Ducking the Point

April 24, 2009, 11:04 pm

Most skeptics have been clubbed over the head with the “settled science” refrain at one time or another. How can you, a layman, think you are right when every scientist says the opposite? And if it is not settled science, how do folks get away unchallenged saying so?

I am often confronted with these questions, so I thought I would print my typical answer. I wrote this in the comments section of a post at the Thin Green Line. Most of the post is a typical ad hominem attack on skeptics, but it includes the usual:

The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes, but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.

Here is what I wrote in response:

I am sure there are skeptics that have no comprehension of the science that blindly follow the pronouncements of certain groups, just as I am sure there are probably as high a percentage of global warming activists who don’t understand the science but are following the lead of sources they trust. The only thing I will say is that there is a funny dynamic here. Those of us who run more skeptical web sites tend to focus our attention on deconstructing the arguments of Hansen and Schmidt and Romm, who alarmist folks would consider their top spokesmen. Many climate alarmists in turn tend to focus on skeptical buffoons. I mean, I guess its fun to rip a straw man to shreds, but why not match your best against the best of those who disagree with you?

Anyway, I am off my point. There is a reason both sides can talk past each other. There is a reason you can confidently say “well established and can’t be denied” for your theory and be both wrong and right at the same time.

The argument that manmade CO2 emissions will lead to a catastrophe is based on a three step argument.

CO2 has a first order effect that warms the planet

The planet is dominated by net positive feedback effects that multiply this first order effect 3 or more times.

These higher temperatures will lead to and already are causing catastrophic effects.

You are dead right on #1, and skeptics who fight this are truly swimming against the science. The IPCC has an equation that results in a temperature sensitivity of about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 as a first order effect, and I have found little reason to quibble with this. Most science-based skeptics accept this as well, or a number within a few tenths.

The grand weakness of the alarmist case comes in #2. It is the rare long-term stable natural physical process that is dominated by positive feedback, and the evidence that Earth’s climate is dominated by feedbacks so high as to triple (in the IPCC report) or more (e.g. per Joe Romm) the climate sensitivity is weak or in great dispute. To say this point is “settled science” is absurd.

So thus we get to the heart of the dispute. Catastrophists posit enormous temperature increases, deflecting criticism by saying that CO2 as a greenhouse gas is settled. Though half right, they gloss over the fact that 2/3 or more of their projected temperature increase is based on a theory of Earth’s climate being dominated by strong positive feedbacks, a theory that is most certainly not settled, and in fact is probably wrong. Temperature increases over the last 100 years are consistent with neutral to negative, not positive feedback, and the long-term history of temperatures and CO2 are utterly inconsistent with the proposition there is positive feedback or a tipping point hidden around 350ppm CO2.

So stop repeating “settled science” like it was garlic in front of a vampire. Deal with the best arguments of skeptics, not their worst.

I see someone is arguing that skeptics have not posited an alternate theory to explain 20th century temperatures. In fact, a number have. A climate sensitivity to CO2 of 1.2C combined with net negative feedback, a term to account for ENSO and the PDO, plus an acknowledgment that the sun has been in a relatively strong phase in the second half of the 20th century model temperatures fairly well. In fact, these terms are a much cleaner fit than the contortions alarmists have to go through to try to fit a 3C+ sensitivity to a 0.6C historic temperature increase.

Finally, I want to spend a bit of time on #3. I certainly think that skeptics often make fools of themselves. But, because nature abhors a vacuum, alarmists tend to in turn make buffoons of themselves, particularly when predicting the effects on other climate variables of even mild temperature increases. The folks positing ridiculous catastrophes from small temperature increases are just embarrassing themselves.

Even bright people like Obama fall into the trap. Earlier this year he said that global warming was a factor in making the North Dakota floods worse.

Really? He knows this? First, anyone familiar with the prediction and analysis of complex systems would laugh at such certainty vis a vis one variable’s effect on a dynamic system. Further, while most anything is possible, his comment tends to ignore the fact that North Dakota had a colder than normal winter and record snowfalls, which is what caused the flood (record snows = record melts). To say that he knows that global warming contributed to record cold and snow is a pretty heroic assumption.

Yeah, I know, this is why for marketing reasons alarmists have renamed global warming as “climate change.” Look, that works for the ignorant masses, because they can probably be fooled into believing that CO2 causes climate change directly by some undefined mechanism. But we here all know that CO2 only affects climate through the intermediate step of warming. There is no other proven way CO2 can affect climate. So, no warming, no climate change.

Yeah, I know, somehow warming in Australia could have been the butterfly flapping its wings to make North Dakota snowy, but by the same unproven logic I could argue that California droughts are caused by colder than average weather in South America. At the end of the day, there is no way to know if this statement is correct and a lot of good reasons to believe Obama’s statement was wrong. So don’t tell me that only skeptics say boneheaded stuff.

The argument is not that the greenhouse gas effect of CO2 doesn’t exist. The argument is that the climate models built on the rickety foundation of substantial positive feedbacks are overestimating future warming by a factor of 3 or more. The difference matters substantially to public policy. Based on neutral to negative feedback, warming over the next century will be 1-1.5C. According to Joe Romm, it will be as much as 8C (15F). There is a pretty big difference in the magnitude of the effort justified by one degree vs. eight.

Category: Skeptic Summaries

103 Comments

Hunter:

Always nice to see a prediction come true, isn’t it? On April 15th, I said “There is serious mental deficiency on display here. And I will bet plenty of money that the existence of ice ages will not trouble our ‘climate skeptic’. I would say in no more than a fortnight, we shall see the idiotic repetition of the same old ‘long-term stable’ nonsense.”

And yep, true to expectations, just ten days later you’re out with the same mental deficiency. Astonishingly you still can’t bring yourself to understand a) that Earth’s climate is definitely not ‘long-term stable’, and b) that the phrase ‘dominated by positive feedback’ that you love so much is meaningless.

Refusing to accept that ice ages happen is only one example of your laughable stupidity. Your intellect is probably not up to understanding much science anyway, but you could at least try.

I guess the next installment of braindead regurgitation is due on or before May 9th, then.
April 25, 2009, 1:59 am
Steve Barr:

Hi Hunter

I’ve been following this blog for the past couple of months. I’m a ‘believer’ in mankind’s part in the climate change we’re seeing but i’m also a statstician and I’ve seen an awful lot of rubbish data analysis coming out of the ‘climate change brigade’, for years, much to my annoyance.

I find this blog incredibly useful as a source for questioning data that so often can be interpreted in different ways.

Do I agree with every suggestion coming from this blog? Of course not and I don’t think for one minute that this blog is designed to be anything other than a vehicle for helping thinking people to question what others often have a vested interest in steam-rollering us into just accepting without thinking.

I value this site for the aid it gives me in questioning. I suspect many others do too. Long may it continue.

On a personal level, I would like to add that I found the tone of your comments rude, condescending and negative. It was those that have led me to write my first comment on this blog, so I guess I should ‘thank’ you for that.

I would also like to suggest that you did not help your own excellent (in my view) point about ice ages, which I too find very hard to see in terms of a ‘long-term stable’ view.

I would de delighted if the Climate Sceptic would explore with us his data-led view on this. (He may already have done so and I’ve just not found it on the Blog yet).

So, Climate Skeptic, I hope you’ll keep kicking out your ‘contrary’ views, backed up with your interpretations of the data.

Hunter, I hope you’ll kick back too, preferably with a bit more consideration for the debate and rather less of the abuse.
April 25, 2009, 5:20 am
hunter:

Jennifer/Hunter,
What do you think causes ice ages?
If ‘dominated by positive feedback’ is meaningless, what is meaningful?
April 25, 2009, 6:02 am
Jim:

Hunter

I don’t know what Climate Skeptic is thinking about your ice age rant, but for my part it looks like one of the lamest things you have posted. I doubt he wants to honor it with a response. Instead of wasting bandwidth on stupid questions/statements, perhaps you could engage in a more substantive conversation and explain why you think strip bark proxies should be included in any temperature reconstruction. In the meantime I’m laughing at you, not with you.
April 25, 2009, 6:44 am
Sean:

I like the characterization of the three step argument presented here. Start with a trend that can be agreed upon, create a shaky framework for magnifying that trend then extrapolate and make worst case scenarios to call people to action. I would maintain that this approach by alarmists has already led to policy that has produced some very severe environmental consequences and human suffering.

If the skeptic community really wants to make a point with AGW believers, they really need to argue the consequences of the climate change solutions and then ask people to choose business as usual or the new “green” alternative. Biofuels, coupled with Wall Streets desire to make a buck manipulating markets, led to grain shortages, rising prices and less food for famine programs as well as higher prices to the poor in third world countries. Extra planting and intensive farming with fertizers in the midwest then led to growth of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t believe many AGW alarmist anticipated this but there are always unintended consequences. There are rainforests in Indonesia and the Amazon that are being converted to farmland partly from the pressure of biofuels. Was this intended?

The cap and trade system set up in Europe has been a windfall for energy companies and energy intensive industries who got to raise prices because of the cost of CO2 emmisions but then traded away the permits they were given. Still other companies who actually made an effort to produce energy intensive products more efficiently find they are not competative with offshore producers not opperating under the same system so less energy efficient processes get used to bring products to market. And who would have thougt that the Russians, because of their gross inefficiencies under the Soviet government, would have more carbon credits to sell to western nations than almost anyone? And the response of Europe is to become more reliant on Russian natural gas because it reduces carbon intensity of energy generation while the Russians have shown they have no qualms about turning off the spigot in a political dispute.

AGW alarmist have computer models that will project what ever they want them to project and use these a clubs to promote “action”. Skeptics have 10 years of history to show that a lot of the corrective “action” on climate change does not produce the results intended. If skeptics spent more time focusing their arguments on the real consequences of the “green” solutions, the average guy on the street (who I think is much smarter than people give him credit for) will start looking 2 or 3 moves ahead and make prudent choices.
April 25, 2009, 6:47 am
Hunter:

“What do you think causes ice ages?”

You’re startlingly ignorant, aren’t you? Slight changes in Earth’s orbital parameters. Changes so slight, in fact, that they could not possibly cause the major shifts in climate that they do cause – unless there were some amplifying factor.

“If ‘dominated by positive feedback’ is meaningless, what is meaningful?

