I await June figures with bated breath. From NOAA:
From NOAA, accessed on 8 July 2010.
Business Week on record temperatures on the East Coast; AOL on global climate change and the probabilities of record-setting temperature episodes. See also Christian Science Monitor:
Indeed, 2010 is set to be one of the world’s hottest years on record, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the first five months of the year was the warmest on record, and 1.22 degrees F warmer than the 20th century average, the NOAA states in its May 2010 State of the Climate Global Analysis.
Additional reading from NYT for conspiracy theorists.
Here is an article that might of interest to both climate watchers and economists. The article is about identifying regime shifts in the climate.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/ClimateRegimeShift.htm
I guess it depends on where you live. In New Mexico we are experiencing a second very mild summer, with the exception of one heat wave. In addition the rainfall has been above normal for the last 2 years.
Today the high is 68 degrees. I do live on a mountain, about 7000 feet above sea level, but my home town will only reach 80 today.
I am not a conspiracy nut, just believe this is a total waste of time and money.
Menzie, Yup! It’s been a warm year. But, that’s pretty much true for most of the el Nino years. We are changing fast to la Nina conditions and those Surface Sea Temps are dropping. We might have a 2010/11 cycle similar to 2008 when the temps dropped like a rock.
BTW, 2008 was the beginning of the wheels coming off the catastrophic temp predictions. Belowyou can see what has been happening with temps using the Sat data:
YR MON GLOBE –NH —SH -TROPICS
2009 1 0.251 0.472 0.030 -0.068
2009 2 0.247 0.564 -0.071 -0.045
2009 3 0.191 0.324 0.058 -0.159
2009 4 0.162 0.316 0.008 0.012
2009 5 0.140 0.161 0.119 -0.059
2009 6 0.043 -0.017 0.103 0.110
2009 7 0.429 0.189 0.668 0.506
2009 8 0.242 0.235 0.248 0.406
2009 9 0.505 0.597 0.413 0.594
2009 10 0.362 0.332 0.393 0.383
2009 11 0.498 0.453 0.543 0.479
2009 12 0.284 0.358 0.211 0.506
2010 1 0.648 0.860 0.436 0.681
2010 2 0.603 0.720 0.486 0.791
2010 3 0.653 0.850 0.455 0.726
2010 4 0.501 0.799 0.203 0.633
2010 5 0.534 0.775 0.292 0.708
2010 6 0.436 0.552 0.321 0.475
If you look carefully, you can see we have peaked from the el Nino. The next few months, with the rate of drop, should tell us how deep the temp change may be.
Menzie, there is growing interest in the next thirty years forecasts. Joe Bastardi, AccuWeather’s long range and hurricane forecaster, was one of the first to predict a high volume season this year. He then predicted a colder winter than normal. Many have us entering a 30 Yr cooling phase. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are synching up in their cold cycles. The PDO is a 60 Yr cycle, 30 cold and 30 hot. What’s been interesting, the past century has had two PDO hot cycles.
Do you think that having 60 of 100 years in a warming cycle would impact on average temps for the past 100+ years? Just wondering.
You know Menzie, you may want to stick to economics. You’re a smart person and everything, but I think you’re out of your depth here.
CoRev: In time series analysis it is customary to decompose a series into three basic elements: trend, cycles and irregular disturbances. No one doubts that there are natural cycles in the temperature data. And no one doubts that there is some irregular or random error term. The error term could be due to measurement errors, autocorrelation (something of a notorious problem with temp data) and just plain old fashioned white noise. But when people talk about global climate change what they are talking about is the deterministic trend. You can argue whether that trend is linear or quadratic, but the key point is that it is deterministic and is lifting up global temperatures. The baseline across cycles keeps getting higher.
And we have good theory that supports the belief that what we’re seeing is a deterministic trend and not stochastic trend (hey…why not put in a plug for JDH’s book!). We know this because the physics of climate change tells us that increasing concentrations of CO2 will trap infrared radiation. You can prove this in the lab. I’m not claiming that we know precisely what all of the parameter estimates are, but we do know that basic physics tells us that higher CO2 concentrations will increase global temperatures. You can argue about the pace of change, but you can’t argue about the inevitable direction.
“I await June figures with bated breath” I couldn’t agree more! The increased global temperatures will be a nice change for some regions especially on the east coast! But I can’t imagine that baseline rise in temperature isn’t raising more questions as to when or how we should be forecasting for the year to come.
2slugs, neat lecture, but what is it supposed to mean? Yup! It’s getting warmer. There is little doubt that it will eventually get colder. Right into an ice age/glaciation. It’s all about the cycles.
Here are the numbers on the major GHGs.
GHG ———-% GH Effect –% Natural–% Manmade
Water Vapor —-95.000% —-94,999% —0.001%
CO2 ————3.618% —- 3.502% —-0.117%
Methane ——–0.360% —–0.294% —-0.066%
Nitrox Oxide —0.950% —–0.903% —-0.047%
Misc Gases —–0.072% —–0.025% —-0.047%
Totals ———–100% —–99.72% —–0.28%
The point is that it takes magic pixie dust (or magical feed back loops to add H2O) to make the man made GHGs any more than a minor GH player. Assigning 100% of the man made GHGs to the .7C warming observed in the past 100 years gives us a maximum impact of 0.196C. Scary ;-o
CoRev: There are cycles, but there is also a deterministic trend, and that’s what global warming is all about.
I’m afraid that your table reflects a weak understanding of the basic physics of climate change. The GHGs represent a very small percentage of the total atmosphere…they even represent a small percentage of the troposphere. But just because they are small does not mean the effect is weak. Water vapor is the dominant GHG, and to the extent that it creates clouds it blocks the sun. But the main effect of water vapor is to retain infrared heat because H20 (like CO2) is a triatomic molecule that is excited by infrared radiation. And as temperature increases, so does the atmosphere’s ability to hold water vapor. The concentration of CO2 has increased from about 280ppm (pre-industrial revolution) to around 380ppm today. And it’s growing at an accelerating rate. The fact that CO2 concentrations are small relative to water vapor is irrelevant to whether or not it exerts a strong greenhouse effect. And we’re lucky that methane is (for the moment) contained because if the permafrost melts and methane is released, then we’re in real trouble because it has an ever stronger effect than CO2.
A few years ago the idea of a 5C temperature increase seemed unlikely. Today that possibility is around 1 in 20 within the next 100 years. A 5C warming would essentially mean the end of a liveable world.
“The main effect of water vapor is to retain heat.”
I’m not so sure that is true, but it also moves heat since it tends to rise.
The main effect of water vapor may well be to trap heat, but the main effect of H2O is to move heat outward. Heat is absorbed in evaporation, quickly transported to high altitudes, and released when condensation happens.
The three phase change of Nitrogen is why Pluto is 10C cooler than we expect it to be, and H2O molecular bonds involve far larger energies.
There’s a 1 in 20 chance that you know the odds.
Posting Jan 2009-Jun 2010 lower-troposphere estimates, MikeMainello writes that “2008 was the beginning of the wheels coming off the catastrophic temp predictions.” That seems an odd reading of the data.
RSS satellite data show temperatures climbing very steeply from May 2008 through Mar 2010, warming about .73C, followed by a few months of slightly lower anomalies Apr-Jun 2010, cooling by about .19C (but even then, temperatures remain more than half a degree above the 1979-1998 mean). Do 3 months chosen from a 378-month time series signify a new trend?
If we look at the full RSS dataset, 1979-present, the slope is +1.6C/decade, not far from independent estimates derived from surface temperature records over the same period.
If, for some reason, we looked at RSS change just since Jan 2008, the slope is +2.4C/decade.
The system is noisy but you have to pick time intervals carefully to say it’s not warming up.
Fifth hottest June on record here in Colorado Springs. Record monthly highs were set in the 2002-2007 period. Five of the ten driest winters on record occured between 2001 – 2009. Drought/warmer winters resulting in massive pine beetle infestation in Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park and now creeping into the Breckenridge area.
I’ve been here since ’93. Less snow in the winter and more fires in the summer based on the data. Some of us don’t like warm weather year round and why we don’t live in Dixie. Didn’t need an air conditioner until 2002, now it’s a necessity.
Whoever said to expect a cooling trend for the next 30 years, I hope they’re right. But I wouldn’t take Bastardi’s word for it.
“You know Menzie, you may want to stick to economics. You’re a smart person and everything, but I think you’re out of your depth here.”
Referencing the reports of experts on climate in order to make economic forecasts is something an economist should do?
Are you suggesting the climate scientists should be making the economic forecasts?
Perhaps you are arguing that economists should continue to do economics assuming a synthetic ecology that behaves in a manner that makes the economics easy, say mining causes no pollution that causes any harm or cost too anyone else?
Presumably, economists predicting crop yields should refrain from looking at long and short term weather reports because they aren’t weathermen?
My biggest complaint about nearly all economists is their oversimplification of the economy which ignores the ecology.
My latest example is the claim that unemployment insurance causes high unemployment, and that ending benefits will increase employment because people will be forced to take the minimum wage job. An ecological view notes a person exists in an environment that he must be able to obtain the necessities, otherwise, humans not being able to enter a state of hibernation, he will die. A human isn’t like a machine that can sit idle for a few years at minimal cost, or that can be sold for scrap.
I am convinced the reason so many economists reject the evidence of man caused climate warming is that it blows all their economic theories out of the water. Especially those who think economies work best with no government.
We know this because the physics of climate change tells us that increasing concentrations of CO2 will trap infrared radiation.
The physics is not anywhere near that simple once you are out a small plastic container in the sun. The dynamics of re-absorption (especially through the ocean) are a big issue and not fully understood.
But whatever, you guys on whatever side you are on just want to confirm your biases. party on.
2slugs, I agree! H2O is the dominant GHG. But, you have explained the reality of the AGW discussion with this: “A few years ago the idea of a 5C temperature increase seemed unlikely. Today that possibility is around 1 in 20 within the next 100 years. A 5C warming would essentially mean the end of a liveable world.”
Gross exaggerations aimed at trying to scare folks into accepting a dangerous political agenda is the norm for AGW. None have actually occurred. So, the temps ARE RISIMG! That’s a fact. The goodness/badness of that fact is the core argument driving the politics.
The politics were exacerbated with Hansen’s 1988 staged testimony to Congress. His 100 year estimates are now nearly 1/4 the way through, and even his “do nothing” scenario has diverged from reality. All his estimates in that testimony are, today, higher or very much higher than reality. And, that 2slugs, is the support for your 1 in 20 chance. None!
Since it has not yet been brought up, I will reference the Muir Russell report which exonerates the CRU (Climategate) participants.
“It is no surprise the final report is a complete whitewash. As McIntyre notes, They adopted a unique inquiry process in which they interviewed only one side CRU. As a result, the report is heavily weighted towards CRU apologia a not unexpected result given that the writing team came from Geoffrey Boultons Royal Society of Edinburgh. Theres that Royal Society connection again. The report exploits lack of knowledge or understanding of climate science just like the CRU and IPCC. They couldnt allow involvement of experts who knew the science and how it was manipulated.”
From here: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25124
Ambler’s commentary is typical of the warmist arguments. He concludes his comment with: “The system is noisy but you have to pick time intervals carefully to say it’s not warming up.”
But picked one of the most recent warm cycles with which to compare. Then he makes a strawman argument saying “it’s not warming.” Did anyone say that? Actually Phil Jones said that there has been little statistically significant warming for the past 15 years. That does not mean NO WARMING, before 2slugs and Ambler jump on it.
Most skeptics believe that it is warming. They do not believe in the catastrophic predictions.
2slug,
From the looks of chart B in this link,
http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/lemke/geog101/lecture_outlines/25_the_ice_age.html
your man-made carbon-induced ‘trend’ is litte more than the most recent warming period in a climate cycle that displays several such periods over the past 500 thousand years.
If the earth has experienced many warming periods similar to the current period then how can changes in man-made carbon emissions be the cause?
Will you at least admit that the science isn’t settled and we need more research before ‘electricity rates necessarily skyrocket’?
If our modern industry causes global warming wouldn’t you expect periods of economic contraction to reduce warming and periods of economic expansion to increase warming? Note the temperature changes in the 1930s-40s compared to the 1950s-60s. Wouldn’t you expect our current world wide contraction to reduce global warming?
Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot for a moment that this was a religion not rational science.
Use the raw data from anny broad selection of stations.
NOAA is NOT raw data. Nor GISS.
If our modern industry causes global warming wouldn’t you expect periods of economic contraction to reduce warming and periods of economic expansion to increase warming? Note the temperature changes in the 1930s-40s compared to the 1950s-60s. Wouldn’t you expect our current world wide contraction to reduce global warming?
Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot for a moment that this was a religion not rational science.
If tax cuts stimulate the economy, then shouldn’t the economy be booming and overheating after tax cut after tax cut after tax cut reducing the Federal tax burden to the lowest level in six decades?
Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot for a moment that economics is a religion not rational science.
CoRev writes “You know Menzie, you may want to stick to economics. You’re a smart person and everything, but I think you’re out of your depth here.” The tone is condescending, but then followed up only by some talking points from politicized blogs.
A few observations regarding the real science, for example, behind CoRev’s declaration (citing a graph of Vostok and EPICA ice core results) that “your man-made carbon-induced ‘trend’ is litte more than the most recent warming period in a climate cycle that displays several such periods over the past 500 thousand years.”
1. My man-made carbon-induced ‘trend’ should not show up in these Antarctic ice core series at all, because their end dates are a century or more before the present.
2. The scientists who drilled and analyzed these cores have, however, often made explicit comparisons between their ice-core CO2 findings and more recent instrumental records. For example:
“Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/abs/399429a0.html
3. Original source of the graphic that CoRev links is Global Warming Art, which produces some nice (and generally accurate) illustrations used by Wikipedia. It can be found here:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature_Rev_png
Appearing on that same Wikipedia page just below the 450,000-year Antarctic graph is another one also by Global Warming Art, showing a 12,000-year Greenland record and demonstrating that even on the scale of a 2,000-year inset graph you can’t see much about what’s happened in the past few decades — the satellite period discussed earlier on this thread.
4. Finally, in the spirit of talking points, it seems to need endless repetition that evidence of past natural climate change does not disprove that recently, human activities are affecting climate too. Any more than prehistoric forest fires prove the recent one can’t be arson.
And to add to Ambler’s point #4, given past natural variability in climate, changes in temperatures in the last 100 years or so do not prove that humans are significantly affecting the temperature on a planetary scale.
It amazes me how morons such as CoRev can look at clear data like these and conclude it’s not warming.
Obviously that’s not possible. So clearly there’s willful disinformation that such people are trying to spread.
And that amazes me even more. I can’t understand why people seem so vehement about denying reality. What does anyone gain? So very bizarre.
CoRev writes that “Actually Phil Jones said that there has been little statistically significant warming for the past 15 years.”
Phil Jones has been widely paraphrased and misunderstood, especially by people who don’t grok “statistically significant.” Just for the record, here’s the question and answer from that BBC interview (emphasis added):
“B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?”
“Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.”
He is referencing the HadCRUT3v global temperature anomaly index, which he helps to produce. But we’ve got a few more months of data now, since Jones gave that interview (Feb 2010). And the not significant, “but only just” trend now looks a little different. Here’s what I see using monthly HadCRUT3v data through May 2010:
1979-present +1.6C/decade, the same slope estimated for the same years using the much differently-derived RSS lower troposphere satellite data, as I mentioned above.
1995-present +1.1C/decade. I’m not sure whether Jones had a fancier model in mind, but for OLS that’s significant. Somewhat steeper positive slopes, also significant (to OLS), occur with all of the other global anomaly indexes for 1979-present and 1995-present.
The “global warming stopped in 1998” meme, widely shouted ’round the blogosphere (certainly not by Phil Jones), was based on hiding the incline by picking the very warm El Nino year (1998) as a starting point, then ending the series before it began the last two years’ run-up (also noted above in the RSS post).
Ambler said,
…”evidence of past natural climate change does not disprove that recently, human activities are affecting climate too. Any more than prehistoric forest fires prove the recent one can’t be arson.”
True, but applying your fire analogy, today’s policy makers are ignoring the prehistoric record and conlcuding that the most recent fire (warming) could ONLY be caused by arson (man-made increase in CO2). Therefore, if we can eliminate arson, we eliminate forest fires.
Here is another link that puts global climate change in its proper perspective.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
Don’t let the alarmists fool you. Earth has experienced warmings similar to the current one numerous times in the past. Does it mean that CO2 plays no role? No, but it does show that a laser-like focus on man-made changes in CO2 as the cause of global warming is naive.
It amazes me how morons such as RN can read CoRev’s comments and concluded that he believes it is not warming.
Obviously this is not possible. He said it’s warming several times. So clearly there’s willful disinformation that such people are trying to spread.
So often we hear the argument: “It looks like a duck. It quacks like a duck. I must be a duck-monster that’s going to bite our dicks off and rape our children.”
And that amazes me even more. I can’t understand why people seem so vehement about denying reality. What does anyone gain? So very bizarre.
Ambler, I believe you’re wrong and Phil Jones said no statistically significant warming. Regardless the fact is that there isn’t “little statistically significant” warming over the past 15 years, there was no statistically signficant warming (at least there wasn’t last fall). That may change after this year.
Ambler, who said this? Hint here: You know Menzie, you may want to stick to economics. You’re a smart person and everything, but I think you’re out of your depth here.
Posted by: JFox at July 8, 2010 02:51 PM
And who said this? It appears you are also attributing it to me. Hint here: If the earth has experienced many warming periods similar to the current period then how can changes in man-made carbon emissions be the cause?
“…Will you at least admit that the science isn’t settled and we need more research before ‘electricity rates necessarily skyrocket’?
Posted by: tj at July 9, 2010 06:55 AM”
And your final over the top complaint: “3. Original source of the graphic that CoRev links is Global Warming Art, …) Note to self, Ambler, the charts to which you appear to be referring is also TJ’s. Zero for three.
BTW, what’s actually wrong with TJ’s chart? Did Rohde take his data from some other than official source?
With the errors in your post, I repeat my earlier comment, “Ambler’s commentary is typical of the warmist arguments. He concludes his comment with: “The system is noisy but you have to pick time intervals carefully to say it’s not warming up.”
Just more misdirection and strawman argumentation. At least it’s a Friday. You have a weekend to rest.
The quote say exactly that. And, he says it’s close to being signifcant at 95%. Not actually significant. And he’s talking about at 95%. The standard is 3 sigma not 2.
Rich Berger writes, “And to add to Ambler’s point #4, given past natural variability in climate, changes in temperatures in the last 100 years or so do not prove that humans are significantly affecting the temperature on a planetary scale.”
No, of course temperature changes alone don’t prove what causes them. That’s why there is so much research on attribution. One approach is to take all the known natural sources of variability (solar, volcanoes, El Nino, etc.) and see how much of the observed variation *they* explain.
Through the lens of most climate research, natural forces can’t explain recent warming. Alternative explanations to CO2 have been systematically considered, then gradually and sometimes reluctantly abandoned as data failed to support them. For example, tempertures warmed as a sunsport cycle waxed, leading to claims that was the cause. But then it kept warming as the sunspot cycle waned. In the late 1990s much of the thinking about Arctic change involved the quasi-cyclical Arctic Oscillation, but Arctic change, unlike the oscillation, did not reverse.
So most researchers conclude that natural forces have not ceased to operate, but been joined by something large and new — humans rapidly changing the composition of the atmosphere.
Ambler, you said decade, it’s century.
tj wrote, “True, but applying your fire analogy, today’s policy makers are ignoring the prehistoric record and conlcuding that the most recent fire (warming) could ONLY be caused by arson (man-made increase in CO2). Therefore, if we can eliminate arson, we eliminate forest fires.”
I don’t know which policy makers you mean, there doesn’t seem to be much policy being made. But this claim has no reality regarding climate research. No one there is “ignoring the prehistoric record.” Paleoclimatologists have been on the cutting edge of modern climate research from the start. Everyone knows that climate has changed for natural reasons in the past, and is being affected by natural forces now. It’s just that those natural forces alone don’t explain how, and how fast, it is changing today.
RN, are you a sock puppet for Ambler? I say this because the reading skills are similar.
BTW, thanks for the support, Aaron.
Ambler makes this statement: “So most researchers conclude that natural forces have not ceased to operate, but been joined by something large and new — humans rapidly changing the composition of the atmosphere.” I look at this stuff every day and remember numbers like 80/20 or 70/30, natural/anthro. That still puts it in the .2C area with a 100% assignment of GHGs to increased temps. Anyone believe that? What about land use? Remember all those rain forests being destroyed. (Oh CoRev don’t go there. Remember the Amazongate issue.)
Menzie, BTW, why are you waiting with bated breath? What is it you expect? Or at least want to convey?
OK, once again we have a bunch of folks coming down right where one could easily predict, folks (CoRev in particular) resorting to description (wheels coming off) rather than evidence, to try to sway a debate that they have limited ability to understand, much less to contribute to.
It is not a good idea to simply receive wisdom without question. The fact that the majority of scientists who work in fields of study that contribute to the climate debate think human activity is causing climate change does not mean we should simply accept that view. But good golly people, the denialist pudding being served up here is not very tasty.
Seriously, the same CoRev who can’t get an economic argument straight and has such a hard time with history wants to tell us what’s what when it comes to complex environmental systems? No, no, no. This is pure push-back. The same old stuff we saw every time somebody tried to tell the truth about Iraq, the same old stuff we see at Angry Bear when the wonders of tax cuts are shown to be less than wonderful.
It would be so nice to have an honest discussion of any of these issues. Sadly, the push-back squad always shows up, always aimed at tossing dust and deception in the air. Waste of space.
aaron (I think I’ve got the attribution right this time!) wrote several things:
“Ambler, I believe you’re wrong and Phil Jones said no statistically significant warming.”
My quote came from the BBC interview, as reported by BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
“Ambler, you said decade, it’s century.”
You’re right about that!
“BTW, what’s actually wrong with TJ’s chart? Did Rohde take his data from some other than official source?”
The Vostok and EPICA CO2 data are fine, but they don’t go up to the present day. Depending on which reconstruction you’re looking at, their starting age is a century or more before present. So they don’t show the modern era, as many bloggers have claimed.
CoRev (July 9, 2010 06:30 AM): “Most skeptics believe that it is warming. They do not believe in the catastrophic predictions.”
RN (July 9, 2010 08:47 AM): “It amazes me how morons such as CoRev can look at clear data like these and conclude it’s not warming.”
Give it up brother. Anyone in the world who is interested has already decided. You won’t change any minds with your words.
COREV,
What you fail to understand is that CO2 is the most important of the GHG’s because it stays in the air for decades while water vapor stays in the air from 10-14 DAYS before releasing it’s trapped heat through the mechanism of rain.
Water vapor is important though because the amount the air can hold at any one time increases as average long-term temperatures increase. So the affect of CO2 in the air is increased humidity.
CoRev says “I look at this stuff every day and remember numbers like 80/20 or 70/30, natural/anthro. That still puts it in the .2C area with a 100% assignment of GHGs to increased temps.”
Are those numbers you remember means? Variances? Both?
Here’s another nice Global Warming Art production on attribution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
based on Meehl et al. 2004,
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0442%282004%29017%3C3721%3ACONAAF%3E2.0.CO%3B2
I’m also right about the quote. He does say it’s not statistically significant. Not even at 2sigma.
When you go back further than 1995, a trend becomes significant at 2 sigma. But it’s not exactly threatening. In fact I’d say it’s encouraging. A little warming and CO2 will benefit the economy.
If it’s a duck, let’s have duck.
Ok, I don’t know if anyone is still reading this post, prolly not. But I took a closer look at the chart Menzie Chin posted, and there is a glaring problem .
The time line begins circa 1880. Huh?! Anyone who is involved in this debate knows that the issue isn’t warming relative to the 1800s but relative to the medieval warming period: 950-1250 AD. Relevant chart here. (The accuracy of the studies of this chart are what is in dispute in the climate world.)
The data Menzie Chin posted is irrelevant to the climate policy discussion. Sorry Prof Chin but you have engaged in some serious confirmation bias. I am a little shocked to be honest. I like your econ posts. But this is just too much.
aaron writes, “I’m also right about the quote. He does say it’s not statistically significant.”
He says exactly what I quoted, does he not?
“When you go back further than 1995, a trend becomes significant at 2 sigma.”
No, as I mentioned above, from 1995-present is already significant by that standard. Perhaps it wasn’t yet when Jones gave his interview.
“But it’s not exactly threatening. In fact I’d say it’s encouraging. A little warming and CO2 will benefit the economy.”
Most climate scientists think otherwise. Also, they suspect we’re in for more than “a little warming.”
Ambler, that’s another problem with ice core proxies. There are very few data sets with high resolution than several decade (most are several centuries) and that have data that overlaps modern records.
All I know of is Greenland. It has 20yr resolution. One point on the earth to compare to modern global numbers.
KH, I see you have joined the discussion with your usual ad homs and meaningless nonsense. Add value or disappear as you usually do with your hit and run tactics.
