"Climate change is accelerating beyond expectations"; while Americans' belief in AGW declines

GIGObuster · November 27, 2009, 6:08pm

I granted before that the next ten years will do.

Nope, researchers do not rely just on one reading, models and data gathered are used for that.

Between 2000 and 2008, Greenland lost 1500 cubic kilometres of ice, which is responsible for one-sixth of global sea-level rise, says scientists.

Michiel van den Broeke of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues say that the bad news is that the rate of ice loss is increasing.

To reach the conclusion, researchers began by modelling the difference in annual snowfall and snowmelt in Greenland between 2003 and 2008 to reveal the net ice loss for each year. They then compared each year’s loss with that calculated from readings by the GRACE satellite, which “weighs” the ice sheet by measuring its gravity.

The researchers found that results from the two methods roughly matched and showed that Greenland is losing enough ice to contribute on average 0.46 millimetres per year to global sea-level rise.

The loss may be accelerating: since 2006, warm summers have caused levels to rise by 0.75 millimetres per year, though van den Broeke says we can’t be sure whether this trend will continue.

IMHO Yes. And once again I wonder why some skeptics refuse to acknowledge that there are limits and then theories will have to be changed or dismissed.

And that is why researchers like Latif concentrate on decadal variations. It is misleading to base criticism on monthly readings or anomalies. (The editor and JunkScience are also pointed before as a being unreliable BTW)

Yes, even sincerity is grabbed by deniers as items that need to be used to discredit the science.

sleestak · November 28, 2009, 6:00am

Post snipped ::

If you read some of the excerpts from the code from the CRU folks there is some damning stuff in there that points to a lot of deception. But it ain’t from the folks you think it is.

The CRU folks are being deceptive by hiding data and methods used on that data. Or in some cases making it up. Seriously, go read the comments in the code. It is nuts.

and

From the linked page.

And we are just supposed to trust these folks?
You may find this articleinteresting. Someone really needs to pay attention to this Judy Curry woman.

From the link:

and

After becoming more knowledgeable about the politics of climate change (both the external politics and the internal politics within the climate field), I became concerned about some of the tribes pointing their guns inward at other climate researchers who question their research or don’t pass various loyalty tests. I even started spending time at climateaudit, and my public congratulations to Steve McIntyre when climateaudit won the “best science blog award” was greeted with a rather unpleasant email from one of the tribal members. While the “hurricane wars” fizzled out in less than a year as the scientists recovered from the external assault and got back to business as usual in terms of arguing science with their colleagues, the “hockey wars” have continued apparently unabated. With the publication of the IPCC 4th Assessment report, the Nobel Peace Prize, and energy legislation near the top of the national legislative agenda, the “denialists” were becoming increasingly irrelevant (the Heartland Conference and NIPCC are not exactly household words). Hence it is difficult to understand the continued circling of the wagons by some climate researchers with guns pointed at skeptical researchers by apparently trying to withhold data and other information of relevance to published research, thwart the peer review process, and keep papers out of assessment reports. Scientists are of course human, and short-term emotional responses to attacks and adversity are to be expected, but I am particularly concerned by this apparent systematic and continuing behavior from scientists that hold editorial positions, serve on important boards and committees and participate in the major assessment reports. It is these issues revealed in the HADCRU emails that concern me the most, and it seems difficult to spin many of the emails related to FOIA, peer review, and the assessment process. I sincerely hope that these emails do not in actuality reflect what they appear to, and I encourage Gavin Schmidt et al. to continue explaining the individual emails and the broader issues of concern.

So this lady,who happens to be a part of the whole global warming conspiracy* is arguing that they need to be transparent.

Someone ought to listen to her.

GIGObuster, you keep acting like the scientists at CRU and other research institutions are clean, pure and honest while skeptics are somehow evil. The AGW folks aren’t perfect, they are just like everyone else. The fact that they hide data and the methods they use to evaluate that data just makes it appear that they have an agenda. Oh, and making shit up really doesn’t help either.

Slee

If people who question the global warming science are ‘deniers’ then I feel it is just to call those hide or make up data to further AGW theories conspirators.

elucidator · November 28, 2009, 6:31am

So, these Climate Audit folks? They announced any plans to release multi-year compendiums of their own e-mail? Make an interesting comparison and provide a standard for integrity to measure against. I mean, seeing as they are all about the transparency. And stuff.

