A free one day seminar in Sydney on Climate Change.
Friday, October 1
Hosted by The Heartland Institute, it’s the fifth in a series of international conferences on climate change that Heartland has hosted since March 2008, and the first to be held outside the United States.
Chris de Freitas | Bob Carter | Cory Bernardi | David Evans
| Alan Moran | Barun S. Mitra | Jo Nova
Emissions policy
Sea level changes
Corruption, Costs, Benefits,
Defeating the Witchdoctors
The seminar is part of the Pacific Rim Policy Exchange, sponsored by Heartland, Americans for Tax Reform, the Property Rights Alliance, and the Institute of Public Affairs.
For more information or to register for the Policy Exchange, click here.
ATR and the HEARTLAND INSTITUTE are offering FREE registration for both conferences
Please contact Rachel Rountree at 512.476.4403 or email her at rachel@donerfundraising.com
Read on here for more information on the Agenda and the Speakers…
Agenda
8:00 – 9:00 a.m. Breakfast buffet
9:00 – 9:15 a.m. Welcome and introduction of morning speakers, Jim Lakely
9.15 – 9:45 a.m. Chris de Freitas – Developments in climate science: potential drivers of emissions policy beyond 2012’
9:45 – 10:00 a.m. Q&A moderated by Jim Lakely
10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Robert Carter — “The reconstruction of past sea-level change: policy implications”.
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Q&A moderated by Jim Lakely
10:45 – 11:15 a.m. Senator Cory Bernardi -“The Political State of Play of Climate Change Policy in Australia”.
11:15 – 11:30 a.m. Q&A moderated by Jim Lakely
11:30 – noon Break
Noon – 1:00 p.m. Lunch buffet
1:00 – 1:15 p.m. Reconvene and introduction of afternoon speakers Jim Lakely
1:15 – 1:45 p.m. David Evans -“Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt?”
1:45 – 2:00 p.m. Q&A moderated by Jim Lakely
2:00 – 2:30 p.m. Alan Moran – Lower CO2 Levels: Costs, Benefits and Possibilities”.
2:30 – 2:45 p.m. Q&A moderated by Jim Lakely
2:45 – 3:15 p.m. Barun S. Mitra -“Challenging Climate: How Domestic Politics cools Global Warming”
3:15 – 3:30 p.m. Q&A moderated by Jim Lakely
3:30 – 4:00 p.m. Joanne Nova- Defeating the Witchdoctors of the 21st C and why Global Warming is about power, money and sex.”
4:00 – 4:30 p.m. Wrap up and adjourn by Robert Carter.
Speakers
SENATOR CORY BERNARDI
Cory Bernardi
Senator Cory Bernardi is a Senator for South Australia. He was one of the leading advocates within the Liberal Party who stood against the Rudd Labor Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
In 2007 he wrote an essay entitled Cool heads needed on global warming, which called for a considered debate on climate change and drew national attention.
Before entering politics Senator Bernardi was a business owner and a financial adviser with a leading stockbroking firm. He established his own asset management practice and continued financial consultancy until he became a Senator. Senator Bernardi represented Australia at the World Rowing Championships.
He has written three books: Fit for Life!; The Money Tree; and As I See It, Thoughts of a Conservative. He recently founded the Conservative Leadership Foundation – a not-for-profit educational, research and training organisation dedicated to developing Australia’s future leaders.
During his almost four years in the Australian Parliament, he has become known as a conviction politician who advocates strongly smaller government, lower tax and personal freedom built on the foundation of Judeo-Christian values.
See Cory’s excellent blog. (I recommend it.)
…
Robert (Bob) M. Carter, Hon. FRSNZ
Bob Carter
Author of Climate: The Counter Consensus. Bob Carter is a marine geologist and environmental scientist with 40 years’ professional experience.
He has held academic positions at Otago University and the University of Adelaide and is currently a research professor at James Cook University (Queensland), where he was head of the School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. He is a former director of the Australian Office for the Ocean Drilling Program, the remier, world-best-practice research program for environmental and earth sciences. Carter has served on many national and international research committees, including the Australian Research Council.
He is a former chairman of the Marine Science and Technologies Award Committee and the National Committee on Earth Sciences. He is an overseas honorary fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Carter’s current research on climate change, sea-level change, and stratigraphy is based on field studies of Cenozoic sediments (last 65 million years) from the Southwest Pacific region, especially the Great Barrier Reef and New Zealand, and includes the analysis of marine sediment cores collected during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 181 in the South Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand.
…
Dr Chris de Freitas
Chris De Frietas
Dr Chris de Freitas is a climate scientist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he has been Head of Science and Technology at the Tamaki campus and four years as Pro Vice Chancellor. For 10 years he was as an editor of the international journal Climate Research.
He has Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Toronto and PhD from the University of Queensland as a Commonwealth Scholar. He has been Vice President of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand and is a founding member of the Australia New Zealand Climate Forum. He is an advocate of open and well informed reporting on scientific issues. In recognition of this, he has three times been the recipient of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, Science Communicator Awards and a Merit Award in Science Communication.
…
Dr David Evans
Dr David Evans
David worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products.
Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering.
The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.
Davids site: ScienceSpeak
…
Joanne Nova
Joanne Nova
Joanne has 15 years of experience in explaining science as a professional speaker, TV host, radio presenter and book author. Her blog gets thousands of visitors every day and is read by politicians, journalists and professors. Her paper on Climate Money exposed fallacy that “big money” was with skeptics, and pointed out that the auditing of billion dollar programs was being done by volunteers.
After winning prizes in her science degree in molecular biology, Joanne joined the Shell Questacon Science Circus and spent five years touring Australia as a performer and then manager. As an associate lecturer at ANU Joanne helped to develop the Graduate Diploma in Science Communication in its earliest years. Joanne also hosted a TV series for children on Channel Nine, and has done over 200 radio interviews, many on the Australian ABC. Her favourite hands-on science experiments were published as a book in 2003. She wrote The Skeptics Handbook in 2008.
Over 220,000 copies of The Skeptics Handbook have been published, printed and distributed in the US, Australia, NZ and Sweden. It was done entirely pro bono, and volunteers have translated it into French, German (twice), Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Turkish, Japanese, Danish, Portuguese, Balkan, Spanish, Thai, Lao, Czech, Vietnamese and Italian. More info: About Joanne Nova.
…
James Lakely- Communications Director, The Heartland Institute
James Lakey
Jim Lakely is communications director for The Heartland Institute. He has nearly 20 years experience in jouralism, including stints covering The White House and Congress for The Washington Times, writing editorals and columns for newspapers in Virginia and California, and serving as business editor for a trade magazine based in Los Angeles.
Jim joined Heartland in 2008 as managing editor of InfoTech & Telecom News and subsequently took on duties as a research fellow and the co-director of Heartland’s Center on the Digital Economy.
A native New Yorker, Jim considers Pittsburgh (where his family resides) his adopted home town.
A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, Jim is an avid follower of his alma mater’s sports teams and a die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Jim and his wife make their home in Oak Park, Illinois, with an adopted racing grayhound and two cats.
…
Dr Alan Moran
Alan Moran
Dr Moran is one of Australia’s best known commentators on the energy industry and over the past ten years has published over thirty major papers and addresses covering specific aspects of the industry. He is the Director of the Deregulation Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs.
An economist, he was previously a senior Australian government official with responsibilities which included regulation review and energy policy.
In addition to editing a recent book, “Climate Change, the Facts”, he has also authored four books, including three on environmental economics, and published dozens articles and submissions on privatisation, energy and other economic policy matters.
For more info see the IPA site.
…
Jo,
I’d like to be there, but it’s not in my budget. I can’t wait to see how you tie sex into it …
George
10
The new pseudo-green doublespeak buzz word for UN global taxation has morphed again, changing from Global Warming to Global Climate Change, and now to Global Climate Disruption (AKA “bad weather”) – man made no less! Will it never end?
10
I’d like to come too but will wait until you add a speaker with a background in publishing research on climate change.
At the moment your speaker list looks like the who’s who of cherry pickers.
20
Why is Monckton not attending?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-scientists-respond-to-Moncktons-misinformation.html
20
Re Shelly #4
Just finished Dr. Carter’s book “Climate: The Counter Consensus” – the most balanced book on the subject I have read so far; Carter among the other presenters have a massive catalogue of peer reviewed publications. Perhaps you meant IPCC pee reviewed?
10
Colin, ask yourself why Carter publishes books rather than scientific papers. Hint: in books you can say whatever crap you like.
A ask him why he thinks polar bears survived through warmer periods, 350,000 years ago, as he claims in a youtube video. How did they do that when they only evolved about 200,000 years ago.
20
Shelly:
Polar bears have adapted to the Egyptian Old Kingdom Warm Period (~ 2,250 BC), the Minoan Warm Period (~ 1,400 BC), the Roman Warm Period (~200 BC), and the Medieval Warm Period (~ 900 AD), and are thriving today. Unless of course you subscribe to the Mann and the warmists who can’t tell the difference between a dead cow and a polar bear.
10
shelly:
September 22nd, 2010 at 10:21 am
And peer reviewed by other members of the climategate consortium of course.
10
#7
Stranded Polar Bear on Iceberg Drowns due to AGW!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8014541/ITV-embarrassed-by-report-of-polar-bear-washed-up-on-beach.html
10
James Lakely and Dr Alan Moran look remarkably alike? Would have loved to attend, especially as I worked briefly with Dr Moran in an earlier life, however I am OS on a family holiday at the moment.
Hope the seminar goes well and gets coverage.
10
Shelly,
Some time ago, a population of grizzly bears got stranded on glaciers. Most died, a few adapted to the cold and evolved into polar bears. In human terms, something similar happened at about the same time as populations of humans trapped in a cooling climate similarly adapted and changed their physical appearance in the process. Of course, we’re only talking about an average temperature of no more than a few degrees C in the case of alleged man made climate change and less than 1C based on the reality of physics. So, what you’re saying is that a species that adapted to being stranded in an environment 10’s of degrees colder than it was used to will have trouble adapting to a climate that’s a degree or so warmer? Don’t come back whining that the change is so much faster now. Polar bear have no trouble adapting to all conditions from summer to winter, and this adaptation happens at a rate of over 1C per month. They also know how to swim, so there’s no need to worry about them getting stranded as sea ice melts. You do know that despite all the noise about Arctic melting, it’s dark for half the year and freezes back up and even at minimum summer ice, the N pole itself is near the center of an unnavigable island of mostly solid ice nearly 2000 miles in diameter. You definitely have succumbed to the fear mongering campaign if polar bears are your biggest concern. Of course, the warmists must use stuff like this since if they used science, they wouldn’t be able to justify their case and besides, tugging on your heart strings and invoking guilt is a more effective way to manipulate you.
George
10
The thumbs down on #1 must not have read the title of Jo’s talk,
3:30 – 4:00 p.m. Joanne Nova- Defeating the Witchdoctors of the 21st C and why Global Warming is about power, money and sex.”
We know Gore’s a philanderer (takes after his old boss), but is there something we don’t know about Hansen and Gore? Was Mann caught exposing his hockey stick again? Does somebody have hooker evidence against Pachuri and that’s why he makes such stupid decisions? Inquiring minds want to know.
10
Where is the Venue?
10
shelly:
September 22nd, 2010 at 10:21 am
A Critical Appraisal of the Global Warming Debate
(New Zealand Geographer, Volume 50, Issue 1, pp. 30-32, 1994)
– C.R. de Freitas
Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous? (PDF)
(Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, Volume 50, Number 2, pp. 297-327, June 2002)
– C. R. de Freitas
Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature (PDF)
(Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 114, Issue D14, July 2009)
– John D. McLean, Chris de Freitas, Robert M. Carter
– Correction to “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature”
(Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 114, October 2009)
– John D. McLean, Chris de Freitas, Robert M. Carter
The greenhouse crisis: myths and misconceptions
(Area, Volume 23, Number 1, pp. 11-18, March 1991)
– C. R. de Freitas
Time to revisit Australia’s climate change policy
(Energy & Environment, Volume 17, Number 1, pp. 103-104, January 2006)
– Bob Carter
The Stern Review: A Dual Critique (PDF)
(World Economics, Volume 7, Number 4, pp. 165-232, October–December 2006)
– Robert M. Carter, C. R. de Freitas, Indur M. Goklany, David Holland, Richard S. Lindzen, Ian Byatt, Ian Castles, Indur M. Goklany, David Henderson, Nigel Lawson, Ross McKitrick, Julian Morris, Alan Peacock, Colin Robinson, Robert Skidelsky
– Response to Simmonds and Steffen (PDF)
(World Economics, Volume 8, Number 2, April–June 2007)
– David Holland, Robert M. Carter, C. R. de Freitas, Indur M. Goklany, Richard S. Lindzen
10
Colin, You’ll find there’s a difference between local warm periods and global ones.
To all those that like jumping on me about polar near survival, have a closer look at my words. I am not saying they will die out, I am highlighting how Carter was stupid enough to suggest the polar bears survived a particular period which was prior to when they evolved.
20
Bob@14, says a lot about them. So many political papers and so few abbot the physical effects.
When we do look at the physical ones, we get Defretis & Canadian Petrolium! Or we get the deeply flawed Southern Oscillation – an exercise on how to remove the long term trend from the data in order to show no warming. LOL
20
Australian TV Exposes ‘Stranded Polar Bear’ Global Warming Hoax…..
http://newsbusters.org/node/11879
November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
10
Seriously… Why a Friday?
Why not a weekend?
Some of us Climate Skeptics have jobs Jo 😛
Reminds me of a P J O’Rorkue quote from Parliament of Whores:
“”How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever someone upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever someone upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American Flag?”
“We have jobs.” said Andy.”
I’m not saying that all climate skeptics are on the right… just that the context was somewhat similar 😀
10
Shelly
You assert Bob Carter said polar bears survived etc 350,000 years ago on an unquoted Youtube video – evidence please, and the reference to support your allegation. I suppose he does not mention it in his book which I suspect you would refuse to read as it’s on your index of banned texts.
And its interesting to read your ad hominems here indicating that you have to be a factual black hole – a factless microball of infinite denseness.
More interesting to us is how you managed to survive the time travel from the alternate universe you inhabit along with John Quiggin, Tim Lambert, Clive Hamilton et al to post your slurs here. Incidentally one of the engineering feats found in your universe are the EU Airbus whose onboard computers can’t be overridden by the pilots – says it all doesn’t it – your universe seems to have more in common with the Airbus than physical reality.
10
@Louis, get fact
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI
9 minutes 20 seconds is where he stupidly says the polar bears survived even before they had evolved.
10
16
shelly:
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Strange you raise political papers when the bible for your side are the ippc reports, little science lots of politics, talk about cherry picked green bullchit.
10
Shelley @ 20:
Grats on picking out a few seconds worth of over-enthusiasm on Bob Carter’s presentation where he made a mistake. I assume you noticed that the last interglacial warm period he points to was less than the 200k years ago you claim as the origin of the polar bear species? You seem to be quite quick at describing your opposition as cherry pickers… looked in the mirror much lately?
