The forecast: It seems there’s less chance of gloom and doom these days.
For sea level rise, now a maximum of about two feet by 2100. As for climate sensitivity, now for the first time ever, we are seeing mentions of a quadrupling of CO2 rather than a doubling to get scary scenarios. From Reuters:
Ice melt, sea level rise, to be less severe than feared – study
* Melt of Greenland, Antarctica less severe than expected
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle
OSLO, May 14 (Reuters) – A melt of ice on Greenland and Antarctica is likely to be less severe than expected this century, limiting sea level rise to a maximum of 69 cm (27 inches), an international study said on Tuesday.
Even so, such a rise could dramatically change coastal environments in the lifetimes of people born today with ever more severe storm surges and erosion, according to the ice2sea project by 24, mostly European, scientific institutions.
Some scientific studies have projected sea level rise of up to 2 metres by 2100, a figure that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a worst case that would swamp large tracts of land from Bangladesh to Florida.
Ice2sea, a four-year project to narrow down uncertainties of how melting ice will pour water into the oceans, found that sea levels would rise by between 16.5 and 69 cm under a scenario of moderate global warming this century.
“This is good news” for those who have feared sharper rises, David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey who led the ice2sea project, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Full story here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/climate-ice-idUSL6N0DV2V420130514
=================================================================
Now onto climate sensitivity. Pierre Gosselin reports on his blog NoTricksZone this passage from yesterday’s NYT story on climate sensitivity.
Some experts think the level of the heat-trapping gas could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in. […] Even if climate sensitivity turns out to be on the low end of the range, total emissions may wind up being so excessive as to drive the earth toward dangerous temperature increases.”
There you have it. Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.
Notice that radical changes in prognostications by the “experts” evokes little skepticism
or wonder at why previous estimates were so wrong. .
Oh Noes!!!! Where did my rubber dingy get to?
Oh Boy… just how dumb do they think we/they are? They’ve been preaching doom and gloom for some 20 odd years now about what will happen when CO2 level doubles. Now we’re supposed to believe them when they say: “Sorry, we meant when it tripled or quadrupled. But it will still be dangerous.”
Don’t you love it- the editing that is…..! Last paragraph of story-
“Many studies since 2007 have had higher upper numbers, including by the World Bank, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a report for the Arctic Council. NOAA put the upper limit at 2 metres. ($1 = 0.7703 euros) (Editing by Alison Williams)”
Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.
So where does that leave us? A quadrupling from 280 ppm would be to 1120 ppm. So subtracting the 400 we have now, that would mean another 720 ppm. Since the rate for the last 17 years has been a steady 2 ppm, that would mean trouble in 360 years.
I think James Hansen’s and my grandchildren will be just fine!
“Some experts think the level of the heat-trapping gas could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in”
This does not look at all like a clear admission of lower sensitivity as such. Instead, they are beating the drum harder saying it “could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in” They go on to say “Notice that these recent calculations fall well within the long-accepted range — just on the lower end of it.” (5 degrees F) The alarmism continues in the article, it seems, almost unabated. The inference to the other conclusion seems stretched, even though I would like to hear them say it.
Well, there goes my beach front property in Richmond. The upside is I won’t have to drive as far to get to the beach. The doom predictions that have been coming out all this year predict quite a rise in the next 40-50 years. Some sort of logarithmic increase they don’t really explain.
I recently saw an upward projection from 400ppm. WUWT? They have begun shifting the goalposts – again.The Guardian now talks of storm surges instead of an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. The slow climb down is clear.
PS I have already started my attack while my account name stays active. 😉 I will soon be banned for my comment.
My question – which is intended to be semi-serious, is this – does anyone think these more recent kind of ‘new’ revelations are perhaps being ‘guided’ by government? I mean, they have a majority of ‘green’ taxation in place – they now know that we ‘know’ that it’s BS – so they (gov’ment) think that some kind of gradual back track is in order to prolong the actual ‘withdrawal’ of the doom and gloom green taxation reasons? How long before the people are up in arms about the green taxes and waste of public money on the green agenda – to my way of thinking, this seems like a great way of ‘semi-justifying’ the crap over the last 10-20 years?
just sayin’……..(well, kind of thinking out loud, really!)
Incredible…Good news,but still qualified with a scare scenario.
OCD obsessive climate disorder.
These mollusks claiming that quadrupling the CO2 concentration will burn up the Earth might want to reference the fact (as reported several times here on WUWT) that the existing level of CO2 presents about 95% of the maximum possible greenhouse effeect of any concentration of CO2.
No amount of hard bservational, empirical, physical proof will ever stop the alarmies from pushing their meme, which is not even about the environment, but is about control and perverse motives. These are people who do not deal in reason and facts. They will only be stopped when they are forced from any position from which they can peddle their slop.
A side note: if any of the regular posters here have not read A.W. Montford’s book, The Hockey Stick Illusion, it is definitely worth the read. His presentation of Steve McIntyre’s analysis of Mann’s hockey stick is devastating – it shows, inter alia, that random numbers may even correlate better to actual temperature data than Mann’s “proxies.” In other words, solid proof that Mann’s data is garbage.
