Topic: Climate Emergency is already here. How much worse it gets is still up to us (?)

[Bioluminescence]

I think that the subsequent posts have demonstrated that the climate is an incredibly complex system. The models can not take account of all factors because we do not know all the factors involved. The IPCC models are consistently being shown to be unreliable in predicting future changes. Continuing to shape policy on the basis of the models is an act of belief and faith, not one of evidence based observations. In many ways belief in Climate Change has replaced religion as a central feature of an individuals value system.

Personally I think the CAGW scare is using one of the oldest tricks in the book to control and subjugate people. 1. Induce Fear. 2. Induce Guilt. 3. Promise salvation through suffering. It has been used by religions for millenia. Fear - You are going to die and burn in hell. Guilt - It is all your fault for being a sinner. Redemption - If you repent and make penance you will be saved. 

For CAGW Fear - The climate is changing. Guilt - It is your fault for producing CO₂ Redemption - Give up hard won advances in living standards suffer energy penury and you will be saved. It also works for Austerity. Fear - The World economy is going to collapse. Guilt - It is all your fault for borrowing too much money and living beyond your means. Redemption - Suffer austerity and we will all be saved. It works for the Terrorist scare too.

Left/right, warmist/denier, Catholic/Protestant, are just  labels which obfuscate the real issues. The real issues are beyond the scope of the Climate Change thread but the Auld arse and Tory Bastards threads often touch on them.

In the meantime while we worry about a trace gas, sort our rubbish and argue with each other about labels our collective pockets are  being picked clean of many of the political social and economic advances that were made in the last century.

I think it's important to note a few things. First of all, models project so-called hiatus periods, when surface temperatures don't warm as much and the heat it taken up in sub-surface ocean waters. An article by Meehl et al. tackled this in 2011. They were trying to solve the problem of observed energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere with the slower rate of warming from 2001 to 2009.  The image below, from this paper, shows the annual mean global surface temperatures for 5 model runs, and the inset clearly shows hiatus periods:



So periods of a decade or so when surface warming slows down is not unexpected. It's just difficult to predict them because, for example, we don't know with any certainty what's going to happen next with ENSO - are we going to get neutral conditions, a La Niña event or an El Niño event? If we get a La Niña or an El Niño, how strong is it going to be? This is why climate models shouldn't be evaluated on short periods of time. In the long term, on the other hand, natural variability cancels itself out, and that's why long-term projections haven't changed.

Some scientists have removed the short-term variability from temperature readings and shown that the underlying warming trend hasn't stopped. This explains why despite the cooling influence of natural variability over the past decade or so, temperatures haven't dropped.



So none of this is based on belief - it is based on an adequate analysis of all the evidence. CO2 is a greenhouse gas - changing its concentration causes an energy imbalance which is directly obserbed in satellite data and surface stations. As predicted by models, the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere has cooled as a result. Oceans are warming because the enhanced greenhouse effect has changed the gradient of the cool skin layer, resulting in a lower rate of heat loss. Ice is melting worldwide, sea level is rising, species are shifting, etc.

There is a huge body of converging evidence that supports anthropogenic climate change. Focusing on a short period of surface temperatures misses the whole picture but is required to spread doubt. Only about 2% of warming goes into the atmosphere so you're missing a large body of data by focusing on the atmosphere.

Your comments on the economy are alarmist. No one is saying stop using all fossil fuels now. What we've been asking for is a transition to a low carbon economy. Studies have shown that putting a price on carbon has a small impact on the economy, and that doing nothing will cost us  more in the long run. It would also address the issue of externalities, as the price of coal has been shown not to reflect its costs. We could do quite a lot by simply improving energy efficiency. We could also invest in R&D for new technologies, helping to develop new industries.

We need to work together to work out policies, but not agreeing with policies should not be a basis from which to assess the science.

[RojoLeón]

I don't feel like you have addressed the points I made in the prior post so I will restate them here in the hope that you will give them consideration.

There is a corporate PR machine behind climate science skepticism. Those PR efforts are well funded, heavily researched and focus grouped: they concentrate on attacking climate science via undermining support for action by associating it with political affiliation and emotional feelings.

There is almost no scientific research which challenges the scientific findings.

They have chosen to go after other arguments (which you neatly encapsulate): Fear over loss of living standards, fear over the lights going out, fear over carbon taxation, fear over telling the 3rd world you have to stay put, fear over fear over fear. The green boogyman, come to take away your leaf blower.

Emotional manipulation, and it has worked like a charm - public support for action on climate change has plummeted in the west. Not because the science stopped being right, or that anyone came close to disproving it. But because marketing/PR agencies discovered that focusing on the science was a loser. So they changed up and went after emotional arguments. And here we are.

The fossil fuel industry is following increasingly environmentally destructive paths toward sourcing ever decreasing supply.

Even if climate science was a hoax, we face costly and toxic soil and water quality degradation due to industrial practice - that the very same corporate interests who are funding climate change denial, are also the biggest spenders in fighting basic environmental protection laws, lobbying to dismantle the EPA in the US, and are some of the most egregious offenders regarding worker, public and industrial safety breaches.

I asked you to consider the people who are singing in the choir alongside you:

James Dellingpole, Melanie Phillips, Lord Monckton, Ian Plimer, Gina Rinehart, Jim Inhofe (remember, this guy thinks the Bible disproves Climate Science), Alex Jones, Charles and David Koch,.. the list goes on. None of these people are close to the centre, let alone approaching leftist views on the economy - don't you think it is a bit weird that these BAU (business as usual) ideologues share in your climate skepticism?

You have organizations such as Heartlands, Cato, Heritage foundation, Institute for Public Affairs, State Policy Network, John Birch Society, Donors Trust (and Donors Capital Fund), etc.. The list goes on. They have several things in common with each other. Right wing, lassiez faire capitalist/libertarian ethos and are affirmatively anti-climate science. Their donors/members consist of some of the wealthiest corporate oligarchs on the planet and they provide support for a myriad network of think tanks, bloggers and grey propaganda outlets. They fund lobbyists in Canberra, Washington and London to fight environmental legislation - why would they spend all this money, time and effort if they want the climate hoax to go ahead? It just doesn't make any sense.

So far, I have seen you rehash much of the PR machine patter without ever casting your skepticism in their direction.

You make a vague statement about the IPCC findings being consistently disproved. When? Where? By who?

Not by climate scientists - by bloggers and economists?

You say that climate science is being used to shape policy: That is crazy: Have you been paying attention to the withering assault on environmental laws and regulations in the US? Very, very little has been done in real terms, and the carbon tax thing I agree with you upon - it benefits the polluting business' more than anyone else. But that is because when faced with actual caps, they lobbied aggressively to the extent that intentions behind it were flipped into being a profitable sideline, rather than an actual penalty.

You make claims about how addressing climate change will harm the economy - I call that as nonsense. It will change the economy for sure - look at Germany, their economy is collapsing into austerity as they move towards renewables,.. Oh, wait.

You are proposing that it is all a big hoax and that we should do nothing because why?

I contend that our present course will cause serious damage to mammalian and aquatic life on Earth. Either because of climate change and pollution.Or just the pollution.

Lose - lose, even if you were right about there being a genuine hoax.

I have pointed out that the people defrauding us are financiers and fossil fuel companies. Yet, you blame environmentalists.

I have pointed out that worker rights and other hard fought for protections are being eroded and repealed by the same corporate interests that are causing the pollution. But you blame the environmentalists.

Environmentalists didn't argue to deregulate finance and corporate acquisition laws. They didn't fight to lower corporate taxes and increase corporate subsidies. They didn't go on a derivative led gambling spree which caused precipitous drops in the World's markets.

They didn't convince Bush/Obama/Cameron to repeal environmental protections that allow deep water drilling, frakking and unsustainable logging practice.

Yet, you blame them for wanting to remove our social and economic advances?

