James has written an open letter to Kevin Rudd. Key paragraphs:
Global climate is near critical tipping points that could lead to loss of all summer sea ice in the Arctic with detrimental effects on wildlife, initiation of ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland with progressive, unstoppable global sea level rise, shifting of climatic zones with extermination of many animal and plant species, reduction of freshwater supplies for hundreds of millions of people, and a more intense hydrologic cycle with stronger droughts and forest fires, but also heavier rains and floods, and stronger storms driven by latent heat, including tropical storms, tornados and thunderstorms. ...
If Australia halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2, it could be a tipping point for the world. There is still time to find that tipping point, but just barely. I hope that you will give these considerations your attention in setting your national policies. You have the potential to influence the future of the planet.
Hat tip: Nexus 6.
"If Australia halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2, it could be a tipping point for the world."
I'm not sure that's true however, if Australia halted the supply of coal to those plants, we might just have a chance.
Is he pitching a movie script ?
Quote that same sentence, try offering a suggestion for how it's not a ridiculous statement and incorporate the word "China".
I mean, unless we're taking a day off having a problem with people lying about climate change science, I'd be fascinated to see how that's going to be explained as anything else, without lying.
Wikipedia tells me that Australia's banning of the incandescent light bulb influenced an entire 5 countries to do the same, China and India not included. I'm not sure how Kev speaking Mandarin is going to influence the world's leading coal fired power station producer in such a different way.
I'm starting to wonder if Hansen's "tipping point" is his elbow. Surely a scientist would have to be drunk to make such scientifically unsupported statements.
Lance's response is almost as dumb as Kininmonth's, "global climate is not near a critical tipping point, temperatures having declined 0.6°C during 2007 to return to the 1961-1990 average"
Winnebago,
Hopefully Rudd will have the good sense to put the energy needs of his country ahead of Hansen's doomsday fantasies. If he doesn't the negative economic consequences will insure his defeat in the next election.
If you want to stop producing CO2 I suggest you put a plastic bag over your head and tie it off at your neck. Had you done that yesterday there would be at least one less insipid post polluting this blog.
depp=true
notiz=[no vowels for you unless you behave yourself]
Oh, its my first disemvoweling! There was no cursing. Was it my "suggestion"? It was light hearted. I wasn't' really suggesting that Winnebago off himself.
Well, I'm all for civil discussion so I'll watch my step.
"Experts there - Canadian and American researchers, including a representative from a high-level group that advises Beijing - said, quite simply, China has decided to build a low-carbon economy. A couple of years ago, it wasn't considered polite to even mention climate change: Now, it's embedded in the latest five-year plan, which calls for a 20 per cent improvement in energy efficiency by 2010.
This summer's Olympics provided an immediate jolt. China doesn't want foul air to spoil its coming-out extravaganza.
On top of that, pollution is taking a terrible health toll: It's among the country's leading causes of death. Climate change threatens to eliminate glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau that are the major source of water for China and much of Asia. Freak storms have unleashed death and economic destruction.
The car efficiency standards were inspired by looming fuel shortages and the soaring price of oil, which China must import.
And like forward thinkers here, Chinese leaders are also convinced there's gold in green. They dominate world trade in conventional exports. Why not in clean technology, too? For a start, China will soon introduce low-cost solar panels that are expected to take over the global market.
China also appears ready to be helpful with the next round of talks on emission targets. Under the agreement reached at Bali, targets are to be negotiated by the end of next year and come into effect in 2012. But that deal was a weak compromise, cobbled together just so the marathon conference wouldn't be viewed as a failure. With 200 nations divided into bickering groups, and complex issues to sort out, prospects for meeting the deadline are dim.
The key impasse is that the United States, backed by Canada, insists China accept commitments before it will move. China has given signs it will act, but wants a signal from the United States before it will go as far as it can. That could come soon after George W. Bush leaves office, since all three of the remaining presidential contenders
support action on climate change.
The other message, though, is that China won't thump its chest about any of this. It doesn't want to be seen as a leader: It prefers stealth."
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/326294
What did I call this exercise at RP Sr's place that got me in trouble...FUD index? FUD phrase index? Can't remember. Anyway:
Kininmonth's reply as FUD analysis:
Words in reply: 186
FUD phrases:
purported
thinly-disguised front
climate change alarmists
hysterical tone
temperatures having declined 0.6°C during 2007
normal fracturing of ice shelves
Arctic sea ice extent has returned to near long-term mean values
carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor an agent for dangerous climate change
emotive and unsubstantiated fear-mongering
% of reply: 25.3
FUD factor: Alarming FUD
FUD rating: 6 of 10
This public service announcement brought to you by the Reality Based Community.
Best,
D
What the heck?!?
What did I call this exercise at RP Sr's place that got me in trouble...FUD index? FUD phrase index? Can't remember. Anyway:
Kininmonth's reply as FUD analysis:
Words in reply: 186
FUD phrases:
% of reply: 25.3
FUD factor: Alarming FUD
FUD rating: 6 of 10
This public service announcement brought to you by the Reality Based Community.
Best,
D
Gah.
z,
"China has given signs it will act, but wants a signal from the United States before it will go as far as it can."
Was this a joke? Yeah, like Germany wanted a "signal" from Chamberlain that it could take the Sudetenland and then it would play nice. China has no intention of limiting its growth in the name of CO2 mitigation. They are building a new coal fired power plant nearly every week.
Do you actually believe that all they are waiting for is the west to "go first" and they will stop their headlong rush towards development and pay billions of dollars to convert those power plants to much less efficient carbon capture facilities?
Dream on.
Shorter Lance: forget the facts, use your imagination!
Uh-oh. Maybe if we keep our heads in the sand long enough, the Chinese solar panels will disappear... and the US can continue in its leadership of the global market just like before. If we keep our heads in the sand.
Is there a way of operating a kill file in Safari? That way I wouldn't have to trouble myself with Lance's effluvia...
Gareth,
Just keep filtering your incoming information based on what you want to believe. Maybe you can write it yourself and read it later to insure complete comformance with your preconceptions.
No Lance,
Gareth wants to filter out the 100% noisy signal you contribute to better see the long term trend in knowledge. You are a drought of information when we are looking for a drink.
You 're 'ysterical, I 'm clean as a slate;
When you ignore me, you vindicate;
When you listen, then you admit I 've
A point, and you should get a life;
And why won't Gore debate us yet?
Or challenge skeptics to a bet?
And no, we never "lose" debates,
we just throw a hissy fit --
There 's no warming,
There 's no warming,
It's just a Terrist Worldwide
Conspiracy;
There 's no warming,
There 's no warming,
For polar bears adapt
And so will we --
Mark,
So any dissenting opinion is "noise"?
I suppose bi's juvenile little poems are what you consider "knowledge" since he has peppered the thread with them and you have yet to complain.
I rebutted z's (fact free) claim that China was just waiting, like a new Greenpeace recruit, to jump on the carbon mitigation bandwagon with some sober facts about their appetite for coal fired power plants.
In response I got a handful of short self-righteous snide replies, an idiotic poem from bi along with a post that made an obscure reference to Chinese "solar panels".
Yeah, I'm really dragging down the level of discourse here at Deltoid.
Tim is well aware that without a diversity of opinions his site quickly becomes moribund.
Not all dissenting opinions are noise. Just the ones, including yours, that have no supporting actual research evidence and, like your comment about China, no understanding.
fifth richest man in China now is a guy who manufactures photovoltaic cells.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116058795104289563.html
"So any dissenting opinion is "noise"?"
Opinions are essentially worthless. I can provide my own dissenting opinions:
"Carbon dioxide is warming the climate"
"No it's not"
See how easy? if you want me to act interested, give me some facts i don't know, and/or a logical analysis I haven't seen/figured out that are behind your opinions; provided they are not obviously nutty, erroneous, or self-contradictory.
