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Sceptical Wombat at 08:59 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
MonkeyOrchid @12 To be fair Inhofe did not say that he changed his mind about global warming because fixing it would cost too much. He did say that when he found out how much it would cost he decided to dig deeper and based on that digging concluded that it was not happening. From this one can conclude that, like many others, he did some very selective digging. I don't think that it is a good idea to imitate the fake skeptics' technique of out of context quotations. -
scaddenp at 07:53 AM on 19 March 2012Pielke Sr. and SkS Disagreements and Open Questions
"In the LGM, the direct radiative forcing of soil dust aerosols is close to zero at the tropopause and −0.4Wm−2 at the surface." Source: Takemura et al 2008 Surely if aerosol forcing was underestimated at LGM, that would result in sensitivity being underestimated as well? -
Bob Lacatena at 07:40 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
I wish when they did these things that they put together a "war room" of google-wizards. Basically, the instant Inhofe (or whomever) says anything, have a dozen bright interns whizzing away on their keyboards, digging up the facts, getting screen caps, and passing them on to someone with a mike to the bud in her ear, telling her what they found and how to counter the flat out lies. It would be great if off the cuff Rachel could have come up with something better than "did, not! did, too!" For instance, that the Financial Times quote was only from an online blog post by someone who doesn't even work at FT anymore. -
owl905 at 07:07 AM on 19 March 2012New Research Lowers Past Estimates of Sea-Level Rise
Sure ... except now during a long inter-glacial, the sea-shore is 70 feet above sea-level while an isostatic rebound theory suggests it should be closer to sea level. It should be 70' above plus the additional sea-level lowering when its end of the teeter-totter is looking at mile-high ice-sheets. They're addition of an additional 20-43' during an Ice Age doesn't address the current location. If they're suggesting the Hoxnian stretch of 50k years had the Bahamas slooowwwly sink to the sea, it should mesh with evidence from at least Nassau all the way to Turks&Caicos. For now, I'll stick with a local vertical push from below. But it's an interesting hypothesis ... better than "The Flood". -
r.pauli at 06:35 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Rachel was far too polite. Inhofe knew she could be a pushover showcase for his book. It would have been more responsible of her to not give him a soapbox or be better informed. She was media-bullied by him. Is anybody contacting the show with offers to explain this better? Every show should have a climate expert contact So far the best media presentation comes out of Australia 3 years ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBzR0-j0O0o -
mohyla103 at 06:29 AM on 19 March 2012It's not bad
JMurphy I got a hold of a copy of the Singh, Jain and Kumar paper. As expected, there is no mention whatsoever of glacial melt separate from snow melt. In this study, they were calculated together and, in fact, not even directly measured. FYI the study was completed with data collected over 10 years, so the figures presented are averages. Nowhere in the paper does it give a "maximum percentage possible" that you had asked about, so for Barnett's figures to be referring to that isn't possible. Here's one relevant section, from page 52, showing that the author of this paper did not distinguish between glacial melt and snow melt in this study: "Snow and glacier contribution to the 10 years' volume of flow in the Chenab River at Akhnoor has been estimated using the following water balance approach: Snow + glacier runoff volume = Observed flow volume - (rainfall volume - evapotranspiration)" Barnett was definitely correct to cite this paper in saying that glaciers provide a key source of water in the summer, of course. Page 51: "In the post-monsoon season, flow is believed to be from the glaciers and occasional rainfall events in the basin. In general, glacier contribution starts in June/July and continues until September/October." But that's all it says. There are no percentages given here for glacial melt. There is a table on page 51 showing the "Average quarterly distribution of annual flows" where we learn that the water flowing in the July-Sept period represents 51.1% of the annual flow. However, this is once again not referring to glacial melt alone, as flow in the July-Sept period comes from rain, glaciers and snow. Singh et al. confirm this in the discussion below the table where they say "[t]he higher contribution to the annual flow from the pre-monsoon season (April-June) and the monsoon season (July-September) is due to the combination of rain, and snow and glacier-melt runoff." One more relevant bit, from the Conclusion section on page 56: "2. It was found that snow and glacier-melt runoff contribute significantly to the total runoff of the Chenab River at Akhnoor. Based on 10 years of data analysis, the average snow and glacier-melt contribution to the annual flow of Chenab at Akhnoor was found to be 49.10 percent. The remainder is contributed by rainfall." In conclusion, Barnett was wrong to cite this paper as evidence that glaciers contribute 50-60% of the flow in this river, either for the summer or a yearly average. It is actually glacier and snow melt together (and technically it's not 50 it's 49). The peer-review process missed this error. Please acknowledge this, as I am no longer arguing based on incomplete information. Considering the same kind of wording and figures appear in the abstracts of the other 2 papers cited by Barnett for this claim, I strongly suspect he and the reviewers committed the same error there. To Barnett's credit, the summary at the beginning of the article actually does mention snowpack and glaciers, not just glaciers alone. -
