@damocles

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Looks like More Water Vapor Woes For Climate Modelers.

So we have a lengthy account of a science report with a dumb conclusion!

It is a familiar denialist theme of course. Every book on climate change I've read and most science papers explore areas where models need improving, these often from the people doing the modeling. Why expect anything else? Usually the models have proven too conservative. "Climate change is proceeding faster than predicted" is a widespread theme in reports of the last few years, particularly those coming out of the International Polar Year(s).

But you have your own climate change model, as does everyone else, a set of opinions, beliefs, observations usually undisciplined by any scientific rigour. It is part of your world view which most people mistakenly call reality or something like that. How is that superior to a model put together by a large group of trained scientists, mathematicians and programmers from a great deal of thought, analysis, data and physics? That a model is on a very large computer as well means the ability to handle reliably and accurately a huge number of calculations. More important it enables many people to share the development of the climate view being fed into it so hypotheses can be tested and anomalies shown up, leading to further research.

Noel

@Tomas

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That is not what i would call ac tive The sunspots are already fading away again anyways and solar flux is nearly flat again. Even Nasa thinks this cycle will peak at around 80-90ssn which is a very weak cycle compared to previous ones

Comparing to the last 2 years, which had no sunspots, it's more active. How active will be interesting to watch.

@Dandy

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Its height started shrinking, while its diameter at the bottom became bigger and bigger. It seemed to "flow apart", . . .

LOL
Aha! Now something is explained. When I was in my teens a friend visited us who was rather large and barrel chested. I used to assemble toy trucks for sale in the district he came from. We would get him to stand on them and get towed around to demonstrate the wooden wheels I made on his lathe would not break or fall off - unlike anything sold in the stores. My younger brother innocently asked him why his stomach had become so big. He claimed his chest had fallen because of his growing age!

A few years later when we lived once again by a beach, on a calm day I asserted I could row out without capsize through three lines of breakers in a Norwegian praam I had built (small squarish plywood dinghy). He decided the test would be more impressive if he came too. With barely any freeboard at the stern that was a challenge. I was celebrating successful negotiation of the outermost line of breakers when I saw to my dismay he had lost balance and instead of leveraging his massive torso with his powerful legs he reached out with his right hand for the gunwale. Over we went.

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When I was still at school, our physics teacher once performed an experiment with a bar of ice. He plugged it half way through a springe made from thin wire and put each end of the ice bar on a table edge. Finally he fixed a weight at the springe below the ice bar.

Standard fare at school for us too. So, as observed in West Antarctica, in a basin under a huge weight of ice there may be a lake under enormous pressure. Now and then a lake will be squirted out, under the ice to another lake, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away, the moving bulge in the ice being readily mapped via satellite altimetry.

Noel

100% renewable electric power generation beckons in NZ

Once we had 100% from hydro. Now that plus a few wind farms still gives us about 70% renewable. The geologists are now hoping to get us back to 100% with
deeper drilling for geothermal resources:

The place is a little over 2 hours drive from Auckland. They talk about the crust being thin but here it is about 100km thick. Nevertheless the area about to be included in an Auckland super-city sports at least 80 extinct volcanoes with hot springs round the edges. Where they are drilling the scene is different, and the smell.

Noel

@BrianK

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BrianK wrote: @Tomas Quote: That is not what i would call ac tive The sunspots are already fading away again anyways and solar flux is nearly flat again. Even Nasa thinks this cycle will peak at around 80-90ssn which is a very weak cycle compared to previous ones Comparing to the last 2 years, which had no sunspots, it's more active. How active will be interesting to watch.

We have had sunspots before during this minimum. We had some promising sunspots back in june for example, but then we suddenly had one of the longest sunspot streaks ever recorded.
It is not the first time they claimed sun were returning to "normal".
It will be a weak cycle according to nasa either way.
it stands now between a weak cycle or a full blown grand minimum like dalton or maunder.
But yeah.. this is the most promising sunspots we have had for a while, but it is still far from active.


Only time will tell.. It sure is interesting times at least

Last edited by Tomas on 29-Sep-2009 at 02:07 PM.

@NoelFuller

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NoelFuller wrote: @damocles Quote: Looks like More Water Vapor Woes For Climate Modelers. So we have a lengthy account of a science report with a dumb conclusion!

Not sure what to make of this. Some anti-GW here believe that G&T scientifically proved the atmosphere doesn't matter. Therefore this other anti-GW claiming things based on the atmosphere must indeed be wrong.

@BrianK

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Not sure what to make of this. Some anti-GW here believe that G&T scientifically proved the atmosphere doesn't matter. Therefore this other anti-GW claiming things based on the atmosphere must indeed be wrong.