This bizarre question is not meaningful. How about you simply specify what the meaning of the word ‘dominated’ is, in this context?
April 25, 2009, 7:04 am
Suzanne:

This is one of the most succinct and thoughtful summaries of the real issue in the current debate about climate change I have read.
I’m not sure where all the “stuff” about ice ages comes from. The reality is that paleoclimatologists and geologists do not have a good handle on the causes of ice ages. Certainly in the currant ice age, the Milankovich cycles have a good correlation but there is good evidence that warming in the past has preceded changes in insolation sufficient to cause warming. Like most things in nature, causes of ice ages appears to be complex and multifactorial and we are just beginning to unravel the puzzle.
April 25, 2009, 7:23 am
Jim:

All the talk about forcings and positive feedback is theoretical. It is interesting, but not so meaningful if the alleged temperature increase is not factual but instead an artifact of data massaging and and cherry picking of proxies. Sure, the global temperature has moved up and down, generally between a large scale warm state and a cold state. But the alarmists are saying the current temperature is abnormal, above the historical swings, and furthermore due to anthropologically produced carbon dioxide. They use their temperature representation in an effort to validate the alleged large value of positive feedback. There are indications that the climate is entering a cooling phase. The alarmists insist the temperature has gone up over the last 7 years when it has not. They insist that the warming of the last 100 years is abnormal when it isn’t. While seven years does not a trend make, the alarmists continue to dodge issues with their temperature reconstructions. And in fact, cooling is cooling no matter how brief. To me, the temperature trend and reconstruction is more important than the feedback issue at this stage of the game.
April 25, 2009, 8:32 am
Roark:

Hunter,

Your comments are filled with ad hominem remarks. Using ad hominem typically implies a lack of actual constructive arguments. Please attempt to stick with objective substance, people would take you much more seriously.
April 25, 2009, 8:51 am
NukemHill:

Hunter,

Please demonstrate to us how Ice Ages are a consequence of strong positive feedback.

Circular Argument is insufficient. Please provide links to vetted, published papers, as well as well-reasoned counter-arguments to refutations of the thesis.

Ad Hominems are grounds for immediate disqualification of anything further stated by you.

Given that this is obviously such an accepted scientific theory, I think 24 hours is sufficient time to present your argument.
April 25, 2009, 9:07 am
stan:

Someone commenting at Matt Briggs blog asked “How can laymen evaluate competing science claims from alarmist scientists and skeptical scientists when we lack a science background?” My response — we ask juries to do this in trials every day. As a lawyer, I look at the ways that experts can be cross-examined in such cases.

A book could be filled with a discussion of all these issues (and I’m thinking of writing one), but the clinchers for me come down to the scientific method and the moral duties of those who seek to impose what amounts to massive punishment on the world’s poor.

I may not know chemistry, physics, etc. in depth, but everyone understands quality control. And everyone can understand what is required by the scientific method and whether it is being followed. We don’t accept as definitive the findings which are announced by a single study. Mistakes (intentional and unintentional) happen all the time. Some scientists have claimed that more than half of published science studies turn out to be wrong. So the scientific method requires that the data, methods, assumptions, analysis, etc. of a study must all be made available to other scientists who then check, audit, and replicate the study. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening in climate science today.

Michael Mann’s comedy of errors hockey stick study overturned everything that the world of science understood to be true about the world’s temperature history for the last 1000 years. It overturned a wealth of findings from a wide variety of disciplines all of which showed a medieval warm period and a little ice age. Yet despite its revolutionary findings, NO ONE checked it, NO ONE audited it, and NO ONE replicated it. The IPCC accepted its conclusions in full and featured it prominently.

This is not the way quality science is done. This is a major failure to operate in accordance with the scientific method. And it is typical of most climate studies.

The temperature monitoring network in the US is a quality disaster. The rest of the world is even worse. It is a farce that so-called climate scientists would make grand pronouncements about the end of the earth without bothering to check that their thermometers were accurate. It is shockingly irresponsible. Add the lack of quality control in the databases for temperature and ice extent and we have a situation that ought to be a public scandal.

Since the climate policies being advocated will inevitably lead to hunger, impoverishment, disease and early death for billions of people, we (as a jury) have a right to expect the “experts” to adopt serious quality controls and follow the scientific method. When they don’t, the only morally responsible position is to dismiss their claims.
April 25, 2009, 10:07 am
joshv:

#1 could be true – but the result is based on models, not observation. There is in fact no way to validate this empirically, lacking the ability to go back in time and re-run the Earth experiment holding all things the same, but keeping CO2 at preindustrial levels. I would not consider the 1.2degC figure to be settled science. It’s an unverified model result. Nothing more.
April 25, 2009, 10:27 am
hunter- bored by Jennifer:

Jennifer,
I won my bet. You cannot answer.
You are just an attitude looking for (and failing to find) wit.
Troll on, babe.
April 25, 2009, 11:04 am
An Inquirer:

Stan:
Just a slight quibble, but I believe that my quibble essentially proves your point. When you say that “NO ONE replicated [Michael Mann’s comedy of errors],” that is not quite accurate. A few studies have replicated Michael Mann’s work, but the vast majority of the authors have been colleagues of Mann and have been called the Team. What has been common in all such studies is the reliance and weight on one or two controversial proxy series that have responsible for the result that “overturned a wealth of findings from a wide variety of discipline.” These controversial series were chosen despite availability of other proxies with less controversy and despite their contradiction to other evidence. For example, today’s retreating glaciers reveal that the climate in Western United States was quite warm a 1000 years ago, contrary to Mann’s bristlecone proxy.
April 25, 2009, 11:43 am
Jeff11:

I’ve seen “Hunter’s” regular comment that “Earth’s climate is definitely not ‘long-term stable’” and wonder why he/she comes to that conclusion?

I suppose that taking a view based upon the “600 million year temperature / CO2″ graph (derived from Scotese and Berner) where temperature appears to vary between approximately 12 and 23 degrees Celsius, “Hunter” seems to have a point, in that an approx 100% variation between max and min is not exactly a sign of stability. However, basing a conclusion upon an arbitrary temperature scale surely proves nothing, shouldn’t we be working in Kelvin? Whereupon the temperature variation moves to a range between 285 and 296 degrees, or to put it another way, around 4.5% – which is, in my view, pretty stable.
April 25, 2009, 12:14 pm
BillBodell:

Joshv,

The theory that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and (on it’s own) contributes to global warming is based on known physical processes and, I believe can and has been proven in lab experiments. Making this arguement is just the kind of thing that will attract the attention of the alarmists and they’ll spend their time arguing with you instead of Warren. Roy Spencer believes in the Greenhouse effect of CO2 (check drroypencer.com), Pat Micheals believes it, Steve McIntyre believes it. Holding out on this point essentially makes you a crank.

Jim,

When you mention the “alleged warming”, I presume that you’re talking about unaccounted for Urban Heat island Effects & the questionable quality of many surface stations. True, UHI effects are most certainly not properly accounted for. The U.S. tempurature records are better than you think, for the rest of the world, they’re terrible. So, of the recorded warming, it’s reasonable to consider that about a half of it is artificial. However, that means that there HAS STILL BEEN Warming. Saying that you question any warming risks putting you in the “crank” category. And this is unnecessary. You can stipulate that ALL the warming is real (as Warren does) and still have a very good arguement to make. This has the advantage of making the “other side” focus on your best arguements.

I think Hunter/Jennifer is paid by Exxon/Mobil to make the AGW crowd look bad.
April 25, 2009, 4:10 pm
Enonymous:

Not all “various groups” agree with the IPCC. Polish geologists don’t.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3310
Original in polish: http://www.kngeol.pan.pl/images/stories/pliki/2.Stanowisko%20KNG%20w%20sprawie%20zmian%20klimatu.pdf
April 25, 2009, 4:24 pm
another guy named Dan:

Something that I think this argument, as well constructed as it is, is missing. The IPCC conclusions are based not on a single set of climate models, but three interdependent sets of models, each of which has measurement and forecasting issues.

The first set of models is used to convert proxy measurements of historical biological and geochemical processes into a historical temperature record. It is these that use such data a tree ring widths, sediment deposition, and stalagmite growth to create a record of past temperature. It is becoming apparent that many of these proxies are affected by factors other than temperature, such as rate of precipitation, and even CO2 atmospheric content directly, making them less reliable than originally assumed.

In the second set of models, the historical temperature trends are used as input to extrapolate future effects of CO2 content on climate. It is here that the assumptions of high and net positive feedback are introduced, based on the potentially flawed reconstructions of historical temperatures.

In the third set of models, the climate trends from the second set are input into economic and econometric models to determine what the net effects of climate changes will be on the survival and welfare of various population groups. Many of these seem to have the implicit assumption that the climatic conditions were somehow “optimal” in the first half of the 20th century, and that any deviation from these conditions is necessarily negative in impact.

The big problem gets introduced by the fact that no one knows how good any of these models actually are. It has been my observation, at least in the second and third sets, that the primary criterion for judging both the accuracy and precision of the models is how well they agree with each other, rather than how well they agree with the actual observed trends.

I have spent most of my adult career working with complex computerized systems, and have experienced first hand the old adage of “Garbage in, Gospel out”, or the fact that people have a tendency to believe numbers out of a computer more readily than their own observations. I have also worked with the mathematics of non-linear dynamical systems enough to realize that any model that can calculate the Earth’s climate faster than the climate changes are themselves realized, must necessarily be oversimplified to the point of dubiousness at best.
April 25, 2009, 5:59 pm
Jim:

BillB – I am not denying there has been warming. I am referring to the allegation that the “hockey stick” part of the alarmists’ chart is abnormal and higher than any temperature in the past. There has been warming since the last cooling – and we had nothing to do with the cooling or the warming. The hockey stick part of the chart is a product of “data processing” at its worst along with questionable proxies in my opinion. I think the truth is that we don’t have a very good idea of recent temperatures before satellite readings due to a sparsity of stations. Any attempt to use this questionable data as a basis for the prediction of of future warming or anything else is futile, again in my opinion. For example, alarmists use the hockey stick to “prove” that the sun no longer drives the temperature. It could be that CO2 is causing the warming or it could be sloppy methods cause apparent warming.
April 25, 2009, 6:11 pm
George Tobin:

I admire the malleability of AGW reasoning as provided by Hunter.

1. There is a huge (undefined) amplification factor that causes (and, I guess, also ends) ice ages. Therefore climate is controlled by large forcing factors we don’t understand BUT ALSO

2. Prof Mann et al. are right that the climate has been utterly stable–almost flatline for millenia so it must be that CO2 is the only factor that matters and the IPCC models understand and account for all factors that matter.

So skeptics are idiots if deny or if they acknowledge significant non-carbon causes of climate change.