Good thing the AGW scientists never make mistakes like that… wait, was that a hockey stick I heard snapping? Again…
10
cohenite@13:
I suspect it is deliberately not mentioned, for fear that hordes of feral AGW true-believers turn up 😉
20
Well, that’s a pity; I’d like to see a feral horde of AGW true-believers.
10
@Bulldust, you’re right, I should point out the other he does which is also very stupid.
Like for instance how at 4:10 he uses a graph to show the temp for the last 2000 years. The dumb thing he does is use one ice core to represent global temps. Even someone with only a little knowledge like myself know that one localised dataset can’t represent the global temperature.
He repeats this basic mistake again when analysing the past 5000 years at 5:27.
That he makes these simple mistakes, something no climate scientist would make, means it is impossible to take him seriously.
20
Just returned from a family reunion in NZ where an additional purpose was to revisit the beach I grew up on as a child in the 50s. Went there at low tide specifically to check which rocks were exposed, the same rocks were exposed by the same amount 50 years later. There is NO evidence of sea level rise at that beach.
What a pathetic accusation against Bob Carter, Shelley, your cred’s out the window.
10
That you can remember the tide level from 50 years ago is remarkable!
Almost as remarkable is that you fail to realise that low tide levels will change day to day.
Dare I memtion crustal subsidence?
Geez I’m having fun today!
20
Shelly,
Let’s review how the ‘local’ temperatures extracted from ice cores are determined. This is by measuring the ratio of Deuterium and Hydrogen in the water comprising the snow which made the ice. This ratio is temperature dependent at the point of evaporation, and since most of the water that falls as show is evaporated from the oceans, the measured ratio is reflective of wide area changes in the average temperature of the oceans. About as local as is gets are as being reflective of the hemisphere specific temperature variability.
George
10
Shelley
Be guided by you or Bob Carter. Tough choice…..
For all those sitting on the sidelines in this debate,
please explain why the CAGW supporters continue to
avoid ANY informed public debate. Go on, support it,
put the sceptics in their place once and for all. I
dare you
10
Shelley 27
So there has been significant sea level rise
but there has been a matching significant crustal subsidence.
I wouldn’t dare to mention it if I were you
for fear of Occam and his razor.
I agree, it is fun on this site.
10
Shelly
Thanks for the url to Bob’s rubbishing of the polar bears will die out CAGW farce by ridiculing it. I think it’s quite apt in countering the Gorian hyperbole by fighting fire with fire.
It’s a bit stupid making an issue of presentational hyperbole when its purposefully done – perhaps satire is alien to your and your fellow Other Universalists?
10
Shelly
It is interesting that whilst criticising Dr Bob Carter you make claims that you do not back up with any scientific referencing.
You claim that Polar Bears evolved after 350,000 years ago and you may well be correct, but you need to state the basis for your claim. Is it based on genetic studies, palaeontological studies or what? Are you quoting actual studies or media reports or eco-activist reports?
However, even if you prove to be correct, there is still the question around how polar bears are supposedly in danger now, when they survived several periods after their evolution which were warmer than now. This is the crux of the argument.
10
Shelly @ 25:
Yeah that must be ridiculous… just like no legitimate climate scientist widely referred to in IPCC documents would ever use a 6-sigma tree ring sample to heavily bias a thousand-year temperature back cast. That would never happen… oops!
10
Shelly – the fact that I can remember the tide levels of that beach is not remarkable. The minute level changes of those rocks determined whether you stayed out there to the end or swam back to shore. Serious stuff to a 10 year old and his friends.
10
Please excuse what may seem to be excessive flattery – I was at the ICCC conference in Chicago Heartland hosted in March. The only way it could have been improved is if you had been there. 🙂
Seriously (or should I say in addition), I really appreciated meeting several of the scientists I had read or corresponded with. Bob Carter and Joe D’Aleo had the most influence on me when I decided it was time to get active in this sordid field. It’s a pity that Neils Axel Moerner isn’t on the list, his review of the data about sea level changes was a very good summary and would be relevant to your quadrant of the planet.
On Polar Bears – I like to say they’re a non-issue because they went extinct in the Roman Warm period and again in the Medieval Warm Period.
10
I would be happy to educate you on the science of climate. It is warming and we are causing it. You clowns are playing russian roulette with the planet. I bet you still believe the Earth is flat.
(You have been posting like this in several different threads.You will have to stop it and focus on the substance of the topic or be sent to the pending folder) CTS
20
Denier,
Yes, deniers are hard to understand. I can’t figure out why otherwise sane people would deny the preponderance of physics and data that falsifies CAGW. Of course, most of the actual scientists (those with a science degree that doesn’t have ‘eco’ the title) tend to be on the side of the science, while the ignorant masses tend to migrate towards those denying the science.
If you need an education about how the climate works, I can oblige, but you will need to be civil, We can start with a simple question. If you diverge from the question and spew more ignorance, I will ignore you, so please, stick to the topic.
The sensitivity of the planets surface temperature to incremental solar power is about 1.2. This means that for each 1 W/m^2 of incremental solar power, the surface power increases by 1.2 W/m^2. In instead, we count only the post albedo power arriving at the surface, the sensitivity is 1.6. Based on the IPCC consensus of failure, 1 W/m^2 of incremental GHG forcing from CO2 must result in 8 W/m^2 of incremental surface power, (if 1.9 W/m^2 at the surface causes a 3C rise) for a gain/sensitivity of 8. This little inconvenient truth is something that the so called ‘scientists’ behind CAGW claims don’t want you to know and to facilitate the deception, they fabricated a meaningless metric of sensitivity whose units are degrees per W/m^2. Temperature increases resulting from solar power, GHG ‘forcing’ or any other source of surface energy will be subject to the same net feedback effects. Why is it that the IPCC considers forcing from CO2 as being 5 times more powerful at heating the surface than forcing power from other sources, for example, the Sun.
FYI, the 1.9 W/m^2 is half of the 3.7 W/m^2 the IPCC claims at the top of the troposphere. This is because the 3.7 W/m^2 is absorbed by the atmosphere, which radiates half to the surface and half back out into space. Even if you deny the physics of BB radiation and claim that all of the 3.7 W/m^2 is directed at the surface, the required gain is still over 4, which is 2.5 times larger than the gain/sensitivity we can measure for solar power. Even in the case where we multiply 3.7 W/m^2 by the surface gain of 1.6, the effect of doubling CO2 is still less than 1.2 C. The real physics puts it closer to 0.6C.
George
10
Sorry about the typo, the last line of the previous post should say 1.2 degrees, not 1.2 W/m^2.
George
—-
Fixed! 🙂 JN
10
How about using one tree to represent global temperature?
Evidence of the Medieval Warm Period has been found in diverse places round the Earth, but to this day the IPCC insist on deleting it. How can you explain this behaviour?
10
More from Tim Ball
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate
10
Using one tree ring sample and ignoring all other data would be wrong too. The IPCC don’t do this.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-6-10.html
As for your MWP, there is not yet the evidence to suggest it was warmer than today.
Some recent evidence shows that, whilst it did get a bit warmer during the MWP, todays temp already exceed them.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/South-American-hockey-stick.html
20
The AGW proponents all say the mean global temperature is rising. But here is a hypothetical I would like to ask. What if, over the past, say 150 years, the mean temperature had not risen by one iota? Let’s assume it was flat all that time. Not up or down. Would that be logical? Surely over a 150 year time period some variation should be expected. If not, why not?
10
I’m glad shelley has linked to figure 6.10 because image (c) plainly shows that the MWP was warmer than today.
As for IPCC not using one tree to establish prior temperature; that is wrong: shelley should google YAD061 or read this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/01/mirror-posting-yad06-the-most-influential-tree-in-the-world/
10
Shelly in general:
If you do not understand the significance of the Yamal tree ring set and particularly the one tree ring YAD061, then I think you need to do some serious brushing up on statistics. Here’s a run through prepared by Mr McIntyre:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/30/yamal-the-forest-and-the-trees/
The desperate desire to show current warming as “unprecedented” and using “tricks” where necessary to hide the divergence between the tree ring proxies and measured temperures… this has nothing to do with science. This is the unscience that drives the IPCC documents.
Had the original Hockey Stick been in the back of an appendix in a footnote no one would have cared. But this was the single most important graph in TAR. This makes the deception all the more significant.
The IPCC needs to get back to science or disband altogether… there is no third option that will give the group any credibility whatsoever.
10
Shelly,
Again, you are making factual errors. Here’s a plot of the DomeC temperature record zoomed in to the most recent 5K years. The MWP, LIA, Roman warming, Minoan warming, the subsequent cooling that crashed their civilization and the Egyption warming are all clearly evident in the plot. When 500 year averaging is applied to the data (the doted magenta line in the plot), these periods become unambiguously evident.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic.png
I should also point out that the dotted blue line represents the temperature, as of 1950, to which the ice core data was aligned with. Based on this, the MWP was significantly warmer than today. You can google ‘edc3deuttemp2007.txt’ to find the original source material. Since you are unlikely to believe me, feel free to download and process the data for yourself.
There is also a warming about 1000BC, that doesn’t seem to have a name (does anybody know?), but I have seen it referenced in other places and it is also seen in other cores. A note about the Roman warming. It seems that the Roman warming, was really a rapid rebound from extreme cooling that had occurred just before. The warming seemed to have stalled for a few centuries, only to pick up again for the MWP.
There is another sequence of plots in the same directory as the above picture (pic0.png through pic4.png). These zoom in on the data for the last 17K years with increasing averaging (smoothing) from 0 (pic0.png) up to 5000 years (pic4.png). You might notice how the CO2 is not effected as much as the temperature below about 500 year averaging. This is because the CO2 samples are significantly farther apart than the temperature samples and already represent longer term averages.
There is a spike near the present day, but of you look at in in more detail, this specific spike occurred around 1900 and the global average temperature seems to have cooled a bit since then since later samples (between 1900 and 1050) were significantly cooler.
George
10
cohenite, that you think the graph C shows a warmer MWP when the data for that period is below the zero line and todays temps being around the 0.5 mark is exactly why you get stuck with a demoralise label.
The various reconstruction do not rely purely on tree ring data as you’d find out by reading the peer reviewed research.
Bulldust, That you rely on blog sites rather than science for “serious science” shows that you will quite enjoy the October fest with like minded people.
20
No, you’re completely wrong shelley, or you’re blind, or simply arguing that black is white; in fig 6.10(c) the MWP peak temperature is 0.2C warmer than today. That’s plain; maybe it was a burst of honesty by the writers, conciously or otherwise; you can only lie for so long.
And you say the reconstructions don’t only rely on dendroclimatic data; that will come as a surprise to Mann, Briffa and the rest of the jolly crew! But since you are such fine critical fettle here is Fig 9.1b from TAR:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/slides/large/05.24.jpg
This shows the MWP, well no, it doesn’t show it at all; nor the LIA with 2010 temperatures nearly 6C above the average. Here is the reality:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0134814d702d970c-pi
You say the models are using other things beside tree-rings; entrails perhaps, chicken livers, tea leaves, Hansen’s mood swings?
10
I read or heard somewhere that tree ring data is not so reliable. e.g. a sudden increase in width of rings may not be evidence of warmer or wetter climate at all. Rather, it may be that the small tree was next to a tall tree which shaded it for some time. Then the tall tree may have toppled over from a storm or old age leaving the small tree exposed to a more beneficial growth environment via sunlight. The reverse could be true too where a tree alongside outgrows another giving rise to smaller rings. Thus, proxy data has to be very very carefully looked at with great scepticism because knowing such facts could be impossible.
10
Yea Shelly! You tell ’em luv!
10
cohenite, you’re showing a great ineptitude for reading graphs.
The highest point of the graph for the medieval data is that 0-10% probablility section of the data that stretches from 0.3 to 0.7 degrees. It is 90% likely that the temp for that period is between -0.4 and 0.3 degrees. All of which is lower than the temp today!
20
AGW believers are the ‘useful idiots’ of the C21st.
They think they are doing good for the planet, but in reality they are fools for the
New World Order unknowingly promoting their agenda. Global Government is the ultimate plan for these families.
10
Yes elsie, tree ring data can be unreliable. It becomes more meaningful when other data, such as sedimentary cores, can verify the data. That some here use it to try and prove that the MWP was one way our the other is kind of silly.
For the MWP to be relevant you would also need to show that whatever was causing the warming back then was also acting to cause the warming that is happening now.
20
shelly, so according to the IPCC reconstructions the MWP only has a 10% chance of being warmer than today; did you read the IAC report on the IPCC and the failure of the IPCC to use reliable confidence indicators in its climate conclusions? And I did link to a comparison between the IPCC predictions and how they are nowhere near the actual temperatures in the modern era, something that McKitrick et al have conclusively shown. That being the case, how can we believe what the IPCC says about 1000 years ago when they are so far out in the last 25 years?
And then there is this:
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/aoas1001-014r2a0.pdf
McShane and Wyner conclude this:
“For example, 1998 is generally considered to be the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the
warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years. Finally, if we look at rolling thirty-year blocks, the posterior probability that the last thirty years (again, the warmest on record) were the warmest over the past thousand is 38%.”
That is, there is 64% probability that 1998 is not the warmest on record and 62% probability that the last 30 years are not the warmest; there is however a 80% chance that 1997-2006 is the warmest; but these propabilities are made with Mann’s data [used by the IPCC] which is based on one tree, YAD061. When the full range of data is used there is little probability that today is warmer as measured by the IPCC models.
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cohenite, yes I have read the McShane and Wyner summary and I’ve read a fair amount of criticism abbot their technique too.
Let’s forget that for the moment and look at two things.
1. The northern hemisphere is NOT “the full range of data”.
2. You are still left with showing how the cause of the MWP is relevant to todays warming.
Oh, and of course there’s still that little niggling problem of trying to explain away the known radiative GHG properties.
20
shelly: #54
September 23rd, 2010 at 2:38 pm
You’re kidding right? Cohenite has to show the cause of the MWP is relevant to todays warming?
It warms, it cools. It does this in various cycles that NO PERSON ON EARTH IS AN AUTHORITY ON TO THIS DAY. It is up to your side to show why todays warming is different to past warmings. Stop shifting the onus, it’s dishonest.
shelly: #46
September 23rd, 2010 at 11:03 am
But at #41 you state..
last I looked, Skeptical is a BLOG SITE.
Seems to me you’ve already started the Octoberfest celebrations.
Now explain yourself, lest we think you’re just another dishonest troll.
10
@baa humbug, I’m not the one claiming that the MWP disproves AGW theory. The onus is not on me to prove anything about the MWP.
AGW theory, as discussed in the IPCC report, does not rely upon the MWP.
There’s no denying the climate changes, but for you to think that because some past period was warmer therefore now is also warmer for the same reason requires evidence. That you do not have.
