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TonyW at 19:54 PM on 28 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
US Carbon emissions from fossil fuels rose in 2013 and 2014, and are projected to rise in 2015 and 2016 also. Actions speak louder than words and the notion that Obama has undertaken significant action to reduce emissions is bizarre, in the extreme. He has an "all of the above" energy policy and is expanding exploration for oil and gas. No, Obama is no different from any other major world leader.
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jja at 11:55 AM on 28 February 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9A
original image here
Larger and readable. -
Newsel at 09:57 AM on 28 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
There is always this option to secure energy supplies:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2581887/The-bonfire-insanity-Woodland-shipped-3-800-miles-burned-Drax-power-station-It-belches-CO2-coal-huge-cost-YOU-pay-cleaner-greener-Britain.html
Which we rather have?
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mancan18 at 09:27 AM on 28 February 2015Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right
Dana, I haven't read your book, I do intend to read it, but I was wondering whether anyone has studied the views on climate change by the "hard yards" researchers who actually collect the data that is used by everyone else to make their arguments pro or con regarding climate change. It seems to me that the views of the researchers who actually camp on the ice flows to collect ice-cores or measure glacial melts; or trek into the jungle to study species extinction, diversity and range; or spend countless time creating and refining the computer models that simulate the climate and weather; or those who monitor the stations that collect the temperature and carbon dioxide data etc; what are their views?
For instance, I know that the climate change advocate, Tim Flannery, early in his scientific career, used to crawl around the jungles of New Guinea studying frogs and it was the changes in that environment that he observed over the years that led him into the field of climate change. Also, I know that Ian Plimer, the mining executive and prominent climate change denier, used to argue that undersea volcanoes were the cause of the rise in carbon dioxide. But I don't remember Plimer actually being on any expeditions that looked for those undersea volcanoes that he used in his argument. Are there any primary researchers who put in the hard yards collecting and analysing the data who doubt that climate change is actually happening? It is easy just to sit at a computer screen, run your statistical software on the data or search for papers that support your view, it is an entirely different situation for the people who actually collect and analyse the data. Wondering if there are any deniers amongst the "hard yards" data collectors. The ratio of those who agree to those who don't would be very interesting. I suspect it would be 100%.
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Tom Curtis at 09:16 AM on 28 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
In response to Red Baron in general, Houghton et al (2009) itemizes total biomass/hectare for various ecosystems. Carbon constitutes about 50% of the biomass. Taking low values where two are given, we thus determine that the carbon content constitutes 95 Tonnes/Hectare (ie, Megagrams per Hectare) for tropical rain forest, and 28.5 Mg/Hectare for tropical savannah. The difference is 66.5 Tonnes per Hectare.
Figure 8 of Retallack et al (2013), shows the carbon content in Kilograms per meter squared for for various ecosystems in African and Australia by precipitation. In Australia, forests have a greater carbon content in soil than do grasslands (Mallee scrub). In Africa forests have less carbon in soil than do grasslands. Taking the largest difference (4 Kg/m^2) and converting units, that represents 40 Tonnes per Hectare. Therefore, using conservative estimates, and counting both soil carbon and biomass Tropical rainforests sequester 26.5 more tonnes/Hectare than do equivalent grasslands. Using more reasonable estimates, forests sequester as much as 126.5 tonnes/Hectare more carbon than do grasslands, ie, about twice the carbon per hectare.
Interestingly, Teague (in a book chapter for Geotherapy) shows a tabulation (table 17) of soil and total Carbon stored in various ecosystems from White (2000). He points out that globally, grasslands store more carbon in soil than do forests, although forests store more tonnes per hectare. That is true of soil carbon alone, but once biomass is included, forests store 90% more carbon as grasslands per unit area, globally averaged. White's results, as quoted by Teague, suggest the African situation is anonalous, and that the Australian situation where forests store more soild carbon than do grasslands is more typical. Indeed, on the White (2002) figures, forests store 50% more carbon in soil per unit area than do grasslands. (That may partially be because grasslands are typically found in more arid conditions than are forests.)
