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Daniel Bailey at 10:42 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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. -
elsa at 10:20 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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? -
skywatcher at 10:09 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
Tom Dayton at 10:03 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
andylee at 09:57 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
skywatcher at 09:50 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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? -
Minkie41 at 09:41 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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 -
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. -
andylee at 09:24 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
padruig at 09:22 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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 -
Minkie41 at 09:21 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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? -
elsa at 09:16 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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. -
Sascha Tavere at 08:56 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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? -
scaddenp at 08:53 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
scaddenp at 07:18 AM on 3 February 2012Climate 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. -
Paul D at 07:17 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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? -
CBDunkerson at 06:54 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
Jim Eager at 06:54 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
Composer99 at 06:51 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
william at 06:32 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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 -
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. -
Martin Lack at 05:59 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements 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/ -
owl905 at 05:56 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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'. -
elsa at 05:20 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
DSL at 04:54 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
DSL at 04:49 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
CBDunkerson at 04:34 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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 -
pbjamm at 04:30 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
CBDunkerson at 04:28 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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 -
Dikran Marsupial at 04:16 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
Esop at 04:14 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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. -
Tristan at 04:10 AM on 3 February 2012Check 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%. -
elsa at 03:50 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
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. -
owl905 at 03:41 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
@andylee - The media's job is deliver news to its constituency, and become profitable by selling sympathetic advertising. They are bound by the legal statutes. After that, their business is selling, not telling. The media has done more to sell this controversy than all the blogs and think-tanks put together. Right now, anti-science syndrome and anti-intelligence disorder ... sells. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:38 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
elsa... I also find with a little searching that Dr Jones is an "ISI highly cited researcher." This is a highly coveted distinction few scientists achieve. -
muoncounter at 03:33 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
CBD#25: "there can be a 'debate' about ... " There is considerable overlap among those who hold the extremist positions in those 'debates' and those who buy the tripe that Mr. Murdoch peddles. "Sunday morning news shows ... are less likely to degenerate into people shouting at each other," said Cassino. "Viewers pick up more information from this sort of calm discussion than from other formats. Unfortunately, these shows have a much smaller audience than the shouters." -
Phila at 03:32 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
Elsa, It's odd that despite your complaints about the lack of hard scientific evidence in this letter, your comments here rely heavily on opinion, "gut instinct," hand-waving, innuendo and slander. In short, you present plenty of "views." But facts? Not so much. It's also odd that despite your complaints about the civility of individual commenters, you seem to have no problem accusing scientists you disagree with of incompetence or worse. That doesn't seem very civil to me. If you don't want to be seen as a tone-tolling hypocrite, perhaps you should try living up to your own high standards. Also, demanding "real data" on the Internet's best self-service portal for exactly that makes you seem kind of...well, lazy. The literature supporting AGW is voluminous and goes back more than a century. Ultimately, the only person who can get you to understand this literature is you. But to do this, you'll need to put aside a few pet assumptions and develop some humility. Unfortunately, it seems you'd prefer to spend your time searching Phil Jones' background for reasons to dismiss him. Again, that's not scientific. It's also not particularly civil. Or ethical. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:30 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
elsa... "Phil Jones is one I have looked at in particular and it seems to me he has very little in the way of a proper scientific background..." Really? Is that so? Well a quick google scholar search tells me that Dr Jones has something in the neighborhood of 150 published peer-reviewed papers on various topics on climate change. How many do you have? -
andylee at 03:13 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
In an ideal world, the media should act as a bridge to translate evidence and inform their readers responsibly and impartially, who would then digest it and collectively modify their behaviour to live sustainably. This to me is called common-sense. However, it is a rude shock to me that the world does not in fact work this way. Instead, the truth is smothered and distorted by dishonourable people for many reasons, and the vitriol and lies spouted by the far right in comments sections and on youtube is just shocking. Thanks to the Net and to sites such as this one, we can bypass the mainstream media and get close to the evidence, but it requires above average intelligence and mental skill to make sense of everything. The majority of people perhaps just don't know or care enough to find out things for themselves, and instead are content to form opinions based on a constant drip of ubiquitous background propaganda. Once a belief set is formed, it seems that it sticks through hell or high water (pun intended!) If the media can't or won't do their job to help educate Humanity and pull together, then what will? A direct strike by a Category 6 hurricane on the Whitehouse? People having to swim to work? Who or what is driving the insanity of denialism, and why? Is it really so unacceptable to transform the way we live to make a better world to live in, or does it really matter if we are the last generations to enjoy our planet? -
John Hartz at 02:48 AM on 3 February 2012The Latest Denialist Plea for Climate Change Inaction
Phlia: You can bet your sweet bippy that the many of the arguments advanced by the Climate Denial Spin Machine have undergone testing in Focus Groups. The Spin Machine has virtually unlimited funds at its disposal. -