As for the south american hockey stick, here’s the link to the original paper http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD012603.shtml
Still the same result, no evidence for the MWP being globally warmer than today.
Another fun day for me! See you pals tomorrow!
20
The MWP was global;
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure61.png
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
In addition the LIA was global as well; neither the MWP or LIA are accepted in extent or temperature range by the IPCC because that would nullify their claim that today’s temperature is unprecedented; if today’s temperature is unexceptional then AGW is negated regardless of the cause.
I’d be very interested in what was the “fair amount of criticism abbot their technique” about the McShane and Wynter paper; as far as I can see there was nothing sustantial; they nailed the hockeystick and took away the premise of AGW.
As for the “known radiative GHG properties”, I’d love to hear your version of those; perhaps you can start with the fundamental flaws in Arrhenius’s experiment.
10
Shelly,
Yes, CAGW theory, per the IPCC, does not rely on the MWP, it goes out of it’s way to ignore it and try and make it disappear as it does with the LIA. Of course, the reason both the MWP and LIA are ignored by CAGW theory is because both events show natural temperature variability that is indistinguishable in rate or magnitude from current climate change which is difficult to explain in the context of CAGW which arrogantly asserts that such levels of change can only be caused by man.
We know that the MWP coincided with when the Vikings established settlements in Greenland. Based on the archaeological evidence, they were growing crops that will not grow there today because it’s too cold. Either the Vikings had access to some ET technology that allowed them to teraform an inhospitable environment into a far warmer and greener place, or it was significantly warmer back then that it is today. I’m inclined to believe the later, but then again, I haven’t bought in to the lie about CAGW either.
BTW, why no comments about the plot in #45? Are you choosing to stick your head in the sand and ignore this evidence? I have a whole lot more …
George
10
Here are the direct links to what I referenced before. These plot 17K years of CO2 and temperature as extracted from the DomeC ice core at increasing averaging windows.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic0.png 0 year averaging
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic1.png 500 year averaging
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic2.png 1000 year averaging
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic3.png 2000 year averaging
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic4.png 5000 year averaging
0 year averaging is native averaging, which for this time span starts at about 10 year averages for temperature and increases to 24 year averages by 3000BC. CO2 samples are closer to 150 year averages over the whole range, except that the first sample is biased towards current levels and not a true 150 year average.
Notice that the lag between temperature and CO2 is clearly evident at all levels of averaging. A more detailed correlative analysis quantifies the delay over the nearly million year data set while these plots show the delay very clearly once zoomed in and averaged to the same scale.
George
10
So cohenite@57
Do you disagree with Dr Roy Spencer, who has no doubt that the greenhouse effect is real, but disputes the feedbacks? If you go to his blog, he shows how easy it is to measure the greenhouse effect using stuff you can easily buy. So is he a “useful idiot”, or a climate scientist?
10
Settle down John; you’re like an apprentice bloodhound keen to sniff out any flaws in the sceptic position; Spencer says there is a greenhouse effect; so do I; Spencer has his doubts that AGW is real and certainly doesn’t agree that water, the primary, by a longshot, greenhouse gas, is the feedback that the IPCC wants it to be; so do I. What remains contentious to say the least are issues like CO2 saturation, climate sensitivity, backradiation, the role of clouds, whether TSI is underestimated by IPCC modeling, OLR, lags in the system etc; just a few minor points really; nothing to cast doubt on AGW though.
10
hahaha looks like John just sent cohenite a dose of “spot the contradicting skeptic argument”.
10
And a happy freezing in the dark to you Pain.
10
John Brookes:
September 23rd, 2010 at 6:17 pm
“Do you disagree with Dr Roy Spencer(?)”
Here’s little bit from Roy Spencer. Do you agree with this Dr. Roy Spencer on global warming?
(Roy Spencer has an Evangelical Christian world view so he is not constrained by any sort of pagan “Gaia” view of the Earth. Thus it means he is free to look objectively at the science without trying to fit that science into the straight jacket of an ecologically determined Earth. One could not help but notice on this site that some CAGWers, aware of their presuppositions, when pushed, had to admit that they were, in essence, fitting their “science” into such a world view – not the best way to do objective science).
Roy Spencer – An excerpt from “Global Warming”:
“…..The ‘consensus’ of opinion is that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is quite high, and so warming of about 0.25 deg. C to 0.5 deg. C (about 0.5 deg. F to 0.9 deg. F) every 10 years can be expected for as long as mankind continues to use fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. NASA’s James Hansen claims that climate sensitivity is very high, and that we have already put too much extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Presumably this is why he and Al Gore are campaigning for a moratorium on the construction of any more coal-fired power plants in the U.S.
You would think that we’d know the Earth’s ‘climate sensitivity’ by now, but it has been surprisingly difficult to determine. How atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low.
The case for natural climate change I also present an analysis of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which shows that most climate change might well be the result of….the climate system itself! Because small, chaotic fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems can cause small changes in global average cloudiness, this is all that is necessary to cause climate change. You don’t need the sun, or any other ‘external’ influence (although these are also possible…but for now I’ll let others work on that). It is simply what the climate system does. This is actually quite easy for meteorologists to believe, since we understand how complex weather processes are. Your local TV meteorologist is probably a closet ’skeptic’ regarding mankind’s influence on climate.
Climate change — it happens, with or without our help.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/
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Llew I can’t believe you wrote so much and still didn’t answer the question.
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Major Pain:
September 23rd, 2010 at 10:07 pm
“Llew I can’t believe you wrote so much and still didn’t answer the question.”
What is the significance of John’s question? When you answer that I will know if you need to be brought up to speed on Spencer’s position which has a bit more to it than the nature of the feedbacks.
10
Shelly or John (or whoever hit thumbs down on #45),
Rather than the cowardly approach of hitting the thumbs down button, why don’t you try and find some science that disputes what I said. I also want you to pay special attention to the 500 year averages. During the last few thousand years, and in fact throughout the whole record where the resolution is fine enough to tell, there’s a strong periodicity of from 1-2 degrees C, whose period is on the order of 900 years. Based on historical evidence, this should be reaching it’s peak just about now. Again, this is another one of those inconvenient truths that warmists tend to ignore because by itself, it invalidates CAGW. The source of this seems to be the result of a long term solar variability since at least during recent times, the trends strongly align with sunspot activity.
You should also pay attention to the transitions in and out of local minimums and maximums. These are relatively rapid where even the 500 year average increases by 1-2C over a century or so.
The indisputable bottom line here is that contemporary change is neither unusually rapid nor large, nor even unexpected, relative to historical change. I will repeat the link here for your convenience.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic.png
One more point is to not be confused by the apparent spike near the current time. This is the result of an unusually large. short term temperature spike that occurred between late in the 19’th century and early in the 20’th century. More recent samples were significantly cooler. It’s likely that this spike is a data anomaly, where the sample tested had more summers than winters in the fixed width slice that was processed and the samples on either side had more winters than summers.
George
10
“Shelly”,
You insult our intelligence by quoting propaganda from “skepticalscience”.
That web site have been thoroughly DEBUNKED!
How John Cook unskeptically believes in a hotspot (that thermometers can’t find):-
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/06/how-john-cook-unskeptically-believes-in-a-hotspot-that-thermometers-cant-find/
FAIL!
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire-French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 – 1778)
10
@cohenite #57,
Ha. No it wasn’t, because I’m in a good mood I’ll show how dumb you are for believing in their crap analysis.
Firstly you should probably note the source of the “science” you are relying on here. Do a little background check on CO2Science and see where their funding comes from; hint Exxon. But let’s not get caught up on that. Let’s do some credible analysis.
The crux of their delusional sense of getting a “global” result comes mostly from relabelling what the MWP actually is.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/description.php
They look at each individual study, find a warm part somewhere near the MWP timeframe, then classify that as supporting their theory. The problem is they will redefine what constitutes the MWP timeframe so as to highlight the warm part of the data and to avoid the cooler sections.
Don’t believe me? Well let’s look at some examples then. Unashamedly from wiki, the MWP period is defined as a time from AD 950–1250, that’s 300 years centered around AD 1100.
What do CO2Science think is the MWP?
Sicre-2008 http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Sicre-2008.html
Their label for the MWP sits over the AD 1000-1300 and avoids the lower temps in the 950-1000 period.
Strike 1!! Note the smoothed red line (running average) sits below modern day temps for almost the entire MWP.
Paulsen-2003 http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Paulsen-2003.html
They have the MWP centered around AD1300!! They moved time!!. For the actual MWP, 950-1250, the average is well below todays temp (shown on the left). Although even if you did take their proposed relocation of the MWP, it still would be cooler than today.
Strike 2!!
Kitagawa-1995 http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Kitagawa-1995.html (note graph is inverted here – warming is downwards)
Yey, the labelling of MWP looks pretty good; but how’s the data?
On initial viewing this show mostly good warming but some radical cooling amongst it too. So what’s up with that? Well firstly have a look at the number of samples used to construct this graph. It contains very few samples and hence you can’t get good confidence from it.
The graph only goes to 1950 so it doesn’t include more recent 0.5 of a degree of warming. Either way, if you were to average out the MWP then the temps are still well below the temp for the last decade.
Strike 3!!
No data is perfect and, individually, most contain some cooling around the MWP as well as some warming. Only by combining them together with some spatial analysis will you get an idea of the global picture.
CO2Science is analysis is a crock of crackers!! Their simplistic approach to simply find some cooling somewhere near the MWP and tick that as supporting a global MWP is ludicrous.
Ovelay the data and you see that the “warm” parts do not always align, some parts of the world were cooler.
20
The “premise of AGW” is that the increase of GHG is causing todays warming. AGW does not mean that other periods cannot warm for other reasons.
As for the critism of McShane and Wynter paper http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
10
“Ovelay the data and you see that the “warm” parts do not always align, some parts of the world were cooler.”
Sounds just like AGW, doesn’t it shell? Now, since you’re so smart; do a composite GMST analysis of the various CO2 science sites; weight for your cooling periods and see what GMST you get; oh wait its already been done:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure61.png
I bet you’re a blonde shell.
10
Oh so WUWT is the new site for “scientific” research now?
If this “research” is so good, why not get it published via a peer reviewed journal?
Ha! Why is it all the “real science” you believe in found on blogger sites?
10
Shelly, are you female? If so, I’ll have to get over my crush on Jo and switch to you. Of course if you are a guy, well, how embarrassing….
10
shelly:
September 24th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Just to remind you of a few of your links recently Shelly:
Four references and three to scepticalscience.
Why does the term HYPOCRITE spring so quickly to mind?
10
Shelly,
You’re not grasping the entirety of what the paleo record is saying. You’re suffering from the same ‘gotta find a problem no matter how small with anything a skeptic says’ syndrome that’s so common among warmists and illustrated daily in these threads. The best you can usually find are small inconsistence, insignificant in the grand scheme of things, which always seem to have a more rational explanation that’s more consistent with the data and first principles and that you reject because it contradicts your beliefs.
The hemispheres responded slightly differently to whatever forcing function is driving the change, but when integrated over centuries, the trends in the 2 hemispheres track relatively well, indicating global, relatively short term, influences. There’s a 1000 year periodic influence superimposed on another of about 150 years. Below this is the 11 year cycle and seasonal cycles, both of which are too short to be resolved by the sample period of the ice cores, but may appear as aliased, longed period effects. On average, every 75 to 100 years, the multi-decade, global average temperature moves nearly 1C in one direction or another. Both of these periods are far too short to be Milankovitch related and far too long to be climate system resonances and the most likely explanation is related to the periodicity of internal solar processes, which are known to be consistently periodic and whose self resonances would be consistent with these periods.
Depending on the resolution and signal to noise ratio of your data, the MWP map appear as either 3 warming periods, a 2 cooling periods, where the first cooling period is significantly suppressed or one longer and less intense, warming period. The deeper cooling period coincides with the anomaly you cite near 900AD. These short term changes are very common in high resolution paleo records. If the data is lower resolution samples of longer term averages, the short term climate reversals disappear and the longer period trends emerge. Pay attention to the plots I linked to you earlier. The averaging technique I use is a sliding window of N samples centered around each high resolution sample point which emulates samples of longer term averages.
George
10
Re #73,
Careful John, based on the response to #1, anything even remotely suggestive seems to offend some.
10
Probably because your unaware of the difference between Skeptical Science and WUWT.
Skeptical Science doesn’t try to do any of the scientific research itself, it merely refers to the wealth of scienctific papers that support the AGW theory.
WUWT and CO2Science on the other hand promote their own brand of scientific theory without all that “unnecessary peer review” to get in their way.
The link to http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/ was in direct response to a question asking about the critism. Given time I dare say these will filter through the scientific process too.
20
So, in other words, skeptical science subverted a domain name with ‘skeptical’ in it as a childish attempt to grab eyeballs under false pretenses.
10
Shell, the CO2 site draws entirely on peer reviewed material; the issue of imprecision with the date of the MWP is, superficially, a legitimate one for purposes of determining whether it was a global event. It is only superficial because as I have noted it is the GMST which is relevant; at no time do all regions in the world exhibit similar trends, certainly not today so for comparative purposes a global average temperature is used, GMST. The GMST is however flawed for purposes of determining the Earth’s energy budget for reasons you no doubt know, but that is a different matter.
The CO2 site shows this lack of global correlation with various sites showing their warming at different periods to others. The crucial issue is the GMST for any of those periods; the link to WUWT had a post by Frank Lasner, who had done this based on the findings of 59 peer reviewed papers; to say therefore that this is worthless because it is not peer reviewed is a stretch since the data Frank used for his calculations was all peer reviewed. But as I said, do your own calculations if you don’t like Frank’s work; here is the link to the source papers which Frank used:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/11/making-holocene-spaghetti-sauce-by-proxy/#more-6961
10
Sure, I wouldn’t be any the wiser about the changes in the temp of the ice core data although I do know that it is more exaggerated than for the rest of the planet.
But assuming you’re perfectly right about the cause, that brings us back to the question, how is that applicable to today’s warming? The past 30 years we’ve seen a cooling sun yet the surface temps continue to climb.
10
co2isnotevil,cohenite:
don’t be too cruel with shelly, under his/her rules she/he can quote blog sites, because his/her blog sites don’t have a bias and only report on the science as she/he would have us all believe, you know heads he/she wins tails we loose.
Forgive us shell if we refuse to march to the beat of your drum.
10
“shelly”,
Why don’t you attend the Seminar and stand up and stand up in front of all attending so you can make a FOOL of yourself.
I’m sure the audience would enjoy a good laugh!
10
Sorry John, I’m married but I’m glad you’re the type of person that likes brains over beauty. Could have done with like you in high school.
10
Wendy, I suggest you look up the meaning of THOROUGHLY.
Your one link to one topic, which judging by the comments there isn’t even debunked, is not even close to being thorough.
10
@cohenite 79.
Using data from peer reviewed research to perform your own calculations does not mean that your calculations therefore automatically become valid and peer reviewed.