Ambler, quibbling about the most recent history (100 Yrs) when the meaning of the chart is in the hundreds of thousands of years.
Asking about means or variances? Another hair to split?
I’m sorry, but those ares worth a SHEESH!
DS, I see you do believe in fairies, but totally misunderstand the physics of the atmosphere. KHarris, why don’t you explain the difference between water and water vapor, and the heat cycle of gases.
DS, the fact a new water vapor molecule replaces an older one should have little to no effect, as the ratios are fairly constant. Neither CO2 nor H2O store heat. It is released instantaneously.
The way the climate models handle water in its various forms, is one of their largest failings. More are being identified. Which is why I jokingly use the fairy dust analogy. H2O atmospheric physics is not very well understood, yet. Dr Roy Spencer makes that point repeatedly.
And what you quoted says there’s no significant warming.
You give a trend line, say nothing of significance.
Here’s an analysis of UAH in Dec. 2009:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/12/no-statistically-significant-warming.html
Ambler said: “Most climate scientists think otherwise. Also, they suspect we’re in for more than “a little warming.”” Most, many, a lot, might even be true.
You still have not answered Aaron’s point. Yup! It’s getting warmer. That is until the eventual shift starts. Now what?
Do you really deny the message of the Ice core graphs? More time spent down than up, and it happens in cycles. The teeny tiny wiggles in temp we are experiencing in recent history are actually noise in the overall picture. Oh, and its been this warm or warmer many times over.
Dan says, “The time line begins circa 1880. Huh?! Anyone who is involved in this debate knows that the issue isn’t warming relative to the 1800s but relative to the medieval warming period: 950-1250 AD.”
Who told you that rule? Why not relative to the 1920s, or 60s, or the Younger Dryas or the Eemian? The instrumental temperature record just goes back to the 19th century, and the satellite record to the 1970s. Pan-Arctic ice measurements are even newer. Greenland ice cores maybe 90k, or a bit more; Antarctic something about 600k, other proxies farther but with worse resolution. There are many people studying each of these time scales, and fitting together what they find.
CoRev waves his hands, “Ambler, quibbling about the most recent history (100 Yrs) when the meaning of the chart is in the hundreds of thousands of years.”
I was quibbling about a post by tj in which he linked to Antarctic data that ended over a century ago and said of them “your man-made carbon-induced ‘trend’ is litte more than the most recent warming period in a climate cycle that displays several such periods over the past 500 thousand years.”
So I pointed out that my man-made carbon induced ‘trend’ could not possibly be displayed in that graph. And that the study’s authors had noted that even in the context of the long record, modern CO2 is exceptional.
CoRev again, “Asking about means or variances? Another hair to split?”
From your mixed-up sounding post about remembering numbers, I thought maybe you did not know the difference between mean and variance. Apparently you don’t, you were just tossing out numbers.
What makes this ironic is your condescending note telling Menzie he was out of his depth talking science.
tj: “your man-made carbon-induced ‘trend’ is litte more than the most recent warming period in a climate cycle that displays several such periods over the past 500 thousand years.”
Current CO2 is at 385ppm. Ice core data going back 800K years always ranged between 180ppm and 300ppm. So we’re already outside of 800K years of experience. Worse yet, it took us 17 years to add 30ppm. Prior to that it never took less than 1000 years to see CO2 increase of 30ppm. The rate of CO2 increase is way outside of any historical experience. Yes, temperatures today are within historical upper limits, but that’s not the point. The point is that CO2 persists for a long time and we’re on track for 600ppm-750ppm within the lifetimes of some folks reading this blog. The problem isn’t today’s temperatures; it’s tomorrow’s temperatures given the very long lead time needed to reverse course. The reason CoRev and other older Tea Party types don’t care about global warming is that they will be long dead and forgotten by the time any of this becomes a crisis too big to ignore. But by then it will be too late. CoRev just doesn’t want to be inconvenienced to solve something that will be another generation’s problem.
aaron: “There’s a 1 in 20 chance that you know the odds.”
Actually, in a way you’ve unwittingly hit on it. The central problem is that climate change is a matter of extreme uncertainty, and that implies fat-tailed distributions are appropriate. In that kind of risk environment the relevant parameter of interest is not the “most likely” estimate but trying to understand the tails. And it’s the tails that you know the least about. The IPCC-AR4 looked at 22 different studies and estimated a 7C warming was at the 5% point (yesterday I had a typo and said 5C). But things have gotten worse and new estimates put it at 10-11C at the 5% point with a 1% chance of a 20C increase over pre-industrial revolution temps by the 22nd century. Anything like that puts us in mass extinction territory…that’s what the fossil record tells us. Now it probably won’t be that bad, but when managing risk with extreme uncertainty and fat-tailed probabilities the correct way to look at the problem is to focus on the tail and not the central tendency.
aaron: The guy at UAH made a very dumb math error. One of common mistakes that people make when working with fat-tailed distributions is that as they increase the sample size they also pull incorporate the observations that were formerly outliers. That’s a common error. And when this happens people wave their findings and conclude that past outliers were not really outliers. A few weeks ago there was an interesting paper making some waves that pointed to exactly this same mistake being made in the financial world right up until the collapse.
On my job I get to talk with people that deal with advising corporations on how to reduce their carbon footprints. One of them, a Manhattan finance expert, agreed with Robert Rapier:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2010/05/26/changing-attitudes-on-climate-change/
My acquaintance’s statement was that every ton and barrel of commercially extractable fossil fuel will be consumed on the planet by developing nations even if we cut off all fossil fuel use in this country. Thus, every ton of carbon emissions will end up in the atmosphere regardless of what we do.
I also agree with him and others on the impossibility of sequestering carbon from fossil fuel plants in any meaningful amount over the long run. This is something that economists can easily run the numbers on, given that all of the parameters are known. It is also a good political science study given the fact that Switzerland halted its pilot CCS project after it apparently caused earthquakes in an area not previously thought to be prone to them.
So we are left with another economic question, what is the most effective way to control carbon, if we are going to actually attempt to do it?
It turns out that 75% of the carbon not counting the oceans is contained in land vegetation. I won’t run the numbers here, but increasing total forest cover on the planet by 1.5% annually can remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to stabilize carbon levels.
We can do this for more than a century, by which time most of the fossil fuel will be used up and we will have to replace it with something else. What does a century gain for us? A century ago there was no atomic power; now it contributes 20% to the US power grid.
And while I am on the Rapier bandwagon, he highlights this company that is creating new applications for wood instead of steel:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2008/12/14/carbon-sequestration-in-practice/
If Prof. Chinn wishes to do more than burn bandwidth by stimulating online arguments over whether the planet is warming (Has anyone measured the data center carbon emissions created by an average blog comment?), maybe he can come up with the numbers showing the relative costs of attacking carbon at the source and at the sink. From a world politics point of view, isn’t reforestation of the Amazon basin much easier to stomach than the uncertainty of attempting to overhaul the world’s energy structure or pumping massive amounts of carbon underground?
And let’s suppose for sake of argument that the theories are wrong and carbon doesn’t warm the planet much. We would still have reforested the tropics, something that we could all feel good about.
CoRev: The ice core data is useful for telling us about historical CO2 levels; it is next to useless in terms of the rest of the climate debate. There are plenty of things that could have caused temperature fluctuations; the issue on the table is only about CO2 being a manmade cause of global warming. We can’t control natural warming, but we can control manmade global warming. And physics tells us that CO2 concentrations in the air will trap radiative heat. And warmer temps from higher CO2 will increase water vapor (a 1C increase increases water vapor by 7%). And that means even warmer temps. But absent the manmade CO2 increases there would not be an increase in water vapor because that is very stable unless acted upon from an exongenous forcing. Saying that things were worse a million years ago really isn’t responsive to the issue. And not understanding the difference between cycles and trends is inexcusable.
Bwahhahhahhahh!!!!!
Oh, cheez 2slugs, so much wrong it’s hard to find a starting point. A doubling of CO2 effects temps how? Several recent estimates say ~1C. If you just look at the long range ice core graphs you will see that there have been several warmer periods.
Your 10-11C (I presume jump in temp) exceeds the total temp differentials between glaciations and warm periods. What feed backs could cause such a massive change? Because it/they would have to be huge in impact, and should be obvious in today’s world. What manifestation(s) will cause that kind of temp rise? I’ve already taken over the fairy dust argument. Pixie dust is still available.
Let’s take apart that CO2 doubling argument. Will that lessen the percentage impact of H2O? No! If you think it does that means you are replacing one high impact molecule with one of lesser impact. Also as you know CO2 has a logarithmic effect on temps. So how do we get from a .2C impact of CO2 to 10-11C?
We’ve had CO2 amounts as high as 7,000 PPM, and its affect was extraordinary plant growth. We routinely see CO2 amounts well in excess of your 700-800 PPM in submarines. Sailors in U.S. submarines work in CO2 levels of 8000 PPM with no ill effects. BTW, isn’t that temp run away territory? Hansen says it is ~450 PPM Think your 10-11C estimate is credible? How about that 7C? How fat is the credibility tail on those estimates?
What bothers me about the “blind faith” contingent is most of their catastrophic examples have never happened and still they persist. Its religious. It certainly can not be science.
Ambler said: “What makes this ironic is your condescending note telling Menzie he was out of his depth talking science.” that’s the second time you have made the INCORRECT accusation. Maybe you better come back later. You have been having a horribly bad day.
2slugs said: “And physics tells us that CO2 concentrations in the air will trap radiative heat.” No, physics tells us CO2 will get excited by infrared at specific wave lengths. But, it does not trap anything. It releases that heat instantaneously. H2O however can trap/carry heat in its liquid form, and that form is common in the temp ranges to which we are referring. Not so for CO2.
Saying “But absent the manmade CO2 increases there would not be an increase in water vapor because that is very stable unless acted upon from an exongenous forcing.” Assigns 100% of the heating to CO2. Not possible.
And saying this: “Saying that things were worse a million years ago really isn’t responsive to the issue. And not understanding the difference between cycles and trends is inexcusable.” Is just a sign of desperation.
CoRev: “it does not trap anything. It releases that heat instantaneously”
Duh. That’s what people mean when they say CO2 “traps” heat. They’re saying that infrared radiation does not directly radiate away from the earth. Infrared excites the CO2 molecule and this generates heat; i.e., it makes the globe warmer. Strictly speaking it’s the infrared that’s trapped, but the net effect is to trap heat because infrared can also be thought of as radiative heat. If there were no GHGs, then all of the radiative heat would leave and there would be no warming…in fact, there would be no warmth. Earth would be very cold. We’d fry in the daytime and freeze at night. Some of that liberated heat is radiated out into space, but the net effect is that the globe is warmer. This is what’s known as a “leaky greenhouse.”
But it’s good to see that you agree that CO2 molecules are excited by the specific part of the infrared spectrum and that part of the spectrum also happens to match the wavelength at which earth radiates back the incoming solar UV heat. So you at least agree with the basic physics as to how CO2 increases global temperatures. Now we’re just arguing about the rate of change towards global warming and not whether there is manmade global warming. That’s progress.
“Assigns 100% of the heating to CO2. Not possible.”
Not quite what I said. There are long run natural processes that could heat the earth, but those are all “long run” and what we are seeing today are rates of change much greater than anything we’ve seen before. Yes, there have been higher temperature and CO2 levels, but not higher rates of change. What I’m saying is that there cannot be any strictly endogenous change in water vapor’s contribution to global warming (and by warming I mean a rate of change). The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is tightly bound by well known physical laws. The only way water vapor can contribute to a change in global temperatures is if there is some exogenous force that affects the bounds. One of those effects is that higher CO2 increases the atmospheric temperatures and higher temps mean the atmosphere can hold more water vapor. This relationship is known precisely and can be replicated in the lab.
And calling a statement “a sign of desperation” still doesn’t answer the question or address the point. We don’t care about what happened a million years ago as a result of natural causes. We don’t care that historically things have been worse. What we do care about is what happens to global temperatures over the next 5 or 6 generations as a direct result of a manmade problem. We can’t prevent global changes due to natural causes, but we sure as hell can prevent manmade catastrophes. What’s going on here is that you’re looking for an excuse to do nothing because you don’t want to be inconvenienced in order to solve a problem that you won’t personally experience.
CoRev: “Think your 10-11C estimate is credible? How about that 7C? How fat is the credibility tail on those estimates?”
