2) Just last week I read that climate models had been using positive feedback to predict moisture (rain and drought) where in fact negative would be more accurate.
Moisture is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon. A hotter climate is able to hold more moisture. In fact, atmospheric moisture has increased by about 4% over the last 40 years. This is why it is a positive feedback - and a powerful one at that.
4) We are in an inter-glacial period and no one knows exactly how far the ice is supposed to recede.
We have been at the hight of an interglacial for the last 10,000 years. Temperatures have been relatively stable over than time, and should be slowly dropping as we head back into a glacial period. Over the last 50 years they have taken a sharp detour.
5) Had CO levels not been elevated by our actions, plant life would soon die - it's been decreasing for millions of years.
And would take millions more before this became a concern.
6) CO2 helps plants grow. Which will also take it out of the atmosphere.
Unfortunatly not at the rate that we are putting it in.
8) The prehistoric record shows significant vegetation (rainforest?) at higher latitudes - like Montana.
There are rain forests in Canada... what of it?
10) Alarmist articles bring eyeballs and ad-click revenue.
No argument there. I wish we could have a more reasoned debate but the media favours the extremes. That said, what is happening in the arctic is truly amazing. We have just about hit rock bottom. There ain't much left to lose! https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
I favour a revenue neutral carbon tax. It is bizarre that we tax income (something we should want to encourage) but don't tax things like carbon that we want to discourage. A revenue neutral carbon tax would address this by reducing income tax. We could then let the market solve problems like which alternative energy source should be used.
As global temperatures rise, ocean temperatures rise and they are almost certainly going to push more water in to the atmosphere in the form of clouds and rain on land. Earth does have natural mechanisms to adapt to climate changes. More rain could mean floods, could mean places that aren't getting enough precipitation like the Sahara will get more and be more habitable.
There will undoubtedly be areas that benefit from global warming, but sub-tropical areas such as the Sahara, Mexico, and the southern U.S. will not. Sub-tropical areas are getting dryer. Sub-polar regions are getting wetter. This is due to the amplification of the global hydrologic cycle and it is expected to continue as the atmosphere gets warmer. The linked video describes the process: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/05/799721/climate-change-how-the-wet-will-get-wetter-and-the-dry-will-get-drier/
I'm curious what your response from McIntyre proves (other than that you were wrong in your original post and that this uncritical acceptance of your newly minted fact allowed you to jump to conclusions of deceit that allowed you to dismiss the uncomfortable research). Perhaps you are suggesting that the researchers had a student handle the correspondence in order to set up a scenario two years later where McIntyre would initially deny receipt of the invitation - knowing full well that this would cause the contrarians to jump to conclusions of deceit? If so, this is a very interesting theory indeed
Regarding different questions - there is no evidence of this. Here is how this gets started: Contrarians are uncomfortable with the conclusion and so look for evidence that will allow them to dismiss the research. They find that each site received a differently named questionnaire. Why have different names if there is not different content? Why have different content if you are not trying to deceive or cook the results? Contrarians are not typically domain experts so they would not be familiar with counterbalancing. This does not mean that they can be excused for these leaps of faith.
Admittedly I am also not familiar with counterbalancing, however I have neither uncritically accepted or rejected the results of this research
Yet another warmist attempt to educate the masses, regardless of the data.
The paper is based on an amalgamation of several different surveys, that weren't sent to the people he claimed they were sent to
Your reaction to this survey is a perfect example of the motivated rejection of science. Each version of the survey had a different ordering of the questions. Far from being a conspiracy, cunning plot, versiongate, or even shoddy workmanship - it is actually standard practice. But you are unskeptical of any misdirection that allows you to reject the science. http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyVersionGate.html
Likewise, the contrarian blogs who had at first claimed that they never received an invitation to participate have since admitted that they did indeed receive one. Your immediate presumption is that the researchers lied, and therefor you can reject the science. And you are not alone! I cannot find a contrarian blog that did not jump to these crazy conclusions! - http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyCCCresponse1.html
I get the sense that you are all unwitting participants of the follow-up paper;)
Let's ignore things such as that different blogs were offered radically different versions of the survey to post (and the primary determinant of the differences seems to be whether the survey was being offered to a blog supporting AGW or denying it), though that by itself probably invalidates the results.
