[Sushi]

I sense a great disturbance in the force. As if a millionttutas suddenly cried out in anguish and frustration, but were silenced...

[Luis Dias]

No, what you might say is that he did not only say what I paraphrased.

His other point is rather silly as well, since "opponents" in this case seem to be fox news, Glenn Beck, Lord Monckton et al., and if anything, it only shows that noisemakers will always focus on the noisemaking stuff, rather on the more interesting and damning things.

And investigative journalism is so 20th century, innit.... let's rather focus on the Wiener's wiener.

[NGTM-1R]

Are you here to actually discuss this **** like you suggested or are you just going to sling feces? Because this isn't encouraging the former view in the slightest, and aside from your first post, nothing has.

[Luis Dias]

Well, ok then. Have you seen the entire article I first quoted?

What do you make of it?

I think it seems rather important if replicated / confirmed, since a climate sensitivity of 1.6 rather than 2.3 is a very significant difference. Notice that many politics revolve around the (silly) notion that we should keep the planet under 2 degrees warmth. Now this kind of climate sensitivity would almost mean just that without further investments.

[watsisname]

Did I miss something, how do we know that the 1.6 figure is even the correct one?

I seem to recall a figure based on geologic records / ice cores that doubling the level of CO2 results in a roughly 2.8°C temperature rise.  How that would factor in to the climate sensitivity curve is beyond me though.

[Bobboau]

a climate sensitivity of 1.6 rather than 2.3

thank you for answering the question I asked in the first post.

now as to climate-gate, please tell me what you consider to be the most damning things in it. I will grant you non-prejudice and assume you will not be talking about declines being hidden or the travesty of not being able to account for lacks of warmth.

to facilitate dialog, I will mention the two things I found most damning:
1) suggestion of destruction of data -- though this is not proof of wrong doing, it suggests that said proof might have been destroyed, this however is not proof of wrong doing, it is merely suspect.
2) multiple instances of a visceral, almost fanatical hatred for the freedom of information act -- fear of having your inner workings exposed is indicative of a lack of faith in it, or of getting obsessively pestered.

also the thing I originally thought was most damning but later determined was not that bad was the discussion of the boycotting of the journal with the paper that the guys didn't like, it turns out it was simply a ****ty paper and that journal had been printing a lot of them lately and there are plenty of not so ****ty papers in not so ****ty journals that have been written that opposed man-bear-pig and these were not mentioned in the emails.

climate-gate strengthened the man-bear-pig argument by showing that when the world isn't watching the researchers behind it don't cook their books, even if they do sometimes use figures of speech when talking informally, and weakened the man-bear-pig denialist position by having them take 'putting data with a known flaw into perspective by by putting other data without this known flaw in it' for a dirty trick to fool everyone.

now I am not an environmentalist, I do think most people are blowing man-bear-pig out of perspective and I honestly think that the earth's temperature is not outside of it's normal operating tolerances, but I base as many of my beliefs as possible on fact and the fact is the man-bear-pig people have been doing a much better job on this front than those who disagree with them.
however, perhaps you do have something new that I have not heard before, please try and convince me that my original gut reaction to climate-gate was right and that there were some world changing bomb shells in there after all. What allows one to progress is the ability to overcome ones biases and accept truth when it is in opposition to what you believe.

[G0atmaster]

I just find all the fuss over CO2 to be quite silly,  as water vapor has a FAR greater greenhouse effect.  Remember those hydrogen-powered cars everyone keeps tossing around?  Yeah, they'd royally screw us over if they ever became mass-produced.

Just go outside on a day when clouds dissipate right after rainfall and tell me I'm wrong.

[bobbtmann]

I just find all the fuss over CO2 to be quite silly,  as water vapor has a FAR greater greenhouse effect.  Remember those hydrogen-powered cars everyone keeps tossing around?  Yeah, they'd royally screw us over if they ever became mass-produced.

Just go outside on a day when clouds dissipate right after rainfall and tell me I'm wrong.