GIGObuster · November 28, 2009, 8:11am

And we should trust the ones cherry picking from stolen emails and with missed context?

Indeed, they are also innocent until proven guilty. And I have seen enough to conclude that virtually all accusations are baseless.

What I see is that deniers are making shit up:

HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the documentation, metadata and databases associated with the legacy CRU TS 2.1 product, which is not the same as the HadCRUT data (see Mitchell and Jones, 2003 for details). The CSU TS 3.0 is available now (via ClimateExplorer for instance), and so presumably the database problems got fixed. Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be.

…

CRU data accessibility. From the date of the first FOI request to CRU (in 2007), it has been made abundantly clear that the main impediment to releasing the whole CRU archive is the small % of it that was given to CRU on the understanding it wouldn’t be passed on to third parties. Those restrictions are in place because of the originating organisations (the various National Met. Services) around the world and are not CRU’s to break. As of Nov 13, the response to the umpteenth FOI request for the same data met with exactly the same response. This is an unfortunate situation, and pressure should be brought to bear on the National Met Services to release CRU from that obligation. It is not however the fault of CRU. The vast majority of the data in the HadCRU records is publicly available from GHCN (v2.mean.Z).

And you do that based on stolen and cherry picked material with an ass load of innuendo and mislead? Do tell.

I do agree with the comment by Matt at Real Climate:

18
matt says:
28 November 2009 at 12:26 AM

When this first broke, I was absolutely horrified. Being a true believer myself, I was crestfallen to find out that the science behind a major and popular theory was “fudged” and had gone unchecked. Even worse were the comments about peer reviewed literature. I felt is if I had been betrayed. I was angry and fearful.

But this controversy seems to be unraveling by the day. The more I read, the more context that is provided about what actually happened…the more the motivations of the deniers and internet foamers become readily apparent.

The longer this controversy drags on it seems that the accusations of fudging data seem to be sticking to the deniers.

I’m really happy that they’ve released the raw data.

Hey kiddos, the data is out there now. BTW You are not the first to recompile it or analyze it. A few DIYers have recompiled the data with their own methods and produced similar results…and yes I’m “hiding” that link from you….because I forgot what page I found it on earlier today. (the conspiracy continues!!!)

This controversy has actually turned out to be good for the AGW crowd. I suspect 2 months from now, this will be barely a blip on the radar screen.

Aji_de_Gallina · November 28, 2009, 2:39pm

Are you being obtuse on purpose? It’s always been the data and models want has been asked. The e-mails certainly look bad, but it’s not want we want to see.

It is charts like this one that always get me worried, still I applaud that data is published and we can comment it. If the effect that is actually measured is 0.1 °F but that final number is 0.6, you see that much of the number is a correction. This chart or this other one show the actual data measured. I fully understand that standarizations and adjustements have to be made, it is normal and expected and wholly scientific, however when almost all the effect you want to show comes not from the raw data but from adjustments it is something you want to look at again.

Or when measured (and adjusted) data is put on a proxies graphs and changes to “look”. Proxies graphand proxies+measured, see the difference? All the “visual” effect is gone.

The truncation of the Briffa reconstructions in 1960 is specifically to avoid showing a downward trend. The IPCC did it with full knowledge.

Is there warming? of course
Are humans responsible for part of it? definitely
How big a part? THAT is the real question in my mind. I think it isn’t the most important factor.

GIGObuster · November 28, 2009, 3:54pm

Climate audit remains the playground of deniers.

Two more teams in the seemingly endless jousting over the ‘hockey-stick’ have just made their entry onto the field. In the first two (of four) comments on the original McIntyre and McKitrick (2005) (MM05) paper in GRL, von Storch and Zorita, and Huybers have presented two distinct critiques of the work of M&M.

The two comments focus on the ‘PC normalisation’ issue raised in MM05 which we discussed previously. Specifically, von Storch and Zorita show that in a GCM model emulation of the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) method, changing the PC normalisation technique makes no difference to the eventual reconstruction (i.e. it is not the normalisation that creates the ‘hockeystick’), consistent with earlier conclusions. Huybers comments that neither of the two suggested normalisations are actually optimal, and proposes a third method which looks like it gives results halfway between MBH and MM05. However, given the von Storch result, this too is unlikely to matter in the final reconstruction.