They do not have to be consistent except in being always wrong :)

Noel

Boxer Kerry Senate bill in USA

I'm agreeably surprised - A pre-view
http://climateprogress.org/2009/09/29/kerry-boxer-climate-clean-energy-jobs-bill-2020-target/#more-12000

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The Boxer-Kerry bill is now the only game in town. If you want a clean energy future with millions of clean energy jobs, this is the bill.  If you want a chance at a global climate deal and hence a chance at preserving a livable climate, this is the bill.  If you want to shut down most of the dirty coal plants in this country in two decades, this is the bill. We're all going to have to fight as hard as possible to keep this bill as strong as possible.  This bill is key to taking back control of America's future from Big Oil, the corporate polluters and their lobbyists, and you can be sure they are going to fight as hard - and as dirty - as possible to kill it.

Noel

@NoelFuller

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NoelFuller wrote: @Dandy Quote: Its height started shrinking, while its diameter at the bottom became bigger and bigger. It seemed to "flow apart", . . . ... He claimed his chest had fallen because of his growing age! ... Over we went.

So his chest fell even deeper...


Quote:

NoelFuller wrote: Quote: When I was still at school, our physics teacher once performed an experiment with a bar of ice. He plugged it half way through a springe made from thin wire and put each end of the ice bar on a table edge. Finally he fixed a weight at the springe below the ice bar. Standard fare at school for us too. So, as observed in West Antarctica, in a basin under a huge weight of ice there may be a lake under enormous pressure. Now and then a lake will be squirted out, under the ice to another lake, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away, the moving bulge in the ice being readily mapped via satellite altimetry.

Yeah - I know.
I think there is a report on this somewhere linked in this thread...

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@NoelFuller

Quote:

They do not have to be consistent except in being always wrong :)

Melting glaciers erase climate record.

"Some cores that Thompson’s group have extracted from Mt. Kilimanjaro, for instance, reveal snow-deposition records going back more than 11,000 years...Within 12 years, he says, Kilimanjaro will likely be glacier-free....
..(In Peru) Melting recently uncovered one wetland region that had been buried under ice for more than 5,000 years, revealing some 50 different members of the botanical community that once thrived there..."

So we're seeing glaciers uncovering evidence which hasn't been seen in 5,000 to 11,000 years. I want to see the anti-GW prove why the MWP, as they state was hotter than we are now, didn't melt the glaciers as far back as we're seeing presently.

@BrianK

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So we're seeing glaciers uncovering evidence which hasn't been seen in 5,000 to 11,000 years. I want to see the anti-GW prove why the MWP, as they state was hotter than we are now, didn't melt the glaciers as far back as we're seeing presently.

Quite, the climate researchers, of which we have a number, have been drilling in our glaciers too. However, the comments on the article you linked indicated a level of ignorance that cannot be argued with. Compare them with the intelligence and awareness evidenced by Kenyans in the comments attached to this BBC article on the Mau forest, well illustrated:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8057316.stm

I'll quote the first comment:

Quote:

I come from the environs of Mau forests. In the 1990s when I was young, there was a land selling frenzy within the neighbourhood in preference for cheap or free forest land in Mau. People used to boast of virgin soils and reliable rains in the Mau and to spice the deal, it was either free or sold at at throw away price. Then, it used to rain a lot in our area. I remember very long rains in April and December of every year. Farming was booming as farmers could know when to plant their crops. These days, it hardly rains. Droughts are the order of the day. The last time I saw the real rains was 1998. Gone are the streams that used to flow down our land, gone is the swamp that we used to hunt birds in my child hood. The Kamwamba dam we used to fish and swim and watch ducks swim is dying. I get sad a lot whenever I visit my rural home. I don't know what our children will inherit if all these continue. Obviously a barren desert! Our people are now poor and starving in a land once so affluent. I get more sad when politicians politicise a purely environmental issue, when the global concern is global warming, they choose to think in terms of the next election. Don't these people read the international press? Even though there will be social consequences when the evictees finally arrive in our village, I think we should consider the greater good! Kiprotich, Nairobi, Kenya

Noel

@NoelFuller

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Quite, the climate researchers, of which we have a number, have been drilling in our glaciers too. However, the comments on the article you linked indicated a level of ignorance that cannot be argued with

I agree. It's the standard anti-gw tripe. I think their approach is, if we say it loud and frequently enough it'll mean it's true.

Good Kenya example. About 14 months ago I quite a job where one of my coworkers was from Kenya. In discussing his homeland he has the same story.

Here is something that should tell us what's happening with Cosmic Rays and global cooling/warming debate, we are at a
high.

Oh, and in case this hasn't been shown yet, the Briffa tree ring data set was 12 trees. Boy, throw in the other 2,000 trees, sure does look different now.

