Posts by NomNomNom

Re: Well

I don't think effects being on geological time-scales can be assumed anymore

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/CO2_history_1024.jpg

Re: Repeat of the same article, this time the biased variant

"instrumentalist" = typo

Re: Repeat of the same article, this time the biased variant

BEST had NOTHING to do with the hockey stick graph. BEST covered the instrumentalist temperature record spanning the last 200 years or so. The hockey stick was about temperature proxies like tree rings for the last 1000 years or so.

The original hockey stick graph is incorrect. It contained statistical errors. Any reference to temperatures of the past 1000 years should rely on newer improved reconstructions.

Re: Did anyone mention the Antarctic?

Currently antarctic sea ice is about 0.1 million sq km above average and arctic sea ice is about 2.4 million sq km below average.

Re: OH KNOWS!

Skate surfaced in an Arctic with much thicker ice than exists now

Re: A modest query...

it's getting thinner. Less heat is needed now than in 2007 to reach the same point.

Re: Mmmm. Pies...

"I merely acted as a conduit for the opinion of other (probably) more educated people than you and I."

"'A wise man questions, a fool simply believes what he is told.'"

If you really question what you've been told by these "more educated people", you didn't show it.

Re: Hands up

It's not that bad, it's a reasonable summary, better than not hearing about the research at all. Yes the framing of it as some kind of climate skeptic pro-data is wrong, but so was the citation of the warming as being unprecedented in the original press release.

Re: Mmmm. Pies...

You just said "blah blah blah judith curry"

You are grossly exaggerating the faults of the IPCC for political gain and you probably know it.

Re: At least quote the conclusion

Conclusion: "If warming continues in this region, as is suggested by its attribution in part to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations7, 23, hen temperatures will soon exceed the stable conditions that persisted in the eastern Antarctic Peninsula for most of the Holocene."

anonymous internaut: "1. That conclusion isn't supported by the data. The data shows significantly larger temperature anomalies without the loss of stability.

Read carefully to spot anonymous internaut's sleight of hand.

Wonder how they got so many upvotes

Re: Can I just point out...

"You're an idiot if you interpret the graph as "should now go down, rather than sharply up" (not that it is going "sharply up"). As the graph has been on average going up since the Little Ice Age, at what point do you think it suddenly started being about CO2?"

You're an idiot if you think we can see the last 300 years on that graph. Have YOU even looked at the graph you posted?

Re: Mmmm. Pies...

"Unfortunately the debate around anthropogenic forcing is more about politics"

Yeah thanks to people like you Mike Hock and your amazing unsupported rants.

Re: I'm not an expert

"If the current variation in temperature is within the bounds of historic natural variation, as recorded in the ice core, then of course it can be explained as being just natural variation. In fact this is the best explanation according to the principle of Occams razor."

"Natural variation" is not an explanation and so it cannot be selected using Occam's razor. An explanation requires a mechanism. "Natural variation" is just a "it happened somehow" non-explanation.

Here's an actual explanation: The reason why it was warmer in the early holocene is because the Earth's tilt meant more incoming sunlight at higher latitudes in summer months.

The only problem is that doesn't explain the recent warming. As it stands the best explanation available really is greenhouse warming.

Re: At least quote the conclusion

"1. That conclusion isn't supported by the data. The data shows significantly larger temperature anomalies without the loss of stability."

No they don't. Which data are you looking at? The projected warming this century from rising greenhouse gases surpasses all temperatures on that graph.

Re: Correlation and Causation?

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/600px-Temp-sunspot-co2.svg.png

You need to read more carefully. The article says "not a single person is set to be MEASURABLY harmed by radiation"

Consider the middle one

http://withfriendship.com/images/h/36248/Three-wise-monkeys-pic.jpg

Re: Thorium cycle a strong option

I like wind turbines. Can't we compromise and have nuclear powered turbines? Or at least let the turbines power the grabber that picks up the fuel rods?

Re: Do we need to talk about radiation?

Comparing people to hitler is really effective. If someone advocates nuclear power I just remark that the Nazis were very keen on nuclear power and then just glare at them. Say what you will about Hitler but he does win me a lot of arguments.