That particular theory is addressed here (http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyVersionGate.html) and is a great example of the motivated rejection of science. If you don't like the result it is easy to jump to all kinds of crazy conclusions. You presume that the procedure used is improper without understanding how such a study should be performed. Futher, you presume that the differences are related to the target audience.
From the comments: Counterbalancing (i.e., reordering the questions) on a questionnaire like this would be standard procedure. The idea is that if there are any question order effects that they average out over the different orders. This type of procedure would be assumed unless reported otherwise, which explains why it wasn't included in the method. For a journal like Psychological Science which publishes only short papers, any standard methods would be omitted in the interest of efficient presentation. This journal practice is also standard across most scientific journals.
... or perhaps the researchers were trying to provoke certain answers from contrarians?
What's with the AGW-my-way-or-the-highway attitude around here? So much for/. being a haven for inquisitive scientific minds.
I'm merely suggesting that considering the science will put you in a better position to determine what mix of mitigation and adaptation should be considered. That your ignorance of the science appears willful (crystal balls?) is disconcerting given your position.
The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA.
And if we ever get evidence in support of your assertion (and which supports your tone of alarmism), you'll be right. In the meantime, dealing with agricultural problems that are much more serious than AGW (such as deforestation, desertification, soil fertility), is the better idea.
It may be alarming, I don't know. Those are your words, not mine. But this is exactly what is being observed. Dealing with deforestation and desertification are noble goals. Both of these problems are exacerbated by global warming. At some point we will need to turn some of our attention away from cleaning up the blood and actually address the wound.
"Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed."
Well, I will play Devil's Advocate and make the argument that others have made to me about the same kinds of observations: weather is not climate, and we cannot judge by one year alone.
You are right of course, but I meant this in general, not in reference to your specific case.
Thank you oh so much for informing me of my ignorance, AC. I guess the fact that I preside over an educational & support organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture was just a case of bad hiring?
Truly scary in light of your previous comments. Which organization do you preside over? The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA. Preparing for every eventuallity seems rather costly when we know that some are not worth considering.
As the planet warms, the atmosphere pulls more water out of the sub-tropics as evaporation. Much of that water condenses into clouds and is transported poleward by the winds where it is eventually deposited as precipitation at the sub-polar latitudes. So, as temperatures rise, there is an increase in the total amount of water evaporating and precipitating over the Earth - a strengthening of the global hydrologic cycle.
"For most of the USA the likely outcome appears to be less rainfall..."
Do you have a source for this? It certainly contradicts what I read about it. I am not far from Canada, and while it has been unusually warm this year, it has also been very abnormally humid.
The IPCC is a good resource for this: "General circulation models (GCMs) project an increase in precipitation at high latitudes, although the amount of that increase varies between models, and decreases in precipitation over many sub-tropical and mid-latitude areas in both hemispheres. Precipitation during the coming decades is projected to be more concentrated into more intense events, with longer periods of little precipitation in between. The increase in the number of consecutive dry days is projected to be most significant in North and Central America, the Caribbean, north-eastern and south-western South America, southern Europe and the Mediterranean, southern Africa and western Australia." - http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter4.pdf
Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed.
Anthony Watt is just another right wing corporate whore with no credentials, no scientific training, no mainstream credibility, and a big mouth (very common in the wingnut alternative reality).
It should also be noted that he was implicated in the leaked documents. He has every reason to claim that they are fake.
Also, it is a chaotic system. You can't expect it to produce nice clean correlation graphs showing how the variance in one parameter influences the result in another graph.