Performing a temperature reconstruction seems to be a very complicated task for which I am certainly not qualified. That’s why I rely on the scientific process to provide the answer.
Frank’s analysis may well be spot on, but having me repeat the calculations would not verify our invalidate his findings because I am unqualified to understand the details.
If Frank’s work IS so good, then I would respectfully wish that he publishes that work so people that do understand the science can verify. Simply sticking it on a blog site gives it no credibility, even worse than that theses days, you could end up as having a reputation for being unable to produce credible work with ones only remaining option being to publish on blogger sites.
And were back full circle to observing the lack of credibility on the speakers at this meeting.
20
shelly has been very successful in polluting this blog about a coming seminar which is probably the aim.
None of the conversations go anywhere and new ones are introduced endlessly.
It would be preferable if they were conducted elsewhere — perhaps a permanent Off Topic thread.
Perhaps a change to policy or guidelines?
Instead of rising to the bait the response should probably be just: OFF TOPIC
10
shelly:@77
September 24th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
shelly:@89
September 24th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Is it just me or can others here see a clear contradiction in these two post from shelly?
once again shelly, I ask Why does the term HYPOCRITE spring so quickly to mind?
10
Shelly,
The ice cores are quite representitive of the hemispheric temperatures averaged pver variable intervals of time. There is also signficant temporal alignment differents between the Vostok core and the DomeC core which was closer to the pole. The DomeC core was drilled more recently and processed with more modern equipment. In the side by side plot shown here, the Vostok resolution started at about 17 years, increasing to about 50 years by 5K years. The DomeC core starts at about 8 years, increasing to about 20 years at 5K years. The accompanying plot renormalizes the 2 data sets as if they were both sampling 500 year averages.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/picb.png
When both are normalized to the same sample period, the variable temporal alignments between the cores is highly evident, even for more recent samples. Absolute dating of the layers is the most subject to errors, but relative temporal accuracy appears quite good. The next plot is over 200K years using 1K year averaging.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/picc.png
But, despite these discrepancies (which also serve to show the difficulty in reconstructing temperature from proxies), the big picture behavior of the 2 cores is largely coincident.
George
10
PJB-253:
September 24th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Well said PJB, I’ll try to resist taking the bait again.
10
Bob@87, can you show me where SS perform their own reconstruction?
10
Shelly @90.
The fact that Skeptical Science does not do independent verification of the veracity of papers it comments on speaks volumes about the credibility it should receive, None.
10
@co2isnotevil
Taking a closer look at this plot I see two problems.
Why is the “pink dotted 500 year smoothing” line at the 650 mark higher than all the 500 years worth of data around it?
If the dotted blue line represents the temperature as at 1950, then the temp in the 1900 was 1.2 degrees higher. Rather a suspect change in temp don’t you think.
So this is the evidence on which we’re supposed to believe that the MWP was warmer than today, but not as warm as 1900?
If you meant to convince me that interglacial periods were global then well done; but I already thought that.
Zooming in on the last 2000 years in that data shows the local discrepancies are huge. If your post #28 was correct, should they both be non-local and hence they should agree. But they do not, well certainly not for the smaller changes like a MWP.
For the larger temp changes that occur during the interglacials they show reasonable correlation. Not so for the MWP.
You guys still seem to be avoiding the question, “How would the cause of a warmer MWP be applicable to today’s warming”?
10
Bob, independent verification should be up to the scientific process, not left to the likes of SS or WUWT.
But please try not to sidestep the question. Can you show me where SS performs their own reconstruction?
10
“shelly”,
Stop being so PARANOID about the end of the world!
We are concerned that something like the following will happen to your family if you don’t sort yourself out!
Baby shot over global warming fears:-
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,20797,26793969-952,00.html?from=public_rss
OR THIS…..
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/01/gunman-holding-people-hostage-in-discovery-channel-building/
SERIOUSLY, SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!
10
Shelly,
The Vostok zero is defined slightly differently than the DomeC zero and both have a relatively high uncertainty. I would trust the DomeC as being more precise, having been processed later with more advanced methods and tools. You might also notice that the magnitude of the max-min is also about 1C smaller for Vostok than for DomeC. This too is a result of calibration differences.
Regarding the anomaly around 1900, this could be a processing error related to aliasing seasonal variability. This would arise if the sample had 1 more summer than winter in the fixed width slice of ice processed and the neighbor slices had 1 more winter than summer. The DomeC record actually identifies several more recent slices whose results were not presented, most likely owing to the aforementioned aliasing causing them to produce results that were inconsistent with the thermometer record.
If you look carefully at the plot of concurrent Vostok and DomeC data, the Vostok data is shifted to the left by a non linear function. The error is as much as 700 years out of 3000, which believe it or not, is within the specified uncertainty in the temporal placement of Vostok core samples. It’s my understanding that one of the differences between DomeC and Vostok was the level of reliance on counting annular layers when determining the ice age.
The evidence that suggests an unambiguous signature for the MWP was in the plot which concurrently showed the 50 and 500 year averages calculated in 50 year steps (pic.png). Notice how the envelope of the 1000 year variability encompasses many period of a higher frequency (shorter period) signal.
This next plot shows the nature of this mismatch. It’s a plot of the sample width, in years, vs. time. There seems to be a relative difference in this, causing a bias in recent years, which corresponds to the temporal shifts seen in the side by side plots. Note that this also corresponds to the amount of snow that falls per year. More snow means fewer years per fixed width slice. Notice the inverse relationship of this to temperature illustrating how precipitation is related to average temperatures.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/picd.png
The differences seem to have been corrected by about 100K years, but starts to diverge again at about 175K years.
George
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George, Wendy, Bob and others:
The latest troll here would still bang on about “underlying” AGW if we fell into an ice age tomorrow. These people need to feel guilty about something…anything, and have no difficulty whatsoever in projecting their guilt complex onto others.
10
Mark,
I figure if I can get her to wrap her head around the fact that climate change rates on the order of 1C per century in the 50 year global average is normal and that when the Vostok and DomeC cores are temporarily aligned, historical warming and cooling events are more easily associated with appropriately coincident features in both plots and that the MWP global average was indeed warmer than today, it will undermine the rationalization for support she thinks the data provides for her cause, which like most warmists, is that contemporary change is unusual and can only be the consequence of man’s actions.
You’re right that uncompromising warmists are hard to convince, but that’s not my objective. I’m only taking advantage of the numerous flaws in the CAGW arguments which makes it so easy to chip away at the foundation of their beliefs.
George
10
George
I concede your point. Reckon I’m just not as patient as you. It is quite amusing to read their responses to your posts. They simply can’t accept that a “denier” can debate at that level. As a result, they ignore the parts where they know they have no answer then fly off on a tangent to some arcane and usually irrelevant subject.
It’s boring, I know, but I still await any of these pseudo-scientists to nominate what empirical facts would nullify AGW. Of course, like the IPCC, they are only interested in data which in their opinion verifies it. The very definition of cherry picking and they refuse to admit it.
10
One of the basic beliefs of science (and implicitly of engineering) is that whatever rules the universe does follow are consistent rules that do not arbitrarily change from time to time without good reason. For example, back when steam engines were popular in the 1800’s people would burn coal to make steam. Today we also burn coal, and it still makes steam, just like it did in the 1800’s.
If one day the coal just decided not to burn, that would be a surprise. Scientists and engineers would then go searching for what changed.
The more formal way to describe this belief is “Occam’s Razor” which states that you never use a more complex explanation than necessary to adequately explain the observation. I might feel the need to invent a new reason every day for why coal would burn, the day I can’t think of anything will be the day it stops burning. However, it is a simpler and easier explanation to just presume that it burns for exactly the same reason every single day. Please note: I cannot prove this to be the case, it is merely an assumption, but it is an assumption that has massive implications to the efficiency of my understanding of the world. It allows one concise explanation to be recycled again and again without effort.
It is also an assumption that almost always works — and (so far) every time this assumption breaks, someone has been able to find a good reason for it.
So to get back to the topic at hand, Occam’s Razor says that if the same cause can explain earlier warming and also explain today’s warming then that is the most efficient explanation and therefore the most desirable and most likely to be true. We should only bring in additional causes if there is absolutely no other option in order to explain the observation.
10
If that’s true then there’s ways to clean up the alias effect. My I humbly suggest that various options for rolling off the edges of your filter are well worth the trouble in terms of the higher quality output. What’s more, a well chosen filter shape can deliver nice sub-samples that are aesthetically pleasing for graphical output and improve visualization of the data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_function
Suggested place to start…
10
Tel,
Yes, I have numerous filters I can apply to the data to clean up a variety of issues, including applying a sliding window of various shapes. Note that for best results, filtering must be applied before sampling and all I have available is samples. The basic issue is that the data extraction method uses to reconstruct the temperature series fails to adequately address Nyquist rate constraints. I also have a processing step in mind to align time between a wide variety of proxies. I didn’t try to hide the anomaly because adjusting raw data and claiming it’s still raw data is not part of my toolkit. Instead, I offer possibilities to explain anomalies. I guess I could have just truncated the series to remove the anomalous data point, but that’s another ‘trick’ that’s not appropriate science.
George
10
OK George, I won’t criticize your efforts without putting forward my own and exposing myself to equal amounts of criticism.
http://lnx-bsp.net/DomeC_holocene.png
And a more detailed focus into recorded historic times (but basically the same data) here…
http://lnx-bsp.net/DomeC_holocene_zoom.png
The red line does show a very similar cycle that the pink line shows above. Note that the green line has essentially eliminated both the LIA and the MWP by simply choosing a 1000 year span to average over. Which is the “real” answer — none of them, because they are all just estimators anyhow, they happen to show different things.
Also note that when it gets close to year 0, all estimators diverge and head in different directions — this is not a bug, it is to be expected. When you are at the edge of a dataset there isn’t enough measurement to back the estimation so it becomes highly sensitive to the filtering parameters.
By the way, the implementation of Nadaraya-Watson kernel smoothing that I use comes from http://www.r-project.org/ so they are to blame if there is a genuine bug in the data!
10
Tel,
These plots also show the 2, short term periodic influences, the 1000 year cycle and the 150 year cycle and also shows the rapid 1C changes within a century in both directions. And as you pointed out, it also shows how you can make features come and go depending on the smoothing. In fact, I’ve taken advantage of this by using notch filters to remove strong signals so that weaker ones can come through.
I would say that both are real answers, one represents the change in a 1000 year average and the other shows the change in a 500 year average. The key is understanding the these 2 answers represent different things with different properties. I always laugh when a warmist declares that the ice cores don’t show change as rapid as contemporary change. For one thing they do and moreover, ice core rates of change in multi-decade to multi-century averages frequently exceed even todays absolute trend over the last century. For some reason, the reality that a multi-century average moves more slowly than absolute year to year change eludes most warmists. If one were to plot the 100 year average temperature using contemporary data, even Mann’s fudged data, the hockey stick would turn in to a hockey rink.
10
Wendy @ 82
Try discussing quantum physics with a rugby team.
They well might laugh a lot when you talk about a particle being in multiple places at once, and that may make them feel better about themselves because they all joined in.
The only thing the physicist would feel FOOLISH about is trying to have the discussion in the first place.
co2isnotevil @ 95 & 97
What I find puzzling is that, when faced with the obvious problem in the data from 1900-1950 you claim
But then you try to convince me that such an anomaly is a natural occurance in the data.
You can’t justify both points of view.
And as I’ve already said, previous changes in climate do not rule out the current warming being caused by an increase of GHG.
10
Tell @ 99
CO2 isn’t an “additional” cause brought in for no reason. It’s part of the GHGs that keep this planet warmer than it otherwise would be and since we’ve been increasing the atmospheric concentration, so too its effect is increasing.
10
Shelly,
I said the anomoly could be an alias, but it could just as easily be real. We really don’t have enough corroborating data to know whether or not such a spike existed. Even so, one potentially anomalous sample out of thousands does not invalidate the data set.
The fact is that changes at a rate in excess of 1C per century are more than just common, they’re the rule. The climate is almost always changing at that rate or more in one direction or another. Longer term (200-500 year) averaging clearly shows that the MWP was warmer than today. Even in absolute terms, the ice cores show it to be so, moreover; the archaeological evidence is even stronger that temperatures were significantly warmer at the time. As Tell pointed out, 1000 year averaging can make the MWP all but disappear, largely because the MWP and LIA cancel at that scale, although you probably want to deny the LIA as well.
If you want to get picky, the average global temperature of the planet varies by over 3C during the course of the year, 3C up and 3C down for a rate of 6C per year, 60C per decade of 600C per century. In January, the average global temperature is about 3-4C cooler than in June, even as the Sun is closer in January. This is because N hemisphere snow and ice which is firmly established by late December, is reflecting enough power to more than offset the increase in solar power caused by the Sun being closer. Can you see how averaging across a period makes periodic variability cancel?
It seems to be that you are the one who wants it both ways. You want contemporary change to be caused by man, yet historical change equal or greater than contemporary change you have no choice but to concede must be natural. You base your man made assertion on the premise that contemporary change is either unusually large or rapid. You can provide no data to support this supposition while you reject data which contradicts it.
George
10
co2isnotevil @ 106
Yeah we do. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1950/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1950/trend
That you wish to claim that as an anomaly and the rest of the data as real and a true indication of variability is simply poor science.
Yeah, just as much as I know having data full of noise makes picknig out the real short term fluctuations impossible.
And whilst you’re at it, can you explain the question you’ve ignored. Why is the “pink dotted 500 year smoothing” line at the 650 mark higher than all the 500 years worth of data around it?
If you can show what that natural cause is I’ll be glad to concede.
At the moment we’re left with a cooling sun and a warming climate.
Attempts to explain the warming over the past 150 years work better when the increased radiation from the additional CO2 is factored into the equation.
No, this seems to be your straw-man argument.
Mine I already stated, that the additional GHGs are causing the additional warming.
And you still seem incapable of answering the question, “How would the cause of a warmer MWP be applicable to today’s warming”?
10
Joanne I completely agree with you that Man Made Global Warming is all about power and money.
However what no-one seems to realise that this and more is part of the Problem-Reaction-Solution paradigm used by the 13 bloodline families to advance their New World Order agenda, their ultimate goal. The names of the 13 families are: Astor, Bundy, Collins, Du-Pont, Freeman, Kennedy, Li, Onassis, Reynolds, Rockerfeller, Rothschild, Russell and Van Duyn, with the Rothschild family being the leaders of this agenda.
http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/bloodlines/index.htm
If anyone here doesn’t know what Problem-Reaction-Solution is it goes like this.
1st You create (covertly) the problem, 2nd there is a reacton (panic) from the population who clamour for a solution for this problem, 3rdly and finally you present your ‘solution’ which believe it or not almost always means the population loses part of their freedoms and the institutions involved gain more power.
I know this sounds like a conspiracy but is that really so when its all true?
For example remember Adolf Hitler and the controversy over his possible Jewish heritage?
