Avoiding Hothouse Earth

[snowlover91]

1 hour ago, bdgwx said:

Then it should be easy to find a natural process or set of natural processes that when summed together explain most of the warming since 1960. So which process(es) can explain the ~1.0C rise in the global mean surface temperature and the rise of 20*10^22 joules of oceanic heat content? What natural physical process explains the warming of the troposphere while the stratosphere cools? And where is all of that energy that is getting captured via greenhouse gas effect going if it's not going into heating the biosphere?

 

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall and I can only read the abstract. The first thing to keep in mind is that this is just one publication and it must be considered in the context of all others. Second, without actually reading the paper my hunch (again based only on the abstract) is that there's going to be an argument that the homogenization step used by conventional datasets like NASA GISS, NOAA GlobalTemp, and the like may be more susceptible to topographical elements than the maintainers of those datasets aren't considering. I want to make a few points here. First, we really need to get a rebuttal from the maintainers of these datasets before we blindingly toss out the hundreds of peer reviewed publications confirming the validity of these datasets based a single publication. Second, the paper seems to be focused on land-ocean boundaries which represents a small percentage of the entire surface area of Earth. Third, there are actually multiple different lines of evidence that corroborate the fact that the Earth has warmed significantly in the modern era. We have satellite based datasets (like RSS and UAH). We have reanalysis (like CFSR, ERA, MERRA, NCAR, JRA, and countless others). And, of course, we have checks on the conventional datasets from independent groups like Berkeley Earth which was originally founded and funded by skeptics specifically to question the consensus. These datasets are from multiple groups using wildly different techniques and subsets of available and they all come to the conclusion that the Earth is warming and the magnitude of the warming is remarkably similar regardless of which dataset you look at. That is a testament to the confidence in this conclusion. The probability that a single publication (which was just published and has yet to get expert commentary from a sufficient depth of the scientific community) would upend this consensus is next to nothing. In other words, don't hold your breath hoping that a big paradigm shift is in the making from this one publication because it's not going to happen. 

Anyway, thanks for the link. Often times you can find a free copy if you google hard enough. Luck isn't on my side this go around, but I'll poke around some more. I'm always open to reading any peer reviewed literature even if it does buck the consensus.

And in regard to the urban heat island effect keep in mind that this has been known about for a very long time. I can probably dig up some really old papers by James Hansen documenting how he dealt with the problem as far back as the 1980's. But all datasets which might have a disproportionate weighting toward urban stations has there own method for dealing with the issue. My point is that this is not a new problem and scientists have definitely embraced it and accounted for it using various different techniques. 

See my above post dealing with some of what you and chubbs mentioned.

There are plenty of additional datasets that I have seen which call into question various temperature profiles, but I feel like that is a separate topic of debate. I think there is sufficient evidence and theories out there showing natural cycles that explain most of, if not all, the current warming we've seen both now and in past warming cycles hundreds and thousands of years ago. The theories abound from solar irradiance to ocean currents (as Dr Bill Gray points out) to various other possible factors or combination of them. We have much to learn and I have no doubt science will uncover additional data that sheds light on natural variables influencing the warming. Do I think CO2 has contributed some to the warming? Yes, I would agree with this. My belief based on all the data I've read from both sides is that CO2 has added to a natural warming cycle that we are in the process of trying to better understand and study. I certainly respect those who would disagree with my conclusion but I feel there is ample evidence out there to cast doubt on AGW as the only source or primary source of the warming.

 

[chubbs]

19 hours ago, snowlover91 said:

Not cherry picking, offering other points of views. It's up to the reader to decide what they believe and you've chosen to believe in AGW no matter what other alternative theories and research is presented. As mentioned, the papers I cited are a small portion of alternative views out there that look at other possible explanations for the warming with solid reasoning for their arguments. If you had read the articles and abstracts I posted you would have seen that. You choose to call them "cherry picking" simply because they don't agree with your point of view and what you consider settled science but the fact is there are scientists and climatologists who believe the science isn't settled and are exploring the complex dynamics in search of answers.

 

The study you cited was cherry-picking because it used a subset of data to make an erroneous claim. I "believe" in climate science because the evidence is overwhelming. It appears to me that you also have a belief system and search out supporting material. I have found that understanding climate science is a good basis for predicting the future. I don't expect warming to slow down until the global emission trajectory changes. What is your outlook for the future? 

