weather is relatively chaotic within quite broad limits: but climate should be smoother overall and long term trends more about genuine changes in fundamental drivers: The trouble is the 'global warming' really hasn't been going long enough to be statistically significant unless you massage the data severely.
My gut tells me that IF climate was as sensitive to CO2 as current models assume, we would have had far larger and more rapid fluctuations in history.
The medieval warming and little ice ages were not accompanied by any major CO2 changes: the IPC claims they were not global phenomena, but really the evidence is they were. They provided far more warming/cooling than we have seen in the 20th century. They suggest other far larger drivers than CO2 are at work. Of course the famous hockey stick simply does not show these temperature fluctuations. The data has been massaged flat.
Well that is your opinion but I didn't make that quote just to give you a chance to vent your prejudices. You claim sea levels are not rising, or at least not as much as the models predict but provide nothing to support you claim. So where are the models you dispute and the evidence that you are correct?
Hansen refers to evidence on melting of both Greenland and Antarctic icecaps and suggests why this might be non linear which, after all, is only to be expected with positive feedback.
So you keep on saying but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the latest models at least fit quite well what has happened in the recent past which is the only period we have accurate primary data for. Those who claim that they are inaccurate have prejudices rather than more accurate models to support their assertions.
But it was balanced by all the smoke from the fires at ground level so really an odd year that was unusually cold is neither here nor there.
1962-3 was pretty vicious too and nothing obvious to trigger that (though some folk blamed nuclear testing at the time).
It was coincidentally the peak year for nuclear weapons testing:
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they were really only a pinprick on the worlds climate when compared to Krakatoa(1884) or Toba(1816) super volcanoes.
You can't attach too much importance to a single years weather. Averaged over 11 years to largely eliminate any solar sunspot cycle influence you get to see the long term underlying trends more clearly.
Nah, that was when we moved from the middle of the hottest Summer in years in South Africa. It was specially arranged just to warn us what we'd let ourselves in for.
You seem inclined to believe the anti-science disinformation campaign.
Or if you look back to the last time CO2 was this high ~400ppm about
15My ago the seas could be headed for an equilibrium height of 5-8m higher and temperatures 3-6K higher than they are now. See for example:
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don't think it will be that extreme, but we have already set in train considerable future warming even if we stopped all emissions tomorrow (a completely impossible scenario anyway).
Some of it is almost certainly related to oceanic currents. There are some cyclic components that are not adequately understood at present. I think they are related to tidal forcing as did Keeling & Whorf.
Low level clouds cut both ways. Daytime they relfect sunlight back into space with a cooling effect but at night they severely limit the escape of heat by radiation from the ground so that the net effect is much smaller and finely balanced than you might suppose. High level thin clouds can give powerful warming effects because they don't stop much light inbound but they do stop radiative losses at night.
That was Lindzen's iris hypothesis but it has been found wanting in experimental tests based on all the observations to date.
That cloud modelling is inadequate is a fair criticism, but just because the models are imperfect does not mean that you can ignore them completely just because you don't like the answers.
There is strong paleological and ice core evidence that historically CO2 in the atmosphere has acted to amplify the tiny variations of the Earth's orbital elements that give rise to the Milankovitch cycles. We are now in a position to generate sufficient man made CO2 to invoke the same mechanisms as have happened naturally in the past.
Not true. Any credible research that demonstrated that the prevailing theories were significantly defective and had demonstrably better predictive power would be accepted. What is not acceptable is to have various fossil fuel sponsored conmen going round the world telling people not to worry it is all the big bad scientists on a gravy train. I can't think of anyone in academic research for the money.
They don't come any more selfish and greedy than oilmen and politicians.
Yes they are. Slowly at the moment. One thing you have to bear in mind is by adding CO2 to the atmosphere we are decreasing the rate of heat loss from the planet long term. It will take many decades before the system comes to equilibrium for the CO2 that we have already emitted and we are still emitting it at an ever increasing rate.
Actually it isn't far off and permanent sea ice is vanishing at a fairly alarming rate. And losing white ice fields makes a very serious change to net albedo in the summer time polar regions.
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>>>> Hardly worth wrecking the world's economy for.
