Quantcast
Channel: Comments for Climate Etc.
Viewing all 147818 articles
Browse latest View live

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by Patrick Brown

0
0

Pokerguy – I agree with you. Our two statements are not in conflict. Climate sensitivity to CO2 is an open question but the existence of some enhanced greenhouse effect to increases in CO2 is essentially a closed question.


Comment on Open thread weekend by lolwot

0
0
Lets just check what we were led to expect <b>2013</b> <i>"Arctic Sea Ice Area Back To Normal! Dramatic Record Refreeze Wipes Out “Dramatic” Melt Of August!"</i> <a href="http://notrickszone.com/2013/01/16/arctic-sea-ice-area-back-to-normal-dramatic-record-refreeze-wipes-out-dramatic-melt-of-august/" / rel="nofollow">notrickszone.com</a> <b>2012</b> <i>"Arctic sea ice has staged a strong recovery in the last few weeks, reaching levels not far from normal for this time of the year."</i> <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/bbc-recovery-in-arctic-sea-ice-continues/" / rel="nofollow">thegwpf.org</a> <b>2011</b> <i>"Arctic Sea Ice Continues To Recover" "Every year since 2007 has had more ice than 2007"</i> <a href="http://www.real-science.com/arctic-sea-ice-continues-recover" rel="nofollow">reali-science.com</a> <b>2010</b> <i>"Arctic Sea Ice about to hit ‘normal’ – what will the news say?" "WUWT is predicting a recovery again this year, which we started mentioning as a prediction last fall"</i> <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/31/arctic-sea-ice-about-to-hit-normal-what-will-the-news-say/" / rel="nofollow">http://wattsupwiththat.com/</a> (compare this to the prediction by the "alarmist" World Wildlife Fund: <i>"Thinner than Normal Arctic Sea Ice Poised for a Rapid Decline in 2010....Climate change contrarians, exploited the ephemeral surge in new ice to misleadingly suggest that the Arctic was back to normal and that climate change concerns were overblown."</i>) <b>2009</b> <i>Sea Ice Extent Now Normal in Arctic</i> <a href="http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/06/sea-ice-extent-now-normal-in-arctic/" / rel="nofollow">jennifermarohasy.com</a> <b>2008</b> <i>"Arctic sea ice back to its previous level, bears safe; film at 11"</i> <i>"Sea ice area approaching the edge of normal standard deviation"</i> <a href=http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/22/sea-ice-approaching-the-edge-of-normal-standard-deviation/</a>

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by timg56

0
0

Gates,

Perhaps you are anal retentive enough to think of wine molecules. I see no reason to go smaller than a glass of the stuff.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by Patrick Brown

0
0

“Climate models are only consistent with a short leash; observations are suggesting a longer leash.”

Some of the highest profile climate models (e.g., GISS Model-E, shown in my figure 4) are definitely short leash models. However, I am currently looking at all the CMIP5 models and there are several that do have large magnitude unforced variability (long leash). I hope that the spread of the magnitudes of unforced variability in these models is emphasized more in the future.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by David Springer

0
0

Frank you need to pay more attention to albedo. Where, when, and why it changes.

For instance melting ice eventually leads to global cooling. As ice melts the surface area of the ocean becomes larger. Ocean has a much lower albedo than land so this at first leads to global warming. However the warmer ocean with greater surface area leads to more snowfall in the winter which builds up glaciers on the continents. As the glaciers build they simultaneously increase albedo by more snowcover and by decreased surface area of the ocean as water is taken up by land-locked ice.

The hysteresis in this process is critical and constrains the minimums and maximums. However cloud cover always limits ceiling temperature. This is evident in all interglacial beginnings when temperature shoots up like a rocket then hits an impenetrable ceiling temperature each and every time. The ceiling is determined by oceans generating clouds at a rate which balances the blockage of insolation. However, there’s not such a convenient limit on the cold side and when the right conditions conspire the cooling phase doesn’t reverse. I suspect the perfect storm that ends an interglacial is orbital mechanics gradually moving towards a favorable condition for southward snow/ice cover progression (which is cooler summers and warmer winters in the northern hemisphere i.e. classic Milankovich) plus a grand solar minimum plus a few closely spaced major volcanic eruptions. Over thousands of years all three will line up sooner or later and boo-yah the interglacial ends.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by David Springer

0
0

A bit of self-reflection from Chief Kangaroo Skippy Elison.

An encouraging sign. The first step in recovery is knowing you have a problem.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by Jim D

0
0

I agree that what is missing in the leash analogy is something related to the time scales. On short time-scales, the dog can get a long way from the man (witness El Nino 1998), but as you average over longer and longer spans, the dog’s mean position drops to perhaps 0.1 C from the man at 30 years. It is a bit like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle where larger energy perturbations have shorter lifetimes. This is why I continually advocate looking at 30-year running means because that really gives a good idea where the man is within 0.1 C.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by WebHubTelescope (@whut)

0
0

Budding scientists should stay away from the joke that The Cappy has become. Plenty of climate science research to review before one can appreciate the clown show.


Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by David Springer

0
0

Damn good point. The man/dog/climate analogy is comedic to start with and that’s the ultimate punchline for it! Bravo.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by Jim D

0
0

The leash is in some sense elastic. Strong perturbations are pulled back more strongly by energy conservation. Hotter ocean surfaces radiate faster.

Comment on Axioms of ecological policy by Bart R

0
0

kim | July 14, 2013 at 3:42 am |

Any measure not money is only a trick, and via jet stream changes, attribution is clear.

Hasn’t the Snowden case taught you, to question the President is treason? You’re shown to be wrong, by Unimpeachable Reason.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by WebHubTelescope (@whut)

0
0

Unctuous sanctimony. Leave him be Tony B.

