macdoc
Philosopher
Moderated Global Warming Discussion
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CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
I expect that when things settle down (long past my time) sustainability will become something politicians try to own for their policies. At the moment the buzz-terms are "Progress", "Change", "Forward" and the like : there are no limits, and sustainability is identified (to some extent rationally) with limitations. The experiences of the next few generations will turn them against such thinking, and people will become far more conservative.
Forums and comments sections (such as JREF, Climate Progress, WattsUpMyButt, Morano's latest lie-vehicle) will be source-material for future historians. We are essentially going "on record" here, as voices of reason or unreason. I am confident of being numbered amongst the voices of reason. Following the science and the laws of physics with an educated and sceptical mind will seldom steer one wrong.
Look at any great social disruption in the past and you will find the voices of reason being ignored. And people will learn about it at school, and wonder how people could be so stupid as not to listen. The timeless truth is, of course, that most people are pretty stupid.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
The reasons for the increase will be (or won't be, if the forecast is wrong) on the public record in five years time. The ostensible reasons, at least.
Even if the Ontario government has already produced a plan to increase energy prices by exactly 46% over five years it's unlikely that such a policy (or such a government) will survive so long unchanged. This is a forecast that really hands hostages to fortune. File it away and in five years you can embarrass macdoc by bringing it up.
Predicting that energy costs will increase in the next five years is a lot safer, with the usual proviso that we avoid a global Great Depression.
None of which will have anything to do with global warming. Peak Oil and/or denial of same is an entirely separate issue from AGW. It's purely coincidental that preparing for the former has a mitigating influence on the latter. (This is meant as a general mild rebuke, not directed at you specifically
.)Matt Giwer
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The reasons for the increase will be (or won't be, if the forecast is wrong) on the public record in five years time. The ostensible reasons, at least.
Even if the Ontario government has already produced a plan to increase energy prices by exactly 46% over five years it's unlikely that such a policy (or such a government) will survive so long unchanged. This is a forecast that really hands hostages to fortune. File it away and in five years you can embarrass macdoc by bringing it up.
Predicting that energy costs will increase in the next five years is a lot safer, with the usual proviso that we avoid a global Great Depression.
None of which will have anything to do with global warming. Peak Oil and/or denial of same is an entirely separate issue from AGW. It's purely coincidental that preparing for the former has a mitigating influence on the latter. (This is meant as a general mild rebuke, not directed at you specifically
Let me try again. My power company is Tampa Electric, TECO for short. Early this year the cost of electricity increased 16%. There was no cause related to this event in the energy sources, global melting or any environmental cause.
The publicly expressed causes (see next paragraph) were several with labor costs being the major component. The cost of fuel was of course a factor but as this was the first rate increase in eleven years (something like that) the fuel component could be no more than ~10% minus the percentage of hardware costs.
I assume the public regulation model of the US is similar to that of Canada as so many things are. Here rates are set such that the earnings are high enough to get a low rate on bond issues for capital equipment expansion and are not directly related to costs as the public exposition version is usually expressed.
So I ask why you would assume the reasons for such an increase are just what you want them to be rather than actually investigate the causes for the increase.
Matt Giwer
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Journalists have assumed an advocacy position
Under the Newspeak rubric of responsible journalism the media has adopted an advocacy position regarding global warming. This was announced a couple years ago and I assume others have read of it. The reason given is that global warming has joined the two or three other things in science which are unquestionably true -- an odd status for such a new field to be up there with evolution and the earth not being flat and maybe one other thing.
1) Journalists have no business being advocates and doing so constitutes a conspiracy even when out in the open under the Newspeak rubric.
2) If in fact the answers are all in there should be no news reports on any "confirmation" of global warming just as there are no news reports of additional confirmation of evolution. To do otherwise is propaganda. Propaganda is what advocates do.