Of more direct interest to your vague theses, Teague also tabulates estimates of emessions from various sources, showing 136 GtC from land use conversions from 1750 onwards (compared to the 180 GtC estimated in AR5), with a further 320 GtC estimated emissions over the Holocene to 1750. The 136 GtC estimate for industrial era emissions compares to an estimated 270 GtC emitted from fossil fuels (compared to 365 GtC estimates in AR5). Part of the discrepancy between these estimates and those from AR5 may be due to the final date of the estimate.
Importantly, Teague is not suggesting that soil degradation is responsible for the hockey stick in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. He does suggest soil revitalization can eliminate excess CO2 from the atmosphere, but that is because he assumes the revitalization of soil degraded in the preindustrial era will contribute to the sequestration. The sharp increase in CO2 concentration, however, is due primarilly to the very sharp increase in fossil fuel use as shown in his post at 224.
Teague does, however, suggest that restoration of the grasslands could sequester sufficient CO2 to bring the atmosphere back to preindustrial levels. He writes:
"If, for the sake of argument, we accept Buringh's 537 Gt number for the historic
loss of carbon from soils, it is the equivalent of 218 ppm that was once safely
stored in the ground instead of in the atmosphere, and is roughly twice the
excess carbon that we've injected into the atmosphere since 1750 (half of which
was absorbed by the ocean and other carbon sinks). We need only put 224 Gt
(112 ppm) back into the ground, even though a percentage of the excess didn't
come from soil, it's from our burning of fossil fuels. To emphasize, replacing
just half of the soil carbon we have lost in the past ten thousand years has
the realistic potential for reducing atmospheric carbon to a pre-industrial
280 ppm, presumably a significant step in restoring a relatively stable
climate. Note that in so doing we would also sequester all past and current
emissions from fossil fuels."(Original emphasis)
I do not, however, trust his sums. First, 1ppmv of CO2 in the atmosphere is 2.12 GtC (AR5), not 2 as uses in his estimate. More importantly, just as only 44% of anthropogenic emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, only 44% of any carbon sequestration will result in a reduction on atmospheric CO2, the rest being compensated for by oceanic outgassing. Therefore, to reduce CO2 concentrations by 120 ppmv, we need to sequester 580 GtC. That is, he underestimates the task at hand by 60%. Put another way, we would need to sequester 27% more CO2 in the soil than he estimates to have come out of it since the start of agriculture to tackle global warming this way.
Second, he appears to fudge his figures. Ruddiman's estimates of preindustrial emissions include excess methane production from the spread of rice paddies, and emissions from deforestation. That is, they are not an estimate emissions of soil carbon. Indeed, even the industrial era emissions from LUC only include 78 Gigatonnes from soil itself. Assuming a similar proportion of preindustrial emissions are from soil, that means only 260 GtC have been emitted from soils due to human activities over the last 10 thousand years.
Given this, the idea that we can solve AGW simply by changing our pastoral practises is fanciful. (We may be able to help solve the problem by such changes, but it will only be a small contribution to the problem, most of which must be solved by reducing industrial emissions.)
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dana1981 at 07:25 AM on 28 February 2015Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right
shoyemore - no paperback edition, but there will be a discount for those who take our climate denial MOOC (see upper right margin of the page).
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protagorias at 04:28 AM on 28 February 2015Animals and plants can adapt
michael sweet,
Climate change is undoubtedly happening at a very rapid and uncomfortable pace. And droughts are obviously a big concern.
Perhaps what can produce a lot of return in the long run, be economocially sound jobs, as well as potentially help in managing forests and mitigating drought, is to gain the technology to unlock some of the water locked up the ringwoodite inside our planet. I think there's something like two or three times the volume of the world's oceans locked up in ringwoodite, but it's around 500 miles down.
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davidsanger at 03:48 AM on 28 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Thanks, this is very helpful. Perhaps you could add that the article was originally published last July on Judith Curry's blog and engendered a long long comment thread. Have there been changes in it since then?