Re: Thorium rocks

not this thorium shit again

Re: Yes

I would need to see at least 12. I grant you chernobly, fukushima, windscale and 3 mile island so far. 8 to go.

Surely if we built more nuclear power plants the number of accidents would decrease.

Re: OMG

1) You are confusing feedbacks with forcings. This article is not saying clouds cause negative feedback. This article is about cloud forcing, not feedback. Clouds cause a negative (cooling) forcing even if cloud feedback is positive.

2) The models don't ASSUME clouds give positive feedback, the cloud approximations in models (because models are not fine grained enough to simulate small-scale clouds) are based on parameterizations based on observations of the climate. Calling that an assumption as if scientists just pulled it out of a hat is wrong.

3) Clouds aren't the only feedback. When a climate model shows 3C warming for a doubling of CO2 a large part of that is positive ice albedo and positive water vapor feedback. Water vapor and ice albedo feedbacks are known with high confidence to be positive. Therefore if you take what is known warming from a doubling of CO2 is almost certainly going to be higher than 0.5C-1C. Even 0.5C-1C warming would dominate over natural temperature changes.

4) The CERN CLOUD stuff isn't about cloud feedbacks, it's about cloud forcing.

5) Your perception that this article is somehow shocking or surprising to anyone but yourself is wrong.

Re: maybe we should just whitewash our cities and roads?

I looked up some numbers for a ballpark estimate. Only about 3% of the land is urbanized meaning only 0.9% of the Earth's surface is. The Earth's surface as a whole absorbs about 168wm-2 sunlight and reflects 30wm-2.

If we assume urban areas absorb 100% sunlight and by painting it white it would switch instead to reflecting 00% sunlight, I calculate the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth's surface as a whole would only decrease by 0.3wm-2 which would only offset 10% of the warming from a doubling of CO2 and I believe this calculation is quite liberal on getting that contribution as high as possible (in reality urban areas don't absorb 100% sunlight).

So unless we can paint the cities "whiter than white" I don't think this is going to work (not that I expected we'd be able to paint all urban areas in the world white anyway).

Re: "Suggesting ... that the body washed into the cave at some point."

i bet it swam

Re: Evolution might work here

"In fact the scientists have seemed to missed the big conclusion of the butterfly study - as the temperatures change animals will move and start showing up in ecosystems that they were previously rare in, moving with the temperature bands."

I can assure you they haven't missed this. The mixing up of species and tearing down of ecosystems into new arrangement is a primary cause of extinctions.

Consider what can happen when species get introduced into new ecosystems that have never before been exposed? Think about the introduction of rabbits to Australia or the many examples of rats being introduced inadvertently to remote islands for example. And what happens if a specie's required food source is unable to move polewards with it fast enough?

Re: Evolution might work here

Is that comment a troll or parody? The reference at the end to "just like free market economics" makes me suspect one of the two.

You also wrongly associate extinction with adaptation. Extinction is not a form of adaptation, extinction is what happens when adaptation fails. Your example of mass extinctions occurring in the past actually challenges this very article's assumption that evolution will save the day. In fact when I first started reading your comment I thought you were going to make that point. It's staggering to see you try to make the opposite. What mass extinctions show is that evolution ISNT going to save the day if climate change is large and fast enough.

Also bear in mind that it takes life millions of years to recover after mass extinction events, so while the full richness of life would recover in the long-term, it wouldn't be around for the foreseeable period of human civilization.

Re: @Lee Dowling ........

Thing is guys, scientists have been measuring a bunch of stuff over many years in the arctic. You might want to come up to speed with the information and knowledge out there about arctic ice before presuming you can dismiss what scientists are saying or come up with alternative explanations:

http://neven1.typepad.com/

The trend this Dr calculated for arctic sea ice volume decline wasn't based on just two datapoints as claimed, it is based on several continuous years of measurements.

see http://www.news.com.au/world-old/palm-trees-flourished-in-arctic-study/story-e6frfkz9-1225791205191

Re: Oversimplified system = invalid conclusion

"rendering their sweeping conclusions overstated"

what sweeping conclusions? go on, your turn.