I don’t have much time for a detailed post, a number of people want to discuss sea ice, so here is your chance. We also need to update the ARCUS forecast for August, due Monday August 6th. Poll follows:
Gneiss,
Your reference is discredited. Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of the UN/IPCC’s Working Group 3, stated: One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.
The IPCC is a political organization, with a thin veneer of pseudo-science. If you are going to cite a source, cite a credible source. The UN is not a credible scientific source, as Edenhofer’s statement makes crystal clear.
Gail Combs
August 6, 2012 6:58 am
Entropic man says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:05 am
Smokey and I have been agreeing (it does happen occasionally!) that the normal glacial/ interglacial cycle is driven by orbital eccentricity cycles which drive temperature changes which drive CO2 changes, with amplification of both changes by positive feedback. This is the natural trend on which any natural short term variation would be superimposed….
_______________________
It was I who brought up Milankovich eccentricity and you are trying to sneak in agreement with “POSITIVE FEEDBACKS” which has been throughly mangled shredded and disposed of HERE and HERE and HERE
You are also ignoring the fact that Milankovich eccentricity means the rate at which the ice is melting ACCELERATES (it is the derivative) The article HEREand Paper HERE
No positive feedbacks from puny little CO2 are necessary and that is why CO2 LAGS the temperature rise.
From the article:
…Gerard Roe realized a trivial mistake that had previously been done. And a similar mistake is being done by many people all the time – scientists as well as laymen; alarmists as well as skeptics. The problem is that people confuse functions and their derivatives; they say that something is “warm” even though they mean that it’s “getting warmer” or vice versa.
In this case, the basic correct observation is the following: If you suddenly get more sunshine near the Arctic circle, you don’t immediately change the ice volume. Instead, you increase the rate with which the ice volume is decreasing (ice is melting). Isn’t this comment trivial?
Nigel Calder knew that this was the right comparison to be made back in 1974….
Entropic man
August 6, 2012 7:04 am
Nasa has published a report showing a long term solar insolation trend of +0.05% per decade since 1978. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0313irradiance.html
By my quick mental calculation, a 1C black body temperature increase at the Earth’s surface would need an increase in insolation of about 0.34%. The observed insolation trend would produce about +0.14C per decade.
NASA/Goddard’s temperature data show an global increase of 0.7C since 1978 (0.23C per decade). On this basis the solar insolation change would account for 61% of the observed warming.
This is clearly a back-of-the-envelope calculation, with any number of complicating factors ignored. Would anyone more competent like to critique?
Entropic man
August 6, 2012 7:28 am
1) Smokey presents a graph showing temperature changes over the very long term, driven by the Milankovich eccentricity oscillations. He uses this to demonstrate that in that context temperature change precedes or marches in step with CO2 change. I agree. Now he says the graph is wrong.
2) Gail, your references are all critiques of published papers, published on a website with a widely recognised anti-cAGW bias. They are not evidence.Peer-reviewed links would be preferred.
3) I am not convinced that acceleration is not relevant to this argument. On the milennial time scales of interglacials there is time to reach equilibrium states and the short term rate of change is of lesser importance.
Over the decadal time scales of recent changes, the equilibrium has been upset, with consequences predicted by both sides, but no resolution yet.
I keep finding references to accelerating trends on WUWT. The NASA/Goddard temperature graph gradually steepens during the 20th century, indicating that the rate of change is accelerating, but I fail to see why the sceptics are so keen to debunk it.
Gneiss
August 6, 2012 7:32 am
Smokey, go ahead and take the challenge. What is the fiction, in WG I Chapter 9? It’s a trick question because to answer I’m hoping someone will look at the actual chapter (no sign of that yet), instead of making political declarations or pasting quotes they read on the internets.
And while we’re chatting … you often lecture scientists about what you think “null hypothesis” means, but in doing so give the impression that you don’t understand the concept yourself. I often test null hypotheses, in fact tested two (no more, no less) for one of my posts in this thread. Can you spot where that happened, and guess what those null hypotheses were? No trick here. I’m pretty sure that Rob Dekker, like most scientists, could answer easily.
Entropic man
August 6, 2012 7:33 am
“3) I am not convinced that acceleration is not relevant to this argument.”
Sorry, too many nots. that should be “3) I am not convinced that acceleration is relevant to this argument”
I am still wrestling with the word processing software.
