There’s no longer any serious debate among climate scientists about either the reality of global warming or about the fact that its substantially caused by human activity, but, as 500+ comments on my previous post on this topic show, neither the judgement of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, nor the evidence that led them to that judgement, has had much effect on the denialists[1].
And the Australian media are doing a terrible job in covering the issue. I’ve seen at least half a dozen pieces this year claiming that the whole issue is a fraud cooked up by left-wing greenies, and January isn’t over yet.
The latest is from Peter Walsh in the Oz. Walsh is still banging on about the satellite data, and the Medieval Warm Period, suggesting that his reading, if any, in the last few years has been confined to publications emanating from the right-wing parallel universe. But that hasn’t stopped the Australian from running him, and a string of others.
If an issue like genetically modified food, or the dangers of mobile phones was treated in this way, with alarmist cranks being given hectares of column space, most of those who sympathise with Walsh would be outraged and rightly so.
Walsh does make one valid point however, saying. “If your case is immaculate, why feed lies into it?” To which, I can only respond, “If the cap fits …”
fn1. At this point, the term “sceptic” is no longer remotely applicable. Only dogmatic commitment to a long-held position (or an ideological or financial motive for distorting the evidence) can explain continued rejection of the evidence.
John Quiggin 
The relationship between sunspots and global climate has been investigated. For a long time, the skeptics were crowing about the results.
Surprise, surprise, as it turns out, the relationship only occured because of some very very dodgy statistics.
A good paper on the topic is Pattern of Strange Errors Plagues Solar Activity and Terrestrial Climate Data.
Wilis wrote;
“Where are they? Look, Michael, the fact is, out of that half a million claimed extinctions, you can’t name me one lousy species that ever went extinct from climate change, not one. All of your fluffing around with claiming I don’t understand ecology and ecosystems is designed to obfuscate that simple point.
If climate change drives hundreds of thousands of species extinct as you claim, we would have noticed at least one of them …”
There’s the obvious problem that in the past (besides the very recent past) no one has been looking to explain extinctions in terms of temperature changes. Becuase there is no doubt there have been plenty of extinctions.
It is reasonable to say that X hasn’t happened because no one was looking for X?
I’d be interested to know if it is possible to guage this retropsectively or if anyone has tried. There have ben a few more recent claims, but they are disputed.
I’m sorry you’re offended by what you think is an insult, but it’s quite obvious that anyone advances this “No one has ever explained to me why, if a species can survive a swing of say 40°C in a single day, it will be threatened by a 1°C rise in average temperature”, as an argument, is operating beyond the limits of their knowledge.
The other problem is that your use of the Nature article shows you to be extremely casual in how you treat others work, creating rather convenient propositions not based on what the study actually said.
Since 1880, the GHCN record says we’ve warmed by 0.76° per century. The Jones record says we’ve warmed by 0.64° per century. And the GISS record says we’ve warmed by 0.48° per century.
Errrr…
According to GISS “Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that “most global warming occurred before 1940”. More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.” Source.
For the record, I haven’t checked your other numbers, but next you supply numbers, it would be nice to include a source so others can check them.
Michael H, thanks for your reply. You say:
In the past, as you note, people have not looked to explain extinctions on the basis of climate change. What you haven’t noted is that we can go back now and re-examine the extinctions, to see if climate change caused them.
So the claim that “nobody was looking for extinctions caused by climate change in the past” doesn’t hold water. People can look right now at every historical extinction to see if it is climate related.
In fact, I have examined every extinction listed in the Red Book, to see if it could be ascribed to climate change, and found none. And to date, at least, no one has announced finding such an extinction.
You also say
The Nature study clearly said that climate change causes extinctions, and put numbers on it. I have used much, much smaller numbers to calculate a low estimate of the claimed extinctions. How is this creating a “convenient proposition”?
Finally, as I noted before, all of this is just a very roundabout way for you to avoid saying “No, I don’t know of one single extinction caused by climate change”.
I mean, isn’t that the truth? That you don’t know of any?
w.
Ken, thanks for posting. You say:
My apologies. The GISS numbers are from the GISS data, where else? I thought that would be evident. The GISS data is at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/new_Fig.A.txt
The difference is that I used all of their data, and have given the trend line since 1880. My figures, therefore, are the warming rate per century for all of their data.
The numbers you quote, on the other hand, are for the “last century”, that is to say, since 1900.
All the best,
w.
Willis, I note that about 250 comments ago I observed that you had run pretty hard on the satellite data when it seemed to support your case. Now all the satellite data sets show significant warming, and all except Christy and Spencer (who have had to make repeated corrections, mostly upwards) give a good match with the surface data.
You don’t seem to have responded to this, although it might be somewhere in the thread
What’s your take on this. What kinds of evidence would you need to accept that you were wrong on this and on the broader issues?
Michael H.
Thanks for answering Willis’ question. But I will elucidate further.
Willis:
If you read the Nature review in which Pimm and I skewered Lomborg, you’ll see that the problem of defining species loss – and even more the loss of genetically distinct populations – is that ignornatly we have classifed very few (in other words there aremany unknowns). We can surmise that there are probably more than 10 million extant species (or there were, when humans began to seriously undermine the helath and functioning of the ecosystems upon which these taxa depend). Thus far, we have officially classified about 1 million, which may be less than 10% of biodiversity at the species level. More importantly, we know very little about the status, in terms of abundance, of most taxa, with the exception of well known groups, which would mean vertebrates. The latest IUCN reports are very depressing in this regard – as I said yesterday, 10-40% of well known taxa (fish, birds, mammals, reptiles etc.) are endangered, primarily by human activities. Its almost a certainty that at least 1,500 bird species will not persist beyond the end of the 21st century at current demographic trends (out of 9,500 species worldwide). This is not in most instances due exclusively to climate change, BUT AGW IS a factor. What we do understand now are many of the mechanisms which drive populations down and result in local (and possible large scale) extinctions. This has been well-detailed by work here at the NIOO where a colleague (Marcel Visser) and his students have been examining migratory and breeding behavior of birds like the Great Tit and Pied Flycatcher over several years. Luckily, we have fairly long term data sets of these parameters for these species. To make a long story short, they have detailed how rapid changes (warming) in winter and spring climate here in The Netherlands have negatively impacted breeding success in both species, but especially the flycatcher, which overwinters in Africa and now arrives at its breeding grounds past the peak of its normal food supply (caterpillars). As a result, populations here are in freefall, and the species is likely to disappear from many of its former habitats in Europe within the near future. Marcel’s work is publsihed in Nature, and I suggest you look it up. What his work underlines is that, to quote ecologist Daniel Janzen, the ultimate extinction is of species interactions within food webs, because atering these interactions creates extinction cascades locally that eventually beome widespread.
