Canadian think-tank The Fraser Institute has just released a 64 page-summary of the the latest United Nation’s report on climate change concluding that:
• Data collected by weather satellites since 1979 continue to exhibit little evidence of atmospheric warming, with estimated trends ranging from nearly zero to the low end of past IPCC forecasts. There is no significant warming in the tropical troposphere (the lowest portion of the Earth’s atmosphere), which accounts for half the world’s atmosphere, despite model predictions that warming should be amplified there.
• Temperature data collected at the surface exhibits an upward trend from 1900 to 1940, and again from 1979 to the present. Trends in the Southern Hemisphere are small compared to those in the Northern Hemisphere.
• There is no compelling evidence that dangerous or unprecedented changes are underway. Perceptions of increased extreme weather events are potentially due to increased reporting. There is too little data to reliably confirm these perceptions.
• There is no globally-consistent pattern in long-term precipitation trends, snow-covered area, or snow depth. Arctic sea ice thickness showed an abrupt loss prior to the 1990s, and the loss stopped shortly thereafter. There is insufficient data to conclude that there are any trends in Antarctic sea ice thickness.
• Current data suggest a global mean sea level rise of between two and three millimeters per year. Models project an increase of roughly 20 centimeters over the next 100 years, if accompanied by a warming of 2.0 to 4.5 degrees Celsius.
• Natural climatic variability is now believed to be substantially larger than previously estimated, as is the uncertainty associated with historical temperature reconstructions.
• Attributing an observed climate change to a specific cause like greenhouse gas emissions is not formally possible, and therefore relies on computer model simulations. These attribution studies do not take into account the basic uncertainty about climate models, or all potentially important influences like aerosols, solar activity, and land use changes.
• Computer models project a range of future forecasts, which are inherently uncertain for the coming century, especially at the regional level. It is not possible to say which, if any, of today’s climate models are reliable for climate prediction and forecasting.
Read the complete review here: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/files/Independent%20Summary.pdf
The press release with comment from Dr Ross McKitrick is here: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=783
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
RC have returned fire:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/fraser-institute-fires-off-a-damp-squib/
Climate wars. Denialists vs alarmists. Let the games begin !
The problem is that by receiving some funds from Exxon the Fraser Institute gets tarred with the Exxon brush, which is fair enough when you see the bollicking govt sponsored bodies get from independant analysts.
It gives a Luke an easy out.
Shouldn’t that headline read ‘UN Climate Change Summary’?
Soon as I saw the advertisement for Adam Smith scarves on the site link and the endorsement of McKitrick I realised that the entire report ( is THIs one a report?) could be disregarded and the authors tarred as right-wing shills and intellectual whores etc.
See , I’m getting it at last!
I reckon ignore the Exxon, shills line and just debate it on the science. Doesn’t matter how they were funded with what motives – how good are their criticisms? Do their points stack up or can they be dismissed?
Are you kidding Luke? that has always been your stand line (Exxon etc etc etc)
Leave immediately you impostor!
I say give’em a break. I used to work at a Mobil servo. They’re only trying to defend a way of life. Let’s face it – driving down the motorway in a very large block 450 cu in GM V8 with 850cfm Holley, nitrided super annealled crank, alloy pistons, mild bordering on wild custom ground camshaft, roller rocker kit, and custom extractors feels pretty darn good. No substitute for cu in.
Slim,
The document indeed appears to be a review of the IPCC REPORT which has not yet been officially released. How embarrassing for the UN!
I have been travelling most of today and busy tomorrow… but am really looking forward to having a read once I have time. I have seen they have a chapter on ‘climate models and their evaluation’.
Fraser Institute is to have David Bellamy as one of it’s representatives at the London kickoff.
Read the hatchet job that Real Climate does on Bellamy, and you will wonder how they could do so. Bellamy, it turns out, is using farcical evidence for his claims that glaciers are actually advancing, not retreating. When they investigated where he got this idea from, it turns out that it can be traced all the way back to outright nutters from the Lyndon Larouche bunch of lunatics.
Once again, the denialists harp on about the accuracy of the models. Imperfect modelling is used in many parts of modern life, just look at economists. Their prognostications are taken at face value by large companies and governments all the time. As soon as a model says something they don’t want to hear, they can’t get past the idea that models aren’t perfect.
Models are what we use in science all the time. End of argument. When we use basic mathematical eqauations in school to predict the rate an object falls, that’s modelling. It’s just a matter of how accurate they are.
Given that we know the earth will warm due to an increase in greenhouse gasses, the models are the only means we have of predicting just what these changes will be. You can take the attitude that since they aren’t perfect, we just don’t want to know at all, or take the models as our best indication of what will happen. (They have been tested on known data to prove they are reasonably valid.)
This is a risk management scenario. Indifference and sticking your head in the sand are not accepted risk management practice.
Arctic ice thickness is not reducing?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4290340.stm
Arctic coverage has not stopped reducing.
“September 2005 will set a new record minimum in the amount of Arctic sea ice cover,” said Mark Serreze, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Boulder, Colorado.
“It’s the least sea ice we’ve seen in the satellite record, and continues a pattern of extreme low extents of sea ice which we’ve now seen for the last four years,” he told BBC News.
I don’t know where they get their information.
SJT,
Yes, the scientists at ‘Real Climate’ seem to increasingly prefer ‘hatchet jobs’ to meaningful discussion of the evidence at hand.
And it would perhaps be to their advantage to at least appear a bit more open minded than they do in the link provided by Luke?
And how embarrassing is this from Real Climate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/the-ipcc-fourth-assessment-summary-for-policy-makers/ :
“The process of finalising the SPM [the IPCC Report] …is something that can seem a little odd.
Government representatives from all participating nations take the draft summary (as written by the lead authors of the individual chapters) and discuss whether the text truly reflects the underlying science in the main report.
