Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
There really is no excuse for this, from Michael Duffy:
Global warming stopped six years ago. It might start again tomorrow, but from 2002 until now, average global temperatures have remained fairly constant. This is in contrast to the previous period when, as everyone knows, the temperature trend was upwards.
Look at the graph below, showing 8-year trends for each 8-year period in the data. (Graph is from RealClimate.) Notice that the eight year trend is sometimes negative. That's because an eight year trend can be greatly affected by an unusually warm or cold year or two. But Duffy doesn't say that warming stopped in the 80s and again in the 90s. Instad he says "the temperature trend was upwards". Which is only true if you look at trends longer than ten years.
Oh and notice that the current 8-year trend is for strong warming -- you have to go to just six years if you want to find a trend that doesn't show warming.
Duffy is aware of Fawcett and Jones explanation that warming hasn't stopped:
A good source for this position is the paper Waiting For Global Cooling, published last month by Robert Fawcett and David Jones of the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
And some blog that's been going on on this simple point for years now:
The mainstream view is represented by the University of NSW's Tim Lambert at scienceblogs.com/deltoid
But he doesn't seem to understand. Look:
It's worth reflecting on the number of scientists who are certain about what the temperature trend will be in a 100 years, yet in 2001 were unable to predict what would happen in the next six.
I can't tell you with any accuracy the percentage of heads you will get if you toss a single coin, but I can tell you that you will get close to 50% heads if you toss a thousand coins. I guess Duffy would argue that if I can't tell you the result of one toss I can't possibly predict the result of a thousand tosses.
Here's Michael Ashley's letter to the Sydney Morning Herald (He's a Professor of Astrophysics at UNSW):
Michael Duffy ("New climate figures would make a great debate", SMH, 3 May 2008) is convinced that there is a global conspiracy to hush up results from the UK's Hadley Center that show that the earth cooled in the six years from 2002.
If he had investigated further he would have found that the Hadley data also show that global warming stopped in six-year or longer periods beginning in 1941, 1951, 1959, 1969, 1979, and 1987.
After each of these periods the earth warmed up to more than compensate for the drop.
The conclusion? Not a global conspiracy of the world's scientists and media to protect the orthodoxy against Duffy's pioneering scepticism, but simply that six years isn't long enough to measure the long term trend.
And here's Andrew Dessler also explaining it:
There has been a lot of nonsense written about the lack of much if any warming over the last few years. It's not a new argument -- in fact, I blogged about it here -- but like an axe-wielding psycho from a cheap horror flick, it just keeps coming back. ...
A close look at the plot shows that this situation is not abnormal. In fact, global warming has stopped repeatedly over the last 150 years --- meaning that there are many instances when the temperature reached a maximum that took many years to surpass.
The reason is clear. A warming rate of 3 degrees C per century corresponds to an annual average rate of warming of 0.03 degrees C per year. At the same time, interannual variability, such as El Niño events, are of the order of 1 degree C per year. Thus, over short time scales, the slow upward trend can be completely swamped by the large year-to-year variability.
Over the course of several decades, however, the slow warming trend dominates, and you end up with significant warming. Thus, to determine if global warming is occurring, you have to look at time periods of decades, not years.
Comments
No, it didn't stop......perhaps it's been put on hold for the next 10 years until the policies are in place.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aU.evtnk6DPo&refer=home
Posted by: Betula | May 4, 2008 3:43 PM
Similarly science claims that it gets warmer in the US between January and July, but upon closer examination you can see the temperature actually goes down most evenings between 10pm and sunrise.
Posted by: david s | May 4, 2008 3:45 PM
Check out the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. Note the Delaware is frozen. This was the Little Ice Age and we are experiencing a warming trend out of it.
I can't believe warmists believe that warming after an ice age(!!) is unprecedented and alarming.
Posted by: Mick | May 4, 2008 4:38 PM
david s and Mick.....
I suggest you don your MOPP gear for the strike that is coming.....LEVEL 4 would be most appropriate.
Posted by: Betula | May 4, 2008 5:02 PM
betula, I'm pretty sure David S is being sarcastic. As for Mick, he clearly knows nothing about the science.
Hey MIck, would you like to produce your evidence that the warming is due to coming out of the little ice age?
Posted by: guthrie | May 4, 2008 5:11 PM
Actually Betula and guthrie, the chestnut of great temp divergence daily has some validity; tamino has just posted a fairly muted, for him, analysis of the climatic significance of daily variations in temp; this slots into the current dispute about base period analysis to substantiate trends and therein AGW.