[the ghost of leroy]

bill gray is an old ass kook

[bdgwx]

[Davies 2018] depends on [Davies 2017]. The later makes the claim that because the computed R^2 correlation of CO2 and T is low for the period 450-34 MYA then that necessarily falsifies the hypothesis that CO2 can modulate temperature. Davies then goes on to say that the R^2 could be low due to there being a low resolution in the data for that period. He concedes that the R^2 is strong for 34-0 MYA which is a period with a much higher temporal resolution of the data. And, of course, the ice core data from 1 million years ago to present shows an undeniable and extremely strong correlation. So Davies is already starting off with a weak argument. The rest of the paper isn't very convincing either IMHO. Namely, his ideas can't explain things like the faint young Sun problem. He also makes really weird warming claims such as that it has only warmed 0.8C since 1850 and that it hasn't warmed any at all from 1998. He also erroneously claims that the "warming hiatus" is proof that CO2 cannot be the cause of the warming. Yet, he doesn't realize that the "warming hiatus" is marked by a strong El Nino at the beginning and a strong La Nina at the end nevermind that the ocean heat content jumped up 5*10^22 joules during this period. And all of that is ignoring the fact that it actually has warmed quite a bit since 1998 anyway. So yeah, if you use the most egregious cherry-picking possible you can claim that global warming paused from 1998 to 2012. But that's only for the atmosphere. The rest of the biosphere (ocean, land, ice, latent heat of fusion), which accounts for more than 90% of the heat uptake pretty much marched straight up.

[Holmes 2018] incorrectly applies the Ideal Gas Law. I see this myth from time to time. The gist is that PV=nRT dictates the T of a planet with the reasoning that the T is high/low because the P is high/low. Skeptics then erroneously point out the differences between the P and T of Venus and Earth as proof that the T is modulated only by the P. However, the big problem with this argument is that the Ideal Gas Law is a state equation and nothing more. It is diagnostic; not prognostic. You can use it derive the value of one variable if you know the others, but you can't use it to explain how a system evolved in the first place. Think about it. It is just as valid for me to claim that the P is high/low because the T is high/low. And, in fact, that better explains the situation for both Venus and Earth in my opinion. Specifically thermal radiation performed work on the atmospheres to increase T in a partially isochoric manner which caused P and perhaps V as well to respond accordingly in a T leads to PV scenario. Holmes and others who use the Ideal Gas Law are assuming (perhaps unknowingly) that the opposite case of P leads to T scenario requires a polytrophic process to reduce the V thus raising both P and T. This could happen via mechanical compression. And the only candidate force that can do this is gravity. So if the argument is that T increased because P increased then that means the planet must have undergone a process by which its gravity increased. The problem...there's no physical process by which planets spontaneously (without external influence) increase their gravity. However, there is a physical process by which planets can spontaneously (without external influence) increase their IR absorption. That is via the radiation trapping behavior due to an accumulation of GHGs.

[Gray 2018] isn't actually written by Gray nevermind the fact that it isn't peer reviewed. It's also just a rehash of skeptic talking points that have already been presented.

None of these citations have much if anything to do with the topic of this thread though.

[snowlover91]

21 hours ago, chubbs said:

The study you cited was cherry-picking because it used a subset of data to make an erroneous claim. I "believe" in climate science because the evidence is overwhelming. It appears to me that you also have a belief system and search out supporting material. I have found that understanding climate science is a good basis for predicting the future. I don't expect warming to slow down until the global emission trajectory changes. What is your outlook for the future? 

Sorry but AGW proponents always use the "cherry picking" argument anytime they have something they can't debate or for data they don't like. If you're going to use it that way though I will also add that AGW proponents cherry pick their data too, one infamous example is the Mann hockey stick graph that was cited in IPCC and later subjected to scrutiny because it "erased" the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age and was based on a small data set. I can cite plenty of other "cherry picking" by AGW proponents but if you really want to find that out I would recommend you do some digging, it's easy to find even within IPCC reports.

The evidence for AGW has plenty of people who argue for it and there are also quite a few who would argue strongly against AGW and point to natural variables that explain part or all of AGW. Just so you know, I used to believe in AGW and changed my views on it as I started reading articles on both sides of the issue, historical data, news media bias/alarmism (both present and past, look at newspaper articles from the 1920s-50s when they said our ice caps would disappear similar yet later we saw a peak of ice in the 1970s), how $$ influences science research and opinion, etc. It's fine if you disagree but my conclusion is based on an analysis of all these factors and is the reason I switched from AGW believer to a skeptic who thinks the primary factors at play are natural cycles.