The notion that large positive feedbacks are unlikely is not the same as saying the climate never changes. It is to say that when there is change it does seem to tend back, however slowly. There do appear to be tendencies to toward equilibrium rather than one-directional change.

In contrast, the hypothesis of overly large sensitivity requires complex face-saving measures to account for rather modest warming over the last century such as: complex assumptions of a pattern of one-sided behavior by water vapor that hasn’t occurred yet, missing ocean heat content, convenient (almost magic) assumptions about aerosols and, of course, intense revisionism about pre-modern climate history.

AGW theory is reminiscent of the complicated epicycles of pre-Copernican theory of planetary orbits designed to save appearances. The heliocentric theory was a lot easier even though there was a large geocentric consensus.

The known science and the numbers seem to say (1) it’s probably gonna get warmer but not that much and (2) it is not at all clear that such a change will be bad much less catastrophic. The (sometimes lucrative) psychological and/or ideological predisposition to speculate about catastrophic climate outcomes is more a function of modern yuppie narcissism than of actual climate change.
April 25, 2009, 6:15 pm
Jim:

Take a look at this RealClimate discussion of the Hockey Stick issue. Notice that for the most part, they avoid discussion of the specific proxies used in reconstructions. Notice how they use the term “significant data” instead of specific proxies. From the web page: “If you use the MM05 convention and include all the significant PCs, you get the same answer.” They will have to get down to more detail than this to convince me the hockey stick is real.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/
April 26, 2009, 6:06 am
NukemHill:

Hunter.

Your time is up.
April 26, 2009, 10:29 am
gavin:

Hunter,

It is about time this came out. Sometimes, you know – it even gets beyond the science and the lay man can understand whats happening. In its complexity – its that simple.

We (lay people) understand, sure we need to curb our levels of emmissions, stay as green as we can be and clean up after ourselves – just NOT for the reasons you people wish we would – to support another ECONOMY that grew out of Al Gore’s a_ _ e!

So, quite simply, if you want to play science here – PLAY it and speak to people as intelligently as they are trying to make their points to you and other. BUT

If you want to abuse people, then just post your address here and I’ll come over and we’ll have that abusive conversation you are after.

And by the way, I meant your home address (a photo is good also so I can locate you when I see you)

Cheers

Gavin
April 26, 2009, 3:26 pm
josh:

“has been proven in lab experiment”.

Lab experiments are not the atmosphere. The general consensus around the size of the effect is based on models alone, and is not based on empirical evidence or measurement. I don’t care who concedes the point, it doesn’t change the fact that about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 is not a scientifically measured (or measurable) quantity.

“Holding out on this point essentially makes you a crank.”

From a scientific standpoint the atmospheric warming effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is are unverified hypotheses, nothing more. There might be compelling reasons to believe that these gases cause warming based on simplified models of the atmosphere, but there are no empirical measurements that demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between atmospheric partial pressure of these gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and long term heat retention.

I will grant that wherever you live, the climate is almost certainly warmer today than it was 150 years ago. I am relatively agnostic as to the various hypothetical cause. I think it unlikely that CO2 is the primary or even a substantial driver, though I could certainly be wrong. I also am skeptical of other proposed theories. There simply is not enough data available to be able to infer clear cause/effect relationships.
April 26, 2009, 6:05 pm
JR:

If climate sensitivity is less than the IPCC says then why is the melting of the summer Arctic sea ice accelerating and proceeding much faster than the worst case IPCC models? Or do you dispute the albedo effect as well?
April 27, 2009, 1:42 am
George Tobin:

JR:
1) Where have you been, dude? The Great Arctic Melt of 2008 has been canceled due to large ice coverage that now exceeds that of each of the last 7 years. See: http://digitaldiatribes.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/sea-ice-april-2009.jpg. For a really solid and informative analysis of ice coverage dynamics and history, see http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm.

2) Given that some of the models in the IPCC call for current temperatures to be running substantially higher than they actually are, I am pretty sure we are well below worst-case levels for melting.

3) Nobody disputes the science of albedo effects. At issue is speculation about magic amplifications of such effects. I believe (as you probably do) that black soot deposits on ice masses are a bad thing and that such deposits affect ice melting and thus albedo. However, I don’t believe that the effect is large or lasting.
April 27, 2009, 5:44 am
claudius denk:

1.. CO2 has a first order effect that warms the planet
2.. The planet is dominated by net positive feedback effects that multiply this first order
effect 3 or more times.
3.. These higher temperatures will lead to and already are causing catastrophic effects.
You are dead right on #1, and skeptics who fight this are truly swimming against the science. The
IPCC has an equation that results in a temperature sensitivity of about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 as
a first order effect, and I have found little reason to quibble with this. Most science-based
skeptics accept this as well, or a number within a few tenths.

You are dead wrong on #1, and skeptics who accept this are swimming with the flow of the pseudo-science. IPCC is a bullshit organization that makes up all kinds of stuff, like climate sensitivity. The fact that you have “no reason to quibble with it” is not a good reason to just accept its scientific validity.
April 27, 2009, 6:21 am
George Tobin:

JR:
Where have you been, guy? The Great Arctic Melt of 2008 has been canceled due to cold weather and sea ice whose extent is now larger that any in the last 7 years. Also, what worst-case scenario? We are experiencing actual temps at the very bottom of the predicted IPCC range.

claudius denk and josh:
The physics of CO2 are well-established. I don’t see any reason to dispute that. The issue is whether the climate system (a) just passively accepts that modest warming; (b) pushes back and reduces it or (c) amplifies it. Present trends validate (a) or (b) and (c) is looking less likely.

Lukewarmists unite! We have been right all along!
April 27, 2009, 7:49 am
pauld:

JR asks
“If climate sensitivity is less than the IPCC says then why is the melting of the summer Arctic sea ice accelerating and proceeding much faster than the worst case IPCC models? Or do you dispute the albedo effect as well?”

Why look at melting sea ice, when we can look at actual global temperature records. Over the last century the increase in global temperature has been significantly lower than what would be expected by the IPCC climate sensitivity. The IPCC has to “explain” the acutal temperature record. The explanations are based on conjecture, not hard data (e.g. aerosals have prevented expected warming; the warming is in the “pipeline”)
April 27, 2009, 7:56 am
PaulD:

The post states:

“Those of us who run more skeptical web sites tend to focus our attention on deconstructing the arguments of Hansen and Schmidt and Romm, who alarmist folks would consider their top spokesmen. Many climate alarmists in turn tend to focus on skeptical buffoons. I mean, I guess its fun to rip a straw man to shreds, but why not match your best against the best of those who disagree with you?”

Hunter replies:

“Refusing to accept that ice ages happen is only one example of your laughable stupidity. Your intellect is probably not up to understanding much science anyway, but you could at least try.”

I would suggest that we spend our time focused on Hansen and Schmidt and Romm rather than “Hunter”
April 27, 2009, 8:22 am
morganovich:

just to clear up some terms for the discussion there is an important distinction between “ice age” and glaciation.

we are currently in an ice age. it commenced about 30 million years ago. it has a great deal to do with both the presence of a major continent at a pole and with the closure of the isthmus of panama preventing equatorial mixing of the Atlantic and pacific oceans. this ice age will persist for millions of years to come barring a massive rearrangement of the continents.

glaciation is what many of you mean when you say ice age. it’s a period in an ice age where ice spreads sometimes from tropic to tropic. we are currently in the warm period between glaciations which are the baseline state in an ice age. de-galciation is highly correlated to malinkovich cycles in the earth’s orbit and rotation.

the current warm period is cooler than most of the others indicated in the vostok ice cores (among others). in all cases, CO2 rise has occurred but as a lagging variable, not a leading one. when the world cools, it then drops, also as a lagging indicator. this same trend (in rate of increase) can be seen on timescales as short as 4 months. this seems to support the argument that CO2 is an effect and not a primary cause of warmings. this is not to say it has no effect, but rather that the effect is not enough to radically alter climate and that it seems to be muted by other factors that provide negative feedback. most current GCM’s model positive warming feedback from clouds despite clear evidence that clouds and precipitation systems provide negative feedback (see spencer’s work with the AQUA satellite and Lindzen’s “adaptive heat iris” hypothesis.

of further interest are cosmic ray impacts that are left out of GCM’s. a drop in solar output may have more than 1 effect on earth climate. in addition to reducing incoming energy, a drop in solar wind also exposes the atmosphere to more cosmic rays. these rays cause ionization which encourages high cloud cover increasing earth’s albedo and reducing the energy reaching the surface even further.

even the IPCC admits to having a “poor” understanding of many of these feedbacks which makes it utterly astounding that they would claim 90%+ certainty in their predictions when feedbacks comprise most of the warming they posit. from these two facts alone (both of which can be found in the AR4 itself) it is pretty clear that the IPCC is either comprised of very poor scientists or possesses an agenda other that an accurate portrayal of the facts.
April 27, 2009, 9:16 am
JimBeaux:

Sean wrote: “If the skeptic community really wants to make a point with AGW believers, they really need to argue the consequences of the climate change solutions and then ask people to choose business as usual or the new “green” alternative. Biofuels, coupled with Wall Streets desire to make a buck manipulating markets, led to grain shortages, rising prices and less food for famine programs as well as higher prices to the poor in third world countries.”

I’m a graphic artist, working with the Environmental Protection Agency. One of the scientists here does research on gasoline additives and how they contaminate the soil. I asked him recently how he felt about ethanol in gasoline. He replied that research has shown that when you add ethanol to gasoline, the contaminates move more rapidly into the soil and then disperse at a faster rate than gas without ethanol. He said that Congress had the results of this data BEFORE they mandated that ethanol be added to gas, but chose to ignore it. This is another example of how the solutions cause as many problems as they solve.
April 27, 2009, 9:33 am
PaulD:

On the topic of ducking issues, I would like to add another thought. Many of the pro-AGW arguments I read on the web are based on “all or nothing” reasoning. For example, they assert that the urban heat island effect cannot explain all of the observed warming in the termperature record. Or they assert that the variations in the behavior of the sun cannot explain all the warming observed. Or that changes in land usage cannot explain all of the observed warming. What they do not fully acknowledge is that some of the observed warming may be caused by processes we do not fully understand such as the urban heat island effect, or variations in the behavior of the sun or changes in land usage.

The IPCC attempts to determine the contribution of CO2 to the observed warming by running historical models with and without increased CO2 and then subtracting the difference. The assumption is that increased CO2 is the only significant cause of the warming. It is possible that this is true, but I don’t think we have nearly sufficient data to state with certainty it is true. The notion that this is “settled science” strikes me as an absurd contention.

