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Comments 64851 to 64900:

  1. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Elsa! I believe I know what Lovelock meant.This is from Paul Edwards's A Vast Machine,MIT Press,page 439,and is not to be taken lightly.The other reference is to M.R. Allen & D.J.Frame in "Call Off The Quest," Science 318,no5850 (2007):582. The discussion involves climate sensitivity,and the idea that doubling CO2 may lead to a temperature rise of perhaps greater than 6 degrees C;which is a lot higher than the IPCC's forecast,and Hansen et al's. "Once the world has warmed by 4 degrees C," Myles Allen and David Frame wrote,"conditions will be so different from anything we can observe today (and still more different from the last ice age)that it is inherently hard to say when the warming will stop."If that is true,the search for mopre precise knowledge has little hope of success.Worse,implicit in the quest for precision is the notion that there is some "safe" level of greenhouse gases that would "stabilise" the climate.Allen and Frame's point is that we do not know this,we cannot find out wether it is true--and we now have good reason to suspect it is NOT true" We need a Churchill of a leader now!All this childish bickering over things like time series anomalies has long gone beyond the ridiculous. Peter Cummins New Zealand
  2. More Carbon Dioxide is not necessarily good for plants.
    JMykos: Your last sentence is technically true yet is part of a larger comment that is essentially misleading (all the more so since the key inferences are left unsaid). The fact of the matter is that the present climate change is occuring at a rate that is unprecedented in paleoclimate history - with the possible exceptions of periods that we would do well to avoid re-visiting (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum & the like). When you consider also that human agriculture has only developed during the period of relative climate stability during the Holocene, when global climate remained within a tightly constrained range, the above-noted rate of change is hardly encouraging. Nor is it any consolation to look at long-vanished climates, to which our current suite of agricultural crops are not in the slightest accustomed, and marvel at the plant growth apparent.
  3. Still Going Down the Up Escalator
    Very quick correction -- you've got 2011 when I think you mean 2012 for some discussion of timelines in the text.
    Response:

    [dana1981] Thanks, corrected

  4. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Norman: If 97 out of 100 surgeons are telling you you should have, say, a tumour, surgically removed, and follow it up with adjuvant chemotherapy, and three others are saying you should just drink some herbal teas, which would you go with? Or would you ignore the surgeons entirely and go with the homeopath, the chiropractor, or the quack who tells you cancer is caused by liver flukes and can be cured with a "zapper"? That is effectively where we are at with climate science. The experts who are paying attention to the evidence are in broad agreement. The remaining tiny minority are espousing positions often indistinguishable from anti-science cranks.
  5. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Speaking as a hockey-country Canadian, that last video nearly elicited tears. I used to have all sorts of fun playing out on the little pond near my grandmother's old house in the winter time. I have a 4-month old boy, and I'd hate to think that he (or his children, should he have any) would have less of an opportunity to do the same.
  6. Still Going Down the Up Escalator
    IMO the power of graphics such as the "Skeptic Escalator" is so great that people who really ought to know better (such as, say, professional statisticians like Mr Briggs) will make stunningly poor arguments against them. It's amazing how people will argue themselves into incoherent knots when they attempt to argue against clear & compelling visualisations of clear & compelling evidence.
  7. More Carbon Dioxide is not necessarily good for plants.
    Just been reading this post. I think many commenters are being harsh. At the least there is a hypothesis that more co2 will benefit overall plant growth and yields. That hypothesis is not proven or disproven by studying issues with soya beans being attached by a particular beetle etc. It's a much more complex situation that. We do know coal seams were formed during rampant plant growth during high atmospheric co2 periods.
  8. Still Going Down the Up Escalator
    It's pretty telling that Briggs seems to have confused real-world, instrumental data records with climate models and predictions, and then tried to trash it. It's even more telling that Anthony Watts thinks that his obscure flailing is somehow sufficient to "school" Phil Plait on statistics! Over at Open Mind, Briggs tried to backpedal by redefining model as "averages," but this doesn't fly either. Also, I was coincidentally using the graphic on Jan. 30th in another forum (responding to the Daily Mail/Rose claim of no warming since 1997), and instantly caught some denialist flak over it. I didn't realize the picture was getting spread around of late, but it's just so great for beating down arguments of short-term "no warming" crap. Funny how things seem to happen to everybody at once sometimes.
