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Global warming

Hardly. Seeing you look sad and stranded on an ice-floe would be a blast but even then ... Happy? I'm not sure I can do it.
Just a billion out, "pollution" not greenhouse gas equivalent, "autos" not SUV's, South-East Asia not Jakarta. That's the "sad", and worth a giggle in itself, but the "stranded on an ice-floe" is still missing.

Hey I remain ready to admit mistakes, CD, I don't capeldodge them.
 
Really?
It appears Al Gore was way off on his 20 ft. sea level claim as Hansen is now saying 80 ft by 2100
​
Nonsense.

It's about what's possible, in risk managment. The data centre could burn down tomorrow. I don't think it probably will, but it could. He is warning people about what is possible. Given the rate of melting of the Arctic, the estimates could quite easily be too conservative.
 
The "History" is only just starting.

I agree!

There is still time for Australia to back out of Kyoto, of course.

My question of a while back still seems reasonable. . . ..
How about Australia? How are you guys doing a la Kyoto? Just state the numbers, please. Any plans to sequester carbon from your famous coal powerplants? Any plans of substance to comply with Kyoto down under, or just rhetoric? Nuclear plants? Any substantial projects at all? Please provide projected numbers in terms of how your country forecasts reaching any reduction in CO2 emissions.
​
 
from www.climateaudit.org unthreaded #19 ...

No Consensus Hits TV


Last night, Fox News, Brit Hume asked:
“How Many Scientists Say That Mankind Is Affecting Global Warming?”
Conventional Wisdom
Earlier this year the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it was “90 percent likely” that man was having an impact on global temperatures. And dailytech.com reports an analysis of scientific papers in 2004 concluded that a majority of researchers supported what it called the “consensus view” that humans were effecting climate change.
But now a study of all research papers between 2004 and 2007 indicates only seven percent give an explicit endorsement of that so-called consensus. Forty-five percent give an implicit endorsement. But 48 percent of the papers are classified as neutral — neither accepting nor rejecting the hypothesis. And only one of the 528 papers reviewed makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.
​
read the rest here

“How Many Scientists Say That Mankind Is Affecting Global Warming?”

Now there's your problem in a nutshell. Most science in this area is not concerned with the effects, but just the specific point of research of their paper. To draw conclusions such as "the effect of global warming on manking" would be outside the scope of what they are investigating.
 
So 7% explicitly affirm, 48% implicitly affirm and (therefore) 45% are neutral.

That leaves, using some basic math, a rough total of 0% who either implicitly or explicitly reject the assertion.

Taken a different way, of the 290-ish (55% of 528) papers who actually comment (implicitly or explicitly), 100% are in support of the assertion.

Where's this lack of consensus argument coming from?
 
Somewhere posted above I noticed someone suggesting that 2005 was the worst year ever for hurricanes because the temperature is rising. I get tired of hearing this meme being presented as if it can't be refuted.

Here is a comparison to the cooler 1950 which I call the worst year ever recorded. All storms and individual tracks with winds >= 65kts are presented. The data comes from the NHC official database.

Code:
Year 2005
____________________
Data range 7/6/2005 to 12/7/2005
____________________
Storm data:
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5	Total
7	1	2	1	4	15

Peak wind in knots
Mode	Median	Mean	S. Dev.
100	90	102	34
____________________
Track data:
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5	Total
104	25	27	32	11	199

Wind in knots
Mode	Median	Mean	S.Dev.
65	80	90	25
************************************************************
Year 1950
____________________
Data range 8/13/1950 to 10/21/1950
____________________
Storm data:
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5	Total
1	2	5	2	1	11

Peak wind in knots
Mode	Median	Mean	S. Dev.
105	105	109	20
____________________
Track data:
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5	Total
91	73	34	30	10	238

Wind in knots
Mode	Median	Mean	S.Dev.
85	85	92	21

There may have been more category 5's in 2005 and more total storms, but 1950 had more major(cat 3-5) storms, more total tracks of hurricane force winds, and the wind speeds were overall higher.