How systemic are these declines? We can only guess, based on the demographics of bird populations around the world, which show distrubing trends. Many North American passerines are in population freefall, and more birds are endangered ow than in the 1970’s. The problem is that, because of financial and manpower constraints, only a few species have been studied intensively enough to elucidate the mechanism(s) responsibe fot the decline. Climate change, like it or not, is a major factor in these studies. Species and populations must adjust to conditions that are changing more rapidly than in tens of thousands of years against a background of systems that are utterly dominnted and changed by human actvities (read my yesterday’s post again). Humans co-opt some 40-50% of net primary productivity and 50% of freshwater flows, whereas 100 yearsa ago this number was a small fraction of that, and thousands of years ago we were but a tiny blip on the biosphere.
Your argument that we must provide comprehensive data on species and populations lost in typical of the contrarian crowd and if you are a scientist in whatever capacity I would expect a bit more common sense that to fall back on this feeble kind of argument. It doesn’t surprise me that obscure non-scientists like Lomborg or the late Julian Simon would depend on this argument, but your parroting of this line is depressing. To reiterate for the hundreth time, species and populations do not disappear immediately after a disturbance, but ‘relax’ towards a new population level that may or may not be sustainable. The flycatcher example is just one in which we have a defined mechanism for its decline. What about the other thousands of species whose populations are in freefall? Your argument seems to be the ‘pissing on a skunk’ example: without 100% unequivocal proof there is no problem. I’ve debated so many contrarians who fall back on this while Rome is metaphorically burning. You people want us to drive off of the cliff in order to prove that we are driving off of the cliff. Forget the fact that numerous studies report worrying trends for many well-studied groups like birds and amphibians (the latter that are experiencing a pandemic decline and are excellent indicators of the health of the environment), you want us to wait until all of our life-support systems are collapsing around us before you will say that, “OK, I believe it. Now do something about it!!!”. By then it will too late.
We know that there are and will be further consequences as a result of anthropogenic processes that were initiated 50 years ago, let alone now. How far do you want this experiment to proceed before you are convinced? Is not the precipitous loss of groundwater levels, the fact that deep, rich agricultural soils that took thousands of years to be generated but are now exhausted in less than a decade, the collapse of marine fisheries, the loss of biodiversity (thousands of times higher than background rates), the number of species becoming endangered etc. etc. etc. not enough to say that we are headed in the wrong direction? I am not a pessimist, I am a realist. I base my views as a scientist on the empirical data, and on the kinds of changes to the biosphere that are resulting in the symptoms I described here and in an earlier post. The global decline in amphibian numbers – 2% since the 1950’s, according to a study in Nature by Houlahan et al. (2000) should be a metaphor of the miner’s canary – after all, amphibians are perhaps the best vertebrate indicators of environmental quality. We don’t need to know how many grains of sand there are on a beach to know that when the water comes in, they will be eroded. Thus, we have accrued enough scientific evidence to show that things are going wrong and that there will be consequences down the road. Like Lomborg, your view seems to be to cross your fingers and hope for the best in light of the empirical evidence. This is the sprint of folly.
You are also incorrect about your use of climate figures. The current warming did not start in 1950, but about 1980. Thus, the decadal increase in temperature has been more like .17 to .20 degrees per decade, which is unprecedented perhaps over the past 100,000 years. For a deterministic system, this is like changing the direction of an ocean liner at top speed over the course of meters rather than kilometers. Its easy to do this with a rowboat, but a huge object like a liner? If humans are capable of influencing largely deterministic systems, then this illustrates the problems we face in the coming decades.
As for the IPCC final draft read this and repeat: IT IS THE MOST PEER-REVIEWED DOCUMENT IN SCIENTIFIC HISTORY. It went through 12 rounds of external and 3 rounds of external peer review. Because so many people were involved, it was not allowed to produce conclusuions that were extreme. Many contrarians were involved in its drafting. The Bush regime, in a a feeble attempt to discredit the IPCC summary, convened a group of 11 scientists to make a report of the United States national Academy of Sciences in 2002. The panel included notorious cimate sceptic Richard Lindzen, and yet, in spite of his contribution, the panels worrying conclusions about AGW and its impacts went well beyond those of the IPCC.
JQ tells Willis to refer to the IPCC’s volumes on the “Scientific Assessment”; let’s begin with the 1990 volume. Much of it complies with Luff’s “How to lie with statistics” – graphs that display various curves without any mention of actual R2s or other measures of correlation, eg Fig.2 p.xv, nor are any sources cited. A general impression of curves moving more or less together is hardly science, especially when the scales differ for each curve. Ever heard of serial correlation or cointegration? or the fake upward sloping demand curve from pork belly prices in Chicago? The IPCC certainly has not. Putting unrelated variables on the same graph as the IPCC does systemically would enable one to prove that Hitler was an inverse product of Bradman’s batting average in the 1930s.
Much of the IPCC reminds one of Milton’s Paradise Lost – we have states of perfect equilbrium between incoming “shortwave” (sic) solar radiation through virtuous inward CO2 (aka archangel Gabriel) and equal absorption of outgoing infrared radiation until thwarted since 1750 by wicked inverted and uplifting outward CO2’s Lucifer, or “perturbation” as the IPCC calls it.(No refs, no citations of lab tests showing these effects; what are the refs JQ says Willis should study? why are there no experiments showing the infrared blocking effects of CO2?)
Tim
Ken Miles Said January 31st, 2006 at 4:47 pm:
We’ll I invite you to read the uncensored discussion on ukweatherworld, you may even join in. It’s about transient and equilibrium sensitivity.
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=25003&start=1
Ken, you crow about the following:
Actually, surprise, surprise, as it turns out, your claim is totally incorrect. What authority do I have for saying that?
Well, none other than your cited paper itself. It expressly denies your false conclusion that “the relationship [between sunspots and climate] only occured because of some very very dodgy statistics”. The cited paper says:
Can’t be much clearer than that …
As the authors note, what they call the “important links” between solar activity and climate have been “demonstrated by many authors over the years.” Our knowledge of the connection between sunspots and climate is actually very old. The first notice of it seems to have been by the astronomer William Hershel, the discoverer of Uranus, in 1801. He noted that sunspots were closely related to wheat prices, which he theorized was because of additional warmth when there were more sunspots.
He presented these results to the Royal Society, where Lord Brougham, anticipating your claim by two hundred years, derided them as a “grand absurdity”. However, further research over the succeeding two hundred year has shown that the relationship is very real, as the authors note.
My advice? Read’m before you cite’m …
w.
Tim Curtin Said January 31st, 2006 at 7:41 pm :
here:
Arrhenius, S, 1901, Ueber die Wärmeabsorption durch Kohlensäure, Annalen der Physik Bd 4. 1901, p690-705.
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/arrhenius1901/index.html
Jeff, thank you for your long and very thoughtful post. You say:
Clearly, you misunderstand my position. I have no disagreement with this at all. I agree that humans are making a wreck of a lovely planet.
Is this a problem? Most assuredly. Should we act on this information? Undoubtedly. Are many of our actions harming the Earth and the creatures who live on her? No question.
