State of the Union - Climate change?

[Paprika]

Nothing was missing from what I presented. It was an accurate summary graph from a reputable scientific source. I provided a link to that source as well as the information on the data sets used.

If I research the original data sets and find the published error ranges you'll demand to see the calibration data on the measurement instruments.

If I manage to find the calibration data you'll demand to see the medical records of the Cal Lab technicians to show they weren't on medication.

Go play your childish games elsewhere.

Very well. If you wish to evade the burden of proof I don't really care.

[Paprika]

Did not answer the questions!! What qualifications do you have to define what is missing. Your thread on error bars is a bust!!!!!!!

HMS_Beagle knows what I'm asking for, yet he refuses to produce it. His argument doesn't hold water until he does.

[HMS_Beagle]

HMS_Beagle knows what I'm asking for, yet he refuses to produce it. His argument doesn't hold water until he does.

I know exactly what you're doing. Playing your childish "gotcha" games by demanding infinite detail while doing zero work on your own.

You got called on your reprehensible behavior of accusing professional scientific organizations like NOAA of being deliberate frauds, now you look like a fool. Wear it.

[Paprika]

I know exactly what you're doing. Playing your childish "gotcha" games by demanding infinite detail while doing zero work on your own.

You got called on your reprehensible behavior of accusing professional scientific organizations like NOAA of being deliberate frauds, now you look like a fool. Wear it.

You presume the worst intentions of me to evade the point brought up. It is not altogether unexpected.

[HMS_Beagle]

You presume the worst intentions of me to evade the point brought up. It is not altogether unexpected.

You insinuated professional scientists were guilty of willful fraud. It was a cowardly and reprehensible thing to do. Don't blame me when you made yourself look like an a disingenuous knob.

[seer]

You don't know what my point is because your reading comprehension sucks and you only see what you want to see. The climate change part referred to the largest on record typhoon, not that a typhoon occurred. Even after I explained your error to you you still refuse to get it.

That is nonsense, you did not qualify that in your original quote. The same with "severe drought." And where is your evidence that either was the result of man made global warming? After all we are told that we can't look to weather conditions to disprove AGW, but you get to look to weather conditions to support it.

[shunyadragon]

I've talked with lao tzu and he showed me that what I was looking for was an analysis of systemic errors.

Again it is justified criticism that your accusation is an accusation of fraud, as both lao Tzu and I have pointed out. Scientific Publications will not normally show such error bars. Much of this information would be in the equipment specifications and data collection procedures the institution used in the research. There will also often be a statistical analysis done on the ranges of data collected. These research projects involve many years of data collection by different institutions. This redundancy of research resolves the problems of the reliability of the data. For example, the ice core data is being collected and analyzed by at least four countries and a number of research institutions in different locations in the Arctic and Antarctic, and when published the results can be compared.

[shunyadragon]

That is nonsense, you did not qualify that in your original quote. The same with "severe drought." And where is your evidence that either was the result of man made global warming? After all we are told that we can't look to weather conditions to disprove AGW, but you get to look to weather conditions to support it.

You still have not understood what is meant by 'weather' and 'climate.' What the research shows is the 'change in climate' over time by measuring weather conditions, and other factors such as changes in the ice cores, polar ice, CO2 atmospheric content and ocean conditions. You still remain combative, citing layman articles with unethical use of short term data cherry picked form legitimate research. You have been given many academic resources, and you have failed to apparently read them, nor are you willing to discuss them.

[seer]

You still have not understood what is meant by 'weather' and 'climate.' What the research shows is the 'change in climate' over time by measuring weather conditions, and other factors such as changes in the ice cores, polar ice, CO2 atmospheric content and ocean conditions. You still remain combative, citing layman articles with unethical use of short term data cherry picked form legitimate research. You have been given many academic resources, and you have failed to apparently read them, nor are you willing to discuss them.

First of all you buffed up fraud, if I'm not mistaken the last article I linked was from Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT. Who probably knows more about this subject than all of us combined here. And if we can't use one weather phenomena like one of the colder winters on record as evidence against AGW, then you do not get to use a typhoon or drought as evidence for AGW. It is a double standard.