Basically, trumped up fear mongering. Not by the environmentalists, but by the fossil fuel PR machine. Duping you into blaming the messenger.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/23-4

The Biggest Criminal Enterprise in History
Terracide and the Terrarists Destroying the Planet for Record Profits

We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide.  And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide.  But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night.  A possibility might be “terracide” from the Latin word for earth.  It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist.

The truth is, whatever we call them, it’s time to talk bluntly about the terrarists of our world.  Yes, I know, 9/11 was horrific.  Almost 3,000 dead, massive towers down, apocalyptic scenes.  And yes, when it comes to terror attacks, the Boston Marathon bombings weren’t pretty either.  But in both cases, those who committed the acts paid for or will pay for their crimes.

In the case of the terrarists -- and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on the planet, giant energy companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell -- you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren. You can take one thing for granted: not a single terrarist will ever go to jail, and yet they certainly knew what they were doing.

Call it irony, if you will, or call it a nightmare, but Big Oil evidently has no qualms about making its next set of profits directly off melting the planet.

It wasn’t that complicated. In recent years, the companies they run have been extracting fossil fuels from the Earth in ever more frenetic and ingenious ways. The burning of those fossil fuels, in turn, has put record amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Only this month, the CO2 level reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. A consensus of scientists has long concluded that the process was warming the world and that, if the average planetary temperature rose more than two degrees Celsius, all sorts of dangers could ensue, including seas rising high enough to inundate coastal cities, increasingly intense heat waves, droughts, floods, ever more extreme storm systems, and so on.

How to Make Staggering Amounts of Money and Do In the Planet

None of this was exactly a mystery. It’s in the scientific literature. NASA scientist James Hansen first publicized the reality of global warming to Congress in 1988. It took a while -- thanks in part to the terrarists -- but the news of what was happening increasingly made it into the mainstream. Anybody could learn about it.

Those who run the giant energy corporations knew perfectly well what was going on and could, of course, have read about it in the papers like the rest of us. And what did they do? They put their money into funding think tanks, politicians, foundations, and activists intent on emphasizing “doubts” about the science (since it couldn’t actually be refuted); they and their allies energetically promoted what came to be known as climate denialism. Then they sent their agents and lobbyists and money into the political system to ensure that their plundering ways would not be interfered with. And in the meantime, they redoubled their efforts to get ever tougher and sometimes “dirtier” energy out of the ground in ever tougher and dirtier ways.

The peak oil people hadn’t been wrong when they suggested years ago that we would soon hit a limit in oil production from which decline would follow.  The problem was that they were focused on traditional or “conventional” liquid oil reserves obtained from large reservoirs in easy-to-reach locations on land or near to shore.  Since then, the big energy companies have invested a remarkable amount of time, money, and (if I can use that word) energy in the development of techniques that would allow them to recover previously unrecoverable reserves (sometimes by processes that themselves burn striking amounts of fossil fuels): fracking, deep-water drilling, and tar-sands production, among others.

They also began to go after huge deposits of what energy expert Michael Klare calls “extreme” or “tough” energy -- oil and natural gas that can only be acquired through the application of extreme force or that requires extensive chemical treatment to be usable as a fuel.  In many cases, moreover, the supplies being acquired like heavy oil and tar sands are more carbon-rich than other fuels and emit more greenhouse gases when consumed.  These companies have even begun using climate change itself -- in the form of a melting Arctic -- to exploit enormous and previously unreachable energy supplies.  With the imprimatur of the Obama administration, Royal Dutch Shell, for example, has been preparing to test out possible drilling techniques in the treacherous waters off Alaska.

Call it irony, if you will, or call it a nightmare, but Big Oil evidently has no qualms about making its next set of profits directly off melting the planet.  Its top executives continue to plan their futures (and so ours), knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life comfortable for humanity.

Their prior knowledge of the damage they are doing is what should make this a criminal activity.  And there are corporate precedents for this, even if on a smaller scale.  The lead industry, the asbestos industry, and the tobacco companies all knew the dangers of their products, made efforts to suppress the information or instill doubt about it even as they promoted the glories of what they made, and went right on producing and selling while others suffered and died.

And here’s another similarity: with all three industries, the negative results conveniently arrived years, sometimes decades, after exposure and so were hard to connect to it.  Each of these industries knew that the relationship existed.  Each used that time-disconnect as protection.  One difference: if you were a tobacco, lead, or asbestos exec, you might be able to ensure that your children and grandchildren weren’t exposed to your product.  In the long run, that’s not a choice when it comes to fossil fuels and CO2, as we all live on the same planet (though it's also true that the well-off in the temperate zones are unlikely to be the first to suffer).

If Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 plane hijackings or the Tsarnaev brothers’ homemade bombs constitute terror attacks, why shouldn’t what the energy companies are doing fall into a similar category (even if on a scale that leaves those events in the dust)?  And if so, then where is the national security state when we really need it? Shouldn’t its job be to safeguard us from terrarists and terracide as well as terrorists and their destructive plots?

The Alternatives That Weren’t

It didn’t have to be this way.

On July 15, 1979, at a time when gas lines, sometimes blocks long, were a disturbing fixture of American life, President Jimmy Carter spoke directly to the American people on television for 32 minutes, calling for a concerted effort to end the country’s oil dependence on the Middle East.  “To give us energy security,” he announced,

    “I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun... Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war.  Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20% of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

It’s true that, at a time when the science of climate change was in its infancy, Carter wouldn’t have known about the possibility of an overheating world, and his vision of “alternative energy” wasn’t exactly a fossil-fuel-free one.  Even then, shades of today or possibly tomorrow, he was talking about having “more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias.”  Still, it was a remarkably forward-looking speech.

Had we invested massively in alternative energy R&D back then, who knows where we might be today?  Instead, the media dubbed it the “malaise speech,” though the president never actually used that word, speaking instead of an American “crisis of confidence.”  While the initial public reaction seemed positive, it didn’t last long.  In the end, the president's energy proposals were essentially laughed out of the room and ignored for decades.

As a symbolic gesture, Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the White House.  (“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people: harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”)  As it turned out, “a road not taken” was the accurate description.  On entering the Oval Office in 1981, Ronald Reagan caught the mood of the era perfectly.  One of his first acts was to order the removal of those panels and none were reinstalled for three decades, until Barack Obama was president.

Carter would, in fact, make his mark on U.S. energy policy, just not quite in the way he had imagined.  Six months later, on January 23, 1980, in his last State of the Union Address, he would proclaim what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine: “Let our position be absolutely clear,” he said. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

No one would laugh him out of the room for that.  Instead, the Pentagon would fatefully begin organizing itself to protect U.S. (and oil) interests in the Persian Gulf on a new scale and America’s oil wars would follow soon enough.  Not long after that address, it would start building up a Rapid Deployment Force in the Gulf that would in the end become U.S. Central Command.  More than three decades later, ironies abound: thanks in part to those oil wars, whole swaths of the energy-rich Middle East are in crisis, if not chaos, while the big energy companies have put time and money into a staggeringly fossil-fuel version of Carter’s “alternative” North America.  They’ve focused on shale oil, and on shale gas as well, and with new production methods, they are reputedly on the brink of turning the United States into a “new Saudi Arabia.”

If true, this would be the worst, not the best, of news.  In a world where what used to pass for good news increasingly guarantees a nightmarish future, energy “independence” of this sort means the extraction of ever more extreme energy, ever more carbon dioxide heading skyward, and ever more planetary damage in our collective future.  This was not the only path available to us, or even to Big Oil.

With their staggering profits, they could have decided anywhere along the line that the future they were ensuring was beyond dangerous.  They could themselves have led the way with massive investments in genuine alternative energies (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, algal, and who knows what else), instead of the exceedingly small-scale ones they made, often for publicity purposes.  They could have backed a widespread effort to search for other ways that might, in the decades to come, have offered something close to the energy levels fossil fuels now give us.  They could have worked to keep the extreme-energy reserves that turn out to be surprisingly commonplace deep in the Earth.