We are stuck with the bankers :(
Wind turbines can pay their way if installed in the right places, solar is pretty much a lost cause at our latitude but would work OK nearer the equator. We should be having a "Save It" campaign on at least the same level as that of the OPEC induced oil crisis of the 70's.
That is not unexpected, but they are saints compared to Exxon.
I agree. But not with trading in worthless bits of derivative paper on the back of it. Such a tax would not be popular with petrolheads for instance and other taxes would have to be reduced. The fuel escalator didn't last long against concerted popular opposition.
Local combined heat and power would make sense in some places too.
We have to build new nuclear *now* it is the only carbon neutral way forward and the UK government has probably prevaricated on this for far too long already. The old reactors are on their last legs and cannot be run for much longer without risks of unexpected failures (and that would do the global nuclear industry's somewhat tarnished reputation no good at all). The triple reactor MFU in Japan after the earthquake has made politicians rather nervous about nuclear power again.
Don't hold your breath while they make the decision(s). And expect the new plants to be built only on existing nuclear sites and very probably supplied by foreign manufacturers as turnkey systems.
You can know how inaccurate the models are without having to have a more accurate model. Those that think you need a more accurate model to prove the other one is bad don't understand the basics.
To give an example of a very common but frequently very inaccurate model just look at weather forecasting. What's more we know why its inaccurate and we don't need a more accurate model to prove it, without prejudice.
Funny enough many of the reasons weather forecasts are inaccurate also apply to climate models, like not knowing the initial conditions very well.
What about the longer bigger solar cycles that we have only just discovered? We now know that the peaks (and troughs) of the 11 year sunspot cycle have been getting higher for the last 50 years. We now know that this indicates rising solar output. The AGW supporters deny this is happening.
Are you sure? Low level cloud is water droplets and absorb and reradiate some of the sunlight as IR. High level cloud is ice and reflect light without converting the solar flux to infrared that is prevented from escaping by the greenhouse gasses. Light that is reflected at a high level has little warming effect on the planet while stuff lower down has a bigger warming effect.
Its a shame that the records of high level cloud cover are so inadequate that its difficult/impossible to actually prove any effect on past climate and we only have the things like 911 to give any indication of its real power. IIRC the temps went up after 911 by a degree or two indicating that its a very powerful effect. It could also explain a lot of the rise in temps we have seen as high level cloud cover has dropped since we cleaned up the emissions from industry that was putting cloud forming pollutants into the upper atmosphere.
There is further evidence for these effects if you are actually interested.. you could look at the effects of some of the volcanoes that cause high level cloud and consequential cooling. Laki would be a good start as its eruption killed millions due to cooling.
Er no. Non linearity and positive feedback are entire distinct concepts.
Though I doubt Hansen understands that.
Of course they do, the data a little and the coefficients a LOT have been adjusted to ensure that they do.
But a curve fitting excercise with the wrong number of elements in the wrong relation is not a truth. It remains a curve fitting exercise - mere mathematical sleight of hand.
If you know anything, you know that you can make a polynomial approximation as close ass you lie to any data set. That doesn't mean that the terms of that equation have any significance whatsoever, nor that their predictions will in any way be accurate.
Not inaccurate, just meaningless.
About as meaningless as Gordon brown, noting year on year GDP growth of whatever, announcing 'no more boom and bust'. Of course he was correct. It's been a case of 'bust and more bust' ever since.
I cannot believe how you can be fooled by this sleight of hand.
A curve fit is not a theory, and a correlation is not a cause.
It has been noted in Wisden, going back many years, that the cost of corn followed the incidence of drawn cricket matches in any given year*.
A Nu Laber solution to that would be to change the rules of cricket to eliminate drawn matches.
A Hansen theory would be that psychic players anticipating hunger play with no verve or something.
*wet summers give drawn matches and poor crops
Positive feedback of the order that Hansen has had to use, would make the climate now, and historically, really unstable. It simply hasn't been that unstable.
Absolute utter rubbish. The sunspot cycle peaked in intensity about 1958 (cycle 19) and has been gradually declining ever since. It all but stalled from 2006-2010 with hardly any sunspots visible for months.
