BTW, Demonstrable AGW = 0. Again.

[seedload]

My take on this is: There clearly is a warming effect, whether it is natural or man made. If we can do something to reduce it, or slow it down, then we should, since in the long term, too hot is not a good thing either.
Personally I favor geoengineering as a solution, but that would require us to solve a few other problems first.

I think that you just said that we should use geo-engineering to reduce warming that you admit might be natural. Somehow, the notion of intentionally affecting climate is a lot more scary to me than the potential of us having accidentally affected it.

[Diogenes]

My take on this is: There clearly is a warming effect, whether it is natural or man made. If we can do something to reduce it, or slow it down, then we should, since in the long term, too hot is not a good thing either.
Personally I favor geoengineering as a solution, but that would require us to solve a few other problems first.
Getting nuclear fusion online would help one way or the other. So that is the highest of all on my priority list.

I see you didn't bother to check with that website for which I gave you the link. Here are the news stories regarding global warming which you won't see anywhere else, just since I told you to look the last time.

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2012/ ... f-you.html


http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2012/ ... f-its.html


http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2012/ ... ldest.html


http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2012/ ... aving.html


http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2012/ ... a-had.html


http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2012/ ... -july.html


If you keep getting your information from one side, you won't be able to tell if it's true or not.

As Mark Twain had supposedly said:

"If you don't read the papers you are uninformed. If you do read the papers then you are misinformed. "

[Diogenes]

My take on this is: There clearly is a warming effect, whether it is natural or man made. If we can do something to reduce it, or slow it down, then we should, since in the long term, too hot is not a good thing either.
Personally I favor geoengineering as a solution, but that would require us to solve a few other problems first.

I think that you just said that we should use geo-engineering to reduce warming that you admit might be natural. Somehow, the notion of intentionally affecting climate is a lot more scary to me than the potential of us having accidentally affected it.

A notion that is completely lost on some people. If we successfully figure out a method to cool down the planet, odds are we will kill ourselves with it. It is my understanding that Ice-Ages are not at all uncommon on this planet.

[seedload]

AGW proven again to be an invention from whole cloth.

From WUWT.

When will those who wanted for the "best" of reasons to kill billions by deliberate impoversihment be made to pay?

Wow. This site, I thought, respected hard science? Forgive me for sounding off but Watts pisses me off by pretending scientific credentials when he has no respect for science - either he is totally ignorant or deliberately distorting. I would not say which. He is detestable.

I find the best antidote is to read here. Not fair, I know, but replying in kind with insults identical to those heaped on the climate scientists. Only the scientific flaws in Watts' arguments are so very obvious it is very easy to pick holes in them.

To return to the main argument.

There are some valid reasons to argue about AGW. The science is not certain. If climate sensitivity comes out 1/2 the value of the current "average" value (according to IPCC this is quite possible) then although AGW will happen we have much more time, and much less to worry about. Let us hope this is true, because sure as hell dramatic reductions in CO2 emmission will not happen, politically, independent of the strength of the science case. Bad things happenning 50 years down the road is outside the timescale of all elected politicians, and most of the electorate.

The IPCC reports tell you the science is not certain (if you bother to read the science). If, on the other hand, you read the political spin you will get nowhere.

however not certain does not mean nonexistent. There is lots of evidence of AGW.

The physical effect of CO2 (discounting all feedbacks) is 100% certain from direct calculation. And it is a warming effect. I can and will argue through the science with anyone so ignorant as not to have gone through it carefully.

Also, the increase in atmospheric CO2 due to anthropgenic emmissions, and the lifetime of that CO2, is equally certain.

So what is less certain is the effect of feedbacks (there are many). These could either amplify or (in principle) reduce the exactly known CO2 warming effect.