The key here is to note that what the lead authors originally came up with is not necessarily the clearest or least ambiguous language, and so the governments (for whom the report is being written) are perfectly entitled to insist that the language be modified so that the conclusions are correctly understood by them and the scientists.”
So ‘Real Climate’ scientists approve of governments approving the language used by scientists!
I am appalled.
Jen,
Rather than jump in half-cocked, how about we evaluate if the final document contains any substantive differences from the draft.
I’m not prepared to waste five seconds on the Fraser Institute report as it contains folk like William Kininmonth among its lead contributors. Kinninmonth has made a galah of himself on the AGW too many times to be taken seriously.
And I also note this:
“The list of sceptics who have refused to bet against the IPCC position has grown steadily since then, and now also includes Michaels, Jaworowski, Corbyn, Ebell, Kininmonth, Mashnich and Idso (all my blog posts and related comments are linked from here).”
These people make hogs of themselves at the right-wing think-tank trough, but are not willing to make a bet- even with favourable odds. Oink, oink.
Cheers and best wishes.
Link for above quote is from http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=161
Jen you need to work for editors at 60 minutes on “selective quoteing techniques” and you are so busted.
Your comment almost caused Phil to have a myocardial infarction. I explained to Grandma that was commonly known as a heart attack ?
What the RC actually says is:
” It is also key to note that the scientists have to be happy that the final language that is agreed conforms with the underlying science in the technical chapters. The advantage of this process is that everyone involved is absolutely clear what is meant by each sentence.
The SPM process also serves a very useful political purpose. Specifically, it allows the governments involved to feel as though they ‘own’ part of the report. This makes it very difficult to later turn around and dismiss it on the basis that it was all written by someone else. This gives the governments a vested interest in making this report as good as it can be (given the uncertainties). There are in fact plenty of safeguards (not least the scientists present) to ensure that the report is not slanted in any one preferred direction. However, the downside is that it can mistakenly appear as if the whole summary is simply up for negotiation. That would be a false conclusion – the negotiations, such as they are, are in fact heavily constrained by the underlying science. ”
It’s not what you’re saying is it?
Next:
“Increasingy prefer hatchet jobs”
Let’s analyse the RC Fraser Institute (FI) post text at
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/fraser-institute-fires-off-a-damp-squib/
Major para 1: OK Fraser guys get some RC personal biffo. Bit of the old jocular invective for Ross and William. And outright derision for Bellamy for porkies. (Although I must say I did enjoy his TV shows strangely). Unprofessional of RC and should have been edited out. Shocking behaviour.
next para: discuss FI lack of knowledge of the IPCC process “As lead author Gerald Meehl remarked to one of us on his way to Paris: “Scientists have to be ok, they have the last check. If they think the science is not represented, then they can send it back to the breakout groups. ”
Next para: Discuss FI take on radiative forcing
Next para: Discuss FI take on Hockey Stick report, solar and UV
Next para: Discuss modelling physical processes
Next para: Discuss observational constraints and model validation diversity of factors
Next para: admonishment on continetal drift ruse.
Then 3 small paras of small talk & biffo.
GEE – looks like an awful lotta words on sciencey stuff discussing “evidence” to me !
So when you say RC are increasingly apply hatchet jobs how about a statistical analysis of all their posts starting with this one. There may be a slight underlying trend of late but is it significant at 1% with only two polar degrees of freedom.
Then we could start on the major contrarian site doing the same.
Jen I am appalled but in a different state of appallation. 🙂 Nah not really. Just a bit grumpy that you spun it and didn’t argue any of the science. Sigh ! In my mock-rage I will send you more Youtube clips to watch as punishment. If it was Pinxi we’d make her march up the back on demos.
Frankly, I’m getting a bit sick of the way Steve Munn and Luke try to implant links to Real Climate in as many posts as they can. This has little to do with science and everything to do with their own well demonstrated propagandising.
So lets look at one of the Fraser Institute’s statements, in respect of the absence of any warming in the tropical troposphere which accounts for half the world’s atmosphere. Is this true or not?
The Fraser Institute is pointing out that as far as volume and significance of fluxes goes, the tropics are really where it is all at, not the poles.
We have seen the usual moronic sneers and defamation from Munn but where is the substance?
We have seen the recent “clarification” of the Rockhampton temperature records that show that temperatures have actually dropped since 1871 and that any warming trend since 1939 was mostly from a rise in overnight minimum temperatures, not an increase in daytime maximums.
This is also consistent with the UK temp records going back to 1659 which also show a warming mean that is driven by a reduction in the number of extreme cold events, not an increase in extreme hot ones.
If it were the other way round then it would support the notion that CO2 was causing increased absorption of insolation but it is not. The critical change is taking place at night when insolation is essentially absent.
Doesn’t that seem just a little bit curious?
I can’t find David Bellamy’s name on the Fraser report, so I assume he isn’t an author. He did attend the meeting in London on Monday. He attends ‘alternative view’ meetings. Bellamy isn’t a climate scientist – his motivation for being involved in the climate debate is a hatred of Wind Turbines.
The argument boils down to the sensitivity of climate to CO2. The IPCC has a modelled range from 1.1C to 6.4C. The likes of Nir Shaviv believe that climate sensitivity to CO2 is low – he has peer reviewed papers to back up his view.
As always, science is about who is wrong, and who is right. My personal view is that, all things being equal (which they are not), around 1C for a doubling of CO2 is about what we should expect. It could be more, it could be less – the IPCC don’t know.
Philip Jones, of the University of East Anglia and a lead author of the IPCC report, said that the Chinese government had attempted to insist during the negotiations on the wording of the report that “some statements should be watered down”. The US, by contrast, had been “fairly neutral” but China, which sent the biggest delegation of any country to the panel with 17 scientists, had been “obstructive”. The Indian government, which has also been hostile to suggestions it should reduce emissions, had sent only one scientist to the meeting, he said.
–Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, 2 February 2007
Jen, anyone who relies on the insanity that is Lyndon Larouche deserves a beating. I can’t believe David Bellamy fell for such twaddle.
News from the real world:
Nothing Americans can do to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions will make a significant impact on the global climate while every 10 days China fires up a coal-fueled generating plant big enough to power San Diego. China will construct 2,200 new coal plants by 2030.
Current issue of Newsweek
Paul
from the Fraser Institute web page
“Please join noted climate researcher Dr. Ross McKitrick as well as Dr. Andrei Illarionov, former advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Professor David Henderson, former head of Economics and Statistics at the OECD, David Bellamy, noted environmentalist, and several of the 10 co-authors for the global launch and presentation of the Fraser Institute’s Independent Summary for Policymakers. ”
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=781
Looks like they are presenting him as part of their package for the day.
I had already fully (not selectively) read RC\’s explanation of the international SPM review process and ensuring accurate representation of the science, taking ownership and double checking the language, but not changing the substance of the science makes sense. I let it pass here though because there\’s so much hot air pre-empting the report by people who haven\’t even read the summary or about the process that it\’s silly.
It\’s a valid point about rereads and cross-checking to verify the language is precise and accurate. It\’s easy to write an accidentally ambiguous word or turn of phrase in a big report and not realise because the co-authors know the intended meaning, but it gets used to hammer in denialist wedges.
Are cherries still in season Jennifer? They\’re looking a bit old to me.
Ian you don\’t offer scientific findings to support the propoganda that you yell from the treetops. Stop the hypocrisy.
David A does China operate in a bubble, who buys China\’s goods? What would happen if the US & allies negotiated GHG standards for production, even got it into the WTO rules? They\’d be backing by the Kyoto nations and the corporations who are reducing GHGs. They could and they will, I bet ya, if and as soon as they get on top of GHGs themselves (huge investments coming along in the US) they\’ll insist on similar international standards (intentional barrier to trade).
I have just checked SJT’s link to the BBC article claiming that Arctic ice is still melting and was pleased to find a map showing the change from 1979 to 2000 which appears to show a receding ice sheet.
I then checked the 1960 edition of the Readers Digest World Atlas, prepared under the direction of Frank Debenham, OBE, MA, DSC(hon) Emeritus Professor of Geography at Cambridge, that has plotted the extent of this ice sheet 20 years prior to the first satellite scan.
And surprise, surprise, the tongue of ice that in 1979 was protruding between Novaya Zemla and Severnaya Zemla, and on the Eastern side of Severnaya Zemla, that is not there today, was also not there in 1960.
The BBC map is not clear enough to be certain but it appears that there may have actually been some minimal expansion in the ice limit between Svalbard and Severnaya Zemla.
The only portion that does appear to have receded is a small section in the East Siberian Sea.
So while a short, totally inadequate, sample period may indicate a receding Arctic ice sheet, THERE IS NOT THE SLIGHTEST ROOM FOR DOUBT THAT THIS TREND IS INTIRELY WITHIN THE RECENT HISTORICAL RANGE OF VARIATION.
Once again, we have so called “highly respected scientific teams” being caught out making extrapolations from limited data sets. It is not only incompetent but downright lazy to limit one’s inquiry to the most convenient data sources.
Think it’s time for Ian to substantiate instead of obfuscate.
So it’s extrapolation of Rocky to the world is it? And an incorrect one – we have no data from Ian on the trends or the movement in upper and lower decile events. And 1871 ? gee data before 1900 requires adjustments or you’ll be a mile out. All in all – sample size of one and wrong anyway.
1659 ? reference – number of sites. Accuracy? No idea.
Warming at night – need more spatial facts and figures pls.
MSU data – notoriously difficult. There is some tropical tropospheric warming in later years. need a spatial and temporal coverage discussion by Ian. Also why the statosphere is cooling. And the temperature patterns seem to have modified the circulation patterns – impact is?
Based on the observed temperature changes alone, we estimate that the jet streams in both hemispheres have shifted poleward by È1- latitude in both summerand winter seasons (6). Because the jet streams mark
the poleward limit of the tropical Hadley circulation, a systematic poleward shift of the jet streams implies that the tropical circulation has widened by È2- latitude during this 27-year period (7). (Our analysis of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalyses suggests that sea-level pressures near 30-N and 30-S have risen relative to surrounding latitudes. Such pressure rises, if real, would cause an additional poleward shift in the jet streams.)
Enhanced Mid-Latitude Tropospheric
Warming in Satellite Measurements
Qiang Fu, 1,2 * Celeste M. Johanson,
1 John M. Wallace, 1 Thomas Reichler 3
SCIENCE VOL 312 26 MAY 2006
More news from the real world:
The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn’t gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.
The magnitude of that imbalance is staggering. Environmentalists have long called the treaty a symbolic rather than practical victory in the fight against global warming. But even many of them do not appear aware of the coming tidal wave of greenhouse-gas emissions by nations not under Kyoto restrictions.
Do you like figures? Here they come:
By 2012, the plants in three key countries – China, India, and the United States – are expected to emit as much as an extra 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide. In contrast, Kyoto countries by that year are supposed to have cut their CO2 emissions by some 483 million tons.
Ian,
CO2 doesn’t cause ‘increased absorption of insolation’.
All insolation (lets just call it sunlight shall we?) that isn’t reflected by shiny parts of the Earth’s surface is absorbed.
The energy absorbed by parts of the Earth cause those parts to get hot. When things get hot, they start emitting radiation. In the case of the Earth, this is long wave radiation – the Earth doesn’t get hot enough to emit shorter wavelengths.
CO2 in the atmosphere is transparent to most of the shorter wavelength sunlight, but is opaque to long wave radiation.
The Earth’s surface emits long wave radiation both day and night. The amount of energy emitted to space has to balance the amount coming in to maintain a stable temperature.