Does a changing climate affect species? Of course, although it doesn’t seem to drive them to extinction. Remember that climate is always changing, it does not ever stand still. When it warms, some species increase and some decrease, and the same is true when it cools. But bear in mind that every species we see today made it through a real climate change about 10,000 years ago, when we came out of the ice age.
During that time, the climate changed both an order of magnitude more rapidly, and to a much greater degree, than anything we have seen since. Your incorrect claim that the current climate change “is unprecedented perhaps over the past 100,000 years” is incorrect, because it ignores that huge, incredibly rapid change at the end of the ice age, which was survived by all of the species that we know and love.
Please note also that the change in global average temperature from one year to the next is as high as half a degree worldwide, and is much more in any given location, often several degrees and occasionally much more. All species seem to tolerate this quite well. Why, then, when all species can tolerate a multi-degree change in average temperature from one year to the next, are you so concerned about a change of the same size over a century or so? We already know they can take a change in average temperature of that magnitude in one year.
Can we control these climate changes? Even if humans are the cause of the recent rise in temperature, the answer to date, unfortunately, appears to be no. The Kyoto Protocol, which is arguably the most costly single project ever undertaken by human beings, is dead in the water because the signatories have been unable to meet the quotas. The net effect of Kyoto to date has been zero, which is indistinguishable from the net effect it would have had if everyone had actually met the quotas.
Finally, are humans causing this current climate change? Unknown. Neither you nor anyone has provided a scrap of evidence to establish that hypothesis.
So yes, we should definitely live as lightly as we can on this lovely planet, conserve our water and our topsoil, manage our fisheries properly, and in general act as wise stewards for this marvellous earth. There is much work to be done … but every dollar and every hour that we waste on trying to control CO2 is a dollar and an hour which we are not devoting to that most necessary work. We have much more important things to do with our money and our time than muck about with CO2.
For me, the reasonable response to all of this is quite simple — conservation. Conservation attacks some of the real problems you have identified, like airborne pollution, and limited resources, and excess waste. And in the process, if we conserve on fossil fuels, it also cuts down on CO2. I don’t think that the CO2 change will make a measureable temperature difference, but since it is a side effect of cutting down on pollution through conservation, that’s fine by me.
Conservation is also the most cost effective solution. Saving a litre of petrol is much cheaper than extracting and refining a litre of petrol. Since in this world we have limited money, this will save us money which we can then use to attack the real problems like disease and poverty and polluted water and all the rest.
w.
remember the arctic sea ice trend
remember the kilimanjaro glacier trend
ïf the trend presists it’ll all be gone by 2050.
I can play that game too:
Here is observed annual emission growth
if the trend persists….
data from cdiac, special thanks to Tom Boden of CDIAC for the emission updates.
For what it’s worth, crocodilians have been around for about two million years, so they’ve coped with quite a few climate changes.
Even the IPCC’s worst scenario shouldn’t make them turn up their toes.
Willis – your last post seems almost reasonable however it contains many half truths and omissions that put together make reducing CO2 seem nonsensical however almost the exact opposite is true.
You mention that all the species we see today made it through the last ice age however you neglect to mention all the species that did not including us as we were perhaps down to 20 000 individuals at one time. If the ice age had been just a little bit more severe we would not be here writing this blog.
You also say that the last ice age was an order of magnitude greater that today and that is true however the Milankovitch cycles are characterised by fairly slow and gradual change giving species time to adapt. Rapid climate shifts like the Younger Dryas did not affect the global species as much as the larger ice ages. You are also not mentioning that adapting species now have man made barriers in their way and do not have the forest or habitat corridors to migrate to new environments now. Many species will come up against these barriers and become extinct. Add to this pressure from habitat destruction and pollution from human sources the extinction from changing climate could be far worse than previously.
Many people on the blog and elsewhere have presented more that a scrap of evidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and warming the planet over and above natural changes. The fact that you ignore this is more a reflection of your own fixation of ideas. You are totally unswayed by scientific evidence that satisfies most of the worlds climate scientists who with all due respect are vastly more quaified to understand the climate than armchair amatuers like you or I.
Action to reduce greenhouse emissions is one of the most urgent and pressing concerns that humans can do at the moment. Along with combating aids and providing healthcare and basic facilities to the 80% of people that don’t enjoy our standard of living. How bad is that 20% of the world can live high on the hod and ruin the planet for the other 80% that don’t even get the benefits.
I do agree with you about conservation. It is the cheapest, simplest and fastest way to reduce greenhouse emissions. The Kyoto protocol was made the way it was by self interest and greed which to our eternal shame was in no small part Australian.
We need to go further than just conservation however we do not have to return to the caves. We can have a technological society based largely on renewable energy. As to cost, well fire fighting equipment seems expensive and a waste of time until a bush fire approaches your house. Then all thoughts of cost go out the window and nothing seems to expensive anymore. Smart people do not wait until the bushfire is on the horizon. As I said before why do we have to wait for the climate change induced natural disaster that could happen that will make the bean counters put the climate before the cost instead of the other way round.
Ahh the Toba lake super eruption, which caused a super cooling and a near extinction of mankind. Glad you mention it!
The Yellowstone supervolcano is a bigger threat than global warming, and there is nothing we can do…
ender writes:
Tell me ender, how would you bring the 80% to our standard of living and reduce global carbon emissions in the same time?
Take a look at SRES again, the big hike is coming from these 80%, go tell them to reduce energy.
John Q, I missed seeing your posting, they’re coming hard and fast. Thank you for persevering with your questions. Here ’tis:
The most recent correction to the UAH data, which is also the one which has garnered the most publicity, actually did not affect the UAH figures much. Mostly, it applied just in the tropics, and didn’t change the overall trend significantly. However, I haven’t looked at the latest numbers in a while, so let me go look …
OK, here we are. For the period 1979-2004, the three surface datasets and the UAH MSU lower tropospheric dataset (T2LT) show the following trends (in degrees/decade), along with the 2SD error:
GHCN 0.288 +/- 0.09
Jones 0.204 +/- 0.06
GISS 0.162 +/- 0.05
UAH 0.079 +/- 0.08
As I mentioned before, the three surface datasets are a long ways from being in agreement with each other. The UAH satellite data, however, shows less than half the warming of the smallest of the surface datasets (GISS), about 40% of the Jones warming, and about a quarter of the GHCN warming.
It is not correct to say “all the satellite datasets show significant warming”, as the MSU trend is not significantly different from zero at two standard deviations (p>.05).
Nor is it clear how any dataset could give a “good match with the surface data” when the surface data don’t give a good match with each other. In fact, the UAH data gives a better match to the GISS data than the GHCN/GISS data match. What can we conclude from that?
The RSS satellite data have always “matched” the surface data (as well as anything can when the surface data don’t match each other), so there’s no change there. No surprise, either, as the RSS data are adjusted to match a climate model … which seems to me like a strange way to analyse data, by adjusting it until it fits a climate model, but go figure. (The RSS team don’t give a comparable (T2LT) product, so it can’t really be compared to the UAH data directly, as they are measuring different things.)
