The WUWT Hot Sheet for Monday August 26th, 2013

“…Policymakers and the public think that the acid rain problem has gone away, but it has not.”
Of course not. They might need it.

Wow. Read the comments on the 350 story. CB is a climate fundamentalist. No heresy allowed!

sunderlandsteve says:
August 26, 2013 at 2:53 pm
“CB appears to believe that co2 actually melts ice! Truly delusional.”
He/she/it has obviously never bothered to look at actual global sea ice.
From cultural marxism to scientific marxism.
(After the victim groups designated by Marcuse failed to destroy capitalism, maybe his successors now try with scientists.)

Who is CB?

Name the hurricanes for skeptics, bunch of right-wingers anyway, right?
Hurricane Alexander (Cockburn).
Hurricane Buzz (Aldrin).
Hurricane David (Bellamy).
Hurricane Freeman (Dyson).
Hurricane Fritz (Vahrenholt).
Hurricane Michael (Crichton).
Hurricane Penn (Jillette).
Hurricane Reid (Bryson).

David L. Hagen says:
August 26, 2013 at 2:14 pm
Re “Naming Vicious Storms After Climate-Change Deniers”
Should we then name tropical storms that fail to become hurricanes after Climate-change Alarmists?
Or When when hurricanes peter out to tropical storms?
=====
Hurricane Peter-out Gleick? I like the sound of that.

I don’t think I’d worry too much about hurricane names. I mean, it’s not like we’re using them up too quickly any more, and any storms that do get named are…well…does anyone remember tropical storm depression Fernand? Dorian? Chantal? Barry? Andrea?
More here…
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/slowest-start-to-a-hurricane-season-on-record/

@Pat Frank: What is a ‘graf’? If you mean goofy mistake, the word is ‘gaffe’:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaffe

I especially liked the table on the last page of the Exit Glacier article showing two orders of magnitude in the range of the annual rate of retreat.

A money quote from Dr. Green’s paper, above:

Comparative empirical studies have routinely concluded that judgmental
forecasting by experts is the least accurate of the methods available to make forecasts.
For example, Ascher (1978, p. 200), in his analysis of long-term forecasts of electricity
consumption found that was the case.

What’s old (2007) is new again:

Does the IPCC report provide climate forecasts?
Trenberth (2007) and others have claimed that the IPCC does not provide forecasts but
rather presents “scenarios” or “projections.” As best as we can tell, these terms are
used by the IPCC authors to indicate that they provide “conditional forecasts.”
Presumably the IPCC authors hope that readers, especially policy makers, will find at
least one of their conditional forecast series plausible and will act as if it will come
true if no action is taken. As it happens, the word “forecast” and its derivatives
occurred 37 times, and “predict” and its derivatives occurred 90 times in the body of
Chapter 8. Recall also that most of our respondents (29 of whom were IPCC authors
or reviewers) nominated the IPCC report as the most credible source of forecasts (not
“scenarios” or “projections”) of global average temperature. We conclude that the
IPCC does provide forecasts.

Pete Olson says:
August 26, 2013 at 7:44 pm
@Pat Frank: What is a ‘graf’? If you mean goofy mistake, the word is ‘gaffe’:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaffe

Duh-duh dum. Did you read the post? I thought not. ‘Graf’ is the name of the ‘dong who produced the 350 video.

Great HotSheet!
The dude that wrote the hyperbole from Paris was the best. That kid worked harrrrrrrd on that tale!

Hurricane Choey? No one would believe it. Oh well.

