With Emanuel of MIT virtually admitting that climate change studies were based on 19th century “pencil and paper” studies, one has to wonder whether anything the IPCC produces is worth reading. For example, in the middle of the 19th century, photons did not exist, nor was the way gases absorb heat with both kinetic and vibrational energy. It is certainty a wonder that so many scientists accept these ancient beliefs.The 1940 singularity and the on/off nature of climate change cannot be understood in 19th century technology.Obviously whether governments need to adopt adaptation or mitigation strategies depends on the accuracy of 19th century science!
Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Alexander Biggs
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Comment on Open thread by admrich
Moving, advancing climate? As per =>
Have you seen this yet? Climate moving south, advancing?
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by xanonymousblog
Indeed, if we are to believe the planet is super sensitive to emissions, then the risk of glacial inception must decrease with increasing CO2.
However, to truly understand the psychology of the warmists one must acknowledge that since humans have evolved over dozens of interglacial cycles, then it only logically follows that “ice-ages” are good, and that we are adapted to such cold climate conditions, and that we should not interrupt the natural cycles that have lead to our evolution.
http://xanonymousblog.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/glacial-inception/
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by manacker
Hans Erren
Yes.
The concluding premise of Tol’s study is that global warming is beneficial for humanity up to around 2.0 to 2.5C warming above today’s level, and that this level will only occur late in this century, using the 2xCO2 TCR estimate of IPCC.
It is unlikely IMO that the “TCR estimate of IPCC” is understated (why should IPCC understate it?).
It is conceivable, on the other hand, that this estimate is overstated (after all, IPCC is selling potentially deleterious AGW).
So the 2.0 to 2.5C limit could actually occur later than projected by Tol.
If we accept the UN (and US Census Bureau) projections on population growth, there will be 10.2 to 10.5 billion inhabitants by 2100.
Between 1970 and 2010 the globally averaged per capita CO2 generation from fossil fuels increased by around 10%.
But this was not evenly distributed.
“Industrially developed” nations (North America, Europe, Japan, Aus/NZ) actually saw a decrease of around 3% in the per capita CO2 generation over this 40-year period, while the rest of the world saw an increase of 53%.
The decrease in per capita CO2 emissions in the “industrially developed” nations has accelerated since 1980 (energy conservation measures, etc.), while that in the rest of the world has increased (primarily due to the rapid industrial growth in nations like China, Brazil, India, etc.)
CO2 from the second major source, deforestation, comes primarily from the third world today. This has remained fairly flat since the 1970s and now stands at around 15% of the total human CO2 emission.
If we ASS-U-ME that per capita CO2 emissions will continue to grow, and that they will increase by 30% by the end of this century, we arrive at a cumulative CO2 emission from today to 2100 of around 4,000 Gt and an atmospheric CO2 concentration of around 650 ppmv by then.
The Tol study is based on a more rapid CO2 growth scenario, reaching around 750 ppmv CO2 by 2100.
This equals “growth” of around 350 ppmv above today versus a more reasonable 250 ppmv above today.
So the CO2 growth assumptions used as the basis for the Tol study are arguably also exaggerated, which would push the “breakeven point” (between beneficial and harmful warming) further into the future.
But the key here is that the added CO2 will not come from the already “industrially developed” countries (whose per capita CO2 emissions are declining today), but from the developing nations, as you pointed out.
Max
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Wagathon
Someone did–e.g.,
The World Health Organization estimates that about 7M people are now dying each year as a result of air pollution. Even on the most pessimistic estimates, climatae change is not expected to cause loss of life on thtat scale for another 100 years
~Richard Tol
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by DocMartyn
Tom, even a 40 kT impact on a nuclear power could cause a retaliatory launch before anyone realized that a rock, not a bomb, caused the explosion.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Wagathon
We can expect Eurocommunism will be as effective in adopting effective adaptation or mitigation strategies as the USSR was effective in competing with the USA.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Wagathon
So, you will just continue to ignore the cumulative effect.
People in most fields outside of it [economics] do not have problems eliminating extreme values from their sample, when the difference in payoff between outcomes is not significant, which is generally the case in education and medicine…
A casual weather forecaster does the same with extreme temperatures — an unusual occurrence might be deemed to skew the overall result (though we will see that this may turn out to be a mistake when it comes to forecasting future properties of the ice cap). So people in finance borrow the technique and, ignore infrequent events, not noticing that the effect of a rare event can bankrupt a company.
Many scientists in the physical world are also subject to such foolishness, misreading statistics. One flagrant example is in the global-warming debate. Many scientists failed to notice it in its early stages as they removed from their sample the spikes in temperature, under the belief that these were not likely to recur. It may be a good idea to take out the extremes when computing the average temperatures for vacation scheduling. But it does not work when we study the physical properties of the weather — particularly when one cares about a cumulative effect. These scientists initially ignored the fact that these spikes, although rare, had the effect of adding disproportionately to the cumulative melting of the ice cap. Just as in finance, an event, although rare, that brings large consequences cannot just be ignored.
~Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness(2004)
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Comment on Open thread by Curious George
“To get people to sign a universal agreement and not cheat…” Don’t worry. Russia proudly signed a 1994 agreement guaranteeing a territorial integrity of Ukraine.
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Comment on Open thread by Curious George
Is the TOA measured by CERES with an unexplained 5W/m2 imbalance, or by other means?