As to the Maunder Minimum; since temps were colder than today, warming must be because the globe is "coming out" of the little ice age; NASA have a good paper on it; http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/
Posted by: cohenite | May 4, 2008 6:11 PM
I see, it can't be the well documented radiative effect of CO2, it's because we are coming out of an ice age that really wasn't an ice age. Magic beans again.
Posted by: Boris | May 4, 2008 6:34 PM
Cohenite, a quick scan (I'm off to bed in a minute) of the link you give shows no sign of any relation to claims that we are still coming out of an ice age. Perhaps you have something else in mind, given that all the models and stuff show that we can't have had the past 30 years of warming without CO2 etc?
Posted by: guthrie | May 4, 2008 6:38 PM
Here's a post with some sample data of short and long term trends with the 1C annual variation on top of 0.03C long term trend. http://skepticssa.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/a-note-about-long-term-trends/
Anyone claiming 6 years of (wrong) data have overturned a long term trend need a big cup of shut the f%$# up and need to come up with better arguments as to why there is no long term trend.
Posted by: Nigel | May 4, 2008 7:16 PM
guthrie; I'm not sure what you want; CET data shows that it was cooler during the tail end of the MM (since CET begins in 1659) than today; Keigan has a paper on sea surface temp during the MM and the medieval warm period which shows it was cooler during during the MM and warmer during the warm period than today; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/274/5292/1503
Oddly enough when I look at my local BoM temp history for Newcastle, which goes back to 1862 and is one of the longest continuous records in Australia, I see that the slightly warmest years were in the late 19thC and the slightly coolest in the late 20th.
Posted by: cohenite | May 4, 2008 7:33 PM
While I wouldn't want to be guilty of claiming that similarity of chart appearance proves anything, I do recommend looking at Holzhauser et al Figure 2, on Great Aletsch glacier, whose chart of glacier length is more-or-less upside-down version of CET, although the glacier length does the smoothing naturally, has some lag time (~24 years), and of course depends on precipitation, not just temperature. Finally, one would expect some differences in sulfate aerosols between Central England and the Alps.
As for why there might be jiggles, I think Ruddiman's hypothesis about pandemics is much further developed than it was in "Plows, Plagues and Petroleum". See the 37-page "The Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis: Challenges and Responses", Section 10. ($ reqd, sorry, so I'll say more):
Fig 21 shows CO2 deltas computed from pandemics and reforestration estimates, aligned with CO2 concentrations from the Law Dome, i.e. as in
Ruddiman says: "In summary, pandemic-driven reductions in atmospheric Co2 can explain half or more of the ~7ppm drop between 1200 and 1700. Depending on the highly uncertain size of the global mean cooling during this interval, this anthropogenic forcing could account for anywhere in between 16% and 66% of the total cooling."
In this case, the relevant pandemic would be the native American one, i.e., Europe's problems with the Little Ice Age maybe have been partially self-inflicted by bringing smallpox to America.
Ruddiman writes:
"An estimated 80-90% of the pre-Columbian population (50-60 million people) dies between 1500 and 1750, with the highest losses probably occurring in the 1500s." By adding up various specific cases, he estimates ~13.8 Gigatons of C sequestered via reforestration. Given the lag times between people dying and reforestration, what you'd expect is a dip in CO2 towards the end of the 1500s, as forests re-establish themselves, and then later, get back into steady-state. Then, after a while, European settlers start cutting enough trees to be noticeable.
From the Law Dome records:
From 1006 to 1570, CO2 usually stayed above 280ppm, with two points below (279.4 in 1006 and 279.6 in 1465). and an average of 281.8. Then:
(Maybe someone can find a 1000AD-2000AD graph of Law Dome CO2, which makes it really obvious that CO2 fell off a small cliff into 1600AD.
Now, it could be an accident that the biggest drop in CO2 in the last 1000 years just happens coincide with the reforestration from the biggest die-off in human history...
Sorry, if someone can look at that graph and tell me that current temperature rise is just "rebound" from LIA ... then they're the sort who wouldn't be surprised if dropping a ball 1 foot caused it to rebound 5...
Posted by: John Mashey | May 4, 2008 8:10 PM
I certainly don't say that current temps are a 'rebound' from the MM, but they are certainly different. I do say it is incredibly speculative to suggest past population fluctuations of humans and their consequent deforrestation habits is responsible for CO2, and therefore climate oscillations; you may as well say that fluctuations in animal herd numbers, and their effect on plant life, had an impact. BTW, here is a CO2 graph which covers the 1000-2000 period and puts it into some sort of perspective;
http://bp0.blogger.com/_0oNRupXJ4-A/SANF6KuP1sIAAAAAAAAATQ/FP8y3DPkssY/s1600-h/images277.gif
Posted by: cohenite | May 4, 2008 8:43 PM
That proves it then; Newcastle stopped coming out of the LIA in the late 19th century.