And we might have had a different world (from which, by the way, they would undoubtedly have profited handsomely).  Instead, what we’ve got is the equivalent of a tobacco company situation, but on a planetary scale.  To complete the analogy, imagine for a moment that they were planning to produce even more prodigious quantities not of fossil fuels but of cigarettes, knowing what damage they would do to our health.  Then imagine that, without exception, everyone on Earth was forced to smoke several packs of them a day.

If that isn’t a terrorist -- or terrarist -- attack of an almost unimaginable sort, what is?  If the oil execs aren’t terrarists, then who is?  And if that doesn’t make the big energy companies criminal enterprises, then how would you define that term?

To destroy our planet with malice aforethought, with only the most immediate profits on the brain, with only your own comfort and wellbeing (and those of your shareholders) in mind: Isn’t that the ultimate crime? Isn’t that terracide?

[RojoLeón]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/business/insurers-stray-from-the-conservative-line-on-climate-change.html?ref=earth&_r=0

For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change

If there were one American industry that would be particularly worried about climate change it would have to be insurance, right?

From Hurricane Sandy’s devastating blow to the Northeast to the protracted drought that hit the Midwest Corn Belt, natural catastrophes across the United States pounded insurers last year, generating $35 billion in privately insured property losses, $11 billion more than the average over the last decade.

And the industry expects the situation will get worse. “Numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the U.S. East Coast in the long term,” said Peter Höppe, who heads Geo Risks Research at the reinsurance giant Munich Re. “The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge.” Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming.

“Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,” Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told me last week. “It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.”

Yet when I asked Mr. Nutter what the American insurance industry was doing to combat global warming, his answer was surprising: nothing much. “The industry has really not been engaged in advocacy related to carbon taxes or proposals addressing carbon,” he said. While some big European reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re support efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, “in the United States the household names really have not engaged at all.” Instead, the focus of insurers’ advocacy efforts is zoning rules and disaster mitigation.

Last week, scientists announced that the concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached 400 parts per million — its highest level in at least three million years, before humans appeared on the scene. Back then, mastodons roamed the earth, the polar ice caps were smaller and the sea level was as much as 60 to 80 feet higher.

The milestone puts the earth nearer a point of no return, many scientists think, when vast, disruptive climate change is baked into our future. Pietr P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told my colleague Justin Gillis: “It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem.” And it raises a perplexing question: why hasn’t corporate America done more to sway its allies in the Republican Party to try to avert a disaster that would clearly be devastating to its own interests?

Mr. Nutter argues that the insurance industry’s reluctance is born of hesitation to become embroiled in controversies over energy policy. But perhaps its executives simply don’t feel so vulnerable. Like farmers, who are largely protected from the ravages of climate change by government-financed crop insurance, insurers also have less to fear than it might at first appear.

The federal government covers flood insurance, among the riskiest kind in this time of crazy weather. And insurers can raise premiums or even drop coverage to adjust to higher risks. Indeed, despite Sandy and drought, property and casualty insurance in the United States was more profitable in 2012 than in 2011, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.

But the industry’s analysis of the risks it faces is evolving. One sign of that is how some top American insurers responded to a billboard taken out by the conservative Heartland Institute, a prominent climate change denier that has received support from the insurance industry.

The billboard had a picture of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who asked: “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”

Concerned about global warming and angry to be equated with a murderous psychopath, insurance companies like Allied World, Renaissance Re, State Farm and XL Group dropped their support for Heartland.

Even more telling, Eli Lehrer, a Heartland vice president who at the time led an insurance-financed project, left the group and helped start the R Street Institute, a standard conservative organization in all respects but one: it believes in climate change and supports a carbon tax to combat it. And it is financed largely with insurance industry money.

Mr. Lehrer points out that a carbon tax fits conservative orthodoxy. It is a broad and flat tax, whose revenue can be used to do away with the corporate income tax — a favorite target of the right. It provides a market-friendly signal, forcing polluters to bear the cost imposed on the rest of us and encouraging them to pollute less. And it is much preferable to a parade of new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We are having a debate on the right about a carbon tax for the first time in a long time,” Mr. Lehrer said.

Bob Inglis, formerly a Republican congressman from South Carolina who lost his seat in the 2010 primary to a Tea Party-supported challenger, is another member of this budding coalition. Before he left Congress, he proposed a revenue-neutral bill to create a carbon tax and cut payroll taxes.

Changing the political economy of a carbon tax remains an uphill slog especially in a stagnant economy. But Mr. Inglis notices a thaw. “The best way to do this is in the context of a grand bargain on tax reform,” he said. “It could happen in 2015 or 2016, but probably not before.”

He lists a dozen Republicans in the House and eight in the Senate who would be open to legislation to help avert climate change. He notes that Exelon, the gas and electricity giant, is sympathetic to his efforts — perhaps not least because a carbon tax would give an edge to gas over its dirtier rival, coal. Exxon, too, has also said a carbon tax would be the most effective way to reduce emissions. So why hasn’t the insurance industry come on board?

Robert Muir-Wood is the chief research officer of Risk Management Solutions, one of two main companies the insurance industry relies on to crunch data and model future risks. He argues that insurers haven’t changed their tune because — with the exception of 2004 and 2005, when a string of hurricanes from Ivan to Katrina caused damage worth more than $200 billion — they haven’t yet experienced hefty, sustained losses attributable to climate change.

“Insurers were ready to sign up to all sorts of actions against climate change,” Mr. Muir-Wood told me from his office in London. Then the weather calmed down.

Still, Mr. Muir-Wood notes that the insurance industry faces a different sort of risk: political action. “That is the biggest threat,” he said. When insurers canceled policies and raised premiums in Florida in 2006, politicians jumped on them. “Insurers in Florida,” he said, “became Public Enemy No. 1.”

And that’s the best hope for those concerned about climate change: that global warming isn’t just devastating for society, but also bad for business.

[noggin the ngog]

Hi Guys,

Bio, I can tell you are a committed and sincere individual and I respect you for it. Briefly,

.... First of all, models project so-called hiatus periods........

Only with post hoc adjustments to fit in with actual real world observations as pointed out by Derek. There was never a mention of this in earlier models.

......They were trying to solve the problem of observed energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere with the slower rate of warming from 2001 to 2009........

i.e. to rationalise the incorrect models with observations.

The graphs you attach are noteworthy but I would point out three things. 1. "Adjusted" Data in the title. 2. Look at the y axis scale and compare it with  the day/night/seasonal variations. 3. x axis going out to 2100.

There is not the time to go into the detailed thermodynamics of energy transfer and the logarithmic nature of the CO₂ effect but its effect is of an ever decreasing magnitude with increasing concentration.


Rojo
..............I asked you to consider the people who are singing in the choir alongside you:..........

I would ask you to consider the same:

Prince Phillip (WWF Founder), his son Charlie boy a well known eco-mentalist, David Mayer de Rothschild, Frank Zacharias Robin "Zac" Goldsmith, the Rockefellar foundation, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs
(http://www.philosophical-investigations.org/CO2_Emissions_Trading) to name a few. Great Socialists one and all,


..............Even if climate science was a hoax.........

Have you ever read Steve Keen on the august "science" of economics? How Nobel prize gaining economics can purport to be a science when it does not consider who makes money and where it comes from exemplifies how pseudo science can take hold.

I respect your arguments and held similar views myself as someone who my kids call an aging hippie of the sixties.

However, I now find myself asking who is gaining and who is losing in the current debate. Multinationals and their high priests of climate change in Institutes of Climate Change "Science" are certainly gaining. The average Joe is losing big time. Running hot water, the means to heat your home and have independent travel are fast becoming a luxury item only for the rich.

We are currently discussing possible CAGW effects which may happen in the next 100-200 years. Presently we have: Fees for higher education; Privatisation of the NHS; The dying being asked to prove they can not work; People being taxed for having a spare room; The biggest reduction of living standards in two generations; The extension of retirement age; An increasing gap between rich and poor; Countries having elected politicians replaced by nominated bankers; Illegal wars in foreign countries: It just goes on and on. Classic con trick. Look over here while I pick your pockets.