Granted, but if you apply appropriate weights to solar, CO2, volcano, and ENSO, you can come up with a graph that is a pretty good approximation to the measured temperatures. The year to year variation is largely accounted for by ENSO. Volcanic eruptions explain most discrepancies between ENSO and the year to year hills and valleys.
I persist in being interested to see what happens during the low cycle;)
It will be interesting. Out of curiosity, assuming that this solar cycle is smaller still than the previous one, what effect do you suppose this will have on temperatures? Should we see the upward trend reverse?
And I thought solar was declining? There's all sorts of excitement on the sceptic sites about the solar minimum we're heading into which will finally prove that solar forcings > emissions forcings. Which will be interesting to see.
I added global mean temp in blue to illustrate the increasing disparity since the 80's. Skeptics don't need to wait for another impotent cycle to determine whether solar activity is the driving factor.
But if you take some of the nuts predictions from the political AGW movement they're no saner than some of the nuts predictions in the sceptic movement. And to be honest, some of the predictions in the IPCC publications are verging on nuts, but then a lot of that body is increasingly political rather than scientific.
The skeptic predictions are not at all crazy assuming they genuinely don't believe that CO2 is a major driver of climate - and I believe that many of them are genuine. Global cooling is really the only sane position to take once you remove CO2. There are certainly nutters in Greenpeace/etc, but don't try to determine the scientific consensus by splitting the difference between Greenpeace and the Heartland institute. The IPCC really is a very good representation of the consensus as of 2007. I'm looking forward to the next report in 2013. One scientist with very moderate views that you may appreciate is John Neilson-Gammon. He has published with Watts and Pielk. His web page can be found here: http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/
Feedbacks are a consequence of the forcing. Both should be counted. Also, keep in mind that 2C is the difference between a glacial and interglacial period - not insignificant. Human influence is both positive (greenhouse gasses) and negative (aerosols). Damn I hope you read through this post - it took way too long to compile:)
Granted, they are not a coherent movement so I can't say that all skeptics have predicted global cooling. The leaders of the movement who are willing to predict anything at all have predicted or promoted global cooling. They are right of course. If CO2 is not a major driver then global cooling has indeed been imminent for the last couple decades. Here is the solar output since 1985: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/from:1985
Here are examples from leaders of the skeptic movement predicting or promoting global cooling:
Henrik Svensmark http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/svensmark-global-warming-stopped-and-a-cooling-is-beginning-enjoy-global-warming-while-it-lasts/
Alan Caruba, "An Icy End for Mankind?" Science and Environmental Policy Project, November 26, 2005; and Robert W. Felix, "Not by Fire, But by Ice: The Next Ice Age Now," Bellevue, WA: Sugarhouse Publishing.
The only notable people missing are McIntyre, McKitrick, Spencer, and Lindzen. None of these people are willing or able to make predictions.
My prediction? We've just had the hottest La Nina on record - hotter even than all but one of the El Nino's of the previous century. La Nina's are cooler part of the ENSO. ENSO neutral 2010 was tied for hottest year on record. Even a small El Nino (warm part of ENSO) will push us into the hottest year on record. So the hottest year on record will come with the next El Nino. Probably within 2 years?
This is a good question. A recent paper by Hansen, Sato, and Ruedy addresses exactly this point. It shows that while the mean temperature is rising the standard deviation is widening: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120105_PerceptionsAndDice.pdf. A result of this is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations () warmer than climatology. This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth's surface in the period of climatology, now typically covers about 10% of the land area.
Both sides agree that at least some of the warming is due to human emissions. Again, the dispute is over how much. The political AGW movement says all the warming is human-induced. The climatologists say some of it is. The anti-AGW movement say very little of it is, and there are a variety of other more important causes.