Remember this the next time some touts 2005.

Edit to add: For those that may not know. A track is defined as one observation. Observations are taken every six hours.
 
Last edited:

Weart is indeed a historian, and he does an excellent job of tracing the history of the science of CO2, and providing references.
 
Somewhere posted above I noticed someone suggesting that 2005 was the worst year ever for hurricanes because the temperature is rising. I get tired of hearing this meme being presented as if it can't be refuted.

Here is a comparison to the cooler 1950 which I call the worst year ever recorded. All storms and individual tracks with winds >= 65kts are presented. The data comes from the NHC official database.

Code:
Year 2005
____________________
Data range 7/6/2005 to 12/7/2005
____________________
Storm data:
Cat 1    Cat 2    Cat 3    Cat 4    Cat 5    Total
7    1    2    1    4    15

Peak wind in knots
Mode    Median    Mean    S. Dev.
100    90    102    34
____________________
Track data:
Cat 1    Cat 2    Cat 3    Cat 4    Cat 5    Total
104    25    27    32    11    199

Wind in knots
Mode    Median    Mean    S.Dev.
65    80    90    25
************************************************************
Year 1950
____________________
Data range 8/13/1950 to 10/21/1950
____________________
Storm data:
Cat 1    Cat 2    Cat 3    Cat 4    Cat 5    Total
1    2    5    2    1    11

Peak wind in knots
Mode    Median    Mean    S. Dev.
105    105    109    20
____________________
Track data:
Cat 1    Cat 2    Cat 3    Cat 4    Cat 5    Total
91    73    34    30    10    238

Wind in knots
Mode    Median    Mean    S.Dev.
85    85    92    21
There may have been more category 5's in 2005 and more total storms, but 1950 had more major(cat 3-5) storms, more total tracks of hurricane force winds, and the wind speeds were overall higher.

Remember this the next time some touts 2005.

Edit to add: For those that may not know. A track is defined as one observation. Observations are taken every six hours.

The actual effects of global warming are difficult to predict, as the scientists keep saying. They expect changes, and model them, which gives us an idea. The atmosphere is hotter, the SST is hotter, what will the actual result be of that extra energy in the system? In terms of hurricanes, it appears the result is stronger storms, average, not more. The current season seems to be confirming that. Rapid intensification of storms that have a chance to pass over high SSTs has been happening again.

Records broken in 2005

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]* Named storms: 28; previous record: 21 in 1933
* Hurricanes: 15; previous record: 12 in 1969
* Major hurricanes hitting the U.S.: Four (Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma); previous record: Three, most recently in 2004
* Hurricanes of Category 5 intensity (greater than 155 mph): Four (Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma); previous record: Two in 1960 and 1961

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2540.htm
[/FONT]
 
Weart is indeed a historian, and he does an excellent job of tracing the history of the science of CO2, and providing references.

His account can be kept, modified to correct the numerous errors, and retitled as the "Myth of Man Made Global Warming".:)

Natural cycles are the cause of changes in hurricanes, not man's evil combustion engines.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,484987,00.html

FIVE-THOUSAND YEARS OF HURRICANES

Does Global Warming Play a Role?

By Franziska Badenschier in Woods Hole, US
Soil samples from the Grande Playa lagoon in Puerto Rico have given US scientists insight into the last 5,000 years of Atlantic hurricanes. The samples suggest that recent devastating storms may not necessarily be linked to global warming.


At first sight, the soil samples collected by geophysicist Jeffrey Donnelly at the Playa Grande lagoon in Puerto Rico don't look like much to get excited about. The cores sitting in his laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts seem to be little more than a bit of moist, black clay. But look closely, and you can see the gray, porous layers of tiny grains; sand that swept into the lagoon from a nearby spit of land by powerful hurricanes. By examing the layers of sand in each of the 12 four-meter-long cores (13 foot) samples, they become an extensive climate timeline. Together, they represent the longest chronology of hurricane activity that currently exists anywhere in the world.

