Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog |
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| Posted by: Dr. Ricky Rood, 7:04 AM GMT on March 26, 2011 | +3 |
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I'm a professor at U Michigan and lead a course on climate change problem solving. These articles include ideas from the course. And no tuition!
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Anyway, I probably won't be on long enough to read any of the linked stuff too carefully; I may be on later tonight.
A few quick observations...
weatherboy1992's first link is to an editorial by a talk-show host, presumably as he states a fairly conservative one. I would expect a piece such as that to contain exaggerations and misrepresentations. I'm sure you wouldn't have to search too hard to find an example from the left as well.
Looking quickly, I don't think the rebuttal by John Abraham in his second is exactly totally truthful either. First, I see that the "97% of scientists..." figure in print again. This figure represents a nonscientific sample of only 75 or so scientists from a thesis paper (we've linked in here numerous times...I'll find and insert the link if indeed it is necessary). Skimming down, I see that he chastises the original article for claiming that temperatures for "declining since 1940" when what is actually stated is that at the time of the Newsweek article from 1975 it was believed that temperatures had been declining since 1940. If I remember the old NCAR estimates that were given from the 1980s correctly, it was believed that temperatures had declined significantly over this time. The newer GISS, CRU et al, graphs shows much less decline over this period now, of course.
I won't have time at the moment to go through the other links, but a quick look at the third tells me that it appears that Chris Mooney's point-of-view is definitely going to come from the left. I don't have a problem with this per se, as I routinely read not only Fox News and What's Up With That just about as often as ClimateProgress and Daily Kos. I don't consider any of those sites to be objective; I don't even know of a site I would consider objective really. I just try to read the same stories from various points of view and make a decision on what's truth and what's spin on my own. It's an imperfect process to be sure, but I don't know a better one.
I might take a closer look at the links later and may have further comment. I'm working on something else at the moment and only taking intermittent breaks to check here.
Fair enough...To each his own.
Thanks.
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OK guys. I'm going to fix me a double Maker's as a reward for getting this spreadsheet I'm working on half-done, but then I've got to get back to it. I may check back later depending on how late it is.
So Long and Good Night if I'm not back.
59 degrees right now.
80% chance of storms tomorrow.
You know how much Mikey hates storms.
Maybe his buddy will comfort him.
Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels
Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report's author now says true estimate is still unknown
Link
Do a search and try to find empirical data on sea level, almost 99 % prediction.
sea levels which have flooded coastal estuaries or
low lands anywhere.
Did see this report in Europe which indicates no
major problems even with the worst case predictions.
Basic Messages
For the most realistic scenario (25 cm of sea-level rise in 50 years):
Changes in the Wadden Sea ecosystem (morphology and biology) are expected not to be substantial.
Costs for coastal defence might increase by 5 to 15%
For the worst-case scenario (50 cm of sea-level rise in 50 years):
The capacity of the system to balance changes might become exhausted.
The Wadden Sea tidal basins might start to evolve into tidal lagoons.
These morphological changes will substantially influence the biology
The costs for coastal defence might double.
The "Breakpoint"
The group expects that, between the most realistic and the worst-case scenarios, there will be an upper limit of capacity from which the tidal basins will start to evolve in the direction of tidal lagoons (i.e. a reduction of tidal flats). The exact position of these breakpoints, i.e., at which rate of sea-level rise this will occur, varies strongly among the tidal basins. Hence, with regard to the strong natural variability, each basin should be investigated separately.
The report of the CPSL served as on an input for the 9th Trilateral Governmental Conference for Protection of the Wadden Sea in Esbjerg, 2001, at which the continuation of the CPSL working group was endorsed.
Link
And this article about more inflated data.
Climate scientists admit fresh error over data on rising sea levels
Latest embarrassment comes as key sceptic Benny Peiser backs down in row over fabricated quote.
Link
RESEARCH PAPERS
Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia?
P. J. Watson
The longest continuous Australasian records, Fremantle and Auckland, situated on the western and eastern periphery of the Oceania region, respectively, exhibit remarkably similar trends in the relative 20-year moving average water level time series after 1920. Both time series show a rise in mean sea level of approximately 120 mm between 1920 and 2000 with strong correlation (R2 ≥ 0.93) to fitted second-order polynomial trendlines that reflect a tendency toward a general slowing in the rise of mean sea level (or deceleration) over time on the order of 0.02–0.04 mm/y2. The Fort Denison water level time series after 1940 similarly reflects a decelerating trend in sea level rise at a rate of 0.04 mm/y2 based on a strongly correlated fit (R2 = 0.974) to the second-order polynomial function.
This decelerating trend was also evident in the detailed analysis of 25 U.S. tide gauge records longer than 80 years in length (Dean and Houston, pers. comm.) and a general 20th century deceleration, driven predominantly by the negative inflexions around 1960 evident in many global records, are well noted in the literature (Douglas, 1992; Holgate, 2007; Woodworth, 1990; Woodworth, Menédez, and Gehrels, pers. comm.).
In considering shorter term recent accelerations, it is evident that there is a high rate of relative sea level rise averaged over the decade centred around 1994. Although average decadal rates of rise in relative ocean water levels are clearly high during the 1990s, they are not remarkable or unusual in the context of the historical record available for each site over the course of the 20th century. Similar conclusions have been drawn by Holgate (2007) in examining global data and by Hannah (2004) examining long-term sea level records for New Zealand. These recent post-1990s short-term accelerations fit within the overall longer term trend of deceleration evident in these long Australasian ocean water level records.
Using a 20-year moving average (10 y either side) water level time series limits the current analysis to the year 2000 (although the year 2000 uses data up to 2010). It is probable that if there is any longer term increase of significance in the rate of sea level rise embedded within the latter portion of the record, as distinct from a cyclical short-term attribute, this may take a further 10 to 20 years to influence the longer term time series.