My outlook for the future? First of all I do think it is our responsibility to use our resources wisely and carefully. Deforestation is a big concern for me, where I live entire forests have been wiped out due to logging with only a barren wasteland of stumps, dead trees and some weeds/bushes growing back. Pollution and destruction of the environment is something all of humanity needs to certainly do what is possible to eliminate or restrict. Having said that, my outlook for the future is based off past history. There will be droughts, hurricanes, flooding, etc that will cause problems for humans as they always have but increasingly so as the human population grows and more people are affected by the same type of natural disasters.

At the same time I don't see a "catastrophic tipping point" occurring where everything goes haywire and millions or billions of people die as the alarmists predict and the original article posted here tries to scare people into believing the end of the world, the "tipping point," is close. The "Arctic is melting and the end of the world is coming" has been going on for 80+ years now. Archives of old newspaper articles reveal this quite well and the general "alarmism" portrayed in the news media is nothing new. The same type of scare tactics and even language used is similar to what you see today.

At the time these articles were written, sea ice extent is similar to what we have now... yet as we know within about 30 years the levels recovered to the peak in the 70s before another downtrend cycle started.

It's almost like the extreme heat in Europe has happened before and the news media hyped things like they always do.

And here was the drought index for 1934 per NOAA, at a time when PPM levels were around 310ppm. If this happened today the alarmists would declare the end of civilization about to occur...

I'm still waiting for the ice free Arctic predictions to materialize since at least 1923.

Hansen's claims of an ice free Arctic still haven't materialized.

Neither have claims for an ice free Artic by 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, or 2017. So far 2018 looks on track to at least keep some ice up in the Arctic

Meanwhile, in the 1970s when the ice reached the peak levels we've seen in the past 100 years, the tone shifted to an "Ice Age is Coming" fear.

 

[bdgwx]

Tony Heller (or is it Steven Goddard) isn't a credible source. I don't mind discussing the science of climate change. It is a legitimate field of study afterall. But, I'd rather not waste my time discussing and debunking propaganda from a lone non-expert blogger who has a history of misunderstanding physical principles, misrepresenting research, fabricating strawman arguments, and dispensing fake news.

[Vice-Regent]

[–]Sanpaku

There’s no market signal from the future 6 points 3 hours ago* 

Probably not. The natural carbon reservoirs are similar now. The amount of carbon humans can release from fossil fuels is on the order of 1-3 teratonnes (edit: accidentally wrote gigatonnes) carbon, before we essentially kill off the consumers. And climate sensitivity is a logarithmic function, each doubling of atmospheric carbon increases equilibrium temperature by a fixed amount (median estimate 3° C, high end of plausible estimates IMO 4.7° C).

So, assuming that the PETM reached 6° C mean surface warming, is 7 or 8 ° C possible with fossil emissions plus natural feedbacks? Probably. That's enough to make most current breadbaskets uninhabitable, and reduce the Earth's human carrying capacity to < 1 billion. That's a perfectly adequate description of collapse.

Unlike some, I don't require the end of all macroscopic life over decades to make climate change a worthy cause. It's enough that humanity will undergo centuries of retreat over bottleneck centuries.

[the ghost of leroy]

who would have thought someone named snowlover would be such an ardent denier of global warming?

[bdgwx]

There's enough fossil fuels to bring atmospheric concentrations to at least 1000 ppm and that's not counting an activation of a possible tipping point that could flip natural CO2 fluxes from negative to positive. So today we are at 410 ppm and our transient response to the 5.35 * ln(410/280) = 2.0 W/m2 of forcing is at least +1.0C (being conservative here). We still have a decade or two before the equilibrium response completes so I think +1.0C mapped to 2.0 W/m2 of forcing is a pretty conservative estimate. Then if we top 1000 ppm that would yield an additional 5.35 * ln(1000/410) = 4.75 W/m2 of forcing. Assuming our response-to-forcing ratio remains constant (probably not likely) that would yield another +2.5C for a total of +3.5C of warming. And that's just the transient response. Using a TCR-to-ECR ratio of 0.7 (trying to be reasonable here) yields an equilibrium response of 5.0C. So yeah, 7C of warming is in the realm of possibility if you consider that 1) I ignored a potential flip of the natural CO2 flux from negative to positive which would result in even high CO2 concentrations 2) I assumed there is only enough fossil fuel to raise concentrations to 1000 ppm and 3) I was trying not to be too aggressive with my assumptions on climate sensitivity. Note, that my numbers here work out to a total ECR of about 2.6C for a doubling of CO2 which puts me pretty close to the middle of the consensus estimate.

