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Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by peterdavies252

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Peter L do you have any citation for the proposition that the poles had no ice for 75% of the time for the past 4-500 million years?


Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Uptown Girl

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My interest here has been your claim that “any” effect of CO2 on the climate means there is necessarily a “high” risk. And thus far it is a completely bald claim, ie completely with any support (indeed you scoff at the very notion).

Your other “dimensions” seem unrelated to this.
(Oh and as a footnote I am quite happy to use other practical and economical forms of energy should they ever materialise).

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Bart R

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Risk is funny that way. There’s a probability component, and a cost component, of risk. I’m sure you’re aware of this, of course.

For the Earth climate, there are some four dozen distinct current weather basins, each of them influenced by neighbors and teleconnections, each sensitive to initial conditions, each iterative and each driven in some way by surface heat. Below most of these are deeper ocean influences, and above them all are high atmosphere conditions. Every single one of those has a CO2E component, indexed logarithmicly by GHG concentration as regards some band of the IR range.

Water vapor has its own story, but let’s say that we just don’t know it. It could be a positive feedback (and likely is, given the evidence we have, but that’s far from certain), negative, dynamic or neutral. If a dynamic or positive feedback, then there is a higher risk of more heat.

CO2 above and in the oceans has a difficult to communicate story. At the very least, one must agree there’s risk of indirect and large effects, be they on temperature or pH or biota. Sure, one could speculate on benefit to biology, but ‘benefit’ is a funny word, ill-defined and not sought by most. Why should people consider any benefit they aren’t asking for into their calculations? Especially when such benefits are speculative at best?

The high atmosphere? CO2 there is in relatively low concentration compared the lower atmosphere, and we’ve done a terrible job of tracking that concentration. If it’s rising as dramatically high up as it is lower down, and if it has GHE effect higher up like an outer layer of an onion, it is certainly still in the low range of that logarithmic curve, and so it takes much less CO2 to double in the high atmosphere.. which mechanisms we poorly grasp, and can anticipate a risk profile that is much broader for its much higher uncertainty.

The fifty climate basins? It’s a precept of Chaos Theory that a new external forcing perturbs a system into a new level. That corresponds mathematically with ideas like “extreme weather” or “extreme events”; the precept isn’t particularly helpful in determining the precise interpretation of what that means. However, it maps exactly onto the concept of increased risk. CO2 increase due human activity has the best case to be made as the largest new external forcing in climate in the past ten to twenty million years. All of these plates in the air spinning, and CO2 rattling each of them more and more. That’s the high risk path.

The lower risk is to simply not raise CO2 levels further.

How dare any one, or any group, usurp the right of all others to determine the risk they are willing to share? To demand ‘proof’ of exactly what is entailed before they stop rocking the boat?

What moral philosophy stands behind such presumptuous trespass?

The man caught peeing in the town well doesn’t get to ask for a physicist to prove harm.

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Edim

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Bart, the real risk is that the AGW hysteria will be extremely damaging to not only environment(alism), but to the public trust in science.

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Bart R

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I really have very little interest in environmentalism. I liked it better when we called the environment the outdoors, or just the world, and went out into it regularly and confidently with regard for our own obligation to leave it at least as well off when we went as when we got there, that future generations would have the same opportunity.

As for trust in science; I don’t quite understand whether you mean its institutions — which little deserve trust in their authority and yet prove time and again the real benefit of investment in their improvement — or its people — who ought be questioned skeptically always, and who by and large prove to benefit us all more than any other single identifiable group ever has come close to — or its ever changing body of knowledge.. One wonders at the utility of investing yet more distrust over a thing that is already being worked on every hour by diligent adherents to find its weaknesses, flaws, failings, errors and imperfections.

Perhaps you mean trust in science journalists and science commentators? Well, who trusts a journalist is already beyond help.

Or are you predicting a catastrophic collapse of all of the above, and a return to the Dark Ages, where barbaric hordes raid the remnants of old centres of learning, and only powerful patrons can host the tattered vestiges of a world of scholarship and invention?

That’s been happening in America since at least 1973. Your concern has come a bit late.

