sunny starry skies

It's a good technique isn't it! I saw a presentation about it, and the micromilling of the shells required, a few years ago, but it looks like they've made some good progress. I've just had a read of the PNAS paper, and I have some issues with their interpretation of their own graphs. They speak of a 6C drop in winter temperatures post-settlement of Iceland, which is simply not present in their graphs. The 2-3C drop in summer maximum temperatures (not another 6C drop that they talk of) would be quite enough to cause the famine in Iceland however. It's odd, because the data they present in Figures 3 and 4 of the PNAS paper are superb, but their interpretation is poor, but... the outcome of most of their interpretations of that part of their record is the same, despite their own misrepresentation of their figures! I also think they misquote their own data on summer/winter temperatures for their most recent bivalves (they say summer/winter of 8.2 and 5.5C, which is the range of summer temps according to their own graph, winter temps are 1-3C on their graph). Confused yet?? I am! So it looks like the method has loads of potential, especially with a more detailed dataset, but I wonder if the interpretations of this specific paper will be corrected/criticised in future? Other interesting observations - muted MWP/LIA signal, despite it being most well developed in the North Atlantic, and it will be still more interesting to make comparisons with ice core and tree ring data (but difficult given the lack of either in Iceland, and the challenges of teleconnecting individual temperature series in the North Atlantic). sss

I suspect you're fishing for trouble, and could easily understand it if you tried, but for the benefit of others who might be interested, and to demonstrate that there is no problem with ice core CO2... Depth (m) = sample depth. These are not necessarily at every possible sample depth through the core, as it will depend on the research questions answered. For example in the Fischer et al paper we had the argument about, they took high-resolution samples around the glacial terminations they were intersted in, but lower resolution samples for other parts of the core. If you want to show the basic shape of the sequence throughout a core, you don't sample at every possible location due to the cost/time of sampling, unless it is specifically relevant to your research question. In this case, Vostok, which has a low accumulation rate, is not sampled heavily for the Holocene as other cores do a better job of giving Holocene CO2, additionally they were studying the whole core. Age of the ice (yr BP) = the age of the ice that encases the sample. Literally, the age the molecules of water were deposited on the surface of the ice sheet. This is determined by a combination of annual layer counting and an age-depth model for the ice sheet. Ages can be verified by several means, including marker horizons and matching with isotope records and palaeomagnetism in ocean cores, which can be dated independently. [an aside... google 'ice core dating' and you find lots of creationists worried about the age of the ice cores.... facts really get in the way of a good conspiracy don't they ] Mean age of the air (yr BP) = the age of the air trapped inside the bubbles. This is different from the age of the ice as, I'm sure you're aware, air can mix downwards a certain distance into the ice. Over a period of time, bubbles will be trapped in any one layer as the gaps leading towards the surface are gradually closed off. This is not instantaneous, but it is a calculable property, and is dependent on the deposition rate of snow on the surface and the temperature of the snow. For any one layer in the core, air bubbles inside it will close within a certain, identifiable time period - ~300 years for Vostok, ~140years for Taylor Dome, references in Fischer et al 1999. Neftel et al (with references) give Siple Dome's closure age as 22 years for its historic CO2 curve (the one that neatly dovetails with the Mauna Loa curve). http://cdiac.ornl.go.../co2/siple.html CO2 Concentration (ppmv) = what it says on the tin, with measurement errors quoted in the relevant papers. They are small, compared to the variations observed. A really good review, which I would encourage you to read if you are interested is Raynaud et al, 1993: The Ice Core Record of Greenhouse Gases, in Science. abstract: http://www.scopus.co...Cn4UBDyFX1x%3a2 full article (not sure if it's free): http://www.jstor.org...origin=elsevier And please tell me you've not read Jawoworski's rubbish on the subject (some of your questions suggest you might) - some of his many flaws are highlighted here: http://www.ferdinand...jaworowski.html In all these cases, you'll find that the errors, other possible sources of error, solutions and issues are discussed in the relevant papers. All it takes is for you to read those papers with an open mind, and not one closed to the idea that actually, we do have a very good idea of the variations of CO2 over the past 800,000 (most recently Luthi et al 2008 in Nature). This crucially constrains the climate-carbon cycle connection back 800,000 years (natural CO2 range 170-300ppm), and places our alterations of it very firmly into context... here is a hockey stick that has nothing to do with Mann or Jones! I think it is crucial to note that samples are not always taken at the maximum resolution, though in all the studies I've read, multiple samples were taken at each sampling depth, therefore constraining the errors. Any experimental scientist will tell you this, particularly if the analyses are expensive or time-consuming. The numerous Antarctic cores provide essentially the same data, with widely-varying sample resolutions, and with overlaps to directly measured values, so we can have great confidence in the CO2 record. sss