If each of these processes and perhaps many more, have made some contribution to the observed warming, then the contribution of CO2 to the observed warming would be overstated in the IPCC models.

If even one-quarter of the observed warming has been caused by processes unrelated to CO2 that we have not fully accounted for, then the models will be far off, particularly when they are extended out 100 years.
April 27, 2009, 10:32 am
M. Kjonaas:

Carbon dioxide facts:
1.Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a colorless gas that appears as a trace (less than 0.04%)component of air.
2. CO2 is essential for plant growth and is essential for life on earth.
3. It is produced mainly by nature but also as a result of the combustion of compounds that contain carbon, such as coal, petroleum and natural gas.
4. CO2 is classified as a “greenhouse gas”. All components of the atmosphere are greenhouse gases, and without them the earth would be a frozen ball of ice.
5. The greenhouse affect of CO2 is insignificant when compared to that of water vapor in the atmosphere. The Global Warming people disregard water vapor when talking about greenhouse gases.
6. CO2 is sometimes sited as the cause of “Acid Rain” but CO2 when combined with water produces a very mild acid. Acid rain has been mostly eliminated by the removal of sulfur and nitrogen oxides from combustion gases.
7. CO2 has sometimes been blamed for the death of some coral reefs. Coral is an animal which depends on CO2 for the growth of its calcium carbonate skeleton. Coral, like all animals eventually die and do live forever.
8. It is amazing that plant life can live with the present trace amount of CO2 in air. Experiments have shown that a higher concentration will cause faster plant growth.
9. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased only about 0.01% during the past 200 years. That still is only a trace amount.
10. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant or poison because it is about 4% in the breath that man exhales.
April 27, 2009, 12:08 pm
Sean:

JimBeaux, the plot thickens when you look at the history of oxygenates in gasoline. The first major oxygenate was MTBE. In the 1980′s it was hailed as a great example of the oil industry and environmentallists working together to solve an air pollution problem. In reality, the MTBE was needed to reduce emmissions on the fraction of older cars that were not well maintained. It increased cost and reduced gas mileage so everyone paid for it whether needed or not. When MTBE started showing up in a lot of ground water people clammored for its elimination so the powerful farm lobby and AGW activists stepped forward to fix the first fix at an even greater cost to consumers. I point this out because whenever you see diametrically opposed groups hoisting a glass of champagne and touting their joint effort to solve a problem, all it really means is that they’ve found a way to profit from legislation intended to solve a percieved problem, usually without regard to unintended effects.
April 27, 2009, 2:30 pm
Fred:

Please Hunter, do tell us.

What causes Ice Ages ?

Are we in an Ice Age now ?
April 27, 2009, 2:42 pm
Jim:

PaulD – I am still exploring and reading up on global warming. I came upon this site today. There is an interesting chart showing a hockey stick in solar output! I have not looked into it to try to figure out if it is valid or not, but thought I would share it in case anyone had not seen this before. Good commentary on many of the proxies also.

One thing about the global warming cultists is they put out a ton of papers. Too bad the methodology they choose frequently isn’t so good.

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Proxies.html
April 27, 2009, 5:23 pm
Jessica:

I am a junior in high school. I don’t understand any of this. I’m not trying to sound like a dunce, I was hoping someone could help explain some of this to me. Do the greenhouse gases have any affect on “climate change”, and if so, how much? And, also, could someone exlain the use of Ice Core Evidence, and whether or not it is a reliable source to prove whether or not global warming is occuring.

Thank you
April 28, 2009, 11:15 am
hunter:

Jessica,
What do you think ‘climate change’ means?
April 28, 2009, 1:25 pm
Stephen Wilde:

Over the past 12 months I’ve been publishing a number of ‘common sense’ articles trying to work out what the climate really is doing and why.

For a different perspective on all this try here:

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=37

There is alot to digest so if interested fix the link as a favourite and dip into it from time to time.

So far my propositions are matching real world climate behaviour very well.
April 28, 2009, 3:50 pm
woodNfish:

Climate Skeptic, I have one quibble with your answer to AGW alarmists; you call their unproven hypothesis a theory. It isn’t.
April 29, 2009, 9:56 am
JNicklin:

Hunter,

Your response to Jessica is, saddly, typical of your total lack of understanding of the science. If you can’t, or won’t, explain it simply and succinctly, so that a high school student can understand, then you are demonstrating either ignorance or are just being your obstreporous self.

Jessica,

Yes, greenhouse gases do have an effect on climate change. The extent of the change is poorly known since there have been times when greenhouse gases have been higher and temperatures have been lower and vice versa. Greenhouse gases help to keep the earth’s temperatures conducive to supporting life. The effect of CO2, is complex. If you double the amount of CO2, you should expect an increase of somewhere around 1.2 degrees, if all other conditions remain the same which they rarely do. You can do some simple math to determine that we would need to get to about 580ppm CO2 to see the temperature rise by 1.2 degrees as compared to pre-industrial times. Then we would need to add another 580ppm (total of 1160ppm) to get another 1.2 degrees. That is, as always, taking into account that all other factors have to remain stable. They don’t.

The earth’s climate is a chaotic system with a considerable number of variables. There are positive and negative feedbacks. The orbit of the earth, the sun’s output patterns, clouds, etc all effect the way the system responds. The bottom line, in my humble opinion is that climate changes, it always has and always will.
April 29, 2009, 11:51 am
An Inquirer:

JR: In response to your questions: “If climate sensitivity is less than the IPCC says then why is the melting of the summer Arctic sea ice accelerating and proceeding much faster than the worst case IPCC models? Or do you dispute the albedo effect as well?”

If Arctic Ice is disappearing faster than the worst case IPCC models while GMT is not rising and other fingerprints are missing, perhaps the models are missing something in the modeling of Artic Ice. If cash is bleeding out of LTCM faster than the worst case in their financial models, perhaps something is amiss with their models. If the Titanic is taking on water faster than models say is the worst case, perhaps the models are missing something key. In the Arctic, the models are missing the effect of abnormal level of sunshine in 2007 and the winds that blew the ice. Unless one maintains that CO2 changes are responsible for the sunshine and winds – and I have not seen such claims – then the IPCC models are quite inappropriate for discussion of recent Arctic ice levels. Furthermore, IPCC models in AR4 did not model ocean oscillations, and there has been little GCM progress in that area since then. The non-Hansen departments of NASA point out that the culprits in 2007 and 2008 levels were lack of cloud cover, winds, the oscillations – and soot from China. We are not talking about a CO2-driven phenomenon in recent Arctic ice levels.
April 29, 2009, 12:21 pm
hunter:

JNicklin,
I am not trying to be naything negative to ‘Jessica’. And I apologize to her if my question to her comes across as anything less than helpful.
My question was an effort to help her clarify her thinking on this topic.
Your answer is a nice one, however.
(And I am not the phony ‘Hunter’ who posts under my name).
My point would be that GHG’s are an integral part of the climate system.
The atmosphere is composed of gasses which are to a lesser or greater extent acting as greenhouse gasses. Each atmospheric component absorbs different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The oceans, the rotation of the planet and its orbit around the sun,along with the atmosphere, and the land, are the prime parts of the climate.
The sun energizes the entire system.
The rotation sets up coriolis effects and prevents large heating differentials; the angle of the axis of rotation creates seasonal changes as Earth orbits Sol.
The oceans receive most of the energy, and the atmosphere convects the energy around, as well as acts as an ‘insulator’ in no small part by way of the famous greenhouse effect.
Each of the major pieces of the climate system has changed over time.
Life has done OK.
Of GHG’s, water vapor is the most significant.
I hope this helps Jessica. The topic is fascinating.
April 29, 2009, 12:52 pm
JNicklin:

Hunter (the real one)

I apologize for confusing you with the interloper. Your post adds to an explanation for Jessica quite nicely.
April 29, 2009, 12:57 pm
Jessica:

Hunter and JNicklin

Thank you both for your help. I am doing a project for my geology class, and I was having trouble finding information on my questions. There was a question that you both forgot to answer for me. How exactly does Ice Core Evidence work, and how reliable is it? I have found a few websites about it, but they tell me different things.

I appreciate both of your help. I am understanding this much more.
April 29, 2009, 5:10 pm
Jeff Id:

You say “The IPCC has an equation that results in a temperature sensitivity of about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 as a first order effect”

I agree that this is true. However, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that the feedback may be negative — of course it would result in a lesser increase rather than a decrease.

The reason I say that is simply because as you know the numbers are NOT well established and while negative feedback is generally considered impossible by the consensus, I’ve seen no proof or even good evidence one way or the other yet.

I know you don’t often answer to comments in your blog but I’ll try anyway, what are your thoughts on this?
April 29, 2009, 8:28 pm
hunter:

Jessica,
Some people hold out ice cores as a gold standard for not only paleo CO2, but for evidence of things like dust particles, pollen, volcanic ash, and other indicators of atmospheric state. There is controversy about the accuracy of the CO2 micro bubbles trapped in the snow.
April 30, 2009, 5:48 am
josh:

Jeff: He never answers. Which is somewhat unique for a blogger. I imagine it does save him a lot of time though.

On the 1.2degC/doubling point – I agree. This is a model result, not an empirical measurement. One can concede that given simplified models, 1.2degC/doubling seems at least plausible. But it’s not a measurable quantity in any scientific sense, and more complex system dynamics which are not currently well modeled could result in a much lower number, even zero.
April 30, 2009, 8:24 am
JNicklin:

Jessica,

As snow accumulates and becomes glacial ice, small amounts of atmospheric gases are trapped in the air spaces between the ice crystals. As years pass, each successive year’s ice becomes compressed under the newer layers. What may have been a metre of snow in 10,000BCE could end up as a few millimetres by 2000CE. Ice cores recover the historical layers which can then be disected to recover the gases and other inclusions for analysis. As the real hunter pointed out, this evidence is considered “gold standard” in some circles. Also as hunter stated, there are problems with accuracy. I will try to give you a snapshot of the problems as I understand them.

1. Gases are free to migrate in and out of the loose snow/ice matrix for several years before being trapped in a steady state matrix. So, depending on weather/temperature conditions, the gases in a paleo layer represent several years of mixed gases. Not really a problem at the resolution scales that paleo studies deal with, but could be problematic if you are trying to get fine resolution to prove, or disprove, a point. For really old ice layers the resolution can be decades or centuries or more.

