General Climate Change Discussion

[Iceberg]

No arrows noggin, I just don't understand what it's showing.

[Chris Knight]

Damn those salami slicers!!!

You take the 99% credit for that very witty association, Jethro, I'll just pocket the 1%

[osmposm]

http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-Jan...36090698242.gif

This is a nice graph thing.

* awaits slings and arrows*

Yes, a very nice graph...um...thing. Perhaps you could start by telling us what it shows? Temps - yes, I understand that. But where? Global? Land? Ocean? Northern Hem? USA? Contiguous USA? Surface measurements? Satellite? As Iceberg says, it's hard to have a discussion until we know what we're discussing.

The fact that it starts with 1998, and shows a slight downward trend - a shortish-term statistic that is probably not in dispute - may mean there is little to discuss anyway. Did you not read Dev's reply to you of 3rd January, in which he showed this similar sort of graph, but presented slightly differently, along with a longer term version?

Ossie

[jethro]

You take the 99% credit for that very witty association, Jethro, I'll just pocket the 1%

Lol. You show all the makings of a millionaire.

[PeteG]

The scepticism arises from a classic chicken and egg situation - what comes first, warming or CO2? There are arguments for both.

You would seem to be implying that only one can be right. I can't see any reason why both shouldn't be true. It is perfectly feasible for some factor to bring about warming and for that to result in a release of CO2 from, for example loss of vegetation through drought or climate change, or alternatively for CO2 to increase through volcanic activity (or mans) also resulting in warming.

Maybe that's why there are arguments for both.

[Gray-Wolf]

The scepticism arises from a classic chicken and egg situation - what comes first, warming or CO2? There are arguments for both.

You would seem to be implying that only one can be right. I can't see any reason why both shouldn't be true. It is perfectly feasible for some factor to bring about warming and for that to result in a release of CO2 from, for example loss of vegetation through drought or climate change, or alternatively for CO2 to increase through volcanic activity (or mans) also resulting in warming.

Maybe that's why there are arguments for both.

The contrarians seem to forget that the records show that CO2 levels rapidly increase once the warming trend is established (due to feedback mechanisms) and though we have 'forced' temps with our fossil fuel dependence we are still to inherit the natural 'feedback' CO2 as the warming impacts the climate systems.

[jethro]

The contrarians seem to forget that the records show that CO2 levels rapidly increase once the warming trend is established (due to feedback mechanisms) and though we have 'forced' temps with our fossil fuel dependence we are still to inherit the natural 'feedback' CO2 as the warming impacts the climate systems.

You know what Ian, much as I like you as a person, much as I respect your knowledge and views on this subject; I really am sick to the back teeth of being referred to as a "contrarian". It's insulting, inflammatory, superior and in my opinion, utterly needless. New Years resolution eh, be a bit friendlier

PeteG: Nope absolutely not implying that at all, was responding to a post which seemed to dismiss sceptics out of hand. I just came up with a few reasons off the top of my head, as to why scepticism does exist and cannot be quite so easily dismissed. I don't believe any of this is cut and dried or an either/or situation.

[Chris Knight]

You know what Ian, much as I like you as a person, much as I respect your knowledge and views on this subject; I really am sick to the back teeth of being referred to as a "contrarian". It's insulting, inflammatory, superior and in my opinion, utterly needless. New Years resolution eh, be a bit friendlier

PeteG: Nope absolutely not implying that at all, was responding to a post which seemed to dismiss sceptics out of hand. I just came up with a few reasons off the top of my head, as to why scepticism does exist and cannot be quite so easily dismissed. I don't believe any of this is cut and dried or an either/or situation.

Nay, lass, it's the Ian Stewarts of the world that are the "contrarians", God bless them. Their gardens are full of silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row. The rest of us have dandelions and chickweed, despite our vigilance. Natural or contrived - it's our choice, in the end.

[Snow Cat]

The fact that it starts with 1998, and shows a slight downward trend - a shortish-term statistic that is probably not in dispute - may mean there is little to discuss anyway. Did you not read Dev's reply to you of 3rd January, in which he showed this similar sort of graph, but presented slightly differently, along with a longer term version?

Ossie

I wonder why different lengths of timescales are used as a means of proving a point. Those who believe the world is cooling show a chart for the past 10 years which clearly shows a decline. Those who believe it is warming show a chart of the last 100 years which despite several cooling periods shows an overall 'trend' upwards in their favour. Then there's the 30 year mean which is meant to show a more unbiased average, although how can it show an average isn't it mostly showing coming out of a PDO cooling and into an a PDO warming?.

