Brrrrr Global Warming

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[dps]

Currently in Girard, Ohio it is 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside with a 10 mph wind.
Wind chill makes it -5 degrees Fahrenheit.

How is the global warming doing where you are at?

David

[Keith Larman]

Just over 80 and so sunny I got sunburned in my southern california backyard.

[Ron Tisdale]

/jealous

Of Keith that is!
B,
R

[Amir Krause]

Around 20c this winter, and for a change it rains a few times a month.

Amir (Israel)

[Shadowfax]

8*F here in SW PA. Wind chills anywhere form 0 to -10 depending on if its blowing or not. Lets get the cold over with and hope for an early spring.

[lbb]

Around me, it's doing a thing called "climate change", which in general has meant more extreme weather. Last summer, prolonged rains caused a total loss of some crops among local farmers. This winter, we're seeing strong and rapid fluctuations in temperature: one day the high temperature will be about 5F with strong winds, two days later it's in the lower 40s, and then back again. That is what the effect of global warming is said to be: more extreme weather, not a simple upwards change in the thermometer outside your window.

[Shadowfax]

Yeah Mary I can see that. Big temp shifts in short periods of time seem more the thing here too rather than warmer or colder then usual. The temps we have today would be normal for us in February. Last week we had days in the 40's. These crazy shifts have been really hard on the horses the past couple of years.

[Keith Larman]

/jealous

Of Keith that is!
B,
R

This is really atypical of us this time of year. Been odd -- we've had some very cold nights recently, had a vicious rain storm, and now our forecast today is in the 70's again. Erratic weather.

[Keith Larman]

Forgot to mention -- Family from Fairbanks Alaska (my Grandfather homesteaded up there in the 1950's so most of my family is still there) have been visiting us off and on over the winter (normal -- few want to be there all winter long). They say the last few years have been no where near as cold up in Fairbanks. Now to me anything under 10 below is freaking cold, but they've been having nothing like the cold they had a decade or two ago. And this has been going on for a few years now. Heck, their 5-day forecast is showing it getting up into possibly above freezing (32F) in the next week. In January in the middle of Alaska. In the dark winter.

[Mike Sigman]

Generally, it gets warmer gradually after an Ice Age and then it starts getting colder as it cycles back into another Ice Age. The original premise of "Global Warming" was that we were see an extraordinary increase in warming and there was even a "hockey stick" graph-prediction to back it up. The alarming level of warming didn't happen, so now we're into some vague idea of "Climate Change", whatever that means. Since everyone knows that climate changes over time (see first sentence), I'm not sure what "Climate Change" means that is important. I suspect there is a little bit of "cognitive disconnect" going on with the sudden change from the term "Global Warming" to "Climate Change", though... sort of like the people who believe strongly that the Aliens will come in flying saucers next Thursday, but when the Aliens don't show up, that makes them even more sure that the Aliens will come. ;)

In terms of "the weather is weirder now than it used to be", the records don't reflect that. I've seen a number of people (in various disciplines) point out that the weather is no 'weirder' now than it's ever been, but people tend to have short memories.

One thing's for sure.... this exponentially increasing number of humans on the planet definitely has a deleterious effect on the planet. It's not good. But the problem is population, not CO2. Let's restrict the amount of CO2 anyone can exhale and maybe we'll solve both problems.

Mike Sigman

[Mark Jakabcsin]

Around me, it's doing a thing called "climate change", which in general has meant more extreme weather. Last summer, prolonged rains caused a total loss of some crops among local farmers. This winter, we're seeing strong and rapid fluctuations in temperature: one day the high temperature will be about 5F with strong winds, two days later it's in the lower 40s, and then back again. That is what the effect of global warming is said to be: more extreme weather, not a simple upwards change in the thermometer outside your window.

LOL. It was called global warming but since the earth is actually on an 11 year cooling trend they needed to come up with a new environmental terrorist moniker. Climate Change. Like that doesn't constantly happen, lol. Remember a few years ago Climate Change was going to pummel the USA with relentless hurricanes. Err, that didn't happen so there were headlines that Climate Change was going to cause fewer hurricanes which was going to devastate ocean life and possible crop life in the Gulf and southeast of the USA. The definitions of the problem change faster than the climate.

Even the BBC is starting to question it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8299079.stm

There has been all sorts of litigation, investigation and ugliness concerning the IPCC, CRU and other lead agencies in the past few months. Unfortunately very little of it is covered by the USA mainstream media. Rigged peer reviews, unwillingness to disclose scientific data, researchers discussing how to avoid disclosing information requested under the Freedom of Information Act, and much, much more. The European papers are doing a much better job of covering this topic. When the American media realizes they can no longer avoid covering this topic it will be a shock to many, even though a tiny bit of digging can uncover all sorts of interesting events going on. In the end the tobacco companies are going to say 'Dang, we didn't even have the balls to hide that much data or make up that much BS.'

Mark J.

[lbb]

LOL. It was called global warming but since the earth is actually on an 11 year cooling trend they needed to come up with a new environmental terrorist moniker.
I call inflammatory thread-killer...not that this thread wasn't headed there from its conception and inception.

[dps]

I was only asking how was the weather where everyone was at.

Currently in Girard, Ohio it is 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside with a 10 mph wind.
Wind chill makes it -5 degrees Fahrenheit.
How is the global warming doing where you are at?


I call inflammatory thread-killer...not that this thread wasn't headed there from its conception and inception.

Only because you are guiding it there Mary.

Around me, it's doing a thing called "climate change", which in general has meant more extreme weather. Last summer, prolonged rains caused a total loss of some crops among local farmers. This winter, we're seeing strong and rapid fluctuations in temperature: one day the high temperature will be about 5F with strong winds, two days later it's in the lower 40s, and then back again. That is what the effect of global warming is said to be: more extreme weather, not a simple upwards change in the thermometer outside your window.

David

[David Orange]

...they've been having nothing like the cold they had a decade or two ago. And this has been going on for a few years now. Heck, their 5-day forecast is showing it getting up into possibly above freezing (32F) in the next week. In January in the middle of Alaska. In the dark winter.

I remember when I was a kid, down here in Alabama, it would get COLD before Thanksgiving and it would stay COLD until about April.

New Year's Day here (3 days ago) was sunny and fine.

Today, it's 20 degrees.

We do still get cold snaps, but most of the winter now is like it used to be in the early fall. Maybe it's just a natural cycle that goes in like 100-year loops, but for the past 30 years or more, our winters have been increasingly mild around here.

Best to you.

David

[Aikibu]

It always amuses me how some folks fight over deck chair placement on the Titanic.

We are harming the Biosphere and you need not worry... The Earth will survive us making life unsustainable for ourselves...and for those of us who believe in James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis (like yours truly) there's really nothing that can be done on a macro scale to stave off the huge population crash that is sure to come when any one Biological "element" grows past the point of being able to sustain itself within it's environment.

Our reliance on fossil fuels will not kill Billions of us just by changing the weather...but our over-reliance on them resulting in the collapse of most human economic life certainly will...

Consider as you read this....

Billions go to bed every night Hungry Thirsty and Broke with no means to take care of themselves or their children.

I am not a pessimist mind you...I am personally doing all I can to make my life sustainable and leave this world better than I found it...but I am only one man. :)

Prepare your children and your children's children for a world vastly more different than the one you were born into.

William Hazen

[Mark Jakabcsin]

The Earth will survive us making life unsustainable for ourselves...and for those of us who believe in James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis (like yours truly) there's really nothing that can be done on a macro scale to stave off the huge population crash that is sure to come when any one Biological "element" grows past the point of being able to sustain itself within it's environment.



The huge population theory is really kinda out of vogue and has been for awhile. Human population is totally controlable via industrialization. Every country that becomes industrialized sees it's population stabilize or even decrease in a few generations. The USA continues to grow because we allow immigration. Japan and some countries in Europe are in trouble as the amount of workers to non-workers continues to shrink at an alarming rate. Most of the U.N. estimates I have read about say the human population will peak around 12-15 billion then slide back to a sustainable 10-12 billion. The faster the entire world is industrialized the sooner the population will stabilize.

Unfortunately the Climate Control/Global Warming policies totally shut down the third world and ensure they will never industrialize and will always live in poverty. The USA is a rich country, we will always get our energy, no matter the cost, but not so for developing nations. And yes we do need to find alternate sources of energy but eco-terrorism will not get us there.

Not to mention the significant racial undertones found in the Climate Control / Global Warming policies. Ugly.

Mark J.

[Thomas Campbell]

those of us who believe in James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis (like yours truly)

Take a look at Peter Ward's Medea hypothesis for another point of view. ;)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227131.400-gaias-evil-twin-is-life-its-own-worst-enemy.html

[Aikibu]

The huge population theory is really kinda out of vogue and has been for awhile. Human population is totally controlable via industrialization. Every country that becomes industrialized sees it's population stabilize or even decrease in a few generations. The USA continues to grow because we allow immigration. Japan and some countries in Europe are in trouble as the amount of workers to non-workers continues to shrink at an alarming rate. Most of the U.N. estimates I have read about say the human population will peak around 12-15 billion then slide back to a sustainable 10-12 billion. The faster the entire world is industrialized the sooner the population will stabilize.

Unfortunately the Climate Control/Global Warming policies totally shut down the third world and ensure they will never industrialize and will always live in poverty. The USA is a rich country, we will always get our energy, no matter the cost, but not so for developing nations. And yes we do need to find alternate sources of energy but eco-terrorism will not get us there.

Not to mention the significant racial undertones found in the Climate Control / Global Warming policies. Ugly.

Mark J.

One fatal flaw in your reasoning Mark... Industrialization on every level is dependent upon oil and other fossil fuels.

http://www.collapsemovie.com/COLLAPSEMOVIE/

Most folks pass him off as a crank or conspiracy theorist but his argument is so convincing and compelling that most have to deny it because to acknowledge any portion of his reasoning would mean a drastic change in the way most people view
the world.

I am not personally a "conspiracy nut" and I found his logic very hard to refute.

William Hazen

[Aikibu]

Take a look at Peter Ward's Medea hypothesis for another point of view. ;)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227131.400-gaias-evil-twin-is-life-its-own-worst-enemy.html

Thanks Thomas for this Great Article and serious food for thought. :)

William Hazen

[Mike Sigman]

Most folks pass him off as a crank or conspiracy theorist but his argument is so convincing and compelling that most have to deny it because to acknowledge any portion of his reasoning would mean a drastic change in the way most people view
the world.

I am not personally a "conspiracy nut" and I found his logic very hard to refute.Fabulous statement! It could've been written by Mark Twain.

BTW... here's a good article to read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/peru-mountain-farmers-winter-cold

[Aikibu]

Fabulous statement! It could've been written by Mark Twain.

BTW... here's a good article to read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/peru-mountain-farmers-winter-cold

Thanks for the article Like I said before more than half the worlds population lives in a constant state of duress due to inadequate resources...

William Hazen

[Mike Sigman]

A good statement early on in the article is "In a world growing ever hotter". Which is simply a deliberate lie by the Guardian, but hey, the Guardian is the bastion of progressivism in the UK. The problem of course is that the world isn't growing hotter.. it's getting measureably colder and the "disappearing" Arctic Ice Pack is growing thicker and thicker (we're not even going to get the ice-free pole this time that the USS Nautilus was able to surface in during the 1950's, at the peak of an earlier warming cycle).

The interesting point is that with a few years of record-breaking cold (despite the CRU guys desperately painting the numbers they gave to the IPCC and hoping to each other that more hot years will come soon), things have gotten worse and worse in the areas that will feel the cold first. The article was about one such group of people. They're not dying from heat... they're dying from cold. The people who think that cold weather is a symptom of heat are the same people who put hot water in their ice trays because they think hot water freezes faster than cold water. Ignorant.

There's stress, though, and a lot of that is simple population pressures. We need to get some countries to follow China's lead in combatting population. Cue Randy Newman's song "Political Science". ;)

M.

[gregstec]

Take a look at Peter Ward's Medea hypothesis for another point of view. ;)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227131.400-gaias-evil-twin-is-life-its-own-worst-enemy.html

So, human life is just a minor (and short) phase in the evolutionary existence of the life entity we call earth - makes sense to me. I have always thought that human life was really just a cancerous form that was slowly eating away at planet earth.

Since that is the natural order of things, no sense in getting too worked up about it - so, let's all just have some fun with the short time we got...:)

Greg

[Buck]

I am going to throw down some words like that Rorschach test for Global Warming- the glaciers are melting thing. Your reactions to these words are scored and interpreted by you, on what ever system you want.

End of the world theorists, this is the definitive one.

Global politics, Euro-hippies have a point.

Inaccurate weather scientist's emails, oops we did it again, no Pulitzer this year.

Mass hysteria, the sky is falling and its the media's fault.

Oh crap there is too many people, damn China.

Economy, let's recycle with the same greed and neglect.

Doomsayers rejoice- E.T. or Jesus you pick which one to save you when the sun dies out, and we all freeze to death. Or when the giant meteor hits earth killing everything on the planet. Or when the next ice age hits, or one of the other hundreds of ways man is going to die out.

Paper or plastic? Neither I will carry my groceries in bags made from hemp which is being grown in poor countries instead of sustainable crops that would wipe out hunger in the country. A hunger that was started as way to kill of the enemy tribe in a war where each side believes in the other religion and is in a struggle for power and religious superiority.

Go Green- Cha Ching $$$$$$$$, Just like wall street and the banks and all that other Ponzi scheming, ‘n thieving, and other pretty bubbles floating around a free market. The green bubble!
------------

[Buck]

Man isn't apart from the earth's ecosystem and it's laws. We play a part no matter what we create or do. We are part of earth's system, we are a part of it's change. It is just as the colliding tectonic plates, volcanic eruptions, fires, and other disastrous forces that shape the earth. We are people. As people, like volcanoes and stuff, we are govern by the greater laws of the planet, and nature, and are a disastrous force. Like over population consuming all the recourses and then dying off. Kind of like bacteria does with the exponential lag and stuff. It consumes and explodes in population and then when there is no more stuff to sustain massive numbers of bacteria, the colony dies. That is just one of the laws we as humans can be susceptible to obey.

The earth is constantly changing. We as humans don't like change, even though we effect it purposely or not we can't change it. Sure we slow down pollution, and other things that are adverse to our planet, like not making so much poopy and pee pee. Reducing our garabage and managing it well. And by not making nasty chemicals to clean our toilets or other unfriendly products that make our lives what they are today. We should. But we haven't it was obvious global leaders couldn't get it together, and then there is the second or third world nation that says they must pollute the earth to survive economically. There is and will be always something. We are at a point in our history where we, as humans, are on a natural course. Just as, land, being over grazed by a over-populated herd of elephants. Or the shift in weather turned a lush tropical paradise to a barren wasteland of sand. Or when tall trees in the jungles or forests block out the sun light from other plants which die or become extinct beneath the forest or jungle canopy. Or when a species of mammals or dinosaurs become extinct all without human invention, but rather the act of mother nature.

