More evidence of global warming.

[pjclarke]

I found this convincing

I wish I was so easily pleased. You didn't spot the axis units blunder in Graph 4? That piece by an oil company CEO posted on the sockpuppetmaster's pseudo-science blog merely restates that the forcing effect of CO2 is related logarithmically to concentration, or to put it another way:-

if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression

as Svante Arrhenius wrote over a century ago, and guess what? This ancient knowledge is already included in every climate model and projection.

But this attenuation is offset by increasing positive feedbacks, the biggest single one being more greenhouse from the increased water vapour held in a warmer atmosphere, resulting in a more linear curve. The idea that the spectrum is saturated is just nuts, and a runaway feedback loop - or the Venus Effect - is unlikely due to Stephan-Boltzmann law which states that irradiance increases with the fourth power of temperature.

RealClimate: A Saturated Gassy Argument

Dessler et al 2008 - water vapour feedback has been observed, measured and found to be inline with the models.

The existence of a strong and positive water-vapor feedback means that projected business-as-usual greenhousegas emissions over the next century are virtually guaranteed to produce warming of several degrees Celsius. The only way that will not happen is if a strong, negative, and currently unknown feedback is discovered somewhere in our climate system.

http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/22...t_al_2008b.pdf

Svante Arrhenius - New World Encyclopedia

[EternalOptimist]

I wish I was so easily pleased. You didn't spot the axis units blunder in Graph 4? That piece by an oil company CEO posted on the sockpuppetmaster's pseudo-science blog merely restates that the forcing effect of CO2 is related logarithmically to concentration, or to put it another way:-

dont be so modest.

dont forget, you are not a muppet.
your role is to educate the inferior people, and other muppets you come across

[BlasterBates]

That doesn't answer the question. A trend line is usually some sort of moving average. How was this one calculated?

Linear regression - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Y= bX

Using the estimate of b which gives the lowest value of Sum of (X-X(est))-squared

[BlasterBates]

Prof. Judith Curry says the following:

note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years:
Raise the level of your game. Nothing in the Met Office’s statement or in Nuticelli’s argument effectively refutes Rose’s argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years.

Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from these other scientists that acknowledge the ‘pause’, mentioned in my previous post Candid comments from global warming scientists

http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/14/pa...ad/#more-10193

...and what does James Hansen say:

These revelations are prompting the science’s biggest names to change their views.

Indeed, the most important outcome from the energy hunt may be that researchers are chronically underestimating air pollution’s reflective effect.

“Less efficient mixing, other things being equal, would mean that there is less warming ‘in the pipeline,’” Hansen said. “But it also implies that the negative aerosol forcing is probably larger than most models assumed. So the Faustian aerosol bargain is probably more of a problem than had been assumed.”

[pjclarke]

Dr Curry also said

16 years is too short, given the timescales of the PDO and AMO, to separate out natural versus anthropogenic variability

did she not?

[BlasterBates]

Dr Curry also said



did she not?

and ...she says this

Natural internal variability plus solar have important impacts on global climate as evidenced by the current plateau, and it is an easy next step to infer that the warming in the 1980′s and 1990′s was ‘juiced by the warm PDO and transition from cool to warm AMO.

i.e. the fact that there is a plateau means that there is a question mark as to how much of the global warming in the 1980's and 1990's was natural.

She then gow on to say in the comments further down:

The climate models don’t adequately simulate the amplitude of natural internal variability at timescales exceeding 17 years. Acknowledge this, and try to do better with the climate models. No one has been paying attention to this issue other than skeptics; seems that finally the ‘establishment’ is focusing on this as a result of the plateau and with the CMIP5 decadal simulation experiments.

[sasguru]

The truth is, people use their skills and brain power to determine what are facts for them. It's a philosophical construct. They can be unsure, certain, convinced, or yet to be convinced.
some people are convinced but open to persuasion.

let me give you an example.
some gobby tit waffles on about who invented the concept of the zero. he is convinced of his facts.
let us call him sasguru.
He denigrated a fellow who had different facts, called him a cretin and said IHTH BIDI a few times
let us call tha fellow EO

I dont think anyone needs any more info on how THAT all panned out.

but the few weeks silence from the gob that followed(as he licked his wounds and swallowed his pride) were very welcome to all concerned

HTH BIDI

What a pile of post-modernist crap.

