Comments on: "We cannot make claims as to the 1990s being the warmest decade."

By: DaleC

DaleC — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:26:13 +0000

Re 41:

For an impassioned account of sea level issues from a strong anti-AGW perspective, try

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf

By: Antireptilian

Antireptilian — Mon, 19 May 2008 06:28:36 +0000

Chaps.
Driving to work this morning, i heard a report on the BBC that stated, coastal salt marshes are under thresat from rising sea levels. As a complete layman in this field, i wonder if some of you could clarify if sea levels are indeed rising.

By: Michael Ballantine

Michael Ballantine — Wed, 04 May 2005 18:09:12 +0000

Peter, what concerns me is that the human race is forgetting how to adapt to a changing climate and is actively taking steps to make it harder to adapt. The climate has a long history of change, sometimes quite dramatically. This occurs whether man is here or not. The only reason we are here today is because we were pretty good at adapting to the last big cycle. Heading south to outrun another ice age would be difficult, if not impossible, for most of the population of the northern hemisphere. I read arguments about doing something to try and control the global temperature for the next hundred years. I see nothing about investing in improving our ability to adapt to changes over the next 1,000 or 10,000 years.
All this focus on a minor GHGs without looking at the whole picture is too much like walking out onto the sand to stare at the interesting sea creatures who have been left high and dry by the rapidly receding waters of a mega-tsunami. I think you know what happened to those short sited people.
Unless we are prepared to think and act long term and switch over to an energy process, such as nuclear or space solar, that does not generate any GHGs then the discussion of whether anthropic CO2 is warming the atmosphere significantly is pointless. If, despite all our advancements, we have become that short sited then we are just another failed experiment waiting to be overcome by the next great attempt at truly intelligent life on this planet.

By: Peter Hearnden

Peter Hearnden — Wed, 04 May 2005 07:53:25 +0000

Re#38. Michael,

Firstly, look up ‘rant’…Secondly I accept you corrections to uncertainties

The last sentence you quote means what it says. If the planet wasn’t, over the long (geological) term, in energy balance, temperatures would show a long term rising trend – they do not (but, of course they do show warming atm).

1w/m2 is clearly a lot of imbalance – we’re headed that why. It might not concern you, but it sure as heck concern me.

By: Michael Ballantine

Michael Ballantine — Tue, 03 May 2005 13:46:54 +0000

Peter, you really should read the referenced paper before commenting. You took a comment on something completely out of context, turned it into something completely different from what is in the paper and then ranted about it. The claimed change of 1.8 is from about -.85 to +.85, not .85 to 2.65.
Here is a more complete quote of a relevant section complete with a caveate that the long term average must be very close to 0.0.
“Earth’s energy imbalance. We infer from the consistency of observed and modeled planetary energy gains that the forcing still driving climate change, i.e., the forcing not yet responded to, averaged ~ 0.75 W/m 2 in the past decade and was ~ 0.85 ± 0.15 W/m 2 in 2003 (Fig. 1C). This imbalance is consistent with the total forcing ~1.8 W/m 2 relative to 1880 and climate sensitivity ~2/3°C per W/m 2. The observed 1880-2003 global warming is 0.6-0.7°C (10, 21), which is the full response to nearly 1 W/m 2 of forcing. 0.85 W/m 2 of the 1.8 W/m2 forcing remains, i.e., additional global warming of 0.85 x 2/3 ~ 0.6°C is “in the pipeline” and will occur in the future even if atmospheric composition and other climate forcings remain fixed at today’s values (3, 4, 22).
The present planetary energy imbalance is large by standards of Earth’s history. For example, an imbalance of 1 W/m 2 maintained for the last 10,000 years of the Holocene is sufficient to melt ice equivalent to 1 km of sea level (if there were that much ice), or raise the temperature of the ocean above the thermocline by more than 100°C (table S1). Clearly on long time scales the planet has been in energy balance to within a small fraction of 1 W/m 2.”

By: Peter Hearnden

Peter Hearnden — Mon, 02 May 2005 20:48:53 +0000

Willis,

if they say “The net change of effective forcing between 1880
and 2003 is +1.8 W/m2, with formal uncertainty ±0.85 W/m2…”, surely that means they think it’s somewhere between +.95W/m2 and + 2.65W/m2 (95% confidence I guess)? You can call it NO SCIENTIFIC etc etc if you like but that’s just your, somewhat shouted, OPINION Why? Because I’m sure the authors wouldn’t agree with you.

By: Willis Eschenbach

Willis Eschenbach — Sun, 01 May 2005 09:26:18 +0000

In their paper, they say that “The net change of effective forcing between 1880
and 2003 is +1.8 W/m2, with formal uncertainty ±0.85 W/m2 …”

Since their result is only the size of their uncertainty, this result has NO SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE!

By: John G. Bell

John G. Bell — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 18:52:55 +0000

Spence, exactly so. #27 was a bit of a troll. Having read “Earth’s Energy Imbalance” the bit on sea level change was well done. I think, and have thought before, it good evidence of warming. I also think the seas do act much like he says as the major source of thermal inertia in multi decade even century time frames. What I don’t get is an anthropogenic “smoking gun”. Perhaps we live in a strangely volcanically uneruptive times. Perhaps the sun’s irradiance has gone up by .44 W/m2 since 1880 but had gone up 2 W/m2 or more in the 1700s and the oceans’ thermal inertia is large enough for our global temperature to be going up only now.

By: Spence_UK

Spence_UK — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 14:48:59 +0000

Re: #28 This is a topic I know less about, but I would agree with you that the surface of the earth varies up and down considerably, but as soon as you go a few metres down that doesn't apply. I say this primarily from experience of going into mines - temperatures in mines are rock (sic) solid steady, on the hottest day of the year and the coldest day of the year. Here is an example discussion I looked up on the web. Sounds to me like there is a massive potential well of energy under the continents, although the inertia (time taken to put the energy down there) will be massive compared to the seas, which have the advantage of convection as well as conduction.

By: Dave Dardinger

Dave Dardinger — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 14:06:34 +0000

Re #29

In fairness to Hansen, the caveat concerns the analysis of how the ‘imbalance’ affects ongoing predictions of temperature rise, not the measurement of the inbalance itself. But I have tons of questions about the measurements themselves which will have to await getting access to the actual article itself. But I think we can guess how difficult it’s going to be to do a real audit of this data.