  9. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Norman#57: "there is always the second opinion when medical treatments are involved." Granted. But what we see here is really this simple: the second opinions given by an ex-astronaut, a newspaper blogger and some paid political policy hacks are not as valuable as the second opinions of those scientists working in climate science. Your link to Dr. Drinkwater, a fisheries biologist, is a case in point. In his opinion, "This warming is primarily due to currents -- a greater amount of warm Atlantic water is flowing into the North Atlantic and up to the Barents Sea." We've clearly shown in other threads that ocean warming is a result of upsetting earth's energy balance. So in his opinion, Arctic ice melt is due to warmer water moving north; what is left unsaid is that warmer water is due itself to global warming. A climatologist (like a practitioner of internal medicine) might make that connection; a fisheries biologist (like a guy who operates only on left elbows) might not.
  10. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Elsa @15:
    "I find it rather difficult to see why you think your own approach is in any way superior to the cherrypicking that you highlight. If we are looking for evidence of temperature changes then surely it is temperature that we should look at."
    Contrary to Mark R, the Daily Mail article was a response to this press release rather than news of the upcoming revision of the Hadley/CRU Land/Ocean Temperature Index. That press release contains data from four Land/Ocean Temperature Indices, three of which are in close agreement and show significant temperature increase over the last fifteen years. There is, however, one which is an outlier, and which shows little or no temperature increase over that period. The land component of that index is also an outlier compared to various land only temperature indices including the BEST analysis (not included in the Met Office press release as it is not a Land/Ocean index). As we also know, it is an outlier with respect to its revised version which, though not yet fully implimented, is known to show warming over that period due to the addition of more station data from regions which where formerly sparsely covered. Naturally, the Daily Mail article focuses exclusively on the outlier. The fact that it is an outlier, however, puts Elsa's suggestion that we look exclusively at the temperature into perspective. The GWPF and the Daily Mail did not look exclusively at the temperature, but exclusively at just one temperature index. That is the nature of the cherry picking she has taken it upon herself to defend. When faced with contradictory temperature data, the obvious thing to do is to exclude the outlier. It is also obvious that we should exclude the temperature index with the least geographical coverage (and hence most unrepresentative of the globe as a whole). We should also exclude the temperature index with the least raw data, ie, actual station records. On all three counts, the temperature index we would drop is the HadCRUT3 temperature index, ie, the temperature index the the Daily Mail (and apparently Elsa) focus on in exclusion to all others. Of course, given that there may be problems with the analysis in any of the indices, the other sensible thing to do is to look for corroborating evidence. If we look at natural events which are significantly effected by temperature, and they tell us a different story from what our temperature index is telling us, then we have significant reason to distrust our temperature index. This is in fact a method recommended by the scientists at NASA:
    "This derived error bar only addressed the error due to incomplete spatial coverage of measurements. As there are other potential sources of error, such as urban warming near meteorological stations, etc., many other methods have been used to verify the approximate magnitude of inferred global warming. These methods include inference of surface temperature change from vertical temperature profiles in the ground (bore holes) at many sites around the world, rate of glacier retreat at many locations, and studies by several groups of the effect of urban and other local human influences on the global temperature record. All of these yield consistent estimates of the approximate magnitude of global warming, which now stands at about twice the magnitude that we reported in 1981. Further affirmation of the reality of the warming is its spatial distribution, which has largest values at locations remote from any local human influence, with a global pattern consistent with that expected for response to global climate forcings (larger in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere, larger at high latitudes than low latitudes, larger over land than over ocean)."
    (Source, my emphasis.) If you follow NASA's advise and look at other indicators of global temperature increase, it becomes obvious that global temperatures continue to rise. Arctic, and global (Arctic plus Antarctic) sea ice have declined: Glaciers have retreated: The Greenland and Antarctic Ice sheets have lost mass, while other smaller ice sheets are disappearing entirely: The oceans are gaining heat: And, among a host of other smaller signs, the Donner Christmas family hockey game is a dying tradition: These secondary indicators clearly show the Earth has continued to warm over the last 15 years. That is, it is GISS and NOAA who are giving us the straight dope on temperatures, not HadCRUT3, on which the Daily Mail keeps its eyes so firmly fixed. Apparently Elsa wants our eyes firmly fixed on HadCRUT3 as well. Not for her any glance outside of that little black circle (figure 2 above). For if we do glance at the additional evidence, we won't believe the Daily Mail's con.