Our solar system is barren, we, earth are the oddity. We are the strange wonder, we are life. Life that takes so many interesting and different forms found so far on no other plant we know of. Maybe we are the last, or the first. But, nothing is engineered by God or man, or Mother naturet to live for ever. So we might as well make the best of it while we can, and play nice on the earth while we run our course to change it. But keep in mind we play a disastrous role on this planet that has shaped and will shape the earth. Our purpose is that we do so in order to make way for new life in the future- a theory of mine based on how SH*T happens. If the dinosaurs didn't die out, we wouldn't be here chatting on the internet.

Now am going to finish off that pint of cheap imitation lager I tried to brew myself and watch the news.

[dps]

So what are the temperatures where you are at?

David

[Michael Douglas]

Flippin fr-fr-freezin!
We haven't had such great snow since the 1970s, it's brilliant.
I had to blowtorch the old outside loo yesterday to get the rising water main to unfreeze.
There ain't no human-affected global warming!!!

[Walter Martindale]

I think we hit +30 today in Christchurch...
;-)

[Aikibu]

I think we hit +30 today in Christchurch...
;-)

Sounds about right for summer. :) It's been a mild winter here so far with Temps in the high 60s to low 70s F.

William Hazen

[Keith Larman]

Yup, forecast for today ... 71 F. That's not a "mild winter", that's a "I don't want to work, I want to go hiking" winter...

[Walter Martindale]

Sounds about right for summer. :) It's been a mild winter here so far with Temps in the high 60s to low 70s F.

William Hazen

Yes, but otoh, I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and remember that the schools didn't close when the temp got to minus 40 (the F and C scales cross at -40 so it doesn't matter) unless there was also either high wind or snow. We'd bundle up and walk - it was about 6 blocks to school for me.

One year (I think 93) living in Saskatoon Sask, the daytime high temperature didn't wander above -30C for all of January. In 1998, while I was living in Invercargill NZ, a friend in Edmonton e-mailed something like: "You know you're an Edmontonian when the morning forecast says that the overnight low was -30 and you think to yourself 'good, it's warming up'."

Lately, however, the January weather only rarely tweaks the "below -35" range, and it doesn't stay down that low that often.

One consequence of that is that the Northern Pine Beetle (I think that's the one), formerly confined to the west coast, has been surviving winter, and has made it over the mountains to the boreal forests in northern Alberta, transporting with them a disease that kills off the pines. Apparently these beetles can hack a -20 with an inbuilt form of antifreeze, and it takes sustained temperatures (something like 2 weeks) of below -30C to kill them.

Yep, it's summer here in NZ, but apparently the El Nino weather makes it really windy - that's great unless your job is "rowing coach" and you depend on calm conditions.

Cheers,
Walter

[Aikibu]

Yes, but otoh, I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and remember that the schools didn't close when the temp got to minus 40 (the F and C scales cross at -40 so it doesn't matter) unless there was also either high wind or snow. We'd bundle up and walk - it was about 6 blocks to school for me.

One year (I think 93) living in Saskatoon Sask, the daytime high temperature didn't wander above -30C for all of January. In 1998, while I was living in Invercargill NZ, a friend in Edmonton e-mailed something like: "You know you're an Edmontonian when the morning forecast says that the overnight low was -30 and you think to yourself 'good, it's warming up'."

Lately, however, the January weather only rarely tweaks the "below -35" range, and it doesn't stay down that low that often.

One consequence of that is that the Northern Pine Beetle (I think that's the one), formerly confined to the west coast, has been surviving winter, and has made it over the mountains to the boreal forests in northern Alberta, transporting with them a disease that kills off the pines. Apparently these beetles can hack a -20 with an inbuilt form of antifreeze, and it takes sustained temperatures (something like 2 weeks) of below -30C to kill them.

Yep, it's summer here in NZ, but apparently the El Nino weather makes it really windy - that's great unless your job is "rowing coach" and you depend on calm conditions.

Cheers,
Walter

Ahhh the Pine Beetle... It's just way too busy chewing up the forest's all over North America
to debate global warming but I am sure is very thankful to be able to wipe out Canada's remote pines too.

In Southern California's Mountains the Pine Forests have been depleted by about 85% because of this "pest" I am talking between the beetle's and wildfires entire mountains stripped bare of trees.

On the other hand hopefully if this El Nino holds We can break the serious 5 year drought we're in and get some great waves later this winter. :)

William Hazen

[BC]

It's cold here in Chicago. Single digit temps with a big snowstorm on the way. Just in time for our dojo's Kagami Biraki this weekend!

[C. David Henderson]

Ahhh the Pine Beetle... It's just way too busy chewing up the forest's all over North America
to debate global warming but I am sure is very thankful to be able to wipe out Canada's remote pines too.

In Southern California's Mountains the Pine Forests have been depleted by about 85% because of this "pest" I am talking between the beetle's and wildfires entire mountains stripped bare of trees.

On the other hand hopefully if this El Nino holds We can break the serious 5 year drought we're in and get some great waves later this winter. :)

William Hazen

The pinon forests of the SW have been devastated by the same pest during the last decade.

El Nino already is bringing us snow -- skiing's happening.

Temperature is about normal -- 20 F at night, 40 F around noon; ten degrees cooler on the mountain.

[Keith Larman]

It has been so weird watching the news each night. The last few days I've been in *shorts* and a t-shirt all day. Gone on short hikes each day (rehabbing my legs) and come home... Yes... Sweaty. Another 70 degree day on tap for us.

[Aikibu]

It has been so weird watching the news each night. The last few days I've been in *shorts* and a t-shirt all day. Gone on short hikes each day (rehabbing my legs) and come home... Yes... Sweaty. Another 70 degree day on tap for us.

Yeah... I feel bad watching the rest of the country freeze while I ride my Vespa in a Tee Shirt and Jeans and hang out on the beach.

However this seems typical of El Nino...A Warm January Followed by a Freight Train of Storms till March...We need the rain for sure but we can count on flooding... huge mudslides because of the fires...and coastal erosion/destruction...

It ain't over till Punxsutawney Phil pops out!!! LOL :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punxsutawney_Phil

Oh Well One Day at a Time... and today is Paradise.

William Hazen

[Carrie Campbell]

It's cold here in Chicago. Single digit temps with a big snowstorm on the way. Just in time for our dojo's Kagami Biraki this weekend!

Best wishes for a wonderful seminar! :)

According to weather.com, it will be "bitterly cold" for the next couple days in Lincoln, Nebraska. Windchill tonight about -35*F, but it should warm up to 4*F by Saturday! (well, except for the windchill factor...)

I'm looking forward to the weather improving at least enough to hold aikido practice. We had to cancel classes yesterday and tonight.

[BC]

Thanks. I guess compared to some parts of Nebraska right now, Chicago is tropical! I just read that Amtrack is cancelling trains to and from the west because of snowdrifts over two stories deep in Nebraska. Yowza!

[Ron Tisdale]

Ah, that reminds me why I'm NOT moving to Nebraska!!!

B,
R (and I thought Rochester, NY was bad...)

[Cajunjambaliya]

G'Day,

Originally from Louisiana, I find myself stuck in the middle of an Australian Drought. This country is commonly known as the "sunburnt country". Melbournes water supplies in the drinking water storage is at 30 percent or 245 days of drinking water left. By the luck of my cajun boots the sky has opened up and started raining.

I don't know about global warming but most elders say that everything has a pattern. The earth cycles and as a result, in Australia for example, experience a drought ever 40 to 50 years. I am not sure if the earth is a result of global warming.

IF we are suffering from Global Warming, I blame Vince Neal from Motley Crue for all the hairspray. Oh, and Paul Stanley as well.:mad:

I honestly believe that earth is going through a stage and some say we are heading to another Ice Age. Who knows but we can all agree, I think, that the weather is pretty messed up now.

Redneck logic, out there I know.....:)

[C. David Henderson]

FWIW, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate-change-global-warming-mojib-latif --

"A leading scientist has hit out at misleading newspaper reports that linked his research to claims that the current cold weather undermines the scientific case for manmade global warming.
Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he 'cannot understand' reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on climate change.

"He told the Guardian: 'It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming.'

"He added: 'There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases.'

"A report in the Mail on Sunday said that Latif's results 'challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy's most deeply cherished beliefs' and 'undermine the standard climate computer models.'

"Monday's Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph repeated the claims.
The reports attempted to link the Arctic weather that has enveloped the UK with research published by Latif's team in the journal Nature in 2008. The research said that natural fluctuations in ocean temperature could have a bigger impact on global temperature than expected. In particular, the study concluded that cooling in the oceans could offset global warming, with the average temperature over the decades 2000-2010 and 2005-2015 predicted to be no higher than the average for 1994-2004. Despite clarifications from the scientists at the time, who stressed that the research did not challenge the predicted long-term warming trend, the study was widely misreported as signalling a switch from global warming to global cooling.

"The Mail on Sunday article said that Latif's research showed that the current cold weather heralds such 'a global trend towards cooler weather.'

"It said: 'The BBC assured viewers that the big chill was was merely short-term "weather" that had nothing to do with "climate", which was still warming. The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view.'"

"Not according to Latif. 'They are not related at all,' he said. 'What we are experiencing now is a weather phenomenon, while we talked about the mean temperature over the next 10 years. You can't compare the two.'

"He said the ocean temperature effect was similar to other natural influences on global temperature, such as volcanos, which cool the planet temporarily as ash spewed into the atmosphere reflects sunlight.

"'The natural variation occurs side by side with the manmade warming. Sometimes it has a cooling effect and can offset this warming and other times it can accelerate it.' Other scientists have questioned the strength of the ocean effect on overall temperature and disagree that global warming will show the predicted pause.
Latif said his research suggested that up to half the warming seen over the 20th century was down to this natural ocean effect, but said that was consistent with the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 'No climate specialist would ever say that 100% of the warming we have seen is down to greenhouse gas emissions.'

"The recent articles are not the first to misrepresent his research, Latif said. 'There are numerous newspapers, radio stations and television channels all trying to get our attention. Some overstate and some want to downplay the problem as a way to get that attention,' he said. 'We are trying to discuss in the media a highly complex issue. Nobody would discuss the problem of [Einstein's theory of] relativity in the media. But because we all experience the weather, we all believe that we can assess the global warming problem.'"

[Suru]

The weather is nice in Miami this morning. It feels like it's in the mid-70s F, with a pretty, clear, blue sky.

Would anyone like to share how the weather is where he or she lives?

Drew

[Cajunjambaliya]

Hi Drew,
I live in Melbourne Australia and this week we have had..Summer, Winter, Fall all in one. It was 42 Celsuis early last week and now it is 15 Celsuis. Melbourne, can't beat it for unpredictability. When I moved here from Louisiana, I always wondered why Melbourne city folks always carry a umbrella even on sunny days

[Lorien Lowe]

Stormy, windy, and rainy. And we had an earthquake a week ago (thankfully a love tap - a mere 6.5 - compared to Haiti).

[thisisnotreal]

pretty miserable here. hazy shade of winter. pretty sloppy. but warm-ish.

[Suru]

Stormy, windy, and rainy. And we had an earthquake a week ago (thankfully a love tap - a mere 6.5 - compared to Haiti).

My buddy in Cali told me about that quake. Have you been living in Cali long? I wonder if you all get used to the tremors or even the moderate quakes after awhile. People in most placed in America feel nature's wrath time and again. For me in Miami, it's the occasional big hurricane, for people in the Midwest it's tornadoes, and there are blizzards sometimes in the north. Can you think of a place in the States that is virtually not assaulted by nature at all? My guess is there are at least a few, but I don't know what they are.

Drew

[C. David Henderson]

Six inches of snow and falling in Town; not planning to work tomorrow. Go'n s-ki'n.

[ninjaqutie]

Delaware is pretty harmless. Snow every now and again, but that is about it.

[dalen7]

The coldest bit was when we hit around negative -17 celsius in Dec.
Typically Jan is the coldest month - though I have to admit it has been consistently cooler. - 0 Celsius.

Quite frankly with global warming, I believe if politicians really cared they wouldnt have allowed the corporate deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. - Even more they would stop what is still happening and start replanting instead of coming up with the new extreme... carbon footprint this and that - regardless of how true it is.

Its like a pendulum that is in perpetual motion and just cant settle down... one extreme to the other. Fanatical one way or the other... where is the "Aikido" - the balance in it all? LOL

Peace

dAlen

p.s. time to move to somewhere where there is balanced temperature of 22 Celsius... :D

[Eugene Leslie]

The weather is warm right now, -5 c. in Central Alberta, but it's supposed to get colder right away...Definitely different from when I was a kid. New record highs and lows every year.

It always amuses me how some folks fight over deck chair placement on the Titanic.

Sums it up nicely.

This whole thread made me laugh.
WoW...??!!! (hee hee hee....)

The original post was "how's the weather?"

I dare someone to start a new post with "how's the government where you are?"

[dalen7]

I dare someone to start a new post with "how's the government where you are?"

Yeah... that would probably be best left untouched - especially here... it is a touchy subject to be sure. ;)

Peace,

dAlen

[Lorien Lowe]

My buddy in Cali told me about that quake. Have you been living in Cali long? I wonder if you all get used to the tremors or even the moderate quakes after awhile. People in most placed in America feel nature's wrath time and again. For me in Miami, it's the occasional big hurricane, for people in the Midwest it's tornadoes, and there are blizzards sometimes in the north. Can you think of a place in the States that is virtually not assaulted by nature at all? My guess is there are at least a few, but I don't know what they are.

Drew

I've been here about 10 years now. We're used to the plentitude of little quakes - 3's, 4's, an occasional 5. This one was the first earthquake I've been in that was big enough to be scary. And to think that the quake in Haiti was 5x bigger than ours...

[Mike Sigman]

My buddy in Cali told me about that quake. Have you been living in Cali long? I wonder if you all get used to the tremors or even the moderate quakes after awhile. People in most placed in America feel nature's wrath time and again. For me in Miami, it's the occasional big hurricane, for people in the Midwest it's tornadoes, and there are blizzards sometimes in the north. Can you think of a place in the States that is virtually not assaulted by nature at all? My guess is there are at least a few, but I don't know what they are.
A few years ago, after a lovely day of running Brown's Canyon in my kayak, I hitch-hiked back to where I put in to the Arkansas River near Buena Vista (the locals there call it "Bew na vista", not Bway na vista... or locally it's just "bew-ney"). The guy who gave me the ride was a retired airline pilot and I asked him why he lived in "Bew-ney". He told me that he'd spent a lot of time researching where to live in the U.S. and that he'd found that Buena Vista was one of those rare places in the U.S. where there were no natural extremes from earthquakes, storms, harsh weather, and so on. So if anyone is looking for a place that seems to avoid natural disasters (plus it has some *dynamite* whitewater runs), try Bewney. ;)

FWIW

Mike Sigman

[Rob Watson]

... no natural extremes from earthquakes, storms, harsh weather, and so on.

Does a meteor strike in Canyon City count?

http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/im-meteor/meteor-strikes.html

Hard to see those buggers coming ...

Not to mention lightning ...http://cbs4denver.com/weatherupdates/weather.denver.colorado.2.1056281.html
Headlines like "State Tied For Most Lightning Deaths In 2008" make one sit up and notice!