Students have research libraries and access to staff and fellow students that they can bounce ideas off of. As if suggesting humility is the key to research success. Climate science is just a research field just like any other.

Comment on Climate vs weather prediction: should we rebalance? by AK

0
0
Hello Prof. Curry. I'm still digging into it, but I discovered this: <a href="http://people.duke.edu/~mk176/publications/KumarEtAl_ObjectOriented_IJGIS.pdf" rel="nofollow">An Object Oriented Shared Data Model for GIS and Distributed Hydrologic Models</a> by Mukesh Kumar, Gopal Bhatt and Christopher J. Duffy <i>International Journal of Geographical Information Science</i> Vol. 24, No. 7, July 2010, 1061–1079 I'm not sure how much relevance it has yet, There are a number of technical issues involved in using OOP for creating models, the most important (AFAIK at this time) being dynamic memory allocation and access to object methods and data in multiprocessing systems. Still looking into where the current modelling is in this regard. My immediate approach would be to bite the bullet and create the infrastructure for queued asynchronous access to object methods (by data rather than reference), allowing model coders to reference object methods without worrying about what system(s) they're running on. I'd also favor writing the new systems in Java, with its automated garbage collection, as well as its <b>theoretical</b> ability to run compiled code on any platform. One likely advantage to object oriented modeling (OOM) is that it would probably scale well down to sizes suitable for local now-casting and short-term forecasting, This means that the same code should ideally be able to run on local workstations with standard JVM's. I know there are performance issues with Java, but that could probably be addressed at the level of JVM development. That would also be the place to address issues regarding multiple processors and distributed systems, where it would be transparent to coders. I could see an automated version of Reiter's thunderstorm efforts as constituting "low-hanging fruit" from a ROI perspective: It could potentially offer better forecasts and warnings for tornadoes. OTOH, if I were going to try to develop prototype methods and protocols for OOM, I'd probably want to start with simple cumulus convection cells.

Comment on Axioms of ecological policy by Bart R

0
0

Punky | July 14, 2013 at 5:34 am |

Barack Obama has determined with the full might of executive power that the fossil fuel industry cost the USA alone $100 billion in 2012 alone.

The drillers of oil and burners of coal and frackers of volatiles get paid for what they do. Arguing that society benefits above the amount of a fair Market price is anti-capitalist crap. It’s communism, Punky, that you preach. The subsidies and gifts and favors to the fossil industries? Corporate communism.

It’s because of your corporate communism, your faith in a benefit the Market does not show to be real, that energy costs as much as it does, in hidden and indirect ways.

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by Patrick Brown

0
0

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your comment.

You say that…

“Your discussion of the leverage that natural variability has on global-mean temperature on decadal timescales is misguided”

and that…

“There is no example of an unforced coupled ocean-atmosphere model, nor is their evidence in the Holocene, in which particular realizations abruptly generate changes as large as the observed trend.”

I am not sure where you are disagreeing with me because there could be large unforced multidecadal variability in global mean T that is still not large enough to account for the 0.8C warming. Nowhere in my post do I suggest that ALL the warming is unforced. In fact, the leash analogy agrees with the sentiment that global mean T is not a random walk as a random walk has no restoring force (no leash).

Also, as far as conservation of energy is concerned, be careful not to think of the climate system as unable to modulate its own energy balance through unforced variability. Quoting directly from the post:

“…unforced variability can also change the total amount of energy in the earth system by changing constituents of the surface or atmosphere that interact with the amount of solar energy coming in, or the amount of infrared energy leaving the earth (Herweijer et al., 2005). For example, if some internally generated change in an ocean circulation caused more heat to be distributed to polar latitudes; this could cause sea ice to melt. This melting sea ice would cause less solar energy to be reflected back to space (ice is much more reflective than open ocean) and thus this would increase the total amount of energy in the climate system.”


Comment on Open thread weekend by jim2

Comment on Unforced variability and the global warming slow down by Patrick Brown

0
0

Hi David,

I appears that you did not read the article carefully as I say:

“However, unforced variability can also change the total amount of energy in the earth system by changing constituents of the surface or atmosphere that interact with the amount of solar energy coming in, or the amount of infrared energy leaving the earth (Herweijer et al., 2005). For example, if some internally generated change in an ocean circulation caused more heat to be distributed to polar latitudes; this could cause sea ice to melt. This melting sea ice would cause less solar energy to be reflected back to space (ice is much more reflective than open ocean) and thus this would increase the total amount of energy in the climate system.”

Comment on Why Libertarians should support a carbon tax by GaryM

0
0

The three posts could be combined in a single article, titled:

Why People Should Ignore Their Own Principles and Adopt the Policy I Want.

Comment on Why Libertarians should support a carbon tax by Alan Sexton

0
0

Bart, in my previous comment I am referring to Ed Dolan’s proposal.
I have no problems with voluntary participation in private endeavors, but taxes are not private.

Comment on Why Libertarians should support a carbon tax by Willis Eschenbach

0
0

Ah, wonderful, Mr. Ed has returned to lead us to sanity. Folks, don’t miss his next exciting installment, “Why The Brain-Dead Support A Carbon Tax” …

Judith, the quality of your guest speakers is getting … well, let me describe them as pathetic, and with more than a whiff of desperation in their arguments. Ed, though, is in a class all his own … I think it’s called “fourth” …

w.

PS—I did love his uncited, unreferenced, and frankly unbelievable claim that a carbon tax is “the least intrusive, least inefficient government intervention available” to deal with the problem … but then uncited, unreferenced, and frankly unbelievable claims seem to be Mr. Ed’s stock in trade.

Viewing all 147818 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images