2. Ice under great pressure is not solid, it is more like a soft wax, it can fold and smear. In some cases, older ice layers can be folded over newer layers. If you take a core through one of these folds, the timeline is distorted. High quality researchers will take this into account, if they get the right cores in the right places.

3. Trapped gases in ice are only an indicator of the gases present at that particular place on the planet at a given time. Using them as global indicators assumes that all the gases are well mixed on a global scale, they are not. Today, we use one site, Mona Kea, for measuring CO2. These measurements may or may not be indicative of the levels of CO2 at the polar regions.

CO2 trapped in the ice layers is not a good indication of anything other than CO2 at the time. A better indicator of temperature is O2. In cold periods, ice will trap Oxygen18, in warmer times its Oxygen16. The ratio of the two Oxygen types can be used to determine, in a broad sense, what the temperature was at a given time in the past. Temperature approximations in paleo times are not as precise as readings taken from modern instruments. If you use ice cores to determine temperatures, you should not combine it with modern instrument data. Some researchers (Mann et al) have used tree rings and other paleo indicators to determine pre-instrument temperatures. To be consistent, they should use modern tree rings to determine current temperatures. Tacking on instrument readings to paleo derived approximations can lead to conclusions that confuse the issues.

You should not take any statements made in blogs or any online site as absolute fact, this includes what I have just told you. Do your own research. Some of us can guide you, but you have to be comfortable with your own understanding of the issues.
April 30, 2009, 11:41 am
JNicklin:

Jessica,

When you look at reconstructions of paleo temperatures or gas concentrations, you should always try to get graphs that have error bars in addition to the nice smooth curves usually presented. Error bars show the amount of confidence that a set of data provide. By looking at the error bars, you can see how precise the presented charts are. You can do some reading about error bars at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_bar
April 30, 2009, 11:47 am
Hunter:

Why would anyone come here to learn about the climate? It’s run by an idiot, and mostly populated by ignorant idiots who don’t ever seem to have taken the trouble to think before typing. I strongly doubt that ‘Jessica’ is actually a high school student. If she is, I hope she fails her course, as she clearly has no idea how to use resources such as text books. It’s a terrible, terrible idea to read the random thoughts of an idiot on the internet, instead of a text book.

JNicklin: “Today, we use one site, Mona [sic] Kea, for measuring CO2″

No. CO2 is measured all over the world. This is a ridiculous error to make! That you would not think to question this bizarre assumption tells us all we need to know about your scientific ability.
April 30, 2009, 3:12 pm
hunter- bored by Jennifer:

Jenn,
Even those who agree with your religious faith in AGW cringe. Take the hint.
And your advice about who to not believe on the internet is certainly one people apply to you within a few second’s worth of reading your spew.
Have you figured out yet, btw, if we are in an ice age or not?
And wishing failure on someone- even someone maybe posing as a student- is low, even for you. Or maybe not.
April 30, 2009, 7:06 pm
Jessica:

Hunter
I am not going to attempt to argue with you. It would be a complete waste of my time, seeing as how there would be no way to prove myself. I appreciate your vote of confidence. Anyways, the textbooks we use are outdated.

JNicklin
Thanks again for your help. I just needed some help in understanding those topics, so I could have better luck in researching it.
April 30, 2009, 8:13 pm
Jim:

Jessica -
You are actually witnessing a significant behavior of scientists. I’m not saying Hunter/Jennifer are scientists, I don’t know them. But I do know real scientists.

Some among the non-scientist public believe scientists are quiet, thoughtful, polite, generally agreeable,agree on the facts,and always right. Nothing could be further from the truth. Given a phenomenon, ph. A we will call it, different scientists in the relevant field can and do frequently disagree on what ph. A is, what causes it, or other particulars. They sometimes with great passion defend their hypothesis and ridicule scientists who don’t agree with them. In short, scientists are human beings subject to all the foibles of Homo sapiens. Scientists have made up data and submitted as fact. It has been published by reputable scientific journals. Scientists have to eat and feed their families. Much of their money comes from Federal grants. Without that grant money, there would be far fewer scientists as the execution of science frequently takes a lot of money and special, costy equipment. Global warming has and continues to be a cornucopia of money for scientists. This motivates them to keep the alarm alive. Other scientists, just as other people, have a political point of view. Some of these believe humans are destroying the Earth and are actually anti-human. They see global warming as a way to get governments to force people to live a less opulent life, thereby utilizing less of the Earth’s resources. You should always consider the source when you are looking for facts is my point here.
May 1, 2009, 7:51 am
Roark:

Hunter……..yawn……..
May 1, 2009, 8:18 am
san quintin:

Hi all
I don’t know how many “Hunters” there are here but I have to say that low climate sensitivity (much beloved by sceptics) is incompatible with what we know about ice ages. I would also like to say that this post is the most reasonable I’ve seen from here for a long time. There are people who hold silly views on both sides (“there is no warming” etc. versus “sea level will rise 25m this century”) but the sceptics tend to have more than their fair share. Most of the pro-AGW “alarmists” have failed to see the clarfications and caveats that scientists routinely place upon the science.

Many (most?) of the sceptics have failed to distinguish between their political views (which in my experience tends towards libertarian and right wing) and the fact that climate change is real. They have fallen into the trap of thinking that because the policy implications of climate change might well include green taxes, restrictions on growth, travel etc, which they hate on ideological grounds, it means that AGW can’t be happening. Clearly this is illogical.

Finally, there is a very good reason why we talk about ‘climate change’ rather than ‘global warming’….many of the effects we see are the result of seconday processes (ie changes in ocean and atmospheric currents, ice sheet stability etc). I’m sure you knew that!
May 1, 2009, 8:51 am
hunter(the real one):

san quintin,
We are in an ice age, and have been for a very long time.
We are in an interglacial period.
‘Climate change’ nor climate science are driving policy. Skeptics that I am aware of, and I know a few, do not dispute that CO2 is a GHG or that it has increased. But AGW – the (false) assertion that human introduced CO2 is leading to an apocalyptic change in the climate system, is driving policy. That is what skeptics are pointing out: That AGW is a fear driven and fear profiting scam.
That you have to talk climate change, when for decades, right up until the warming of years ago ended, all that was spoken of global WARMING.
You don’t get to dissemble away from the complete and utter failure of AGW predictions by simply changing the name.
And the policy ‘solutions’ for AGW are garbage because they are garbage, not becasue they are left or right. They are simply wrong. Like many government programs, they are the wrong solution for a non-existant problem.
No matter how slick the packaging.
May 1, 2009, 9:03 am
san quintin:

Hi hunter (the real one)
That’s a lot of mistakes for one post! We are not in an ice age…we are in the Holocene interglacial. There are lots of sceptics who argue all sorts of stupid things….including that there is no warming, that CO2 is not a GHG, that glaciers are all advancing etc. No scientist is claiming that ‘apocalyptic change’ (whatever that may be) is happening now…just that there is a very high likelihood of it.

You also clearly don’t know the difference between weather and climate. I suggest you look it up. You think the AGW are garbage and so are the policy solutions. Show me how, and then show me what your solutions would be. Do nothing? I tried to be civil…maybe you should try it too.
May 1, 2009, 10:38 am
san quintin:

Another thing…show me how low sensitivity explains the pattern of glacial/interglacial transitions.
May 1, 2009, 10:39 am
BillBodell:

san quintin,

The political aspect interests me. It does seem to be true that most skeptics are libertarian or right-wing. However, it also seems to me that most “alarmists” are left-wing. This leads many to think that skeptics somehow “know” that AGW is real and a dangerous threat, yet, because it would conflict with their politics, they choose to ignore it. That’s absurd. I’m a libertarian and if I was convinced that AGW was a great danger and that the only way to avoid it’s consequences was to institute a “world government”, I’d be all for it. The idea that I’d endanger my children and grandchildren’s lives rather than give up my free market beliefs is close to insulting (not that you’ve suggested this, but other have).

There’s a far more innocent reason that the two wings end up on opposing sides of the AGW debate. Everyone approaches new issues from their particular world view. The right tends to be skeptical of experts, believe that more government is rarely the answer and that things will be fine if left alone. The left tends to believe experts (since they have litt;e faith in cultural knowledge), believe that government is required to solve most problems and think that the masses can’t make it on thier own without the guidance of their betters. Given these starting points and the fact that very few people are capable of letting the facts disuade them, it’s not surprising that right = skeptic & left = alarmist is the the outcome.

However, good science is good science regardless of one’s political stance. One’s political loyalties are of no consequence to the quality of the science. While politics can inform an understanding of the motivations behind the opposing viewpoints, when discussing scientific issues, referencing politics is essentially just an ad hom attack.

As for the “climate sensitivity” issue, I think this site has done the best job I’ve seen in support of a low sensitivity based on objective historical data. Do you have a counter argument for that?
May 1, 2009, 12:20 pm
hunter:

san quentin,
Check your facts about whether or not we are in an iceage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
You would be wrong.

As to apocalyptic change not being threatened by reputable scientists:
http://www.globalwarminghysteria.com/blog/james-hansen-outgores-gore-on-gw-apocalypse-timing.html

As to weather vs. climate, weather is not climate, but climate is composed of weather.
If the weather isn’t doing anything unusual- and it is not- then neither is the climate.
As to what to do, I suggest we do what we were working on doing before the AGW hypesters highjacked the public square:
Work on cleaning up the environment, being more energy efficient, and dealing with Earth’s ever changing cliamte system.
May 1, 2009, 12:26 pm
Jim:

BillB – I agree with you. One should focus on the science and leave the personal motivations out of it. Scientists on both sides of the issue should abide by that rule. Unfortunately, some of them, being human, don’t. But OTOH, I think one would be negligent not to acknowledge that fact. Science is a human endeavor. Scientists sometimes are not honest and are sometimes subconsciously influenced by their own non-science beliefs, political agenda, and/or material needs. People pretty much expect this behavior from politicians, but often don’t see scientists in the same light. It is the methods of science including replication, skepticism, and scrutiny that eventually winnow out the bad science from the good. I think in ten years or so, the majority of people will see that some of these non-science factors were at play WRT global warming. Time will tell.
May 1, 2009, 12:55 pm
Alan D. McIntire:

There ARE some positive feedbacks; for one the emissivity of seawater goes down a little in stormier, rougher seas, up a little in warmer, calmer seas. The albedo of earth increases with the growth of glaciers, decreases with shrinking glaciers.
The polar ice caps currently constitute 1.5% or so of surface exposed to the sun. Likewise, the emissivity of the oceans is already 0.95%, so there’s not much room for more positive feedbacks to further warming.
There’s PLENTY of room for positive feedbacks in global cooling- growing ice and snow leading to increased albedo, colder and rougher oceans leading to lower emissivity and further cooling.
May 1, 2009, 1:17 pm
Alan D. McIntire:

Pardon my typo, it should have read “the emissivity of the oceans is 95%” = 0.95, not .95%
May 1, 2009, 1:19 pm
hunter:

san quentin,
Perhaps you should check out your positions a little more closely.
We are in an Ice Age:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
As to reputable scientist and declarations fo apocalypse, most AGW believers think Hansen is reputable. Do you?
http://www.globalwarminghysteria.com/blog/james-hansen-outgores-gore-on-gw-apocalypse-timing.html
or
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html
or is Lovelock not reputable?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
and here is a nice AGW promotion blog that is certain *the* end is near:
http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=440

As to feedbacks, that we have not ever done as Hansen prophesizes- gone ren away in billions of years- it shows that the positive feedbacks are limited in scope, and ultimately overwhelmed by negative feedbacks. I think a term like ‘dynamic stability’ where positive and negative feedbacks largely offset each other would be a more productive way to look at our climate.
May 1, 2009, 4:58 pm
peter_ga:

I find the magnitude of the postulated temperature rises of AGW impossible to accept.