So, near as I can tell, the situation is no different than when I last looked at it.
What kind of evidence would it take to convince me I was “wrong on this”? Wrong on what? On whether the UAH data is different from the surface data? It is. On whether the surface data agrees with itself? it doesn’t. On whether the UAH data shows warming? It doesn’t, although it may at some future date. Since the earth is generally warming, it wouldn’t surprise me. However, the UAH data still shows that there is an upwards bias in the ground based records.
What exactly do you think I am “wrong on”?
And as to what evidence would convince me on the broader issues, well, John, lets start by seeing if we can find any evidence at all. None has turned up here yet, from you or anyone, so it’s kind of hard to say …
w.
Ender, you say:
You are conflating two things here, Ender. People have presented evidence, and I have never denied, that some greenhouse gases are increasing.
However, no one has presented evidence that these gases are “warming the planet over and above natural changes”. That is the evidence that I have asked for, and I have not received. There is nothing yet for me to “ignore”.
w.
Willis says: “Does a changing climate affect species? Of course, although it doesn’t seem to drive them to extinction. Remember that climate is always changing, it does not ever stand still. When it warms, some species increase and some decrease, and the same is true when it cools. But bear in mind that every species we see today made it through a real climate change about 10,000 years ago, when we came out of the ice age.”
This is an absurd comment and it is one that I have dealt with previously. No ecologist would make such a bizarre claim and I’m puzzled as to why someone as obviously intelligent as our good friend Willis would make it.
The extinction of Australia’s megafauna, including giant bird, reptile and mammalian species is one of many well documented results of climate change. In this the extinctions resulted fromn the heating and drying of the Australian continent some 50,000 plus years ago.
(Aboriginal settlement of the Australian continent was also a factor in the extinction of the megafauna although its importance is hotly disputed. Some claim that the Aboriginal practice of ‘firestick farming’ may have in fact contributed to localised climate change).
I have previously mentioned why warming is now MUCH more likely to lead to extinction. This is because flora and fauna no longer have their former freedom to migrate. In Australia, like most other parts of the world, native biota is mostly confined to nature reserves that rarely include more than one or two climatic zones and are often separated by large distances
Does Willis seriously believe that species like Trichosurus arnhemensis, Phalanger maculatus or Sminthopsis virginae can navigate their way through paddocks, towns and across roads to a new climate zone as they did during previous climate perturbations before industrialisation?
Willis, in Nov 2003 you summarised the data as follows
“The entire satellite data for the whole world shows a warming during the 1979-2002 period of just 0.005º C by year, or 0.5º C in a century. This is, by far, much less than “prophesized” by the IPCC’s “global warming” hypothesis for the recorded period, that was characterized by massive CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.
This demonstrates that there is no “global warming”, as it demonstrates that there is no anomalous warming. Satellite records, the best available information we have, show the present warming trend – half a degree Celsius by century – is well within the range shown for the last few hundred years.’
Go back a few years before that and contrarians were claiming no trend at at all or a cooling tred in the satellite data.
Now, the best you can see is that if you take the lowest (and most consistently revised upwards) interpretation of the satellite data, it doesn’t quite manage two standard deviations away from zero. At the same time you harp on disagreements among the surface measures even though they all agree within the same confidence intervals,, and all show significant warming consistent with IPCC estimates.
The claim that the satellite data is more reliable for this purpose has collapsed, since the UAH satellite data has been corrected repeatedly mostly in ways that bring it closer to the surface data.
You must know all this, but you persist in saying “no evidence has been presented” and so on.
Hans – “Take a look at SRES again, the big hike is coming from these 80%, go tell them to reduce energy.”
So they should reduce their energy use from 20% to nothing so we can increase? That should go down well.
No Ender, whatever we do, pales to the growth of the emerging economies.
What the West does, doesn’t matter.
Willis,
I appreciate your thoughtful reply. Its too bad we can’t sit down for a beer and discuss these themes. I assume you live down under, and it might be a few years before I get out to the beautiful country.
As to your comments, I disagree that the current change is an order of magnitude less than that of the last ice age. We are talking about decades for contemporary change, not two thousand or so years. The average global temperature now is only some 9 C warmer than during the depths of the last ice age, and the planet took some two millennia to emerge from that. If the planet warms in the coming century by even as ‘little’ as 2 C, we are talking about a major change wkith serious consequences. If we approach 10 C, as the NAS panel suggested is possible, then we are talking about mass exticntions and mayhem. Because humans depend more on nature and on the provisioning ecosystem services I talked about yesterday than any other organism, then the biggest victim of human malfeascence may well be us. This is why environmental NGO claims to want to ‘save the planet’ are bogus. Its not the planet that will be extirpated, but Homo sapiens may well be the most prominent victim. The biosphere will recover from any and all human assaults, even if in an evolutionary sense this recovery takes 5-10 illion years. But there is little guarantee that our species will persist.
Lastly, to Willis’ polar bears argument. Again, I agree that polar bear numbers are fairly stable now, even increasing in places. but this in no way suggests that they are not in trouble. Polar bears have optimal habitat requirements with respect to food supply (seals) and this food supply hinges critically on the seasonal extent of sea ice. In a very cold environment, the ice is too thick in most places for seals to penetrate and make breathing holes, and the bears suffer as a result. Because polar ice is in retreat, transient conditions may actually favor the bears in the short term because they have more access to their seal prey. But the ice retreat is apraching a definte point beyond which bear numbers will plummet. Again, the process is non-linear. Bear numbers will not gradually diminish but once some threshold is exceeded, they will plummet. If current trends continue i te Arctic, polar bears will not persist beyond 2050. Its a simple as that, period.
Hans,
Wrong again (as usual). The developing world, with less than 15% of the world’s population consumes more than 80% of natural capital. Our governments and state planners in the overconsumptive nations financing huge domestic ecological deficits have always aimed at devising methods to maintain this disparity (read George Kennan’s 1948 speech; nothing has changed). The development model is tirelessly proposed, without recognizing that the profits of development are virtually always repatriated to the elites within the developed world and also in the developing world. As long as this situation remains as it is, we are ehaded on a long raod to catastrophe.
Hans – “No Ender, whatever we do, pales to the growth of the emerging economies.
What the West does, doesn’t matter. ”
Yes it does Hans – we provide the overconsumptive, inefficient and wasteful model that they aspire to. How about we the massive consumers provide a better example so that the resources of the planet, limited as they are, might be shared even a bit more equally.
So Willis if I understand you correctly I could paraphrase your position as follows:-
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Question by Terje: Do you know of any evidence that contradicts the AGW theory.
Answer by Willis: No I don’t.
Question by Terje: What do you believe is currently the best theory to explain GW.
Answer by Willis: I feel that it may be due to variations in the suns magnetic field.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Willis I know that concensus is not proof, however you would make me a little more comfortable if your “feeling” was shared by some other intelligent and learned people. Perhaps you can cite some examples of such others.