Because CO2 hampers the emission of long wave radiation back into space, the earth gets hotter so that it can emit more radiation and balance the incoming solar energy.
The abilty of the atmosphere to trap long-wave radiation affects how cold it then gets at night. That’s why Mercury gets really hot during the day, but really cold at night. And that’s why deserts can get cold at night – clear skies.
So, using common sense, CO2 in the atmosphere should contribute to higher nighttime minimum temperatures. Nothing curious about that.
David, when I first heard about global warming, the first thing of thought of was nuclear, not because it’s desirable, but because it’s the less worse option. Although I think that renewable energy has been vastly underutilised, and energy efficiency pretty well completely ignored, (just look at all those shiny new residential towers going up, covered in glass and totally reliant on very powerful air conditioning and heating to be livable, nuclear is going to be the only way out for the near future.
As Galbraith said, politics is not the art of the possible, it’s about choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous.
Luke, I did not extrapolate from Rocky to the world. But Rocky is in the middle of what BoM maps as a hot spot of warming since 1910 but the addition of earlier data shows an actual cooling has taken place.
The relevance of this is that, like the Arctic Ice Sheet, above, when earlier data is included we get outcomes that are entirely within the recent historical range. Ergo, the warming is normal and shows little impact of anthropogenic origin.
Well I’m asking you back up your assertion on Rocky ! Add in pre-1900 data from a different measurement system and “come in spinner”.
And your Arctic ice reference is a 1960 atlas. Oh come now. Furthermore the warming is just beginning.
The sceptic argument is going to be remorselessly drowned out at any rate.
The media is going nuts about this now and that train is not for turning. This story is a good fit with the natural left-of-centre leanings of the majority of journalists AND it’s sensationalist preoccupations – contrary views are going to be harder to find.
All the more important for the IPCC to avoid the RC route, stay away from personal attacks and ensure that the doubts and inconsistencies are fully and fairly ventilated.
It’s a double edged sword of course – the more aroused the media becomes the more likely they are to openly advocate and the greater the risk they’ll be shown up as exaggerating.
If this is to be avoided then scientists have to become more scrupulous than ever in their statements.
Jim
I you don’t think there is a lot of political pressure on the scientists from the right wing of politics, you are being naive.
I’m sure there is pressure on scientists from all sides SJT.
But I didn’t allude to that in my post.
I said that as the AGW snowball gathers momentum;
1. there is less likelihood that contrary opinion will be heard (or fairly represented ) and
2. given 1. , IMO there is an increased onus on scientists to be meticulous in their statements as ( I think we’d all agree ) the MSM isn’t the most reliable source of objective information.
I think the public remain to be tested. We’ll see what happens when nuclear power gets promoted or the price of electricity goes up. Or the visual pollution of wind turbines. The unreliability of all soalr for baseload. Forcing streets of Brisbane to be cosed – mooted today. Cracking down on what car you can have. Your air travel.
Might we all change our mind?
I sense people think this can be done for nothing. So how much “feel good” are we dealing with. It’s the difference betwen “dolphin free tuna” and ” no tuna” at all ?!? Using the yellow recycle wheelie bin vs cutting down on what you put inside it.
What a pathetic cop out, Luke. What a humble 1960 Atlas may lack in cyber cool, it more than makes up for as a hard copy record of fact.
Are you seriously suggesting that government map makers (during the cold war) were unable to plot the exact location of the pack ice?
Would you like me to list off all the other names that contributed to the work, from The Polar Institute, The Royal Society, The British Museum, The National Institute of Oceanography, Geological Survey and Museum, and a Deputy DG of UN FAO.
This evidence is clear. There is no significant decline in pack ice over the past half century. And that fact would certainly seem to knock at least half a metre off the projected Sea Level rise, don’t you think?
And let me see, that would make it somewhere between diddly squat and SFA by 2100.
The fact that a bunch of cyberpunks may not be able to google the data makes it even sweeter.
Ian says: “The evidence is clear. There is no significant decline in pack ice over the past half century.”
I hate the way you use your envelope and your interpretation derived from one tongue of ice not seen in a 1960s atlas to make such sweeping statements as ‘the evidence is clear’. show some humility man! or at least some sense.
See here Ian:
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html
You can see clearly from the graph of satellite measurements since 1979 that arctic sea ice has been declining, with record lows in most of the last few years since satellite measurements began in 1979 – thats over half of ‘the past half century’.
Sea ice would have to have increased from the 1950s to 1979 for your statement to be correct.
But submarine data from as far back as the 1950s helps to show that this isn’t the case.
From the same website:
“Using data from submarine cruises, Rothrock and collaborators determined that the mean ice draft at the end of the melt season in the Arctic has decreased by about 1.3 meters over the past 30 to 40 years. These recent trends and variations in ice cover are consistent with recorded changes in high-latitude air temperatures, winds, and oceanic conditions. It is important to note though, that the ice cover responds to a variety of climatic factors, and the available record of sea ice cover is relatively short.
Satellite data from the SMMR and SSM/I instruments have also been combined with earlier observations from ice charts and other sources to yield a time series of Arctic ice extent from the early 1900s onward. While the pre-satellite records are not as reliable, their trends are in good general agreement with the satellite record and indicate that Arctic sea ice extent has been declining since at least the early 1950s.”
So there is data from a variety of sources (satellites, submarines and observation dating back to early last century) that show that sea ice has been declining “since at least the early 1950s”.
By comparison, you have your atlas.
So their is growing evidence that sea ice decreases are a sustained multi-decadal trend. Plenty of evidence that there has been signficant decline over the last half century.
I don’t think the evidence is clear that you are correct at all Ian.
I am continually amazed that Ian rarely cites anything scholarly or substantive. A vast personal opinion knowledge bank on every subject. I have 4 atlases as well as my well worn grade 4 classic.
While we’re on debts: Still waiting Ian’s Rockhampton analysis, Sid’s rainfall analysis and David’s solar defence.
