Australian Politics Forum - Is Greenland close to a tipping point?

Upton Sinclair

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #30 - Aug 6^th, 2012 at 8:06pm

progressiveslol wrote on Aug 5^th, 2012 at 11:05pm:

Except, even your beloved IPCC says 'Climate models are unable to predict extreme events because they lack spatial and temporal resolution. In addition, there is no clear evidence that sustained or worldwide changes in extreme events have occurred in the past few decades'

Except what MOTR cited isn't a climate model predicting the future, it's a statistical model of observed change, so you're entire premise is deeply flawed. Apples and oranges.

Quote:

But of course then go on to say the same ol BS

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/regional/index.php?idp=232

There is no link to extreme weather event ans CO2. Do you have the data that says extreme weather events are more common now, are greater in intensity now or do you just have lives lost and cost and trying to use that as a "more = worse"?

The report was written between 1998 - 2005. Believe it or not, science progresses and evolves and known unknowns soon become knowns. The final submissions to the 2013 IPCC AR5 have just been taken, the Copenhagen Diagnosis was a precursor to the AR5, and the sorts of things that the AR4 couldn't quantify, such sea level changes from ice melt and the ability to attribute extreme weather events to the changing climate. A number of significant papers have been published since 2005 that have done exactly that, most notably with the Russian heatwave of 2010. Because while you guys were obsessing about blog posts and 15 year old hockey-sticks, the real scientific debate has progressed significantly. You know, the OTHER climate debate that you hguys do not participate in?

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namnugenot

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #31 - Aug 6^th, 2012 at 9:12pm

MOTR wrote on Aug 6^th, 2012 at 7:43pm:

namnugenot wrote on Aug 6^th, 2012 at 8:47am:

Are these events actually more common?
They are certainly much better covered by the now global media where in the past it would get little coverage if at all or even ever known about.
Example we would have probably never heard of the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake that initially reportedly killed 1 million and later revised down to about 250,000, had our then former PM not been there in China at the time judging from the coverage at the time.

What makes you think this hasn't been investigated using scientific methods.

Reference to dice, the invocation of prayer and the reference to his own data that does not fit as a statistical fluke. Otherwise he does not cite his methodology so it is difficult to tell.

"It's about rare weather events becoming more common. Pointing to similar events in the past does not counter this argument. We all know these things happened, but why are they happening more frequently today." MOTR

Other than reference to the US 1930's there is nothing in the paper other than speculation going to the frequency of global "rare weather events". He also states that the four mean temperature anomalies for 1934, 1936, 2006 and 2011 are practically indistinguishable. He goes on to say that it is difficult and perhaps unessential to find an "explanation" for either the large 1930's anomalies or the relatively slow upturn in hot upturns for the last few decades. From this he leaps wildly into speculation that because the last few decades in the US were lower than what was expected it will climb even more rapidly. You can't be serious.
This does not address global rare weather events. For Australia it is certainly the case that the weather events at around the beginning of the last century were more pronounced adverse weather was evident, added to which there was not the water usage in anywhere near the current rates for either rural or urban centers.
There are also many parts of the world where there were no records until quite recently so the veracity of such a claim as to the frequency of such events while described as difficult for where there are detailed records (US) are impossible where there are none or where the quality of such data is questionable.

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Soren

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #32 - Aug 6^th, 2012 at 10:32pm

Ice loss from Greenland's vast sheet may happen mainly in short bursts, research by Danish scientists suggests.

They used aerial photos dating back to the 1980s to plot shrinking of glaciers around the island's northwest coast.

In the journal Science, they show that most of the ice loss happened in two periods - 1985-1993 and 2005-10 - with relative stability in between.

They say it will be hard to project sea level changes from Greenland ice melt until these patterns are deciphered.

A complete melt of the ice sheet would raise sea levels globally by about 7m, but it could take centuries for this to occur.

Last month, Nasa released evidence showing that ice melting had been observed across virtually the whole extent of the Greenland ice sheet, unprecedented in the satellite era.

Days earlier, an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan broke away from the Petermann glacier in northwest Greenland.

Dramatic though those events were, neither means much on its own for the long-term picture.

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MOTR

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #33 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 1:43am

namnugenot wrote on Aug 6^th, 2012 at 9:12pm:

Reference to dice, the invocation of prayer and the reference to his own data that does not fit as a statistical fluke. Otherwise he does not cite his methodology so it is difficult to tell.

Quote:

"It's about rare weather events becoming more common. Pointing to similar events in the past does not counter this argument. We all know these things happened, but why are they happening more frequently today." MOTR

Other than reference to the US 1930's there is nothing in the paper other than speculation going to the frequency of global "rare weather events". He also states that the four mean temperature anomalies for 1934, 1936, 2006 and 2011 are practically indistinguishable. He goes on to say that it is difficult and perhaps unessential to find an "explanation" for either the large 1930's anomalies or the relatively slow upturn in hot upturns for the last few decades. From this he leaps wildly into speculation that because the last few decades in the US were lower than what was expected it will climb even more rapidly. You can't be serious.

