from pre-industrial times to the present (using Hansen's figure)?
61875. Composer99 at 11:44 AM on 7 March 2012
       PMO Pest Control: Scientists
       Pay no attention to the systematic shutting down and defunding of good science in Canada... look, a panda!
61876. owl905 at 11:39 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       @dana22 - He is taken seriously by a wide audience of pro-pollutionists. And he needs to be taken seriously, and rebutted seriously, by the voices for science.
61877. KR at 11:31 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       Fairoakien - "...the ocean is heating at a slower rate than the land mass..." As expected - this was predicted by Svante Arrhenius from first principles in 1896 - land has less accessible thermal mass, and will react to changes faster than the oceans.
61878. KR at 11:28 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       Fairoakien - "The FAR projection was extended from the lowest temperature at the time, 1989..." The FAR projection (in Fig. 4, which in absence of other information from you I suspect you are speaking of) is presented as a trend comparison. In fact, the FAR projections shown (Fig. 1, Fig. 3 of this post) are the results of model runs showing anthropogenic temperature gains over a baseline state: "The contribution of the change in greenhouse gas concentrations to the change in global-mean surface air temperature (C) during 1875 to 1985 together with projections..." Fig. 6.11, page 190, emphasis added. ...and not scenario expectations for absolute temperature. This is because the FAR isn't assuming that CO2 is the only forcing. I suggest you do a bit more reading before you try accusing anyone else of "self-serving justification".
61879. cruzn246 at 11:27 AM on 7 March 2012
       It's the sun
       Solar activity does not have to increase to cause warming. It has to be at or above a certain level. Approximately 1365.7 seems to be enough to warm. It pretty much held or exceeded that level from 1918 or so on.
61880. Composer99 at 11:03 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       Fairoakien: With regards to your statement on ocean heating: that oceans heat more slowly than the atmosphere and Earth surface will surprise no knowledgeable person, thanks to the high specific heat capacity of water. That is why the oceans are such a large heat sink, and hence as long as the oceans are still accumulating heat there is no sensible basis on which to claim that global warming has stopped.
61881. scaddenp at 10:59 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       "recent articles show that the ocean is heating at a slower rate than the land mass" What articles would these be please?
61882. Albatross at 10:52 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       @ 88, The heat content graphic @30 is based on Church et al. (2011); the data were kindly provided to SkS by Drs. Church and White.
61883. Fairoakien at 10:42 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       What a self serving justification! No wonder there are non be believers The FAR projection was extended from the lowest temperature at the time, 1989 If the average of the 3 years temperatures 1989-1991 Then the projected sloped line is at the top of the observed temperature range (-Snip-) Oh and Albatross : I don't know wher you got the heat sink graph from, but recent (-Snip-) articles show that the ocean is heating at a slower rate than the land mass which is why they explain the rise in temperatures over the Northern Asian land mass
       Response:

       [DB] "recent (-Snip-) articles show that the ocean is heating at a slower rate than the land mass"

       Kindly provide a link to the peer-reviewed paper published in a reputable scientific journal for this unsupported assertion.

       Inflammatory snipped.