[snowlover91]

3 hours ago, bdgwx said:

Tony Heller (or is it Steven Goddard) isn't a credible source. I don't mind discussing the science of climate change. It is a legitimate field of study afterall. But, I'd rather not waste my time discussing and debunking propaganda from a lone non-expert blogger who has a history of misunderstanding physical principles, misrepresenting research, fabricating strawman arguments, and dispensing fake news.

Who referenced him as a credible source? Last I checked no one cited him in this thread as one. Unfortunately I'm afraid oftentimes skeptics and AGW proponents are guilty of the above accusations as is the news media.  As mentioned in my previous post, the Mann "hockey stick" graph is one of many examples of AGW proponents manipulating the data to fit their agenda as well.

[snowlover91]

1 hour ago, the ghost of leroy said:

who would have thought someone named snowlover would be such an ardent denier of global warming?

My username was created when I was an ardent AGW proponent, but nice try.

[the ghost of leroy]

10 minutes ago, snowlover91 said:

My username was created when I was an ardent AGW proponent, but nice try.

lol at changing your mind the wrong direction

[snowlover91]

1 hour ago, Vice-Regent said:

[–]Sanpaku

There’s no market signal from the future 6 points 3 hours ago* 

Probably not. The natural carbon reservoirs are similar now. The amount of carbon humans can release from fossil fuels is on the order of 1-3 teratonnes (edit: accidentally wrote gigatonnes) carbon, before we essentially kill off the consumers. And climate sensitivity is a logarithmic function, each doubling of atmospheric carbon increases equilibrium temperature by a fixed amount (median estimate 3° C, high end of plausible estimates IMO 4.7° C).

So, assuming that the PETM reached 6° C mean surface warming, is 7 or 8 ° C possible with fossil emissions plus natural feedbacks? Probably. That's enough to make most current breadbaskets uninhabitable, and reduce the Earth's human carrying capacity to < 1 billion. That's a perfectly adequate description of collapse.

Unlike some, I don't require the end of all macroscopic life over decades to make climate change a worthy cause. It's enough that humanity will undergo centuries of retreat over bottleneck centuries.

So in theory if we saw between 6-8C in global warming, how would that kill off billions of people? What are your thoughts?

[Vice-Regent]

3 minutes ago, snowlover91 said:

So in theory if we saw between 6-8C in global warming, how would that kill off billions of people? What are your thoughts?

Disease vectors and droughts diminishing crop yields. This is not because the Earth is becoming drier overall rather it's because the sub-tropical high pressure zones move into the Breadbaskets of the world thus causing desertification over the regions that are currently used for agriculture. One may say we can grow our crops in Canada or Russia but there is no guarantee that the climate will be stable or supportive.

Tread lightly.

[snowlover91]

1 minute ago, the ghost of leroy said:

lol at changing your mind the wrong direction

Yeah, thinking for yourself and being willing to change your mind is such a bad thing

[Vice-Regent]

2 minutes ago, snowlover91 said:

Yeah, thinking for yourself and being willing to change your mind is such a bad thing

The opposite for me. I moved from denier to proponent. Lol. Although I was 14 when I was a denier so I think that's to be expected.

[the ghost of leroy]

9 minutes ago, snowlover91 said:

Yeah, thinking for yourself and being willing to change your mind is such a bad thing

that's the same thing anti-vaxxers say.  i'm not sure what to tell you if in 2018 you still cant see the writing on the wall.

[snowlover91]

1 minute ago, Vice-Regent said:

The opposite for me. I moved from denier to proponent. Lol. Although I was 14 when I was a denier so I think that's to be expected.

To each his own I have no problem with people who accept AGW as the primary or complete cause of the warming we've seen since there is good research out there pointing to that possibility. I personally am a skeptic based on the research I've done but enjoy reading both sides so long as they are well reasoned, thought provoking and consistent. I look forward to seeing how things evolve in the next 20 years, much will be revealed in that time. With the AMO possibly going negative for an extended period it will certainly be interesting to see the effects of that.

[snowlover91]

Just now, the ghost of leroy said:

that's the same thing anti-vaxxers say.  i'm not sure what to tell you if in 2018 you still cant see the writing on the wall.

You would do well to come up with a better argument for your position than statements like this I find that those who are not able to articulate their arguments and believe whatever they read without questioning the validity of it or researching alternative viewpoints usually make similar statements.

[bdgwx]

1 hour ago, snowlover91 said:

Who referenced him as a credible source? Last I checked no one cited him in this thread as one. Unfortunately I'm afraid oftentimes skeptics and AGW proponents are guilty of the above accusations as is the news media.  As mentioned in my previous post, the Mann "hockey stick" graph is one of many examples of AGW proponents manipulating the data to fit their agenda as well.

