Hair on fire

The International Energy Agency has issued its World Energy Outlook 2008. WEO 2008 stresses the necessity of controlling CO2 emissions. The number one conclusion of the report is that

Current energy trends are patently unsustainable - socially, environmentally and economically

The IEA has been introducing the report around the world. There is video of some of these (US, Sweden, Norway ) The bottom line is

Current energy trends are patently unsustainable —socially,
environmentally, economically

Rising global consumption of fossil fuels is still set to drive up greenhouse-gas emissions and global temperatures, resulting in potentially catastrophic and irreversible climate change. The projected rise in emissions in the Reference Scenario, in which no change in government policies is assumed, puts us on a course of doubling the concentration of those gases in the atmosphere to around 1000 parts per million of CO2-equivalent by the end of this century. This would lead to an eventual global temperature increase of up to 6°C.

Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6°C. WEO-2008 assesses the implications for the energy sector of efforts to put the world onto a different trajectory, by means of a 550 Policy Scenario, in which greenhouse gas concentration is stabilised at 550 ppm CO2-equivalent and temperature rises by about 3°C, and of a 450 Policy Scenario which results in a 2°C increase.

To avoid "abrupt and irreversible" climate change we need a major decarbonisation of the world’s energy system

Mitigating climate change will substantially improve energy security

The present economic worries do not excuse back-tracking or delays in taking action to address energy challenge

And oh yes, adaptation, new technology and mitigation are all needed right now. FWIW to meet the goal of 550 ppm requires an additional investment of $4.1 trillion over the no policy change scenario , but yields $7 trillion in reduced costs from increased efficiency. 450 ppm requires an additional investment $9.3 trillion in investment and claws back only $5.8 trillion in efficiency increases.

Comments?

So that's where the junk mail came from

Rabett readers are without doubt familiar with the Oregon Petition Project. As a matter of fact, Eli himself has been rumored to have written some about it. Greenfyre points to an article from eSkeptic by Gary J. Whittenberger which is worth reading for itself, but answers an interesting question about Arthur Robinson's provocation

....we must first examine how the petition itself was distributed and how signatures were collected. To a sample of persons on the mailing list of American Men and Women of Science,³ Robinson sent a petition packet consisting of a petition card, a return envelope, a cover letter from Seitz, and a 12-page review of the literature on the human-caused global warming hypothesis authored by the two Robinsons and Willie Soon.⁴

and

Arthur Robinson not only requested that recipients return the signed petition card, if they agreed with its assertions, but also arranged for the recipients to distribute petition packets to their colleagues. He also enabled other persons to obtain petition packets by simply requesting them through his website, and this procedure ultimately produced five percent of the returned petition cards. Thus, signed petitions were solicited in three different ways.

Robinson claims that

Signed petition cards were accepted only if they came from persons who had “obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields”.⁵

although there is clear reason to doubt that

Eli can now rest easy and let the bunnies discuss this further

Shoals of red herrings, or Eli goes on a snark hunt

Seeking inspiration and giggles, eli oft goes on a snark hunt looking for stuff to blog on. Mostly he has to swim through a sea of red herrings, painful mis-thinking, politics masquerading as science and your general collection of bad attitudes, not to mention classic paranoia. What the bunny has learned by reading Deltoid is that you have to stand on your head and live in Australia to get the quality stuff so he took the express INTERTUBE down there and discovered Australian Climate Madness where Simon from Sidney demonstrates that he was out of the room when they were talking about multiplication and division

The latest advert for the Toyota Prius claims that by driving one for 10 years or 100,000km, you can save 7.5 tonnes of CO2 as compared to a regular petrol-engined car.

Let's put that into perspective. If you drove a Prius for, say, 70,000 years, you would save the same amount of CO2 that a large coal-fired power station generates in a day.

Moral of the story: don't fool yourself into thinking that driving a butt-ugly hybrid car is anything but a feel-good gesture.

Having made an excellent point about closing that large coal-fired power station Simon, somehow neglected to mention that if the entire sea of gas guzzlers in Australia was replaced by hybrids (like multiply 7.5 tonnes by a few million) that would make a considerable difference.