Your choice of words suggests to me that your feeling is not in fact a theory supported by “evidence” of the quality that you deem necessary for a proper “theory”. You seem almost reluctant to call it a theory.
If in fact you are saying that there are no evidence based theories that can explain GW then we are indeed in a difficult position and we need to make some pretty tough decisions. For you and me the existance of politically active body of AGW believers means that even doing nothing will have conseqences.
Is my characterisation of the situation fair?
Willis, it’s becoming clear (to me at least) that your arguments routinely involve crude distortions.
You wrote;
“In the past, as you note, people have not looked to explain extinctions on the basis of climate change. What you haven’t noted is that we can go back now and re-examine the extinctions, to see if climate change caused them.�
Yet I asked that specific question, “I’d be interested to know if it is possible to gauge this retrospectively or if anyone has tried�.
There are the incidents of the loss of the Australian megafauna as Jeff noted and the demise of the wolly mammoth, but I thinking of more recent examples, eg. past decades.
I’m glad that you have looked at the ‘Red Book’ and not seen any link, but think I might prefer a more recognized authority than your opinion.
Then you claim that,
“The Nature study clearly said that climate change causes extinctions, and put numbers on it……�
Errr…actually it didn’t say that. This is what it said,
“The responsiveness of species to recent and past climate change raises the possibility that anthropogenic climate change could act as major cause of extinctions in the near future………… Here we use projections of the future distributions of 1,103 animal and plant species to provide ‘first-pass’ estimates of extinction probabilities…….�.- Extinction Risk from Climate Change.
That’s the first paragraph of the study.
Willis, this penchant for convenient misrepresentation, makes me suspect the possibility that every article/study/report that you refer to has been similarly mangled.
MH,
Excellent post. The authors of the Nature study (Thomas et al.) did a fine job with the 2004 paper – I really don’t find it at all hard to imagine that drastic shifts in climate – with regional variations far exceeding the global average – will force species and populations to adjust. When biomes and the ecosystems embedded in them were simplified by earlier (natural) global changes, they still were largely connected with corridors that faciliated dispersal. There clearly were extinctions, but certainly not on the scale that is projected now. Moreover, as I have said countless times, AGW is but one stress that humans have inflicted upon natural systems. Its quite likely that most extinctions are the results of combined stresses: habitat loss, competition from invasive species, pollution, etc.
Humans are the major factor shaping global change now. We are biologically homogenising the biosphere, overharvesting certain species and functional guilds, altering a range of biogeochemical cycles, fragmenting vast landscapes down to local ecological communities, and saturating the planet’s surface in a number of synthetic compounds: the slash and burn approach to global habitat management. As I said earlier, we co-opt almost half of NPP and more than half of freshwater flows. We are attempting to take over all of nature which will leave less and less for the rest of it. The debts will have to be paid at some stage, which will manifest themselves in the breakdown of ecosystems and the services they provide. The techo-optimists out there seem to think that we can reduce nature significantly and still enjoy comparative luxury, but this period of self-delusion will come to an end. Its just a matter of time, based on the current course we are on and the massive inequities that are manifest in the distribution of wealth and power in the world.
I have been meaning for some time to reply to the claims Willis made earlier in this debate about coral reefs. Coral reefs are extremely important since about one-quarter of all fish species spend at least part of their life cycle in them. Hence their destruction could dramatically affect fish stocks and accordingly our food supply.
Firstly, in contrast to what Willis says, there is powerful evidence that coral will suffer with increased CO2 concentrations in the ocean. An ABC report for instance looks at evidence from the Biosphere II project in Arizona:
“Within the self-supporting Biosphere ocean, a small reef community of fish, coral and algae mimic life in the real world. It’s here that an international team is investigating the way corals respond to the increases of carbon dioxide we are making to the atmosphere. At first, people thought corals would do quite well in a Greenhouse world. The more carbon dioxide, the faster corals would grow. Quite useful, given the threat of rising sea levels. But the Biosphere experiments have shown the opposite is true. As CO2 rises and makes the ocean more acidic, it reduces the concentration of carbonate ions in the water. This makes it much harder for corals to build their limestone skeletons.â€? (1)
If Willis was to look up Google Scholar and type in “coral� “climate change� and “carbon dioxide� he would be confronted by 2,250 references. Many of these studies support the hypothesis that coral reefs will suffer from increased oceanic CO2 uptake. After a brief perusal I could find none that disputed the theory (although I must admit I deliberately ignored papers from right-wing political fronts). Of course, various papers note it isn’t only coral that will suffer:
“the majority of marine calcification occurs in planktonic organisms. Here we report reduced calcite production at increased CO2 concentrations in monospecific cultures of two dominant marine calcifying phytoplankton species, the coccolithophorids Emiliania huxleyi and Gephyrocapsa oceanica . This was accompanied by an increased proportion of malformed coccoliths and incomplete coccospheres. Diminished calcification led to a reduction in the ratio of calcite precipitation to organic matter production. Similar results were obtained in incubations of natural plankton assemblages from the north Pacific ocean when exposed to experimentally elevated CO2 levels.� (2)
Increased oceanic CO2 uptake is already blamed at least in part for the poor state the Florida Keys coral reefs (1).
Willis also downplays the evidence that warmer oceans will dramatically affect coral reefs. However as a paper in Ambio says:
“The year 1998 was the warmest year since the start of temperature recordings some 150 years ago. Similarly, the 1990s have been the warmest decade recorded. In addition, 1998 saw the strongest El Nino ever recorded. As a consequence of this, very high water temperatures were observed in many parts of the oceans, particularly in the tropical Indian Ocean, often with temperatures of 3 degree to 5 degree C above normal. Many corals in this region bleached and subsequently died, probably due to the high water temperatures in combination with meteorological and climatic factors. Massive mortality occurred on the reefs of Sri Lanka, Maldives, India, Kenya, Tanzania, and Seychelles with mortalities of up to 90% in many shallow areas. Reefs in other parts of the Indian Ocean, or in waters below 20 m, coral mortality was typically 50%. Hence, coral death during 1998 was unprecedented in severity…. If the observed global trends in temperature rises continue, there will be an increased probability of a recurrence of the phenomenon observed in 1998 on the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean, as well as in other parts of the tropical oceans in coming years.� (3)
Unfortunately for coral reefs, El Nino events like 1998 are likely to become increasingly frequent. As Prof Gerard Wellington of Houston University notes:
“The longest record we have from anywhere is the Galapagos record, which goes back 400 years. That record tells us that the frequencies of El Ninos have indeed changed through time. Galapagos is a place where you have penguins and sea lions and all these things that you don’t expect to see at the equator. The greatest changes in sea surface temperature during the El Nino occurs there and biologically, it has the greatest impact. In the 1600’s the El Nino frequency was on the order of anywhere from every 6 years to every 4.6 years. You go up to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and in fact you begin to see a change to about 4.6 and then finally, you see a change to about 3.3 which is what El Ninos have been through most of the 20th Century. And now we are beginning to see a shift to a more frequent 2.5 year interval.” (1)
One of Willis’s numerous extravagant claims is that coral reefs are quick to recover from warming events, typically taking just 5 years. (see Willis’s post on 10/01/06 posting on “The End of the Global Warming Debate� thread). If this is true then we would expect all the reefs that were damaged in 1998 to be back to normal. In fact this hasn’t occurred. Scott Reef for example was still smothered in algae and mostly dead by 2004, when a hurricane caused further damage. (1) and (5)
Another reason why Willis thinks we ought not be overly concerned by coral reef dieback is that coral grows relatively quickly, at the rate of 30-40 mm per year (see Willis’s post on 11/01/06 posting on “The End of the Global Warming Debate� thread). This claim is manifestly false. Coral species, like plant species, grow at very different rates. Some Porites species for instance average growth of only 10 mm per year. (1) Other species of coral grow at even slower rates of sometimes less than 2 mm per year and never more than 5 mm per year. (4)
A few minutes fiddling with Google Scholar reveals copious other examples of much slower growth rates.