Of course, as long as the fishing is good who cares about lightning, meteors or UFO abductions?

[Mike Sigman]

Does a meteor strike in Canyon City count?

http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/im-meteor/meteor-strikes.html

Hard to see those buggers coming ...

Hmmmmm... maybe I can't spot it, but I don't see a mention of Buena Vista per se. Besides, meteor strikes are undoubtedly a sign of god's wrath and the good people of Beuny would be far above such considerations. Of course if you're dumb enough to run Pine Creek rapid at the wrong flow, you'll be sure to find out what "god's wrath" actually means. That freakin' hole in the middle is as big as a box-car at high flows. I had no trouble with irregularity for many months after a high-flow run on that sucker.

Not to mention lightning ...http://cbs4denver.com/weatherupdates/weather.denver.colorado.2.1056281.html
Headlines like "State Tied For Most Lightning Deaths In 2008" make one sit up and notice!

Of course, as long as the fishing is good who cares about lightning, meteors or UFO abductions? Lighting strikes are a different animal at high elevations, unfortunately. Particularly amongst people who think that the afternoon thunderstorms above treeline are something to shrug off.

http://www.backpacker.com/october_08_americas_10_most_dangerous_hikes_barr_trail_pikes_peak_co/destinations/12621

The fishing may be good here, but generally I just nod pleasantly to fishermen as I float by in my kayak, taking their expensive flylines with me while shouting "here fishy fishy fishy" at them as a token encouragement. :D

Best.

Mike Sigman

[dps]

January 2010 in the Youngstown, Ohio area nearly doubled the normal amount of snow fall.

http://www.myvalleyweather.com/news/story/Snowiest-Januarys-on-Record/iRolMARsDkegNwnZJvsBXw.cspx

"Snowiest Januarys on Record

Last Update: 1/28 8:37 pm

As of Wednesday, January 2010 officially entered the record books as one of the top 10 snowiest Januarys on record for the Youngstown area.

Wednesday evening, the snowfall for the month registered at 22.8 inches, making it the tenth snowiest month. By Thursday at 5:30 p.m., snowfall for the month rose to 24.6 inches, putting it in ninth place.

January 2010 bumped January 1977 off of the list. Myvalleyweather.com Meteorologist Don Guthrie said the normal amount of snowfall in January is 12.7 inches. This means January 2010 nearly doubled the normal, he said.

The following Januarys are currently in the top 10:

1. 36.4 1999
2. 36.0 1987
3. 35.8 2009
4. 31.5 2007
5. 30.3 2004
6. 30.1 1948
7. 27.2 1994
8. 25.6 2003
9. 24.6 2010
10. 23.4 1966"

David

[lbb]

And here in Massachusetts we barely have any snow at all.

[C. David Henderson]

We've had a series of storms. I was able to x-c a foothills trail as well as the mountain last week.

Still, it was odd when the temperature rose above freezing as a front moved in one evening. When I first moved here, if it was cloudy enough in deep winter to percipitate, it was cold enough to snow. Maybe that storm was just a weather fluke too....But it looks like fire season won't be too bad.

[Aikibu]

The Ocean Temps are still scary warm for this time of Year... Which means we may still get a few Jet Stream propelled Storms rolling through...

William Hazen

[dps]

In the Mahoning Valley of Northeast Ohio we got 10-20 inches of snow Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
We are suppose to receive another 6 inches Tuesday and Wednesday.

So how much snow did everybody else get?
How is the snow in Massachusetts?

David

[lbb]

In the Mahoning Valley of Northeast Ohio we got 10-20 inches of snow Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
We are suppose to receive another 6 inches Tuesday and Wednesday.

So how much snow did everybody else get?
How is the snow in Massachusetts?

David

We didn't get a flake, thank God -- we had a seminar Saturday. We're supposed to get some Wednesday.

[C. David Henderson]

Somehow its easier to believe in global warming now that I'm hot each day.

And then there are these as well:

http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2010/Assessing-an-IPCC-assessment.-An-analysis-of-statements-on-projected-regional-impacts-in-the-2007-report.html

[lbb]

Bring out your dead...

[C. David Henderson]

Not dead yet. Feeling better.

[Mike Sigman]

Somehow its easier to believe in global warming now that I'm hot each day.

And then there are these as well:

http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2010/Assessing-an-IPCC-assessment.-An-analysis-of-statements-on-projected-regional-impacts-in-the-2007-report.htmlI hope you're not serious. Even some staunch AGW'ers are embarrassed at the whitewash. Go back and read from even when they tried to stack the panel with known supporters (who carefully hid their relationships until dug up by the press and some outraged scientists). The world appears to be warming just about the way it's done for millenia after Ice Ages; nothing more or less.

I always say, "So where's the hockeystick spike that all of this was predicated upon?" Also... "where's the data?" and "where are the codes?". Still won't release them... and the discrepancy between the satellite observations and the reported temperatures continues to grow, contrary to some testimony given by Jones.

Most of all, though... where's the hockeystick spike? At some point in time, even the dumbest observer is going to wonder why the predicted temperature averages have never come to pass.

FWIW

[C. David Henderson]

Hi Mike,

I was serious. Not embarassed either. You may be right, but I tend to doubt it. I think the reports stand for themselves.

As for the "pause" in recent years, some respected scientists, if I recall correctly, distinguished between climate change (long term) and weather events (e.g., El Nino). Of course, over time, you are right, in my view: If the data doesn't accumulate as expected, even an observer of modest intellect, if honest, will have to conclude the scientific consensus was mistaken.

Good to hear from you though; was in your area recently -- very beautiful country. A bit hot, that weekend.

Take care of yourself.

[C. David Henderson]

BTW,

Finding No. 23, page 13 states in relevant part:

"On the allegation that references in a specific e-mail to a 'trick' and to 'hide the decline' in respect of [sic] a 1999 WHO report figure show evidence of an intent to paint a misleading picture, we find that, given its subsequent iconic significance … the figure provided was misleading."

(Emphasis in the original.)

I don't think this falls within what I'd normally call a whitewash.

The report was in fact critical of the individual scientist's response to perceived conflict with ideologically motivated opponents, and is fairly critical of the lack of openness alluded to by Mike.

It also found these problems did not affect the overall scientific validity of the conclusion that man-made climate change is real.

Is it? Is this just a sophisticated whitewash that throws some crumbs to critics on issues that it could not spin away?

Like I said -- I really don't know. Like most of us, I sift through second-hand information and make informed guesses.

But time will tell, I suppose.

[Mike Sigman]

It was a pretty blatant whitewash, David. Commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia... or didn't you get that piece of news in your source?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[C. David Henderson]

Hi Mike,

I was aware from reading the report the University was the institution to which its recommendations for reform were addressed. Its not a surpise to me to learn the University commissioned the report. Thinking about it, any other explanation probably would surprise me.

This fact is arguably consistent with your hypothesis; but it doesn't prove it, Mike, at least not to me.

You may have more reasons for your suspicion -- you've alluded to the identity of some panel members. If so, I'm ok taking a look at them. If not, that's no problem.

But to me the acid test of your hypothesis would be an analysis of how the report is a whitewash. And of what? The underlying issue about lack of transparency to the public; the scientific work; both?

Are its suggestions for reform genuine?

Is its scientific review sound?

And, as for the Univeristy (and the scientific community) will the recommendations be followed?

You've also suggested they haven't released data still -- that would suggest whether the suggestions for reform were genuine or not, they haven't resulted in positive change yet.

Another data point relevant to your argument, I think, but still not enough given the short time frame involved, any more that the deviations between the predicted temperature changes and data over the last few years. (Again, I'm going on things I've read, not any claim of personal knowledge or deep understanding.)

I do think a lot of these debates tend to look different six months or a year down the road -- this one is a good example.

BTW, what about the report out of the Netherlands, which I also posted?

[Mike Sigman]

Hi Mike,

I was aware from reading the report the University was the institution to which its recommendations for reform were addressed. Its not a surpise to me to learn the University commissioned the report. Thinking about it, any other explanation probably would surprise me. I watched some of the initial astonishment at the initial formation of the investigatory committee that they so blatantly tried to stack the committee. The fact that such behavior doesn't surprise or seem to dismay you is a datum worthy of note, but my comment was simply that this was a pretty well-known whitewash. You apparently didn't read enough of the background from various sources.
This fact is arguably consistent with your hypothesis; but it doesn't prove it, Mike, at least not to me. Sounds a bit like the hypothesis from many of my liberal friends of mine during the Clinton years that lots of women stepping forward to say that Clinton was a serial woman-abuser didn't count because it was never proved in court. It's an interesting perspective, but in my experiences in a cause-and-effect world, too many coincidences are always suspect (I'd like to quip that the women didn't matter because every one of them was a Democrat, but let's pretend that I held my tongue). ;)
You may have more reasons for your suspicion -- you've alluded to the identity of some panel members. If so, I'm ok taking a look at them. If not, that's no problem. Perhaps you should go look at some of the consternation about some of the early proposed panel members who did things like leave out from their resume's their previous relationships with the EAU boys in question?

But to me the acid test of your hypothesis would be an analysis of how the report is a whitewash. And of what? The underlying issue about lack of transparency to the public; the scientific work; both? I'm still following it. At present, one of the members has back-peddled a bit and said that the question of the science was not closely studied, but mainly the whether anything dishonest was done was looked at. I.e., no one is asserting that the science of the EAU guys was correct... the contention is only that they didn't deliberately break any laws (see the WSJ editorial for rebuttals to that contention).

Are its suggestions for reform genuine?

Is its scientific review sound?

And, as for the Univeristy (and the scientific community) will the recommendations be followed?

You've also suggested they haven't released data still -- that would suggest whether the suggestions for reform were genuine or not, they haven't resulted in positive change yet.

Another data point relevant to your argument, I think, but still not enough given the short time frame involved, any more that the deviations between the predicted temperature changes and data over the last few years. (Again, I'm going on things I've read, not any claim of personal knowledge or deep understanding.) Scientifically speaking, the only question is whether the basic premise is correct. If there is no hockeystick rise in temperatures, people should already be asking questions about the basic premises rather than signing up for the next Children's Crusade.

BTW, what about the report out of the Netherlands, which I also posted?I'm not sure what you're asking. In a way, that report was a polite way of glossing over a massive error that is printed in the previous IPCC report about the effects on the Netherlands. The data was simply wrong and they're trying to have it both ways by saying that it was wrong, but next time please make more data available so that if you're wrong we can justify it more easily than forming this silly european committees.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

[Mike Sigman]

Here's a piece from The Register indicating public remarks by MP Graham Stringer; he's of the opinion that the parliamentary commission was misled and wants to re-examine:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/09/stringer_on_russell/print.html

[C. David Henderson]

Looking for points of agreement, I do agree with your definition of the scientific question, which is, in truth, the only one that ultimately interests me and, I suspect, may be the one of most interest to you as well.

Maybe where we differ is that you believe enough data has been accumulated to declare the hypothesis invalid, while I have accepted the proffered explanation from climatologists that the descrepancies do not invalidte the hypothesis.

Again, FWIW, its been my understanding that acute climactic events were not taken into consideration by the initial predictions, and, taking the recent data into consideration, most climate scientists remain convinced in the original overall hypothesis, which they'd argue (based on knowledge and not second-hand understanding like me) is probably valid.

As to children's crusades, I understand the reference, and I infer it may means something like -- "Before we mandate our economic system take a prolonged dive based on a concern over climate change, we'd better be certain the theory is correct."

To which some would respond its better to err on the side of preserving a livable earth.... I'm sure you know how the rest of that rap sounds.

I'm not a strong partisan on this issue, but I have to place myself in the second group. Since, however, it may be that the rise in global temperatures will take longer than expected, we have more time to act (which we'll likely waste).

Thanks for the links.

[Mike Sigman]

Looking for points of agreement, I do agree with your definition of the scientific question, which is, in truth, the only one that ultimately interests me and, I suspect, may be the one of most interest to you as well.

Maybe where we differ is that you believe enough data has been accumulated to declare the hypothesis invalid, while I have accepted the proffered explanation from climatologists that the descrepancies do not invalidte the hypothesis.

Actually, my viewpoint is, as I indicated, concerned with basic premises. I'm willing to accept some degree of AGW because I personally don't see how it can be avoided as a contributive factor. The question is how much of a factor it is and frankly, that's what the argument it. Most reasonable people concede that there is some element of AGW (hence the agreement that there is AGW, although much is made of the agreement without indicating that it is a measured, not complete, agreement that man is the major factor.

The "hypothesis" of AGW is that most of the current warming we're seeing is mostly caused by man. It is an unproven hypothesis. What intrigues me is the argument you're indicating (as do many AGW believers) to the effect that someone needs to prove that the hypothesis is invalid or the hypothesis stands. In effect, that approach flies in the face of rational debate because it implies that the people who question AGW must prove the negative. A lot of the talk about "deniers" is borderline insane because a "denier" is someone who questions an unproven theory, in this case.

Incidentally, please bear in mind that the general trend after every recorded Ice Age in the past was for the earth to warm. The earth has been warming gradually since the last Ice Age and has at times even been warmer than today... even though that was during pre-industrial times. The original premise of AGW was that not only was the earth warming (as per post-Ice-Age norms), but that the warming was at a rate that indicated an alarming spike as per the Hockeystick. The Hockeystick didn't happen and the earth's temperature has now been in decline for a number of years, according to the raw data. What the discussion of "whitewash" is about is that apparently a small group of scientists have been fudging the data (notice that they "lost" the original raw data and now only have the massaged data and they refuse to say what their adjustment protocols were).
Again, FWIW, its been my understanding that acute climactic events were not taken into consideration by the initial predictions, and, taking the recent data into consideration, most climate scientists remain convinced in the original overall hypothesis, which they'd argue (based on knowledge and not second-hand understanding like me) is probably valid. I'll have to look for it, but within the last month, there has been a concession that "most scientists" turns out to be a couple of dozen. As I said, given the population of the earth, it's highly probable that Man is contributing to climate change to some percentage, but "most scientists" do not agree that that percentage is very high.

As to children's crusades, I understand the reference, and I infer it may means something like -- "Before we mandate our economic system take a prolonged dive based on a concern over climate change, we'd better be certain the theory is correct."

To which some would respond its better to err on the side of preserving a livable earth.... I'm sure you know how the rest of that rap sounds. Of course. Using that sort of "I'm going to force you to do this because it's in the best interests of the planet" is a fairly standard form of reasoning with which to justify why people are forced into doing certain things. It's always justified as "the right thing to do". When I take over the planet, that's the reason I'll use, also. ;)

I'm not a strong partisan on this issue, but I have to place myself in the second group. Since, however, it may be that the rise in global temperatures will take longer than expected, we have more time to act (which we'll likely waste).

Thanks for the links.I'm not a strong partisan, but I have been sort of watching in disbelief as a number of scientists have let their politics move them enough that they've begun fudging data "because it's the right thing to do". If we can't trust science as being objective, then science, by definition, is pointless.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

[C. David Henderson]

Thanks for the response Mike. Good presentation of your point of view. I will mull this over (when my deadline is done.)