Posted by: Nick | May 4, 2008 8:52 PM
Sorry, having trouble getting that graph up; the perspective will have to wait.
Posted by: cohenite | May 4, 2008 8:58 PM
In response to the realclimate 8 yr trend figure, and I guess in support of AGW-deniers, there are only a few (5) negative slopes shown and they are associated with strong sulfate injections (via vulcanism). The point is well-taken that the current/recent 8 yr trends are positive, but the connection to questions regarding how unusual is the most recent 6 yr trend is pretty weak. I suppose a complete comparison for the purposes of rebutting AGW-deniers would also include other estimates of global temperature (whichever one they support most at the time).
Posted by: Steve L | May 4, 2008 9:18 PM
The issue of this global cooling nonsense has also been addressed here: http://www.aussmc.org/IstheEarth_Cooling.php
It was interesting that Andrew Bolt cottoned on to that above and misleadingly painted it as a tet-for-tet debate between Brook and Kininmonth only - a balanced debate!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/warmunderthe_collar/P20/
(By the way, how to you embed links here - my standard method on other forums of [url=insert link] [/url] is not working here)
Posted by: Amaranthus | May 4, 2008 9:41 PM
re: #12 cohenite
Ruddiman's work is clearly labeled, by him, as early hypotheses, and he may be right or wrong, and as data as appeared, he has modified his hypotheses (somewhat, and I'm working from his very latest piece), but he is a world-class (Google scholar: WF Ruddiman) paleo-climatologist who has:
-- worked through the gory details of the ways in which this interglacial different past ones
-- looked hard at the methane from animals and rice paddies
-- studied deforestration/reforestration patterns, down to the amount of land needed to support a person at various levels of farming technology
-- and published a lot of such work in credible peer-reviewed journals
His ideas are taken seriously by people like Richard Alley, James Hansen, Ray Pierrhumbert, Jon Overpeck, Stephen Schneider ... whose opinions carry some weight in this turf. What weight should we ascribe to the anonymous opinions?
[IUOUI: Ignore Unsupported Opinions of Anonymous Individuals :-)]
Suggestion: read what he says before opining on it. The book will cost you less than $20, and you might learn a lot, as it's quite well-written, and accessible even if you don't have much math or physics background. If you want more, you can look at the more detailed technical papers, many of which are freely accessible, or at least look him up in Wikipedia.
Have you read his book and the papers, and maybe even corresponded with him? In which case, let's go debate the details, as they are quite interesting, and the process by which hypotheses evolve is well-illustrated here.
If not, then for you to dismiss all this as "incredibly speculative" hints of Dunning-Kruger Effect to me, but at least that's curable with some study.
Posted by: John Mashey | May 4, 2008 10:24 PM
Mick:
I wasn't aware that we were still experiencing an ice age in the 1950s and 1960s. Thank you Mick, you are so informative.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | May 4, 2008 10:26 PM
Ah, yes, the incredibly accurate instrumental record from the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s being quoted by a denialist who undoubtably will also argue that the modern instrumental record is so inaccurate as to be useless ...
Posted by: dhogaza | May 4, 2008 10:49 PM
Not to mention that this is a strawman, since only denialists claim that the science proclaims that CO2 concentration is the only driver of climate ...
Posted by: dhogaza | May 4, 2008 10:50 PM
Well, can strawmen suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect? The Ruddiman/Broecker-Stocker debate seems to have an element of tautology inherent since no matter what correlation exists between nominated anthropogenic activity and CO2 levels any causality remains moot; as dhogaza has so graciously pointed out by implication CO2 is not the only driver of climate; as an aside, since I agree with this, I must not be a denialist (what an ugly term). Far be it for me to denigrate GISS temp records, so let me query historical records for CO2 instead. The Lawdome results have been criticised by Jarowosky, who in turn has been criticised by everyone at RC; I won't even mention Beck, but it is still undeniable that at the beginning of the Tertiary CO2 levels were at 1000 ppm. The other relevant historical context is that the Holocene is still coming second to the Eemian; will the H beat the E? Is it desirable for humanity that it do so? If so, is there anything humanity can do to prolong the H and delay the Milankovitch crunch. This is has been the missing element of this debate; namely that warmth is better for humans than cold, but the attitude towards heat since this debate has began has been decidedly frosty; so ladies, that is the question; and ignoring the strawman of runaway, is the recent heating (and again I'm ignoring the debate about whether there has been some) a desirable, on balance event?