_________________
Dammy

@damocles

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Oh, and in case this hasn't been shown yet, the Briffa tree ring data set was 12 trees. Boy, throw in the other 2,000 trees, sure does look different now.

Another denialist beatup that introduces unacceptable data from short lived trees - described by one as just noise, and ignores the fact that the so-called "hockey sticks" don't depend at all on the yamal tree ring record, or the sub-set Briffa used, though his use was quite proper, just totally misrepresented by McIntyre. Shame on those news media that published his baseless argument without doing any study to end their ignorance.

The graph of the two thousand year arctic lake record recently published did not depend on tree rings at all but the tree ring record (from 1000's of trees) matched fairly closely the sediment isotope record that graph was based on. McIntyre's latest denialist effusion is discussed at the link below. Also shown are many independent proxy temperature graphs, (without tree ring data) that show that recent warming has not been matched by any other warm period in at least two thousand years:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/#more-1184

Throw out all tree ring data and the temperature record is not changed at all.

Humans are responsible for the recent temperature rise, swamping all other effects, including Cosmic ray effects - which I think of as a clutching at straws.

Noel

Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427281.300-posthuman-earth-how-the-planet-will-recover-from-us.html?full=true

A New Scientist excursion into extinctions, hot times in the past and a hot future if we can't get a handle on the climate. From the past it seems that it takes about 10 million years of "hanging on' survival before biodiversity starts to get the upper hand after a major extinction.

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"It's a rats, weeds and ####roaches kind of world," says Jablonski.

Noel

@NoelFuller

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NoelFuller wrote: Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427281.300-posthuman-earth-how-the-planet-will-recover-from-us.html?full=true A New Scientist excursion into extinctions, hot times in the past and a hot future if we can't get a handle on the climate. From the past it seems that it takes about 10 million years of "hanging on' survival before biodiversity starts to get the upper hand after a major extinction. Quote: "It's a rats, weeds and ####roaches kind of world," says Jablonski. Noel

Very interesting article.

"...
However, today's carbon spike differs from that of the late Palaeocene in one important way: our planet is much cooler than it was back then, so warming is likely to have a more profound effect. During the late Palaeocene, the world was warm and largely ice-free. Now we have bright, shiny ice caps which reflect sunlight back into space. These will melt, giving way to dark, energy-absorbing rock and soil. And with all that meltwater, sea levels will rise and permafrost will thaw more rapidly, boosting warming still further.
..."

What might be interesting here is:
Did they take into account that if the arctic ice cap melts entirely e.g. the gulf strem will most likely be disrupted?

As the gulf stream is the hot-water heating system of e.g. Europe, its disappearance might lead to a cooling here, which in turn could lead to an resurrection of the polar ice cap and so re-start the gulf stream...

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

Interesting rebuttal to Briffa's response.

_________________
Dammy

@Dandy

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What might be interesting here is: Did they take into account that if the arctic ice cap melts entirely e.g. the gulf strem will most likely be disrupted? As the gulf stream is the hot-water heating system of e.g. Europe, its disappearance might lead to a cooling here, which in turn could lead to an resurrection of the polar ice cap and so re-start the gulf stream...

One is effectively attempting to construct a climate model to discuss this. The more I ponder it the more complex it seems.

For starters the Atlantic conveyor has enormous momentum so though it may oscillate about it is not going to stop anytime soon. The arctic sea ice is only one of its drivers though important. The disappearance of ice from the arctic in summer is not going to stop it. If ice is all gone in winter too the planet will be in a very hot era indeed, as it has been in the distant past.

I have read that the Gulf Stream is worth about 10°C to Europe. A few years back a mistaken notion that the stream had weakened 30% led to discussion that Europe might be in for a mini ice age but that ceased when better instrumentation revealed that the stream had merely wobbled.

If the ocean curents come to a standstill this would represent the release of the huge stores of methane from the sea bed as well as stagnation resulting in a huge extinction, as has happened in the past. A very long period of weathering through many milankovitch cycles would be required to restore ice at the poles so I am somewhat doubtful that failure of the gulf stream and cooling of Europe would automatically restart the process. Too much methane and CO2 will have been released for that to happen.

Noel

Further to the discussion on ice thinning

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=40569

NASA's image of the day (Oct 3) - Images of Antarctica and Greenland overlaid with the satellite data on thinning including a lengthy discussion:

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These images illustrate changes to the edges of the ice sheets between 2003 and 2007 as observed by ICESat. Places where glaciers thinned from lost ice over time are red, while areas where glaciers or the ice sheet gained ice are blue. Areas that were not a part of the analysis are gray.

Noel

@damocles

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Interesting rebuttal to Briffa's response.

And did you read the link I sent you? It's got to 6 pages now. McIntyre's so called rebuttal is not interesting at all.

Noel