Dawlish

You do absolutely right and long may you do so! However, I invoke Godwin's Law here! Paul

When you are talking about "so many people" Cap'n, you are actually referring to a small minority of scientists. There may be hundreds, but when you measure that against the many tens of thousands of scientists that accept AGW, then it is a small minotiry! By not fully accepting C02's role in causation, I'm actually in the minority, but the weight of the majority has been slowly persuading me, over the last 2 years in particular. To change one's mind is very, very difficult. Paul PS Hope I've got my "so many people's" actual focus right there!

I agree. There is such a difference, for me, in the models being used to produce forecasts out to 16 days and the models being used to predict climate out to 100 years. The variability in the atmospheric models, with slightly different initial conditions producing massive differences in well under 16 days time, is not reflected to the same degree in climate models IF and only if, C02 is the main cause and there isn't another cause that is greater and will override it. The reason for the difference is the inherent simplicity in the variables used in the climate models, compared to the complexity of the variables being modelled in, say, the gfs models. If C02 is the main culprit in GW, the models will, to the error limits that define them, probably be correct. As PM3 rightly says, the hindcast accuracy is good. The only problem with the models, for me, would be if the main model input were to be masked by another factor (solar output, natural cycles, astrometeorology?? etc.). That's why I feel, at my personal odds of 1/6 C02 being the main cause, that the predictions of the climate models are more likely to be correct, than not. Paul

Don't you dare go for brevity! We're enjoying your contributions! Paul ( and I've been called a lot worse than Paul on here, I can assure you!)

Tha article hound at his best! I like that realclimate site, it teaches you and make you think and although the comments following the article, take some time to plough through, there's a lot of commonsense in the opposing views. Perhaps the one which I agree with the most was this combination of nice hunour and knowledgeable comment: "........I tend to be more interested in the really big patterns, like the natural greenhouse effect keeping us warmer & adding to it likely increases that warmth. Past mass extinctions caused by runaway GW (then, obviously, triggered by a convergence of natural events), resulting in few left to breathe out CO2 (among other constraints), leading to stabilization and retreat back to a climate more hospitable to a wide range of biota. See: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...18_fossils.html These make so much sense & are so dangerous in their implications, that the burden of proof should be on the contrarians or skeptics to prove these things are not happening. And even if they do, we still have many many other reasons, aside from GW, to reduce our actions that increase GHGs. So, to the extent that we're smart and able, let's ease up on the GHG trigger, or we might be shooting our own descendents. But I do appreciate the meticulous ongoing work to understand in excruciating detail and minutia just how we are harming ourselves". Comment by Lynn Vincentnathan With the bulk of scientific opinion favouring a continuation of the warming trend and the bulk of scientific opinion favouring CO2 as the main cause, I do think it is up to the sceptics (I hate that "k" in sceptics!!) to prove it is otherwise. Paul Devonian - I agree with you entirely. The whole debate has been good and it will continue; just a note: no need to quote the whole article for a one line comment. I always cut it down to what I am commenting in, or just add a general reply, instead of replying to the whole article :lol: Hope the anniversary went well, Cap'n.

That's where careful and dedicated amatuer recording really comes into its own. Any recording error (and there will be little) is drowned by the wealth of data. Thanks TM. Long may you and many others continue. Is anyone capable of putting this in a graph, running a regression analysis on it and seeing what the trend is and how significant it is? I can't do the techie bits! Paul

Nice reply Cap'n. When you investigate CO2, look, as well, at increasing partial pressure, as the concentration of the gas increases. It may offset the release from the oceans' warming. Are you actually bang on the fence, Cap'n? ie would you propose that C02 has an equal chance of being the main cause as it has of not being the main cause? I always like to use odds in these circumstances, it allows a much clearer picture of preference, or belief, to be painted, whilst allowing the proposer to show that he/she has an open mind still (that "1" in the odds signifies that one recognises that what one is proposing has a measure of doubt). I go 1/6 C02 being the main cause, 7/1 it is natural cycles, 12/1 it is changes in Solar output, and 20/1 the field. At the start of this year, I was saying 1/4 C02, which shows how my thinking has changed, as I've learned more. Paul

Been a very nice day down here. Up to 12C in a very light Westerly. Some nice sunshine and good visibility. Beginning to feel cooler now. I saw 3 red admirals in the garden and I killed a wasp, which was in the Kitchen!