Another way to get at that is to look at the emissions per person and Stoat's Friendly Wikipedia has the answer we need. Turns out that per capita, Australians belch ~18 tonnes CO2. Figuring that there is one car per 2 Aussies as an OOM guess, that means that replacing the family ark with a hybrid makes a ~25% difference.

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The Pielke fan club

Some new bunnies were wondering why Ethon and Eli are foundling members of the Pielke fan club. Dining at Prometheus we came upon this gem served up by the big liver hisself. Roger points to an interview in Der Spiegel (it's in English, and Eli rather suspects that the actual interview was also in English) of Shyam Saran, India’s climate treaty negotiator. RP not only quotes a small part of the interview but somehow, the honest broker forgets that your starting position is not the one you end up with. For Roger and friends the money quote is

the Prime Minister of India made a commitment that India’s per capita emissions will at no time exceed the average of the per capita emissions of developed, industrialized countries. We have thus accepted a limit on our emissions and at the same time provided an incentive to our partners in developed countries to be more ambitious. The more significant their reductions of emissions, the lower the limit we would need to accept for our own.

which is labelled as a hard line. Now you could take this as a hard line either way, e.g. we are not going to do anything, or a hard line the other way: you have to do some hard work too and we do also, but Roger is all about rushing the rubes. Readers of the interview and India's global climate change policy would recognize this. The whole interview should be read RTFR!! including

We have been able to deliver 8 to 9 percent economic growth with only a 3.7 percent increase in our energy consumption. It is our national goal to reduce, as quickly as possible, the use of fossil fuels per dollar of GDP by 25 percent.

and

There are still 400 to 500 million Indians who currently do not have access to commercial energy services. If their requirements could be met by solar power instead of carbon-based fuels, think of the contribution this would make in dealing with climate change.

concluding with

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Chancellor Merkel took Prime Minister Singh's suggestion and developed it further, suggesting that by 2050 every person on Earth should be allotted 2 tons of CO2 emissions. Is that realistic?

Saran: The science of climate change is still somewhat imprecise, and we need to conduct further studies to determine what a safe level of CO2 emissions we should be aiming at by 2050. But as a benchmark, Chancellor Merkel's proposition is certainly worth examining. To achieve this, very drastic emission reductions may be required among industrialized countries. For developing countries, their ability to undertake significant mitigation efforts would also require large financial and technological resource transfers. This is a tall order and is already under a cloud as a consequence of the global economic and financial crisis.

Comments?

Fafnir Giblets and the Medium Lobster are back

With their global warming update

"Maybe global warming won't be so bad after all," says me. "Like maybe Bangladesh'll like bein underwater. If you think about it havin your country flooded is kinda like spendin every day at the beach!

"Maybe it's a glass-half-full kinda thing," says Giblets. "Like scientists are always going on about how lots of people are gonna die from famine and disease. But you know what you never hear them talk about? How most of those people are complete strangers who probably suck."Go read.

You want more, go to Fafblog and leave your snark in one place.

Rhymes with Orange


There is nothing else available

How to mitigate adaptation

Ethon, has not been dining well owing to his usual hunting ground being abandoned by all except the very usual suspects whom everyone else has dispaired of dealing with. It is sad to see that a long thread now has 2, 3 maybe 6 posts. Having invented climate blogging, RPJr decided to ban anyone from the church who didn't hold with him. RP Sr went one better and banned everyone. When you tell folk that it is your way or the highway, well, Eli always did like Rte. 66. Ethon OTOH enjoys the tasty bile.

It's too bad, because especially Dave Bruggeman is writing interesting things and Roger knows what is going on. Eli disagrees with much of it, but still, civilized bunnies could take part in even intempered but amusing exchanges. Roger still is feeding his multiple jones, the IPCC, air capture, and adaptation ueber alles. It is to the last that we point as a springboard to the UNEP survey mentioned immediately below. About a week ago (yes Ethon instant messages Eli often about what is happening on the Front Range) RPJr put up a post entitled Adaptation is now cool says ipcc authors which crows about how Michael D. Mastrandrea and Stephen H. Schneider wrote in the Boston Review that

Mitigation, however, will not suffice. Even with aggressive global efforts to reduce emissions, the Earth’s climate will continue to change significantly for many decades because of the magnitude of past emissions and the inertia of social and physical systems. Of course, many uncertainties remain about how best to reduce emissions and how the climate system will respond. But we can now say with confidence that rapid climate change and its impacts are at hand. As a result, we face immediate choices about how to temper its worst consequences for vulnerable populations and regions.