So you're saying warming caused by carbon dioxide or methane wouldn't have any effect on the amount of water vapour in the air? I thought it was common knowledge that much of global warming deals with positive feedback. Anthropogenic global warming would cause water to evaporate faster, and allow the atmosphere to carry more water...

[watsisname]

I just find all the fuss over CO2 to be quite silly,  as water vapor has a FAR greater greenhouse effect.  Remember those hydrogen-powered cars everyone keeps tossing around?  Yeah, they'd royally screw us over if they ever became mass-produced.

Just go outside on a day when clouds dissipate right after rainfall and tell me I'm wrong.

Then you ought to be concerned that global atmospheric water vapor has increased by about 4% since 1970, which is what GW theory says should have happened given the observed 0.5°C (0.9°F) warming of the planet's oceans during the same period.

Indeed, increasing CO2 levels indirectly leads to increasing H20 concentrations, because the ocean surface becomes warmer.  How about that? 

[bobbtmann]

Then you ought to be concerned that global atmospheric water vapor has increased by about 4% since 1970, which is what GW theory says should have happened given the observed 0.5°C (0.9°F) warming of the planet's oceans during the same period.

Indeed, increasing CO2 levels indirectly leads to increasing H20 concentrations, because the ocean surface becomes warmer.  How about that? 

And as the ocean becomes warmer, their capacity to dissolve CO2 decreases, making them less efficient carbon sinks. That means that even less of the carbon dioxide we emit gets taken out of the atmosphere.

[watsisname]

That, too.  And let's not even go into the problems of CO2 increasing ocean acidification levels. 

[watsisname]

Sorry, double post.  Just want to tell G0atmaster that I'd like for him to watch this lecture on CO2 and earth's history.  It's very fascinating and hopefully may help you better understand how large of a role CO2 has played in regulating earth's climate in the past, with implications on what it means for our future.

[Luis Dias]

Did I miss something, how do we know that the 1.6 figure is even the correct one?

We don't. What I am fascinated by however is how a single error in the IPCC literature has the potential to deviate so much the cs curve.

To me it does not bode well for the allegded capability to project temperatures to 2100...

now as to climate-gate, please tell me what you consider to be the most damning things in it. I will grant you non-prejudice and assume you will not be talking about declines being hidden or the travesty of not being able to account for lacks of warmth.

I find it amazing that people are willing to forgive the first one you mention. That requires perhaps some ignorance to the hockey stick debacle, or at least a biased viewpoint on the matter. The second one is just mere opinion by Trenberth, and it is a growing problem to be solved (a recent paper by Mann et al tries to answer to that very problem, but it is mostly filled with speculatory mathematics). Recent temperature trends (since the TAR projections) seem to deviate from the projections by a lot - see Lucia's blog about this, she's quite amazingly thorough with a monthly analysis update and honest about it all - http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/may-t-anomalies-cooler-than-april/). But I am in complete agreement that while a "growing problem" it is still not that big. Yet.

But to answer your question, you have a comprehensive list of the "worst" quotes here:

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html

I mostly agree with your analysis of them. Most of them show a petty atmosphere controlled by a few hawks. Some of them show how this clique is actually controlling peer review, controlling the IPCC process of accepting or denying certain papers or comments, distorting empirical findings, cherry picking mathematics, hiding conflicting results from the general public with tricks, and trying to get certain nay-sayers out of the academic picture for their heresies.

Andrew Montford is a very good writer on the subject btw, I highly recommend it, and at least the reading of these two key blog posts of his:

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html

climate-gate strengthened the man-bear-pig argument by showing that when the world isn't watching the researchers behind it don't cook their books, even if they do sometimes use figures of speech when talking informally, and weakened the man-bear-pig denialist position by having them take 'putting data with a known flaw into perspective by by putting other data without this known flaw in it' for a dirty trick to fool everyone.

Most of the "cooking" is subtler than the trick to hide the decline, like say, the whole Hockey Stick shenanigan which is an amazing example on how science can be maliciously perverted. However, this one stood out because it was flagrantly exposed in the most literal way in the e-mails in a way that usual people could understand. Jon Stewart in his piece:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-1-2009/scientists-hide-global-warming-data

... understood it as we all did.