Ian says: “And that fact would certainly seem to knock at least half a metre off the projected Sea Level rise, don’t you think? And let me see, that would make it somewhere between diddly squat and SFA by 2100.”
You have forgotten that sea ice melt has no direct bearing on sea level. It’s only ice on land (greenland and antarctica) that will affect sea level.
Jeez Ian, wrong on the basics of the greenhouse effect, and wrong on sea ice – you need to go back to global warming 101. Maybe you should (re)watch “An Inconvenient Truth”. It might be easier to digest than reading, or using “The Internet”.
I’ve only just noticed this week’s Jakarta floods. Most of the reportage has concentrated on the immediate disaster and the associated political recriminations, but I see in SMH that “Meteorologists have claimed climate change contributed to the disaster, with a delayed monsoon season bringing unusually high rainfall.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/jakartas-worst-floods/2007/02/06/1170524059025.html
I think this could be worth a post in itself, for a number of reasons.
First of all, this is a major weather disaster – almost half the capital of South-east Asia’s biggest country just spend a week under water – happening in our region.
Second, it would be of interest to understand the cause and effect here. How often does this happen? Why does it happen? The capital is flooded annually,
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailcity.asp?fileid=20070207.C04&irec=3
and there were big floods in 1996 and 2002.
http://theunspunblog.com/2007/02/03/jakarta-floods-an-assessment-and-how-you-can-help/
The Jakarta Post writes, “The floods are worse than the last major inundation in 2002. It has been argued they are the result of weather abnormalities that occur every five years.”
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailcity.asp?fileid=20070207.C03&irec=2
Third, perhaps we could have a general discussion about the evidential value, if any, of such large events in the AGW debate. The debate over Atlantic hurricanes like Katrina may serve as a prototype.
Steve, you are quoting a site and quotes from a site do not constitute ‘data’. The references to submarine reports are anecdotal and far from systematic.
And Luke quite clearly has not even bothered to consult a decent map before dismissing my reference to tongues of ice as if they were some long thin vestige of a snake’s tongue (how apt).
The “tongue” of ice in question between Novaya Zemla and Severnaya Zemla was 650km long and about 400km wide. Ditto the one on the eastern side of Severnaya Zemla.
What a pack of hypocrites. You accept a link to a BBC article with a rudimentary map as appropriate validation of a point but try to imply that a carefully prepared Atlas, and one of the widest circulated ones, is not valid substantiation.
You forget that in 1960 there were no vested interests in distorting the picture on exactly where the pack ice was. It was a simple representation of fact, most likely prepared by the Polar Institute from contemporary best sources.
And all you sleazy scrubbers can offer is spin and web hype masquerading as factual data.
Thanks Mitch, I’ll start a new thread.
My apologies Ian, I will try to control the sleaze.
I would not however our esteemed Prime Minister is now an official believer in Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming.
For you, Ian.
“Following the summer low, scientists would expect the sea ice to bounce back to normal during the following winter. However, winter refreezing patterns are also changing. “In the past, less ice in the summer would mean more of the ocean would be exposed to the air once winter came, and the ice would grow rapidly and recover to normal pretty quickly,” Meier said. “Sea ice at the end of the winter was always really stable, around fifteen-and-a-half million square kilometers [six million square miles], give or take a few hundred thousand.” But now, the ice is not recovering to normal winter levels. “Winter air temperatures are higher, the ocean is warmer, and that is delaying the onset of refreezing in the fall,” Meier said. In March of 2005, the sea ice area bottomed at a record wintertime low of only 14.5 million square kilometers (5.6 million square miles). “This is well outside what we’ve seen in the past.””
http://nasadaacs.eos.nasa.gov/articles/2006/2006_seaice.html
Ian,
The site I linked to was the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. It was a page on their site summing up the research, with many links to published papers.
I’ll take their advice on arctic sea ice extent over you and your BS masquerading as analysis any day of the week.
“Anecdotal” and “far from systematic”!?
Rothrock, D.A., Y. Yu, and G.A. Maykut. 1999. Thinning of the Arctic sea-ice cover. Geophysical Research Letters 26(23): 3469-3472.
This is published research, and you have absolutely no skill or sense to make that judgement.
But keep arguing, I’m enjoying highlighting to everyone just how full of bullsh1t you are.
Jen,
Nexus 6 has very clearly picked up some errors and misleading comments in your Courier Mail article. http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2007/02/59cm-myth-with-appearance-of-global.html
Do you intend writing a letter of apology for the benefit of the Courier Mail’s readers? Your integrity should demand that you do.
cheers
I thought Al Gore was the one who made some misleading comments, if GW happens will sea levels rise due to melting of ice sheets or not?
Gore “discusses the risk of the collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or West Antarctica, either of which could raise global sea levels by approximately 20 feet (6m)”
Munn, are you saying that the ice wont melt and sea levels wont rise?
Gore does spend some time talking about that scenario, viewers are left with an impression of a flooded world caused by AGW. Gore also states that if appropriate action is taken soon the situation can be reversed.
The latest IPCC opinion is that “on sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. That could be augmented by an additional 4-8 inches if recent surprising polar ice sheet melt continues.”
R/C supports the film
Has anyone had a gander at the bibliography of the Fraser thingy? Look through the peer-reviewed papers mentioned therein and guess how many actually support their hypotheses (answer: not many). Pay particular attention to Zhen-Shan and Xien (2007). If you’ve got access, download it. It’s a classic. Not only does the ‘all-that-smoke-in-the-pub-is-in-no-way-bad-for-you’ lot completely misrepresent its findings, its challenging Archibald’s recent paper as the worst climate science paper of all time.
There should be punishments for crimes against statistics, there really should!
rog you silly goose, that comment just proves yet again that the loudest sceptics don’t read. Read comment by steve above.
