Dr. Roy Spencer is one climate contrarian I have some respect for. He has scientific credentials and is one of the principals in the UAH satellite temperature record. Unfortunately despite his training he hasn't been able to find a major chink in the armor of global warming.
I have read both of those before and Latour is full of it. While it's true that the net energy flow is always toward the cooler object his hypothesis that a warmer object reflects the IR radiation of a cooler object doesn't hold water. It the hotter plate reflects the cooler object's IR then that IR heads back to the cooler plate but since it's already at the temperature the IR was emitted at it can't absorb it either so what happens to the IR? Conservation of energy says it doesn't just disappear. Is it stuck in limbo between the two plates? No, the hotter plate absorbs the IR from the cooler plate and gets enough hotter that the total IR emitted is equal to the input from the electric heater plus the cooler plate.
I don't imagine that will satisfy you but that's the way I see it.
In 2010 a study was published [PDF] that compared the temperature trends of Watt's surfacestations.org lists of well and poorly sited weather stations. It found that the the poorly sited stations actually had a cooling bias on the warming trend compared to the well sited stations. To me that means the UHI effect is well compensated for and perhaps a bit overcompensated for.
Remember also that we're not so much interested in the absolute temperature but how temperature is changing over time. It seems plausible to me that a well sited station and a nearby poorly sited station would show similar temperature trends even if the poorly sited stations reads 5 degrees higher because of the UHI effect.
Maybe some of them went up a river on the incoming tide and found some nice river silt to germinate in. Or maybe some happened to get washed far enough inland on a storm surge. There's lots of possibilities and lots of time for something uncommon to happen.
A domesticated plant (or animal for that matter) is one that has been grown purposely by humans for a long enough time that selective breeding has accentuated characteristics that make it more beneficial to humans.
60,000 years ago in the middle of the last glaciation (ice age) sea level was about 120 meters (400 feet) lower than it is today. The original Australians probably walked most of the way and may not have had crossings that got out of sight of land. After all humans got to the Americas by walking across the Bering land bridge.
You may have a pilots license but you couldn't use it legally to pilot a plane without getting current first. I believe you have to do a check ride every two years to stay current.
Well, you made me laugh. When the independent Berkeley Earth Science Temperature project found essentially the same temperature trends as HadCRUT, GISS and NOAA I think the accuracy of them was pretty much confirmed. Even if you just take the raw unadjusted temperature data you don't get substantially different results.
I do pay attention to the climate debate but I've seen very little good science coming from the climate contrarian side. One example of that is Anthony Watts bringing a lot of attention to the urban heat island effect. I'm glad he did. It caused scientists to examine their methods for dealing with it more closely but in the end it just increased the confidence that they were dealing with it well.
Yeah, it all started when Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate below 50%. Before that there was more incentive to put the money back into the business rather than hoard it for yourself.
The CFC issue was about far more than the ozone hole over Antarctica (which is still there BTW, it's just not getting worse any more). There was ozone depletion going on globally as well and ozone's role in blocking UVB radiation is important to all life on Earth.
Having said that, I am NOT claiming Watts is a wonderfully reliable source... I'd definitely rate him as less biased than realclimate.org,...
ROTFL - I'm blowing mod points but I can't let that ridiculous statement stand. The only bias I've seen at Real Climate is for good science and they've got the data to back it up. The guys running it are among the leading scientists in the field. I guess that might seem biased to someone who is already biased against what their science says but in the end the real world will tell you what they got right and what they got wrong. So far they're doing pretty good.
Climate model are not used to measure climate change. The weather stations and satellites do a fine job of that. They are used to test our understanding of how the climate works. BTW, the term "climate change" was used at least as far back as 1970.
What is not reproducible in climate science is the raw data, the temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, etc. You've got one shot to collect that. But everything beyond that is reproducible.
So the sea level is expected to climb something around 3 to 4 feet by the year 2100 if all goes as claimed.
Don't make the mistake of thinking sea level rise stops in 2100. The last time CO2 levels were the current level, 400 ppm, sea levels were 80 feet (25m) higher than they are now. It will take centuries for the great ice sheets to reach a new equilibrium but sea level will continue to rise until they do.
I think it's the Gulf Coast and Florida that is most threatened. What does 3 or 4 feet of SLR do to Huston, NOLA, Mobile, Miami or Tampa Bay, particularly when the next hurricane and storm surge comes along?
There have been several climate studies where the researchers either were unable/unwilling to release their data, or they were unable/unwilling to release the methodology they used to process that data.
There may have been some truth to that in the past but not much any more, especially if you're willing to put a little work into seeking it out rather than expecting it to be handed to you on a silver platter.
As regulators choke industries to death with regulations...
Better that than US citizens choking to death like the citizens of China because of lack of regulation.
(And yes I realize to irony of polluting industries moving to China because of our regulations but if something can't be produced without all that pollution then maybe it's not worth producing in the first place.)
The trouble is, there is no practical existential threat from Al Qaeda.