The short answer is anthropogenic aerosols, but I'll leave you to look up the IPCC AR4, to read and understand why temperatures don't always dutifully follow CO2 rise, as I've done enough research on your behalf. There'll be links on Skeptical Science too, which debunk most of the common denier arguments. sss

There is definitely a separation between a research consensus and a political one, in that in research it tends to come about naturally, but in politics it is more driven, partly because of the different ideologies involved. In politics it's harder to get a consensus, but you need some sort of majority to pass policies. An analogy might be first-past-the-post versus proportional representation, where the PR system gives a smoother representation of the voters' wishes, but is less likely to provide a clear winner or outcome. FPTP often skews results, producing a clear winner when the voter proportions say it wasn't so close. The result is greater legislative power, less need for compromise or 'consensus'. The problem with AGW is that here is a natural scientific consensus being pushed into the political arena, which is where ideologies come into play. In order for policy to be made, it is easier for the politicians (not the scientists) to skew the consensus into something absolute, the 'them and us' approach, which leads to inevitable political problems when errors are found/mud is slinged, but to the politicians it is the only way to push AGW forward. The fallout is on the scientists who do not deal in certainties (we're not talking about Newton's Law of Gravitation here), but are dealing in theories, which have a high degree of verification, and a consensus of opinion among nearly all relevant scientists. They are then slammed when the politicians assertion of certainty is confused with the real state of the science. But I don't suppose the political environment (or the media for that matter) will ever understand the differences between the scientific terms 'hypothesis' (a testable idea that explains observations/makes predictions that is as yet untested or unverified), 'theory' (hypothesis is verified and passes existing tests, predictions are subsequently verified), or 'law' (fundamental mathematical relationship exactly describing a principle of science). Theories rarely become laws, as the definition of 'law' is very specific and far too narrow for most theories. To too many people, 'theory' implies something [very] uncertain, yet they are the building blocks of our scientific knowledge. Politics and science make very uncomfortable bedfellows it seems, and a lot of it is down to language, and some of it to ideology. Not really sure quite where I'm going here (!) so I'll stop at that. sss

Clarification on CO2 levels here, with a nifty video showing how the levels vary with latitude. You can see how the South Pole sites varies least (being farthest from emissions), but that all sites steadily rise to the 380ppm mark. At the end of the animation you see the connection in with the Siple Dome ice core CO2 record. http://www.skeptical...uncertainty.htm The data is from the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases: http://gaw.kishou.go...dcgg/wdcgg.html So that comfortably answers your questions 1, 3 and 4 David. As for elevation, well that is rather easier to deal with: Firstly, the top of the ice sheets (depending on which dome you're talking about) are over 3000m.a.s.l. Vostok station is about 3500m, or 11,500 feet above sea level. Greenland Summit (GRIP, GISP2) is 10,500ft. Other core sites are lower, but it is immaterial, because the concentration of CO2 is vertically fairly constant (within ~10ppm) throughout the troposphere, with a drop as you cross into the stratosphere of about 7ppm. Therefore your question 2 is answered on two counts, first that the long ice cores are (coincidentally) at a similar elevation to Mauna Loa (please tell me you didn't think the ice sheets were flat and at sea level???), and secondly that the air is well-mixed vertically and so measurements at sea level are not that different to those higher up in the troposphere. Bischof et al (1980) in Nature: http://www.nature.co...s/288347a0.html Good slides showing vertical mixing esp slides 14-18, the values are rarely more than 5-10ppm through the air column: http://www.tiimes.uc..._eol_070418.pdf sss

