sensitivity is easily measured.u measure temp and change in forcing. u can do so daily monthly annually or over millenia
Hmm in the annular mode (the poor mans climate model) in mid latitude stations in the SH,the solar forcing is 2 magnitudes greater (120wm^2) then the AGW observed forcing(1.6 wm^2)Sell that.
Nick Stokes
You have to go through the report. “Inferred possible recoverable resources” are given for all the major producing countries, as are the “proven reserves” (which are smaller).
Proven reserves are:
Coal: 900 Gt
Oil: 1,300 billion bbl
Gas 180 trillion cubic meters
Total inferred possible recoverable resources are:
Coal: 1,900 Gt
Oil: 5,100 billion bbl
Gas: 490 trillion cubic meters
(Note that this is higher than most estimates I have seen.)
These would generate 9,290 GtCO2 when consumed, based on the following unit ratio (GtCO2 per unit):
Coal: 3.3 per Gt
Oil: 0.4 per billion bbl
Gas: 2.0 per trillion cubic meters
Based on other sources we’ve burned a total of around 450 Gt carbon to date ~1,650 GtCO2
So the remaining fossil fuels represent ~85% of the original total.
The first 15% got us from 280 to 385 ppmv (in 2008)
The next 85% will get us roughly to:
385 + 0.85(385-280)/(0.15) ~ 980 ppmv.
Hope this helps.
Max
Beth
Thanks from one serf to another.
There seem to be two Damoclean swords hanging over the heads of all of us serfs:
- Peak oil – and its extension, peak fossil fuels (when the lights all go out)
and
- AGW – and its dreaded extension, CAGW (when we are all fried – or drowned – as a result of greenhouse warming)
The two are mutually exclusive, however (although Webby hates to look at it like that, ’cause he likes ‘em both so much).
I’m not really worried about either one.
But I’m just trying to calm down some folks that seem to be getting hysterical about both of them at the same time.
And your points about human ingenuity plus the specific ideas of Freeman
Dyson’s for CO2 “sequestering by increasing soil biomass thereby also improving crop productivity” are good examples of why we should be looking at positive solutions rather than fretting about imaginary hobgoblins we can’t do anything about anyway.
Your fellow serf,
Max
Step outside your fears for a skeptic’s moment. Let us take as given that, “mankind has liberated huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries.”
But mankind did not “create” this carbon dioxide out of nothing. It was released by the burning of “fossil fuels”, created by the Earth over millions of years from the remains of plants and animals (who themselves ultimately obtained their nutrition from those plants). So where did those plants get their energy and carbon dioxide from? They absorbed the radiant energy of the Sun, and breathed in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as plants continue to do today. In other words, when we burn fossil fuels, we are utilizing a small part of the solar energy that had been collected and stored by plants over millions of years, and in the process we are liberating into the atmosphere the carbon dioxide that those plants had absorbed from the atmosphere in the first place.
This may sound like a fairly benign sort of natural cycle, until you realize that a couple of hundred years is a mere blink of an eye compared to the millions of years it took for the planet to build up those resources. It is right for scientists to worry about whether that massive and almost instantaneous “kick” to the planet may throw the equilibrium of the biota into complete chaos. It is a valid question, of ultimate global importance—one that most people would have thought would have demanded the most careful, exacting, and rigorous scientific analyses that mankind could muster.
Climategate has shattered that myth. It gives us a peephole into the work of the scientists investigating possibly the most important issue ever to face mankind. Instead of seeing large collaborations of meticulous, careful, critical scientists, we instead see a small team of incompetent cowboys, abusing almost every aspect of the framework of science to build a fortress around their “old boys’ club”, to prevent real scientists from seeing the shambles of their “research”. Most people are aghast that this could have happened; and it is only because “climate science” exploded from a relatively tiny corner of academia into a hugely funded industry in a matter of mere years that the perpetrators were able to get away with it for so long. (John P. Costella, ‘Climategate Analysis’)
Max,
You’ve been saying over and over, for weeks, things like:
“WEC 2010 estimates that the remaining inferred recoverable resources represent 85% of all the fossil fuels that were ever on our planet.”
But they didn’t. Instead its some hairy arithmetic you’ve done, using some of their numbers. That’s misleading.
You haven’t included shale oil, for example. And it’s not clear that unconventional natural gas is covered. And they specifically said:
“In addition, the Questionnaires sent to WEC Member Committees requested information, as available, on undiscovered resources of the principal fossil fuels, in terms of the estimated additional amount in place and the amount recoverable from such resources. The information received in this regard is reported in the Country Notes on coal, oil and natural gas, but overall was insufficient to form the basis of a worldwide summary table.”