First, let me repeat that I am not talking about “most likely” temperatures; I am talking about temperatures at the tail. The proper question is whether or not my estimates are credible, but whether or not it is credible to assume a thin tailed distribution when all parties to the debate agree that there is extreme uncertainty about the degree and effects of global warming. If you were an analyst who was brought into consult on a risk management plan and you told me that there was a lot of uncertainty about the project and then you calculated risks using a normal (i.e., thin tailed) distribution, I can promise you that my team would kick you out of the room. And this really gets us out of the physics debate and back into the economics argument. Over the next couple of generations the most likely effect of global warming means something like an annual 2 percent welfare loss as a result of depressed crop yields, water problems, loss of shorelines, famine, resource wars (the Pentagon considers global warming a long run military problem), impact on fish harvests, etc. But a 2 percent welfare loss is still a manageable problem. But there is also a low but not zero probability that temperatures could be at least 10C higher within the next several generations, and we have no relevant experience with temperatues that high. So the economic costs are virtually incalcuable. For starters, no agricultural crops will grow in that kind of environment. In terms of earth’s history there have been periods when temps have been that high, but those events were also associated with mass species extinction. So that leaves us with the balancing act between generations. On the one hand cutting back CO2 will hurt the current generation in terms of welfare…that’s why you don’t want to do it. On the other hand, not fixing manmade global warming today increases the cost to future generations. We need to balance those costs across generations. Marty Weitzman at Harvard has done a lot of interesting work on intergenerational discount factors in a context of fat-tailed outcomes and his results are interesting. Krugman has been paying a lot of attention to his recent work.
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/weitzman/files/GammaRiskAdjustedF.pdf
colonelmoore: “So we are left with another economic question, what is the most effective way to control carbon, if we are going to actually attempt to do it?”
That’s a fair question and one that I think Menzie was inviting when he posted the NOAA data. There are economically smart ways to reduce the carbon footprint and economically stupid ways to do it. Voters have a tendency to always want to avoid doing things the smart way because that usually means tackling the problem early on, so we will probably end up doing it the stupid way, which usually means some draconian regulations coupled with a last minute crash program. I think there is near universal agreement amont economists that the smart way to managed carbon emissinos is through either a carbon tax or its economic equivalent, a cap & trade arrangment. But Republicans seem hell bent on stopping any meaningful cap & trade arrangement, so this pretty much dooms future generations to a very expensive EPA administered program coupled with crash alternative energy development programs. And we’re already seeing EPA move in that direction. It’s a stupid way to tackle the problem of climate change, but voters seem to prefer doing things the stupid way as long as they can fool themselves into thinking it’s not a tax increase.
2slugs, your arrogance is still amazing. For those who have not been part of 2slugs and my prior discussions, most on AB, my condolences. We have had this discussion many times over, and frankly, he has learned a lot, but has not changed his belief. And that is OK, too.
He made this statement for your sake and not mine: “Now we’re just arguing about the rate of change towards global warming and not whether there is manmade global warming. That’s progress.” That is not new as we have never been discussing whether there is manmade warming. The few times that subject was broached was when he misstated my own beliefs. Much as Ambler has done on this thread.
The remainder of his commentary re: water vapor is fluff and stuff, after being caught out making an ignorant statement. “But absent the manmade CO2 increases there would not be an increase in water vapor because that is very stable unless acted upon from an exongenous forcing.”
In that statement he makes/implies two claims that the heating and increase of H2O is only due to manmade CO2 (But absent the manmade CO2 increases) and that CO2 is the only exogenous (sic) influence on H2O increases (an exongenous forcing.) Neither is true; moreover, ~97% of the CO2 increase is natural.
These arguments are typical for this subject. The only difference when we get more heavily scientific is in the details of the physics. And that occurs because there is so much still not understood, and still more to be identified. It’s the settled science, DONCHA NO!!!
Slug there have been higher temperatures, higher CO2 levels, lower temps, faster rates of change, and longer trends. It’s evident from my previous link. Motl goes on to show that the trend we do see is not unusual.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/12/no-statistically-significant-warming.html
The assumption that water vapor in the atmosphere is stable is absurd. Weather is always changing this.
Slug, things have also been better in the past. This is usually associated with warming. Cold causes hardships and disease to spread. Assigning a negative connotation is inappropriate.
2slugs said: “The proper question is whether or not my estimates are credible, but whether or not it is credible to assume a thin tailed distribution when all parties to the debate agree that there is extreme uncertainty about the degree and effects of global warming.”
No, your estimates are not credible. No, there is not universal agreement that there is extreme uncertainty about the degree and effects of global warming. Your estimates are outside the range of temps for millions of years. Worse, your warmista side is in near universal agreement over the dire, catastrophic effects of global warming. Even the skeptics are in agreement of some of the more minor effects.
So the core of your premise is totally false. Moreover, to believe in the fat tails issue you must agree that the risk of doing nothing exceeds the risk of attempts to mitigate. Sorry, there are several economic studies, and, more importantly real evidence that mitigation has serious economic consequences. Try Spain, try the price impacts of methanol, try the need for significant subsidies to reduce carbon, and finally try the potential huge increase in energy prices for reducing carbon. We don’t have to worry about potential fat tails. Those serious economic impacts are real.
As an example of the callousness of the current mitigation strategies, a recent study found that there were potentially 40,000 additional deaths this past winter due to heating energy poverty. Poverty caused by the very same methods you have supported in past discussions.
So you base your belief on this: “But a 2 percent welfare loss is still a manageable problem. But there is also a low but not zero probability that temperatures could be at least 10C higher within the next several generations, and we have no relevant experience with temperatues that high. So the economic costs are virtually incalcuable.”
So how low is: “low but not zero probability”? In my estimation it is so low to be zero. Also in my estimation, the serious negative impacts of implementing the CO2 mitigation measures that are being proposed, is nearly 100%. That trade off is not worth the lives and welfare costs you so grandly claim are the possible when the reality they are happening today directly from those same mitigation methods.
Sheesh, 2slugs! Take a look around at the evidence instead of hyper-ventilating over what is almost 99.9999999999% sure to be unlikely. How many more need to die in today’s world because of these absurd beliefs?
Fat tails? Pshaw! Reality trumps them, and reality ain’t pretty.
The trend we see is not dangerous, it is not unusually, and it cannot be attributed entirely to anthropogenic GHGs directly or indirectly. Just more than half of the trend can be attributed to a-GHGs and feedbacks. That puts us at .5 or .6 C per century (assuming we can continue to increase the rate of emissions).
A large portion of the recent warming was likely cyclic, and was wrongly attributed to feedbacks. It also likely caused feedbacks that were wrongly attributed to a-GHGs.
You don’t try to prevent tail risks, you come up with ways to deal with them. If you tried to stop tail risk, you’d never accomplish anything.
“Over the next couple of generations the most likely effect of global warming means something like an annual 2 percent welfare loss as a result of depressed crop yields, water problems, loss of shorelines, famine, resource wars (the Pentagon considers global warming a long run military problem), impact on fish harvests, etc. But a 2 percent welfare loss is still a manageable problem. But there is also a low but not zero probability that temperatures could be at least 10C higher within the next several generations, and we have no relevant experience with temperatues that high. … For starters, no agricultural crops will grow in that kind of environment. In terms of earth’s history there have been periods when temps have been that high, but those events were also associated with mass species extinction. … not fixing manmade global warming today increases the cost to future generations. We need to balance those costs across generations.”
None of this is true.
If you have a link, I’d be interested in the Weitzman work.
Slug, you might like the Motl link. I’ll add the disclaimer, I don’t agree with all of his conclusions and assumptions.
He assumes that GHGs are perfectly mixed, so he assumes that the GHG warming (sans feedbacks) cannot be seasonal. That puts the maximum portion of the warming trend attributable to GHG at about .5C/century (the lowest trends in 30yr data by month). However, not all GHGs are well mixed. Even CO2 is not evenly distributed in our atmosphere. Feedbacks, such as water vapor, can be seasonal as well.
But the work is interesting.
You might also like this post:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/self-similarity-of-temperature-graphs.html
aaron: Slug, things have also been better in the past. This is usually associated with warming. Cold causes hardships and disease to spread. Assigning a negative connotation is inappropriate.
Since this is an econ blog, a little econ discussion is appropriate. The idea that moderate temperatures are better than cold temperatures, and therefore warmer temperatures must be better than moderate temps is crazy. For example, corn, soybeans and cotton are all very sensitive to temperature and we are very close to to the yield limit. Here’s a recent NBER study that snuffs out any nonsense about warmer temps being good for agricultural crops:
The United States produces 41% of the world’s corn and 38% of the world’s soybeans, so any impact on US crop yields will have implications for world food supply. We pair a panel of county-level crop yields in the US with a fine-scale weather data set that incorporates the whole distribution of temperatures between the minimum and maximum within each day and across all days in the growing season. Yields increase in temperature until about 29C for corn, 30C for soybeans, and 32C for cotton, but temperatures above these thresholds become very harmful. The slope of the decline above the optimum is significantly steeper than the incline below it. The same nonlinear and asymmetric relationship is found whether we consider time series or cross-sectional variation in weather and yields. This suggests limited potential for adaptation within crop species because the latter includes farmers’ adaptations to warmer climates and the former does not. Area-weighted average yields given current growing regions are predicted to decrease by 31-43% under the slowest warming scenario and 67-79% under the most rapid warming scenario by the end of the century.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13799
And while warmer temperatures do not adversely affect income growth in developed countries, it is very bad news for poor countries:
This paper uses annual variation in temperature and precipitation over the past 50 years to examine the impact of climatic changes on economic activity throughout the world. We find three primary results. First, higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries but have little effect in rich countries. Second, higher temperatures appear to reduce growth rates in poor countries, rather than just the level of output. Third, higher temperatures have wide-ranging effects in poor nations, reducing agricultural output, industrial output, and aggregate investment, and increasing political instability. Analysis of decade or longer climate shifts also shows substantial negative effects on growth in poor countries.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14132
And rice yields in Asia fall off with warmer night time temperatures. I could go on. Just take a stroll through any new papers that show up at NBER every week. The idea that warmer temperatures are an unmitigated good news story is just a fairy tale.
CoRev: You know perfectly well that the amount of water vapor in the global atmosphere is very stable and cannot endogenously move outside that tight band. In order to get more water vapor in the atmosphere there has to be some exogenous factor that first warms the atmosphere. It requires a forcing factor.
On the one hand you confidently assert that the probability of catastrophic events is zero, and then almost in the same breath you say:
And that occurs because there is so much still not understood, and still more to be identified.
Which is it? Are you certain that you know all there is to know about climate change, or do you agree that there is “much still not understood”? Because if it’s the latter, then you’re really talking about uncertainty and not variability. And if you’re talking about uncertainty, then, as Weitzman points out, you are talking about evaluating risk in terms of fat tails. (If you don’t know why that’s true, then I can link you some rather geeky papers).
The nature of the greenhouse effect is to increase lows and affect highs only slightly.
aaron: That puts us at .5 or .6 C per century (assuming we can continue to increase the rate of emissions).
Why would you assume a linear growth trend when CO2 concentrations are growing exponentially? Again, you keep looking in the rearview mirror. The problem isn’t today’s temperatures; it’s where temperatures are likely to be over the next 5 or 6 generations given current growth rates of CO2 concentrations.
As to the calculations of that blogger you referenced. Ugh. First, it’s a little hard to critique Jones’ statement and then use UAH data rather than the CRU data that Jones used. So he should have at least been working off the same database. But what really has me scratching my head is that this guy made a simple regression and builds his entire argument on the claim that the significance tests were not within the usual levels. If you’re going to make that kind of a claim, then you damn well better make sure that you’ve tested for heteroskedasticity errors. Now scroll up to the top of the webpage (I know, at this point that’s kind of a long scroll!) and look at the data. Do you see any evidence that the error terms are distributed homoskedastically? I’m guessing not. And if the errors are heteroskedastic, then the usual standard errors are meaningless. He should have shown us some kind of heteroskedasticity test and then used a weighted least squares approach. And if you believe there’s a cycle, then you can’t simultaneously claim that the unweighted errors in a simple OLS regression are homoskedastic. BTW, GISS corrects for outliers and heteroskedasticity in its calculations.
The only relevant point is the fall off of rice yields with warmer night time temperature. (GHGs raise night time and winter temps, increase stability)
But this is easily overcome by planning and technology. We simply move production and change crops.
The greenhouse effect diminishes for each additional molecule as concentrations increase. That’s why we talk about a temperature increase for a double of CO2. The effect of the next 180ppm will be about 1/3 that of 100ppm we’ve already put out.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
He doesn’t critique what Jones says, he confirms it. Jones said there’s been no significant warming since 1995 using the CRU data. UAH confirms.
He’s not making the claims you think he’s making.
