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Comment on Year in review – top science stories by ordvic

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ATTP, I thought about your statement here : “Climate scientists are studying our climate; past, present, future and presenting possible outcomes that depend on what pathways we might follow in the future.”

The first part seems accurate to me as I looked up Climate Science so to speak. This definition is from wiki: “Climatology (from Greek κλίμα, klima, “place, zone”; and -λογία, -logia) or climate science is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time.[1] This modern field of study is regarded as a branch of the atmospheric sciences and a subfield of physical geography, which is one of the Earth sciences. Climatology now includes aspects of oceanography and biogeochemistry. Basic knowledge of climate can be used within shorter term weather forecasting using analog techniques such as the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Northern Annualar Mode (NAM) which is also known as the Arctic oscillation (AO), the Northern Pacific (NP) Index, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Climate models are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the weather and climate system to projections of future climate.”

The second part “presenting possible outcomes that depend on what pathways we might follow” made me wonder. Now that is plural and I take it to mean you are talking about the models. A simplistic view of this would be that specifically CO2 is suppose to warm the atmosphere in a quantitative measure and depending on how much we have already released and will continue to release into the atmosphere we will have a net (or gross) rise in temperature. To me that differs significantly from wiki that says: “Climate models are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the weather and climate system to projections of future climate.” Of course I’m pointing to “outcomes that depend on what pathways we follow” in your definition vs what they say is the definition. Now I could say Oh you naughty boy that’s advocacy and just point out you shouldn’t say that anymore, but we all know that is very true especially as I pointed out in my simplistic view the models are about CO2 and warming. We don’t see, for example, models projected way into the future showing how much CO2 might be needed (or some other measure) to prevent an ice age due to Milankovitch cycles. To be fair you could argue that “outcomes that depend on what pathways we follow” is simply projections but I think that is the crux of what Editor is pointing out. I agree with your rebuke of him about quoting, however He says; “Climate scientists have bet big on a catastrophic outcome arriving soon.” It seems to me you are talking about the same thing he looks at it as a big bet you look at as pathway projections. If the models prove to be wrong then the hypothesis is ready for the dustbin or needs readjusting and that is the bet. Their ‘bet’ or ‘pathway’ could be either right or wrong. How is bet and pathway different?


Comment on Week in review – science and technology edition by Julian Flood

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Plankton are natural. Would that cover your point? That’s why I mentioned them. There have been conflicting reports on what is happening to plankton, from ‘huge blooms, we’re all doomed’ to ‘plankton numbers plummet, we’re all doomed’. Let me repeat, I’d really like to know what caused the huge smooth near Madeira,

Assuming that any suggestion involving possible human input to the problem is ‘scapegoating’ is not sensible — one thinks of all the reasons one can and then looks to see if any of those reasons are right.

Oddly enough the area concerned is part of a gyre with the current involved originating near North America. Surely it can’t be polluted run-off from land, not after weeks in transit? Dunno.

JF

Comment on NOAA fails walrus science by Jim Steele

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Willard I don’t know why you insist on embarrassing yourself.

First despite calling everything a “straw man” argument, you obviously don’t understand what a straw man argument is. That you characterize my “requiring that we debate the evidence” is a straw man argument is hilarious and an example that your blather about “straw man” arguments is just plain ignorant.

Second why are you trying to divert the discussion to Kovacs 2011 paper when he obviously does not know what he is talking about? The most obvious blunder is his claim that you quoted that walruses “give birth and mate on sea ice”?

Walruses mate in the water and that fact has been published since at least Fay 1982. From Garlich-Miller 2011 Status Review of the Pacific Walrus, “Males perform visual and acoustical displays in the water. … Individual females leave the resting herd to join a male in the water where copulation occurs.”

I suggest you learn more about walruses before you engage in persistent internet sniping because obviously Willard you don’t know what you are talking about either, which makes everyone suspect your true intentions. My essay are meant to be informative, but I can only lead you to the information but I can’t make you drink.

Finally citing a paper that simply speculates on the effect of sea ice is just one more example of your nonsense. I have read Kovacs 2011 and he presents no evidence to support his speculation.

