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Comment on What are the most controversial points in climate science? by genghiscunn

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Richard, Peter, agree. This is a major issue not because of the science per se but because of the massive, costly impact of proposed and implemented policy responses. My reply to Steve Pruett below touches on this. The critical science questions are those for which answers are needed to guide good policy, with human welfare being the highest consideration.


Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by mosomoso

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There were probably Polish kids playing with lead soldiers when the Wehrmacht and Red Armies moved in on Poland in 1939. I guess the kids learned the difference pretty quickly between models and real things.

Now, in the face of a climate which, as far back as we can trace, has never been consistent or predictable or convenient for long, we are staring at models (often confected by people who are incurious about or bored by the physical world), our backs turned to the real thing. And we don’t have the excuse that we are kids, and that we are just playing.

Believing in impregnable defences is one kind of folly – our industrial infrastructure, fossil fuel based wealth and modern tech can’t defend against everything. But pulling down defences because you’re certain which direction trouble will come from, that’s a higher kind of folly.

I’d invite policy makers to have a think about what a bit of cooling has meant to China and Africa in times past, and what a lot of cooling did to just about everybody some four millennia ago.

Be ready for everything, because everything is ready for you, little humans.

Comment on What are the most controversial points in climate science? by agnostic2015

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Jim D,

This is why the hiatus is always constructed to include 1998 near it’s beginning.

No – you are misunderstanding how the hiatus is constructed. 1998 happens to be included if you simply start from the present and look backwards in time until you get a statistically significant trend. That’s the fairest way to look at it without cherry picking. When you do that, the “hiatus” is about 18 years (depending on the data set).

The 1998 El Niño was followed by quite a deep La Niña, so you can’t start there either.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by genghiscunn

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Excellent exchange, Judith, I’m glad that there are at least two interested House members. Let’s hope that they have some influence.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Mike Flynn

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Peter Lang,

Does it matter?

Well said! Who knows?

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Barclay MacDonald (@barclaymac)

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Your responses are succinct and straight-forward. I like that, and at the risk of straying, I would suggest the following:

Perhaps a glossary or an appendix would be appropriate, but for laymen reading your response it is important you explain many of your acronyms, which are esoteric to those outside this issue.

1A Reduction over what period? How do you assess its significance regarding prevention? Inconsequential?

2. A. I like this answer, but somewhere it might be useful to mention the percentage of CO2 that is natural and the percentage that is anthropogenic that government policy is directed toward affecting.

3A. Very good! Consider adding an example of a personal experience or that of a colleague.4

4 A. ?

4B. Simplify and clarify. What is a hiatus? What are decadal and regional spatial scales? How does regional differ from global and who cares? What is a projection vs a prediction? What do you mean, “can be tuned”.

6B. I see the response to this question as being very important. Please elaborate and clarify attempting to bring it to a laymen’s level of understanding.
Additionally, it seems to me the most glaring and problematic uncertainty is the level of uncertainty, the “Uncertainty Monster”, at all levels and subjects of analysis in “climate science”.

6C. I think I like this one sentence answer!

6D. The question is looking for a No answer. Your answer is too literal.

7B Excellent, but can you put it in simpler, laymen’s terms.

7C Also, put the answer in simpler, laymen’s terms and what that means to us.

8B Perhaps discuss uncertainty regarding warming and climate impacts? Your response to 8C deals nicely with this.

2 Briefly elaborate as to why it would be helpful to reallocate funding.

Dr. Curry, I can recall when you first began posting and questioning at Climate Audit. Wow! You have come a long way! Very impressive!

Comment on What are the most controversial points in climate science? by davideisenstadt

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as do those who chose to study english in their post secondary academic career?

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by agnostic2015

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Dr Curry,

These are excellent responses, but in my opinion they could sometimes be couched with less certainty.

In questions regarding appropriate policy responses, it might be worth mentioning those who have shaped your thinking eg. Lomborg, Tol, or Nordhaus perhaps.

I think 6 C is deserving of being fleshed out somewhat. For example, climate change, warming or cooling, natural or anthropogenic, involves some costs and some benefits. It’s possible that mitigation is the riskier option – but the debate is rarely framed in this way.

Lastly, I think it worth pointing out that mitigation to reduce anthropogenic affects on climate is supposed to be a world wide effort. Just because US mitigation efforts would have an insignificant effect on its own is not justification for not doing it. That would be a tragedy of the commons. IMO you should include figures that demonstrate mitigation effects if US efforts were adopted worldwide.

It’s likely that that they would not be terribly significant either, and arguably unnecessary, but it is the fairest way to look at it.


Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Andrew

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As a resident of the UK I would list the reasons for burning wood fuel as:

High FF prices till recently, compared with wood fuel, which is now rapidly increasing.
Fashion for green energy.
Technology. Modern burners have increased the efficiency of wood burners, making the process far cleaner.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by HAS

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A couple of comments:
Q8A
I think it is a mistake to characterise RCP8.5 as the “business as usual” scenario.

RCP8.5 is described in Riahi et al 2011 “RCP 8.5—A scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions” as “the upper bound of the RCPs” and “a relatively conservative business as usual case” (emphasis added if WordPress understands these things). The term “business as usual” isn’t used to describe RCP8.5 in either of the relevant IPCC AR5 WG1 (Chapters 1 or 8).

Also RCP8.5 isn’t the likely scenario and as I understands it we are currently tracking approximately on the RCP4.5/6.0 pathways, while temperatures from the models are below the RCP2.6 scenario.