Mark Schafer,
"Not all dissenting opinions are noise. Just the ones, including yours, that have no supporting actual research evidence and, like your comment about China, no understanding."
Where is the "research evidence" in your whiney little screed?
So, this is the same scientist who cried censorship. He could give any politician a run for his money. Having read his writings, I find him transcending into religion than strictly observing scientific process.
RK:
Great, more content-free static.
Maybe the denialists can name us one scientific paper authored or co-authored by Hansen which they've actually read, and summarize in their own words what on earth it's saying.
Hey Lance,
Your posts are all the research I need to conclude you have offered exactly 0 content. The real research exists at any good university library, which you will never touch because you have not to this point done so. In the extremely unlikely event that you present primary evidence supporting your fantasies I will be happy to look at such. Until then all readers are safe in ignoring your pathetic posts.
Normally the "alarmists" offer good science to back up GW arguments.
In defending the Hansen letter with it's claims of imminent tipping points they're resorting to ad hominem
attacks.
Hansens has become an "elder scientist", like Lindzen and other denialists, and letting his heart run ahead of his brain.
His use of geometric progression to argue that sea levels could rise 5 metres by 2095 (or was that 80 metres by 2135?) was an appalling display of advocacy that totally ignored sound science.
I said:
Still no takers. I guess actually reading scientific papers is too pinko an idea for our, um, un-denialists.
Bi:
Judging by your posts above, it'll be futile on my part to match your intellectual content. Looks like others have realized as well. Thanks for the suggestion though.
I said:
Great, still no takers.
So let's see: RK claims that Hansen's writings are "transcending into religion than strictly observing scientific process", and when I ask him to substantiate his claim by paraphrasing the conclusions of an actual scientific paper by Hansen, he trots out the Clinton-did-it excuse.
The denialists have no clothes.
My comments are strictly based on his extracurricular activities and writings. They do border on the fantastic. Bi, I think you should look in the mirror, long and hard.
Hansen is a high ranking government employee. He is the boss and has the power to make or break the career of other climate experts. Yet his letter is overt politically lobbying. Does no one see this as a conflict of interest?
You can not be a key player on the IPCC and lobby. To be seen to have a fair trail, you need a clear separation between the police and the judge. Experts need to keep reserve. Leave the politics to Ally G.
Grow up bi, nobody is going to let you assign them a "book report". I have read many of Hansen's papers. Some are well reasoned and supported by sound data, others are over the top nonsense based on little more than conjecture.
Come on Lance,
You can do better than a vague criticism of Dr. Hansen. What specific paper do you think is "based on little more than conjecture"?
His letters and presentations are chockful of extrapolations, conjecture and guilt-tripping. This is the main medium of reaching a broader audience, and he is doing a terrible job of it. It is upto his supporters to backup those claims - not the job of those who question these wild assertations of doom.
Bill Kininmonth's comment on the Hansen letter deserves to be repeated here:
"The purported Open Letter from Dr James Hansen, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is no more than a thinly-disguised front for a group of Australian climate change alarmists. The hysterical tone of the letter cannot hide the obvious defects of the information contained: global climate is not near a critical tipping point, temperatures having declined 0.6°C during 2007 to return to the 1961-1990 average. The only sign of ice sheet disintegration is the normal fracturing of ice shelves off the Antarctic Peninsula and Arctic sea ice extent has returned to near long-term mean values. Unstoppable sea level rise is imagination rather than reality. Statistics do not back up the claim that there are stronger droughts, forest fires, storms, tornados or thunderstorms.
"Fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource and to be used as efficiently and effectively as possible until alternative renewable resources are developed for wide application through developed and developing countries. However carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor an agent for dangerous climate change. Energy policies must be based on good science, not emotive and unsubstantiated fear-mongering..." Bill should have added: "...by those like Hansen with a financial interest in their alarmism".
While I think Hansen is making claims beyond what is scientifically established, Kininmonth is even worse in stating his opinion as fact ("global climate is not near a critical tipping point...Unstoppable sea level rise is imagination rather than reality...carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor an agent for dangerous climate change") misleading ("Arctic sea ice extent has returned to near long-term mean values")and making claims that are demonstably false ("temperatures having declined 0.6°C during 2007 to return to the 1961-1990 average")
Like all other natural exponential growth processes, the breakup of an ice-cap will not accelerate exponentially forever. Any suggestion that exponential growth at some point necessarily means that there must be exponential growth at some later point is just silly.
Chris O'Neill said that "Any suggestion that exponential growth at some point necessarily means that there must be exponential growth at some later point is just silly."
But if you check the archives here, that is what Chris has all too often said. It is also precisely what the ineffable James Hansen claims in the starting point of this very thread (if you track back to his 2007 paper cited in "his" letter to Rudd, eg his various Figs, which are more redolent of Spaghetti Junction than any real science). Actually, as Bill Kininmonth correctly surmised, that "letter" was drafted by clots like Raupach (CSIRO) and Steffan (ANU), all card members of Rudd's ALP.
I hope all the same that Chris makes it to the next IPCC lead uthors group and their Ignobel prize, to show that bunch why their exact replications of what he decries are wrong.
I said:
What, still no takers?
Just the usual crop of vague insinuations and pure garbage from the denialists.
I will take that challenge bi
How about J E Hansen 2007 "Scientific reticence and sea level rise"
That would be the one about scientists should lobby as the point is not to be technically on solid ground,
but to limit CO to have some solid ground left!
Chris, Obviously exponential growth cannot continue forever, my point was that there's no science behind any claim that exponential growth of SLR is even going to start.
Ball is in your court Bi- it's your Hansen who is proposing these theories, not us. Such vitriol and smugness only turns people away. I thought you were in the business of convincing people of the fact of "A"GW.
His papers are full of conjectures, extrapolations, and vague handwaving unsupported by data.
Which paper(s) in particular?
Oh, you know.... lots of them. Mostly.
"Dear Kevin
Please give up this enormously profitable industry, which is a drop in the emissions ocean but will create jobs and more importantly stacks of money for people who might support your re-election."
"Dear Dr Hansen
No."
Count on Rudd's sticking to cosmetic, meaningless approaches to global warming.
Ah, at long last.
...unfortunately your summary is way off.
Here's a summary which agrees just as much with Hansen's actual words as yours does: "I, James Hansen, am a child rapist."
- - -
Again, my challenge still stands:
Any of the usual excuses, vague insinuations, and pure nonsense will be at best ignored, or at worst mocked.
- - -
Dr. Zen:
I'm not sure the big carrot that Big Smog is holding up is still as big as ever.
Hi bi #44: Hansen's paper is typical of his habitual dissumulation (and yours). Dear old Jim (getting a little past it) cites Mercer (1978) suggesting that "global warming from fossil fuels could lead to disastrous disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet, with a sea level rise of several meters worldwide". Well, here we are, 30 years later, bits of that sheet do fall off in the southern summer, only to be rebuilt in the southern winter, and there has been zero sea level rise in the beeches I frequent over that 30 year period of "disastrous disintegration". That is why in his increasing dotage, Hansen refers (2007 et al., in the links to his forged letter to Kevin Rudd) to his model's runs to the year 3000, by when unless we have all been cloned by then (Gawd help us) he will not be around to be held to account for fraudulent and indeed criminally misleading claims.
Hansen then goes on to claim that the "planetary energy imbalance is itself NOW sufficient to melt ice coresponding to one meter of sea level rise per decade..." Goodbye Rose and Double Bay in Sydney. But of course there is not a shred of evidence of any sea level rise in those bays since 1788, despite their whole population consisting of the chardonnay set who believe everything baby feeder Hansen tells them.
bi: just point to specific Hansenite predictions like the above and then to the current situation.