Posted by: cohenite | May 5, 2008 3:41 AM
COhenite- I'm talking global, or at least hemispherical temperatures. Reffering to the CET is irrelevant. You are aware are you not that the majority of the contiguous USA has warmed very noticeably, except for a state or two in the East, which have in fact cooled. This is entirely to be expected.
Moreover, as dhogaza has pointed out, the old temperature record has major problems, and that Sargasso sea paper you pointed to covers the Sargasso sea, and nobody is denying that some parts of the northern hemisphere were pretty warm 1,000 years ago, its just that there is no evidence to suggest that the entire hemisphere was warmer than the late 20th century.
Posted by: guthrie | May 5, 2008 4:22 AM
Cohenite writes: "I do say it is incredibly speculative to suggest past population fluctuations of humans and their consequent deforrestation habits is responsible for CO2, and therefore climate oscillations; you may as well say that fluctuations in animal herd numbers, and their effect on plant life, had an impact."
Are you being serious here? Really, honestly, truly serious here? Or is this a joke, a punch line?
To be rather blunt, human impacts across the biosphere make the cumulative effects of mammalian herbivore 'grazing' appear like a drop in a very large ocean. There's virtually no doubt that the current spiking of atmospheric CO2 levels is due to widespread human alterations - read ecological simplification - across the biosphere. Human activities are profoundly affecting biogeochemical and hydrological cycles over exceedingly large spatial and temporal scales. Many of these changes are unprecendented in hundreds of thousands or millions of years, and certainly there is no evidence that any other evolved inhabitant in the planet's history has been able to manifest such effects. Stanford ecologist Peter Vitousek's 1994 McCarthur Award winning article in the journal Ecology gives more details that I will here.
Therefore, I hope that your grazing comment was made with your tongue firmly in your cheek...
Posted by: Jeff Harvey | May 5, 2008 5:46 AM
guthrie; in respect of US warming; are we talking the USHCN or the NOAA versions? Jeff; I never stand between a man and his hope.
Posted by: cohenite | May 5, 2008 5:56 AM
Cohenite, demonstrating that he has a brain made of bakelite, spewed forth:
1) I am calling you out on your sexist, or rather, misogynistic use of the word 'ladies'.
Defend yourself.
2) Upon what evidence do you presume that a warmer average global temperature would benefit humanity, let alone the biosphere?
Aside from the fact that you are such a cosseted, etiolated nimrod that you feel 'better' if it is warmer.
Come on - evidence?
And in the process you might include your ecological, medical, epidemiological and/or demographical bona fides. If you are able to.
Idiot...
Posted by: Bernard J. | May 5, 2008 6:17 AM
cohenite posts:
levite answers:
The question is not whether some hypothetical warmer climate would be the best in some objective sense; maybe it would be. But that's completely irrelevant to the issue. We are adopted to THIS climate; to the unusually stable climate we've had for the past 10,000 years. A change up OR DOWN would disrupt things unpredictably, except in the very broad outlines. Our agriculture and our economy depend on a stable climate.
The very broad outlines predicted for global warming are increased droughts in continental interiors (ask the Europeans the Australians), more violent weather along coastlines, and sea level rise. Their combined effects are going to kill millions of people and cause trillions of dollars worth of property damage. That's the issue.
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | May 5, 2008 7:20 AM
Hmm, am I seeing yet another round of iterative backpedalling by the climate inactivists?
Posted by: bi -- Intl. J. Inact. | May 5, 2008 7:22 AM
Sorry, I meant "adapted," not "adopted," of course.
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | May 5, 2008 7:23 AM
My, my, so much attitude, and heat;
bernard; you seem the most excitable with your witty ad hominem approach: misogynism, no? Just a playful little deference to Denzel Washington in "Training Day"; you really need to get out more.
Both happy bernard and Barton ask, or at least, dispute the virtues of a warmer climate; at the risk of being offensive, although the tone has already been set, a better man than both of you has clearly indicated the advantages of heat over cold: Lomborg in both his books presents the facts; in "Cool It", his European comparison is instructive: in 2000 across 6 European countries there were 1219 deaths attributable to cold; at the same time there were 11560 deaths from heat. Sorry, barton but you couldn't be further from the truth; the success of humanity dosn't depend on stability, but on energy, warmth and technology.
Posted by: cohenite | May 5, 2008 7:44 AM
the success of humanity dosn't depend on stability, but on energy, warmth and technology.