Very good question! My pointer hovered over the 'bad' radio button for a while then I settled on 'makes no difference'. Not quite because I think it makes no difference, but because I think it depends on the nature of the consensus. If it is a consensus that is forced upon people, as you suggest, then it is definitely a bad thing, as it is against the natural way of scientific progress. But if it is a consensus that arises naturally out of, say, a theory that successfully explains the observations such that very few people quantitavely disagree with the theory, then it is a good thing, as it can then be a foundation for moving forward beyond the theory, or acting upon it. As far as climate scientists are concerned there is such a natural consensus. There will remain such a natural consensus until someone can come along with a strong alternative theory that can supercede the existing one. By that logic, a 'natural consensus' is also far more open to change in the light of new information, whereas a 'forced consensus' is not. 'Natural consensus' may also be seen as the adoption of a prevailing paradigm. While there may be some resistance from some (usually older) members of the relevant community to a paradigm shift away from the existing one, the shifts happen with the weight of new evidence to support a new theory. I am entirely in agreement about the notion of 'official consensus' on the asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs as being pretty silly and unnecessary. Though I'm sure we're going to disagree on the nature of the AGW consensus! sss

You don't understand the concept of a scientific theory, do you? http://en.wikipedia....ientific_theory Examples include: Special theory of Relativity Quantum Mechanics Big Bang Evolution Copernican theory of the solar system Theory of electromagnetism AGW theory makes a series of predictions, based on the known properties of greenhouse gases. These predictions have been and are being observed (including feedbacks), hence why the theory is verified by it's different predictions for different parts of the globe, levels of the atmosphere, radiation at different wavelengths above and below the atmosphere, and attendant physical consequences in the atmosphere, ocean and cryosphere. I'm sorry you don't understand that, really I am, but this is 100 years of good science that you wish to brush under the carpet because you don't like it. The theory stands alongside other theories that you're quite happy to accept (I presume you do accept that we orbit the Sun, for example). It will continue to stand until evidence falsifies it or a new theory supercedes it. If a negative feedback appears that changes the outcome for the Earth, then all well and good, so long as we do something about our greenhouse gas emissions before the negative feedback goes away. You forget that climate scientists would be entirely happy to discover a new property of the system that meant we did not irreversibly alter our global climate. But that's bnot going to happen, based on the evidence. unless of course you have some new evidence to show... You're convinced it's all a conspiracy, but it's not, it's based on observations that verify the predictions of the theory... unless you think there has been a conspiracy for generations and among tens of thousands of scientists across the whole world. I really enjoyed your bit about the IPCC scientists. You mean the same ones that aren't paid to write the report? Speaking of conspiracies... 32 organisations involved in both the denial campaign surrounding tobacco and that surrounding AGW: http://www.realclima...#comment-151461 [comment 855 by Timothy Chase has the list] sss

Some interesting research out recently - looks like the cosmic ray - clouds/aerosol hypothesis is standing on increasingly weak ground: Kumala et al (2010): http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/1885/2010/acp-10-1885-2010.html "Our main conclusion is that galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation events, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well." Calgovic et al (2010): http://www.eawag.ch/organisation/abteilungen/surf/publikationen/2010_calogovic.pdf "Here we report on an alternative and stringent test of the CRC‐hypothesis [cosmic-ray-cloud hypothesis] by searching for a possible influence of sudden GCR decreases (so‐called Forbush decreases) on clouds. We find no response of global cloud cover to Forbush decreases at any altitude and latitude." It looks like competing hypotheses are steadily thinning out now, seemingly in line with increasingly (and baseless) political attacks on climate scientists. I don't think that relationship is a coincidence. sss

No point in feeding a noisemaker who is unable to support his assertions or defend any of the criticisms. Has he looked at the Fischer data? Doubt it. The point was that nothing was well documented in the 'book', or I would have got the information I needed. It absolutely demonstrates a poor understanding of palaeoclimate, tides, orbital mechanics, statistics and data analysis among other things, and no explanations (just fob answers and a failure to look facts in the face) were forthcoming for my questions. I'd rather not further this discussion any more. Fischer data - high resolution Vostok ice core CO2 data at <200 year intervals, from a paper Dilley references, yet data which Dilley says does not exist. Link in my previous post: Lunar perigees, which dilley insists occur near solstices/equinoxes, surely as his whole premise is based on lunar cycles he would know they are not. Black vertical lines are the equinoxes and solstices. I couln't be bothered to get the data for earlier, this is sufficient to prove my point. Data from the link in my previous post: NSSC, there is lots of evidence for albedo and water vapour feedbacks. Plenty of evidence too for the mechanism of CO2 forcing, for why CO2 is a weaker greenhouse gas than menhane (but more important in the context of our emissions), and of course for the shape of the temperature rise during the 20th/21st Century. Plenty of direct observational evidence of the enhancement of the greenhouse effect as well. The hypothesis of AGW forcing is much older than the evidence for its effects, and the evidence is such that it is well and truly elevated to 'theory' (you know the difference between hypothesis and theory?), and been verified many times over. It is incumbent on the skeptics, who's views are contrary to every relevant academy, academic organisation, and major government of this world to provide evidence that this theory is incorrect, or provide a better theory, that both explains the existing evidence, and shows that AGW isn't the culprit for the warming. sss