I don't recognise that scenario; nah; never happened to me, ever; nope; well, not since yesterday!

If I could agree more, I would, but I can't, so there you go. I scraped the physics "A" level, hated the short period of undergraduate physics I suffered and finally took a degree in the Earth Sciences - which any meteorologist worth their salt will tell you, doesn't count a scientific fig! They told Prof Manley the same for years as he was a Geographer too....but they're scoffing on their own verbal stuff now!! Just enjoy the debate. We are all at different stages, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from the most sage, or the newest newbie, or the most hardened opponent. It is hard to believe the amount that I've learned about GW since beginning to discuss it on the Internet. Even people actually working in climatology cannot keep abreast of every branch of the subject and there will be climatologists who will know less than the readers and writers on this thread do about some of the more arcane topics that have been argued over on here. Paul

Thanks Stephen, I was looking for that on the synoptic chart, but it must have been a chart for just before the temperature rose. It was still saying 10C in your area. Meteocentre still hasn't picked up the change, although it could be very localised: http://meteocentre.com/analyse/map.php?hou...g=en&map=UK Thanks for alerting us to it. It really is interesting, in that the fohn/lee wave is embedded in that occluding front. Did you notice the clouds, before it got dark? Any lenticulars, or was it 8/8? Paul

For me, Ice Age Now is one man's crusade against the vast body of scientific opinion that accepts that the world is likely to continue to warm. realclimate is that vast body of opinion. Personally, I don't think it is biased. The contributers are climate scientists who are working on climate research right now; many of them are leaders in the field. The site reflects the overwhelming scientific belief that the world will continue to warm, rather than the site itself being biased. If anyone goes lookig on the site for articles saying the next ice age is imminent, they aren't going to find many (there are some responses, however), because the vast majority of climate scientists don't believe it is. I happen to agree with that body of opinion. Many of them (not all) believe that C02 is the cause (I took it for granted that you meant an open mind as to AGW. You write well and it's good to keep that open mind. I favour C02 being the major cause, but I'm not yet convinced and I don't think the conclusive evidence is there, yet, to convince me), but they are by no means the only voice in the AGW debate on there. Paul

I see it Stephen. How strange it looks. It must be a lee effect, as you imply.

Agreed, however the Global Warming trend per se is conclusive. It is not reflected in every glacier, on every continent, just as it is not reflected by a linear, similar, warming trend in every area on the globe, but the world is warming. I take your point entirely about the limp 30 glacier sample of the world glacier monitoring service. It must be down to costs. 500 would be far better! Realclimate, a site which appears to have good provenance, has some more excellent data on glacier retreat (did I quote this site earlier??). Nice graphs and piccies, again. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=129 I've just flicked around Garry Braasch's site again (link above) and the photography and juxtaposition of glaciers over time is just terrific to see. Paul

Thanks for the article cap'n. There are just no hard and fast rules; glaciers in fairly close proximity, but different catchments can be doing dissimilar things and as the article says, monitoring in some of the remote areas is difficult and all we have are snapshots. Also, if 2/3 of Himalayan glaciers are melting, as I quoted (maybe the figure could easily be argued with; monitoring is not great in these incredibly remote areas), it means that 1/3 are not and some will be advancing. I'd just go with the best data for the overall world picture. The mass balance figures (I know 30 glaciers isn't that many, but they are sampled from a global perspective and the sampling appears to produce statistically significant results) show the worldwide trend overall and it would be difficult to argue that these global trends are not due to a warming climate, despite some glaciers not fitting the overall melting trends. I hope the anniversary goes well! Paul