I’m taking the weekend off, as I need to do some climate unrelated work, which is physical, and always good for the soul, and I need to spend time with my family, who often get neglected due to the amount of time I put into this blog.
Guest posters are welcome to post stories.
Feel free to discuss topics within site policy.
Can anyone help?
I’m an engineer, not a scientist. For 30 years I’ve relied on New Scientist to keep me in touch.
I am seriously disappointed with NS in recent years. They are totally sold on the CAGW religion, plus they’ve gone all arty, and Social Sciencey. NS has sold its body. They are just courting passing trade in the newsagent’s shop with misleading covers and headlines. I just don’t trust the editor any more, and I don’t want to give them my money.
I’d cancel the subscription, but I don’t want to be completely out of the loop.
There must be something on the internet that’s equivalent, a one-stop shop with general science for the intelligent layman.
Suggestions?
ps Anthony, I love WUWT! I owe you a lot.
[Here is another science site: http://www.world-science.net Not a recommendation, I only just found it myself. — mod.]
Anybody bored and want to educate me on the paleo argument for high climate sensitivity? My understanding of the argument is that it goes like this: look at the paleo record. CO2 was high and temperature was high, so there. Is there more substance to the argument than that?
Actually, I get that there’s a little more than that. The argument goes that something minor perturbed temps upward, CO2 increased, and therefore temps increased. Does anyone know of a walk through that shows the math in a reasonably understandable way?
BTW – I’m not looking for an argument, I’m looking to understand an argument. Please don’t open fire on whoever answers, assuming anyone answers.
Thanks in advance.
“Heard today that Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to run for POTUS in 2016.”
I thought you had to be born in America or of American parents to be the President?
With regard to Schwarzenager lobbying for a change to the constitution to enable him to be POTUS, surely there are more urgent priorities for reform.
How about fixing the broken senate filibuster rules which essentially completely break democracy. How about a line item veto to cut back on the extent of back room dealing and pork clauses riding through in omnibus legislation. How about looking at instituting proportional voting for one of the houses. How about a single transferrable vote system in the presidential primaries. Why is it possible to get the constitution amended to deal with Schjawrzanagers trivial petty and self-serving desire to stand for president whereas it is not possible to address serious structural issues. The US system of government is currently dysfunctional. Does anyone honestly think that a foreigner being unable to stand for president is the biggest problem?
Ferdinand, how many languages do you speak? Also, while you make a good case for anthro CO2, that is not the final part of the debate. The last step is answering the question: does CO2 matter?
CO2 is a minor trace gas. We know it is beneficial, because life could not exist without it. If it dropped below 200 ppm we would have big problems. But the entire debate over “carbon” is predicated on the belief that CO2 will cause runaway global warming. If its only effect is a degree or so warming per doubling, then the alarmist crowd loses the debate. It is not worth arguing over something like that, because there aren’t enough fossil fuels to double CO2.
So the central question remains: does CO2 matter?
Based on empirical evidence, the answer is clearly: “No.”
Whether you agree or disagree, I would like to read about it.
Mark Bofill says:
October 19, 2013 at 3:33 pm
There is no paleoclimatological argument for high CO2 temperature sensitivity in any time frame. Sometimes higher T happens to correspond accidentally with intervals of elevated CO2, but more often not. CO2 follows temperature, although it might have a slight positive feedback effect.
From c. 1977 to 1996, rising CO2 coincided with rising mean global temperature, if heavily “adjusted” data sets are to be credited & if Earth’s T can indeed be taken to precisions of fractions of a degree C. But from c. 1944 to 1976, falling T coincided with rising CO2. From c. 1910 to 1943, flat, falling to ever so slightly rising CO2 coincided with rising T.
Farther back in our current interglacial, there was not much more CO2 during the Medieval, Roman, Minoan & Holocene Optimum Warm Periods than during the intervening Little Ice Age, Dark Ages & other Cold Periods. During the preceding glaciation, CO2 was perhaps 100 ppm lower than during the Holocene, because colder oceans hold more of the gas.
In the prior interglacial, which was a lot warmer than the Holocene, CO2 got up to perhaps 330 ppm, if ice core data are to be believed.