Vaguely, though the ones I've seen only deal with data up to 2000AD (considerable warming in the Arctic since then), and also a rather sparse network of stations dominantly above 70 deg north, combined with very odd additions, such as Aberdeen (!) and other anomalously far south stations. http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/warm/warm_apr02.pdf If you use data only from above 70 deg north, you get a different pattern than if you use data from above 60 deg north due to the greatly reduced number of stations. Therefore I am unsure how well Polyakov's interpretation of trends (while perfectly plausible) would hold up under more detailed analysis, and also into the last decade? However I would be very interested to see how it does propagate into this decade, as there have been a few suggestions floating around that the unusual weather patterns of the last couple of years may have something to do with the warming in the Arctic. I'm not saying that's the case of course, not enough data, but I find it interesting just how low the Arctic Oscillation got this year - far lower than in the 1960s: http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/arctic-oscillation-ao sss

I've had enough of the misinformation peddled by GWO. He is wrong on all 6 of his points, and I am not going to explain them once more, as he is clearly not interested in reading or understanding the answers. He still seems to deny reliability or resolution if ice core readings for either the last 1000 years or from older cores, because he's not willing to do the research, and is fundamentally contradicting his own earlier statements: Dilley, yesterday at 13:03: "This is the main reason we do not have a history of CO2 from 1900 back several thousand years." This is just plain wrong. We do have a history for the last 1000 years. It's published and available online, the resolution is good, and the data is internally consistent and consistent with recent instrumental readings. The resolution of older cores is also good, and the data quality is good when the resolution is required (such as for the Fischer paper). You've been shown to be wrong on so many things here, not just by me, yet you pretend you're right. Where is this cold Arctic air? In the Arctic that has experienced unusual warmth this winter? [a direct consequence of the negative AO] Tides: Your chapter on tidal cycles includes a number of basic misconceptions: relationship of 6-monthly perigee peaks to equinoxes/solstices - not true: http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html 4-year cycle - bizarrely unexplained, given that the cycle of high and low declinations of the Moon is ~18 years (oddly you simultaneously accept that) "gravitational force of the moon causes the oceans to bulge along the lunar gravitational envelope, and a dome of water to form on both sides of the earth." Er, no it doesn't, a common misconception, that does not take into account the Coriolis Force. See the description of amphidromic points in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide#Phase_and_amplitude Your graphs of PFM at different scales are not just similar, but identical. Why would that be? And your other graphs purporting to show links are pathetic, with, as VP said, no statistical analysis, and obviously poor correlations. Lastly, have a read of this: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Does-record-snowfall-disprove-global-warming.html Maybe you'll learn a little about temperature, humidity and precipitation, and why your claims about the record snowfalls in the US are so wrong. sss