To use the Insurance Industry  as a validation of Climate Change has to be the richest irony. Let's put these Shysters on the liof multinational parasites who aim to gain from the CAGW scam.

If there was a real threat we would already be in a hydrogen economy, nuclear electricity and serious development of Thorium. We would certainly not be pissing round tinkering with the present system.

At the end of the day global temperature is not rising and has not for almost 20 years. We are now told that we now have to wait 20, 40, 80,100 years for scripture to be fulfilled.  Goodness knows what the human condition will be then after we have given up the advances our forefathers made.

Derek, I like your scientific thinking. Cosmic rays may be a factor. Let's keep a watch on it during the forthcoming cooling period.

Back to Lurking.

[Bioluminescence]

Hi Guys,

Bio, I can tell you are a committed and sincere individual and I respect you for it. Briefly,

.... First of all, models project so-called hiatus periods........

Only with post hoc adjustments to fit in with actual real world observations as pointed out by Derek. There was never a mention of this in earlier models.

......They were trying to solve the problem of observed energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere with the slower rate of warming from 2001 to 2009........

i.e. to rationalise the incorrect models with observations.

The graphs you attach are noteworthy but I would point out three things. 1. "Adjusted" Data in the title. 2. Look at the y axis scale and compare it with  the day/night/seasonal variations. 3. x axis going out to 2100.

There is not the time to go into the detailed thermodynamics of energy transfer and the logarithmic nature of the CO₂ effect but its effect is of an ever decreasing magnitude with increasing concentration.

Actually the first graph I put up shows hiatus periods happening in the future. And again, you insist on evaluating models on short timescales - why?

As I've already pointed out several times, models can't predict exactly when natural variability is going to affect temperatures on short timescales, which means they have to make assumptions. Once the data is in, they can go back and enter tha actual data for a period of time, enabling them to see whether their understanding of various factors is correct. There's nothing dodgy about it, as you seem to be implying.

Yes, the graph is for adjusted data since they have removed the effect of natural variability to show that the warming trend goes on unchanged. I explained that when I posted the graph. Natural factors should have caused cooling over Recent years so why Have temperatures risen? I'm not sure what you mean with your second point. And the first graph is a projection of temperatures, that's why it goes up to 2100.

Yes, the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, this doesn't mean it's having little or no effect. You say we should look at the data - well the data tells us there is still an energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, consistent with an enhanced greenhouse effect. Sea level is still rising, ice is still melting, oceans are still accumulating heat, etc. Why are you ignoring all of this? And focusing on a short period of surface temperatures, which are considerably affected by natural variability? You're missing a large part of the overall picture and I'm intrigued as to why you would think that you can reject a whole body of evidence based on an incorrect understanding of climate projections on short timescales and ignore all the data that shows the rate of warming is unchanged and the factors that explain the non-unexpected slowdown in surface temperatures.

[Bioluminescence]

A recent paper on CLOUD and the possible role of cosmic rays on current climate change:

The problem of the contribution of cosmic rays to climate change is a continuing one and one of importance. In principle, at least, the recent results from the CLOUD project at CERN provide information about the role of ionizing particles in ’sensitizing’ atmospheric aerosols which might, later, give rise to cloud droplets. Our analysis shows that, although important in cloud physics the results do not lead to the conclusion that cosmic rays affect atmospheric clouds significantly, at least if H2SO4 is the dominant source of aerosols in the atmosphere. An analysis of the very recent studies of stratospheric aerosol changes following a giant solar energetic particles event shows a similar negligible effect. Recent measurements of the cosmic ray intensity show that a former decrease with time has been reversed. Thus, even if cosmic rays enhanced cloud production, there would be a small global cooling, not warming.

[CornerFlag]

"Has man's dominion been good for the planet?" on BBC One's The Big Questions.

In a word, no.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

"Has man's dominion been good for the planet?" on BBC One's The Big Questions.

In a word, no.

What does 'good for the planet' mean though? Man has been around for tens of thousands of years. Before that there were about 4 billion years where he wasn't. I wouldn't expect mankind to be around in, say, 20,000 years and the predicted life of the Earth is more than 5 billion years. In a million years it'll be like we were never here and something else will have toddled along, died and.. repeat.

So. Overall mans impact on the Earth will be pretty much nothing.

[ChaChaMooMoo]

Central Europe on alert for flooding

Homes have been evacuated across southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland as rivers reach dangerously high levels.

The Czech capital Prague is on high alert as authorities fear a repeat of the catastrophic floods of August 2002.

The River Vltava has inundated towns and villages upstream of the capital, and one person is known to have died.

The German cities of Passau and Rosenheim have declared a state of emergency.

Authorities in Passau, which lies at the confluence of three rivers in Bavaria, say they expect the Danube to reach 10.5m by Sunday evening and have requested help from the German army.

The BBC's correspondent in Prague says firemen have been putting up metal flood barriers and volunteers filling sandbags as the Czech capital prepares for a swell of floodwater.

Prime Minister Petr Necas has called a special cabinet session to co-ordinate the emergency response.

Cottage collapse
The woman who died in the Czech Republic was killed when her cottage collapsed. Two more people are missing after their raft overturned on a swollen river.

At least four people have died or are missing due to the floods in Germany and Switzerland in recent days, according to the Associated Press.

Bavaria's flood alert service warns that the forecast of continuing heavy rain is likely to worsen the flooding affecting the Danube and the Inn, among other rivers in the area.

The Munich-based newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports that rivers in Saxony and Baden-Wuerttemberg, as well as in Bavaria, have burst their banks.

Bavaria's premier, Horst Seehofer, has discussed the floods with Chancellor Angela Merkel and has called a crisis meeting for Sunday afternoon, the paper reports.

In the Austrian city of Salzburg a man was found dead after being swept away as he worked on flood defences.

Two further people are missing in the Salzburg area, according to the Salzburger Nachrichten.

The Austrian army was called in to help civil authorities in the settlement of Taxenbach, south of Salzburg.

[RojoLeón]

What does 'good for the planet' mean though? Man has been around for tens of thousands of years. Before that there were about 4 billion years where he wasn't. I wouldn't expect mankind to be around in, say, 20,000 years and the predicted life of the Earth is more than 5 billion years. In a million years it'll be like we were never here and something else will have toddled along, died and.. repeat.

So. Overall mans impact on the Earth will be pretty much nothing.

What do Andy's posts mean though? Andy has been around for tens of thousands of posts. Before that there were about 4 billion posts where he wasn't. i wouldn't expect Andy to be around in, say, 20,000 posts and the predicted life of rawk is more than 5 billion posts. In a million posts, it'll be like Andy were never here and someone else will have toddled along, posted and.. repeat.

So. Overall Andy's impact on the rawk will be pretty much nothing 

[RojoLeón]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-turner-climate-change-20130602,0,6053461.story

The climate change guilt trip
The battle against global warming should not be about judging people's every choice.

A friend recently returned from a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada. His eyes shone as he described the opalescent sky, the vitality of wildlife in spring and the fun he'd had playing with his two young daughters during the mellow evenings. It had been a really good trip, an experience to treasure, he said.

I casually asked how long it took to get there. "Oh, it wasn't too bad," he said, and then caught himself, as if he'd said something wrong. "But we took the minivan this time, which I suppose means we weren't so in tune with nature after all."

I felt slightly hurt. I am an environmentalist — I work for Greenpeace. Did he think that makes me some moral arbiter of fun, sternly passing judgment on those who ignore the perils of climate change to enjoy a weekend in the mountains?

Of course, it wasn't really about me. What my friend expressed was climate guilt, a feeling that many of us who care about environmental issues experience every day. I am not immune. We feel guilty about driving cars and watching TV and turning on lights, as if that makes us personally responsible for this gigantic threat that looms over us.

