July 2013 Open thread

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At Owlmirror's suggestion, this is a new thread to cope with the flaming wrongness of this recent creationist pimple, Teno Groppi, on the Entropy and evolution thread (which is now closed, by the way). This happens, now and then: some obtuse and confident creationist, made even more stubborn by an…
This may be the last update of the non-terminal thread for a while — I'm going to get beat up by some doctors today, and there are too many steps involved in thread closure and new thread creation and template updating to hand this job off to Mary. So the ol' portcullis may stay up for a while. A…
After brutally splicing the insane Oprah thread to the perennially random thread, it is now my intent to infuse it more deeply with the crazy: Catholics and Oprah. Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahaahaaaa! Oprah vs the Catholic Church - Which is More Evil?Uploaded by wiredset. - Discover more gaming…
By the time this appears, I should be on my way home from the AACR. For some reason, the meeting this year didn't get me all fired up the way it usually does. Perhaps I'll post in more detail about why that may have been after I get home. In the meantime, here's something I've been meaning to try…

CO2 is not the main driver of our earthly climate.

Red herring. Which rather supports the observation that you don't know what you're on about. Did you learn pie-in-your-own-face clown-trolling from Karen/Mack/Sunspot?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 26 Jul 2013 #permalink

A trace gas which effects temperatures should be universally applied, otherwise it fails.

Now you've descended into incoherence, so it's more evidence you really don't know what you're on about.

I'd say "there's a thought in there somewhere, do try to get it out" but I'm not at all convinced you're actually thinking.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 26 Jul 2013 #permalink

Correct me if I'm wrong ... you are saying CO2 makes temperatures rise, but not fall?

In your own words, a sentence or two, without links.

el Gordo @ Page 13, #10: "CO2 does not cause warming."
el Gordo @ Page 15, #90: "..but we do know CO2 dropped significantly and cooled things down quite a bit."

So according to Fatboy, more CO2 does not cause warming, but a drop in CO2 "cools things down quite a bit."

Self-contradictory, much?

Self-contradictory, much?

Right after trying to claim that I was self-contradictory.

Remember, folks, with these clowns it's always projection.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 26 Jul 2013 #permalink

'Self-contradictory, much?'

Alright, not wishing to puts words into your mouth, an increase in CO2 causes global warming but global cooling is caused by natural variability.

Is this statement correct?

Is this statement correct?

Not by a long shot. The best examples are the volcano years. If you look at the years following the Pinatubo eruption, to cite the most recent relevant large eruption, the temperature dropped precipitously, by 0.5C. But it only took another couple of years for the global temperature to get back to the previous level. If you omit the Pinatubo years entirely, you wouldn't know that there'd been any drop - there's no change in the trend line.

...an increase in CO2 causes global warming but global cooling is caused by natural variability.

Is this statement correct?

No.

A) An increase in (atmospheric) CO2 causes warming, all other things being equal and on a global average, but not the same amount of warming everywhere at once.

B) A decrease in (atmospheric) CO2 causes cooling, all other things being equal and on a global average, but not the same amount of cooling everywhere at once. (This is necessary to explain the paleoclimatic observations. Over very very long time periods after CO2 spikes, natural processes remove CO2 from the atmosphere which slowly slowly cools the planet down, all other things being equal.)

The "all other things being equal" part is very important. All forms of natural variability violate this condition, as do all sorts of other things humans are doing (many of them pointed out above).

And that means the changes due to CO2 can be temporarily overwhelmed by other forces. And that has important consequences, such as:

1) If you're only considering surface (or atmospheric) temperatures as your measure of "global cooling or warming" then you have to look at the measurements over a long enough time period before you can be confident of seeing the effects of the CO2 forcing changes dominating the sum of all the other effects. Alternatively you have to use more sophisticated methods to attribute observed temperature changes to different forces. (But in order to do that, you either have to do real scientific work or you have to rely on scientific work that you are rejecting...)

2) You can't look at a shorter time period and validly conclude "CO2 went up/down and temperatures went down/up, therefore it has no effect". That would be as silly as looking at the speedometer records of a car and concluding "the accelerator has no effect" because you saw a period where the accelerator was depressed further as the car reached the bottom of a steep hill, but the car went slower than it had been going on the flat. You have to account for the other acting forces as well.

3) If you're only considering atmospheric temperatures as your measure of global warming/cooling, then you can't expect a climate forced by increasing amounts of CO2 to have every year warmer than the previous one. Due to all the other forces, you expect periods - perhaps quite long periods in human terms - where there's not much obvious warming because the sum of the other forces are temporarily pushing against the warming force of CO2.

And quite apart from all of this, changes in CO2 are known to cause radiation imbalances based on fairly simple physics, simple experiments and top of atmosphere satellite readings, so arguments against the climate impacts of CO2 based only on surface temperatures are insufficient because they are refuted by other evidence showing that CO2 definitely affects the earth's radiation balance. Even during periods where the surface temperature changes aren't very obvious, the energy imbalance remains.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 27 Jul 2013 #permalink

Karen, as usual, is intellectually dishonest. Read the entire paper she cut and pasted the abstract from. Nowhere does it dispute AGW. And there's even this in the discussion:

"Overall, our results indicate that the extreme magnitude of the March 2012 temperature anomalies can be largely explained by natural variability, with an additional contribution from a long-term warming trend of approximately 1o C that is likely due mostly to human influences".

Repeat: "that is most likely due to human influences..."

Like other deniers, Karen is a master cherry-picker, who also doesn't understand most of the science she cites.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 27 Jul 2013 #permalink

'Over very very long time periods after CO2 spikes, natural processes remove CO2 from the atmosphere which slowly slowly cools the planet down, all other things being equal.)'

Hmmmm....

There are certainly way better ways to invest time in a constructive manner than to ‘debate’ some of the denier numbskulls who write into Deltoid.

Yes, people like the grossly ignorant Rednose who has no idea how heat gets into oceans yet stupidly and arrogantly will "debate" climate science.

I will check out the link you supplied.

Thank you. It would be great if you became involved ... perhaps you could even convince others here to do so.

For Craig's sake, its been flat for more than a decade.

Dr. James Hansen – NASA GISS – 15 January 2013

“The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.”

Dr. Virginie Guemas – Nature Climate Change – 7 April 2013

“…Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period…”

Dr. Hans von Storch – Spiegel – 20 June 2013

“…the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero….If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models….”

Professor Masahiro Watanabe – Geophysical Research Letters – 28 June 2013

“The weakening of k commonly found in GCMs seems to be an inevitable response of the climate system to global warming, suggesting the recovery from hiatus in coming decades.”

Professor Rowan Sutton – Independent – 22 July 2013

“Some people call it a slow-down, some call it a hiatus, some people call it a pause. The global average surface temperature has not increased substantially over the last 10 to 15 years.”

As I pointed out above, if you're only going to look at atmospheric temperatures you need to look at long enough time periods if you want to discern the influence of an ongoing forcing - whether it be CO2 or something else.

A decade certainly isn't long enough - unless you can remove enough of the other influences from the observations to let more of the signal emerge, perhaps like this analysis. Does the resulting graph look "flat" to you? (I guess it might - wasn't it you that posted the 100+ year temperature record and claimed it "looked flat", to much laughter from other readers?)

This also demonstrates that von Storch's logic is fallacious - or at very least leaves out important caveats that would undermine his conclusion. Bonus points for pointing out his cherry-pick. (Hint: what was special about the weather 15 years ago?)

von Storch gets a small amount of credit for apparently using trends rather than endpoint values, but that doesn't rescue his fallacy (see link above). He's a smart bloke - he really should be able to comprehend that analysis, and I'd bet good money he knows that (a) modeling short term variability (over several years) is a lot harder than modeling climate over appropriate timescales (~20+ years) and (b) models aren't great at modeling short term variability yet, but (c) that doesn't invalidate their usefulness over climate timescales.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 27 Jul 2013 #permalink

Loth, just to pick up one point: "(b) models aren’t great at modeling short term variability".

More correctly, I think that should read "model ensembles aren't that great at modeling short term variability".

Individual model runs often show variability equal to or exceeding that actually observed in nature, but the results of models are normally published in terms of the average of several runs (can be thousands, depending on the model). Obviously, the average output is going to have lower variability that the output of each run. Average anything is not very good at capturing sample variation.

Fatcat and friends choose to pretend they don't know this. Or they really are that dumb. I've lost interest in working out which it is.

chek @ #84 page 15

Although I know the south coast of Cornwall far better (St Austell/Fowey area)...

You may recognise this scene then Panorama from above Cardinham looking towards the St Austell workings. Taken about ten years ago using a 6 Megapixel DSLR and comprised of about seven shots spliced together.

Cardinham has some resonance for me having been put out there with the other New Entries to 'tiff training courses in the early weeks of 1963 (I don't know if you are old enough to remember the winter of 62-63).

There was a proving ground of old structures used as an assault course - climbing and jumping off walls with a pack full of bricks and crawling through flooded tunnels - that sort of thing. The Pièce de résistance was a 'Death Slide' created by placing a pylon on top of a china clay spoil heap and rigging a cable from that across the deep flooded pit to an opposite bank.

We didn't use fancy contraptions of a wheeled carriage with a suspended strop but our waist webbing belts looped over, halves of brass buckle connected and away we went clinging on for dear life.

In reterospect, that, and the ten tours route moor walk we did during that period were probably designed to find out early those unlikely to stay the course.

Whilst at training camp, near Torpoint, early morning rising at 06:15 or 06:30 (depending on another routine) we were run down to the coast from camp, rigged cutters or whalers and the engaged in rowing exercises. On returning boats to shore and securing same we then ran back to camp, about 5 circuits of the gym followed by shower and change then into breakfast.

Oh. Dear. More misunderstanding, or is it more non-understanding.

Is this statement correct?

No.

Cooling can be caused by these factors, not necessarily an exhaustive list,

Draw down of CO2 either due to post orogenic erosion (Urey) or changes in land usage resulting in increased forest area, particularly at lower altitudes. Ruddiman has made a case for such agrarian age draw down following epidemics of plague.

Changes in solar output, currently the sun's output is low vis a vis a few decades back.

Changes in orbital factors, tilt, precession and obliquity. Currently all these cycles are near their minimum for warming effect. Check out James Croll for a less obvious intro' to this topic. Therefore the sun is NOT causing the increase in heat of Earth's systems.

Volcanism and large scale fires can put particulate matter into the atmosphere. Indeed these mechanisms have been recognised as having a suppression effect on rising temperatures, but not halted same. One unfortunate aspect of large scale boreal and tundra fires is that large quantities of dark matter is descending on Greenland etc, causing the surface to warm more rapidly with an acceleration in melt, above that already being caused by rising temperatures and reducing altitude of the surface layers.

At the present, despite claims that CO2 in the atmosphere is a trace gas, GHGs are in charge of the climate, had it not been this way then it is most likely that we would have slipped into another ice age for by most metrics one is overdue. Further more it is most unlikely, that with BAU and the build up of heat in the oceans that another ice age will come upon us any time soon.

This is not all from models (which BTW are based upon physics and the equations that underpin it) but from physics, observation and measurement.

Well, that was up to Josh's usual hilarious standard.

As was the drivel below it. Next.

More correctly, I think that should read “model ensembles aren’t that great at modeling short term variability”.

Yep, I didn't state that very well. I wasn't talking about reproducing the amount of variability we observe, but rather reproducing the actual short term (e.g. handful of years) trajectory that the climate system takes . I was trying to point out that if you expect a model to reliably reproduce the behaviour over short time scales then your expectations are (currently) unrealistic, and if you claim the models don't provide some insight into longer term patterns - climate - on that basis then you're indulging in a fallacy.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 27 Jul 2013 #permalink

@ #17 Olaus

Will you please read the words instead of repeating yourself?

On the previous page, in response to your comment re Mike Hulme (sp x 2 now - the dangers of cut'n'paste moronic spamming):

@74 OP

Two things.

First, irrespective of quibbles over a per cent or two, there is a strong scientific consensus over AGW. No amount of argument over methodology changes this.

Second, it is a distraction. It’s something to argue about endlessly that doesn’t make a whit of difference to the actual problem or the physics and paleoclimate behaviour that demonstrate that there *is* an actual problem.

In summary, Mike Hulme isn’t saying that radiative physics is falsified and thus no CO2-forced warming.

Now bugger off.

@ el gordo, incessantly, above since last week.

Try to understand the basics:

The troposphere ≠ the climate system.

You are ignoring the increase in ocean heat content in the 0 - 2000m layer, which continues apace.

The very real forcing from very real anthropogenic CO2 continues to cause an energetic imbalance at the top of the atmosphere and energy continues to accumulate in the climate system exactly as expected.

Short-term variability in the rate of ocean heat uptake modulates the rate of surface temperature increase.

This is what we've seen since ~2001. AGW is not "falsified". The laws of physics continue to operate as they have always done and always will. Sensitivity to 2xCO2 is still most likely to fall in the range ~2.5C - 3C.

Please RTFLs.

Thank you.

Sodding HTML.

* * *

@ el gordo, incessantly, above since last week.

Try to understand the basics:

The troposphere ≠ the climate system.

You are ignoring the increase in ocean heat content in the 0 – 2000m layer, which continues apace.

The very real forcing from very real anthropogenic CO2 continues to cause an energetic imbalance at the top of the atmosphere and energy continues to accumulate in the climate system exactly as expected.

Short-term variability in the rate of ocean heat uptake modulates the rate of surface temperature increase.

This is what we’ve seen since ~2001. AGW is not “falsified”. The laws of physics continue to operate as they have always done and always will. Sensitivity to 2xCO2 is still most likely to fall in the range ~2.5C – 3C.

Please RTFLs.

Thank you.

Oops! That should have been Ten Tors in my #15. Doh!