  11. The Latest Denialist Plea for Climate Change Inaction
    This caught my eye… “It seems a reliance on non-experts for consultation is not just a problem for education, as underscored in the editorial by climate scientists. I wonder: is it just coincidence that global warming and education are both socially and politically charged fields? There's a lot at stake for wealthy interests to ensure that global warming remains controversial and contested. Otherwise, we'll finally adjust our lifestyles and that could hurt a bottom line. A similar situation might be true for education. Certain well-heeled entities are very interested in the acquisition of valuable public per-pupil dollars. This might be why the real experts get shut out: they actually know what might be best for students and not someone's bottom line.” Source: “Climate Scientists, Educators, and Why We Avoid Consulting the Experts” by Shaun Johnson, The Huffington Post, Feb 2, 2012 To access this thought-provoking article, click here.
  12. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    muoncounter @20 I think it is correct to respect the knowledge of experts in a given field but you can certainly question them and should. A skilled surgeon may claim you need an operation, but they could still be wrong, there is always the second opinion when medical treatments are involved. "While you're at it, consider Arctic ice melt and world glacier mass loss; explain how these symptoms can possibly be happening if there's been no warming." muoncounter. Arctic ice melt may very well be a signal of Global warming but there are other explanations out there. Note I am not endorsing any particular view but showing that other possibilities do exist. Here is one at this link. Quote from the link above: "Dr Drinkwater rejects the common explanation that the Barents Sea is getting warmer because the atmosphere in the polar regions has warmed." Current Arctic Sea Ice, low formation in Barents Sea area. source.
  13. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    elsa#43: You quote Lovelock without providing a reference. That's poor form in a scientific discussion; it tends to erode your credibility. Here is the interview you refer to. Note his statement a few paragraphs below your selection: I think the sceptic bloggers should worry. It's almost certain that you can't put a trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere without something nasty happening. This is going to resolve itself and global heating is going to come back on stream and it's these bloggers who are going to be made to look weird when it does. ... But everything has a price and an unexpected price may hit these bloggers. It's the cry-wolf phenomenon. When the real one comes along, they'll be laughed at. We call picking only the data that fits your argument a cherry-pick.
  14. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Daniel Bailey - I have to agree. elsa has clearly misconstrued the entire thread, failed to follow any information or links provided, and appears to be commenting simply to confuse. Elsa - If I'm wrong, please demonstrate it by actually commenting on the content of the thread, or the information you have been provided. If not, I would have to consider you a troll.
  15. Doug Hutcheson at 11:08 AM on 3 February 2012
    Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Getting back on the topic of think tanks and media misinformation for a moment ... The desmogblog has an interesting article shining the light on a strategy document put out by the International Climate Science Coalition. In part, the strategy document says:
    But small community newspapers are where the real easy pickings are to be found. The strategy explains these publications are more likely to publish submissions because they’re not swamped with offers like larger newspapers. Also, these publications might not yet have an editorial stance on “controversial, ‘big city’ media issues such as climate change.
    To take the ICSC on at its own game, I have decided to start writing regular letters to the editor of my local paper. It is a right-wing rag, but I have had letters published in the past, so I can hope at least a few will be published in future. This is something I can do that is positive. I have the time, I am literate and I am concerned, which is all it takes to write letters. I am not a scientist, but I can write and I vote. I invite others who are wondering what they can do to help, to take up the same challenge.
  16. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    elsa... Would that be the same James Lovelock who says that humans are too stupid to prevent anthropogenic climate change?
  17. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    ... and clearly avoiding providing any alternative explanation for the consilience of evidence. Elsa, Have you an explanation for all the evidence in #42? You might also want to read Dessler on clouds, and as aerosols are predominantly a cooling agent, invoking them is not good news for Earth: lots of aerosols may indeed mean that our GHGs are responsible for more than 100% of global warming.