owl905 at 06:28 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
It's all in how you position the discussion. Score another card-trick victory for the pro-pollutionists. Comparing traceable lobby efforts from the smokers to environmental groups efforts is where numbers score a triumph over common sense (neither the first nor the last). The smokers spent $294mil (traceable) to fight a pollution cleanup of their own creation. It's like BP decding to spend all the money claiming Macondo was a natural variation in the Gulf bedrock - and they're not going to clean it up. This is isn't about comparison - it's 'what the smell is the Energy Industry doing spending all that money defending their pollution?' ... We're just lucky they're not in charge of the garbage collection. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:26 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
I agree with Pieter. I get the sense that Rachel and her amazing team are not as up on the climate change issue as maybe they could be. That leaves Inhofe an open window to gish gallop his way through the interview. It was interesting, too, that Inhofe mentioned Michael Moore in a discussion on his book on global warming. I think he may have meant Michael Mann being that Moore does nothing regarding the AGW issue. I could be wrong but it sure seemed odd. The other thought I had was, I would guess that Inhofe did not write his book but instead used a ghost writer, since he didn't seem to know what Maddow was talking about with the reference to her in his book. Instead of addressing it Rachel let Inhofe change the subject. -
scaddenp at 06:26 AM on 19 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Some points. Firstly, expect fuel price to go up anyway. Look at IEA reports on effects of delayed investment in MENA. Combatting climate change is really about coal. Does your cap-trade money also pay for infrastructure improvements to ameliorate climate change effects in countries that have negligible contribution to global warming? And what is your geoengineering solution to ocean acidification? I would be rather surprized if the cost of effective geoengineering was cheaper than moving to non-carbon generation. -
funglestrumpet at 06:20 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
monkeyorchild @ 12 Of course the laws of physics bend and change according to America's financial situation! Money seems to be the only thing that nation worships. I imagine they even believe that you have to pay an entrance fee to get into heaven. Honestly, what self-respecting god would miss such an obvious business opportunity? Not one that blesses America, for sure. I imagine the likes of Inhofe and the Tea Party believe that they will be able to solve climate change, in the unlikely event it proves necessary, by slipping the big fella a few dollars to prove Lindzen's numbers for climate sensitivity to be correct. Let's face it, it is going to take something like an act of god to do that. But of course, they are going to have to get to heaven first. Unfortunately for them, If their behaviour has the results it is on course to, it will be "Tea break over you miserable wretches, get back to stoking those fires!" If you believe in all that sort of thing, of course. -
Pieter B at 06:04 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
I felt that Rachel, whom I adore, lost control of the interview early on. Inhofe was doing a Gish gallop, which is impossible to deal with unless you insist that your opponent name names (not just "a scientist with the IPCC wrote") and cite sources completely. Inhofe made a big deal about media reports on climate science, but as we well know, the media do a piss-poor job of reporting on science issues and often have to issue corrections of early reports. Yes, there was a flurry of reports in the 1970s that there was an impending Ice Age,but in actuality the majority of climate scientists at the time were concerned about the emerging warming trend. She also let a couple of references to the Oregon petition slip by unchallenged. I don't think a fence-sitter would be swayed to our side by this confrontation. -
mohyla103 at 05:47 AM on 19 March 2012It's not bad
Bernard J.: "Glaciers do not impound water, they hold it as frozen mass." Did you mean that glaciers can be actual dams that hold liquid water back behind them, or that glaciers act like a dam in that they hold precipitation (snow, not rain) at a higher altitude? If it is the latter, then I misunderstood the phrase "natural dam" in your original statement. I thought you were referring to something like this, where a glacier acts as a true dam, actually impounding water, and actually bursting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_lake_outburst_flood -