Link
Where the heck is all the coastal flooding???
(Highlights)
Atmospheric physicist at George Mason University and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project
(NOVA)Do you think, then, this is no longer operating as "normal" science, that there's some kind of pathological mechanism here?
I think climate science is on its way to becoming pathological, to becoming abnormal in the sense that it is being guided by the money that's being made available to people. I don't blame people for accepting money. And the people who take the money and do research, by and large, are doing very competent research. [But] you'll find them very careful not to speak out against the global warming "threat"--(I'm putting "threat" in quotes, of course. And you'll find also that when they do speak out, as many of them do, they suffer consequences. They lose support. And I can give you examples of that. Or they have other consequences that are equally disagreeable. And if you're a young professor at a university and want to get tenure, or if you want to get a permanent academic position, you must do published research. And to do published research, you must write proposals to get money to do the research. So you're locked into a vicious spiral here. You have to go along with the current wisdom that global warming is a threat. Otherwise, you're not going to get the job that you want.
(NOVA)If you're right and they're wrong, then is what they're doing falsifiable? If, for instance, the next ten years was unusually cold, would that make them give up their theory?
The climate business doesn't work the way laboratory science does. If the next ten years turn out to be cold, this by itself does not prove anything. It just makes it less likely that global warming is important. Because people will say, "Well, now instead of having 20 years of satellite data, we have 30 years of satellite data." They'll say, "Well, that's not really long enough. We need 100 years of satellite data that show cooling." And inevitably during the next 100 years, you're going to have some warming, because the climate is constantly changing. Certainly it will change as the solar radiation becomes stronger or weaker. And we know solar radiation does fluctuate on an 11-year cycle and on longer cycles.
(NOVA)But my question is: What could convince you that you were wrong? What could convince them they were wrong? What could actually resolve this debate to the satisfaction of honest scientists? If people can always interpret what happened within their model, how do you resolve it?
I think that we would have to try to get the models to become better, and try to find more specific fingerprints-as I call them-- in the observations that can either be verified or falsified by models. And the global average temperature simply isn't good enough. It has to be based on geographic variation, or variation with altitude, or temporal variation, or much more detailed measurements. Certainly we know that the models do not agree amongst themselves. So I think the first step is to find out why this is so, and work very hard to at least resolve the differences between [models], and then try to resolve differences between models and observations.
Wow, real science, what a novel concept.
Link
Barack Obama may not have mentioned the Keystone XL crude pipeline expansion specifically at Georgetown University on Wednesday, but the themes of his speech nonetheless support the TransCanada Corp. project.
The U.S. president spoke about looking to neighbours with “stready and reliable oil resources,” such as Canada, Mexico and Brazil. He also stated that America will be dependent on oil for “quite some time.”
The State Department will ultimately approve the pipeline, so supporters of the project should be pleased, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Kwan. At the same time, the administration is demonstrating to opponents that it is willing to re-examine the issues surrounding the controversial project.
TransCanada has prepared the market for a delay and the State Department is likely to ask the company to make relatively minor modifications to the project to demonstrate efforts to protect the environment, Mr. Kwan told clients. Then it should issue a Presidential permit. Although this has become a political issue, Congressional approval is not required.
The analyst expects supporters of the project and Canadian crude to become more vocal, countering a well-organized effort by environmental and other opponents.
Keystone currently has 591,000 barrels per day of capacity in operation, delivering crude to Wood River and Patoka, Illinois, as well as Cushing, Oklahoma. Despite pressure restrictions, Mr. Kwan thinks the entire Keystone system could be expanded by a further 200,000 barrels per day.
The total cost for the project is roughly $7-billion, with 75% of capital cost overruns to be recovered due to higher tolls.
Assuming the Presidential permit is issued by the end of 2011, TransCanada expects to then start construction so the project could be in service by mid-2013.
Link
New York Times Article...
BEST released the following chart yesterday. Denialists around the globe are upset that their last best hope has been dashed; they now focus their dwindling hopes on the complete data set:
It's just science, folks.
I like how your name is weatherboy.
Cause the boy at the end sounds great.
All I've seen is pictures of graphs posted by sheep saying the Earth is warming.
But no proof it is man-made.
NO PROOF!!!
How long till I see proof?
You can call me Nick ;), boy!
But I can get a Nobel Prize for doing nothing aka Obama then I'm sure I can get it.
This is ridiculous.
No links?
Then according to yall's rules you made it up.
I can show you made up equations too.
Why don't you send a link my way?
I don't have time to sit and do equations where I get nothing out of them.
Some of us have lives rather than being on here all the time.
People travel at this time of year.
For the most part, I still would prefer to wait for the complete official results to make any real comparisons. However, it is interesting that the 2% preliminary results seem to be reasonably similar to the established analyses, especially considering that no corrections for UHI or station relocation have been applied as of yet.
For anyone interested, BEST has updated the Initial Findings page.
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Concerning JFlorida:
Seems like it's been weeks since I've seen a post of his. Doesn't he have a second handle, though?
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Concerning (but not replying to) the "snowball earth" inference at the end of № 136:
There is no real correlation of CO₂ to temperature over the PreCambrian through Mesozoic Eras--and likewise no conspicuous drops in CO₂ that have led to "snowball earth" conditions; I guess the alledged "CO₂ thermostat" wasn't functional back then.
* * *
From a strictly mathematical sense, I see no problem with the equations that weatherboy1992 posted, other than he didn't provide a source (they are however, easy to find given the information he provided). Of course, when considering the earth's climate system there is a lot more to take into account.
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I'm out for now; will probably be back this evening sometime.
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