  18. Climate change policy: Oil's tipping point has passed
    @47 Mattj - my favourite analogy again: How do you make turkeys vote for Christmas? Voters hold the keys in a democracy, and as the majority of them vote selfishly according to their economic conditions, the people they elect will always be mandated to pursue disaster. If voters are informed that doing X will definitely lead to Y if action Z isn't taken might just be able to lead to some positive results, but Easter Island springs to mind. Actively encouraging and investing in markets for alternative energies is a way forward, even if initially expensive. Considering externalities, I'd argue that leaving coal in the ground is worth more than digging it up.
  19. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Elsa has been pandering this form of denial, "We can't be sure because we don't know everything" on the intertubes for well over a year now. Examples just from GPWayne's site are here and here. It is quite obvious due to the utter lack of supportive links that Elsa is just here to prosecute the twin agendas of delay and denial.
  20. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Minkie41 at 09:21 AM on 3 February, 2012 To the rational,observant and informed the AGW case is proven conclusively "beyond all reasonable doubt".Yet,many sections of the media continue to lie,obfuscate and confuse. I'm an old Lovelock fan too. Well here is what he has to say on the science that you think is proven: "The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they're scared stiff of the fact that they don't really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show. We haven't got the physics worked out yet." So who is right? Him or you?
  21. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    andylee: interesting thought... a "category 5 high pressure" (at least as a notion of quite extreme high pressure), though it should be pointed out that many extratropical lows go much lower than 966mb in the Atlantic and Pacific in winter (e.g. Hurricane Bawbag, which spawned the trampoline Internet hit). elsa: if you think the last 10 years is significant, you seriously need to read Going Down The Up Escalator What's so strange about a short-term lack of warming? Nothing! They are present in observations and in climate models, and are just what to expect when you combine a solar max --> solar min with a period of roughly El Nino --> La Nina, masking the warming (see Foster and Rahmstorf). Warming is not monotonic.
  22. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    elsa, science crucially relies on converging evidence. That's why people have been retesting the theory of relativity in different ways, for decades, despite the clear success of the previous tests. Converging evidence is gathered to ensure that the previous measurements, no matter how carefully gathered, were not due to some cause other than the nominal cause. The many other indicators of a warming world, and indicators that humans are causing it (e.g., ice diminishing), converge with the temperature measurements in pointing to the same conclusions. That's why it really is important to attend to those other indicators.
  23. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    “consider Arctic ice melt and world glacier mass loss” >Why would I do so if I could use the temperature record and >why do you not mention the Antarctic? Elsa, that is like driving a car by GPS without looking out of the window! Even if global average temperatures have not seen much increase over the last decade, the unequivocal loss of Arctic ice and glaciers are particularly notable because they are the canaries in the coalmine, saying that Something Big Is Going On. Do we really have to wait for data to become so obvious that the last remaining denier has to concede? It'll be too late to do anything by then.
  24. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    elsa #38: you're handwaving. You claimed in #15 not to see much warming in the full temperature record in the opening figure, despite the large and statistically significant warming present in the figure. You then claim that the surface temperature record is all that matters. However, heat in the near-surface Earth environment goes into many things, most importantly ocean water and sea/glacier ice. If you fail to account for those you miss quite a lot of the heat (see Fig 1 above). Ocean heat content is a measure of temperature, despite your claims otherwise, as others have pointed out to you. And you're repeatedly claiming that the other measures, of glacier ice melt, sea ice loss and sea level rise are not indicators of temperature rise. Theoretically possible, but what is your alternative mechanism for an acceleration of sea level rise, and an accelerating decline of glacier and sea ice, that does not involve temperature rise. It's rather difficult to move all three simultaneously without temperature rise, particularly when that is observed clearly in every surface temperature dataset and in the 0-700m and 0-200m ocean heat content datasets. Add to that the 10 human fingerprints on climate change, notably the cooling stratosphere, reduction in heat escaping to space and increase in heat returning to ground, and there is a coherent, consistent picture that explains all the evidence. What is your explanation for all this evidence?