Gail Combs
August 6, 2012 7:50 am
I should also note on the Milankovich eccentricity, that we are at the DECELERATION phase. This is a point that is never brought up in the discussions but you can certainly see it in the graphs. Antarctic and Arctic
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, USA et al Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present…
So we now have 9% less Solar Energy than we had when the sun kicked the earth out of the last Ice Age. The solar “Constant” now is 1370 Wm2 at TOA. 11ka ago it would have been 123 Wm2 higher than it is today.
Hansen’s calculations for CO2’s impact is 0.6Wm2 (see here )
If you go with energy at the surface (and given the Solar Energy interacts with the atmosphere on the way down that is being nice.) Total forcing (solar plus longwave) averaged around the globe 24/7 is about 500 watts per square meter. So 9% of that is still in the neighborhood of ~ 45Wm2.
Sorry CO2 is just plain puny.
Entropic man
August 6, 2012 7:51 am
Smokey says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:35 am
” If you are going to cite a source, cite a credible source.”
This is part of the reason we seem to spend so much time arguing past each other. The sources I cite are not credible to you, and the sources you cite are not credible to me.
beng
August 6, 2012 8:05 am
****
Entropic man says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:05 am Smokey and I have been agreeing (it does happen occasionally!) that the normal glacial/ interglacial cycle is driven by orbital eccentricity cycles which drive temperature changes which drive CO2 changes, with amplification of both changes by positive feedback.
****
Sure, it’s called ice/albedo feedback. In interglacials, that positive feedback has essentially run-out (hence the unusual stability of interglacial temps compared to glacial temps). There’s no ice, including sea-ice, present that’s far enough equatorward to have any more than a local effect.
How the interglacial degrades to glacial is the question. Something has to “kickstart” the climate into a colder regime first (if not, we’d already be in a glacial regime since the summer sun in the N hemisphere right now is at a minimum). As the ice/snowline gets further equatorward from the kickstart, the positive feedback will come into play, exaggerating the inherent climate shifts during glacials.
This has zero to do w/CO2.
Gail Combs
August 6, 2012 8:13 am
Entropic man says:
August 6, 2012 at 7:28 am
2) Gail, your references are all critiques of published papers, published on a website with a widely recognised anti-cAGW bias. They are not evidence.Peer-reviewed links would be preferred.
________________________________
HUH??? These are NOT a reputable sources???
a The Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado
b Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA
c Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
d Earth Surface Processes, U.S. Geological Survey, MS-980, Box 25046, DFC, Denver, CO 80225, USA
e Mainz Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Literature, IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany
f Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada
g School of Geography, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
h Geography Department, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK
i Department of Biological Sciences, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209, USA
j Geological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 5-7, DK-1350, Copenhagen K, Denmark
k Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Box 1846, Providence, RI 02912, USA
l Water and Environmental Research Center University of Alaska Fairbanks, Box 755860, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
m School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-4099, USA
n Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
o Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, 108 Scott Hall, 1090 Carmack Road, Columbus, OH 43210-1002, USA
p Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswich, NJ 08901, USA
q Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, NSIDC, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
r Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada
s Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences, IFM-GEOMAR, Wischhofstr. 1-3, D-24148 Kiel, Germany
t British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK
If you want the whole paper it is here: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-2/public-review-draft/sap1-2-prd-all.pdf
Given all the evidence that “left-leaning” Academics block others from the Climategate e-mails, firings of editors and a newer study where they come right out and SAY they block papers from conservatives, Peer-reviewed now means SQUAT! http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/liberal-majority-on-campus-yes-were-biased/?page=all#pagebreak
Yeah it is a news paper. You can go dig out the study since my computer is about to crash if I do not shut down.
Anonymous Coward
August 6, 2012 8:58 am
Beng, CO2 plays an important role providing positive feedback in glacial/interglacial transitions. That is well established.
tjfolkerts
August 6, 2012 9:09 am
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: “Umm… No. “Within the range of natural variability” is the null hypothesis”
And Gail Says: “Smokey is talking about the Null Hypothesis in science.”
Yes, I understand the idea of “null hypothesis”, but I think you are all missing an important idea or two about the null hypothesis.
1) We need to agree on what the “natural variability” is. When rolling dice or flipping coins, that natural variability is. We KNOW the odds of getting 6 heads in a row (1/64) or rolling a total of at least 25 when rolling 5 dice (a little over 3%). This knowledge can be gained by studying the shape of coins or by rolling lots of dice.
