Slashdot Mirror

Hmmmmmmmm...who to trust?

On one hand I see that cpu6502 suspects that our current warming spike is entirely natural.

On the other hand I see that the U.S. National Academies and the science academies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russian, the UK, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, NASA, the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Chemical Society, the American Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of America, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Australian Institute of Physics and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics think cpu6502 is wrong.

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=05192010
http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html
http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/mtg_200702/aaas_climate_statement.pdf
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/ssi/american-physical-society.pdf
http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/positions/climate_change2008.shtml
http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_SUPERARTICLE&node_id=1907&use_sec=false&sec_url_var=region1
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.pdf
http://www.geosociety.org/positions/position10.htm
http://www.euro-acad.eu/downloads/memorandas/lets_be_honest_-_festplenum_03.03.07_-_final2.pdf
http://www.aip.org.au/scipolicy/Science%20Policy.pdf
http://www.iugg.org/resolutions/perugia07.pdf
http://planet3.org/2012/03/11/a-brief-guide-to-the-scientific-consensus-on-climate-change/

If Slashdot covering a weather story isn't a climate-scale outlier, I don't know what is.

Here's another strange fact: on March 18 the low temperature in Rochester MN exceeded the previous record high for that date.

I'm working on an essay linking this event to anthropogenic climate change ("global warming") which will appear on Planet3.0.

(For what it's worth I might as well submit a Slashdot story when it's up. Hose my host - see if I care.)

If Slashdot covering a weather story isn't a climate-scale outlier, I don't know what is.

Here's another strange fact: on March 18 the low temperature in Rochester MN exceeded the previous record high for that date.

I'm working on an essay linking this event to anthropogenic climate change ("global warming") which will appear on Planet3.0.

(For what it's worth I might as well submit a Slashdot story when it's up. Hose my host - see if I care.)

Quoting Nathan Urban, author of the paper:

"... World Climate Report doctored our paperâ(TM)s main figure when reporting on our study. This manipulated version of our figure was copied widely on other blogs. They deleted the data and legends for the land and ocean estimates of climate sensitivity, and presented only our combined land+ocean curve â¦. Pat Michaels duplicated this doctored version of our figure again in an article at Forbes, and didnâ(TM)t mention at all that it had been altered. (A side note with respect to the Forbes article: Science didnâ(TM)t âoethrow a tantrumâ about posting our manuscript on the web. They never contacted us about that. I took it down myself as a precaution, due to the journalâ(TM)s embargo policy.)

I find this data manipulation problematic. When I created the real version of that figure, it occurred to me that it would be reproduced in articles, presentations, or blog posts. Because I find the difference between our land and ocean estimates to be such an important caveat to our work, I made sure to include all three curves in the figure, so that anyone reproducing it would have to acknowledge these caveats. I didnâ(TM)t anticipate that anyone would simple edit the figure to remove our caveatsâ¦."
--------
Full interview at:

http://newscience.planet3.org/2011/11/24/interview-with-nathan-urban-on-his-new-paper-climate-sensitivity-estimated-from-temperature-reconstructions-of-the-last-glacial-maximum/

Here are further comments from the author: http://newscience.planet3.org/2011/11/24/interview-with-nathan-urban-on-his-new-paper-climate-sensitivity-estimated-from-temperature-reconstructions-of-the-last-glacial-maximum/

Q: Given all these caveats, how robust are the results of your study?

I think our lower climate sensitivity estimate will hold up, provided the reconstructed LGM temperature data on which it is based hold up. Our finding of a warmer LGM will prove controversial among the scientific community and the data will be subject to much scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether this temperature data is consistent with everything else we know about that period of time (its climate, its vegetation, the size of its ice sheets, etc.).

I am less confident that our narrow uncertainty range really does exclude climate sensitivities above 3 C. This is something that could be overturned by future work. It certainly would stimulate a lot of rethinking among scientists if the result isn’t overturned. I can’t say I’m rooting strongly for either outcome, though. I’d be pleased to see our findings confirmed, but if they’re disproven, I’ll learn something from the way in which they are disproven, and this will improve my own research. Who knows, maybe I will disprove them myself.

Q: Can you briefly summarize which aspects of the study you and you coauthors contributed to?

I developed and conducted the statistical data-model comparison, in collaboration with lead author Andreas Schmittner. This corresponds to Figure 3 of the paper and most of sections 5, 6, and 7 of the supporting online material. Andreas designed and carried out the model simulations. Other coauthors worked on the temperature reconstructions, the assumptions about dust forcings, etc. I can’t tell you the exact partitioning of responsibility because I entered this project relatively late, after all the proxy reconstructions and model simulations had been completed.

Q: Your paper got a lot of positive attention from climate skeptic blogs like “Watts Up With That?”. What’s your reaction to all that?

I haven’t followed these blogs too closely, but I skimmed the comments on a few that were pointed out to me. The responses I saw were fairly predictable, veering from uncritical acceptance of our findings, to uncritical dismissal of any study that involves computer models or proxy data. But some comments did seem to find an appropriate middle ground of, well, skepticism.

Here is an interview with the author of the paper: http://newscience.planet3.org/2011/11/24/interview-with-nathan-urban-on-his-new-paper-climate-sensitivity-estimated-from-temperature-reconstructions-of-the-last-glacial-maximum/

Q. It’s a little funny, to me, that your paper was receiving such positive comments from skeptics while many of those same skeptics also support claims by Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer purporting to find an essentially insensitive (~1C or less) or self-stabilizing climate. Does your paper support such incredibly low values for ECS?

