“The countries increasing their CO2 emissions the most are: South Africa (home of Durban), Egypt, Brazil, Vietnam, Iran, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, India and China.”
But then, “EU bailout fund chief Klaus Regling travels to China to ask for help
The head of the eurozone bailout fund visits Beijing on Friday as debt-laden Europe tries to persuade China and other top emerging economies to come to its rescue. The state-owned China Daily newspaper, citing a source close to EU decision makers, said on Wednesday that China and other top emerging economies had agreed to help eurozone countries by contributing to the bailout fund.
But on Thursday China’s state Xinhua news agency said Europe needed to take responsibility for the crisis, and not rely on “good samaritans” to rescue the continent.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8854442/EU...
Go Figure.
Comment on Public engagement on climate change by KPO
↧
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by Bryan
Chris Ho-Stuart says..
…..”A number of my co-authors did have degrees in physics, and specific expertise in thermodynamics. No great expertise was actually needed. A competent undergraduate comprehension is more than enough.”…
I would agree with that.
Backradiation (as you call it) does exist.
However it is not heat.
Heat has the capacity to be turned into work in the given situation.
In a purely radiative exchange heat would be the net value of the radiative flows.
I guess that your physics co-authors had not brushed up recently on their undergraduate thermodynamics.
Its the only charitable excuse I can think of.
↧
Comment on Peer review is f***ed up by Willis Eschenbach
Thanks, M. carey. It means that Spanier falsely claimed that a proper investigation had occurred, when nothing could be further from the truth. It says nothing about Mann's guilt or innocence at all. It simply says that a proper investigation of Mann's guilt or innocence <b>had not </b>occurred, and Spanier lied when he said one<b> had </b>occurred.
You may not be aware, M., that not only did the Mann Inquiry Committee not get the answers to the relevant questions. They didn't even ask them.
Spanier's role in this was widely known already from the time of the Penn State whitewash of Mann. So for those of us who were aware of Spanier's false report to the Board of Trustees in Mann's case, it was quite telling (but unfortunately, not all that surprising) when Spanier was discovered and dismissed for doing <b>exactly the same thing</b>, only regarding covering up something much worse.
It proves nothing about Mann, nor did Steve say it did. It definitely proves that Spanier's cover-up in the Mann Inquiry was not an isolated case.
w.
↧
Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by manacker
Vaughan Pratt and JCH
Max – you are determined to distort this. [Trenberth's reaction to the recent "lack of warming"]
No distortion necessary. As you both seem to have been a bit confused, let me set you straight.
Observed fact: Since January 2001 the HadCRUT3 globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly has shown a slight cooling trend.
This trend (-0.06°C/decade) is only around one-third of the warming trend seen over the 1990s (+0.18°C/decade), so the “average” temperature of the 2000s is obviously higher than the “average” of the 1990s. (Duh!)
IPCC had forecast a warming of +0.2°C/decade for the first decades of the new century, but this warming did not occur despite the fact that CO2 concentrations reached new record levels.
MetOffice attributed the “lack of warming” to natural variability.
In a leaked e-mail Kevin Trenberth alluded that it is a “travesty” that this lack of warming is unexplained.
In an interview by Richard Harris entitled, “The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat”, Trenberth suggests reasons for this “lack of warming” (a.k.a. “slight cooling”):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
The articles continues:
But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?
Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it’s probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can’t be directly measured at the moment, however.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they’ve been playing during this period,” Trenberth says.
All makes sense to me. Clouds acting as a “natural thermostat” reflecting incoming solar energy “back out into space”.
Roy Spencer would be proud of Trenberth!
(Looks like you guys just didn’t get the word.)
Max
↧
Comment on Public engagement on climate change by Paul S
Richard Tol is a social scientist / economist specialising in climate policy. The public policy debate is precisely his area of expertise.
↧
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by manacker
Louise
But why would they wish to lie in this way?
Correct. Makes much more sense – career wise – for them to “lie the other way” – right?
Max
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by manacker
Rob
You may be correct in stating that few US voters can “communicate quickly and correctly why the ‘consensus’ …position is flawed”
Many might simply state “uncertainty”, referring to both the magnitude and (of more importance to the average voter) the impact of the GH effect.
This recent BBC article points to this “uncertainty”.
Mixed messages on climate ‘vulnerability’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15698183
But when you get down to specifics, the academic consensus is far less certain.
There is “low confidence” that tropical cyclones have become more frequent, “limited-to-medium evidence available” to assess whether climatic factors have changed the frequency of floods, and “low confidence” on a global scale even on whether the frequency has risen or fallen.
In terms of attribution of trends to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the uncertainties continue.
While it is “likely” that anthropogenic influences are behind the changes in cold days and warm days, there is only “medium confidence” that they are behind changes in extreme rainfall events, and “low confidence” in attributing any changes in tropical cyclone activity to greenhouse gas emissions or anything else humanity has done.
Max
↧
Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by dallas
Louise, have you ever considered that some people are skeptical because there is a need for skepticism? Global warming theory is not complete. It cannot be predictive until it is complete enough explain observations. There are too many surprises because there are too many errors.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2011/11/completely-missed-in-climate-models.html
↧
Comment on Peer review is f***ed up by David Bailey
Brad,
I think I could sum up your comment as, “Leave the system as it is, it is not too bad!”. I’d say that if it causes our electricity grid to be reconfigured in a hugely expensive and pointless way, it is absolutely terrible!