Guess what he is 1/4 Jew and guess who that Jew is? Baron Rothschild because his father Alois is the bastard child sired by Baron Rothschild and Maria Anna Schicklgruber, Adolf’s grandmother.
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/hitler_was_a_rothschild.htm
10
Shelly,
Anyone can guess what it was from a sparse set of surface measurements, but as I said, there’s not enough data to know for sure whether or not there may have been a global spike at the time. Besides, we all know that the CRU reconstructions take many controversial liberties with the data.
The pink/magenta line is bigger than the others because it’s drawn to a different scale. Obviously, when you increase the integration period, the p-p variability decreases. Oh wait, this is another of those inconvenient facts about the way averages work that warmists like to ignore.
Your assertion of substantiation is silly. Without demonstrating positive feedback, the best this can do is about 1C per doubling CO2. Since I can demonstrate in many ways that the system is dominated by net negative feedback, any effect will certainly be less than 1C. You need to be able to explain 3C.
We all know that CO2 is a GHG and that varying it’s concentration will have a finite effect, however; the effect of incremental CO2 small, less than 1C for doubling CO2. To explain the CAGW 3C, you need to be able to explain why 1 W/m^2 of incremental GHG forcing power reaching the surface is 8 times more powerful at heating the surface than 1 W/m^2 of solar power reaching the same surface. I can do the math for you to show this, but it would be better if you sit down and do it yourself. It’s just simple arithmetic and basic first principles that I think you can handle.
Your question has been answered many times in many ways. The MWP is applicable to today because it’s not an isolated event. About every 1000 years there’s a warming period in between a pair of cooling periods and if history is any guide to the future, it’s supposed to be warmer than average right now, especially since we are also near a peak of a shorter term 160 year periodicity. The likely explanation for the 160 and 1000 year cycles is solar variability which is unaffected by Earth’s CO2 levels. It also demonstrates that natural influences have no problem duplicating contemporary change and lacking any reason to explain why natural forces acting on climate change should stop and be superseded by man made forces, the only rational explanation is that the current cycle of change, being statistically indistinguishable from hundreds of other cycles of change in the ice cores, in far more likely to be a continuation of a natural cycle than a consequence of man in spite of the fact that CO2 is a GHG and man is adding it to the atmosphere.
Attempts to model the climate work ‘better’ when increasing CO2 is accounted for, but that only counts for a few tenths of the increase, which is about what I would expect. You also must be careful about how it’s accounted for. If it’s simply an effect caused by a slight increase in atmospheric absorption, you can model that relatively accurately and in fact, I do that in my models and I use full 3-d HITRAN based atmospheric simulations and I see a couple of tenths of a degree difference between 280ppm and 400ppm. The problem comes with assumptions about feedback, time constants and other empirical constants driving the heuristics, which seem to have more to do with compensating for other modeling problems than being dictated by any kind of rational physical explanation. With the possible exception of mine, there’s not a single main stream climate model I know of based on first principles alone. All embody many assumptions and contain many empirical dials that need to be ‘tuned’.
George
10
Well, well, well.
Hoodathunkit!
“Non-scientist” finally concedes that ol’ sol could just have something to do with climate (gasp!)…but only a teensy-weensy little bit, mind you.
10
So “shelly” (104),
Your trying to tell us all here that YOUR qualifications are in Quantum Physics, is that correct?
10
Ah! The link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727793.100-the-sun-joins-the-climate-club.html
10
co2isnotevil @ 106
Then you should have added the other scale to the side of the graph otherwise it looks as if the person making the graph is trying to be purposefully deceptive.
This graph http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec/pic.png would make a lot more sense if you plotted the average at the same scales.
But perhaps your point is to be deceptive? Hence why you didn’t answer the question the first time it was asked.
This your way of trying to justify the poor graphing ability? I’m well aware of how avergaes work, hence why I spotted the problem in your graph. Rather than acknowledge the mistake you now try to blame shift. That’s pathetic!
I quite happily admit I do not have the capacity to perform sensitivity studies just as I lack the ability to perform brain surgery.
I’ll leave that for the experts and their attempts to reduce the uncertainty in sensitivty is summarised here in figure 3. http://www.skepticalscience.com/detailed-look-at-climate-sensitivity.html
If you’re so good, I guess there’d be no way the scientists dedicated to the study of climate science could debunk your data and logic.
So where can I download your peer-reviewed work?
And how exactly does it debunk all other studies of climate sensitivity?
10
You are jumping straight to a re-assertion of your original assumption.
The observation is that climate variability today is much the same as it was 1000 years ago or 5000 years ago. If the effect of CO2 really is increasing then that effect is relatively small compared with all of the natural variability that has existed since the earth was young. Nothing to panic about.
The short term fluctuations are real.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/12/22/snow-second-man-freezes-to-death-115875-21916157/
Christmas 2009 and a number of British citizens froze to death, some within reach of their own homes. Are you telling me those people are a bit less dead because the temperature was only “noise” and not part of the bigger picture? Temperatures on Earth do fluctuate, that’s a simple statement of fact.
10
The “warmers” wouldn’t finesse temperature graphs, would they?
You betcha they would.
http://climategate.tv/?p=1085
10
Wendy @ 111
You trying to tell us yur a rugby player? Is that correct?
Tel @ 114
I agree, so far. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/All_palaeotemps.png
The climate can and has changed a lot. Never whilst man has walked the planet will it have changed as much as the IPCC BAU scenario suggests it will.
Of course you’ve got the evidence to show us everything will be alright if the planet warmed by 6 degrees? Right?
Now you’re cranking on about weather not climate. Surely you’ve moved on from that???
10
Shelly,
Are you really complaining about a missing scale on a plot I cranked out in a few seconds in response to a question on a blog? I admit that I need to make some tweaks to my paleo plotting package, but I’ve been concentrating more on the analysis than making it pretty, for example, something I’m working on now is aligning time and magnitude scales among different paleo reconstructions. As you saw, plotting DomeC and Vostok side by side shows a highly nonlinear time misalignment of more than 10K years in both directions across the data set.
Regarding feedback, take a look at this.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sg/sg.html
and this (which has been peer reviewed)
http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html
The SS blog posting you pointed to about climate sensitivity is so riddled with obvious errors and flawed logic it’s hard to know where to begin.
First, there’s the pervasive assumption that the changes in multi-century averages extracted from paleo records are somehow reflective of absolute year to year change integrated over a few years at most. Paleo records with a more detailed time line (i.e multi decade averages, rather than multi-century averages) show unambiguously that temperature change > 1C per century and within a 1-2C window is the rule, not the exception. In rate of change or magnitude, nothing about contemporary climate change is unusual or unexpected.
Second, the ’empirical’ (or should I say ethereal) evidence is primarily based on data sets whose fudge factors have already been revealed to push the data towards warming. These studies all start with exceptionally sparse data and there are so many assumptions and processing steps between the data and reconstruction that any trends revealed by this data should be viewed with extreme skepticism.
Third, the ‘supporting models’ all assume CO2 forcing must be responsible for anything that is not otherwise accounted for. That a model which assumes something predicts it should not be unexpected, nor is it a valid confirmation of the assumed effects.
Forth, measured data from ERBE, ISCCP and other sources of satellite data dispute the findings presented, yet no mention of this data is made. Why is it that you continue to rely on adjusting (fudging), homogenizing (chewing up and spitting out) sparse surface records and low S/N paleo data to justify a trend that doesn’t exist, while at the same time rejecting data with 100% surface and temporal coverage which contradicts the presumed trend?
The only thing I saw that I could agree with was the statement that the climate must respond the same to forcing from the Sun as it does to forcing from CO2. I fully agree with this, yet the little inconvenient fact that in order for the mythical 3C rise to occur, forcing power from CO2 must be treated as being far more powerful than forcing from the Sun. Do the math here. It’s real simple. For 3C of rise, surface power must increase by over 16 W/m^2. From 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing at the top of the troposphere (the IPCC definition), 1.9 W/m^2 reaches the surface, which must be amplified by 8.6 to achieve the desired result. On average, 240 W/m^2 of solar power reaches the surface and on average, the surface emits 384 W/m^2 (287K), which is an amplification factor of only 1.6. If the 8.6 gain assumed for GHG forcing is applied to solar forcing, the surface power would be 2064 W/m^2 for a surface temperature of nearly 437K. If you so strongly believe that doubling CO2 can cause a 3C rise, then why don’t you also believe that the surface temperature should be 437K? Yes, I know the surface is not 437K, but I also know that doubling CO2 will not result in a 3C surface temperature increase.
George
10
I wish you could do one in Southern California, Jo.
10
I might be missing something here but the seminar is advertised as free for those attending the Pacific Rim gig which costs $US350. Where are the free registrations. Probably full now anyway I would imagine.
10
Shelly,
FYI. the p-p variability of the 500 year average during the last 5K years (the missing scale) is 0.7C, -0.5 to +0.2 around the short term current temperatures. This is about 1/2 of the p-p magnitude of the 50 year average (the scale supplied) and about 3.5 times the variability in the 5000 year average (0.2C). Notice how the p-p variability in the average is affected by the term of the average? The display scales were chosen such that the average dT/dt were about the same for both plots. This means that the 500 year average is changing at a rate of about 2 times slower than the 50 year average. We should expect that the dT/dt of the 4 year average (what most CAGW trend plots use) to be twice as large as the dT/dt of the 50 year average. By this metric, current change is unexpectedly small.
George
10
Sure I am. When the scale for the line is missing then the whole point of showing the data is lost. Frankly I can’t see why you’d bother having two different scales for the same data when the averaged data could easily be plotted at the same scale.
But what was worse was the way you firstly ignored my query about it, then tried to blame shift.
If this was a plot Michael Mann produced it’d be all over the internet about how deceptive it was.
Where can I find this published? I “google scholar” for both your name and the title of the web page but neither showed up this content.
Who peer reviewed it? Anyone that has published in climate science?
And this is where I think you go wrong.
I’ve been studying climate science at a purely amateur level for a year now, reading articles and learning more about what how the planet holds together. I openly admit that although I’ve always been interested in science and math, I’ve very little real understanding of how it all works in climate science.
But what I do find is that there seems to be many people that think “oh it’s simple really” and then when you read further into the topic, you come to realise it’s actually much more complex than it originally appeared.
This is why, when it comes to the more complex matter of crunching the numbers, I prefer to let the experts duke it out.
Now if your theory is so simple and obvious (and I am a strong believer in the simple answer usually being right IF it solves the problem), then I think it needs to be published and critiqued by experts in the field.
At the moment all you’re feeding me is more “website blogger” calcs, which whilst they could be correct and valid and totally invalidate AGW theory, at the moment they are nothing but another persons, well intentioned, but amateurish attempt to explain the problem that they themselves may not fully understand.
And yes, simple stuff that even I can see wrong such as poorly plotted graphs, do not help your cause.
I sincerely hope you are right and that climate sensitivity turns out to be a low number because I have serious doubts that the planet being coordinated and unselfish enough to act on this problem.
Until you can, I’ll continue to defer to the experts that have published and show that climate sensitivity is confined to within a certain range with the most likely value of 3 degrees for a doubling of CO2.
10
Shelly,
You’re reaching at straws to find fault where none exists.
The people who reviewed that paper were other skeptics, drawn from both professional and amateur climate scientists. If your metric of published is to appear in Nature, don’t hold your breath. Most of the main stream publications won’t touch research which goes against the ‘consensus’, but the Internet is a publishing medium and the link has gotten thousands of hits. I’ve received numerous emails from people who have stumbled upon it, read it and said that it sealed the deal against CAGW. Try googling ‘testing AGW’.
I never said the climate was simple, only that the falsification of CAGW as a viable hypothesis is simple. You say that you want to defer to experts, well then, you should defer to me. I’ve read every one of the so called ‘expert’ papers you claim support CAGW with high sensitivity, and without exception, every one has glaring problems that should have been caught in peer review. So much for climate science peer review. If you want we can go as far back as the 1984 Hansen paper and the follow on by Schlessinger, who introduced the concept of sensitivity as degrees per W/m^2, rather then the dimensionless ratio of gain, i.e. sensitivity, traditionally defined by Bode and others. The very foundation behind the quantification of sensitivity used by CAGW alarmists is fundamentally and fatally flawed and appears to be no more than a deception using a meaningless metric to hide the inconsistencies I’ve pointed out relative to solar forcing. If it was easy to see that the basic climate system gain relative to energy entering and leaving the surface is only 1.6 and the equivalent gain required for catastrophic CO2 forcing is 8 or more, everyone would question the results. It’s a rather clever deception, and I’ve told Schlessinger as much, but it’s a deception none the less. He stopped communicating with me once it became clear he could not explain away his errors, which is an all too common behavior among warmists.
Back to the specific topic at hand, why don’t you go ask your buddies on SS to verify that the surface power gain (sensitivity) relative to solar power is only 1.6. To help you with the arithmetic, 239 W/m^2 is entering the surface is based on a solar constant of 1366 W/m^2 and an average albedo of 0.3. The 385 W/m^2 leaving is the surface power density based on a 287K average surface temperature using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. Divide the 2 to arrive at the gain, 385/239 = 1.6.
Next, consider that the surface power at 287K is 385 W/m^2 and at 290K (3C higher), it would be 401 W/m^2, which is 16 W/m^2 more. Doubling CO2 results in 3.7 W/m^2 more power absorbed by the atmosphere. Even if all of that got to the surface, the required gain would be 16/3.7, which is 4.3 and about 2.7 times more than the post feedback gain measured for solar power. The actual physics dictates that only about half of the incremental absorption actually gets back to the surface, so the gain must really be closer to 8.
You can cross check this from the IPCC definition of nominal sensitivity being 0.8 K per W/m^2. The difference in surface emitted power between 287K and 288K is 5.4 W/m^2, so even the IPCC heuristic claims a gain of 5.4*0.8 = 4.3, which is the value I calculated based on the assumption that all of the 3.7 W/m^2 of incremental absorption found it’s way back to the surface.
You clearly can not resolve this dilemma and 100% confidant that I will be able to explain why any explanation you get from SS, RC or others will be wrong. I’ve tried to raise this issue on many CAGW sites and it’s usually been censored away.
George
10
Wrong. Even though this list has many papers that don’t really qualify for that title, there’s plenty of examples here that go against the AGW consensus.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/800-peer-reviewed-papers-to-deny/
The internet allows anyone to say anything, which is great. That freedom also means you are free to make mistakes.
Sure peer-reviewed research is no silver bullet solution, mistakes will be made, but over time the science that gathers more evidence eventually wins out over science that cannot be supported or is found to be erroroneous.
This statement simply smacks of self-delusion.
You haven’t published anything in climate science, think that getting thousands of hits and numerous emails means your theory is validated.
Try googling “alien abduction pregnant” – do you believe those websites too?
10
Which is exactly I did in my graph of the same data, and it shows the same features George was talking about. Rather than address the key issue you pick at nits instead.
