Seems almost a planned effort this week, Sea Ice, Iasaac, and now the AMS statement.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
617-227-2426 ext. 3901 August 27, 2012 kseitter@ametsoc.org
American Meteorological Society Releases Revised Climate Change Statement
August 27, 2012 –The American Meteorological Society today released an updated Statement on Climate Change, replacing the 2007 version that was in effect. The informational statement is intended to provide a trustworthy, objective, and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public. The statement provides a brief overview of how and why global climate has changed in recent decades and will continue to change in the future. It is based on the peer-reviewed scientific literature and is consistent with the majority of current scientific understanding as expressed in assessments and reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
“This statement is the result of hundreds of hours of work by many AMS members over the past year,” comments AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter. “It was a careful and thorough process with many stages of review, and one that included the opportunity for input from any AMS member before the draft was finalized.” The AMS releases statements on a variety of scientific issues in the atmospheric and related sciences as a service to the public, policy makers, and the scientific community.
The new statement may be found on the AMS web site at:
HTML Version:
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html
PDF Version:
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.pdf
CLIMATEGATE EMAIL
We don’t understand cloud feedbacks. We don’t understand air-sea interactions. We don’t understand aerosol indirect effects. The list is long.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1079108576.txt&search=mwp
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2012 at 5:34 pm
“The three indicators per century come to
Cent. 18 19 20
SSN 65 51 64
Ap ??.?? 13.08 13.34
HMF ?.?? 6.45 6.43”
Question, how confident are you in the accuracy of the 18th century SSN? I note there are no corresponding numbers for the other measures for this time period. I ask this as there is a 25% increase in SSN from 19th to 20th century, which woud seem substantial were in not for the previous 18th century SSN. I would also note that there are evidently arguments even today regarding sunspot counts, size of spots, what is a spot, etc. Finally, your opinion on the relative relavence of each measure to potential ‘solar warming’, if any.
Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 8:59 am
Question, how confident are you in the accuracy of the 18th century SSN?
The evidence from cosmic rays [Figure 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf ] also suggests high solar activity. Aurorae at mid-latitudes are a sensitive measure of high solar activity, and a good [homogeneous] catalog from Hungary shows high 18th century activity: http://www.leif.org/research/Ungarn-Aurorae-1600-1960.png
The question can be turned around, if one doubts the record, then how can it be taken as evidence for low activity?
I would also note that there are evidently arguments even today regarding sunspot counts, size of spots, what is a spot, etc.
All of these questions are under serious consideration by the solar community: http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home with the rationale here http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Cliver.pdf
Finally, your opinion on the relative relevance of each measure to potential ‘solar warming’, if any.
Solar activity undoubtedly has an influence on the order of 0.1C. CO2 undoubtedly also has a small influence of unknown size. Orbital changes have a large influence [causes glaciations if the distributions of continents is suitable]. Any complicated system has internal oscillations and the oceans is a very large heat-reservoir that we sitting next to, so any small change in circulation could be of large influence. Apart from the orbital changes it is silly to ascribe climate change to a single cause.
The AMS are in on it too! How many of these so called scientific organisations are going to continue telling us lies? So far it’s the IPCC, the 30+ Academies of Science who’ve issued joint statements supporting AGW, NASA, the Royal Meteorology Society , The European Science Foundation, American Geophysical Union (with the highly-suspicious acronym AGU) et al.
I’m not remotely bothered that not a single scientific institution in the world dissents from AGW. I get my science from blogs.
Whoooopeeeeee!
Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 8:59 am
Finally, your opinion on the relative relevance of each measure to potential ‘solar warming’, if any.
and in case I misunderstood your question, I may add that all changes we have observed on the Sun are related to [caused by] its magnetic cycle and the dynamo driving it, so to a large extent all the measures I mentioned are equivalent.
Leif,
“Finally, your opinion on the relative relevance of each measure to potential ‘solar warming’, if any.”
Here, I was trying to get at your opinion as to whether you feel that any of the three solar activity measures is more important when considering potential warming effects.