Jeff, that Quintero and Wiens paper is both shocking and unsurprising. The difference between real and required rates of evolution is stark:

We find that the rate of change observed among species is typically ~10 000–100 000 times slower than the expected rate of change from 2000 to 2100.

I actually discussed this exact subject with some colleagues about 5 or 6 years ago, and I suggested precisely these orders of magnitude. Some agreed, and some thought that I was being too pesimistic. I wish now that I'd put money on it.

If the methodology is demonstrated to be robust (and I see no immediate indication of discordance with other lines of evidence) then ecoclimatologically we're still in the pre-ignition phase of a wildfire-magnitude conflagration of extinction.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 27 Jul 2013 #permalink

And so Betty-John et al. can pretend that because the effects of CC are *only just beginning* to be felt, everything's going to be okay.

Which is, of course, physics denial.

Yes, Bernard, its something that ecologists and evolutionary biologists have been pondering with respect to the combined effects of AGW and other anthropogenic stresses on complex adaptive systems. What I have been saying here over and over and over again is that the current rates of change, when placed against natural rates, is many more times rapid in terms of scale. Certainly species can and do adapt to changes of a certain magnitude, but the scenario unfolding in front of our eyes now is largely unprecedented in many millions of years at the very least. Species with longer generation times are lower fecundities are certainly much less able to adaptively respond to changes of the current magnitude. There will just not be enough random mutations and natural selection to respond to AGW and a suite of other human-induced changes across the biosphere. Its an unfolding catastrophe, but one that should be clearly able to predict. I have posted a number of studies in the literature reporting the negative effects of regional and local warming on species and species-interactions. The real problem here is that the deniers are not interested in science that they clearly do not understand. They are stuck in reverse with their limited understanding of nature and the environment.

The new study is published in Ecology Letters, a journal just barely below the likes of Science and Nature. I have reviewed a number of papers for this journal (not this one, though) and its findings are indeed profoundly troubling. We are already well into the 6th great extinction event. and it will accelerate. The ultimate effects of this huge loss of species and genetically distinct populations on the stability and resilience of natural systems is hard to gauge, although it will not be positive for humanity, since as well well know by now our species critically depends on a range of conditions ('ecosystem services') that emerge from natural systems over variable spatial and temporal scales. These services permit humans to exist and persist (Levin, 1999) and yet we seem intent on hammering away at nature with the current slash-and-burn approach to the biosphere.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 27 Jul 2013 #permalink

'Does the resulting graph look “flat” to you? (I guess it might – wasn’t it you that posted the 100+ year temperature record and claimed it “looked flat”, to much laughter from other readers?)'

No, you must be confusing me with someone else. I've maintained that it was warm last century and our star was probably responsible.

el gordo

I have little confidence in the theory that the missing heat is hiding in the oceans and one day it will return to cause havoc.

You have nothing but an unsupported *opinion*. This is of course scientifically weightless. Get over yourself and look at the data and think.

SST indicate that its flat.

Basic error. SST ≠ OHC.

Being stridently wrong and ill-informed isn't the same as being sceptical.

No, you must be confusing me with someone else. I’ve maintained that it was warm last century and our star was probably responsible.

No. Latter C20th warming cannot be attributed to solar variability.

See for yourself.

'It's the Sun' is frickin' boring. No, it ain't. Next.

Incidentally, Web of Trust goes into full alert over that Amazonaws/Moyhu link. I assume that's all from people unable to distinguish a host cloud from some of the content dumped on it!

A recent paper by Lassen and Thejll shows a connection between solar activity and sea ice in the Arctic.

'...a persistent series of solar influenced millennial-scale variations, which include the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, reflect a baseline of the centennial-scale cycles.

'The ’low frequency oscillation’ that dominated the ice export through the Fram Strait as well as the extension of the sea-ice in the Greenland Sea and Davis Strait in the twentieth century may therefore be regarded as part of a pattern that has existed through at least four centuries.

'The pattern is a natural feature, related to varying solar activity. The considerations of the impact of natural sources of variability on arctic ice extent are of relevance for concerns that the current withdrawal of ice may entirely be due to human activity. Apparently, a considerable fraction of the current withdrawal could be a natural occurrence.'

It'd be interesting to know the provenence of how a 2005 report which conveniently has absolutely nothing whatsoever to say about the current collapse of Arctic sea ice suddenly becomes the darling of the abjectly fuckwitted and terminally stupid like El Fatfuckhead here.

It’d be interesting to know the provenence of how a 2005 report which conveniently has absolutely nothing whatsoever to say about the current collapse of Arctic sea ice suddenly becomes the darling of the abjectly fuckwitted and terminally stupid like El Fatfuckhead here.

Because it's been recently touted in the denialosphere by all the usual suspects. Also note that it's puffed up as "a paper" when as far as I can see it's not published in any peer reviewed journal, and the GWPF even erroneously touts it as "recent" (unlike many of the others), suggesting that might be where el gordo got it from. (Scientific standards? Accurate dates? Who needs them when we need to find something that says what we want said?)

For giggles, look it up in Google Scholar to see how many citations it has. One of them is a textbook where it's cited for the reconstruction of historical ice conditions off Iceland. The other is a study of a specific polynya.

Based on previous behaviour, el gordo doesn't actually understand the paper nor how well it supports the extracts he quotes, let alone how much of an impact it's had on the climate science - he just cuts and pastes it because it comes from his trusted sources and panders to his preconceptions. (These sources are presumably the same ones who lied to him about the lake at the North Pole - but they're still trusted because they're saying what he wants to hear, right?)

Some brief discussion in comments here and at #54 and #55, for those so inclined. Warning for el gordo: contains some nuance and logic which might mean re-evaluating the claims made in that quote, and calls the paper out for apparently attempting to manufacture doubt.

Or we could simply temporarily accept the paper's overhyped claims at face value for the sake of argument, and note that the quote favoured of el gordo appears to imply that much of the recent Arctic ice decline is not due to natural causes, so is down to anthropogenic influences...which isn't that far from mainstream scientific understanding. Welcome, el gordo!

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 27 Jul 2013 #permalink

ANDREW BOLT: 'About climate change - well, let’s go into it. What I want to know is-'

KEVIN RUDD: 'I accept the science. It’s happening. Therefore we’re going to do something about it.'

guffaw ... the PM is brain dead, just like the clowns around here.

...the PM is brain dead, just like the clowns around here.

...says the guy who told us there was no pond at the North Pole this year.

Teh Irony.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

'…says the guy who told us there was no pond at the North Pole this year.'

I admitted my error and thanked my associates here for setting me straight.

The judgement of idiots

Imagine having a PM who accepts what the BoM and CSIRO are telling him, rather than what the bloviating, mouthbreathing, scarred-knuckle talkback rabble want him to believe!

Yeah, just imagine that!

Fuckwit. Sorry, that won't do - make that 'pointless fuckwit'.

Do you ever get sick of yourself? Everyone else does...

Seriously, I am so sick of you morons.

Here's a short IQ test for you -

It is / is not part of the job description of the Australian Prime Minister to take into account what the CSIRO and BoM are telling him or her, and to act accordingly.

What you have to do, muppet, is to strike out whichever word / phrase does not apply in the italicised section (that's this bit.)

It's because the continent is veritable choked by blowhard pontifical cornucopian pseudo-conservative jackasses that we're in significant danger of gaining a PM who's too fucking thick to pass the above test, too. One of your own, in other words. Much joy may we all have of him...

The thing is, Abbott maybe just as thick. In which case I'll be voting informal...

A pox on both yer 'ouses

Oh go back to your gruntback radio, Fatty.

The thing is, Abbott maybe just as thick.

Abbott is thick - or is pretending to be. Rudd isn't thick in the first place (despite the pronouncements to that effect by various people ill-equipped to make that judgement, but nevertheless firmly convinced of their capacity to do so).

This observation about Abott vs Rudd applies not only to climate science, but to a whole bunch of other areas - such as economics, which Abbott studied at tertiary level - where Abbott has said a lot of truly stupid things, hoping to (and generally succeeding at) misleading the gullible, the uninformed and the less intellectually equipped amongst us.

(And FWIW neither Rudd nor Abbott is "my house".)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

el gordo: easy for you to prove that it's the sun wot dunnit... show a similar rise in surface temperatures on all the bodies in the Solar System. Oh but wait... there's hasn't been, so sorry you lose, thanks for playing.

By Turboblocke (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

el gordo #47

That link debunks the solar claim. Perhaps you should actually read it now.

el gordo
July 27, 2013

‘You really don’t know what you’re on about, do you Fatso.’

CO2 is not the main driver of our earthly climate.

When CO2 is suddenly increased from 280ppm to 400ppm, then *yes*, CO2 is right now the main driver for climate change.

el gordo
July 27, 2013

My money is on that bright orb which passes over my place everyday, probably has a bigger impact than the warmists are prepared to admit.

The impact of that bright orb can be measured.
It has been measured.
And guess what? It hasn't changed in any way that explains the current phase of global warming - global warming that is perfectly well explained by the sudden increase in CO2, by the way.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

'That link debunks the solar claim. Perhaps you should actually read it now.'

That's why I put it up, its the warmist bible....praise the dog.

'When CO2 is suddenly increased from 280ppm to 400ppm, then *yes*, CO2 is right now the main driver for climate change.'

The theory may have got some traction 16 years ago, but with temperatures flat and the high priests of the Klimatariat admitting they have a problem, perhaps you should consider your future.

'And guess what?'

Ha ha, that's funny, you sound just like our supreme leader, who happens to be brain dead. Coincidence? I think not.

You were on a good thing last century, with temperatures rising in tandem with increasing CO2, but now its a completely different ball game.

Obviously if politicians continue to talk out of their arses you remain on safe ground, but in a couple of years the Chinese and Russian scientists say there will be a sharp cooling and AGW will be doomed.

I can wait for that.

el gordo

That’s why I put it up, its the warmist bible….praise the dog.

Data denial.

The theory may have got some traction 16 years ago, but with temperatures flat and the high priests of the Klimatariat admitting they have a problem

Repeated msrepresentation. Read the words.

Climate basics #1:

The troposphere ≠ the climate system.

You cannot argue this topic until you understand the basics. Repeating debunked crap is not debate. Arguing from ignorance and by assertion are logical fallacies. At present, you aren't saying anything at all.

but in a couple of years the Chinese and Russian scientists say there will be a sharp cooling and AGW will be doomed.

Ideologues pontificating outside their fields aside, which Russian and Chinese climate scientists are making these claims?

To the regulars here: is there any advantage to hoovering up the most cretinous morons available that I may not be aware of? Are the Kochs planning to use them as cannon fodder or landmine clearance or what?

Lionel @ #15

Is that from a hill or a cab to somewhere? As I recall the road is wooded and I can't place the perspective. Looks bloody gorgeous though - I'd stand you a pint or three of Cornish for that view alone.

Having said that, on the far side of that China clay mountain it looks barren as the Moon.

chek #56

is there any advantage to hoovering up the most cretinous morons available that I may not be aware of?

Never give a sucker an even break ;-)

Odd about all that Arctic melt acceleration during this solar minimum...

* * *

Ideologues pontificating outside their fields aside, which Russian and Chinese climate scientists are making these claims?

And what about #48?

"

el gordo

Stop quoting irrelevant studies in an attempt to dodge the facts.

I repeat: Latter C20th warming cannot be attributed to solar variability.

I demonstrate this from the data. Now stop wittering and concede the point."

You were wrong. Please concede the point.

Zhen-Shan, L. and Xian, S. 2007. Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 95: 115-121.

There is a lag BBD.

Zhen-Shan and Xian are from the genus "quasi-cycle finders". Given a data set with a bit of noise you can generally find a few of these, even if the data set is artificial and you know it wasn't composed from "quasi-periodic" cycles because you constructed it yourself.

They find four quasi-cyclic components (each with wildly varying amplitude on each "cycle") plus a "trend" (not linear). (See their Fig. 1. in the PDF here). One of the components they "find" has a period of about 60 years in a data set that is 121 years long! Another is "6-8 years" long, another is "3-4 years" long, and the fourth is "18-22 years" long. One of the components in Fig. 1 even skips an entire quasi-cycle. Furthermore, they do NOT find a quasi-cycle corresponding to the solar cycle of approximately 11 years - hmmmmmmmmm, I thought climate scientists said the solar cycle does have an impact?

If alarm bells weren't going off in your head already, they should be. They predict that these quasi-cycles will continue despite (a) having no underlying explanatory mechanism and (b) there being no obvious way to extrapolate the curves describing the quasi-cycles they "found" given that they vary in amplitude and period so much (and optionally skip the odd "cycle" altogether).

(And it's arguably worse than that - they appear to be trying to find out which of the quasi-cycles are most affected by CO2, and they use CO2 concentrations rather than the CO2 forcing which is logarithmic in CO2 concentrations. They clearly don't even know basic climate science.)

This quick review points out attributes that suggest that the journal that published it has low standards and suggested it was most likely a crap paper - and amusingly, since it's been so beloved of "cooling is coming!" skeptics, all of their graphs stop at the year 2002 so they weren't willing to show any predictions or even attach a range of outcomes! Nevertheless, el gordo is willing to hang his hat on their words...

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

And speaking of curve-fitting exercises, one would be tempted to wonder what happens if one projects Zhen-Shan and Xian's quasi-cycles backwards (similar to what is done here in Fig. 1). But conveniently, one can't do that because they're quasi-periodic and their amplitude is all over the place...

El gordo, Bernard J has been looking for a denialist to bet against for quite some time. Perhaps you should take him up on his offer? I seem to recall that he was offering quite generous odds. Heck, in your case I'm tempted to get in on the action myself, seeing you put your faith in quasi-cycles with no identified mechanism rather than (say) Foster and Rahmstorf who removed most of the temperature impacts from some known causes.