Alexandre at 05:43 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Life is a gift from God. It's up to Him to grant it or take it away. My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of human beings who think serial killers can change what He is doing with life is outrageous. Now more seriously: Kathy Hayhoe put it very beautifully when she pointed out that instead of using faith and values to inform our poitics, we're using politics to inform our faith. Sad. -
JMurphy at 05:36 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Very true, Phil, and that is laughable enough : but hearing Inhofe using it as a supposed quote from a "liberal" newspaper (rather than the reality of it being a quote from a columnist-in-denial, in a right-wing paper), is the reality-creating icing on the cake of delusion. fpjohn, I didn't know for sure what its general position was and have discovered that they do have a reasonable Climate Change section, but further investigation requires registration, albeit for free. The section you mention, though, doesn't appear to have been updated this year - unless I was looking at something else. Generally, though, most people would agree that they were pro-business and, therefore, the sort of paper that someone like Inhofe would generally approve of...if only he knew what he was talking about. -
Martin at 05:33 AM on 19 March 2012New Research Lowers Past Estimates of Sea-Level Rise
So the East Arctic ice sheet won't melt away in my lifetime. Phew! I'm feeling much better now.Moderator Response: [JH] That would be the "East Antarctic" ice sheet. -
monkeyorchid at 05:27 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
"I was on your side until I found out how much it would cost" ... a perfect example of deliberately blurring the lines between science and politics. Inhofe appears to believe that the laws of physics will bend and change according to America's financial situation... -
Doc Snow at 05:13 AM on 19 March 2012New Research Lowers Past Estimates of Sea-Level Rise
So there's another shoe to drop, when the 'rethinking' has been done? I'm a bit surprised that glacial rebound wasn't more thoroughly factored in in the first place. It's not all that obscure an effect!--or so I'd have thought.Moderator Response: [JH]Science is a continuous process of discovery and learning. -
muoncounter at 03:30 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Here is the so-called 'article in Nature' that Inhofe touts. It is in reality a column by David Adams in Nature News. This column cites a report by Dr. Michael Nisbet, as evidence for the apparent 'closing of the funding gap' between industry-funded denial lobbies and environmental groups. Nisbet responds to Infhofe here. Nisbet makes it clear that Inhofe's presumptions about more spending by environmental groups towards climate change action are unfounded. He describes Inhofe as an ideologue: What explains the stark differences between the objective reality of climate change and the partisan divide in Americans’ perceptions? In part, trusted sources have framed the nature and implications of climate change for Republicans and Democrats in very different ways. ... In speeches, press releases, and on his Senate Web log, Inhofe casts doubt on the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other major scientific organizations, selectively citing scientific-sounding evidence. To amplify his message, Inhofe takes advantage of the fragmented news media, with appearances at television outlets, such as Fox News, on political talk radio, and Web traffic driven to his blog from the Drudge Report. Nisbet's report is sobering, as it documents the continuing failure of climate science communicators at winning the battle for hearts and minds (at least in the US). How surprising is that, as US climate action is apparently held hostage by readers of Drudge? -
Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Thanks, Glenn! It feels good to get it verified that my understanding of heat capacity, heat of vaporization and very large numbers is about correct. Hopefully I will be able to do the translation soon! BTW, the period of the winter with ice cover on my local lake here in the south-eastern Norway has decreased from about 158 to 148 days during the last 26 years according to the linear trend calculated in Excel. I’m not enough of a statistician to tell if that is statistically significant or not, but the climate has definitely changed here in Norway, too. -
fpjohn at 01:18 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
jmurphy@7 The FT is less a denialist than "hopefully" skeptical paper in regards to Global Warming. Effects of Climate Change and costs of action remain uncertain for them. Search "Climate Insight" on their site. yours Frank -
Phil at 00:24 AM on 19 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
JMurphy @7. What you didn't note about this article that Inhofe quotes, is the fact that it was written on 28th Nov 2009, i.e. just a few days after the CRU emails were "released", before the context of the emails was understood and long before the independent investigations that Rachel Maddow refers to were carried out. -