With sea ice, we have only a limited knowledge of what the “natural variability”. There is excellent data since late 1978 from satellites. There is decent data going back 100’s of years (from people living near and traveling on Arctic water. There is various data going back thousands or millions or billions of years.
2) We need to know what the natural variability is FOR CURRENT CONDITIONS. It is natural for the Arctic to be pretty much ice-free in some natural conditions. It is natural for the Arctic to be pretty much solid ice well beyond the current limits in some natural conditions. Changes in earth’s orbit and plate tectonics have huge impacts. But what happened 5,000 or 5,000,000 years ago doesn’t really matter. We want to know the natural variability for current conditions.
3) We want to know the natural variability not only of the extent, but of the RATE at which extent changes. That is even less well known. Is it natural for the summer extent to drop from 7.5 to 4.5 million km^2 in 30 years? Before we can even THINK about testing a null hypothesis, we need to know what the null hypothesis conditions are. It is one thing to say “we don’t know the natural conditions well enough to state that current conditions are unnatural.” It is a very different thing to say “we DO know the natural conditions, and this definitely is within the natural bounds.”
Can any of you tell me the probability of naturally getting 4.5 million km or less given current “natural” orbital/geological/atmospheric conditions (eg, for a “natural” CO2 level of ~ 350 ppm)? Can you tell me the odds of dropping from 7.5 to 4.5 million km in 30 years?
I don’t know either. People study this because they want to know. It seems most of them think the current extent and rate of change are NOT natural. Their expectations of “natural variations without human impact” are not consistent with current ice conditions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Putting it the other way around, we are not testing if the current condition fall inside a known “natural variability range” (like we might be with dice or medical studies). We are instead trying to decide what those natural variability limits actually are to begin with.
The “null hypothesis statistical tests” are trivial once the natural variability is known. But either side needs to present evidence for the “natural variability” before coming to conclusions.
beng
August 6, 2012 9:15 am
****
Anonymous Coward says:
August 6, 2012 at 8:58 am Beng, CO2 plays an important role providing positive feedback in glacial/interglacial transitions. That is well established.
****
No, it hasn’t been “well established”. Read Gail’s links about Roe’s Milankovitch-cycle analysis above, understand what that analysis means, and you’ll discover why.
tjfolkerts
August 6, 2012 9:36 am
Smokey says: August 6, 2012 at 6:20 am
Entropic,
Cutting and pasting your comment from another thread does not make it legit. I showed that on all time scales, from years to hundreds of thousands of years, rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature.
Similarly, repeating your point does not make it more valid, either.
The simple truth is that CO2 can be both a cause and an effect of warming.
* A warming ocean can hold less CO2, and will naturally out-gas in response to warming temperatures (e.g. from changes in earth’s orbit).
* Conversely, if you raise the CO2 levels, you will reduce IR emissions to space and warm the surface.
The fact that the first statement is true in no way speaks to the second statement or negates Entropic’s point. In the past, there were ONLY “natural” sources and sinks of CO2. In the last millennium (and especially the last half century), the natural order has been significantly impacted by anthropogenic causes. We have a “new experiment” running where CO2 changes not only in response to trees and ocean, but also gets changes “artificially” by people. The old rules need to be re-examined.
OLD EXPERIMENT: How does CO2 change in response to natural drivers.
NEW EXPERIMENT: How does nature change in response to anthropogenic drivers.
The analysis is complicated by the “old experiment” still running in the background. The analysis is complicated by other feedbacks (eg the water cycle). But you can’t simply quote “experiments” (ie history) done under different conditions and assume a priori that the same results still apply in new conditions.
tjfolkerts
August 6, 2012 9:44 am
Gail says: “So we now have 9% less Solar Energy than we had when the sun kicked the earth out of the last Ice Age. The solar “Constant” now is 1370 Wm2 at TOA. 11ka ago it would have been 123 Wm2 higher than it is today.”
Gail, you misinterpreted the passage you quoted. “Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present)” means that the distribution of energy in time and space was different. Specifically, there was 9% more solar energy in the Arctic during the summer. The earth as a whole got about the same, and the solar constant was about the same, too (certainly not 123 W/m^2 higher everywhere all the time).
Game over guys.
The storm over the arctic now will tear the thin ice to shreds. Expect a new Area record ( <2.9) before the end of the month. Extent will drop below the record 4.3.. maybe fall below 4.