“If you’re going to make that kind of a claim, then you damn well better make sure that you’ve tested for heteroskedasticity errors. Now scroll up to the top of the webpage (I know, at this point that’s kind of a long scroll!) and look at the data. Do you see any evidence that the error terms are distributed homoskedastically? I’m guessing not. And if the errors are heteroskedastic, then the usual standard errors are meaningless. He should have shown us some kind of heteroskedasticity test and then used a weighted least squares approach. And if you believe there’s a cycle, then you can’t simultaneously claim that the unweighted errors in a simple OLS regression are homoskedastic. BTW, GISS corrects for outliers and heteroskedasticity in its calculations.”
Are you f’ing serious. Grab the data and take a look.
And remember, absolute zero is -273.
slugs, your getting even more desperate. Yesterday it was cycles versus trend. When all the time you have talked about the short term trend line of the most current cycle. Sheesh!
Today, you go off on the old fat tail of uncertainty versus the variability of temps. We have very good records defining the variability, and those records clearly show there is little uncertainty re: temp ranges for many millions of years. Moreover, your 10-11C temp increase attempt to scare us has not occurred in more than 1/2 M years, but you insist it is possible in the next few human generations? Sheesh!
Then you go off on the ability of the atmosphere to hold water vapor, while completely ignoring the fact that water occurs in the atmosphere in all of its states. Yup! A clear understanding of the physics of those state changes are completely ignored while insisting that the gaseous form is effected by exogenous influences. Well thank you for the duh, moment. Another sheesh!
You bring up that ole warming can change crop yields. Yup, Aaron has the appropriate answer, then move the cope to a better environment. As we have done for generations.
What really amazed me is 2slugs in an are where two crops per year is common. he completely ignores the possibility that that possibility might be extended to areas, such as the upper mid-west, where most of our cash crops are actually grown. Another sheesh!
But the most amazing argument he uses is that the 99.99999% of the fat tail scenario NEVER occurring, trumps the 99.9999% surety of high cost energy and the many other negative economic impacts of his mitigation proposals occurring. Even he lives in an area where his electricity prices are higher because of carbon pricing considerations. I haven’t yet determined what is stronger than sheesh, but when I do, I will be sure to use it for that thought.
So for all you warmists out there, if you can justify the “fat tail” scenario of something possibly, maybe, some time in the future economically bad happening versus the absolutely surety of something economically bad already happening today, then please show us.
Your solutions are killing people today. How uncaringly callous!
Slug, many of you’re comments fall in the realm of not ever wrong. That’s what the laugh earlier was about. (To be fair, so do some of CoRev’s. I don’t know what “~97% of the CO2 increase is natural,” or “No, physics tells us CO2 will get excited by infrared at specific wave lengths. But, it does not trap anything. It releases that heat instantaneously,”are supposed to mean.)
Dr. Motl made no math error. Outliers don’t come into play in satellite measurements. CRU and UAH are satellite data, not thermometer.
Dr. Motl also discusses noise throughout his post and further in the other post. You seem to think a CERN physicist doesn’t understand statistical analysis.
You also fail to realize that the post was written several months before Dr. Jones confirmed his analysis during the BBC interview. The paragraph mentioning Jones’ confirmation is an update.
I find some of your comments interesting, but there are often times you clearly don’t understand what you are saying.
2slug,
You have fallen under the spell of Mr. Obama as he often makes the same mistake you made earlier when you said, “But Republicans seem hell bent on stopping any meaningful cap & trade arrangement”.
The fact is that Democrats control both houses of congress. In the Senate, dems hold 59 seats. The bill in question, authored by Kerry/Lieberman is coathored by independent J. Lieberman, giving the dems a fillibuster proof 60 votes. In other words, they don’t need any republican votes, so how can you blame republicans?
Don’t feel bad, Obama often makes the same mistake. He blames republicans every time a few democrats refuse to go along his agenda.
I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read this piece by Michael Crichton. Obviously not a climate expert, but he has some great insights related to the debate.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. ~M.C.
Aaron said: “I don know …”No, physics tells us CO2 will get excited by infrared at specific wave lengths. But, it does not trap anything. It releases that heat instantaneously,”are supposed to mean.)
This is what I meant: A CO2 molecule absorb an IR photon, become vibrationally excited, undergo molecular collisions, gain a small amount energy in collisions, lose a small amount of energy in collisions, and then emit an IR photon almost identical to the one it absorbed. It returns to its prior vibrational equilibrium. All of this happens instantaneously.
As to the ~97% CO2 increase, that was not very well stated. I was referring to the percentages of GH effect I provided earlier in the thread. Doubling of the amount of CO2 has a negligible effect (
aaron: We simply move production and change crops.
Well, maybe not so “simply”:
http://aspenface.mtu.edu/pdfs/Ainsworth%20et%20al%202008.pdf
Jones said there’s been no significant warming since 1995 using the CRU data. UAH confirms.
Yes, but “not statistically significant” doesn’t mean what the man on the street thinks it means. It simply means that up to some given confidence level you cannot be sure that the results weren’t just the luck of the draw. A commonly accepted level of significance is a p value of .05, but as the guy who set up that standard (Pearson) once said, there is nothing sacred about the value. It’s just a convention that is commonly used for publication purposes, although most software packages will report a .10 as significant as well (those are the ones with one “*” displayed). Jones also said that it was very close to .05, which should tell readers that it is still overwhelmingly likely that there has been a warming trend. In other words, even though a warming trend is not statistically “proven” in the data, if you had to make a bet then you should pick the trend because it is still more likely.
As to the data, I was not talking about measurement errors, although that’s fair enough. I was talking about heteroskedasticity that invalidates the t-tests. Since the guy’s claim was about t-tests, he should have checked to see if the series needed to be weighted.
The standard formula tells us that an increase to 600ppm (the optimistic end-of-century value) would raise temps by only a couple of degrees C. And that would be manageable. The problem is that warming temps might also release massive amounts of methane (a much bigger problem than CO2), and each 1 degree C increases water vapor by 7 percent. All of these feedback effects could tighten the “leaky” factor keeps things from being a perfect greenhouse. And changes to that parameter have a very strong leveraging effect. Some very small adjustments can easity get you to an 11 degree increase. That is why we need to think in terms of uncertainty and why we need to think about tail events rather than “most likely” possibilities.
tj
The Dems don’t “control” Congress. It takes 60 votes to control Congress, not a simple majority.
And your vote count is wrong. Lieberman is counted as a Democrat. Including Lieberman the Democrats have 58 senators (Byrd just died). And unlike Republicans, individual Democratic senators will occasionally break ranks. They don’t have the party discipline of the Republicans.
As to scientific consensus, I think there’s pretty clear consensus about evolution, but yet that doesn’t stop stupid GOP politicians from giving voters “Intelligent Design” nonsense. Even the leading GOP presidential candidates believe in “Intelligent Design” and that is clearly outside of any scientific consensus.
As to Michael Crichton, well…his book was a joke. The statisticians from the National Institute of Standards and Technology simply demolished his statistical claims in a report.
CoRev: It returns to its prior vibrational equilibrium. All of this happens instantaneously.
You forgot something: it gets radiated back down to the surface. That’s why the surface temperature has to be greater than the atmospheric temperature.
For the warmist crowd commenting/reading here, you might have noticed that the arguments (at least mine) have switched to the actual economic impacts, but even more importantly the increased rate of deaths due to mitigation policies. A new report here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/f383117230427m87/?p=2d758f27f3c44a7aa823d16f0f72b77e&pi=0 and a review here: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/new-paper-an-evaluation-of-the-progress-in-reducing-heat-related-by-kalkstein-et-al-2010/ has some interesting results.
The study shows that deaths in the US due to heat waves have been going down since ~1996. The question that come to my mind is: “what will happen if/when we implement the proposed policies which will raise the costs of using that life saving energy for cooling/heating during weather extremes?
Again we have a current historical reference from those countries aggressively pursuing those CC mitigation policies, and it is not a good record. How many increased deaths does it take to recognize some policies are bad?
ConRev said: “I was referring to the percentages of GH effect I provided earlier in the thread. Doubling of the amount of CO2 has a negligible effect”
And you offer a WND article with no byline that quotes a physicist who references a non-climatologist. Not a very firm foundation at all an assertion that runs counter to the common view in the climatology community.
If you want, we can start comparing articles in peer reviewed climatology journals; if you’re up to it that is.
2slugs said: “You forgot something: it gets radiated back down to the surface. That’s why the surface temperature has to be greater than the atmospheric temperature.” Yup! Actually it radiates in all directions, if I wasn’t previously clear.
Also, your reference to the study, concluded with this: “This generation of experiments would
focus on adapting crops to the future environment, specifically elevated [CO2], using the tools of molecular genetics.”
I’m not sure what your point was re: moving crops to a better environment. this study appears to be an attempt to determine adaptive technologies for increased CO2 environments. Many, many, many actual commercial greenhouses increase CO2 to increase and speed growth.
Regardless, the comments (yours included) were actually centered upon temps ranges. We all agree that there are environmental optimum ranges for every living critter. Does CC increase or decrease the areas where these ranges occur is the crux of just one of the arguments.
As to your political argument re: Dem dominance/majority, write some legislation that is bipartisan, or actually that the voters accept, and then your argument might make sense. So, quit whining about party discipline. That is just another smoke screen for writing poor/unaccepted legislation, but, so far it is our way or the highway for some of the latest legislation.
We are going far afield, so I will stop here!
CoRev: You fix that problem with subsidies to ensure that people have enough money to pay for the energy consumption they need to stay alive. The cap & trade bill had such a provision. Like I said earlier, there are smart ways to allocate carbon costs and there are stupid ways to do it. So far voters seem to be choosing the stupid way.
aaron: You mentioned the possibility of developing hybrids that would be more tolerant of higher temperatures. The paper that I linked to argued that this is likely to be a lot harder than people think; but aside from that it still doesn’t get you out of the contradiction box. Even if it turns out that we could develop hybrids, doing so will not be free. We will have to pay for it. So either directly or indirectly there will be some kind of carbon tax. And that also means that you will have to commit in advance to either accepting global warming or not. If you deny global warming, then you cannot simultaneously make the argument that we should pursue hybrids…unless you’re in the habit of arguing for things that you believe will prove to be useless. Why invest in hybrids if global warming isn’t true?
This is a general problem with arguments that tell us not to worry about global warming because technology will solve the problem. Even if it turns out that technology can solve the problem, it cannot do so without cost and a prior commitment to fix the problem. So once again we’re back to shifting costs onto future generations for problems that we created.
The smart strategy is to hedge your bets. The sooner we enact a meaningful cap & trade bill the lower will be the total carbon abatement costs across several generations. And a cap & trade regime is entirely reversible. If global warming turns out to be a hoax, you can always undo it. But if global warming turns out to be true, and if we put off carbon abatement measures, then not only will it cost more in damages, but the effects may not be reversible. That’s why uncertainty is an economic argument for hedging your bets. CoRev wants to put all of his eggs in the “denier” basket and that is motivated by the fact that his personal demographics makes it extremely unlikely that he will ever have to pay for the costs of being wrong. To a large extent global warming is a generational issue.
The standard model tells us 600ppm would raise temps less than 2 degrees.
Slug, many statements in your post are not even wrong. Some are just wrong. The relation is 1C raises water vapor .7% not 7%.
Perhaps slug can infer from this why his point is irrelevant:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/insignificant-warming-trends-why-1995.html
Also, Looking at one tail is fantastically miopic. Catastrophic cooling is more likely than warming in our history. Warming reduces fat tail risk on the cold side more than it raises it on the warm.
Enough of the straw men. I never said anything about hybrids. Changing locations and to existing alternative crops, adjusting seasons, improving conditions other regions… will trump the losses.
2slugs said: “You forgot something: it gets radiated back down to the surface. That’s why the surface temperature has to be greater than the atmospheric temperature.” Yup! Actually it radiates in all directions, if I wasn’t previously clear.
Also, your reference to the study, concluded with this: “This generation of experiments would
focus on adapting crops to the future environment, specifically elevated [CO2], using the tools of molecular genetics.”
I’m not sure what your point was re: moving crops to a better environment. this study appears to be an attempt to determine adaptive technologies for increased CO2 environments. Many, many, many actual commercial greenhouses increase CO2 to increase and speed growth.
Regardless, the comments (yours included) were actually centered upon temps ranges. We all agree that there are environmental optimum ranges for every living critter. Does CC increase or decrease the areas where these ranges occur is the crux of just one of the arguments.