[best also to remove the reference to the "upcoming" NCAR conference] -
RedBaron at 03:33 AM on 28 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
@ MA Rodger,
Actually a closer aproximation of what I am saying is that the IPCC is vastly underestimating the problem, by ignoring much of the most basic underlying causes. This has also flawed their analysis of what needs to be done to fix the problem as well. Maybe if I approach it in more general terms you'll understand better. I admit I am not a very good "rough and tumble" public debate specialist. So you'll probably need to fill in some blanks yourself. But let's look at some disturbing trends. As a result of erosion over the past 40 years, 30 percent of the world's arable land has become unproductive. http://www.ids-environment.com/Common/Paper/Paper_83/Soil%20Erosion.pdf Now of course this is measured in terms of agricultural food production for humans. But if you understand that unproductive also means not feeding the soil food web that is responcible for the major part of the carbon cycle, you get an idea why the biosphere can't keep up with fossil fuel emissions. Or look at it from still another angle. The least efficient natural ecosystem for long term sequestration of carbon is forests, and forests currently occupy only 20-25% of the land surface of the planet, yet nearly all the carbon sequestered in world wide terrestrial ecosystems is in forests. Why? Because mismanagement of agricultural "artificial" ecosystems. Mismanagement that has turned the largest terrestrial carbon sink into an emissions source! Depending on how IPPC calculates it, it is either 8-10% of emissions, or calculated differently near net 0 effect. See references above. post 227 "Globally, the current flux from agricultural management is uncertain but probably not far from zero." See the IPPC got that part! But what they left out was that the same ecosystems that are currently "probably not far from zero" are the same ecosystems that pre-human intervention were the primary terrestrial sequesters of carbon. I am not sure how to explain the math flaw. If you have a negative and turn it into a positive, it is wrong to use the positive as the effect. So if you start with -A and later measure +B due to anthropomorphic changes. It is improper to use +B as the anthropomorphic effect. The real anthropomorphic effect is A+B. IPPC has vastly underestimated the effect of agriculture for this reason. Admittedly that is highly oversimplified, but it addresses the principle IPCC flaw. The effect of environment degradation is underestimated because the measurements are being done on the degraded ecosystems we see now, not the functioning ecosystems prior to humans degrading them. http://www.fewresources.org/uploads/1/0/5/2/10529860/3768968_orig.jpeg
Adding to the confusion, humans can actually improve on the natural ecosystems function beyond the natural pre-historical state (with intensive management). We haven't. We have done the opposite. But there is no reason we couldn't.
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jja at 02:37 AM on 28 February 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9A
I have included the Feldman et al. (2015) data in my TOA forcing clearinghouse graphic. The observed trend from 2001-2011 of 0.2 watts per meter squared falls DIRECTLY in line between the upper and lower range bound rates that I derived from Nuccitelli et. al. 2012 and Durack et. al. 2014. I see this as a strong confirmation of the cumulative work to date on the subject. view the graphic here:
More troubling, the 2001-2011 period was the decade with the most rapid expansion of Aerosol emissions in human history. Therefore this rate of increase in ratiative forcing is moderated, possibly by a factor of 50%. If this view then, the recent NODC ocean heat data (red dot at top right of graphic) is certainly within the range of plausible current forcings and the rate of increase may be as high as 0.5 watts per meter squared per decade.Moderator Response:[RH] Activated image source and constrained size to fit page format.
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Jim Eager at 02:33 AM on 28 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Some of the "other" known problems with the earlier portions of the Central England Temperature (CET) record include the taking of some readings indoors , and the use of records from Utrecht, NL, to fill in time gaps, meaning some portions are not even from central England.
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Jim Eager at 02:24 AM on 28 February 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9A
Wrong url for "Scientists witness carbon dioxide trapping heat in air in real-time field measurements"
Moderator Response:[JH] The glitch has been fixed. Thank you for bring this to our attention.
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Zeke Hausfather at 01:48 AM on 28 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Sailingfree,
Figure 1 does indeed show land only. Here is what land/ocean looks like:
Moderator Response:[RH] Adjusted image size to fit page formatting.
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MA Rodger at 00:56 AM on 28 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
RedBaron @241.