IPCC is clear about this. Go read the report. There is so much uncertainty in this because the feedbacks (things like clouds, but also bio-feedbacks) are very complex. So direct calculation of these feedbacks is not clear - easy to miss something out. Having said that detailed climate models get better and more powerful (the two things are not the same - computer power increases, as does the level of sophistication of the modelling) every year. So there is some direct evidence for H2O feedbacks being positive - as the globe warms, so increasing water vapour in the atmospjhere, cloud cover overall tends to increase heat trapped. This is BTW the naive conclusion as well, but when you look in detail at what clouds do they warm or cool according to whether they are low down or high up in the atmosphere. And the formation or not of clouds is very complex.

So we then have indirect evidence for positive feedbacks. this rests on whether climate over last 100 years can be explained by natural changes other than CO2 + high climate sensitivity. Effectively, you model all possible causes of variability, find other ways to validate as many causes as possible, and what is left is the CO2 signature.

This entreprise is extremely difficult, and requires very greta care. It is NOT certain (as the climate scientists all agree - political spin aside). The variability in the climate feedback parameter between different studies is large.

So, thus far I can agree with the skeptics - but thus far I am not disagreeing with IPCC AR4 (actually there is one important issue where I side with James Annan and other climate scientists - that of thinking the uniform Bayesian prior used in IPCC AR4 to be wrong, and this has a significant effect on projections - downwards thank god). AR5 will address the matter or there will be trouble within the mainstream climate science community.

But the best that can then be said is that we can't know what is climate sensitivity to forcing. We DO know that atmospheric CO2 has very long lifetime and will be a forcing factor increasing global temperatures just as surely as changes in the earth's orbit, or changes in solar radiance.

That is cause for concern and lots of research to reduce the uncertainty - because the way we have changed, and continue to chnage, atmospheric composition is so large.

Humans have not till the 20C had the ability to make globally significant changes to the ecosystem. Now we can, it is really stupid not to be careful. Unlike every other previous effect of the human race this one is (potentially) irreversible, affects the whole globe, and has a long time constant so we won't know whether to be worried till after we are committed to change. Now that is unarguable, and if you care about +50 years timescale it is scary.

Personally, I don't feel scared. I'll be dead. But sticking my head in the sand like an ostrich (as many on this thread argue is apropriate) seems to me a really stupid idea.

But then, when has the human race not been really stupid?

Anthony Watts, welcome to the human race. You are behaving on form.

What a weird post. You say that there is a directly calculable physical warming affect from increased CO2. Anthony Watts agrees. You say that how much this will actually affect the climate depends on an uncertain science of feedbacks. Anthony Watts agrees. You say that the science of feedbacks is extremely difficult, and requires very great care. Anthony Watts agrees. You say that the increase in temperature over the last hundred years is a form of indirect evidence for feedbacks. Anthony Watts agrees. However, if it is being used as indirect evidence, then the magnitude is important. Anthony Watts endeavors to get the magnitude correct. For this you call him detestable and sarcastically welcome him to the human race.

Basically, you just called into question all of the science of AGW beyond there being a calculable physical warming from CO2 and then condemned those that do the same.

Honestly, I don't get it.

[randomencounter]

Followed the link to the original source (the NCDC site) and as with all climate denier assertions it is depending on the *specific* to try and deny the *general*.

For the country as a whole, July 2012 was somewhat warmer than July 1936.

More states had record highs in 1936, but more states were also at average or below average temperatures that year, yielding a slightly lower national average.

And, it must be said again, the Continental USA is not the world. For global warming the only temperature that matters is the global average. This includes Russia, China, Australia, both poles, the 70% of the world that is covered by water, and all those little countries that nobody seems to care about (like Brazil! why don't they ever reference the average temperatures in Brazil?!)

I'm not saying that they are *necessarily* wrong, but when someone lies to me to try to prove their point and the lies are so easily uncovered I get mighty suspicious.

[Diogenes]

I'm not saying that they are *necessarily* wrong, but when someone lies to me to try to prove their point and the lies are so easily uncovered I get mighty suspicious.

Therefore you are completely fed up with the apostles of "Global Warming" ?