As to your political argument re: Dem dominance/majority, write some legislation that is bipartisan, or actually that the voters accept, and then your argument might make sense. So, quit whining about party discipline. That is just another smoke screen for writing poor/unaccepted legislation, but, so far it is our way or the highway for some of the latest legislation.
We are going far afield, so I will stop here!
GregL, I try never to get into the competing peer reviewed articles battle. For every point there usually is a counter point. And, no one is able to decipher which is best of all of them.
CovRev,
I find you excuse for not using peer reviewed reports to be thin, to say the least. If you can not or will not discuss a science issue from a science perspective, you’ve conceded the question.
GregL, this is what you suggested, “If you want, we can start comparing articles in peer reviewed climatology journals; if you’re up to it that is.”
And I answered: “GregL, I try never to get into the competing peer reviewed articles battle. For every point there usually is a counter point. And, no one is able to decipher which is best of all of them.” Climatology is a multi-discipline science, and no one, certainly not you nor I, can be the expert in the nuances of each discipline.
Whether you like it or not, there is no reason to get into a general point-by-point slug fest until the last man is standing. I don’t care, you win! You can be the last one standing.
CoRev: You have a very odd view of peer-review; in economics, we do not give equal credence to published (in peer-reviewed journals) and unpublished working papers (or blog-posts, for that matter). There is a reason for this; peer review by experts in the field on average sort out the wheat from the chaff, and catch errors.
Perhaps you have a more jaundiced view of peer review, based upon your experience in some other disciplines, or some other reason. However, I think the use of peer-review, and the absence of peer-reviewed articles on the non-AGW side, should convey some information.
[text fixed, 7/12, 8am Pacific]
tj: [T]hat site you mentioned worries me. In particular, there was a problematic application of a structural change algorithm — one that apparently placed no restriction on the number of regimes. At the limit, that leads to Brownian motion…(roughly, a random walk).
2slugs, I opened up two prongs for you to respond when I said, “If Prof. Chin wanted to…” I’ll cede that point to get to the meat.
Up front I’ll say that you get the last word, as I do not have it in me to duke it out here. I only wanted to make one point in that last comment and see what others thought.
You wrote:
colonelmoore: “So we are left with another economic question, what is the most effective way to control carbon, if we are going to actually attempt to do it?”
That’s a fair question and one that I think Menzie was inviting when he posted the NOAA data.
This quote was an opportunity for you to riff on your theme, but it didn’t really address what I was after. To summarize your reasoning:
We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. Carbon taxes are the easy way and the hard way is to do nothing until we have an emergency situation requiring draconian regulations.
This strikes me as a set of false choices because there would appear to be alternatives to the two listed. I suggested that we could use forestation to hold carbon levels constant for many years. We could pay for it by any number of methods. Cap and trade or carbon taxes is one broad method that might work if forestation were assigned a value that made it cheaper than reducing point carbon emissions.
Another method is similar to what the third world was wanting, reparations. However these reparations would be targeted specifically at forestation and holding down deforestation. This would satisfy the Chinese and Indian ambitions. They might even agree to some form of contribution to the fund.
Each of these methods achieves a different purpose. Cap and trade and carbon taxes satisfy those that believe that the polluter should pay. Reparations satisfy those that think that inexpensive energy that permits places such as the rustbelt not to bleed jobs to China should not be disabled by a sudden change in societal priorities. But the method of payment can be negotiated, if first we agree that forestation is the approach to take.
My proposal was for people to spend less time rating the relative intelligence of political parties or even trying to prove/disprove whether the world is heating due to carbon and more time figuring out how to study the relative costs of taking care of carbon at the source and at the sink. Apparently my proposal was not worth discussing but no one was willing to embarrass me by saying so (a rare outbreak of politeness on this discussion thread).
Menzie said: “You have a very odd view of peer-review; in economics, we do not give equal credence to published (in peer-reviewed journals) and unpublished working papers (or blog-posts, for that matter). There is a reason for this; peer review by experts in the field on average sort out the wheat from the chaff, and catch errors.
That’s just another fallout from Climategate. Those emails pulled back the covers on how corrupted/controlled/colluded were the peer review process in the CC community.
As to that site reference, I could not find it in my comments.
For your entertainment:
Calculation of climate sensitivity:http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
Why runaway warming can’t happen:http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
Related Article
Solar Activity predictions:http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005KFNT…21..471A
Solar activity and earth:http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005IAUS..223..541A
Solar Activity correlates with Volcanic Activity:http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2003ESASP.535..393S&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years
Half of recent warming solar:http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/12/eichler-et-al-half-of-recent-warming.html
Carbon cycle feedback 1/5 previously believed:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
Forestation and deforestation aren’t good and bad of them selves. Forest growth removes carbon dioxide, but mature forests basically turns CO2 to methane.
Tree farming for building materials is a great way to sequester.
In the category: “It’s ALL About the Weather!”. The US was book ended with heat and cold records. Days after the Right coast experienced record heat, the left coast experienced record cold.
Regardless, if you are a CAGW believer, it was all caused by the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Stop breathing for heavens sake!!!!!!
CoRev: Apologies; I misattributed to you a site referenced by tj. I will fix.
Menzie, this whole thread has been full of it Misattibution)! My skin has thickened. 😉
Forestation and deforestation aren’t good and bad of them selves. Forest growth removes carbon dioxide, but mature forests basically turns CO2 to methane.
Thanks, Aaron, for pitching in. I am encouraging everyone to think of solutions rather than remaining frozen in fixed opinions and narrow thinking just to prove that they are right and their opponents are stupid. What good does that do other than to puff up egos?
Since mature forests convert CO2 to methane, how long will it be before we start seeing the salutary effect of tree planting turning into the harmful effects of methane production?
Let’s say 200 years. In 200 years what sorts of energy technology would we have at our disposal? And would we have some means of dealing with the mature forests?
It’s a good way to reduce CO2, but I think CO2 is a good thing.
What is the fascination of the global-warming deniers here with some person whose name is Motl? What are the contributions of this guy to the research in the field of climate? Has he provided any?
@CoRev:
Have you made up these claims about the 1988 projections by Hansen yourself, or have you copied them from some obscure source? Your claims are fiction. Here are some facts about these projections:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
Jan Perlwitz typifies the CAGW believer segment of our population. I have yet to see anyone here deny global warming, but he makes that claim. Why? Plus he does not know who Lubos Motl might be.
Motl is a PHD theoretical physicist, and physics is one of the climatology disciplines. He appears to have a history of taking on other scientists. In doing so he does not take any prisoners. It seems to have cost him an Assist. Prof. job at Harvard. Old boy payback??? Dunno.
Menzie, the GISSTemp June temps are out. Here’s what Lucia Liljegren has to say: “GISTemp announced a June Temperature Anomaly of 0.59C; thats lower than May 2010 (0.66C) or June 2009 (0.62). It is tied with June 2005 for 3rd hottest June in the GISTemp record and exceeded by June 1998 (0.69C) and June 2009 (0.62 C).”
See here: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/giss-temperature-anomaly-drops-3rd-hottest-june-in-record/
I include her link as she keeps a running comparison to the model projections.
Menzie,
Thanks for the tip on the regime switching website. I didn’t look into the algorythm in detail but thought it would be of interest to readers, given the work that James H. has done in this area. I do recall a critique stating that parameters could be jiggered to produce the desired result. If theory could pin down parameter selection then maybe it has some value.
@CoRev:
Jan Perlwitz typifies the CAGW believer segment of our population.
Apparently, this is something bad in your eyes what I “typify”, isn’t it? Well, at least I don’t spread untrue assertions as alleged facts like you do for instance about Hansen’s projections in 1988. Could it be that you typify the global-warming denier crowd with this?
A global-warming denier is someone who denies that there was any significant man-made global warming, not even any to expect over the course of this century and following centuries, given the current emission rates of greenhouse gases, and who says the knowledge a body of research of 30 years has provided about this was basically all bogus, or even fraud (which implies an international conspiracy that would have invented global warming). Are you claiming you are not saying this? And no one else here is saying this? What else are you saying, then? Why are you calling others snidely “warmists? Are you a “warmist” too, if you don’t deny global warming, then? And, generally, why do global-warming deniers like to use the phrases “global warming hoax” or “global warming swindle”, like Motl does and who is quoted by you from an news-article that comes with the headline “Sizzling study concludes: Global warming ‘hot air'”.
And which one of these alleged factoids about Motl qualify him as someone to be referred as source for any assertion regarding climate science? I don’t see any. He still hasn’t done any research in the field, on which he could base his assertions. If you cite him to back up your assertions you still don’t do more than citing just the opined assertions of another global-warming denier. It doesn’t make your claims in any way more proven.
@RicardoZ:
No, I wouldn’t. Global warming is a process that takes place over a time scale of many decades and expectedly centuries. Why would an economic contraction of not more than 3 to 5 percent over only one or two years visibly reduce global warming? In what data, which are relevant for global warming is the economic contraction supposed to show up, significantly? On a time scale of one or two years, no global warming signal can be detected, anyway. It’s all natural variability in the climate system on such short time scales.
I recommend to refrain from derogatory remarks towards a field of science, if you just have shown in the paragraph before that you don’t know much about what the science in this field is actually saying.
CoRev writes:
So much for the propagandistic spin that comes from the global-warming denier site, even though The Independent Climate Change Email Review of the University of East Anglia has just come to a different conclusion after months of investigating the accusations against Phil Jones and other climate scientists:
(Reference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10538198.stm)
Here is the link to the report by The Independent Climate Change Email Review:
http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf
This has been the third committee now, which exonerated the climate scientists regarding the accusations against them about the honesty and integrity of their scientific research. What remains is the criticism regarding the bad handling of the FOIA requests.
The “Climategate” that wasn’t.
Although, it probably won’t convince the ones who believe in a global conspiracy that allegedly invented man-made global warming for its own sinister purposes. They just will keep going with the same accusations, and the commissions will be declared to be part of the conspiracy. Like every closed conspiracy theory is immune against anything that contradicts it.
Jan, sorry, but all you are doing is starting a discussion/argument over the validity of our two beliefs in this subject area. Oh, and name calling “denier” to reinforce your views.
Make an argument, support it and we can have a discussion. BTW Hansen’s 1988 predictions are greatly diverging from reality. The closest prediction to today is his most conservative, “do nothing alternative”, but even that is way off. I do not intend to give you the links, as I think it will do you some good to look it up. On this subject I would be pleased to get into a link comparison.
You really do need to reread each of my comments on this thread with an open mind and compare your wording to mine. This whole thread has been rife with passionate misattribution. Your passion does not trump the reality of what was said. Your and others’ passion appears to color your reading comprehension.
A skeptic just printed this:
Ill finish with the skeptics creed:
I believe in the radiative capture of CO2
I believe radiative capture creates warming
I believe in climate feedback to warming
I believe the rest is unknown
From here: https://econbrowser.com/archives/2010/07/may_global_surf.html#comments
Read the comments to get some interesting nuances to the creed. My own nuance is that we do not know WITH ANY CERTAINTY how and how much the GHGs effect temps and certainly not climate. Please note the caveat in the above.
Jan, re-read everything. I don’t think there’s even anyone here saying something like that.
Motl doesn’t say that. He expects about 1C of warming from emissions.
CoRev,
Just like global warming is greatest at the poles, it is also greatest in the Northern Winter and lesser in the Norther Summer. The poles are accentuated because of the temperature rise’s effect on the cryosphere. The Norther Henisphere has the proponderance of the land which also responds to the loss of snow cover during winter.
If you would look at the GISS anomoly tables yourself, the seasonality is strikingly evident.
Jan/anon claims: “…even though The Independent Climate Change Email Review…” Independent? One of the reviewers was for years closely affiliated with CRU! They did not interview ANY CC skeptics, but even more importantly, they did not interview Stephen McIntyre.
They claim to not have reviewed the science, and apparently accepted CRU’s testimony re: standard practices in the field. All this while CRU was chastised by the Govt and in the Muir/Russell report for not following the Information Act.
Desperation is believing in white wash review boards. This was one of the worst. The two PSU at least hid their biases better.
But, it really does not matter. The emails are out there. The interpretation is available for anyone who wants read them. If, after actually reading the emails, you still believe in the results from the review boards, or that there was no collusion in writing the IPCC reports and restricting access to the science journals, then no more can be done.
Ooops. The comment by Anonymous at July 12, 2010 09:23 PM was mine.
CoRev,
Did you read the IPCC AR4 WG1 report?
CoRev writes:
I see. Calling scientists snidely as “warmists” or “alarmist”, because “skeptics” don’t like the results of the science, is OK. But calling “skeptics” “global-warming deniers” because they deny the validity of the knowledge about Earth’s climate system accumulated over 30 years, but which they don’t like for what ideological reason ever, like creationists deny the validity of the knowledge on evolution (who I equally call “evolution deniers”) in the biological sciences, because it contradicts their religious believes, is bad “name calling”. Apparently, “skeptics” apply a different standard for themselves than they want to allow for others.