In essence, in the past the reconstructions were defended and the criticisms were rejected, most ClimateAudit contributors post in an echo chamber and no matter how many errors they come up with, they will always tell you that they are correct.

After going for FUD sources, it is no wonder.

Most climate scientists believe that the human contribution to today’s global warming is important, and cannot by any means be dismissed as negligible. The consequences of global warming are potentially very dangerous. In view of the importance of the issue, and in view of Cockburn’s prominent (and well-deserved) role as a left intellectual and his formidable powers of persuasion, it is worthwhile restating the scientific case for modern anthropogenic global warming.

The present article consists of (1) a summary of the scientific case for modern anthropogenic global warming, (2) a summary of the contrarian case advanced by Cockburn, (3) an assessment of global warming in greater depth, and (4) my detailed critique of the contrarian arguments advanced by Cockburn.

The scientific case is not dependent on citation of authority, no matter how distinguished the authority may be. The case is dependent upon experimental evidence, logic, and reason. The present article does not touch on the impact of global warming, or on policy questions: what to do about global warming, whether the Kyoto treaty is a good idea or not, etc.

Anthropogenic global warming is based on very solid science. The discussion in the scientific climate change community is about how much anthropogenic global warming is occurring, but not about whether or not anthropogenic global warming is happening at all. The contrarian arguments raised by Alexander Cockburn lack scientific validity.

This is not to say that Cockburn and other skeptics should not have raised some of the questions they have. Science demands constant scrutiny and the misuse of science, when it occurs, is everyone’s concern. But it is also important to recognize a truth when it has been established. The verdict is in. Modern global warming stemming to a considerable extent from anthropogenic causes is real and constitutes a serious threat to life on the planet as we know it. It is time to stop debating its reality and to do something about it, while there is still time.

Aji_de_Gallina · November 28, 2009, 4:47pm

Climate Audit’s fans are not the topic here. Apparently answering points isn’t either.

Is your answer to the graphs to say “deniers”? Does it not worry you at all that most of the effect is added and not measured?

Was it truncated? Yes
Did it show a downward trend? Yes
Were questions raised? Yes
Were they accpeted? No, but it is their right.

i never implied negligible.

Much, much more good would be done by giving clean water to all.

sleestak · November 28, 2009, 5:28pm

Wow, considering the fact that the emails from CRU prove that the AGW folks are purposely creating an echo chamber where anyone who comes up with different data or analysis are to be rejected on the spot, journals that may publish contrary views are to be ignored and told to tow the line or else, and only ‘approved’ AGW scientists should be able to get printed in journals, that is a really amazing statement.

When people say shit like

It instantly tells me two things. First, they ain’t that good of a scientist because nothing in science is ever settled completely. Second, since this guy believes the science is settled, then he probably *can’t *be objective about new data or analysis. That isn’t good.

You know, that particular quote has one giant flaw. That is the word presumably. Did the data actually get fixed? If so, how? Actually, more importantly can the data be fixed in a way that won’t affect the results? Or did they make shit up? Which is it? Well, since they never want to release the data or the models except to ‘approved’ scientists who already agree with their position, we cannot know.

That isn’t good science.

Slee

GIGObuster · November 28, 2009, 5:29pm

The pattern shown is that you deny that they were replied to. I do make an effort to reply to the points, I guess you are complaining that the points were already replied to and by more competent persons, what I see is that it sucks to you that I post their relevant replies. The main reason to quote them is that many times years have passed when the investigations took place. The stolen emails are replaying the same criticisms, useless then, useless now. Ignoring that past is good for deniers but not for dopers.

As the National Academy of Science concluded after seeing the best of the critics, No I don’t worry.

I know it’s off-topic, but what are RC’s views on the newly-published Wegman, Scott and Said report (highlighted on Climate Audit, not surprisingly)?