It’s time the sceptics put up some relevant, up to date science or shut up. Yes, open to well-reasoned critical reviews. No, closed to idiotic uninformed ranting which is what we get from rog and Motty.
I have looked at the NSIDC site, Steve, and it is all pure post 1978. And I don’t know what sort of dinkie little number comes to Luke’s mind when he hears the word ‘Atlas’ but compared to my map, the NSIDC stuff is downright rudimentary.
Mine at least has a scale, it shows the latitudinal and longitudinal grids, it shows depth of ocean floor, it shows both maximum and minimum extent of pack ice at a particular point in time, it shows the extent of drift ice and names all the relevant islands and landforms.
It allows me to state with perfect clarity that the pack ice was 81 degrees north in a line between 0E and 80E and formed a straight line from 100E,79N to 170E,71N and from north of Herald Island (180,E71N) it then traced a line due east through the Beaufort Sea at Latitude 73N.
On the East coast of Greenland it only extended as far south as 75N. And that, matey, is well within the 1979-2000 mean as provided by NSIDC. But don’t bother looking for any such niceties at the NSIDC site because it is all just pretty colours.
Clearly, if there is a trend to receding ice cap then the same ice cap must have expanded considerably between 1960 and 1978.
You guys forget that we have seen all this before. We have the Satellite clearing data that can show how much of the clearing was mapped as ‘Remnant’ but the dilbreys don’t bother looking at the past aerial photos that prove that the remnant is regrowth on a grassland ecosystem.
Same old sleazy same old. And we get witless plodders dumping on us for not using enough web links when most of the links are nothing but electronic chip wrapper.
Well guys (and gals) Motty is just too good for us. Let’s surrender.
Anyway Ian – serious question – what’s your summary take (even expansive rave guest post) on all this AGW business. Do you reckon there’s anything in it? Don’t worry I’m not going to bombard you with 100 questions. And in the event that you do think there’s something in it and CO2 is the culprit do you have any recommendations for the PM. (Like John give yourself a thorough slapping and get back to being a sceptic).
I’ve decided to become an interviewer? Let’s face it do we know what Ian thinks in summary? No we don’t.
Steve Munn,
My Courier Mail piece was a fair review of the IPCC summary.
But then again you seem in a perpetual state of confusion over what I write, I’m still wondering about your comment here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001847.html
PS Re-reading the drought articles and the thread, it seems you either deliberately misrepresent or you can’t understand what you read.
Pinks,
You want “the sceptics put up some relevant, up to date science or shut up,” so here goes. “Natural” C02 is joined with a carbon isotope–carbon-14, which is familiar to paleontologists, who use it for “carbon dating.”
Emissions from fossil fuels do not have this isotope, which makes it possible to determine how much CO2 in our atmosphere results from burning fossil fuels.
As a result of this innovation, it is possible to determine that 99.9988 of the atmosphere is *not* C02 from fossil fuels.
How’s that for “relevant and up to date?” For your reading pleasure, I recommend these heretical links:
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2007/00467/EGU2007-J-00467.pdf?PHPSESSID=4cafe2901e039d990f13a40a823dce4d
http://www.colorado.edu/INSTAAR/RadiocarbonDatingLab/atmospheric_co2.html
http://www.atmos.berkeley.edu/~niryk/Boulder05_Diana_extendedabstract.pdf
http://www.atmos.berkeley.edu/~niryk/Boulder05_Diana_extendedabstract.pdf
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2007/00467/EGU2007-J-00467.pdf?PHPSESSID=4cafe2901e039d990f13a40a823dce4d
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87
This is nothing new, Schiller, that is what climate scientists have known for years.
I just wonder if you are correct, and 99.9988 is not from fossil fuels, how in the heck is the CO2 content in the atmosphere increasing so rapidly. If it’s not fossil fuels, it must be coming from somewhere.
I would just like to point out again, John Howard agrees with me.
“Another, quite independent way that we know that fossil fuel burning and land clearing specifically are responsible for the increase in CO2 in the last 150 years is through the measurement of carbon isotopes. Isotopes are simply different atoms with the same chemical behavior (isotope means “same type”) but with different masses. Carbon is composed of three different isotopes, 14C, 13C and 12C. 12C is the most common. 13C is about 1% of the total. 14C accounts for only about 1 in 1 trillion carbon atoms.
CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases.”
What I find equally surprising is that Luke, Steve et al are capable of arguing that the ice pack was static prior to 1978. And they do this in the face of European temperature records that make it very clear that temperatures cooled between 1945 and 1975. So our 1960’s vintage maps should have shown an ice sheet that was well into an expansion phase.
The only logical conclusion to make from a temperature record that shows cooling from 1945 to 1975 is that the adjacent ice sheets would expand during that time to a maximum extent on or around 1975-1980.
Yet, we have these clowns trying to tell us that the melting process started decades earlier in the face of completely contradictory temperature records.
This must be the blogistas squalid little version of the “big lie”, in this case called “the blog lie”.
Jen,
I wrongly accused you of denying there was a drought. Sorry. I withdraw that claim. However I maintain that Nexus 6 has pointed some obvious errors and misleading statements in your Courier Mail article. If you are unwilling to acknowledge this that is your choice.
SJT,
Your comment to Schiller “I just wonder if you are correct, and 99.9988 …”. Do the math yourself: from the AR4 SPM (Human & Natural Drivers of Change, bullet pt 1 – Pre industrial CO2: 280ppm, 2005 CO2: 379ppm.
Even if the 100ppm difference is directly caused by human activity, then this difference represents 100 PARTS PER MILLION of the atmosphere, i.e. only 0.01% – and this then means that 99.99% is other…
The “…how in the heck is it incerasing so rapidly” is meaningless question in this context – a single datum can not be used to provide an answer. You need to establish at least one other data set to show / question a cause and effect relationship
Worse, the way it is phrased and accompanied with the “supporting detail that you point out” attempts to set up a straw man and obfuscate one of the key problems with the “We’re all dommed unless you sign Kyoto push”.
cheers
Arnost
Steve , in looking at Nexus’ graph on his site it appears to me that it is correct to say the trend is downward from 98.
there are few certainties in this world and predictions by virtue are not among them. The use of the word “certainly” was a poor choice. I’ll get over it, how about you?