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Uptown Girl

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Yes, that’s better – it’s a complicated physics situation we are only beginning to understand, and so definitely can’t say with any sincerity or much certainty that there’s a high risk involved.
Certainly nowhere near enough to warrant the the huge drop in everyone’s standard of living that not emitting any more CO2 (as you recommend) would entail.
But it is something that warrants more study. CO2 could indeed turn out to be a serious issue. It is not something to ignore.

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Edim

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OK, environment then. Forget environmentalism. By science I mean science as activity or enterprise, not the scientists and especially not the institutions.

Another risk is that it makes rich richer and poor poorer, which is not good at all, IMO.

Comment on Climate science in public schools by Tom Choularton

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In the UK science teaching in schools reflects and must reflect the mainstream science of the day that includes climate change and evolution. For example, if an individual does not have an understanding of the role of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere how can they possibly have a view on man-made climate change.


Comment on The Bias of Science by Girma

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GISS and CRU, please start measuring your GMT anomaly from the ramp (http://bit.ly/IU5iXE), not your “w.r.t 1961-1990”

Comment on Climate science in public schools by lolwot

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thanks, R.Gates, that was my point but I had to log off before I could respond to the inevitable denial

10 years is too short to determine that the phenomenon, known as global warming, has stopped.

Comment on Climate science in public schools by lolwot

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Its amusing how so many conspiracy theorists absolutely hate being labeled conspiracy theorists.

If you really think there is a conspiracy for funding, then suck it up – you are a conspiracy theorist. Either love that or stop being one.

Comment on The Bias of Science by Girma

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The Ramp
http://bit.ly/J4JJiS

Early 20th century, 1888-1944 => 0.06 deg C per decade
Mid 20th century, 1910-1970 => 0.06 deg C per decade
Late 20th century, 1939-1999 => 0.06 deg C per decade
The whole of 20th century, 1884-2004 => 0.06 deg C per decade

Comment on Climate science in public schools by willard

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lolwot,

I think mike’s point was fair and well written. We should encourage commentors’ best efforts, and mike has done much worse, Bart R was lazy and deserves it.

Comment on Climate science in public schools by willard

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> It is failing, more and more [...]

Join the bandwagon!

Comment on Climate science in public schools by WebHubTelescope

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“It is highly unlikely that this will ever occur. As fossil fuels become increasingly difficult and costly to extract,”

…. we will be forced to adopt the same risk mitigation strategies, that is transition to a more sustainable energy source.

(finishing up the paragraph properly)


Comment on Climate science in public schools by Bart R

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Well, what would you propose the course be called?

And as for lazy.. I’m quite confounded. On the one hand, I’m criticized for too many, and overlong posts with too many big words; on the other, I’m lazy. What gives?

I’m not saying mike’s riposte wasn’t visciously hilarious, in its self-pityingly off-target way; just that I didn’t deem his original worth more effort.

My answer? mike’s assertion of negative consequences is baseless, unsubstantiated, and hackneyed. It’s been around since Spencer tacked the economic red herring onto the hind end of his attack on Kyoto, and it’s just not worth even answering any more.

Put some real analysis behind the claim, or withdraw it. It doesn’t withstand scrutiny so far.

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Rob Starkey

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It would be interesting to have someone confident in their belief of an ECR over 1.5C to clearly define the specific factors and weights at what timeframe to support their conclusion. This would seem to be the heart of the debate, but I find few specifics at the levels necessary to validate a conclusionin my reading.

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by WebHubTelescope

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“Assume the system is first order with time constant tau = 30 years.”

The outgassing time constant is not 30 years, it is a fraction of a year (I used 1/30). The ocean breathes CO2 almost instantaneously as the surface water warms and cools. The lag of a couple of months is likely the amount of time it takes for the excess CO2 to migrate from the warm equatorial waters to Hawaii.

You are right that a first-order lag of 30 years would completely destroy the signal.

Don’t confuse the outgassing lag with the sequestering lag. The adjustment time constant for CO2 sequestering is huge (100′s to 1000′s of years) and it acts as a great integrator.

Comment on Climate sensitivity discussion thread by Jim D

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There is a carbon cycle that explains very well why fossil fuels add to both the atmosphere and ocean carbon and why it is so hard to remove once there.

Comment on Climate science in public schools by WebHubTelescope

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Hey buddy, units are implicit. I did all the heavy lifting for the chumps out there.

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