HTHm BIKIW.

[EternalOptimist]

What a pile of post-modernist crap.

HTHm BIKIW.

I believe you read a lot on maths and stats and that you claim to be self-educated.

All I can say is that it is very nice of you to take the blame

[IR35FanClub]

LOL. I'm staying out of this one. I don't need any blogs or opinions to tell me one fact. CO2 is higher than its ever been since the evolution of modern man, [edit - I hope BB and EO are not creationists or we'll be told evolution is only a disputed theory and never hear the end of it, LOL] and that is not normal. Whatever you decide to tell yourself after that is your own opinion. But lets face it, if the oil companies can sponsor some contrarian blogs and people like EO and BB keep repeating it - it's best not to argue with them. It just provides more airtime to the conspiracy theorists.

You are better off spending your time writing a business plan on how to make money from the opportunities provided by the global consensus amongst governments that they need to do something. That's what I'm doing at the mo. Well not on the plan stage yet, just doing the research on competitors and looking at opportunities. The retrofit industry is going to be worth billions over the next few years - and this is nothing to do with climate change - it based solely on the efficiency improvement MUST pay for themselves or they won't get funding. Check out the Green Deal. So spending money to save money is a green light in my book = [pardon the pun]. I gave up arguing about climate change about 3 years ago.

My own observation are there are 3 types of people who make efficiency improvements -

1) Those that do it for altruistic reasons because they understand the science and the risk of not doing anything. These people are likely to consider compositing toilets, growing their own food and cutting car use as much as possible. Buy clothes from charity shops and take holidays by using the train.
2) People who do it to save money as it makes economic sense. These are people like my dad, who has been looking at PV because the rate of return on FiT is better than his savings account. He's bought a 1.6TDi golf to replace the Discovery. Etc.
3) People who like gadgets and eco bling - regardless of the cost. This is me. I'm putting in a whole house automation system that can turn of the lights from my arm chair and and fire up the heating from my phone before I get home, or turn it off when I leave the house and switch on the burglar alarm. The cost of the system can't be justified on a payback basis - as I could get up and turn off the lights at the switch. But that isn't a challenge.

In future I'm going to try to build an inter-seasonal heat store in my garden (well some final year MSc/PHD student is - with me sponsoring the costs of equipment). Thikn of a large solar thermal system with a heatpump burying the heat down a borehole, which can then be reversed in winter. Yes some heat will escape - but it will lift the surrounding ground temps enough to get a much better heating efficiency from the heat pump during the winter. I see this as the future of home heating - using the summer time sun stored up to heat your home in winter. Just as some people spend thousands on customising a car, or building a home theatre, this is going to be my project. I could save somewhere around £1,000 a year at current prices. The first thing though is to super-insulate the house to get an idea of heating requirements. The more of that I do now, the less heat I'll have to store - and with borehole costing about £1000/kw to install - it could save £10-20k on the borehole. What I'm trying to do is become independent of energy prices as much as possible...

Which brings me on to - forget climate change. The real reason to drive energy efficiency is resource usage/depletion. Forget those climate graphs... here's the one you need to see.... this is unfettered, objective and one most people can relate to as they pay bills every month.

The Changing Costs of Utility Prices in the UK

Have a play and you can overlay gas and electric. Who thinks those graphs are going back down, either soon, some time in the distant future, or more likely - NEVER! So system may have a payback of 10 years now, but by year 5 that payback might only be 6 years at the energy price has risen again and again.

Or some raw data staticstics...
Energy price statistics - Department of Energy and Climate Change

So forget about trying to prove or disprove whether we need to act on climate change. We definitely can save money now and in future by doing stuff.

PS The future of home heating is electric - not burning stuff in a boiler - as we're running out of cheap stuff to burn. Oil gas and coal. It's not running out - but it is getting to expensive. Solar PV is about 18 months away from the price point where it's life time costs are comparable to grid electric. That's a game changer. Shame it doesn't work all year round though.

I do think the gov got some stuff wrong. They shouldn't have put PV on houses - it should have gone on offices and factories where it can get used in the day time.

[d000hg]

LOL. I'm staying out of this one. I don't need any blogs or opinions to tell me one fact. CO2 is higher than its ever been since the evolution of modern man

I'm interested how you know something like that without a source to tell you. Are you an immortal with a 6th sense of measuring CO2 and a very good memory?