The images of newspaper articles come from realclimatescience.com (not to be confused with realclimate.org). It is ran by Tony Heller who used to post on Anthony Watts' blog as Steven Goddard until even Watts got fed up with him. Heller thinks all of the data available is fake and that climate science is all one big hoax. Heller frequently indicts scientists of fraud. He also pushes the Ideal Gas Law myth which I'm guessing is where you got the link to the Holmes paper. It also did not escape my notice that Holmes uses Lansner's work (ya know...the questionable ocean-land boundary argument used to diminish the amount of warming that has occurred) so there's a nice circular reference going on here. Also, Hansen never claimed that the Arctic would be ice free by now despite the piece of fake news Tony Heller dug up. And Al Gore is not a credible source nor an expert or even a scientists so I pretty much ignore any of his predictions. And, no, the scientific consensus did not predict that the Arctic would be ice by now either. Nor did Mann manipulate anything. You can read his papers regarding the topic here and here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of Mann either mostly because of his bravado on the topic but the fact is that there have been dozens of reconstructions of the pre-industrial temperature using various proxies and they overwhelmingly corroborate Mann's original work from 1998 and beyond. I thought about mentioning these points earlier but figured it would be a waste of time. It's probably still a waste of time, but what's done is done. 

[snowlover91]

15 minutes ago, bdgwx said:

The images of newspaper articles come from realclimatescience.com (not to be confused with realclimate.org). It is ran by Tony Heller who used to post on Anthony Watts' blog as Steven Goddard until even Watts got fed up with him. Heller thinks all of the data available is fake and that climate science is all one big hoax. Heller frequently indicts scientists of fraud. He also pushes the Ideal Gas Law myth which I'm guessing is where you got the link to the Holmes paper. It also did not escape my notice that Holmes uses Lansner's work (ya know...the questionable ocean-land boundary argument used to diminish the amount of warming that has occurred) so there's a nice circular reference going on here. Also, Hansen never claimed that the Arctic would be ice free by now despite the piece of fake news Tony Heller dug up. And Al Gore is not a credible source nor an expert or even a scientists so I pretty much ignore any of his predictions. And, no, the scientific consensus did not predict that the Arctic would be ice by now either. Nor did Mann manipulate anything. You can read his papers regarding the topic here and here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of Mann either mostly because of his bravado on the topic but the fact is that there have been dozens of reconstructions of the pre-industrial temperature using various proxies and they overwhelmingly corroborate Mann's original work from 1998 and beyond. I thought about mentioning these points earlier but figured it would be a waste of time. It's probably still a waste of time, but what's done is done. 

Does it matter where the newspaper clippings come from? It’s much easier to link from existing sources than pull up the archives, pay for access, etc. The point is equally valid that past newspapers hyped the changes in climate just as we see today and also corroborate the low ice coverage that is seen in reconstructions, one of which I posted. The reconstruction also nicely shows ice extent levels then are similar to what we see now. Assuming the reconstruction is accurate, the ice levels we have currently have been seen in the past 80-100 years. 

I’m not sure why you call the info about  Hansen “fake news” as you can find multiple articles citing that he made this claim. Here is one such article. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-06-23-1642922053_x.htm

I also never claimed the scientific consensus predicted an ice free arctic. I said that there have been multiple claims of this going back a LONG time and they have proven false as many alarmist predictions have been. It’s hype and part of the AGW scare that scientists and the news media are using to try to get people to accept it. 

The Holmes and Lasner papers are just a few. There are plenty of others with similar ideas and conclusions based on their data and research. I don’t find the papers from Tony Heller’s site if that what you’re implying. My guess is he cites those on his blog since they provide a skeptical POV. 

Mann’s hockey stick graph may have some research corroborating it but that doesn’t mean it’s correct. The Medieval warm period and Little Ice age are well documented as are the changes those brought. There is plenty of evidence for them existing, far more than the “hockey stick” graph which has rightly received a good deal of criticism.

I take it from your line of reasoning you would deny that there were warmer periods in the past and accept Mann’s work as true. If so, then that’s unfortunate. 

[bdgwx]

16 hours ago, snowlover91 said:

Does it matter where the newspaper clippings come from? It’s much easier to link from existing sources than pull up the archives, pay for access, etc. The point is equally valid that past newspapers hyped the changes in climate just as we see today and also corroborate the low ice coverage that is seen in reconstructions, one of which I posted. The reconstruction also nicely shows ice extent levels then are similar to what we see now. Assuming the reconstruction is accurate, the ice levels we have currently have been seen in the past 80-100 years. 