The BEST director, Richard Muller did another explanation of the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk

It IS damning. I wouldn't, I couldn't believe any further word of these people again.

And if you are willing to accept that perhaps this praxis of fudging presentations in order to hide the controversies behind the science and rather present the "Truth" as the scientists feel you should see (in order to make you aprehensive about the future or smth) is maybe throughout whole IPCC chapters (with some obvious candidates like the extreme weather - climate connections within the AR4 presentation which is clearly biased against all evidence, giving prominence to an unfinished paper just because it seemed the only paper to give credence to that link - something that the finished paper denies to), I don't see how this whole sad episode "Strengthens" the case for the theory.


Even granting the position (which I don't) that this episode wasn't that sad, the notion that this is the "only" thing that the counters found out bad about it, so it must be generally a good theory, does not follow exactly.

[watsisname]

We don't. What I am fascinated by however is how a single error in the IPCC literature has the potential to deviate so much the cs curve.

Ah, I see, and I agree that if this error is duplicated then that would be a significant find.  I'm pretty skeptical though, since the IPCC estimate for climate sensitivity seems to agree rather well with the ice-core data.  The video I just linked to discusses that briefly, actually.

To me it does not bode well for the allegded capability to project temperatures to 2100...

I don't think very many self-respecting scientists consider those projections to be of very high confidence.  Like the projections on arctic sea ice decline, it's such a complicated thing to try to model that I'd say they are meant to be and should be taken as "This is our best-estimate from current knowledge", not a "This is how it's going to be and here's our confidence level."

I really hope nobody is taking that to mean that we can continue business-as-usual without seeing adverse effects from it.  And on that note, one of Jeff Masters' recent blog articles makes a fairly convincing case that we might already be seeing extraordinary weather events driven by AGW.  Is this absolutely certain?  No.  But it is thought-provoking at the very least.

[Luis Dias]

There is no scientific evidence for these "extreme weather events caused by climate change" at all. All peer reviewed papers in the literature that calculate the appropriate renormalizing figures (to compensate growing population and coastal development throughout 20th century) all agree that the evidence simply doesn't show up.

Whenever I see someone arguing that we are already witnessing calamity from CC, I reach for my gun.

What I am not saying is that CC *won't* be producing nasty stuff in the future. While I haven't any trust in many model "projections" that try to answer that question, it seems like a very real possibility with possible simple physical explanations.

[bobbtmann]

I'm curious what you mean about renormalizing figures. Do you mean the height of the rising water divided by the number of people living in the drowned city?


I'm being facetious here

But seriously, most of the "record breaking years" I've been hearing of had nothing to do with population. They've been measured in square kilometers burnt, or degrees Celsius, or duration of drought, total rainfall.

[watsisname]

Whenever I see someone arguing that we are already witnessing calamity from CC, I reach for my gun.

Whoa there, that's a pretty strong knee-jerk response.  I'd say you might ought to reread my post and Jeff Master's post and reconsider what we're both saying.

All peer reviewed papers in the literature that calculate the appropriate renormalizing figures (to compensate growing population and coastal development throughout 20th century) all agree that the evidence simply doesn't show up.

Do you have links to those peer-reviewed papers?  I'd love to see them.  And does that include data on water vapor content, Jet Stream migration, and global precipitation?  And what's the population and coastal development figures for, are they only considering hurricanes/cyclones?

I'm not saying that we *have* seen CC-induced weather events already.  I'm saying we may have, and that if you look at all these records, it looks pretty dang convincing.  I'd be much more surprised if it was a fluke than if it was not, especially considering that increased energy to the climate system (warmer surface temps, higher water vapor content) should result in stronger weather systems.  If it doesn't then someone should be explaining a mechanism for how it doesn't, which I have yet to see.

edit:  also, bed time for me here.  Got classes today. :zzzzz:

[Luis Dias]

Sure, whatsisname. I refer to the IPCC itself, which finds nothing of the sort, and a bunch of papers, and yes, you'll find that I'm talking mostly about cyclones.