This does not address global rare weather events. For Australia it is certainly the case that the weather events at around the beginning of the last century were more pronounced adverse weather was evident, added to which there was not the water usage in anywhere near the current rates for either rural or urban centers.

There are also many parts of the world where there were no records until quite recently so the veracity of such a claim as to the frequency of such events while described as difficult for where there are detailed records (US) are impossible where there are none or where the quality of such data is questionable.

Here is the reference to dice.

Quote:

Abstract. The "climate dice" describing the chance of an unusually warm or cool season, relative to the climatology of 1951-1980, have progressively become more "loaded" during the past 30 years, coincident with increased global warming. The most dramatic and important change of the climate dice is the appearance of a new category of extreme climate outliers. These extremes were practically absent in the period of climatology, covering much less than 1% of Earth's surface. Now summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (σ) warmer than climatology, typically cover about 10% of the land area. Thus there is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, which exceeded 3σ – it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming. If global warming is not slowed from its current pace, by mid- century 3σ events will be the new norm and 5σ events will be common.

Here is the invocation of prayer.

Quote:

One of the major candidates in the current Presidential primary in the United States has declared that human-made global warming is a hoax, and he has issued an official Proclamation: " I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on those days for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life."

Science cannot disprove the possibility of divine intervention. However, there is a relevant saying that "Heaven helps those who help themselves."

Science does show that business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions will cause atmospheric CO2 to continue to increase rapidly. The increasing greenhouse gases will cause the rapid global warming of the past three decades to continue, and this warming will cause the climate dice to become more and more loaded with greater and greater extreme events. The probability that this conclusion is wrong is about as close to zero as one can get.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to continue business-as-usual. In a paper that we are working on with a number of distinguished colleagues we argue that an appropriately rising price on carbon emissions could move the world to a clean energy future fast enough to limit further global warming to several tenths of a degree Celsius. Such a scenario is needed if we are to preserve life as we know it.

Here is the statistical fluke.

Quote:

The longer time scale is important for the United States, because of the well-known extreme heat and droughts of the 1930s. . . The 48 states cover less than 1.6% of the global area and thus the results are very "noisy". Despite the noise, we can discern that the trend toward hot summers in recent decades is not as pronounced in the United States as it is in hemispheric land area as a whole. Also the extreme summer heat of the 1930s, especially 1934 and 1936, is comparable to the most extreme recent years.

Summer temperature anomalies for the United States are shown in Figure 8, including maps for 1934, 1936, 2006 and 2011. The mean temperature anomalies in these four warm summers (approximately +1°C or +2°F) are practically indistinguishable, as the differences among them are smaller than the uncertainty. Year-to-year variability, which is mainly unforced weather variability, is so large for an area the size of the United States that it is difficult and perhaps unessential to find an "explanation" for either the large 1930s anomalies or the relatively slow upturn in hot anomalies during the past few decades. However, this matter warrants discussion, because, if the absence of a stronger warming in recent years is a statistical fluke, the United States may have in store a relatively rapid trend toward more extreme anomalies.

And his methodology is not difficult to follow. It is a simple statistical analysis of the data found here.

Quote:

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) surface air temperature analysis (Hansen et al., 2010) is carried out at two spatial resolutions: 1200 km and 250 km. In this paper we use the 250 km analysis, which is well-suited for our objective to illustrate seasonal-mean climate variability on regional spatial scales and investigate the significance of recent extreme events.

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« Last Edit: Aug 7^th, 2012 at 3:27am by MOTR »

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"What does this mean? It means that we need to do practical things that actually reduce emissions."

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MOTR Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 6646	Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point? Reply #34 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 5:39am
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progressiveslol Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 17029	Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point? Reply #35 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 9:55am MOTR wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 5:39am: Mr Hansom says 'if you ignore the past and like cherries'
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progressiveslol Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 17029	Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point? Reply #36 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 10:43am Hansen failed in 1988 with his failed predictions, so he up the cherry picking and political spin. Temps now are actually less than hansens lowest estimate/prediction which is of zero emmisions.
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namnugenot

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #37 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 11:05am

MOTR wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 1:43am:

namnugenot wrote on Aug 6^th, 2012 at 9:12pm:

Reference to dice, the invocation of prayer and the reference to his own data that does not fit as a statistical fluke. Otherwise he does not cite his methodology so it is difficult to tell.