Did you notice the article did NOT mention the 17 yr cooling trend? Were they trying to protect the sensitivities of their environmentally sensitive readers?
CO2 quadrupling!!! It’s still going to be a bloody disaster! Head for nearest hill!
Here is what tripling can do. Remember, co2 is not plant food but an atmospheric poison of the worst kind. Worse that cobra venom – it’s that bad.
http://youtu.be/P2qVNK6zFgE
Somewhat related–on the WUWT “sea ice page”, NSIDC indicates Antarctic ice above normal, and DMI indicates Arctic ice at or above normal.
If we merely project the present rate of increase in CO2 continuing indefinitely, we will have a quadrupling and more. But that supposes that we won’t have discovered other more efficient and more plentiful forms of energy in the meantime. The chances for no such discovery seem quite low to me, with all the promising research that has already been reported.
The hysteria continues: “Carbon emissions may be self-limiting. It is likely that, before atmospheric CO2 reaches 500ppm, extreme weather events would disrupt industrial and transport fossil fuel-combusting systems enough to lead to reduction of emissions. However, the feedback processes like methane release, forest bushfires and warming oceans will drive CO2 levels further.”
And he’s serious!
From: http://theconversation.com/as-carbon-dioxide-hits-a-new-high-theres-still-no-planet-b-14074
The Day After aired in 1983, 6 years to the month before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Day After Tomorrow debuted in 2004, 6 years before global temperatures began their decline.
Must we wait another 9-10 years for the next in The Day After series? I can’t.
Kev-in-Uk says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:39 pm
My question – which is intended to be semi-serious, is this – does anyone think these more recent kind of ‘new’ revelations are perhaps being ‘guided’ by government?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well of course!
The meme used to be that they had to raise taxes to reduce emissions. Now they are admitting that no matter what they do, emissions will probably double to triple before they level out. So….
They will now have to tax us to lower emissions AND tax us to pay for mitigation efforts.
“There you have it. Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.”
——————————————-
If current CO2 is 400 PPM & we quadruple to 1600 PPM & we assume “temperature of worry ” is 2° C increase (which commonly seems to be the alarmist number of worry) – from where it is today, we can calculate the implied sensitivity :
1.00 °/C per doubling – that’s definitely at the low end of the range!
Even if we boost that to tripling (1200 PPM ) & keep the same 2°C temp rise, sensitivity would still be only 1.26 °C/ doubling – still also very much on the low end, especially considering when alarmists & the IPCC have been pushing for values in the 3-4 °C/ doubling range.
Oh, and how long will that take until we get there , you ask ? At the current rate of 2 PPM /yr – that would be 600 years from now in the year 2613 (using the quadrupling to 1600 PPM as input). Even if we doubled our “carbon footprint ” (that term makes me cringe ) & were increasing CO2 by 4 PPM per year, it would still take 300 years to get to an “alarming” 2 ° C increase in temps.
I don’t know about you, but I am not alarmed.
Four cheers.
Yeah but it’s hot as hell in southern California. Or it was a couple days ago. So that proves our case. The globe is a warming big time.
So the oceans aren’t rising and the climate is insensitive (please, don’t be so insensitive!) to CO2. Who cares! The globe is warming in socal. And the proof that CO2 is causing this warming is that we have twelve and a half dozen models that say so. Proof is not in the pudding, but in the (super) computer models, models that, like HAL, are free of human error. Our super models are going to go on tour and show you under-educated deniers a thing or two, despite the fact that ALL the models have failed spectacularly. ALL the super models have done great big belly flops, every single one of them.
To quadruple pCO2 you would have to emit 6 times more CO2 than we have since we came out of the caves, assuming prehistory pCO2 of 280ppmV.
Current 400 ppmV
Prehistory ~280 ppmV
Difference 120 ppmV
Quadruple = 4 x 280 = 1120 ppmV
Amount needed to get there = (1120 – 400) / 120 = 6 times more
Which would mean burning 6 times more coal and oil than we have done so far in all of history. So much for ‘peak oil’ and ‘peak coal’.
And that would get us a rise of 1.4 C from prehistoric levels due to CO2, ie about 0.7 C more than today.
Wow! 0.7 C more! That’s so much its amazingly amazing! Why my eyeballs could almost fry with that amount of temperature rise.
Of course I am using Lindzen’s median value for 2XCO2, which is what I also get by modelling the CET. And which is what the climate GCM’s will also derive once they bother to include both the oceanic cycles and the full effect of the Sun.
Not long now ’til this silly climate fad is over.
It’ll be interesting to see how they try to spin out of this one. They must just hate good news.
How about a 1600ppm countdown-to-midnight graphic from Josh, with the danger-hand poised at about 3 o’clock? Ho hum.