Consider the heat balance at the Earth’s surface. After albedo is taken into consideration, on average there is an input of 240 Watts/meter-squared short-wave solar radiation, and a long wave emission of 40-60 (say 50) Watts. This leaves a balance of 190 Watts lost due to evaporation and convection, forced by an increase in the earths temperature by 33K from 255K with only albedo considered to 288K. These figures are commonly accepted by most skeptics and proponents of AGW.

The AGW argument hinges on how much the surface temperature will rise given an increment in heat at the surface. This concept is easily inverted by considering the incremental heat flows in response to an increment in temperature. The long wave radiation increment is most easily calculated by assuming a constant radiative emissivity (0.128, *5.67e-8*288**4 = 50W), comes to about 0.7 Watts/degK by differentiating the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. I would assume this is uncontroversial. ( dQ/dT = 4 * 0.128 * 5.67e-8 * 288**3)

However AGW disaster scenarios are built on feedbacks of 3 degK/Watt and more, or less than 0.33 Watts/degK. For this to occur, the evaporative/convective incremental power loss would have to be negative. However if the earth had the same albedo but no atmosphere, the evaporative-convective loss would be zero, and the temperature would be 255K. As atmosphere is added, the temperature would gradually rise, and the evaporative-convective power loss would also rise.reaching 190 watts at 288K. What is unknown is how the power loss varies with surface temperature at 288K. A straight line fit would give 5.75 watts/degC. If this were the feedback, combining with the long wave feedback, would give an overall feedback of 0.15 degC/Watt.

To obtain the disaster scenario feedback, the incremental convective power loss would have to be negative at -0.3 Watts/degK to compensate. This is highly unlikely, and requires extraordinary verification to be plausible, and that verification has not been forthcoming. It would require some sort of physical mechanism explaining why the evaporative-convective power loss not only saturates with increasing GHG concentrations, but decreases.
May 2, 2009, 3:01 am
san quintin:

Hi BillBodell.
Thanks for your reply….I guess that the point I was making is that many of the right wing don’t want AGW to happen (for ideological reasons perhaps) and are therefore incapable of accepting the science. This seems to me to be illogical. Similar ideologically-driven people were against the notion that smoking caused cancer, and that CFCs affected the ozone hole. It seemed to me that both of these showed the importance of regulation and the limits of the free market (both of these views are denied by the right and libertarians). As a result, there was a sustained attack on these by the free-market right, despite the science. A similar process is happening with climate change. I’m not assuming that you are like this. Neither am I….I’m a scientist heavily involved in climate research (and accept the science showing AGW) but am also not left wing. As for high climate sensitivity…well if the sceptics want a global MWP or LIA then this is incompatible with low sensitivity. Similarly, our understanding of the LGM forcings and the global temperature response requires a high (3C or so) sensitivity.
May 2, 2009, 4:30 am
Jim:

san quintin – if you are a scientist, you are not very objective. You make assumptions and assertions about others and you have not proof. You paint conservatives with a broad brush and this is typical of liberals (I did not you claim not to be “left wing”). I am a Republican and conservative, yet I believe that markets need regulation, that the homeless should not be relegated to living on the streets, and further more that an Ayn Rand style free market system is an insane proposition. I really don’t get people like you who make careless assumptions about others – it reminds me of racism.
May 2, 2009, 7:44 am
Jim:

san quintin – Why do you think the Sun isn’t responsible for the temperature variations implied by the various proxies? Even if it is difficult to assign absolute temperature via the proxies, obviously there has been variation. Are you using temperature reconstructions as proof the Sun is not the cause of the temperature variations? If not, what or what else?
May 2, 2009, 8:15 am
hunter:

san quentin,
Maybe I am not as wrong as you wish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
“Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres;[1] by this definition we are still in an ice age (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).[2]”
I would say that skeptics can be wrong, but they are not the leaders of the skeptics. Here is what leaders of AGW have to say:
Hansen-
http://www.globalwarminghysteria.com/blog/james-hansen-outgores-gore-on-gw-apocalypse-timing.html
“With just 10 more years of “business as usual” emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, “it becomes impractical” to avoid “disastrous effects.”

The study appears in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Its lead author is James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The forecast effects include “increasingly rapid sea-level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones,” according to the NASA announcement.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auTEWanRTfM

And of course there is more. Much more.
May 2, 2009, 11:04 am
Alan D. McIntire:

In reply to san quentin: Many of the left wing are incapable of understanding the economics of the adjustments proposed by AGWers. We’d have to cut back emissions 80% for the world as a whole to meet the AGW goals. For the US, since we consume roughly 4 times the average energy, it would be more like 95%. The only countries in the world below those levels now are Haiti and Somali. The only way anyone would voluntarily reduce their economic consumption to those levels would be at the point of a gun.
May 2, 2009, 6:42 pm
Alan D. McIntire:

In reply to san quentin: Many of the left wing are incapable of understanding the economics of the adjustments proposed by AGWers. We’d have to cut back emissions 80% for the world as a whole to meet the AGW goals. For the US, since we consume roughly 4 times the average energy, it would be more like 95%. The only countries in the world below those levels now are Haiti and Somali. The only way anyone would reduce their economic consumption to those levels would be at the point of a gun.
May 2, 2009, 6:42 pm
Tim L:

Jeff got to this first, i ask too this same thing.

You say “The IPCC has an equation that results in a temperature sensitivity of about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 as a first order effect”

I agree that this is true. However, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that the feedback may be negative — of course it would result in a lesser increase rather than a decrease.

The reason I say that is simply because as you know the numbers are NOT well established and while negative feedback is generally considered impossible by the consensus, I’ve seen no proof or even good evidence one way or the other yet.

I know you don’t often answer to comments in your blog but I’ll try anyway, what are your thoughts on this?
April 29, 2009, 8:28 pm
May 2, 2009, 8:41 pm
hunter:

san quentin,
We are in an ice age, for starters. Look it up. I am unable to make posts with links in them at this site, apparently. Wiki, while pedestrian, is well documented on this topic.
While extremists on both sides of the AGW question may say silly things, for the AGW belief side, the set of ‘extremists who say silly things’ and the set of ‘AGW opinion leaders’ are nearly the same.
Hansen, Gore, Lovelock, Mann, etc. all say things that are factually wrong, designed to create massive fear on false statements, etc.
In other words, the extremists of AGW are leading it.
May 3, 2009, 6:08 am
san quintin:

Hi Hunter
The point I was originally making is that you can’t explain glacial/interglacial transitions without a reasonably high sensitivity…something that the sceptics deny. The point about Hansen, Lovelock, mann etc (Gore isn’t a scientist) is that they aren’t alarmist. They all say that there is a fair chance that climate change will be rapid and serious if we continue to emit Co2. Hansen is right…the whole point about the palaeo record is that sea level rise can be very rapid and that 3C may well cause 20-30m sea level rise as it has in the past. This seems pretty alarming (if not alarmist!).
May 3, 2009, 7:50 am
Jim:

san quinten – Well, I see you dodged my question to you about the Sun causing the temperature variations. So much for you discussing science. Even if the alarmist are correct, warming will have some negative consequences and many positive ones as well. It will be easier to grow crops and while more people will die of heat stress, all in all warming is better than severe cooling. If the glaciers return, most of us will die. So even if you happen to be right, you are wrong about the alarm part.
May 3, 2009, 8:19 am
san quintin:

Hi Jim. The reason I didn’t answer your question about the sun is that I didn’t think you were serious. We can reconstruct past solar variation (using 14C, berillyum etc) and they aren’t sufficient to drive climate on their own. Do you have better information? The majority of solar physicists say that present warming is not caused by the sun. Sorry about that.

As I’ve said before…if you want to overturn AGW you will have to produce an alternative, testable theory with as much explanatory power as AGW, and one which also explains why CO2 somehow isn’t a GHG. The sceptics have had decades to produce one….and they’ve failed. All you seem to do is to shout “it’s the sun” without producing any science to back it up. Do you now see why scientists don’t take sceptics seriously?
May 3, 2009, 9:46 am
Jim:

san quintin – Thank you for your answer concerning the Sun. I am always up for learning more about this. I have to ask you again. You mentioned that the solar output can be measured by C14, berillyum, etc. Are you (and the solar physicist majority) comparing that data with temperature reconstructions in order to obtain your conclusion??

It is funny you mentioned “testable theory.” I was just thinking today, that before quantum mechanics turned the world of physics on its head, science was conducted via hypothesis that could be tested by a controlled experiment. This sort of science still is generally, but not always, accessible in chemistry. Certainly a controlled experiment isn’t possible with the Earth; 1) because we don’t have two of them and 2) even if we did have two, we don’t have the means to manipulate them. So I assume that for you, testability refers to computer models?? Is that correct or do you use some other test?
May 3, 2009, 10:05 am
san quintin:

Hi Jim. I agree with you about quantum mechanics….and wouldn’t for a moment suggest that we know everything about AGW or science generally. But there were real issues in physics before Planck including ralleigh-jeans Law that gave a hint that there were things missing in classical physics. I also agree about the impossibility of controlled experiments with the earth, and I don’t accept that GCMs are the last word on this either (in fact, over the past couple of years I’ve published several papers pointing out the problems with GCM projections). Still, we can use the palaeo record to show that T and GHG are tightly correlated and that the sun only plays part of the role in driving climate.