  25. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Regarding my Churchill post,may I add some other criteria?At least bi-lingual:Mandarin and English.An internationally well-respected scientist possibly,maybe a writer,but with highly developed political skills.Charisma in bucket loads and absolutely clean--no DSKs please.An ex-warrior,perhaps? Appointment to be by a non-political committee of internationally recognised scientists; and by acclamation.But soon,very,very soon,please. Peter Cummins New Zealand
  26. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    elsa - Please see my comment here. This thread shows that looking at the larger data (all the data, all the indicators) clearly shows global warming - only 'skeptic' cherry-picking indicates otherwise.
  27. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Well, a simplistic explanation for the lull in land temperatures is because most of the heat has gone into the oceans, carried north, and melting the ice. We all know what happens to temperature over time while heating a bath of ice. It stays at 0 until the ice has melted and then continues climbing. I know the difference between weather and climate. The extremes that we are seeing are caused by more energy being injected into a dynamic system. My analogy is like agitating a filling bath, if you agitate more vigorously, the peaks and troughs of the waves increase, even as the average level increases. The atmosphere behaves the same - it's a huge spherical "bath" of gas behaving like a thin liquid. Highs and lows of pressure are directly proportional to the height and mass of air above, but because of their size and the rotation of the Earth, they are forced to rotate while searching for equilibrium. As the world is retaining more heat, the atmosphere becomes more active, jet streams shift, pressure differentials increase, and then wind and weather become more extreme and unusual. Topical case in point now is the extreme cold that we are suffering in Eastern Europe, where in my memory the weather has been behaving strangely for the last decade, some winters not even seeing any snow. This year winter took a holiday until just last week. The high pressure above Siberia reached 1060 mb (1013+47), and would make a Category 5 hurricane if it were a low of 966! (1013-47). Also this year North America has an unusually mild winter. It seems to me that with more Arctic interaction, the Arctic will gain even more energy this year and we will again see record losses of ice cover this year. Whatever we can do to try to keep our climate stable should be done, whether cynically or pragmatically - the benefits of making use of alternative energies stand on their own, even if warming were not happening.
  28. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Dr. Trenberth successfully highlights the skeptics flaw, that among scientists engaged in climate research, anthropogenic global warming is not a theory or belief but is data, analysis and models. The so-called skeptics have utterly failed to suggest or promote an alternative hypothesis in peer reviewed literature that explains the observations and models, instead seeking to promote a manufactured consensus through posters and opinion pages. Unfortunately, the final arbiter of this story is going to end up being the physics, thermodynamics, physical chemistry and all the other sciences that make up the multidisciplinary field of climate science. There was a paper once written that I would quote here, not only for its content but for its context in this field of study - "A great deal has been written on the influence of the absorption of the atmosphere upon the climate. Tyndall in particular has pointed out the enormous importance of the question. To him it was chiefly the diurnal and annual variations of the temperature that were lessened by this circumstance. Another side of the question, that has long attracted the attention of physicists, is this: Is the mean temperature on the ground in any way influenced by the presence of heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere?" S. Arrhenius, On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground. April 1896
  29. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    To the rational,observant and informed the AGW case is proven conclusively "beyond all reasonable doubt".Yet,many sections of the media continue to lie,obfuscate and confuse.What struck me most about the David Rose Daily Mail nonsense were the commenting punters' affection for AGW denialist remarks and their loathing for all others.Denialist stances are popular and that helps sell advertising. While I'm not a scientist,I've read Hansen's Storms Of My Grandchildren and Spratt & Sutton's Climate Code Red,plus others.I'm an old Lovelock fan too.I follow the science on a long list of excellent sites like this one.My opinion echoes many people's--but not nearly enough--like me.It is that we are heading for a humongous catastrophe;a combination of the impact of CO2 and CH4,and it's too late for anything but drastic worldwide action. To achieve this,I suggest we need a charismatic,articulate and loveable leader--a modern day international Churchill--to capture the hearts of of the majority so that the denialists and other contrarians become irrelevant. The time for argument and debate,much of it so juvenile and divisive,has passed.The time is for action but without a leader nothing much will happen. Where are you?