Arctic hasnt seen a storm like this .. well.. lets just say its rare.
Now, before AGW, when the ice was thick.. no problem. But now.. the wind and wave action will pummel the ice. saltier water from lower depths ( also warmer) will get pumped up to the surface and cover the ice..
Bruce Cobb
August 6, 2012 10:31 am
@tjfolkerts, You appear to be saying that we simply don’t know enough about climate to know what, if any effect we are having on it. Perfect! That, in a nutshell is the skeptics’ stance as well.
Now, all you need to do is to agree that a cooling climate such as what occurred during the LIA would be what we need to fear, not warming, such as what occurred during the MWP.
To that end, you might find this interesting: http://www.wnd.com/2010/05/155225/
tjfolkerts,
Agree, CO2 both causes warming and rises as an effect of warming.
But the latter effect is large, while the former is too minuscule to measure.
And as Gneiss hides out from my challenge, he uses his usual alarmist projection to say, ‘go ahead and take the challenge’.
What a disreputable charlatan. Gneiss knows that my challenge stands unfalsified: At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
And because Gneiss cannot falsify that testable hypothesis, he prevaricates and dissembles.
Anonymous Coward says:
“Beng, CO2 plays an important role providing positive feedback in glacial/interglacial transitions. That is well established.”
Um… No. It is not. For at least the past 720,000 years, CO2 has risen and fallen as an effect of temperature, not a cause. But thanx for playing.
.
tjfolkerts says:
“Yes, I understand the idea of “null hypothesis”…”
Quite clearly you do not.
.
Entropic man says:
“2) Gail, your references are all critiques of published papers, published on a website with a widely recognised anti-cAGW bias. They are not evidence. Peer-reviewed links would be preferred.”
Right there is the basis of your confusion. Peer reviewed papers are not ‘evidence’. And Gail Combs has slaughtered you with her replies.
Entropic cannot even keep the commenters straight, no wonder he is so confused about the subject.
The wild-eyed alarmist crowd clings to natural Arctic variability like a drowning man clings to a stick. It is the only one of their endless scary predictions that might support their globaloney nonsense. Their problem is that the Antarctic has most all of the planet’s ice, and the Antarctic’s ice is steadily increasing. Thus, blaming the entirely natural Arctic variability on human activity is a major FAIL.
Wake me when/if the Null Hypothesis is ever falsified. Until/unless that happens, everything observed is natural. It has all happened before, and to a greater extent. But I don’t expect the handful of cognitive dissonance-afflicted true believers to ever accept that, because their minds are already made up and closed tight. Facts do not matter, it’s confirmation bias with them all the way. Leo Tolstoy explains their uncomfortable predicament:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
The Arctic has been repeatedly ice free during the Holocene. But cognitive dissonance is extremely difficult to treat. So expect more confirmation bias, cherry-picking, and ignoring facts by the reason impaired. They are driven by emotion, not by logic or facts. Have sympathy for their affliction. But disregard their climate alarmism, because Planet Earth is making clear that we have been through the same thing before. Many times. Naturally.
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
August 6, 2012 1:40 pm
From Steven Mosher on August 6, 2012 at 10:28 am:
Now, before AGW, when the ice was thick.. no problem. But now.. the wind and wave action will pummel the ice. saltier water from lower depths ( also warmer) will get pumped up to the surface and cover the ice..
Smokey!
You are specifically claiming that “All of the changes are due to natural variability. Proof: … ” This is bad hypothesis testing no matter how you look at it.
That is simply NOT what you can claim based on hypothesis testing! The best you could possibly claim is “All of the changes are due to consistent with natural variability” which is very different from your claim that there are in fact ONLY natural variations and NO man-made changes. At best, the test can only say we didn’t detect the potential changes.
Geez… After 240 some comments, someone finally mentions the storm. Talk about some clueless commenters.
kadaka: The center of the storm is around 80N and 170W, about a thousand miles north of Barrow. Here is a nice site showing the storm: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/weather/arcticweather_imagecontainer.php
(note link auto updates)
But even at Barrow, the storm changed weather fast.