I refer to a consensus paper in the WMO in 2010 here: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n3/pdf/ngeo779.pdf

About other things, look, I'll be criticizing the points raised by your link one by one.

1. Earth's hottest year on record

This is one of the premises to the idea that gw is causing havoc, not an argument. I agree with it.

2.Most extreme winter Arctic atmospheric circulation on record; "Snowmageddon" results

This is a complete ad hoc explanation for the latest "snowmageddons", that were created post fact. I have little respect for a kind of science that is only able to predict phenomena after it is seen, specially when it is a phenomena that it would otherwise create suspicion we had the wrong idea about the climate. I am not saying it is a false idea. I'm saying it's ad hoc and not impressive overall.


3. Arctic sea ice: lowest volume on record, 3rd lowest extent

Our "record" of the arctic sea ice spans for 30 years. Not impressive, but something to watch out for. It says nothing about "extreme weather events" however.

3.Record melting in Greenland, and a massive calving event

Same.

4. Second most extreme shift from El Niño to La Niña

The first one being in 73. This kind of thing is expected to happen, you know? It is statistically impossible to avoid that some years will have record heights in some cherry picked values, specially if your records are only 50 years old.

5.Second worst coral bleaching year

Sad.

6. Wettest year over land

The trend is somewhat clear, if a little obscured by the graphical choice of presentation. It says nothing about extremes, however. One could both have a case where mild rains were more frequent (a generally good thing, I'd say), or extreme rains were more frequent (a bad thing for sure).

7. Amazon rainforest experiences its 2nd 100-year drought in 5 years

Amazon phenomena is intriguing, but has little to do with GW. Much more to do with direct human abuse of it, I'd say. At least, I don't see how you could disentangle such obvious fact from the data.

8. Global tropical cyclone activity lowest on record

Yeah, right on. I can't see how this should be a problem, the most powerful cyclones being a little more powerful shouldn't be so damned scary. I find the lack of weather protection in third world countries to be far, far more deadly than these beasts.

(To compare, see the two hundred thousand casualties from Myanmar and compare them to the 3000 people dead in New Orleans, and a good case is made that these 3 thousand casualties can be blamed on the incompetence of those who should have maitained the levees that were shattered by Katrina).

9. A hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season: 3rd busiest on record

To be sure, any trend that spans for more than a century on this kind of thing should be caveated with the notion that most likely a century ago not all storms would be caught in the record, while nowadays to miss these is pretty much impossible, creating an artificial trend.

10. A rare tropical storm in the South Atlantic

So? Impossible things happen all the time?

11. Strongest storm in Southwestern U.S. history

This is novel to me. Ok, what is the physical explanation linking this phenomena to GW?

12. Strongest non-coastal storm in U.S. history

The second one in 76? As I said, records will be shattered every year in any given place for any phenomena, it's statistically inevitable. Just like someone is always winning the lottery.

13. etc.,etc.


The list is impressive, but it shows nothing other than we are living in a hazardous planet. The blame-the-humans for everything that happens to us is an usual mind faulty process that has accompanied us for thousands of years, one which we should watch out for. Are we sure we aren't just witnessing the results of amazing detection abilities progress, really bad urban planning, global media connections that are instant, etc.?

I have seen no evidence of the "weirdness" that the post aspires to demonstrate, but I'm willing to accept there's probably a trend there of increasing intensity of some phenomenas.

If it doesn't then someone should be explaining a mechanism for how it doesn't, which I have yet to see.

Oh, that is fairly simple. GW predicts that while the average temps will grow, they will grow faster in the poles rather than in the tropics. This means that the temperature differences between the extremes will be lower than now. If you accept the premise that many weather events are caused by the tensions and confrontations between these extremes (differences in pressures, etc.), then you are given that mechanism. The other mechanism that you refer to also makes sense. So here we have two different mechanisms that may be working at the same time. Or not.

[watsisname]

From the abstract of your link,

Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes.