I’m not sure why you call the info about  Hansen “fake news” as you can find multiple articles citing that he made this claim. Here is one such article. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-06-23-1642922053_x.htm

I also never claimed the scientific consensus predicted an ice free arctic. I said that there have been multiple claims of this going back a LONG time and they have proven false as many alarmist predictions have been. It’s hype and part of the AGW scare that scientists and the news media are using to try to get people to accept it. 

The Holmes and Lasner papers are just a few. There are plenty of others with similar ideas and conclusions based on their data and research. I don’t find the papers from Tony Heller’s site if that what you’re implying. My guess is he cites those on his blog since they provide a skeptical POV. 

Mann’s hockey stick graph may have some research corroborating it but that doesn’t mean it’s correct. The Medieval warm period and Little Ice age are well documented as are the changes those brought. There is plenty of evidence for them existing, far more than the “hockey stick” graph which has rightly received a good deal of criticism.

I take it from your line of reasoning you would deny that there were warmer periods in the past and accept Mann’s work as true. If so, then that’s unfortunate. 

All Hansen was attributed to saying in that AP article is "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." The author took the liberty to interpret that single statement as him echoing his peers with a prediction that the Arctic would be ice free in 5 to 10 years. Those were the AP article author's words; not Hansen's. And none of Hansen's publications (which are numerous) claim a quick melt out. I do acknowledge that there are peer reviewed publications that contain aggressive predictions of Arctic sea ice loss, but when weighed against the abundance of research on the subject these aggressive predictions do not represent the consensus.

Your point about Mann is fair. Just because Mann's work is corroborated by his peers doesn't necessarily make it right. But, there's no reason to think that he "manipulated" the data or that he "erased" the MWP or LIA or that anything he did was unethical. You can read his original work and can see for yourself that his data does show a slight signal for the MWP and LIA or at the very least they can easily fit into the margin of error which brackets his best guess. Furthermore, his later publications have refined data that increase the signal for the MWP and LIA a bit more. Did Mann underestimate the MWP with the original MBH1999 work? Probably. But was it an egregious error or academic dishonesty? Not even close. Here are various reconstructions for you to consider.

 

Also, I don't deny that there were periods of warm and cool anomalies in the past. I don't have a choice but to acknowledge this because I accept the abundance of evidence that is available. I also do not take Mann's work as absolute truth. Instead I focus on a consensus derived from the evidence. And the evidence tells me, despite my personal misgivings of Mann and his style, that I have to accept that his work falls in line with everyone else or at the very least there are no obvious or egregious deficiencies with it.

But it's mostly moot anyway. In the context of AGW we need an explanation for the cause of the warming today. And just because the physical processes that modulated climate change in the past were mostly natural does not preclude an anthroprogenic component from also modulating climate change. I'm not saying we can't learn something from the past, but we also can't assume that the past is exactly like the present either. Afterall, there's a new variable in play now!

[chubbs]

Per the detailed account below, it is Mann's critics who manipulated the data.

https://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/

[SENC]

On ‎8‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 11:02 PM, Vice-Regent said:

Such a pleasant sensation. Forever reminded of this beautiful feeling with a aesthetically pleasing scar. Things are getting serious boys. I think it's time to hit the shovels.

Yeppers!! Lets DIG MOR COAL! Were going to need it going into the Grand Solar Minimum..   Gotta keep warm & Toasty inside..  Do you know, it's been SNOWING in Japan in AUGEAT? AND FROST elsewhere? (Granted it was in the Northern Most Island) but EARLIEST recorded frost & snow since 1974?    

OR that AT the same Latitude  Where Norway & those other Nordic Countries were "recording a Heat Wave, Parts of Russia at the Same Latitude was receiving SNOW? (Earliest recorded)? SEEMS our #FAKENEWS conveniently leaves little details like this out of the Doom & Gloom News reports.. 

Record-setting early snowfall covers top of Hokkaido mountain link https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180817/p2a/00m/0na/014000c

Snow in June,July & Augest in Russia? http://englishrussia.com/2018/06/01/snow-on-first-day-of-summer-in-russia-photos/

http://englishrussia.com/2018/07/20/today-snowing-in-norilsk-russia-2-video/

Remember this is at the SAME Latitude Where the record setting heat Wave was "occurring".. 

Excuse the underlined formatting got messed up.. 