If the data is unreliable, why do you use it to identify cycles in your book? You still haven't shown me this phantom smoothing. You still don't understand the difference between closure age and time of compaction of snow to ice. I showed you that high resolution data is available from deeper in the ice cores, and that it is internally consistent and exhibits none of the variation you talk of. Why is Fischer wrong? And that data is available for the last 1000 years, which is similarly internally consistent. Of course the readings are not as accurate as a direct measurement today, but they are fundamentally of the same thing. Do you think that a reading from a household thermometer that reads 14C is measuring a different property than a high precision thermocouple reading 14.134C? You repeat that oft-debunked "temperatures have not risen in 12 years" BS. Care to place that into context, or explain to me the minimum length of time required for statistical significance of the trend, and why you wish to start at 1998, and not 1997, 1999, 1994, 1989, 1979?. Why would I not start a temperature series in 1991? Why do you wish to start from the biggest warm outlier in the HADCRUT3 dataset? Seeing as we're discussing non-significant trends (or more correctly, trends within the 'noise' of the climate signal), what's the trend between 1998 and 2009? Up, or down? Where is the IPCC saying what you suggest? And where does the IPCC deny the existence of natural cycles, given that the most important ones are accounted for in AR4? If you learn a little basic climate science you would understand why the IPCC says what it does, but I don't expect you will, and you'll continure repeating your badly-researched, incorrect and misleading claims. Hi Jethro, on your question, I think something like 90% of the heat is being delivered into the oceans, and also that the increasing concentration of GHGs offsets the reduced effect of GHG forcing at higher concentrations. If GHG forcing steadily continues on its upward trend, as we observe, then the magnitude inevitably takes us well beyond that which solar forcing can manage. In any one decade, solar forcing may just about do enough to negate a rise, especially if aided by ENSO, but the additional GHG forcing is still 'banked' by the Earth over that time, so when the ENSO/solar forcings go back to normal or positive values, temperatures will rise above where they were on the previous occasion that the ENSO/solar forcings were positive. sss

How about we move the discussion forward. I'll not thank you for comparing me to a politician, as I was stating facts about the poor quality of Dilley's research. Here's a paper (Lean, 2010) just released that reviews evidence for solar activity's influence on climate. It once again shows that the influence on climate is there, but that it is at the <10% level. http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WiresArticle/wisId-WCC18.html I think the article is freely available to all as well. What do you think of the article? Here's a pertinent quote from it: "Although the sheer volume and the high fidelity of the empirical evidence may suggest a prominent solar impact on global climate, Figure 7 cautions that the corresponding global response is typically an order of magnitude smaller than the strongest site-specific Sun–climate linkages (with increases of as much as 1◦C during the solar cycle). Claims that the Sun has caused as much as 70% of the recent global warming (based in part on the attribution of radiometric trends to real solar irradiance changes49) presents fundamental puzzles. It requires that the Sun’s brightness increased more in the past century than at any time in the past millennium, including over the past 30 years, contrary to the direct space-based observations. And it requires, as well, that Earth’s climate be insensitive to well-measured increases in greenhouse gases at the same time that it is excessively sensitive to poorly known solar brightness changes. Both scenarios are far less plausible than the simple attribution of most (90%) industrial global warming to anthropogenic effects, rather than to the Sun." What do you mean by 'past warming'? If you mean the 19th-20th Century, you have the attribution studies. If you mean a direct causal link between GHGs and climate, you have observations of Earth's radiation to space, and of increased downward longwave radiation, as I have linked to previously, as well as the 100-year-old physics that predicted that this would happen. sss

Entertaining blindness here. I pointed out very obvious flaws and clear errors in Dilley's work and his posting. Not the least was an assertion about CO2 measurements not being possible over the last 1000 years, or at high resolution, when in fact they are and the data has been available for over a decade. I did not actually comment on Dilley's hypothesis, only the quality of his background research. "As per usual sss, you are keen to dismiss any theory that goes against AGW being the main source of "past warming" we've endured." No I didn't, because I did not discuss Dilley's 'theory'. If there's evidence for an alternative hypothesis, I'll consider it, why not show some good evidence? "What we don't find is 'intentional mistakes' like what the IPCC and Phil Jones presented, and what we do see is the climate beginning to respond similar to as projected". Please show the evidence for your slander of IPCC and Jones, in that you suggest without evidence, that somehow the IPCC (and by implication thousands of supporting studies) and Jones deliberately falsified material, where all of dear old Dilley's "mistakes" were purely accidental. Looks very much like double standards in your levels of skepticism there. Show me some evidence of the climate beginning to "respond" any different to what AGW theory suggests. I have shown you the global temperature datasets show that the warming continues unabated through the last decade, but I suppose you're blind to that too. Looks very much to me like the blindness is only on one side here. You can be as open-minded as you like but you have to be able to assess the veracity of what someone is saying to you, and decide whether it is correct or not. If someone believes every word that Dilley is saying, it tells me a lot about that person's ability to perform critical thinking. sss