Reality check:
"Reality check", can you read out to us the first sentence in the paragraph immediately following the Mercer (1978) citation?
My challenge still stands:
I also said:
I think I'll add this: Blatant attempts at quote-mining will be treated as cases of Hansen Derangement Syndrome.
re bi at #46. Read on to the 3rd paragraph from that quote of mine that you object to where Hansen repeats himself WITHOUT qualification thus: "However this cooling effect [from iceberg melt etc]is limited on a global scale as shown by comparison with the planetary energy imbalance, which is NOW sufficient to melt ice equivalent to about one meter of sea level per decade." (my caps again).
Jim Hansen is growing more and more like Dr Strangelove (himself modelled on the ageing John von Neumann who really did try to persuade Harry Truman to eviscerate the USSR c1948). Hansen's piece is a good defence of the role of scientists in alerting us to imminent dangers if they are real. But in nothing of his that I have read does he make out a case that a rise of 2C in response to doubling CO2 (itself unlikely before 2100) will be dangerously damaging anywhere, when such a rise is already within the variability of current global climate on a daily and seasonal basis. Adelaide recently survived its longest ever sequence of days with max temps of c39, well (c10) above the average for March. Did the sky fall in? how many died? But this heat no doubt encouraged Hansen's Australian ghost writers to get him to advise Rudd to close Australian industry unless there is instant CCS etc. There is a much more dangerous mismatch between the science and the policy advice.
Reality check- you need to rename yourself. Warmer temperatures will bring a whole host of changes. For example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6200114.stm
Not to mention rainfall changes such that normally fertile areas will dry up. And fish in the north sea are already not in their usual places because of warmer sea waters, pushing many of them closer to extinction since they cannot feed where they usually do.
THen there is the ovrall change to plant diversity:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0409902102v1
Not to mention that people will have to build and rebuild their houses to cope with changes in weather and climate, nor the rise in sea level affecting nuclear reactor sites, Bangladesh, wetlands and a lot of other things. If this was the only danger to the world, plants and animals would survive alright, but since we are also destroying global ecosystems and concreting over everything we can, we will do a great deal more damage to the planet.
And lets not forget ocean acidification.
Devils Advocate:
Maybe, but you would avoid damaging your credibility by avoiding silly suggestions that imply exponential growth beyond physical limits.
Reality check needs a check:
So when Hansen repeats himself twice, he obvious means something different from what he said before? Yeah, sure.
Maybe instead of calling it "Hansen Derangement Syndrome" I should call it something more scientific, like "Hansen-induced apopletic dyslexia". The apoplexy cuts of blood supply to the brain, and causes the denialist to miss out entire phrases right after the sentence fragment he quote-mines.
For those who want to read the whole 6 pages like I did, and not just an abstract
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/2/2/024002/
Hansen explains he found himself in court unable to cite experts who publicly supported his "alarmist" views on sea level rise. He concluded that experts broadly agreed with him but applied a higher standard of proof than him for public statements. This is what he identified as the reticence problem.
Hansen is for lowering the bar of proof on climate as we are at tipping points and "Important decisions are being made now and in the near future."
"Reticence is fine for the IPCC. And individual scientists can choose to stay within a comfort zone, not needing to worry that they say something that proves to be slightly wrong. But perhaps we should also consider our legacy from a broader perspective. Do we not know enough to say more?"
The last half page is lobbying actions.
What Sean Egan said earlier:
I guess Sean Egan decided to actually read the paper after posting his earlier garbage. Well, better late than never.
Science is being done a monumental disservice by people with such agendas. It really does create mistrust in people.
Coming from the 3rd world, and having seen the amount of disease and death that I have seen until a decade ago; I shudder when I see the self-important, guilt driven politics of today placing abject blame on fossil-fuels; without which we would still be seeing millions dying where I come from.
Let's talk about the real problems of pollution and land misuse; otherwise the dogs will bark as the caravans (eg. India and China) move on.
Chris O'Neil: "Maybe, but you would avoid damaging your credibility by avoiding silly suggestions that imply exponential growth beyond physical limits."
It was a cynical comment, high lighting the stupidity of playing fast and lose with geometric progression.
PS. Given ocean thermal expansion, 80 metres might just be possible with a complete ice melt ;)
Bi, seem to hang together for me
"the point is not to be technically on solid ground" =>
"Hansen is for lowering the bar of proof on climate"
"but to limit CO to have some solid ground left!" =>
"as we are at tipping points" (that is sea level rise tipping points)
"scientists should lobby" =>
"The last half page is lobbying actions." (if you read the actions, they are for scientists)
Back to the point. Is overt lobbying compatible with being the boss of the service producing important climate data? Especially as in 2007 you had to do those tricky adjustments to the 1930s.
bi at #51: "Reality check needs a check:
Hansen repeats himself WITHOUT qualification thus:
So when Hansen repeats himself twice, he obvious means something different from what he said before? Yeah, sure."
When Hansen used the sentence I quoted for the second time, he omitted his initial qualification so that energy imbalance became available after all.
guthrie: your citations provided zero statitical evidence, the IPCC shows increasing precipitation since 1980 across most of the northern hemisphere, world food production continues to grow except where, as in Tamil Naidu, rice has been replaced by eucalypts to earn carbon credits under Kyoto's CDM (source BBC World Service, 5 April 08), or where diverted to biofuels. There are no measured (as opposed to computer modelled) increases in extinctions, and increasing urbanisation reduces overall population growth rates, see the evidence in virtually every country's census. This was evident in India as long ago as the 1960s, I can provide citations if you insist, but start with Robert Cassen's book The Crisis of Indian Planning c1967. Let Reality rule!
Correction: Cassen's book is India: Population, Economy, Society, while the cited title was a book edited by Streeten & Lipton, also c.1967/8. Apologies.
Umm, whats statistics got to do with the simple fact that extinctions have increased as humans have cleared habitat, and the scientists who are observing such things fully expect greater extinctions in the next few decades as climate change really kicks in.
You did actually have a look at the BBC article, right? It is quite clear that wheat will no longer grow in the American midwest, but it won't grow in Canada because there is very little soil. You can't get more real than that.
As for precipitation, that is a very local thing, and you have completely missed the point, which is that if, as has happened already in the UK, patterns change (we have more in winter now and less in summer, and heavier localised downpours) people have to spend money building more catchment, design and build better drains, etc etc. All this costs money, which the anti-warming people always forget.
World food production is affected by a wide number of things. And mere urbanisation is not the only driver of reduced population- education and access to family planning make a real difference.
Why on earth did you bring population growth up anyway?
Dear guthrie;
1. The only valid test of extinctions is the population per species per sq. km in say Hertfordshire at say time = 1990 and the population at same place now. Even the monkish Lord May lately of the Royal Soc. admits this has never been done (I heard him say so at UNSW about 3 years ago).
2. Wheat seems to do just fine in Canada now as ever in the last 200 years.
3. you said: "people have to spend money building more catchment, design and build better drains, etc etc. All this costs money, which the anti-warming people always forget". No we do not, as Lomborg and the rest of us have always said, adaptation is by definition cheaper than mitigation, because it addresses costs as they arise, not as they might be in the never-neverland of Stern-Hansen & co. Stern's duplicity no less lay in concealing this, as he NEVER computed the relative costs of adaptation and mitigation (same goes for IPCC).
4. What is your evidence for more rain in winter than in summer? There is none for my county (near Bristol).
5. Why should I not mention relative urban-rural population growth and fertility if it is relevant? You are right about education, but access to family planning is irrelevant - look at pop growtb rates in Eire & Italy where latter is in effect banned but are amongst lowest in the developed world.