So the source you provided only discusses tropical cyclone activity.  And by its own words, cyclone activity is too variable and the records too limited for a trend to show up.  The IPCC agrees.  That's why I asked you if you had links discussing other trends, such as migration of jet streams and the tropical belt, which is predicted by GW and the records so far are in agreement with it (though more research/time required to boost confidence).

Oh, that is fairly simple. GW predicts that while the average temps will grow, they will grow faster in the poles rather than in the tropics. This means that the temperature differences between the extremes will be lower than now. If you accept the premise that many weather events are caused by the tensions and confrontations between these extremes (differences in pressures, etc.), then you are given that mechanism. The other mechanism that you refer to also makes sense. So here we have two different mechanisms that may be working at the same time. Or not.

Let's look at that bolded statement real quick.  Most weather systems actually are not controlled by the global latitudinal temperature differences, but by interaction between airmasses, Jet Streams, and convergence zones.  Temperature differences between the equator and the poles regulates the Hadley circulation, which also regulates jet streams, and therefore the climate as a whole.  By changing that, you change the global circulation patterns, thus changing regional climate and pretty much cause problems everywhere since everything has to adapt to a new regime.

You've done a good job of looking at each of the events Mr. Masters' discussed but you seem to have missed the concluding paragraph:

Any one of the extreme weather events of 2010 or 2011 could have occurred naturally sometime during the past 1,000 years. But it is highly improbable that the remarkable extreme weather events of 2010 and 2011 could have all happened in such a short period of time without some powerful climate-altering force at work. The best science we have right now maintains that human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like CO2 are the most likely cause of such a climate-altering force.

The collective speaks more than the individual, in other words.  But I digress, take it or leave it, we'll know more in another few decades I'm sure.

[Luis Dias]

From the abstract of your link,

Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes.

So the source you provided only discusses tropical cyclone activity.  And by its own words, cyclone activity is too variable and the records too limited for a trend to show up.  The IPCC agrees.  That's why I asked you if you had links discussing other trends, such as migration of jet streams and the tropical belt, which is predicted by GW and the records so far are in agreement with it (though more research/time required to boost confidence).

I admitted as such already, what else do you want me to do?

Let's look at that bolded statement real quick.  Most weather systems actually are not controlled by the global latitudinal temperature differences, but by interaction between airmasses, Jet Streams, and convergence zones.  Temperature differences between the equator and the poles regulates the Hadley circulation, which also regulates jet streams, and therefore the climate as a whole.  By changing that, you change the global circulation patterns, thus changing regional climate and pretty much cause problems everywhere since everything has to adapt to a new regime.

Sure. Climate change. That's the whole meaning of the term. Be aware right now that you are now speaking of a different phenomena than the one claiming that "extreme events will happen due to more energy". This is a parallel phenomena.

You've done a good job of looking at each of the events Mr. Masters' discussed but you seem to have missed the concluding

Any one of the extreme weather events of 2010 or 2011 could have occurred naturally sometime during the past 1,000 years. But it is highly improbable that the remarkable extreme weather events of 2010 and 2011 could have all happened in such a short period of time without some powerful climate-altering force at work.

Again, the last sentence *could* be true, but alas, I see no evidence for it. And by evidence, I mean statistical evidence that there is really a trend towards spectacular weather phenomena. All I see is vulgar statistical evidence that shows that sometimes **** happens. And in some very specific places, certain phenomena hit a certain criteria to be called "record high". But this is statistically inevitable, as I previously said, even for completely random numbers.

The best science we have right now maintains that human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like CO2 are the most likely cause of such a climate-altering force.

If you *assume* that there is such an amazing trend, and if you also *assume* that natural variations aren't probably the cause for many of these phenomena. Alas, there are too many assumptions in your science.

The collective speaks more than the individual, in other words.  But I digress, take it or leave it, we'll know more in another few decades I'm sure.

Well that's the ultimate empirical test, innit? We know that we know very little. And this should be enough for us to make certain important decisions, like start a policy of protecting the economy, the infrastructures, the cities, the natural environments against the crude accidents of nature in a wise fashion.