10
Shelly,
You can’t answer my question, so you resort to angry insults and typical warmist behavior. I’ve noticed 2 things, first, you put your trust in magical arguments proposed by so called ‘experts’ and second, while you proclaim an interest in science, you are incapable of following a simple argument based on non controversial, first principles physics, so you really have no choice but to trust others. You’ve just made a poor choice about who you should trust and don’t seem to want to, or can’t, understand the basics, which are relatively simple, for yourself.
Your anger seems motivated by a feeling of helplessness as the foundation of your cherished CAGW theory crumbles. Lets summarize.
First, you can’t dispute the paleo record which shows larger and faster changes in slower moving long term averages than we measure in fast moving, short term contemporary averages, even when compared to fudged data, such as that used by Mann.
Second, strong contradictory evidence shows that a 3C rise from doubling CO2 requires a closed loop system gain at the surface of more than 8, while the measured closed loop system gain is closer to 1.6.
Third, you’ve been shown the first factor of 2 error in the IPCC quantification of sensitivity. This is the assumption that all of the 3.7 W/m^2 of power incrementally absorbed by the atmosphere is returned to the surface, where in fact, only half finds it’s way back and the remainder is re-emitted into space, where power sent up and down is at wavelengths in the transparent regions of the atmosphere.
A second factor of 2 arises because they fail to distinguish between clear sky and cloudy sky. The surface is 2/3 covered by clouds, which trap and reflect almost all surface power, rather than the much smaller fraction trapped by GHG’s, therefore, changes in GHG concentrations between clouds and the surface makes almost no difference, relative to the Earth’s energy balance and the steady state surface temperature profile (there’s a small effect from CO2 between clouds and space and a second order effect arising from the non unit emissivity of clouds).
The last big error in the IPCC definition of sensitivity comes from assuming that the net feedback is positive, which if you’ve paid attention. you will realize is not the case and the net feedback is demonstrably negative at the current average surface temperature, close to neutral at 0C and is only slightly positive at temperatures below 0C. Yes, the N pole has a larger reaction to changing temperatures (in both directions!), but the S pole, not so much. This is because the S pole is not undermined by an ocean which can transfer heat in and out far more efficiently and quickly.
If this all makes you mad, then that’s a problem you will need to deal with. The cold hard truth is that the IPCC has been over estimating the effects of incremental CO2 by between a factor of 4 and 8 and they damn well know it. If you want to vent anger and frustration, get mad at them for deceiving you, don’t get mad at me for enlightening you.
George
10
So what? We are due for another glaciation and all historic data suggests that it will come, as it has regularly come every 100k years. Then we will see the climate changing, and we will deal with it as best we can.
Besides, the Venus of Willendorf is approx 24000 years old, and there’s modern women walking around with plausibly similar body shape. Based on whatever ice-core you choose, whoever caved that figurine was very familiar with snow and freezing conditions, so your statement about climate stability whilst “man walked the planet” is just plain wrong.
Now we could talk all day about IPCC predictions, but first you will have to explain to me where they predict 6 degrees of warming, and by which year?
After explaining that, how about you have a go at a systematic description exactly how weather is different to climate, and how we can clearly identify one from the other?
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Tel,
I suspect we are heading back into a realm of shorter glaciation cycles. If you examine the current interglacial, it’s significantly cooler than any other during the last 500K years. The higher amplitude interglacials are associated with the 100-120K cycles, while the lower amplitude ones are associated with the 44K year cycles that appeared 500K to 1M years ago.
There’s a 100-120K year forcing influence (orbital eccentricity variability), a 44K influence (axis variability) and a 22K influence (precession of perihelion), the max heating influence of each all aligned during the last interglacial and the max cooling influences all aligned during the depth of the most recent glacial epoch, although spread out a little. This interglacial, the influences have been partly aligned, with the peaks of each many thousands of years apart, rather than all near the same millennium, as was the case during the last one. This has the effect of both cooling and lengthening the current interglacial. The down side is the depth of the next ice age is likely to be within about 20K years, but it will not be as cold as the last one, which as ice ages go, was about as deep as they get. None the less, the glacial ice will still likely encroach into the US, Northern Europe and most certainly, Canada and Russia.
If I lived in Canada or Russia and thought that CO2 was as powerful as the IPCC claims, I would be demanding that the world pump as much into the atmosphere as possible to fend of the next ice age. Of course, it’s not that powerful and the cold will come anyway. There is an upside though, which is rather than the 0.6-0.8C effect doubling CO2 would have today, during the next ice age, doubling CO2 will have an effect closer to 0.8-1.0C owing to increased net gain at lower average temperatures.
George
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This news won’t surprise the “regulars” here in these crazy times, but read it and weep anyway.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/09/shouting-out-loud.html
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Tel #124
Another example of blame shifting. Think that the incorrect plotting of an average that makes it look like the MWP is warmer than what the data says is NOT nit picking. It’s very specifically pointing out the poor quality of his graph.
As for your plot that you presented earlier, http://lnx-bsp.net/DomeC_holocene_zoom.png , this quite clearly shows the most recent temps were warmer than all else including the MWP (when looking at the 50 or 100 average, looking at longer averages meaans you’re starting to use an average longer than for which we’ve been emitting CO2).
But again I have to point out that even if the MWP was warmer, you’d still be left with having to show that the cause of that warming is also the cause of the warming we see today.
Just because its warmed in the past doesn’t mean that CO2 isn’t causing the warming today.
co2isnotevil #135
I don’t answer your question because I am not qualified to do so. The same as I wouldn’t answer a physicists question about quarks.
I resort to “warmist” behaviour like defering to experts because they will know more about the subject than me. They do not all agree so, as with most sciences, the truth of the subject eventually weeds out the poor science and the truth becomes evident over time.
The truth is not usually to be found on blogger websites. I’m sorry you find my comments about websites lacking credibility but that you think I am angry says more about your interpretation than it does about my state of mind.
I comment here quite cheerfully and enjoy pointing out where your logic fails.
Perhaps you’re upset that I pointed out how you couldn’t get a simple average plotted properly? How this might reflect upon the quality of the rest of your equations? Or do you not like the fact that I demonstrated that you fail to publish your “science” in a credible climate science journal, but instead whack it on some website and claim this somehow makes it true.
I don’t dispute that tghe climate can change rapidly. I do request that if and when these changes occur there is a cause of them, be it a change in the solar output or atmospheric darkening via meteor impact or something else perhaps?
If you wish to show that past causes are also causing the current warming, then please do so. Jumping up and down repeating “the climate changes” isn’t progressing the debate.
And where’s your published peer-reviewed research to support this? I’m kind of bored with blogger posts on the topic.
I’m not mad at all. A bit over the whole, “hey I’ve put my calcs on a website and therefore I’m an expert” kind of debate from you but hey, this seems like all you have.
So what, the temp wasn’t warmer back then.
I didn’t say the IPCC predicted 6 degrees, my understanding is that we could head towards that with 200+ years. Regardless, looking at the IPCC report shows that the top of A1FI projection could reach +6 degrees.
Are you seriously telling me you don’t know the difference?
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Oh really? For someone so careful about fine details you seem mighty caviler when it suits.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Please note the red line 5 year running mean, not 50, not 100, but an order of magnitude smaller. So go average out the last 100 years of the GISTEMP and see how it compares with the 100 year smoothing in Dome-C, the MWP is bigger. Try it with 50 year averages and the MWP is bigger again because the peaks of the 50 year smoothing jump higher than the 100 year smoothing (as the Central Limit Theorem says they must).
Of course, the Dome-C data may contain non-random aliases caused by seasonal variation being sampled, or it may contain genuine random noise in the measuring equipment. But then again, so could GISTEMP (especially when you consider the many systematic non-random adjustments that have been inserted into the surface temperature data set).
Within the limits of uncertainty, the MWP looks larger (when you compare apples with apples).
As I’ve already said, the presumption of all science is that the universe does not change it’s rules arbitrarily. If it’s natural for the sun to rise every morning, we don’t go looking for a new reason why it rose today as compared with all the other days.
It doesn’t mean that Bilbo the Hobit isn’t causing the warming today either, but why deliberately go for a more complicated explanation when natural variation would suffice?
Most of the rest of your argument is just argument by authority. So if we aren’t sufficient authority for you to accept anything we say, then what are you discussing here? You’re only logical purpose would be an attempt to browbeat us into bowing down to some authority chosen by you. By the way, how do you go about selecting an authority? I presume you are not qualified to understand the matter, thus you have no way of deciding which authority is best. You really do need to get a second authority to help you pick out the best choice of first authority. Hmmm, but how to pick the second authority?
May I suggest you go back the ultimate authority, that being the Catholic Church. Forget about science, too many questions, go back to the good old days when all the answers were known.
No, it was about 5 or 6 degrees colder, which is quite a large change, thus your statement made in #116 above remains demonstrably wrong.
Oh please, stop hedging around and spell it out in simple terms. There’s non-authorities out here dying to know the answer.
I’ll ask the question again more formally, given any observed data series, how can I calculate what is the climate component and what is the weather component?
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co2isnotevil
The irony.
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Pointing out ridiculous is it to think that web bloggers have any sort of credibility.
Still waiting for Nova to publish ANYTHING in climate science, or anything at all for that matter!!
All you get here is more op-ed blogger half-baked attaempts at conducting science.
Hmmm .. weblogger that can write whatever rubbish they like – or a scientific research paper than is reviewed by experts in their field. Not really that difficult a decision now is it.
Wrong. Local change in the Antarctic ice core was greater than global change.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/All_palaeotemps.png
The more you talk the more obvious it is that you’re out of your depth.
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Pointing out ridiculous is it to think that web bloggers have any sort of credibility.
Still waiting for Nova to publish ANYTHING in climate science, or anything at all for that matter!!
All you get here is more op-ed blogger half-baked attaempts at conducting science.
Hmmm .. weblogger that can write whatever rubbish they like – or a scientific research paper than is reviewed by experts in their field. Not really that difficult a decision now is it.
Wrong. Local change in the Antarctic ice core was greater than global change.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/All_palaeotemps.png
The more you talk the more obvious it is that you’re out of your depth.
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Shelly,
Initially, I thought you might have a scientific mind, but sadly, I was mistaken and discussing the science with you is like discussing evolution with someone who takes the Bible literally. You seem to have been afflicted with the same disease common to many who have succumbed to ideology over reason and which turns the gray matter between their ears to mush. A symptom of this disease is a complete and unconditional disrespect for first principle physics, the scientific method and an extreme inability to follow logical arguments if the conclusions are not what you want to hear. It’s kind of like a communicable version of Turrets Syndrome, where the inflicted can’t help but blurt out nonsense which mostly parrots those who they have caught the disease from. The depth of your infection is evident from your comment that I’ve quoted below.
It’s not up to me to prove that the climate is behaving the same way it’s been doing so for billions of years. It’s you that needs to prove why natural forces acting on the climate no longer apply and that only man’s actions can change the climate, moreover; you must prove that increasing temperatures are even harmful in the first place. After all, the Earth’s been warming and cooling for billions of years and surprise, surprise, it’s still here. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and the claim that doubling CO2 will cause a 3C surface temperature rise is as extraordinary as claims get. It shouldn’t even be up to me to falsify this, I do so only to point out how trivially easy it is to do so.
Your assertions are as silly as stating that in the past, tides were caused by gravitational influences from the Sun and Moon, but now, tides are the result of the sum of the wakes coming from man made ships. Your logic is really this absurd and part of the disease is not recognizing the depth of your self delusion. At least when the bozo’s you consider authoritative have no choice but to accept the reality that incremental CO2 is somewhere between benign and helpful to both man and the climate, you won’t be all that surprised.
George
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I think you’ll find it is you that are failing the test. Of course if you had evidence for this revolutionary idea then you be able to publish your results and be the next genius … oops, there’s that stumbling block again. “I’m a genius; if only the rest of the world would take notice!!”
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/physicists2.png
No my assertion is that the known effect of CO2 as a GHG is getting larger.
In your analogy that would be like saying IF the moon got larger, it would have a greater effect on the tides.
So back to my question, how is it you think 6 degrees of warming would be beneficial? What studies do you have that show this or are you still in denial about the amount of change that occurred since 24,000 years ago?
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Shelly,
Six degrees? You’ve apparently found some powerful hallucinogens to help you cope with the effects of your PBR syndrome.
First of all, the equatorial climate doesn’t vary much, even as the Sun swings from tropic to tropic. The reason is the self limiting effect of evaporating water on temperature, which as it evaporates, also cools. Since about 1/3 of the planet is between the tropics where temperatures are already saturated at the water vapor limit of about 300K, your 6 degrees would need to be 9 or more degrees to affect a 6C planet wide increase. The Antarctic (bottom 20 degrees of latitude) has an average temperature of -32C and peak average summer time high of -20C. so even in your worst case, Arctic ice would not melt, so sea levels are safe and the reflection from it’s ice will be preserved. The top 20 degrees of the Arctic has an average temperature of -13C, so the ice here is also safe, despite all the bogus noise about melting Arctic ice during the summer and it’s influence on reflectivity will be mostly preserved. There will be a small reduction in permafrost and permanent glaciers which will make more land available for agriculture. Increasing temperatures also increase total rainfall. Weather patterns may migrate along with the locations of desert and rainforest, however; increased rain will on average, reduce the amount of desert and increase the amount of rain forest. Increased winter snow will boost water supplies and available hydro resources. Increased temperatures means less energy will be required to heat homes.
While I can agree with you that whatever effect incremental CO2 has on the climate is getting bigger, a million times zero is still zero and twice an insignificant amount is only a little bit bigger insignificant amount.
Not withstanding the fact that your 6C rise is even more absurd than the IPCC’s hypothetical 3C rise, civilization, agriculture and world wide biomass have always prospered when the climate has been warm and have always waned during naturally cold periods. It was the MWP that brought the world out of the Dark Ages. Biomass prefers warmth and the delayed response of CO2 to temperature seen in the ice core record is an indicator of planet wide biomass. The more biomass there is, the more biomass is decomposing into CO2 and CH4. The signature is clear in the ice cores and other paleo records. Even the hysteresis effects can be explained by biological processes.
The kind of heating and cooling we see at the extremes of the Earth’s climate represent the limits of the dynamic range of the system. The multi-century average during the last interglacial was about 3C warmer than this one, so that’s about as warm as we can ever expect the climate to get, regardless of CO2 levels. The real question you must ask yourself is what harm would a climate 6C colder have on man and the planet. I can assure that it’s far worse that 6C or even just 3C warmer.
George
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Snowball Earth disagrees with you.
Now your talking crazy. You think Arctic ice won’t melt because the temp at the other end of the planet has an average temp of -32C. That’s just difficult to fathom your reasoning there. And why you think Arctic sea ice affects sea level much I don’t know. Most climatologists think the sea ice won’t affect sea levels when it melts because it’s already displacing most of the water it sits in anyway. Again the more you say, the less comfortable I am that your “theory” will stand up to any kind of scrutiny.
Antarctic land based ice is another story. It will affect sea levels when it melts, just as the glaciers will.
