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Study Links Pacific Coastal Warming To Changing Winds
tranquilidad writes: In a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two authors ascribe the majority of northeast pacific coastal warming to natural atmospheric circulation and not to anthropogenic forcing. In AP's reporting, Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institution for Science, says the paper's authors, "...have not established the causes of these atmospheric pressure variations. Thus, claims that the observed temperature increases are due primarily to 'natural' processes are suspect and premature, at best." The paper's authors, on the other hand, state, "...clearly, there are other factors stronger than the greenhouse forcing that is affecting...temperatures," and that there is a "surprising degree to which the winds can explain all the wiggles in the temperature curve."
That's an interesting thought process... "some warming is natural" means "no warming is artificial." It's like claiming at your murder trial that someone's death was natural, so therefore humans can't cause other humans to die. Talk about grasping at straws!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
This is apostasy and can only be punished by academic death. They will never get a grant in this town, again!
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
You're aware that changing wind patterns still don't mean squat for the global thermal energy balance? The winds are just moving the heat around a bit.
Ezekiel 23:20
You're right of course, it's terribly flawed logic. Just as flawed as the logic in "The greenhouse effect is demonstrable in a test tube, therefore it is the primary factor directly controlling the temperature of Earth."
Real scientists don't make such simplistic and unjustified steps in their logic. Unfortunately, because real scientists remain silent when they don't have verifiable mathematics and experiment to back a theory, we only get to hear the charlatans for whom contributory data is equivalent to understanding the whole thing.
... Underscores the real problem here. This is far too politicized to be judged scientifically anymore. There are very few open minds left and those few that are open are not listened to by anyone.
Consider for the sake of argument if everything you know about this issue is wrong. Just for the sake of argument. Now reexamine these little niche issues one at a time to see if they have anything interesting to say WHILE in that frame of mind.
This is something I do every time I get new information. I take all my opinions, convictions, and beliefs... and I put them in neutral. Then I read it all IN that frame of mind. Often I will be reading something that contradicts my previous understanding. And unless I kept that frame of mind I would probably prejudge and discount it without properly considering it.
Everyone does this from time to time. The best scientists in the world have been caught doing this occasionally. You never stop being human.
What is so distressing about AGW for me is that we're all so polarized on the issue that we can't even talk about it anymore without breaking into our little factional camps can calling each other names.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It's like claiming at your murder trial that someone's death was natural, so therefore humans can't cause other humans to die.
While this isn't a bad way to put the Denialist reaction to this paper, it is worth pointing out that these guys have done more than produce one number: they have also produced predictions for regional variation that a) match the data and b) can't be replicated by a global forcing model. Since a critical component of the evidence for ACC is the regional variation of the predicted warming, this should at least give one pause.
Of course, letting it give one pause would be a disaster for members of the Warmist religion, whose mantra "The Science Is Settled" implies that any modification to the conclusion "almost all warming observed everywhere is the result of ACC" is equivalent to "the Denialists were right after all!"
This is nonsense, of course: the Denialists are wrong. Doubling the CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere are almost certainly increasing the effective insolation by about 1.6 W/m^2, which will likely have appreciable consequences on the climate.
However, how those consequences work themselves out is an extremely uncertain business, and no competent computational physicist puts nearly the trust in our unphysical climate models that Warmists do. This paper is a good example of how science (as opposed to politics and religion, which is what most of the public debate about ACC amounts to) works: they have squeezed a plausible hypothesis (that regional changes around the Pacific are explicable by global forcing) and found it questionable.
I expect we'll see a lot of work in the next decade on the interaction of natural variations and anthropogenic forcings, with Warmists continually playing a game of catch-up and Denialists continually repeating that the manifest uncertainty in our conclusions proves that "humans can't possibly have doubled the CO2 level" (or something like that... why Denialists believe humans can't have a global impact is beyond me.)
This is the damage to science done by Warmists: by claiming something that is not just false but actively anti-science ("the science is settled") they have encouraged their equally ignorant opponents to disbelieve science when it is working exactly as one would like it to.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The winds are just moving the heat around a bit.
"Moving heat around a bit" has a tremendous impact on global climate. This is why ENSO in the south Pacific is so important: by moving heat around it changes global circulation patterns, which changes the overall energy balance of the Earth. This is why the simple achievement of getting reasonable agreement that anthropogenic CO2 is adding about 1.6 W/m^2 to the Earth's heat budget is such a huge scientific achievement, and while that conclusion is still subject to significant uncertainty: because adding heat changes the winds and currents which themselves influence the radiative balance. There are even (very unlikely) models in which adding sufficient heat causes global cooling due to increased transport of energy to the poles, where it radiates back into space more efficiently.
Climate is a non-linear, strongly coupled system. Treating it as if one could draw simple conclusions dismisses the complexity and difficulty of climate modelling. It also results in underestimating the uncertainties in models.
Any competent computational physicist (me, for example, but other people a lot smarter than me as well: http://online.wsj.com/articles...) will tell you that climate models are far less certain than their public, political proponents are claiming. This does not mean that "global warming is a hoax" or any such Denialist gibberish. It means that models are uncertain, and we should not get bowled over when they are subject to correction, even significant correction.
In the meantime, we can do some pretty universally agreeable things, like shift income and corporate taxes toward carbon taxes. After all, income and corporate taxes apply to something that is basically good--making butt-loads of money--while carbon taxes apply to something basically bad: burning irreplaceable fossil fuels and dumping garbage into the atmosphere. I guess anti-capitalist crusaders might oppose carbon taxes, but I can't think of any other reason to do so. If anyone is really in favour of keeping income and corporate taxes high, do feel free to make your case, though.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
You are wrong. I am not a climate scientist. Almost all the people here are not climate scientists. However, if 97% of climate scientists around the world agree on something, it tends to sway me into their favor. Arguments to the contrary are always welcome but, from what I've seen, they aren't credible (because they are so easily debunked in ways I can understand). When the community of climate scientists is swayed, those of us with open minds will be swayed, too. Same goes with relativity, evolution, and whatever else. I have an open mind but if the overwhelming majority of the experts in a field agree on something, it gets my attention. It seems that what gets the attention of deniers is only what they want to hear.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
One of the main problems is quantifying the energy in the ocean. The boundary conditions are poorly define, a detailed thermal profile is non-existent, and small changes in water temperature resolve to large changes in air temperature.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
I can't find the reference right now, but if the average temperature of the planet increases by 4 degrees celsius, large swathes of this planet's real estate become uninhabitable. There's about 2 billion people living in that zone that have to get out, or die. Do you think an iron fence will stop them at the border? Not a chance.
And if the temperature rises enough to release the methane gas in the seas in the arctic, the whole process will accelerate beyond our power to control it.
Now, this may or may not happen. Chances are, if we do nothing it might not happen. The odds don't seem favorable though. In any case, gambling with the entire area of this solar system we can actually inhabit seems like a rather stupid proposition.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
What happens when you shut the air conditioner off in your house?
I save the fucking planet, that's what. :)
Since a critical component of the evidence for ACC is the regional variation of the predicted warming, this should at least give one pause.
Really?
When I looked at it, my understanding was that models reproduce the global mean surface temperature very well, but regional climate change is expected to be more affected by systems that originate on scales smaller than the cells of current climate models.
Where do you get this claim that the regional variation is a critical component of the evidence for ACC?