[Diogenes]

The Utter Desperation of Global Warming Liars






http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/ar ... um=twitter

[paperburn1]

My take on this is: There clearly is a warming effect, whether it is natural or man made. If we can do something to reduce it, or slow it down, then we should, since in the long term, too hot is not a good thing either.
Personally I favor geoengineering as a solution, but that would require us to solve a few other problems first.
Getting nuclear fusion online would help one way or the other. So that is the highest of all on my priority list.

Easy soultion would be to dope jet aircraft fuel with a ir reflector. (some sulfur compound?) Planes travel everywhere and we have our umbrella. Life goes on, end of story at least untill the acid rain starts.

[Skipjack]

I think that you just said that we should use geo-engineering to reduce warming that you admit might be natural. Somehow, the notion of intentionally affecting climate is a lot more scary to me than the potential of us having accidentally affected it.

Not really, there are several ways for doing it and some can be very, very finely tuned.

Easy soultion would be to dope jet aircraft fuel with a ir reflector. (some sulfur compound?) Planes travel everywhere and we have our umbrella. Life goes on, end of story at least untill the acid rain starts.

Havent heard that one yet. The one I know is the one that Bill Gates has invested in. It basically consists of a fleet of ships that keep vaporizing seawater and spraying that high up into the air. I dont have time to look it up right now, but that is how I remember it to work. It would not be THAT expensive and probably cost a lot than all those climate dollars cost the US ecenomy.

[hanelyp]

...(climate|global warming|etc.) denier...

And at that point I typically tune out the argument trying to support AGW.

[tomclarke]

AGW proven again to be an invention from whole cloth.

From WUWT.

When will those who wanted for the "best" of reasons to kill billions by deliberate impoversihment be made to pay?

Wow. This site, I thought, respected hard science? Forgive me for sounding off but Watts pisses me off by pretending scientific credentials when he has no respect for science - either he is totally ignorant or deliberately distorting. I would not say which. He is detestable.

I find the best antidote is to read here. Not fair, I know, but replying in kind with insults identical to those heaped on the climate scientists. Only the scientific flaws in Watts' arguments are so very obvious it is very easy to pick holes in them.

To return to the main argument.

There are some valid reasons to argue about AGW. The science is not certain. If climate sensitivity comes out 1/2 the value of the current "average" value (according to IPCC this is quite possible) then although AGW will happen we have much more time, and much less to worry about. Let us hope this is true, because sure as hell dramatic reductions in CO2 emmission will not happen, politically, independent of the strength of the science case. Bad things happenning 50 years down the road is outside the timescale of all elected politicians, and most of the electorate.

The IPCC reports tell you the science is not certain (if you bother to read the science). If, on the other hand, you read the political spin you will get nowhere.

however not certain does not mean nonexistent. There is lots of evidence of AGW.

The physical effect of CO2 (discounting all feedbacks) is 100% certain from direct calculation. And it is a warming effect. I can and will argue through the science with anyone so ignorant as not to have gone through it carefully.

Also, the increase in atmospheric CO2 due to anthropgenic emmissions, and the lifetime of that CO2, is equally certain.

So what is less certain is the effect of feedbacks (there are many). These could either amplify or (in principle) reduce the exactly known CO2 warming effect.

IPCC is clear about this. Go read the report. There is so much uncertainty in this because the feedbacks (things like clouds, but also bio-feedbacks) are very complex. So direct calculation of these feedbacks is not clear - easy to miss something out. Having said that detailed climate models get better and more powerful (the two things are not the same - computer power increases, as does the level of sophistication of the modelling) every year. So there is some direct evidence for H2O feedbacks being positive - as the globe warms, so increasing water vapour in the atmospjhere, cloud cover overall tends to increase heat trapped. This is BTW the naive conclusion as well, but when you look in detail at what clouds do they warm or cool according to whether they are low down or high up in the atmosphere. And the formation or not of clouds is very complex.