For years, caring governments and thoughtful corporations have communicated the idea that we're all in this together, that if we each just do our bit we can solve this global warming mess. Duke Energy, a utility company that depends heavily on coal, points out that "saving the environment can be as easy as changing a light bulb." It's a gentle, brotherly tone. But there's something in the subtext here too — a warning: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

In economics this would be called a barrier to entry, an obstacle that makes it difficult to gain access to a given market. In this case, rather than economic, the barrier is philosophical. If you aren't taking mass transit, you have no right to oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic. Until you've cleaned up your act entirely, you're not entitled to criticize the major oil companies for cashing in our children's future.

Whether this "guilt barrier" is deliberately constructed or just innate to our psyches, it's being exploited by the fossil fuel cartel. Its members are content to have us feel guilty, particularly if it contributes to a sense of helplessness. Where once companies such as Exxon Mobil denied that their products were causing dangerous levels of pollution, now they claim it is impossible to switch from them. "Look at your life," this thinking goes. "You're up to your neck in it. You really want us to turn off the tap?"

This accusation is based on a false premise: that all alternatives are equally accessible to consumers, and we're all happily choosing fossil fuels. That's simply not true, and nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the oil industry's greatest threat: the electric car.

Despite encouraging news that the Toyota Prius has become the No. 1 selling car in California, fully electric vehicles remain out of financial reach for all but the most affluent families. And like most of America, our state lacks the charging infrastructure to support many such cars anyway. More barriers to entry.

Whatever my friend might personally think about climate change and air pollution, he has to stick to a budget that will support his whole family. Nor will he risk stranding them all along I-5. His "choice" of a minivan is in fact no choice at all. He's left feeling disempowered, implicated and hypocritical. Any desire to act is supplanted by resignation. But whose fault is it?

Oil companies have made up the most powerful industry on Earth for the last 50 years. They have consistently lobbied against fuel efficiency standards. They've fought any taxes on the pollutants we must breathe. They've sneered at electric vehicles and insisted on a market so rigged that only one technology could ever win out anyway. They indefensibly refuse to pay for the carbon their products — though they would say "your cars" — spew into the atmosphere.

Maybe it's time for us to remove the guilt. Yes, I drive a car that runs on gasoline. I fly for work when necessary and occasionally for vacation. But doing these things is not the same as admitting they are inevitable. Five years ago I flew more; now I use Skype. Bike lanes have been newly painted in my neighborhood, so I cycle to the store. In a couple of years, electric cars might come into my price range. In the meantime, I refuse to feel guilty.

In the battle against climate change, we should not be waging guilt trips on one another. Rather, we should take the fight to those who use our sense of personal responsibility against us. Climate change is a problem, and we must fix it. But it's certainly not our fault.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

What do Andy's posts mean though? Andy has been around for tens of thousands of posts. Before that there were about 4 billion posts where he wasn't. i wouldn't expect Andy to be around in, say, 20,000 posts and the predicted life of rawk is more than 5 billion posts. In a million posts, it'll be like Andy were never here and someone else will have toddled along, posted and.. repeat.

So. Overall Andy's impact on the rawk will be pretty much nothing 

[RojoLeón]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/pacific-ocean-warming-15-times-faster-than-ever-before-8916297.html

Pacific Ocean 'warming 15 times faster than ever before'

Study adds weight to the theory that recent global warming 'pause' is down to heat absorbed by ocean depths

Deeper regions of the Pacific Ocean are warming 15 times faster now compared to previous warming phases over the past 10,000 years, a study has found.

The findings lend further weight to the idea that the recent “pause” in global surface temperatures may be due to large amounts of heat in the atmosphere being absorbed by the deep ocean, scientists said.

The study used indirect, “proxy” temperature readings estimated from the chemical makeup of the shells of tiny marine creatures which had been washed from the middle depths of the Pacific into seabed sediments that had built up off Indonesia.

These showed a gradual long-term cooling of the Pacific Ocean over thousands of years at depths of between 1,500 and 3,000 feet, until they started to rise slightly at the start of the Medieval Warm Period in northern Europe around 1100AD.

Temperatures then fell again with the rate of cooling increasing during the so-called Little Ice Age of the 17 and 18 Centuries, when “frost fairs” were held regularly on the frozen River Thames, the study found.

However, the temperature of the deeper Pacific Ocean over the past 60 years of direct thermometer readings has risen 15 times faster than they did during the warming cycles of the past 10,000 years, based on proxy measurements, said Braddock Linsley, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York.

“Our work showed that intermediate waters in the Pacific had been cooling steadily from about 10,000 years ago. This places the recent warming of the Pacific intermediate waters in temporal context. The trend has now reversed in a big way and the deep ocean is warming,” Dr Linsley said.

“We’re experimenting by putting all this heat in the ocean without quite knowing how it’s going to come back out and affect the climate. It’s not so much the magnitude of the change, but the rate of change,” he said.

The study, published in the journal Science, is the latest to suggest that huge amounts of heat are being absorbed by the deep ocean. A previous study for instance found that changes to the cold Pacific current, called La Nina, may have resulted in the absorption of excess heat from the atmosphere.

Although global surface temperatures from land-based stations show that the world is warmer now than for thousands of years, the rate of increase has levelled off over the past 15 years or so, leading climate sceptics to question the link between global warming and carbon dioxide emissions, which have continued to increase during the same period.

The oceans and atmosphere are intimately related to one another, exchanging gases as well as heat, and heat energy can be transported to deep layers which can store vast amounts of heat for long periods of time.

One recent estimate for instance suggested that the heat being absorbed by the deep ocean is equivalent to the power generated by 150 billion electric kettles.

Yair Rosenthal of Rutgers University in New Jersey, who led the latest study, said that the findings indicate that the deep ocean may be storing far bigger quantities of heat than previous estimates had suggested.

“We may have underestimated the efficiency of the oceans as a storehouse for heat and energy. It may buy us some time, but how much time, I don’t really know, to come to terms with climate change. But it’s not going to stop climate change,” Professor Rosenthal said.

The temperatures of the Pacific over the past 10,000 were estimated from levels of magnesium and calcium in the shells of Hyalinea balthica, a one-celled organism that gets buried in the seabed sediments off Indonesia as water flows from the middle layers of the Pacific Ocean.

Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist with the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said that global surface temperatures are unlikely to go down for any length of time and are more likely to start to rise again.

“With global warming you don’t see a gradual warming form one year to the next. It’s more like a staircase. You trot along with nothing much happening for 10 years and then suddenly you have a jump and things never go back to the previous level again,” Dr Trenberth said.

Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Columbia University, said: “Surface temperature is only one indicator of climate change. Looking at the total energy stored by the climate system or multiple indicators – glacier melting, water vapour in the atmosphere, snow cover and so on – may be more useful than looking at surface temperature alone.”

[Weescotty]

So if the past 15 (actually closer to 17) years hiatus is due to the oceans absorbing heat, why wasn't it doing this before then?

Can we really measure the GLOBAL ocean temp to 1/100ths of a degree?

60 years - really?
Argos has been around since 2003 (ish), prior to that it was thermometers in buckets (not very accurate and definitely not to within 1/100th of a degree, probably not even to within 1/10th degree.) and very few of them were at depths > 700m.

MWP - Has always been claimed by Mann, Trenberth etc that the MWP was a peculiarly Northern hemisphere at the MOST event. Yet they are now saying that tiny wee creatures washed up in Indonesia (majority South of the Equator) correlate to the MWP.
Are we now looking at the MWP being a GLOBAL event, or will they claim the tiny wee creatures came from Europe and entered Indo illegally?

Very much a theory, now lets see them PROVE it.

[RojoLeón]

No, dude - they present a case, backed up with evidence and supporting data, form a hypothesis and present their findings for peer review.

It is called science.

They have proved their theory - you don't think so?

Prove them wrong - go hog wild proving them erroneous - you will be a hero to right wing politicians, libertard fuckmumps, conspiraloons and free market capitalists the world over. It'll make you famous and rich. What's stopping you - if its all so obvious why has the entire denierscape shown itself bereft of published, peer reviewed studies showing the consensus of the entire scientific community to be in error? 