Get real - let Reality reign OK?
Realitycheck posts:
[[global climate is not near a critical tipping point, temperatures having declined 0.6°C during 2007 to return to the 1961-1990 average.]]
Climate is defined as the average regional or global weather over a period of 30 years or more. What happens in one year tells you nothing. It's like predicting that the cas-ino you're in is about to go out of business because you won one hand of bla-ckj-ack.
Reality check posts:
[[Well, here we are, 30 years later, bits of that sheet do fall off in the southern summer, only to be rebuilt in the southern winter,]]
Which have been rebuilt in the winter? Larsen B? Wilkins? Specifics, please.
[[ and there has been zero sea level rise in the beeches I frequent over that 30 year period of "disastrous disintegration". ]]
Well, of course not. Beeches are trees. They won't tell you the sea level rise unless their roots are actually underwater and you can mark the sea level on their trunks.
Reality check posts:
[[The only valid test of extinctions is the population per species per sq. km in say Hertfordshire at say time = 1990 ]]
In Hertfordshire??? How about in a rural area surrounding Hertfordshire and then the same area after it is developed? Don't you think that might give a better comparison?
Over human time scales, the biosphere is a zero sum game. As the human and domestic plants and animals population increases, the populations of other organisms must decrease. There really isn't any way around that. Other species are becoming extinct because we're eating their food.
Paging Jeff HArvey, Paging Jeff HArvey...
Since when has the only valid test of extinctions been per population per species per km2, given that a) we don't have every single square km mapped out in terms of biodiversity, and b) one of the predictions of climate change is population shifts due to temperature changes, something which has in fact been exhaustively observed. This ties in with the BBC article I pointed you at regarding wheat crops.
Also, wheat in Canada has a small problem given that much of Canada is ancient bedrock which is too poor to grow wheat, as opposed to the vast areas of central USA which can do so but won't be able to once it gets too hot. Like many denialists, you fail to see the woods for the trees.
As for adaptation and mitigation, perhaps I have missed the studies done showing how cheap adaptation is?
There has been an overall precipitation increase over the period 1961 to 2004, in England South west by 14.3%, apparently increases in Winter, Autumn and Spring. There has also been an increase in the number of days of rain of greater than 10mm, i.e. days of heavy concentrated rainfall.
It is also incontrovertably warmer everywhere in the country.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/about/UK_climate_trends.pdf
See Table 7 on changes in precipitation.
The long term Hadley predictions can be found here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/pubs/brochures/2005/c…
It is quite clear that these predictions are already coming to pass, and the trends will continue, barring odd things like the solar activity dropping greatly.
Guthrie, I am here!
'Reality check' must be a pseudonym for 'Utterly delusional'. The statement he/she makes is utter jibberish.
There are countless examples of well-know species - vertebrates such as birds, mammals and herpetiles for example - in which population extinctions have been documented, and in some cases entire species. Its hard for me where to know to begin dismantling RCs remark. Its so bad... well, you get the idea. I could cite a million examples where population declines and local extinctions have been well monitored. We also know from museum specimens that the genetic diversity of many endangered species was much greater in the past century, and that many species are now in the middle of 'bottlenecks' because most of the populations have been extirpated. An article by Hughes et al. (1997) in Science estimated that the planet was probably losing something like 30,000 genetically distinct populations per day at that time - out of a global total of 1-6 billion, and that figure is almost certainly higher today. RC's comment is typcial of those who say that, without 100% evidence, a problem does not exist. They've used it to downplay the deleterious effects of acid rain, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity. I hear and read comments like this crap all of the time. Arguing with these people is like trying to win a pissing match with a skunk, as a colleague in South Carolina once told me.
Another problem is that most species - perhaps 95% or even more - have never been formally described scientifically. The anti-environmentalists are ignoring the fact that we don't need to know how many grains of sand there are on a beach to realize that they erode away as the tide comes in (a metaphor for habitat loss). In other words, the real concern amongst scientists such as myself is the 'unknown factor'. Most importantly, the area-extinction models of exponential decay originally formulated by the likes of Terborgh, Soule, Wilson, and MaCarthur, have proven to be very effective tools in predicting the loss of species and populations.
Another important point is that it is established that 10-40% of well described species - vertebrates and vascular plants - are currently endangered (see current IUCN estimates). The list is also growing. Therefore, RCs comment is devoid of logic and should be ignored.
For our education it would be nice if you could pick just one species and tease out the forces leading to extinction. General statements are useful, but so are conrete examples- different people will take things on board in different ways.
"Reality check", you might take an eponymous moment and consider what Jeff Harvey has noted in response to some of the waffle that comes from your direction.
To use two turns of phrase from some of the senior contributors here, you are not even wrong, and when you spoke that last about extinction, I think that I vomited a little bit in my mouth.
I wish that I could, off the top of my head, appropriately attribute those phrases!
Oh, and to follow on from guthrie's comments about adaptation - it concerns me that the lay public will see the possibility of (narrow and contextual) 'adaptation' as a general get-out-of-jail card. Guthrie's wheat example is repeated countless times at macrocosm, mesocosm and microcosm scales, in species, in (ecological) communities, and in ecosystems, aside from the human side of the matter. I think that unless one can come up with a sound reason to the contrary, 'adaptation' should be overtly recognised as an option of last resort when attempting to deal with any recognisable climate change. Otherwise we run the risk of following in the footsteps of the magician's apprentice, and find that our simple adaptation axe-cures have generated more problems than we can ever deal with in the future.
Of course, for many who don't see the integrity of the non-human biosphere as an important consideration, I am probably just being a hysterical ecologist.
RC#"What is your evidence for more rain in winter than in summer? There is none for my county (near Bristol)."
Are you really sure about that?
Try UKCIP08
http://www.ukcip.org.uk/images/stories/08_pdfs/Trends_precip_maps.pdf
Grrrr...why didn't that work?
Underscore between 08 - pdfs, and between Trends - precip in the last link.
Oh, and "Reality check", your statement:
[my emphasis]
is, as Jeff notes, complete balderdash. Have you ever picked up an ecology journal? Go and educate yourself, and look at the offerings at your local uni library, or even at the online versions for pity's sake - exactly such monitoring is the bread-and-butter of many scientists working in this area. During my PhD fieldwork I watched and very carefully monitored the populations of four species in my taxon of study inexorably decline in numbers toward imminent extinctions. Locations, study (surface) areas, (many, over years) repeated times, and animal numbers - all as precisely measured as is possible. The same has occurred in a threatened species that I am currently employed to monitor.
It is standard ecology practice.
To repeat my earlier statement, you're not even wrong.
Hi Guthrie,
Gee, I have a search image problem, there are so many examples to choose from. Looking at recent, local (population based) extinctions, there are many examples in North America. The Loggerhead Shrike has disappeared from most of north-eastern North America since about 1960. The reason was a mystery for many years but recent evidence suggests that habitat loss in the southern US means that resident birds aggressively resist northern birds that migrate south from their breeding range and thus the northern birds are effectively 'shut out' in their wintering grounds. Similar effects are being observed for many migrants in Europe. Climate is also hugely impacting the phenology of peak food (caterpillar) abundance with the arrival of migrant passerines from central Africa, with demographic meltdown occurring for species like Pied Flycatchers in western Europe. Moreover, populations of caribou in Greenland have been shown to be very negatively affected by phenological changes in the availability of browsing vegetation as a result of climate change, again with rapid population declines being observed.
A series of recent studies have shown that there are hugely negative effects on the populations of some birds like the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo caused by very strong North Atlantic Oscillation or El Nino events, that are linked with climate change. This is a new and worrying find.