[Response: This is probably an unavoidable off-topic, so I’ll paste in the text of Mann’s released comment on the issue, but I’m actually pretty bored of this subject by now, and I think most everyone else is too. - gavin]

The un-peer reviewed report commissioned by Rep. Barton released today adds nothing new to the scientific discourse on climate change and is a poor attempt to further personalize and politicize what should be a matter of scientific debate not politics.

The impartial and independent National Academy of Sciences convened a panel of experts in climate science and statistics and performed a far more extensive review of the science, confirming the key conclusions of our earlier work, as well as numerous more recent supporting studies. Namely that late 20th century warmth is likely anomalous in the context of the past 1000 years and cannot be explained by natural variability. The scientific evidence for human influence on current climate comes from a large body of independent lines of evidence of which paleoclimate data is but a small part.

Barton’s report, written by statisticians with no apparent background at all in the relevant areas, simply uncritically parrots claims by two Canadians (an economist and an oil industry consultant) that have already been refuted by several papers in the peer-reviewed literature inexplicably neglected by Barton’s “panel”. These claims were specifically dismissed by the National Academy in their report just weeks ago. Barton’s report also reveals that his panel collaborated closely with the two Canadians, yet made no attempt to contact me or my collaborators at any point.

The panel makes the odd claim that there is “too much reliance on peer-review” which goes against every principle of current scientific practice. Barton in his ‘factsheet’ goes further and suggests that the anonymous peer reviewers themselves are in some way biased, a claim that he cannot possibly support since peer reviewers are in fact anonymous and this was not studied in the report.

Climate science, like many multidisciplinary fields, requires broad collaboration with researchers across many areas. Any well published scientist would show a wide-ranging pattern of connection with other researchers in the field. While I am flattered that the committee seems to think that I am at the center of the field, the same analysis would have shown a very similar pattern for any researcher engaged in widespread interdisciplinary research.

My colleagues and I continue to work on reducing the uncertainties in past climate reconstructions and understanding the mechanisms of past and current climate change. Policy-makers should more constructively focus their attention on the consensus findings on climate change as presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Academies of all G8 countries, rather than on pursuing politically-motivated attacks against individual scientists.

And the verdict of the most capable judges was that the questions were not relevant or had no support.

The evidence so far shows me that gallons of the medicine are needed by the deniers. Not much needed for the climate scientists.

Aji_de_Gallina · November 28, 2009, 5:34pm

GIGObuster:

The pattern shown is that you deny that they were replied to. I do make an effort to reply to the points, I guess you are complaining that the points were already replied to and by more competent persons, what I see is that it sucks to you that I post their relevant replies. The main reason to quote them is that many times years have passed when the investigations took place. The stolen emails are replaying the same criticisms, useless then, useless now. Ignoring that past is good for deniers but not for dopers.
As the National Academy of Science concluded after seeing the best of the critics, No I don’t worry.

RealClimate: ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ update

And the verdict of the most capable judges was that the questions were not relevant or had no support.
The evidence so far shows me that gallons of the medicine are needed by the deniers. Not much needed for the climate scientists.

The pattern resides only in your neurons.
Your “answer” doesn’t address the specific point I make aobut the graph.
Apparently you prefer stickin’ it to the “deniers” that actually saving people.

GIGObuster · November 28, 2009, 5:46pm

Reckless accusation, not all are coming from CRU and many disprove of the emails mentioning the rejections. (And it still relevant to find evidence that they succeeded or if it was just wishful thinking.)

No, when other organizations that investigated the charges in the past found that the journals that published contrarian views had also very clear conflicts of interest and bad practices it is not amazing at all.

You are accusing him of not seeing the evidence before and the points of the deniers, that is a very dishonest way to conclude where he is coming from.

It was already **demonstrated **that it is beyond silly to claim that “they never want to release the data or the models except to ‘approved’ scientists who already agree with their position”

If one depends only on what the deniers tell us.

The fantasies of the deniers do not fit the reality.

It is not a good debating tactic to ignore previously posted evidence on the way to continue to claim that data was never released to the public.

GIGObuster · November 28, 2009, 5:54pm

The graph is about the reconstructions (Proxies), in other words, the Hockey stick.

Sorry to notice that you are not paying attention.

:rolleyes:

As mentioned before I tend to agree more with people that say that we should concentrate on helping countries develop so when the effects of the warming are more pronounced they will be able to deal with it properly, saving many lives.