Regards,

[Rob Watson]

a concession that "most scientists" turns out to be a couple of dozen... If we can't trust science as being objective, then science, by definition, is pointless.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

Most scientists simply do not study climate so are in no way able to form an informed and reasoned position at all. Being a scientist brings no magical abilities as one must still put in the work to stay current. Most scientists are simply too busy trying to stay current in their own field to have enough 'free time' to also 'do' climate work.

If one does not put in the effort yet offers an opinion then it carries no extra weight just because of some alphabet soup dangling after their name.

Now, I am not climatologist but it does not take long to find out the basic approach fraught with problems.

Consider that modern forecasting is quite good but rarely accurate past 4 days out due to the highly nonlinear models - even with loads of accurate and current data. To be sure short range forecasting is a different beast than long range 'forecasting' but one has to wonder if we are so limited in short range methods what are we to expect from long range methods?

Given that one cannot simply take the total amount of data available and dump it into a model then forecast away one has to ask just exactly are the criteria for selecting which data is to be used? What exactly is the model being used? If this info is not readily available for review and critique then one is not doing science. I leave it to the reader to determine the accessibility of these two pieces of info.

Given my previous work with nonlinear systems I can appreciate the complexity of the problem as an intellectual exercise but it is a very long way from there to public policy.

As I write my neighbor is burning a bunch of yard waste across the street ... I'm pretty sure he is in violation of several codes and regs. If folks are not going to abide by the rules we already have then what good are new rules without vigilant enforcement? Compared to volcanoes in Iceland my neighbors brush pile is nothing but then public policy rarely impacts volcanoes but certainly can result in enforceable actions on ones neighbor. Relevance is kind of important to some folks.

The closest thing we have to volcanoes (that we can control) are coal fired power plants. Plenty of reasons besides climate effects to obsolete these beasties. How's that going? Liquid Thorium, baby (see the recent Sci. Am. issue for a very interesting rundown).

[Keith Larman]

As an aside, back when I had money to invest (pre my deciding to be a full time artisan -- then I had money but now I'm poor but happy) I invested in a company named Lightbridge (actually at the time it was Thorium Power Ltd.). This was my "I wish people would notice and start using this technology" investment. At the time I used a broker and his question was "Who and Why?" I told him it was my lotto ticket investment since it was a penny stock. Anyway, it has since changed names to Lightbridge (nasdaq: LTBR). I bought at (factoring in splits,etc.) what would have been about 4.80 today I think. Sold at 10 to pay some debts. Good for me.

I still look at it longingly. They've got great people on-board. Lots of smart people. Lots of good technology. And if you can get away from the emotional hand-wringing gut-level responses to anything with the word "nuclear" surrounding it, well, this would be a great way to go.

I decided recently that if I ever manage to get positive in cash flow I'm going to buy some stock again and shove it in the back of the safe with the daughter's name on the envelope with instructions where it is invested. *If* people get off their duffs and look into technology like this, companies like Lightbridge are going to explode (in a good way). :)

And more directly to the discussion... Climatology is not my area. Frankly most "weather men" really don't know much themselves and often (not always) have piss-poor educations when it comes to the larger science of climate change over time. Lots of the people commenting on the science know very little about it. So it gets dicey at best although of course one can comment on poor study design, conflict of interest, etc.

FWIW some close friends of mine are long time climatologists at JPL and Cal Tech here locally. They study it directly and they have little doubt themselves that man has caused some significant changes to our weather patterns. But then again lots of things have causes significant weather changes. And even they will say that the problems are in the details, in the "how much" questions, in the "what do we do now" questions, etc. It is an enormously complex problem and there really aren't easy solutions because this all bangs up against social needs, political issues, industry, modern society, and on and on and on.

Me... I figure trying to be as lean and mean as possible when it comes to my energy usage and footprint is about the best I can do. Last weekend my daughter and I built a new solar oven with an old box and aluminum foil. The hot dogs came out pretty good! A few months ago I showed her how to repair old, discarded chunks of solar panel to make a charger for her IPod. Made a second one for my cell phone. And am now looking at ways of capturing some rainfall as part of a necessary rebuilding of our rain gutters. What the heck, reducing energy usage (in general) helps reduce pollution. Might as well do what I can even if people are locked in a scientific/political/world view stalemate.

Sorry, back to your discussion. I was just cleaning my little freebie solar panels I made and got on a roll. Of course I'll be doing my polishing work later so I'll be firing up my large halogen light to see scratches. Which will use more energy than I'd probably generate all year with those two little panels... I want my own, small thorium generator. Get rid of the grid!

Sorry for the tangent. Back to your discussion...

[Rob Watson]

Liquid Thorium, baby (see the recent Sci. Am. issue for a very interesting rundown).

Oops. American Scientist not Sci. Am. http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2010/4/liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactors

Perhaps one would be surprised to find out that there are hundreds of ways to build a nuclear fired plant. The crop we have were decided on because they could produce weapons grade materials. Times have changed so should our goals and ideas for tomorrow.

[Rob Watson]

Sorry, back to your discussion. I was just cleaning my little freebie solar panels I made and got on a roll. Of course I'll be doing my polishing work later so I'll be firing up my large halogen light to see scratches. Which will use more energy than I'd probably generate all year with those two little panels... I want my own, small thorium generator. Get rid of the grid!

Sorry for the tangent. Back to your discussion...

Not a tangent at all. Directly to the point - demand drives the growth. If demand slows so will the deployment of new power plants.

Now if we can get you to put down the halogen and salvage some high output white LEDs or tweak that solar oven and focus sunlight for illumination of those pesky scratches ... actually I'd love to talk offline about that as I have ideas on ways to light up scratches - presuming you may have a less than optimal method in place already.

[Mike Sigman]

Oops. American Scientist not Sci. Am. http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2010/4/liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactors

Perhaps one would be surprised to find out that there are hundreds of ways to build a nuclear fired plant. The crop we have were decided on because they could produce weapons grade materials. Times have changed so should our goals and ideas for tomorrow.Heh. I wondered about that. I wouldn't use a Scientific American article for an unbiased source anymore than I'd use the New York Times or the Glenn Beck Show as an unbiased source. Throw Nature magazine into that group, too, since they're part of the "peer reviewed" publications that have been part of the scheme to further "global warming" by selectively not publishing anything that casts doubts on the AGW narrative.

I quit reading Scientific American back in my college days when I realized that there was a political slant to too many things they were publishing. I don't need politics (Left or Right) when I'm reading for accurate scientific information.

FWIW

Mike

[Keith Larman]

Now if we can get you to put down the halogen and salvage some high output white LEDs or tweak that solar oven and focus sunlight for illumination of those pesky scratches ...

Actually I have a wonderful high output white LED lamp I invested in to see how well it worked. Great for much of what I do, but it simply doesn't compare with how halogens light up scratches. The good thing is that for most of my work the LED's are just fine. So most of the time I'm running on very low power. Unfortunately, as I finish a stone I have to switch to the halogens (and not necessarily on high power settings) to get the scratches to "stand up" so I can see them.

I've tried CF and the LED's. But for looking at metallurgical features in steel I haven't found anything better than halogen or good old fashioned Edison incandescent bulbs... On the positive side I don't use them nearly as much anymore instead relying of fluorescent and the LED lights for most illumination. But... Halogens do create a light that is very good for some things.

[Rob Watson]

unbiased source

They are hard to come by ... seems one still has to do a fair amount of leg work no matter where the inspiration comes from.

Rarely would I consider most any magazine as a source in the pure sense I think you mean. More along the lines of something to bring up subject matter that may be interesting to pursue. You will find plenty of 'slant' in even the most dry of 'real' scientific papers if you go looking for it. For example some papers on embryonic stem cell research - just the subject matter is slant enough for some folks irrespective of the quality of the work or its merit and relevance. I drift therefor I am ...

[C. David Henderson]

[J]ust the subject matter is slant enough for some folks irrespective of the quality of the work or its merit and relevance.

This is a real problem in media coverage since so many scientific issues and theories have become political issues, and that's a lot easier to understand than the science. Because of that, I appreciate the focus of this discussion on the science.

I certainly accept the idea that climate science (like economics) remains inexact. (Remember the Club of Rome, anyone? I think we're all already dead according to theory.)

And I think Mike's view -- that there is a human component, but what's transpiring is consistent with regular climate cycles -- is certainly a legitimate view, even if I tend to differ on the question of relative contribution if not the relevance of different factors.

I think the question should, indeed, be framed in terms of the relative contribution of these factors (plus others, including volcanic activity -- Iceland anyone?)

Underlying all of this, and still distinct from political uses of the data are questions about how to make rational policy choices in the face of what is probably irreducible uncertainty.

A country like the US (or China) has interests that may push policy in one direction; a country like the Netherlands, or Pacific Island nations have interests that make guessing wrongly and/or doing nothing a lot less attractive.

BTW, I didn't say or intend to talk about "most scientists," but "most climate scientists." Dunno if that number is a few dozen, but it wouldn't surprise me.

FWIW, gentlemen.

[Rob Watson]

Underlying all of this, and still distinct from political uses of the data are questions about how to make rational policy choices in the face of what is probably irreducible uncertainty.

Easy, find a solution that solves more than one problem. One can simply stipulate to climate change as "bad" then move onto what to do about it. If the solutions proposed are so onerous they won't be done then it does not really matter anyway. One must find solutions that have a significant impact and also alleviate other issues along the way. Spread the cost and widen the benefit then things make sense for lots of reasons and they can also be done and progress will be made.

Even if we cut CO2 and CH4 to zero we can't plug all the volcanoes and prevent vegetation from decay. Replant some trees and cut CO2 that way ... who is going to say that is a bad thing to do? I know Ronald Regan said trees cause pollution (and they do emit complex hydrocarbons) so you never know where the rocks are going to fly in from. Some may argue that electric cars are the solution but they don't care about climate change - they want to sell electric cars!

So, line up all the options and pick the ones that are more '2fers' and go with that. Even if they don't turn out to do anything for climate change at least they have other positive impacts.

[Mike Sigman]

Some may argue that electric cars are the solution but they don't care about climate change - they want to sell electric cars! I love how the general population never seems to consider that it takes a lot of coal-fired energy (with lots of loss inherent between energy production and usage) to run an electric car or to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen in water in order to make 'hydrogen fuel cells'. The general MSM, even if some of the reporters have researched out those facts, tends not to report the bad news because it plays against the narrative many of them want to believe.
So, line up all the options and pick the ones that are more '2fers' and go with that. Even if they don't turn out to do anything for climate change at least they have other positive impacts.Pooh... I think what we're seeing more of, on the general level, is what I watched in basic psychology classes in college using rat populations: the denser/larger the population, the more erratic and screwy the population, the more demand on resources, and voila', fighting breaks out untill there is some sort of stabilization. Saying "Om" and talking about harmony is cool, but the rats never bought into it. ;)

FWIW

Mike

[Keith Larman]

Obviously the solution is to teach rats Aikido... No, wait...

I'm hoping for some better solar generation technology. There have been some recent advances in thin solar, printed stuff, etc. Would be nice to have a cover on my Southern California roof that bakes all summer (and all winter) long. Then having an electric car would make a great deal of sense for me.

Funny thing is that I looked into solar recently for my house. It turns out we're so frugal in our power usage that even the companies that do the leasing deals, etc. said it makes zero sense for us. It would double our total monthly costs. Most, so they say, save money long term. We would be losing money from day 1. Which just goes to show what you can do by not using the air conditioning at the drop of a hat. Or by using an evaporative cooler in a workshop. Or ... Anyway, I was shocked to hear how much people spend on electricity a month in my neighborhood. Which goes to show how much waste there is.

[Mike Sigman]

Obviously the solution is to teach rats Aikido... No, wait... It's already being done. ;)

Funny thing is that I looked into solar recently for my house. It turns out we're so frugal in our power usage that even the companies that do the leasing deals, etc. said it makes zero sense for us. It would double our total monthly costs. Most, so they say, save money long term. We would be losing money from day 1. Which just goes to show what you can do by not using the air conditioning at the drop of a hat. Or by using an evaporative cooler in a workshop. Or ... Anyway, I was shocked to hear how much people spend on electricity a month in my neighborhood. Which goes to show how much waste there is. There's far too much waste. In terms of buying solar 'for the long term', in the long term you'll probably die, so why not give away all your worldly goods and quit eating? :D Get rid of the car and buy a 3-horsepower scooter. And so on. My solution is for everyone who is "green" to quit using gasoline vehicles and to go back to using beeswax candles. Problem is that all of my 'green' friends tend to have and use as many power items as anyone else. Try to find a few houses in Durango where people hang their clothes out on clotheslines and you'll spot that the facade is bigger than the actual religion, as it is in most places.

Think I'll plug in my copy of "The Road" and see what it looks like. ;)

Mike

[Keith Larman]

Yeah, I hear ya. I walk the kid to school. Most day I walk to the post office and drug store for whatever I need. Good for the back and waistline not to mention I don't have to use the car. And that raises another peeve of mine -- cars in general. I have a friend who was harping along about his 3rd Prius. Okay, I'm in a 1994 Saturn. Long paid off. Still gets about 30 MPG.

It turns out that a large percentage of Americans buy/lease new cars every 3-5 years. Wow. I'm at 16 years on my last one. The one before that was used and was itself almost 10 years old when I got it. And I drove it another 5 years.

Anyway, in the time I've had my Saturn there are those who'd be on car #6 now... How much waste/energy/etc. is created by going through that much "stuff"? And how much pollution is created by the building and subsequent junking of extra cars?

And when I walk the kid to school I'll often see a long line of cars dropping off kids. Sure, most of them are too far away to walk, but most of the kids are jumping out of gigantic SUV's.

Shrug. I do what I think is right as much as I can.

But I still want my own Thorium mini-generator. Think of the number of problems that would solve in a ripple fashion...

[C. David Henderson]

A stray thought or three from yesterday, FWIW

As to the inexact nature of climate science -- I think the limits on our ability to predict the weather, as short-term system perturbations, is a conceptually different problem from the limits on our ability to predict movement of the climate's set point.

Sort of like the difference between predicting daily winners and losers on Wall Street (a la Jim Cramer), and predicting long term economic trends (like the Great Recession).

Or, between predicting an earthquake and understanding seismology well enough to predict that the Bay Area likely will experience one at some point.

Which doesn't imply we're necessarily a lot better at one than the other (as the examples suggest) just that we can't extrapolate directly from our problems making the first category of predictions and the second.

Second, as I was mulling over Mike's points, I asked myself why, since I'll concede the science is inexact and that "time will tell," I also still tend to think human contributions to climate change are a bigger part of the problem.

I recalled seeing a showing in Colorado Springs last March or April of time-lapse video of retreating glaciers from around the world. It was startling and worrisome, and I would remain concerned if I became convinced the changes are mostly just normal cyclical changes in the environment. Maybe more so.

Third, about the two-fer approach to policy Rob mentioned -- I thought that makes a lot of sense. Still, I guess I was alluding to something a bit different.