As far as total extinction of a species is concerned, the process is more difficult because scientists are very cautious with respect to offically designating a species as technically 'extinct' or 'extant' in relic populations. In North America, the human role in the extinctions of the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet and Bachman's warbler are well-documented, but other species that have undergone dramtic population declines in recent years, such as the Bachman's sparrow, Golden-cheeked warbler, Black-capped vireo, Red-cockaded woodpecker and others are of great concern. The IUCN lists over 1100 of the worlds bird species (out of just over 9,000) as being endangered, which should be of grave concern. It is likely that 90% of Hawaii's endemic birds won't last the century, and many are already gone; islands are a microcosm for the biosphere as a whole.
Remember too that I am talking here about a well-studied group, birds. What about the vast array of life in the soil? Organisms that drive many key ecological processes? Of these, we know little, except that human actions are also unraveling soil food webs by simplifying them. The same thing goes for many above-ground insects and especially pollinators, which have declined precipitously in recent years. I jsut don't have the space here (or the time, as I am very busy reveiwing grants and writing papers at the moment) to expand upon this, but good scientific information is not hard to find. The bottom line is that the trends that really matter: the vitality and health of terrestrial, freshwater and marine food webs, as well as biodiversity, are all in decline. This cannot persist if we are to have a sustainable, secure future.
Jeff Harvey, showing a far greater generosity with his time than anyone has a right to expect, has given some very good examples of the impact of climate change on the phenology on various species. And his examples are just the tip of a massive iceburg of taxa that are already, or soon will be, affected by human-induced climate change.
Several times now I have challenged the denialists that troll here to present their supportable evidence that the biosphere is not a conclusive integrator of the many parameters that constitue the thing we call climate.
The silence has been deafening.
Lance, Tim kentin, HPjnr, CP et al - if the vast majority of science is really just a bunch of greenie commo hysteria, please enlighten us as to why the biosphere is ignoring you by profoundly demonstrating otherwise. And a word of advice - there is an awful lot of uncontested, (properly) peer-reviewed and simply self-evident material in the ecological literature that you will need to dismantle before you can even begin to think that you have made any sort of a case.
Come, step to the plate. After all your bawling about inadequate models and inappropriate experimental design and researcher biases and 'warmer' misinterpretations and everything else that you might possibly dredge up, the final arbiter of any clmate impact of human activity is the biosphere. Tell us where the biosphere has it wrong.
If you can.
Er, that should be 'phenology OF'...
Bernard J: blah blah. I asked for data on before (say 1980)and after (say 2007) enumerations of species alive in 1980 and extinct in 2007, per sq. km., whether in Hertfordshire or Holland. Still waiting. Jeff H and Bernard J have yet to come up with anything statistically of any interest at all.
RC: Regarding extinctions, surely you would agree that coral bleaching resulting from increasing acidity of seawater (see, e.g., Hoegh-Guldberg, O, "Climate Change, Coral Bleaching and the Future of the World's Coral Reefs", Marine and Freshwater Research (1999) 50:839-866 (PDF)) due to increased CO2 content is a terrible consequence of global warming for marine ecosystems?
Re: RC: Regarding extinctions, surely you would agree that coral bleaching resulting from increasing acidity of seawater...
No, No Saurabh. You miss the point. There's no coral bleaching occurring around Bristol and that's the only 'world(view)' that really matters.
Saurabh: The author you cite is a notorious alarmist, nine years on from that he is still predicting 100% bleaching, without any evidence to support his 1999 predictions. Bleaching is part of the coral's life cycle in synch with the recurrent wearming and cooling of the Pacific in line with El Nino and La Nina, the very phenomenon which Hansen 2007 tipexed out of the models on which he based his letter to Rudd.
Hugh: The weather in the Bristol channel is the same as it has ever been. Try it, cold, wet and miserable for much of the time, the last two summers have been specially ordinary.
Well RC, that's a really interesting response. To be honest I was expecting you to at least look through the UKCIP08 trend information that I linked to. If you had you would have been able to come back at me by pointing out that the precipitation changes experienced around Somerset over the past 4 decades have been observable but insignificant...which is not saying that the trends observed in other parts of the UK aren't significant; but I suppose your 'only my neighbourhood matters' scale of analysis comes into effect here (remember TL would be justified in thinking that Inverness is close to Bristol on the global scale). Instead, what you appear to have done is apply a nose-out-the-door weather barometer approach. You do understand the difference between weather and climate and the fact that CC will be felt disproportionately across the regions of the world I take it?
PS. RC, I wonder if you've felt it getting warmer outside your house? That is afterall one of the 6 significant (95%) trends that the south west region has experienced (since 1904 but accelerating this 1961). Other UKCIP08 (+/-) trends (for just the south west region) are, rising minimum temps; reduced air frost days; reduced heating degree days (less central heating); increased cooling degree days (more air con); less relative humidity. No trend changes (at 95%)in windspeed (no trend given); sea-level pressure (hPa); 1mm rain days and...precipitation. Perhaps precipitation was a cherrypick by you? Afterall, warm is just good isn't it?
RC, what on hell's Earth are you babbling about with your 'extinctions per sq km' drivel? This is meaningless gobbeldegook, a childish deviation from fact. Extinction rates are not measured in such precise terms because species distributions are not spatially fixed, but fluctuate according to local conditions, especially at the edge of a species range. Its hard for me as a scientist to stoop to this basal level of intellectual discourse because population biology does not measure the demographics of species in this way.
The facts are these: certainly a small fraction of species have been formally described. This is simply because there are not enough taxonomists to study them. To give you some kind of indication how thin we are on the ground regarding taxonomy, there are actually only a few qualified taxonomists in the world trained to identify parasitoid wasps in the family Braconidae. This is in spite of the fact that the family is made up of many sub-families, tribes, genera, and tens of thousands of species, and many more that have not been formally described. A few new species of braconids are discovered in the UK every year. This in a country that is biologically very well studied; imagine the difficulty in tropical biomes. Therefore, its almost impossible to know what the effects of global change driven by the expansion of the human enterprise are on little studied but species-rich groups like the Braconidae, except that area-extinction habitat models I discussed last time have thus far proven to be very reliable indicators for the decline and extinction of well-studied groups such as birds and mammals. In fact, these models often underestimate extinctions because they exclude other processes, such as climate change, pollution, and competition from invasive species. Therefore there is no reason to believe that little-studied organisms that play a vital role in the functioning of ecosystems are also not being similarly affected as the well-studied vertebrate groups.
Like I said in my last post, RC is playing the same, tired game that the anti-environmentalists have played for a long time, saying that without 100% unequivocol proof then the problem does not exist. He/she has little formal understanding of the wide range of biotic and abiotic factors determining the range of a species both locally and globally, and because of this he/she are stuck in this childish and ever-decreasing circular argument. As I said, extintion rates are NOT measured in sq. km; the science is not this exact. But this does not downplay what we already know: that every natural system across the globe is in decline. There are alos plenty of peer-reviewed studies examining the effects of anthropogenic processes in driving the decline and extinction of species and genetically disticnt populations. We also know that up to 90% of species at the terminal end of coastal marine food chains are gone. This is not conjecture; its fact. And the consequences of undermining terrestrial and marine food webs are already being manifested.
With respect to RCs comments and similar views, Charles Darwin nailed it when he set, "Ignorance begets confidence more often than knowledge".
When Jeff steps to the plate to bat, he does so with a club rather than with a more gentle implement. It is almost cruel - almost. I think his response to "Reality check" says everything that needs to be said.
It is interesting to note though how RC decided to move the goal posts even before he received a response.
First, at #60:
then, at #74
[my emphasis]
1990, then 1980? Why not continue to, say, 1900, or 1830, and skip all of the inconvenient intervening decadal increments - if you go back far enough you might be able to eventually whittle most of the long-term studies of population dynamics from your arbitrary criteria.
