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Global warming discussion III

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macdoc said:
There are so many jobs in renewables and the materials costs are way way down now.
In Canada there are now more new jobs being created in renewables than in the fossil sector.
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I think strategic thinking in the market is going to drive things rather than direction from the government and diplomatic level. The logic is inexorable.

This clearly is China's century.
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Nobody's getting a whole century to themselves again.

First world will focus on better and hopefully the US will get out of its "frontier" mindset and start husbanding resources instead of exploiting them.
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That won't happen while the political system is largely in thrall to primary producers, who've received a great boost recently from fracking. Which has seen more capital sunk than has been extracted so far, and now the oil price has tanked (following the gas price tanking). Loads of capital that isn't contributing to anybody's future and the prospect of boom towns going bust overnight.

Nothing new there, then.

Japan and EU are both moving towards a low population growth with a focus on sustainable with Sweden and Norway setting standards.
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The EU has been spread so thin it barely means anything any more. Even the euro-zone is an asylum. I find it all a great disappointment.

I can't see the UK avoiding some serious difficulty.
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Too late for that. Our government beggars description in its every aspect, and the outer kingdoms of the Union are stirring. And in that I include such kingdoms as Northumbria and Westmoreland.
 
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Well finally a bit of positive news and negative feedback ;)

NASA finds good news on forests and carbon dioxide
Date: January 2, 2015
Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Summary:
A new NASA-led study shows that tropical forests may be absorbing far more carbon dioxide than many scientists thought, in response to rising atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas. The study estimates that tropical forests absorb 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of a total global absorption of 2.5 billion -- more than is absorbed by forests in Canada, Siberia and other northern regions, called boreal forests.
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more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150102084700.htm

now if we just can stop cutting them down....:rolleyes:
 
A good article on the nexus of science and politics in Australia

This could be the year of extinction for the climate-change denier

Two farmers well understand the impacts and risks of climate change – and also the difficulty of convincing others in their industry.

Bill Yates, a farmer from Garah in northern NSW, serves as a "Climate Champion" as part of the federally funded Managing Climate Variability R&D program and is unhappy with the body's title.

"You're allowed to talk about climate change in terms of variability but change is change," the 65-year-old, third-generation farmer said.

His region has been hard hit by drought but it is the rising temperatures, particularly in spring, that is most concerning. Wheat and other crops are flowering earlier, reducing their output for harvest even when the rains do come, he says.

"The really smart farmers are sowing earlier because it's warming up," he said, adding though that wheat may be unviable in his area within 30 years.
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bit_pattern said:
A good article on the nexus of science and politics in Australia

This could be the year of extinction for the climate-change denier
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When even US Republican politicians are falling back on "I'm not a scientist" and Abbott's minions are resorting to "climate variability", outright denial is clearly falling out of fashion.

I think we'll be hearing the phrase "climate variability" a lot more in the coming year as the right tries belatedly to get in on the policy debate without explicitly conceding the scientific case for AGW. Their intent will remain the same, of course : inhibit the transition to renewables as much and as long as possible wherever they have influence.
 
The Tea Party is not in the pocket of the fossil fools so they may make life hell for the corrupt Repuglies and the funders for fossil fuel projects are pulling out in droves.
Questions will be asked why the subsidies for fossil fuels when the returns are so low.
Many fracking companies are now underwater for projects that relied on high oil prices to be viable.

Falling Oil Price slows US Fracking By STEVE AUSTIN for OIL-PRICE.NET, 2014/12/08
Recent falls in oil prices alter the financial dynamics of oil extraction. Certain sources of oil entail lower costs than others. For example, conventional pumped oil extraction in high pressure onshore wells costs relatively little to set up and operate, whereas remote oil fields beneath icy seas require specialized equipment and override wages to locate and extract. When the oil price rises, more difficult oil fields become economically viable, when the price falls, the margins of extraction remove the viability of certain sources. Hydraulic fracturing in the United States has provided an unexpected source of oil. However, it has contributed to an oversupply that could soon cause fracking production to shut down; as a matter of fact applications for new U.S. well permits dropped by nearly half last month. US oil production is slowing down because of low oil prices and today we'll explain the reasons for that decline and explore the solutions.

Economics 101

When there is more of a product available for sale than there is demand, then buyers can shop around for lower prices. Different suppliers have different financing models and so those with loans to pay back soon will panic and drop their prices drastically to make sure they sell all of their stock quickly. Those who decide to tough it out soon find their unsold wares piling up. Sooner or later, they have to decide to stop increasing their inventory of unsold product, and shut down production.