Going way back millions, tens of millions & hundreds of millions of years, CO2 concentrations of thousands of parts per million were associated with T both warmer & colder than now.
There’s no significant long-term correlation, although warmer climate will eventually lead to a little more CO2 in the air & colder to less at equilibrium, if that’s ever achieved. But CO2 levels higher than tens of parts per million have negligible effect on temperature, since the so-called greenhouse effect is logarithmic.
No, it is about different kinds of glaciers at Svalbard, of which 60% is covered in ice.
dbstealey says:
October 19, 2013 at 3:49 pm
Whether the human contribution to the present beneficial level of CO2 in dry air be 16 ppm or 100 ppm doesn’t matter to global mean T. CO2 contributes insignificantly to raising T above concentrations much lower than 280, 380, 480 or 580. It does have an important effect at levels under 100 ppm. Above that, it’s just more plant food. When it reaches tens of thousands of ppm, at it might start impacting how the planet now works by meaningfully lowering the relative abundance of oxygen. Some humans can begin feeling minor effects (like headaches) of CO2 around 1000 ppm (as in real greenhouses) & suffocate before 50,000 ppm.
Rumour has it the ObamaCare website disaster was caused by a Team of U Penn climate scientists moonlighting as web developers.
Makes sense. If you could screw up the climate models so badly, if you could invent the Infamous hockey stick and pass it off as science, then you could be the fools that so screwed the pooch on ObamaCare.
milodonharlani says:
October 19, 2013 at 3:57 pm
——————
Thanks, although that’s not really what I was after. Let me phrase my question another way. I can go to SkS and look up the apologetic. I find a reference to Shakun et al 2012, which apparently relied on models. Ok, this isn’t what I was looking for. I was hoping somebody could point me towards a warmist study or argument with math that can be followed by humans that purports to validate the argument that the paleo record shows high sensitivity.
Basically, the reason I care is this. I’ve never heard a paleo argument that didn’t amount to handwaving. If there is some other substance behind this argument (other than GCM’s, which I don’t consider substance anyway) even if it’s not correct I’d like to understand what it is. This is what I’m really getting at.
Mark Bofill, I studied a number of those papers including the flawed Knutii review from if I recall correctly 2009. All cited in the climate chapter of my book. Following a thumbnail sketch.
ECS includes long term feedbacks like change in land albedo from change in vegetation that might take a century to fully respond. There is no definition of the open period. A hundred years? A thousand? Several energy balance and observed heat/temp studies (not paleo) say most feedbacks take place ‘quickly’ (less than 15 years or so) and all those are pretty much captured in TRS. (Dr. Curry and I had a three month tussle on this before she posted my comments on ECS on her blog last year.) So use your imagination on what the long lag feedback remainder might be, and how significant.
What the paleo studies do is take two well separated time points or periods (centuries to millennia) with causative variable and dependent variable start and end. Causative is of course CO2. Dependent is some paleoproxy or proxies for temp. They look at the change over the interval, ignore transient fluctuations, and calculate ECS from delta T/ delta CO2.
In addition to the obvious uncertainties in measurement, there are wonderful cherry picking possibilities in choice of start and end times and in proxies for T.
While I am only qualified to judge as a critical thinker, the best of these studies (no obvious start stop or cherry pick problems) always seem to come out plus minus an ECS of 2. The worst ( obvious issues when the papers are read carefully) always seem to come out about 3 or a little higher. Read the Knutti survey review on ECS and you will be able to see all of this at work in practice to justify 3′ when the real answer seems to be between 1.5 and 2. My bock gave 1.9 as my then best guess. Several studies this past year lead me to revise that down toward 1.7 if I were to rewrite it now.
Regards
Mr. Mark are you sure that is what you want to know. The increase can be 100 human contribution, but the proportion of the total CO2 that is the human contribution is very small.
Rud,
Thanks, this is what I was looking for.
