climate science
stoat | December 25, 2012Said my wife, appalled. But I can, you know. Let's hope this doesn't happen:
In Essexshire it happened so
A man went out all for to plough,
As he was ploughing along so fast
Up came sweet Jesus himself at last.
"Oh man, oh man, why dost thou plough
So hard upon the Lord's birthday?"
The farmer answered him with great speed,
"To plough this day I have great need."
His arms did tremble through and through,
Until that he could no longer plough.
The ground did open and he fell in
Before he could repent his sin.
His wife and children are out of place,
His beasts and cattle now all are lost.
His…
stoat | November 29, 2012 Shepherd et al.: Science 30 November 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6111 pp. 1183-1189 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228102:
We combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions, time intervals, and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of Earth’s polar ice sheets. We find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods—especially in Greenland and West Antarctica—and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty. Between 1992 and 2011, the ice sheets of…
stoat | November 12, 2012 There's a nice paper out by Holland and Kwok, attributing much of the somewhat-hard-to-understand change in Antarctic sea ice to changes in wind forcing. The growth in Antarctic sea ice, although much smaller than the decrease in the Arctic, is still a bit embarassing; it would be much tidier if it were decreasing. The abstract says:
The sea-ice cover around Antarctica has experienced a slight expansion in area over the past decades [1,2]. This small overall increase is the sum of much larger opposing trends in different sectors that have been proposed to result from changes in atmospheric…
stoat | November 9, 2012Well no, of course not. But since its popped up on wiki I suppose it needs discussion (which is, astonishingly, what is currently happening on wiki, rather than a flame war; how novel).
"We are probably entering a new ice age right now. However, we're not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide," says researcher Professor Lars Franzén.
That is rubbish. How do I know? Because there is quite a long history of papers about the "end of the current interglacial" and they reach very different conclusions. Quite how Prof Lars has managed to miss them I don't know. He has a paper out, though…
stoat | November 1, 2012 Or so says Bloomberg (h/t Tamino and TP). And they should know? Well, maybe not; I'll wait for something more definitive, perhaps from RC. But maybe indicative of how opinion is shifting, at least this week. As I've said before (but can't find now) people - the great unwashed masses I mean - are unlikely to "believe" in GW until something dramatic and possibly unrelated happens. DA presents the skeptical case (with a genuine "k").
Refs
* Serendipity
* The Onion
* Bloomberg brings climate change out of the closet in stunning snub to Romney
stoat | October 27, 2012 Which is a shame, because I've defended him in the past. But then he did go Emeritus in 2011 so perhaps this is all to be expected.
Its not terribly exciting I'm afraid. There is a piece of tat in the Euresis Journal, whatever that is, called Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?. Skipping over the rest of the nonsense, the only bit I care about is me, obviously:
The myth of scientific consensus is also perpetuated in the web’s Wikipedia where climate articles are vetted by William Connolley, who regularly runs for office in England as a Green Party candidate. No…
stoat | October 17, 2012[Guest post by John Mashey]
This is a second follow-up to the original falsification, flat-earth maps and dog astrology. Flat-earth is discussed here in More use and abuse of IPCC 1990 fig 7.1(c). This post explores the other topic:
David Deming, "dog astrology journal" and then Jon Overpeck This started with quote of David Deming's comments in the Journal of Scientific Exploration(JSE), or "dog astrology journal." JSE was first brought to my attention by Eli Rabett in 2008, relevant in an Wikipedia talk page on Hockey Stick Illusion, and further in 2010. That discusses the journal issue…
stoat | October 8, 2012[Guest post by John Mashey]
This is a follow-up to the original falsification, flat-earth maps and dog astrology journal @ STW or cleaner version by Neverending Audit. It originally was a comment to be attached to WMC's Attacked! or WUWT: taking incompetence to a whole new level.
Introduction
The origin of IPCC(1990) Fig 7.1(c) may be historically interesting, but far less than the history of its later abuse, mis-use, and falsification, combined into a fine marketing campaign.
- See pp.199-203 of FAR Chapter 7. Fig7.1(c) p.202, errs in its specific scale (Years before present) and the…
stoat | October 4, 2012A somewhat unfair title; the person in question is Marcel Leroux and the "death" is the deletion of his wiki page. The "sales" is his wacko views on GW. I don't think ML is particularly interesting - wiki certainly thought not - but perhaps the way wiki deals with minor characters is.
Background: anyone is free to create a new page on wikipedia (there is probably a brief qualification period, but this is a trivial barrier), but there are various mechanisms for getting rid of pages that are junk, just offensive, or for some reason better not present. Any admin can delete a page; there is a…
stoat | September 18, 2012h/t WTD. The Graun says
Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years
and so on. Its all sourced to "an email to the Guardian" which unfortunately they don't reproduce. Now is the time to mention the Arctic Methane Emergency Group of which Wadhams is a member, to his discredit.