The classic market involves many different producers in many parts of the world. Each has different priorities and strategies. However, economic theory applies to all markets and sooner or later the same pattern of actions emerges. The weakest go out of business, or mothball their operations, while the strongest sail through the crisis with only reduced profit margins to show any damage of the period of oversupply. In the oil business, the strongest players are the Gulf states and the strongest of all is Saudi Arabia.

Bubberlin' Crude

Just like Jed Clampett of the Beverley Hillbillies, the Saudis need to do little more than stick a pipe in the ground and pump to get their oil into barrels. Crude oil literally oozes out of the ground and once the Saudis break through the top layer of sediments, the sheer pressure caused by the vast quantities of compressed underground oil means they often don't even need to pump very hard. Under such conditions, start up costs for new wells are minimal. Moreover the Saudis have such cash reserves that they don't have to go to any banks for loans. Saudi Aramco, the state-run oil company can pick and choose which engineering partners they will send along to do all the work for them, and oil extractors compete fiercely for the privilege, forcing Saudi costs down further.
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http://oil-price.net/en/articles/falling-oil-price-slows-us-fracking.php

The Saudi's have the world by the balls and are squeezing their competition none too gently.
Good for consumers tho....fuel getting to 95 cents a litre here and 60 cents a litre in the US.

It has put a stake in the heart of the oil sands .....a blood sucking noisome vampire best be gone.
 
Kestrel said:
The real question is will they continue to vote as if climate change was a myth?
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By accepting climate variability politicians can vote for precautionary adaptation while opposing mitigation because, heck, climate has always varied so there's nothing we can do to stop it. It's no skin of an oil billionaire's nose if taxpayers shell out for, say, sea defences since they're not taxpayers in any real sense themselves. Threaten their subsidies or freedom of action, though, and they'll call their minions to arms.
 
Trakar said:
I suspect it was the warmest year on record for the planet, at least in modern record.
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You can suspect all you want but the fact is ...

The Great Pause lengthens again

Figure 1. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 3 months since October 1996.
 
Haig said:
You can suspect all you want but the fact is ...

The Great Pause lengthens again
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_3823654a948f72e0e4.png[/qimg]
Figure 1. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 3 months since October 1996.
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You might as well be quoting the Enquirer, although they do have a better record than Watts.

We are still waiting on a complete tabulation of data from Dec. but it looks like a new record has been set and is simply awaiting confirmation.

http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nightly-news/2014-officially-the-warmest-year-on-record-378458691995
 
WUWT and Monckton always use RSS to show no warming. I wonder why that is? Interestingly Roy Spencer doesn't seem to have a lot of faith in it's accuracy. This is a quote from his website.

Anyway, my UAH cohort and boss John Christy, who does the detailed matching between satellites, is pretty convinced that the RSS data is undergoing spurious cooling because RSS is still using the old NOAA-15 satellite which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality. We have not used NOAA-15 for trend information in years…we use the NASA Aqua AMSU, since that satellite carries extra fuel to maintain a precise orbit.

Of course, this explanation is just our speculation at this point, and more work would need to be done to determine whether this is the case. The RSS folks are our friends, and we both are interested in building the best possible datasets.

But, until the discrepancy is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, those of you who REALLY REALLY need the global temperature record to show as little warming as possible might want to consider jumping ship, and switch from the UAH to RSS dataset.

If that's the case then it's more than a little dishonest of the science deniers to keep using it as their only measure of whether we are experiencing global warming or not.
 
CapelDodger said:
Arrhenius thought Sweden could do with a bit of warming but I don't think he'd really thought it through :).
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It is a lot nicer here when it is warm, so I can stoically accept it! :rolleyes: Thinking stops here! Three monkeys stance activated!
 
Haig said:
Figure 1. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 3 months since October 1996.
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Haig, have you never looked at that graph and thought that 1998 looks a bit off? Was it really so much warmer than today?

What is it about this particular measure (RSS), as opposed to the others which do show warming, that makes you especially confident in it?

(Some of you may think I've answered that question in the posing of it, but be kind. Let the lad have his say.)
 