michael sweet at 00:05 AM on 19 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Glenn and Owl: In the most recent still warming thread the ocean heat content graph does not even show heat below 2000 meters. You are arguing that the heat that penetrates below where that article measures will not resurface for centuries. What about the 90% of the heat that does not go into the abyss? The dissolved CO2 that goes into the abyss will also take a long time to come to the surface, but this reference says old CO2 is already causing problems with commercial fishing in the North Pacific. The problem there is caused by CO2 that dissolved about 40 years ago. You said it would be centuries before that CO2 (along with the associated heat) returned to the surface. It is clear that some areas will take less time and others will take longer. Your argument that we do not need to worry until equilibrium is reached is incorrect. Since the great majority of the heat goes into the upper layers of the ocean, arguing that we don't need to worry since the abyss will not reach equilibrium for centuries completely misses the point. Most of the heat returns in much less time. -
Doc Snow at 23:15 PM on 18 March 2012The History of Climate Science - William Charles Wells
Thanks, Doug. The plan is to continue to do just that. There may be pieces similar to this one, focussed on one researcher, and possibly also some pieces that are more synoptic (in the non-meteorological sense of the word!) in nature. -
Sapient Fridge at 22:13 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Dave123, that reminds me of this quote: "For a creationist to believe in evolution, no evidence is good enough. For a creationist to believe in a god, no evidence is good enough." I suspect something similar applies to AGW "skeptics" -
JMurphy at 22:04 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
I posted a similar comment on the Spencer Thread but, again, you can see what sort of rubbish Inhofe believes in when you look into the 'sources' he brings out at the beginning of the interview - the "liberal" British Telegraph (actually columnist-in-denial Christopher Booker in the famously right-wing Telegraph); the Financial Times (actually ex-blogger Clive Crook in the pro-business Financial Times); and the UN and IPCC, or some blustering, incomprehensible combination of the two, somehow (actually Hal Lewis's resignation letter from the APS, and Dr Philip Lloyd, MD of Industrial and Petrochemical Consultants company). As for the Newsweek 'condemnation' and the study (the link here is a response to Inhofe's assertions) in the "liberal" Nature : Inhofe is seeing exactly what he wants to see, rather than what is actually there in real life. What a surprise... -
Dave123 at 21:08 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
@5 Which just goes to show the kind of rigged game it is: A denier gets anything right (reads watch for time of day) and that proves everything they say is right A "warmista" gets anything wrong, and everything on the warmist side is wrong. Climate doesn't care -
Delmar at 20:58 PM on 18 March 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
I read Archer and Jacobson and their argument has a critical flaw. A&J stated that coal fired power had an availability of 87.5% and compared this with the availability that a wind power network of 19 interconnected sites spread across midwest USA can achieve. The comparison benchmark for availability for wind to achieve in the report became 87.5%. The critical flaw in the argument is that 87.5% is the availability of a single coal fired generator, it is not the availability of a coal fired power network!! So they are comparing a wind network with a single coal fired generator. How something like that passed peer review is astounding. If you still have any doubt that 87.5% availabilty is incorrect, well this would mean householders supplied by coal power would have blackouts for 1095 hours per year (12.5% x 365.25 days x 24 hours) Those households who have coal fired power would typically have blackouts less than 8 hrs per year, thats 99.9% availabilty, because the coal fired units are also interconnected and they have excess generators running at any time to pick up the load if one generator trips. If you refer to the A&J chart of "Generation duration curves for arrays", for 99.9% availability and 19 sites this means the available power per generator is about 30 kW, it does not give the about 250kW that 87.5% would imply. A significant difference!! -
Glenn Tamblyn at 19:09 PM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
HGK @45 Your calcs look about right. If lake Mjøsa is about 56 cubic kilometres - 56,000,000,000 cubic metres, then that is about 10 times Sydney Harbour at 562,000,000 cubic metres. So roughly 10 times the volume. So a boiling time of 5-6 days is about right. -
Tristan at 19:05 PM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
I think if the feedbacks played nice we'd more or less get away with this slowly coalescing slipshod approach to tackling climate change that we've seen over the past 25 yrs. If going to +2-2.5 triggers a substantial methane release or the collapse of the amazon basin we may find ourselves up fifth street without a camel. -