Another critical issue that Willis chose to ignore is that branching species of coral, which are the most important providers of marine life habitat, are usually the first to die after a warming event. Even when/if a coral reef “recovers�, its usually because other less biologically beneficial species expand their range. (5)..
I find it puzzling that someone who has written a journal article about coral reefs and global warming appears to know so little about either. I think this says plenty about both Willis and the journal in question.
(1) see http://www.abc.net.au/science/coral/story.htm
(2) “Reduced calcification of marine plankton in response to increased atmospheric CO2� in Nature 407, 364-367 (21 September 2000)
(3) “Ecological and Socioeconomic Impacts of 1998 Coral Mortality in the Indian Ocean: An ENSO Impact and a Warning of Future Change?� Wilkinson, C; Linden, O; Cesar, H; Hodgson, G; Rubens, J; Strong, AE Ambio . Vol. 28, no. 2, p. 188. Mar 1999.
(4) see for example http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/lib/CREWS/SaltRiver/salt_river3.pdf
(5) “The Weather Makers�, Tim Flannery (2005) Text Publishing p.104-113
Hans:
The IPCC Scientific Assessment does not cite Arrhenius; Willis was told by JQ to refer to the IPCC’s citations. His work was ambiguous and has not been replicated by any of the IPCC’s 2500. What the SA admits is that there are no chemical intersctions with CO2 below the stratosphere but that scattered inert CO2 molecules (380 ppmv) surrounded by water vapour (about 999600 ppmv) successfully prevent infrared radiation of heat back to space at the same time as they allow solar radiation in. Reminds me of Marie Correlli’s novels of the 1890s where lovers in Vienna and Paris communicate directly without benefit of phones or mobiles.
Man, I go to bed, and when I get up in the morning, there’s another tidal wave of postings … it’s good thing the climate debate is settled …
This could take a while. My most immediate response is that Trichosurus arnhemensis is found in 7 different ecoregions (Arnhem Land tropical savanna, Carnarvon xeric shrublands, Carpentaria tropical savanna, Kimberly tropical savanna, Pilbara shrublands, Victoria Plains tropical savanna, Western Australian Mulga shrublands) which include hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of some extremely isolated land in Australia. You probably could find a much better poster child for a species endangered by climate change. The claim that it will have to cross man-made barriers if there is climate change is extremely dubious, that part of Australia doesn’t have all that many even on a good day with a following wind …
More later, guys, I have to go to work.
w.
Willis, the native Australiam mammal most threatened by climate change is the Mountain Pygmy Possum (Burramys parvus). This is the only Australian mammal restricted to Alpine and Sub-Alpine areas and is found in only a handful of locations about the eastern New South Wales- Victorian border. Population declines have already been noted, though other factors like increased opredation by feral predators like cats seem to be the main cause. Burramys parvus is now unlikely to number much more than 1,000.
The species I mentioned earlier are a random selection and not under any immediate threat from climate change. However, it would be unwise to under-estimate the threat posed by climate change in conjunction with other factors, as I and Jeff Harvey have already mentioned at length. Many Australian mammals have been reduced to a mere fraction of their former range and density. Extinction caused by “a thousand cuts” might be an appropriate phrase. It would take little to push some of them over the edge. A good example is the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii) , which now numbers approximately 113 individuals in one small enclosed forest in Queensland.
Actually, Australian animals provide a very good example of how the IUCN Red List you rely on is not definitive. I personally have contemporaneous copies of the the Australian Museums “complete Book of Australian Mammals” and subscribe to “Nature Australia”. Both make the point that research on most Australian species is either completely absent or vastly inadequate. Hence those who compile the Red List, in spite of their best intentions, have very little to go on.
I also note that the information on the IUCN Red List is sometimes significantly out of date. For instance, Lasiorhinus krefftii, even though it only hair’s width away from extinction, has not been assessed by IUCN since 1996!!
Taking this comment on face value we can lament the poor quality of the data but we can’t then logically conclude (from non definitive data) that things are getting worse. Data that is not definitive supports neither side of the argument. The only argument supported by such data is the argument that says we need better data.
Its not a problem Steve. Just organise with the New Zealanders a program for a few million dollars to buy and help create some extra habitats in the South Island of New Zealand for the little critter.
Or perhaps you could instead spend a few trillion (literally) dollars to alter the climate, and it doesn’t work, the little bugger dies off anyhow, just in time for a new glaciation.
Face it. The left has no judgement. Imagine if I was chief of police somewhere. And it was noticed that there is more crime during the full moon.
Do I change the schedule so that there are no rostered days off during the full moon or yet even short holidays. And do I also ask the guys to do more overtime during that period? That is to say a host of cost effective small measures.
Or althernatively do I team up with a bunch of Utopian socialists who are pushing to wipe the moon clean out with a massive nuclear attack?
interesting:
a denier (Tim) on my left and an alarmist (Jeff) on my right. Who shall I answer first?
Graeme – “Face it. The left has no judgement. Imagine if I was chief of police somewhere. And it was noticed that there is more crime during the full moon.”
If you want to use dodgy analogies yours is slightly wrong. The ‘utopian socialists’ want to disarm the criminals and institute programs to stop crime through education in schools etc not wipe out the moon.
Programs to reduce greenhouse gases can change the climate as we are using a very powerful lever which amplifies our small efforts.
The difference is that I used all of their data, and have given the trend line since 1880. My figures, therefore, are the warming rate per century for all of their data.
The numbers you quote, on the other hand, are for the “last century�, that is to say, since 1900.
Hi Willis,
While herein lies the problem, if you want to compare trends between different data sets, then it is best to make sure that they cover the same period.