Here’s another one: next above average snow year (bound to be next year, same as the last several), show an alarmist bending by the shoreline examining sea-level change with a magnifying glass (“watching for dangerous sea-level rise”) while snow cover rises like a tsunami over Montreal and Moscow. Could even include a little secondary comment in the corner, as Oliphant used to do, with a miniature monkey or something peering through his own outsized magnifying glass saying: “Wait a minute? Is sea level actually going down?”
One of the posters at http://notrickszone.com/ linked to this very interesting New Yorker article.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=
THE TRUTH WEARS OFF Is there something wrong with the scientific method?
Just a sample:
Here was a scientist who had repeatedly documented the decline of his data; he seemed to have a talent for finding results that fell apart. In 2004, Schooler embarked on an ironic imitation of Rhine’s research: he tried to replicate this failure to replicate. ….The craziness of the hypothesis was the point: Schooler knows that precognition lacks a scientific explanation. But he wasn’t testing extrasensory powers; he was testing the decline effect. “At first, the data looked amazing, just as we’d expected,” Schooler says. “I couldn’t believe the amount of precognition we were finding. But then, as we kept on running subjects, the effect size”—a standard statistical measure—“kept on getting smaller and smaller.” The scientists eventually tested more than two thousand undergraduates. “In the end, our results looked just like Rhine’s,” Schooler said. “We found this strong paranormal effect, but it disappeared on us.”
Hey, Jimbo (er, I mean WHATABOUTTHEFACTS — great name),
Nice comment. And IT’S STILL THERE (as of about 6PM, PST). Hm. I noticed it was posted around 12:30 AM, local time… it is now about… 3AM in London… Sigh. Probably only about 6 hours left to live… . IT WAS READ, though, Jimbo, many times, I’m sure. It was worth going back there yet a NINTH? time. You are a WUWT hero! An inspiration.
Interesting spin here. Aren’t these projections (at least at the top end) at the high end of the 4AR projections?
http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-es-8-sea-level.html
Small comfort, that…
Eric Simpson, LOL! “ALL the super models have done great big belly flops, every single one of them.”
Great post, heh, heh. Maybe it’s because I played with Barbies a lot (a LONG time ago, AndyG ;)), but I kept picturing the Barbies from “Toy Story II” flopping all over and being ridiculous.
Thanks for the laugh — boy, can we trutht ellers use one!
Flip Flop go the Climate Experts.
“…could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in….”
It is a stepdown all right.
Remember Hansen, and others, said we (humanity) would all be dead before then ….. now this suggests humanity will still be there doing some “reining in”
Okay, here’s a data point on which to hang a cartoon about snow and ice growing while alarmists make mountains out of molehill sea-level changes: Anthony’s new post on the late date of yet-to-happen Nenana ice break-up.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/14/nenana-ice-classic-now-running-4th-latest-ice-breakup/
Al, the Toy Story Teller’s “models” — “Check it out!”:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Barbie+dolls+in+Toy+Story+2&view=detail&mid=768B50DE8B0F34F427D9768B50DE8B0F34F427D9&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR
Dammit, we can’t not be doomed!
The claim that sea levels were strongly accelerating is based on the mistake of ignoring the natural 60-year oscillation of the climate system and of other oscillations extensively discussed in my papers, for example.
Essentially, the convexity of the sea level records from 1950 to 2010 due to the 60-year oscillation was mistaken for a background acceleration that was then extrapolated from 2000 to 2100.
These issues are extensively discussed in two recent papers of mine:
Scafetta N., 2013. Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes. Climate Dynamics. in press.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-013-1771-3
Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57. (open access)
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
The latter paper extensively discusses the sea level record of New York City case, and other typical cases usually mistaken by the AGW advocates during the last years.
The lower level prediction is just the trickle remaining after the last glaciation, 20k yrs ago ?
Robert in AZ…possibly the most interesting and thought-provoking thing I have ever seen on the internet. Thanks for sharing it.
What strikes me is that it represents the exact inverse of another effect described in the Eighties by one Rupert Sheldrake.
He argued that effects appear both more strongly and quickly with repetition. Can they both be right? He later fell into disreputable guff about telepathy in dogs. But the original topic has always stayed in my mind. Now youve provided its corollary.
Odds Are It’s Wrong.
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Siegfried-Odds-Are-its-Wrong.pdf
The problem in Climate Science and science in general is that scientific papers are rarely if ever published if they show a negative result. Climate Science operates at the 95% confidence level, so 1/20 times you will get a false positive.
However, if Scientific Publishers only publish positive results, this means that the 1/20 false positive will end up published as though they were true, and the 19/20 true negatives that refute the false positive will never see the light of day. This allows all sorts of nonsense to be represented as scientific fact when in reality it is simply due to chance.
It is only later, when other researchers try and replicate the result that the false positives are slowly revealed. Which is a strong argument to consider ALL scientific publication as suspect until they are independently and repeatedly replicated. Today’s scientific breakthrough may be nothing more than chance coupled with publication bias.
“warmists in retreat on sea level rise, climate sensitivity … Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.”
=======================================================
I do not see it as a retreat at all. The tune is essentially the same: “we need to cut CO2 emissions or else…”
Cool!