How warm?
And your claim about (climate?) stability not being important to human welfare and success is pretty, umm, interesting.
Posted by: WotWot | May 5, 2008 7:52 AM
He sort of has a point- in olden days, stability was important in terms of avoiding starvation, but it can clearly be seen in Western Europe that development continued all the way through the little ice age.
Of course this aside, he (I assume its a he) ignores the fact that most oil refineries and nuclear plants are built beside the sea, and will become rather vulnerable over the next few decades.
Here in Scotland, there are several railway lines and roads which will be destroyed by the sea level rise over the coming century. We are already having to fit new, larger drains to cope with the more concentrated rainfall brought about by climate change.
The issue is not whether we are going to go extinct; but how much money shall be wasted on adapting after the fact to changes which have been predicted, as well as the reactions of the many millions whom climate change will adversely affect.
As for US data, choose whatever you like, it'll show the same thing.
Posted by: guthrie | May 5, 2008 8:04 AM
That, of course, should be 1219 deaths from heat, and 11560 deaths from cold. Is my face red.
Posted by: cohenite | May 5, 2008 8:13 AM
"in 2000 across 6 European countries there were 1219 deaths attributable to heat; at the same time there were 11560 deaths from cold." (Quote altered in line with #32)
And what were the figures from 2000 (or any other year) for South Asia and subsaharan Africa?
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 5, 2008 9:02 AM
How much warmer? 1000 degrees C warmer? 10000?
Can't you see how stupid your argument is?
Posted by: dhogaza | May 5, 2008 9:59 AM
August 2003 was a bit warm for about 35000 Europeans...
Posted by: Nick | May 5, 2008 10:14 AM
Cohenite (Cohey), Please come back to Andrews's blog, your not ready for this - these people will tear you to shreds.
Posted by: Daryl | May 5, 2008 10:15 AM
Guthrie, I take your point in #31 above, but I think that the post-mediaeval Western development (which involved a fair bit of pinching of colonial resources and novel crops) is just a small part of the modern story. After all, most of the world is not Western!
Cohenite - for better or worse, humanity is dependent on a stable climate. Not convinced? Well, we need stability for global agricultural production reasons, and for any semblance of stability in the world's ecosystems upon which we irrefutably rely for fisheries, timber, novel pharmaceuticals, crop genetic diversity, water purification... and this is just for starters.
As a random example, a few days ago I linked to a paper printed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which the researchers found a 10% drop in rice yield with a 1ºC increase in average minimum diurnal temperature. Given that the world is currently on a bit of a knife-edge as far as food production goes (although many fat Westerners such as we, who tippy-type at out keyboards, are blissfully unaware of it), an apparently insignificant phenomenon such as this could bring shortage to many people. It wouldn't even need to apply to all rice varieties to have a huge impact.
Maybe the technology with which I worked for many years can bring some GE answer to the table, but in any shift from current climate stability we will be playing catch-up, and we will only be addressing those issues that affect the technological societies the most.
A change in climate would also have profound impact in the distribution and emergence of diseases (big issue), and on the distribution of water - another Big Issue. There's no easy way to technology ourselves out of these, even with a Great Big Pot-full of DDT.
And given that another of your tripod's leg's, energy, is showing signs of termite activity, our technology's reliance on energy to actually drive tech development is definitely looking to be compromised down the track. And that is apart from our direct requirement for energy simply to grow food, to make what nik-naks we currently consume, to warm ourselves (usually more than is physiologically necessary) and to move from A to B.
So even if we didn't need climate stability (and only a crazy person would claim this), we definitely need energy stability. Um, isn't this why we are kicking seven colours of snot out of folk who have the dubious fortune to own the hydrocarbons we so crave? If societies that aren't 'technological' are suffering themselves from an unstable climate, they might take umbrage at our shenanigans in contributing to it. And guess what, such societies are where we get our go-go juice and our chocy-treats and much other 'stuff' from...
Stability seems written into the equation where you like it or not.
Posted by: Bernard J. | May 5, 2008 10:26 AM
How about 2003? Heat/cold related deaths in Europe?
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/coolitBchap2heat.htm
Posted by: luminous beauty | May 5, 2008 10:36 AM
I have two "excuses" or points for Michael Duffy:
1) Temperatures from 2002 through 2007: 0.46, 0.46, 0.43, 0.48, 0.42, and 0.40. And here is the comparing graph of the two datasets along with IPCC projections: http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/material/globaltemperatures.pdf as posted at Realclimate.org according to Rahmstorf et al., Science 2007. How much is the 8-year trend of both Hatcrut3 land-ocean and Gisstemp land-ocean? It was Hatcrut3, not Gisstemp Duffy was referring to.
