Dorthea’s piece was read by every Aussie kid in the 50s. Many years later, living on the land and waiting for spring rains, I find myself aching for that “drumming of an army” after weeks of “pitiless blue sky”.
More essential reading on the nature of Oz is this little short story by Henry Lawson;
My crystal ball is a little foggy. I’m sticking with the pause for the moment.
If the temperature goes up by 2030 – the CAGW crowd have some game but probably not enough to worry about, depending on how much it goes up and how much is computer generated. If the temperature stays the same until 2030… something strange is happening, and any truth to CAGW isn’t enough to worry about. If the temperature declines by 2030 CAGW is simply wrong.
Mr. Pierre-Humbert has a lot of respect in the circle of those who are most alarmed about climate change and his arguments need to be taken seriously.
However, this piece suffers from the most common of Alarmist fallacies, that attacking the reputation or standing of your opponent is more important than countering his/her arguments.
Mr. Pierre-Humbert spends over one page of a two-page article trying to deligitimize Mr. Koonin. When he finally gets around to Koonin’s arguments, it’s easy to see why. They basically amount to ‘Koonin’s measuring A instead of B’ or he’s counting from Date A instead of Date B.’
But Koonin didn’t do the measuring or counting. He (exactly like the IPCC) is assessing the measuring and counting done by others.
As a brief aside, Pierre-Humbert notes a doubling of the rate of sea-level in the century before AGW is thought to have started and seems to think that’s an effective argument on the issue because the rate of sea-level rise ‘doubled’ in the century afterwards.
The Alarmist Brigade would rather call their opponents senile or out of touch with the mainstream literature than engage with the (best of) their arguments. A lot of foolishness is put forth by skeptics (Iron Sun, Sky Dragon, etc.) But the best of their arguments need to be considered seriously. After all, a similar amount of nonsense issues forth from the Alarmist camp as well.
One of the reasons for their ad hominem attacks is that the best of the skeptic/lukewarmer arguments are extremely tough to counter.
All the more reason for Mr. Pierre-Humbert to save time and energy by abandoning his attacks on Mr. Koonin’s reputation and qualifications.
There is no end to the good ideas for spending some else’s money.
“However, there are two important sources of heat for surface heating which results in “basal sliding”. One source is geothermal energy. This is around 0.1 W/m² which is very small unless we are dealing with an insulating material (like ice) and lots of time (like ice sheets). The other source is the shear stress in the ice sheet which can create a lot of heat via the mechanics of deformation.”
“Once the ice sheet is able to start sliding, the dynamics create a completely different result compared to an ice sheet “cold-pinned” to the rock underneath.”
“..Moreover, our results suggest that thermal enabling of basal flow does not occur in response to surface warming…”
“…Our simulations suggest that a substantial fraction (60% to 80%) of the ice sheet was frozen to the bed for the first 75 kyr of the glacial cycle, thus strongly limiting basal flow. Subsequent doubling of the area of warm-based ice in response to ice sheet thickening and expansion and to the reduction in downward advection of cold ice may have enabled broad increases in geologically- and hydrologically-mediated fast ice flow during the last deglaciation.
Increased dynamical activity of the ice sheet would lead to net thinning of the ice sheet interior and the transport of large amounts of ice into regions of intense ablation both south of the ice sheet and at the marine margins (via calving). This has the potential to provide a strong positive feedback on deglaciation.”
Looks like Marshall and Clark
http://scienceofdoom.com/2014/04/14/ghosts-of-climates-past-nineteen-ice-sheet-models-i/
What I think they’re saying to some extent that it’s a function of mass which is a function of time. Given enough cold time and transfer of liquid water from the oceans the to the ice sheets we will get a mechanical collapse. A slow motion avalanche to an interglacial.
Are we collapsing the ice sheets now? If we are, there would be a reduced weight and insulation of ice which would reduce basal sliding and push in the direction of ice sheet stabilization.
PA,
Since the axil tilt is a 41,000 yr cycle that would leave only the apisidal precession of 21,000 years to coorespond with the short interglacial period. It seems to be how the combination of all three line up to make it happen? I’m just trying to figure out where they are now. I know the tilt and eccentricty approximately and supposedly the apisidal is north pole faces at furthest eliptical distance and south pole at closet right now. But this still doesn’t tell me how far we are from peak on the downside. The apisidal is mainly what is throwing me off right now.
I resent…. err… resemble that!
The boring truth is that only very green/liberal or dedicated conservative/libertarian (AkA white over 55, male) people care much about this issue.
If warming does not accelerate very soon, then vehement defenses of high climate sensitivity will be relegated to the theater of the absurd, where main stream climate science already has long term residence status.
Well, until the CAGW people can show significant warming in the raw data for this century, it is just a game and China wants to win as much as it can.
Without actual (raw data) warming, unless someone pays you to clean up there is no incentive.
The pause is predicted to go on until 2030 so we have some time to kill.
If the pause goes to 2030 CAGW has a hard time justifying any action. China will be at peak coal and there won’t be a another big player to keep emissions rising.
It is hard to defend predictions of more than a 1°C temperature rise if temperatures are flat for a third of a century. A 1°C temperature rise by 2100 doesn’t justify taking any action.
What does it have to do with anything?
AK: Your faith in the exponential advancement of technology is shared by me. However, unlike the mobile phone industry at its beginning, the power industry infrastructure is established and will change only over time, perhaps generations of time, as demand increases and existing facilities become uneconomical.
In California the entire government-education complex is a bridge to nowhere.
[...] unlike the mobile phone industry at its beginning, the power industry infrastructure is established and will change only over time, [...]
I suppose that’s what most people thought about the land-line phone system, too.
The last thing anyone should ever do is misrepresent the air of certainty and urgency that all on the Left have tried for years to cultivate by knowingly providing false, incomplete, misleading and sometimes simply made-up facts and information to create public alarm.
I have an idea. Instead of pylons, let’s suspend the electric grid main lines using drones. Attached to the lines, they could be powered by corona discharge through a small spike. That way, we could direct power wherever it is needed!
Professor Curry, as Czech President Klaus concluded several years ago, “It’s about freedom.”
Better yet, scrap the big long-distance grid entirely, and replace it with cheap gas-fired generators feeding local micro-grids.
Natural gas won’t last forever, that’s for sure. But there’s more there than anyone knows, I’m betting.