Now we have the highest level of CO2 for 700 ka (or 25Ma?) and we have a sustained trend of high and rising T. We know that GHG MUST warm the atmosphere (basic radiative physics going back to Fourier). We also know that the radiative effect of changes in TSI are positive, but much too small to account for the T increase. Even if the sun were responsible, we would then have to explain why this enormous increase in GHG wasn’t having a T effect!

Re: hunter. I accept your point re ice ages….what I assumed you had mean was that we were still in a glacial. Sorry.
May 3, 2009, 10:40 am
Jim:

san quintin – I’m not so certain the reconstructions of either CO2 or temperature are completely reliable, especially when attempts are made to translate the various proxies to absolute levels or tack on modern instrumental readings to the proxies. However, I do feel more confident in the, shall we say, first derivative of those proxies. It would appear that temperature changes precede similar channges in carbon dioxide concentration in the ice core data. Since the two measurements are taken from the same sample, it is difficult to see how one could argue cause and effect, i.e. CO2 increase will cause temperature increases. Do you dispute this interpretation of the ice core data?

WRT to the GHG concentration increase, even the AWG proponents are not saying the bulk of warming is caused by CO2. They say it is the response of water vapor to the increase in CO2 concentration that is problematic. Correct?
May 3, 2009, 12:32 pm
hunter:

san quentin,
The point is you are wrong. We are in an ice age.
If we were in a highly sensitive, positive feedback dominated world, we would not be in an ice age. We would be Venus.
And if you think Hansen and pals are not alarmist, I think we will just have to agree to disagree.
May 3, 2009, 1:21 pm
hunter:

san quentin,
After reading your post to Jim, I thank you again for being reasonable and professional.
My post above was before I read through. I had tried to post, with links, for several days and finally just put up something to at least respond.
The observation I would offer after reading your post to Jim is this:
You are characterizing the changes in global T as large, and the data as reliable.
I think we are seeing many examples of why neither is actually very reliable.
The actual energy inputted, if the laboratory measurements of CO2 are 100% reproduced in nature is not really very much.
And the feedback processes of the atmosphere itself, which are not well measured on the negative side, can easily offset something in the 0.5% range.
Regards,
May 3, 2009, 5:52 pm
MikeN:

Does anyone reading this have access to GCM model runs?
I’m curious if there is a higher probability of a ten year pause in temperatures between different models?
Been having this back-and-forth on Chris Colose’s blog(‘Decadal scale coolings no unlikely), and this is a bottleneck.
May 3, 2009, 9:47 pm
Hunter:

“If we were in a highly sensitive, positive feedback dominated world, we would not be in an ice age. We would be Venus.”

Non sequitur. Try and think before you type.
May 4, 2009, 2:43 am
san quintin:

Hi Jim and hunter. As with all reconstructions, there are uncertainties in the palaeo record for T and CO2. But they are as good as we have got. Do you have any better idea?

Jim…You are right…during glacial/interglacial transitions the initial warming is via changes in High latitude insolation and GHG play the role of an amplifier of this warming (insolation alone isn’t sufficient to melt a continental-scale ice sheet for instance). Thus there is a lag between initial T rise and CO2. But this shouldn’t be seen as a weakness in AGW theory as it was predicted by scientists long before we had ice core records and there is loads of supporting evidence for this (ocean degassing, melting permafrost, vegetation change etc). I also don’t think it’s controversial to say that doubling CO2 on its own causes more than 1.5 C warming…it’s the feedbacks (water vapour, albedo etc) that then increase the warming. Again, established science. What we have now is human-emitted CO2 with no orbital forcing. The CO2 does what the physics says it must do…and the atmosphere warms.

Just because we have positive feedbacks doesn’t turn is into Venus. CO2-induced warming will trigger feedbacks but these aren’t ‘runaway’ in the sense of Venusian climates.
May 4, 2009, 2:53 am
Hunter:

We’d have to cut back emissions 80% for the world as a whole to meet the AGW goals. For the US, since we consume roughly 4 times the average energy, it would be more like 95%. The only countries in the world below those levels now are Haiti and Somali.”

If you don’t know what the facts are, just make them up, eh, Alan D. McIntyre?

Here is the data. It gives US emissions as 5902 million metric tons of CO2. 5% of that is 295.1 million metric tonnes of CO2. There are in fact only 20 countries which emit more than that. Here is the complete list of countries which emit less than that:

Indonesia
Netherlands
Thailand
Turkey
Kazakhstan
Malaysia
Argentina
Venezuela
Egypt
United Arab Emirates
Belgium
Singapore
Pakistan
Uzbekistan
Czech Republic
Greece
Nigeria
Iraq
Romania
Algeria
Vietnam
Hong Kong
Korea, North
Austria
Kuwait
Philippines
Israel
Belarus
Chile
Colombia
Portugal
Denmark
Hungary
Finland
Sweden
Qatar
Libya
Former Serbia and Montenegro
Syria
Turkmenistan
Bulgaria
Trinidad and Tobago
Ireland
Switzerland
Norway
Bangladesh
Puerto Rico
Azerbaijan
New Zealand
Slovakia
Oman
Morocco
Peru
Cuba
Bahrain
Ecuador
Croatia
Angola
Tunisia
Jordan
Estonia
Yemen
Slovenia
Dominican Republic
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Lithuania
Panama
Lebanon
Burma (Myanmar)
Virgin Islands, U.S.
Sri Lanka
Luxembourg
Bolivia
Sudan
Jamaica
Guatemala
Netherlands Antilles
Kenya
Armenia
Zimbabwe
Brunei
Cyprus
Latvia
Mongolia
Moldova
Honduras
Tajikistan
Ghana
Macedonia
Cameroon
Uruguay
Cote d’Ivoire (IvoryCoast)
El Salvador
Costa Rica
Senegal
Congo (Brazzaville)
Ethiopia
Bahamas, The
Mozambique
Kyrgyzstan
Equatorial Guinea
Albania
Tanzania
Georgia
Papua New Guinea
Nicaragua
Gibraltar
Gabon
Botswana
Mauritius
Paraguay
Iceland
Malta
Mauritania
Nepal
Reunion
Namibia
Benin
New Caledonia
Madagascar
Zambia
Togo
Congo (Kinshasa)
Martinique
Macau
Guadeloupe
Suriname
Djibouti
Guam
Haiti
Uganda
Guyana
Barbados
Guinea
Wake Island
Fiji
Niger
Sierra Leone
French Guiana
Burkina Faso
Swaziland
Belize
Malawi
Aruba
French Polynesia
Seychelles
Rwanda
Afghanistan
Somalia
Mali
Eritrea
Maldives
Faroe Islands
Antigua and Barbuda
Bermuda
Cambodia
American Samoa
Greenland
Laos
Liberia
Cayman Islands
Guinea-Bissau
Saint Lucia
Burundi
Bhutan
Central African Republic
Gambia, The
Western Sahara
U.S. Pacific Islands
Grenada
Cape Verde
Antarctica
Lesotho
Solomon Islands
Chad
Saint Vincent/Grenadines
Nauru
Samoa
Tonga
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Comoros
Vanuatu
Sao Tome and Principe
Virgin Islands, British
Dominica
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Montserrat
Cook Islands
Falkland Islands
Kiribati
Turks and Caicos Islands
Saint Helena
Niue

Or perhaps you meant per-capita. The US emits 19.78 tons per capita. 5% of that is 0.989 tons per capita. Here’s another list of all 61 countries that emit less than that:

Mauritania
Kyrgyzstan
El Salvador
Swaziland
Guatemala
Zimbabwe
Yemen
Western Sahara
Nicaragua
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Samoa
Pakistan
Nigeria
Turks and Caicos Islands
Cape Verde
Sri Lanka
Paraguay
Sao Tome and Principe
Vanuatu
Bhutan
Senegal
Togo
Cameroon
Solomon Islands
Kiribati
Cote d’Ivoire (IvoryCoast)
Benin
Ghana
Sudan
Kenya
Bangladesh
Guinea-Bissau
Burma (Myanmar)
Mozambique
Zambia
Haiti
Sierra Leone
Gambia, The
Liberia
Comoros
Eritrea
Guinea
Madagascar
Tanzania
Lesotho
Nepal
Niger
Laos
Rwanda
Somalia
Central African Republic
Burkina Faso
Malawi
Ethiopia
Mali
Uganda
Cambodia
Burundi
Congo (Kinshasa)
Afghanistan
Chad

“The only way anyone would voluntarily reduce their economic consumption to those levels would be at the point of a gun.”

You appear to believe that prosperity arises only through releasing CO2. Apart from that being transparently ridiculous, and apart from your claim about Haiti and Somalia being a product only of your diseased mind, what exactly do you think is going to happen when fossil fuels run out? We all turn into Somalians?
May 4, 2009, 3:20 am
hunter:

Jennifer,
We are having a civil conversation. If we want that to change, we will be sure and give you a ring.
Otherwise, please continue to lurk. And do please explain how ice ages are examples of positive feedback.

san quentin,
Talk to Hansen about Venus. He is the one that brought it up. I have ridiculed it every time as stupid and irresponsible. Since the great ice melting fear is joining the great hurricane fear in the ‘failed AGW claims’ bin, I suggest you find other things besides a melting Arctic to focus AGW believer’s fears on.
May 4, 2009, 5:29 am
Hunter:

Who ever said ice ages were ‘examples’ of positive feedback? That’s like saying your car’s speed is an example of its accelerator pedal. You demonstrate time and time again that you’re not capable of understanding simple terminology.

When, and in what context, did Hansen bring Venus up?
May 4, 2009, 5:57 am
san quintin:

I’m getting a little confused here about who said what. Changes in albedo, reduction in GHG etc help explain the initiation of glaciations….this would be a positive feedback. I don’t think anyone is seriously considering a runaway warming like Venus. However, high sensitivity (6C or so?) would be catastrophic on its own.

hunter: if you disagree with hansen then do what a scientist would. Publish a paper in the peer-reviewed scientific literature setting out your reasoned arguments showing how he is wrong. This is what all the sceptics should be doing if they disagree with AGW. Blogs are great, but they don’t replace the literature.
May 4, 2009, 6:18 am
Jim:

san quintin – WRT to the temp reconstruction, much of the dire global warming predictions hang on these. If they are not good enough, in my view we should not rely on them to make decisions of this magnitude – very expensive and onerous changes will result from these decisions.

