Global warming discussion III

[Belz...]

It is so small, it doesn't even matter. Not even a little. The sun is so much more powerful a source of energy, in one year it is larger than the entire fossil fuel use for all of mankind's burning it. As in, the entire history of the human race.

Yeah but the released heat isn't the problem, but the trapping of the heat.

 

[bit_pattern]

After a bad breakup, sometimes the best therapy is someone/something fresh and new.

Something I've wondered but not seen quantified is, how much does anthropogenic heat production add to the earth's energy budget?

I'm assuming this includes greenhouse radiative forcing but the entire human energy system is estimated to be about 13 trillion watts - a third of the rate of plate tectonics

The rate heat is released from the earth – a measure of its natural “metabolic rate” – is well understood. It’s about 44 trillion watts, and reflects the average rate of energy transferred in moving all the continents, making all the mountains, the earthquakes and the volcanoes on our planet in a process we call plate tectonics.

By way of contrast, the International Energy Agency estimates our human “energy system” operates at a rate of some 16 trillion watts.

So we are already operating at one-third the rate of plate tectonics, and with our energy use doubling every 34 years we are on course to surpass plate tectonics by about 2060.

There's some impressive figures in this article

http://theconversation.com/our-effect-on-the-earth-is-real-how-were-geo-engineering-the-planet-1544

 

[r-j]

Cohen et al are quite specific in their science publications. It's obvious what they report, and what passes peer review, in regards to trends, winter, cold, and what the greenhouse theory predicts. As well as what models based on the theory show us.

2012 (based on trend of 1988-2014)

The most up to date consensus from global climate models predicts warming in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) high latitudes to middle latitudes during boreal winter. However, recent trends in observed NH winter surface temperatures diverge from these projections. For the last two decades, large-scale cooling trends have existed instead across large stretches of eastern North America and northern Eurasia. We argue that this unforeseen trend is probably not due to internal variability alone. Instead, evidence suggests that summer and autumn warming trends are concurrent with increases in high-latitude moisture and an increase in Eurasian snow cover, which dynamically induces large-scale wintertime cooling.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/014007/


2014 (based on 1988-2014)

However, also evident in Fig.*3d,f is that the number of days continuously below freezing has increased and the minimum temperatures have decreased since 1990.

Figure 3h also indicates that the frequency of unusually cold winter months (colder than two standard deviations below the 1951–1980 mean30) had reversed its longer-term downward trend by the end of the 1990s.

http://web.mit.edu/jlcohen/www/papers/Cohenetal_NGeo14.pdf

I checked, and indeed "the number of days continuously below freezing has increased and the minimum temperatures have decreased since 1990" is exactly what the data shows. For large areas of Canada as well,

Certainly the warming since 1965 (or 1979) happened. Nobody with any knowledge of climate history doubts this. The graphics show it clearly.

Just as they show the reversal and the recent cooling trend.

 

[greybeard]

I will take that as a no. In spite of asking for our help in finding a way to contact the authors of the blog article, and us giving him multiple ways of contacting them. He still hasn't. This thread has been taken over by a conspiracy theorist who believes he can prove that scientists around the world are illicitly tampering data to hide cooling but he has to be spoon fed ways to contact them. Then finds excuses not to.

Here is what Reality Check said.

The fact is that there is contact information on realclimate, for example actual contact information on RealClimate for RealClimate on their About page !

My comment was about the article that you are accusing the authors of being wrong without any actual evidence or trying to contact the authors even over 3 weeks after making that accusation:


Other posters have been able to exchange emails with the authors after a few minutes effort:




And what does the very next post say, r-j?


As for evasion, I will remind you of the many questions that you have been evading for weeks, -.j:
r-j (8 September 2014): Please cite the source you used to check the temperature records of from 1930 to about 1950 (1930's and early 1940's) for the weather station mentioned in the RealClimate article. (etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!).

As usual when it shows r-j he is wrong he ignores it. Then tells DC five days after he asked for help that an email address isn't good enough? What did he expect to get in this day and age. The scientists home telephone number? If he hasn't moved on to the age of email then I wonder who helps him sign into this forum?
It's a joke.

 

[carlitos]

CATO is touting this paper, which seems to indicate that much of the warming in the Pacific Northwest is not due to manmade causes. Any thoughts?

Northeast Pacific coastal warming since 1900 is often ascribed to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, whereas multidecadal temperature changes are widely interpreted in the framework of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which responds to regional atmospheric dynamics. This study uses several independent data sources to demonstrate that century-long warming around the northeast Pacific margins, like multidecadal variability, can be primarily attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation. It presents a significant reinterpretation of the region’s recent climate change origins, showing that atmospheric conditions have changed substantially over the last century, that these changes are not likely related to historical anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing, and that dynamical mechanisms of interannual and multidecadal temperature variability can also apply to observed century-long trends.

Johnstone, J. A., and N. J. Mantua, 2014. Atmospheric controls on northeast Pacific temperature variability and change, 1900-2012. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1318371111.

 

[CapelDodger]

CATO is touting this paper, which seems to indicate that much of the warming in the Pacific Northwest is not due to manmade causes. Any thoughts?