Interestingly, this comment in a Deltoid post that briefly touches on this paper points out that Bob Carter wouldn't take a bet on cooling with odds that were in his favour if - as according to Bob Carter - temperature evolves as a random walk. It's actually quite difficult to find a climate contrarian who will put their money where their mouth is, even if the odds are tilted in their favour. But they're quite prepared to put the entire globe where their mouth is...

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

BTW, el gordo's link to a Russian news article says there are 11, 90 and 200 year solar cycles. (No references to papers though - perhaps too much to ask for a very light "news" piece.) His link to the Chinese scientists' paper didn't find any 11 year cycles (and their data set was too short to find the others).

Yet he apparently believes both of them...

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

He also believs this, I guess:

The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%.

It's pretty good that these Russians have discovered the cause of the massive ice-age the Earth enters every 200 years, don't you think?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

Thanks for that critique Loth, I'm taking it onboard.

Craig its less a 'massive ice age' and more a mini ice age which, all things being equal, should begin soon.

'The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%.'

The mechanism is not well understood, but they are aware that the sea ice around Iceland lingers in times when the solar cycle length is longer.

"a re-run of the Dalton"

El Gordo is such a whizz at all this that he doesn't need to call it "the Dalton Minimum".

And he is valiantly kidding himself that variations in sunspot activity will somehow magic-away the energy imbalance caused by the CO2-enhanced greenhouse effect.

Craig its less a ‘massive ice age’ and more a mini ice age which, all things being equal, should begin soon.

Interesting that El Gordo rejects physics and observations, but chooses to believe in a model that projects into the future a pattern of natural variation for which there is no evidence in the past.
If your buddy "Dalton" is a pattern, where is that pattern? Nobody else can see it.

The mechanism is not well understood, but they are aware that the sea ice around Iceland lingers in times when the solar cycle length is longer.

You will need to correct the above statement: the "mechanism" is entirely un-posited, owing to the fact that this weak correlation has not been translated through such positing into any suggested mechanism explaining any possible causation.

Interesting that El Gordo rejects the plain and factual physics explaining the observed global warming caused by CO2 increase in the atmosphere, and yet he is perfectly willing to imagine a non-existent mechanism behind something he read on the crank-blog run by a uni-dropout ex-weatherman.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

Oh, and why El Gordo is dwelling on an 8-year-old meteorological report that has never been followed-up by any kind of published research owing to its rapid supercision by events involving the mass-melting of most of the Arctic sea ice is still a mystery.

I guess, like fundamentalists who see the face of Jesus in their piece of toast, El Gordo thinks he can see evidence of the fairy-tale he believes in, and he desperately clings to any faint wisps of pseudo-substance that he imagines support this pathetic and addle-brained belief.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

The impact factor of the journal Fatty cites (by the Chinese authors) is 1.327 - very low indeed for a journal in the field of climate science and atmospheric physics. Its hardly surprising, then, that their paper ends up there.

Note how deniers promote any studies - no matter how shoddy - that bolster their world views, and denigrate other research that appears in the most rigid journals that doesn't. They've been doing this for years.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 28 Jul 2013 #permalink

'chooses to believe in a model that projects into the future'

The AGW models have proved to be faulty.

'willing to imagine a non-existent mechanism'

Yes...

'the most rigid journals' are all pro AGW and suffer from groupthink. That's why we have post normal science on the blogosphere, peer review CC science has lost its integrity.

'integrity'? from the likes of you? that's another irony meter exploded, then...

‘"The most rigid journals’ are all pro AGW and suffer from groupthink. That’s why we have post normal science on the blogosphere, peer review CC science has lost its integrity".

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! I have never read such bullshit in my entire life. Virtually all of these journals do not have editorial or institutional bias because they depend on peer-review. The vast majority of tenured scientists agree that humans are the primary agent responsible for the clear recent rapid warming trend, based on the empirical data.

Probelm is, fatty, that the clowns you side with are not scientists for the most part, but idealogues. The sources you glean for most of your information have not got a shred of scientific integrity (in fact, most of them are set up by non-scientists). Their science is hardly 'normal'; its more of a kindergarten variety.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

el gordo

There is a lag BBD.

So explain the physical mechanism to me.

OHC is rising now. How does TSI from several decades ago heat the ocean now?

How does your "lag" actually work?

The mechanism is not well understood, but they are aware that the sea ice around Iceland lingers in times when the solar cycle length is longer.

- Highly speculative

- Even if true (which I doubt, btw) you are confusing a regional NH high-latitude effect with global climate change

Yet another basic failure of comprehension of the mechanisms of physical climatology.

Craig its less a ‘massive ice age’ and more a mini ice age which, all things being equal, should begin soon.

And what if we attempt to quantify the effects of a Dalton-type solar minimum on global climate? Has anyone done so?

Why yes, they have. See Feulner & Rahmstorf (2010):

The current exceptionally long minimum of solar activity has led to the suggestion that the Sun might experience a new grand minimum in the next decades, a prolonged period of low activity similar to the Maunder minimum in the late 17th century. The Maunder minimum is connected to the Little Ice Age, a time of markedly lower temperatures, in particular in the Northern hemisphere. Here we use a coupled climate model to explore the effect of a 21st-century grand minimum on future global temperatures, finding a moderate temperature offset of no more than −0.3°C in the year 2100 relative to a scenario with solar activity similar to recent decades. This temperature decrease is much smaller than the warming expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century.

You don't understand the relative magnitude of the changes in forcing. TSI change - even entering a minimum - is much, much smaller than the increasing forcing from GHGs.

Another failure to grasp the basics of physical climatology.

You are hopeless, you know.

'The vast majority of tenured scientists agree that humans are the primary agent responsible for the clear recent rapid warming trend, based on the empirical data.'

Last I heard 97% of scientists in the world believe in AGW.

'you are confusing a regional NH high-latitude effect with global climate change'

The LIA came on the heels of the MWP, when large icebergs began appearing in the north Atlantic around 1250 AD. In order for that to happen there would have needed to be a build up in mass balance during the earlier decades.

Just sayin'

'You are hopeless, you know.'

Its hubris to imagine humanity can change global climate.

'Ice in the ocean around Iceland has mostly arrived from afar.

'It comes here from the Denmark strait, which connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, between Iceland and Greenland. Sometimes the ice comes directly from north to the northeast corner of Iceland, but all the ice comes from the same source: the East-Greenland current which flows from the Arctic Ocean due south along the east coast of Greenland, passing northwest Iceland.

'This great cold current transports a lot of ice southwards, both sea ice which is formed in sea water and ice bergs which break off from the glacier of Greenland.'

Icelandic Met

What a voluble moron you are!

Empty vessels...

Its hubris to imagine humanity can change global climate.

No, it's hubris to assert against evidence that humanity can not.

Remember folks, it's always projection.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

This lag thing is hilarious...

How long does it take a hemisphere to cool on the annual seasonal tilt away from the sun?

And these clowns think that the planet is warming merely from solar activity from decades ago.

Imbeciles.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

el gordo

You are starting to fuck me off. First, although I demonstrated to you that TSI cannot be responsible for warming in the second half of the C20th you have still not admitted that you were wrong on this point, despite being asked twice.

So admit your error, now, please.

Second, you have simply skipped a very important follow-up question which you now oblige me to repeat:

You claim - wrongly that there is a lag.

So explain the physical mechanism to me.

OHC is rising *now*. How does TSI from several decades ago heat the ocean *now*?

How does your “lag” actually work?

Answers please.

# 84

You are confusing regional high latitude NH with global climate change and your comment does nothing to address - let alone dispel - this confusion.

el gordo

Once again, you have produced a reference which undermines your own position (#88):

Thus in order to explain a long-term cooling like the LIA, the volcanic eruptions must trigger certain feedback effects in order to extend their impact on the climate. Miller et al. ran transient climate model simulations and believe they have identified some of these possible feedbacks.

First, the reduced incoming solar radiation due to the volcanic aerosols blocking sunlight allowed Arctic ice to expand. The Arctic ice expansion increases the overall reflectivity (albedo) of the Earth, causing it to cool further. The increase in Arctic sea ice in the north Atlantic Ocean also bring more cold and fresh water to the region, impacting the ocean circulation.

If the LIA was triggered by positive ice-albedo feedback to negative aerosol forcing then what of today?

Arctic ice and indeed the cryosphere as a whole is *shrinking rapidly* despite the decrease in solar output.

How can a renewed NH cooling begin now, given these conditions? Please explain the physical mechanism with reference to Miller et al. - your own link.

This I have to see.

But first - #92.

Bernard J #91

And these clowns think that the planet is warming merely from solar activity from decades ago.

Imbeciles.

Data deniers. One only has to look.

He won't explain his "lag" because there is no such thing - it's a term bandied about by the crank ignoramuses and which has no meaning in the context in which they use it.

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

Its hubris to imagine humanity can change global climate.

Ok, gordo, you are now on the same level as Rush Limbaugh. Time to pack it in, sweetheart.

Its hubris to imagine humanity can change global climate.

Physics denial.

Are you a religious man, el gordo?

Hi Stu, it seems like years.

Physics denial.

These clowns don't care because it means nothing to them. Having a robust science based understanding of the world is only of any importance for those with a rational disposition who understand the necessity of a consistent worldview.

In the case of the clownshoe battalion, it's merely any semi-plausible sounding old nonsense acting as a fig leaf for the red in tooth and claw corporate agenda they serve, whether as useful idiots or otherwise.

Any old far-fetched possibility or 'post-normal' bollocks that doesn't interfere with the fossil fuel industry is infinitely preferable, no matter how much of an obvious fantasy it may be, to any actual science that shows that BAU can no longer continue unregulated.

Cook and Lewandowsky have embarked on an exploration of a madness beyond what they may have anticipated at the beginning.

'Are you a religious man, el gordo?'

You are the one with the AGW faith and even when your high priests announce that warming has stopped for some inexplicable reason, you lot would rather ignore reality and carry on as if nothing has changed.

If it fails to warm within five years your religion is dead meat.

'You are starting to fuck me off.'

Give up the turps and you will see things in a more rational light.

If it fails to warm within five years your religion is dead meat.

You have no idea what you're up against. El Fathead.

19th century scientists said that if we burnt a lot of fossil fuels we would increase the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere. We burnt a lot of fossil fuels and 20th century scientists found that CO2 levels in the atmosphere were increasing.

19th century scientists said that if atmospheric CO2 levels increased the global temperature would rise. Atmospheric CO2 levels increased and 20th century scientists found that the global temperature was rising.

20th century scientists said that as fossil fuels have a lower ratio of the isotopes carbon13 to carbon12 than vegetation or atmospheric carbon then an increase of atmospheric CO2 caused by burning fossil fuel would reduce the carbon13 to carbon12 ratio in the atmosphere. 20th century scientists found the ratio of the carbon isotopes was falling as predicted showing that the increase in atmospheric CO2 was largely due to burning fossil fuels.

20th century scientists said that if global temperatures increased the Arctic region would warm faster than anywhere else on Earth. 21st century scientists have found that the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth.

20th century scientists said a increase in global temperatures would reduce summer ice in the Arctic. 21st century scientists have found that summer ice extent and thickness is falling.

20th century scientists said that global warming would lead to climate change with more extreme weather events. 21st century scientists have found that the climate is changing and the weather is becoming more extreme.
(h/t T Bombardi)

el gordo, aka "Skippy"

You are definitely fucking me off. First, although I demonstrated to you that TSI cannot be responsible for warming in the second half of the C20th you have still not admitted that you were wrong on this point, despite being asked twice.

So admit your error, now, please.

Second, you have simply skipped a very important follow-up question which you now oblige me to repeat:

You claim – wrongly - that there is a lag.

So explain the physical mechanism to me.

You say:

We should find the lag in the oceans, where else could it be?

This is meaningless.

OHC is rising *now*. How does TSI from several decades ago heat the ocean now?

How does your “lag” actually work? Please explain the physical mechanism. Where is the energy coming from that is heating the ocean *now*?

You have dodged another direct question: are you a religious man? Yes, or no.

You say:

Its hubris to imagine humanity can change global climate.

Hubris is an interesting and loaded term. In its basic sense, your comment simply denies known physics. But by saying "hubris" you imply that greater forces are at work.

Are you a religious man, el gordo?

'Are you a religious man, el gordo?'

Atheist.

Skippy

Thanks for the straight response at #8.

Now, please, in you own words, without links, explanation.

You have *again* skipped a very important follow-up question which you now oblige me to repeat:

You claim – wrongly - that there is a lag.

So explain the physical mechanism to me.

You say:

We should find the lag in the oceans, where else could it be?

This is meaningless.

OHC is rising *now*. How does TSI from several decades ago heat the ocean now?

How does your “lag” actually work? Please explain the physical mechanism. Where is the energy coming from that is heating the ocean *now*?

Please, take your time...

Some of us have day jobs, thanx for your patience.

Without going into detail, there appears to be a 10 to 30 year lag in the oceans, the TSI is felt at the tropics and works its way around the system through ocean currents.

They don't have a definitive answer on this process, anymore than Trenberth's missing heat.

Didn't you quit your job over a year ago, El Gordo...?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

You're out-of-date there, too, oh Clown Prince.

'Felt' eh? That's about your level.

Enough of the handwaving - explain the mechanism. Everyone here - including you - knows you can't.

#13

Rubbish. And unreferenced rubbish at that.

See Levitus et al. (2012). OHC 0 - 2000m in all major ocean basins has increased simultaneously since the 1970s.

Which ocean current or currents can distribute warm water simultaneously from the tropics to all major ocean basins?

Explain. With supporting references.

Or admit your error.

el gordo
July 29, 2013

‘He won’t explain his “lag” because there is no such thing’

We should find the lag in the oceans, where else could it be?

http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/29/has-trenberth-found-the-missing-heat/

I think we have pointed this out before: you are focussing on crank blogs, thus resulting in your being grossly misinformed.
Stop visiting crank blogs (except for entertainment).