Alongside mitigation, then, we also need policies focused on adaptation, on making sensible adjustments in the face of unavoidable changes.

Roger brags on trumpeting adaptation from the year dot without the self-awareness that his trumpeting contributed substantially to the urgent need for adaptation that Mastrandrea and Schneider now find. RPJr is the patricide who pleads for mercy as an orphan.

One of the most interesting questions in the UNEP survey (ah, the Rabett follows wondering paths, but he does get there sometimes) was what percentage of resources should be put into mitigation or adaptation

____% Mitigation
____% Adaptation

Eli's answer is below, what is yours?

60% Mitigation
40% Adaptation

Ten years ago, Eli's answer was

120 % mitigation and
-20% adaptation,

because there was so much low hanging fruit around in increasing efficiency, helping China, India and the rest of the under-developed world industiralize that we could have gotten a net benefit from the process.

The world has simply spent 30 years doing nothing or worse than nothing and damage from climate change which is inevitable now, but not then requires adaptation.

Freeping** the survey

Well my fellow lagomorpi, the climate freepers are at it again. The United Nations Environmental Program has thrown a survey on what to do about climate change out there

Few dispute that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the planet.

unfortunately the few have computers, net access and public affairs offices.

Decisions made over the next few years will shape the world's response to climate change through mitigation measures, adaptive preparations, etc. You are among the many professionals that will determine what that response will be. Your views on which approaches to climate change will succeed and what key barriers are most slowing progress are important and must be widely heard.

with the silly expectation that it will not be hijacked, and indeed, the climate freepers are at it again. However, as experience has shown, once this sort of thing is broadcast out of the ghetto of denial, the results disappoint the unenvironmental.

We would encourage you to take 20 minutes of your valuable time to participate in this survey by following the link. The results will influence decision making at all levels, not least of all at the Poznan Conference of the Parties in December where the results will be presented to the global community. GlobeScan will also send you your own report of survey results in appreciation for your contribution.

The survey is pretty good, concentrating on what should be done to deal with the problem of climate change caused by humans. More on that soon. They try and separate the pikas from the hares by asking about qualifications at the end. Eli would put out good carrots to see how the Monckton answers those questions (no check box for found my Nobel Prize in a box of Wheaties) or those other noted IPCC expert reviewers Vincent Grey and Richard Courtney

This is serious stuff, Eli would not encourage anyone to cheat as the late Dad Rabett, put it, by voting early, voting often but the Bunny would strongly suggest voting, especially for those who have a clue.

Freeping: **"Attention all believers in the sanctity of baby peas. There is a poll on a babypeasaredelicious.com. Go there and vote that every baby pea is sacred and should be saved, even those that are frozen and will never be planted in the ground"

Comments?

Calling Jim Hansen

Sometimes half a loaf is all you get. The EPA Appeals Board has just issued a ruling on the application of the Deseret Power Electric Cooperative to construct a coal powered plant. A permit issued by the U.S. EPA Region 8 had been challenged by the Sierra Club on the grounds, well on a lot of grounds, but principally in Massachusetts vs EPA the Supreme Court had agreed that CO2 was an air pollutant and that therefore the EPA had to set limits on its emissions under the Clean Air Act.

See if you can spot the thorn in the Appeals Board Ruling:

Although the Supreme Court determined that greenhouse gases, such as CO2 , are “air pollutants” under the CAA, the Massachusetts decision did not address whether CO2 is a pollutant “subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act. Massachusetts v. EPA. The Region maintains that it does not now have the authority to impose a CO2 BACT limit because “EPA has historically interpreted the term ‘subject to regulation under the Act’ to describe pollutants that are presently subject to a statutory or regulatory provision that requires actual control of emissions of that pollutant.” We hold that this conclusion is clearly erroneous because the Region’s permitting authority is not constrained in this manner by an authoritative historical Agency interpretation.