[phank]

First of all you buffed up fraud, if I'm not mistaken the last article I linked was from Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT. Who probably knows more about this subject than all of us combined here. And if we can't use one weather phenomena like one of the colder winters on record as evidence against AGW, then you do not get to use a typhoon or drought as evidence for AGW. It is a double standard.

You are stretching pretty hard. As a heat sink, an entire planet's average temperature is pretty hard to change. Certainly it can't be changed in a short period of time. The heat CAN be moved around from place to place, of course. A colder than usual winter in one place is guaranteed to mean warmer than usual temperatures somewhere else.

Now, one of the predictions of AGW is that we are likely to see more of this moving-around. That is, colder colds, warmer warms, changes in storm frequency and intensity, etc. Colder winters are NOT evidence against AGW. Indeed, colder winters somewhere are a prediction of some of the models. I notice that this has been an unusually warm winter in the US west of the Rockies. Maybe next winter California will freeze and New England will be balmy, and those in New England who can't see past the horizon will decide the world is warming up after all.

[HMS_Beagle]

First of all you buffed up fraud, if I'm not mistaken the last article I linked was from Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT. Who probably knows more about this subject than all of us combined here. And if we can't use one weather phenomena like one of the colder winters on record as evidence against AGW, then you do not get to use a typhoon or drought as evidence for AGW. It is a double standard.

Ahem...

How Will Changes in Moisture with Global Warming Impact Midlatitude Storms: A Study Using Idealized Moist Baroclinic Life Cycles
Booth, J. F.; Wang, S.; Polvani, L. M.
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011

Abstract: Global Climate Models predict that atmospheric moisture content will increase with global warming. This study examines how these changes may affect midlatitude storms, using a baroclinic wave experiment in the NCAR Weather Research Forecasting model. Two experiments were conducted, one in which the moisture in the initial conditions is altered, and a second in which the saturation vapor pressure was multiplied by a constant. The following storm characteristics were examined: eddy kinetic energy (EKE), sea level pressure minimum, and extreme surface winds and precipitation. We found that the storm strength, based on all of the above metrics, increased monotonically with moisture content, for moisture levels going from dry to the level closest to observations. When the moisture was increased beyond current observed levels, the storm response changed, becoming sensitive to the behavior of the cumulus convection scheme. Our analysis found that large increases in moisture create strong conditional instabilities in the lower latitudes of the storm domain, and the upright convection disturbs the alignment of the surface and upper level storm circulations. This results in a weaker EKE. However, the storm precipitation and surface wind speed maxima both increase.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFM.A11D0112B

Tropical cyclones and climate change
Knutson et al
Nature Geoscience 3, 157 - 163 (2010)

Abstract: Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have changed or will change in a warming climate — and if so, how — has been the subject of considerable investigation, often with conflicting results. Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes. However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre. For all cyclone parameters, projected changes for individual basins show large variations between different modelling studies.

link

Seer reminds me of the big tobacco companies in the 70's. Study after study was released showing how smoking greatly increases the risk of lung cancer. Big tobacco responded by saying science couldn't prove any one specific case of lung cancer was caused by smoking.

[HMS_Beagle]

Here's another recent paper for you seer.

Moisture flux convergence in regional and global climate models: Implications for droughts in the southwestern United States under climate change
Gao et al
Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 39, Issue 9, 2011

Abstract: The water cycle of the southwestern United States (SW) is dominated by winter storms that maintain a positive annual net precipitation. Analysis of the control and future climate from four pairs of regional and global climate models (RCMs and GCMs) shows that the RCMs simulate a higher fraction of transient eddy moisture fluxes because the hydrodynamic instabilities associated with flow over complex terrain are better resolved. Under global warming, this enables the RCMs to capture the response of transient eddies to increased atmospheric stability that allows more moisture to converge on the windward side of the mountains by blocking. As a result, RCMs simulate enhanced transient eddy moisture convergence in the SW compared to GCMs, although both robustly simulate drying due to enhanced moisture divergence by the divergent mean flow in a warmer climate. This enhanced convergence leads to reduced susceptibility to hydrological change in the RCMs compared to GCMs.

link

and another one

Changes in precipitation with climate change
Trenberth
Climate Research Vol.47:123-138 (2011)