I do not claim to be a solar expert (I do have some great visible light photos through an 8″ Meade SCT of recent and older sunspots, the 1994 annular solar eclipse, this year’s venus transit and accompanying sunspots as well as two partial solar eclipses). I do agree that there are way too many variables to ascribe too much importance to any one, or small group of variables, when it comes to climate and feel that the present attempts at modeling and predicting future climate are ridiculous.
Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:15 am
Here, I was trying to get at your opinion as to whether you feel that any of the three solar activity measures is more important when considering potential warming effects.
As I said, they are all aspects of the same reality: the sun’s magnetic field. And are in that sense equivalent. The solar magnetic field carried out to the earth by the solar wind does not have any measurable influence on ‘global warming’, but the magnetic field back at the sun is the result of sunspots and faculae and thus determines the Total Solar Irradiance [TSI] which obviously has an effect on the climate. We once thought [and some people would still like to believe] that there was a variation of TSI on the order of one percent [which would indeed have a noticeable effect], but observations over the last 30+ years show a change only one tenth that large, removing TSI as the cause of recent climate change. More here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL046658.pdf
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 3:38 pm
However, there is solid evidence showing that CO2 is a function of temperature. And that, combined with the lack of warming over the past decade and a half,
If CO2 were “a function of temperature” and there is a “lack of warming over the past decade and a half” then that implies that CO2 wouldn’t have risen over that timespan, but it has! You can’t have it both ways Smokey.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:58 am
Using the SIDC data, possibly a different one than you quoted as I note there are more than one, at http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/#, I arrived at SSN’s/year/century of:
18th 19th 20th
55.6 42.6 60.5
not really too much different from your #’s and I used the same 1750 starting point for the 18th century as it was apparent there were poor numbers prior to that. However, I also looked at 1950-2011 to see if there was anything worth noting and found an average of 69.2 for those most recent 63 years, for what it is worh, relative to potential recent solar effects compared to the last 300+ years.
Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Using the SIDC data, possibly a different one than you quoted […]
I also looked at 1950-2011 to see if there was anything worth noting and found an average of 69.2 for those most recent 63 years
As I show here the SIDC values after 1945 are 20% too high http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction%20of%20Sunspot%20Number.pdf
You should reduce all values after 1945 by 20% in order to make a correct comparison.
Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Using the SIDC data, possibly a different one than you quoted
Apparently you did not consult the links I took the trouble to provide you with:
“All of these questions are under serious consideration by the solar community”
http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home with the rationale here http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Cliver.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Using the SIDC data, possibly a different one than you quoted […]
I also looked at 1950-2011 to see if there was anything worth noting and found an average of 69.2 for those most recent 63 years
“As I show here the SIDC values after 1945 are 20% too high http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction%20of%20Sunspot%20Number.pdf
You should reduce all values after 1945 by 20% in order to make a correct comparison.”
The point is that you must understand that perhaps others might not buy your argument, or even be aware of it, and use the actual unadjusted data and come to conclusions such as the original comment from Mr. Rawls regarding recent increases in solar activity. Based upon your links and other information available, at some point much of the finer detail here apparently becomes a matter of opinion. No offense intended, as I have found this most recent discourse with you enlightening, to say the least. That aside, we will probably not, however, come to agreement on dark matter or dark energy any time soon. And I am well aware that this most likely does not bother you in any way, but be aware neither am I disturbed by this situation.
Jim G says:
August 30, 2012 at 8:35 am
The point is that you must understand that perhaps others might not buy your argument, or even be aware of it, and use the actual unadjusted data and come to conclusions such as the original comment from Mr. Rawls regarding recent increases in solar activity. Based upon your links and other information available, at some point much of the finer detail here apparently becomes a matter of opinion.
That is why we have the SSN workshops with participation from all stakeholders in the production of the SSN. There is already now general agreement among those concerned that the Waldmeier adjustment must be made, so that is no longer a matter of opinion. And by the way, science is not about opinions, but about data and facts. If the data goes against you, it doesn’t matter what your opinion is. That is also the case with the Dark Matter issue, which is no longer a matter of opinion.