Here is the weather talk from Barrow today:
NORTHERN ALASKA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FAIRBANKS AK
437 AM AKDT MON AUG 6 2012
.DISCUSSION… (continued)
NORTH SLOPE…
“SCREAMING COLD AIR ADVECTION AND DRYING OF THE AIR MASS BEHIND THE FRONT AS EVIDENT ON THE 12Z BARROW SOUNDING. THE FREEZING LEVEL AT BARROW DROPPED FROM OVER 10K FT ASL AT 00Z/4PM AKDT SUNDAY AFTERNOON TO JUST 200 FT THIS MORNING! IT WAS 60F YESTERDAY AFTERNOON AT BARROW AND THE CURRENT TEMP IS 33F WITH A WIND CHILL OF 22F.”
Gneiss,
Your reference is discredited. Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of the UN/IPCC’s Working Group 3, stated:
One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.
The IPCC is a political organization, with a thin veneer of pseudo-science. If you are going to cite a source, cite a credible source. The UN is not a credible scientific source, as Edenhofer’s statement makes crystal clear.
Entropic man says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:05 am
Smokey and I have been agreeing (it does happen occasionally!) that the normal glacial/ interglacial cycle is driven by orbital eccentricity cycles which drive temperature changes which drive CO2 changes, with amplification of both changes by positive feedback. This is the natural trend on which any natural short term variation would be superimposed….
_______________________
It was I who brought up Milankovich eccentricity and you are trying to sneak in agreement with “POSITIVE FEEDBACKS” which has been throughly mangled shredded and disposed of HERE and HERE and HERE
You are also ignoring the fact that Milankovich eccentricity means the rate at which the ice is melting ACCELERATES (it is the derivative) The article HEREand Paper HERE
No positive feedbacks from puny little CO2 are necessary and that is why CO2 LAGS the temperature rise.
From the article:
Nasa has published a report showing a long term solar insolation trend of +0.05% per decade since 1978.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0313irradiance.html
By my quick mental calculation, a 1C black body temperature increase at the Earth’s surface would need an increase in insolation of about 0.34%. The observed insolation trend would produce about +0.14C per decade.
NASA/Goddard’s temperature data show an global increase of 0.7C since 1978 (0.23C per decade). On this basis the solar insolation change would account for 61% of the observed warming.
This is clearly a back-of-the-envelope calculation, with any number of complicating factors ignored. Would anyone more competent like to critique?
1) Smokey presents a graph showing temperature changes over the very long term, driven by the Milankovich eccentricity oscillations. He uses this to demonstrate that in that context temperature change precedes or marches in step with CO2 change. I agree. Now he says the graph is wrong.
2) Gail, your references are all critiques of published papers, published on a website with a widely recognised anti-cAGW bias. They are not evidence.Peer-reviewed links would be preferred.
3) I am not convinced that acceleration is not relevant to this argument. On the milennial time scales of interglacials there is time to reach equilibrium states and the short term rate of change is of lesser importance.
Over the decadal time scales of recent changes, the equilibrium has been upset, with consequences predicted by both sides, but no resolution yet.
I keep finding references to accelerating trends on WUWT. The NASA/Goddard temperature graph gradually steepens during the 20th century, indicating that the rate of change is accelerating, but I fail to see why the sceptics are so keen to debunk it.
Smokey, go ahead and take the challenge. What is the fiction, in WG I Chapter 9? It’s a trick question because to answer I’m hoping someone will look at the actual chapter (no sign of that yet), instead of making political declarations or pasting quotes they read on the internets.
And while we’re chatting … you often lecture scientists about what you think “null hypothesis” means, but in doing so give the impression that you don’t understand the concept yourself. I often test null hypotheses, in fact tested two (no more, no less) for one of my posts in this thread. Can you spot where that happened, and guess what those null hypotheses were? No trick here. I’m pretty sure that Rob Dekker, like most scientists, could answer easily.
“3) I am not convinced that acceleration is not relevant to this argument.”
Sorry, too many nots. that should be “3) I am not convinced that acceleration is relevant to this argument”
I am still wrestling with the word processing software.
I should also note on the Milankovich eccentricity, that we are at the DECELERATION phase. This is a point that is never brought up in the discussions but you can certainly see it in the graphs. Antarctic and Arctic
So we now have 9% less Solar Energy than we had when the sun kicked the earth out of the last Ice Age. The solar “Constant” now is 1370 Wm2 at TOA. 11ka ago it would have been 123 Wm2 higher than it is today.
Hansen’s calculations for CO2’s impact is 0.6Wm2 (see here )
If you go with energy at the surface (and given the Solar Energy interacts with the atmosphere on the way down that is being nice.) Total forcing (solar plus longwave) averaged around the globe 24/7 is about 500 watts per square meter. So 9% of that is still in the neighborhood of ~ 45Wm2.