Only a couple of posts back you were shown to be lacking in your knowledge of how local warming in the Antarctic can be much greater than the global average.
Here’s a reminder. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/All_palaeotemps.png . Note the Vostok is overlaid against the global temp.
Here’s some more info. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091119141039.htm
And by posting the numbers that you do, you seem to be implying that we need to raise Antarctic temps to zero in order for sea level rise to be affected. In fact we can affect the more northern areas, and indeed are doing so now, with only a few degrees of warming.
Safe? Like the way it keeps going downwards? http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_hires.png
Bogus noise? You mean from the experts in that field. http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/qthinice.asp
No doubt you consider yourself an expert in their field too and able to debunk their analysis with a few equations on a website? 😉
Can you please cite the report that supports this and how it considers the rest of the world as well? I’d like to be sure the “small reduction” isn’t offset by a “large increase” of unuseable land elsewhere.
And floods too.
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Shelly,
NRDC are only experts in political lobbying. And arguably; experts at rent-seeking.
“Snowball Earth” sounds very impressive. Hollywood in fact. Now, tell us when that was in effect and what other factors are thought to have came into effect to produce it.
The heat engine that is the major component of the climate system on this planet obeys the same thermodynamic rules as every other heat engine. In essence, it will do its best to get rid of the heat.
Keep in mind that the planet is always cooling. It cools more from the warmer regions than the cold. And even in the warmer regions, it only heats up for a short part of the day. Most of the planet’s surface is a nett radiator of heat, most of the time.
You will not find anybody with sufficient appreciation of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics who will argue that the temperate zones will not heat more rapidly than the tropics under a notional “global warming” scenario; simply because that is basic thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. And as they warm more, their radiative power increases by the 4th power.
The planet is however not just a simple heat engine. Not only are the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics chaotic, there is life on the planet. Life that uses energy. And life that alters drastically the physical (thermodynamic) characteristic of elements of the climate system. Even over short time spans.
There is only a deluded/naive/arrogant minority of climate scientists who believe that climate models have any worthwhile predictive quality.
And then there are thousands who exploit those scientists to feather their own nest and to increase their political power.
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I hope to attend with another person, hopefully there will be vacancies.
I couldn’t see a location written anywhere aside from Sydney ?
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Oh no it’s full we can’t get in 🙁
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Shelly,
The freezing point of water is 0C. If you trace out the extent of permanent ice and permafrost, it roughly coincides with the isotherm representing an average yearly temperature of 0C. In the N hemisphere, this isotherm is about 35 degrees South of the pole, while in the S hemisphere, it’s about 38 degrees North of the pole. What part of “temperature over 0C -> no permanent ice, temperatures below 0C -> permanent ice” don’t you get?
And yes, the nrdc is a source of bogus noise. Their #1 priority is to combat global warming. Are you really so naive to believe that anything they say will be objective? You really need to examine the sources of your so called ‘authoritative’ data.
I should also point out that during the previous interglacial, the multi-century global average temperature was about 3C warmer than today (are you going to deny this as well?) During that time, Antarctic ice was still present, as we have cores going back over a million years. In Greenland, cores go back to well before the last interglacial, although there is some potential evidence uncovered of million+ year old plant remnants at the bottom of the cores, which says that if it gets warm enough parts of Greenland could melt and support a biosphere, as parts did during the MWP. Gore’s bogus sea level predictions were based on all Antarctic ice melting and a number of arithmetic errors. Antarctica isn’t going ‘green’ any time soon for 2 important reasons. First, much of Antarctica’s surface is well over 2000m above sea level, which even at mid latitudes is high enough to sustain year round ice. Second, and perhaps more important, is that Antarctica is mostly dark for 6 months of the year where it’s average monthly temperature drops below -40C at the depth of winter. I should also point out that most of Greenland is also mostly dark for 6 months of the year which will make it’s ice difficult to melt as well.
If the Arctic and/or Antarctic warmed substantially, the rest of the planet would need to cool to compensate. This is because the surface would be radiating more power away from the planet than it receives and equilibrium would be achieved only if the rest of the planet got cooler. The tiny 1.5% increase in total atmospheric absorption caused by doubling CO2 won’t change the equilibrium by much, if at all. I’ll bet you didn’t know the effect on total absorption was this small. Here’s the math (I mean arithmetic). The surface emits about 390 W/m^2. Of this, the average atmospheric absorption (including between the surface and clouds) is about 60%, or about 234 W/m^2. An increase of 3.7 W/m^2 is only 1.5% of the total. Some of the really foolish CAWG’ers like to claim that 80% or more is captured by the atmosphere (they confuse clouds with atmospheric absorption). Of course, this makes the magnitude of the change even smaller. Some will complain that 3.7 is a larger fraction of the power that does leave. Well, lets do some more arithmetic. Of the 390 W/m^2 of surface power, 156 W/m^2 passes through the atmosphere without absorption. Half of the absorbed power is also radiated into space, so the total radiated into space is 156 + 234/2 = 273 W/m^2. 3.7 W/m^2 is only 1.4% of the power that would be leaving, moreover; since half of the 3.7 leaves the planet anyway, the actual reduction is even smaller.
It really boggles the mind how such a basic concept like Conservation of Energy can be so callously ignored by the CAGW’ers. GHG’s do not create energy. All of the energy reflected back to the surface by GHG’s originated from the Sun. Only the Sun adds appreciable energy to the planet and the global average temperature is determined by whatever is required for the amount of power leaving the planet to be equal to the amount entering. At least this part of how the climate works is very simple, yet those who promote CAGW seem ignorant of this physical truth.
George
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So you guys are conspiracy theorists then because the data coming from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency also shows the ice extent declining, just as NSIDC does.
Interesting insight into your psych right there!!
@Bernd Felsche, you can read up on snowball earth in scientific literature, without there being a Bruce Willis character anywhere. Do you have a point with all that talk about heat or did you just want to get some things off your mind?
@co2isnotevil, well done on the understanding of what the freezing point is. Now as the isotherm moves toward the poles under a warming climate, are you going to get more melt or less? Can you work that out? What part don’t you get?
It seems that beating you over the head with evidence is doing no good but here we go anyway.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/All_palaeotemps.png
Every single interglacial comes in around 1 degree higher, nowhere near the 3 degrees you mention. Why do you continue to confuse local temps with global ones?
No climate scientist claimed it would all melt. If it did we’d be in for oceans 60+m higher than now.
A small fraction of Antarctic ice would be enough to cause serious flooding in many parts of the world. Your concept of more rainfall being a positive aspect of global warming wouldn’t be so positive in those situations.
So this didn’t happen?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100712154438.htm
Another global conspiracy coverup?
I’ll bet you don’t know how much credibility I place in blogger calculations.
It really boggles the mind to think you believe that climate scientists are not aware of a basic concept like Conservation of Energy.
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Shelly,
The point isn’t whether the extents of the polar ice change on a seasonal basis and that the min/max varies on a year by year basis, but whether or not these changes are at all unusual.
Again, you need to be careful about your sources. Almost anything from Wikipedia that has anything to so with the climate has been tainted by William Connolley and must be viewed with a skeptical eye. You arrogantly pass off this plot as authoritative and yet you were complaining about a labeling omission in one of my plots that made absolutely no difference to the way it was interpreted? You have a brain, you should really try and use it.
You will no doubt come back again whining about conspiracy theories, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about idiots with radical environmental agendas who do whatever they can to distort the science in favor of a hypothesis that has otherwise been falsified in many ways by many people. They hold on the the flawed hypothesis because it comprises the foundation for everything they believe. Let’s look at data and you can see for yourself how wrong you are.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/vostok.gif
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec.gif
In the Vostok core, the prior interglacial is about 3C warmer than the current one and in the DomeC core, it’s almost 5C warmer. In both plots, the dotted like closely reflects the average temperature of the current interglacial. Don’t you pay attention to real data? Are you so accustomed to seeing fudged data that you don’t believe data unless it’s been heavily processed? Or is this flaw of yours related to your inability to follow logical arguments when they lead where you don’t want to do?
You also seem to complain about what you call ‘blog calculations’. All I’ve presented is some simple arithmetic, based on well known and non controversial physics and data that anyone who has taken high school level science should be able to understand. Do you deny that the solar constant is about 1366 W/m^2? Do you deny that the global average surface temperature is around 288K? Do you deny that the Stefan-Boltzmann Law is valid? Are you one of those people that must continue to argue your agenda even though you’ve lost on every single point? At least I can justify all of my arithmetic, unlike the ‘blog calculations’ seen on RC and other alarmist sites.
If you can’t handle simple arithmetic, what are you doing trying to argue the science? You are so far over your head that you are drowning in your own bullshit. You seem consumed with self inflicted guilt, fear and anguish over a problem that doesn’t exist all the while, you refuse to acknowledge incontrovertible evidence that your fears are unfounded. Yes I know that this is the goal of the scare campaign, but unlike you, my ivy league science and engineering degrees have provided me with the skills to recognize junk science and more importantly, to be able to think for myself. I also have better things to do, so even though I feel somewhat sorry for you, I’m done with you.
I’m sure you will need to get a last word in, so don’t hold your breath for a reply.
George
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Amen to your last sentence George.
We just know that the screeching, squawking harridan will materialize yet again to spew her bile and vitriol.
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Back in #136 George tried to say “the equatorial climate doesn’t vary much” but you had to argue against that. Now you keep waving around that “All_palaeotemps” graph. Let me just quote from the guy who did that graph:
I emphasized a bit, you might want to read that carefully. The heading on the graph is “Temperature of Planet Earth” — wow, the whole Earth, right here in a graph. Except that Pleistocene section contains a sample size of 1, just one measurement at just one place on Earth. Presuming the ice core accurately measures maybe a square kilometer of surface, that would be a coverage rate of 0.0000002%
But don’t worry, the poor coverage has been compensated by multiplying the values by “about the usual one-half”, which translates to sticking a wet finger in the air. Why do they choose one half? Because the implication is that “the equatorial climate doesn’t vary much”, oh wait, that just what George was saying. But you have to argue against George rather than listening to him because he’s just a blogger, not one of your chosen Authorities.
How do you choose those Authorities? You won’t say, it’s a secret, shhhh!
Maybe Tim Flannery is suitable authority, he got an award or something so he is clearly better than a blogger, with statements like this one:
Anyhow, it seems Flannery has recently rediscovered the concept of evolution and adaptability. But wait, that’s what the bloggers have been saying for ten years or more. Damn those bloggers! Always getting the right answer before they are told.
By the way, I can’t turn up tomorrow, have been bogged down with work stuff.
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True you shouldn’t assume anything from Wikipedia is the truth. I use it because it conveniently has the graphs readily at hand rather than having to delve into the research papers themselves.
Wikipedia does provide references for you to follow.
Again I point out that these are LOCAL temps, not global ones.
Even you highlight how two sources, relatively close to each other disagree by 2 degrees!! How can they both be representing global change? How bloody obvious is this?
Justify? To yourself perhaps.
There’s that whole peer-reviewed reseach thingy again.
You may think you’re right, but you haven’t been able to write a research paper, haven’t had it peer reviewed, haven’t published so for all we know your theory is abolute rubbish.
HA. Says the guy that can’t distinguish between local measurements of temperature and global ones.
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Shelly,
You will never understand the arguments until you think for yourself how the energy transfers through the heat engine of the climate system. Understand it well enough to coherently explain it to somebody else not just recite.
“Snowball Earth” is a hypothesis. It’s not even a theory. And it’s disputable that it actually happened and the mechanisms that led to it if it did happen. And it is quite irrelevant to the climate experience by humans and likely to be experienced by our fortunate progeny. That is simply because the continents were in a different place 650 million years ago when the period is hypothesized to have occurred They were largely part of Rodinia. Continents influence how much of the heat is transferred through the climate system because they block ocean currents. Having largely unobstructed oceans facilitates the transfer of heat to “temperate” regions from where it can radiate more effectively.
vis e.g. The Early Coast of the Pacific Northwest (750-200 million years ago)
The movement of tectonic plates has stabilized climate; made it less sensitive to perturbations by restricting internal heat transfer to regions of greater radiative efficiency and for heat to accumulate in the oceans as a consequence.
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It was an easy point to dispute given that the planet has been much cooler before, including the tropics. I didn’t want George to be under the false impression that it can’t change much.
His words are … “your 6 degrees would need to be 9 or more degrees to affect a 6C planet wide increase.”. A 6 degree global increase is exactly that – it might work out to be 3 in the tropics and 9 at the poles. I wasn’t trying to say the increase will be equally distributed.
I’m glad you acknowledge the ice core as a local measurement for temperature, although it does now contracdict your earlier statement in #130 when you say the climate was 5 or degrees colder 24,000 years ago. Or are you suggesting man inhabited Antarctica at this point in time?
Do you have a reference for this?
I did say. Those that publish their work in their field of expertise under the peer-reviewed system are more credible than any web-blogger.
Maybe he is. You still might want to check that his predictions were backed up by peer-reviewed research rather than accepting them on face value.
Interestingly he also said
Very relevant to tomorrows meeting.
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J. Hansen et al.,“Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should
Humanity Aim?”,Open Atmospheric Science Journal, Volume 2, 18 June 2008, Supplementary Material page vi.
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The GiG is here.
Thank you. It is held at Sheraton on the Park starting at 8am.
Kelsey Zahourek
+1 202.290.7646
currently mobile
10
Thanks very much Wilson Fletcher. For anyone wanting a direct link, I found it here http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOASCJ/2008/00000002/00000001/217TOASCJ.SGM
On page vi of the Supplementary Material.pdf there is a diagram (S5), showing “Estimated global temperature change based on measurements at a single point or, in the case of the deep ocean, a near-global stack
of ocean drilling sites: Antarctica Dome C [S8], Warm Pool [S9], deep ocean [26].”
It goes on to say.
So Tel, with regard to your comment “which translates to sticking a wet finger in the air. Why do they choose one half?”. I hope this information provided by Wilson Fletcher helps answer your question.
That phrase “finger in the air” takes on new meaning now doesn’t it.
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I have no doubt that the people who lived around the region that has the modern day name of Willendorf never went anywhere near the tropics. You are right that we have no ice core from exactly that region, so all we have is an estimate, which is all anyone has on paleo temperatures. I’d still trust an estimate of past temperature based on one measurement, rather than IPCC guesstimates of future temperatures based on less than that.
But the point is, they survived the last glaciation, humans were adaptable, and we still are today.
My reference for “about the usual one-half” comes from your own reference above. Don’t you check your own references before you post them up? Where are you cutting and pasting your material from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png
If you like Hansen’s method, then take the 8 degrees of temperature change seen at the poles, divide it by half to get 4 then multiply by two thirds to get 2.7 degrees change at the tropics. There you have it — the tropics don’t change very much. Which was absolutely no comfort to the people living in ice-age Northern Europe where they did cope with the brunt of temperature change during the last glaciation. Whoever was living in the tropics at that time probably barely noticed.