On the other hand, there are people with agendas [and opinions derived from those] that will ignore the data and stick to their opinion.
Jim G says:
August 30, 2012 at 8:35 am
The point is that you must understand that perhaps others might not buy your argument
One of the arguments is simply comparing the data. It has been known for a long time that there is an obvious relationship between the sunspot number and the area on the sun covered by spots: more spots take up more area. So one can calculate the number of spots from their areas. If one does that using the pre-1945 relationship one can compare the observed sunspot number with that calculated from their observed areas. The result is shown in the top panel of
http://www.leif.org/research/Rz-SA-comparison.png As you can see there is very good agreement. You may also see in the lower panel that if you use that same relationship to calculate the sunspot number after 1945, the observed numbers are overall 21% higher than the expected numbers. It is this kind of data that convince the solar community that the post-1945 numbers need to be corrected. We actually choose to correct the pre-1945 numbers upwards instead as the modern values are used in operational programs, e.g. by the US Air Force to calculate satellite drag.
Leif Svalgaard says:
“And by the way, science is not about opinions, but about data and facts. If the data goes against you, it doesn’t matter what your opinion is. That is also the case with the Dark Matter issue, which is no longer a matter of opinion.
On the other hand, there are people with agendas [and opinions derived from those] that will ignore the data and stick to their opinion.”
On the DM, that’s your opinion. On the SSN’s, I agree with your analysis, so it is my opinion as well as yours, since the data seems to back it up quite well. When someone finds direct evidence of DM, I will come over to your opinion, as then it will be fact. Until then, as I said before, you are confusing indirect evidence based upon observed gravitational EFFECTS with direct evidence such as some actual DM like those WHIMP’s or MACHO’s that are theorized to exist as the CAUSE.
Jim G says:
August 30, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Until then, as I said before, you are confusing indirect evidence based upon observed gravitational EFFECTS with direct evidence such as some actual DM like those WHIMP’s or MACHO’s that are theorized to exist as the CAUSE.
If we observe a Whimp in the laboratory we have no assurance that that particle is in fact what causes the effects of DM on the large scale. In fact it will impossible with current technology to measure the gravitational effects of a single or a few Whimps, the same way as we cannot [to my knowledge] yet measure directly the gravitational effect of a normal particle, like a proton. ALL evidence is indirect. We deduce from the effect that DM must exist [and very few physicists doubt taht], and we have a pretty good idea of what it is [not baryonic, not reacting to the EM force, etc]. Then we go and look to see if we can find such a particle. If we can, we can further explore its properties and learn new physics. If we cannot up to a point in time, it simply means that we should look for a longer time, not that DM does not exist. Just like that if the police faced with a murder victim but has not caught the murderer yet does not mean that there is no murderer.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2012 at 8:06 pm
“Just like that if the police faced with a murder victim but has not caught the murderer yet does not mean that there is no murderer.”
Of course, but we still don’t know who or what the murderer is until we have caught him or it. We have not yet “caught” any DM. We only have the dead body.
Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 12:05 pm
We only have the dead body.
Proof that there is a murderer, just as the effect of DM is proof there is DM. The serious effort has long ago shifted from arguing over existence to actually trying to find the particle that is there. There is a similar case concerning the neutrino. When energy seemed to be missing in beta decay, Pauli in 1930 introduced the neutrino to carry away the ‘missing’ energy. He did that because physicists were [and are] loath to give up the conservation of energy [a consequence of Noether’s theorem: “any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law”: Invariance of physical systems with respect to spatial translation gives the law of conservation of linear momentum. Invariance with respect to rotation gives the law of conservation of angular momentum, and invariance with respect to time translation gives the law of conservation of energy]. Only in 1956 was the neutrino actually ‘detected’ as a particle in the laboratory, although that event did not turn the existence of the neutrino into a ‘fact’, in the process converting hordes of doubting Thomases, and to change their opinion. It was already a fact. Same with DM and General Relativity.