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Comment on Open thread by Mickey Reno
I agree that perfect TOA measures of outgoing radiation, subtracted from perfect measures of incoming radiation would give us a reasonably good momentary assessment of the rate (+ or -) of retention of flight of energy from within the Earth’s atmospheric shell.
But what Dr. Palmer suggests as a conclusion is a pointless tautology. Except it’s not quite pointless. It’s clearly meant to imply that the realist/skeptical side of the global warming debate is wrong, and that the alarmist/catastrophic side is correct. And that is only opinion and unscientific propaganda. Which is so damn typical of the alarmist side of the debate.
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Comment on Week in review by Paul Vaughan
New Animation:
(polar views added 2014-04-05)
Sun-Climate Multidecadal (MD) Wave
= Wyatt’s “Stadium” Wave
http://s28.postimg.org/52xs3duez/Sun_Climate_MDwave.gif
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Tonyb
Rgates
Here is my comment quoting Phil jones that the 1730′s was the warmest decade until the 1990′s and that natural variability might be underestimated.
It’s ok, apology accepted
Tonyb
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by John S.
It’s a shame that you find “illusory” the categorical difference between man’s ideas and palpable physical reality. A scientist you’ll never make!
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Jim D
An item on WG3 due out soon.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/05/ipcc-meeting_n_5097022.html
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Vaughan Pratt
Latimer, you may have overlooked Mike Flynn’s point, ” In a deterministic dynamical system, an arbitrarily small change to an input may cause an unknown arbitrarily large change to the output.” The small change need not be cyanide for Mike’s point to hold.
For an analogy closer to the case at hand, consider a meter-thick wall of clear glass. Now thicken it by 0.1 mm. By your reasoning this increase of one part in ten thousand can’t make much difference to its opacity. While this would be true if the 0.1 mm thick additional layer were more of the same glass, if it were black plastic it would make a considerable difference to the opacity.
Oxygen and nitrogen are transparent to the 10-micron radiation that cools the Earth by passing to space. CO2 by contrast is relatively opaque at those wavelengths. If the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere is a tiny fraction of the amount of oxygen and nitrogen, it does not follow that the change in opacity of the atmosphere at those wavelengths is tiny.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by John S.
Vaughan Pratt:
Your argument about opacity may seem plausible ex ante; however, radiosonde data show that the optical depth of the atmosphere hasn’t changed detectably in the last 60 years.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Robert I Ellison
‘Comparisons of global steric height trends based on different gridded fields of Argo in situ measurements show a range of 0–1mmyr−1 which can be lead back to data handling and climatology uncertainties. Our results show that GOIs derived from the Argo measurements are ideally suitable to monitor the state of the global ocean, especially after November 2007, i.e. when Argo sampling was 100% complete. They also show that there is significant interannual global variability at global scale, especially for global OFC. Before the end of 2007, error bars are too large to deliver robust short-term trends of GOIs and thus an interpretation in terms of long-term climate signals are still questionable, especially since uncertainties due to interannual fluctuations are not included in our error estimation.’ http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf
‘Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.’ http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
The more fundamental equation is the 1st order differential global energy equation.
d(W&H)/dt = energy in (J/s) – energy out (J/s)
Where W&H is work and heat – and is mostly heat in oceans – and the LHS is the radiant imbalance at TOA. Theoretically – it is possible to determine the radiant imbalance to first approximation from ocean heat. It is impossible to quantify this directly to the required accuracy from satellite observations – but the change in trend is much more accurate and the difference is equal to the change in the rate of ocean warming or cooling.
In the period that von Schuckmann and Le Troan (2011) cover energy in declined a little and energy out declined somewhat more leaving a net warming of some 0.5W/m2. So the safer assumption is that the oceans did warm in the period. Looking more closely at the components of energy out it was in the period all SW changes – less reflected SW – presumably due to secular changes in cloud cover associated with changes in ocean and atmosphere circulation.
Of immense significance is that there are both decadal changes in energy out and abrupt shifts associated with shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation. Less cloud from the 80′s to late 1990′s, an abrupt shift post the 1998 climate shift and not much change since.
Over the full CERES record there is negligible trend in net energy out – it is perhaps unlikely that this will change any time soon in the current cool decadal mode. Energy in is declining from near the Schwabe cycle peak and perhaps longer term.
It seems the trend for the near term is less warming – or even cooling. Cloud cover suggests cooling from the late 90′s peak. Only ARGO can tell for sure which way – the sign of the differential. The next round of ARGO updates should be most interesting – if we can get past the problems of data handling.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Stephen Segrest
Dear Jim Cripwell — I hope the following comes across as respectful, as this sure is my intent. For the sake of discussion, would it be objective to add one word to your statements — there is no “current” signal? My question continues to be with the GHE theory of Dr. Arrhenius. If we had trajectories of 2,000, 3,000, ppm, this still wouldn’t be a concern? The theory of Dr. Arrhenius at any ppm trajectory level can not be considered relevant without a “clear signal” first? Thanks.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Vaughan Pratt
What optical depth are you referring to, John? Aerosol, cloud, visible light, UV, IR, FIR, some combination thereof?
Depending on which notion of optical depth the radiosondes were measuring, the atmosphere could change from completely transparent to completely opaque at the wavelengths of Earth’s thermal emission without changing the atmosphere’s optical depth at all.
A paper or other citation relevant to the past 60 years would be helpful. A dataset even more so.
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