Making policy choices that address multiple problems -- say nuclear/solar/wind/whatever energy production as a way to address concerns over climate change and concerns over global instability --is a way of getting more bang for the buck. As far as that goes, its golden.

How many bucks do you put out there for the bang?

It does seem that our society has poorly developed ways of dealing effectively with uncertain risks -- no clear market incentive exists to get ahead of an uncertain problem, and its difficult to come to a political consensus to do something about such a problem either.

Regards, all.

[C. David Henderson]

Ran into this DRAFT report on line today.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0601.pdf

[Rob Watson]

Pooh... I think what we're seeing more of, on the general level, is what I watched in basic psychology classes in college using rat populations

If this is ones basic model for human interaction then I'd suggest a broader view is called for. For the moment I'll stipulate to the model and suggest the privileged position of the observer setting things up to fail is more to the point than whatever the rats are doing.

My solution is for everyone who is "green" to quit using gasoline vehicles and to go back to using beeswax candles

I'd prefer they go cold turkey with zero emissions (them candles still give greenhouse gases) and see how many hours they can last before they make the rats look well behaved (see above). But, I can be a bit of an extremist sometimes.

As to the inexact nature of climate science -- I think the limits on our ability to predict the weather, as short-term system perturbations, is a conceptually different problem from the limits on our ability to predict movement of the climate's set point.

I'd have to say not really. That is the beauty of the chaotic system is the scalability of the variations. The best one can hope for in such cases is characterization of the system attractor (one hopes there is only one stable one - which is not always the case) and then at least some reasonable likely bounds can be found. Given that the basic model is a set of weakly linked interacting chaotic systems the nature of the attractor is going to be quite complex. The forecast calls for little to no chance of a reasonable expectation of predictability so don't hold you breath.

Second, as I was mulling over Mike's points, I asked myself why, since I'll concede the science is inexact and that "time will tell,"


To quote Mr. Sigman "pooh" - science is brutally exacting which is why it gets such a bad rap. Totally unforgiving in its cruel determinism.

Even with chaotic systems the exactness is there in the characterization of the type and extend of variations. Just because moment to moment predictability is not possible does not make the method inexact in the sense implied (maybe I read too much into the comment).

"time will tell" ... I was under the assumption that you wanted to do something now. Sitting back and waiting to see what happens leads to the rats running amok as described previously.

Third, about the two-fer approach to policy Rob mentioned -- I thought that makes a lot of sense. Still, I guess I was alluding to something a bit different.

How many bucks do you put out there for the bang?


I thought you were talking about making policy decisions in the face of uncertainty. Perhaps you can give examples of the policy decision that have been made based on certainty? Seems to me there are a great majority of affairs in our realm that are uncertain and yet we muddle on anyway. I must have missed something. These days (possibly always) the decision has been on the side of how those in power/money are best able to retain and build that power/money. It is not the unpredictable nature of events that is the problem but the logic used in deciding the course of action has been based on presumptions that those of us 'out of the loop' don't particularly agree with.

"how many bucks"? How many bucks does the alternative cost? Now you have the basis for cost versus benefit analysis.

It does seem that our society has poorly developed ways of dealing effectively with uncertain risks -- no clear market incentive exists to get ahead of an uncertain problem, and its difficult to come to a political consensus to do something about such a problem either.

I'd have to say that political consensus causes more problems than it solves. The time proven process has been that technology advances to the point where alternate approaches make too much economic sense to be ignored so things get done that way irrespective of the rumblings of politics.

The traditional approach to dealing with risk and uncertainty is fairly well established and the 'trick' is to spread/share the risk and otherwise minimize the impact of negative consequences.

As an aside - it is really not a good idea for me to post after I've just finished a very potent blend of medium and dark roasted coffee as it tends to produce extreme verbosity. I'll just go now and vibrate in the corner.

[Mike Sigman]

Ran into this DRAFT report on line today.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0601.pdfHansen is the most overtly rabid of the AGW people and he has an archived history of making extreme predictions that haven't worked out. Some powerful liberal Dems have blocked every effort to have Hansen replaced with a more objective person at GISS, so we're already looking at a very strange situation. Hansen is also one of the people blocking the release of data and adjustment factors so that other scientists can try to unravel the exact "science" that is promoted by HADCrut, Giss, and the main London office. At the moment, this is a political fight, not a science fight. Even though some very grave scientific questions have been raised, political forces continue to push forward as if no questions are there. "Science" as an institution has been badly damaged, although the lay reader doesn't see much of this because the reporting is so one-sided.

Hansen and Gore are joined at the hip, BTW, so that should tell you something. ;)

Mike

[mathewjgano]

I enjoyed that post, Robert, thanks!

I'll just add that I'm pretty sure we recently broke two records in the Seattle area: once for being the coldest day (for that day of the year) and then shortly followed by one of hottest.

[C. David Henderson]

If

I'd have to say not really. That is the beauty of the chaotic system is the scalability of the variations. The best one can hope for in such cases is characterization of the system attractor (one hopes there is only one stable one - which is not always the case) and then at least some reasonable likely bounds can be found. Given that the basic model is a set of weakly linked interacting chaotic systems the nature of the attractor is going to be quite complex. The forecast calls for little to no chance of a reasonable expectation of predictability so don't hold you breath.

Thanks for this.

To quote Mr. Sigman "pooh" - science is brutally exacting which is why it gets such a bad rap. Totally unforgiving in its cruel determinism.

.... (maybe I read too much into the comment).

Well, I think we didn't communicate.

"time will tell" ... I was under the assumption that you wanted to do something now. Sitting back and waiting to see what happens leads to the rats running amok as described previously.

Although this isn't what I was saying, it does capture the delimma.

I thought you were talking about making policy decisions in the face of uncertainty. Perhaps you can give examples of the policy decision that have been made based on certainty? Seems to me there are a great majority of affairs in our realm that are uncertain and yet we muddle on anyway. I must have missed something. These days (possibly always) the decision has been on the side of how those in power/money are best able to retain and build that power/money. It is not the unpredictable nature of events that is the problem but the logic used in deciding the course of action has been based on presumptions that those of us 'out of the loop' don't particularly agree with.

Let me put it bluntly -- I doubt we can avoid disaster because I doubt we're rational enough to get out of the box you describe. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think that I am.

"how many bucks"? How many bucks does the alternative cost? Now you have the basis for cost versus benefit analysis.

Not unless you can quantify the risk of doing nothing in a rational way, which is often not part of the discussion of alternatives.

I'd have to say that political consensus causes more problems than it solves. The time proven process has been that technology advances to the point where alternate approaches make too much economic sense to be ignored so things get done that way irrespective of the rumblings of politics.

And how does it advance? How is it funded? NASA spin-offs? Market forces? Is there a role for government?

The traditional approach to dealing with risk and uncertainty is fairly well established and the 'trick' is to spread/share the risk and otherwise minimize the impact of negative consequences.

As in tort liability and insurance. Hard to spread a global risk, I think, or for Mongolia to share the risk of risking seas with the Netherlands. Any ideas?

As an aside - it is really not a good idea for me to post after I've just finished a very potent blend of medium and dark roasted coffee as it tends to produce extreme verbosity. I'll just go now and vibrate in the corner.

Oh, pooh, you did great. Now just lie there a few more minutes and the palpitations will pass.

[Mike Sigman]

Let me put it bluntly -- I doubt we can avoid disaster because I doubt we're rational enough to get out of the box you describe. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think that I am. A valid part of the discussion is that "disaster" keeps getting mentioned (specifically, climate-change disaster), yet no definitive disaster has panned out. The Arctic Ice instead of disappearing now appears to be in the beginning of a cyclic recovery (the Arctic has been "ice free" several times in the last 100-150 years, BTW, but that is seldom mentioned). The Hockeystick temperature spike that was used to show "alarming" climate change didn't happen; at worst we're now looking at the typical gradual increase in temperature that has happened after every other Ice Age in the past. The seas aren't rising in any disastrous way and some of the rise has now been found to be due to melting that is part of an eons-old cycle. Glaciers retreating? Not worldwide, they're not:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/02/new-zealand-glacier-findings-upset-climate-theory/

One of the very prominent problems with all the alarum over "disaster" is that it's not really happening. So the predictions are turning out to not be very accurate, not to mention that the biggest discovery everyone seems to be making is that their data bases for the predictive modelling software has turned out time and time again to be wrong because the base-data assumptions were wrong. I.e., we seem to be back to the same cyclic Doomsday scenarios that every good liberal seems to want desperately to be true (this all started with Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", but there have been a number of interim doomsday scenarios and none have come to pass).

No Hockeystick. Arctic Ice recovering. Pacific Islands sinking in the sea seems to be too often related to groundwater usage and other issues. Hope for a disaster if it satisfies some deep-seated angst and self-flagellation for being white and a winner, but hope for the best. ;) Remember that the AGW hypothesis has still never been proved and more and more scientists are distancing themselves from it.

Incidentally, did anyone see where the originator of the Hockeystick, P. Mann, is trying to wriggle out and say that he'd always admitted there were errors in it? Was reported in some Brit papers last week, but the US MSM didn't seem to think it fit the narrative so they omitted it along with the reports that NASA's main mission now has to do with boosting Muslim countries self-esteem.

:D

Mike

[Mike Sigman]

Pooh... this argues against my over-population position:

http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/12/happy-world-population-day-som

[MM]

Over Population???

Consider the facts ...

The State of Texas has 261,797 square miles of land (does not include areas of water).

http://www.texasalmanac.com/environment/

There are 5,280x5,280 square feet in 1 square mile.
This gives us 7,298,481,484,800 square feet.

World's population is 6,697,254,041
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_totl&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+of+world

Take Texas square feet and divide by world's population and you get:

1089.77 square feet for each person. That's a 33x33 foot area for each person.

In other words, every single person (man, woman, child) can all fit into the State of Texas land mass and each person would have their own 33x33 foot area.

There is no natural over population of the Earth. There is a societal and purposeful over population in specific areas on Earth created by human choice.

[C. David Henderson]

A valid part of the discussion is that "disaster" keeps getting mentioned (specifically, climate-change disaster), yet no definitive disaster has panned out.

Fair enough; but FWIW I was speaking more generally, on the level of your "rat" metaphor. Generally speaking, I'm not impressed by our ability to avoid problems even when we see them coming.

Was reported in some Brit papers last week, but the US MSM didn't seem to think it fit the narrative so they omitted it along with the reports that NASA's main mission now has to do with boosting Muslim countries self-esteem.

:D

Mike

Well, those countries are very hot, generally.

[Rob Watson]

Pooh... this argues against my over-population position:

http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/12/happy-world-population-day-som

I thought the rats turned to homosexuality which also would help out with the population thingy.

Seriously, education of women is the leading cause of lower birth rates so if one wishes to further that movement educate the daughters - better yet have them become proficient at martial arts. Educated women than are not afraid to kick some tail ... anyone smell the coffee brewing?

[C. David Henderson]

Three easily accessed articles on the "hockey stick" hypothesis --

One pro:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html

One con:

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm (re. historical "mini" ice age)

One Vanilla:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

[Mike Sigman]

Three easily accessed articles on the "hockey stick" hypothesis --

One pro:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html

One con:

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm (re. historical "mini" ice age)

One Vanilla:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy Well, the Hockeystick is actually pretty much in the rubbish bin now. It didn't happen. Jones of CRU fame has now openly admitted that the Medieval Warming Period (a datum the AGW crowd tried to pretend never happened) was probably warmer than today. If there is now conceded that there was a MWP then the Hockeystick math goes out the window entirely. And Mann is backing away else he be forever discredited.

A lot of these developments I just mentioned are more recent than the otherwise good articles you posted.

Best.

Mike

[C. David Henderson]

Well, some of it seems to have been going on in one form or another for awhile. The wiki piece suggests:

In a letter to Nature on August 10, 2006, Bradley, Hughes and Mann pointed at the original title of their 1998 article: "Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations"[57][58] and pointed out "more widespread high-resolution data are needed before more confident conclusions can be reached and that the uncertainties were the point of the article."[57]

Mann and his colleagues said that it was "hard to imagine how much more explicit" they could have been about the uncertainties surrounding their work and blaming "poor communication by others" for the "subsequent confusion." He has further suggested that the criticisms directed at his statistical methodology are purely political and add nothing new to the scientific debate

Is the recent spin more of the same?

Also this piece suggests

In June 2005, Congress asked Mann to testify before a special subcommittee. The chairman of the committee, Republican Joe Barton, wrote a letter to Mann requesting he provide his data, including his source code, archives of all data for all of Mann's scientific publications, identities of his present and past scientific collaborators, and details of all funding for any of Mann's ongoing or prior research, including all of the supporting forms and agreements.[29] The American Association for the Advancement of Science viewed this as "a search for some basis on which to discredit these particular scientists and findings, rather than a search for understanding."[31] When Mann complied, all of the data were made available for McIntyre [one of his original critics in the scientific community].

(Emphasis and brackets added.)

Has the stonewalling continued elsewhere or occurred again since then?

I was struck by the robust debate over the science in these articles by scientists and statisticians. It will be interesting to follow up -- thanks for bringing the issue to the fore.

Take care.

[Rob Watson]

good articles you posted.

http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm

Particularly this one since I've always been perplexed by ice core data and why so little scrutiny has been applied. Given the time scales and very high pressures I can imagine all kinds of strange chemistry is going on that seemingly is not even mentioned.

Ice core data is particularly important for long time scale records of temperature and trace gas (and all sorts of other stuff) for almost a million years. Given that one argues that current trends are significantly deviant from historical trends - the ice core data is the historical trends of the greatest extent that serve as the baseline reference.

I always liked to check models against historical data to see if they can 'predict' known data as a form of consistency check. I never seen anything like this attempted with current climate models.

[Mike Sigman]

Well, some of it seems to have been going on in one form or another for awhile. The wiki piece suggests:

In a letter to Nature on August 10, 2006, Bradley, Hughes and Mann pointed at the original title of their 1998 article: "Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations"[57][58] and pointed out "more widespread high-resolution data are needed before more confident conclusions can be reached and that the uncertainties were the point of the article."[57]

Mann and his colleagues said that it was "hard to imagine how much more explicit" they could have been about the uncertainties surrounding their work and blaming "poor communication by others" for the "subsequent confusion." He has further suggested that the criticisms directed at his statistical methodology are purely political and add nothing new to the scientific debate

Is the recent spin more of the same?

Also this piece suggests

In June 2005, Congress asked Mann to testify before a special subcommittee. The chairman of the committee, Republican Joe Barton, wrote a letter to Mann requesting he provide his data, including his source code, archives of all data for all of Mann's scientific publications, identities of his present and past scientific collaborators, and details of all funding for any of Mann's ongoing or prior research, including all of the supporting forms and agreements.[29] The American Association for the Advancement of Science viewed this as "a search for some basis on which to discredit these particular scientists and findings, rather than a search for understanding."[31] When Mann complied, all of the data were made available for McIntyre [one of his original critics in the scientific community].

(Emphasis and brackets added.)