When I see a Tim Flannery statement like “an increase actually represents an overall increase since the industrial revolution of 25 per cent – from 15 to 20 degrees” I don’t need to go scrambling around with peer review. Anyone with even a high school knowledge of physics knows that calculating percentage increase between two temperatures in degrees C is meaningless. Flannery no doubt knows this as well but just shrugs and talks rubbish to the media because he has no respect for either them or their readers. Fumble a few figures around and the dummies will be impressed.
Anyhow, now that you have settled on “the peer review process” as basis for your authority, since you use the work “the” you imply there is only one such process, could you provide a reference to where the process is described?
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I don’t understand how you can read that paper and not consider Tel’s summation to be highly accurate.
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So they were in Austria and you’ve no idea what local temperature change they experienced or how rapidly it changed. Yet you claimed they adapted and survived so it’s all ok.
Humans survived the last glaciation, but we didn’t start to thrive until about 10,000 years ago.
Nor have we ever lived in temps that we will start to approach in the next 100 years under BAU conditions.
So that’s why I asked earlier, where’s the evidence that we can survive with a global increase of 6 degrees?
24,000 years ago there were perhaps a few million people. Did half of them die from the global change? We wouldn’t know.
Today we’ve billions of people that depend on the planet to keep them fed.
The tropics don’t change AS much.
When I first read about a few degrees increase it didn’t really make a lot of impact until I was told that the average temp is 15 degrees.
To say it’s a 25% increase (actually shouldn’t it be 33%, a 5 increase on 15) seems trivial to me but certainly more relevant to the public that trying to express the change in Kelvin.
I would say the usual “skeptic” argument that we only emit 3% of the CO2 is far worse because it is suggesting that we’re not responsible (or perhaps trying to avoid saying we are responsible) for the accumulation in the atmosphere.
I suggest you read up on the specific terms with the publisher of your choice.
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I would like to add “Well done Shelly!”
And this page is a great resource for debating with bloggers.
It’s so funny when I challenge denialists (mainly on http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz) to show me some peer-reviewed science, they always resort to a blog.
What’s wrong with a magazine, one listed in the ISI Master Journal List?
Final question: Is my old stamping ground, The University of Auckland, embarrassed by de Freitas’ antics?
They should be.
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So, Luc; Get a laugh out of this list of 850 peer-reviewed papers supporting skepticism of CAGW.
Or, is the fact that a list of peer-reviewed papers is on a blog enough to disqualify it?
What am I supposed to be “denying” anyway? I do deny that current climate models have demonstrated any significant predictive skill (and I have peer-reviewed support for that). Since the entire basis for emergency action is based on predictions of climate models, the fact that they have failed to show any predictive skill kind of takes the wind out of the alarmist’s sails.
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Actually, Shelly, let’s stick to peer-reviewed studies of CO2 in the atmosphere. There are two kinds of such studies:
1) Empirical measurements of CO2 lifetimes in the atmosphere. There have been 36 such studies in the last 50 years (listed here, on page 13 of Segalstad’s paper). The CO2 lifetimes found range from 2 to 12.5 years, with an average of ~5 years.
2)Hypothetical models of CO2 lifetimes, of which there are hundreds with lifetimes ranging from 100’s to 1000’s of years. The model papers inevitably reference only other model papers and universally ignore the actual measurements of CO2 lifetime (discussion by Tom Segalstad here).
The difference between these two kinds of estimates is important: If the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is on the order of 5 years, then it is a simple calculation to show that Human emissions can, at most, be responsible for 3-4% of the current inventory, and are not responsible for the steady rise seen in the last 50 years. Not only do the actual measurements show that this is the case, the lack of a lag between hemispheres (when the vast majority of emissions are in the N. hemisphere, and there is a 2-3 year mixing lag between hemispheres) also shows that it is not Human emissions that are causing the rise in CO2.
Since we aren’t causing CO2 to rise, we also can’t stop it by suppressing emissions.
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BobC
So you are telling me that every government worthy of the title, every national academy of science, almost, but not quite, 100% of climate researchers and every single report attributing species and environmental stress and change to climate change due to anthropogenic warming is just wrong. Plain wrong.
If that is what you are saying, why should I believe you?
And there is quite a bit on Bob Carter here and here
Quite a bit!
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Luc:
1) I backed up my statements with data and logical reasoning (as described in the papers I referenced).
2) You did not respond to either the data or logic — instead you answered with a logical fallacy, “Argument from Authority”. (In fact, as well as being fallacious, your statement is BS. You can’t back up your claims of universal consensus with any actual facts.)
Appealing to authority cannot prove anything right or wrong — the only thing it indicates is that you can’t think for yourself.
Did you even look at the list of peer reviewed papers I referenced? I doubt it. Have you looked at any of the data or arguments on this site? (Here is a convenient collection.) Again, I doubt it.
Why indeed? If you would think for yourself, (and performed some due diligence) you wouldn’t need to blindly believe anybody.
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Luc:
BTY: I’m not Bob Carter.
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Bob
Bob Carter was one of the speakers at this event – see above.
I could have picked another, like de Freitas, but Carter seemed appropriate in this case 🙂
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Bob
See the “More skeptics than ever…” thread for my rebuttal of your Appeal to Authority allegation.
And yes, I’ve seen that list before.
The IPCC is the most informative and authoritative (yes, THAT word!) source of information. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I have deep respect for the New Zealand scientists who take part in that project – without additional remuneration, I should add.
My only beef with the IPCC is that it is already behind the latest science when it is published. In today’s computerised age, it could update as it goes and post every paper they have under consideration on their website, in real time.
Other than that, Bob, I can trump your 850 papers with thousands confirming AGW.
Do you really want to play that game?
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Luc Hansen @162,
We’ve all seen that, “…thousands…” of papers nonsense before. So cut right to the chase. Where is the empirical evidence? In your thousands of papers do you have evidence linking CO2 with warming or do you just have opinion, guesswork and money grubbing politicians along with their money grubbing stooges in “science”?
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Luc #155. You need to justify your term “denalists” or apologize. Name and explain one paper that shows empirical evidence that increasing CO2 will lead to warming greater than 1.5 degrees.
No one else has done it yet. Your comments will be moderated and held until this point is resolved.
“Deniers” deny something. There is no paper we will not discuss.
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Luc, I linked to the list of 850 papers, because you claimed you didn’t know of any peer-reviewed papers that challenged CAGW.
Now you say:
So, I guess you were lying when you said:
This statement is particularly childish:
Are you really so dumb as to think that facts are decided by vote? The game that I have been trying to play is to discuss the evidence, which you are apparently incapable of doing.
For example, the empirical studies of CO2 atmospheric lifetime that I referenced in comment #157 (and that show said lifetime to be about 5 years) have never been shown to be in error — indeed they have never been challenged in the reviewed literature. In the absence of any coherent challenge, we must assume they are correct. The inescapable conclusion is that Humans cannot (by adjusting their fossil fuel use) significantly affect CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Come on Luc — try to construct a logical answer to that (and avoid using defamatory labels, so maybe your post will pass moderation).
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Jo, I didn’t realise you were all so sensitive here (please excuse the accidental pun). However, I think you would agree that some of your commenters are pretty robust in their comments, too.
Nevertheless, here is a link to a paper you asked for (one of very many which define 1.5C as the lower bound of climate sensitivity, the definition of which is in the abstract): http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n1/abs/ngeo724.html
I found it quickly here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=118&&n=193
Here’s another: Hansen, J., A. Lacis, R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, and H. Wilson, 1993: How sensitive is the world’s climate? Natl. Geog. Soc. Res. Exploration, 9, 142-158; PDF found here http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha02800o
And I presume you are using this or a similar definition of “empirical”: The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation. A central concept in modern science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. (Wiki) (emphasis added).
If I may, I would like to briefly reply to the challenge of BobC, above.
BobC, my reference to peer reviewed articles should have included, and I do apologise for for the omission, but this is just a blog, that I meant in credible ISI listed journals. In answer to your challenge, I present: http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html
As with Jo’s demand for “empirical” evidence, I’m not sure if this meets your test of having “never to be shown to be in error”. Perhaps “they have never been challenged in the reviewed literature” because they are just so wrong as to have passed unnoticed.
In closing, and in reply to the accusation that I have defamed you by my use of the term “denialist”, I present this:
To me, you, BobC, and others on this site fit that definition. But if you disagree, and I offended you, I certainly apologise because I actually thought it was a label you would wear with pride. No offense was intended.
Generally, I find the people I debate with who by and large fit the definition above are not in it commercial reasons. I actually think many are sincere, but misguided.
I do hope I have the opportunity to continue our discussion.
Have a nice day. It’s a beautiful sunny day here in Auckland.
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Luc Hansen @166,
I didn’t look at skepticalscience. Did you know that their intent is to mislead you? Probably not. I didn’t look at pubs.giss.nasa either. These are not sources of honest information.
I did look into the one I quoted above. Now if I went out to buy a car and the salesman’s pitch included as much equivocation, as many “not well understoods” and he opened his pitch with this kind of weasel worded language,
I would tell him he should sell soap instead. Then I’d buy a bicycle because I’d know that the car I was contemplating wasn’t based on sound understanding or engineering.
Now in fairness I will allow that you put faith in this stuff honestly. But doesn’t their own uncertainty and equivocation about AGW bother you? It certainly does bother me.
Do you want know what turned me from a bemused but more or less detached observer to an instant skeptic? I became a skeptic the very first time I heard the argument that the matter was settled and no more debate was possible. This is not the statement of a scientist. A scientist never considers anything to be settled or beyond debate. A scientist is always looking over his shoulder to see who might be turning his best work into fodder for the office shredder by pointing out the fatal flaw.
My own field is computer science but I knew better than to swallow that argument.
I hate to be dramatic but this kind of statement — no more debate is possible — comes from the dictator who wants to force something on you, willing or not.
After realizing what was going on I started to research the matter. And the farther I went the stronger my conviction became that the skeptical arguments simply overwhelmed the pro AGW arguments.
The reason, at least for me, to dislike the term denier or denialist is because it’s a pejorative intended to make skeptics look inflexible and immovable on the subject, blind to the truth. You quoted them yourself. But I will venture to say that not one regular contributor here would hesitate to look at honest empirical evidence supporting AGW. And if it could stand up under examination, I at least, would change my position. There is a difference between skepticism and blindness.
You really should spend time reading on this site before you jump in with a complaint. You really should compare what you see at nature, realclimate, skepticalscience, et al, with what you will find on a host of other sites like those Joanne so conveniently lists in the right sidebar in every thread on her blog. You will then be equipped to debate the matter.
I’m quite serious when saying you should be afraid. But you’re afraid of the wrong people.
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Roy
Thank you for your reply.
I think you will find that the “The science is settled” statement relates to the thesis that the observed average global temperature increase is mainly caused by human fossil fuel emissions. That’s as settled as, say, the fact of evolution.
Beyond that, though, uncertainties abound, as does debate.
Where you see equivocation, I see honesty.
Where you claim “skepticism”, I see a blanket refusal to accept the conclusions of our most brilliant climate scientists.
Where you see “blindness”, I claim the application of ordinary commonsense and a prudent deferral to the Precautionary Principle – ie what if they are right?
I suggest you give your government your wholehearted support as they try, unusually for politicians, many would think, to actually do the right thing and provide the price signals required to create a cleaner, quieter, healthier, low-carbon world.
I look forward to it.
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The list of 850 papers I linked includes 40 from Nature. Since you reference Nature yourself, I assume it is on the “approved” list.
There is a complete list of referenced journals at the end of the paper list — I haven’t cross-checked them with the “credible ISI listed journals” yet, but that would be easy if you would supply that list (I can’t predict what constitutes a “credible” journal for you — For all I know, you mean “any paper that has been personally approved by James Hansen”.)
It is somewhat hard to believe that you are really interested in a discussion, given that you obviously didn’t look at the list before launching an irrelevant attack on it.
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Thanks for that link, Luc. I might have had a hard time coming up with a single paper that illustrated my point so well. This is not, strictly speaking, a research paper, but is an editorial review of the state of knowledge about carbon dioxide atmospheric lifetimes. Given that it appears in Nature, we can assume that it should be a through review.
Here’s what I claimed:
The article you linked references a number of model results. However, nowhere in this article is it even hinted at that the quantity in question — CO2 atmospheric lifetime — has actually been measured as reported in dozens of published studies. The existence of these studies is not even hinted at, much less referenced or a refutation attempted. They are simply ignored.
None of these empirical studies found a lifetime greater than 12.5 years (the average was ~5 years), yet the Nature article implies that this value is best determined by modeling. Nowhere do they admit that the models, however much they agree with each other, are falsified by actual data.
(When I am asked to review papers in my field, one of the first things I look for is whether prior work has been adequately referenced and acknowledged. If not, I recommend not to publish until this defect is rectified. As far as I can see, the peer review process in climate science is broken — probably hijacked by a clique, as evidenced in the ClimateGate emails.)
You say:
On the contrary, it perfectly illustrates my claim that no one has even tried to show that the measurements of CO2 lifetime are in error, but are universally ignored as if they didn’t exist.
Also, you claim:
You’re getting desperate, Luc. If you had glanced at my links, you would have seen that 7 of the CO2 lifetime studies were published in Nature. Now you are claiming that Nature published something so wrong that they didn’t bother publishing any challenges?
I would be embarrassed to be associated with an argument that lame.
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Ok Luc, I just looked at the abstract of the paper you linked:
The authors of this paper determine climate sensitivity (to CO2) by the following method:
1) They look at the correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperature in the Pliocene (4.5 million years ago). Note that this data is not high enough resolution to decide whether CO2 leads temperature, or vice versa.
2) They assume that changes in CO2 concentration were the only cause of temperature changes. (“Here we reconstruct atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations for the early and middle Pliocene,… to estimate Earth-system climate sensitivity from a fully equilibrated state of the planet.”)
3) They then conclude (by dividing temperature change by the log of CO2 change) that climate sensitivity (to a doubling of CO2) is (or has been) “significantly higher than 1.5 – 4.5 deg C.
We don’t even know what all the significant climate forcings are today — e.g. Changes in albedo measured over the last several decades have caused variable forcings several times as great as the potential forcing caused by doubling CO2 — and these changes have correlated well with temperature. We don’t know why albedo is changing. If you were to play a similar trick to what the authors of your linked paper played — assume that albedo changes are entirely the cause of temperature changes, you could calculate a climate sensitivity (translated to a doubling of CO2) of about 0.7 deg C.
Assuming that there were no unknown climate forcings in the Pliocene which could have changed at the same time as the CO2 (perhaps even driving the CO2 changes, as temperature changes have for the last 400,000 years, according to ice core data), is obviously not justified by any logic or data and hence renders their conclusion meaningless.
To claim that this (> 4.5 deg C sensitivity) is a firm conclusion based on empirical data is delusional. What it is is slight of hand played with empirical data to get a desired result.
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