I also think there is some confusion on what the IPCC said. We have scenario based projections of which the IPCC said they thought the total range (2.6-8.5) was likely. I’d be inclined to use the the IPCC wording – you leave the impression that the model projections are something more than the sum of the assumptions and the models, about which the IPCC expressed a view on their likelihood.

Q10
I think this offers the chance to say something more about risk, and risk management that addresses a key issue that is widely ignored by those that present the policies as insurance. This is the risks and associated costs in too early a response and overly enthusiastic response. A related issue is the extent to which these costs and responsibilities are individual or should be socialised.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Fernando Leanme (@FernandoLeanme)

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Peter, the RICE model provides an educated guess. It doesn’t have the capability to provide a useful number. If I were a congressional staffer working for the committee I would A) get the IEA 2015 outlook broken down in detail to make sure the biofuels and NAtural Gas liquids are broken out. B) ask a neutral government outfit to estimate a similar forecast using the pledges received to date by the UN bureaucracy. Assume those countries failing to deliver pledges will change emissions as per the average of the pledged countries’. C) have the same outfit deliver a total emissions and greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration estimates (use high, base, low estimates to account for carbon cycle uncertainties). D) NOAA and ask them to run at least five different models with variable initializations and prepare the temperature anomaly forecasts for those models as well as the ACTUAL average surface temperatures for a) the world, b) the Antarctic peninsula. c) North America land from Mexico to Ellesmere, d) EU nations e) China excluding the Gobi desert.
E) Compare model temperatures to actual over the last 50 years.
F) Compare the temperature by 2050 for Christianaclimate versus IEAclimate.

I did my own rough estimate and estimated 0.2 degrees C by 2050 using an IPCC climate sensitivity. This of course excludes solar forcing. A lower climate sensitivity puts it in the 0.1 degree C range. But the Christianaclimate scenario is only achievable if fossil fuels do start running out. In which case fossil fuel prices and scarcity become a much more pressing problem.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by krmmtoday

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8A: “Under the Business As Usual Emissions Scenario (RCP8.5), the IPCC AR5 projects a likely increase of global mean surface temperatures for 2081–2100 relative to 1986–2005 to be 2.6°C to 4.8°C (RCP8.5). The likely confidence implies that there is a 34% chance that the increase could lie outside this range. Personally, I think the IPCC is overconfident in their estimate; I would expect the warming to lie below this range.”

How could this (or any other percentage ever) be falsified?
That the eventual outcome had been attributed a low probability doesn’t invalidate the forecast or the model used to create the forecast.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Fernando Leanme (@FernandoLeanme)

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Rcp8.5 is a surreal scenario. It was developed to achieve 8.5 watts per m2 forcing in 2100, this constrained the integrated model, forcing it to use very questionable assumptions.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Peter Lang

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<blockquote>Peter, the RICE model provides an educated guess. It doesn’t have the capability to provide a useful number. </blockquote> That's an unsupported statement. It seems to me it answers the questions asked, and furthermore allows the user to change the input parameters to run sensitivity analyses on the key inputs. <blockquote>I did my own rough estimate and estimated 0.2 degrees C by 2050 using an IPCC climate sensitivity.</blockquote> Why didn't you simply download RICE 2010 and extract the answers from an authoritative source?

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by KenW


Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Peter Lang

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[Repost is correct place]

Fernando Leanme,

Peter, the RICE model provides an educated guess. It doesn’t have the capability to provide a useful number.

Why do you say that? It seems to me it answers the questions asked, and furthermore allows the user to change the input parameters to run sensitivity analyses on the key inputs.

I did my own rough estimate and estimated 0.2 degrees C by 2050 using an IPCC climate sensitivity.

Why didn’t you simply download RICE 2010 and extract the answers from an authoritative source?

The Excel version has separate spreadsheets for US, Russia, China and India, projections every 10 years of emissions, concentrations, temperature, damages and abatement costs for various policies. You can compare the results for the Baseline with other scenarios.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Fernando Leanme (@FernandoLeanme)

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Peter, renewables do have a role to play as fossil fuel extenders. And in some locations they are very viable if coupled to pumped storage. I’m thinking of locations in southern chile, for example. The wind blows all the time, they have mountains and it’s fairly easy to build a storage reservoir. The key is to make it earthquake proof.

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Peter Lang

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by beththeserf

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‘What are the current key gaps in our understanding of
natural climate variability?’

Solar impacts, mechanisms of natural variability, ocean
heat, climate feedbacks, cloud dynamics … gaping
maws of a one-eyed climate consensus.
http://ithaka.wikispaces.com/monsters

Comment on Follow-up questions re my recent House testimony by Fernando Leanme (@FernandoLeanme)

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Peter, I suppose you haven’t lived in Southern South America. The wind blows so hard we had to use steel cables for clothes lines, and the clothes had to be clamped down. Cars have to be parked facing up wind (if they face down wind the doors can be damaged when they are opened). My guess is the wind turbines have to be built with tiny blades or they tear apart. This makes wind a no brainer. Buffering it with pumped storage is relatively cheap, the Andes provide the topography, and the alternative for Chile is importing coal from the USA or unreliable gas from Argentina.

On Argentina’s side they have some natural gas, but the wind works very well as an extender. The key is to focus on the site specific resources and needs. As it turns out southern South America is one of the best places I’ve seen for wind/hydro combinations. I imagine New Zealand’s southern island would be a viable site as well. But I never consulted for anybody in NZ. I did consult for companies in Argentina, and I discussed the Chile market with them.

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