Game Over for the Climate

tekprodfx16 · 4 days

ping

frecklefart88 · 4 days

Ctrl-F for "ghostfacers" comes up empty. For shame Reddit.

WhiteBlade3000 · 4 days

whether it really is a huge mystery that turns evolution upside-down.

No. Creationists commonly claim that "living fossils" present a problem for evolution, but that's because they don't understand what evolution actually entails.

a young-earth creationist who claimed at one point that the discovery of the coelacanth, the "living fossil" that hasn't evolved in millions of years

This is completely false. There are different modern coelacanth populations that have diverged genetically from a common ancestor within the last few hundred thousand years (Nikaido et al., 2011).

Nikaido, M. et al. (2011), Genetically Distinct Coelacanth Population Off the Northern Tanzanian Coast, PNAS, 108(44), 18009–18013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1115675108.

dadoctordonna · 5 days

I don't know why someone downvoted you for just talking about your experience. Jesus christ, people. C'mon.

Anyway, cheers. I wasn't directing that at you, just hijacking your post.

dadoctordonna · 5 days

I don't get all the Ayn Rand hate.

There's this:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. ~ John Rogers

Also this: http://i.imgur.com/xgByr.gif

Also this: http://i.imgur.com/gLGOU.gif

Also, the whole serial killer admiring, drugged up personality cult, and dying a hypocrite living off of government benefits stuff.

tekprodfx16 · 6 days

That's the million dollar question.

That's more than a bit of an exaggeration. There is unquestionably uncertainty in any estimates, but it's not as though we don't have a general idea.

I am pressing you to be explicit and quantitative in your claims because they seem very "hand-wavy" to me. Without being explicit about the contribution of solar during the period in question, there's no way to meaningfully evaluate whether or not it played a role in recent warming. You can't just note that there was a solar max a few decades before and throw up your hands.

We can state rather confidently that it isn't simply TSI.

So what, though? None of the trends in solar can possibly be driving the multidecadal warming of the last several decades. They're all either in opposition or neutral. That's even taking into consideration your lag. In fact, your own cited paper says as much.

Not to mention, the indirect effects of solar are relatively small compared to TSI, at least in terms of globally-averaged temperature response.

In order for you to believe that solar has driven some of the warming of the past several decades, you need to show solar forcing during the period in question. You also need to show the net natural forcings.

Do you agree?

Edited to add: I also find it more than a little odd for you to claim:

I know your argument for this, that increases in radiative forcing are more than offset by aerosols, but it is overly simplistic and doesn't consider the sum of natural forcings.

Which is unquestionably false. It absolutely takes into consideration natural forcings, including volcanic aerosols, changes in stratospheric water vapor, etc. In fact, it is consideration of the sum of natural forcings that allows us to say the warming of the past several decades is more than 100% attributable to GHGs.

And it's all the more odd because when I push you to describe the net natural forcings during the period in question, your answer is entirely solar-focused:

A highly active sun (grand solar max) immediately preceding an increase in temperature, followed by a flattening of temperature after a decrease in solar forcing is good evidence that it isn't all anthro.

This makes no sense. I am explicitly considering net natural forcings (e.g. Knutti and Huber, 2011). You are entirely focused on solar in a non-quantitative way and will say nothing about its net impact and the sum of natural forcings during the period in question. ???

tekprodfx16 · 7 days

A highly active sun (grand solar max) immediately preceding an increase in temperature, followed by a flattening of temperature after a decrease in solar forcing is good evidence that it isn't all anthro.

You seem to be (unconsciously) conflating several different important aspects of the issue to arrive at that answer. Let's decompose them.

What is the contribution from solar forcing over the period in question? What is the net natural forcing over the period in question?

What role solar can be said to play in the recent warming depends on multiple factors, not simply whether or not solar increased at any point during the period in question.

I'm not going to be online much for the next few days, but I encourage you to respond in order to make your underlying assumptions explicit and to discriminate between co-incidence and contribution.

tekprodfx16 · 8 days

it is overly simplistic and doesn't consider the sum of natural forcings.

What do you believe is "the sum of natural forcings" during this time, and how does that refute the evidence demonstrating that the recent warming is entirely attributable to anthro forcings?