This can't be reiterated enough. The response to 9/11 was completely out of proportion to the actual threat posed by the perpetrators. GWB said they hate us for our freedom so what do we do? We turn around and reduce our freedom. What kind of sense does that make?
Fourier's discovery that the Earth was warmer than it should be given its size and distance from the Sun was a major step forward in geoscience.. That he may not have had the mechanism right in no way detracts from the importance of that insight.
The center of Greenland's ice sheet may be thickening but over all Greenland is losing ice mass at a rate of over 260 Gt per year since 2002 as measured by the GRACE satellites. See the Total Ice Mass section of this report for details.
I did a little searching and found a paper from 2011 [pdf] that addresses Jakobshavn specifically. It has this to say:
3.3. Jakobshavn Isbroe
Jakobshavn Isbroe was losing 8 Gt a1 of mass per year in 2000 (Figure 2). This rate increased over the following years to near 25 Gt a1 by the end of 2002. The loss rate then stabilized and declined back under 20 Gt a1 until 2006, when it increased to 33 Gt a1, reaching 34 Gt a1 by the end of 2007. Subsequently, the annual loss rate has fluctuated between 25 and 33 Gt a1. In total the glacier lost 321 ± 12 Gt by the end of 2010, equivalent to a basin!wide thinning of 3.5 m, with 2/3 of this loss occurring since June of 2005 (Figure 3). The 85 km2 of retreat accounts for nearly 20% of this loss. The rate of discharge is now such that the glacier is losing mass nearly throughout the year. As previously reported [Joughin et al., 2008a, 2008c; Luckman and Murray, 2005], annual oscillations in speed of ±20%, with a peak in June/July, correlated with seasonal retreat and advance of the ice front, become increasingly pronounced at the location of the fluxgate after 2005 (Figure S7). Seasonal oscillations in speed, SMB and front position cause annual fluctuations in mass of up to 50 Gt.
Of the other two glaciers reported on in the paper Helheim gained 17 +/- 13 Gt and Kangerdlugssuaq lost 152 +/- 10 Gt compared to Jakobshavn's 321 +/- 12 Gt in the 11 year period studied. Those are the three largest outlet glaciers in Greenland.
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Dr. Roy Spencer is one climate contrarian I have some respect for. He has scientific credentials and is one of the principals in the UAH satellite temperature record. Unfortunately despite his training he hasn't been able to find a major chink in the armor of global warming.
I have read both of those before and Latour is full of it. While it's true that the net energy flow is always toward the cooler object his hypothesis that a warmer object reflects the IR radiation of a cooler object doesn't hold water. It the hotter plate reflects the cooler object's IR then that IR heads back to the cooler plate but since it's already at the temperature the IR was emitted at it can't absorb it either so what happens to the IR? Conservation of energy says it doesn't just disappear. Is it stuck in limbo between the two plates? No, the hotter plate absorbs the IR from the cooler plate and gets enough hotter that the total IR emitted is equal to the input from the electric heater plus the cooler plate.
I don't imagine that will satisfy you but that's the way I see it.
In 2010 a study was published [PDF] that compared the temperature trends of Watt's surfacestations.org lists of well and poorly sited weather stations. It found that the the poorly sited stations actually had a cooling bias on the warming trend compared to the well sited stations. To me that means the UHI effect is well compensated for and perhaps a bit overcompensated for.
Remember also that we're not so much interested in the absolute temperature but how temperature is changing over time. It seems plausible to me that a well sited station and a nearby poorly sited station would show similar temperature trends even if the poorly sited stations reads 5 degrees higher because of the UHI effect.
Maybe some of them went up a river on the incoming tide and found some nice river silt to germinate in. Or maybe some happened to get washed far enough inland on a storm surge. There's lots of possibilities and lots of time for something uncommon to happen.
A domesticated plant (or animal for that matter) is one that has been grown purposely by humans for a long enough time that selective breeding has accentuated characteristics that make it more beneficial to humans.
60,000 years ago in the middle of the last glaciation (ice age) sea level was about 120 meters (400 feet) lower than it is today. The original Australians probably walked most of the way and may not have had crossings that got out of sight of land. After all humans got to the Americas by walking across the Bering land bridge.
I hear you. I have some mementos in my wallet too.
You may have a pilots license but you couldn't use it legally to pilot a plane without getting current first. I believe you have to do a check ride every two years to stay current.
Well, you made me laugh. When the independent Berkeley Earth Science Temperature project found essentially the same temperature trends as HadCRUT, GISS and NOAA I think the accuracy of them was pretty much confirmed. Even if you just take the raw unadjusted temperature data you don't get substantially different results.
I do pay attention to the climate debate but I've seen very little good science coming from the climate contrarian side. One example of that is Anthony Watts bringing a lot of attention to the urban heat island effect. I'm glad he did. It caused scientists to examine their methods for dealing with it more closely but in the end it just increased the confidence that they were dealing with it well.
Yeah, it all started when Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate below 50%. Before that there was more incentive to put the money back into the business rather than hoard it for yourself.