Not quite true. The answer doesn't need to lie between 0% and 100%. Natural forcings are likely exerting a cooling influence. This is why the skeptics have been predicting global cooling for the last 30 years. The reason they are wrong is that the human influence is greater and positive. Climatologists put human responsibility for recent warming somewhere between 80%-120%. (See for instance Tett et al. 2000, Meehl et al. 2004, Stone et al. 2007, Lean and Rind 2008, Huber and Knutti 2011, and Gillett et al. 2012)
What we don't have is another spare Earth running with accelerated time to test whether injecting the quantities of CO2 that have been released (along with aerosols, particulates, and other assorted crap) will have a long term net warming effect, cooling effect, or something else, and the magnitude of that effect.
Luckily we have physics. We know the magnitude of the effect of CO2 is dF=5.35*ln(C/C0)W/m^2 (where C0 is the initial concentration of CO2 in ppm and C is the current).
With the information we have we can determine the direction and magnitude within certain bounds. Certain interests would prefer that we wait 100 years and see what happens.
Wow. Not a single one of those sites references the programs that Mann has supposedly been pushing. Good job! It looks like Google must be part of the conspiracy!
As to michael mann, the programs he supported, and the obvious cost... I'm going to just pass.
Gotcha. You can't find any evidence of that either, but you know it to be true regardless of the evidence.
Type in Mann's name into google... he's on record.
Yes, he is a very public figure. He has given TED talks, he has written op ed's in various papers. You would think you could find at least one example where he has advocated a specific solution to this issue.
Regarding lawyers and doctors and engineers, none of these people are scientists, but all of these will need to be part of the solution to the impacts of global warming. Scientists on the other hand can only tell us about the universe. It is up to other professionals to put that knowledge to use.
Regarding cost, most people are advocating that we do as much as is reasonable without unduly impacting our economy. Some go so far as to advocate that we internalize the external costs of fuel. That is, pay the real cost of gas. I'm not sure what program you think will cost us trillions, or where you get that number, but you seem to know a lot about this issue without having any real facts to back it up. Your gut tells you what you need to know. Science be damned.
So are you shocked we want more information? Be shocked. That isn't going away until the price tag comes WAY down.
I'm shocked that you guys are still whinging about not having access to data that has been available for years. Would have thought you would have figured that out by now.
So... Michael Mann, who is a scientist... didn't campaign in favor of these bills and in favor of various programs that would cost hundreds of billions?
Not that I'm aware of. Do you have any proof of that? Where do you get this stuff from? Where do you get the idea that scientists are asking for trillions in funding every year? This is all just pure bunk. Do you have any sources to back this up?
Give us affordable solutions that you think will actually fix the situation.
Why would you expect climate scientists to be responsible for providing the solution? All scientists can do is give you the facts. As for solutions, you and your half of the US political spectrum need to step up and start providing some if you don't like the ones already on the table. Instead you are sticking your heads in the sand and hand waiving about FOIA for data that is already freely available so that you can audit results that are already highly replicated and uncontested. It baffles the mind.
This is a La Nina year. We would expect global temperatures to be low. As it turns out, this is the hottest La Nina year on record. Expect a new record high the next time an El Nino rolls in.
Slashdot Mirror
2) Just last week I read that climate models had been using positive feedback to predict moisture (rain and drought) where in fact negative would be more accurate.
Moisture is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon. A hotter climate is able to hold more moisture. In fact, atmospheric moisture has increased by about 4% over the last 40 years. This is why it is a positive feedback - and a powerful one at that.
4) We are in an inter-glacial period and no one knows exactly how far the ice is supposed to recede.
We have been at the hight of an interglacial for the last 10,000 years. Temperatures have been relatively stable over than time, and should be slowly dropping as we head back into a glacial period. Over the last 50 years they have taken a sharp detour.
5) Had CO levels not been elevated by our actions, plant life would soon die - it's been decreasing for millions of years.
And would take millions more before this became a concern.
6) CO2 helps plants grow. Which will also take it out of the atmosphere.
Unfortunatly not at the rate that we are putting it in.
8) The prehistoric record shows significant vegetation (rainforest?) at higher latitudes - like Montana.