Has the stonewalling continued elsewhere or occurred again since then?
Well, McIntyre basically popped the bubble on the statistical analysis that Mann did. A number of die-hard AGW people then spent a lot of time arguing, even though the outcome was so obvious that ultimately one famous Brit recently wrote a pretty scathing paper about it. Basically what has been happening is that all the data has been hidden or "lost" (note the comments about that in re the Russell report critiques) and it has been by grudging and spotty responses to court orders, FOIA, back-calculations, etc., that data has been pried loose. The fact that there is still a strong attempt to keep all the data hidden tells you that the news cannot be good. If the data supported the public pronouncements, I'm sure it would have been turned loose immediately.

One of the current bones of contention (well, it's been an issue for a number of years) is that NASA/GISS, Hadley, and London Met have been using weather temperature stations which have questionable reliability... and that reliability issue has been shown to be very real, in a number of studies.

The AGW people single-handedly control the whole AGW/IPCC data access, so essentially they've had a free hand to do and say (and broadcast in the IPCC report) whatever they've wanted. Their response to the declining numbers of temp/weather stations, etc., is that they have used "adjustments" which allow for all of the areas not covered, temp stations surrounded by concrete/streets, and so on. It is the question of "adjustments" that is being kept hidden more than anything else. With 'adjustments' you can basically make data say anything you want it to.

The fact that NASA/GISS and the other 2 places (they use the same base data and they are all staffed largely with AGW believers) are putting out world temperature data that is suspiciously diverging from the observed satellite data is troubling. If it weren't for political support from liberal/socialist governments that want to believe, the whole AGW thing would probably have collapsed by now.

Seeing statements from leaders in the AGW movement beginning to concede that there was indeed a Medieval Warming Period, etc., shows how precariously balanced this thing has become. It's interesting to watch, but doubly so because you see some scientists and media types who argue that it's OK to fudge the data because if it gets people to live 'greener' it's ultimately better for the world, right? Using the old "ends justifies the corrupt means" argument in science, media, and academia is nothing new, but the sad thing is that in our supposedly advanced civilization we have the same kind of chicanery that has been around forever. Actually, that's probably the source of my horror more than anything else... why is this crap still going on in this day and time? ;)

Mike

[C. David Henderson]

Yeah, I had read a little about the "adjustments" issue before. It reminds me of "pro forma" adjustments to a company's books to make an investment look more profitable than recent past performance would suggest. In accounting situations, there are proper and improper uses of these exclusions of data, but the potential for abuse is very similar to what you're describing here. With similar reasons to distrust the motives of those doing the adjusting, regardless of their explanations.

As to why/how this kind of stuff could be going on today, Mike, I think your choice of emoticons suggests you have answered that question for yourself. I agree with your remark earlier that, left or right or personal, the science could do with less of the politics, and we all could then do more with the output labled "science."

To the list of governments that "want to believe," though, I would guess there'd be other, low-lying countries (like the Netherlands or Pacific Island nations) for which the possibility of a bad outcome is much worse than others. For them, if its possibly true, they have to try and do something. Doubt can be a luxury in an uncertain world, sometimes.

[Mike Sigman]

To the list of governments that "want to believe," though, I would guess there'd be other, low-lying countries (like the Netherlands or Pacific Island nations) for which the possibility of a bad outcome is much worse than others. For them, if its possibly true, they have to try and do something. Doubt can be a luxury in an uncertain world, sometimes.The Netherlands report you cited was actually in relation to a total mis-statement in the IPCC report about the amount of Netherlands territory below sea-level. Did a lot to jar many Netherlanders into disbelieving the IPCC line.

FWIW

Mike

[C. David Henderson]

Not invested in the outcome of the process, or the validity of the report; just saying I understand why folks there have a particular sense of awareness about what's at stake. Your description of public opinion in that country is consistent with my perspective, I think.

[Rob Watson]

Just in case one wishes to leap into the fry ... nice place to start here http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap3-1/final-report/sap3-1-final-all.pdf

[Mike Sigman]

Just in case one wishes to leap into the fry ... nice place to start here http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap3-1/final-report/sap3-1-final-all.pdfWell, that's still a 2008 article. The main question for all the AGW believers (the basic premise of which was that there was an *alarming* increase in global warming instead of the "normal after an Ice Age typical warming") is "where's the beef?". The Hockeystick never happened. That *should* have been enough to stop the religious belief in its tracks or, if nothing else, the now-documented recent decline of more than a half-decade of global temperatures should have been enough. This stuff goes on needlessly... we're now watching fluctuations of normal behaviour and trying to read doom into them. I.e., for the the scientific types.... before I spend a lot of time evaluating your hypothesis, how about at least showing me some compelling evidence that you're at least generally correct.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

[Aikibu]

Well, that's still a 2008 article. The main question for all the AGW believers (the basic premise of which was that there was an *alarming* increase in global warming instead of the "normal after an Ice Age typical warming") is "where's the beef?". The Hockeystick never happened. That *should* have been enough to stop the religious belief in its tracks or, if nothing else, the now-documented recent decline of more than a half-decade of global temperatures should have been enough. This stuff goes on needlessly... we're now watching fluctuations of normal behaviour and trying to read doom into them. I.e., for the the scientific types.... before I spend a lot of time evaluating your hypothesis, how about at least showing me some compelling evidence that you're at least generally correct.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

Emphasis Mine. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/13/heat-waves-could-be-commo_n_644189.html

QUOTE: "Also this week, NASA data shows that global temperatures recorded from January through June 2010 were the highest ever."

William Hazen

[Mike Sigman]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/03/is-2010-heading-for-a-record/

BTW, let me point out that the NASA/GISS group is headed by the extreme AGW type, James Hansen, whom I mentioned before. He's a fanatic. You never read two sides in any Hansen article or in the many public statements he makes, yet a number of his predictions, etc., have been proved wrong in the past. It's the one-sidedness that bothers me.

A Huffington Post article (which is about as believable to me as a Rush Limbaugh article on climate) that is trying to say how bad it's going to be 30 years from now is pretty far-fetched. Where's the Hockeystick spike? If they can't even predict a year or two ahead and were completely wrong about the hockeystick, how does it figure that they're going to be right about something 30 years from now???

I think we're into the cognitive disconnect realm. Cognitive disconnect is like when the people who are waiting for the aliens to show up in a flying-saucer on Thursday night, but come Thursday no aliens arrive.... and then these people take the fact that they didn't come as even stronger proof that the aliens are coming soon.

The spike didn't happen. NASA fudges the figures even worse than the Brits do *and* they extrapolate temps into areas where they don't have weather stations... a trick that has landed them in some ludicrous situations and caused them to revise things a number of times. It's embarrassing to me that the Brits can do weather science better than NASA. ;)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/shocker-crus-jones-giss-is-inferior/

[Mike Sigman]

Here's a 'green' sort of guy with a pretty good reputation ripping the investigations because the whitewashes were too obvious for most serious thinkers to stomach:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/climategate-and-the-big-green-lie/59709/

[Aikibu]

Here's a 'green' sort of guy with a pretty good reputation ripping the investigations because the whitewashes were too obvious for most serious thinkers to stomach:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/climategate-and-the-big-green-lie/59709/

From the Author/Article

Quote: "Greens who feared and climate skeptics who hoped that the rash of investigations following Climategate and Glaciergate and all the other problems would reveal some gaping obvious flaws in the science of climate change were watching the wrong thing. The Big Green Lie (or Delusion, to be charitable) isn't so much that climate change is happening and that it is very likely caused or at least exacerbated by human activity. The Big Lie is that the green movement is a source of coherent or responsible counsel about what to do."

Emphasis Mine... I try not to let the facts be clouded by my political leanings...;)

So while some fiddle...Man Made Global Warming continues to make the Earth burn...

The Arguments about IF it's happening have pretty much been settled. WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT is still very much in debate...

Only those with an interest in fiddling (aka The developed World's Fossil Fuel based Economic Companies/Czars) have an interest in continuing to debate moot points. There very survival depends in part on obfuscation and denial until they can figure out a plan to leave the sinking ships they(we) have created.

One way or the other The (Cheap) Fossil Fuel Epoch in Human History is coming to a close... Perhaps within my remaining lifetime (20 to 50 years)...Funny how I remember discussing this subject in the 5th grade back in the 60s,,, when the very idea that we would be where we are today was (Also ;) ) also mere speculation and Science Fiction.

Have fun...Personally I can't play a fiddle worth a darn. LOL :)

William Hazen

[Mike Sigman]

The Arguments about IF it's happening have pretty much been settled.

Heh. Did you read this thread and what it's about? ;) Where's the Hockeystick, the little piece of "settled science" that now is being swept under the rug because it didn't happen?

Mike

[Aikibu]

Heh. Did you read this thread and what it's about? ;) Where's the Hockeystick, the little piece of "settled science" that now is being swept under the rug because it didn't happen?

Mike

It's right there in front of you everyday everywhere you "choose" to look.

With all due respect You may be mistaking your own finger for "proof" the Moon is nothing more than a reflection. :)

[Mike Sigman]

In the worst case scenario (from the article I previously referenced):

Another point to be made is that an increase of 0.2 deg C per decade, if it is real and sustained, is 2.0 deg C per century, an increase not that unprecedented in the climatic record of the past 10,000 years, and substantially less than the widespread predictions of a higher increase.

I.e., there is no hockeystick. Therefore there is no "alarming increase" in global temperatures, as was first described by the alarmists ... which means that "settled science" is either a joke or a deliberate fraud, as many people have pointed out.

[mathewjgano]

I'm no expert of course, but I don't see how the lack of a very extreme curve equals "safe." ...Or means anyone who worries about global warming trends is being overzealous.
I imagine the Earth (and its atmosphere) is much like a hotbath (in a kind of pressure cooker), which implies some kind of speed limit for things like global climate shift. The more pertinent question to me seems to be related with how one goes about controlling for the effects of the inevitable change of global weather, whatever it may be at the moment.

[Aikibu]

In the worst case scenario (from the article I previously referenced):

Another point to be made is that an increase of 0.2 deg C per decade, if it is real and sustained, is 2.0 deg C per century, an increase not that unprecedented in the climatic record of the past 10,000 years, and substantially less than the widespread predictions of a higher increase.

I.e., there is no hockeystick. Therefore there is no "alarming increase" in global temperatures, as was first described by the alarmists ... which means that "settled science" is either a joke or a deliberate fraud, as many people have pointed out.

Siiiiiigh....With all due respect.... Thats what Senator Imhofe Big Oil and those who have a huge stake in fossil fuels hang their hat on...Science....Where NOTHING is "settled" HA HA HA HA

I prefer to hang my hat my own experience with the Scientific Method... The Trivium.... and the facts...Not just rely on someone with a vested financial and or economic interest..

I am for the Polar Bears. :)

"But that is not the question. Why are we here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come."
- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

William Hazen

Meanwhile....

[Mike Sigman]

Siiiiiigh....With all due respect.... Thats what Senator Imhofe Big Oil and those who have a huge stake in fossil fuels hang their hat on...Science....Where NOTHING is "settled" HA HA HA HA

I prefer to hang my hat my own experience with the Scientific MethodYou just ignored the facts every time. Where's the Hockeystick? It didn't happen. The temperature records (read that as "The Facts") don't support it. Anything else is spin or denial... or cognitive disconnect.

[Aikibu]

You just ignored the facts every time. Where's the Hockeystick? It didn't happen. The temperature records (read that as "The Facts") don't support it. Anything else is spin or denial... or cognitive disconnect.

LOL. Godot plays hockey? ;)

William Hazen

[Rob Watson]

The temperature records (read that as "The Facts") don't support it..

The more I dig into this the more goofy things get. Turns out that actually using temperature (even just measuring it) is pretty danged tricky. There are several very critical points to be clarified surface temperature on land (whats going on with the stations?) versus sea surface temperature. Actually real scientists (physicists - I'm biased) worry about energy and really are not too concerned with temperature. For example moist air can absorb a tremendous amount of energy with very little rise in temperature while dry air raises temperature with much less energy - this means temperature is a terribly indicator of what the energy is doing (which is critically important).

Whether any of this matters or not depends on just what lengths are taken to 'fix' the 'problem'. As I mentioned earlier 'what's next' - http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=kh04000r

Renewables are not enough and never will be and coal has got to go and the only viable alternative for the next 50-100 years is nuclear.

I think coal is bad enough to justify action irrespective of global warming.

[C. David Henderson]

For that matter, look at the challenge of estimating temperature changes over the last 1,000 years using proxy variables, such as tree ring analysis. In fact, an early controversy in this area focused on the reliance upon bristlecones and another species of pine (I forget the exact problem). Mann subsequently did another study using more kinds of variables, and announced that it supported the "hockey stick" hypothesis even if one excluded the original temperature proxies.

So, on top of problems relating to measuring temperature today, there are questions regarding the techniques for estimating temperatures in the historic record.

Also,last year Science News reported a study that seemed to indicate localized "anthropogenic" climate effects (the "A" in "AGW.")

This study found the midwestern United States' climate may have become cooler due to irrigation.

Anyway, as I've said on another threat, I think nuclear energy likely will make a comeback in the US, based on the realities of trying to achieve "energy independence." Unfortunately, in the short run, coal consumption may go up, not down, especially if the problem is defined predominately in terms of geopolitics and economics rather than environmental impact.

[phitruong]

whoa! you lots still here? would have thought you all melted by now. my rear-end is melting from practicing aikido in this 100F with only a couple of fans for us to do the Marilyn Monroe waza and i am not even wearing anything underneath. i think i need to move back to Minnesota where it's cooler. damn it's hot and it's only early July here. we should be able to cook a full breakfast on the sidewalk by August. :)

personally, i think we should use the insurance as the measuring stick. how far in-land will the insurance cover will dictate the warming level. :) money talks, folks.

[Mike Sigman]

For that matter, look at the challenge of estimating temperature changes over the last 1,000 years using proxy variables, such as tree ring analysis. Well, that's certainly a big part of the problem. Bear in mind that there are a lot of variables to the whole discussion (including what part of the earth's warming cycle you set as the "zero"), but the problem with the proxy variables is that they weren't very good and... most of all... one of the major giveaways that there is something wrong is when "scientists" start hiding their data instead of putting it out there for reproducibility studies. Mann is an avid publisher who tries to keep his data from people who want to try to reproduce his results. That should be enough to raise the alarm in any serious thinker.

Probably the best non-partisan general-discussion article I've read on the Hockeystick is here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/

Also,last year Science News reported a study that seemed to indicate localized "anthropogenic" climate effects (the "A" in "AGW.")

This study found the midwestern United States' climate may have become cooler due to irrigation. I think it's obvious that Man has *some* effect on the climate and there is data to support it (e.g., industrial soot settling on Arctic ice has been shown to affect ice-melt). The question for science, though, is how much of an effect is there and if there are indeed long-term ramifications on a global scale. That's the question. The AGW people say Yes and the other side says "Wait a minute... we don't have data to say that with certainty". If you think about something the size of all the current and ongoing volcanic activity on the planet (plus factor in how long and consistent that activity has been), which has the greater effect, Man-made pollution factors or the volcanic contributions? Then think about other natural factors. It becomes an unclear issue and hence the reasoned uncertainty. Of course, the easily swayed want to jump at the most appealing emotional issues and side that way, but it's worth thinking this through a little more thoroughly, I suspect.