Manacker insists “Fanny, Don’t do a waffle on me here, Fanny. The question was NOT [this] it was [that]“
Which is more wrong-headed, Manaker?
• The answers that denialists insist upon?
• The questions that denialists insist upon?
Gee, maybe denialist questions and answers are *BOTH* kind of wrong-headed?
Isn’t it just plain better to let these thoughtful folks supply the cider, wine, and whiskey?
What do you think, Manacker?
Yeah Max,
hunan ingenuity and the ‘heritage of The Enlightenment’.
Herwith a poem repeat on same though I know I’m up
against heavy comp-e-tishun here, poetry wise I mean.
O we are creatures of the light, of enlightenment.
Drawn to the light flickering on the river,
The riffling silver threads disturbing its opacity.
Drawn to the litter of stars that spark
In the dark abyss of night, to the harvest moon,
Palpable as globed fruit, forgetting
Its light’s reflected from the sun.
Shine on, o shine, harvest moon!
Seeking through poetry and science, to probe
The secrets of the heavens and deep ayss,
We yearn fo honey from the golden hive,
Enlightenment – o.
BC
‘abyss’ impetuous typing is me flaw …well one of them.
climatereason on March 26, 2013 at 4:10 pm
Thanks for your vote of acceptance, even though I might be barking up the wrong tree.. Smile. RE: “I don’t think any of us are ridiculing you as you come over as an earnest and sincere person. …..however the notion that such villages are being built as a last refuge for mankind should remain as science fiction not a visionary revelation. Even James Lovelock has recanted…” BUT ONE THING, climaterason: Dr Lovelock did not recant at all. I have studied that fake msnbc interview he did with ian hjohnston there last yaer, and 1. the entire interview was a set up piece for his new book , part 3 of the Gaiai trioloogy which Allen Lane will publish in the UK in Jnanuary 2014 and 2. he did not recant he merely movied the timeframe back to reality, more like 2500 AD…..that is not recanting. he stillk says the retreat will be toward the pioles. he has seen my work.. He wrote to me email: “Danny, thanks for sending me the images of polar cities by artist Deng Cheng-hong . It may very well happen!”
True, true the link to the Pope was a bridge to nowhere…
Way cool! Some extremely valid points! I appreciate you
penning this post and also the rest of the website is really good.
Fan:
As long as your “proofs” of isothermy totally ignore convection, they are of mathematical interest only. See Dutton’s “The Ceaseless Wind” for a serious physical discussion of Emden’s nearly century-old finding that a gravity-bound atmosphere in radiative equilibrium is hydrostatically unstable. I don’t have time to discuss this important side-issue here.
Ah Beth, impetuous typing is the best kind.
(No) time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
Let’s eat a bunch of juicy peaches while we type impetuously and meet up in moderation where we can plan the revolution.
“Among the questions surrounding the global warming debate is the impact of
human activities in influencing climatic changes. For the ever dwindling
number of scientists who still discount global warming as mere apocalyptic
hoopla the scientific standard is not meterorological data but
sociological data. They cite the fact that apocalypticists have been
predicting the fiery end of the world for centuries, that these fears and
paranoias are rooted in human nature and that global warming is
twenty-first century version of fiery chariots and dragons loosed from the
abyss.”
Jeff Norman | March 24, 2013 at 2:59 pm |
However it does look like we should ignore 99% of what Bart R is posting because he made it abundantly clear that he is unfamiliar with Marcott et al, climate science, the peer review process and the game of hockey.
Did you want to list other things I’m unfamiliar with, or did you want to go back, read what I actually said, and compare it to what you got out of it in your haste to commence ranting?
Am I familiar with Marcott et al? I’m familiar enough to have dismissed the last 120 years of the infographic in question as entirely unreliable without further development or resolution of apparent discrepancies, and to understand you can tell nothing about the frequency of sub-century spikes directly from millennialy smoothed ensemble averages. But you clearly missed that, as it wasn’t the first thing your eyes fell on. Also, Marcott’s so new to published papers, it’s impossible to track citations of his work directly — though I expect this paper and follow ups will explode very quickly with adaptation of his methods. You might want to check the citation index instead of Marcott’s thesis advisor.
I don’t pretend to know anything about climate science. My entry in the denizens page says so. So what? Other than that of the two of us, I’m the one not pretending it all over the interwebs.
You might be interested to learn I am not a fan of the current peer review process. I’ve been saying so for many years. It’s not transparent, it’s inefficient, it encourages lax and deceptive practices while slowing the progress of research and of communicating findings. There are ample better tools for publishing science than are used by Science. How did I form this opinion? Certainly not by guessing about it from outside the process.