Sorry CO2 is just plain puny.
Smokey says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:35 am
” If you are going to cite a source, cite a credible source.”
This is part of the reason we seem to spend so much time arguing past each other. The sources I cite are not credible to you, and the sources you cite are not credible to me.
****
Entropic man says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:05 am
Smokey and I have been agreeing (it does happen occasionally!) that the normal glacial/ interglacial cycle is driven by orbital eccentricity cycles which drive temperature changes which drive CO2 changes, with amplification of both changes by positive feedback.
****
Sure, it’s called ice/albedo feedback. In interglacials, that positive feedback has essentially run-out (hence the unusual stability of interglacial temps compared to glacial temps). There’s no ice, including sea-ice, present that’s far enough equatorward to have any more than a local effect.
How the interglacial degrades to glacial is the question. Something has to “kickstart” the climate into a colder regime first (if not, we’d already be in a glacial regime since the summer sun in the N hemisphere right now is at a minimum). As the ice/snowline gets further equatorward from the kickstart, the positive feedback will come into play, exaggerating the inherent climate shifts during glacials.
This has zero to do w/CO2.
Entropic man says:
August 6, 2012 at 7:28 am
2) Gail, your references are all critiques of published papers, published on a website with a widely recognised anti-cAGW bias. They are not evidence.Peer-reviewed links would be preferred.
________________________________
HUH??? These are NOT a reputable sources???
a The Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado
b Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA
c Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
d Earth Surface Processes, U.S. Geological Survey, MS-980, Box 25046, DFC, Denver, CO 80225, USA
e Mainz Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Literature, IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany
f Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada
g School of Geography, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
h Geography Department, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK
i Department of Biological Sciences, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209, USA
j Geological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 5-7, DK-1350, Copenhagen K, Denmark
k Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Box 1846, Providence, RI 02912, USA
l Water and Environmental Research Center University of Alaska Fairbanks, Box 755860, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
m School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-4099, USA
n Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
o Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, 108 Scott Hall, 1090 Carmack Road, Columbus, OH 43210-1002, USA
p Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswich, NJ 08901, USA
q Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, NSIDC, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
r Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada
s Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences, IFM-GEOMAR, Wischhofstr. 1-3, D-24148 Kiel, Germany
t British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK
If you want the whole paper it is here: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-2/public-review-draft/sap1-2-prd-all.pdf
Given all the evidence that “left-leaning” Academics block others from the Climategate e-mails, firings of editors and a newer study where they come right out and SAY they block papers from conservatives, Peer-reviewed now means SQUAT! http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/liberal-majority-on-campus-yes-were-biased/?page=all#pagebreak
Yeah it is a news paper. You can go dig out the study since my computer is about to crash if I do not shut down.
Beng, CO2 plays an important role providing positive feedback in glacial/interglacial transitions. That is well established.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: “Umm… No. “Within the range of natural variability” is the null hypothesis”
And Gail Says: “Smokey is talking about the Null Hypothesis in science.”
Yes, I understand the idea of “null hypothesis”, but I think you are all missing an important idea or two about the null hypothesis.
1) We need to agree on what the “natural variability” is. When rolling dice or flipping coins, that natural variability is. We KNOW the odds of getting 6 heads in a row (1/64) or rolling a total of at least 25 when rolling 5 dice (a little over 3%). This knowledge can be gained by studying the shape of coins or by rolling lots of dice.
With sea ice, we have only a limited knowledge of what the “natural variability”. There is excellent data since late 1978 from satellites. There is decent data going back 100’s of years (from people living near and traveling on Arctic water. There is various data going back thousands or millions or billions of years.
2) We need to know what the natural variability is FOR CURRENT CONDITIONS. It is natural for the Arctic to be pretty much ice-free in some natural conditions. It is natural for the Arctic to be pretty much solid ice well beyond the current limits in some natural conditions. Changes in earth’s orbit and plate tectonics have huge impacts. But what happened 5,000 or 5,000,000 years ago doesn’t really matter. We want to know the natural variability for current conditions.
3) We want to know the natural variability not only of the extent, but of the RATE at which extent changes. That is even less well known. Is it natural for the summer extent to drop from 7.5 to 4.5 million km^2 in 30 years?