The samples have allowed hurricane historian Donnelly from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to look more than 5,000 years into our planet's past. And what he found may have profound implications for our understanding of the effects of global warming on violent storms. The frequency of fierce storms that sweep into the Caribbean and onto the Puerto Rican island of Vieques varies considerably.

There are stormy periods and more placid epochs -- and they alternate back and forth.

Donnelly and his colleague Johnathan Woodruff listed their results in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature. Hurricanes, they wrote, regularly struck the lagoon between 5,450 and 3,650 years ago. This period of intense hurricane activity was interrupted only briefly by a 150 year respite. After that period, there were only few hurricanes -- until about 2,550 years ago, when an interval characterized by a relatively high number of strong hurricanes began, continuing until the next quite phase, which began about 1,050 years ago.

But during the last 300 years, the lagoon has once more been exposed to a higher number of violent hurricanes -- just as the unpleasant storms have been multiplying elsewhere as well.
 
For the most part, it really is neutral science. The study you reference found only one paper that mentioned AGW leading to catastrophe. The scholarly and learned climate science journals are not publishing such alarmism, even as they publish more and more papers that refine and bolster the hypothesis of AGW.

I do hope you appreciate the sheer amount of scientific research that would have to be refuted for the AGW hypothesis to fall. That's not to say that you shouldn't tilt at it, as after all criticism and skepticism will always have a role to play.

Of course, you understand that the study on the lack of consensus was important, because of pro AGW polemicists continually harping on their 100% or 99% consensus, which was utterly ridiculous. That was the problem. As you mention, most is neutral science - their may be a short statement in the intro "None of this is meant to disprove the wider context of global warming" or the like. But most of the actual scientific work is too narrowly focused to have direct application to the issue.

However there are exceptions. There is the evidence we are digging up from the past. In that, there is a record of climate cycles.

And there is no shortage of this material - more of it can be dug up in diverse locations to prove or disprove any hypothesis. We are talking ice cores, bore holes, sea bed sentiments, and the like.

So rather than the science being "completely settled in favor of AGW", as various alarmists have repeated claimed since 1992, it is just in it's infancy.
Here is another bit of that historical record - the pollen database.
The North American Pollen Database reveals nine continent-wide temperature-driven shifts in vegetation during the past 14,000 years, an average of one every 1,650 years. Thousands of pollen studies show that the vegetation shifts occurred across the whole of North America. The most recent major shift happened about 600 years ago "culminating in the Little Ice Age, with maximum cooling 300 years ago." The previous shift began about 1,600 years ago, and "culminated in the maximum warming of the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago." The pollen analysis was led by Andre Viau of the University of Ottawa who wrote, "We suggest that North Atlantic millennial-scale climate variability is associated with rearrangements of the atmospheric circulation with far-reaching influences on the climate."
Ian Campbell and John McAndrews of Environment Canada found that as the Little Ice Age cooled southern Ontario's climate, the predominant forest trees shifted from warmth-loving beeches to cold-tolerant oaks, and then to cold-adapted evergreens. Since 1850, that shift has been reversing, with oak trees gradually displacing the evergreens, and the beech trees awaiting their turn. The scientists' computer simulation found the tree species still lagging behind the Modern Warming in 1993, though most of the warming predated 1940. Tree populations may thus need centuries to adapt to the major climate shifts. Campbell and McAndrews also concluded that the total plant mass of Ontario forests fell by 30 percent in the Little Ice Age; the forests still have not recovered the full productivity they had during the Medieval Warming.