Jim Strom says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:57 pm
“But that supposes that we won’t have discovered other more efficient and more plentiful forms of energy in the meantime. The chances for no such discovery seem quite low to me, with all the promising research that has already been reported.”
We already did that. It is called nuclear fission. It unfortunately has the major engineering and technical defect that it is politically incorrect.
I see one of the ‘mainstream’ warmist paper predicts, based on their analysis of the paleo data that the warming for a doubling of CO2 will be somewhere between 0.5C and 4C. (Idso 1998’s analysis of 8 real world step changes in temperature to determine the planet’s sensitivity to forcing, predicted a temperature rise of 0.45C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2.)
Observations and analysis supports a predicted 0.5C temperature rise for a doubling of atmospheric CO2, the lukewarm AGW theory. As the CO2 forcing is logarithmic, there will be another 0.5 C warming for the change from 560 ppm to 1120 ppm.
As it appears the planet is starting to cool, it appears the warmists are scurrying for cover.
If the planet starts to cool it will be interesting to listen to the tall tales concocted to explain what is causing the cooling (Hint: Weakest solar magnetic cycle in 150 years and followed by a Maunder minimum).
It will be difficult after calling the so called ‘skeptics’ deniers for 20 years, stating the climate science is settled, and 97% of all right thinking climate scientists support the extreme AGW theory, to admit that the extreme AGW theory was bunk and needs to be replaced by the lukewarm AGW theory.
The following are two additional fundamental observations, logic pillars, to support the lukewarm AGW theory.
1) NO TROPICAL TROPOSPHERIC WARMING
A fundamental pillar of the extreme AGW theory is the predicted tropical tropospheric warming at roughly 10 km is. If there is to be substantial warming of the planet (more than 1C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2) due to the increase atmospheric CO2, there needs to be tropical tropospheric warming to amplify CO2 warming. The observations indicate that there is neither warming in the tropics and in addition there is no tropical troposphere warming. These two observations support each other.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data. … …We have tested the proposition that greenhouse model simulations and trend observations can be reconciled. Our conclusion is that the present evidence, with the application of a robust statistical test, supports rejection of this proposition. (The use of tropical tropospheric temperature trends as a metric for this test is important, as this region represents the CEL and provides a clear signature of the trajectory of the climate system under enhanced greenhouse forcing.) On the whole, the evidence indicates that model trends in the troposphere are very likely inconsistent with observations that indicate that, since 1979, there is no significant long-term amplification factor relative to the surface. If these results continue to be supported, then future projections of temperature change, as depicted in the present suite of climate models, are likely too high.
2) PLANET RESISTS FORCING CHANGES RATHER THAN AMPLIFIES FORCING CHANGES
Tropical cloud cover increases or decreases, thereby reflecting more or less sunlight off into space which resists forcing changes, negative feedback.
This is the second paper by Lindzen and Choi on this subject. The warmist scientists had a number of criticisms concerning the first paper’s analysis techniques. Lindzen and Choi address every criticism with more data and multiple analysis techniques to confirm the conclusion is valid. Tropical planetary cloud cover increases or decreases to resist forcing, negative feedback. The warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will be less than 1C if the planet resists, rather amplifies the CO2 forcing.
http://www.johnstonanalytics.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/LindzenChoi2011.235213033.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000- 2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. An earlier study (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) was subject to significant criticisms. The present paper is an expansion of the earlier paper where the various criticisms are taken into account. … ….We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. …. …However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1C (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of well mixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5C to 5C and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds. Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth. Cloud feedbacks are still considered to be highly uncertain (IPCC, 2007), but the fact that these feedbacks are strongly positive in most models is considered to be an indication that the result is basically correct. …
Both of the above papers support the sensitivity Idso found by analyzing real world step changes in temperature.
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/10//c010p069.pdf
Over the course of the past 2 decades, I have analyzed a number of natural phenomena that reveal how Earth’s near-surface air temperature responds to surface radiative perturbations. These studies all suggest that a 300 to 600 ppm doubling of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration could raise the planet’s mean surface air temperature by only about 0.4°C. Even this modicum of warming may never be realized, however, for it could be negated by a number of planetary cooling forces that are intensified by warmer temperatures and by the strengthening of biological processes that are enhanced by the same rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration that drives the warming. Several of these cooling forces have individually been estimated to be of equivalent magnitude, but of opposite sign, to the typically predicted greenhouse effect of a doubling of the air’s CO2 content, which suggests to me that little net temperature change will ultimately result from the ongoing buildup of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. Consequently, I am skeptical of the predictions of significant CO2-induced global warming that are being made by state-of-the-art climate models and believe that much more work on a wide variety of research fronts will be required to properly resolve the issue.
GCD is well under way.
The Glibbering Climb Down by these modern soothsayers has begun, unfortunately for them each of their claims of, “thats not what I said”, can be quickly and accurately debunked, using their own words.
Let the finger pointing and scapegoating begin.