You have no idea what "lag" means.
A "lag" would be a delayed response
.
There is no "lag" in relation to changes in irradiance. More sun=more heat. Instantaneously.

If you want to understand the basics of climate change, you can get it from here:

http://www.csiro.au/en/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding.aspx

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Climate-change-tracker&track…

http://climate.nasa.gov/

You seem to insist on ignoring these valid sources of information in favour of crank blogs whose misinformation and nonsense helps confirm your personal beliefs.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

Rubbish. And unreferenced rubbish at that.

See Levitus et al. (2012). OHC 0 – 2000m in all major ocean basins has increased simultaneously since the 1970s.

Which ocean current or currents can distribute warm water simultaneously from the tropics to all major ocean basins?

Explain. With supporting references.

Or admit your error.

Without going into detail

Detail is required to explain the physical mechanism for this "lag".

Please provide it.

Missing link:

Levitus et al. (2012).

If you can't be bothered to read the paper, look at the SI at the end. See figures S1 (OHC 0-2000m) and S2 (OHC 0-700m).

I'm going to bed now, gordy, but let's get one thing clear before I toddle off.

You know nothing. You have no argument. You are politics, not science.

Politics. Not science.

FFS be honest about what you are doing and why.

Pole-axingly thick squawkback politics at that. Seriously; what is the point of you, Gordo?

Craig.... Judith Curry is a luke warmer.

--------------
BBD
I have no objection with the argument that heat is being stored in the 700– 2000 m layer, our only difference is the source of that initial heat.

So what do you expect will happen over the next five years?

Curry recently held up Craig Idso's professionally unqualified, politically-tainted, and therefore useless, opinions as a valid contrast to the opinions of a well-qualified professional who *doesn't* take money from lobbyists and thinktanks.

She is therefore a crank, and her website is for that reason alone (even if you hadn't noticed all the other nonsense she has there) of value only to the misinformers.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

I have no objection with the argument that heat is being stored in the 700– 2000 m layer, our only difference is the source of that initial heat.

The source of the heat? Like, undersea volcano-fairies, maybe?

We know perfectly well what the source of the heat is. What makes you imagine there is any argument in this department?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

What makes you imagine there is any argument in this department?

...the fact that he can't accept reality in this department, I expect, and can't admit it - therefore there just has to be valid argument.

Almost everything he says comes across as the kind of attempted opinion seeding unencumbered by the weight of evidence (a.k.a. wishful thinking that the sayer hopes other people will validate by joining with him in wishing it) that is beloved of political pundits and actual politicians, professional business propagandists and their fellow travellers in marketing and advertising and religious evangelists. Opinion seeding reveals more about what they want to be true - or for the more cynically inclined, what they want the gullible muppets they are fleecing (intellectually, if not actually financially) to believe to be true despite not believing it themselves - than what actually is.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jul 2013 #permalink

About a year ago I got into a debate about increasing heat in the southern ocean and I argued against it, but was proven wrong.

We then discussed the possibility of volcanic activity in West Antarctica....

"About a year ago I got into a debate about increasing heat in the southern ocean and I argued against it, but was proven wrong"

That must have been easy for your opponent. Your debating skills stink on the basis of the fact that you don't know very much about anything you are talking about. However, like others afflicted with large doses of the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon, coupled with your own deep-rooted idealogical biases and warped political world views, you've swallowed just about every facet of the climate change denial handbook hook, line ands sinker.

One bit of solace for you, Gordo: the internet is full of dupes like you. Many of them even go so far as to set up their own blogs. You happen to glean a lot of your ideas and arguments from them.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

So Jeff drags out Dunning Kruger, get over it young fella.

'coupled with your own deep-rooted idealogical biases and warped political world views'

Being left wing all my life, having voted for jools at the last election and shook hands with Jim Spigelman at a Whitlam rally .... I was pretty much rusted on.

Where did it all go so terribly wrong?

Are you talking about the disastrous response to the GFC?
No, I guess not.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

For you? Only you can tell. And only you care.

You're now officially one of Hawke's Silly Old Buggers. Some result, eh?

And........the Gish Gallop continues.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

"So Jeff drags out Dunning Kruger"...

No need for me to drag it out, Fatty. You are a textbook example. You clearly think that you know more about a complex field - climate science - than you do. My guess is that you have absolutely zero pedigree in any field of science.

Moreover, you give far too much weight - excuse the pun - to weblogs run by climate change deniers who (surprise, surprise!) have also been set up by a veritable coterie of non-scientists. In virtually every instance these people denigrate scientists with whom they disagree, many of whom are leaders in their field. At the same time, like you, they scrape the bottom of the barrel to find any studies, no matter how shoddy or non-peer-reviewed, that try and argue that increasing atmospheric C02 concentrations are not driving climate change.

As I have said before, with few exceptions your 'side' are not interested in science-driven research, but in bolstering clear ideological and political agendas. The fact that many of the deniers cannot dissociate themselves from far right think tanks and corporate funded lobbying groups is clear proof of this.

Essentially, in scientific circles you guys are laughingstocks. Or would be, if there weren't such huge amounts of money passing around the denial slush-fund.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

el gordo

I have no objection with the argument that heat is being stored in the 700– 2000 m layer, our only difference is the source of that initial heat.

I have shown you that it is not the sun. There is no ocean current or currents capable of delivering warm equatorial waters simultaneously to all major ocean basins. It is not fucking volcanoes in Antarctica.

I have repeatedly asked you for an explanation of a physical mechanism that can account for the observed increase in OHC. You have skipped and dodged farcically.

Either accept this, or provide a detailed description of an alternative physical mechanism that has added ~25 x 10^22J to global ocean heat content over half a century.

Time to walk the walk, gordo. Or time to go.

Unclear:

"Either accept this" -> "Either accept the scientific consensus that CO2 forcing is the cause"

Blue Collar to Boltard. It's not such an uncommon trajectory; all that's required is the requisite profound lack of brains...

#38
Would that be about 30cm rise/century, or about a foot.

More cause for alarm.

Another one. Yep, that's a real recovery, alright! Woohooo! It's all clear sailing from here!

I note you're not around rabbiting on about UK temps at the moment. Now, why could that be?

Incidentally, the rot really is spreading. Pretty soon it's going to be Colonel Blimp blowhard radical-reactionaries only in your bedraggled little camp. You and Lord Frickin' Monckton and that toxic beanpole Dellers. Much joy may you have of each other!

Do you ever tire of being so paralyzingly dim?

Rednoise

You know absolutely nothing about the dynamics of ice sheet collapse.

Nothing whatsoever.

So, I refuse to discuss the potential for non-linear response to warming on a centennial scale with you because you are not competent to argue this matter.

* * *

Hansen (2007) Scientific reticence and sea level rise.

'or provide a detailed description of an alternative physical mechanism that has added ~25 x 10^22J to global ocean heat content over half a century.'

I read a few articles in the SS bible, to get their slant, then I found Bob Tisdale who suggests it has nought to do with a heat trapping gas.

'Climate modelers still cannot simulate the coupled ocean-atmosphere processes associated with El Niño and La Niña events. And they are still trying to force El Niño and La Niña processes with longwave radiation from greenhouse gases, while in reality the processes are fueled by sunlight.

'One of the authors of Meehl et al (2013), Kevin Trenberth, actually “wrote the book” on ENSO, and he understands the processes well. Yet somehow he has lent his name to a paper that presents an alternative to that reality. That is, Meehl et al suggest that manmade global warming continues but it’s being driven to depths below 700 meters by La Niñas. But the warm water created during La Niñas results from an increase in sunlight, not infrared radiation.'

Tisdale is a contrarian crank with no qualifications.

Nor is this an explanation of the mechanism *you claim exists* that is responsible for the modern increase in OHC.

So, game over for you. You can't give me that explanation because you do not have one. You stand revealed as credulous, ignorant, dishonest and very, very stupid indeed.

Where is your sense of intellectual pride? Why are you not ashamed of being publicly exposed as an ignoramus and a dupe? What moronic impulsion brings you here to be mocked for your gullibility and abysmal topic knowledge?

Don't you dislike being shown up as a sorry little joke?

BBD#20

Your missing link.

Looking at the Ocean Heat Content for the Major Ocean Basins, S1/S2, in your own words, how would you describe the shape of most of these graphs, or trends, post 2002?

"Do you ever tire of being so paralyzingly dim?"

In Rednose's case, apparently not. His story on the status of insects in the UK is straight from the sandbox. Longer term data show that many UK butterflies are in deep trouble from a combination of anthropogenic threats. But there's nothing like a feel-good story in a corporate paper to trump the empirical literature and years of data gathering, is there?

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

Like this.

You need to look at the full 0 - 2000m layer, not cherry-pick the 0 - 700m layer. Incomprehension of what is going on plus basic dishonesty. As per.

It's serendipitous that Rednoise has re-appeared. He and the cretinous el gordo make a good pair of buttocks.

The Levitus paper is much debated and Palmer too, but it seems fairly clear that the changes in OHC are not directly caused by CO2.

BBD#48
You have not answered the question concerning the graphs referred to in Levitus 2012 and have changed to something else.
Levitus 2012 S1 shows the 0-2000m layer Ocean Heat Content for the Major Ocean Basins.
So I repeat the question, in your own words, how would you describe the shape or trends of most of those graphs post 2002 shown in S1 for Levitus 2012.

but it seems fairly clear that the changes in OHC are not directly caused by CO2

Don't hold back Prince, explain your full understanding of why not, and the mechanism by which the Sun is responsible instead.

You ridiculous old man.

The Levitus paper is much debated and Palmer too, but it seems fairly clear that the changes in OHC are not directly caused by CO2.

So what has caused the increase in OHC over the last half-century?

You don't seem to understand how this works, gordy.

Either you provide a physical mechanism that explains the observations or you accept the scientific consensus that it is CO2 forcing. What you don't get to do is repeat lies and horse-shit ad nauseam.

Where's your proposed physical mechanism? No mechanism, no argument.

You lose and you bugger off. It's really very simple. So simple that even someone as stupid as you evidently are ought to be able to understand the principle.

# 51

You have not answered the question concerning the graphs referred to in Levitus 2012 and have changed to something else.

You fucking moronic tool. Look at where the NODC OHC data comes from. What does it say on the pretty picture?

Updated from Levitus et al. 2012)

Your denialist cherry-picking and lying stupidity answered - again:

Global 0 - 700m and 0 - 2000m compared.

Now fuck off and stop wasting my time.

As I said, these two are a perfectly matched pair of arse-cheeks.

The NODC graph linked twice above is shown in the final panel of Levitus et al. (2012) Fig S1. It is labelled "World Ocean". Preceding it are "Southern Hemisphere" and "Northern Hemisphere".

Buttock-stupid fuckwit deniers take note.

"The 0 - 2000m component of the NODC graph..."

#54

Is your fucking graph shown in S1?

So answer the question.

So I repeat the question, in your own words, how would you describe the shape or trends of most of those graphs post 2002 shown in S1 for Levitus 2012.

Is your fucking graph shown in S1?

Yes, you imbecile. Read the fucking words:

# 54

# 56

What is wrong with your brain?

Apologies. A version is there.
But answer the question.

It's not MY fucking graph.

The data are from Levitus 12.

How is it possible for anyone to be this fucking STUPID?

I DID answer the question - look at the GLOBAL data and stop trying to cherry pick. You are being intellectually dishonest as you invariably are.

And that is *it*. That is the not-missing energy right there, in front of you. That is the *real* "global warming". Not this brief slow-down in the rate of surface warming which is itself simply modulated by the rate of ocean heat uptake.

Why can't you people just try to understand? Why are you so fucking mad and paranoid that you actually believe there's some sort of conspiracy between every oceanographer, atmospheric chemist, atmospheric physicist, paleoclimatologist, ecologist and all the bloody rest of the Earth System sciences.

It is just fucking insane. You are all mad. Barking bloody mad, the lot of you.

And now you are being intellectually dishonest.

The original Levitus S1 graphs for the separate ocean basins nearly all flatten out post 2002. The exception being the Southern Indian.

No Rednoise. Intellectually dishonesty is when you eyeball the data and make a false claim.

How do we know the claim is false? Because the paper also presents the global analysis, properly calculated from the basin data, not eyeballed and cherry-picked by some denialist ignoramus lying his arse off on a blog.

The difference between what I am doing and what you are doing is that what I am doing is *rigorous* and what you are doing is intellectually dishonest.

A word of advice, you fuck. Make that the last time you accuse me of intellectual dishonesty.

The original Levitus S1 graphs for the separate ocean basins nearly all flatten out post 2002.

Balderdash! (And that's quite apart from BBD pointing out you're desperately trying to redirect the discussion away from global OHC.)

Even with my Mark 1 eyeball, that's not the case. Zoom in a bit and put a ruler on the left hand edge of the 2002 tick in fig S1 (Note: S1, not S2) and see what the trend looks like for the remaining data. The only one that arguably doesn't have a distinct rising trend post-2002 is the North Indian basin - and although it's hard to tell due to the scale, the post-2002 trend doesn't look markedly dissimilar from the red trend line.

More specifically, since you talked about an apparent change in trend since 2002 when I compare post-2002 with the red trend line I see:

South Atlantic: rising much faster than red line (the very opposite of what you claim)
North Atlantic: faster than red line (ditto)
South Indian: much faster than red line
North Indian: faster than red line
South Pacific: similar to red line
North Pacific: similar to red line

NOT ONE of them is clearly rising more slowly than its red trend line. Not one.