[Weescotty]

"peer reviewed studies showing the consensus of the entire scientific community to be in error? "

The claim of 97% support Global Warming, Climate Change, Disruptive Climate Change (or whatever the hell the next incarnation will be) has been well and truly dissected to death and found wanting.

Just a few simple questions....

1) Why wasn't the heat going into the oceans PRIOR to the current hiatus, and why the change?
2) Are we now saying the MWP was global?
3) How is the heat getting from the upper layers to the lower layers without doing much to near surface layers?

Slight edit to change Where to Why in Q1

[RojoLeón]

Found wanting what? And when?

In case you where wondering, science requires evidence - show me where it has been dissected to death (by actual scientists)

[Weescotty]

Found wanting what? And when?

In case you where wondering, science requires evidence - show me where it has been dissected to death (by actual scientists)

I should have been more clear -
I was referring to your "ENTIRE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY" statement.
The 97-98% often cited figure is based on a subset (75 out of 77) of the original survey and not the actual number of respondents to the survey. (roughly 3500)
Either way its not the entire scientific community.

Peer reviewed - Yup sure, if you are not on Mann's or Trenberth's hit list of stopping your paper getting to peer review (leaked emails from Climategate)

Interestingly having re-read your original post...
Kevin Trenberth and his 'staircase' - Isn't this the very thing that us skeptics are always being shot down for i.e. viewing it as a staircase?

Still haven't answered -
1) Why wasn't the heat going into the oceans PRIOR to the current hiatus, and why the change?
2) Are we now saying the MWP was global?
3) How is the heat getting from the upper layers to the lower layers without doing much to near surface layers?

[edit] Just to clarify -
From the Nuccitelli paper they are claiming the oceans temps have increased by the equivalent of 0.06C over 45 years or so.
Each Argo buoy has to measure approx 300,000 cubic metres of ocean to within 0.01C (yet they are only capable AT BEST of measuring to within 0.1C)
HOW
Previous methods of temp measurement prior to Argo - Thermometers in buckets dropped off ships, or thermometers 'fired' into the ocean.
You think they are even as reliable as 0.1C?

Then this new claim is by using INDIRECT PROXIES!

Sorry but for me it doesn't add up.

[Bioluminescence]

I should have been more clear -
I was referring to your "ENTIRE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY" statement.
The 97-98% often cited figure is based on a subset (75 out of 77) of the original survey and not the actual number of respondents to the survey. (roughly 3500)
Either way its not the entire scientific community.

Peer reviewed - Yup sure, if you are not on Mann's or Trenberth's hit list of stopping your paper getting to peer review (leaked emails from Climategate)

Interestingly having re-read your original post...
Kevin Trenberth and his 'staircase' - Isn't this the very thing that us skeptics are always being shot down for i.e. viewing it as a staircase?

Still haven't answered -
1) Why wasn't the heat going into the oceans PRIOR to the current hiatus, and why the change?
2) Are we now saying the MWP was global?
3) How is the heat getting from the upper layers to the lower layers without doing much to near surface layers?

[edit] Just to clarify -
From the Nuccitelli paper they are claiming the oceans temps have increased by the equivalent of 0.06C over 45 years or so.
Each Argo buoy has to measure approx 300,000 cubic metres of ocean to within 0.01C (yet they are only capable AT BEST of measuring to within 0.1C)
HOW
Previous methods of temp measurement prior to Argo - Thermometers in buckets dropped off ships, or thermometers 'fired' into the ocean.
You think they are even as reliable as 0.1C?

Then this new claim is by using INDIRECT PROXIES!

Sorry but for me it doesn't add up.

No, the 97% figure is based on several papers now (Doran and Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al. (2010) and Cook et al. (2013)). Different groups using different methodologies all reaching the same figure, while on the other hand contrarians have failed to produce a single paper showing a different figure. So it's back to conspiracy theories I guess, claiming that pal review means contrarians don't get their papers published. The problem here is that the likes of Scafetta, Soon, Baliunas, Spencer, Lindzen, Pielke, Michaels and others have all published articles. so again the evidence doesn't support the claims.

As for your questions:

1. It was, just at a lower rate since it takes time for the heat to be transported to lower depths.

2. No. If you want to state that the MWP was global, you need global coverage. Research suggests that large areas (central Asia, tropical Pacific) were considerable cooler than the 1961-1990 average. What is lacking is evidence showing that the MWP was a globally synchronised period - what we have is different regions warming at different times, while others cooled. This aside, even if scientists find that the MWP was global, it changes nothing about what's going on now.

3. I'm not quite sure I understand you. The heat is being transported to lower layers, hence the layer from 0 to 700 metres is warming at a slower rate. What would you expect to see?

I don't know where you're getting your figure on Argo accuracy - according to the Argo FAQ page, it is accurate to +/- 0.005ºC.  I guess things don't add up for you because you're not looking at the whole evidence. I'd be interested to know whether you can provide peer-reviewed literature that shows the oceans haven't warmed or didn't warm in the past. I'd also be interested to know where you think the heat from the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere is going, why sea levels are rising and have been rising for decades, and why changes in the cool skin layer, which slow down the rate of heat loss from the oceans to the atmosphere, would not lead to ocean warming.

It seems to me that contrarians are once again attacking measurements while failing to look at the whole body of evidence or produce evidence to suggest measurements are unreliable. It happened with surface stations, when the blogosphere was full of reasons why temperature measurements were unreliable. They failed to understand the work that goes into keeping temperature records and were shown to be wrong. They appear to be following the same pattern now, again without doing any actual work. It would be nice if for once their claims were substantiated with data analysis, rather than vague assertions that measurements are unreliable.

[RojoLeón]

Sorry but for me it doesn't add up.

You have gone to a lot of effort and it's to your credit that you exhaust so much energy in this direction. I would point out the question of things adding up has been answered by the scientific community. That it doesn't for you is on you, but you seem like an enthusiastic sort and will work it out eventually.

Mucho credit to Biolu for her eloquent and patient style of discourse

[SP]

You have gone to a lot of effort and it's to your credit that you exhaust so much energy in this direction. I would point out the question of things adding up has been answered by the scientific community. That it doesn't for you is on you, but you seem like an enthusiastic sort and will work it out eventually.

Mucho credit to Biolu for her eloquent and patient style of discourse

Please don't be so condescending. It really doesn't help you win over people, and just makes thing antagonistic. Feel free to demolish his arguments, but play the ball not the man.

[kesey]

What is everybodys thoughts on the sky being chemtrailed so the sun's rays bounce away from the Earth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8338853.stm

[RojoLeón]

What is everybodys thoughts on the sky being chemtrailed so the sun's rays bounce away from the Earth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8338853.stm

Not a fan myself, at all. Kicking the can down the road doesn't fix anything and merely postpones problems. Also, this shit doesn't do a thing to stop ocean acidification - potentially a more serious climate changer.

It's like the fuckwits who want to use nuclear power to cut carbon emissions - short termist, rinse and repeat stupidity of the nature that got us into this mess.

We need to change up - you know this yourself and have been telling everyone on here about it for years.

'Be the change you want to see', or something like that.

Happy Deepawali! 

[SP]

It feels dangerous messing with an incompletely understood system. My gut feel screams "Cane Toad" .

[kesey]

Nice one Rojo.

Who the fuck gives these people permissio to spray chemicals in the skies? Its mental. Iam not a boffin of any kind but I guess to make the suns rays to bounce of something then that something has to have some sort of metallic substance in.If this is the case then these metallic substance ( possibly alliminuim ) has to fall to the earth. The consequences of this is horrendous. Absolutely horrendous.

So basically this ' proposal ' is an admission that they plan to spray chemicals in the sky. I personally think its been happening for awhile.

[kesey]

Bit if a short winded reply to a topic that deserves more attention but a bit bevvied.

Back tomorrow.

Namaste.

