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Comment on Ethics of communicating scientific uncertainty by Pierre-Normand

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Rob Ellison: “The finite volume is open on both ends”

And then he immediately proceeds to say: “We may consider this an isolated system with fixed mass and fixed extension.”


Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by R. Gates

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“And really the ‘forcing changes’ are very minor compared to annual, interannual and decadal variability.”
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That part is true, and exactly why approaches that try to filter out all three of these (especially ENSO) to see the long-term trend are the most valid. Using decadal average tropospheric surface temperatures is probably the most honest approach. Granted, each decade will have a few years that set new records, usually those records will be set in El Nino years (though 2014 might well become the first exception). Overall, better to use decadal averages to see real trends. Faux-skeptics hate this, as the GH forcing starts to reveal itself from the noise of annual, inter annual, and decadal variability.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rob Ellison

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rud Istvan

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Yup. Yet we have the Obama administration asserting the opposite in its National Climate Assessment 2014. My new ebook was delayed months just writing an essay to discredit the 2014NCA opening chapter in a convincing fashion. See essay Credibility Conundrums. Prof. Cliff Mass of UW did a much better job on his blog concerning the Pacific Northwest portion. Well worth a separate read, since not covered by the ebook.

Comment on Week in review by Danny Thomas

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MY week in review with apologies to all, I’d appreciate constructive (sans politics, please). I’m posting this in several locations at the risk of ridicule. As the week in review seems to be a bit of a catch all I could think of no more appropriate location and am happy to accept criticism of that choice.

“Thank you for your response. I want to preface my comments with letting you know I’ve spent a few days on Watts and taken a firm beating (would be happy to provide a link or two if that would add to my credibility). I kinda expect the same to happen here because folks tend to let emotions take over.

So I’ll ask that you and others here bear with me as I’m just beginning my journey towards an understanding of Climate Change and I have to start with a basic question that I can’t get a concrete answer for. Why is CO2 such a “bad guy”? My seriously AGW buddy (and I can provide his website, he’s given permission) said (para mine) I don’t know, go to the National Academy of Science. I’ve gone there and there is some evidence, but no definitive conclusion. I’ve gone to IPCC and get the same. Google, same. Watt (of course it’s NOT AT ALL a bad guy there–as if breathing on Venus would be easy for us humans LOL.). JC, eh, maybe, maybe not. I can’t for the life of me understand how if that is unsettled IPCC can say we have to cut it to the extent proposed. I can see it’s can be seen as pollutive at some level, but I don’t see it at today’s level. I’ve been to the NOAA Mauna Loa site to run the numbers for myself. Yes, it’s increasing, and that increase has increased in the past decade. But if it’s such a known “bad guy” why is it still debated?

So many out there have already made determinations, on both sides. It’s thick with politics. But seemingly there is so much riding on such a basic question that I’m frankly confused.

I don’t wanna stir things up, I’m no troll. There is no place for those of us beginning this quest. There is AGW, and “absolutely not” sides. There are some in what I perceive as “the middle” (accepting Global warming is occurring based on evidence, but unclear if cause is natural or man caused or maybe even a bit of both). I’m in that middle.

My buddy has provided some stuff but he can’t seem to see that his politics muddies the picture. But to his credit, he’s got me researching.

I see there is psychology of Global Warming communication and that bothers me as I’m not aware of something like that for say, chemistry or physics. I come from a sales background and selling an intangible requires some psychology. This should be tangible and it bothers me that it’s not.

And I’m not understanding why There’s a Watts side, and Judith Curry side and a Real Science side. But since there is, why aren’t folks here over there and folks there over here?

In other words, as you say it seems there is no “company line” on the “skeptical side” (I can’t use denier because my perception is very few deny global warming but do deny causes). But there are reasonable discussions (as well as unreasonable attacks) of some of the evidence for AGW.

Short comment is the science seems far from settled. Am I missing something (I’m sure I’m missing A LOT)?

Reminder, I’m just beginning developing my understanding. It’s a tough ask, but can you or others approach this with me from that perspective. I’m cringing by hitting the submit button.

Oh, and if it’s inappropriately posted please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

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Comment on Week in review by Climate Researcher 

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Clouds and water vapour all lead to cooler surface temperatures, not warmer ones as the IPCC would like you to be gullible enough to believe. Empirical data proves this cooling is a reality.

The emissivity of water and water vapour are a next-to-useless figures when trying to calculate the temperature of any thin layer of a cloud or the atmosphere through which most of the solar radiation passes, just as we can’t determine easily what temperature solar radiation mostly passing through the thin surface layer of the ocean would affect its temperature. (These layers do not act like black or grey bodies.) Yet the IPCC authors think they can do so, and not only that, they add the back radiation which, as is well known, does not penetrate more than a few nanometres into the ocean. Then they fudge the back radiation figure so they get a total that gives them 288K with emissivity 0.95 and hence a total solar and back radiation flux of 370W/m^2 of which solar flux is only 163W/m^2. That’s laughable, because their atmosphere is supposedly somehow delivering 370W/m^2 when, after albedo considerations (say, 30%) is 55% more than the total solar flux of 238W/m^2 entering at the top. So the atmosphere is a good energy generator is it?

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rud Istvan

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Tony, as Nic posted in an email to BishopHill, Harrabin confused concentration with emissions, and ECS with TRC. Still amd all, media progress. Steady on with your important historical research on natural variation. Disproving the hockey stick is crucial to the grand scheme.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rob Ellison

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‘Faux-skeptics hate this, as the GH forcing starts to reveal itself from the noise of annual, inter annual, and decadal variability.’

Does it?

