My advice is just wait till a few years after the next solar maximum before drawing any solid conclusions about the trend. You may be sadly surprised if past decades are anything to go by. Skeptics only believe in natural variability when it goes in the warming direction.
Comment on Climate Classroom by Jim D
↧
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by John Carpenter
“Where is the band-wagon effect for climate theories that deem to explain the 33 degree C heating of the planet above that predicted in the absence of greenhouse gases? I keep track of a lot of the crackpot theories but I don’t see any traction behind any of these. Is that because we are getting on the band-wagon of the correct interpretation?”
WHT, strawman argument and you know it. You missed the point of that comment. Think alarmism wrt to the climate change debate and then you will see the light… it’s that simple, no need to bring in a false argument of whether people have alternative theories to the GHE… what’s alarming about that? How is that selling papers?
↧
Comment on Climate Classroom by manacker
Jim D
To get back to the K-12 classroom.
If the kiddos are being taught about past warming and CO2 they should know.
Over the past 160+ years it has warmed at an average rate of a bit more than 0.04C per decade, or 0.7C over the entire period.
CO2 rose from an estimated 290 ppmv in 1850 to a measured 390 ppmv today.
The warming occurred in three similar multi-decadal warming cycles of ~30 years each, with ~30-year cycles of slight cooling in between. The last two warming cycles (early and late 20th century) have been statistically indistinguishable, while the late 19th century warming cycle was slightly less pronounced.
While both atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperature have risen since 1850, there is no observed statistically robust correlation between the two. The temperature record is a random walk, statistically speaking.
Since January 2001 (before most of you were in school and before many of you were even born) global temperature has ceased to rise (actually cooled very slightly). Whether this is the start of another multi-decadal cycle of slight cooling or not is too early to tell and scientists have differing opinions on this today.
Scientists know that there are natural factors, which have changed our planet’s climate over its history, but the magnitude and mechanisms for these changes are largely unknown today.
Scientists also believe that greenhouse gases, such as CO2 and water vapor, influence climate through the warming caused by the greenhouse effect.
Some of this greenhouse warming has come from human emissions of greenhouse gases, principally CO2, but scientists are uncertain today just how much warming this effect has caused.
Scientists believe that this effect is logarithmic. This means that a doubling of CO2 level from 280 to 560 ppmv will have the same temperature impact as a further doubling from 560 to 1120 ppmv.
Research work is going on today to learn more about our planet’s climate and what makes it act and react the way it does. This work is done by atmospheric physicists, meteorologists and solar scientists.
This is an interesting field. Maybe some of you will pursue this when you grow up – and maybe you will help to solve some of the many mysteries that still exist about our climate.
Max
↧
Comment on Climate Classroom by maksimovich
Within decades there are pauses associated with solar minima that seem to fool people who don’t average them out. This happened in the 80′s, 90′s and 00′s, but only the last one has received attention.
It is well known that the frequency of El nino decreases from solar maxima and the extremal or point wise T excursions at minima.That these point wise excursions tend to “move the market” it is difficult to remove the signal and residual memory.
↧
Comment on Climate Classroom by Jim D
Max, I agree with most of this, especially the end part, but would additionally advise against using short-term trends as indicators of anything, due to natural variability. Solar influences have been important in understanding other recent trends like the one up to the 1940′s and the LIA, possibly MWP. The Ice Ages are quite well understood in terms of Milankovitch cycles. The warmer paleoclimates are fairly well understood in terms of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases, including the Cretaceous period, 100 million years ago, which our CO2 levels will match by 2100. It is an interesting scientific field and an interesting time for today’s children to grow up in. In this century, our climate is going to change at a noticeable speed that will be a lesson to everyone.
↧
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by manacker
pokerguy
Fred has a strange (IMO myopically fixated) notion of what is “interesting” when it comes to climate science.
Reports by Spencer or Lindzen on climate sensitivity estimates based on satellite observations are of “low interest level”, while this Chinese-published yawner of poorly founded predictions for China’s future climate are of “high interest”
As the French would say: “chacun à son goût”.
Max
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by Jim S
“….the Lobell et al study, while not conclusive, implies that agricultural productivity has been impeded compared to what it would have been without the warming.”