ABSTRACT: There is a direct influence of global warming on precipitation. Increased heating leads to greater evaporation and thus surface drying, thereby increasing the intensity and duration of drought. However, the water holding capacity of air increases by about 7% per 1°C warming, which leads to increased water vapor in the atmosphere. Hence, storms, whether individual thunderstorms, extratropical rain or snow storms, or tropical cyclones, supplied with increased moisture, produce more intense precipitation events. Such events are observed to be widely occurring, even where total precipitation is decreasing: ‘it never rains but it pours!’ This increases the risk of flooding. The atmospheric and surface energy budget plays a critical role in the hydrological cycle, and also in the slower rate of change that occurs in total precipitation than total column water vapor. With modest changes in winds, patterns of precipitation do not change much, but result in dry areas becoming drier (generally throughout the subtropics) and wet areas becoming wetter, especially in the mid- to high latitudes: the ‘rich get richer and the poor get poorer’. This pattern is simulated by climate models and is projected to continue into the future. Because, with warming, more precipitation occurs as rain instead of snow and snow melts earlier, there is increased runoff and risk of flooding in early spring, but increased risk of drought in summer, especially over continental areas. However, with more precipitation per unit of upward motion in the atmosphere, i.e. ‘more bang for the buck’, atmospheric circulation weakens, causing monsoons to falter. In the tropics and subtropics, precipitation patterns are dominated by shifts as sea surface temperatures change, with El Niño a good example. The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 led to an unprecedented drop in land precipitation and runoff, and to widespread drought, as precipitation shifted from land to oceans and evaporation faltered, providing lessons for possible geoengineering. Most models simulate precipitation that occurs prematurely and too often, and with insufficient intensity, resulting in recycling that is too large and a lifetime of moisture in the atmosphere that is too short, which affects runoff and soil moisture.

link

Science of course can't prove any specific drought is caused by global warming but the overall trend and the close matching of reality to the model is unmistakable.

[Truthseeker]

Seer, I'm afraid HMS Beagle made a good point in saying your response is analogous to the Big Tobacco's standard response. But in any case I still don't have a clear idea what role mankind has in the global climate and how important it is. And anyway I just don't trust our governments to do whatever can be done in any good way to ameliorate effects of climate changes.

Phank makes the queer assertion that heat moving around means that the earth is warming up. No, the average will stay the same as long as the magnitude of heat (I think technically, "free energy"??) over all is the same. The question merely is, is the earth getting hotter? Sure, Phank may re-assert that increased "moving around" is evidence, but that presumes we know what would happen if the CO2 atmospheric concentration stayed the same since say 1998 (counterfactual). That seems like a good assumption, but we do NOT know. Maybe someone ran a model with the CO2 level held constant, and found less "moving around." That proves nothing, the model is yet to be validated in the first place.

[phank]

Phank makes the queer assertion that heat moving around means that the earth is warming up.

No, I did not. I said that several models indicate that AS the global temperature increases, more local variation is possible. This does NOT mean that local variation shows the planet is warming.

No, the average will stay the same as long as the magnitude of heat (I think technically, "free energy"??) over all is the same. The question merely is, is the earth getting hotter? Sure, Phank may re-assert that increased "moving around" is evidence, but that presumes we know what would happen if the CO2 atmospheric concentration stayed the same since say 1998 (counterfactual). That seems like a good assumption, but we do NOT know. Maybe someone ran a model with the CO2 level held constant, and found less "moving around." That proves nothing, the model is yet to be validated in the first place.

I agree with most of this. By measurement, the CO2 concentrations are increasing. Whether the models are correct in predicting a wider range of local variation, remains to be seen. The argument was put forth that the observed recent wide range of variation was evidence AGAINST warming, and it is not. And that was my whole point. seer said "gee, look what a cold winter I'm having in New England, warming must be a crock." I argued that this is not valid. If it means anything at all (and it might not), wider local variations could well indicate warming. They are not evidence for warming, nor are they evidence against it. They are consistent with certain warming models.

[TheLurch]

I have to make an at-least partial correction. El Nino, the ocean warming between Indonesia and Peru, is now back.

Not as far as i can tell. Here's the latest ENSO index data:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/

Seems to suggest we're stuck in neutral.