There are rain forests in Canada... what of it?
10) Alarmist articles bring eyeballs and ad-click revenue.
No argument there. I wish we could have a more reasoned debate but the media favours the extremes. That said, what is happening in the arctic is truly amazing. We have just about hit rock bottom. There ain't much left to lose! https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
I favour a revenue neutral carbon tax. It is bizarre that we tax income (something we should want to encourage) but don't tax things like carbon that we want to discourage. A revenue neutral carbon tax would address this by reducing income tax. We could then let the market solve problems like which alternative energy source should be used.
As global temperatures rise, ocean temperatures rise and they are almost certainly going to push more water in to the atmosphere in the form of clouds and rain on land. Earth does have natural mechanisms to adapt to climate changes. More rain could mean floods, could mean places that aren't getting enough precipitation like the Sahara will get more and be more habitable.
There will undoubtedly be areas that benefit from global warming, but sub-tropical areas such as the Sahara, Mexico, and the southern U.S. will not. Sub-tropical areas are getting dryer. Sub-polar regions are getting wetter. This is due to the amplification of the global hydrologic cycle and it is expected to continue as the atmosphere gets warmer. The linked video describes the process: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/05/799721/climate-change-how-the-wet-will-get-wetter-and-the-dry-will-get-drier/
I'm curious what your response from McIntyre proves (other than that you were wrong in your original post and that this uncritical acceptance of your newly minted fact allowed you to jump to conclusions of deceit that allowed you to dismiss the uncomfortable research). Perhaps you are suggesting that the researchers had a student handle the correspondence in order to set up a scenario two years later where McIntyre would initially deny receipt of the invitation - knowing full well that this would cause the contrarians to jump to conclusions of deceit? If so, this is a very interesting theory indeed
Regarding different questions - there is no evidence of this. Here is how this gets started: Contrarians are uncomfortable with the conclusion and so look for evidence that will allow them to dismiss the research. They find that each site received a differently named questionnaire. Why have different names if there is not different content? Why have different content if you are not trying to deceive or cook the results? Contrarians are not typically domain experts so they would not be familiar with counterbalancing. This does not mean that they can be excused for these leaps of faith.
Admittedly I am also not familiar with counterbalancing, however I have neither uncritically accepted or rejected the results of this research
Yet another warmist attempt to educate the masses, regardless of the data.
The paper is based on an amalgamation of several different surveys, that weren't sent to the people he claimed they were sent to
Your reaction to this survey is a perfect example of the motivated rejection of science. Each version of the survey had a different ordering of the questions. Far from being a conspiracy, cunning plot, versiongate, or even shoddy workmanship - it is actually standard practice. But you are unskeptical of any misdirection that allows you to reject the science. http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyVersionGate.html
Likewise, the contrarian blogs who had at first claimed that they never received an invitation to participate have since admitted that they did indeed receive one. Your immediate presumption is that the researchers lied, and therefor you can reject the science. And you are not alone! I cannot find a contrarian blog that did not jump to these crazy conclusions! - http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyCCCresponse1.html
I get the sense that you are all unwitting participants of the follow-up paper ;)
Let's ignore things such as that different blogs were offered radically different versions of the survey to post (and the primary determinant of the differences seems to be whether the survey was being offered to a blog supporting AGW or denying it), though that by itself probably invalidates the results.
That particular theory is addressed here (http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyVersionGate.html) and is a great example of the motivated rejection of science. If you don't like the result it is easy to jump to all kinds of crazy conclusions. You presume that the procedure used is improper without understanding how such a study should be performed. Futher, you presume that the differences are related to the target audience.
From the comments: Counterbalancing (i.e., reordering the questions) on a questionnaire like this would be standard procedure. The idea is that if there are any question order effects that they average out over the different orders. This type of procedure would be assumed unless reported otherwise, which explains why it wasn't included in the method. For a journal like Psychological Science which publishes only short papers, any standard methods would be omitted in the interest of efficient presentation. This journal practice is also standard across most scientific journals.