2) The new German paper as published in "Nature" on May 1, 2008 and is probably described best online at BBC News under the heading "The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted." (Keenlyside, N. S., M. Latif, J. Jungclaus, L. Kornblueh, and E. Roeckner, 2008: Advancing Decadal-Scale Climate Prediction in the North Atlantic Sector. Nature, 453, 84-88). The paper was reviewed by Richard Wood from the Hadley Centre, who cautions that "this kind of modelling is in its infancy; and once data can be brought directly from the Atlantic depths, that may change the view of how the AMO works and what it means for the global climate." So contrarry to what went into the latest IPCC report, a 60-70 year cycle called AMO was finally taken into account as an event that has a decadal cooling effect over the average of the whole globe. I am fully aware that the European scientists managed to "assimilate" unchanged climate models with new ocean data and thus claim that the climate will warm again fast after 2020. But why is the claim that the warming trend since 1976 has stopped (as supported by the newest figures and science), is in itself wrong?
Posted by: climatepatrol | May 5, 2008 11:36 AM
"Not even wrong." ---Wolfgang Pauli.
It is a claim that is statistically meaningless, i.e., empty noise.
Posted by: luminous beauty | May 5, 2008 12:25 PM
Bernard.
You stated...."Upon what evidence do you presume that a warmer average global temperature would benefit humanity, let alone the biosphere?"
The question could easily be asked.....Upon what evidence do you presume that a warmer climate would only be detrimental to humanity?
This from page 96 of Climate of Fear...... http://www.cato.org/pubs/books/climate/089-102.pdf
Posted by: Betula | May 5, 2008 1:10 PM
bernard- my not so well expressed point was more to close off another avenue of argument early.
Betula- a variety of scientific evidence, such as in post #37, show that warming on the scale anticipated will be bad for large chuncks of the worlds population.
Some will benefit. Many won't. The world is already uneven and painful enough without us adding to it.
Posted by: guthrie | May 5, 2008 1:31 PM
Ethics according to Betula:
A few more nice spring days in northern cities balances out unspeakable death, destruction and disorder for millions in tropical and sub-tropical populations.
Posted by: luminous beauty | May 5, 2008 5:43 PM
So much pessimissm at this place. dhogaza; 10000? I presume you mean centigrade? I did say, ignoring the strawman of runaway. Craig O'Neil in April 2008 Australian Science does a tectonic comparison between Venus and Earth to establish runaway is not possible on Earth. Anyway, if it was going to happen as a response to CO2 levels, it would have already in the geological past when CO2 levels were 10 times what they are today and the cooling point of Anarctica was not in place. Jeffery Glassman has done an interesting piece on thermohaline circulation and ocean storage capaity of CO2 which should be read in conjunction with O'Neil. O'Neil notes:
Water, absorbed into the oceanic crust as hydrous minerals, follows the plate into the mantle. Similarly, dissolved carbon dioxide in the oceans can precipitate to from calcite, which is then deposited on the plate and likewise recycled into the mantle.
For O'Neil "plate tectonics act as an essential regulator of atmospheric composition and thus a thermostat for the planet's temperature throughout history". Even so, the fact that CO2 levels have been so much higher in history simply negates the dominance of CO2 as a climate driver (ie not the only driver).
bernard; I should have said that humanity relies on energy, warmth and technology, with as much stability as we can get. But we are not going to get stability. Ruddiman may or may not be right about the Holocene being possibly extended by AGW, but the fact is the interglacials are shortlived. I think you also underestimate human ingenuity while, rightfully, focusing on some of the inequalities. But I must say there is a strong Clive Hamilton undercurrent of disapproval in your comments; "fat Westerners" and "nik-naks" indeed. You also ignore the massive dislocation and cost which will occur if kyoto is implemented; even if there is a disease, the cure may be worse, which is Lomborg's point. luminous, I appreciate your your link and will look at this issue of warmth being better than cold further and get back.
Posted by: cohenite | May 5, 2008 7:21 PM
"I can't believe warmists believe that warming after an ice age(!!) is unprecedented and alarming."
with CO2 levels at 380 ppm ...and rising ...im surprised that were not having more trouble that we are
they've KNOWN that this increase in CO2 levels would be a problem since the 1950s
the IPCC was started BECAUSE those early climate change preditions from the 50s started coming true
Posted by: brightmoon | May 5, 2008 7:29 PM
Scientists don't give a flying fuck about your personal inability to understand science.