So what you are saying is that these two Retallick & Teague do not accuse the IPCC or anybody else of failing to account properly for CO2 emissions from land use changes. Are there any other studies or published theories that lend support to accusations of such mal-accounting of emissions by the IPCC? Or is it all some analysis of your own invention? Perhaps you would like to share your detailed reasoning with us. Or perhaps it is not that well-founded and yet unready for the rough-&-tumble of public scrutiny.
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sailingfree at 00:54 AM on 28 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Zeke, Your Fig. 1 for "Global" shows adjustments to give more warming. Do you mean "Global Land" there? I though adjustments to ocean temps lead to LESS warming globally. That would be the bottom line. End of discussion. Those "leftist" scientists fudge to show LESS warming.
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Jim Hunt at 00:49 AM on 28 February 2015Telegraph wrong again on temperature adjustments
Jubble @7 - You may also wish to click through my alter ego "Snow White's" latest Tweet, to "her" latest article, in which "she" was most ably assisted by Dr. Kevin Cowtan:
https://twitter.com/GreatWhiteCon/status/571297273159786496 -
CBDunkerson at 22:42 PM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
ryland, the Central England Temperature record is about as far from a "pure and unadulterated temperature reading" as you can get. For example, the values for the early decades are essentially guesses based on descriptions of the weather in old letters... if people wrote that it was a hot summer or that a river stayed frozen longer than normal then the estimated 'temperature' value for that year was adjusted up or down accordingly.
This is not to say that's 'bad'... it's the best data available, but the idea that the CET is in any way 'more accurate' than other temperature records is just not valid.
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CBDunkerson at 22:35 PM on 27 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
Elmwood, I'm sorry but that just isn't remotely true. The EPA regulations Obama pushed through essentially outlaw new coal power plants in the United States. That's more than just "paying lip service". As are the high fuel efficiency standards he has enacted. Ditto the deals he has made with China and India (the other two big emitters) to get them agreeing to emissions targets after long refusing to do so.
As to the State Department report, as you note one of their assumptions was that the tar sands would still be extracted just as quickly without the pipeline... history has now already proven that assumption false. The current low oil prices have made the tar sands much less profitable and decreased extraction significantly. If the pipeline were in place, or even in progress, then the long term profitability of the tar sands would be greater and extraction would not have dropped as much. If oil prices stay around their current level and the pipeline remains unapproved for another five years or so it seems likely to me that the bulk of the tar sands will not be used... another significant achievement in GHG reduction.
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shoyemore at 21:58 PM on 27 February 2015Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right
I will probably read this book sometime, but at the moment I am disappointed that it is quite expensive, even on Kindle. Is there a paperback edition on the way?
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wili at 21:12 PM on 27 February 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9A
WSJ says that China's coal use decreased last year, and Carbon Brief says total CO2 emissions also went down.
www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-coal-consumption-and-output-fell-last-year-1424956878
www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/02/official-data-confirms-chinese-coal-use-fell-in-2014/
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Kit at 21:10 PM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Zeke, many thanks!
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michael sweet at 20:54 PM on 27 February 2015Animals and plants can adapt
Looking deeper I found this reference which is more reliable and suggests only about 5% of Texas trees were killed by the 2011 drought. I stand by my point that managing forrests will produce little return in the face of historic drought.
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michael sweet at 20:43 PM on 27 February 2015Animals and plants can adapt
Protagorias,
I saw an interesting find where it described that 25% of the trees in Texas over 4" diameter at breast height were killed by the drought they have had. In California the current drought is the worst in the past 1200 or more years. Fires alone have killed millions of trees. Do you think the increase in trees in Central Europe is more or less than the decrease in trees in the American West? What should we do to manage the forests more responsibly in the face of historic droughts?
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protagorias at 15:50 PM on 27 February 2015Animals and plants can adapt
There was an interesting find I saw published in the journal of Nature Communications published September 2014:Central Europe Tree Growth
...we show that, currently, the dominant tree species Norway spruce and European beech exhibit significantly faster tree growth (+32 to 77%), stand volume growth (+10 to 30%) and standing stock accumulation (+6 to 7%) than in 1960.That's interesting, a 75% increase in growth rate in beech trees in parts of Europe.