3) Constant reports of weather extremes do not differ from constant reports of breaking sports records. In weather and in sports there are enough different statistics kept most of them largely meaningless in both cases that records are regularly being broken.
To illustrate there one chance per year to be the warmest/coldest/wettest/driest year on record. There are twelve chances per year to set a monthly record in those categories. And of course there are 365 chances per year to set a record in just those four categories. That produces 4x12x365 chances to set a record in one of the four categories each year. Add to that four more chances per year to set a record for the previous decade each year.
Of course the above apply just to a single location. Given all the major cities in the world the chance of a record is then the number of major cities multiplied by 4x12x365+1. Then there are arbitrary geo-political areas which can also set records such as Germany or Idaho or Europe. The sum of those possibilities is another multiplier to that large number. Then there are other arbitrary geographic accumulations such as the US plains states or eastern Europe leading to another multiplier.
And the journalists' part in this? Local record breaking on the other side of the world is reported as news particularly when it is warming news.
Advocate propaganda at its worst.
Under the Newspeak rubric of responsible journalism the media has adopted an advocacy position regarding global warming. This was announced a couple years ago and I assume others have read of it. The reason given is that global warming has joined the two or three other things in science which are unquestionably true -- an odd status for such a new field to be up there with evolution and the earth not being flat and maybe one other thing.
1) Journalists have no business being advocates and doing so constitutes a conspiracy even when out in the open under the Newspeak rubric.
2) If in fact the answers are all in there should be no news reports on any "confirmation" of global warming just as there are no news reports of additional confirmation of evolution. To do otherwise is propaganda. Propaganda is what advocates do.
3) Constant reports of weather extremes do not differ from constant reports of breaking sports records. In weather and in sports there are enough different statistics kept most of them largely meaningless in both cases that records are regularly being broken.
To illustrate there one chance per year to be the warmest/coldest/wettest/driest year on record. There are twelve chances per year to set a monthly record in those categories. And of course there are 365 chances per year to set a record in just those four categories. That produces 4x12x365 chances to set a record in one of the four categories each year. Add to that four more chances per year to set a record for the previous decade each year.
Of course the above apply just to a single location. Given all the major cities in the world the chance of a record is then the number of major cities multiplied by 4x12x365+1. Then there are arbitrary geo-political areas which can also set records such as Germany or Idaho or Europe. The sum of those possibilities is another multiplier to that large number. Then there are other arbitrary geographic accumulations such as the US plains states or eastern Europe leading to another multiplier.
And the journalists' part in this? Local record breaking on the other side of the world is reported as news particularly when it is warming news.
Advocate propaganda at its worst.
YUou are wrong on a number of points.
Firstly, journalists have NEVER been so idealistic to not take a stance in their reporting. They always apply their own views to what they report. Especially when they are given the chance to right blog entries or editorials. This ghenerally has meant anti-science entries from the likes of Delingpole or North in the UK.
Record breaking in terms of climate is not from single events, it's from the annual rolling average across the globe. It doesn't rely on local records (such as those in many countries, not just Russia (as an example)). In terms of simple records 17 countries indicated record highs this year including Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, KSA, Pakistan, Sudan and Niger
Please do better.
Matt Giwer
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Individual journalists are human. For the group of journalists to adopt a single position and declare it "responsible journalism" is quite different. That is a conspiracy to promote what they do not understand. To report what is by their declaration settled is in fact propaganda.
You appear to have missed the "hottest summer in Europe" and hottest summer in Britain and coldest winter in Britain -- in 31 years of course.
While there may be some PRE massage data for the world which indicates a trend (massaging the data makes statistics inapplicable) the constant reports of local records is what I addressed and constitutes nothing more than advocacy propaganda.
macdoc
Philosopher
except there is also the same chance to set lows which you conveniently ignore and .the record highs outweigh the lows very significantly....
unlike you pontificating without a shred of evidence....- I have supporting references
of course in your world UCAR must be part of the conspiracy.....
http://www2.ucar.edu/about-us
AGW is in the same confidence class as evolution and plate tectonics for good reason.....the physics has been around for over a century and the evidence is overwhelming.....
but some don't think evo valid even now.......there are always a few cranks left manning the bastions of mistaken opinion for whatever their personal agendas are......