[snowlover91]

12 hours ago, bdgwx said:

All Hansen was attributed to saying in that AP article is "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." The author took the liberty to interpret that single statement as him echoing his peers with a prediction that the Arctic would be ice free in 5 to 10 years. Those were the AP article author's words; not Hansen's. And none of Hansen's publications (which are numerous) claim a quick melt out. I do acknowledge that there are peer reviewed publications that contain aggressive predictions of Arctic sea ice loss, but when weighed against the abundance of research on the subject these aggressive predictions do not represent the consensus.

Your point about Mann is fair. Just because Mann's work is corroborated by his peers doesn't necessarily make it right. But, there's no reason to think that he "manipulated" the data or that he "erased" the MWP or LIA or that anything he did was unethical. You can read his original work and can see for yourself that his data does show a slight signal for the MWP and LIA or at the very least they can easily fit into the margin of error which brackets his best guess. Furthermore, his later publications have refined data that increase the signal for the MWP and LIA a bit more. Did Mann underestimate the MWP with the original MBH1999 work? Probably. But was it an egregious error or academic dishonesty? Not even close. Here are various reconstructions for you to consider.

 

Also, I don't deny that there were periods of warm and cool anomalies in the past. I don't have a choice but to acknowledge this because I accept the abundance of evidence that is available. I also do not take Mann's work as absolute truth. Instead I focus on a consensus derived from the evidence. And the evidence tells me, despite my personal misgivings of Mann and his style, that I have to accept that his work falls in line with everyone else or at the very least there are no obvious or egregious deficiencies with it.

But it's mostly moot anyway. In the context of AGW we need an explanation for the cause of the warming today. And just because the physical processes that modulated climate change in the past were mostly natural does not preclude an anthroprogenic component from also modulating climate change. I'm not saying we can't learn something from the past, but we also can't assume that the past is exactly like the present either. Afterall, there's a new variable in play now!

I would certainly agree with the bolded portion here and this is why I believe all avenues of research that agree with AGW AND skeptical research proposing alternative explanations for some or all of the warming are worth exploring. We have much to learn about our climate and how it operates and I have no doubt that we will continue to discover new data that will shape the way we view the warming we have seen. I've taken this topic OT a bit too much now though so I won't get into this any further, we'll just have to agree to disagree on some things  

@chubbsI guess we will have to agree to disagree on the various research which has been done regarding the "hockey stick graph" as well. I've taken this topic OT a bit much so will let this get back to the point of discussion!  Carry on! 

[bdgwx]

8 hours ago, SENC said:

Yeppers!! Lets DIG MOR COAL! Were going to need it going into the Grand Solar Minimum..

Don't hold your breath waiting for a period of cooling due to a solar grand minimum. The difference between the Maunder Minimum and the Modern Maximum is about 1.0 W/m^2. Compare that with the radiative forcing of CO2 doubling which can be estimated as 5.35 * ln(560/280) = 3.7 W/m^2. A hypothetical grand minimum will certainly mitigate the warming, but it won't stop it. Also, look closely at your graph. The modern maximum was in a peaking process between 1960 and 1990 with the time integration of total solar irradiance beginning to wane by 1980 and definitely by 1990. And since 1990 the entire biosphere (land, air, ocean, etc.) has accumulated about 20*10^22 joules of heat with most of that uptake being stored in the ocean. And the global mean surface temperature has increased by about +0.6C. And that's just the transient response. We still have to wait a decade or two to see what the equilibrium response is to the current 410 ppm of CO2. Furthermore, the LIA cannot be explained by solar output alone. Increased volcanic activity and, to a lesser extent, land use changes by humans also likely contributed. So no, the evidence does not suggest that we should intentionally release more CO2 into the air as a means for staving off a bout of cooling caused by a hypothetical solar grand minimum.

But, to get back to the point of this thread one could ask if a hypothetical solar grand minimum would change the conclusion of the paper cited in the OP. Probably not. At least not drastically. Research shows that a hypothetical solar grand minimum would certainly change the timing of the milestones of the warming, but it won't actually prevent them from happening. It should also be pointed out that solar grand cycles have periods on the order of few decades to a couple of hundred years. Yet, CO2 residence times in the atmosphere are on the order of 100-1000 years. And while the equilibrium response to specific GHGs concentrations occurs pretty quickly (a decade or two) the falloff in temperature is much slower. I just don't think a grand minimum would have a significant impact on hothouse tipping points from a macroscopic viewpoint anyway. But, I could be wrong. The devil is often in the details.

[csnavywx]

I always love those GSM predictions. They're so bad that it ends up being good entertainment.

I also love the incredulity at what +6-8C would do. We don't have to guess. That's what paleoclimate is for. Virtually all of the big extinctions are due to large excursions of carbon from igneous provinces. The trick is the atmosphere couldn't care less if the carbon is from Volvos or volcanoes.