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sun is now finally into cycle 24 and we will have to wait and see how active it gets. The magnetic field strength in sunspots is observed to be declining and if it goes much lower we will see a spotless sun much like during the Maunder minimum before too much longer. For now though sunspots and associated activity are back on the increase again. There was incidentally an auroral storm alert last night.
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sunspots and an active sun gives an increased output since there are also bright faculae on the active sun covering a larger area and more than compensate for the few small dark spots.
That might well be because they have access to the *published* data and do not rely on Australian crank dittohead science sites.
No I am simply disinclined to believe the pseudo science disinformation campaign.
So why is the sea not that high and the temperature that high already? By that argument we are already doomed, so nothing can be done anyway
'almost certainly due to'.....yeah.
Methane Water vapour Clouds Polar ice albedo Ocean currents Cosmic rays multi decadal oscillations Dust in the air High flying planes Drawn Cricket matches. Butterflies flapping their wings in Brazil ...people driving cars..
.....pick any one that you can make a profit out of and its guaranteed to be that one in your book.
Golly. How friggin erudite can you get. Grandmother, egg, suck.
Of course. Its not ALL that is going on, is it. Don't forget the Brazilian butterflies.
Sorry, what on earth makes you think that *I* am the one ignoring things because I don't like the answers? THAT is ENTIRELY the province of the IPCC.
On the contrary, I am trying to INCLUDE so much MORE, because I don't like the oversimplification of the really crude climate model that Hansen has come up with. And I dont like the way in which it is being promulgated. With all dissension being airbrushed out by exactly that sort of statement that you have just made.
If the science was that solid, you wouldn't need the ad hominem attacks ....
Er, no, rather the reverse: large climate change nearly always changes the CO2 balance. CO2 changes after the temperature, not before.
We
That almost certainly didnt happen that way in te past.
Pull the other one. The point is there are half a dozen theories out there, all competing, but that is not politically acceptable.
They cannot be allowed to compete: The impression would be that scientists were not SURE.
What is not acceptable is to have
1/. The fossil fuel companies are perfectly happy with climate change as long as that means renewable energy, which doesn't compete with fossil fuel.
2/. No one stays in research without the money, however.
3/. dissenters are actually far more led by sincere and intelligent people who can see the way that 'message' is being pushed, and are beginning to wonder why, if its all so cut and dried, its being pushed quite so hard and in such a marketing led fashion.
That's what I said. Oilmen dont give a toss. But if it helps them plant subsidy farms and sell more shale gas, heck why not? If you can beat em, join em, and steer the bandwagon to suit your business. That's renewable energy of course. Fits perfectly with fossil fuel as an enormously profitable way to carry on burning gas.
ER that does not compute..
But that is nothing new. The arctic has been more or less ice free in summer before, and will be so again.
Meantime we had one of the coldest winters in te last 50 years last yera.
No we are not.
Its only FUD. 'can you imagine life without the banks' well yes, actually. Should have let em crash.
I can also imagine life without the Euro, without Tony Blair, and without the IPCC and renewable energy.
It actually looks very attractive.
You are obviously soft in the head if you believe that.
I don't do belief: I do sums. Fortunately the dynamics of power generation are a lot simpler than those of climate. Its possible to say with complete certainty that without government intervention renewable energy never would have been, and never will be in any way a cost effective solution to anything.
But I accept that the inconvenient truth of this statement, will be resisted by those whose faith and beleifs have been formed by green marketing promulgated by profit making companies to line their own pockets.
Enron STARTED the green movement. And they were busted for total fraud.
Sure if you have rubbish to burn. Greens want to stop it in Denmark though, and make everyone put in heatpumps ..
What other options have we got ...?
Even Their Lordships accept that Huhne is a total raving idiot, these days..
Thin high level cloud reflects more IR..than it blocks.
Low level cloud reflects more daytime sun than it blankets you at night.
IIRC you only need about half a percent less low level cloud to account for all the global warming of the last 50 years.
Clouds are PROBABLY the most significant driver of global temperature, but the question then arises as to what drives the clouds....
..one theory I like is Svensmarks. No idea if its 'true' but it is disturbingly close to providing another part of the climate jigsaw.