Right. You make an assertion about the 1988 projections by Hansen w/o backing this assertion up, I respond by referring to an article where this assertion is being refuted (in addition, here is the link to Hansen’s 2006 paper where the projections from 1988 are compared to the observed temperature change: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2006/Hansen_etal_1.html). Now, you just repeat your assertion, explicitly refute to provide any backing up for it, and request from me to make an argument and go myself on a search for the links where your assertions are being allegedly supported. If you really wanted to make an argument, this would have been your chance. I guess your approach and way of making unsupported claims exemplifies the dishonesty of many of the “skeptics”.
So you say. Please tell me now in which of my statements I misrepresented what your point of view is. I guess you will be able to quote these statements, and correct me where I’m wrong, instead of doing just some general, unspecified complaining about “misattribution” like you are doing here.
That’s it. The views of the “skeptics” are a creed.
What exactly is here “that” he doesn’t he say what I say global-warming deniers say?
Yup!
And who is the one allegedly “closely affiliated” with CRU “for years”? In what way was he allegedly “closely affiliated”?
What exactly do you mean when you say “review the science”? Are they supposed to re-do one or two decades of research to check the validity of the governed knowledge? Science can’t be reviewed by a committee. Reviewing the science is part of the scientific process and permanently ongoing. A committee like this can look for specific evidence for scientific misconduct with respect to specific accusations. This is what they did. This included testing accusations according to which scientific results published by the CRU scientist weren’t reproducible based on the publicly available data and the published information on the methodology. This is what they concluded:
(Reference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10538198.stm)
Like I said. Conspiracy theorists are immune against any facts or outcome that contradict the conspiracy theory. It’s just being incorporated into the conspiracy theory, explained away, or simply ignored.
And what are the alleged biases? That members of the review panel share the view that global warming was real based on the accumulated evidence? Well, they are “biased” like most biologists are “biased” in favor of biological evolution. It’s a pro-science bias. This is no reason to exclude such biologists from a review panel, if other biologists are accused of scientific misconduct in the field, and to make creationists members of the panel instead.
So, since you read the report, can you point to a specific error in it (page & quote please); one of great significance? And please explain why it is wrong?
Jan,
Call me a skeptic. I don’t deny the earth is warming, but I am skeptical of the claim that a change in the level of CO2 from human activity is the main cause.
The bottom line for most skeptics is that policy makers are pushing a carbon control agenda based on the current state of climate science. These policies will not significantly lower global carbon emissions. However, these policies will increase the cost of living (necessarily raise electric bills) for every U.S. household and business. Entire industries will shrink and throw millions of workers into unemployment. Green job created will lag the immediate negative impact on employment upon policy implementation.
These policies are based on projections from climate models that are cutting edge, but based on an incomplete understanding of the climate. I don’t know about you, but I detest the fact that our incomplete and politically biased understanding of the effects of smoking tobacco led to millions of premature deaths. I am not saying that all, or even most, climate scientists are politically motivated. I am saying that we have politicians who will tout the ‘consensus’ view based on an incomplete understanding of the science for personal gain.
For example, climate scientists simply do not fully understand the complex relationship between variation in solar activity and climate change. Consider that changes in solar activity effect deep ocean temps which may take years or decades before returning to the atmosphere and raising surface temps.
If you look at the solar activity record you will see that the 1970’s – 2000 warming could be explained by a solar warming period that filled our deep oceans with enough heat to raise global temps as oceans released pent up heat over the next 3 decades, (even though solar activity did not increase during the same period). Many economists read this blog and clearly understand lagged effects and the difficulty of controlling for them.
‘Supporters’ will point to volumes of climate research that attempts to rule out or minimize solar effects. However, see if you can find any results that do so with a model that fully accounts for the effect of past solar activity on deep ocean temps, and the subsequent release of that energy back into the atmosphere.
Here is a link to a recent (2008) peer reviewed article that makes a strong case that current global climate models understate the impact of solar irradiance on climate by a factor of 10. That implies that the impact of CO2, and other ‘forcings’ are overstated.
Why don’t these types of results make it into IPCC reports in order to temper the notion that the models are worth of fundamentally changing our means of producing energy and our economy?
http://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Shaviv-Ocean%20as%20calorimeter-solar%20forcing.pdf
With respect to simulating climate dynamics, the results have two very interesting ramifications. First, they imply that any attempt to explain historic temperature variations should consider that the solar forcing variations are almost an order of magnitude larger than the total solar irradiance variations now used almost exclusively. It would imply that the climate sensitivity required to explain historic temperature variations is smaller than often concluded.
Jan, a creed = 1 : a brief authoritative formula of religious belief
2 : a set of fundamental beliefs; also : a guiding principle
From Merriam. I of course prefer the second definition. 🙂
I am fascinated to watch your definition of “global warming denier” shift from denying warming and now to the more general “the science”. But, it doesn’t really matter as you have shifted from logical arguments to personal.
I do, however, admit your point re: name calling. Warmists and alarmists is no better. For that I apologize.
As for the Hansen estimate versus reality test, this is what Steve McIntyre said in 2008, a little later than Hansen’s 2006 paper. Go here to see the charts. http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/16/thoughts-on-hansen-et-al-1988/
In text he said: (comment start)”[Update: The testimony is now available and Hansen’s statement that Scenario B was “used” in his 1988 testimony is very misleading: Hansen’s oral testimony called Scenario A the “Business as Usual” scenario and mentioned Scenario B only in maps purportedly showing extraordinary projected warming in the SE USA
On the other hand, Hansen also testified in November 1987 online here and, in that testimony (but not in the 1988 testimony), he did say that Scenario B was the “most plausible”, though in a context that was over a longer run than the 10-20 year periods being discussed here. At present, I do not understand how the trivial differences between Scenario A and B forcings over the 1987-2007 period can account for the difference in reported Scenario A and B results, that’s something I’m looking at – end update]
In any event, Hansen argued in 1998 that real world forcings tracked Scenario B more closely and that warming was even more rapid than Scenario B:
There were three scenarios for greenhouse gases, A, B and C, with B and C being nearly the same until the year 2000, when greenhouse gases stopped increasing in scenario C. Real-world forcings have followed the B and C greenhouse scenario almost exactly. and the facts show that the world has warmed up more rapidly than scenario B, which was the main one I used.” (comment end)
Looking at your Hansen reference and the S. McIntyre reference we can see that what I said earlier was essentially true. Although I was going from memory, now that I have been forced to review the charts, I find the “do nothing” scenario is far worse than I remembered it. His best scenario, one which cuts CO2 to near zero, is still higher than today’s temps.
Admittedly, temps have warmed since 2008 due to the el Nino, so Hansen’s Scenario C may be very near to today’s average temp. Regardless, we have not met his scenario C constraints.
And at this writing, darn it, I have just broken my rule about competing links.
With that I quit. G’day to Y’all.
tj writes:
And what does this exactly mean? That you see only a low likelihood that global warming was man-made? Based on what?
This is a political argument. How is a statement about the validity of scientific knowledge in the paragraph before supposed to follow from a political argument? This just lacks logic. So your “skepticism” regarding the science is actually politically motivated?
Of course they are. That the knowledge governed in science was “incomplete” is an assertion that can be made for any scientific field. It’s objectively never refutable, since science is always “incomplete”. There is no absolute knowledge. Consequently you should refute to acknowledge anything that relies on any science. Do you refuse to enter a plane ever? Do you decry the use of vaccinations to immunize humans against diseases?
If there was a killer asteroid on collision course with Earth and scientist said there was a 90% probability it will hit Earth, would you oppose any actions to prevent the catastrophe, using the argument the knowledge was “incomplete”, since there was no 100% certainty?
I’m not aware that this alleged causal link was a fact. Could you elaborate on what your claim is based, please?
No doubt about that. Like there are politicians who refuse to acknowledge results from scientific research, even if it is supported by the vast majority of scientists who work in the field, because these politicians expect some personal or political gain from it. It neither invalidates the science, nor it follows that nothing should be done to prevent likely dire consequences from continuing with business-as-usual.
About what period of solar activity are you talking here, specifically?
Just because you make up some mechanism that you imagine as the possible true cause for global warming it doesn’t follow that the given, generally acknowledged explanation that global warming was mainly man-made, supported by lots of evidence, wasn’t the valid one.
Will they indeed? Your statements implies the accusation that the studies have been done with the deliberate purpose to “rule out” or “minimize” solar effects. Is this what you want to say?
However, see if you can find any results that do so with a model that fully accounts for the effect of past solar activity on deep ocean temps, and the subsequent release of that energy back into the atmosphere.
What are you saying here? That you would accept only results from model simulations that “fully account” for a physical mechanism about which you only speculate? What are current climate models missing and what would they have to include to account for what you think they should account for to satisfy you?
Now that’s interesting. On one hand you dismiss the results from climate studies, since the used models were based on an “incomplete” understanding of the climate system, but then, on the other hand, you claim a study makes “a strong case” for the validity of some hypothesis, even though the results and conclusions in the study are based only on a quite simple heat flux box ocean model with quite some approximations and assumptions, on a quite low correlation between solar irradiance and ocean heat flux, and on detrended temperature and sea level time series, as soon as the study seems to support your views. This looks very much like a very biased perception of evidence and the quality of models used.
Are you asking why a study published in 2008 didn’t make it in the IPCC-report of 2007?
Jan,
A laughable reply.
This one was a hoot – “even though the results and conclusions in the study are based only on a quite simple heat flux box…”
How dare someone attempt to advance the science based on a simple model. Paper airplanes fly better than a plastic scale model even though the plastic model is much more complex and ‘appears’ more realistic. In every reality but yours, validity counts more than complexity.
The bottom line is that the results in the paper I cited add to the understanding of climate change and point out a potential flaw in current models.
Flawed models and incomplete science do not form a solid foundation on which to build climate policy.
Here is the chart you asked for showing an uptrend in solar activty peaking around 1960.
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/600px-Temp-sunspot-co2.svg.png
This chart has been used to support the claim that solar activity leveled off while temperature continued to rise along with CO2. Climate scientists simply do not fully understand the complex relationship between variation in solar activity and climate change.
Consider that changes in solar activity effect deep ocean temps which may take years or decades before returning to the atmosphere and raising surface temps.
If you look at the solar activity record you will see that the 1970’s – 2000 warming could be explained by a solar warming period that filled our deep oceans with enough heat to raise global temps as oceans released pent up heat over the next 3 decades, (even though solar activity did not increase during the same period). Many economists read this blog and clearly understand lagged effects and the difficulty of controlling for them.
I apoligize if I can’t reply to your response. The weather here is cloudy and windless so I am running out or power for my electrical appliances.
tj writes:
I don’t think it was. I have given specific replies to various statements you made. I rather would say you are short with arguments and don’t know any substantial reply to my points. So you just dismiss everything I said as “laughable” to have a pretext to excuse yourself from the discussion. Very convincing.
This isn’t what I said and this wasn’t the point I wanted to make. You distort what I said based on a distorted quoting of my statement.
I don’t have a problem with someone using a highly idealized model as a tool to better understand basic physical relationships in the climate system. This has been done all the time (although allowed is this apparently only for “climate skeptics” to support their views, since “climate skeptics” dismiss simulations done with climate models again and again on the grounds that these climate models wouldn’t sufficiently consider all relevant processes and feedbacks of the climate system). Instead, I have a problem with jumping to generalized conclusions w/o sufficiently considering the limitation of highly idealized models and the constraints on the validity of the results introduced with the underlying assumptions. I even more have a problem with your double standard. On one hand rejecting results from climate studies, because models were used with “incomplete” understanding the climate system, on the other hand none of such objections are for you relevant anymore as soon as a study seemingly supports your believes.
So then explain, please, how you have decided that the results and the conclusion of this one study cited by you were valid, in contrast to the results of all the many other studies, which are based on a much more comprehensive inclusion of all the various forcings, processes and feedbacks of the climate system, summarized in the latest IPCC-report, except, of course, that this one study is in agreement with your preconceived views.
This statement is plainly ridiculous. It only serves the purpose to always keep raising the bar, since based on the criteria, implied with this statement, there never could been made any reasonable argument based on any science what the policies of governments should be. Every model is “flawed” by definition. There is no such thing like a flawless model. The only flawless model in nature sciences would be an exact copy of nature. Nor is there such a thing like “complete science”. Ever.