My personal inclination is simply to work to manage forests responsibly.
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wili at 14:07 PM on 27 February 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #8B
Something for the next News Roundup? thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/02/26/3627490/china-coal-peak/
Carbon Brief also has an article on this that claims that China's total CO2 emissions also went down about 7%.
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scaddenp at 13:37 PM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
I'm curious too. If you only read the station once a day, then I dont see how this helps, unless you get more rain at night/late pm. Morning rain would evaporate in the afternoon.
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Zeke Hausfather at 13:18 PM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Hi DAK4,
As far as I'm aware the reason why morning readings of rain gauges was preferred was to minimize the amount of daytime evaporation.
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DAK4Blizzard at 12:43 PM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Following figure 2: "Observation times have shifted from afternoon to morning at most stations since 1960, as part of an effort by the National Weather Service to improve precipitation measurements."
How does taking the observations in the morning improve precipitation measurements? Is there a pattern in the diurnal timing of precipitation in the US? Thanks in advance. -
RedBaron at 12:27 PM on 27 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
MA Rodger,
You asked, "So where within this work of Rellatack or this work of Teague is there support for your assertion @225 that the IPCC AR5 Chapter 6 "have the numbers right for the land use change to agriculture, but are missing the land use changes within agriculture as methodologies change."?"
Retallack I used to establish a base line and context. So for example, when I speck about methodologies in agriculture that use biomimicry to restore ecosystem services function, it is important to define exactly what that means, and show evidence that indeed at one time ecosystems did function to sequester carbon and cause global cooling. So Retallack provides that evidence, context and helps one to exactly understand which ecosystem functions we are trying to restore, why. and how.
Teague is the direct answer to the question of changes in agricultural methodology, as several types of land use change within different management types of agriculture were directly measured on a real world working ranch scale. Now that was accomplished by using biomimicry, and the concepts being mimicked are evidenced by Retallack. So they are interconnected in that way although Retallack's research has nothing to do with agriculture directly. There are other methodologies that use biomimicry to accomplish carbon sequestration. I simply used Teague because his research is well documented and pretty robust. Many other carbon farming techniques are still in what we would call development and verification stage. I am deveoloping one myself in fact. But I couldn't use that here as it is unpublished original research. Teague's work is published reviewed and pretty strong evidence.
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protagorias at 10:48 AM on 27 February 2015Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
Thank you for clarifying. I wanted to address, as a last point, specifics regarding the degree of confidence in the accuracy of the recorded data by the instrumentation from the Venus missions. Is the data coming back from the cameras on the Venus climate orbiter adequate and accurate?
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Zeke Hausfather at 10:11 AM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Hi Kit,
Iceland is an interesting case. NCDC adjusts the mid-century warming down significantly, while Berkeley does not. As Kevin Cowtan has discussed, homogenization may make mistakes when there are geographically isolated areas with sharp localized climate changes (e.g. parts of the Arctic in recent years, and perhaps in Iceland back in the mid-century). For more see his discussion here: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/update.140404.pdf
I don't have the expertise on Iceland's specific record to tell you which one is correct; either way, however, the impact on global temperatures (which is primarly the metric we care about) is fairly negligable.
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Kit at 09:29 AM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Hi Zeke, I really enjoyed reading this, thank you. Look forward to your other two posts.
Temp homogenisations are not only discussed on the mainstream blogs, but also in the backwaters. I'm not able to provide answers to the many questions which 'sceptics' have on this issue, but if you had time you might be able to set at least one of them straight :)
http://euanmearns.com/re-writing-the-climate-history-of-iceland/ -
denisaf at 09:15 AM on 27 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
The stark reality is that irreversible rapid climate change, ocean acidification, depletion of irreplaceable natural resources and irrevocable aging of the vast infrastructure of industrial civilization is occurring. This is an unsustainable process. These discussions are only about policies that can have only a very limited impact on what is acrually happening.
