It Is Official Himalayan Glaciers Are Not In Trouble

[MSimon]

Josh says:

When you're talking about a chaotic system a "right answer" is non-existent. You are setting the goalposts so high that they're unachievable. What they can do is come up with a best estimate. I see nothing wrong with their best estimate.

I think more than temperatures that this is the crux of the problem.

We do not yet know if there is a link between sunspots and earth climate. That is: all we have is correlation not causation. But suppose there is a cause/effect relationship (solar magnetism/GCRs is likely).

http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archiv ... imate.html

(b) The globally averaged sea surface temperatures are plotted with the sunspot numbers (Reid; 1999). Both sunspot number and solar cycle length are proxies for the amount of solar energy that Earth receives. The similarity of these curves is evidence that the sun has influenced the climate of the last 150 years.

Even the climate changes of the 20th century may have a significant solar component. Figure 3 shows comparisons of globally averaged temperature and solar activity. Many scientists find that these correlations are convincing evidence that the sun has contributed to the global warming of the 20th century. Some say that as much as 1/3 of the global warming may be the result of an increase in solar energy. So, while it is becoming clear that human activity is changing the climate today, solar activity may also be contributing to climate change and probably changed the climate in the past.

We have no way of predicting reliably future solar activity.

Given the above it is entirely possible that the effect of CO2 on climate is minor. And it is entirely possible that we are headed for cooling.

So let us look at the confounding factors so far. Ocean cycles - up to 50% of the warming. Solar cycles - up to 33% of the warming. If both of those are found to be at the top of the range than CO2 comes in at about 15% of the observed warming.

And of course on top of the cycles mentioned above there is chaos.

And then this:

http://www.unisci.com/stories/20022/0613022.htm

University at Buffalo scientists working with ice cores have solved a mystery surrounding sunspots and their effect on climate that has puzzled scientists since they began studying the phenomenon.

The research, published in a paper in the May 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, provides striking evidence that sunspots -- blemishes on the sun's surface indicating strong solar activity -- do influence global climate change, but that explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth can completely reverse those influences.

It is the first time that volcanic eruptions have been identified as the atmospheric event responsible for the sudden and baffling reversals that scientists have seen in correlations between sunspots and climate.

"Knowing the mechanisms behind past climate changes is critical to our understanding of possible future changes in climate, such as global warming, and for assessing which of these changes are due to human activities and which arise naturally," explained co-author Michael Stolz, doctoral candidate in the Department of Physics in UB's College of Arts and Sciences.

So far volcanic activity is unpredictable on longer time scales (decades - centuries - millenia)

Best estimate? Possibly. If all known and predictable factors are included. But we know there are so far unpredictable factors. So the 90% confidence (how was that computed?) is a possibility given what the models cover. Real world? More like 10% or less.

You can't predict climate in any way unless ALL the major factors affecting it are included. And it is is CERTAIN all the factors are NOT included. And some known factors can not yet be predicted.

[IntLibber]

But deniers lack data analysis abilities.

MSimon, it is increasingly hard to believe that you have any experience whatsoever with engineering.

Sounds like this debate is wearing someone's rhetoric down to ad homs.

I remember what I was called when I was actually wrong about a topic. And I used a few choice words myself.

I LIKE spirited discussion. Real engineers have few manners.

OTOH the deniers bit has been going on for ages.

The real spirit of science is: here is my argument. Break it if you can.

I.love.the."deniers.lack.data.analysis.abilities".bit...As.if.Steve.McIntyre.is
n't.a.trained.statistician...The.fact.is.that.the.Hockey.Team.has.
consistently.demonstrated.poor.mathematical.skills.with.their.data,.bad.
statistical.methods,.as.well.as.terrible.QA.and.data.handling.policies..

[Josh Cryer]

MSimon, I'll write more comprehensive replies sometime next week or later. But you do realize your sunspot image ends in the 90s? This is a common tactic.

Extend it out and you get a major divergence between sunspots and warming. Indeed, it was the one thing that falsified sunspots as a contributor, believe it or not the scientists took solar variation very seriously, and we now have good solar variance satellites so we can put it in to our models.

[MSimon]

MSimon, I'll write more comprehensive replies sometime next week or later. But you do realize your sunspot image ends in the 90s? This is a common tactic.