That latter half of the 20th century plus this century.

So, ~1950+?

Yes. Figure 4 in this paper gives the correlation lag versus solar forcing. It peaks at about 10 years.

I can't tell if you're trying to be funny, but there is no Fig 4 in that paper...

mean trend of solar activity turned slightly negative in about 1990.

Not what I'm asking. You brought up solar max as a possible contribution to recent warming. Do you agree that that's just not possible timing wise for the last few decades?

It's a specious claim that present warming is faster than anything in prehistory because prehistory lacks sufficient resolution to describe global temperatures. We have seen two near-identical warming-rate periods in the 20th century and one in the 19th century. One one of those three is attributed primarily to mankind even among the most concerned AGW proponents.

So, you're not arguing about periods of paleoclimatic warming at all. Gotcha.

I have to get some sleep. I'm up too late already.

tekprodfx16 · 8 days

With temperature leading CO2. You are purposely trying to obfuscate causality with correlation.

This is misleading. Temp most certainly does not lead all of the CO2 change- the CO2 change drives a substantial amount of the temp change, even if initial warming occurs from non-CO2 sources like orbital forcing.

Absolute bullshit.

What is a faster incidence of global warming in the past 20ma? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm interested in what paleoclimate you think justifies your refutation.

The sun just concluded a grand solar maximum.

"Just"? Would you agree that since ~mid-20th century, there has been no upward tend in solar? And that for the last several decades, the trends in solar are either neutral or in opposition to the changes in temp?

Warming lags forcing by about a decade.

For solar? In terms of TSI, IIRC it's not nearly so long for global effects. There is evidence for multidecadal lags for some regional responses, but these aren't associated with global trends.

Recent warming is a combination of factors, both anthropogenic and natural. You are being outright deceitful to claim only one factor is responsible.

What is "recent" according to you? For at least the past several decades, warming has been driven entirely by anthropogenic forcings.

AlyssaMoore · 8 days

there is nothing at present that can replace fossil fuels for cheap energy except for nuclear

I am a huge supporter of nukes as an all of the above strategy to stabilize emissions. But I don't think any of my fellow nuke "hawks" would make such an unqualified claim as there is no pathway to emissions stabilization without massive nuke deployment. That's simply not justified from everything that I've read.

Now, if you want to make the case that alternative pathways are less econo-socio-politico-etc. likely to happen, be explicit. Stop hiding behind false certainty.

If you actually believe that there is literally no other emissions stabilization pathway other than nukes, I'd love to see some legitimate references.

AlyssaMoore · 8 days

If you want to limit the discussion to emissions from coal, that fine, but that certainly isn't what carbon taxes are about. They are about taxing emissions from all fossil fuels.

You yourself like to cite analyses that basically focus on limiting coal because the authors are all but resigned to the exploitation of easily recoverable light sweet crude.

I'm not trying to "ding" you here, but surely you recognize that even under general carbon taxation schemes, the focus can be placed on coal?

butch123 · 10 days

It seems obvious that a number of people have access to it if they are writing recommendations to correct the results.

No, that's not obvious at all. For over a decade, people have been trying to figure out how UAH implements certain aspects of its corrections, basically through trial and error without access to UAH's code.

The net result of all of this has been Spencer and Christy having to revise their results warmer and closer agreement with the surface record.

In this specific instance, it's possible that Po-Chedley and Fu are wrong, or they may be right. But it would be a lot easier for everyone involved if UAH actually bothered to be half as transparent with their data and code as NASA GISS is.

butch123 · 10 days

Have either UAH or RSS ever publicly released their working code?

I'm pretty sure RSS has...

I wonder, based on the fact were talking about satellites with (essentially) cameras pointing down looking at every square inch of human civilization, if there might not be some 'national security' issues involved.

The data are available to download. It's the code used to correct for various biases in the raw data that UAH has never made public. We're also talking about microwave brightness data over a fairly coarse area, not spy sats with high resolution imagery.

Edited to add:

ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/support/binary_read_routines/

http://www.remss.com/data/msu/weighting_functions/

butch123 · 10 days

That's not the UAH code. That's just the MSU data. Those data are available through a number of places- UAH, RSS, NOAA.