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jgnfld at 09:06 AM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
So, you expect me to believe that temperature adjustments are honest as opposed to a nefarious plot by a global conspiracy involving 97% of the climate scientists in the world all bent on
- extracting more grant monies from poor innocent taxpayers,
- installing a liberal world government controlled by the UN, and
- economic ruin?
I think not!
Moderator Response:[DB] Please make it clear if you are using sarcasm, as Poe's Law is easy to transgress.
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Elmwood at 07:30 AM on 27 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
Obama has done very little, besides paying lip service, to seriously cut GHG emissions in our country. Comparing him to politicans who are explicitly pro Big Oil does little to change this fact. Even the State Department acknowledged that stopping the KXL would not significantly slow the extraction of oil sands. This article IMO is amounts to a propoganda piece for the Obama administration.
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Zeke Hausfather at 07:22 AM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Hi ryland,
The Central England Temperature record is an amalgation of multiple stations, and is subject to time of observation adjustments, instrument change adjustments, station move adjustments, and others. See this paper by Parker et al for example: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf
Mercury thermometers weren't even invented to the early 1700s, so data before that is tough to accurately interpret.
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link
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Jim Hunt at 06:54 AM on 27 February 2015Telegraph wrong again on temperature adjustments
Jubble @7 - You may wish to compare notes with the response we got from The Telegraph. We have been talking to IPSO about this sort of thing for quite some time!
A Letter to the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph
Whats the scientific definition of "egregious inaccuracy"?! -
MA Rodger at 06:02 AM on 27 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
RedBaron @239.
Fine. We are looking at the same sources. So where within this work of Rellatack or this work of Teague is there support for your assertion @225 that the IPCC AR5 Chapter 6 "have the numbers right for the land use change to agriculture, but are missing the land use changes within agriculture as methodologies change."?
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RedBaron at 05:19 AM on 27 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
Here is the published text that support the conference lecture. That is what is in The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Sorry I got the conference name wrong by swapping it with his published paper.
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-earth-050212-124001?journalCode=earth
Moderator Response:[PS] FIxed link
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RedBaron at 05:05 AM on 27 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
OK I got the Name of the conference wrong, but here is a link.
http://bio4climate.org/conferences/conference-2014/program/
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link
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ryland at 04:49 AM on 27 February 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
The author says there is no such thing as a pure and unadulterated temperature reading. Does this apply to the Central England Temperature record which I understand is a well regarded record of temperatures since the 1600s. I have a particular and arguably proprietorial, interest in this as I come from Central England and would like to have something to skite about.
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thinstatic at 02:40 AM on 27 February 2015CO2 lags temperature
(Moderator, forgive the funky link. Policies/firewalls here break some features of websites - I see a basic comments box, no tabs.)
Moderator Response:[RH] If I'm not mistaken, you can also just type in the html code to embed links. If you know a little html that might be a workaround.
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thinstatic at 02:37 AM on 27 February 2015CO2 lags temperature
Maybe this isn't the appropriate thread - this article might apply to several arguments, but CO2 lag seemed to fit. Brief on LiveScience on observed greenhouse effect(vs. modeled):http://www.livescience.com/49950-greenhouse-effect-measured-us.html
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CBDunkerson at 02:29 AM on 27 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
Obama certainly has a mixed record on global warming, but I don't think there is any question that the title of the piece is entirely accurate... with a GOP president Keystone XL would have been approved years ago, there would be no EPA regulations on coal plants, there would have been no funding for renewables research, there would have been no subsidies for solar and wind development, there would be no tightening of automobile MPG requirements, et cetera.
Sure, you or I could have done the job better ( :] ), but Obama has done more than any president before him on this issue and vastly more than any GOP president would have.
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MA Rodger at 02:14 AM on 27 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
Correction to #236. That Teague link is here.
Moderator Response:[JH] Commenters like RedBaron are expected to document the source of their assertions about what others have supposedly stated. It they do not, or cannot, their comments are merely heresay hearsay.
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MA Rodger at 02:11 AM on 27 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
RedBaron @235.