Our analysis found a lower bound of 1.35 C for climate sensitivity (less than 5% probability of being below this bound). We tried a range of statistical and physical assumptions, and found sensitivities as low as 1.15 C, and as high as 4.65 C (if we analyze the land data). I don’t think sensitivities lower than our bound are consistent with either our study or paleoclimatic evidence in general.

Q: Any other thoughts on the skeptics’ reception of your paper?

One blog did surprise me. World Climate Report doctored our paper’s main figure when reporting on our study. This manipulated version of our figure was copied widely on other blogs. They deleted the data and legends for the land and ocean estimates of climate sensitivity, and presented only our combined land+ocean curve:

Interview here. It gives some perspective on the claims people are making and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the study.

For example, in the linked article.

Thanks, interesting graph. China just passed the US and it's on a steep upward climb.

I live in Germany which has managed to have a very small CO2 footprint while maintaining a pretty high standard of living. It shows that it can be done.

Indeed! Every decade has seen cooling since 1973! The following graph must bee seen to be believed! http://planet3.org/2011/11/08/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words-a-graph-more-so/

It's not "almost all China". That's completely retarded.
It's not the rate that CO2 output is increasing that is the problem, it's the level of CO2 output. China only recently surpassed US in level.
Worse than that though, it's not just a yearly output that's the problem, but decades worth of output, because CO2 stays around in the atmosphere for a very long time.

Check out this chart from a recent slashdot story: http://planet3.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cdiac.gif
Compare the area under the graph of the US relative to the area under China.
It's more appropriate to say "It's almost all US" at this point. China, having produced less CO2 in the past decades but now producing more, has only just started to catch up. It's got a long way to go.

That said, with the US not slowing down and China racing to catch up, if their rate of production keeps up then things are going to get a lot worse a lot faster. However you spin it, rate of CO2 production by the US is not sustainable, whether they're producing most of the world's CO2, or (worst case) if their dangerously high levels are only a small fraction of it. In the latter case, in the future the US would be making things generally worse, while China might be rapidly endangering the planet, but that hasn't yet happened and it still wouldn't make the problem "almost all China".

For example, in the linked article.

Either you are wrong or the article's graph sourced from the US department of energy is. It shows no significant reduction, only a slight dip before a continued upward trend.

Why would you try to introduce facts into a discussion about climate change?

The problem is that EU wants to do the RIGHT thing, America does not want to get burned, and China wants to trash the west at any and all costs.

Assuming the chart in TFA is accurate (admittedly from the US DOE), doesn't this refute the EU stance on the Kyoto Protocol, and validate the U.S. stance that any meaningful reduction treaty had to include developing nations? Looking at those lines, it seems even if Kyoto had been ratified by everyone and everyone had hit their 1990-level reduction targets, it would have been rendered almost completely meaningless by the massive increase in emissions from China and India.

What have absolute levels got to do with anything? How about per-capita levels? The US has, what, about 1/4 of the population of China, yet China has only just overtaken the US?

No-one in the west can get on their high horse about increases in emissions from China and India.

Developed nations have caused most of the problem so far, so should take the brunt of the remedial measures. Developing nations, once reaching the so called developed nations in per-capita emissions, should then take the same remedial measures.

Note that the US, who in principle did not sign the Kyoto protocol, actually reduced emissions significantly (not just reduction in growth, but actual reduction) since 2007 due to the economic recession.

So, we don't want to reduce carbon emissions because it will hurt our economy - but hurt the economy and emissions automatically reduce. Sounds like a vicious cycle that needs a technological exit strategy to me.

Either you are wrong or the article's graph sourced from the US department of energy is. It shows no significant reduction, only a slight dip before a continued upward trend.

That graph is on a 100 year timeframe starting in 1902 and non-specific about when it stops after 2000... I was referring to the numbers quoted in the text for 2007 and beyond. Economically, I hope I don't continue to live in a 2007->2008 trend, but if it continued, we would be significantly reducing emissions year over year. Too lazy to go and re-read, I think the article was predicting a return to 2007 level emissions in 2011, i.e. flat for the last 4 years.

Sure, we need reduction, not flat, but good luck even getting flat emissions out of China without extensive use of nuclear power...

Note that the US, who in principle did not sign the Kyoto protocol, actually reduced emissions significantly (not just reduction in growth, but actual reduction) since 2007 due to the economic recession.

So, we don't want to reduce carbon emissions because it will hurt our economy - but hurt the economy and emissions automatically reduce. Sounds like a vicious cycle that needs a technological exit strategy to me.

Either you are wrong or the article's graph sourced from the US department of energy is. It shows no significant reduction, only a slight dip before a continued upward trend.

http://planet3.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cdiac.gif Sure they went at a lower speed up , nearly flat, but the emission did not go down except 1 year.

First of all, who can verify that the information of that pie chart on http://planet3.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cdiac.gif is valid?

The problem is that EU wants to do the RIGHT thing, America does not want to get burned, and China wants to trash the west at any and all costs.

Assuming the chart in TFA is accurate (admittedly from the US DOE), doesn't this refute the EU stance on the Kyoto Protocol, and validate the U.S. stance that any meaningful reduction treaty had to include developing nations? Looking at those lines, it seems even if Kyoto had been ratified by everyone and everyone had hit their 1990-level reduction targets, it would have been rendered almost completely meaningless by the massive increase in emissions from China and India.