Extend it out and you get a major divergence between sunspots and warming. Indeed, it was the one thing that falsified sunspots as a contributor, believe it or not the scientists took solar variation very seriously, and we now have good solar variance satellites so we can put it in to our models.

I read a paper the other day that explained the divergence and why the results are likely to converge soon. Dang I wish I had put it where I could find it.

BTW Josh. I don't do TACTICS I discuss issues to the best of my ability.

[MSimon]

Here it is:

http://www.unisci.com/stories/20022/0613022.htm

From 2002:

University at Buffalo scientists working with ice cores have solved a mystery surrounding sunspots and their effect on climate that has puzzled scientists since they began studying the phenomenon.

The research, published in a paper in the May 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, provides striking evidence that sunspots -- blemishes on the sun's surface indicating strong solar activity -- do influence global climate change, but that explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth can completely reverse those influences.

It is the first time that volcanic eruptions have been identified as the atmospheric event responsible for the sudden and baffling reversals that scientists have seen in correlations between sunspots and climate.

"Knowing the mechanisms behind past climate changes is critical to our understanding of possible future changes in climate, such as global warming, and for assessing which of these changes are due to human activities and which arise naturally," explained co-author Michael Stolz, doctoral candidate in the Department of Physics in UB's College of Arts and Sciences.

According to the UB researchers, their work reveals two different mechanisms by which climate is affected by cosmic rays, charged particles that stream toward Earth and which are strongly influenced by solar activity.

"For a long time people have tried to find out whether, for example, periods of maximum sunspots will influence the climate to behave in a certain way," said Michael Ram, Ph.D., professor of physics at UB and co-author on the paper.

"Whenever scientists thought they had discovered something, say, they were seeing a positive correlation between temperature and sunspots, it would continue like that for several years and, all of a sudden, there would be a reversal and, instead, they would start to see a negative correlation," said Ram.

"There seemed to be no consistent relationship between what the sun was doing and what the climate was doing," he said.

To truly confirm any connection between sunspots and climate, a consistent correlation would have to be observed over a long period, covering many solar cycles, Ram explained.

That's what he and his graduate students and co-authors have done with their study of ice cores, long cylinders of ancient ice from Greenland that serve as a frozen archive in that they record climate details from thousands of years ago.

"This is the beauty of working with ice cores," said Ram. "They go back 100,000 years, so we can study how dust concentrations vary along the ice core, reflecting past atmospheric dust concentrations."

Plain old dust, Ram added, holds the key in these experiments because it reflects how dry conditions were in a particular year.

"Dust is a very sensitive parameter of climate," he explained.

Drawing on climate data derived from ice cores obtained through the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2, (GISP2), the scientists used laser-light scattering techniques to determine the level of dust in the atmosphere for roughly the past 300 years, which is how far back sunspot data have been recorded.

The scientists started out with the assumption that a low level of cosmic rays on Earth resulting from high sunspot activity would lead to less cloud cover and less rain, with resulting high dust levels.

"This was true for the first three or four solar cycles we studied, from about 1930 to 1962, but then the correlation reversed itself, demonstrating that the mechanism couldn't be what we thought," said Ram.

It turned out that during those 32 years of positive sun/dust correlation, there was relatively little explosive volcanic activity worldwide. The researchers found that the same conditions existed between 1860 and 1882. Each of these relatively "quiet" periods came to an end with increased volcanic activity.

For example, in 1883, the Indonesian volcano Krakatau erupted in one of the deadliest volcanic disasters, killing 36,000 people. At exactly the same time, the data started to exhibit low dust concentration whenever there was high sunspot activity, a correlation that violated the scientists' original assumptions.

"By carefully studying the timing of other volcanic eruptions, we found that they coincided with all of the correlation reversals between sunspots and climate," said Ram.

The current thinking is that any divergence we see currently is due to China and its dirty coal plants. I haven't seen a quantification.



http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greensp ... y-law.html

Ozone from Asia is wafting across the Pacific on springtime winds and boosting the amount of the smog-producing chemical found in the skies above the Western United States, researchers said in a study released Wednesday.