Quote:

"It's about rare weather events becoming more common. Pointing to similar events in the past does not counter this argument. We all know these things happened, but why are they happening more frequently today." MOTR

Other than reference to the US 1930's there is nothing in the paper other than speculation going to the frequency of global "rare weather events". He also states that the four mean temperature anomalies for 1934, 1936, 2006 and 2011 are practically indistinguishable. He goes on to say that it is difficult and perhaps unessential to find an "explanation" for either the large 1930's anomalies or the relatively slow upturn in hot upturns for the last few decades. From this he leaps wildly into speculation that because the last few decades in the US were lower than what was expected it will climb even more rapidly. You can't be serious.

This does not address global rare weather events. For Australia it is certainly the case that the weather events at around the beginning of the last century were more pronounced adverse weather was evident, added to which there was not the water usage in anywhere near the current rates for either rural or urban centers.

There are also many parts of the world where there were no records until quite recently so the veracity of such a claim as to the frequency of such events while described as difficult for where there are detailed records (US) are impossible where there are none or where the quality of such data is questionable.

Here is the reference to dice.

Quote:

Abstract. The "climate dice" describing the chance of an unusually warm or cool season, relative to the climatology of 1951-1980, have progressively become more "loaded" during the past 30 years, coincident with increased global warming. The most dramatic and important change of the climate dice is the appearance of a new category of extreme climate outliers. These extremes were practically absent in the period of climatology, covering much less than 1% of Earth's surface. Now summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (σ) warmer than climatology, typically cover about 10% of the land area. Thus there is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, which exceeded 3σ – it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming. If global warming is not slowed from its current pace, by mid- century 3σ events will be the new norm and 5σ events will be common.

Here is the invocation of prayer.

Quote:

One of the major candidates in the current Presidential primary in the United States has declared that human-made global warming is a hoax, and he has issued an official Proclamation: " I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on those days for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life."

Science cannot disprove the possibility of divine intervention. However, there is a relevant saying that "Heaven helps those who help themselves."

Science does show that business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions will cause atmospheric CO2 to continue to increase rapidly. The increasing greenhouse gases will cause the rapid global warming of the past three decades to continue, and this warming will cause the climate dice to become more and more loaded with greater and greater extreme events. The probability that this conclusion is wrong is about as close to zero as one can get.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to continue business-as-usual. In a paper that we are working on with a number of distinguished colleagues we argue that an appropriately rising price on carbon emissions could move the world to a clean energy future fast enough to limit further global warming to several tenths of a degree Celsius. Such a scenario is needed if we are to preserve life as we know it.

Here is the statistical fluke.

Quote:

The longer time scale is important for the United States, because of the well-known extreme heat and droughts of the 1930s. . . The 48 states cover less than 1.6% of the global area and thus the results are very "noisy". Despite the noise, we can discern that the trend toward hot summers in recent decades is not as pronounced in the United States as it is in hemispheric land area as a whole. Also the extreme summer heat of the 1930s, especially 1934 and 1936, is comparable to the most extreme recent years.

Summer temperature anomalies for the United States are shown in Figure 8, including maps for 1934, 1936, 2006 and 2011. The mean temperature anomalies in these four warm summers (approximately +1°C or +2°F) are practically indistinguishable, as the differences among them are smaller than the uncertainty. Year-to-year variability, which is mainly unforced weather variability, is so large for an area the size of the United States that it is difficult and perhaps unessential to find an "explanation" for either the large 1930s anomalies or the relatively slow upturn in hot anomalies during the past few decades. However, this matter warrants discussion, because, if the absence of a stronger warming in recent years is a statistical fluke, the United States may have in store a relatively rapid trend toward more extreme anomalies.

And his methodology is not difficult to follow. It is a simple statistical analysis of the data found here.

Quote:

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) surface air temperature analysis (Hansen et al., 2010) is carried out at two spatial resolutions: 1200 km and 250 km. In this paper we use the 250 km analysis, which is well-suited for our objective to illustrate seasonal-mean climate variability on regional spatial scales and investigate the significance of recent extreme events.

Lovely graphs and all but when it all boils down he has only speculation that does not fit with the geological fraction of an eye blink that he looked at so what does he do is extrapolate his expectations rather than the data he has into the future. He then puts this down to CO2 greenhouse and speculates that we can avoid catastrophe by moving to a low carbon future. This has flaws you can drive a planet through. He is measuring surface temperature ignoring how greenhouse works and the available evidence for it being not other than possibly a minor greenhouse effect. It also ignores that globally CO2 will increase regardless of what western nations do. Also that regardless the IPCC say CO2 has an atmospheric residency of 100 years so accordingly we cannot expect these increases to reverse until then. Assuming we all stop producing all CO2 now that would put the top the curve at 2112.
What he also does is reference Puma and Cook to highlight the increase of irrigation over the last 50 or so years to explain summers cooler than expected in the US.
This touches on, but misses, a more plausible explanation consistent with small changes of temperature that could occur at or near the surface.
This is my own wild speculation and I have no proof whatever so call me a climatologist.