The problem as I see it with climate change in the media is the way that they tout the recent warming as "runaway warming", make it sound unnatural, out of control like it would just get hotter and hotter, like some freak event that has never happened before in earths history, which is obviously not true, temperatures rose sharply before each of the ice ages (http://www.iceagenow.com/Pacemaker_of_the_Ice_Ages-1.jpg)

If you want to look at the big picture of climate change then how about pasting the chart of the last 1000 years, including the Mediaeval warm period which had higher temperatures than the recent warming trend of the 90s and shows how natural the ups and downs look overall.

http://deadcantrant.com/wp-content/uploads...emperatures.jpg

Edited January 8, 2009 by Snow Cat

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechn...g-a-kettle.html

How bad are we?

[Iceberg]

Snow Cat I am assuming you know all about the spencer/mann issues with the MWP ?.

[Admiral_Bobski]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechn...g-a-kettle.html

How bad are we?

We should start banning anything that causes excess CO2 to be produced. So we should start by banning sports - when people overexert themelves they breathe faster and expel more CO2 than when at rest...

(Just thought I'd throw that in while we're being absurd.)

CB

[noggin]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art...-eco-blitz.html

Don't watch the telly, either.

Tell you what...why don't we just all die now and get it over and done with? Then the AGWers can sit around in the afterlife congratulating themselves on how AGW wiped out the entire population of the world, even if it was only due to the fact that we all did ourselves in because their pontificating drove us mad.

[Solar Cycles]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechn...g-a-kettle.html

How bad are we?

That's put a stop your googling GW!

Also I see those bureaucrats in Brussels, want to ban Plasma tv now. Is there no end to this madness!!!

Snow Cat I am assuming you know all about the spencer/mann issues with the MWP ?.

And what an issue it is! That nice Mr Mann didn't like what he saw with the MWP. So he decided to cook the books, and come up with the hockey stick!!!!! Edited January 12, 2009 by Solar Cycles

[Guest]

I wonder why different lengths of timescales are used as a means of proving a point. Those who believe the world is cooling show a chart for the past 10 years which clearly shows a decline. Those who believe it is warming show a chart of the last 100 years which despite several cooling periods shows an overall 'trend' upwards in their favour. Then there's the 30 year mean which is meant to show a more unbiased average, although how can it show an average isn't it mostly showing coming out of a PDO cooling and into an a PDO warming?.

The problem as I see it with climate change in the media is the way that they tout the recent warming as "runaway warming", make it sound unnatural, out of control like it would just get hotter and hotter, like some freak event that has never happened before in earths history, which is obviously not true, temperatures rose sharply before each of the ice ages (http://www.iceagenow.com/Pacemaker_of_the_Ice_Ages-1.jpg)

If you want to look at the big picture of climate change then how about pasting the chart of the last 1000 years, including the Mediaeval warm period which had higher temperatures than the recent warming trend of the 90s and shows how natural the ups and downs look overall.

http://deadcantrant.com/wp-content/uploads...emperatures.jpg

:lol:

A bit like the bear and bull markets of the stock markets!

[Iceberg]

I don't really want to open that old debate, It's fair to say that about 20 different studies have now been undertaken on proxies if you Wiki temperature reconstructions you find out that none of them have the MWP as high as spencer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Yea..._Comparison.png

[Solar Cycles]

I don't really want to open that old debate, It's fair to say that about 20 different studies have now been undertaken on proxies if you Wiki temperature reconstructions you find out that none of them have the MWP as high as spencer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Yea..._Comparison.png

I agree Iceberg, it's old hat, and it's what is going to happen next that intrigues us all!

[noggin]

http://newsblaze.com/story/20090106135456t...b/topstory.html

Second meeting of the International Conference on Climate Change coming up on 8th-10th March in New York. It'll be interesting to see what comes out from that and how the media react.

PS Nice to see that Anthony Watts will be there. WUWT looks to have won the 2008 Weblog award for "Best Science Blog".

My congratulations to Mr Watts.....he got my vote!

PPS Let's just..... http://wattsupwiththat.com/ .

Edited January 14, 2009 by noggin

[jethro]

Here's a new paper about the Greenland icecap; seems it's rapid, impending disappearance has been over-stated:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/nc...bs/ngeo394.html

[Gray-Wolf]

The excerpts I read (or the quotations of one of the chappies responsible for the paper) were at pains to point out that this was the study of 1 glacial terminus and could not be applied to other glacial outlets in either Greenland or Antarctica.