In reply to Simonjm Willis wrote: “From 1978 to 1988 Arctic ice amounts were about steady. From 1988 to 1995, the ice area declined. Then from 1995 to 2002, the ice area actually increased (although you would never read that in the popular press), it decreased again in 2004, and in 2005 it increased again … and at the end of 2005, the amount of Arctic ice was back to the 1979-2000 average ice coverage. See
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg”
Actually, the graph Willis has selected to illustrate his point indicates a slight but perceptible downward trend. Moreover, if you go to the homepage for this site, which is for the University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research Centre, you see the following text:
“Sea ice extent averaged over the Northern Hemisphere has decreased correspondingly over the past 50 years … The largest change has been observed in the summer months with decreases exceeding 30%. Decreases observed in winter are more modest.”
Methinks Willis has on this occasion once again demonstrated a crafty and mischevious manner.
JQ, thanks for your reply. You say
In 2003, I said the satellite data showed 0.05° per decade. It is now 0.07° per decade. It has been revised upwards, as you say. However, the revisions have been small, well within the published error figures of 0.05° per decade.
You seem to think that the revisions have made the satellite less accurate, which I don’t understand. That’s the nature of science, data is constantly made more accurate by revisions, not less accurate. Including everything that anyone has been able to find wrong with the UAH data does not make it less accurate — it makes it more accurate.
You also talk of these errors as though they were large. They are not. For example, the revision due to the error discovered by the RSS team, about which so much noise was made, was only 0.035°/decade. This is far less than the differences between the ground data over the same period (GHCN – GISS = 0.12° decade).
And now that all of the revisions have been made, does the UAH data agree with the surface data? Well … no, it still doesn’t. The surface data is still significantly higher than the satellite data, and the satellite data is still well below the IPCC forecasts. That was my point in 2003, and remains my point today.
Finally, although (as you point out) the 3 ground-based datasets are not significantly different over the short period of the satellite record, they are most assuredly significantly different over their entire (1880-present) record. For that period, the results are (in degrees per decade +/- 2SD):
GHCN: 0.076 +/- 0.010
Jones: 0.064 +/- 0.007
GISS: 0.048 +/- 0.006
In other words, Jones is significantly different from GISS (pWe can’t even agree on what the global average temperature is. As fundamental a question as the global average temperature, and we don’t know the answer.
It gets worse. It’s not that we just don’t know. Our best scientists, using the exact same data sources give us different answers. Please stop disagreeing with me in your mind for a moment, and just think about the implications of that. You claim a “consensus” of scientists agree with AGW, and in fact we don’t even have a dang consensus about the average temperature …
And remember, this is not the result of all of the known problems with the ground based climate records … these three teams, all comprised of well-known climate scientists, are using the same temperature records, and they can’t even agree on what the average temperature of the earth is.
What does that say about the state of our understanding of the climate? And how much worse is our knowledge of the average temperature once we consider that we have, on average, only one single lonely thermometer for every 85,000 square kilometres of land, and we don’t know if that single temperature is affected by UHI or not?
I have said before, and I repeat now — our knowledge of the climate is pathetic. Before y’all start ranting and raving about a bunch of computer forecasts of where we are going tomorrow, wouldn’t it be wise to first get your mythical “consensus” about where we are today, and where we were yesterday?
That’s why I’m basically an agnostic on this question, and the more I learn about and think about the question, the more agnostic I have become. UAH satellite data and balloon data agree with each other. Ground data disagrees with each other, and is consistently higher than either balloon or UAH satellite data. RSS data is somewhere in between, but it can’t agree with all the ground data, and disagrees with the ballon data as well. What kind of firm scientific conclusions can we draw from that?
I would be very interested in your thoughts about this lack of knowledge of our average temperature, and what that means about the state of climate “science”. When three teams of scientists using the same data disagree to that extent … where is the science?
w.
PS — I’m not saying
as you claim in your throwaway closing line.
I’m simply stating a fact. I’ve asked for evidence of AGW. Neither you, nor anyone else, has presented any.
More to the point, there is absolutely noting in any of these satellite or balloon or RSS or ground based records that reveals anything about the cause of whatever warming may or may not be shown in those records. For you to strongly imply otherwise, as you did in your closing line is … well … I’m just going to call it mistaken, and to note that you still have not provided any evidence of AGW.
Michael H. was ragging on me that I misunderstood the Nature paper, Extinction Risk from Climate Change”. He said of the paper:
Here’s what the paper actually said:
Seems pretty clear to me … so the facts are:
The maximal scenario is actually 52%, not 37% as Michael claimed. In any case, I did not say that 37% was the minimal scenario, and in my calculations I used 5%. Nor did I say they would go extinct on the spot, the paper speaks of “decades” for them to go extinct.
To summarize, I asked … where are the extinct animals? I mean, the earth has been warming for centuries, so there should be hundreds of thousands of extinctions, where are they?
Someone said, “Oh, they might have happened, but we didn’t ascribe them to climate change” … but still, where are they, no matter what we ascribed them to?
Someone else said “Oh, it takes a while for them to happen, the “relaxation time”. This won’t wash either, because the “relaxation theory” says that there is some kind of lag because of an exponential dieoff, not every species dies on day one. But the Nature paper puts the lag at “decades” and it’s been hundreds of years that the earth has been warming. So even if the exponent is low, we whould have seen thousands of extinctions from the warming. Where are they?
Someone else said “Well, they have barriers now that they didn’t have then …” But the paper clearly relates the purported extinctions to the “species-area” relationship, not the “barriers”, and in any case, there have always been natural barriers. Also, the areas studied were areas where there are few human barriers (Queensland forest, Brazilian cerrado), and it has been warming throughout the 19th century when there have been lots of barriers. Where are the extinct species?
Someone else said “Pigmy Possums are endangered … although it might be from cats …” Yes, and the point still remains.
Y’all have not come up with one name, not one species, out of the hundreds and hundreds of species that should aready have died from the last three centuries of warming.
So you are welcome to kerfluffle around about barriers and endangered species and how we haven’t looked since 1996 at the Blue-Lipped Quogga, but dudes …
Where are the extinct species that the Nature so confidently talks about? Where is the evidence? I know it’s a beautiful theory, but where’s the hundreds of extinctions?
w.
PS — by the way, in addition to the thousands we should have seen go extinct from warming, this same claim has been made for extinctions from the cutting of the tropical forest. In that case, the numbers claimed are just as large … but we haven’t seen any of those thousands of extinctions either, have we? Should be hundreds or thousands of extinctions from each of the two separate cause, forest cutting and climate change, and we’ve seen … zero.
OK, here’s your bonus question — anyone care to guess how many continental dwelling (as opposed to island or Australian) birds and mammals have gone extinct in the last 500 years?
(I omit the island and Australian extinctions because the overwhelming majority of those extinctions are from a single cause … introduced species, including cats, rats, foxes, plants, mongoose, snakes and a host of other introduced predators and diseases. Bad humans … no cookies …)
So. Continental bird and mammal extinctions. Guesses?
Dang, I just re-read my post on satellite temperature, and the gremlins ate a few sentences from the middle … ah, well, such is life.
w.
Wily Willis says: “I’m simply stating a fact. I’ve asked for evidence of AGW. Neither you, nor anyone else, has presented any.”