[Bioluminescence]

What is everybodys thoughts on the sky being chemtrailed so the sun's rays bounce away from the Earth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8338853.stm

A recent study has showed that reflecting incoming solar radiation could change precipitation patterns, including the monsoons. I haven't read it and I know the authors used very high CO2 levels, but it kind of supports SP's position. We don't have a complete understanding of complex systems so it's probably not a good idea to mess with them even more. And as Rojo points out it doesn't address the problem of ocean acidification.

Plus I'd like to know who would pay for these things. I doubt that any would be cheap so who's going to fork out all this money?

[Weescotty]

Thanks for the mainly courteous replies....

RE: Argo buoys accuracy.

Agreed EACH INDIVIDUAL buoy has a claimed 0.005C accuracy.
If you think you can accurately measure the global oceans (surface area = 361,000,000 sq/kms) temperature to within 0.005C (to within 0.5C would be stretching it) using 3000 buoys at RANDOM locations, then there's nothing I can say.
The error bars SHOULD be huge! Add in depth and the problem increases.

The idea of spraying crap in the atmosphere - LUNACY.

Ocean acidification -
If anything you can claim they are less alkaline, but they are no where near becoming acidic, but it sure sounds SCARY doesn't it.
I suppose if I fill a cup of coffee with boiling water, once it drops 5C I can claim it is coffee freezification, not that it just less hot.

[SP]

I suppose if I fill a cup of coffee with boiling water, once it drops 5C I can claim it is coffee freezification, not that it just less hot.

To be fair, the justification for freezification is as rigorous as some of your other arguments.

But you are railing against terminology. Whether you cool it freezification or cooling the same underlying cooling effect is still happening. And before being published in peer reviewed literature the data to back up the claim would be published and reviewed too.

[Bioluminescence]

Thanks for the mainly courteous replies....

RE: Argo buoys accuracy.

Agreed EACH INDIVIDUAL buoy has a claimed 0.005C accuracy.
If you think you can accurately measure the global oceans (surface area = 361,000,000 sq/kms) temperature to within 0.005C (to within 0.5C would be stretching it) using 3000 buoys at RANDOM locations, then there's nothing I can say.
The error bars SHOULD be huge! Add in depth and the problem increases.

The idea of spraying crap in the atmosphere - LUNACY.

Ocean acidification -
If anything you can claim they are less alkaline, but they are no where near becoming acidic, but it sure sounds SCARY doesn't it.
I suppose if I fill a cup of coffee with boiling water, once it drops 5C I can claim it is coffee freezification, not that it just less hot.

It seems to me that you are simply assuming 3000 Argo floats aren't sufficient to get an estimate, but where's your evidence? There are different ways to allow you to determine how many observations are needed. The simplest is cross-validation, where you take smaller and smaller random subsets of data and see and which point the global average starts to change significantly. There are more complicated methods, like fitting spherical harmonics to the data. There are ways that could show that 3000 floats aren't sufficient to carry out their task adequately, so where are the papers showing this conclusively? Having a feeling isn't sufficient - you have to demonstrate it.

With regards to ocean acidification, this is just semantics. It's called ocean acidification because of the drop in pH and the changes in fundamental chemical balances. It's not a scare tactic, and if you think there's nothing to worry about, then I suggest you start reading up on the subject. Here's a 2009 comprehensive review which is a good starting place. Focusing on terminology rather than addressing the issues is never going to win you arguments.

Edit - it seems you're actually talking the precision of the Argo data. What makes you think that level of precision is not possible?

[RojoLeón]

Ocean acidification -
If anything you can claim they are less alkaline, but they are no where near becoming acidic, but it sure sounds SCARY doesn't it.
I suppose if I fill a cup of coffee with boiling water, once it drops 5C I can claim it is coffee freezification, not that it just less hot.

I'm going to copy and paste in a reply I gave a while back to a similar sounding statement that seemed to be soundbitery

Oceans aren't "acidifying". They're just becoming less alkali.  There's a huge difference.

So the pH is measurably and predictably (according to simple carbon cycle models) decreasing, exactly in line with the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle



As the proportion of CO2/H2CO3* increases, the pH decreases depending on the buffering capacity of the water - there is enough CO2 to create an imbalance and push the pH below levels that are conducive to healthy phytoplankton population. They are the chief motor in our planets CO2-O2 exchange mechanism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton

Other marine life will be affected due to lowering pH (btw. 'acidification' and lowering pH are effectively the same thing: there are more H+ ions in the water - the chief measure of pH)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

The ANC (acid neutralizing capacity) of the water is decreased by the CO2 imbalance. If you wanted to be picky, you might say that the basicity is decreasing but not necessarily the alkalinity - Total Alkalinity can still be measured at low pH as there will be some concentration of conjugate base ions present in the water. One factor that might dramatically decrease alkalinity is dilution of the seawater by freshwater, such as from melted polar ice caps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkalinity

The big dangers are reduced air quality due to less O2 in atmosphere and that the system is slow moving and hard to stop - big changes to correct the CO2 imbalance may be too late for a lot of people who have illness due to reduced air quality, exacerbated by other pollution factors. O2 concentrations above most industrial cities are much lower than they should be for healthy respiratory function - this will make things much worse.

Another danger is that the oceans create a feedback loop with solar radiation as the ocean region albedo decreases, increasing the amount of 'warming' IR radiation getting to the planet surface. Warmer oceans mean more favorable conditions for things that are not good for current ocean ecology. Warmer planet means higher sea levels, changing weather patterns and less favorable conditions for us.

The big baddie of these scenarios is mass algae kill off - a runaway increase in seawater algae populations, driven by the CO2, which would 'smother' the sea, killing off most life in the water due to catastrophic anaerobic conditions. This would be pretty detrimental to land based life also - mitigating any fears from this scenario, things would have to get pretty challenging to mammalian life on the land surface before the algal bloom delivered the final  blow. 

Seemingly, it is not currently economically feasible for the global power brokers to reign in the industrial society which is the major and minor contributor to this. We will keep burning shit and in increasing quantities. 

Feel free to point out any fallacious chemistry described above - the processes are something I have professional training in and am pretty confident to discuss at a high level

[Dar]

This country been chemtrailed since forever then!

[TepidT2O]

I'm going to copy and paste in a reply I gave a while back to a similar sounding statement that seemed to be soundbitery

Feel free to point out any fallacious chemistry described above - the processes are something I have professional training in and am pretty confident to discuss at a high level

I can confirm that RojoLéon has indeed smashed the chemistry out of the ballpark.

In one way it isn't important whether it's acidity or alkalinity that is changing, because in terms of ecosystems they're screwed either way.

It's very difficult to predict acuractely the effect of CO2 on seawater though, we can predict changes to acidity and alkalinity, but it's probably more important to look at the hydrogen ion activity, and no one really knows how that will be affected in sea water.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-climate-change-20131112,0,6958165.story

Climate change will disrupt not only the natural world but also society, posing risks to the world's economy and the food and water supply and contributing to violent conflict, an international panel of scientists says.

The warnings came in a report drafted by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The 29-page summary, leaked and posted on a blog critical of the panel, has been distributed to governments around the world for review. It could change before it is released in March.

"We see a wide range of impacts that have already occurred ... on people, ecosystems and economies," said Chris Field, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and co-chairman of the group writing the report. "Looking into the future, we see increasing risks that are more pervasive and more severe with greater amounts of climate change."

Field and an IPCC spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the draft. "This is a close-to-final work in progress," Field said.

The report describes a planet in peril as a result of the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution, where glaciers are shrinking and plants and animals have shifted their ranges in response to rising temperatures. As global warming continues through the 21st century, many species will face greater risk of extinction, marine life will shift toward the poles and seawater will grow more acidic, the report says.

By 2100, hundreds of millions of people in coastal areas will be flooded or displaced by rising sea levels. The arid subtropics will have less fresh water, leading to more competition for resources.

The global food supply is also at risk, with yields of wheat, rice, corn and other major crops projected to drop by as much as 2% each decade for the rest of the century, even as demand rises.

Among the other risks forecast in the report: extreme heat waves that will be especially deadly in urban areas, where a growing population will also contend with severe storms, flooding and drought. Rural areas will cope with less drinking and irrigation water and less productive farming.