​
Viau et al., "Widespread Evidence of 1,500-Year Climate Variability in North America During the Past 14,000 Years," Geology, vol. 30, no. 5, May 2002, pages 455–458.
​

Singer, Fred 2007 Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500 Year Climate Cycle

Television interview (and transcript) 10 minute video of Singer and Avery
​
Some scientists would not be happy at substantial evidence that natural variation is responsible for the largest part of the recent warming we seem to have seen. Those are the scientists who have stepped outside the bounds bounds of respectable, objective science and have found that they like the publicity engendered by shrieking about alarmism.

Other - I suspect the vast majority - would be quite happy to have it be effectively determined that there was no planetary crisis caused by man's industrial and technological civilization that demanded urgent action.

The recent warming is shown by the historical record to not be outside the bounds of natural variation. Since only the "unprecedented recent warming" that causes the "A" to be added to the "GW", in the absence of "unprecedented warming", the AGW hypothesis falls.

So there may be a small desk in the basement that Hansen, Mann, Gore, and Jones can share. Lovelock is already down there, of course.

And would you take a can of roach spray down there for them? They have some work to do.:)
 
The actual effects of global warming are difficult to predict, as the scientists keep saying. They expect changes, and model them, which gives us an idea. The atmosphere is hotter, the SST is hotter, what will the actual result be of that extra energy in the system? In terms of hurricanes, it appears the result is stronger storms, average, not more. The current season seems to be confirming that. Rapid intensification of storms that have a chance to pass over high SSTs has been happening again.

Records broken in 2005

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]* Named storms: 28; previous record: 21 in 1933
* Hurricanes: 15; previous record: 12 in 1969
* Major hurricanes hitting the U.S.: Four (Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma); previous record: Three, most recently in 2004
* Hurricanes of Category 5 intensity (greater than 155 mph): Four (Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma); previous record: Two in 1960 and 1961

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2540.htm
[/FONT]
You seem to be missing the point. Again. You can always find a way to set some new record. I don't know how many records 1950 set when it occurred. But let me give you a pop quiz.

That character occasionally seen in Star Trek by the name of Q comes to you and says you are to make a choice from one of two possible scenarios for the next hurricane season's activity in the Atlantic Basin. With the storm locations to be randomly chosen at a later date. He'll make sure it happens. If you don't make a selection he will cause a 100 year suspension of all rainfall in Australia. Nothing heavier than morning dew will be allowed.

Choices:
A) Another year like 2005 with a bunch of records being set, and 49.75 days of hurricane winds with an average speed of 90 knots.

B) A season like 1950 with few records, and 59.5 days of hurricane winds with an average speed of 92 knots and cooler temperatures.

Which choice do you make?
 
You seem to be missing the point. Again. You can always find a way to set some new record. I don't know how many records 1950 set when it occurred. But let me give you a pop quiz.

That character occasionally seen in Star Trek by the name of Q comes to you and says you are to make a choice from one of two possible scenarios for the next hurricane season's activity in the Atlantic Basin. With the storm locations to be randomly chosen at a later date. He'll make sure it happens. If you don't make a selection he will cause a 100 year suspension of all rainfall in Australia. Nothing heavier than morning dew will be allowed.

Choices:
A) Another year like 2005 with a bunch of records being set, and 49.75 days of hurricane winds with an average speed of 90 knots.

B) A season like 1950 with few records, and 59.5 days of hurricane winds with an average speed of 92 knots and cooler temperatures.

Which choice do you make?

Disregarding temperatures (and air densities, and total mass of air)

the energy ratio should be like this ...

Kinetic energy = 1/2 * m * v^2

Relative Kinetic energies A/B = (59.5 * 92^2)/(49.75 * 90^2)

A/B = 1.25

1950 looks like 125% of 2005.

Bob, that "cooler temperatures" .... was that ocean temps or air?
 
I don't see the point you're trying to make. Are you saying that warmer waters in the Caribbean will not lead to stronger hurricanes? In which case, how does the single record year of 1950 support your position? Remember, one single year is not a climate trend, and there are other factors influencing hurricanes than just temperatures.