Posted by: dhogaza | May 5, 2008 7:41 PM
"This is has been the missing element of this debate; namely that warmth is better for humans than cold, but the attitude towards heat since this debate has began has been decidedly frosty"
yes, the polar bears also, as they can take off those expensive warmup suits. somewhere darwin is weeping as he spins like a top.
Posted by: z | May 5, 2008 8:29 PM
These debates sound a lot like slow versions of fiddling while Rome burns. Denialism has been very effective - despite lots of good evidence that AGW is really happening (I'm talking things like borehole temperatures, ice loss from ice sheets and glaciers, all the phenological evidence of changes, measured sea level rise etc, not theoretical stuff) - real policy action in Australia is still being deferred at the same time as new coal mines are being brought on line. No restrictions of coal exports to those consumers that use CCS (does it even exist?). Fossil fuels are not being phased out or replaced and R&D money is going mostly to CCS (does it even exist?) whilst real Australian energy innovation finds anywhere to be better than here - Ausra to California, Vanadium redox batteries to Canada, Crystalline Silicon on Glass to Germany. It's a good bet that, just as fuel prices are making hybrid and electric vehicles a sensible option, taxes on petrol and diesel will be cut in order to improve electoral chances, voted in by people who find the anti science of denialism much more attractive than the best science reflecting reality. Short term expediency is going to keep winning out over long term sustainability, at least in Australia. The US, which demands the world be followers of their lead, isn't any better. Should we be looking more to Europe? I suspect their long history of Civilisation makes them more receptive to understanding there are limits and consequences to ignoring them. The exploitative economies, reliant on abundant resources and ignoring long term consequences, like the US and Australia, will continue to rely on denying those consequences are significant.
Posted by: Ken | May 5, 2008 8:39 PM
"climatepatrol":
You just don't get it do you. IPCC projections do NOT predict El Niños or La Niñas or other short term fluctuations. How many times do you have to be told this?
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | May 5, 2008 9:20 PM
"The question could easily be asked.....Upon what evidence do you presume that a warmer climate would only be detrimental to humanity?"
I do not believe anyone has made this claim. Can you back it up with a link?
"This from page 96 of Climate of Fear...... "
You do realize that this is a work of fiction? By the way, I've given a brief extract of one of Crichton's other books to undergraduate students to see if they could find the five blunders on the one page. He is not as informed about science as he and many of his readers would like to believe.
Posted by: Richard Simons | May 5, 2008 10:33 PM
Richard Simons....
Yes, I can back it up.....see #25, question #2.
As for the second part of your comment.....do you realize predicting future catastrophies is a work of fiction?
Posted by: Betula | May 5, 2008 11:14 PM
Guthrie.
Your points do seem to be steering the wingnuts in other directions: they're not getting back to you, and in particular I was hoping that at least one of them would comment on your point about the cost of remediation under a BAU scenario. But of course, if the climate is not going to change (or only change in a cooler direction) then no cost against warming will ever be incurred...
I wonder what the insurance companies think about this premise? Hmmm...?
Where I live even a 10cm increase in mean sea-level over a century would profoundly resculpt the coastal landuse for both humans and the ecosystems here. The local governments are seriously concerned; and I am sure that they run the numbers past as many bean counters as they can, yet they don't seem to think that an Ice-age is imminent.
Cohenite, I hardly think that mention of the simple fact of the weight of the average Westerner (very much an elephant in the room!), or the fact that we are a particularly acquisitive society, requires an invocation of Clive Hamilton or by implication the 'extremeness' that the conservatives label him with. These are two simple facts, and the processes that make these two simple facts a part of our culture have profound implications for the future progress of our society, especially if we anticipate that it will continue as it has for the last century or so.
I am well aware of the 'costs' of implementing Kyoto: I am also well aware of the costs of not implementing it if even the best case scenario of warming were to occur. Of course, you and your friends are not convinced of the fact of warming, so I would ask a several simple questions of you:
1) Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? 2) If you said 'no' to (1), upon what evidence do you reach your conclusion? 3) If you said 'yes' to (1), what forcing to you ascribe to CO2? 4) Will the concentration of CO2 increase over the coming decades and centuries? 5) If you said 'yes' to (1), at what point in the future do you predict that the combination of CO2 greenhouseness and CO2 concentration increase will result in a warming that you are prepared to acknowledge is warming? 6) How far into the future do you think that we need to be concerned about anthropogenic changes to climate, if indeed we do have an impact upon climate?