By our holding today, we do not conclude that the CAA (or an historical Agency interpretation) requires the Region to impose a CO2 BACT limit. Instead, we conclude that the record does not support the Region’s proffered reason for not imposing a CO2 BACT limit – that although EPA initially could have interpreted the CAA to require a CO2 BACT limit, the Region no longer can do so because of an historical Agency interpretation. Accordingly, we remand the Permit to the Region for it to reconsider whether or not to impose a CO2 BACT limit and to
develop an adequate record for its decision.

Given that EPA will be under new management a lot before this record is developed and that a record must developed to support any ruling, look forward to a fun fest. BTW this is happening in Bonanza, Utah.

Nil nisi

Speak no ill of the dead is wise advice, so Eli is removing the newly dead Michael Crichton from the Wall of Shame. Crichton himself was not very considerate of others, esp. those who disagreed with him.

Comments?

The old man and the warming ocean

One of the bunnies in the comments, pointed Eli to a posting by Josh Willis of JPL (and the ARGO floats) which provides as good an explanation of variability as the Rabett has seen. Go read it:

My wife likes to gamble. She’s no high roller or anything, but give her a hundred dollars, a spare weekend and a room full of slot machines and she’s happy.

Not me, though. Somewhere along the way, I guess I took one too many math classes and betting against the house just isn’t much fun anymore.
But I understand why she likes it. It’s the ups and downs of gambling that are fun. You lose, lose, lose and then every once in a while you win a great big jackpot. Maybe you even win enough to make up for the last 30 or 40 bets you lost. But like any game in the casino, the odds are stacked against you. If you play long enough, you will eventually lose.
Global warming and climate change work in much the same way. Wait long enough and odds are, the Earth will be warmer. But will tomorrow be warmer than today? Who knows! There are plenty of things about the atmosphere and ocean that can’t be predicted. Over a period of days or weeks, we call these unpredictable changes “the weather.”

but the real fun is in the comments, where RPSr drops by to beat his drum

I am puzzled by your weblog, and have weblogged on it. You are ignoring the value of heat in Joules (not surface temperature) as the primary global warming metric, despite your pioneering research using heat content change in Joules in the upper ocean to diagnose the radiative imbalance of the climate system..

Willis' answer is classic

True, ocean heat content is the better metric for global warming, and the past few years of no warming are interesting. But tacked on to the 50-year-record of ocean warming before that, the last four years pretty much ARE just a wiggle. And yes, the estimates of global surface temperature do have errors and uncertainties. But the record of sea surface temperature also shows about 1 degree C of warming over the last 100 years. Remember, the oceans are 2/3 of the Earth’s surface and that record has fewer problems than the temperature data over land. Between the long-term records of ocean heat content, land and ocean surface warming, global sea level rise (about 20 cm over the last 100 years) and the increase in atmospheric CO2, you get a pretty simple, consistent picture of man-made warming. No models required.
Of course, the data are not perfect. Our understanding and our climate models are missing important pieces of the puzzle. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. You don’t have to count every tree around before you realize you’re in the woods, just like a casino doesn’t have to win every bet to turn a profit.
Despite all the uncertainties, I think it is pretty clear that humans have already warmed the planet. And if we continue to add more CO2 to the atmosphere, we will warm it even further.

Very much in the tradition of if we had such measurements we would use them, but we don't so why are you asking for them.

UPDATE: The readers remind Eli to point them to the earth observatory article explaining how the interplay of measurement and models strengthen each other and allow a better understanding of oceanic warming and sea level rise.

Fill the comments young hares.

Bill Proxmire Special

It turns out that if you want to capture a denialist's heart give them a warm cup o tea. We know this because Williams and Bargh have published "Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth" in Science.

We hypothesized that experiences of physical warmth (or coldness) would increase feelings of interpersonal warmth (or coldness), without the person's awareness of this influence. In study 1, participants who briefly held a cup of hot (versus iced) coffee judged a target person as having a "warmer" personality (generous, caring); in study 2, participants holding a hot (versus cold) therapeutic pad were more likely to choose a gift for a friend instead of for themselves.

Eli suggests some 15 year old Ledaig (guess who the denialist is) to confuse em. Beinn A' Cheo is much too good to waste.