There is some strange stuff in the article, such as [Wadhams] predicted the imminent break-up of sea ice in summer months in 2007 which I don't think is true - certainly, no-one predicted that 2007 would be unusually low, as far as I know [*]. It does quote him as saying I have been predicting […
stoat | July 30, 2012 Woo, this is great. Watts is now reporting that McI says that the BEST papers got turned down by a reviewer (ahem, well, McK, not even McI) at JGR. Since its McK, that doesn't necessarily say anything about the paper's quality. But it does directly contradict what BEST themselves are saying, specifically Elizabeth Muller:
All of the articles have been submitted to journals, and we have received substantial journal peer reviews. None of the reviews have indicated any mistakes in the papers; they have instead been primarily suggestions for additions, further citations of the literature.
How is…
stoat | July 10, 2012The question, which is the better man, is determinable only in the estate of government and policy, though it be mistaken for a question of nature, not only by ignorant men, that think one man's blood better than another's by nature; but also by him, whose opinions are at this day, and in these parts of greater authority than any other human writings (Aristotle). For he putteth so much difference between the powers of men by nature, that he doubteth not to set down, as the ground of all his politics, that some men are by nature worthy to govern, and others by nature ought to serve. Which…
stoat | July 5, 2012 * xkcd: All 786 known planets to scale.
* I liked Brian's take on the USSC ruling on Obama's healthcare stuff. And also the little-heard-from-anymore RP.
* Planet3.0 on Greenland albedo; if you prefer it with added "tipping point" hype then try Climate Central. My initial though was "oh its warmer, so the albedo drops" but Box himself speculates that its soot from wildfires, or coal burning.
* The Double Recovery of Arctic Sea Ice
* Matthew Parris on everyone's anger at the banks (the actual article is behind the Times's stupid unlinkable paywall, so I point you at that, instead. What he is…
stoat | June 12, 2012* On global solar power growth and its prospects - "Many existing markets – in particular China, the USA and Japan, but also India – have addressed only a very small part of their enormous potential for PV development. Moreover, several countries from large sunbelt regions like Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia and South America are on the brink of starting their development, pushed by an increasing awareness of solar PV potential. As a whole, the global PV market will grow more sustainably, driven by the competitiveness of PV solutions rather than mainly by financial support schemes.…
stoat | June 4, 2012Or, Timmy in the Torygraph. Its a bit broken I'm afraid, though it manages to get some obvious things right. But before I start on the actual matter, we need to sweep away some of the dross.
It starts Perhaps we can sit down and discuss this climate change thing like the adults we are? Put the Delingpoles over here, the vilenesses that are Greenpeace... and the problem - repeated elsewhere - is the pretence of equal treatment of the two "extremes" whilst actually clearly favouring one side. The bias continues in the treatment of climate sensitivity, though for something appearing in the…
stoat | April 4, 2012Another one in the eye for the solarists. K. Rypdal, JGR VOL. 117, D06115, 14 PP., 2012 doi:10.1029/2011JD017283:
I show that the peak-to-peak amplitude of the global mean surface temperature response to the 11-year cyclic total irradiance forcing is an order of magnitude less than the amplitude of a cyclic component roughly in phase with the solar forcing which has been observed in the temperature record in the period 1959-2004. If this cyclic temperature component were a response to the solar forcing, it would imply the existence of strong amplifying feedbacks which operate exclusively for…
stoat | February 25, 2012I used to like the IJIS sea ice pic for comparing this year's progress. And them AMSR went down (I hope I've got that right, I really wasn't paying attention) and they stopped updating. But C points me to
which, while not so pretty, is a good substitute. That comes from http://gfspl.rootnode.net/index.php/arcticiceart which has others.
This post was mostly for me to link to the pic for my own convenience. But we could also look at it... too early to tell, but we seem to be bumping along at the bottom of the range at the moment. Time will tell.
stoat | January 4, 2012Oh no: another post consisting of nothing but a video:
and links to old posts and songs.
stoat | November 23, 2011A beautiful BBC video:
You have to stand back in awe at the resources they pour into taking photographs. Scientists can never afford that kind of money.
BTW: this did weird things when I first wrote it, but don't blame me. I think scienceblogs or youtube are doing something weird with the processing. Here is the video.
stoat | November 18, 2011Which is a bit of a mouthful, so they call it SREX. In the traditional and slightly unlovely IPCC way, you can read the SPM now but will have to wait awhile for the report. But it provides enough for me to mount my hobby horses, so giddy-up!
The first point is that extremes are useless for detecting or attributing climate change: if you want to know if the globe is warming, you should look at the global temperature series. Attempting to say "floods in Pakistan - global warming must be real" is silly (depending on what you mean by "real". I mean, "is actually happening". If you mean "will have…