Evidence for that fact, recently evident here.
macdoc
Philosopher
4 degrees C warmer....coming soon to a world near you
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-world-degrees-celsius-poses.html
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-world-degrees-celsius-poses.html
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Try what again?
I wouldn't expect there to be any connection to the environment. As to sources, what makes you think there's no change there?
I find it odd that labour costs have increased so much at a time of high unemployment. Are you quite sure these people are being honest?
I fail to see the logic in that.
If the electricity price was stable for so long then something must have changed recently to cause a 16% increase, and the "labour costs" argument is less than convincing. Perhaps there's been a change in the regulations? Or in the regulators? Or in the price of fuel? (I haven't paid much attention to the oil-price recently, but eleven years ago it was a lot lower).
Given that earnings are directly affected by costs then so is the price. Earnings being equal to price less costs,after all.
Perhaps there are some relatively major bond issues coming up, which would imply a surge in capital investment. They might be phasing out oil-burning generators in favour of gas for cost reasons, or investing in renewables, or even (far-fetched this one, I know) nuclear.
You assume knowledge of what I want things to be. So I ask you : what's the label over the pigeon-hole you've put me into?
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
The whole media? All of them? FoxNews, the WSJ, the Daily Torygraph included?
That's certainly true of FoxNews. They advocate dismissing AGW as a vast conspiracy, and something that ain't actually happening.
Have you read it, as opposed to of it? Read enough on the internet and you can read of pretty much anything.
In what you've read of it, did you find out who announced this and where? And did your source refer to "the media" or to "the liberal media"?
Well that rules out FoxNews, which pushes the line that AGW is unquestionably not true, as proved by a stack of leaked emails.
You think the US would exist if journalists hadn't advocated rebellion against the British, in no uncertain terms?
Journalists have no business lying (oh dear, I crack myself up sometimes
) or concealing to mislead, but there's no reason they shouldn't be advocates. Comment is free, but facts are sacred (words of a great journalist).Should news reports of, for instance, floods, droughts, or people sailing through the Arctic not mention that they conform to expectations in a warming world? Nor that most scientists attribute the warming to AGW? All too often what we see, of course, is "Some scientists ..."
Perhaps you're too young to remember when extreme weather events were very seldom on the news. There just weren't that many of them. There are many more now, mostly involving Biblical rates of precipitation. Something we can expect from established science : in a warmer world more water goes up and more comes down in any given period.
Whatever period you choose the warmer records are vastly exceeding the cooler records.
Only the truly weird would register a daily wet/dry record, except perhaps for St Swithin's day. Wet/dry records are generally looked at seasonally, and droughts necessarily occur over extended periods.
Record rainfall in a 24-hour period can feature, of course, and has done quite a lot recently.
Take any of them you like and you'll still find more warm records than cold ones being broken of late. That's because the world generally is warming, so natural variation is acting around a rising baseline.
Do you have any examples? I haven't heard "local records" being mentioned except when there's been some direct effect, such as flooding or drought or people dying of heat-stroke. Are you sure you haven't "read of" such things rather than reading them yourself?
I'd give that accolade to FoxNews myself. Have you seen it? It's absolutely dreadful. Even the production values suck.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
"The media" has now become "the group of journalists"? Which group?
Why do you assume the journalists involved do not understand what they're talking about? And a conspiracy which is announced is a very odd conspiracy, don't you think?
That was while back. There was another dry summer in Southern Europe, but they're getting used to it.
We just had a very wet one, record-breaking in some parts. It goes up, it comes down, and what doesn't come down on Ireland tends to come down here.