The study, published in the journal Nature, probes a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists in the last decade: Ground-level ozone has dropped in cities thanks to tighter pollution controls, but it has risen in rural areas in the Western U.S., where there is little industry or automobile traffic.
The study, led by Owen R. Cooper, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, examined nearly 100,000 observations in the free troposphere — the region two to five miles above ground — gathered from aircraft, balloons and ground-based lasers.

It found that baseline ozone — the amount of gas not produced by local vehicles and industries — has increased in springtime months by 29% since 1984. The study has important implications both for the curbing of conventional pollution that damages human health and for controls on greenhouse gases that are changing the planet’s climate, experts said.

It shows the need, said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, for a transformation of global energy and transportation systems. “Atmospheric scientists keep finding more evidence that pollutants travel around the globe and move up and down as they travel,” she said. “There is not a bright line separating greenhouse gases from regular air pollution.”

[MSimon]

Solar magnetism and cosmic ray flux:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009 ... icrays.htm

From the data I've seen there is a 3 to 5 year lag from the time of peak cosmic rays until their maximum effect on earth's climate.

As far as I'm aware none of this is in the models. You will of course make me aware if I'm in error.

Earth is in no great peril. Our planet's atmosphere and magnetic field provide some defense against the extra cosmic rays. Indeed, we've experienced much worse in the past. Hundreds of years ago, cosmic ray fluxes were at least 200% to 300% higher than anything measured during the Space Age.

And hundreds of years ago we were having a Little Ice Age. Makes ya wonder.

"The space era has so far experienced a time of relatively low cosmic ray activity," says Mewaldt. "We may now be returning to levels typical of past centuries."

NASA spacecraft will continue to monitor the situation as solar minimum unfolds. Stay tuned for updates.

If the physicists are right and the real climate scientists are wrong we are headed for cold.

[KitemanSA]

Dropping or adding stations changes what you are measuring.

No it doesn't. Ask any statistician. I'm not one, but I know that you can continue discovering a trend as long as the data you have is similar.

What? One of the major issues with statistician is the definition of the population being studied. Change the definition in mid-study, you need to compensate. MSimon's suggestion to remove the old data from the removed stations is one easy way to do it.

This is remenicent of that flap where official science/medicine was claiming that hetero white females had the highest increase in AIDS infection. Turns out the only reason was that in the middle of the study period, they changed the definition of AIDS. The overall illness rates hadn't changed. They just started calling some old illnesses "AIDS" in the middle of the study. Silliness all around.

But policy was formulated on the study. Not silly anymore.

[Josh Cryer]

MSimon, the IPCC doesn't require peer-review. Perhaps AR5 will be more stringent.

KitemanSA, the "easy way to do it" is how engineers think. The "right way to do it" is how scientists think. The homogenization processes are the right way to do it if you want to get a sample from the noise. If only due to UHI.

I found it amusing how D'Aleo and others were "shocked" that Central Park (really raw) was actually cooler than Central Park homogenized. All down to UHI. People like to pretend that the adjustments make all sites cooler, btw, in order to "invoke" a trend. But the reality is that half of the adjustments make sites cooler while half make sites warmer, on average.

http://www.gilestro.tk/2009/lots-of-smo ... sify-data/

[MSimon]

MSimon, the IPCC doesn't require peer-review. Perhaps AR5 will be more stringent.

It is comforting to know that flat out lies will be accepted if they move the agenda in the correct direction.

Mosher thinks the fix is in and AR5 will be as bad or worse.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/26/m ... e-hackers/

[Josh Cryer]

MSimon, the IPCC doesn't require peer-review. Perhaps AR5 will be more stringent.

It is comforting to know that flat out lies will be accepted if they move the agenda in the correct direction.

*shrug*

Like how D'Aleo lied about Central Park data? Or how all of you lie when you say that homogenization creates a bias? (It most certainly does not.)



Why would you not trust the homogenization when any biases cancel out and the overall average is equal?

[MSimon]

I have already stated what I would accept.

Measurement.

Find out the error by measuring it.

A novel idea to be sure.

[alexjrgreen]

It is comforting to know that flat out lies will be accepted if they move the agenda in the correct direction.

This is the big flaw in "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof".

Every claim requires convincing proof: otherwise people see what they expect to see.