Willis, if you type “anthropogenic” and “climate change” into Google Scholar you get 21,100 results. May I suggest that you go away and read each and every one these papers to acquaint yourself with some of the evidence for AGW.
Since the guys who wrote the papers are mostly well credentialled professional scientists rather than armchair dabblers like us, this course of action may prove most fructuous.
I said that the sea ice was not in a simple decline as someone had stated. Discussing this, I wrote:
Steve, however, comes back with earthshaking, blockbuster news …
That’s your big revelation? That there is a “slight but perceptible downward trend” in ice area? And that this slight decline in ice area is shown in a graph that I cited, and that I invited you to examine? Whoa, be still my beating heart …
Steve, of course, ascribes it to my evil ways, saying it shows my
Oh, it’s a mondo sneaky plan all right, Steve, to ask people to look at a graph for themselves, to point them to the data, it’s probably that crafty science deal you might have heard about …
You know the one, where you cite some evidence, and then you say where the evidence can be found, and you invite people to examine the evidence and make up their own minds … devious fellers, them scientists …
So, Steve, when are you going to get crafty and cite some evidence for AGW?
w.
Willis, you neglect to mention the most salient point that your chosen source makes. I repeat:
“Sea ice extent averaged over the Northern Hemisphere has decreased correspondingly over the past 50 years … The largest change has been observed in the summer months with decreases exceeding 30%. Decreases observed in winter are more modest.�
Your propensity to mislead, distort, inflate and deceive is intellectually dishonest. Shame on you.
Ken wrote to aske me about the difference between my temperature trend figures and his figures. I wrote back to him:
He has now responded to say:
Mmmm … er … not sure what you’re on about here, Ken. I did make sure that all three data sets I was discussing (GHCN, Jones, and GISS) covered the same period, 1880 to 2004. I also specified what period I was talking about.
You are the one that brought in new data covering a different period, and wondered why it was different … which I explained …
So remind me again … why you are suggesting that I do something that I already did?
w.
Steve writes:
Steve, find one place where I disagreed with that statement you quote above. Find one place that I said that the Arctic was not warmer than in 1960. Find one place that I said that sea ice was not decreasing recently.
Yes, sea ice has decreased over the last 50 years. You seem to find that highly significant, but I don’t. Why? Because Arctic sea ice has also increased over the last 75 years, decreased over the last couple hundred years, and increased over the last 10,000 years.
The only “distortion” occurs because you have made the classic newbie mistake of someone who doesn’t know much about the Arctic. You have started measuring from the 1960’s, which are known to have been a cold period not only in the Arctic but worldwide.
So the fact that it has warmed since then, while it seems to have you breathing awfully hard, doesn’t mean much to people who have studied the Arctic. Climate has cycles, and the Arctic is no exception.
Look, I am the one who cited the source you are quoting. I know very well what it says, I suspect I’ve spent much more time wandering around that site than you have, and the NSIDC site and a host of others as well.
Where is my distortion? Where I said that ice amounts had stayed about level from ’78 to ’88? Where I said that they then declined to ’95? Where? I defy you to find one untrue statement in what you quoted me as saying.
It is not a “distortion” or a “deception” or an “inflation” to say that for the seven year period 1995-2002, the ice area recently increased. It is a FACT. You may not like it. Tough. All the statements you quoted me as saying are not distortions. They are facts.
I put up the citation and talked about the graph. If you disagree with what I said about the graph, fine. Say what you think the graph means. But since I posted the citation, you cannot accuse me of trying to hide or distort or inflate the facts. They are right there for everyone to see, and I’m the one who posted those facts.
How, then, can I “deceive, distort, inflate, and mislead” you, when you are standing there looking at the facts that I provided for discussion? If you think I’m distorting things, then you tell me what the ice area did between 1995 and 2002 … sheesh.
w.
Six.
Months.
Totally reconstituted.
Most extensive bleaching “ever” on this reef, small patches died, the rest recovered within 2 years.
2
Years
I know you guys think I make this stuff up, but I don’t. I’m a diver and a sailor and a surfer, and I’m in the ocean on a weekly basis. I surf nothing but reef breaks, and I’m well aware of the condition of the reefs.
Yes, as someone pointed out, sometimes reefs don’t recover from bleaching. This usually happens when the reef is under some other kind of pressure, such as human predation or pollution.
It is not generally recognized how fragile reefs are to predation. One of the biggest dangers is night diving, as a number of the reef fish sleep at night and thus can easily be wiped out entirely.
The reef is more than just the coral — it is a complex and intertwined ecosystem, where many of the parts are not optional. Wherever humans have come into contact with reefs and have started killing the fish that live in and around them, the reef has started to die. There was a good study done on that last year, but I’m not going to look it up. It exists, and documents centuries of declining reefs.
If a reef is then hit by a bleaching event, it may not return … not because of the bleaching, but because of the damage that has already been done. You want to worry about reefs? You should, but bleaching is not the danger … humans are.
w.
Man, I love studying and research … thank you so much, guys, for the questions and the ideas and the opportunity.
In this case, again, not generally recognized — coral reefs are a source of CO2
Note that the pCO2 (amount of CO2 in the water) varies wildly in the water around the reef, reaching very high values … and somehow the coral keeps growing. This study is particularly interesting in that it shows that global atmospheric CO2 levels are not related to the CO2 levels on any given reef. Global pCO2 is on the order of 300-350 µatm, so this means the local concentration around the reef is nearly double that, and that this high CO2 level is created by the reef itself. I don’t think increasing atmospheric CO2 will affect at least this reef too much … here’s more on the subject.
Once again, the finding that the coral reefs are a source of CO2 … since they are a source of CO2, the idea that CO2 will keep them from growing seems doubtful. Of note in this one is that calcification rates are higher when the water is warmer.
Here’s another. Diel means diurnal, although why they don’t just say “diurnal” I don’t know … dang scientists trying to confuse us …:
The study shows that CO2 in the ocean goes up and down because of a host of biological, microbiological, and other processes that include coral reefs. These are among the reasons that aquarium studies don’t cut it for studying these questions. Aquarium studies also have drawbacks, as this quote from the Waikiki Aquarium shows:
How about if the coral in an area dies out entirely? Can it come back? It turns out that coral reefs are international travellers …
When I’m out surfing, I often jump off my board and just hang out underwater watching the reef, and this will certainly give me more things to think about when I’m doing that … or for that matter when I’ve made one little tiny mistake and I’m being dragged, tumbling, getting worked in the white-water, clawing for the surface and hoping against hope that I can avoid being scraped bloody over that same reef … like I said, my relationship with the reef is up close and personal. For most of you, a coral reef is an abstraction … for me, it’s both friend and foe, we talk on a regular basis …
My best to you all,
w.
In his State of the Union address George Bush has announce that he wants to see the US wean itself off of Middle Eastern oil.
SOURCE:-
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/state-of-the-union-address/2006/02/01/1138590550050.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2