Not record-breaking then. We had record-breaking cold in Wales a few days ago, and not just for November. Winters are getting positively Scandinavian in these parts.
Winters like this wouldn't have been particularly newsworthy thirty years ago. They are now because people have got so used to warm winters in recent decades.
Local records which are not connected to other human-interest effects are not widely reported. "Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Many Hurt", words of another great journalist. Stories like that do not sell, or only sell locally when news is slow.
"Record Cold in Chilean Summer" did sell, as I recall, because anything that seems to argue against AGW gets preferential treatment. FoxNews definitely covered it, and you may have read of it yourself.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
There are still some who think AGW is still about predictions, which was true even a decade ago but most certainly isn't now. They're still trying to break the Hockey-Stick while stuff is happening all around them.
The 2000's will turn out to be denial's Golden Decade, and it will be clung onto for years yet. Heck, some of the emeriti are still living through the Cold War.
For the emeriti the Golden Decade will be their penultimate, so they'll stick to their guns whatever happens. They declared long ago that what's happening wouldn't happen and they're not about to back-track. They will die in the sure and certain knowledge that they'll be vindicated by the future events.
As opposed to admitting they were wrong, which is never easy.
What's clear is that climate denial is not recruiting young, active scientists with any credibility in the field. Not because of propaganda, but because they have careers ahead of them and they want to start from the front-line. Lindzen can keep making up arguments for a low climate sensitivity even as events prove him wrong, but his future is behind him. No doubt he appreciates the attention he gets, though.
Evidence for that fact, recently evident here.
In the fantastical world of the internet or cheap paper-backs (remember that Gods From Space stuff?) denialism will have a long tail as a cult.
Matt Giwer
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Far from ignoring it several years ago the melters declared warming could mean cooling and therefore they are willing to use and have use both warmer and colder to declare warming is happening.
In other news up is down and left is right.
Reciting well known facts such as the inapplicability of statistics to deterministically created data is doing no more than reminding people of the well known facts. I emphasize reminding as one must know such elementary facts to discuss the subject.
of course in your world UCAR must be part of the conspiracy.....
http://www2.ucar.edu/about-us
AGW is in the same confidence class as evolution and plate tectonics for good reason.....the physics has been around for over a century and the evidence is overwhelming.....
but some don't think evo valid even now.......there are always a few cranks left manning the bastions of mistaken opinion for whatever their personal agendas are......
Evidence for that fact, recently evident here.
I recited the facts which establish there is in fact a media conspiracy. That is all I said. I have not presented an opinion on UCAR but the link silent on the matter.
However I can click on the link and discover its funding is derived from six agencies of the US government. Speaking from personal experience all six of those agencies promote political agendas. That UCAR might be immune from the political nature of its sponsors is beyond imagining.
Matt Giwer
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That is only true when one asserts that up is down, left is right, and cooling is warming. Once the gods have declared an ice age is the result of warming there can be no contrary evidence. Hotter and colder, wetter and drier, when all four are caused by warming then there can be nothing to contradict warming.
By the same paradigm one can also say with equal validity that global cooling causes warming because it has been declared global warming causes cooling. There is no difference between the two declarations.
As the assertion is that it is a settled subject then one has to ask just what warming means when warming can be blamed for cooling. One can imagine a future political cartoon of people in France looking at a glacier and damning global warming.
As the declaration is that warming can produce either warming or cooling one has to ask just what the point is to the exercise. If it can produce either without a way to determine which it will be one does have to ask how the "predictions" differ from flipping a coin.
Blue Mountain
Resident Skeptical Hobbit
A question for folk here more in tune with the issues than I am. My understanding is it takes a lot of energy to thaw a ton of ice. Is much of the heat energy being added due to greenhouse gasses being consumed by the melting of the polar ice instead of raising temperatures?
macdoc
Philosopher
moreEarth's Lakes Are Warming, NASA Study Finds
enlarge
Tahoe, seen here from Emerald Bay, was one of the primary validation sites for the global lake study. The lake, which straddles the borders of California and Nevada, is the largest alpine lake in North America. (Credit: NASA-JPL)
ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2010) — In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth's largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change.
Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide.
They reported an average warming rate of 0.45 degrees Celsius (0.81 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
"Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world," said Schneider, lead author of the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes."
Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake's natural ecosystem.
Scientists have long used air temperature measurements taken near Earth's surface to compute warming trends. More recently, scientists have supplemented these measurements with thermal infrared satellite data that can be used to provide a comprehensive, accurate view of how surface temperatures are changing worldwide.
The NASA researchers used thermal infrared imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Space Agency satellites. They focused on summer temperatures (July to September in the Northern Hemisphere and January to March in the Southern Hemisphere) because of the difficulty in collecting data in seasons when lakes are ice-covered and/or often hidden by clouds. Only nighttime data were used in the study.
The bodies studied were selected from a global database of lakes and wetlands based on size (typically at least 500 square kilometers -- 193 square miles -- or larger) or other unique characteristics of scientific merit. The selected lakes also had to have large surface areas located away from shorelines, so land influences did not interfere with the measurements. Satellite lake data were collected from the point farthest from any shoreline.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101128220357.htm
macdoc
Philosopher
A note on the maturity of AGW.....for those that are under the misguided impression that it's new
Pedigree is similar to evolution and plate tectonics and likely far better understood than the latter....
Response 1
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/so-how-did-that-global-cooling-bet-work-out/
Pedigree is similar to evolution and plate tectonics and likely far better understood than the latter....
Response 1
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/so-how-did-that-global-cooling-bet-work-out/
BenBurch
Gatekeeper of The Left
Hell, AGW was even dealt with in SciFi in the 30s and 40s. It was far from hidden knowledge.
Matt Giwer
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Unsurprisingly most of the ideas of even the best minds of the 19th c. have been found to be in error. These errors were largely due to simplifications to make the matter tractable but did not in fact represent a true analysis. You are reciting errors which have since been corrected.
For example in 1) the simplification was that CO2 was sort of a mirror high up in the atmosphere the reflected heat back. Of course CO2 is at all altitudes. It relies upon reflected heat having a longer wavelength that is absorbed and re-radiated by CO2. Note the short wavelength heat passes through. What is missed is that most of the heat the earth receives is at the longer wavelengths. The more CO2 the less gets through in the first place.
Next it is clearly not a "mirror" reflecting heat back. Rather being at all levels it is nothing more than a contribution to the heat capacity of the air at the same temperature.
It was demonstrated by experiment nearly 100 years ago that greenhouses are warm solely because they trap warmed air and has nothing whatsoever to do with long wavelength IR not escaping.
One has to remark upon the nonsense intrinsic in talking about a "greenhouse' gas when greenhouses are known not to increase in temperature by means of containing infrared.
The 1910 or so experiment simply replaced glass which does "trap" IR with sheets of salt which are transparent to long wave IR and thus does not "trap" heat. The internal temperature of both greenhouses was essentially the same. Trapping and no trapping but the same temperature. As there is no temperature change in a real greenhouse whether or not there is IR trapping it is difficult to accept what does not happen in a greenhouse would happen for the entire world for the same reason which has been demonstrated to be false.
In any even the 1910 experiment was conceived as a test of the 19th c. theoretical pronouncements and demonstrated they were false. Theory is great but experiment rules.
I do not see the point of this repertoirial posting of material which is well known to be refuted by experiment.
These sources are no different from, although less well known than, the equally scientific sources saying man can never fly nor leave the earth nor survive travelling more than 50 miles per hour.
What is the point of these posts? Why regale the thread with the equivalent of "man can never fly" pronouncements discredited a century ago? It is annoying to say the least. The posts are as a priori as nonsensical as "man can never fly."
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