And recognising that he'd left the door so far open that my 3 year old nephew could have driven a truck through it, "Reality check" changed from 'population ... now' to 'extinct in 2007', hoping evidently to stem the avalanche of examples that were going to descend upon him in response to his first attempt. Obviously, we can safely ignore any of the countless examples of decline that are not yet at the terminus of their trajectories - if they're not extinct yet they're not symptomatic of any climate change effect. At least, this so in RC's universe.
Oh, and since 'extinct' is generally accepted to imply no evidence of sighting for at least fifty years, he knows full-well that any such recent occurrences cannot be certified for decades yet.
And I am sure that 'extinction debt' and its attendant lag time is not in RC's dictionary either.
How about you stop wiggling from your original point just because you know that you're about to be hung out to dry?
Jeff H said: "A few new species of braconids are discovered in the UK every year". Well said, and no doubt many of them were in Hertfordshire.
Bernard J: stop armwaving, and show me ANY area where an inventory has been done EVER, well before 2007, and SAME area now. Even in urban areas wild life is remarkably adaptive - when I last lived near London my wife had the interesting experience of walking in broad daylight with a fox to the same greengrocer, bent on doing the same shopping (probably from the same coven that she had fed the previous evening). Anecdotal evidence aside, forget models, give me before and after data. Where I live now the local ornithologists are assiduous in doing such inventories and have found no decline over the last ten years. Without B&A inventories, JH and BJ have nothing of interest to add.
JH said "A few new species of braconids are discovered in the UK every year."
Well done, how many in Hertfordshire?
Bernard J:
Until you and Jeff come up with before inventories, whether from 1900, 1950, 1980, or 1990 is immaterial, and now 2007, you are just armwaving.
Apologies for double posting above, there was a glitch.
Moving on, John Quiggin has objected to Don Aitkin's speech last week challenging the AGW orthodoxy.
In today's The Australian, Professor Aitkin says "the earth's atmosphere may be warming but, if so, not by much and not in an alarming and unprecedented way.
"It is possible that the warming has a 'significant human influence', to use the (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's) term, and I do not dismiss the possibility.
"But there are other powerful possible causes that have nothing to do with us."
He says "an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide over the past century is agreed, some of it due to fossil fuels, cement-making and agriculture. However, normal production of CO2 is not known, and it makes up only a tiny part of the atmosphere. How does a small increase in a very small component have such a large apparent effect? The truth is that no one has yet shown that it does."
According to the professor, much of the inadequate policy-making on climate change is based on "over-certainty in the absence of convincing argument and data" and "over-reliance on computer models".
"While governments can never ignore what they see as popular feeling, good policy cannot be based on moods," he says.""
Naturally neither here nor at his own Blog does JQ even attempt a point by point refutation, because of course he cannot (beyond the armwaving he has already shown at his blog).
Aitkin is right. The problem that Hansen (the starting point of this thread) and Quiggin have is that neither has ever attempted a quantitative analysis of what a rise of temperature of 2oC over the next 100 years (the IPCC's best estimate) would actually mean at say the University of Queensland or anywhere else on the planet. Such a rise would probably mean no more than warmer nights in Brisbane of around 1.5 C and days hotter by not more than 0.5C. (That is about the actual so far since 1980). So Quiggin might have to buy a fan for warmer nights, and perhaps also an air con for the hotter days. Quelle catastrophe! At NO POINT does the IPCC even attempt to quantify the real economic costs of such temperature changes. I await JQ's estimates of such costs for UQ denizens relative to those he & Garnaut would impose on the rest of us, with compound interest.
reality check, I'm afraid you just lost the chance for anyone to treat you with niceness.
Saying
"The problem that Hansen (the starting point of this thread) and Quiggin have is that neither has ever attempted a quantitative analysis of what a rise of temperature of 2oC over the next 100 years (the IPCC's best estimate) would actually mean at say the University of Queensland or anywhere else on the planet."
Just shows you are a moron.
RC,
Like Guthrie said.
Furthermore, before you embarrass yourself any further, I suspect that you should check up on the Atlas counts of birds in Europe and North America that come out every few years, based on counts in 10 km quadrats. They show precipitous declines for many species over the past 50 years, and a singificant increas ein the number of endangered speices. In the UK, population declines for species such as the Song Thrush, Red Backed Shrike, Corn Bunting, Tree Sparrow and others since the early 1980s have been dramatic; the Shrike is now extinct in the UK as a breeding species. The butterfly counts in the Uk show very similar trends: dramatic declines for most species, except habitat generalists or nominal pest species feeding on crop plants (e.g. pierid butterflies). In the US, populations of many species of passerines are in freefall. I listed some yesterday. If you get off your butt, and do a bit of searching, you'll find plenty of information.
You clearly did not understand what I meant when I made the point about the lack of taxonomists as this applies to biodiversity loss. To reiterate, I was saying that just because we have a very poor understanding of the true level of genetic diversity on our planet does not mean that there are no consequences to the continued simplification of natural systems. Its the unknowns that are the biggest worry, because they constitute a vast black hole of knowledge about the true effects of the human assault across the biosphere. What we do know about terrestrial and aquatic systems is that they are in sharp decline. There is plenty of empirical evidence to show this, but I can see you've never read a peer-reviewed paper on the subject. Wetland loss and eutrophication, fraying and unraveling food webs, more destabilistation of ecological communities and ecosystems: its all documented.
The last points you make about climate change are also overly simplistic. For example, you ask, "How does a small increase in a very small component have such a large apparent effect?". This question also has no empirical basis to it. No understanding. Cause and effect in nature can and often are disproportionate. If I was to give you an infintisimally small drop of dioxin, in fact an amount so small in comparison with you body mass that you could hardly see it with you naked eye, it would still kill you, and very quickly. One mg of venom from the Australian Taipan would kill you very quickly too. It has long been recognized (in fact, since the 19th century) that C02 is a very potent greenhouse gas. Guthrie's point is completely valid. You are debating people here like a junior high school student.
Essentially I am wasting my breath on you, because its clear that you don't understand basic concepts. I asked what qualifications you have to make such outrageously simple points and you don't answer.
(Un)Reality check.
You say that 'the monkish Lord May' admits that there are no studies that test:
in the context of species decline/extinction (and remember, you did not specify a climate association). Whilst doing a literature search for my thesis I decided to spend just a couple of minutes to test your claim.
I chose a random database, random extinction-related keywords, and narrowed it to only declines/extinctions related to climate change, and on the first page of results I found three such studies that spanned 60 years, 40 years, and 20 years respectively. Most of the others covered 10-15 years.
Below are the abstracts for just the first three papers I found with study periods spanning over a decade. I could draw your attention to hundreds more that would make an extinction case (especially at a local/regional level) much more strongly than the 'mere' declines in the abstracts below, but I thought that I'd just stay with the randomness of the exercise. I won't cherry-pick to bolster my case - I don't need to.
As a test for decline/extinction this approach has been done ad infinitum, repeatedly and conclusively for non climate-related causes, and beyond doubt for extinction processes in train as a result of currently onbserved climate change.
You might try a semantic slip-the-noose trick, but the gist of your claim is patently garbage.
And if you still don't agree, stop asking others to do your homework for you a la David Kane and write the conclusive literature review that proves your point.
You are not even a clever troll.