Betula, using "Climate of Fear" as a reference is probably the worst thing that you could do if you desired to retain credibility.
It's even worse that someone quoting Lomborg as an ecological/environmental reference.
Posted by: Bernard J. | May 5, 2008 11:50 PM
Bernard, I was once tested by a census taker and I invited him in for a nice bottle of chianti; I suppose you'd like next week's lotto numbers as well? I think CO2's heat retention and distributive properties are limited by Wien and Beer and Stefan-Boltzmann, and I don't think atmospheric stratified thermal equilibrium, through a disparity between the rate of CO2 excitation and collisional deexcitation, prevents the effect of CO2 being limited. I think the carbon cycle is subordinate to the larger H2O cycle. I think the natural negative feedbacks and reservoirs are drastically underestimated, and I refer to O'Neil's and Glassman's pieces again; and I think natural variations and cycles such as the PDO/IPO's will swallow humanity's influence. I am far more concerned about localised and regional issues of pollution which I think have been neglected while AGW has held centre stage.
As to non-carbon energy sources and future limits to anthropogenic CO2, one of the benefits of AGW is the growth of R&D in this area; personally, I'm a fan of thorium.
Returning to the warming issue; AGW theory predicts that the coldest months will become warmer more than the warmer times; the CET data shows some conformity with this thesis; if AGW, lessons both seasonal and regional extremes, surely that is a good thing?
As to sea levels; a local council, Lake MacQuarie, has just declared that it will impose a levy on all new developements; this will substantially increase the cost of building new homes
Posted by: cohenite | May 6, 2008 2:23 AM
cohenite:
Instead of being a "thinking" ignoramus, why don't you find out what many scientists have measured climate sensitivity to be without using models. James Annan has a very good survey of other papers in his paper.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | May 6, 2008 2:47 AM
That's right. I just don't get it. Whenever I talk about multidecadal events such as 60 to 70 year AMO and sometimes PDO cycles (5-20 years according to NASA), I am being referred to single El Niños or La Niñas. And how about a cold AMO phase coinciding with a cold PDO index coinciding with a looming weak solar cycle 24 coinciding with growing worldwide cloud cover? Are you suggesting that such possible examples of medium to long-term natural climate variations (not to say the word "climate shifts") should be treated like short-term natural noise when looking at a 30 and/or 200 year trend line in global mean surface temperature? Come to think of it, so far I understand that the 30 year temperature trend from 1978 to 2008, as I understand the majority of people posting here, is considered as 100% human induced and bad, with short-term ENSO and major volcanic events being "noise" in that trend, is it not?
Posted by: climatepatrol | May 6, 2008 4:39 AM
@ Chris O'Neill Sorry, didn't address it. Above post is in answer to your #54.
Posted by: climatepatrol | May 6, 2008 4:42 AM
Thanks for that chris; I am steadily educating myself out of the "ignoramus" stage; I found this paper to be of some assistance in respect of forcings and climate sensitivity:
http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/forcing.htm
I see you haven't considered the O'Neil and Glassman references. Perhaps you can be more selective once you graduate from the ignoramus stage.
Posted by: cohenite | May 6, 2008 4:58 AM
"I think the carbon cycle is subordinate to the larger H2O cycle. "
Do you think the rate of change in atmospheric H2O levels and associated forcing over the past century has been comparable to the rate of change in carbon dioxide and methane levels?
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 6, 2008 5:04 AM
Good question Ian; I don't know; ask these guys;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008431.shtml
Plus Joel Norris and Roy Spencer for clouds I guess.
Posted by: cohenite | May 6, 2008 7:15 AM
cohenite posts:
Yes, cohenite, and our technology depends on our agriculture and our economy, which will be hit hard by global warming. Your simplistic idea that "warmer = better" is what couldn't be farther from the truth.
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | May 6, 2008 8:19 AM
cohenite babbles:
"Atmospheric stratified thermal equilibrium?" What in God's name does that mean? After studying atmosphere physics for ten years I've never run across that one. Stratified atmospheres, yes. Thermal equilibrium, yes. But one has nothing whatsoever to do with the other.
As far as CO2 being limited, in practice there is no upper limit; among the known terrestrial planets there is none that will not become hotter if you add more CO2 to its atmosphere. Even Venus has been hotter at times (900 K compared to the present 735 K, see Bullock and Grinspan's many papers).
And neither Wien's Law, nor Beer's Law (the Beer-Lambert-Bouguer Law), nor the Stefan-Boltzmann relation put any clear upper limit on a carbon dioxide greenhouse effect; certainly Beer's La