First thought is "Weather". Second is "mathturbation". Third is that this will probably turn out to be an embarrassment.


Then there's this (I'm a sucker for "unusual fish occurrences") :

The Gulf of Alaska is unusually warm, and weird fish are showing up
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...unusually-warm-and-weird-fish-are-showing-up/

Something odd is happening in Northern Pacific waters: They're heating up. In fact, it hasn't been this warm in parts of the Gulf of Alaska for this long since researchers began tracking surface water temperatures in the 1980s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

with this contribution from Dr Mantua :

Normally storms and winds roll through to cool off the surface of the Northern Pacific, but a weather pattern popped up for a few months in winter 2013 that inhibited those storms from developing, said Nate Mantua, a NOAA research scientist. Then, from October 2013 through January, the weather pattern came back as a ridge of high pressure (the same one connected to the California drought). All of that made the already warm waters in the Alaskan gulf even warmer, a layer about 100 meters thick, Mantua said.

In the spring, warm water started to develop in other Northern Pacific waters, namely the Bering Sea. There's also a chunk of warm water developing off the coast of California.

"You have lots of warm water, and it's due to weather patterns that basically don't take heat out of the ocean," Mantua said. "They are letting the ocean warm up rapidly, and stay warm."

The change in surface water temperature doesn't appear to be a manifestation of global warming, but rather the result of weather and wind patterns that change quickly and vary year to year, Mantua said.

confirming, I think, my first thought (weather) and sparking a new one - are we seeing a scientist follow Curry down the yellow-brick road to fame if not fortune? Time will tell.

 

[CapelDodger]

Thanks for the link, Reality Check. I did some more research, and found that annual solar irradiance is around 20,500 times greater than annual global energy production.

Indeed, the Sun is the Big Daddy of energy output in this neck of the woods. Hence the common regard for it as a god in times past.

 

[macdoc]

Carlitos..... the devil is in the details.

century-long warming around the northeast Pacific margins,

A little tiny slice of the world.
To the north of that Alaskan glaciers are growing...these are both anomalies against the larger picture and the larger picture in no way rules out NAO, PDO or ENSO tho AGW will influence them.

They are "in the box" energy events, AGW is a result of increased GHG and that is a primary driver from outside the atmospheric box.

GHG means retained energy, warmer atmosphere and ocean and a melting cryosphere.

La Nina to take one variable has helped reduce the impact of AGW by burying heat in the deeper ocean.
It's been called the North American air conditioner.

El Nino aside from killing lots of people and coral in 1998 has provided deniers with their favorite anomalous year to claim AGW is over.

Both are in the box, neither is a global climate driver, both can have quite severe regional climate imapcts.

The Pacific Northwest fringes.....interesting....not significant globally.

 

[r-j]

CATO is touting this paper, which seems to indicate that much of the warming in the Pacific Northwest is not due to manmade causes. Any thoughts?

The first thing I think of, is lets look at the data.

1960-1994 warming trend

1995-2014 cooling trend

OK, first thing is there hasn't been any warming for the last two decades in the boreal cold season.

If greenhouse forcing is causing the changes, then there is something seriously wrong with global warming there.

If it's natural cycles, it might make perfect sense.

If it's both (most likely) then we don't really know what's going on.

 

[Reality Check]

The first thing I think of, is lets look at the data.

1960-1994 warming trend

1995-2014 cooling trend
....

Sorry, r-j but neither of your links says there is a warming or cooling trend - the lack of an actual number for the trend is a clue. ETA: Unless those 0.40 and 0.15 numbers are the trend, in which case they are both warming (and for the entire globe).
Another possible problem is the note

Note: Ocean data are not used over land nor within 100km of a reporting land station

But the subject of the paper is coastal trends. The figures from the paper suggest this is coastal land trends.

You also do not seem to have read the paper
* it is not about the boreal cold season.
* the abstract starts with "Northeast Pacific coastal warming since 1900" - this is warming rather than your assertion of cooling.
* the paper is about the trend since 1900, not 1995.

 

[Reality Check]

CATO is touting this paper, which seems to indicate that much of the warming in the Pacific Northwest is not due to manmade causes. Any thoughts?

The first thing to do is look at the scientific literature and find:
Seasonal Climate Variability and Change in the Pacific Northwest of the United States (March 2014)
whose authors looked at that paper and note some issues on their blog.
Comments on “Atmospheric controls on northeast Pacific temperature variability and change, 1900–2012” by Johnstone and Mantua

 

[Reality Check]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/divisional-comparison/

Don't take my word for it, you can check for yourself.

I have and see a GHCN - Divisional comparison screen that produces graphs with a comparison between 2 datasets, DRD964x and nClimDev.