----------------------
Climate-Related Change in an Intertidal Community over Short and Long Time Scales
Author(s): Raphael D. Sagarin, James P. Barry, Sarah E. Gilman and Charles H. Baxter
Source: Ecological Monographs, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Nov., 1999), pp. 465-490
Publisher: Ecological Society of America
Abstract:
Changes in the abundance of macroinvertebrate species documented in a rocky intertidal community between surveys in 1931-1933 and 1993-1996 are consistent with the predicted effects of recent climate warming. We resampled 57 0.84-m2 plots of an intertidal transect first surveyed by W. G. Hewatt at Hopkins Marine Station (HMS), Pacific Grove, California, between 1931 and 1933. Replicating precisely the location of the plots and methodology used by Hewatt, we documented changes in the abundances of 46 invertebrate species, indicating that this intertidal community changed significantly during the 60 yr between surveys. Changes in abundance were related to geographic ranges of species. Most southern species (10 of 11) increased in abundance, whereas most northern species (5 of 7) decreased. Cosmopolitan species showed no clear trend, with 12 increasing and 16 decreasing. Although Hewatt did not record algal species as thoroughly as invertebrates, we were able to document a massive decline in cover of Pelvetia compressa, a cosmopolitan fucoid alga that is typically more common in the southern part of its range. Shoreline ocean temperature, taken daily at HMS, warmed by 0.79ºC during this 60-yr period, with average summer temperatures up to 1.94ºC warmer in the 13 yr preceding our study than in the 13 yr preceding Hewatt's. The hypothesis that climatic warming drove the observed range-related community shifts is supported further by historical records and data from other investigators. Several alternative hypotheses to explain changes in the invertebrate community at HMS, including habitat changes, anthropogenic effects, indirect biological interactions, El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, and upwelling are considered to be less important than climate change. Changes in species' abundances over a short period (3 yr) were relatively small compared to large species shifts over 60 yr and were unrelated to geographic range of the species, indicating that short-term population fluctuations play a relatively minor role in the long-term community changes that we observed.
----------------------
Long-Term Contrasted Responses to Climate of Two Antarctic Seabird Species
Author(s): Stephanie Jenouvrier, Christophe Barbraud and Henri Weimerskirch
Source: Ecology, Vol. 86, No. 11 (Nov., 2005), pp. 2889-2903
Publisher: Ecological Society of America
Abstract:
We examined the population dynamics of two Antarctic seabirds and the influence of environmental variability over a 40-year period by coupling the estimation of demographic parameters, based on capture-recapture data, and modeling, using Leslie matrix population models. We demonstrated that the demographic parameters showing the greatest contribution to the variance of population growth rate were adult survival for both species. Breeding success showed the same contribution as adult survival for Emperor Penguins, whereas the proportion of breeders had the next stronger contribution for Snow Petrels. The sensitivity of population growth rate to adult survival was very high and the adult survival variability was weak for both species. Snow Petrel males survived better than females, whereas Emperor Penguin males had lower survival than females. These differences may be explained by the different investment in breeding. Emperor Penguin adult survival was negatively affected by air temperature during summer and winter for both sexes; male survival was negatively affected by sea ice concentration during summer, autumn, and winter. On the other hand, there was no effect of environmental covariates on Snow Petrel adult survival. The Emperor Penguin population has declined by 50% because of a decrease in adult survival related to a warming event during a regime shift in the late 1970s, whereas Snow Petrels showed their lowest numbers in 1976, but were able to skip reproduction. Indeed, the retrospective analysis of projection population matrix entries indicated that breeding abstention played a critical role in the population dynamics of Snow Petrels but not Emperor Penguins. Snow Petrels did not breed either when air temperature decreased during spring (probably reducing nest attendance and laying) or when sea ice decreased during autumn (reducing food availability). Emperor Penguin and Snow Petrel breeding population sizes were positively influenced by sea ice through its effect on adult survival for Emperor Penguins and on the proportion of breeders for Snow Petrels. Therefore, we hypothesize that the population sizes of the two species could be negatively affected by reduced sea ice in the context of global warming.
----------------------
Changes in an Assemblage of Temperate Reef Fishes Associated with a Climate Shift
Author(s): Sally J. Holbrook, Russell J. Schmitt and John S. Stephens, Jr.
Source: Ecological Applications, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Nov., 1997), pp. 1299-1310
Publisher: Ecological Society of America
Abstract:
Substantial changes have occurred in assemblages of nearshore reef fishes in the Southern California Bight during the past two decades. At two sites off Los Angeles, California, species richness of reef fishes fell 15-25%, and composition shifted from dominance by northern to southern species. Additionally, by 1993, 95% of the fish species had declined in abundance by an average of 69%. Concurrent declines of similar magnitude were observed for several trophic levels of the benthic ecosystem farther north at Santa Cruz Island where populations of surfperches (Pisces: Embiotocidae), the standing stock of their crustacean prey, and the biomass of understory macroalgae all declined by â¼80%. Abundances of fishes fell because declining recruitment of age-0 fish was insufficient to compensate for losses of older age classes. Annual levels of recruitment of age-0 fishes at all reefs examined fell more than one order of magnitude over two decades and was correlated among years with a broad indicator of Bight-wide productivity, the biomass of macrozooplankton in the California Current. Lower productivity of the coastal marine ecosystem, associated with a climate regime shift in 1976-1977, likely caused large, but unforeseen, impacts on population abundances and trophic structure in nearshore benthic communities.
Reality check, whose nom de plume is clearly a joke, posts:
RC, mon ami, when it comes to climatology, Aitkin doesn't know his Acheulian hand axe from a hole in the ground. The bit about CO2 at 385 parts per million by volume being too small to have an effect is especially ignorant. 0.1 ppmv of fluorine will kill you. When Aitkin says CO2 is too small to have an effect, he is simply WRONG. He doesn't have an interesting new point of view, or a brave, iconoclastic take on things, he's simply flat-out, dumb-ass, didn't-do-the-homework WRONG. Capiche?
Barton: So CO2 is chemically as poisonous as fluorine? If you read more widely you may grasp that if CO2 did not poison us like fluorine when it was at 280 ppm then you have to explain why the increase of just 103 ppm over 158 years is now so poisonous that it will kill us all and soon. At the current rate it may well be 2150 or so before it reaches 560, the IPCC's tipping point for total disaster. Not only that, your own wide ignorance is shown by your inability to discover that only part (33%) of the increase in CO2 concentration eg at Mauna Loa is from fossil fuels, as shown by the changing balance between the C12 and C13 isotopes at Mauna Loa. However your ignorance does not justify Hansen (who knows better) suppressing such data from his letter to Rudd. He wants all CO2 emissions to stop to get us back to 280, even though 67% are natural, and he blames UK, USA, Germany etc and Australia for most of the increase since 1750, so we must wear the hair shirts he demands. Hansen's use of science is as political as any politician's, as shown by he and Howard being awarded the same prize this week.
Oops: the change from 280ppm in 1750 to 383 now took 258 years, not 158. And I should make it clear that I owe the data on the breakdown of changes in atmospheric CO2 to a personal communication.
Prosenjit Ghosh has published widely using the C isotopes - in one paper (with S.K. Bhattacharya and Partha. Ghosh) he states "...the atmospheric contribution to total soil CO2 is very small because of very low concentration of CO2 in the MODERN atmosphere" (2005, p.9 my caps).
Reality check, once again failing to live up to his name, writes:
I didn't say CO2 was poisonous, RC. A wooden dagger isn't poisonous, but it can still kill you. More CO2 in the air is dangerous because it warms the ground, and altering the climate is dangerous because our agriculture and our economy are exquisitely adapted to the unusually stable climate of the last 10,000 years.
Not even close to true. What's your source for this little factoid?
Of the new CO2 entering the air, about 80% is from combustion of fossil fuels. The next largest source after that is deforestation. The next largest source after that is cement manufacture. Not one bit is "natural."
Wow, he must be really stupid. All we could do by ceasing to use any fossil fuels would only slow the warming down a bit, is that what you're saying? And Hansen knows this, but suppresses the information? What a bastard! Thank God you found out in time to alert the rest of us!