You are (a) an idiot for depending on your eyeball rather than calculating trends from data, and (b) an idiot for making eyeball claims that eyeballs can refute since other people may be better or worse at eyeballing trendlines than you, (c) an idiot for using time periods that are short enough that noise may dominate signal, (and (d), as ever, an idiot for determinedly refusing to get the point and trying to discuss some other cherry-pick instead, but we all knew that already.)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

The original Levitus S1 graphs for the separate ocean basins nearly all flatten out post 2002. The exception being the Southern Indian.

So yeah! If you look at that specific version, put your hand over that one (I don't like that one, forget that one), tilt a little to the right and squint, it ALMOST says what I said it does!

So there! QED!

Fucking clown.

The final graph you link to global OHC 0-2000m
Shows the pedental average to 2012 (as per levitus)
Croyoned onto this is the yearly average for 2012 and then the 3 month average for Jan-march 2013.
Chalk, cheese and chutney.
And you accuse others of intellectual dishonesty.

A word of advice, you fuck.

Word of advice, if you are aiming to threaten someone, make sure the message is clear.

#68
You should go to Specsavers. I see trends for N and S Atlantic and N and S Pacific less than the red trend lines. This is at a time when the oceans are supported to be taking in all this extra heat to account for the hiatus in surface temperatures.

Croyoned onto this is the yearly average for 2012 and then the 3 month average for Jan-march 2013.

Of the same variable.

Chalk, cheese and chutney.

You are quite possibly as stupid as a person can be while still being able to type.

I see trends for N and S Atlantic and N and S Pacific less than the red trend lines.

You have no idea what "trend" means, do you precious?

Oh fuck off Rednoise. Your #70 is beyond the limit. You are too stupid to have this discussion with.

Global data falsify your stupid, dishonest cherry-pick. Utterly, incontrovertibly, undeniably and finally.

The evidence is there in black and red. See #66.

Fucking denialist moron.

I just cannot get over this:

The final graph you link to global OHC 0-2000m
Shows the pedental average to 2012 (as per levitus)
Croyoned onto this is the yearly average for 2012 and then the 3 month average for Jan-march 2013.
Chalk, cheese and chutney.
And you accuse others of intellectual dishonesty.

You actually do not understand this graph in any way at all do you?

That's incredible, really. How can you seriously come here and argue with us?

Yes, you are intellectually dishonest. Constantly. But you are also a stupid little worm.

Just.. fuck off.

You should go to Specsavers. I see trends for N and S Atlantic and N and S Pacific less than the red trend lines. This is at a time when the oceans are supported to be taking in all this extra heat to account for the hiatus in surface temperatures.

But this is not representative of the 0 - 2000m OHC of the global ocean.

This is why we do not eyeball and cherry-pick.

This is why we use the calculated global ocean OHC instead.

Because we are interested in ocean heat uptake globally.

I don't think I can face much more of this for now. Can somebody else explain to this utterly clueless clown why his "reasoning" is dog-shit?

Chalk, cheese and chutney.
And you accuse others of intellectual dishonesty.

Epic ROFL Fail!

The three different treatments are clearly marked. You know, in that "legend" element that graphs often have? And they're all treatments of the same data. Perhaps you should learn how to read a graph before you foolishly throw out accusations of dishonesty to distract from having been caught out trying to bullshit people who are far more bullshit-resistant than you are.

I see trends for N and S Atlantic and N and S Pacific less than the red trend lines.

I did not say you didn't.

Please revisit the three reasons I called you an idiot. If you have even a modicum of intellectual dignity you'll refrain from making assertions that you can't back up, if only because they are far too subjective, let alone the ones that are clearly wrong. (BTW, I predict you won't refrain...)

This is at a time when the oceans are supported to be taking in all this extra heat to account for the hiatus in surface temperatures.

You have to be desperately stupid to point at a couple of regions using only known-to-be-inaccurate eyeballs instead of using actual statistics on the actual global data set - especially when the global trend is shown to you on the very same figure.

But you are both desperate and stupid, aren't you? You literally can't deal with the evidence in front of your nose so you desperately invent new layers of bullshit to deny it. And you're stupid enough to think you won't get rumbled, and even more stupid than that because you haven't learnt a damn thing from all the other times you have been rumbled.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

I don't think I can face much more of this

There there BBD. What you need is a nice relaxing holiday.

#77

Yes but different treatments and should be graphed separately not tagged one onto the other.
The assertions made via eyeballing can be followed by anyone else viewing the s1 graphs

Yes but different treatments and should be graphed separately

No. The graph is abundantly clear. Stop trying to shift the blame: the problem is you and your ignorance and incomprehension. You have, once again, made a complete and utter arse of yourself.

The assertions made via eyeballing can be followed by anyone else viewing the s1 graphs

Dog shit.

Rednose: do you understand why the blue line doesn't go all the way to the end?

By Turboblocke (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

No, I think it's evident that he doesn't. Frightening, but see "#70.

And because he cannot understand *any* of what he sees, he accuses me of intellectually dishonesty.

'Where’s your proposed physical mechanism? No mechanism, no argument.'

As I mentioned earlier, no mystery, its that big bright orb.

# 83

I've already shown you the data that contradicts this claim, so why are you repeating it?

Repeating the debunked is lying.

The sun comes up and warms the oceans, it happens.

BBD you may need professional help with your anger management and for starters I'd be giving up the piss.

El Gordo, ask yourself this: If solar irradiance isn't increasing, and ocean heat content is increasing, what has changed?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

Repeating the debunked is lying. Smearing the debunker is the tactic of last resort.

Look at the data. You are wrong.

And you still haven't admitted it. Instead, you lie.

'Smearing the debunker is the tactic of last resort.'

Oh for christ's sake have a look at yourself, you are a disgrace.
---------------------
'If solar irradiance isn’t increasing, and ocean heat content is increasing, what has changed?'

Good question young Craig and I once again refer you to the 'lag'. Late last century the sun was very active and now its not, so the OHC must have slowly absorbed that warmth.

As it takes 10-30 years to go through the system I suspect that over the coming decade the OHC will show a 'pause'.

UKMO report (part 2) is out and I'll leave it here for later consideration.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/q/0/Paper2_recent_pause_in_global…

The sun comes up and warms the oceans, it happens.

Is this that new post-natal science?

Good question young Craig and I once again refer you to the ‘lag’. Late last century the sun was very active and now its not, so the OHC must have slowly absorbed that warmth.

No. The energy transfer from solar SW to OHC is instantaneous. But over recent decades OHC has increased as DSW fell. You are wrong. Look at the data FFS.

I think what we're dealing with here is post-neural science.

The intellectual dishonesty, ignorance, stupidity and persistence of the deniers on this thread is a disgrace.

Being blunt in dealing with it is a relief.

el Gordo, here's a hypothesis -

A large percentage - probably a majority - of Deniers are vacuous old Dunning-Krugerite blowhards who have no real grasp of the basic science, but love the sound of their own voices. What they think they know about the issue comes from the same small circle of reactionary blogs they found during their initial 15 minutes of *cough* 'research' on the interwebs. These are reassuring to the deludee because they are run by similarly ignorant muppets and/or conspiracy theorists and/or outrightly venal hacks.

Now, which of the following applies; your behaviour here confirms / disproves this hypothesis?

In short; what do you imagine you're achieving?

It's obvious to everyone here (who hasn't already drunk the Kool-Aid*) - and a lot of people read this stuff - that you haven't got the ghost of an f 'ing clue and just faff around like a third-rate clown waving your hands around and quoting Andrew Bolt.

There's a life's work...

*and even some of them must cringe each time they see your icon! But, never fear - being a Denier is all about never conceding that any of your fellow-travellers is wrong, no matter how deranged, daft or contradictory their message.

...and he's back on this "lag" thing...

What "lag", El Gordo? Where is this documented?
How does energy delivered instantaneously stay invisible for 30 years?

More to the point, what kind of a person would ignore a perfectly well-documented mechanism explaining the current energy imbalance along with observations confirming that this is exactly what is happening in favour of an unknown mechanism for which there is no evidence?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

'...an unknown mechanism for which there is no evidence?'

'...warm water created during La Niñas results from an increase in sunlight, not infrared radiation.’ (Tisdale)

Solar radiation is mainly short-wave.

#95

The energy transfer from solar SW to OHC is instantaneous. But over recent decades OHC has increased as DSW fell.

So why is energy accumulating in the oceans?

Provide a physical mechanism.

Wow, a non sequitur! That was out of character...

Gordy's idea of a physical mechanism is a tin opener.

The sun comes up and warms the oceans, it happens.

Tide goes in, tide goes out...

From Limbaugh to O'Reilly. Dumber than a sack of hammers.

For goodness sake gordy. Just think.

ENSO is an oscillation. The clue is in the name. It is internal variability. It does not add energy to the climate system as a whole.

So ENSO cannot cause global OHC to rise over several decades. It doesn't add energy to the climate system.

Actually, I wonder if I might interest Gordy in investing in this overunity engine I've developed...

ENSO 'does not add energy to the climate system as a whole.'

That's not correct.

warm water created during La Niñas

Variability *creates* energy...?

results from an increase in sunlight

What increase in sunlight?

...(Tisdale)...

Oh dear, *still* getting your mis-info from cranks...

Why not actually learn some real facts about ENSO from people who - unlike Bob Tisdale - can demonstrate professional competence in the area:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/history/ln-2010-12/three-phases-of-E…
and maybe consider
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image00…
See all that ENSO variation around its mean?
No?
So you see an underlying trend there, right?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

More and more I'm going off poking at dead intellects with a stick, but the persistent post mortem spasms that pass for thought in the putrescent minds of the denialists here warrants the occasional prod.

Fatso and Rue-Dolt the Red-nosed Denier are especially amusing with their dogged determination to not see what is otherwise simple, high-school level physics.

I made this point a few days ago but it bears repeating...

Consider the fact that the solstices occurred five and a half weeks ago. This means that since then the Northern Hemisphere has been receiving progressively less insolation and the Southern Hemisphere has been receiving progressively more insolation.

Question 1 - how has the Northern Hemisphere's mean temperature responded?
Question 2 - across what span of time has this response occurred, and what will be the predictable response until the next solstice?

Conversely...

Question 3 - how has the Southern Hemisphere's mean temperature responded?
Question 4 - across what span of time has this response occurred, and what will be the predictable response until the next solstice?

For brownie points and a gold star:

Question 5 - from the change in insolation and the resultant temperature change over time, what can be inferred about the relationship between Δinsolation and Δtemperature?

On the matter of El Niño/La Niña being the cause of global warming, proponents of this nonsense seem to be oblivious to the fact that they are positing something that contradicts the first law of thermodynamics. From where is all of this heat coming if not from solar heat retained by an enhanced greenhouse atmosphere? In other words, where is the heat-depleted body of matter that surrendered its thermal energy to warm the top two kilometers of the world's ocean, to warm the atmosphere, and to melt the staggering amounts of glacial and polar ice, as has been documented for over a century?

Finally, I note that there seems to be the modified meme of no warming since 2005. Proponents of this variation of the arrant nonsense about recent cooling should consider the questions that Betula was never able to answer, and also to take a hint from this graph.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

'I would say that the so-called missing heat problem is not yet solved. I have argued before that I don’t think it actually exists, since the “missing heat” argument assumes that feedbacks in the climate system are positive and that radiative energy is accumulating in the system faster than surface warming would seem to support.

'For the reasons outlined above, Trenberth’s view of deep ocean storage of the missing heat is still theoretically possible since increased vertical ocean mixing doesn’t have to be wind-driven. But I remain unconvinced by arguments that depend upon global deep ocean temperature changes being measured to an accuracy of hundredths or even thousandths of a degree.

Bob Tisdale / Post Normal Science

Actually, this graph is worth more comment:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image00…

You notice that every La Nina year has been warmer than the last since the 1976 La Nina?

Where's all this heat coming from? Apart from Tisdale's magical mechanism (as yet to documented), can you think of anything that explains this trend?

On another note, let's remember what all that ice is doing, that is in contact with these warming oceans,
http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/slide2.jpg

And on a related note, we can see that 2,000 Gt of ice is being turned to water ever year, then that would be:
2x10^15 * 334,000 Joules being added to the Earth's energy budget every year without causing any increase in temperature.
6.7x10^20 Joules.
Every year.
And increasing.
I don't suppose Bob Tisdale can explain where this is coming from any better than he can explain his magical ENSO?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

Stop quoting cranks, El Gordo, they can only mislead you.

Consider the fact that the solstices occurred five and a half weeks ago. This means that since then the Northern Hemisphere has been receiving progressively less insolation and the Southern Hemisphere has been receiving progressively more insolation.

Question 1 – how has the Northern Hemisphere’s mean temperature responded?

In a similar vein, has anybody noticed the *lag* between maximum insolation at noon, and the burst of heat we get around midnight?
Anybody?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

Really Fatso? You're quoting baffle-gab from Tisdale to avoid indicating where the heat has come from that's warming the planet? Really?!

Be intellectually honest... fromwhere is the heat coming that has warmed the top two kilometers of the world’s oceans, warmed the atmosphere, and that has melted the staggering amounts of glacial and polar ice, as has been documented for over a century? What has become colder - or are the laws of thermodynamics in suspension?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

'The oceans emit vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Just make sure not to mention how much they absorb.'

More CO2 is released when oceans are warmer and cool oceans trap it.

I don’t think it actually exists, since the “missing heat” argument assumes that feedbacks in the climate system are positive and that radiative energy is accumulating in the system faster than surface warming would seem to support.

Tisdale is simply a pig-ignorant denier. And El Gordo repeats his nonsense.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

Gordy, are you really such a hapless booby, or do you just play one on teh internets?

More CO2 is released when oceans are warmer and cool oceans trap it.

So what you're saying Fatso is that there is a positive feed-back that will heat the planet even more.

Congratulations, you're finally learning.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

BJ its definitely our star, we can all agree on that, its a question of long or short waves.

If atmospheric temperatures remain flat then the AGW models are flawed and we may be facing a global cooling tipping point.