So we then have indirect evidence for positive feedbacks. this rests on whether climate over last 100 years can be explained by natural changes other than CO2 + high climate sensitivity. Effectively, you model all possible causes of variability, find other ways to validate as many causes as possible, and what is left is the CO2 signature.

This entreprise is extremely difficult, and requires very greta care. It is NOT certain (as the climate scientists all agree - political spin aside). The variability in the climate feedback parameter between different studies is large.

So, thus far I can agree with the skeptics - but thus far I am not disagreeing with IPCC AR4 (actually there is one important issue where I side with James Annan and other climate scientists - that of thinking the uniform Bayesian prior used in IPCC AR4 to be wrong, and this has a significant effect on projections - downwards thank god). AR5 will address the matter or there will be trouble within the mainstream climate science community.

But the best that can then be said is that we can't know what is climate sensitivity to forcing. We DO know that atmospheric CO2 has very long lifetime and will be a forcing factor increasing global temperatures just as surely as changes in the earth's orbit, or changes in solar radiance.

That is cause for concern and lots of research to reduce the uncertainty - because the way we have changed, and continue to chnage, atmospheric composition is so large.

Humans have not till the 20C had the ability to make globally significant changes to the ecosystem. Now we can, it is really stupid not to be careful. Unlike every other previous effect of the human race this one is (potentially) irreversible, affects the whole globe, and has a long time constant so we won't know whether to be worried till after we are committed to change. Now that is unarguable, and if you care about +50 years timescale it is scary.

Personally, I don't feel scared. I'll be dead. But sticking my head in the sand like an ostrich (as many on this thread argue is apropriate) seems to me a really stupid idea.

But then, when has the human race not been really stupid?

Anthony Watts, welcome to the human race. You are behaving on form.

What a weird post. You say that there is a directly calculable physical warming affect from increased CO2. Anthony Watts agrees. You say that how much this will actually affect the climate depends on an uncertain science of feedbacks. Anthony Watts agrees. You say that the science of feedbacks is extremely difficult, and requires very great care. Anthony Watts agrees. You say that the increase in temperature over the last hundred years is a form of indirect evidence for feedbacks. Anthony Watts agrees. However, if it is being used as indirect evidence, then the magnitude is important. Anthony Watts endeavors to get the magnitude correct. For this you call him detestable and sarcastically welcome him to the human race.

Basically, you just called into question all of the science of AGW beyond there being a calculable physical warming from CO2 and then condemned those that do the same.

Honestly, I don't get it.

If you strip out the political spin & conspiracy theories, both sides of this debate do agree. It is then a matter of detailed science to deterimine what is the probability distribution of climate sensitivity.

AW has my contempt because he repeatedly publishes papers which have blatantly incorrect scientific content. Not minor nuances, but the whole thing obviously and provably wrong. Surprisingly (?) these incorrect papers always have the political import of "mainstream science has got it wrong with climate sensitivity too high". So basically he is filtering on wanted conclusion, but NOT filtering on even rudimentary scientific correctness. Then he complains these papers do not get published and invokes worldwide science conspiracies to explain this.

To see this follow the deconstructions of AW's specific papers from other web sites who bother to do this (tamino is good, he is a decent mathematicien). Don't, of course, juts read one side, read the responses of both sides and work out for yourself who is right.

So that is the anti-AW "weirdness".

The other part of my post is saying that given we have no good handle on climate sensitivity, it could be pretty high, in which case irreversible changes we know we are making would have large difficult to quantify (because once climate departs from known ranges we cannot tell how feedbacks will change) results.

That type of risk, in any other scientific endeavour, would lead to a complete ban. It is certainly cause for being really careful and putting effort into quantifying risks better. The mainstream science community would argue that by continuing to increase CO2 levels at a high rate we are being the opposite of careful. Remember, there are very long time constants (ocean temps) in this system.

Like somone who plays with the wiring of a land mine without instructions, saying: well - we know there may be a risk of bad things happening, but we cannot determine it accurately, and very possibly all wll be fine.