If you or Kovacs want to demonstrate that the lack of sea ice prevents walruses from accessing foraging grounds, then you need to present evidence that when sea ice retreats and makes those foraging areas available, walrus do no go there because those ice free waters are too far away from terrestrial haul outs. IN that regard there has been no evidence or observations, just speculation. But the evidence I presented clearly demonstrates that when sea ice is thick there are no walruses hauling out in nearby areas. But when sea ice retreats then walruses are present.

I have presented peer reviewed evidence that walruses in the Bering Sea spend their whole summer in ice free waters. Such observations have been recorded for centuries. So if you are Kovacs want to insist that climate change is preventing walruses from accessing foraging grounds because there is no ice to haul out on, then you must explain the Bering Sea Paradox that walruses choose to spend their summers in ice free waters.

Perhaps you can quote Kovacs where he has demonstrates – not silly states or speculates – that less sea ice prevented access to foraging ground.

Kovacs 2011 states “Sea ice broadens the feeding distribution of this species markedly, which permits greater overall walrus abundances.”
But he supplies no evidence to support that statement. In contrast I reported consensus opinion that walrus avoid regions where ice concentrations are 80% or more and reported research where the numbers to the west of the traditional land haul out at Cape Serdse-Kamen and to the north around Wrangel Island represent traditional haulouts that are used only in years of light sea ice but unoccupied in years of heavy ice (Fay 1984).

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by HAS

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“And yes, we can and do set policy based on educated guesswork.”

It pays to think about what the policy issue really is, the appropriate tools to sue and work back from there.

As a general comment this is slowly evolving issue and as we go along we are learning more about what is happening. Optimum public policy is not formed by projecting what we think might happen in 2100 and act accordingly. We’ve got real options (including waiting a bit to find out what evolves), so betting the house on what we know today would be dopey.

But it is being suggested that humans do have a hand on one lever, the amount of GHG they produce. Public policy does need to understand that because that too creates options.

The best way to do that is probably to model the pre-1940s temps (holding out data for verification) and then use that to test whether the post 1940s temps lie outside the model expectations (taking into account the expected variability give our lack of knowledge). If they don’t we can (and should, provided the balance of costs and benefits indicate) exercise our option to wait and see what happens next.

And in the end the fact that we have poor information about what was going on the further back in time is unlucky, but you can’t bring that back by fancy data manipulation, what we don’t know, we don’t know. We need to honestly reflect that uncertainty into our prognostications about the future (and in particular what might be causing temp changes).

In multi-decade climate forecasting for policy making real options are much more apposite than precaution. The conditions under which we are making our decisions fit the former, not the latter.

Comment on NOAA fails walrus science by Jim Steele

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Oh wow. You are truly brilliant Willard. Two pages of affiliations certainly trumps evidence. LOL

But perhaps you just forgot to post the critical evidence discussed in those papers you cite. So just what was their critical evidence? You never supply any evidence.

I know what you are thinking, that asking for evidence is a straw man argument. LOL Science doesn’t require evidence just affiliations.

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by Mike Flynn

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John Carpenter,

There is precisely no evidence whatsoever to show that the Earth has either warmed or cooled due to the action of CO2.

If you accept the Earth has indeed cooled, as you now imply, then you agree with me. Any perturbations along the way do not change the fact.

Obviously the Earth has been warmer in the past, as it cooled from its molten state. As to a completely frozen, or iceball Earth, this would appear to be a physical impossibility. Ice exposed to maximum equatorial insolation at sea level cannot remain frozen. You may care to try the experiment if you wish.

So far, you have not provided any facts to back up your assertions. Global warming due to the influence of CO2 is nonsense. Just saying the planet has warmed and cooled does not make it so, unless you are talking about ephemeral effects such as those due to the Earth’s rotation, and its progression in its wobbly orbit around the Sun.

Fact – the Earth has cooled. You may consider this fact irrelevant if you wish. It won’t change it.

I have considered your unsolicited advice, and accorded it the mindfulness it so richly deserves.

Cheers.

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by Mike Flynn

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David Springer,

You asked –

“Is the referenced molten surface of the earth an actual observation?”

I can’t help you. You could ask someone who was there at the time. I assume your question was not serious, but an attempt at a gratuitous insult. Sorry, but I decline to take offense, unless you can provid a logical reason why I should do so.

Cheers.