Do not be alarmed, humanity will survive.

'that there is a positive feed-back'

Its a negative feedback, like when the oceans warmed after the last glaciation... releasing an abundance of CO2 into the atmosphere from the oceans.

"BJ its definitely our star, we can all agree on that"

Fatty are you drunk? Or merely completely deluded? "We've" made it clear here that, with few exceptions, NONE of us "agree on that". Throw in the vast majority of climate scientists, and those plugging the 'its the sun wot dunnit' brigade shrinks even further.

Your posts are bizarre to say the least. The reveal a mind that it locked into some kind of strange holding pattern where reality and hallucination become blurred.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

BJ its definitely our star, we can all agree on that, its a question of long or short waves.

I'm sorry that your head injury has gravely compromised your intellectual abilities, but it is my duty to wipe the drool from your chin.

The sun is the primary source of heat for the Earth. Physics and empirical data show however that it is not responsible for the pattern of global warming seen over the last century. And there is no question that there is a surfeit of longwave radiation being reradiated from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere back to the planet.

Your nonsensical appeal to Phantasysics of the sort favoured by Tisdale does not change the fact that insolation is not responsible for global warming.

If atmospheric temperatures remain flat then the AGW models are flawed and we may be facing a global cooling tipping point.

The land temperatures are still increasing. The oceans are warming. Glaciers and polar ice are melting.

There is no global cooling approaching, just as there is no Easter bunny.

Do not be alarmed, humanity will survive.

Jeff Harvey recently linked to Quintero and Wiens 2013:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23800223

which clearly demonstrates that across many taxa the current rate of warming outstrips by an order of magnitude of between 10 ten thousand and one hundred thousand (if not more) the rate at which species can adapt to temperature change. The mammalian taxa included show no beneficial skew for mammals, and indeed basic thermal physiology dictates that mammals will suffer in a warmer world.

There's little point appealing to humanity's use of complex technology because that is largely powered by the fossil fuels that are causing the problem in the first place, andat about the same time that we'll have irrevocably FUBARed the climate for the biosphere we'll run out of usable carbon fuels. This will have a HUGE effect on how humans can respond to the challenges of the near-future climate, and will be exacerbated by overpopulation and by the fact that much capacity for self-sufficiency has been lost. Combine all of these factors and there is no scientifically valid way of concluding that humans will be able to carry on without severe curtailing of numbers and life-style.

If humans do not take serious measures now to address each and every one of these issues to the fullest extent possible then it will just be a big ugly decent into apocalyptic demise over the space of several generations, likely starting with generations that are now living. Perhaps there will be a fraction of humans left in 500 years, living with delicately-nurtured high tech and/or simply subsisting in societies no more sophisticated that those of the Iron Age.

If this is in your opinion an acceptable trajectory for the human species then perhaps "humanity will survive". Even then there's a lot that could go wrong and little that could go right, and if we push the temperature over 3-4°C human survival becomes very much a gamble. Over 4°C we might as well break out the chisels and carve our suicide messages in granite for any future alien race to ponder in their wise bemusement.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

...10 ten thousand...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

"Do not be alarmed, humanity will survive"

See my last post. Here, Fatty is projecting again, without even a basic understanding of the consequences of a huge array of anthropogenic effects there are on complex adaptive systems.

In contrast with what he is saying, which is entirely quantitative, there are also qualitative processes to consider. And even here, there's no guarantee that humanity will survive' exhibiting anything close to the bloated, over-consumptive lifestyles enjoyed by a comparative few. Sure, some of us may survive, but in conditions in which the threshold between existence and oblivion becomes finely delineated.

On the current trajectory, humanity is certainly working towards increasing the chances of its own short-term extinction. No doubt that it will come eventually anyway, given that the shelf life for most species is between a few hundred thousand and 10 million years or so, but our species appears intent on speeding up that process. We are undermining our ecological life support systems at a profoundly alarming rate, and there is already an enormous body of literature showing that critical ecological services are declining and that food webs and ecological resilience are fraying. Every natural indicator is in decline (see the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2006) and, if this trend persists, we can certainly expect more widespread systemic collapse, along with, as I said, key ecological services that sustain human civilization and permit humans to exist and persist.

Climate change might just be the final nail in the coffin. Certainly, we have greatly reduced the capacity of natural systems to support mankind through a suite of other stresses - from over harvesting to the outright elimination and destruction of natural ecosystems to the introduction of exotic species into non-native ecosystems to other forms of pollution. On top of that we are forcing climate at rates unseen in tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. We are expecting species to adaptively respond to this combined assault, and as the paper I posted last week published in Ecology Letters shows, many vertebrates will have to evolve at rates up to 1000 time or greater more rapidly to keep up with climate-change mediated alterations in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems alone in order to have any chance of survival.

And, against a huge volume of empirical evidence to the contrary, we have Fatty here making a flippant 'humanity will survive' remark. I have encountered enough of these simpleton thinkers on Deltoid alone to keep me busy on this blog. If there are millions of people out there who think like Fatty, then its no small wonder that the future of humanity is far from secure.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jul 2013 #permalink

It's frustrating isn't it Jeff?

You know, I wouldn't mind so much if there was the usual direct faulty-adaptation-leading-to-extinction consequence operating for Teh Stupidity genes that are pervading the human gene pool, but the interconnectedness of human society is such that the first ones to suffer are almost always not the ones who cause the problem.

Natural selection has been confounded in so many ways by technology, and some of the more perverse and disturbing ways are now only doing their stretching exercises and their warmings-up... so to speak...

It's ironic. Most of the Denialati are right-wing libertarians who don't want to be offering advantage to others in their community, but they are happily oinking like pigs at the trough to grab the benefit of evolutionary fitness that is more deservedly the right of others.

Evolutionary dole-bludgers, the lot of them.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

'Even then there’s a lot that could go wrong and little that could go right, and if we push the temperature over 3-4°C human survival becomes very much a gamble.'

I was under the impression that they had backed away from those numbers... something to do with 'sensitivity'.

'It’s ironic. Most of the Denialati are right-wing libertarians'

Not true, many of us are Labor refugees.

'On the current trajectory, humanity is certainly working towards increasing the chances of its own short-term extinction.'

Life on earth is precarious and it has always been so, humanity has faced extinction before and survived.

We are much better prepared for cooling or warming than ever before, so there really is no reason to be concerned.

Adaptation is the key to survival and I'm not referring to green energy.

Fatso.

I was under the impression that they had backed away from those numbers… something to do with ‘sensitivity’.

The only "they" who have "backed away from those numbers" are you and your Denialati mates - the ones who are afraid of what mainstream science has to say.

The sensitivity issue has been had countless times before, and never once has a Denialatus been able to put forward a convincing argument to counter the consensus. Even Brad Keyes was dragged kicking and screaming close to the consensus figure during the progress of the Brangelina thread. And no matter which end of the most likely range for sensitivity, it's entirely possible to reach 4+ °C by burning just a portion of the remaining the fossil carbon reserves of the planet.

‘It’s ironic. Most of the Denialati are right-wing libertarians’

Not true, many of us are Labor refugees.

Reread my statement and parse it carefully. Your claim regarding "Labor refugees" does not render my statement "not true" - and there are studies that show that it is true.

That head injury is really giving you gip, isn't it?

Life on earth is precarious and it has always been so, humanity has faced extinction before and survived.

Life on Earth is generally not precarious, and it has rarely been so. The only times that have been precarious involve stonking great balls of rock slamming into the planet, or supervulcanism freezing the place.

Humanity has, on the other hand, faced extinction and this during times when climate was not changing nearly as rapidly as it is now. Back then we didn't have the benefit of technology of course, but we also didn't have a biosphere that was already under enormous pressure from pollution, from overpopulation and from modification, and we didn't have billions of people who were so specialised in a highly technological society that they could not feed, clothe, house and defend themselves should the lights go out and the oil run dry. And that's without the addition of grave environmental and climatic damage.

We are much better prepared for cooling or warming than ever before...

How?

Adaptation is the key to survival and I’m not referring to green energy.

How would our society adapt to a world where:

1) there is no effective supply of fossil fuel and quite possibly no effective replacement on a global scale given our society's current imperative for cheap and widespread energy density
2) there is a shortage of water, fisheries, forests, agricultural soil, and many easily-accessed minerals
3) there is a huge disparity in privilege, and aggravated geopolitical tension, and an overabundance of state-owned seven-colours-of-snot weaponry
4) the attitude to disease over he last 50 years has rendered many of our best treatments sitting close to the edge of ineffectiveness, and where there is in many places such a density of population that should the underlying social infrastructure fail (nine meals from anarchy...) the transmission of disease without the best medical technology would be a fruitless endeavour

Adaptation as you imagine it is predicated on at least three things...

In a biological context it requires a functioning ecosystem in which humans can be sustained, and this includes a climate that is not warming at a rate thousands of times faster than that to which we are currently adapted.

In a technological context it requires the maintenance of each and every component of the complex system that underpins our modern society - system components that can and will fail in the future because they are finite in duration and we currently have no effective substitutions.

In a cultural context it requires an awareness by humanity of what is required, and a preparedness to follow through and do it. To date we have shown an inability to exhibit a such functional awareness, and it is the phenotypic baggage of selfish denialism that is the biggest roadblock on that path.

"Adaptation" is not the guaranteed saviour that you imagine, Fatso.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

Bernard, you aren't kidding. With intellectual "luminaries" like El Gordo overpopulating the blogs, I tend to get quite pessimistic.

Gordo writes, "Most of the Denialati are right-wing libertarians’ Not true, many of us are Labor refugees".

MOST, Fatso. There are always a few outliers You are one of them. Congratulations on your gullibility.

Then he writes this utterly puerile balderdash:

"Life on earth is precarious and it has always been so, humanity has faced extinction before and survived.
We are much better prepared for cooling or warming than ever before, so there really is no reason to be concerned.
Adaptation is the key to survival and I’m not referring to green energy".

Fatty, at no time in history has one species co-opted so much of net primary production and freshwater flows. When there were ecological bottlenecks in the past the human impacts on nature - our footprint - was almost non-existent. Now we are a global force.Unlike past extinction events, this time the culprit for generating it is one of the planet's evolved inhabitants - us. And, if you bothered to read what I said above, I said that climate change is just one major anthropogenic threat - there are a number of others. In synergy, they are simplifying natural systems at an astonishing rate. We already know that nature has a reduced capacity to support man. And yet we continue with a slash-and-burn approach to the biosphere unabated, in what appears to be one long last rush headlong towards undermining our ecological life support systems for short-term profit to benefit the privileged few. Humans cannot 'adapt' if the ecological systems underpinning our social and economic systems are damaged beyond repair. We simply do not have the technology to effectively replicate most critical ecological services - water purification, nutrient cycling, maintenance of soil fertility, pollination, seed dispersal, pest control etc. Climate change on its own is a profound threat to all of these services as it is driving the extinction of species and genetically distinct populations. But when you throw all of the other human assaults into the mix, the prognosis becomes dire.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

Life expectancy has increased markedly over last century, through disease control, more food and a warmer climate. The figures speak for themselves.

Also modern communications technology has saved millions of lives with advanced warning of nasty weather.

Humans are adapting well and will continue to do so.

Gordo, you do not have a clue what you are talking about. My advice is to stop putting your large foot into your mouth. Your comments are so empirically empty that its hard to know where to begin deconstructing them. Essentially, your understanding of environmental science and ecology are so simple that I feel like I need to begin at elementary school level. Clearly the stuff Bernard and I are discussing is way, way over your head.

This is the first generation in the United States in which the kids have it worse than their parents - a very ominous sign. The only reason that life expectancy in (in the developed world for the most part) has increased is two fold: first, natural systems are resilient enough to have largely withstood the human assault thus far, and although greatly simplified, the services that emerge from them are still mostly intact, but with very worrying signs that we are approaching critical thresholds beyond which many will collapse (see work by Martin Scheffer and colleagues on non-linear dynamics and alternate states).

The second is that every developed country in the world maintains a massive ecological deficit that can only be maintained through what can colloquially be referred to as economic looting of resource-rich (but poor) countries to the south. This is a major topic all on its own, but the thrust of it is that no developed country can support its lifestyle - consumption and waste production - on the resources contained within its own borders. Hence why economically nationalist countries in the south are routinely vilified in the corporate media, and why a term such as the 'resource curse' is so appropriate. Michael Parenti's outstanding 2011 book "Imperialism" would be a good starting point for you Gordo. Only I think you enjoy wallowing in your ignorance. I cannot do anything about that.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

# 2 el fuckwit

ENSO ‘does not add energy to the climate system as a whole.’

That’s not correct.

Yes it is. You don't have the remotest clue what you are talking about.

When are you going to admit that you were also hopelessly wrong about the sun?

Come on. You've seen the data that prove that you are wrong. So have the moral fibre to admit your error.

Or would you prefer to be viewed here as lying scum?

I was under the impression that they had backed away from those numbers… something to do with ‘sensitivity’.

Another area of the science you have exactly zero clue about.

No, nobody has "backed away" from anything. Attempts to estimate S from "observations" are *at best* of questionable validity. At best.

living with delicately-nurtured high tech and/or simply subsisting in societies no more sophisticated that those of the Iron Age.

On this theme, has anybody here read a book or lengthy essay which essentially posited that should we crash this civilisation, that there is no coming back?

Unfortunately I can't recall the title or the author after all this time and it's not on my bookshelves so I must have borrowed it from a friend or the library.

The basic premise was that theres unlikely to be another iron age re-run or industrial revolution take 2 because we've exhausted all near-surface deposits and deep mining/mountain top removal will be difficult-to-impossible for any future generations starting the climb to industrialisation (short of some heavy-duty terrain remodelling which humanity likely wouldn't survive anyway).