It seems quite unlikely that CO2 is anywhere near the dominant factor in short or long term variability in the radiant budget. Certainly not for the next few decades.


Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Richard (rls)

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Gates

Do you not love Ms Hiatus?

Richard

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rob Ellison

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Something is going wrong – other than Randy I mean.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rud Istvan

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Spot on. I would further extend your ‘leadership from in front’ example. From 1/1/15 all UN agency lighting and computer electricity will be provided soley by renewables. That includes the massive power to their GCM models. For surely they must have the intermittency/storage problem figured out.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by jim2

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Technology has already confounded predictions of peak oil. There was no magic in the technology that has already increased oil production in the US, and there will be no magic in future technological development that will accelerate production of oil.

Of course, at some point we will run out of economically producible oil. It’s just a question of when and so far peak oil predictions just haven’t worked out.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by jim2

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I’m didn’t extrapolate. But it seems to me that a lot of peak oil predictions have been nullified by the rapid increase in US production. This was obviously completely unexpected by the “experts” given witness by the gearing up by refineries to use heavier crudes.

Fracking is spreading around the world and the improvements in technology so far, the technology responsible for the increased production, has no component of “magic.” Technology will continue to improve recovery of tight oil.

I’m not trying to predict when economical oil will die out, but I do know that predictions so far have been way off the mark.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by David L. Hagen

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<b>Incremental Decisions on Greater Confidence</b> href=http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/toy-math-vs-lew-math-toy-wins/>Blackboard, Lucia gives an excellent model and explanation </a>for incremental decisions, deferring major expenses until later as we achieve greater clarity: <blockquote>Summary There is no mathematical reason a current, 2014, board needs to build a protections to levels required to protect citizens in 2100. There is no mathematical reason a current, 2014, board needs to build to protect to the upper uncertainty bound for sea level rise in 2100. If the board opts to schedule several many periods, the best estimate for the required protected height approaches the mean value for the projected sea level rise. If the board opts to build as required, they can come close to building “just the right” height protections. Other factors not discussed here become very important to the boards decision. These include: the discount rate which makes current expenditures more costly than future ones, incremental added cost of maintaining unnecessarily tall protections for 100 years, risk of unnecessary excess loss if the unnecessarily tall protections are destroyed by an earthquake sometime between 2014 and the time when the flood protection of that height might be needed and added costs when engineering projects start and stop. Most of these will tend to argue in favor of many builds; the final one argues in favor of a smaller number of builds. Careful calculations would be required to determine the optimum number of builds; it is unlikely to be 1. It is true that uncertainty results in higher costs. However, note for the case considered, the “Lew” method suggested the uncertainty meant one needed to build 1-m protections when the best estimate for required protections under certainty was 0.5 m. But <b>by responding with sanity </b>the expected value of build heights were (0.53 0.51 0.50 0.50)m for (2,3,4,5) builds respectively, with the additional height above the 0.5m required under certainty falling within rounding error. Admittedly, rounding down was required, but I think few boards would be impressed by the thought that ‘climate uncertainty’ adds horrific costs when the difference in cost is less than 0.5% of the expected costs, represents less than 1mm in height of a protection and this uncertainty is dwarfed by other uncertainties that affect board decisions.</blockquote>

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by David L. Hagen

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At the <a href="http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/toy-math-vs-lew-math-toy-wins/" / rel="nofollow">Blackboard, Lucia gives an excellent model</a>

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rud Istvan

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AK, as an inventor/entrepreneur in this space let me add a small qualification. There is stuff that has a good chance of working, stuff that has some chance of working, and lots and lots of stuff that has no chance of working based on known fundamentals. As someone who has participated in multiple Fed energy grant research proposals, I can assure you that far too much of the last, and far too little of the middle, gets FEd funding (ARPAE, DOE). Been there, done that. They are apparently scientifically clueless. Several concrete examples in Arts of Truth, and also in Blowing Smoke, essay California Dreaming. None concerning my own experiences.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rob Ellison

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‘In today’s world, approximately 99% of all observations used in weather and climate analysis come from remote sensing techniques and primarily from satellites. Satellite measurements of the Earth’s microwave emissions are a crucial element in the development of an accurate system for long-term monitoring of atmospheric temperature. Special sensors (microwave sounding units) aboard satellites have orbited the Earth since the late 1970’s allowing scientists to calculate temperatures of the atmosphere in the lower troposphere. While satellite observations are not without some of their own limitations, they provide nearly complete global coverage and homogeneous data quality at much higher densities than attainable with in situ observations. In situ observations also suffer from non-uniform temporal coverage and undocumented changes in the instrumentation used that can lead to local biases and increased uncertainty. Finally, satellite-derived temperatures don’t require the “UHI adjustments” often required with conventional weather station temperature measurements.’ http://beforeitsnews.com/weather/2014/09/hottest-august-ever-not-so-fast-take-a-look-at-this-2443674.html

But the critical difference is in contamination of the land surface record by changes in latent and sensible heat as a result of changes in surface water availability.

The use of the surface record for climate monitoring is an anachronism – but anything to save the narrative.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rob Ellison

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This is not the surface temperature – btw – but the tropospheric record and there is a difference of course.

Comment on How urgent is ‘urgent’? by Rud Istvan

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Doc, I also noticed that the African ‘witch doctors’ who contributed to the present Ebola situation are referred to in the PC MSM as ‘traditional healers’. I far prefer you to them. As Reyes syndrome proves.
Even tho life is in the end always fatal, you and your science based medicine have made it much more bearable in the interim. Soldier on with highest regards.

Comment on Ethics of communicating scientific uncertainty by Rob Ellison

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