I think I agree and disagree in equal measure to both G-W and Jethro here. Arctic ice chagnes are a consequence, not a cause of warming, but they are part of the albedo feedback, and so rapid losses are a more serious issue. Global temperatures are the most important measure of a warming world, but not the only one. Ice measures of change are perfectly valid if they are time-integrated, which I think is relevant for the changes in old multi-year ice, the loss of old ice shelves, and the recession of glaciers. Each of these systems has a response time of years to decades, and so is not just responding to one or two random hot years. Trends in short-lived as well as long-lived ice are also important. They do just tell us about the region, not the globe, and we have to then make the assessment of how that pattern fits in with what we expect of AGW or any proposed altrernative theory. sss

Why don't you look at the data yourself? I link to it via the NCDC website for Vostok data. My point was to prove your assertion that ice core CO2 data points are averaged over 4000 years is totally false, which I did. Using one of the references you cite, I showed you that the closure ages are an order of magnitude smaller than you assert. Then, using data from the paper that you cite (Fischer et al), I showed that there is very little noise in high-resolution data from between 137000 and 127000 years ago. I also showed you a reference and a link to ice core CO2 data from the last 1000 years (Taylor Dome), in direct contrast to your assertion that such data does not exist. Can you see why I think your ability to research a topic is woeful? You can glibly suggest that all my criticisms of your 'book' don't change the final findings, but I showed your level of research to be very poor in a mere 10 minute read of it, showing it is littered with inaccuracies that you could easily correct if you read the relevant papers in the first place. Your source material is also suspect, and glib assertions of "you'd complain about whatever source I used" don't cover the fact that you use as a source for your cycles an article in a 'popular science' magazine, that you turn a misquote (Rind abour permafrost) from a web page into a 'reference', that in your above 'reference list' you reference Wikipedia, and that you don't seem to understand the consequences for the world of melting all the ice on Vostok. Your essay appears to be a poor contribution to the anti-science being pushed on the public. It is exactly the sort of thing the Royal Society for Chemistry were concerned about in Point 10 of their submission to Parliament: "The issue of misinformation in the public domain must also be tackled. Just as the scientific community must be open with regard to their evidence base, those who disagree must also provide a clear and verifiable backing for their argument, if they wish their opinions to be given weight." sss Edit: Blast, I think you'll find rather more than typos wrong with the 'book'.

What, you mean like this record, for the last 1000 years? http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html Some nice figures in there of what the CO2 record looks like in an ice core, over the last 1000 years. Etheridge, D.M., G.I. Pearman, and P.J. Fraser. 1992. Changes in tropospheric methane between 1841 and 1978 from a high accumulation rate Antarctic ice core. Tellus 44B:282-294. Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.L. Langenfelds, R.J. Francey, J.-M. Barnola, and V.I. Morgan. 1996. Natural and anthropogenic changes in atmospheric CO2 over the last 1000 years from air in Antarctic ice and firn. Journal of Geophysical Research 101:4115-4128. And you fail to understand the concept of 'closure age' once again... Data is available from ice cores, and you can easily identify the resolution, as well as the data quality: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_co2.html For the Fischer et al study, it is easy to determine that their samples are focused around their areas of interest. During the ~130Ka glacial termination, there are 53 samples between 137Ka BP and 127Ka BP, a mean of less than 200 years. This sampling resolution is not the same as the closure age, which is the time over which the bubbles are trapped (about 300 years for this core). Nor is it the same as the age of the ice, or the time of transition between snow and ice. So your hypothesis is totally unsupported (that they average the data over much longer timescales), and I'd also rather you did not misrepresent what I said as well. The high resolution Fischer study shows how low the internal variability for CO2 measurements within an ice core is at high sampling resolutions. For the above-mentioned hi-res region in the Fischer dataset, the mean difference between neighbouring measurements, once the rising trend of the glacial termination is removed, is 8.76ppm, with a standard deviation of 8.8ppm. This indicates excellent agreement between neighbouring measurements, and no sign of the wild scatter you talk about. And crucially it is in the relatively slowly-accumulating Vostok ice core. I apologise to other readers of this thread for continuing this argument, but this is basic palaeoclimate science, with the data readily available for examination, and so I feel it important that others are not misled by incorrect assertions. sss