dana1981 at 02:48 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
NYJ and elsa - I can tell you from personal experience that it takes a whole lot more time and effort to debunk a Gish Gallop of myths than it does to create one. Writing "global warming stopped 10 years ago" takes about 5 seconds and no intellectual effort whatsoever. Debunking that one-sentence myth can take several hours and paragraphs, depending on how thorough you want to be. In short, the scientists responding to the 'skeptic' letter were under no obligation to put any more effort into their response. The 'skeptic' letter was unsubstantiated nonsense myths, so the response really doesn't require anything more than pointing out the myths are just that - myths. If you want some detail as to why the myths are wrong, see the Skeptical Science debunking of the WSJ letter. -
John Hartz at 02:43 AM on 3 February 2012The Latest Denialist Plea for Climate Change Inaction
Dana’s excellent article continues to garner attention by other pro-science writers. For example: “Top sites Media Matters* and Skeptical Science quickly counter-argued the nonsense put forth in the WSJ piece with some thoughtful pieces looking at the simple facts of the matter and the bias of the op-ed contributors.” Source: “WSJ Non-Climate-Science Propaganda Eviscerated by Climate Science Facts” by Zachary Sahan, Planetsave, Feb 1, 2012 *The Media Matters article, “The Journal Hires Dentists To Do Heart Surgery” can be accessed here. -
muoncounter at 02:25 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
MarkR: "CO2 forcing should also rise linearly." To be complete, that does not translate to Linear Warming over the long run. -
MarkR at 02:17 AM on 3 February 2012Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
#32 victull: at the region we're looking at, the Stefan-Boltzmann response is pretty close to linear. From 273 K up to 300 K, a linear fit explains most of the variance, R^2 is over 0.99. One way is to look at ΔF/ΔT (F = flux [W m-2]) for known changes in flux. If you fit a linear trend based on the change from 273-274 K, then expand that out for 5 K of warming your answer is only ~2% smaller than the real change predicted by S-B. Pretty close to linear! CO2 is expected to rise at least exponentially in the long run, so the CO2 forcing should also rise linearly. -
Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree
elsa - If I was unclear in my previous comment, my apologies, although I believe it's rather straightforward. Cherry-picking data - particularly short term data (as 'skeptics' do) - is statistically unsupportable, and may be a sign of a lack of statistics background, confirmation bias, or an intent to distort the issue for others. Ocean heat content is a temperature measure, and even by your criteria is clearly something to pay attention to. Ice cover, glacial melting, sea level rise and others are interplays with temperature and other things (precipitation, land run-off), but those influences are estimable, and hence estimates of (and the tracks of) temperature are determinable from them. As to satellite measures, which you also pooh-pooh - the trend lines you seem to dislike are the statistics of those measures, and if you for some reason don't approve of statistics, I fail to see how you are discussing science or evidence. The human eye is extremely good at finding patterns, often incorrectly - the 'cost' of mistakenly seeing a bear in the woods is trivial compared to the cost of not not seeing a bear that is actually there, and we tend to a lot of pattern false positives. Statistical analysis helps overcome the biases of the 'eyecrometer'. --- Long term temperature statistics, cryosphere measurements, ocean heat content and level - all of the evidence agrees, all supports the observation of ongoing climate change and global warming. The only way to not see this in the data is to, in fact, cherry-pick it, look at insignificant short terms or subsets of the data, such as: Yet we can see that in 2008 the temperature was no higher than it had been 10 years earlier.. You have, in that very statement, supported the thesis of the thread - that cherry-picking is required in order to deny the full body of the evidence. -
wonderful world at 01:49 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
@greencooling I agree with most of what you said but calling bolt a 'convicted racist' isn't entirely right, there was a civil case. Considering the findings I am surprised he isn't in a criminal court. The judge that found against bolt in the case of eatock vs. bolt commented that he had been dishonest and wrote that bolt had made ommissions and written untruths and distortions, thats just to start with. Bolts dishonesty regarding his reporting on climate change may not be as offensive but it certainly follows a trend. Anybody interested look up Eatock vs. Bolt -
CBDunkerson at 01:39 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
muoncounter wrote: "Debate? One side has a full record of evidence, the other side has a cherry-picked few years." We now live in a world where there can be a 'debate' about whether the universe is more than 6000 years old, whether Barrack Obama is a Kenyan born secret muslim, and/or whether Rupert Murdoch 'news' outlets are biased. People whose entire worldview is founded on lies and delusion can 'debate' anything... and never lose, because the facts disproving their position don't exist in their reality. -
DSL at 01:29 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
elsa: "The facts that seem under debate here are whether or not there has been warming in the last 10 years or so. That is something on which it would be interesting to see some real data" Ok, elsa, look at the simple linear temperature trend since 1997, 1998, and 1999 in GISS, HadCru, RSS, and UAH. These are generated from the data. As far as Phil Jones goes, data is withheld all the time in many areas of science. I seriously doubt if most of those who have been critical of Jones would be any less critical--or believe what he has to say any more--if the data had been wide open from day one. Some folks have entrenched but evidence-free beliefs about the way things are. It's very difficult to loosen up this entrenchment (and that's my professional opinion as an educator). It's even worse when someone invests themselves publicly in a belief. "I would completely agree with your comment about evidence, unfortunately there is none in this letter. That is one of the reasons that I am critical of it." And are you just as critical of the letter that preceded it? If not, I'd have to question your motivations. You point to Watson as well and tell us that we learn nothing from his signature. Not true. Watson, you claim, has been critical of the IPCC in the past, but here he signs Trenberth's letter that, in part, claims, "It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses." Is Watson an idiot for not reading what he signs his name to, or does he now agree with Trenberth that the situation is serious? We actually learn quite a bit from Watson's signature (if signatures are a meaningful way of determining truth for you). -
folke_kelm at 01:27 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
@Elsa #14 "Phil Jones is one I have looked at in particular and it seems to me he has very little in the way of a proper scientific background" This and the rest of your post is ....what shall i say....a little bit ridiculous? Please have a look at this and take your time to read and understand the publications where Phil Jones has participated. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/pubs/byauthor/jones_pd.htm -
Composer99 at 01:19 AM on 3 February 2012Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate
elsa, if you're looking for data, peruse the threads in this site and examine the links to the scientific literature contained therein. Above all, please refrain from the tired, creationist-style game of equating denialist handwaving (the WSJ letter by Lindzen et al) with statements backed by solid empirical support (the reply letter posted in this OP).
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