No, this explanation lacks plausibility. The relaxation time of the deep ocean via deep mixing to a forcing at the atmosphere-ocean boundary is up to thousands of years, not 30 years. Secondly, what physical mechanism do you imagine how the deep ocean heats the atmosphere in the global average? The temperature of the deep ocean is near the freezing point. Thirdly, you also would have to explain away the effect on the ocean heat balance of the forcing by climate drivers like greenhouse gases. This effect is still there. It doesn’t vanish just because you don’t want to hear about it.
Jan,
Standard climate models assume solar activty has little influence on climate. Alternate views are emerging based on evidence showing that variation in solar activty offers a compelling and more complete theory. It sounds like you need to dive back into the literature and get up to speed on the topic. Maybe you are reading the wrong journals.
Here is a timely piece that raises serious doubt regarding current climate models level of completeness.
http://www.klimarealistene.com/solen%20varsler.pdf
It offers evidence that the length of solar cycle explains temperatures in the following period (decade or decades). It seems that the folks who are holding fast to the current family of climate models are unwilling to accept the obvious and large effect that solar activity in period (t) has on temperature in the following years, much quicker than the 1000 year lag you cite. (But if you admit to 1000 year lags at least that is a start, just work your way back toward the present and you’ll be a skeptic in no time.)
The bottom line for most skeptics is that policy makers are pushing a carbon control agenda based on the current state of climate science. These policies will not significantly lower global carbon emissions. However, these policies will increase the cost of living (necessarily raise electric bills) for every U.S. household and business. Entire industries will shrink and throw millions of workers into unemployment. Green job creation will lag (by years or decades, 1000 years?) the immediate negative impact on employment and income.
tj writes:
This claim by you is already just factually wrong. This isn’t at all an assumption in climate models. There aren’t any preferred climate drivers in the model simulations. Instead, it’s a result, not an assumption, of the climate simulations that the effect of solar forcing on the globally averaged temperature and other climate variables from pre-industrial times to today has been significantly smaller compared to the forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Beside your ad-personam what would be the right journals I should read?
What is the alleged evidence in there? I don’t speak Norwegian(?). Do you? And is some colored pdf-copy from an obscure non-scientific magazine all you have to offer after lecturing me that I should read the right journals? Didn’t you mean scientific journals?
Well, I guess, by postulating this as “obvious” you have proven that you are right. And no, neither have I cited any 1000-year lag between solar activity and global temperature, nor have I “admitted” such a thing.
The bottom line here is, your repeated mixing in of political arguments, when it is about the validity of results from scientific studies, indicates that your acceptance of statements in non-scientific articles and conclusions from scientific studies on Earth’s climate as valid is mainly politically and ideologically motivated, but is not based on any true scientific or epistemological criteria.
Jan,
Hmmm… a model with no assumptions. How are the models parametized?
Simulated results based on paramterizations, based on, ummm…data analysis, based on errr…assumptions? e.g. basing paramterizations on the assumption that period (t) temp anomaly is a function of period (t) solar activity. I bet some folks could even get a negative correlation on that one if they cherry picked, err, I mean assumed the ‘correct’ time period for the parameterization.
This isn’t at all an assumption in climate models. There aren’t any preferred climate drivers in the model simulations. Instead, it’s a result, not an assumption, of the climate simulations that the effect of solar forcing on the globally averaged temperature and other climate variables from pre-industrial times to today has been significantly smaller compared to the forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
The bottom line here is, your repeated mixing in of political arguments, when it is about the validity of results from scientific studies
No, the bottom line is that politicians are basing climate policy on flawed and obviously incomplete models.
Well Menzie, here’s a report of your June NOAA temps. NOAA: Hottest June in Record.
From one of my Faves: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/noaa-hottest-june-in-record/
We’re waiting for the Hadley/CRU temp calculations.
CRU is always the slow one. The other four agree last month was toasty — either the 1st (NOAA), 2nd (UAH, RSS) or 3rd (GISS) warmest June on record.
tj writes:
I didn’t say there were no assumptions in the climate models. There are always assumptions on which models are based, whether in climate sciences or in any other sciences, since models are idealizations of reality. There just isn’t such an assumptions you have assumed here.
Sub-scale processes are parameterized in climate models, since these processes can’t be resolved on the model grid scale, on which the model differential equations are numerically solved.
No, you are mistaken. There is no such parameterization that prescribes the temperature anomaly, neither the magnitude of its global mean, nor the three-dimensional pattern, as a function of solar activity. The models take the incoming solar radiation at each latitude and longitude, which is reconstructed from observation data for past to present climate simulations, or is assumed for future climate projections, and solves the radiative transfer equations in every atmospheric grid box for different spectral bands, i.e., it calculates how much radiative energy is transmitted downward, scattered or absorbed. The radiative transfer equations are also solved for the thermal radiation that is emitted from the various climate components and constituents of the atmosphere. In this way, the radiative energy is redistributed throughout the system and transformed in other forms of energy, potential energy, kinetic energy, wave energy, heat, chemical energy within the atmosphere and also the other climate components that absorb the radiation energy, depending on how comprehensively a model has incorporated all those components and processes. Given the external climate drivers are held constant and with a fixed atmospheric composition, the model goes into a state, in which the statistical properties of the model climate, like mean and variance of the climate variables stay the same over time. If this state is used as control climate, and then external climate drivers, the boundary conditions of the model simulation, are changed, e.g., by increasing or decreasing solar radiative forcing, or by changing the chemical composition of the gases in the atmosphere, like an increase in greenhouse gases, or changing the amount and geographical distribution of aerosols, the model will respond by changing the statistics of its climate variables. But neither the direction, nor the magnitude of the response is externally prescribed, e.g. how large the climate response to a change in solar radiative forcing is compared to a change in the greenhouse gas concentration. The specific response of the model to a change of a specific climate driver is not tuned to match the observed climate change, e.g., from preindustrial times to today. If the climate response was tuned we only would produce results and draw conclusions from them that already had been assumed beforehand. This would be circular logic. But that’s not how it is done.
This is an invalid argument. It’s logically fallacious, since it raises the bar, when government should be allowed to found their policies on results from scientific research, to the infinite. If this was a valid argument, there never ever could be a justification to base government policies on any science. Or is this what you are really thinking? That science should be ignored in society and in government policies?
BTW: I already had replied to this statement by you. Instead of refuting what I replied you just recycle and repeat what you said. This means the argument here has become recursive, and if you don’t bring anything new in response to what I said this point is finished.
Ambler wrote:
The difference between both the different analyses and the high-ranking years is likely not statistical significant anyway. They are not really distinguishable from each other. So I wouldn’t put to much emphasis on single record years.
More relevant is that the decade has been the warmest one for the global average since instrumental measurements have sufficiently covered the globe, since the variability is smaller on a decade scale than between single years. The statistical significance of the long-term trend and whether it can be statistically distinguished from natural variability is even more relevant for drawing scientific conclusions.
Sorry, I forgot to enter my name again in previous post.
Ambler wrote:
The difference between both the different analyses and the high-ranking years is likely not statistical significant anyway. They are not really distinguishable from each other. So I wouldn’t put to much emphasis on single record years.
More relevant is that the decade has been the warmest one for the global average since instrumental measurements have sufficiently covered the globe, since the variability is smaller on a decade scale than between single years. The statistical significance of the long-term trend and whether it can be statistically distinguished from natural variability is even more relevant for drawing scientific conclusions.
Or is this what you are really thinking? That science should be ignored in society and in government policies?
The less complete the branch of science, the more our government should ignore it.
Climate science is sufficiently far from understanding the degree to which solar activity influences climate that government policy should not be based on it.
Here is a slideshow by Bill Cotton at Colorado State. More evidence in the slideshow that raises questions regarding the robustness of climate models.
http://rams.atmos.colostate.edu/cotton/archives/frontpagelink1.html
He concludes with:
Considering the stochastic external forcing parameters(eg. Volcanoes), uncertainties of solar variability forcing, and the tendency for strong model biases on time scales of 2-5 years let alone 10 to 50 years, I see no evidence that climate is predictable on these time-scales nor will it be for decades to come(a forecast!).
tj wrote:
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but how would you know this? Please explain based on what criteria your assertion is supposed to be valid. How did you get to this assessment? You even don’t seem to know how the climate models work on which the climate studies are based. So, I wonder.
It looks like you are confusing scientific evidence with mere assertions. Assertions in a slide show are no evidence.
Or could you point out statements in the slide show, which you consider scientific evidence, please?
William R. Cotton is actually someone who has provided valuable contributions to atmospheric sciences. It is unfortunate that someone who produces fine scientific papers (on clouds and mesoscale modeling, but who doesn’t really work on climate modeling) produces such a slide show which is very flawed due to straw man argumentation (e.g., climate not “predictable”, variability due to volcanoes), relying on papers that have been refuted as invalid, e.g., on the ground of a selective use of data (specifically McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003), or a confusion between correlation and causation (e.g., world population vs. CO2). I wonder why that is.
Jan,
Myself and others have identified many questions throughout this thread that climate research is unable to adquately address. I have also cited peer reviewed research and other links with cites to peer reviewed research embedded within them.
We can’t expect an immature field like climate science to have the final answer to these questions.
Hopefully, we will see these questions/issues adequately addressed over the next few years.
Just a question for you, tj.
Do you see any justification for the claim tax cuts stimulate the economy and job creation?
Do you think that returning to the tax rates of 60s with the baselines being suitably adjusted for inflation would have any adverse effects given the lousy predictive capability of economics which has included arguments that the economy today would be superior today because taxes are lower?
@tj:
Well, and I have noticed that you and other climate contrarians regularly distract and evade, when they are challenged with a specific argument to which they would have to give a specific answer. They prefer to make unspecific, generalized statements. I could make a whole list of these instances just based on the discussion with you here.
Jan, just read your latest paper. Found it interesting, but left me with questions. 1) Have there been any observational proofs to your hypothesis? It seems with the Service Weather Guessers’ data that some could be used to verify it.
2) How does this study compare with some of Dr. Spencer’s latest informal writings re: cloud cover?
mulp,
I’m not sure what you are getting at. I would say that income tax cuts (all else constant) today would do no good as they would make the deficit worse.
Regarding economic models vs climate models –
Economic models that are used for forecasts/projections typically are back-tested by using a portion of the sample period to determine the parameters of the model, then the model projection is compared to the actual data.
Can you or Jan point me to some papers that show how climate model projections compare to the actual data? For example do you have any climate papers from the period 1950 – 2000 that make climate forecasts for the period before 2010? That way we can let the evidence speak to the accuracy of climate models.
TJ, You might look here: http://landshape.org/enm/validation-of-climate-models-the-missing-link/#more-4497
His conclusion: “At present there are no generally recognized standards for validating climate models. In spite of the published concerns of the professional statistical forecasting community, the standard practice is to use the best estimate (the mean) of an ensemble of opportunity (all 26 models included in the IPCC evaluation studies), without any specification of levels of performance. From my review of recent regional forecasting reports from drought, to flood and hurricane frequency to sea level change, it is not clear that climate scientists even know where to begin.”
Not too many peoples realize that the IPCC temp results are not truly model-based as an average of the many models. Doesn’t say much for the quality of any given model, does it?
Thanks co-rev.
Too bad this thread is dead. I just came across this 2010 paper that puts the nail in the coffin of the hypothesis that CO2 emissions during the period from 1948-2008 caused the observed increase in global temperature.
The data negate increase in CO2 in the atmosphere as a hypothetical cause for the
apparently observed global warming. A hypothesis of significant positive feedback by water vapor effect on atmospheric infrared absorption is also negated by the observed measurements. Apparently major revision of the physics underlying the greenhouse effect is needed.
Miskolczi (2010) Energy & Environment, Vol. 21, No. 4.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/E&E_21_4_2010_08-miskolczi.pdf
tj, careful of the Miskolczi papers. His theory is interesting and actually based upon real observations, but some of his math in his early papers was suspect. I think it will take some time before his theory is determined to have legs.
G’day to Ya!
We are beyond nails in the coffin. Here is another shovel full of dirt on it. Hansen’s global warming model predictions are drifting farther from reality each year.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/21/the-satellites-are-missing/#more-22305
Menzie, the HadCRU numbers are finally in, 2nd hottest June on record, 0.534C. Lucia, has the comparisons: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/hadcrut-2nd-warmest-june-in-record/
@tj:
Dynamic climate models aren’t built in this way. The climate projections are not based on fitting parameters using past time series of the data.
You could start with reading the IPCC report, which also provides a bibliography with many scientific papers on this subject, if you really were interested. The whole Chapter 8 in the volume of WG I is about evaluating climate models.