Comment on NOAA fails walrus science by timg56

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Springer,

Do we really have evidence Willard is fat?


Comment on Year in review – top science stories by Mike Flynn

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I try not to be too sensitive about CO2. I think it’s lovely stuff. I breathe it out, and plants eat it. Then I eat the plants, or what they get eaten by. Then I breathe out more CO2.

Seems like a win-win situation to me!

Cheers.

Comment on Year in review – top science stories by Peter Lang

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Mike Flynn,

I’ve been laughing and chuckling ever since you posted your comment about Peter Lang is an I poster and you are the real agent. I didn’t post a comment there because I was hoping there’d be more comments and I didn’t want to spoil further discussion.

I love the way Judith allows humour on CE threads rather than banning O/T comments.

Cheers

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by oppti

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by edimbukvarevic

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Mosher, the period where we have only natural forcing is before ~1950. The alleged human effect before that is negligible. This CANNOT be controversial. If anthropogenic CO2 and other ghgs have the claimed effect (I am not convinced that it has), it only became significant after around the middle of the 20th century.

Comment on Year in review – top science stories by Mike Flynn

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Peter Lang,

I was hoping you’d be amused. I think a few people have a somewhat small bump of amusement, (phrenologically speaking), so I attempt to stimulate it, given half a chance.

I agree with you about Judith allowing humour, although often others think I’m being serious when I’m joking, and vice versa.

Please fell free to poke fun at me any time – I deserve it! In the meantime, have a very Happy and wonderfully Prosperous New Year!

Cheers.

Comment on Year in review – top science stories by beththeserf

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Thank you, Peter, an epic invite!

Comment on NOAA fails walrus science by Jim Steele

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Pat Cassen, So glad to see you finally “calmed down”, “took a deep great”h and are now backing away from your ill-advised smear tactics in your rush to denigrate the essay. And I thank you for acknowledging that the evidence is strong that less ice increases primary productivity.

You then attempt to address the important point that perhaps increased primary productivity “might” not translate into an increase in the walrus’ food items but ignore what I wrote. INstead you chose to cite papers that were again filled with nothing more than speculation suggesting less ice could, might, maybe etc etc decrease the supply of that increased primary productivity to the benthos, the walruses food. Did you read those papers?

To address “concerns” such as yours I had written, “Contrary to earlier suggestions that global warming may possibly decrease productivity (Grebmeier 2006), satellite observations have determined marine productivity has increased by 30% since the 1990s (Arrigo 2015). The reason for this increase is elementary. Less sea ice allows more photosynthesis. Grebmeier 2015 has now reported that the Bering and Chukchi Sea “hotspots” she has studied have sustained high levels of biomass over the past 4 decades.”

Grebmeier 2015 presented evidence that there has been no decline in the benthos reporting, “Detailed benthic macrofaunal sampling indicates that these hotspot regions have been persistent over four decades of sampling due to annual reoccurrence of seasonally consistent, moderate-to-high water column production with significant export of carbon to the underlying sediments.” Perhaps I could have been more explicit that the increased biomass equaled increased walrus food. BUt if you were concerned with the robustness of the evidence I cited, I would expect you would read the paper I cited. Such evidence a Grebmeier 2015 reported once again trumps any speculation in the papers you chose to highlight instead.

Your other choice of a paper that highlighted Cooper et al 2006 is quite hilarious and suggests you never read that paper either. Cooper 2006 is the iconic embodiment of Mark Twain’s quote “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

During a cruise Cooper observed 9 calves swimming without their mothers in the Arctic where depths were over 3000 meters. That was the full extent of his observations. Yet from those observations Cooper magically concluded, “Given limited sea surface visibility from the ship, we surmise that many additional calves may have been separated in the overall study area. These conditions appear to have been related to the transport of unusually warm (7° C) Bering Sea water into this area north of Alaska. Walruses invest considerable maternal resources while caring for calves on seasonally ice-covered continental shelves for periods of up to 2 y or more and only rarely separate from their young. Therefore, these observations indicate that the Pacific walrus population may be ill-adapted to rapid seasonal sea-ice retreat off Arctic continental shelves.”