... or perhaps the researchers were trying to provoke certain answers from contrarians?
What's with the AGW-my-way-or-the-highway attitude around here? So much for /. being a haven for inquisitive scientific minds.
I'm merely suggesting that considering the science will put you in a better position to determine what mix of mitigation and adaptation should be considered. That your ignorance of the science appears willful (crystal balls?) is disconcerting given your position.
The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA.
And if we ever get evidence in support of your assertion (and which supports your tone of alarmism), you'll be right. In the meantime, dealing with agricultural problems that are much more serious than AGW (such as deforestation, desertification, soil fertility), is the better idea.
It may be alarming, I don't know. Those are your words, not mine. But this is exactly what is being observed. Dealing with deforestation and desertification are noble goals. Both of these problems are exacerbated by global warming. At some point we will need to turn some of our attention away from cleaning up the blood and actually address the wound.
"Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed."
Well, I will play Devil's Advocate and make the argument that others have made to me about the same kinds of observations: weather is not climate, and we cannot judge by one year alone.
You are right of course, but I meant this in general, not in reference to your specific case.
Thank you oh so much for informing me of my ignorance, AC. I guess the fact that I preside over an educational & support organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture was just a case of bad hiring?
Truly scary in light of your previous comments. Which organization do you preside over? The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA. Preparing for every eventuallity seems rather costly when we know that some are not worth considering.
This video by NOAA fluid dynamics laboratory is also very instructive: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/05/799721/climate-change-how-the-wet-will-get-wetter-and-the-dry-will-get-drier/
As the planet warms, the atmosphere pulls more water out of the sub-tropics as evaporation. Much of that water condenses into clouds and is transported poleward by the winds where it is eventually deposited as precipitation at the sub-polar latitudes. So, as temperatures rise, there is an increase in the total amount of water evaporating and precipitating over the Earth - a strengthening of the global hydrologic cycle.
"For most of the USA the likely outcome appears to be less rainfall..."
Do you have a source for this? It certainly contradicts what I read about it. I am not far from Canada, and while it has been unusually warm this year, it has also been very abnormally humid.
The IPCC is a good resource for this: "General circulation models (GCMs) project an increase in precipitation at high latitudes, although the amount of that increase varies between models, and decreases in precipitation over many sub-tropical and mid-latitude areas in both hemispheres. Precipitation during the coming decades is projected to be more concentrated into more intense events, with longer periods of little precipitation in between. The increase in the number of consecutive dry days is projected to be most significant in North and Central America, the Caribbean, north-eastern and south-western South America, southern Europe and the Mediterranean, southern Africa and western Australia." - http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter4.pdf
Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed.
Every think tank ofcourse helps it's sponsors
No. A think tank is an institute that performs research and provides advice on public policy - not a PR mouthpiece for its donors. The Heartland Institute has shown itself to be the latter: http://www.desmogblog.com/fake-science-fakexperts-funny-finances-free-tax
Anthony Watt is just another right wing corporate whore with no credentials, no scientific training, no mainstream credibility, and a big mouth (very common in the wingnut alternative reality).
It should also be noted that he was implicated in the leaked documents. He has every reason to claim that they are fake.
The $90,000 going to Anthony Watts is money well spent, considering the sheer volume of easily debunked anti-science nonsense that gets posted over there.
I played around with the graphing options there and yeah, there's no correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature I can see...
If you plot the 138 month mean sunspot graph alongside the 12 month mean temperature graph you get pretty good correlation up until the 70's: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/plot/gistemp/mean:120/scale:100/offset:70
Also, it is a chaotic system. You can't expect it to produce nice clean correlation graphs showing how the variance in one parameter influences the result in another graph.
Granted, but if you apply appropriate weights to solar, CO2, volcano, and ENSO, you can come up with a graph that is a pretty good approximation to the measured temperatures. The year to year variation is largely accounted for by ENSO. Volcanic eruptions explain most discrepancies between ENSO and the year to year hills and valleys.