Haig said:
You can suspect all you want but the fact is ...
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Sorry, Haig, but the fact is The Great Pause never existed regardless of the bad science at WUWT and ignorance of the economist Christopher Monckton :eek: !
This is a version of the planet has to warmed since 1998 climate myth.
What has global warming done since 1998?
The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 - global warming is still happening. Nevertheless, surface temperatures show much internal variability due to heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. 1998 was an unusually hot year due to a strong El Nino.
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Monckton has:
Our latest topical graph shows the least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean lower-troposphere dataset for as far back as it is possible to go and still find a zero trend.
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which is even worse - there will be no "zero trend" found by going back since every month would have positive and negative trends. What he really means is "a small trend which we will treat as zero and not tell you about"!
ETA: Monckton even quotes Dr Carl Mears, the senior research scientist at RSS, stating the obvious fact that picking a date just before the 1998 El Nino will skew the trend to be smaller
"...The denialists really like to fit trends starting in 1997, so that the huge 1997-98 ENSO event is at the start of their time series, resulting in a linear fit with the smallest possible slope.”
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followed by an unsupported assertion that the 2010 el Niño will somehow offset that bias.

And then there is a bit of ignorance:
The satellite datasets are based on measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers ...
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Satellites do not lower platinum resistance thermometers into the atmosphere to measure temperatures :) . They contain platinum resistance thermometers to calibrate the instruments they use to collect data that is used to calculate temperatures. This is why a single satellite's data will be more precise than surface measurements - but not necessarily more accurate because the temperatures are not as directly measured. When you have multiple satellites then combining their data is complex.

Monckton seems to have misunderstood a blog by Roy Spencer where he basically advocates ignoring surface data for satellite data. Spencer goes on about the thermometer data being "patchy" while ignoring the "patchiness" of satellite data. Yes the coverage is better but satellites get replaced, models used to calculate temperatures are updated, instruments are changed!
Have a look at MSU / AMSU Figure. 1 Plot of which satellites are used for each month to construct the MSU/AMSU TLS dataset.. This is the equivalent of adding and removing weather stations at a location every few years.
 
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What was the earth's average temp in 1999?
2013?

I can't find 1999 with google.
This is all I can find
Recent mean global surface temperatures

Below are annual mean global surface temperatures in °C, according to NOAA's annual state of the climate reports from 2004 to 2013. All correct to 1 decimal place.

2004, 14.4,
2005, 14.5,
2006, 14.4,
2007, 14.5
2008, 14.4
2009, 14.5
2010, 14.5,
2011, 14.4
2012, 14.5,
2013, 14.5

Below are annual mean global surface temperatures in °C from 1900 to 1997, according to NOAA's The climate of 1997. All correct to 1 decimal place.

1900, 16.4
1901, 16.3
1902, 16.2
1903, 16.0
1904, 16.0
1905, 16.1
1906, 16.2
1907, 16.0
1908, 16.1
1909, 16.1
1910, 16.1
1911, 16.1
1912, 16.1
1913, 16.2
1914, 16.3
1915, 16.4
1916, 16.2
1917, 16.1
1918, 16.2
1919, 16.3
1920, 16.2
1921, 16.3
1922, 16.2
1923, 16.2
1924, 16.2
1925, 16.3
1926, 16.4
1927, 16.3
1928, 16.3
1929, 16.2
1930, 16.4
1931, 16.4
1932, 16.4
1933, 16.3
1934, 16.4
1935, 16.3
1936, 16.4
1937, 16.5
1938, 16.6
1939, 16.5
1940, 16.4
1941, 16.5
1942, 16.5
1943, 16.5
1944, 16.6
1945, 16.5
1946, 16.5
1947, 16.4
1948, 16.4
1949, 16.4
1950, 16.4
1951, 16.5
1952, 16.5
1953, 16.6
1954, 16.3
1955, 16.3
1956, 16.3
1957, 16.5
1958, 16.6
1959, 16.5
1960, 16.5
1961, 16.5
1962, 16.5
1963, 16.5
1964, 16.3
1965, 16.3
1966, 16.5
1967, 16.4
1968, 16.4
1969, 16.5
1970, 16.5
1971, 16.3
1972, 16.4
1973, 16.6
1974, 16.3
1975, 16.4
1976, 16.3
1977, 16.5
1978, 16.5
1979, 16.6
1980, 16.6
1981, 16.6
1982, 16.6
1983, 16.8
1984, 16.5
1985, 16.5
1986, 16.6
1987, 16.8
1988, 16.7
1989, 16.7
1990, 16.8
1991, 16.8
1992, 16.6
1993, 16.6
1994, 16.7
1995, 16.8
1996, 16.7
1997, 16.9
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