61884. scaddenp at 10:37 AM on 7 March 2012
       Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
       Yes, but note a lot of research on its accuracy. The inferred changes in CCD is what I understand underpins the PETM event.
61885. Griffin at 10:20 AM on 7 March 2012
       PMO Pest Control: Scientists
       Mark R@14, If indeed Canada does much better than the USA, there will be the same problem as in California during the depression, millions of Climate Refugees that, given the balance of power, Canada will have to accept.
61886. dana1981 at 10:17 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Lindzen is undoubtedly very smart and very well-informed about climate science. Which is why it's all the more puzzling that he claims we've doubled CO2-equivalent, that we can just ignore aerosols' impacts on temperatures, that he fails to differentiate between transient and equilibrium warming, etc. If Lindzen doesn't understand these things, then he's not nearly as smart as I think. If he does, well, it's against SkS policy to comment on peoples' motives or suggest they're being dishonest, so there's not much more I can say about that scenario. Regardless, as long as Lindzen continues not only to make, but rely so heavily on this obviously wrong argument, he simply cannot be taken seriously.
61887. logicman at 10:16 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       les #14 Thanks, I already left some comments there. When I first signed up at the Guardian the name 'logicman' was already taken, so I has to use a variation. It's easy to spot. My comments are the ones about charity law. :-) Back to the topic: the committee room rented for Lindzen is quite small. Perhaps the organizers realized just how many empty seats there would be if they rented the Royal Albert Hall or Wembley Stadium. Of course, if they had made their "debate" open to the public then they may well have made a tidy sum from ticket sales: but they would have been outnumbered by those of us who are careful to examine all of the available scientific facts before reaching our conclusions. It is a sign of a very closed mind to start with a conclusion and seek evidence in support, as is done by the campaign against the climate act. They are offering prize money for essays: "We invite pieces from 1,000 to 2,000 words in length, to gore one of the sacred cows of the environmentalist movement."
61888. Stephen Baines at 10:03 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Lindzen is undoubtedly accomplished, but how someone's ideas are considered by ones peers is a better measure of current reputation than a publication list. His ideas have been out there for long enough that people have been able to test them directly. Unlike the atmosphere, they just don't hold water. The only question is why he holds onto these ideas so stubbornly. Generally, that is not an admired trait.
61889. Stephen Baines at 09:49 AM on 7 March 2012
       Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
       Scaddenp...Don't they use delB-11 in borate to estimate past variations in pH? That is a more direct measure supposedly. It doesn't vary much either I believe.
61890. owl905 at 09:37 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       @Rob 17 - if you want to dispute Lintzen's list in his "Publications" section, do it with him. There seems to be two references in the list to Jupiter, and the suggestion that papers aren't papers because they're not 'peer-reviewed' papers doesn't get much traction here. The non-paper you produced is a debate published in Nature magazine - Nature reviews and accepts/rejects those discussions. If he's done some padding with Business Today, it's minor compared to the compendium of work in atmospheric physics over three decades. It's his accomplishment and reputation that was behind the stunned reaction when he first forwarded the 'AGW has stopped' interview in 2004. He's one of the skeptics that has a lot of expertise traction.
61891. actually thoughtful at 07:39 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       GreenCooling - I am interested in the refrigerants you mention - one of the problems we have right now in renewable energy is that R-134/R410-A (the common ones after the Montreal Protocol took effect) is limited to a high temp of about 120F in a ground source heat pump. But to get to the high temp you need to really work the compressor, so we need a refrigerant that can easily handle higher temperatures (180F would be ideal...). Less compressor work = less electricity = smaller PV/wind array or (in the worst case) the less coal burned. This is for the concept of a ground source heat pump (GSHP) powered by PV as a way to handle both heating and cooling (heating alone is better handled by straight up solar thermal). Do you know, or can you point me towards, the temperature properties of the all natural refrigerants you mention above? Are you thinking of ammonia or CO2 as the refrigerant? I've read about ammonia powered chillers driven by evacuated tube solar thermal panels. Currently not small enough for residential, but intriguing.
61892. actually thoughtful at 07:30 AM on 7 March 2012
       Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
       Reading this post late, I am struck by how much Anteros is stuck on the same problem that Michaels had: treating BAU as a common term, rather than a scientifically defined term. If BAU means "business as usual" - and "business" hasn't notably changed - then they may have a point. But in both cases, Michaels, and now Anteros, have to ignore the fact that the term BAU is defined to be a particular forcing (different I think, one being Hansen's 1988 BAU and the other being the 1990 FAR BAU -but because the terms are defined, there really isn't an excuse for the confusion. Anteros, it can be hard to see the problem with something when you have espoused it so vehemently - take a look at Micheal's BAU problem - see if you can recognize where Michael's erred, and then see if you recognize it in your own position. At this point I think we have a new myth "BAU means whatever happened".
61893. scaddenp at 06:50 AM on 7 March 2012
       Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
       Well paleoclimate cant actually measure pH directly. Instead the studies infer carbonate compensation depth which is a meaningful, ocean pH measure. Let's see the evidence that this fluctuates wildly.
61894. dana1981 at 06:47 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Rob @17 - pretty much the same line since 1989, in fact.
61895. Trent1492 at 06:30 AM on 7 March 2012
       Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
       I have heard the objection that since ph fluctuates widely on a daily basis that this measurement of a average ocean ph level is useless. I get the feeling that this argument is akin to the bit of sophistry that involves the same argument we hear in regards to measuring global temperature.
61896. scaddenp at 06:13 AM on 7 March 2012
       Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
       There are many things that we can say with confidence about the PETM (likes the lower limit on the rates of acidification, timing constraints etc.) but I dont think cause is one of them. This is an active research area with many problems to solve - I'd keep away from definitive statements until some of the dust has settled. Oh, and watch the journals...
61897. Rob Honeycutt at 05:59 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Interestingly, Lindzen has been plying pretty much exactly the same line since at least 1993. http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/165pal~1.pdf Owl905 @ 3... I got the above article from your link. There are a number papers on the list that are not actual papers. Some are just articles like this one. Others are papers on the climate of Jupiter. I think Lindzen's contribution to climate science is probably about half that number of papers.
61898. Paul D at 05:50 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       The definition of 'The House of Commons' is very specific. It is the room where the primary debates take place and voting on policy is conducted. Lindzen did not address anyone in there so basically Heartland Institute is ignorant of cultures and politics outside the US and has faked a meeting that never took place. The reality was... AFAIK a conference room was rented in the Palace of Westminster and invitations and people bought tickets for the event. On the other hand... Hansen did address one of the parliamentary select committees about 3 years ago, which was broadcasted on BBC Parliament and online.
61899. angliss at 05:37 AM on 7 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Kevin C - yes it does. Thanks for the explanation.
61900. rustneversleeps at 05:22 AM on 7 March 2012
       PMO Pest Control: Scientists
       @ Mark R, I certainly grok the logic of your speculation, but if there is one thing that the financial crisis of 2008-???? reinforced for me is that it not so easy to isolate "yourself" (be it an individual, corporation, nation) from global forces. Some dodgy mortgages go into default in Arkansas, and the next thing you know Google stock is down by 70% and Gordon Brown is suggesting that Britain take equity stakes in its banks. I am not so sure it plays out as neatly as our intuitions suggest. But if that were indeed the "planning" on The Harper Government(tm)'s part, it would be beyond cynical. The muzzling of our scientists is truly odious behaviour. This from a Harper who said while in opposition: "Information is the lifeblood of a democracy. Without adequate access to key information about Government policies and programs citizens and Parliamentarians cannot make informed decisions and an incompetent or corrupt Government can be hidden under a cloak of secrecy." Putz.

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