What we are doing by changing CO2 forcing so rapidly is without precedent. The (many) natural causes of climate variability operate on much much longer timescales. This is significant because it allows ecosystems to adapt. Major temperature changes would not probably bother humans if on typical geological timescales because human civilisations would change location and activities as needed - they do this anyway.

BTW I agree geoengineering is very important. It offers the possibility of recovering from changes after they have been made when we know the consequences are bad. But it is also very uncertain - both is it practical and also whether the changes made to counteract CO2 would do so. It is not going to happen on significant scale until we are desperate because of these risks. There is no geoengineering currently hypothesised cheaper than moving to lower CO2 emissions quickly over the next 50 years.

[randomencounter]

I'm not saying that they are *necessarily* wrong, but when someone lies to me to try to prove their point and the lies are so easily uncovered I get mighty suspicious.

Therefore you are completely fed up with the apostles of "Global Warming" ?

I have yet to see a serious attempt to disprove current global warming.

I have yet to see any attempt that doesn't fall to tiny sharp pieces when poked with a stick.

Just being inclined to shout that you are right for longer than me does not make you right.

It makes you not worth engaging with.

Good day, sir.

[paperburn1]

The fact that there is any warming at all when the sun has been in a cooling trend for 7-8 years is troubling. What do we suppose will happen when the sun goes back into a warming trend in 3-4 years?

The problem I have is DATA given most of the data is collected from one general source that uses 25 percent of the energy and only has 6 percent of the volume how can we make a rational assessment of what is going on with the weather. NOAA relies on 7,280 thermometers to measure temperature worldwide, and 2,300 of those are in the United States. (More U.S.-based thermometers are in the global data set than in the national average data set because NOAA’s selection criteria for the national average are more stringent.) That means nearly 32 percent of the official land-based thermometers are located in the United States, even though the United States represents just over 6 percent of global land mass. Only 4,400 of the global thermometers have more than 25 years of historical data, and a disproportionate share of those are in the United States. NOAA uses a series of computational strategies to fill in the international gaps and blends land and marine data (collected by sensors on ships and buoys, among other places) to calculate global temperature changes. I beleive the climate is changing but I also belive we are still withen the normal variations of our planet for the past 100000 years.

[tomclarke]

The fact that there is any warming at all when the sun has been in a cooling trend for 7-8 years is troubling. What do we suppose will happen when the sun goes back into a warming trend in 3-4 years?

The problem I have is DATA given most of the data is collected from one general source that uses 25 percent of the energy and only has 6 percent of the volume how can we make a rational assessment of what is going on with the weather. NOAA relies on 7,280 thermometers to measure temperature worldwide, and 2,300 of those are in the United States. (More U.S.-based thermometers are in the global data set than in the national average data set because NOAA’s selection criteria for the national average are more stringent.) That means nearly 32 percent of the official land-based thermometers are located in the United States, even though the United States represents just over 6 percent of global land mass. Only 4,400 of the global thermometers have more than 25 years of historical data, and a disproportionate share of those are in the United States. NOAA uses a series of computational strategies to fill in the international gaps and blends land and marine data (collected by sensors on ships and buoys, among other places) to calculate global temperature changes. I beleive the climate is changing but I also belive we are still withen the normal variations of our planet for the past 100000 years.

Since we have made an abnormal for last 2,000,000 years change in CO2 levels and this has a known forcing effect this belief is surely at best a "best guess" hope, leaving the matter uncertain.

But it also ignores parallel lines of evidence:
sea temp rise
direct physical modelling of H2O feedbacks

The point that gets lost here is the burden of proof. Known and clear science gives a rate of change in forcing without any natural parallel. So "we don't yet know whether it is a real problem" is not good enough.

[seedload]

If you strip out the political spin & conspiracy theories, both sides of this debate do agree. It is then a matter of detailed science to deterimine what is the probability distribution of climate sensitivity.