Wanna know what +6C can do? Ever heard of the end-Permian? The difference is the sun is brighter in this era (by 2.5% since the end Permian and 0.5% from the PETM), so not nearly as much carbon is needed to get those very high temperature levels.

[Typhoon Tip]

2 hours ago, csnavywx said:

I always love those GSM predictions. They're so bad that it ends up being good entertainment.

I also love the incredulity at what +6-8C would do. We don't have to guess. That's what paleoclimate is for. Virtually all of the big extinctions are due to large excursions of carbon from igneous provinces. The trick is the atmosphere couldn't care less if the carbon is from Volvos or volcanoes.

Wanna know what +6C can do? Ever heard of the end-Permian? The difference is the sun is brighter in this era (by 2.5% since the end Permian and 0.5% from the PETM), so not nearly as much carbon is needed to get those very high temperature levels.

That's... basically it, ladies and gentlemen..

To paraphrase some of my own recent protestations:  ... all of humanity proverbially sets upon the train tracks and as the iron beneath their feet begins to whir with impending doom, they argue about the color shoes being worn to the engagement - 

In that metaphor, "the engagement" is obviously ... pretty much everything else we concern our selves in as a species that does not focus in the fact that we are racing toward a scenario where there is no world upon which to concern everything else.

There is a real, real inability to connect the collective psyche around an urgency ... they don't believe is real in the first place.

I've opined why the latter is - I think it's quite literally (yes, literally and not figuratively) a species limitation, where despite Einstein, Galileo, Mosart and "Jack The Ripper," ... humans cannot seem to react to threat they do not perceive readily via one of the five senses. Climate is a pernicious stalker..  We are getting more striking heat waves in the world. Freak storms that are scratching heads for seemingly being unnecessarily beyond the pale of typical violence...  But, those are being dismissed by the favorite mantra: 'these events have always happened.'  Thus, that "sixth" sense...that eerie feeling that something is very right, or very wrong, ... is apparently turned off entirely by some kind of incredulous idea that the climate disaster is a faux heretical thing...  It's baffling, but perhaps therein, erstwhile understandable.

Perhaps that's our species universal kill switch.  That catch-22 that all fledgling species of the Cosmos must pass like some sort of grand test; how to evolve without evolution defeating its self. As a wild Science Fiction sort of digression - why we don't actually detect any super-terrestrial species out there...  Actually, the idea in cosmological circles/ethos of the "kill switch" is relatively old - but it seems almost apropos here.   That last human being ... choking on the ashes during their last breath, might wish they'd heeded the warnings.

 

 

[Save the itchy algae!]

I find the premise of this thread to be rather alarmist.  That doesn't mean that we should not be more thoughtful stewards of the planet though.  That said, its highly unlikely that the earth will be in a hothouse environment in 300 years; we will either be largely in the same realm of climate we are today (300 years is a blink of the eye as it relates to the earth's climate) or we will be extinct due to much more impactful circumstances than the use of Volvos, coal, and plastic.

[Typhoon Tip]

42 minutes ago, Save the itchy algae! said:

I find the premise of this thread to be rather alarmist.  That doesn't mean that we should not be more thoughtful stewards of the planet though.  That said, its highly unlikely that the earth will be in a hothouse environment in 300 years; we will either be largely in the same realm of climate we are today (300 years is a blink of the eye as it relates to the earth's climate) or we will be extinct due to much more impactful circumstances than the use of Volvos, coal, and plastic.

It's ironic ...that there are those the feel this way, when ... the world is so issue-saturated and thus 'cry wolf' jaded, such elaboration becomes sort of necessary to cut through the malaise and get people to re-engage and pay attention - not you per se... but just out there in general. 

I don't agree with your reply overall, though - not that you asked or care.

While it is certainly true that a super volcano, a Carrington Event, a comet/asteroid impact... or you name it, a CRB burst ... nuclear war, super pandemics... anyone of these could bring civilization to it's knees... I find the use of that argument less relevant when climate-related catastrophe is air-apparent (excuse the pun) and presently, evidentiary. One aspect of that catastrophe is GW - hence the hyperbole of the title.

Only one of those other background threats is above mere noise, statistically, for occurrence, and that's nuclear war - which ironically...could be part of chaotic, panicked world, should it plunge into macro-scaled civil duress in a scramble for the last remaining seat when the music of resources stops.  Barring that happening for a moment that reliance upon a "what-if" list of other Armageddon bares less representation to reality and said present evidences.  The threat of climate break down, however, DOES.