Ian, you gimp, I didn’t argue anything except to doubt your atlas as source – I have 3 versions of ice and one with none !
Anyway – la de dah – who cares – as you cannot seem to comprende we’re talking about the “future” and if trends continue. Jeez it’s only just starting. WAIT FOR IT !
What’s the difference betwen Motty and a computer?
Gosh Luke, this must be “the incredibly receding start to Gullible Warming”. I could have sworn someone was telling me that it all started back in about 1910, not just now. That is when all the BoM temperature charts show their warming trend lines, conveniently ignoring the earlier data showing cooling.
So now this “self evident warming” is not actually a fact but, rather, something that is just around the corner. That would make it a bit like Mavis Frizzletit and a dose of dignity, just around the corner.
And you appear to have made some sort of request in relation to the Rocky temp data but when I read it it doesn’t make any sense. So what, exactly, did you request me to do?
By the way, if, as you appear to now agree, that most of the contribution to any warming is from a reduction in extreme cold events rather than an increase in warm extremes, then surely one can only conclude from this that current warming is entirely within the existing range of variation?
ST,
Apart from giving the same 2 papers twice and giving us the Wiki on carbon dating (which doesn’t appear to address C14 analysis of atmospheric CO2), I couldn’t find any quotes or sections that supported your statement: “that 99.9988 of the atmosphere is *not* C02 from fossil fuels”. Could you please provide that paper? Or at least show us how this figure was derived? Also from the papers provided the C14 methods described are useful for determining the amount of “recently-added” CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. It won’t be useful in determining the total contribution of fossil fuel burning to the total atmosphere because the C is converted to C14 in the atmosphere by cosmic rays regardless of source.
being that you only to punch the data into a computer once. Boom boom.
You know very well the issues with 1800’s temps – may even one of those loathsome PhDs written on the subject.
Re Rocky – well you could present on blog your century or so of days over 35 and days under one degree or something like that. A trend line for 1990-2006. If you were going all out you might try to show H-naught – that the slope is not significantly different to zero? But don’t bust a valve.
But anyway you’ve now stated that there has been no global increase in extreme warm events and there has been a reduction in extreme cold events. You could produce a quality reference perhaps for the assertion or 100 climate global stations analysed personally or .. ..
Otherwise it’s your generalisation of Rocky (so you think) to the world.
SimonC – tell us if this helps on CO2 issue.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87
“22 Dec 2004 – How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?”
Arnost,
his language was not clear. I thought he was saying the increased level of CO2 was 99.9988 not due to human activity. As to his incredulity at the effect CO2 has on the atmosphere, I can’t believe 0.1mL of Dimethyl Mercury is lethal. I just can’t. It can’t be.
SJT,
Are you suggesting that 0.1ml of (CH3)2Hg is lethal while 0.09999ml isn’t?
cheers
Arnost 🙂
Again, Luke displays his comprehension deficit. What I said was, “most of the contribution to any warming is from a reduction in extreme cold events rather than an increase in warm extremes”.
Reasonable men and women would conclude that this does NOT mean warm extremes have not increased, merely that the reduction in extreme cold events is greater than the increase in extreme warm ones. The key word was “most”, it is not a synonym for “all”.
And the understanding of that distinction, Luke, accounts for much of the difference between reasonable people and nutters.
Yes yes yes Ian – stop stalling and laying smoke with the ad homs and get some evidence/data up or not be believed. Or are you quoting from your 1960’s Atlas?.
Ian
if it’s less cold, then it’s probably because it’s warmer.
Ian Mott says:
“And the understanding of that distinction, Luke, accounts for much of the difference between reasonable people and nutters.”
Actually, Ian, nutters make comments like this:
“If it were the other way round then it would support the notion that CO2 was causing increased absorption of insolation but it is not. The critical change is taking place at night when insolation is essentially absent.”
So now Steve Munn is claiming that CO2 only warms at night by preventing heat from escaping?
Funny, I could have sworn that there was supposed to be a dozen or so major forcings but if the situation requires a good little climate clansman to change the facts to suit the story then who am I to spoil your fun.
Given Ian is only prepared to play dodgem cars and silly buggers we might as well try to put some intelligence in the debate.
FAR leak says:
The warming of the climate is consistent with a widespread reduction in the number of frost days in mid-latitude regions. The latter is due to an earlier last day of frost in spring rather than a later start to the frost season in autumn. Cold extremes have declined over more than 70% of land regions studied from 1951–2003, with slightly greater changes at night compared to daytime. Increases in the number of warm extremes have also occurred, but not to such a large extent. .
Widespread (but not ubiquitous) decreases in continental diurnal temperature range (DTR) since the 1950s occur with increases in cloud amounts, as expected from the impact of cloud cover on solar heating of the surface. The rate of decrease of DTR overall has likely reduced to negligible values when considered over the 1979–2004 period.
So does this end this incredibly tedious discussion with Ian who as usual thinks he’s onto “something”. Steve Munn’s helpful reminder about greenhouse forcing but no solar forcing at night shows why this DTR behaviour is reasonable. Yes Ian we know that greenhouse also occurs during the day too – a duh! As usual Ian misses the point and concentrates on the jocular invective for the cheer squad. ” zzzzzzzzzzz ”
Leave Ian alone, he’s just distinguishing himself from a computer again by needing to be told the same fairly straightforward stuff multiple times:
I’ll quote my self from earlier this thread so he doesn’t have to scroll up:
“The abilty of the atmosphere to trap long-wave radiation affects how cold it then gets at night. That’s why Mercury gets really hot during the day, but really cold at night. And that’s why deserts can get cold at night – clear skies.