ManBearPigg · 10 days

ah yes, personal attacks. Always the way to win an argument.

You probably don't even realize the absurdity of this comment in the context of this discussion, do you?

I didn't read a blog, I had personal dealings with Gavin.

Oh, right. Let me guess- you "dealt with" him on a message board, usenet group, email listserve, or something like that?

That has fuck all to do with you dismissing out of hand the estimated foricngs over the past millennium as compiled the 15 other authors of the paper, why exactly?

ManBearPigg · 10 days

you're using Gavin's paper as proof

I'm not using anything for "proof".
I love that because people read blogs they think that they can dismiss a paper because they recognize the name of one its authors. There are 15 other authors for the paper in question. It is the basis for the PMIP modeling runs. You don't get to dismiss evidence out of hand because you can recognize one name out of 16.

LOL computer models are not science and proof of nothing.

As if I needed further evidence that you're either a troll or else bone-achingly ignorant.

bluegarlic · 10 days

I snorted.

ManBearPigg · 10 days

Can you justify either of those assertions?

In terms of the latter, I think it's fairly close to being correct, but not fully correct, because madmanoflamancha over-specified things unnecessarily. ~1970 is a good marker for when anthropogenic positive forcings began to outstrip the combined influence of anthro negative forcings + net natural forcings (Huber and Knutti, 2011):

http://i.imgur.com/gNDXL.png

In terms of the former, I'm not as familiar. It looks like the 20th century isn't a bad place to start marking the "recent" warming relative to the past millennium, using estimated forcing values (Schmidt et al., 2012):

http://i.imgur.com/zQHEm.jpg

[Edit: to be clear, this is temp using the Schmidt et al. forcings in the UVic EMIC model]

It's certainly possible to start earlier if one wants to cherry pick the recovery from the LIA, but then be left explaining why to start there rather than still earlier.

Huber, M., and R. Knutti (2011), Anthropogenic and natural warming inferred from changes in Earth's energy balance, Nature Geoscience, 5(1), 31–36, doi:10.1038/ngeo1327.
Schmidt, G. A. et al. (2012), Climate forcing reconstructions for use in PMIP simulations of the Last Millennium (v1.1), Geoscientific Model Development, 5(1), 185–191, doi:10.5194/gmd-5-185-2012.

ManBearPigg · 10 days

It's not strange at all!

I think that there is a very large misconception in the "skeptic" community about how solar (direct and indirect) is viewed by the mainstream climate community.

Solar is an enormously important component of the climate system. There is still a great deal of work to be done on solar influence in the present, future, and past. Solar influence on smaller spatial and temporal scales is getting a lot of (well deserved) attention.

That this is the mainstream climate view appears to be completely foreign to most "skeptics". They've been led to believe that thinking solar is important is "skeptic" territory, all but ignored by the mainstream. This couldn't be further from the truth.

The reason why the misdirection works is because even though the mainstream recognizes the importance of solar and continues active research on solar-climate connections, it's been demonstrably clear for years that (on global and multidecadal scales) solar is being swamped in significance by anthropogenic forcings and will continue to be.

Because "skeptics" reject this, they are easily tricked into believing that solar has been written off almost entirely by the mainstream.

It's a similar state of affairs with respect to GCRs, ocean-atmosphere couplings, etc. Much of what the "skeptics" believe are "skeptic" positions are entirely mainstream. The significance with respect to anthropogenic forcings is where the things diverge dramatically.

ManBearPigg · 10 days

it may imply very bad news for agricultural production.

I don't know about "very bad news", but certainly the potential import for such regional changes on precip and agriculture should (and no doubt will) be investigated.

It may not follow the this results in global cooling

I am responding to the bullshit spin being put on an otherwise interesting study by the Daily Fail. The paper did not talk about "global cooling" at all, much less claim to have "proved" [sic] it.

Does this mean the effects were only regional? Also no.

Again, I am just responding to the bullshit spin being put on an otherwise interesting study by the Daily Fail. They're the ones claiming global scope. This claim is completely unjustified by the paper in question.

Given the NAO-like phenomenon discussed by the paper, I think it's safe to say that it is restricted to a regional nature. That isn't to say that there aren't other effects that could occur in other regions driven by the same solar change, of course.