So your 'book', which includes a mere 37 references, many of which you have misused or misquoted, is riddled with errors, poor referencing, missing referencing. What's the length of the lunar cycle? you quote 27.5 or 27.3 days, in consecutive paragraphs. Why use the sidereal cycle instead of the synodic cycle, when many phenomena are correlated with the latter? You mistype the latitudinal displacement of the high pressures, 4442km is rather a lot. Who is "Bryon", presumably you mean "Bryson"? While Jean Meeus is a well-respected calculator of astronomical phenomena, surely you could have found, and used, a better reference than a 1981 article in Sky and Telescope, a magazine for amateur astronomers, when you were looking for data on lunar cycles? Lake Vostok virtually ice-free 420,000 years ago? Interesting theory, no reference in your 'book'. Given the EPICA core has >800,000 years ice only 500km away, this seems obviously unlikely, quite apart from the idea requiring the almost complete deglaciation of the EAIS and the greater part of 60m sea level rise above present. No evidence for that either. From Fischer et al (1999), the most recent of your three ice core references: " The internal temporal resolutionof ice core air samples is restricted by the age distributionof the bubbles caused by the enclosure process (10).This age spread is about 300 years for Vostok (11)and 140 years for the TD ice core (9) at present butabout three times higher for glacial conditions (11)." Not 4000 years, as you claim. And these numbers are for relatively old ice too. The ice age - air age difference is 2000-6000 years depending on the time period, but this is a totally different concept to the time for closure, which controls the temporal resolution. Maybe you confused the two concepts? "Rind (2003)" is actually a NASA web page, which quotes David Rind on permafrost, and is not an article written by Rind himself - very bad referencing practice. You manage to get what he said wrong too. The permafrost is not 'newly exposed', but is melted by the warming Earth. Of course you gloss over (ignore) the comment about their effect as greenhouse gases by Rind. I gave up at this point, having failed to find what I wanted, and found lots of bad information. It entirely justifies my comment on another thread about my not wishing to read your 'book'. Do you have any references to directly support your claims of us being unable to resolve the CO2 record at less than 4000 years? Back to something more interesting? Surely we can test these ideas of discplaced jetstreams with evidence? Anyway, a southerly displaced jetstream may do no more than trap warmer air equatorward of it, which along with the relatively warm air near the poles, will more than offset the cold air in the mid-latitudes? sss

It's a completely diferent science though, badboy, and so problems with one are not transferrable to the other. A bit like saying the brakes are broken on your bike, therefore you won't drive your car to work. I'm glad that the Met Office are no longer publishing these long-range forecasts, as they weren't very good. But you know that their short-term forecasts and their annual global climate forecasts are very good. Short-term weather is easier than long-range weather, for very obvious reasons, while the global climate forecast for next year is a completely different methodology, based on the forcing of CO2, ENSO, volcanic and solar. sss

Really? That's interesting. The same ice cores that have as good as annual layer resolution going back 10,000 years? The ones that have accurately-determined closure ages (to correct for the fact that the gas is younger than the ice), and crucially good estimates of the time during which the gas samples will be shut off from the surface, called the age width (~15 years for Greenland Summit, ~100 years for the slower-accumulating South Pole). See sections 3.2-3.4 of the article below: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119246689/PDFSTART What's your source for suggesting that ice core gas is not isolated until 4000 years have passed? No denier blog please, but a respectable source, from someone who has actually done the science, maybe even a peer-reviewed paper that has stood the test of time? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. sss

Maybe because it is a poor and irrelevant question? Here's why: 1: individual weather extremes are much larger than climate averages, so cold events can still be broken by the right weather conditions. 2: Do you believe that it is impossible for severe cold weather to happen in a warming world? If you don't believe that then you'll realise that your question is unnecessary. Nobody has ever said that cold weather was impossible in a warming world, except maybe the tabloid media... 3: A releated question is: do you believe that it is impossible for warming to actively contribute to an increase in certain kinds of extreme event, in particular high snowfall? We observe that there is more water vapour in the atmosphere, and we observe increased heat in the atmosphere. This can quite reasonably lead to more severe snowstorms where the warm air interacts with the cold air - with this year's weather that is over some heavily populated areas of the developed world. But on a global scale, the world is warmer, without the need to have 100-year records broken. But I'm sure you'll be aware of the research showing that statistically there is an approximately 2:1 ratio of warm records being broken compared to cold records in the US this century, showing an increased likelihood of warm over cold extremes. Note that this is not a 2:0 ratio, as it is perfectly possible to break a cold record. Additionally, research like this below that indicates a relationship with the predicted effects of AGW: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030948.shtml sss