How sad another vile anti-human cult has imploded.
jbutzi says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:29 pm
“Some experts think the level of the heat-trapping gas could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in”
This does not look at all like a clear admission of lower sensitivity as such…”
/////////////////////////////////////////
This statement, as written, is clearly not an admission of lower climate sensitivity. On its own it has nothing to do with cliamte sensitivity.
It is a statement of opinion as to how much emissions will rise before humans get on top of the ‘problem’ of curbing emissions.
This may be because some experts now realise that wind and solar do little to curb emissions because of the need for back up by conventionally powered generation. It may be that those experts consider that whilst developed nations may curb their own emissions, any such curbing will be more than offset by increasing emissions from developing nations. It may be that those experts now recognise that steps being taken to mitigate emissions is simply futile given globalisation and the sheer number of people living in developing countries. Who knows, may be those experts consider that the majority of CO2 emissions are not manmade and that there are natural processes involved which will mean that CO2 emissions will rise faster than man curbs his own emissions.
What is of interest is how much would emissions rise if we were to burn all presently known oil, gas and coal reserves. I have seen commentators suggesting that if we were to burn all known fossil fuel reserves we would not get above about 1200 ppm of CO2. However, I do not know whether such comments are based on hard evidence.
The interesting comment is the projected sea level rise. That may be an indicator that the ‘experts’ consider a lower climate sensitivity and hence less warming on a BAU basis.
Odds Are It’s Wrong.
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Siegfried-Odds-Are-its-Wrong.pdf
Good article, thanks. And so true. Hypothesis testing is a game I have a lot of experience in, and p-value is indeed an oft-abused concept that even the supposedly wise get wrong.
Then there is the statistically significant fact that green jellybeans cause acne…
http://xkcd.com/882/
rgb
Isn’t this climbdown the millennialist way? When the prophesy of doom is clearly impossible, then move the event so far into the future (to keep up the FUD) that the prophesy cannot be refuted empirically.
There seems to be so many clips teenage girls on Youtube demonstrating you how to expand your shoes with plastic bags filled with water left inside the freezer for 2 hours. next to old cardboard toilet role tubes with condoms stretched over them that also seemed to be filled with expanded ice.
Martini and Coke Cola adverts or the best bit in Titanic showing that ice floats in water ,mainly below the water line.
No matter how much you melt the ice caps the Sea level always stays the same.
Wow! CO2 quadrupling.
Tell you what, now I really would like the answer to a great question posed by Elmer here, and that is this … What other components of air will be displaced from the PPM total by the C02 increase?
In other words, if C02 gets to 1000 ppm, what other gases will be “removed” from the air makeup? If those removed gases are better GHG’s than C02 the net effect with be less greenhouse effect ( naturally assuming air pressure remains constant ). Can’t wait to hear them try to slip out of this one 🙂
What would be great would be a complete table of air chemistry ratios detailing the atmosphere at the “super-safe” 250 ppm levels of the Little Ice Age, one for McKibben’s 350 ppm, one for now at 400 ppm and another for the quadrupling to 1000 ppm. Please make sure all ingredients total to one million in each case. Thank You! 😉
Mosher?
Yes, the green jellybean standard of significance in Climate Science. What a sham.
Blade, as with any other fringe change, Nitrogen and Oxygen will absorb all the details.
I am normally on the strong sceptic side and usually ignore CO2 radiative effect, not likely to change, but could it be another CO2 factor?
Inspired by 400ppm hullabaloo, I plotted de-trended CO2 Mauna Loa against the local SST, they appear to be in anti-phase.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SST-CO2.htm
With small seasonal swing in the SST of about 2.5C, and for CO2 of 7ppm, it is expected that shift of half a cycle in either variable would produce relatively high correlation; I found that if CO2 is given the lead than R2 goes from 0.7 to 0.8.
This would suggest that CO2 level has some effect on the SST about 6 months hence.
If radiative effect is not factor, what is the link?
Looking at various data for the North Pacific’s phytoplankton seasonal growth, is it likely that a bit more of CO2 would produce small increase in the plankton volume, lowering the surface albedo, resulting in a bit more energy absorbed and some extra warming. Consequence of slightly higher SST is an increase in the CO2 oceanic out-gassing (positive feedback loop) until some kind of equilibrium is established.
Possible, but is it likely? An expert opinion will be appreciated.
vukcevic says:
… . but could it be another CO2 factor?
……Possible, but is it likely? An expert opinion will be appreciated.
It is the sun, stupid
More X-class solar flairs:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/rt_plots/Xray.gif
see movies
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3.gif
vukcevic says:
May 15, 2013 at 1:01 am
“I am normally on the strong sceptic side and usually ignore CO2 radiative effect, not likely to change, but could it be another CO2 factor?
Inspired by 400ppm hullabaloo, I plotted de-trended CO2 Mauna Loa against the local SST, they appear to be in anti-phase.”
Vuk, it is a 90 degree phase shift. Which corresponds to the phase shift that happens when you take the derivative of CO2 concentrations.
So do this; compare the derivative of the 12 month average of CO2 with SST. The 12 month average removes the seasonal fluctuation. The derivative shows the change in CO2 seasonal baseline. It corresponds closely to SST due to Henry’s Law.