The overall trend correlates pretty will with this ;) : http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/plot/gistemp/mean:12/scale:100/offset:320
I persist in being interested to see what happens during the low cycle ;)
It will be interesting. Out of curiosity, assuming that this solar cycle is smaller still than the previous one, what effect do you suppose this will have on temperatures? Should we see the upward trend reverse?
And I thought solar was declining? There's all sorts of excitement on the sceptic sites about the solar minimum we're heading into which will finally prove that solar forcings > emissions forcings. Which will be interesting to see.
Yes and no. It's an 11.5 year cycle. Each cycle has been lower than the previous for the last few decades, and this coming cycle looks to be lower still, but we are headed into another maximum. This graph illustrates: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:12/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/plot/gistemp/mean:12/scale:100/offset:70
I added global mean temp in blue to illustrate the increasing disparity since the 80's. Skeptics don't need to wait for another impotent cycle to determine whether solar activity is the driving factor.
But if you take some of the nuts predictions from the political AGW movement they're no saner than some of the nuts predictions in the sceptic movement. And to be honest, some of the predictions in the IPCC publications are verging on nuts, but then a lot of that body is increasingly political rather than scientific.
The skeptic predictions are not at all crazy assuming they genuinely don't believe that CO2 is a major driver of climate - and I believe that many of them are genuine. Global cooling is really the only sane position to take once you remove CO2. There are certainly nutters in Greenpeace/etc, but don't try to determine the scientific consensus by splitting the difference between Greenpeace and the Heartland institute. The IPCC really is a very good representation of the consensus as of 2007. I'm looking forward to the next report in 2013. One scientist with very moderate views that you may appreciate is John Neilson-Gammon. He has published with Watts and Pielk. His web page can be found here: http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/
Feedbacks are a consequence of the forcing. Both should be counted. Also, keep in mind that 2C is the difference between a glacial and interglacial period - not insignificant. Human influence is both positive (greenhouse gasses) and negative (aerosols). Damn I hope you read through this post - it took way too long to compile :)
Granted, they are not a coherent movement so I can't say that all skeptics have predicted global cooling. The leaders of the movement who are willing to predict anything at all have predicted or promoted global cooling. They are right of course. If CO2 is not a major driver then global cooling has indeed been imminent for the last couple decades. Here is the solar output since 1985: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/from:1985
Here are examples from leaders of the skeptic movement predicting or promoting global cooling:
Joseph D'Aleo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D'Aleo
John McLean: http://www.skepticalscience.com/mclean-exaggerating-natural-cycles.html
Christopher Monckton: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/monckton-global_warming_has_stopped.pdf
Anthony Watts: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22global+cooling%22+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com
Piers Corbyn: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/global-warming-skeptic-predicts-brutal-winter-warns-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/
James Dellingpole: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100055500/global-cooling-and-the-new-world-order/
Don Easterbrook: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/
Henrik Svensmark http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/svensmark-global-warming-stopped-and-a-cooling-is-beginning-enjoy-global-warming-while-it-lasts/
David Rose: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
Alan Caruba, "An Icy End for Mankind?" Science and Environmental Policy Project, November 26, 2005; and Robert W. Felix, "Not by Fire, But by Ice: The Next Ice Age Now," Bellevue, WA: Sugarhouse Publishing.
Lawrence Solomon: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/05/03/lawrence-solomon-arctic-ice-sets-records-in-april-could-auger-global-cooling.aspx
The only notable people missing are McIntyre, McKitrick, Spencer, and Lindzen. None of these people are willing or able to make predictions.
My prediction? We've just had the hottest La Nina on record - hotter even than all but one of the El Nino's of the previous century. La Nina's are cooler part of the ENSO. ENSO neutral 2010 was tied for hottest year on record. Even a small El Nino (warm part of ENSO) will push us into the hottest year on record. So the hottest year on record will come with the next El Nino. Probably within 2 years?