And I learned to skate before the age most toddlers learn to walk, from a former professional hockey player, my father. Though I don’t pretend to any particular affiliation with the game.
In peer review, the people doing the reviews are called referees. If they blow the whistle too often it prevents a paper from being published. If they don’t blow the whistle, all kinds of cheap shots get into the journals. A person or team wins the game if their paper gets published. It’s a major league game if it is published in Nature or Science. If they are lucky they will get written up in the sport pages.
See, the logic of analogy is a funny thing.
You extend the analogy you’re handed, instead of confusingly supplanting it with another near analogy straw man and arguing that one. Your analogy is pretty and all, but it’s not the analogy Rud Istvan argued and I responded to.
Get your head in the game. This game. Not the one you wish you were playng.
In hockey, referees are trained and certified to ensure a certain standard in game play. In climate science the referees are not necessarily familiar with the subject, have strong opinions about who may be allowed to win and on occasion promise to change the peer review process to ensure some people will not get published.
We’ll never know what referees Science used for the Marcott article, on the balance of probabilities. Only the publisher knows all the referees, and they’re contractually and conventionally tight-lipped about identities, generally. If you find out who the real referees on the Marcott paper were, by all means let us know.
The referees are unlikely to be the same as his thesis advisor, and are likely to be in large part responsible for the differences between the thesis and the paper as published. Which would likely be the product of the referee’s expertise — which we can deduce is not small, to have led to such a significant (and so far as we can tell, correct) change.
Steve McIntyre et al are not in the game. They are like commentators reviewing the game as it was played and pointing out the penalties not called by the referees thereby throwing the game. At least Marcott et al allowed their game to be videoed for review unlike Mann et al who still won’t even release the verbal play by play. The video doesn’t show all the corners all the time, so it’s still not totally clear what went on.
Rud Istvan blew the whistle. He dressed himself up as a referee in a lawyerly bowtie, not as a commentator. He aligned himself with a team of McIntyre et al. This is not what commentators do. This is not what referees do, either, but it’s the analogy Rud imposed.
It is clear that Marcott et al were offside numerous times moving the data back and forth across the blue line without a word from the linesmen. Any goals points they might have scored were all kicked in after a hand pass.
What is ‘clear’ to you is all speculation, so conjectural and ill-supported as to be more defamation and malice than commentary. The conclusions ‘deduced’ by McIntyre, Istvan & team are anything but reliable, and while the situation needs resolution, it isn’t going to be resolved in a brawl.
And just in case Bart R is reading this… Marcott et al did not create their blade using the modern instrument record. They did it by moving individual data points in individual proxy records until a blade emerged out of the dross
The premise is exactly right. Marcott et al’s blade is a product of Marcott et al’s methods; that doesn’t exclude however that the modern instrument record played no role.
There are any number of legitimate ways to procure a blade in a curve. None of these are being considered in this witch hunt.
> [W]ith more than 0.5 Tt C released already since pre-industrial times, it may well turn out that we can only afford to release less than the same again, possibly much less, with many times that amount in fossil-fuel reserves remaining underground.
https://edit.ethz.ch/iac/people/knuttir/papers/allen09nrcc.pdf
Y U NO PLAY FAIR?
‘The Paper therefore proposes that the organising principle of our effort should be the raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever their cause may be.’
I have quoted this from the executive summary of the Hartwell 2010 paper before. You are tallking but I don’t think it is to me.
Scott | March 27, 2013 at 12:21 pm |
Who changed it? When? Where? Cite? That would be a big help; however, I propose an easy way out of asking those questions.
I agree it’s an absurd hypothesis, and is vastly improved (as a hypothesis) by replacing “cannot be ruled out” committeespeak with “more likely than not” — which itself is still weak as hypotheses go.
It’d be easier to say the first line alone is an incomplete statement of the full hypothesis, and then digging into the rest of the chapter for more fulsome meaning allows us to discuss the statement as the “CAGW Hypothesis” as offered by IPCC in AR4, so we could go even further in replacing “cannot be ruled out” with “as predicted by Meehl et al 2007 and delineated by the consequent risks as enumerated (melting ice caps, sea level rise of X meters, etc.)
That way, we don’t need to go to other sources, and we can all agree to what we’re talking about, once we’ve fully reformulated the chapter of the report into the strict formalism of a working hypothesis.
After all, a chapter of a report isn’t a hypothesis.
Should we work on constructing one out of this chapter?
Joshua, don’t yer mean re – visiion -ist history as done by
visionary – progressives. Joshua I don’t usually do this and
I feel bad about it but I hafta’ award you a -1. (
A serf.
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