Fred, this proposition cannot be falsified and is without merit.
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by Fred Moolten
John – I don’t know what the Chinese government expects from releasing the document. The study that went into it was commissioned by the government and was very extensive, with an extensive writeup. I assume the government is taking the results seriously, but how that will affect their actions is beyond my ability to predict.
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by manacker
As the wheels on the speeding CAGW bandwagon (and gravy train) are beginning to squeak and wobble, the riders aboard (like NOAA) are getting shriller in their doomsday warnings – it’s all part of the show.
↧
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by manacker
cui bono
My theory on this is simple: Despite continuous ex post facto corrections, adjustments and other manipulations, HadCRUT3 was no longer conveying the desired message, so had to be replaced with a record that would.
Let’s see if the new record really does show more warming (particularly in recent years) than the old HadCRUT3.
If so, we will know exactly why the record was changed.
The 69% who believed last August that the data were being falsified will probably grow another few percentage points after this.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/69_say_it_s_likely_scientists_have_falsified_global_warming_research
An’ the beat goes on…
Max
↧
Comment on Climate Classroom by Chief Hydrologist
Jimmy – you don’t really try to understand why do you? Simply make it up as you go along? Ignore the quotes and references?
You are part of the problem – unshakably convinced and no room for complexity or uncertainty. When the history is written it will be that of groupthink claiming the authority of science on the basis of a horribly selective bibliography. ‘Although it has failed to produce its intended impact nevertheless the Kyoto Protocol has performed an important role. That role has been allegorical. Kyoto has permitted different groups to tell different stories about themselves to themselves and to others, often in superficially scientific language. But, as we are increasingly coming to understand, it is often not questions about science that are at stake in these discussions. The culturally potent idiom of the dispassionate scientific narrative is being employed to fight culture wars over competing social and ethical values.’
We are at or near solar max -http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png – and you are bound to be disappointed as things are only getting cooler.
I compare people like you to space ship cultists. They integrate or ignore contradictory information until the incongruities become too great and then commit mass suicide. My only advice to you is to stay away from the kool-aid you little space cadet you.
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by Arcs_n_Sparks
“get the government out of the energy arena, other than for nuclear which needs more regulation due to the nature of the fuel.”
And what nature is that? Radiation release? I think coal leads the pack, with radon from natural gas a close second. Proliferation? Sorry, but all military programs have been dedicated and separate from civilian nuclear power. This canard is getting very old…..
↧
Comment on Climate Classroom by Jim D
CH, OK, thanks for your thoughts. I don’t know whether you are in the denier or skeptic camp. I define a denier as someone who thinks AGW is not even possibly true (0%). But even if you have a slight inkling that AGW could become significant there is hope for you as the warming becomes more apparent. You might move to the pool of “it is warming, but that isn’t so bad” where some skeptics are dipping their toes already having seen the writing on the wall.
↧
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by incandecentbulb
Mark Levin says, that utopianism and constitutionalism cannote coexist. He says, “Utopianism requires power to be concentrated in a central authority with maximum latitude to transform and control. Oppositely, a constitution establishes parameters that define the form and the limtis of government.”
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by randomengineer
You missed this
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LY3AJ31A74E901-703SIP1EKP1CK27FVGL5LB0GP8
Germany is slowly whacking subsidies for PV.
↧
Comment on Climate Classroom by Chief Hydrologist
Oh right – I provisionally made the list. Yea. Might I suggest he add the NAS – http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309074347 – the WHOI – http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455 – and the Royal Society – http://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science/ – to the list. Although I think the latter was only because Tim Palmer was on the committee.
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by markus
Ha, you’re telling me. Mate, you are a goose. Goodbye
↧
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by Jim D
Assuming you mean CF is the surface, home plate is space, and the cut-off man is the atmosphere. The rule is that to get as many balls to home plate as you did without the cut-off man, you have to throw twice as many from CF. And it is the number going to home plate that has to be preserved. To throw twice as many balls, you have to be twice as hot at CF (so to speak).
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by capt. dallas
I think the problem is the cutoff man is going to third some of the time 
↧
Comment on Week in review 1/20/12 by JCH
My hunch, a prolonged global recession would result in a pretty quick run up in OHC.
↧
More Pages to Explore .....