Will you do me a favor? See if you can get a copy of John T. Houghton's book, The Physics of Atmospheres (3rd edition 2002). Read through it and work all the problems. An alternative might be Grant W. Petty's A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation (2006).
If you don't want to do the math, try Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming (2003), or George S. Philander's Is the Temperature Rising? (1998).
Saurabh: The author you cite is a notorious alarmist, nine years on from that he is still predicting 100% bleaching, without any evidence to support his 1999 predictions. Bleaching is part of the coral's life cycle in synch with the recurrent wearming and cooling of the Pacific in line with El Nino and La Nina, the very phenomenon which Hansen 2007 tipexed out of the models on which he based his letter to Rudd.
RC - this is untenable. Bleaching is "part of the coral's life cycle" like starvation is part of a dog's life cycle. If bleaching is so normal, why were many very old and massive corals killed off in the El Nino event of 1998? Furthermore, if you'd read the review I cited, you'd see that there is actual evidence - namely, that the predictions of bleaching events based on sea surface temperatures have proven an accurate model. Moreover, the specific mechanism whereby temperature leads to failure of the photosynthetic system in symbiotic zooxanthellae in corals has been investigated, so I wouldn't say this constitutes "lack of evidence".
I'd like to see some cites saying this is "normal" - even the people who say that bleaching might be mitigated by adaptation say that SST is the major cause of bleaching. What, in your view, is the cause?
Re Barton Paul etc ay #91:
He quotes me "... only part (33%) of the increase in CO2 concentration eg at Mauna Loa is from fossil fuels, as shown by the changing balance between the C12 and C13 isotopes at Mauna Loa".
Barton's erudite comment: "Not even close to true. What's your source for this little factoid? Of the new CO2 entering the air, about 80% is from combustion of fossil fuels. The next largest source after that is deforestation. The next largest source after that is cement manufacture. Not one bit is 'natural.'" and proceeds to offer John Houghton as a physics teacher. Actually my sources are (1) a physicist of considerable renown who prefers to remain anon. for understandable political reasons, and (2) the very same John Houghton. Your problem is that like Stern, Garnaut, Houghton, and the IPCC you have not the foggiest concept of stock and flow analysis. Houghton actually admits (Global Warming: the Complete (sic) Briefing, very sick, 2004, p.30)(without like you showing a glimmer of understanding of the implications) that the air/sea exchange is 90 GtC p.a., so 90 GtC goes up from the oceans every year and your fossil fuels and cement production add only 6.3 GtC. So where do you get your 80%? Whether the CO2 going up every year is "old" or "new" is irrelevant in the Gospel according to St John Houghton. What is potentially interesting is that a lesser proportion of 13C relative to 12C is taken up by photosynthesis, but as fossil fuels are the result of photosynthesis, this does not progress matters very much, and Houghton certainly fails to do so. My friend however notes that fractionation of the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere is such that carbon coming from coal or oil is 1.083% C13 while carbon in the atmosphere is 1.103% C13. As a potential Nobel physicist I am sure that Barton can do the rest (the Mauna Loa data on C13 are at CDIAC).
Reality check really needs to cash his reality cheque:
For all intents and purposes, this is totally indistinguishable from "I just made this up a minute ago and attributed it to some unnamed renowned physicist".
What next? Maybe Reality check can get a PhD from an institution which is so famous that it has to remain unnamed, just like all the other PhDs coming from unnamed prestigious universities.
Reality Check posts:
Gee, mine is a direct revelation from God, equally checkable.
Of the INCREASED or EXTRA CO2 added to the climate system every year, nearly all is artificial. Yes, most of the CO2 produced every year is natural, and a hell of a lot higher fraction than 67%. But those sources are balanced by sinks, which is why the ambient level of CO2 in the atmosphere was stable at 280 ppmv for so long. We are now adding more than the sinks can handle, which is why the ambient level has gone from 280 ppmv to 385 ppmv over the last 200 years. Of the EXCESS CO2, about 80% is from fossil fuel combustion, and the rest from deforestation and cement manufacture.
The oceans give off about 90 gigatons of carbon per year in the form of carbon dioxide. They absorb about 92 gigatons of carbon in CO2 per year. The new CO2 in the air, the part over and above the natural balance, is almost entirely artificial.
It's like filling a tub to the brim. If you add just a little more, it will slop over onto the floor, even though the extra amount added is very small compared to the amount already there.
Will you for God's sake CRACK A BOOK? None of this stuff is so arcane that you can't learn it with a few hours at a library. Or just read the IPCC AR4 report; the whole thing is available on-line, as is Weart's book.
BPL:"Of the EXCESS CO2, about 80% is from fossil fuel combustion, and the rest from deforestation and cement manufacture."
How do you know? St John Houghton + IPCC say "atmospehric CO2 is well mixed". Which of the 90%+ molecular uplift from the oceans and land every year is retained up there, and which by the 57% of net uptakes of fossil fuel emissions by photoysnthesis? When you can offer named molecules now up there by age from arrival and source I will believe you. The C13s provide some help, but clearly that is beyond you. No Nobel for you just yet.
I asked you to use the changes in C12/C13, and you have failed to do so. Really, you are a waste of space like all the other respondents to my comments on this alleged "science" blog, more like Sunday School only less polite.
Re the ineffable Harvey, what is your source for stating that CO2 uptakes by oil palm are less than by native forests per ha. p.a.? If you had ever actually walked through an oil palm plantation you would be surprised by all the bio-diverse activity going on down under foot. But measurement is something beyond your capabilities.
For the second within a week, and as the sage once said, I think I vomited a little bit in my mouth.
No prizes for guessing why.
Second TIME, that is...
Reality check posts:
Attention: The radioisotope signature of fossil fuel CO2 was first detected in ambient air by Hans Suess in 1955. The depleted C14 and the C13/C12 ratio are one of the ways we know the excess CO2 is from fossil fuels. It's not from the ocean because the ocean is a net SINK for CO2 at the moment.
Stop just making stuff up and CRACK A BOOK. I gave you a huge push in the right direction and I haven't seen any sign that you've taken it seriously.
See above.
And YOU are POLITE??? Excuse me, I think I just snorted ginger ale all over my screen. RC, people treat you like you treat them. I, like a lot of people on this blog, am polite to people who are polite to me. You have not been.
"When you can offer named molecules now up there by age from arrival and source I will believe you."
Named molecules???
ONe is called bob, another Jim. How on earth do you tell them apart?
Yes, if they are different isotopes you can, but you can't track individual atoms and molecules. Chemistry is based upon them all being identical, and you'd certainly get a Nobel if you could prove otherwise. (apart from in the case of small numbers of atoms of different isotopes)
Exactly, guthrie, that is why Hansen's letetr to Rudd and attachment was so absurd, as he implied he knew which CO2 molecules came from UK etc and which not. With the annual fluxes far exceeding anthro fossil fuel emissions, he cannot know which of any particular molecules heading back to earth came from the emissions and which not. Looking at emissions only in regard to Mauna Loa increases is neat but deceptive unless as you say you do the isotopes. When that is done Hansen's simplistic approach falls apart, and the anthropogenic signature is greatly reduced, perhaps to just 37%.
RC, still oblivious to reality, posts:
No, the isotopes show that the new CO2 is mostly from burning fossil fuels. Where are you getting contrary information? Where else is the new CO2 supposed to be coming from? It's not coming from the ocean. It's not coming from the biosphere. Are evil wizards creating it with an incantation? And if, as is estimated, half of the new CO2 from burning fossil fuels isn't going into the atmosphere, where is it going? We've already accounted for the amount going into the biosphere and into the ocean. What other source is there? Volcanoes? That's trivial compared to industrial sources, by about 135 to 1. Where is it coming from, RC?