(The derivative also turns any continuous addition of CO2 due to human activity into a constant offset in the derivative so this does not rule out human contribution to total CO2 level.)
What it boils down to is, you have to compare the CHANGE in CO2 to SST.
Coastlines change all the time. Look at the latest Google Earth addition. Timelapse pictures dated from 1980ish.
Thanks Dirk
I was doing something similar, correlating CO2 and SST annual peaks and then again annual troughs, it does show similar thing. That is enough of the CO2 theory for me, I shall return to the matters solar …..
BTW, there is an object shooting ‘towards’ the sun most likely meteor or may be another satellite
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif
appears at 2013/05/11 21.12 (clock face location 6.30) until 2013/05/12 02.36
“… so excessive as to drive the earth toward dangerous temperature increases.”
Note the wording. Simply going “towards” dangerous temperature increases does not really commit to anything at all but at the same time manages to recycle the “dangerous temperature increases” fearmongering.
If temperatures rise one hundredth of a degree in one hundred years they can still be said to be “moving towards…”
In fact if we also note the use of the conditional “may”:
“… total emissions may wind up being so excessive as to…”
we find that this statement tells us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, while still trying to maintain the spin.
However, it should be noted that this paragraph is just a NYT journo writing, not a quote from a climate scientist.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/science/what-will-a-doubling-of-carbon-dioxide-mean-for-climate.html?_r=0
I really don’t think we need to worry about Greenland. When the colonising Vikings got there in 986 it was lovely and warm. Much warmer than it is today! They cut timber, hunted, fished, and farmed sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, etc. for about 30 generations, and had a flourishing trade in walrus tusk and polar bear skins with Iceland and Norway. The were happily settled in Greenland for about as long as the European has been settled (back) in North America!
But if you look at the site of their most northerly ‘Western Settlement’ of 1,000 years ago, eg. at ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Settlement )
..and then compare that with the same area today (just Satellite Google Earth the town of Nuuk in Greenland – it’s rather small capital city)
..you will see that what little ice-free land still protrudes form beneath the ice cap of present day Greenland is devoid of vegetation and absolutely impossible to farm. It is what is known as an ‘Arctic Desert’ environment. Nothing has re-grown since the last of the poor old Vikings perished there, in the freezing cold, with failing crops and dying stock, cut off from their fishing grounds and exit route by sea ice as the Mediaeval Warm Period waned.
Today the easternmost Viking farm sites of the Western Settlement are still hemmed in by sea ice and glacial outflow for much of the year and are effectively uninhabitable without modern resources or equipment.
Greenland still appears to be a great deal colder than it was 1,000 years ago when the Viking colonies were first established there. You only have to look on Google Earth at the places they once successfully occupied farmed. These are now frozen, bare and completely inhospitable.
From the Reuters article: “Sea levels rose by 17 cm last century and the rate has accelerated to more than 3 mm a year. ”
Another fine example of the warming cosine principal:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=209
The implicit and unfounded implicaiton is that the current rate of change will perisist and probably the acceleration will continue.
The other problem is that what is now presented as “sea level” is not the physical sea level that floods land and against which barriers are needed, but the ghostly GAIA adjusted [sic] mean sea level that hovers mysteriously above the waves.
I don’t know why so many people are seeing this as a climbdown. Much if not all is dependent on the way this paper is reported, and the usual suspects are citing it as more evidence that CO2 emissions have to be curtailed before we all drown! ie business as usual 🙁
This is from the small-circulation but influential newspaper read by teachers, lecturers and opinion formers, and the headline indicates their take on the study:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/sea-levels-rising-so-fast-london-faces-significant-risk-of-flooding-without-thames-barrier-upgrade-8616204.html
“For sea level rise, now a maximum of about two feet by 2100.”
Wow, two feet per century, that’s exactly the average sea level has risen since the end of the last glaciation 20,000 years ago. Two feet per century.
In other words; it’s business as usual.
Damn, I was kinda looking forward to watching the oceans boiling. You don’t see that every day !!
Just as a quick guied, using the sea level graph on Wikipedia, they state a rise of .06 inches (1.5 mm) per year average rise over the period 1870 – 2008. No-one really noticed this going on in the background of our lives for the last 140 years. The Wikipedia graph citation also claims (slightly miseleadingly I think, from eyeballing the graph it looks like they cherry picked a temporary low in 1993 to get such a high rate) that the rate of sea level rise doubled to 0.12 inches per year (3.0 mm/year) over the period 1993 – 2008 (due to global warming).
The range in the article referenced at the top of this post, due to moderate global warming, to the year 2100 is 16.5 – 69 cm over that period, giving rates of 1.9 to 7.9 mm/yr. So at the lower end of that range it would seem that sea level rise would be slowing down, almost to the background level of the last 140 years or so. As for the upper level, it just looks absurd. What will cause the rate to jump by a factor of close to x3 over such a short period? Ice sheets in Antarctica, Greenland etc are way below freezing and are not going to melt anytime soon. That’s why AGW proponents like to show temperature anomalies, to hide the fact that even a 10 degC rise wouldn’t melt ice thats 40 below freezing. Or perhaps they think its all going to sublime somehow?
