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Merged AGW without HADCRUT3

BenBurch said:
Was DogB seriously saying my list was not a punch-list of the things you need to falsify AGW?
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Of course it is but so what? Defining a limited list of things that would falsify AGW has no valid use. If there's one, then the theory is falsifiable. What possible use could making a limited list be?

Unless of course you can list every method of falsification. That would be a big list.

BenBurch said:
I don't suppose he had the wit to provide his own list?
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I had the wit to know yours was useless.

Oh and perhaps someone could mention to Ben that if he wants to have a debate with me it might behove him to take his fingers out of his ears – or he could go back to his lint thing.
 
DogB said:
Because our population is growing (you might have noticed) and new dams and recycling are politically unacceptable. What's left?
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No, climate change is also on their mind. I have talked to an employee of a water company and it is one of the big things they consider as they plan for the future. Runoff has plummetted, which has nothing to do with new dams, population or recylcing.
 
a_unique_person said:
No, climate change is also on their mind. I have talked to an employee of a water company and it is one of the big things they consider as they plan for the future. Runoff has plummetted, which has nothing to do with new dams, population or recylcing.
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Plummeted? Seriously?

I know some areas have had problems. For example there was a step change in the Murray Darling catchment in 1940 that has never recovered, but I doubt you can blame that on AGW. As a general rule the annual rainfall has been improving very slightly over the last hundred years or so.
 
Runoff probably has plummeted. We've been making a huge effort in our designs of hardtop surfaces to prevent runoff because runoff is hugely destructive to the terrain, and the damage it causes is expensive to clean up.

Open-square parking lots, runoff reducing drainage, and increased emphasis on open designs of ground means that we're designing to avoid the stormwater problems we've had in the past.

This is not necessarily a negative.
 
GreyICE said:
Runoff probably has plummeted. We've been making a huge effort in our designs of hardtop surfaces to prevent runoff because runoff is hugely destructive to the terrain, and the damage it causes is expensive to clean up.

Open-square parking lots, runoff reducing drainage, and increased emphasis on open designs of ground means that we're designing to avoid the stormwater problems we've had in the past.

This is not necessarily a negative.
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All this is true but most hardtop runoff occurs downstream of our major catchments anyway. That said stormwater reuse is a growing field.
 
DogB said:
Plummeted? Seriously?

I know some areas have had problems. For example there was a step change in the Murray Darling catchment in 1940 that has never recovered, but I doubt you can blame that on AGW. As a general rule the annual rainfall has been improving very slightly over the last hundred years or so.
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Yes, seriously, runoff has plummeted. It is more complex than just rainfall, and the hundred year 'improvement' has been due to increased rainfall in the top north west due to the 'asian brown cloud' of particle pollution. Runoff is temperature sensitive, since a drier ground will cause more evaporation and hence absorb more water.
 
Can you back this up? Other than a record of one dam in WA I can’t seem to dig up any long term data and my personal knowledge is quite local (SEQ).
 
Re: #4 on Ben's list- man's co2 molecules are the exact molecules causing an excessive GH effect.

Okay, I can see that there may be different carbons released from human activity. It's a given, we do release carbon when we burn fossil fuels. Something like gigtons, by now. But CO2 is fungible. I'm sure lots of 'ours' has been absorbed by the seas and trees, and lots of other CO2 has been released from the warming sea. And melting glaciers, rotting farm detritus, etc. So the statement that Anthropogenic CO2 is exactly the stuff that is raising the temp seems doubtful to me. And without proof of that, there ain't no A in AGW.

And Ben, I think you need a #8) It is getting hotter than ever. Because if it is not hotter than ever, there is no big hoo-hoo here, just normal cyclical climate.
 
casebro said:
Re: #4 on Ben's list- man's co2 molecules are the exact molecules causing an excessive GH effect.

Okay, I can see that there may be different carbons released from human activity. It's a given, we do release carbon when we burn fossil fuels. Something like gigtons, by now. But CO2 is fungible. I'm sure lots of 'ours' has been absorbed by the seas and trees, and lots of other CO2 has been released from the warming sea. And melting glaciers, rotting farm detritus, etc. So the statement that Anthropogenic CO2 is exactly the stuff that is raising the temp seems doubtful to me. And without proof of that, there ain't no A in AGW.
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For some reason people have difficulty understanding that the increase is what we are causing, but the amount up there in excess will be a mix of what we put up there and what would have gone there anyway.
 
As an example, there is a bathtub, with water pouring in from a tap, and flowing out through the drain. The water level is up at the lip of the bath, just about to overflow. The water flowing in matches exactly the the amount draining out.

I start to pour water in myself, from a bucket. The water overflows the bath. The overflow was directly attributable to me, but the water flowing over will be a mix of what I poured in, and what was going in anyway from the tap.
 
JANUARY 28, 2009, 9:39 AM
The Greenhouse Effect and the Bathtub Effect

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The atmospheric “tub” of carbon dioxide is filling faster than it’s draining.
A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluding that the buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases could leave a profound millenniums-long imprint on climate and sea levels, focuses on a characteristic of global
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http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2...effect-and-the-bathtub-effect/?pagemode=print

popular meme
 
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Megalodon said:
The official investigation is not responsible for the initial accusations, or the lack of substance in them. I'll address it when the results come out.

As I said, it was a cock-up, and it was discovered by scientists, not journalists or sceptics.
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Are you kidding? Real skeptics, both in print and in blogs, were laughing at the ridiculousness of those IPCC sections as soon as they came out.

It was admitted by IPCC scientists nearly three years later.
 
I guess my point is "How is this temp peak any different from the past peaks in the Milankovich cycles?"

For billions of years, the Earth has suffered from climate peaks, during which heat and CO2 has gone up. Later they both fell again. In light of the fact that the tips of the peaks can't possibly show in the fossil records, why would we think that this peak is any different than the usual cycles?

Also, just before Climategate broke, wasn't there news that some sediment record was examined more closely, and the ancient peaks turned out to have been higher than earlier believed?

Previous proxy studies probably weren't concerned with the ultimate peaks. Short and steep spikes don't even count as climate, anymore than the rain outside my window counts. Especially since the proxies are 'analog', and our thermometers are 'digital' in comparison. A scientific mind would expect to find greater variations in any 'digital record' than in any analog record, no? I just don't think "the hottest it's been in 150 years" counts. Not when it's been hotter, according to proxies
 
What is different is that we have artificially changed the CO2 levels this time out, and returned carbon to the system that has been sequestered for (rough average) 100 million years. At the same time we have damaged the ability of the system to capture and store that carbon in the short term by deforestation and agricultural land-use practices.

And we can COMPUTE the effects - physics is quite certain on this.

We are creating conditions (we keep pumping in more Carbon every year) that have not existed since the end-Permian extinction event.
 
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