Incidentally, back to the somewhat telling fact that much of the data and adjustment codes have been deliberately hidden from other scientists, let me clarify what the "Scientific Method" actually means, as opposed to using it as a buzz-phrase:

http://www.neijia.com/science_method.png

I.e., when "scientists" are hiding the data, it's not really the Scientific Method, regardless if their pals "peer reviewed" the articles and said it is The Word of God. Hence the current worry about scientific corruption.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

[C. David Henderson]

Good article -- effective use of graphs. It would be interesting to compare the Greenland ice sheet record and the Antarctic one to see if they lend support to the article from New Zealand you posted earlier, which suggests the N. and S. hemispheres are sometimes out of phase with each other as well.

I guess the Hummer will come back into style with a vengence if we ever need to pump more CO2 into the air...

[Keith Larman]

Well, I'll admit to being an avid agnostic in this particular debate. I'm from a family of scientists and I learned a loooong time ago that one should be very careful about wading into areas outside one's own.

Now, that said... (No, no wading boots yet, I'm not being inconsistent.)

For me the entire "larger" issue raises questions about where we get our fuel and how we're going to maintain these things long term. I don't know if our reliance on fossil fuels is causing some sort of future global warming problem. For me the problem is actually a lot simpler. Most of those people we get our fossil fuels from don't like us very much. And they're getting richer while we're getting poorer shoving increasing amounts of fossil fuels into our own apparently bottomless pie-hole.

So I go back to a few observations...

Even people in the Sierra club have done an about face on Nuclear. More importantly, in my mind, the entire rational for old conventional reactors (we need fuel for bombs and subs) just doesn't seem to hold today. So here we could be developing thorium technology that is actually as old as the conventional reactor technology. It employs thorium which is actually rather fairly distributed around the world. And the end product is vastly less useful for making things that go boom. Safer, cleaner, better... Sigh.

But we have a legacy of some justified fear of nuclear and a whole lot of irrational fear. Then the entire regulatory structure is set up for the conventional reactors making it nearly impossible to build anything.

To me the issue is what are we going to do now that will continue to work for us for the next 50 years that doesn't involve giving billions (trillions) to other people. Maybe there will be fantastic breakthroughs in solar. Or something else. But it won't happen today or in the near future. So we have technology that works well that has few of the problems of big, bad nuclear. All while side-stepping the issues of carbon footprint, yadda, yadda, spiel.

But it would take a political will. And it would take people stepping away from the BS political rhetoric that seems to be the norm of today (if you think death panels was bad, just wait until they talk about building a "thorium nuclear" reactor in Grandma's back yard -- "mutation machine that will burn to China and the earth's core will explode!"). Instead we will have to live with oil slicks in the gulf, Hugo in Venezuela making friends, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the list goes on... Wouldn't it be nice to just say "Thanks for everything, but I think we can handle it from here on out?"

So whether they are right I see little downside to acting on these issues. Even if Global Warming is a load of crap can we please move away from a country dependent on fossil fuels? To me it is like suddenly realizing that your smoking habit is eating up half of your discretionary income. Even if it turns out you aren't sick from it, even if it didn't hurt you, at what point do you decide there is a better use for that money?

[C. David Henderson]

Different perspective:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/27/climate-sceptics-global-warming

Reactions?

[Aikibu]

And another...

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/07/lying-to-ourselves-about-oil/

William Hazen

[mathewjgano]

I.e., when "scientists" are hiding the data, it's not really the Scientific Method, regardless if their pals "peer reviewed" the articles and said it is The Word of God. Hence the current worry about scientific corruption.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

Sorry if this has been described already, but has he offered a reason as to why he won't release all of his data? Hiding data does beg the question pretty badly to a scientist...or a wanna-be like me. On the other hand, that's not proof of anything about global weather trends either. Maybe that's just plausible deniability for him...

...Well, I hope it's not true that "studies" are being cherry-picked to fit the commercialism of Global Warming interests. I blame the fact that science is often just another form and/or tool of Big Business and Big Business-like operations. If you want to study something, you have to get funded, to get funded you have to appeal to investors...who are, all too often, special interest groups).

I took a pretty good environmental science class several years ago and it basically taught that while we see a trend toward higher temperature overall, we don't know exactly what is causing it. My sense was that CO2 held no obvious connection to the trend, but that the fear is that it might play a role in something more complex...the straw and the camel's back and all that. As also regards CO2, I know of a study at Duke which seemed to imply a little help from nature as CO2 levels continue to rise.
My understanding is that a greater danger comes from SO2 (for a variety of reasons, if I recall correctly), of which volcanism is certainly the lead producer, but which industry still adds more than we probably want in our neighborhoods.
...Robert, is it the sulfur compounds in coal that make you dislike it so much?

[Mike Sigman]

Different perspective:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/27/climate-sceptics-global-warming

Reactions?Well, it's from January of this year and a lot of things have happened since then, so even something from 6 months ago tends to be dated, David. Let me also point out that the Guardian is considered Far Left and very strongly in the pro-AGW camp (although their top pro-AGW writer had fits about the dishonesty of the East Anglia crowd, once those emails and data were put out... it made him out to be a chump for having been a believer).

Here's a post on the Greenland Ice Sheet, showing the data involved and apparently, like has happened so many times in the past, when the data gets out the story gets quietly dropped by the media who are desperately hoping the doomsday scenario is true so their self-guilt will be justified ( ;) ):

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/12/greenland-hype-meltdown/

The other topics have changed in that time, too, but you can use the sources below to take a look. Once the Hockeystick statistics were revealed to be very dodgey, people began looking closer at everything, so it's all fun to watch. Generally speaking, the AGW followers have been getting much smaller in number.

When I see a story (I stay more current than you, apparently, but I don't follow all that closely) that is interesting, I cross-check it for starters against:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://climateaudit.org/
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/

If the story is interesting enough, I check the main AGW website of Gavin Schmidt: http://www.realclimate.org/ (Problem is that Gavin has been caught in a few whoppers, but regardless this is the main AGW site associated with the main AGW scientists).

Then I watch the story to see how it develops over time.

Points of correctness have been made on both sides, but the main difference I see is that the AGW crowd is too often fighting a defensive war that occurs *after* facts they didn't want known come out. It's that "we have to win the Big Game on Saturday, Judy, so it's worth telling just one whopper about" mentality that bothers me. If ethics are going out the window on one side, then everyone should just join the party, IMO.

YMMV

Mike

[Rob Watson]

...Robert, is it the sulfur compounds in coal that make you dislike it so much?

Besides the strip mining of whole mountains, the massive amounts of uranium, pottasium and thorium released into the air and the slag/fly ash and sludge ponds steeping and seeping its way into the locals water what's not to like about sulfur? http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

And that is not just in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee but elsewhere http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/7150

[Rob Watson]

My sense was that CO2 held no obvious connection to the trend, but that the fear is that it might play a role in something more complex...the straw and the camel's back and all that. As also regards CO2, I know of a study at Duke which seemed to imply a little help from nature as CO2 levels continue to rise.
My understanding is that a greater danger comes from SO2 (for a variety of reasons, if I recall correctly), of which volcanism is certainly the lead producer, but which industry still adds more than we probably want in our neighborhoods.

Check the ice core data and note the temperature proxy LEADS the CO2 increases. Go figure.

Forget SO2 & CO2 as H2O is by far and away the most significant greenhouse gas. How about a water tax to make sure we cut the horrid emissions?

[C. David Henderson]

Thanks for your response, Mike. I think you do stay more current than I, and my perspective has shifted toward's Keith's "agnosticism" as a result of this conversation, as this has the hallmarks of a live issue.

From my perspective, if we set aside the wider political uses of each side's position, this is playing out a great deal like the academic politics I saw in grad school, where each side puts its considerable intellect into trying to rebut the other.

Let me make this part clear -- I think it's wrong for a scientist to stonewall release of data and methods in order to maintain a position, for whatever combination of personal, professional, or political reasons that it may occur.

But the back and forth seems to me to be of a piece with other academic debates I've seen, and I'm willing to accept each side genuinely believes it's view to be the sounder view, and that each side has made some good points and some bad points.

I don't see bias on the part of just one group of researchers; I percieve each is committed to its position. A human reaction with good and bad to it.

It's also my sense you are right about the AGW folks being more on the defensive than the "skeptics." Part of that may relate to being thrown into the "deep end" of politics with little idea what they're about. Sitll, whatever the final outcome of the debate, it seems to me they've done themselves and the rest of us a disservice by creating good reasons to distrust the results of their work. "It's worse than a crime," as the saying goes, "it's stupid."

Regards,

[Mike Sigman]

It's also my sense you are right about the AGW folks being more on the defensive than the "skeptics." Part of that may relate to being thrown into the "deep end" of politics with little idea what they're about. Here I disagree. The politics entered science when a group of scientists, who had the encouragement of a political faction that they believed, presented a hypothesis that they themselves were worried enough about that they hid the data. There is a huge insult implied when they begin to call people who doubt their hidden data and thereby begin to call those calling for the data "deniers". The idea of there somehow being a moral equivalency "between both sides" doesn't really agree with the actual facts. When someone calls for the proof, that doesn't make them equally guilty with the person making a potentially dishonest presentation. Let's settle the presentation first. Then let's punish the wrongdoers... all of them. Maybe that will deter people from making ridiculously false assertions. (Don't forget that there was a big movement among the AGW people to punish anyone who didn't agree with them... that's is and was fascism at it's peak flavour).

FWIW

Mike

[C. David Henderson]

Or, what I've always considered the classic example -- Stalin, Lysenko, and the great leap ... into famine.

Understand your perspective, Mike.

[Mike Sigman]

Or, what I've always considered the classic example -- Stalin, Lysenko, and the great leap ... into famine.

Understand your perspective, Mike.Well, I'm troubled on a number of fronts at the movement to silence points of views that don't agree with the government in charge, the politics of the majority of academia, and so on. The efforts to silence or trivialize or demonize anyone who doesn't agree, regardless of facts or First Amendment, is a sign that a collision is coming. However, that's the sort of thing that I was talking about that occur more and more frequently as population grows or as population becomes fat, dumb, and happy. There is always someone who will pluck fat, dumb, and happy bunnies.... that's Mother Nature in action. ;)

FWIW

Mike

[mathewjgano]

Check the ice core data and note the temperature proxy LEADS the CO2 increases. Go figure.

Forget SO2 & CO2 as H2O is by far and away the most significant greenhouse gas. How about a water tax to make sure we cut the horrid emissions?

Does this mean I have to start buying water-vapor offsets when I water my little garden? I guess I could pay for them in part with the carbon offsets I'll earn...it's also an oxygen farm which uses CO2 as the feed.

[Aikibu]

Well, I'm troubled on a number of fronts at the movement to silence points of views that don't agree with the government in charge, the politics of the majority of academia, and so on. The efforts to silence or trivialize or demonize anyone who doesn't agree, regardless of facts or First Amendment, is a sign that a collision is coming. However, that's the sort of thing that I was talking about that occur more and more frequently as population grows or as population becomes fat, dumb, and happy. There is always someone who will pluck fat, dumb, and happy bunnies.... that's Mother Nature in action. ;)

FWIW

Mike

Siiiiiigh With all due respect ( I would not want to victimize you :) )The Right has been playing the Victim Card since Truman "lost" China and the founding of the Birch Society in the 1940s. They play it every time they lose power. At least the current administration mostly appoints real scientists and folks who are actually qualified to do the jobs they are appointed to do...instead of the political hacks and cronies George W Bush was infamous for.

So your right... Nature is efficient. ;)

William Hazen

[C. David Henderson]

Forget SO2 & CO2 as H2O is by far and away the most significant greenhouse gas.

Someone help me out with this one. Is it the "most significant" because of its relative abundance? Or does water as a compound trap heat energy in the atmosphere to a greater degree?

And, to the extent H2O vapor acts as a "greenhouse gas," how do liquid and frozen water affect worldwide temperatures? Don't they have a moderating effect?

Finally, how does this relate to the idea that moister air absorbs heat energy without increasing temperature as much as dry air?

Thanks for any info.

[Mike Sigman]

Someone help me out with this one. Is it the "most significant" because of its relative abundance? Or does water as a compound trap heat energy in the atmosphere to a greater degree?
You're putting your finger on why a lot of people got curious about the whole "global warming" thing. Note, BTW, that when it became apparent that the recent trend was not for warming (even with some fudged data that was caught!), the popular doomsday trend suddenly became "Climate Change", a very vague evil indeed. The idea of global warming due to manmade causes makes sense (my initial reaction was to believe it) but instead of pointing out the various contributive factors, the AGW crowd singled out CO2 as the main culprit because it is a "greenhouse gas". Except for pinning all their hopes on CO2, "global warming" would have been an easy sell and no one would have been the wiser. There are a number of reasons why the CO2 thing rings a discordant bell; trying to look up an explicative page, I came across this one:

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

It has a lot of data and references (what I prefer over strict opinion pieces) that can be viewed.

Remember that most people in the physical sciences agree that the earth is warming (as it does after every Ice Age), the question has been "how much" and "how much of any warming is caused by Man?". The "how much" is a central question on which, believe it or not, the raw data is still being largely witheld. Apparently the increase is not *too* much because 1938 is still argued as being warmer than 1998... if that is still being debated, it's obvious that 1938 and 1998 must be pretty danged close to each other. 1938 wouldn't have had the CO2 buildup that is being pointed out as the reason for "global warming" today, so you can see why there are some valid questions.

FWIW

Mike

[C. David Henderson]

Thanks Mike. This seems like an article one should read irrespective of one's "position" on the issues. At a minimum, it poses questions that need answers. Of course, I don't know enough about the overall subject for my view to add or detract from that of the authors

On the issue of H20, it did provide answers to my questions:

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, "Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models," Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).
****

While it is intuitively reasonable that the most prolific and important greenhouse gas could act as a magnifier there is no evidence that it does. In fact water vapor is self limiting because it precipitates out as rain and snow and its effect also varies as cloud, with more bright low cloud acting as a cooling effect.

[Rob Watson]

While it is intuitively reasonable that the most prolific and important greenhouse gas could act as a magnifier there is no evidence that it does. In fact water vapor is self limiting because it precipitates out as rain and snow and its effect also varies as cloud, with more bright low cloud acting as a cooling effect.

Where does the energy go? No evidence - that's a joke, right? Perhaps you would care to provide links to papers that show water has an insignificant (or at least less than CO2 or other trace gases). The fact is all the climate simulations are basically working on how water moves about the atmosphere so of course water is the critical element. One of the most glaring problems with the models is the poor understanding of cloud dynamics (really important stuff).

[Rob Watson]

Well, that's still a 2008 article. The main question for all the AGW believers (the basic premise of which was that there was an *alarming* increase in global warming instead of the "normal after an Ice Age typical warming") is "where's the beef?".

How 'bout this one? http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Granted this is still in draft form but if there are not a great number of significant points upon a reasonable person goes "huh?" while reading. One thing that I found remarkable and would certainly hope gets removed before publication is the unsupported hyperbole.