The don't -worry-be-happy routine of El Fatso gets more irritating with each iteration and puts me in mind to re-read it, if I can find it

chek

I'm familiar with this argument, which to me seems incontrovertible. There will be no second round. No abundant and easily exploitable fossil fuel deposits and no abundant easily exploitable metal/mineral resources. Don't know where it originated though.

Yes but different treatments and should be graphed separately not tagged one onto the other.

Why?

Most high school students can see and understand the three different treatments. If they want to look at only one of them for one purpose they simply disregard the other two for that purpose.

I'm even more staggered at the claim that showing the different treatments on the same graph - as opposed to three separate graphs - is misleading. That's one of the stupidest claims I've heard - and there have been some pretty stupid ones here.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

...we can all agree on that

Attempted opinion seeding, or just the desperate invocations of the True Believers? If they focus on saying it over and over again maybe they can prevent themselves noticing the evidence to the contrary.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

Gordy is astonishing. The man is wrong about *everything*. I missed this on first pass:

Its a negative feedback, like when the oceans warmed after the last glaciation… releasing an abundance of CO2 into the atmosphere from the oceans.

No, you fatuous fuckhead. That is a positive feedback to orbital forcing.

Positive feedbacks amplify the effect of a forcing change.

Negative feedbacks suppress the effect of a forcing change.

Un-bloody-believable. And these bone-headed tossers expect their grunting ignorance and politically motivated denial to be taken seriously.

Why? How?

Craig Thomas nails the ENSO problem at #8.

Thanks, Craig!

...since the “missing heat” argument assumes that feedbacks in the climate system are positive...

Don't think so. You get a "missing heat" argument from observing a radiative imbalance at the top of atmosphere, calculating the rate of energy rise that corresponds to, calculating how much energy rise is accounted for by observed phenomena (warming atmosphere and surface, melting ice, evaporation, warming oceans in the parts you can measure) and noting that there's more imbalance than there is observed energy rise.

You don't need to assume a single damn positive feedback to do that.

But it's fundamentally much worse that that: we know from basic physics that net feedback in the climate system is positive, otherwise the average temperature of the earth would be an awful lot colder than it is. Accordingly Tisdale is either an idiot or an abject denier - or a bare-faced liar. This blatantly obvious fatal flaw in his argument should alert anyone with half a brain and a modicum of scientific knowledge - or the ability to read rebuttals written by people who fit that description - that his opinions are completely untethered from physical reality.

And if someone with half a brain figures that out, they would stop using him as a source of scientific opinion because it only needs half a brain to conclude that's the smart course of action. El gordo obviously doesn't meet that criterion.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

I was under the impression that they had backed away from those numbers… something to do with ‘sensitivity’.

No, that's conflating two different things.

Climate sensitivity in response to a double of CO2 equivalent has nothing to do with how much of a temperature rise the ecosystem can handle in a relatively short period of time without losing a whole lot of carrying capacity - in other words, without a whole lot of humans (and other life) either dying off, or not being born in the first place.

If you're going to talk about "backing away from numbers", previously the scientific consensus was that somewhere roughly around 2C warming was where climate change would get dangerous. The consensus appears to be backing away from that number - and saying that somewhere roughly around 1C warming is getting dangerous (with some saying we're already seeing evidence of danger at a mere 0.8C).

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

I'm impressed that someone who insists a positive feedback is a negative feedback thinks they have the inside knowledge of where all of those foolish scientists have got their understanding of climate science wrong.

And is apparently a bit peeved when someone mentions Dunning and Kruger in their direction.

Where can I buy Irony Meters in bulk?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

We are much better prepared for cooling or warming than ever before, so there really is no reason to be concerned.

This is abject illogical stupidity.

It's like saying that "we have airbags in cars now, so we're much better prepared for driving off a cliff than they were in the 70's".

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

The 'negative feedback' thing reminds me of Tim Curtin's amazing topsy-turvy version of which are the Greenhouse gases.

For many of us watching Teh Stupid unfold is actually an embarrassing and uncomfortable experience - most of us would be completely humiliated to be revealed as so mind-numbingly ignorant in a public venue, and performances like Gordy's are genuinely cringe-worthy as a result.

It's a wonder Gordy or SpamKan don't simply die of the shame. I'm reminded of Hitchhiker's Guide -

Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine--in a desperate attempt to save life itself-leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

We should be so lucky...

'Positive feedbacks amplify the effect of a forcing change.

'Negative feedbacks suppress the effect of a forcing change.'

--------------
'Negative feedback — this is an impact which offsets the prevailing change in climate. Under global warming, this would create a cooling effect, balancing out the changes. If the climate was getting colder, it would create a heating effect.

'Positive feedback — this is an impact which increases the change in the climate. It would add to global warming by creating further heating or, if our climate was cooling, would cool the climate further.'

UK Met

Adaptation is the key to survival and I’m not referring to green energy.

This is also abject illogical stupidity, probably fueled by utopian technological fallacies and outright denial of unpleasant consequences.

The scientists who study the ecosystem are running around with their hair on fire - most recently in a link Jeff Harvey published - pointing out that we can expect much of the current ecosystem to fail to adapt to the changes we are throwing at it. If this happens, no-one - but no-one has proposed any solid "adaptation" measures that humanity can take (other than "let an awful lot of people die and hope the rest can hang on").

There are (for example) geoengineering proposals - but most of them turn out to be ill thought out, or to have obvious nasty consequences - and they almost always fail the very same tests that the deniers try to apply to mitigation measures, including (a) that one can't be very very certain of the outcomes, and (b) they cost a metric shitload of money (and sometimes even (c) they require coordinated international action which is just a cover for introducing a world government and stealing all of our golfs).

We also know from extensive experience that most large interventions in complex systems have unintentional consequences, and that the vast majority of the time these are detrimental.

The entire meme is escapist fantasy.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

‘Negative feedback — this is an impact which offsets the prevailing change in climate. Under global warming, this would create a cooling effect, balancing out the changes. If the climate was getting colder, it would create a heating effect.

Yes.

Now go back to your scenario.

Warming (in this case, of the oceans)...

...causes more CO2 in the atmosphere...

...which causes a warming radiation imbalance...

...which causes more warming.

In other words, warming...causes more warming. Positive or negative feedback?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

et fatuous

#41

What is your point? The MO definitions are identical to those I gave you earlier.

Please explain.

You don't understand any of this, do you?

Testing, testing:

BBD: Positive feedbacks amplify the effect of a forcing change.

Met Office: Positive feedback — this is an impact which increases the change in the climate.

BBD: Negative feedbacks suppress the effect of a forcing change.

Met Office: Negative feedback — this is an impact which offsets the prevailing change in climate.

Remember, climate changes in response to a change in forcing. Not in response to a change in the amount of caramelised onions in the stratosphere.

Do take your time, gordy...

There's a horrible smell in here. Like something has died.

Don't tell me el Gordo is one of those ignoramuses (ignorami?) who think positive feedback = runaway warming?

Here's a clue fatboy:
Loop Gain > 0 and +1

Both positive feedbacks, but do you see a difference?

Lotharsson: "stealing all of our golfs" = LOL.

Stupid tag recognition. Let me try again:

Here's a clue fatboy:
Loop Gain greater than zero and less than one.
Loop Gain greater than one.

Both positive feedbacks, but do you see a difference?

FrankD

I don't think el gordy has got that far. At present, he doesn't understand the difference between positive and negative feedbacks.

Baby steps! Don't rush the poor chap. I can't imagine what it would look like if he somehow became even more confused that he already is and I don't want to know.

Re: stealing all our golfs, this is a real concern to some folks (and Google will find you many other very concerned folks).

(One notes that fortunately for people like the Kochs and Moncktons of this world, lots of things are concerning to the kinds of folks who think that Agenda 21 is a UN plot to steal all their golfs, regardless of lack of evidence and implausibility.)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

ALL YOUR GOLFS ARE BELONG TO US.
UN Agenda 21

Fatso:

Life expectancy has increased markedly over last century, through disease control, more food and a warmer climate. The figures speak for themselves.

Disease control is largely predicated on a functional petroleum industry. An integrated health system is entirely predicated on a functional petroleum industry. Do you see the flaw in your position?

Food production is largely predicated on a functional petroleum industry, and on a phosphorus fertiliser industry. Do you see the flaw in your position?

Also modern communications technology has saved millions of lives with advanced warning of nasty weather.

Complex technology, especially space technology, is largely predicated on a functional petroleum industry and currently could not be supported by a renewable energy industry. Do you see the flaw in your position?

Humans are adapting well and will continue to do so.

Eh?! It happened in the past so it will continue to happen in the future? Really, that's your argument?

That's an inductive fallacy. A koala stamp if you can figure out why.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

Are the Denialati on this thread vying for the title of who is the most stupid?

It certainly seems to be the case.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

# 55

They're both winning!

I dunno really. Is it stupid or stubborn or pure cussedness.

It's easy enough for a survivalist mindset to come up with an agrarian, off-the-grid, self-sufficient utopian image for modern technology supplying the original equipment for facilities like solar and insulated triple glazing. They can grow their own fruit and veg, poultry, pigs, goats, recirculating fish system and the idealistic like. So they don't care if the rest of the world succumbs to lack of grains from large scale agriculture. Their small scale farm can sustain them and they really don't care that there isn't enough arable land for everyone to live like that.

But these guys seem unable to do even that. Far from not caring if the world at large can maintain broadacre farming, they're sitting back and waiting for their technutopian fantasies to come to the rescue. Just in time. For no cost.

Of course we'll have magical GMO seed stocks for grains that will survive heat stress, drought, new pests and diseases and floods - all in one season. And of course these non-existent crops will grow with no artificial fertilisers. And of courseengineers can design self setting, self expanding sea walls and flood protections, and they won't cost very much even if we do need them. So yah, sucks, boo to climate change. Can't catch me.

I just don't get it.

Check @ page 16 #57

Is that from a hill or a cab to somewhere?

The view here is from the location marked by the red blob in the direction shown by red arrow which is pointing to the church in Cardinham.

Sorry for the delay, been away again. Thanks for your comment.

Having just sloughed through the recent posts here I am beginning to feel sorry for el gordo who clearly is too ignorant to realise how ignorant he is.

Instead of bothering to study at the numerous places pointed too he continues to double down on the ignorant as these crackers make clear:

You asked about a book which described the final and irrevocable collapse of civilisation, the scenario you describe sounds like something Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees may have covered in his book, 'Our Final Century: Will the Human Race: Will The Human Race Survive the twenty-First Century'. I have a copy here I'll look it out. Unless I have loaned it out and forgotten to whom (I am missing a few books like this, I am on my fourth, or is it fifth, copy of 'The Selfish Gene').

el gordo @ #23

Life on earth is precarious and it has always been so, humanity has faced extinction before and survived.

Survived yes, but anthropologists know that this was by the skin of a small gene pool.

Go do some reading, Jared Diamond is a good starter, 'Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Survive', 'Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years' and 'The Rise and Fall of The Third Chimpanzee: How our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live', not necessarily in that order. Dawkins' 'The Ancestor's Tale' will also be a revelation to you on many levels.

We are much better prepared for cooling or warming than ever before, so there really is no reason to be concerned.
Adaptation is the key to survival and I’m not referring to green energy.

OK. 'The Exxon CEO Tillerson strategy', well there happens to be another ignoramus, or a liar confusing ignoramuses.
Have you any idea how long it will take for our fellow travellers in the plant, animal and other kingdoms to adapt to changed conditions of temperature, and dislocation in time and space?

Such a comment demonstrates clearly the shallowness of your knowledge and thinking strategies.

Given the many faceted nature of the problems that will ensue because of a warming world which has lost its polar thermostats creating drastically changed weather patterns, I.e. climates, where winds no longer blow where they did before, atmospheric moisture precipitates out (rain, snow, hail, whatever) with much altered patterns in both temporal and geographical domains, sea levels have risen flooding MOST MAJOR cities in the world which happen to be on the coast and huge swathes of low lying land in many of the river deltas and with many islands vanishing beneath the waves.
Biological diversity so impoverished that the food web collapses. The way in which we have impoverished the soils of the world, the sea floors by trawling especially for that unsustainable prawn habit which destroys the supporting web of life on the sea floor.

Where plagues once under control roll out across the Earth, 'Out of Africa' may develop a new and terrible resonance. Are you aware that even today there are cases of the Black Death in California. Good luck combating these without medicine and vaccines, remember you are isolated by flooded sea ports and disrupted air travel. Ask yourself how many major airports are near sea level.

There will be a world similar in some ways to the post KT extinction event, or maybe even that of the late Permian.

Some species did well of course and seem to do well. For lack of predatory fish and the fish younger stages jelly fish seem to be on the increase. I hope you like once living jello.

You really have not thought about this have you el gordo?

And for all those who throw the CAGW label around, would not such events be catastrophic?

A few items for our resident dim bulbs to ponder:

Greenland And Antarctica ‘May Be Vulnerable To Rapid Ice Loss Through Catastrophic Disintegration’.

You were saying Rednoise?

New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Reservoir Dries Up

You were saying Rednoise?

A Nation On Fire: Climate Change And The Burning Of America.

You were saying about adaptation elgordo, how are you going to put out the fires when there is no nearby water?

'What is your point? The MO definitions are identical to those I gave you earlier.'

Yes, I was interested in fleshing it out for future reference.

And I see and understand your concerns about positive feedbacks destroying the planet, but its just a theory.

If atmospheric temperatures remain flat for another five years and OHC also becomes flat, then its an example of negative feedback.

Lionel I have Diamond's book and found his argument fairly convincing.

And I see and understand your concerns about positive feedbacks destroying the planet, but its just a theory.

So how did the climate system get out of the last glacial?

'Have you any idea how long it will take for our fellow travellers in the plant, animal and other kingdoms to adapt to changed conditions of temperature, and dislocation in time and space?'