Roger D at 18:45 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Ms Maddow did well with respect to challenging most of Inhofe's "mythy" statements. And overall, she is also very good about not losing her cool with those who make up fake "facts". The only let down for me is that it turned out Maddow mistakenly called Inhofe to task for a reference he made about her in his book The Greatest Hoax: in short, Maddow told Inhofe that she never mentioned Inhofe's impending protest trip to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference in a Dec 2009 episode of her show, as he contends in his book. While watching the interview I thought wow, Inhofe really feels like he has to make things up in order to make it look like "the liberal climate change alarmists" in the media are aligned agaist him. But it turned out she had in fact discussed Copenhagen in the episode in questioin(simply gave the facts and maybe poked a little good nature fun). However, climate change deniers, if any watch the Rachel Maddow show, would see the interview as a he said/ she said affair regarding the climate change discussion and would believe Infhofe probably made sense with respect to that topic: And when they find out Maddow got a non-science related point wrong they'd interpret her mistake as confirmation Inhofe was correct about his contentions regarding the science. Otherwise, I agree with the other commenter's above. -
Fran Barlow2 at 18:32 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Rachel Maddow has long been my favourite on-air journalist. She's possessed of a sharp mind and the willingness to use it in her job without worrying who objects. -
owl905 at 18:07 PM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
@Michale Sweet 51 It' not peer-reviewed, just: "While variations close to the ocean surface may induce relatively short-term climate changes, long-term changes in the deep ocean may not be detected for many generations." http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/ocean-earth-system/climate-variability/ "Neither is this heat going to come back out from the deep ocean any time soon (the notion that this heat is the warming that is ‘in the pipeline’ is erroneous)." Gavin Schmidt, Real Climate: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/global-warming-and-ocean-heat-content/ SKS: "Heat buried in the deep ocean remains there for hundreds to thousands of years. It is not involved in the heat exchange occurring in shallower layers." http://www.skepticalscience.com/Ocean-Heat-Poised-To-Come-Back-And-Haunt-Us-.html hth. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:03 PM on 18 March 2012The History of Climate Science - William Charles Wells
Lovely article. I particularly enjoy having people and things put into historical context; the recent London sewerage piece and this article are prime stuff. Thanks! -
mohyla103 at 17:10 PM on 18 March 2012It's not bad
Yes, that's exactly the sentence I'm referring to. The wording here is tricky, so this is probably where the misunderstanding comes from. I find it strange that he mentioned summer months, then specifically referred to "summer flow" with the Ganges, but not with other major rivers. So I interpret this sentence like this: "a key source of water for the region in the summer months" Glacier meltwater provides water in the summer for the Ganges and other major rivers. The sources all confirm this as well. "as much as 70% of the summer flow in the Ganges" This one's straightforward. The abstracts of Barnett's sources don't mention this but I presume this figure is in the full text and I'm not arguing anything here. "and 50-60% of the flow in other major rivers" What flow is he talking about? I interpret this as a yearly average, not summer specifically, especially since the sources all mention a yearly average figure around 50-60% right in their abstracts. Notice Barnett did not say "summer flow" like he did with the Ganges. Obviously, glaciers do provide water "in the summer months", so Barnett is not wrong to word the first part of his sentence this way, but I don't think you can assume this 50-60% figure actually refers to summer flow. I'm working on getting access to the full text of the Singh, Jain, Kumar paper and I'll let you know what it says in there as soon as I find out. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 15:58 PM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
michael sweet @51. I can't give you a citation but I can give you some basic numbers. To heat 1 kilogram of water by 1 Deg C takes a bit over 4 times as much heat as heating a kilogram of air by 1 Deg C. The total mass of the ocean is about 280 times the mass of the atmosphere. So roughly speaking the oceans need 1100-1200 times as much heat to warm by 1 Deg C compared to the Atmosphere. And currently the oceans are absorbing around 30 times as much heat as the atmosphere. So, on the back of a convenient envelope, that is 37-40 years for the oceans to warm as much as the atmosphere does in 1 year. So a significant time but not Eric's 1000's of years either. Since ocean overturning time is of the order 800-1000 years, heat can flow into the ocean faster than it can reach the depths. So we are likely to see an initial thermal equilibrium based on only part of the ocean in decades then a slower long term equilibrium that could take centuries. Hence the dividing of Climate Sensitivity (CS) into Transient CS, on the scale of a few years, Short Term CS on scales of multiple decades and Long Term CS on scales of centuries. -