U.S. Climate Divisions
Drd964x Dataset

Traditionally, climate division values have been computed using the monthly values for all of the Cooperative Observer Network (COOP) stations in each division are averaged to compute divisional monthly temperature and precipitation averages/totals. This is valid for values computed from 1931-2013. For the 1895-1930 period, statewide values were computed directly from stations within each state. Divisional values for this early period were computed using a regression technique against the statewide values (Guttman and Quayle, 1996). These values make up the Drd964x division dataset.

nClimDiv Dataset

The nClimDiv dataset is based on the GHCND dataset using a 5km gridded appoach. It is based on a similar station inventory as the Drd964x dataset however, new methodologies are used to compute temperature, precipitation, and drought for United States climate divisions. These new methodologies include the transition to a grid-based calculation, the inclusion of many more stations from the pre-1930s, and the use of NCDC's modern array of quality control algorithms. These have improved the data coverage and the quality of the dataset, while maintaining the current product stream.

So you are complaining that they add more data, improved methodology and more quality control, r-j !

 

[Reality Check]

What does that even mean?

What NOAA Weather Stations

The most important difference in the U.S. temperature record occurred with the systematic change in observing times from the afternoon (when it is warm) to morning (when it is cooler). This shift has resulted in a well-documented and increasing cool discrepancy over the last several decades and is addressed by applying a correction to the data.

means is, r-j:
There exists a thing called morning when the Sun comes up.
There exists a thing called afternoon after the Sun has been up for a while.
Afternoons are in general warmer than mornings .
So if you change for some unknown reason from measuring temperature in the afternoon to the morning, you will measure cooler temperatures. This is a cool bias or discrepancy . Thus you have to adjust the old data.

ETA: If you want to know more about the issue: An evaluation of the time of observation bias adjustment in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (PDF)

 

[Reality Check]

...insults and ignorance about the mostly volunteer based US HCN snipped....

You missed this:

ETA: If you want to know more about the issue: An evaluation of the time of observation bias adjustment in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (PDF)

What does the word "daily" in daily temperatures mean, r-j?
Hint: It is not hourly or continuously.

ETA: I am surprised that in 2003 most of the stations had thermometers that were physically read by volunteers one a day.
ETA: I am more surprised that NOAA Weather Stations hints that may still be the case with the current modernization of the network (which will possibly result in more adjustments for you to complain about, r-j).

 

[Pixel42]

I just typed The Theory of Global Warming into the Wikipedia search box, and then tried it without the The. The result was the same in both cases:

The page "Theory of Global Warming" does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.

The first search result offered is, amusingly, Global Warming Conspiracy Theory.

Strange that such a well known Theory, apparently referred to extensively by "scientific publications, papers, the IPCC, James Hansen, GISS and a wealth of historic documents", doesn't have its own wiki page.

 

[greybeard]

Just an aside about the Oregon petition. This from the first search result on google. It happens to be wikipedia but it's backed up with sources.

George Woodwell and John Holdren, two members of the National Academy of Sciences, responded to Jacoby in the International Herald Tribune, describing the petition as a "farce" in part because "the signatories are listed without titles or affiliations that would permit an assessment of their credentials."[18] Myanna Lahsen said, "Assuming that all the signatories reported their credentials accurately, credentialed climate experts on the list are very few." The problem is made worse, Lahsen notes, because critics "added bogus names to illustrate the lack of accountability the petition involved".[19] Approved names on the list included fictional characters from the television show M*A*S*H,[20] the movie Star Wars,[19] Spice Girls group member Geri Halliwell, English naturalist Charles Darwin (d. 1882) and prank names such as "I. C. Ewe".[21] When questioned about the pop singer during a telephone interview with Joseph Hubert of the Associated Press, Robinson acknowledged that her endorsement and degree in microbiology was inauthentic, remarking "When we're getting thousands of signatures there's no way of filtering out a fake".[20] A cursory examination by Todd Shelly of the Hawaii Reporter revealed duplicate entries, single names lacking any initial, and even corporate names.

Yet we see people who are wiling to believe it's bona fide in the science section of a sceptic forum.

 

[kmortis]

The weather station discussion has been moved here. Please keep this thread to the more general discussion of GW.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: kmortis

 

[DC]

what do you guys and ladies think about ditching the 2°goal?

http://www.livescience.com/48097-climate-change-2-degrees-goal.html

 

[greybeard]

On the one hand, we have scientific publications, papers, the IPCC, James Hansen, GISS and a wealth of historic documents describing a theory of global warming, or as NASA says, basic global warming theory, and on the other hand, anonymous internet people claiming there is no such thing as global warming theory.



Yes, who can we believe.

This subject has been discussed to death. You have made it clear that you don't like answers other forum users have given. Here is a link going back more than a year. When discussion of this dies down, you start again by quoting what other users said before and belittling the answers. This is clearly a disruption tactic and I have reported your post. I will do the same when I see you restarting discussion about NH winters for the same reason.
Another link from Jan 2014 where r-j dislikes everybody's definition of "theory of global warming". R-j asks question, people answer, r-j doesn't like answer, brings it up again, people give same answer, and so it goes around in circles.

 

[greybeard]

what do you guys and ladies think about ditching the 2°goal?

http://www.livescience.com/48097-climate-change-2-degrees-goal.html

I doubt we are going to achieve only a two degree increase but should that stop us trying? If there were something else on the horizon that was going to cause so many problems and loss of life wouldn't we be working together to find a solution? From what I understand we will likely see an increase of 4 degrees by 2070. I fear for my grandchildren.