Much obliged. 🙂
Since this is an open thread I have to warn folks about the Australian fire being blamed on global warming or climate change. Now I hear that police are investigating military activity being a possible cause, as well as two girls seen trying to light a camp fire. This makes me recall the green who set of one of the worst fires in Israeli history because she was told that burning toilet paper was more eco-friendly. This fire was also blamed on global warming. You can’t make this up my friends.
SHOOT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER. This is the new motto for journalists.
Dear Mark (@ur momisugly 2:11pm today),
Note: Ferdinand Englebeen does not represent the views of most of the skeptic scientists who post on WUWT.
Moreover, he is resoundingly refuted by Dr. Murry Salby in the video below.
Dr. Murry Salby, Hamburg, Germany, April 18, 2013
In the above video, I think you will find the answer to your question at:
[36:34] Native Source of CO2 – 150 (96%) gigatons/yr — Human CO2 – 5 (4%) gtons/yr
[37:01] Native Sinks Approximately* Balance Native Sources – net CO2
*Approximately = even a small imbalance can overwhelm any human CO2
Hoping that was helpful,
Janice
Fred says:
October 19, 2013 at 4:09 pm
umm fred…that would be penn state, not u of penn.
u of penn is too busy with their hospitals HUP, and CHOP, and the wharton school to go grant grubbing on the retail level that penn state does. sorry.
Here is what you left out.
I don’t know or care who is right, but the way you present it is not very clear.
Well, it looks like the NSIDC is up and running again and the Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is starting to get humorously/freakishly above average in my opinion…http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Janice Moore says:
October 19, 2013 at 4:25 pm
“Dear Mark (@ur momisugly 2:11pm today)…..”
Thanks from me as well.
Rud Istvan says:
October 19, 2013 at 4:13 pm
IMO, ECS isn’t that high now, but in any case, there can be no single number, even for the specific doubling from ~280 to 560. When CO2 went through those levels in the Paleozoic or Mesozoic, the effect wasn’t the same. The Cretaceous is a big problem for CACA, since its apparent warmth would require an ECS of 6.0, 7.0 or more at much higher concentrations than now, the effect of which would have to be less, due to the logarithmic nature of CO2 warming (most of which occurs at low concentrations).
Fred says: “Rumour has it the ObamaCare website disaster was caused by a Team of U Penn climate scientists moonlighting as web developers.”
U. Penn.? or Penn. State? Surely you have a link, Fred. Or were you just trying to be funny?
Further to Jimbo’s comment on the Australian bushfires.
http://australianclimatemadness.com/2013/10/18/moronic-greens-mp-links-nsw-bush-fires-to-climate-policy/
Recall POTUS said raising the debt ceiling doesn’t increase the debt. The Treasury Dept was simply using accounting tricks until an agreement was reached to eliminate the debt ceiling for ~90 days so the process can repeat, Obama will demand unconditional surrender, the media will place 100% of the blame on the Republicans (not that they aren’t culpable for spending); wash, rinse repeat. This was all planned out long ago.
This is the first president in my lifetime that up front said he (and Harry Reid) would not negotiate for anything, only unconditional surrender. In fact, he once said the opposition would have to ride in the back.
U.S. debt jumps a record $328 billion — tops $17 trillion for first time
The next 12 months will not be good news for the U.S. QE2Infinity will of course continue inflating assets (stocks) and create a new housing bubble, but the dollar is headed toward irrelevancy as China buys up the gold and waits for the right time to dump U.S. bonds thereby quickening the death of the dollar. Already the reserve status of the dollar is showing signs of deterioration as more and more countries are bypassing the dollar to trade direct currencies. It’s only a matter of time.
If Obama had a city, it would look like Detroit.
On Obamacare, from a software engineer’s POV
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/20064
david eisenstadt says:
October 19, 2013 at 4:27 pm
Fred says:
October 19, 2013 at 4:09 pm
umm fred…that would be penn state, not u of penn.
u of penn is too busy with their hospitals HUP, and CHOP, and the wharton school to go grant grubbing on the retail level that penn state does. sorry.
________________________
Best way to tell them apart? Just remember- State Pen, not Penn State
Dear Luke Warmist — you are so very welcome. (btw, Mark never responded to me. Sigh. — that made your acknowledgement doubly gratifying — THANK YOU)