2013 historically the least extreme weather year ever?

Weird, melting ice absorbs a lot of heat and if enough is melted:

Melting ice has an interesting attribute, the temperature of the ice and water clamps at the melting point, 0C for fresh water and -2C for sea water. A lot of heat can be absorbed without a corresponding increase in temperature . . . and then there is this local 'buzz' about a temperature plateau while ignoring the 'white elephant' in the room, Arctic shipping, and significantly open, Arctic water.

There have been multiple pauses in the historical records, 'noise'. In this current pause, we have this big chunk of melted Arctic ice which shippers are taking advantage. So I'm fairly calm and patient. There is a interesting note about ocean warming:

• http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/examining-the-pause.pdf - Zeke Hausfather

There have been other 'pauses' in the past and no doubt there will be more in the future.
The current one is just another one, an opportunity to learn more about how the climate works.

So how do we deal with deniers . . . we don't. The drivers of global warming have not stopped and that we don't have 'perfect knowledge' doesn't really matter when dealing with a complex system. When observations change, new scientists, grad students, and even PriusChatters will work from the data. But commercial interests are not so blind.

As I've pointed out before, natural law works on its own schedule. For example this was a recent photo from a commercial ship in the Arctic:

It is called pancake ice, next year to be called first year ice over the Arctic . . . unless it melts, again. I'm patient.

FYI, here is another article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/opinion/a-pause-not-an-end-to-warming.html?_r=0

Bob Wilson

 

The BEST data is easily available so I wanted to expand the details of more recent data:

The pause that stopped around 1980 was interesting but the scale of this chart was a little too coarse. So I took the BEST data and using my favorite Gaussian filter, generated this graph:

Between 1940-1980, there was a 40 year plateau. Then an upward slope to a mini-pause that might have started around 2008. But this is nothing compared to earlier, 'noise' events and no evidence of even a 0.1 C decrease in temperature. Noisy data, this is nothing compared to:

• -0.1 C in 1992-95
• -0.1 C in 1984-85

Declaring global warming over because the slope looks to have flattened, not even gone downward is pure, utter nonsense. Just another denier strawman which they are beating to death. The natural laws don't care.

Bob Wilson

 

Wouldn't 'the least extreme weather year ever' be in and of itself an abnormal weather event?

 

Agreed, we are not that confident with the 3 number for sensitivity, but how about 1? At a sensitivity of 1 degree C for a doubling of carbon dioxide, no feedback just the physics, we would get 0.5 degrees rise in temperatures from the rise from 280 ppm to 400 ppm in the time period temperatures have risen 0.75 degrees. Now the reason we are 95% confident not 100% certain is because of uncertainty about natural variation and time it takes ghg to change the earth's temperature.

I call bs. Where is the money spent who spent it. This is a false stat, that has no basis in reality. On the other hand the US government has spent over $100B subsidizing coal and oil pollution during the last 40 years.

 

Even the skeptics, Curry, Linzden, etc all agree with the forcing of logarithmic sensitivity to ghg, as this is basic physics. What is disagreed upon is the sensitivity, not the reality of the warming or that it is occurring. I think curry's most recent was that about 1/3 of the warming seen was anthropologic, but she didn't make the claim in any peer reviewed paper, but was reviewing about 6 lowest cases. You may be able to cling to part of that perception, that it is 33% not over 50% anthropologic in nature, but each year as we get more data, the certainty that the number is significant goes up.

What you are reading is fake science promoted by political groups, trying to force raise doubt about the science. This fake stuff is much like the science promoted by the tobacco institute, that tried to claim there was no link between cancer and tobacco use. The studies that claim that is is getting cooler are not studies at all. It is politically motivated fakery, by people with their hands out wanting continued government subsidies for their companies. This is all bad will. Now if you go to something like huricanes/ghg, as some have claimed, there are good studies that show that these are not linked in any statistcally significant fashion. Stop drinking the Koch kool-aid. There is warming, ghg contribute to it, the sea levels are rising.

I have and there is nothing near your hundreds of billions. In fact subsidies to coal pollution are much higher than money spent because of ghg.

Now congress in 1978 passed a law to encourage coal and coal pollution. What this did was make it illegal to build natural gas as base load generaters (california was allowed to opt out of the law because of the clean air act). There were additionally price controls set on natural gas and prices low enough to prevent any free market exploration. There were also few restrictions on coal pollution even though government knew quite the environmental and heath implications. The result of these mandates was a de-facto coal subsidy of around $10B/year to coal utilities.

In the late 80s and 90s, some of these mandates were removed. SO2 and NOx were capped in some states, and scrubbers were installed removing some damage from coal caused acid rain. The '78 bill out lawing natural gas for base load was removed, and the DOE helped support natural gas technology, that is only now reducing the cost of electricity. Coal is still subsidied but to a lesser extent. Some of the health problems associated with coal are now regulated by the epa. I'm sure in your hundreds of billions you count pollution control on coal, because you think the owners of coal utilities should not be responsible for dead animals or people from its pollution.

China is now starting to regulate some of coals pollution. Its not about ghg, its because living in smog is bad for people and animals.

Now you please get 'er done and only count costs that actually are because of ghg pollution. They are exceedingly small.[/QUOTE]

 

This is like playing whack-a-mole with demented, zombie moles. As much as I respect the knowledge and expertise of those whacking the moles, I wonder if we'd be better off with that knowledge being put to constructive use.

 

Well, that explains why you're having trouble seeing clearly.

 

I see it more as going to the gym to work out and build up strong and quicker reactions. So when I have an occasional beer at the 'tap room' and one of the ditto heads comes in . . . well I have pretty good responses regardless of which beers and quantities I've consumed. So here is another example:

	Column 1
0	[th]time[th]posting
1	[tr][td2]14:12[td]denier posts nonsense about CO{2} and declares victory
2	[tr][td2]14:46[td]empiricist finds original article and posts facts and data
3	[tr][td2]14:40[td]cheer-leader posts speculation from the original post source
4	[tr][td2]14:42[td]cheer-leader posts disappointment about no traction for cutting budget area
5	[tr][td2]14:52[td]empiricist suggests cheer-leader should first fund their own education
6	[tr][td2]15:08[td]facts-man posts additional facts and data
7	[tr][td2]16:22[td]denier posts link to denier-librarian that the 14:12 source was nonsense

Now this may seem like "whack-a-mole" but I see it as how 'facts and data' make the best response. That empiricism, the facts and data, are readily at hand mean there was no need to ask "Mr. Google" or http://www.skepticalscience.org/ for a reply . . . we had the answers already in our general knowledge. And this readily available, common science knowledge, must be what drives deniers and their cheer-leaders to madness and sometimes meanness. But this exercise also serves another purpose.

We are approaching family holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years when we should meet with our inlaws and outlaws, our kin and friends. Sharing many of our genes, there no dinner that tastes better than those prepared by people with similar genetic material (funny how we love the same foods . . . mostly.) But science and engineering are cultural and take effort. Sad to say, some kin seek out inaccurate sources and as the conversations wander, denier nonsense may show up.

Now the best answer in a family gathering is to find something else to discuss. But if you care for them, see if you can get away from a 'public forum' and go over the facts and data. That does not mean you'll change their mind but at least it won't appear to be trying to start some pointless ego-based, argument that spoils everyone's holiday.

Bob Wilson

 

Fair enough. Sorry, Bob. Don't let my attitude spoil your fun.