AW has my contempt because he repeatedly publishes papers which have blatantly incorrect scientific content. Not minor nuances, but the whole thing obviously and provably wrong. Surprisingly (?) these incorrect papers always have the political import of "mainstream science has got it wrong with climate sensitivity too high". So basically he is filtering on wanted conclusion, but NOT filtering on even rudimentary scientific correctness. Then he complains these papers do not get published and invokes worldwide science conspiracies to explain this.

To see this follow the deconstructions of AW's specific papers from other web sites who bother to do this (tamino is good, he is a decent mathematicien). Don't, of course, juts read one side, read the responses of both sides and work out for yourself who is right.

So that is the anti-AW "weirdness".

The other part of my post is saying that given we have no good handle on climate sensitivity, it could be pretty high, in which case irreversible changes we know we are making would have large difficult to quantify (because once climate departs from known ranges we cannot tell how feedbacks will change) results.

That type of risk, in any other scientific endeavour, would lead to a complete ban. It is certainly cause for being really careful and putting effort into quantifying risks better. The mainstream science community would argue that by continuing to increase CO2 levels at a high rate we are being the opposite of careful. Remember, there are very long time constants (ocean temps) in this system.

Like somone who plays with the wiring of a land mine without instructions, saying: well - we know there may be a risk of bad things happening, but we cannot determine it accurately, and very possibly all wll be fine.


What we are doing by changing CO2 forcing so rapidly is without precedent. The (many) natural causes of climate variability operate on much much longer timescales. This is significant because it allows ecosystems to adapt. Major temperature changes would not probably bother humans if on typical geological timescales because human civilisations would change location and activities as needed - they do this anyway.

BTW I agree geoengineering is very important. It offers the possibility of recovering from changes after they have been made when we know the consequences are bad. But it is also very uncertain - both is it practical and also whether the changes made to counteract CO2 would do so. It is not going to happen on significant scale until we are desperate because of these risks. There is no geoengineering currently hypothesised cheaper than moving to lower CO2 emissions quickly over the next 50 years.

BTW, I tend to agree with you regarding Watts. If his only function was to post bunk, I would completely agree with you. However, I don't think you can ignore his other function of revealing bunk, which at times he has done quite respectably. Without blogs like his, nobody would be serving this function. That said, his tendency to fight fire with fire is not great. So, yes, like most media, it takes a bit of a discerning reader to get anything out of his site. FYI, I did take a tiny bit of offense at the implication that I don't read both sides of the debate, but that is neither here nor there.

As to the rest of your post, I tend to disagree with the conclusion that natural variability is only seen over long time scales. I don't think that has adequately been established.

Also, intuitively, a high climate sensitivity does not make sense to me, especially since the feedbacks in question are not feedbacks to CO2 concentrations but are feedbacks to increased temperature - regardless of whether higher temps are caused by CO2 or not. My intuitive sense of things is admittedly not scientific, but when I look to scientific attributions I find only computer models and weak attributions claiming no other physical explanation for the current warming (or prehistoric). While I agree that computer models are based on physical processes, I think our understanding of those physical processes is far from complete and am therefore very dubious of the idea that they represent any evidence for a high sensitivity.

Also, I am aware of the precautionary principle. Most of your post is a restatement of it. I do not believe that the precautionary principle can be applied without understanding the economics of action vs inaction. If suffering from action is greater than suffering from inaction, then we should obviously not act. There is an awful lot of suffering in the world as a result of too little energy. Assuming that the potential suffering from warming necessitates continuing or increasing that suffering is not an assumption we should take lightly.

Finally, while I am sure that we will continue to disagree about the likelihood for a catastrophic outcome from our use of fossil fuels, I suspect that the fact that we are both on this blog is a good indication that we agree on a need to eventually move away from them. I believe that we need to advance our capability of building safer and more efficient nuclear power and that we need to develop new energy storage technologies to eventually move all electricity and everyday transport away from fossil fuels. I think this is doable. I am a big fan of LFTR. Hopefully, fusion one day.