As an addendum to my comment above, over the period 11,000 yrs to 8,000 yrs BP, the Wikipedia graph would give an approximate (natural) rate of sea level rise of around 15 to 18 mm/yr. Those natural rates are greater than x10 the rate of the last 140 years or so.
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said “We are all just prisoners here,
of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast
Eagles, Hotel California
Blade says:
May 15, 2013 at 12:06 am
Wow! CO2 quadrupling.
Tell you what, now I really would like the answer to a great question posed by Elmer here, and that is this … What other components of air will be displaced from the PPM total by the C02 increase?
In other words, if C02 gets to 1000 ppm, what other gases will be “removed” from the air makeup? If those removed gases are better GHG’s than C02 the net effect with be less greenhouse effect ( naturally assuming air pressure remains constant ). Can’t wait to hear them try to slip out of this one 🙂
Oxygen is removed from the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, about three molecules of O2 for every molecule of CO2 produced.
Larry Kirk wrote:
“They cut timber, hunted, fished, and farmed sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, etc. for about 30 generations, and had a flourishing trade in walrus tusk and polar bear skins with Iceland and Norway.”
I’m totally with you except the “cut timber” part. Is there any evidence that they cut anything bigger than 15 cm or so in diameter? From the evidence I have seen, arctic birch and willow, which are predominantly shrubby, would have been all they had even in the warmest of times.
ThinkingScientist: (slightly miseleadingly I think, from eyeballing the graph it looks like they cherry picked a temporary low in 1993 to get such a high rate)
Like I said above: “Another fine example of the warming cosine principal:”
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=209
The Independent: “There is significant risk of London being hit by a devastating storm surge in the Thames estuary by 2100 that could breach existing flood defences and cause immense damage to the capital, a study of global sea-level rise has found.”
Wow , so we have 85 years to avoid a 5% risk. On that timescale I would imagine that all our sea defences would be maintained and upgraded anyway, with or without GW.
A complete NON ISSUE.
DirkH: “What it boils down to is, you have to compare the CHANGE in CO2 to SST.”
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=223
Taking this one step further, looking a second diff of CO2 and rate of change of SST.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=225
Not only is there good correlation on the inter-annual scale but perhaps more notably, there is no obvious divergence over the whole period of the record.
That may have interesting implications.
This corruption of climate science is more like a climate of corruption that includes science.
All these revisions to settled science are unsettling.
Hey Canute ; move your damn chair !
All very interesting, but who REALLY thinks there’ll be a change in direction? There’s too much invested in the religion of climate change and the scams arising therefrom.
Re: Jimbo at 4:37PM on 5/14/13 —
Just checked. The Guardian (unless the Thames rose so swiftly that their web server was flooded out!), scrubbed Jimbo’s fine post!
Now, THAT was predictable.
…Ice melt, sea level rise, to be less severe than feared – study…
Ice melt, sea level rise, feared to be less severe than hoped – study
There. Fixed that for ’em…
This is interesting!
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lynn-davidson/2008/02/16/western-greenland-ice-growing-still-global-warming
The problem I find at times with this blog is that scepticism tends to go only one way. There is very little consistency in counter arguments for “mainstream” scientific opinion. For example, studies which point towards climate sensitivity at being around 1.5 to 2 degrees C are often favoured as showing there to be no reason to worry about climate change. The article quoted above suggesting we may be on track for a tripling or quadrupling of CO2 makes a valid point as far as I’m concerned. Who cares if the media has never talked about it before? A business as usual scenario could plausibly result in such levels. If such a case were to occur, then a climate sensitivity of only 1.5 C would still result in significant change. Should this not be cause for at least mild concern and planning to reduce future emissions? I’m not talking about raising alarm over it, but some sceptical consistency would be nice to see.
REPLY: One way? Apparently you have not read my position on those people who use a warped interpretation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to claim the greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere is “bogus”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/11/the-spencer-challenge-to-slayersprincipia/
or how about this one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/28/a-misinterpreted-claim-about-a-nasa-press-release-co2-solar-flares-and-the-thermosphere-is-making-the-rounds/
Look for another one shortly – Anthony
Dave says:
May 15, 2013 at 12:04 pm
“Should this not be cause for at least mild concern and planning to reduce future emissions? I’m not talking about raising alarm over it, but some sceptical consistency would be nice to see.”
There’s no need for concern. Since 1980 the price per Wattpeak for Solar Power has halfed once a decade; pretty much independent of subsidy regimes, simply through progressive efficiency gains in the many production processes involved, coupled with experience curve (scale) gains. Given the low climate sensitivity we seem to have we have many decades available to switch to new sources of energy, and in about 30 years a combination of solar power and battery or fuel synthesis storage will be economic. My estimate might be too optimistic and it might take 50 years; which would still be good enough.