Now that’s going to put them off if you lot get excited about storms being named after you. It could be like a lottery, “And the winner is…” 🙂

Re: Naming Vicious Storms After Climate-Change Deniers
Using IPCC scale of confidence levels for policy makers, there is low confidence (minimal concensus or agreement regardless of evidence) in naming storms after climate-deniers. Although on the bright side, it is virtually certain (full agreement or concensus (97%?) and robust or limited evidence) that hotspots would be named after climate-alarmists; example, “Trenberth’s missing hotspot”. /sarc
Extracts [my bolds] supporting this sarc idea from a 2012 IPCC special report brochure with a long-winded name. Explanations of confidence scale is detailed at the end of the brochure.
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-SPMbrochure_FINAL.pdf
On Climate Extremes and Impacts

Models project substantial warming in temperature extremes by the end of the 21st century. It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century at the global scale…

Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins. It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged. [3.4.4]

There is medium confidence that there will be a reduction in the number of extratropical cyclones averaged over each hemisphere. While there is low confidence in the detailed geographical projections of extratropical cyclone activity, there is medium confidence in a projected poleward shift of extratropical storm tracks.There is low confidence in projections of small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes and hail because competing physical processes may affect future trends and because current climate models do not simulate such phenomena. [3.3.2, 3.3.3, 3.4.5]…

There is low confidence in projections of changes in large-scale patterns of natural climate variability. Confidence is low in projections of changes in monsoons (rainfall, circulation) because there is little consensus in climate models regarding the sign of future change in the monsoons. Model projections of changes in El Niño–Southern Oscillation variability and the frequency of El Niño episodes are not consistent, and so there is low confidence in projections of changes in this phenomenon.

On Human Impacts and Disaster Losses[my comment: really? given what they said above]

Increases in exposure will result in higher direct economic losses from tropical cyclones. Losses will also depend on future changes in tropical cyclone frequency and intensity (high confidence)

We need to understand the confidence in climate projections. From same report: Climate Extremes and Impacts

Confidence in projecting changes in the direction and magnitude of climate extremes depends on many factors, including the type of extreme, the region and season, the amount and quality of observational data, the level of understanding of the underlying processes, and the reliability of their simulation in models. Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain. For projected changes by the end of the 21st century, either model uncertainty or uncertainties associated with emissions scenarios used becomes dominant, depending on the extreme. Low-probability, high-impact changes associated with the crossing of poorly understood climate thresholds cannot be excluded, given the transient and complex nature of the climate system. Assigning ‘low confidence’ for projections of a specific extreme neither implies nor excludes the possibility of changes in this extreme…

And again we need to clarify what a climate projection is. From IPCC AR4 glossary:

Climate projection
A projection of the response of the climate system to emission or concentration scenarios of greenhouse gases and aerosols, or radiative forcing scenarios, often based upon simulations by climate models. Climate projections are distinguished from climate predictions in order to emphasise that climate projections depend upon the emission/concentration/radiative forcing scenario used, which are based on assumptions concerning, for example, future socioeconomic and technological developments that may or may not be realised and are therefore subject to substantial uncertainty.

BTW, What is the WMO definition of a vicious storm?

Cheers back to Dr Kesten C Green. Fascinating and timely, especially in light of recent comments by some eminent sceptics who also called the models useless, and for pretty much the same reasons!
As we say down here in the Antipodes, “Grouse!”
Cheers,
Coops

What exactly is that “massive” report being written on. Oh – very definately “green” paper. How many revisions will be done to it so that each and every word is exactly right. Then more “green” paper to be used. And even it its “recycled” paper, does that mean that no energy was used to produce stuff to be written upon? Are all the delegates tele-conferencing into the conference? Or are they rowing to Stockholm? The constant hypocrisy is numbing.

I remember when “acid rain” was the eco-bete-noir of the 1970s and 80s. I also remember there was a very expensive and conclusive study funded by Congress to get to the bottom of the problem. Turned out there was no problem with the rain (fingers were pointing toward sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-burning powerplants causing sulfurous acid formation). There was only rain runoff from acidic coniferous forest duff. (Are coniferous trees acidic? My lawn seems to think so.) Nobody recommended wiping out all coniferous trees. As a result, the subject has been dead for nearly 30 years. Now, those who don’t remember (and couldn’t care less) are raising the same false alarm.