As with any river the course/behaviour is dependant on the underlying geology, the surrounding geography and the precipitation across the basin. We had a broader paper last year that tried to show that Greenland will reach a 'new equilibrium' once the impacts of recent warming have 'worked through' the system. This paper neglected to give figure for the impacts on sea levels up to that point or how long the warming was predicted to continue.

As it stands the past two years of observations have both been record breaking in their Tally's for outflow. The largest areas of outflow were 07' from the south of Greenland and 08' for the north.

As with most of the cryosphere science still appears to be 'running to catch up' with recent developoments (events on the ground mirroring simulations not supposed to be occurring for some years yet) I'm still not convinced we have a very clear idea of where we go from here but recent observations, were they to continue, don't leave me optimistic.

[Methuselah]

Here's a new paper about the Greenland icecap; seems it's rapid, impending disappearance has been over-stated:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/nc...bs/ngeo394.html

The claim (I would call it scaremongering) that the Greenland Ice-Sheet will rapidly disappear in the near future, is one that I've never believed...

[Gray-Wolf]

The claim (I would call it scaremongering) that the Greenland Ice-Sheet will rapidly disappear in the near future, is one that I've never believed...

Not with it sat in it's own basin an'all. I think the point is we need to know just how much of it we CAN expect to melt in the coming years, along with the sheet/glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula.If you look at the size of the next chunk of the Petermann Glacier due to plop off this year (and this in North Greenland) then you start to see how rapidly the glaciers are retreating/collapsing??? up there. We are told the majority of sea level rises at the mo' are from the smaller glaciers but these big ones do tend to focus the attention!

The other point being that we are now beyond the point where thermal expansion outstrips meltwater for the larger part of the yearly sea level rises. Seeing as oceanic temps are still trending up this would suggest (along with the general increases in rate of sea level rise) that something is accelerating in the global inputs from glaciers/snow melt/grounded shelf collapse.

As I've said in various other threads the danger from quickly changing seas levels (to me) is the impact on the floating shelves around Antarctica (that are still somewhat insulated from global temp rises by the impacts of the spring ozone hole and it's impacts on the Circumpolar winds/currents) from storm swells and high tides. The mechanical stresses on their junction with the continent must raise concerns about mechanical erosion/collapse and their subsequent drift into warmer waters to melt.

When folk go on about the inundation of major cities it appears a far off event, I think before we see major, AGW attributable, inundations we will see the breakup of the edges of Ross ice shelf and the ice of the Weddell sea. Both these 'mechanically driven' events will then impact the ability of the sea/shelf ice to hold back the outflow from behind which in turn will increase the rate of sea level increases.

Edited January 14, 2009 by Gray-Wolf

[Admiral_Bobski]

Both these 'mechanically driven' events will then impact the ability of the sea/shelf ice to hold back the outflow from behind which in turn will increase the rate of sea level increases.

I think the notion that ice shelves are like corks holding back glacial outflow is not valid. Glaciers have an enormous amount of power behind them - can a free-floating mass of ice really hold back the force of millions of tons of densely compacted ice that moves in a glacier? Glaciers grow at the rate at which they grow - removing the ice sheet "corks" is not going to make them grow any quicker.

CB

[Iceberg]

I think it's more complicated than that CB, It probably depends on the bed rock, the straightness of the glacier and the type of ice and the average age of the glacier as well as the angle of the glacier i.e the difference in height between it's top and bottom and the profile you get inbetween.

I don't know the answers to any of these for the glacier he studied but hope that he mentioned these factors in his work.

Thanks

Matt

[Admiral_Bobski]

I think it's more complicated than that CB, It probably depends on the bed rock, the straightness of the glacier and the type of ice and the average age of the glacier as well as the angle of the glacier i.e the difference in height between it's top and bottom and the profile you get inbetween.

I don't know the answers to any of these for the glacier he studied but hope that he mentioned these factors in his work.

Thanks

Matt

You're right, it is more complicated than that (though this simplified scenario is how the situation is presented by Gray-Wolf - that the loss of ice sheets will uncork the inland glaciers and allow them to flow into the oceans, thereby leading to catastrophic sea-level rises). I may be guilty of having expanded the oversimplification to demonstrate my opposition to it. The factors you mention do of course have a bearing on the dynamics of glacial movement, but even taking the variations of those factors into account, no inland glaciers is going to suddenly "gush" into the sea (at least not in the way in which Gray-Wolf presents the scenario).

Here's a good place to start: http://www.nsidc.org/glaciers/

CB

Edited January 14, 2009 by Captain_Bobski