There’s simply no need to rush it or subsidize a roll out of these things when we know they’ll only make our economies less viable. Well we know that’s not how it works and solar power is used as centerpiece for a giant scam but that’s not the fault of the technology.
As its numerical value is not observable, the climate sensitivity (aka equilibrium climate sensitivity) is a scientifically illegitimate concept.
Thanks Phil, but I would think that this is verifiable through direct measurement rather than theoretical calculation. In other words, take a sample of air and use proven spectroscopic and other methods to identify each element and compound and its ratio in parts per million, and then simply log the results in a completed table. This should be categorized right down to the last PPM and if it doesn’t add up to a million I want to know where our knowledge and techniques are lacking and why.
Call this a scientific control to gauge our ability to determine such minute quantities, especially since we can allegedly do the same for far off planets, stars, nebulas and galaxies, not to mention allegedly in ice cores and sediments too. It’s not a trick question, just a genuine appeal for truth. Please note that identifying a few of the present compounds and then “calculating” the remainder is NOT what I had in mind. So can we do this? Does it ever happen?
Oxygen is removed from the atmosphere when critters breathe and added to it when plants thrive. This dynamic alone trumps the lazy method of guesstimating any part of the chemical makeup of air.
Willey Ley in An Engineers dreams said to flood the Qattarra Depression, Also there is the Danikil Lake Assal and the Dead Sea. The flooding would probably kickstart the greening of the Sahara and evaporation would allow the collection of sodium hydroxide to put back in the ocean and increase the alkalinity to reduce acidification.
Blade says:
May 15, 2013 at 11:03 pm
Phil. [May 15, 2013 at 7:03 am] says:
Blade [May 15, 2013 at 12:06 am] says:
Wow! CO2 quadrupling.
Tell you what, now I really would like the answer to a great question posed by Elmer here, and that is this … What other components of air will be displaced from the PPM total by the C02 increase?
In other words, if C02 gets to 1000 ppm, what other gases will be “removed” from the air makeup? If those removed gases are better GHG’s than C02 the net effect with be less greenhouse effect ( naturally assuming air pressure remains constant ). Can’t wait to hear them try to slip out of this one 🙂
Oxygen is removed from the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, about three molecules of O2 for every molecule of CO2 produced.
Thanks Phil, but I would think that this is verifiable through direct measurement rather than theoretical calculation.
Well we know the composition of the fuels we burn so we can estimate that overall, burning those fuels removes 3 O2 molecules/CO2 produced, this is also known by measurement. As a result we would expect a corresponding reduction in O2 to go along with the increase in CO2.
It’s also shown by measurement: http://www.worldgreen.org/images/stories/KeelingOxygenCurve.jpg
Re rgbatduke says: May 14, 2013 at 10:20 pm
Abuse of statistics is also covered in this old article which is unfortunately not on line:
“A Matter of Opinion – Are life scientists overawed by statistics?”, William Feller, Scientific Research, February 3, 1969.
[Begin quote (upper case added for emphasis)]
To illustrate. A biologist friend of mine was planning a series of difficult and laborious observations which would extend over a long time and many generations of flies. He was advised, in order to get “significant” results, that he should not even look at the intervening generations. He was told to adopt a rigid scheme, fixed in advance, not to be altered under any circumstances.
This scheme would have discarded much relevant material that was likely to crop up in the course of the experiment, not to speak of possible unexpected side results or new developments. In other words, the scheme would have forced him to throw away valuable information – AN ENORMOUS PRICE TO PAY FOR THE FANCIED ADVANTAGE THAT HIS FINAL CONCLUSIONS MIGHT BE SUSTAINED BY SOME MYSTICAL STATISTICAL COURT OF APPEALS.
[End quote]
Well that’s one compound. So I guess the answer is no?
Looking for actual measurment of all 100% of the chemical makeup of air, no guestimates or calculations or assumptions. A table of all ingredients in PPM. Make believe we were on another planet and have a sample of the atmosphere and want to determine it’s composition and detail it in a report. Does it ever get done? Has it ever been done?
I’m not trolling you, it’s a truly skeptical and Missouri-style “show me” type of query. I see PPM thrown around like tablespoons in a recipe or gallons in a gas station. I am starting to suspect everything now, especially precision to hundredths of a part per million.
This is one of the consequences of the damage that the AGW hoaxsters have done to Science itself. Alarmism is everywhere, dwarfing the unenlightened eras of the past and even exceeding the countless and never-ending historical examples that Steve Goddard finds daily. Trust is no longer an option when the world starts to resemble the Matrix. IMHO.
2000ppm by 2100!
Grrr. Offset … how much? Which direction? Labelling is obscure. What does “m” stand for? Minutes? months? which direction (+ or – ) ?
Hilarious. Oxygen starts out (now) at about 200,000 ppm. Increasing CO2 by, say, 400 ppm would affect oxygen by 2% of 1%. Not even a rounding error. Not detectable.
Negligible, means “can safely be neglected”, immaterial, irrelevant, insignificant, meaningless. Like your posts.