Will_Power · 11 days

Gotcha.

Will_Power · 11 days

I wasn't aware of Lockwood's paper.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Lockwood's group and its recent work to you several times, as a mainstream counterexample to cranks like Corbyn and the "cosmic rays drive climate" nutters.

Edited to add: It's not just one paper- his group has at least three from 2010 to the present on the topic.

Lockwood, M., R. G. Harrison, T. Woollings, and S. K. Solanki (2010a), Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity?, Environmental Research Letters, 5(2), 024001, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001.
Lockwood, M., C. Bell, T. Woollings, R. G. Harrison, L. J. Gray, and J. D. Haigh (2010b), Top-down solar modulation of climate: evidence for centennial-scale change, Environmental Research Letters, 5(3), 034008, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/5/3/034008.
Lockwood, M., R. G. Harrison, M. J. Owens, L. Barnard, T. Woollings, and F. Steinhilber (2011), The solar influence on the probability of relatively cold UK winters in the future, Environmental Research Letters, 6(3), 034004, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034004.

I am pretty sure there is at least one more that was published in a journal besides ERL. I'll keep looking.

butch123 · 11 days

the author’s are uninformed on the complexity of the UAH satellite merging algorithm

Where can one download the UAH code?

For example, if I want to download the GISTEMP code, I can just find it on GISS's website. And because GISTEMP is freely available, that means that others have kindly ported it from FORTAN to Python.

ManBearPigg · 11 days

Is 'global cooling' on the way?

No. A new solar minimum will have a global effect an order of magnitude or more smaller than the outcome of our emissions pathway (Feulner and Rahmstorf, 2010; Jones et al., 2012).

Lake sediment proves sun cooled earth 2,800 years ago - and it could happen again soon

No, the seds and modeling didn't prove [sic] the sun cooled "Earth". They demonstrated a change in regional atmospheric circulation (Martin-Puertas et al., 2012). It's right there in the title of the paper: Regional atmospheric circulation shifts induced by a grand solar minimum.

Feulner, G., and S. Rahmstorf (2010), On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, 5 PP., doi:201010.1029/2010GL042710.
Jones, G. S., M. Lockwood, and P. A. Stott (2012), What influence will future solar activity changes over the 21st century have on projected global near-surface temperature changes?, J. Geophys. Res., 117, 13 PP., doi:201210.1029/2011JD017013.
Martin-Puertas, C., K. Matthes, A. Brauer, R. Muscheler, F. Hansen, C. Petrick, A. Aldahan, G. Possnert, and B. van Geel (2012), Regional atmospheric circulation shifts induced by a grand solar minimum, Nature Geoscience, doi:10.1038/ngeo1460.

[Edit: Added in sources.]

Will_Power · 11 days

Interesting. Somewhat similar to Mike Lockwood's group's findings re: low solar = cold UK/European winter. Paper here.

Abstract:

Large changes in solar ultraviolet radiation can indirectly affect climate1 by inducing atmospheric changes. Specifically, it has been suggested that centennial-scale climate variability during the Holocene epoch was controlled by the Sun2, 3. However, the amplitude of solar forcing is small when compared with the climatic effects and, without reliable data sets, it is unclear which feedback mechanisms could have amplified the forcing. Here we analyse annually laminated sediments of Lake Meerfelder Maar, Germany, to derive variations in wind strength and the rate of 10Be accumulation, a proxy for solar activity, from 3,300 to 2,000 years before present. We find a sharp increase in windiness and cosmogenic 10Be deposition 2,759 ± 39 varve years before present and a reduction in both entities 199 ± 9 annual layers later. We infer that the atmospheric circulation reacted abruptly and in phase with the solar minimum. A shift in atmospheric circulation in response to changes in solar activity is broadly consistent with atmospheric circulation patterns in long-term climate model simulations, and in reanalysis data that assimilate observations from recent solar minima into a climate model. We conclude that changes in atmospheric circulation amplified the solar signal and caused abrupt climate change about 2,800 years ago, coincident with a grand solar minimum.

If anyone has interest in reading the full paper, let me know.

thingsbreak

TROPHY CASE

thingsbreak

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login