Global surface temperature has risen about 1.5 degrees since 1880 as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, industrial activity, agriculture and deforestation. Cutting emissions could ease the rate of change, but not until the second half of the century, the report says.

The report "brings this issue home and it shows us why it's important," said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who did not contribute to the assessment. "The reason we care about climate change is because it affects us: It affects our food, our water, our health, our roads, buildings and infrastructure and our natural environment."

Climate change alone isn't the cause of most of the ill effects. Rather, it worsens them by interacting with other factors, such as population growth, urbanization and exploitation of natural resources.

The panel sees the changing climate slowing down economic growth and worsening poverty, hunger and disease.

The report also says climate change increases the risk of violence and civil war.

Some low-lying countries will see their territorial integrity challenged by rising sea levels The shifting of water supply, sea ice and fish stocks across international boundaries has "the potential to increase rivalry among states," the report says.

In one section, the report breaks down the effects on specific regions. Among the greatest risks to North America, for instance, are wildfires, heat-related deaths and coastal flooding. Africa is threatened by water shortages, famine and disease as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift.

The IPCC, created in 1988, has issued five major assessments of the science of climate change, each including a report on its effects. Hundreds of scientists from across the world collect and summarize thousands of peer-reviewed studies to come to a consensus every five or six years.

In September, the panel predicted that the planet will warm between 2.7 degrees and 8.1 degrees if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere double, and that sea levels will rise 10 to 32 inches by century's end. For the first time, the panel also endorsed a limit on the amount of carbon that can be emitted before the temperature rises more than 3.6 degrees and the worst effects of climate change set in.

The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization announced last week that the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere accelerated to a record high in 2012. Carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, was responsible for 80% of the jump, pushing concentrations to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years.

[Bioluminescence]

Interesting new paper on the so-called pause. That should make for interesting conversations with contrarians

Incomplete global coverage is a potential source of bias in global temperature reconstructions if the unsampled regions are not uniformly distributed over the planet's surface. The widely used HadCRUT4 dataset covers on average about 84% of the globe over recent decades, with the unsampled regions being concentrated at the poles and over Africa. Three existing reconstructions with near-global coverage are examined, each suggesting that HadCRUT4 is subject to bias due to its treatment of unobserved regions.

Two alternative approaches for reconstructing global temperatures are explored, one based on an optimal interpolation algorithm and the other a hybrid method incorporating additional information from the satellite temperature record. The methods are validated on the basis of their skill at reconstructing omitted sets of observations. Both methods provide superior results than excluding the unsampled regions, with the hybrid method showing particular skill around the regions where no observations are available.

Temperature trends are compared for the hybrid global temperature reconstruction and the raw HadCRUT4 data. The widely quoted trend since 1997 in the hybrid global reconstruction is two and a half times greater than the corresponding trend in the coverage-biased HadCRUT4 data. Coverage bias causes a cool bias in recent temperatures relative to the late 1990s which increases from around 1998 to the present. Trends starting in 1997 or 1998 are particularly biased with respect to the global trend. The issue is exacerbated by the strong El Niño event of 1997-1998, which also tends to suppress trends starting during those years.

[Weescotty]

Bio - Yup, I was questioning the purported accuracy in respects to the Argo buoys as a whole as opposed to an individual buoy.

Fag packet calculation - the claimed rise in ocean heat content is equivalent to about 2/100ths to 4/100ths of a degree.
I can't see how they can claim to be that accurate.

Approx 14% of the oceans have never been sampled, including a large belt around the Equator.
The buoys pop up at 'random' locations to send their measurements.

RE: The latest paper you linked to.
Interesting...
Let take a dataset that has gaps, and 'infill' it with another dataset that has those gaps themselves 'in filled'. When will they stop torturing the data, it must be squealing in agony by now!

http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/13/uncertainty-in-sst-measurements-and-data-sets/

[RojoLeón]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exposed-the-myth-of-the-global-warming-pause-8945607.html

Failure to record temperature rises in the Arctic explains apparent ‘flatlining’, study finds, undermining sceptics’ argument that climate change has stopped

Scientists can now explain the “pause” in global warming that sceptics have used to bolster their arguments. Sceptics had claimed we have nothing to fear from climate change because it has stopped being a problem.

A new study has found that global temperatures have not flat-lined over the past 15 years, as weather station records have been suggesting, but have in fact continued to rise as fast as previous decades, during which we have seen an unprecedented acceleration in global warming.

The findings will undermine the arguments of leading sceptics, such as the former Chancellor Lord Lawson, who have criticised scientists from the Met Office and other climate organisations for not accepting that global warming has stopped since about 1998.

Two university scientists have found that the “pause” or “hiatus” in global temperatures can be largely explained by a failure of climate researchers to record the dramatic rise in Arctic temperatures over the past decade or more.

When Kevin Cowtan of York University and Robert Way of Ottawa University found a way of estimating Arctic temperatures from satellite readings, the so-called pause effectively disappeared and the global warming signal returned as strong as before.

The paucity of surface-temperature records in the remote and inaccessible Arctic has long been recognised as a problem for global estimates, not least by the Met Office itself.

However, the scale of the Arctic warming highlighted by Mr Cowtan and Mr Way has surprised seasoned climate researchers.

“The problem with the polar areas lacking data coverage has been known for a long time, but I think this study has basically solved it,” said Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

He added: “People will argue about the details, as is normal in science, but I think basically this will hold up to scrutiny.”

[Bioluminescence]

Bio - Yup, I was questioning the purported accuracy in respects to the Argo buoys as a whole as opposed to an individual buoy.

Fag packet calculation - the claimed rise in ocean heat content is equivalent to about 2/100ths to 4/100ths of a degree.
I can't see how they can claim to be that accurate.

Approx 14% of the oceans have never been sampled, including a large belt around the Equator.
The buoys pop up at 'random' locations to send their measurements.

RE: The latest paper you linked to.
Interesting...
Let take a dataset that has gaps, and 'infill' it with another dataset that has those gaps themselves 'in filled'. When will they stop torturing the data, it must be squealing in agony by now!

http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/13/uncertainty-in-sst-measurements-and-data-sets/

I still don't see how you can claim that the error bars should be large. According to the Central Limit Theorem and the Law of Large numbers, increasing the number of data points reduces error estimation. Yet you claim the exact opposite and fail to explain your point quantitatively. So I'll ask again: where is your evidence?

It's worth pointing out again that the overall strength of the findings of climate science is based on multiple lines of evidence converging to paint a consistent image. In the case of ocean heat content, sea-level rises are consistent with warming waters since thermal expansion accounts for about 50% of observed rises. We still have an energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, and the cool skin layer has changed. Therefore we can be pretty confident that the oceans are accumulating heat. There are uncertainties of course, but nothing to justify the claim that measurements are unreliable. There are many scientists out there working hard to ensure the data are as good as possible. There is always room for improvement, but this is not the same as saying the data offer nothing. It would be nice if contrarians put in half the effort scientists do.

As for Judith Curry, both Kevin Cowtan and Robert Way have responded to her blog. Also Curry provides nothing to substantiate her points - where are the analyses that support her claims? And most importantly, is she planning on publishing a paper herself to address her points, or will she hide behind her blog? What this paper should've done is start a discussion on how to solve the problems of incomplete coverage, but all we get is unsubstantiated and uninformed claims that try to dismiss the new findings.

As for torturing the data, beautiful irony since contrarians are very good at distorting everything to create myths that can easily be debunked when looking at the data closely. That's when they're not ignoring the data altogether of course. If you'd taken the time to understand why there is a need to improve the HadCRUT4 dataset, you might not have made such a flippant comment. It's a no-win situation really - contrarians criticise the data for not being good enough, but when someone tries to improve datasets we get sarcastic comments and insinuations that the data are being manipulated to support the "religion".

[Corkboy]

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/NZ9lmXIKZlQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/NZ9lmXIKZlQ</a>