I think a better solution is still to control the emissions, but I don’t think there is much political will there, IMHO the people funding the deniers do not care if future generations get to suffer the effects of what we are doing today.

elucidator · November 28, 2009, 7:20pm

Darwinism settled? Relativity? Germ theory of disease?

Anduril · November 28, 2009, 7:56pm

Really? This is not like the theory of evolution where if you aren’t skeptical of the facts, you cannot escape the conclusion that evolution is fact. For AGW, to be perfectly honest, I only appeal to the authority of the scientists - NOT on my own understanding of the issue. Does anyone here seriously claim that they have a complete understanding of all the arguments? Save for a rare few, I doubt that is the case. So don’t dismiss AGW skeptics just like that. They simply don’t have the information as is true even for a lot of people who believe in AGW.

Euphonious_Polemic · November 28, 2009, 8:12pm

There a still a significant number of people in the world who believe that sickness is caused by bad thoughts or demons, and do not believe in the germ theory. After all, it’s only a theory, right? Probably a conspiracy by big pharma to push drugs.

We should teach the controversy in Med School. Have whole classes devoted to exorcism and related ways of curing disease.

Imagine if there was a multi-trillion dollar industry that was being threatened by the Germ Theory of disease. We’d have “germ-deniers” regularly featured on the news.

Aji_de_Gallina · November 29, 2009, 5:00am

So, if I mention proxies then it’s the hockey stick and therefore I’m wrong?
Why bother acutally responding to when you can always answer with “denier” or something like that.

My point is that even if AGW/CC guys are completely right, fighting it is less important and more costly and less cost effect vis a vis improving people’s lives, than providing clean water to all.
Dude, do you know where I can cash my denier-money; everybody keeps saying we’re funded but I still don’te see any money.

Aji_de_Gallina · November 29, 2009, 5:04am

Imagine if scientists were claiming that we needed to make everyone poor to counteract gravity, which, by the way, can be anywhere between 7.6 and 23.7.

Least_Original_User_Name_Ever · November 29, 2009, 5:13am

It’s still expensive to handle, store, and move the waste. It’s expensive enough to get it to Nevada, I can’t imagine how much it’d be to get it to Antarctica.

Nuclear power is the interesting x-factor. Environmentalists are swallowing the nuclear pill, and they’ll embrace it. It’s still not renewable technology, for you still need the radioactive elements, and it’s also some 50-year old technology. I think nuclear power is going to be a huge part of the “finished” energy puzzle in the end.

GIGObuster · November 29, 2009, 5:47am

Yes. It is not my problem that you are ignoring the context on the way to attempt to spread ignorance.

Once again, if you ignore that your sources and many cites were already explained or out of date it is not my problem.

You are now then saying that that cost is a settled thing.

You are ignoring also the cost for not preparing or doing nothing.

Meh, just pap, not really an explanation or justification on why you came with reheated and dismissed points here and elsewhere.

BrainGlutton · November 29, 2009, 8:51pm

‘Permanent’ Arctic ice vanishing:

**‘Permanent’ Arctic ice vanishing

Satellite images misled shocked scientists**

WINNIPEG–One of Canada’s top northern researchers says the permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world’s polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared.

Experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding. But David Barber says the thick, multi-year frozen sheets crucial to the northern ecosystem have been replaced by thin “rotten” ice that can’t support weight of the bears. “It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multi-year sea ice. The whole world thought it was multi-year sea ice,” said Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea.

“Unfortunately, what we found was that the multi-year (ice) has all but disappeared. What’s left is this remnant, rotten ice.”

<snip>

The findings, soon to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, come as a shock to experts worldwide.

Although northern sea ice hit a record low in 2007, researchers believed it was recovering because of what they were seeing on satellite images.

But the images the experts relied on were misleading because the rotten ice looks sturdy on the surface and has a similar superficial temperature, Barber explained.

“The satellites give us only part of the story. The multi-year ice is disappearing and it’s almost all gone now from the northern hemisphere.”

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Are you being obtuse on purpose? It’s always been the data and models want has been asked. The e-mails certainly look bad, but it’s not want we want to see.

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