Note the 'hokey stick' has now vanished. It was never a real issue anyway because the real issue is the "A" in AGW (or lack).

I still do not see the "A" in AGW. Where is the 'baseline' for normal and natural (a.k.a expected warming trends) that we are rapidly diverging from and can clearly point to the culprits? No beef, no there, there.

On another note for the curious to ponder ... why so much effort and interest in 'adjusting' the temperature data series for UHI? The claim is the readings are biased to the warm by the energy 'consumed' in urban areas which leads to a rise in temperature. Since we should be concerned with when the energy goes are not these elevated temperatures actually important?

Consider that surface air temperature is a terrible way to monitor climate. The vast energy stored in the oceans is the 'great moderator' that drives weather and climate (as driven by the sun). Trying to model weather/climate based on surface temperatures (particularly over land) is like trying to predict which way the bull will jump by watching the fleas on his backside.

If someone claims AGW they must show (at a minimum) that observed patterns (over any time scale) are significantly different than expected based on solar forcings. Once that is established then the cause of the deviation must then be established. If the primary (or even modest) causes are found then to be man made then we have something to talk about and develop policy around. This would all fit very neatly into a single article in Nature, Science, Discovery (even), etc and even the Sunday paper (since the public needs to be well informed and can influence/be influenced in pushing policy). Anybody seen that neat little package? Bueller?

[C. David Henderson]

No, that's a quote. Another part of the quote, which you omitted, stated:

"In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds."

Maybe, after you read the article, you would be kind enough to explain to a lay person, why you think the statement about the lack of evidence that water acts as a "magnifier" is a "joke."

If you disagree with any part of the article posted, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

If you have different answers to the questions I asked, I would love to hear them.

If you know of other articles, please feel free to post a link.

Really. I'm interested in learning more.

I don't understand, frankly, the personal tone to your response. If you felt I was challenging your view, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I though I was pretty clearly asking for help in understanding what you said.

While I also noticed you reviewed the threat before Mike responded, you didn't bother to say anything at that time. Instead, when I expressed appreciation that Mike had provided an answer, you reacted with incredulity. So, what's the deal then?

[C. David Henderson]

"Where does the energy go?"

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/grnmhse85.jpg

Right, wrong, mostly wrong; what?

[Mike Sigman]

"Where does the energy go?"

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/grnmhse85.jpg

Right, wrong, mostly wrong; what?I think that's just a general diagram indication shortwave and longwave radiative behavior. There may be some more factors that are less important, of course. Since the diagram doesn't assign percentages it's really not much more than general information and can't be "right" or "wrong" too far.

FWIW

Mike

[C. David Henderson]

Agreed. And it doesn't do justice to its source material as a whole.

[Rob Watson]

No, that's a quote. Another part of the quote, which you omitted, stated:

"In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds."

Maybe, after you read the article, you would be kind enough to explain to a lay person, why you think the statement about the lack of evidence that water acts as a "magnifier" is a "joke."

If you disagree with any part of the article posted, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

If you have different answers to the questions I asked, I would love to hear them.

If you know of other articles, please feel free to post a link.

Really. I'm interested in learning more.

I don't understand, frankly, the personal tone to your response. If you felt I was challenging your view, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I though I was pretty clearly asking for help in understanding what you said.

While I also noticed you reviewed the threat before Mike responded, you didn't bother to say anything at that time. Instead, when I expressed appreciation that Mike had provided an answer, you reacted with incredulity. So, what's the deal then?

Sorry but my sarcasm gets the better of me sometimes (mostly). Water is THE single most important factor but you seemed not to quite grasp that. That the sun and water are not commonly understood as the primary components of what we are talking about is beyond my ability to be level headed. Please feel free to ignore my commentary and just look at the referenced materials. What do I know anyway?

[Rob Watson]

Agreed. And it doesn't do justice to its source material as a whole.

One picture may be claimed worth 1000 words but there is way more than that behind the picture so there is a natural loss of info in the presentation.

One thing to note is the strong indication that more energy goes into the soil than into the air. Maybe soil temperature (energy) is a better indicator than surface air temperature ... I'm pretty sure the temperature stations do not monitor soil temperatures so there is a considerable lack of data in this respect. I'm sure one can imagine the vagaries of diurnal cycle is moderated considerably ~ 1 meter below the surface.

[C. David Henderson]

I think you misunderstood the article's use of the term "magnifier," which has to do with positive feedback loops.

I wouldn't ask for your view if I didn't think you knew quite a bit.

[Rob Watson]

I think you misunderstood the article's use of the term "magnifier," which has to do with positive feedback loops.

I wouldn't ask for your view if I didn't think you knew quite a bit.

From the website you referenced.


However, the true climate sensitivity remains uncertain, in part because it is difficult to model the effect of feedback. In particular, the magnitude and even the sign of the feedback can differ according to the composition, thickness, and altitude of the clouds, and some studies have suggested a lesser climate sensitivity."

Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, pp 6-7,
Committee on the Science of Climate Change
National Research Council


Often the answer, indeed, even the questions, are not so simply put.

[C. David Henderson]

Thanks.

Your comments about soil and ocean temperatures made a lot of sense to me, FWIW.

[Rob Watson]

evidence that water acts as a "magnifier" is a "joke."
SNIP
So, what's the deal then?

I read too carelessly. Sorry for my confusion. I'd better go have some more coffee ...

[Mike Sigman]

Here's the kind of discussions that go on... arguably a good thing. When people say that "science is settled", that's an attempt to stifle discussion. Few sciences are ever "settled" unless they're about very simple principles (like the lever, speed of sound, etc.).

http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/2010/07/collapse-of-climate-physics.html

[Erick Mead]

Here's the kind of discussions that go on... arguably a good thing. When people say that "science is settled", that's an attempt to stifle discussion. Few sciences are ever "settled" unless they're about very simple principles (like the lever, speed of sound, etc.).

http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/2010/07/collapse-of-climate-physics.html .. and oh, say, Gravity, mebbe...

oh wait... never mind.

http://www.physorg.com/news198135631.html

"Nothing can be settled which is not right.. " Charles Sumner

[Rob Watson]

.. and oh, say, Gravity, mebbe...

oh wait... never mind.

http://www.physorg.com/news198135631.html

"Nothing can be settled which is not right.. " Charles Sumner

The bickering in the forum (physorg) is pretty clear indication that the human condition runs through a great many matters. Descartes got it wrong "I bicker, therefor I'm human" is more like it. Scientist or artist seems little modulation is present.

As with Descartes one wonders if the converse is necessarily also true. "I am, therefor I think" is not required to follow.

Lest my geekness show I dare say the Sheliak had is right about us when they said "You gibber" - great episode.

[Mike Sigman]

For anyone interested in following the latest actual sea-ice data, WUWT has posted a (sourced) page. Seems to be doing OK for "the warmest year on record" (data and adjustments not provided by NASA):

http://wattsupwiththat.com/sea-ice-page/

For anyone using "Scientific Method" as a buzz-phrase, this is your out.

FWIW

Mike Sigman

[Aikibu]

Golly I had no idea the terminology I have been using through all these years of science from high school through college and beyond was a buzz phrase....

Thanks so much Mr Sigman I'll inform the faculty. :)

William Hazen

PS. I will also give my teachers a political litmus test to insure their use of the "Scientific Method" is not "politically" motivated. ;) Just like the God Fearing Anti-Evolutionary Anti-Science Republicans do!

Ahhhh the Dubya Days....I miss them already

[Mike Sigman]

There was a revelation yesterday about the Russell 'whitewash' that's pretty interesting. Note that the investigatory committee never called any of the critics of the East Anglia University people who were accused of wrongdoing. It was a *very* friendly investigation, indeed. Turns out now that the partial review of papers that they did was not arbitrarily picked, as they once asserted... the papers which were studied were approved by one of the accused. It's like a criminal defendent choosing which evidence he'd like accepted for his own trial. :p

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/19/breaking-phil-jones-got-to-endorse-papers-for-oxburgh-inquiry/#more-22229

[C. David Henderson]

It does show the kind of deference to one side that, as with previous actions, creates a bad appearance. I guess the question remains what affect it had. Reading the link, it appears Lord Martin John Rees, astrophysicist and head of the Royal Society, was the other person who selected the papers to be reviewed. As to him, a quick search found the interview below for Australian radio.

Please note -- I'm still looking both at differences and the extent of agreement by folks in different camps. One thing that struck me about this interview is that Rees' statements are on a continuum with views expressed in this thread.

I also don't have independent information on the man's background or other involvement. Maybe other folks do.

Anyway, FWIW, from abc.net.au/am/content/2010/s2860819.htm:

TONY EASTLEY: As a British Lord and president of the Royal Society, Martin John Rees, is somewhere near the pinnacle of the conservative establishment in the UK.

The Society is the oldest scientific academy in the world. Founded in 1660 it's a fellowship of the most eminent scientists of the day, elected for life by peer review. Its members have included Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking.

Martin Rees is a cosmologist and astrophysicist and has been Astronomer Royal since 1995.

As Lord Rees he sits as a cross bencher in Britain's House of Lords.

He's in Australia giving a series of talks and lectures. Last night he delivered the inaugural Derek Denton lecture in Melbourne.

TONY EASTLEY: Professor Rees, as president of the Royal Society and of course, a prominent scientist, you presumably have a lot to do with scientists yourself. Even though climate change isn't your speciality, what do you think about the current scepticism about climate change science?

MARTIN REES: Well, I am perplexed by it because of course, although not an expert, I have talked to a great deal of the experts and there is a general consensus that climate change is something which could have very worrying consequences if the world goes on burning fossil fuels at the present rate.

So it seems to me there is no controversy about that. There is clearly controversy about just how bad it is going to be and about we should best respond to this threat.

I mean obviously there are some people who are not experts who are sceptical about this but the analogy I'd give is if you've got some medical problem, you look on the Internet, you find a whole variety of remedies and ideas but if you've got any sense, you go for treatment to someone who has got real credentials; you don't take account of the bloggersphere and I would say that those who are not experts should respond to the bloggersphere and the debate about climate change in the same way.

They should look for the people who have credentials and among them you would find a consensus that there is something we need to worry about. It is an unprecedented effect on the climate that carbon dioxide is being produced by fossil fuels.

TONY EASTLEY: Here in Australia some people believe there is what is called a 'group think' on the issue of global warming. Is that your observation?

MARTIN REES: Actually it is not scientific consensus just as there is that germs cause diseases but I don't think one should disparage that as 'group think'. There is a consensus based on good scientific arguments.

TONY EASTLEY: But when it comes to 'group think' do world scientists not coalesce?

MARTIN REES: Well, scientists collaborate and exchange information in every subject. That is how the science advances and we at the Royal Society are concerned to advance the science further.

We had a meeting last month on greenhouse gases, a meeting last week on uncertainty in science and we have a meeting coming up on improving the computer models. So everyone is working hard to improve the science but having talked to a large number of those who are well qualified, I support the view that we should present to politicians a strong consensus that climate change is a threat that needs a response.

TONY EASTLEY: So you don't think it is possible that there is a global think amongst or present in the scientific community?

MARTIN REES: Well, there is a consensus but as I say, there is a consensus just about the germ theory of diseases because there is good evidence.

TONY EASTLEY: You also sit in the House of Lords so you have an understanding of politics. Can you understand the lack of progress on climate change policies around the globe?

MARTIN REES: Well, I think so. I think it is a hard sell for two reasons. First the threat is very long-term. It is not going to produce doomsday next year. It is just a serious concern 50 years from now and in politics the urgent trumps the important and it is hard to focus interest on making sacrifices now for the benefit of the long-term future.

TONY EASTLEY: Was the threat overplayed too early, too soon?

MARTIN REES: I don't think so. I think it is a serious threat but of course, it is like an insurance policy. How much are you going to pay up front in order to reduce a long-term threat.

TONY EASTLEY: The head of the UN's climate change panel has accused politicians and prominent climate sceptics of a new form of persecution against scientists who work on global warming. Have you felt that heat?

MARTIN REES: I don't think so. I think we want robust debate on how we respond to this. I think if you look towards the second half of the century we are going to have a combination of problems, shortages of water, problems with food production, all aggravated by climate change and growing population and I think we want to look further ahead.

And certainly it is my experience also and I am a university teacher, that it is the young people who are more aware of this, people under 30 will still be alive 50 years from now. So it doesn't surprise me that the so-called sceptics tend to be among the older people and that the younger people have much deeper environmental concerns. So they, in my view, are the hope for the future.

TONY EASTLEY: Astrophysicist and president of the Royal Society, Martin Rees.

[Mike Sigman]

It does show the kind of deference to one side that, as with previous actions, creates a bad appearance. I guess the question remains what affect it had. Well, again, there is a common factor that occurs... there was an aspect kept secret or hidden that Jones himself had had a hand in selecting the papers being reviewed, yet the original press put out was that these were random but pertinent papers. The ideas of duplicity, hidden data, etc., keep recurring.

What effect did a whitewash have? Well, what effect to most whitewashes have? ;)

Mike

[C. David Henderson]

Depends on the color of the fence and the number of coats, among other things.... But I hear what you're saying.

[thisisnotreal]

...
But we have a legacy of some justified fear of nuclear and a whole lot of irrational fear. Then the entire regulatory structure is set up for the conventional reactors making it nearly impossible to build anything. ...


Hi Keith,
Did you see this< (http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/07/23/0125235/Worlds-First-Molten-Salt-Solar-Plant-Opens)?
It is an interesting design....pegged at being a potential intermediary technology to new (liquid thorium?) reactor technologies. anyhoo...thought it was interesting (and the discussion at /. too)
josh

[Mike Sigman]

Using NOAA's own data, it appears that a lot of the statements about this being the warmest year on record aren't correct:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/02/noaa-graphs-62-of-continental-us-below-normal-in-2010/#more-22891

The Arctic icepack is increasing nicely (just as one would expect, since arctic ice melts and thickens along a known cycle), and the U.S. is generally cooler than normal (this is also cyclical, over the long term).

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/01/sea-ice-news-16/

[C. David Henderson]

FWIW, this caught my eye.

It doesn't begin to answer Mike's critique on its merits, but it does suggest the question of validity continues to be a live one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/30/bjorn-lomborg-climate-change-u-turn

[Rob Watson]

The Aug 13 issue of Science is chock full of info on alternative energy. Also there are two articles about the role the biosphere plays in greenhouse gas and CO2 regulation. One thing to not is the two major models have a discrepancy that is >400% of the amount of CO2 generated by burning fossil fuels! Climate modellers need to use on model of the other.

While this may not be quite so interesting what is interesting to note is the uncertainty in the actual total amount of CO2 'absorbed' by terrestrial plants, in both models, is actually greater than the amount of CO2 produced by fossil fuels burning!

Forget all the high tech long term gee whizzery and plant some dang grass, bushes and trees and realize immediate and long term reduction in atmospheric CO2. Heck, plant food producing plants/trees and get another '2fer' by helping the climate and producing healthy food ... all for pennies on the dollar. Even if you don't care about climate you gotta like food.