Before we can even THINK about testing a null hypothesis, we need to know what the null hypothesis conditions are. It is one thing to say “we don’t know the natural conditions well enough to state that current conditions are unnatural.” It is a very different thing to say “we DO know the natural conditions, and this definitely is within the natural bounds.”
Can any of you tell me the probability of naturally getting 4.5 million km or less given current “natural” orbital/geological/atmospheric conditions (eg, for a “natural” CO2 level of ~ 350 ppm)? Can you tell me the odds of dropping from 7.5 to 4.5 million km in 30 years?
I don’t know either. People study this because they want to know. It seems most of them think the current extent and rate of change are NOT natural. Their expectations of “natural variations without human impact” are not consistent with current ice conditions.
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Putting it the other way around, we are not testing if the current condition fall inside a known “natural variability range” (like we might be with dice or medical studies). We are instead trying to decide what those natural variability limits actually are to begin with.
The “null hypothesis statistical tests” are trivial once the natural variability is known. But either side needs to present evidence for the “natural variability” before coming to conclusions.
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Anonymous Coward says:
August 6, 2012 at 8:58 am
Beng, CO2 plays an important role providing positive feedback in glacial/interglacial transitions. That is well established.
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No, it hasn’t been “well established”. Read Gail’s links about Roe’s Milankovitch-cycle analysis above, understand what that analysis means, and you’ll discover why.
Smokey says: August 6, 2012 at 6:20 am
Similarly, repeating your point does not make it more valid, either.
The simple truth is that CO2 can be both a cause and an effect of warming.
* A warming ocean can hold less CO2, and will naturally out-gas in response to warming temperatures (e.g. from changes in earth’s orbit).
* Conversely, if you raise the CO2 levels, you will reduce IR emissions to space and warm the surface.
The fact that the first statement is true in no way speaks to the second statement or negates Entropic’s point. In the past, there were ONLY “natural” sources and sinks of CO2. In the last millennium (and especially the last half century), the natural order has been significantly impacted by anthropogenic causes. We have a “new experiment” running where CO2 changes not only in response to trees and ocean, but also gets changes “artificially” by people. The old rules need to be re-examined.
OLD EXPERIMENT: How does CO2 change in response to natural drivers.
NEW EXPERIMENT: How does nature change in response to anthropogenic drivers.
The analysis is complicated by the “old experiment” still running in the background. The analysis is complicated by other feedbacks (eg the water cycle). But you can’t simply quote “experiments” (ie history) done under different conditions and assume a priori that the same results still apply in new conditions.
Gail says: “So we now have 9% less Solar Energy than we had when the sun kicked the earth out of the last Ice Age. The solar “Constant” now is 1370 Wm2 at TOA. 11ka ago it would have been 123 Wm2 higher than it is today.”
Gail, you misinterpreted the passage you quoted. “Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present)” means that the distribution of energy in time and space was different. Specifically, there was 9% more solar energy in the Arctic during the summer. The earth as a whole got about the same, and the solar constant was about the same, too (certainly not 123 W/m^2 higher everywhere all the time).
Game over guys.
The storm over the arctic now will tear the thin ice to shreds. Expect a new Area record ( <2.9) before the end of the month. Extent will drop below the record 4.3.. maybe fall below 4.
Arctic hasnt seen a storm like this .. well.. lets just say its rare.
Now, before AGW, when the ice was thick.. no problem. But now.. the wind and wave action will pummel the ice. saltier water from lower depths ( also warmer) will get pumped up to the surface and cover the ice..
@tjfolkerts, You appear to be saying that we simply don’t know enough about climate to know what, if any effect we are having on it. Perfect! That, in a nutshell is the skeptics’ stance as well.
Now, all you need to do is to agree that a cooling climate such as what occurred during the LIA would be what we need to fear, not warming, such as what occurred during the MWP.
To that end, you might find this interesting: http://www.wnd.com/2010/05/155225/
tjfolkerts,
Agree, CO2 both causes warming and rises as an effect of warming.
But the latter effect is large, while the former is too minuscule to measure.
And as Gneiss hides out from my challenge, he uses his usual alarmist projection to say, ‘go ahead and take the challenge’.
What a disreputable charlatan. Gneiss knows that my challenge stands unfalsified:
At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
And because Gneiss cannot falsify that testable hypothesis, he prevaricates and dissembles.
re: Smokey (8/6/2012 11:04AM) Testable hypothesis?