The CFC issue was about far more than the ozone hole over Antarctica (which is still there BTW, it's just not getting worse any more). There was ozone depletion going on globally as well and ozone's role in blocking UVB radiation is important to all life on Earth.
Having said that, I am NOT claiming Watts is a wonderfully reliable source ... I'd definitely rate him as less biased than realclimate.org, ...
ROTFL - I'm blowing mod points but I can't let that ridiculous statement stand. The only bias I've seen at Real Climate is for good science and they've got the data to back it up. The guys running it are among the leading scientists in the field. I guess that might seem biased to someone who is already biased against what their science says but in the end the real world will tell you what they got right and what they got wrong. So far they're doing pretty good.
Climate model are not used to measure climate change. The weather stations and satellites do a fine job of that. They are used to test our understanding of how the climate works. BTW, the term "climate change" was used at least as far back as 1970.
What is not reproducible in climate science is the raw data, the temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, etc. You've got one shot to collect that. But everything beyond that is reproducible.
So the sea level is expected to climb something around 3 to 4 feet by the year 2100 if all goes as claimed.
Don't make the mistake of thinking sea level rise stops in 2100. The last time CO2 levels were the current level, 400 ppm, sea levels were 80 feet (25m) higher than they are now. It will take centuries for the great ice sheets to reach a new equilibrium but sea level will continue to rise until they do.
I think it's the Gulf Coast and Florida that is most threatened. What does 3 or 4 feet of SLR do to Huston, NOLA, Mobile, Miami or Tampa Bay, particularly when the next hurricane and storm surge comes along?
It's pretty pessimistic to think humans aren't intelligent enough to invent ways of doing all of that without unacceptable levels of pollution.
There have been several climate studies where the researchers either were unable/unwilling to release their data, or they were unable/unwilling to release the methodology they used to process that data.
There may have been some truth to that in the past but not much any more, especially if you're willing to put a little work into seeking it out rather than expecting it to be handed to you on a silver platter.
As regulators choke industries to death with regulations ...
Better that than US citizens choking to death like the citizens of China because of lack of regulation.
(And yes I realize to irony of polluting industries moving to China because of our regulations but if something can't be produced without all that pollution then maybe it's not worth producing in the first place.)
"you can't make a copy" - Hell, you can't even get a copy of the data or algorithms.
Sure you can if you're not too lazy to look for it. Here's a good place to start.
The trouble is, there is no practical existential threat from Al Qaeda.
This can't be reiterated enough. The response to 9/11 was completely out of proportion to the actual threat posed by the perpetrators. GWB said they hate us for our freedom so what do we do? We turn around and reduce our freedom. What kind of sense does that make?
He (Fourier) proposed the theoretical foundation, Tyndall demonstrated the mechanism by his work with radiative absorption - Arrhenius quantified it.
Nicely and succinctly put. I'm going to steal that.
Errata: The "a1" in the quote showed as "a-1" in the original and stands for per annum or per year.
Fourier's discovery that the Earth was warmer than it should be given its size and distance from the Sun was a major step forward in geoscience.. That he may not have had the mechanism right in no way detracts from the importance of that insight.
The center of Greenland's ice sheet may be thickening but over all Greenland is losing ice mass at a rate of over 260 Gt per year since 2002 as measured by the GRACE satellites. See the Total Ice Mass section of this report for details.
I did a little searching and found a paper from 2011 [pdf] that addresses Jakobshavn specifically. It has this to say:
3.3. Jakobshavn Isbroe
Jakobshavn Isbroe was losing 8 Gt a1 of mass per year in 2000 (Figure 2). This rate increased over the following years to near 25 Gt a1 by the end of 2002. The loss rate then stabilized and declined back under 20 Gt a1 until 2006, when it increased to 33 Gt a1, reaching 34 Gt a1 by the end of 2007. Subsequently, the annual loss rate has fluctuated between 25 and 33 Gt a1. In total the glacier lost 321 ± 12 Gt by the end of 2010, equivalent to a basin!wide thinning of 3.5 m, with 2/3 of this loss occurring since June of 2005 (Figure 3). The 85 km2 of retreat accounts for nearly 20% of this loss. The rate of discharge is now such that the glacier is losing mass nearly throughout the year. As previously reported [Joughin et al., 2008a, 2008c; Luckman and Murray, 2005], annual oscillations in speed of ±20%, with a peak in June/July, correlated with seasonal retreat and advance of the ice front, become increasingly pronounced at the location of the fluxgate after 2005 (Figure S7). Seasonal oscillations in speed, SMB and front position cause annual fluctuations in mass of up to 50 Gt.
Of the other two glaciers reported on in the paper Helheim gained 17 +/- 13 Gt and Kangerdlugssuaq lost 152 +/- 10 Gt compared to Jakobshavn's 321 +/- 12 Gt in the 11 year period studied. Those are the three largest outlet glaciers in Greenland.
More generally the ice mass loss on Greenland has been well documented by the GRACE satellites. See the Total Ice Mass section of the Arctic Report Card: Update for 2013 for details.
150 feet per day is 1.25 inches per minute. That's still fast enough that you could see it in a minute or three with good reference points.