Then you cite a paper that uses Cooper to conclude that less sea ice ” poses a particular problem for adult female walruses that are nursing young calves that presumably would be disadvantaged by swimming long distances in the open sea (Cooper et al. 2006)”

This published “science” reminds me of a game we played as kids called “telegraph” where one kids whispers a phrase to the next kid and that kid passes it on down the line. When the last kid speaks the message they received it is totally distorted, sometime beyond recognition.

Radiotelemetry studies have shown that when an ice flow that a walrus was using to rest on moves away from their foraging area, the walrus simply abandons the ice floe. So why would the observed calves be over waters that were 3000 feet deep, in locations never used by walruses to forage? Why would Cooper surmise the mother’s had led them to bad foraging areas or that unusually warm water caused the separation?

It is more likely Cooper’s observations were just more examples of individuals with bad directional genetics. every year we observe birds from the eastern USA flying over the Pacific. Nature simply culls their bad genetics. In addition Orcas have been observed attacking swimming walrus herds and systematically separating mothers from calves. It is also more likely Copper’s lost calves were the result of such an attack. Orcas are the top cause of walrus deaths.

Yet you and your cited publications want to present Cooper’s observations of lost calves as evidence that global warming and less sea ice “poses a particular problem for adult female walruses that are nursing young calves that presumably would be disadvantaged by swimming long distances in the open sea”

Mark Twain nailed the idiocy that often masquerades as science. To repeat “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”


Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by franktoo

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Craig and others: It seems to me that one should subtract the much larger influence of forcing agents before trying to characterize the role of AMO in GMST. After subtracting the large forced bias in the record, there may be no need to use an AMO index that has been detrended. Of course, we don’t know precisely how to remove the influence of forcing agents, but it certainly appears possible to explore subtracting Forcing*TCR from the historical record using a range of possible TCRs – say 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.1 degC/doubling – before abstracting an AMO index from the historical data. This appears superior to merely relying on an AMO index created via a linear detrending step. If the amplitude of the AMO index’s contribution to GMST is relatively independent of TCR, the detrending issue could be avoided.

However, the AMO index’s contribution to GMST will probably be dependent on the choice of TCR. In that case, one could choose the value (or range of values) for TCR that results in zero trend over various 68-year periods when the AMO is might be expected to have no slope: Peak-to-peak and trough-to-trough across each oscillation.

Comment on Year in review – top science stories by Mike Flynn

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Craig Loehle,

You wrote –

“Thus when geologists speak of something be “sudden” or “catastrophic” like ice sheet “collapse” they may not be speaking in internet time but in geologic time….”

On the other hand, they may be talking about the time that events like the Younger Dryas, and similar, took to occur. So your “may not” is true but completely meaningless. Ah, Warmism. Deny, divert, confuse.

But just in case I’m wrong, show me where a geologist (not a climatologist, of course), talking of something being sudden in relation to ice sheet collapse, is referring to geologic time. You might like to define geologic time, in scientific (not climatological) terms. A million years? A billion? A couple of hundred, or less?

Wriggly, wriggly, Warmist Worm. Deny. Divert. Confuse.

How’s the CO2 heating effect going? Or is that irrelevant too?

Cheers.

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by vukcevic

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Having in mind Dr. Loehle’s qualification:
It is not claimed here that the AMO is unique in capturing internal variability. Rather, this initial effort seeks to open this line of enquiry to reducing the uncertainty due to internal variability.
I think as an academic exercise is fine, but in my view is misleading because it
a) reinforces the view that the CO2 is the underlining cause of the temperature rise
b) by assuming that the variability in the N. Atlantic temperature is somehow composed of two independent components, one represented by linear upward trend and the other by its de-trended derivative known as the AMO.

It is far from certain that either of the above is true representative of the reality.
The ‘linear’ upward rise appears to be the part of two (taking a longer term view) closely spaced pulses one starting in the mid 1920’s followed by another in the mid 1970s.

The above graph illustrates the point.
If the ~100 year long initial section of the N. A. SST data is moved forward by about 65 years, it can be clearly seen that two sections are nearly identical (R^2 >0.7, statistically significant) with a single uplift of about 0.2C..

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by edimbukvarevic

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AMO discussion brings to light all the not-even-wrongness of the AGW “science”. I’m lovin’ it!

Comment on Global Temperature Trends After Detrending with the AMO by RichardLH

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Shows your intellectual level quite well.

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