Could you add some detail on the temp rising before CO2 rise scenario? Are you saying the temperature rises first, the forcings/feedbacks take over? If that is the case, why does temperature go down before CO2 goes down. It seems what with the high CO2 levels, if forcings/feedbacks made the temperature higher than it otherwise would have been, then the temperature would not go back down. What makes it go back down?
May 4, 2009, 6:36 am
san quintin:

Hi Jim. I don’t think that the GW predictions hang on T reconstructions too much. We have multiple lines of evidence to suggest that sensitivity is 3C or thereabouts (including from recent events such as vocanic eruptions, Maunder Minimum etc)…therefore we know that 550ppm will eventually produce 3C rise with likely severe implications for sea level etc.

Your second question: yes, T rises first, then CO2 amplifies this. After a while, orbital forcing produces gradual cooling, with incresed ice sheet extent and permafrost and cooler oceans. These all sequester GHG and increase albedo….so the T falls. There’s loads of detail in journals like Quaternary Science Reviews.
May 4, 2009, 7:02 am
san quintin:

I might not be posting much for a while….I have a day job as well!
May 4, 2009, 7:04 am
MikeN:

Hunter thanks for the list of countries. I’d say you proved his point quite well. What is the lowest percentage of emissions/GDP for developed countries? Is it the Netherlands?
May 4, 2009, 7:41 am
hunter:

san quentin,
My boss just reminded me of the same thing.
May 4, 2009, 8:14 am
hunter:

MikeN: I proved he was making things up rather well, yes.

I gave a link to the data. You’d need to define ‘developed’ to answer your question but you can find the emissions per capita per GDP data at the link I gave.
May 4, 2009, 10:51 am
BillBodell:

san quintin,

Drat, just when I think I’ve got a reasonable pro-AGW to talk with, he’s got to go back to work.

I proposed that everyone approaches new issues from their particular world-view (liberal, conservative, libertarian, etc.) and that this colors their initial response. Most people seem incapable o altering their initial opinions in the face of well reasoned arguments. There is a point, however, at which even the most reluctant will come over to the “correct” side (we’re not there yet regarding AGW). I don’t see how this makes AGW skeptics unusually “anti-science”. Liberals have the same problems when the science goes against them. I did an experiment over at Deltoid regarding Economics and Minimum Wage laws. Liberals and Conservatives promptly switched sides; with conservatives referring to the “consensus” and quoting peer-reviewed literature and liberals denying that there was a consensus and quoting papers outside the mainstream. There was even an article by an Economics professor that talked about how much trouble he had publishing against the consensus and how he was made to feel like an outcast by his academic peers.

Just to define our terms: most every skeptic I’ve read agrees that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that the Greenhouse theory is correct and that humans have, no doubt, contributed to Global Warming. The debate is over the magnitude of the effect. There really needs to be a better term CAGW (Catastrophic AGW)?

I’m not sure what your point regarding smoking and CFCs was. I’m not sure what free markets and regulation have to do with smoking. I haven’t spent much time with the CFC issue, but once enough people were convinced that CFCs were having a negative effect, this is an “external cost” and market based solutions were available and regulation is certainly a valid option. Certainly skeptics have been proven right on several issues such as alar, breast implants and “crack babies”. I suspect that if you kept score, skeptics have made the right call more than their fair share of the time.

As to “Climate Sensitivity”, we are talking about the standard definition of climate sensitivity as the effect on global temperature caused by a doubling of CO2 right? I’m not sure how this relates to the MWP or LIA. Are you saying that the ONLY way that climate changes is due to CO2? And that since there were, at most, small changes to CO2 during these times that there must be a high climate sensitivity? I don’t think that skeptics believe that the MWP and LIA were caused by changes in CO2 concentration. I would think that there are other processes that effect climate than CO2 and that they might be responsible for these events.

We are about 43% of the way to a doubling of CO2 from 270 ppm to 540 ppm. At this point, we should have seen approximately half of the warming caused by the increase in CO2. Yet, the temperature has only increased by about 0.6 C. Even attributing ALL of the warming to CO2 (ignoring the distinct possibility that a significant amount of the increase in due to uncorrected UH1 effects), that gives a climate sensitivity of approx. 1.2 C. All I’ve heard in response is “aerosols” or “the heat is in the pipeline”. It seems straight-forward, we have seen an increase in CO2, we have a temperature record, where’s the evidence of a 3 to 5 C climate sensitivity?

You mentioned that. in order to displace AGW, skeptics need to come up with a better theory than AGW. Skeptics are not necessarily interested in knowing what the best theory is. As far as I’m concerned, AGW may well be the leader in the clubhouse. The issue isn’t “what theory is best”, it’s “are we certain enough of CAGW that it is worth suffering the known consequences of drastically reducing CO2″. This is the point of the debate, not “who’s got the best theory”.
May 4, 2009, 10:57 am
san quintin:

Hi Bill: I’ve now got a few spare minutes. Yes, you are right about the ‘world view’ that people from different political persuasions have. I have political views just like everyone else, but the point of being a scientist is to be as objective as we can be when doing our science. I spent a very long time being sceptical of AGW (as all scientists should be) until I was convinced by the overwhelming science from half a dozen different disciplines. If AGW were based just on (say) palaeoclimatology, then it would be on much dodgier ground. But when you have glaciologists, chemists, physicists, climatologists etc all essentially saying the same thing (that CO2 is a GHG and that the climate and associated systems are sensitive to atmospheric CO2) the onus really is on the sceptics to put forward an equally persuasive alternative theory. They haven’t done this.

I certainly don’t argue that the LIA and MWP were driven by CO2 (although it MAY have had an impact on the LIA). Clearly climate change can be caused by loads of things….but when we can rule out solar and other influences, and see enormous increases in GHG the attribution is clear.

Your view on why we haven’t seen large warming so far in response to GHG forcing is well put. However, there are clear lags in the climate system…and sensitivity is an equilibrium response not a transient one…it will take time. At the moment we are in early May and it’s cold here. By early August (same solar forcing) it will be much warmer here….there are lags at the seasonal level too. the point about sensitivity is that we can’t have big climate changes in response to relatively modest forcings (LIA, MWP etc) without sensitivity being high. Same goes for LGM. Don’t forget sceptics want both a global LIA and MWP and low sensitivity! I can’t square this circle.

Back to work!
May 5, 2009, 7:18 am
Stephen Wilde:

san quintin is incorrect in accepting that it was reasonable for so many scientists to rule out solar and other influences.

The recent warming coincided with a grand solar maximum, a run of powerful El Nino events within a positive (warming) Pacific Decadal Oscillation and a poleward shift in all the main air circulation systems.

All those factors have been going into reverse since 2000 with first a pause in warming and now a cooling.

In view of recent developments the AGW hypothesis is becoming less convincing by the day.
May 14, 2009, 10:28 am
An Inquirer:

Regarding the list of countries, you might be interested in C02 emissions per GDP. If the US cut its emissions by 80% but kept its same GDP, there is only one country that would have a lower CO2 per GDP — that would be Chad. At the present time, the United States is in the upper half of countries for lowest CO2 per GDP.
May 14, 2009, 8:38 pm
Alan D. McIntire:

Here’s a wikipedia link to per capita energy consumption:

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

It lists the US as 7794.8 KG oil equivalent per year. 5% of that is 389.74.
Bangladesh, Benin, Ivory Coast, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritria, Ethiopia, Haiti, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, and Yemen are the 12
countries listed as conusming less than 5% of US energy. Somalia is not listed. The 95% for the US was estimated off the top of my head based on an estimate of the US consuming 4 times average per capita energy, having
5% of the world’s population, and the fact that the goal of global warming initiatives is to cut back emissions 80% of 1990 levels. My guestimate of
95% for the US may well have been UNDERESTIMATED once the fact that my calculaiton was an off the top of my head calculation, and that 1990 world energy production rather than 2003 world energy production would be the base.

Most of you have never seen the countries listed above, but I’ll bet a significant portion have visited Mexico. Mexico consumes over 3 3/4 tiems the amount of energy we’d have to cut back, and Mexico is not exactly a paradise overflowing with energy.-
May 17, 2009, 11:08 am
Jack:

I have just arrived at your blog and I very much like what I see. I am so tired of hearing about scientific consensus. If that is how science works poor old Alb Einstien would never have been heard. Science is not about what the majority beleive is true it is what the minority can prove is right that is what makes science. I don’t care how clever a scientist is, unless he/she can prove their point beyond a doubt to their piers it is NOT science!

I believe this point is being missed in this entire climate change debate. There is no voting in science votes only count in politics. This is how to identify the scientist from the politian.

Thus the debate at present is not about science but on if we should bet and act on conjecture. When it become a matter of science the answer will be much more clear and sides will be taken but the facts will be science not thoughts and the direction of action will be plain regardless of the side one takes.

A nuclear explosion is science, if and when to use it is politics. This was not the problem until the bomb became science. Prior, it was a matter of if such a bomb could do what conjecture said it could? Then science proved it and there was no longer any doubt. We still have the politcal problem though.

I suggest this is where the climate debate is headed. My vote is that we get the science right first and then react according to our politics. If we allow politics to drive true science we will end up with a replica of the “science” of economics or worse still Polictical “science”. I doubt there is a need to vote on veracity of this fact. I guess it must be science then?

QED

Jack
May 22, 2009, 2:53 pm
san quintin:

Hi Jack. I’m afraid you’ve completely misunderstood how science works. You said: “I don’t care how clever a scientist is, unless he/she can prove their point beyond a doubt to their piers (sic) it is NOT science”. Well we have…that is why there is a consensus. It’s that there is no alternative explanation to AGW that remotely holds up. It’s certainly not the sun, nor natural variability, natural emissions of CO2 etc. The interesting point about Einstein is that he was never stopped from publishing or ridiculed by the scientific establishment (like denialists like to say AGW deniers are). Physics then was (and is now) falsifiable and Einstein produced some answers to some long-standing problems. If a modern-day Einstein wanted to falsify AGW s/he could easily do this…..show that CO2 isn’t a GHG. Showing that the T trend isn’t warming actually wouldn’t falsify the physics at all…the only falsification is physics not weather. The fact that no-one has done this is significant. Sceptics have had since 1824 to show that CO2 isn’t a GHG and they haven’t done so. That’s why there’s a consensus!
May 23, 2009, 10:30 am

Climate Skeptic

Ducking the Point

103 Comments

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