muoncounter at 15:54 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
The Inhofe interview can be found on youtube. It should be required watching, as it fully illustrates the duplicity of this Inhofe character. 'I was on your side until I found out how much it would cost' is just the tip of the iceberg. -
Bob Lacatena at 14:35 PM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
19, Eric (skeptic), You are fooling yourself. No chance. None. -
michael sweet at 13:10 PM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Eric, What a wonderful suggestion. All the third world can change their economies into manufacturing from agriculture. Then they can eat the cars they build!! Think through your suggestions. What will people eat after their agriculture fails due to drought? You have been making a lot of these types of suggestions lately. -
Doug Hutcheson at 13:00 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
How refreshing to see a member of the MSM actually seeking the truth! I'd love to see her debate Jo Nova, for example, but she makes a pretty good job of deflating Inhofe. I wonder how much hate mail she gets from the pawns at WUWT? -
michael sweet at 12:55 PM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Eric (skeptic) This is supposed to be a scientific discussion. Please cite a peer reviewed source for your wild claim that it will be thousands of years for the heat to return. In reality, it is estimated that it is only about 40 years for 90% of the surface warming to occur. (Since you do not provide references I will not bother either). If you are younger than 40 that heat will come back to get you. When you make wild, unsubstantiated claims people stop taking you seriously. You have made a number of unsupported opinion statements lately. Please try to reference your wild claims. You will find that many of your questions have already been answered. -
owl905 at 12:47 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Sincerest thanks to SKS for not making anyone sit through the interview with Senator Inhofe. The missing link in Ms.Maddow's terse deconstruction of the decline issue, was the revelation at the time that the divergence problem was known and peer-published before the temperature reconstructions. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline.htm -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:47 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
william, you askWhat happens if we melt enough of the Greenland ice to shut down the overturn by the Gulf stream.
Could you explain that process to a complete layman, please? I had not realised that the one could cause the other. -
YubeDude at 11:09 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Sceptical Wombat Thank you for your reply. I am interested in the tonality of the message and not the content. All the charts and graphs, the science in general, sail way above my pay grade. I am one of those in the masses who is the target of the communication barrage. It appears to me that though the science community has the facts to support their position they don't have the catchy spin and subsequently lose ground to those that doubt. Arm wrestling the data should be a rather one sided affair but it is not and the reasons it is not is what interest me. The science side uses the data to lever their opponent while the other side uses smoke and mirrors to distract the audience; they make claims that kids will go hungry and old ladies will freeze if this Socialist restructuring happens. They turn the argument on its head and beat it with illogical non sequiturs I opened with a post wondering if Singer and his minions had started to rebrand their message in an attempt at re-positioning the argument. They can't fight the science so why not target the perception. Not wishing to invoke Godwins Law...let's not forget that the second most powerful man in the NSDAP was Dr Goebbels. I think Karl Rove and Sean Hannity were tied for third. Thanks again for your reply. -
Eric (skeptic) at 10:07 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Doug H, I think they were assuming that all the proceeds would be used for emission mitigation and they did not count any economic benefits from that mitigation since they would presumably come much later. -
Doug Hutcheson at 09:36 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Eric, you quote from the Heritage report, but miss the following passage in the OP:The reason the Heritage estimate was so high is that it evaluated the costs of a carbon cap, and then ignored the distribution of those funds. ... The Heritage Foundation report effectively assumed that the generated funds would disappear into a black hole. Their analysis was the equivalent of doing your household finances by adding up your expenditures while ignoring your income. It sure looks bad, but tells you nothing about your overall finances.