One of my undergrad professors was actually involved in the project for the detection of the neutrino which, if I remember the story correctly, was a facility established at the bottom of a coal mine? The purpose of such was to block out all of the “noise” from other more readily detectable particles. Cannot remember his name but he was my physics 4 professor. At that time we were taught that neutrinos had no mass, no charge, and only a “spin” which was not really a spin. Now we have 3 different “colors” of neutrinos which transmute, decay, from one to the other.
In any event you are comparing apples and oranges, though you are probably correct IF there are no new physics discoveries, which are also a potential outcome of the LHC in its search for new particles should they NOT find what they are hypothesizing to exist. Many scientists are more excited about that potentiality than they are about finding what they think they will find. Depends upon how much of their reputation is at stake. This search is not so different from our space explorations which have inevitably resulted in finding out what we thought was true of planet formation was incorrect. Most recently, Vesta being a good example.
Skeptical Thomas
Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 2:03 pm
One of my undergrad professors was actually involved in the project for the detection of the neutrino which, if I remember the story correctly, was a facility established at the bottom of a coal mine?
You are confusing this with the detection of neutrinos from the Sun by Ray Davis. In 1956, the neutrino was detected in a regular laboratory.
In any event you are comparing apples and oranges
Absolutely not, the situation is completely equivalent.
This search is not so different from our space explorations which have inevitably resulted in finding out what we thought was true of planet formation was incorrect.
This is typical of this kind of debate. By not qualifying it, you are saying that ALL we thought was true was incorrect. In reality, the Vesta finding has to do one of the finer details, not with the fundamental ideas.
Skeptical Thomas
Are by definition always found to be wrong.
Do you continue to rule out any “new physics” discoveries that may change, using your term, the “minor details” of what is presently understood/theorized? The recent Vesta discoveries are certainly more than minor in nature relative to planet formation. I am sure you will classify any such new physics discoveries, should they occur, as minor and therefore not personally be wrong. And, again, I, being an open minded skeptic, say they may indeed be relatively minor, should they occur, but just enough to obviate the need for DM.
Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Do you continue to rule out any “new physics” discoveries that may change, using your term, the “minor details” of what is presently understood/theorized?
Finding the DM particle will be ‘new physics’ as will finding out about its properties, just like all the new physics we learned about the neutrino: that it has mass, can change flavor, etc.
It took open-mindedness to propose DM in the first place. Now that DM has been established, you call it is open-minded to continue to deny it… sigh…
On Vesta, it does not upset the theory about planet formation, just about what Vesta itself is: a protoplanet or an asteroid [which are debris from destroyed protoplanets], so Vesta survived. We didn’t know that, but that certainly does not change anything fundamental.
Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 2:56 pm
The recent Vesta discoveries are certainly more than minor in nature relative to planet formation.
The press release opens up with: “Already however, the Dawn science team has confirmed long-held theories about Vesta’s history, a timeline that dates back to within 300 million years of the beginning of the solar system’s existence
You strike me as the prospector who ignores the gold nugget at his feet for the hope of finding an even bigger nugget of fool’s gold higher upstream…
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 4:40 pm
Leif,
I am in complete agreement with you. Throw the bums out!
_____________________________
Unfortunately we just get a different set of piglets with their nose in the trough but at least they are not yet hogs.
The downside is tax payers get to fund another set of Congressional pensions. Taxpayers are likely to foot the bill for at least $26 million in pensions for former Members of Congress this year…
Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 2:56 pm
The recent Vesta discoveries are certainly more than minor in nature relative to planet formation.
The press release opens up with: “Already however, the Dawn science team has confirmed long-held theories about Vesta’s history, a timeline that dates back to within 300 million years of the beginning of the solar system’s existence.”
You strike me as the prospector who ignores the gold nugget at his feet for the hope of finding an even bigger nugget of fool’s gold higher upstream…