Where do you think we're missing a baseline, or missing the detailed studies? Baselines come from palaeoclimate, and in some cases, instrumental records. They are less detailed than today's Earth observation, but still quite sufficient to support the theory. If you're looking for a perfect representation of the Earth, there isn't one of course (we don't have a spare), but if you're looking for a theory that explains the observed changes in a way that no other theory does, it's there. And there is plenty detailed data to be confident about that. Are you perhaps taking Stott's quote out of context? He's referring to high-resolution details, not the core science which generally deals with the lower resolution data. Or do you think that the thousands of studies that support the theory (and the >100 newer ones that support even higher confidences of the theory), don't qualify as "detailed"? [apologies if that sounds strongly-worded, I just wish to understand what you mean here] Edit: Excellent post TWS! sss

Hmmm, I think there are several problems weaved together here. On the IPCC - with the IPCC going for "virtually certain" or something similar that the Earth is warming, and going for "very likely" or "very high confidence" that it is due to Man. The IPCC being a consensus report, ie something different from a normal scientific paper, in that all the interested parties had to agree on all parts of it, makes me wonder whether the levels of certainty expressed in the report are, as VP would reasonably ask, statistically-derived, or whether they are agreed on by the members (which I think they are). To my knowledge (and I may be wrong) some of the level of scientific uncertainty is downplayed somewhat in the IPCC report, in order for all members to agree and sign off on the details. But to test this, we would need to look at the relevant papers to assess their uncertainty levels, and how they were derived. Then we have politics and the media. Both of whom like absolute certainty, the black-or-white approach, which does not fit with scientific practice at all. While the relevant scientists are really confident of their results, they will not be saying that it's 100% this, or that. The media, and politicians, have a nasty tendency to drop mention of the uncertainty level, which leads to awkward positions. Which then feeds back to the scientists, who have been misrepresented or misinterpreted, and have to pick up the pieces. And the media/politicians then don't know how to report it when the scientists increase their levels of certainty based on further research. Hence "how can something that was certain now be more certain"! I don't like it when something is touted as certain when it is, by definition, not 100%. Especially not in Parliament. But I think we have a problem with language, where something that has a level of "uncertainty" associated with it will be pounced on by the non-scientifically literate people (politicians, media, credulous others, especially people looking for a story), who then convert scientific "uncertainty" into "uncertain" in the sense of "we don't really know". Which is a false line of reasoning. We know quite enough to act on climate change, of that the community of climate science is sure. 100% certain? No. Is there uncertainty? Yes, but it is small. sss

Quick one from me - can you show that this is exactly what the IPCC said. So far as I'm aware they said: [from AR4 SPM] "The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling infl uences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence [7] that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2 (see Figure SPM.2). {2.3., 6.5, 2.9}" very high confidence meaning >= 90% confidence. Now that leaves room for improvement, so you can go from very high, to even higher, which is exactly what the Met office summary of recent research is showing. While all this spurious debate has been raging, the science has actually merely continued to confirm the broad findings, and in many cases show that the AR4 understated the effects. So not at all inconsistent. The detail, I think, is in the higher-resolution patterns rather than the overall picture. The overall picture is much easier to determine than detailed impacts, such as (for example) changes in the frequency or magnitude of hurricanes. Just as in a weather model, you have a better idea of whether the air pressure will be low or high, but less idea if it will rain in 72 hours. sss

Indeed, well put TWS. So far as this year's El Nino goes, looks like it's in line with projections, being a central Pacific Modoki event, of a kind expected to occur more and more frequently in a warming world. Yeh et al (2009): El Nino in a changing climate. Nature. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/nature08316.html (sorry if it's not freely available) Here's a description, showing that observations of Modoki events have increased in recent years: http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/idm/2009/nov-2009-if-it-s-not-el-nino-then-it-must-be-his-brother/index.html AVISO has maps of ocean height and temp anomalies since 1992, good for visualising the differences: http://bulletin.aviso.oceanobs.com/html/produits/indic/enso/welcome_uk.php3 So you can see how different in spatial pattern this year was to events such as 1998. You can also see just how much weaker this year's El Nino has been compared to 1998, yet global temperatures are similar or even higher. Other possible forcings have either not changed or are weaker (volcanic = no change; solar = same or weaker). This is in line with AGW theory raising the baseline, and flattening the thermocline in the Pacific, exactly as predicted. sss