“Harmless” “Beneficial”
Value judgments are testable? How?
Anonymous Coward says:
“Beng, CO2 plays an important role providing positive feedback in glacial/interglacial transitions. That is well established.”
Um… No. It is not. For at least the past 720,000 years, CO2 has risen and fallen as an effect of temperature, not a cause. But thanx for playing.
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tjfolkerts says:
“Yes, I understand the idea of “null hypothesis”…”
Quite clearly you do not.
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Entropic man says:
“2) Gail, your references are all critiques of published papers, published on a website with a widely recognised anti-cAGW bias. They are not evidence. Peer-reviewed links would be preferred.”
Right there is the basis of your confusion. Peer reviewed papers are not ‘evidence’. And Gail Combs has slaughtered you with her replies.
Entropic cannot even keep the commenters straight, no wonder he is so confused about the subject.
The wild-eyed alarmist crowd clings to natural Arctic variability like a drowning man clings to a stick. It is the only one of their endless scary predictions that might support their globaloney nonsense. Their problem is that the Antarctic has most all of the planet’s ice, and the Antarctic’s ice is steadily increasing. Thus, blaming the entirely natural Arctic variability on human activity is a major FAIL.
Wake me when/if the Null Hypothesis is ever falsified. Until/unless that happens, everything observed is natural. It has all happened before, and to a greater extent. But I don’t expect the handful of cognitive dissonance-afflicted true believers to ever accept that, because their minds are already made up and closed tight. Facts do not matter, it’s confirmation bias with them all the way. Leo Tolstoy explains their uncomfortable predicament:
The Arctic has been repeatedly ice free during the Holocene. But cognitive dissonance is extremely difficult to treat. So expect more confirmation bias, cherry-picking, and ignoring facts by the reason impaired. They are driven by emotion, not by logic or facts. Have sympathy for their affliction. But disregard their climate alarmism, because Planet Earth is making clear that we have been through the same thing before. Many times. Naturally.
From Steven Mosher on August 6, 2012 at 10:28 am:
Ice thickness: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn/nowcast/ictn2012080418_2012080600_035_arcticictn.001.gif
Ice concentration: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicen/nowcast/icen2012080418_2012080600_035_arcticicen.001.gif
With most of the sea ice thicker than 2 meters and 75% or greater concentration, you expect this storm will tear apart this “thin” ice?
Current weather: http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
Roughly around the the Beaufort Sea it’s slightly windy. Barrow, Alaska and Resolute, Nunavut, Canada are reporting winds around 17mph with gusts around 23mph. Otherwise the stations around the Arctic aren’t reporting anything noticeable. Where are you getting your info about this “monster” storm over the Arctic now?
Sea level pressure in the arctic bassin
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/weather/arcticweather.uk.php
Smokey!
You are specifically claiming that “All of the changes are due to natural variability. Proof: … ” This is bad hypothesis testing no matter how you look at it.
That is simply NOT what you can claim based on hypothesis testing! The best you could possibly claim is “All of the changes are
due toconsistent with natural variability” which is very different from your claim that there are in fact ONLY natural variations and NO man-made changes. At best, the test can only say we didn’t detect the potential changes.http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/loop/ak-1mo-loop.html
It does not seem to be breaking up yet because of the wind.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/prvsnow_alaska.gif
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_alaska.gif
Geez… After 240 some comments, someone finally mentions the storm. Talk about some clueless commenters.
kadaka: The center of the storm is around 80N and 170W, about a thousand miles north of Barrow. Here is a nice site showing the storm:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/weather/arcticweather_imagecontainer.php
(note link auto updates)
But even at Barrow, the storm changed weather fast.
Here is the weather talk from Barrow today:
NORTHERN ALASKA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FAIRBANKS AK
437 AM AKDT MON AUG 6 2012
.DISCUSSION… (continued)
NORTH SLOPE…
“SCREAMING COLD AIR ADVECTION AND DRYING OF THE AIR MASS BEHIND THE FRONT AS EVIDENT ON THE 12Z BARROW SOUNDING. THE FREEZING LEVEL AT BARROW DROPPED FROM OVER 10K FT ASL AT 00Z/4PM AKDT SUNDAY AFTERNOON TO JUST 200 FT THIS MORNING! IT WAS 60F YESTERDAY AFTERNOON AT BARROW AND THE CURRENT TEMP IS 33F WITH A WIND CHILL OF 22F.”