This is a good question. A recent paper by Hansen, Sato, and Ruedy addresses exactly this point. It shows that while the mean temperature is rising the standard deviation is widening: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120105_PerceptionsAndDice.pdf. A result of this is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations () warmer than climatology. This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth's surface in the period of climatology, now typically covers about 10% of the land area.
Both sides agree that at least some of the warming is due to human emissions. Again, the dispute is over how much. The political AGW movement says all the warming is human-induced. The climatologists say some of it is. The anti-AGW movement say very little of it is, and there are a variety of other more important causes.
Not quite true. The answer doesn't need to lie between 0% and 100%. Natural forcings are likely exerting a cooling influence. This is why the skeptics have been predicting global cooling for the last 30 years. The reason they are wrong is that the human influence is greater and positive. Climatologists put human responsibility for recent warming somewhere between 80%-120%. (See for instance Tett et al. 2000, Meehl et al. 2004, Stone et al. 2007, Lean and Rind 2008, Huber and Knutti 2011, and Gillett et al. 2012)
What we don't have is another spare Earth running with accelerated time to test whether injecting the quantities of CO2 that have been released (along with aerosols, particulates, and other assorted crap) will have a long term net warming effect, cooling effect, or something else, and the magnitude of that effect.
Luckily we have physics. We know the magnitude of the effect of CO2 is dF=5.35*ln(C/C0)W/m^2 (where C0 is the initial concentration of CO2 in ppm and C is the current).
Aerosols are harder to quantify, but we can determine the outer bounds of their impact: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf
With the information we have we can determine the direction and magnitude within certain bounds. Certain interests would prefer that we wait 100 years and see what happens.
Wow. Not a single one of those sites references the programs that Mann has supposedly been pushing. Good job! It looks like Google must be part of the conspiracy!
As to michael mann, the programs he supported, and the obvious cost... I'm going to just pass.
Gotcha. You can't find any evidence of that either, but you know it to be true regardless of the evidence.
Type in Mann's name into google... he's on record.
Yes, he is a very public figure. He has given TED talks, he has written op ed's in various papers. You would think you could find at least one example where he has advocated a specific solution to this issue.
Regarding lawyers and doctors and engineers, none of these people are scientists, but all of these will need to be part of the solution to the impacts of global warming. Scientists on the other hand can only tell us about the universe. It is up to other professionals to put that knowledge to use.
Regarding cost, most people are advocating that we do as much as is reasonable without unduly impacting our economy. Some go so far as to advocate that we internalize the external costs of fuel. That is, pay the real cost of gas. I'm not sure what program you think will cost us trillions, or where you get that number, but you seem to know a lot about this issue without having any real facts to back it up. Your gut tells you what you need to know. Science be damned.
So are you shocked we want more information? Be shocked. That isn't going away until the price tag comes WAY down.
I'm shocked that you guys are still whinging about not having access to data that has been available for years. Would have thought you would have figured that out by now.
So... Michael Mann, who is a scientist... didn't campaign in favor of these bills and in favor of various programs that would cost hundreds of billions?
Not that I'm aware of. Do you have any proof of that? Where do you get this stuff from? Where do you get the idea that scientists are asking for trillions in funding every year? This is all just pure bunk. Do you have any sources to back this up?
Give us affordable solutions that you think will actually fix the situation.
Why would you expect climate scientists to be responsible for providing the solution? All scientists can do is give you the facts. As for solutions, you and your half of the US political spectrum need to step up and start providing some if you don't like the ones already on the table. Instead you are sticking your heads in the sand and hand waiving about FOIA for data that is already freely available so that you can audit results that are already highly replicated and uncontested. It baffles the mind.
This is a La Nina year. We would expect global temperatures to be low. As it turns out, this is the hottest La Nina year on record. Expect a new record high the next time an El Nino rolls in.