Let's assume temperatures eventually pick up by a couple of degrees over the coming decade, any species which can't survive that modest improvement in climate conditions deserves to go extinct.

Gordy

If the climate is dominated by net negative feedbacks, it would stay where it is. Every push would be damped away by negative feedbacks.

So here we are, 21ka in the depths of the last "ice age". Wobbles in the Earth's spin and orbit line up every 100,000 years and the NH gets hotter summers (but colder winters). This seasonal/spatial reorganisation of solar forcing is not *increase* in global solar forcing, which barely changes. This is important.

Yet this NH push from orbital dynamics terminates glacials and triggers a ~5C increase in global average temperature.

Negative feedbacks would quash this before it even got started. But, as we can see, this is not what happened. Positive feedbacks are required. And there have been lots of orbitally-forced glacial terminations over the last ~2.75Ma. All of which require positive feedbacks to have happened at all.

TLDR: Paleoclimate behaviour demonstrates that feedbacks net positive.

'So how did the climate system get out of the last glacial?'

Orbital forcing?

It still appears to be negative feedback?

The climate was getting colder at the LGM and then quite sharply the world began to warm, liberating the CO2 that had been 'drawn down' into the cold depths of the oceans.

Bad journalism is always with us but physics doesn't go out of date. And paleoclimate is what is.

Sensitivity estimates constrained by paleoclimate behaviour *still* centre on a best-estimate range of ~2.5C - 3C per doubling of CO2.

Even if it turns out to be ~2C - 2.5C per doubling, there is no practical difference.

Remember the underpinning argument:

Lotharsson #37:

Climate sensitivity in response to a double of CO2 equivalent has nothing to do with how much of a temperature rise the ecosystem can handle in a relatively short period of time without losing a whole lot of carrying capacity – in other words, without a whole lot of humans (and other life) either dying off, or not being born in the first place.

And #42:

The scientists who study the ecosystem are running around with their hair on fire – most recently in a link Jeff Harvey published – pointing out that we can expect much of the current ecosystem to fail to adapt to the changes we are throwing at it. If this happens, no-one – but no-one has proposed any solid “adaptation” measures that humanity can take (other than “let an awful lot of people die and hope the rest can hang on”).

Jeff Harvey drew attention to Quintero & Wiens (2013) which Bernard J. helpfully re-linked at #17.

All the back-and-forth about climate sensitivity tends to obscure the real issue: ecological sensitivity to rapid warming. Every indication is that it will be far higher than climate sensitivity to CO2.

'Each glacial period is subject to positive feedback which makes it more severe and negative feedback which mitigates and (in all cases so far) eventually ends it.'

wiki

Positive feedback (mainly ice albedo and reduced GHGs) maintain glacials.

Negative feedbacks do not and can not end glacials.

Link please.

You need positive feedbacks to terminate a glacial with only spatial and seasonal reorganisation of TIS (aka orbital/Milankovitch forcing).

Net negative feedbacks would suppress the global climate system response and we'd still be in an "ice age."

Fatso said:

Let’s assume temperatures eventually pick up by a couple of degrees over the coming decade, any species which can’t survive that modest improvement in climate conditions deserves to go extinct.

1) "A couple of degrees over the coming decade" is 20 degrees per century. Yhis is and order of magnitude again faster than Quintero & Wiens 2013 modelled in their paper. Nothing can adapt to that rate of warming, especially if it continues for more than a decade, and more especially if it occurs on top of current warming.

2) The opinion "any species which can’t survive that modest improvement in climate conditions deserves to go extinct" is just that - an opinion of an uneducated and unintelligent numpty, predicated on the baseless assumption that warming is an "improvement". And no species species "deserves to go extinct" just because a knuckle-dragging oik thinks so.

Fatso, your argument on this thread has swung between "it's not warming" to "it's stopped warming" to "it's natural, ENSO" to "warming is good" to "the weak deserve to die if they can't take the most extreme warming". Not a single one of your kettle (il)logic stances is actually defensible.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

el fatuous #68

[BBD:] So how did the climate system get out of the last glacial?’

[el fatuous:] Orbital forcing?

It still appears to be negative feedback?

Read the words.

You still have positive and negative feedbacks muddled up.

any species which can’t survive that modest improvement in climate conditions deserves to go extinct.

What an utterly contemptible fool you are!

How about half-educated loud-mouthed maladapted humans who just refuse to accept reality, Numpty? What do they deserve?

any species which can’t survive that modest improvement in climate conditions deserves to go extinct.</blockquote

If the set of species that "deserves to go extinct" includes species such as,
Gossypium
Oryza
Anthophila
,
then you will have been demonstrated beyond all doubt to have been an ignorant, stupid fool.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

Over the Holocene temperatures have gone up and down within a band of a few degrees. Even with AGW forcing its not expected to rise beyond a couple of degrees over this century.

So if we can't survive its too bad.

If you're here to demonstrate that Deniers are contemptible, selfish, scientific and biological ignoramuses whose arrogance is inversely proportional to their capability you are doing an outstanding job!

Otherwise... plonker. Take note, dear Lurker.

Over the Holocene temperatures have gone up and down within a band of a few degrees. Even with AGW forcing its not expected to rise beyond a couple of degrees over this century.

A) Bollocks to the claimed "facts" 1: the best estimate of the Holocene variation in global average temperature is under 1C since the preceding glacial was exited (although with significant uncertainty bands attached).

B) Bollocks to the claimed "facts" 2: the current expectation is that there's a significant chance of hitting 3, 4, or 5+ degrees rise by 2100 - and even more warming by 2200, and more beyond that. If we reach about 4C rise it's going to be very hard to stop it rising at that point so we'll probably proceed to 6C+.

C) Bollocks to the "logic": this time yesterday my car's speedometer registered an increase in speed of 110km/h when I left my car park and drove on the freeway. This time today I'm on the freeway doing 110km/h, so by your logic since I increased my speed yesterday at this time by 110km/h with no problems, I can do the same today. (I'm sure that will convince the nice friendly policeman who pulls me over, right?)

Worse still: now that we've established that 220km/h is no problem, I'm about to do that speed on this here winding dirt track. By your logic - "logic" that dismisses all the informed discussion upthread of how conditions have changed for the ecosystem since "most of the Holocene" - that won't be any problem either, will it? I'm safe as long as my speed increase is no more than I safely did yesterday, right?

You really don't put the brain in gear before you type. What's really impressive is that you haven't figured that out yet, despite receiving copious free information to that effect.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 31 Jul 2013 #permalink

First this: "Let’s assume temperatures eventually pick up by a couple of degrees over the coming decade, any species which can’t survive that modest improvement in climate conditions deserves to go extinct"

The this: ""As I said, life on this planet is precarious"

What do you know about life, fatty? And more importantly, why do you persist here with his kind of willful ignorance? To reiterate what I have said before, the planet evolved the highest biodiversity quire recently - under relatively low temperature regimes and low ambient C02 concentrations. High temperatures are NOT a pre-requisite for large adaptive radiation, unless the primary producers and soil systems follow suit. The key is stability to a large degree.

A global increase averaging - that being the key word - 2 C in the time scale envisaged will wipe out a large number species, incurring huge social and economic costs on humanity. A 4 C rise and humans are teetering on the edge of extinction; a 6 C rise and its game, set and match for us. WE CANNOT SURVIVE ON THIS PLANET UNDER THESE LATTER CONDITIONS BECAUSE OUR ECOLOGICAL LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS WILL BE SO RAVAGED THAT THEY WILL BE LARGELY DIS-FUNCTIONAL - at least in terms of supporting a large, over-consumptive rapacious bipedal primate. Get this through your thick heat Fatty. Read and repeat until it sinks in.

The current projected rises in temperature - in terms of temporal scale - are probably unprecedented in many, many millions of years. Against this background are landscapes and marine systems already hugely simplified by a range of anthropogenic stresses. And, importantly, idiots like fatty here constantly misconstrue temperature rises as being equal. Thus, 2 C or 4 C sound modes, but in the context of largely deterministic systems they are stupendously huge, and entail non-linear variation from one region to another. So, for instance, ecosystems at higher latitudes will experience huge increase and those at lower latitudes only small increases. There will be more extreme events: heat waves, floods, droughts, and other weather-related phenomena. And of course plants and animals are genetically armed to cope within certain ' windows' pertaining to temperature and other abiotic factors, as well as biotic constraints. If one reads and understands Per Bak's analogy (using sand piles as a metaphor) ecological systems are self-organized and living close to a threshold between existence and extinction. Self-organized criticality is his term (see discussion in Levin, 1999, "Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons", a book I reviewed for Nature).

What really irks me is when the idiot brigade in the denialati write all of this anthropocentric crap intimating how Homo sapiens has evolved beyond natural laws, that we are effectively exempt form them etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. These morons just do not get it: that as our species continues to simplify nature, it's capacity to support man is diminished, but not necessarily in a linear fashion. The key words are critical thresholds: where a system is so stressed that it eventually collapses giving way to an alternate - and not necessarily stable - state. Humans are pushing natural systems towards this threshold; scientists know it (see my comment about the research of Martin Scheffer yesterday). I certainly do. Against this background we have an army of deniers, some of whom are well aware of the oncoming precipice but who like things as they are and just who don't give a damn for the plight of future generations. These people are profiting handsomely fro the current system of selfish free market absolutism and desperately want to keep the present intact and damn the future. Then we have their brainless army of acolytes, represented well on Deltoid by a number of posters, including Gordo who, in spite of his profound ignorance, fancies himself as something of an expert on environmental and climate science.

Numbskulls like fatso here wade into areas so far beyond their competence that they effectively are hard to argue with: their arguments being below benthic.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 01 Aug 2013 #permalink

The swaggering arrogance of this colossal poltroon almost surpasses belief!

If any single phenomenon in the contemporary world truly merits a well-deserved extinction it's the Stupidity of this clown and his ilk.

And, by his own 'logic', he will have nothing to complain of.

One almost suspects el gordo is not here for the hunting, if you know what I mean (a trope discussed a while back with chameleon, IIRC).

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Aug 2013 #permalink

One suspects that one is correct.

One hopes that one is correct. If not, the human gene pool requires some heavy duty chlorination.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Aug 2013 #permalink

gordo

Lionel I have Diamond’s book and found his argument fairly convincing.

Which argument did you find convincing and in which of the three books that I cited did you find it?

So what science crimes has el fatuous committed in the last 24 hours? He's misrepresented Holocene climate variability, hasn't read Marcott et al. (2013) and won't so why do I bother linking? For others, of course.

Our results indicate that global mean temperature for the decade 2000–2009 (34) has not yet exceeded the warmest temperatures of the early Holocene (5000 to 10,000 yr B.P.). These temperatures are, however, warmer than 82% of the Holocene distribution as represented by the Standard 5×5 stack, or 72% after making plausible corrections for inherent smoothing of the high frequencies in the stack (6) (Fig. 3). In contrast, the decadal mean global temperature of the early 20th century (1900–1909) was cooler than >95% of the Holocene distribution under both the Standard 5×5 and high-frequency corrected scenarios. Global temperature, therefore, has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past century, reversing the long-term cooling trend that began ~5000 yr B.P.

Climate models project that temperatures are likely to exceed the full distribution of Holocene warmth by 2100 for all versions of the temperature stack (35) (Fig. 3), regardless of the greenhouse gas emission scenario considered (excluding the year 2000 constant composition scenario, which has already been exceeded). By 2100, global average temperatures will probably be 5 to 12 standard deviations above the Holocene temperature mean for the A1B scenario (35) based on our Standard 5×5 plus high-frequency addition stack (Fig. 3).

* * *

Here's a pretty picture. Holocene temperature reconstruction from M13 spliced with HadCRUT4 and the A1B SRES emissions scenario to 2100CE.

# 70 You are right, it's in the wiki. And the statement that negative feedbacks terminate glacials is flat-out wrong. Which is why you should not use wiki as a reference.

The process of the last deglaciation is described in detail by Shakun et al. (2012). It is one of entrained positive feedbacks to orbital forcing. Quick summary (but read the paper):

- NH summer insolation increases from ~ 21.5ka

- By ~19ka, mid/high latitude NH temperature increase causes sufficient melt from NH ice sheets for freshwater flux to inhibit NADW formation and halt AMOC

- NH *cools* as equatorial -> poleward heat transport stops

- With the NH ‘heat sink’ turned off, the SH *warms*, as it must

- Deep water warming in SH causes release of carbon to atmosphere. This positive feedback globalises and amplifies the warming

- NH melt resumes, fully engaging strongly positive ice albedo feedback

- Deglaciation accelerates until largely complete by ~11.5ka. Holocene interglacial begins

Just google the acronyms.

What do you know about life, fatty

Jeff, nokken. Why are you talking about his weight? Do you really want to share the low road with the "AlGore fat har har LOL" morons?

Stu

Horrible feeling I'm being thick and missing the beat here, but just in case: el gordo means "the big one/fat one".

Ah, that explains it! I mean, how would we know anything about him - and we can be pretty-damn-sure it's a him - physically?

@bill, @BBD: OH DERP. Never mind. Sorry guys.

Stu, purely on the moronic outgushings we unfortunately have to witness again (after a welcome break of a few years), my guess is that 'El Gordo' is 'Gordon' trying to sound 'cool'.

Which has obviously worked out just as well for him as all his other drivellings,

Yes, I wouldn't bet much money that el fatuous knew what it meant either. And even if he did, it doesn't excuse what followed. Stu isn't here pretending to be an expert on the Spanish language.

El Gordo is the Fat One

And its ironic that you think me a man, elsewhere on the blogosphere I've been outed as a woman.

Naturally, because of the confusion with my gender and adult autism (alluded to on the other thread), I'm banned at a few places.

Thanks for your patience.

East Greenland and West Antarctica there is ice loss and I'm curious to know the cause.