  30. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    Interestingly I raised a number of questions for CBDunkerson, Composer99 and DSL to answer but they have chosen not to respond. While I suspect that KR and I disagree on many things I would comment again that at least his comments are well and politely made in contrast to some others. This approach, of reasoned argument well put, is completely necessary for a truly scientific approach, which recognises differences of opinion and weighs up evidence in a calm manner. My replies to his points are: 1. I completely agree with his comment on cherry picking, although I think it is unfair to say that this is solely a skeptic tendency. In many ways that was one of the points of my comments on this article. 2. I would also agree completely with the comment on ocean heat content. But surely to measure this we use a measure of temperature first, in order to calculate the heat content. Would it not have been much simpler if the authoress of this article had just shown us ocean temperature in the first place, when it is warming that we are discussing, rather than putting it in another less obvious form which also makes it impossible for us to judge by how much the oceans have warmed? 3. I note there is no comment on ice cover or sea level. Does KR agree with me that if we are debating whether or not the world has warmed, it is very odd to use these measures as a proxy for temperature when we could use the temperature record itself? 4. I have not pooh-poohed the satellite readings, indeed I think they are highly relevant as they are part of the subject we are discussing, the temperature. My point is that they do not support the global warming view, certainly not in its most alarming form. 5. I would agree that the human eye is extremely good at finding patterns, often incorrectly. But it is not me that seeks to do so. The authoress of this article claims to see a warming pattern. I do not. 6. I make no comment here about long term statistics etc. because the article has chosen to focus on short term statistics and the claim is made that these support the global warming hypothesis. My point is that you can equally interpret the statistics in another and opposite way. Kevin C comments that the reason for not just looking at temperature is that temperature is only a very crude measure of energy. But this is no excuse for using even cruder measures, such as ice cover and sea level, which may move totally independently of average global temperature.
  31. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    I do not belly-laugh at the SkS blogs or comments often. But I did today. Great relief. May I be equally serious ... There seems to be a crocodile invested river in India which carries the notice: "Swimming forbidden. Survivors will be prosecuted" Can anyone rework this to apply to denialists?
  32. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    "No "skeptic" site does anything like this" Actually CO2Science does reference papers - but obviously in the sure confidence that the "skeptic" is not going to actually check since the papers often seem to state a diametrically different opinion to what CO2"science" says they do.
  33. Climate change policy: Oil's tipping point has passed
    I know China imports coking coal but it has a hell of a lot of thermal coal. Furthermore as price goes up, there are very large estimate resources that could be upgraded to reserves as they become economic. Praying that we will run out of coal before seriously damaging climate doesnt isnt prudent policy. The best chance for not extracting those coals would be an alternative cheaper energy source.
  34. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Elsa@14 A quick look around the interweb reveals the following: Phil Jones - BA Environmental Sciences - Lancaster MSc --- Newcastle (UK) PhD Hydrology - Newcastle (UK) Sounds science like to me. What do you believe someone needs to create a temperature series? And has not Muller recently produced a very similar series?
  35. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    william, sadly a large percentage of climate deniers can and do deny all of those things. Indeed, denying AGW is just a continuation of much deeper rooted delusions. The people who insist 'peak oil is a myth' are a case in point... consumption of a finite resource won't eventually peak and then decline? It is sheer insanity, but they passionately believe it.
  36. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Elsa, the letter of reply printed here is just that, a letter. If you want an item-by-item scientific response to each of the unsubstantiated assertions made in the first letter then look at the science. An easy way to do so is to click on "Arguments" in the top menu bar. The Intermediate and Advanced versions of each rebuttal include links to the relevant papers in the scientific literature. No "skeptic" site does anything like this. Now ask yourself why.
  37. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    What a gem:
    I am grateful to DSL for pointing me in the direction of a number of interactive sites with temperature data. I had raised the question of temperature over the last 10 years so that is what I searched for (2001 to 2011, global mean land temperature). The result gives a graph with a series of fluctuations and a trend line that is almost completely flat. Unfortunately I cannot seem to copy and paste it into here but insofar as it shows anything about trends it is not supportive of the view that the world got warmer (or cooler) in this period.
    Of course, this only make sense if you ignore ocean temperature increases & ice melt and cherry-pick your ten or eleven year period. It's not like we have another comment by elsa on another post here at Skeptical Science actually suggesting we ignore other indicators of warming such as increases in ocean heat content or increases in ice melt. Oh, wait... we do.