The problem with your approach, is that when you leave the rot in a system, it tends to grow – just as rot grows in teeth, or wood.
When I speak of the internet, I am thinking of its electronic infrastructure, global reach, and ease of use – not of some particular mechanism such as blogging. I’m not suggesting that peer review be replaced by blogging!
Think for a moment of GOOGLE. It routinely sifts untold petabytes of information, but usually manages to bring the most salient information to the front. Are you really saying that some equivalent couldn’t be created to enhance peer review. Suppose for example people could read one of Mann’s papers, and immediately see a trail of caveats (or more accurately, a tree of caveats) contributed by named individuals (with real digital signatures – not blogging names) – are you really saying it would not help?
Imagine if we could just see the pattern of peer review – visualising the incestuous knots of mutually favourable reviews in certain areas – are you really seeing that would be of no value?
↧
↧
Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by Robert
Can you (or anyone else) point out (provide a link to) a single paper that has described the great net harms that humanity will incur as a result of AGW, that is believed to be an unbiased and valid scientific analysis?
Believed by whom?
There are many, many papers that estimate the harmful impacts expected as a result of global warming.
I’m sure you can find them on your own.
When you do you are welcome to raise any points about them you think are important.
But being accepted by “skeptics” as valid and unbiased is not necessary for science to go on. In fact, it’d say being a paper praised by “skeptics” as valid and unbiased is strongly associated with the quality of being a streaming pile of crap.
↧
Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by Robert
“You write:”
No, I didn’t write that. Lying by the second word, huh? Impressive.
↧
Comment on Public engagement on climate change by RobB
“It seems to me almost a prior condition of better engagement with the public is that there should be better engagement between scientists.”
I could not agree more. In the rare instances that scientists do engage in public it is often reticent and limited to bald statements of an individual’s position without a real argument about the nitty gritty. A fear of public failure perhaps?
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by DEEBEE
At best that is an asinine conclusion, devoid of any value, except auto-titilation
↧
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by manacker
Steven Mosher
If all the past data was lost we would still have physics which tells us that adding GHGs leads to a warmer planet.
The real debate is over how much. energy focused away from that debate is a diversion.
Exactly.
That’s why all the fear mongering conjuring up two meter inundations of NYC, killer heat waves or other climate disasters are beside the point – but that does not stop the “consensus” crowd from using these arguments to sell their message of alarming AGW in order to justify remedial actions (i.e. direct or indirect carbon taxes).
I believe that our host’s approach is to get the discussion back to the basics:
We know the physics tell us that added CO2 should cause warming. We do NOT know how much (great “uncertainty”) of the past warming has been caused by natural factors and how much by human GHG emissions.
As a result, we have no notion of whether or not human-induced GH warming will represent a major inconvenience to mankind or not – but we do have indications that even in its worst incarnation, it will not represent an existential threat by the end of this century.
Until we have figured this out, it is premature to talk about remedial actions whose unintended consequences we also cannot predict.
Would you agree?
Max.
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by gbaikie
“But briefly, backradiation from atmosphere to surface is less than radiation from surface to atmosphere.”
Ok
“Backradiation exists, it is radiation from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface, it’s been directly measured now for over forty years, and there’s no violation of any thermodynamics because the heat flow, obtained by summing all the energy flows, remains upwards.”
Ok
Galactic background radiation was detected from earth.
But it’s not warming earth.
It’s 2.725 K. If instead it was 5 K or 1 K it wouldn’t cause the earth to get warmer or cooler.
It will prevent any object in space from passively cooling below 2.725 K. It could do work or heat could flow from it if a object if object were cooler than 2.725 K.
If the surface is cooler than the sky then the sky can warm the surface- it do work, there would a heat flow from sky to the ground. It would warm this cooler ground.
If the sky were 1000 C and the ground was 1000 C, the sky would not warm the ground- the sky heat could not do any work if there no cooler temperature than 1000 C
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by Chris Ho-Stuart
I know the point you are trying to make. I am showing that your point is incorrect.
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by Chris Ho-Stuart
You said “0.04*F per year.” I said 0.026 C total. Not per year; total. It’s the UNITS that is the crucial difference.
Further discussion belongs in the response to your previous comment.
↧
↧
Comment on Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism” by Edim
Yes! Finally you understand tt! Never stop being skeptical. That’s a good start.
↧
Comment on Proc. Roy. Soc. Special Issue on ‘Handling Uncertainty in Science’ by Raving
Fifty years will erase the modern world as we know it.
↧
Comment on Proc. Roy. Soc. Special Issue on ‘Handling Uncertainty in Science’ by stefanthedenier
bob, argon is just a trace gas – insignificant. I don’t take references, until people recognise that Global warming is phony – climatic changes are real. If you can find any drivel on my site, you would have pointed it. Instead, people like you are scared from real proofs as the devil from the cross. Bringing argon into the subject is a proof that I am correct on everything. If argon was playing any importance – I would have taken it in consideration – because I didn’t – wasn’t any reason for doing it. Tell us what is your reason for bringing argon, the real reason, please?! If you rely on references for your knowledge, why don’t let them do it?
↧
More Pages to Explore .....