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he is correct, the solution to global warming could be something as simple as pointing particle accelerators at the sky and switching them on...
..and CERN is ideally placed to guarantee snowfall on the Alps, for skiers..:-)
Er no, they went down at night.
Daytime was largely unaltered.
No. Low level cloud cover has dropped. Its rare for particulate emissions - which are definitely involved in cloud formation at lower levels - to go up that high.
Dust is an effective screener of sunlight. But its all part of a giant complex system - one that is far more complex than the IPCC want you to BELIEVE.
We do now have satellites measuring the overall Earth's albedo IIRC by the way: the data is slowly coming in..
You are clueless beyond words. The active sun is on average brighter. This is well known and easily demonstrated by the satellite flux monitoring data.
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huge sunspot group can briefly decrease the solar flux for a few days but the active sun with many sunspots is on average *BRIGHTER* because the associated bright faculae are more important to average TSI.
This is a well known astronomical result that goes back to Herschel who noticed the relationship of grain prices to sunspot number in 1801.
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have demonstrated that you are a clueless anti-science dittohead.
You only know how inaccurate the predictions are after the event. As it is the models are predicting continuously rising temperatures and all that is really at stake is the rate of rise. By contrast those who are predicting that global temperatures are now falling have no model and nothing to hang their hat on bar the 1998 figure which sticks out like a sore thumb. The Met Office still has 1998 as the warmest year yet but the two American centres (it is not clear exactly how independently) producing their own temperature record both conclude that 2010 and 2005 are first equal and 1998 only third.
Weather forecasting is frequently very accurate. It is very rare for there to be a major c*ck-up.
But you do not have another model to make a more accurate prediction.
At least some of the apparent inaccuracy we see now is as a direct result of the furore over that hurricane when the Met Office got the track of the storm wrong. Caution now rules and bad weather will now almost always be less extreme than forecast and turn up latter than forecasted.
well exactly. Cant even agree on the DATA let alone the model. There ARE plenty of other models..if you care to look. That are just as open to criticism of course.
But absence of a viable alternative does not render the IPCC model somehow magically credible in its predictions.
What are we after? a political decision making basis? Or the truth?
The truth is we know more, but not nearly enough, to really start to risk the whole of human society on a deeply flawed and inaccurate model, just because we haven;t got a better alternative.
The actual impact of climate change measures is significantly rising to the point where it is more damaging than the putative climate change itself.
That is particularly true of renewable energy.
The sensible way to hedge the bets is in fact nuclear power.
A modest increase in cost with massive emission reduction potential.
And vastly improved energy security.
Whereas it can be clearly shown that renewable energy does almost nothing to improve either of the above. at several times the cost.
The data is online: Do your own weather forecasts: The Beeb is dumbed down and very bland - there are far better weather discussion sites online where real meteorologists and long range forecasters assign probabilities and directions to weather in the next weeks.
That is the best and most pragmatic position to take.
Well exactly.
Both. Plus other things: The important thing is how much is down to each element.
Right now my best expression of what is 'we don't really know' plus a 'and I STRONGLY SUSPECT that CO2 is not the only, nor yet the main, issue: and that is dangerous - to be committed to a one element policy blinds us to possible other AGW (or natural) sources, or indeed other things we might be doing with the money'
Its exactly the same with renewable energy: It blinds us to alternatives. In our haste to 'do something' we run the risk of doing worse than nothing.
I am sure you can come up with some situation where positive feedback doesn't magnify whatever imbalance it is acting on but I am not going to even try.
Given the choice of believing you or some published and peer reviewed scientist I will take the sane choice of believing the scientist.
How else do you build a model but by including all the fields believed to have an effect and given each factor some weight. You build a model to predict the future but to do so convincingly it must also account for what has happened in the past.
Mere prejudice.
Gordon Brown never got my vote.
Strawman.
So there is a connection between drawn matches and the cost of corn so the number of drawn matches could be used to predict the cost of corn or vice versa. Much the same way as tree ring and ice core data is used to predict prehistoric temperatures. not perfectly but better than nothing
ISTM that there have been a number of occasions in the past when a tipping point has been reached and rapid changes have ensued.
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