So, using common sense, CO2 in the atmosphere should contribute to higher nighttime minimum temperatures. Nothing curious about that.”
I’d just like to point out again, John Howard agrees with me, global warming is being caused by CO2.
One comment deleted. Probably should have been more. Please try and stay on topic and polite. 🙂
Does that give AGW theory more credibility SJT?
Jim
just sayin….
But the issue is that every green spiv and his dog have been saying that we are all doomed from extreme climatic events when, in fact, most warming is entirely within the normal range of variation. A shortage of frosts is not an extreme event. And a shortage of frosts can also be caused by elements and activities that do not involve CO2. Even minimal till and stubble retention farming can contribute to warmer night time minimums.
Even the arctic ice melt, treasured anecdote of the CO2 Flux Clan, is nothing more than a return to 1945 conditions.
And if the Polar Bear population is directly related to Arctic ice mass then one MUST conclude that blond Brown Bear populations (surfie bears) underwent a population expansion from 1945 to 1979. And this population that has supposedly declined since 1979 is merely within its natural ebb and flow.
Ian,
you have once again completely missed the point. It’s not going to stop at normal, it’s going to keep rising. If it was going to stop at normal, no one would be making any fuss.
SJT, I have not missed the point at all. You and the shonkerazzi have been busy telling everyone that the evidence is already present when it is not. So when you have some evidence that “it has not stopped at normal” then come back and we will have a long chat about the distinction between an actual event and an imaginary event, or an expected event.
I suspect that excessive substance abuse by greens and departmental types has destroyed the capacity to distinguish between the actual and the hypothetical. You can do that all you want in the privacy of your own home but spare us the tedium of cleaning up afterwards. You’ll go blind y’know.
Ian’s intellect at full gallop. Frightening stuff. One teensy problem coming back when it’s all melted – you or anyone else won’t be doing anything about it. Darn.
So this means then that Ian does not believe that increased atmospheric CO2 causes enhanced global warming. He sees no evidence of such.
Wrong, Luke, I am merely stating that the biggest, sexiest bit of Gullible Warming evidence, Arctic Ice melt, has turned out to be a complete crock of the proverbial.
Why the avoidance, Luke. Are you in denial that the evidence from the satellite scans is limited and only shows one cycle?
Are you in denial that this represents a serious misrepresentation by omission?
And don’t try any defamation now.
No you haven’t read your background material. Tsk tsk.
Ian
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20050928_trendscontinue.html
just look at that, and repeat your claim.
“For the fourth consecutive year, NSIDC and NASA scientists using satellite data have tracked a stunning reduction in arctic sea ice at the end of the northern summer. The persistence of near-record low extents leads the group to conclude that Arctic sea ice is likely on an accelerating, long-term decline.
“Considering the record low amounts of sea ice this year leading up to the month of September, 2005 will almost certainly surpass 2002 as the lowest amount of ice cover in more than a century,” said Julienne Stroeve of NSIDC. If current rates of decline in sea ice continue, the summertime Arctic could be completely ice-free well before the end of this century. (Figure 1: September extent trend, 1978-2005).”
I have already seen it SJT and it is bollocks. Read my earlier posts. The NSIDC have no data from before 1979 when the first satellite scan was done. Note that the Figure 1 in the last brackets of your post refers to 1978-2005 only. They have been flogging this deceptive spin based on limited data and have been caught out.
They are extrapolating from limited input, standard operating procedure of shonkademics.
Says someone using a 1960 atlas ! Yee haa !
By any objective assessment, Luke, I used a 1960’s atlas to add information to a limited NSIDC data set. Do you have a problem with the use of pre-electronic data? Do you have a problem with extended data sets?
I thought that was how we were being told the earth is now in a cooling phase.
Its time to move on luke. Its NSIDC withsatellite data since 1978 *and* submarine and ice chart data from well before then
vs
Ian and his atlas – we don’t even know what time of year his atlas data is from.
No competition.
And I love the way ian harps on about defamation as though he is oh so polite. A true thin-skinned bully.
http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/ARCSS-SAT/
This paper from the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington has an interesting figure.
Check out figure 8 Ian, which has arctic surface temperature next to sea ice extent from 1900 to 2000.
The data seems to come from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
http://www.acia.uaf.edu/
You can see the graphs in the first paper in the graphics set 1 here:
http://amap.no/acia/ACIAGraphics.html
Presumably the report explains how they got the data, though i haven’t looked at it yet.
Probably a better source of data on arctic sea ice extent than Ian and his atlas though.
Their website looks pretty interesting.
Steve, the report doesnt explain how they got the data and the graphics set reveals an underlying misleading approach. It is riddled with graphs that show changes, attributed to climate, that are subject to other variables. We have graphs of Cod and shrimp catches showing major declines etc when the primary variable is over fishing, not @#%& ice extent or sea temperature.
The classic was p17 of the 3rd graphic series which purported to show aquaculture production in the Faroe Islands. It showed a steady rise from 10,000 tonnes to 50,000 tonnes in 2003 (the year of the document) and a projected decline back to 10,000 tonnes in 2006. This enabled the rapid reader to assume that this was somehow climate related but the fine print revealed that climate had nothing to do with it.
The fact that the graph was even there betrays an intent to mislead.
The rest of the material displays similar mistakes deceptions. But thanks for the links, I am sure there is a mine of shonkademia to be discovered yet. Yee haa.
Ian, the full report is here:
http://www.acia.uaf.edu/pages/scientific.html
chapter 6, page 189-192.
I had only linked to graphics sets with my earlier links.
If you read through it, you will notice that Fig 6.6 icelandic sea-ice index looks like it might support your argument to some degree, though there is plenty of other material that supports the view that sea ice has been declining in recent decades to levels not seen in over 100 years.