  38. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Let's take our eye off the right hand and concentrate on what the left hand is doing. They don't believe in anthropogenic climate change. Fine. Even if they can deny climate change evidence, they can't have their heads so far in the sand that they don't recognize the reality of peak oil, of coal fired power stations spewing out masses of pollution, of the destruction the west is causing to the environment and society of oil rich countries, of the number of our own and their young people that are killed in energy wars, of the money we spend on oil coming back to buy up main street, wall street, air ports and sea ports - making us tenants in our own countries. To the Denyers. "Forget climate change if you must". Simply look at our own short and long term interests. http://mtkass.blogspot.com/2010/10/forget-climate-change.html
  39. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    elsa - You have made a number of claims based upon 10 year trends. While 10 trends are (currently) low, do they mean anything? No. Before making any more such claims, I would suggest you read the thread on Separating signal and noise in climate warming, in particular the referenced Santer 2011 paper. Given the noise and variation (not the same thing, mind you, see Foster and Rahmstorf 2011) it requires 17 years of data to separate any significant trend from the noise. So - what do we see with 17 years of data? You see this plot (linear trends from raw data, which was then smoothed with 60 month running mean for clarity). Showing trends with slopes of 0.156, 0.106, 0.081, and 0.149 C per decade - not even close to flat. Your '10 year trends' are cherry-picking. I do not know if you are simply unaware of proper statistical treatment in the presence of noise (if so, follow the links), or you are aware and and hence are trolling - but such short time periods don't establish anything about what's happening in the climate.
  40. Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
    I am hoping this will not be seen as political but, having made having made a thorough review of GWPF pronouncemnents of recent years for my MA degree, I decided that the it would be more appropriate to call it the "Global Wonky Policy Foundation". See http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/category/global-warming-policy-foundation/
  41. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    In the true spirit of the "butwhattabout" brigade, the discussion has again been hijacked by a mysterious claim of significance in a phony 10-year flatline (check your residiuals on that flatline claim, Sparky). It doesn't work for 6 or 12, Nature is not a decadal digital creature, but somehow someone has swamped another thread with claims that it is a definitive issue. It isn't. It's a trick from the bag of make-believer beans. The true significance is in the 12-month run from June 2009-June 2010 setting the complete all-time 12-month running period in the historical records (even higher with the new HadCrut). The true significance is the 10-foot thick layer of freshwater in the Beaufort Gyre. The rest is 'lies, damned lies, and statistics'.
  42. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    pbjamm: You are right - it does not meet my own criteria, but unfortunately I was unable to cpoy and paste the graph onto here, so I had no alternative but to leave it out.
  43. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    At the same time, take into account that solar input has been "unusually low" for the past half decade.
  44. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Elsa, my point with the links was that you can pick whatever trend you want for the short run. Take a broader view. Find fault with this analysis.
  45. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Hmmm, ok that link was wrong. Gotta take beginning of year vs end of year into account; Past 10 years
  46. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    elsa@34 You have asserted a fact (The result gives a graph with a series of fluctuations and a trend line that is almost completely flat) without providing any reference to your source. In previous statements you were concerned with the lack of science content in the rebutal letter. Does your assertion meet your own standard of science content? I am not saying that you are wrong about the graph, jsut that you have provided nothing at all to back up your claim.
  47. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Last I checked, 2001 to 2011 was 11 years. Not 10. Instructions for including links to pages / images can be found by clicking the link reading 'Click for tips on posting images or hyperlinks' at the bottom of the comments box. Ten years with trend
  48. Dikran Marsupial at 04:16 AM on 3 February 2012
    Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    elsa be aware that looking at temperature trends over a timescale as short as a decade is statistically meaningless - the data is too noisy on this scale to expect to get a statistically significant trend whether it is actually warming or not. The only reason that anyone is discussing the trend over the last decade is because it suits the skeptic position, provided you forget about what we have learned about statistics over the last century or so.
  49. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    #34: 2011 saw one of the strongest La Ninas since the 50's. La Ninas lower the measured surface temperature significantly. It will increase once we hit ENSO neutral conditions, and once the next El Nino hits, we will likely see a new global average temperature record, just like we saw in 2010, despite the lowest solar activity in more than 100 years.
  50. Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
    Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. He means climatologists actively publishing. For 'scientists actively publishing' the number is closer to 90%.

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