Changes and reduction in the quality and extent of vegetation cover. Where cooling effects and heating are dispersed, ala similar to the dispersal of heat from ocean currents over land masses in the northern hemisphere (about 6+ degrees C). Trees especially pump huge amounts of water and have a huge transpiring leaf surface area that would dwarf irrigation as a climate modification vector. So they have atmospheric effects in addition to the production of atmospheric O2 which as it happens has been steadily falling. Cities tend to be hotter than surrounding areas, because the anthropogenic structures tend to reradiate heat causing urban heat islands. This heat diffuses more widely. Urban areas also have over-representation in the temperature records. If you are unconvinced of the ability of anthropogenic surfaces to reradiate heat and don't have a properly calibrated thermometer stand on the bitumen on a hot day in bare feet and then on some lawn see if there is difference, you can repeat, you can even plot it on a graph, surface against time at different times of the day...blisters permitting. Or you could plot surface against blisters. Mmmmmm..........sciency.
Lots of reasons to point the finger at other than CO2 as causative of any increase in temperature.
But like I say, purely observational and wild speculation on my part.

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Upton Sinclair

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #38 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 6:33pm

namnugenot wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 11:05am:

But like I say, purely observational and wild speculation on my part.

Well, at least you got ONE thing right in that post. All I can really say is you should probably give up on the wild speculation and do some really quite cursory research into how climate science actually works. You might find it quite a revelation to, oh I don't know, pick up a text book and try reading it? .

Let's just say that at this stage you're doing it wrong and leave it at that.

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Upton Sinclair

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #39 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 6:40pm

progressiveslol wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 10:43am:

Hansen failed in 1988 with his failed predictions, so he up the cherry picking and political spin. Temps now are actually less than hansens lowest estimate/prediction which is of zero emmisions.

It's not of "zero emmisions", you can't even get the basics right, its a lower emission scenario based on the world taking action earlier.

And, that model was written almost 30 years ago, things have progressed significantly since then. The mechanics of the model work fine, the problem lay with the assumption made 30 years ago that climate sensitivity would be higher than what the last 30 years of research has demonstrated it really is. When you input the assumption of modern day sensitivity then you get a much closer fit with the observational record.

Here's an ensemble of IPCC model runs, published 20 years AFTER Hansen's testimony to congress:

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progressiveslol

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #40 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:03pm

Upton Sinclair wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 6:40pm:

progressiveslol wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 10:43am:

Hansen failed in 1988 with his failed predictions, so he up the cherry picking and political spin. Temps now are actually less than hansens lowest estimate/prediction which is of zero emmisions.

It's not of "zero emmisions", you can't even get the basics right, its a lower emission scenario based on the world taking action earlier.

And, that model was written almost 30 years ago, things have progressed significantly since then. The mechanics of the model work fine, the problem lay with the assumption made 30 years ago that climate sensitivity would be higher than what the last 30 years of research has demonstrated it really is. When you input the assumption of modern day sensitivity then you get a much closer fit with the observational record.

Here's an ensemble of IPCC model runs, published 20 years AFTER Hansen's testimony to congress:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/IPCC_model_vs_obs.gif

Things have progressed, like data manipulation. I seeno 1930's real observations in your graphs.

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namnugenot

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #41 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:07pm

Upton Sinclair wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 6:33pm:

namnugenot wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 11:05am:

But like I say, purely observational and wild speculation on my part.

Well, at least you got ONE thing right in that post. All I can really say is you should probably give up on the wild speculation and do some really quite cursory research into how climate science actually works. You might find it quite a revelation to, oh I don't know, pick up a text book and try reading it? .

Let's just say that at this stage you're doing it wrong and leave it at that.

I've got plenty of textbooks and read plenty of papers so you need not worry.
Judging from the drivel you continually come up with yours consists of throwing chicken bones onto the ground.

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Upton Sinclair Senior Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 496	Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point? Reply #42 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:16pm namnugenot wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:07pm: I've got plenty of textbooks Great. Then pick one up from the geophysical section of your expansive library and read it. Then you won't have to base your views on wild speculation
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Upton Sinclair Senior Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 496	Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point? Reply #43 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:20pm progressiveslol wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:03pm: Things have progressed, like data manipulation. I seeno 1930's real observations in your graphs. What ARE you on about? Do you have an alternative instrumental temperature record to support this conspiracy theory?
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namnugenot

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Re: Is Greenland close to a tipping point?
Reply #44 - Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:24pm

Upton Sinclair wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:16pm:

namnugenot wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 7:07pm:

I've got plenty of textbooks

Great. Then pick one up from the geophysical section of your expansive library and read it. Then you won't have to base your views on wild speculation

I've read all my textbooks thank you.
But why the new found aversion to speculation it seems to be good enough for yourself and virtually everyone you quote?

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