I assume this paper by Retallack will contain what you're advocating. And (I do hate linking to video - life is too short) this 24 minutes of somebody's life will explainwhat you mean by Teague (& this the Retallack equivalent).
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RedBaron at 01:19 AM on 27 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
@MA Rodger,
I am not sure I am up to the monumental task you just outlined. But what I can say is that Greg Retallack and Richard Teague both spoke at the most recent Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences conference. They appear to be in support of each other completely. Ie the paleo record supports the current observations and they both point to potential near future solutions of AGW.
Moderator Response:[JH] Please document what Greg Retallack and Richard Teague said at the most recent Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences conference. Where and when was this conference held? Who sponsors it? Were you in attendance?
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:06 AM on 27 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
Synapsid,
The portion of XL that was built was indeed to increase the movement of damaging fossil fuels, but it does not need to be extended into Canada where it would further damage things. And Obama had absolutely no influence over that portion beacause it did not cross the US border.
Obama could do little to stop what the greedy likes of the Tea Party/Republican controlled House wanted. Same goes for coal export.
The problem is the likes of the Tea Party/Republicans including those who call themselves Democrats but will vote for coal if they are in a region where the damaging activity is a prominent part of the economy.
A global ban on the ability of greedy pursuers of personal benefit to export any product derived from the oil sands is needed. Many self-interested people will try any way they can get away with to benefit as much as possible, even if they are fully aware of how unsustainable and damaging their pursuits are.
However, I agree that his apparant support of Arctic Drilling and Ga-Fracking are unacceptable, if he had authority to actually block them, which he probably doesn't.
The real problem is the American voters who share that attitude in numbers big enough to elect members of the House and Senate in the bizarre shaped Jerrymandered House constituencies created by the likes of the Tea Party Republicans (combined with their deliberate attempts to keep people who would not vote 'with them' from getting to cast a vote).
What the Americans can do, in addition to stopping any expansion of coal export facilities, is to ban the movement and export of the Petroleum Coke by-product of trying to turn the bitumen into something more readily burnable.
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MA Rodger at 20:22 PM on 26 February 2015There's no empirical evidence
RedBaron @233.
Down this thread since #217, you have been presenting perhaps three separate arguments which may be why the responses haven't been quite hitting the mark for you.
Perhaps the least controversial (relatively) of your three proposals concerns sequestartion of CO2. There are people (coming from different directions) who advocate using grassland management techniques to improve sequestration of atmospheric CO2. It is usually at the same time also argued that such management of grassland would hughly incerease pastoral livestock production. Further I have seen such argument made in a general sense to cereal production as well.
These multiple approaches reaching similar conclusions would suggest there is merit in such arguments although the slow of progress made by such arguments suggests also that the benefits are not as straightforward as claimed (or as not so easily demonstrated as claimed). It also suggests that a discussion here will not easily provide a clear outcome.
However, it is the second argument that you present that is the main bone of contention within the thread. You are arguing that the rise in atmospheric CO2 results directly from changes in agricultural practice and such changes have caused CO2 emissions that remain unaccounted for by any of the studies of the likes of Houghton.
Such an argument is strong stuff. Yet in establishing such a hypothesis, I would say that I don't think you have begun even to scratch the surface.
But there is a third hypothesis that you are proposing. You suggest that it was the spread of grasslands during the Cenozoic that resulted in the fall in atmospheric CO2 levels over that period. Again, this is strong stuff.
Mixing up all this into one big debate will get us nowehre. Thus I would recommend that these three areas of discussion are addressed separately.
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Elmwood at 18:02 PM on 26 February 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
Synapsid is spot on, Obama has done very little to decrease our nations future production of fossil fuels and has laid the ground work for growth. Despite the right-wing mantra, Obama has shown himself at best to be a centrist moderate on environmental issues.
Opening up drilling off the southeast coast should be a shock for people concerned about AGW and his removal of areas from future leasing in the Arctic were mere postage stamps relative to the vastness of the lease sale areas, besides the fact that they were not thought to be prospective to industry. His administration has scheduled lease sales in the Cook Inlet, Beaufort and Chukchi Sea in Alaska, which is ground zero for climate change.
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