I, for one, am not saying that the 2005 record year proves that warmer water leads to stronger hurricanes. It certainly supports the theory, but admittedly not really by much, and it was mostly as a response to the 'how many hurricanes have we experienced since Katrina' question. Science, not one record year, is demonstrating that warmer waters fuel hurricanes.

NOAA Research: 'The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the earth's climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.'

Nature: 'Here I define an index of the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on the total dissipation of power, integrated over the lifetime of the cyclone, and show that this index has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. This trend is due to both longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities. I find that the record of net hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature,
reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multidecadal
oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and
global warming.'

More here. Admittedly, this is not 'proven science', but what we have points towards stronger storms as the waters are heated.
 
You seem to be missing the point. Again. You can always find a way to set some new record. I don't know how many records 1950 set when it occurred. But let me give you a pop quiz.

That character occasionally seen in Star Trek by the name of Q comes to you and says you are to make a choice from one of two possible scenarios for the next hurricane season's activity in the Atlantic Basin. With the storm locations to be randomly chosen at a later date. He'll make sure it happens. If you don't make a selection he will cause a 100 year suspension of all rainfall in Australia. Nothing heavier than morning dew will be allowed.

Choices:
A) Another year like 2005 with a bunch of records being set, and 49.75 days of hurricane winds with an average speed of 90 knots.

B) A season like 1950 with few records, and 59.5 days of hurricane winds with an average speed of 92 knots and cooler temperatures.

Which choice do you make?

I just quoted the NOAA web site.

The result of warming appears to be not more, but stronger, hurricanes. The last two through the carribean seem to indicate that is the case. The rapid speed at which they have spun up to CAT5 has surprised the hurricane watchers.
 
AUP, I don't feel like people can model climate, but weather, you bet we can and do.

And modeling the negative consequences of Kyoto plans is well within our grasp.

We have on the Gulf Coast here, from Mexico through Texas and to Florida, hurricanes. Period. Lots of them. Big ones. Really big ones. Always have and always will. When and if those storms come cartwheeling into the Gulf, if the Gulf is unusually warm, they pick up energy. Basic weather 101. Moisture plus heat = storms. That's not fundamentally different for summer thunderstorms or cyclones.

If I understand this argument it goes this way -

1. There is GW.
2. There is more CO2 because we put more in the air.
3. (2) caused (1). This is the AGW premise.
4. There are more intense hurricanes than there used to be.
5. (3) caused (4).
6. Kyoto plans will maybe fix 5,4,3,2,1

It looks to me like

1. Recent warming is not outside the bounds of natural variation
2. There is more CO2 because we put some in the air
3. (2) is an insignificant or minor contributer to (1).
4. There is no evidence of a change in hurricane activity.
5. No causal effect of (2) or (3) on (4).
6. There is a documented historical cycle of hurricane over millenia.

I have provided several references on (1), and also one on (6). Bob has provided some data that roughly agrees with (4).

Safekeeper -

Your reference to NOAA is a modeling forecast. Basically it says that if temperatures go up hurricanes should get more intense. Sounds reasonable on a first guess basis, yes.

Please explain this.

1. We were in a Little Ice Age until about the middle of the 1900s.
2. We are not in a Little Ice Age now.

Does that mean temperatures went up, down, or stayed the same?
 
mhaze,

Here are some links to text files for monthly northern hemisphere temperature anomalies going back to 1880.
Land
Ocean
Combined

Yep. But these compute the "anomaly" based on an average, thus the first half has a "negative anomaly" (colder) the second half has a "positive anomaly" (hotter).

I'd like for these warmers to definitely state that in their opinion, the natural trend is a line with slope = 0 coming out of a "little ice age". Because that is what all the theory of unusual warming is based on, right?

On the contrary, if one said that the line has should have some positive slope, then granted, some amount of AGW could be overlaid on top of it to get to the actual historical trend line.
 

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