The economic cost of acting now is incorrectly represented in the Heritage report, which smacks of a scare tactic. Yes, there will be a cost to mitigation and everyone will share the burden, but there will be a greater societal and personal cost to be borne if we delay. -
Eric (skeptic) at 09:01 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
JoeTheScientist, considering the entirety of the oceans, the equilibrium time you are talking about is 1000's of years, simply not worth caring about. The oceans are sinking heat that won't come back (i.e. water is being warmed from 35 to 35.1 or something along those lines). If that water comes back to the surface it will cool the atmosphere. -
Eric (skeptic) at 08:56 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
The technology to sequester will be there, just a modest amount of government research funding and extensive cross-fertilization from commercial technology (e.g. nano-tech) will make it happen. What we will lack is the economics to perform the sequestering on a large scale anything close to the scale of the automobile and other fossil fuel burners. For that reason I don't see it happening either. But I do see a variety of things happening that will all add up. If, for example, we can build a space elevator or something like that, we can also build large chimneys to suck excess heat into space. The updrafts created in the chimney would provide alternative energy. That's just one idea off the top of my head. -
Eric (skeptic) at 08:44 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Sphaerica and scaddenp: From the Heritage report (link in the OP):It is no surprise that the economy responds to cap and trade as it would to an energy crisis. The price on carbon emissions forces energy cuts across the economy, since non-carbon energy sources cannot replace fossil fuels quickly enough. Energy prices rise; income and employment drop....As the economy recovers and the caps tighten, the detrimental effect of cap and trade gets more and more severe. In the worst years, GDP losses exceed $500 billion per year.
As DSL said above: "The system [capitalism] requires poverty, desperation, and unemployment. It requires taxation without representation (capital is a tax imposed by property owners on "their" laborers). It lifts all boats, but it requires the water to rise faster and faster, but the boats are chained to the dock of material and historical reality--some with longer chains than others." The system of capitalism does have those features that DSL points out. It has one more, relevant to the discussion on the other threads which should be on this thread. Namely that the externalities of burning fossil fuel are not currently priced into the fossil fuel. The increase in those prices from any of the proposals listed in the OP will (to borrow DSL's phrasing) keep some boats tied to the dock as temperatures rise and the consequences arise. An example of a boat tied to the dock is a small pizza place. The current propane bill to run the ovens is $1000 / month and will rise under the proposals to where the business will probably shut down. Another boat tied to the dock is the long distance commuter, common in my area. I pay $250 / month to ride in the van and that would likely be at least $350 using the Heritage gas price rise of 75%. I don't have a problem with that but other people will. In the sensitivity thread Sphaerica said "40% chance of a cost of $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year for decades to centuries (or more, with higher sensitivity)." I don't think centuries is realistic, that would assume practically static technology. But Heritage points out the GDP loss of $500 billion per year which is guaranteed unlike the 40% chance of the higher cost. The biggest difference between the two types of expenditures are that the cap and trade money goes into offsetting emissions whereas the 1-2 trillion that I proposed goes straight into infrastructure (mainly better water retention systems to prevent floods and alleviate drought). With that infrastructure we all benefit from more water resources for public and farming uses. Note that I do not propose doing "nothing" but put forth solutions here. Some of those would in fact require a modicum of cap and trade, but many would be implemented by policy changes (e.g. we pay farmers and tell them what to do already). -
wild monkeys at 08:15 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Am I right it's more than 2300 tonnes of heat? -
william at 07:44 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
The escalator graph seems to be a reflection of periods when there is more mixing in the ocean, absorbing heat and allowing the atmosphere to cool a little and periods when mixing is less (el Nino conditions?) and the atmosphere temperature jumps. We should be due for an El Nino very soon and it will likely fall within the present, fairly weak solar maximum. Perhaps the next upward lurch in the Escalator graph will convince the skeptics but I doubt it. Perhaps the accompanying Arctic sea ice melting will be more convincing. What happens if we melt enough of the Greenland ice to shut down the overturn by the Gulf stream. That could be interesting.
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