Word from the Middle Kingdom

Wen Jiaboa is the Premier of China, and a geologist. Unlike the geologists of our acquaintance, Jiaboa knows which end is up. Down deNile the wingnuts are always asking for China to go first. Science recently published an interview with Wen which has a great deal of interesting information about how China responded to the Sichuan earthquake, the tainted milk scandal and more. Of interest to readers of this blog is his (and thus China's) position on global climate change and energy

China is a main energy consumer and, therefore, is also a big greenhouse gas emitter. We must use energy resources rationally and must conserve. This needs us to adjust our economic structure, transform the mode of development, to make economic development more dependent on progress of science and technology and the quality of the work force.

We need to take strong measures, including economic, legal, and administrative measures when necessary, to restrict high energy consuming and heavily polluting enterprises and encourage the development of energy conserving and environmentally friendly enterprises.

Now every year, China produces about 180 million tons of crude oil and imports about 170 million tons. China's coal production exceeds 2.5 billion tons a year. This kind of huge consumption of energy, especially nonrenewable fossil fuel, will not be sustainable.

We have established a goal that our GDP [gross domestic product] growth every year must be accompanied by a 4% decrease in energy consumption and a 2% reduction in COD [chemical oxygen demand] and sulfur dioxide emissions every year. We will also adopt various measures to reduce the use of oil and coal in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, including energy-conserving technologies and carbon-capture technologies.

We have only been industrializing for several decades, while developed countries have been on this road for over 200 years. But we will now begin to shoulder our due responsibilities, namely, the common but differentiated responsibilities set forth in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.

There was a confirming editorial statement in the next issue

I firmly believe that science is the ultimate revolution. At a time when the current global financial turmoil is dealing a heavy blow to the world economy, it has become all the more important to rely on scientific and technological progress to promote growth in the real economy. Economic and social development must rely on science and technology, and science and technology must serve economic and social development. We will rely on science and technology to promote economic restructuring, transform development patterns, safeguard food and energy security, and address global climate change. We are confident that China will reap a rich harvest in science and technology and that this will have positive and far-reaching effects on human civilization and the well-being of humankind.

Comments below

First use of the f__ word on Rabett Run

From Newsweek

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

As Atrios said, you gotta kinda like the guy

Have at it in the comments

What works

“With reactionaries, never argue on content or with logic. The only thing that works is to make them feel really, really bad and really, really stupid.”

On first read, the perceptive John Fleck stuck Rabett Run into his meta science category which gets too close for comfort. After playing in the USENET sandbox for a number of years, Eli realized that the denialists were very heavy into nasty and straight ahead, determined to throw so much filth that everyone went away to avoid having to shower constantly. Of course this continued in the blog world, just read the comments at Jen's place.

However, the increased reach of blogs and the ability for the bloggers to control content and monitor comments produced another style. The Bunny saw folk manipulating the system to their own personal glory and influence in ways that could only lead to distructive policies. Besides concern trolling, a number of long established strategies from the policy and scientific communities were being deployed. Blogwhoring is not so far from self-citation. To figure out what was happening you had to have some familiarity with both sides and many readers were not quite aware of what was going on but Eli is an old bunny, a veteran of many faculty meetings and conferences and an observer and listener by nature if you can get a word in edgewise.

Rabett Run was started to meet this challenge and the first thing was to find a tone that met that challenge. Michael Berube talks about this in a posting today on Barack Obama's response to attacks:

The curious thing is that Obama has been firing back, pretty consistently, without cursing like a blogger—and without quite “coming out swinging,” either. He’s introduced an entirely new discursive mode to the world of Democratic presidential politics, and I should have recognized it much earlier, because it’s the mode this humble blog has adopted in all its exchanges with David Horowitz: the mode of derisive mockery. (This has, indeed, given some of my colleagues the vapors—such as the guy who told me he doesn’t think mockery is ever appropriate in public discourse. He doesn’t teach at Penn State, though. He teaches at the Institute for Earnest Leftism.)

This is a standard that Eli tries to reach, and sometimes gets close to (IEHO) but often fails. As Berube recognizes,

But unlike my responses to Horowitz, Obama’s mockery hasn’t been over the top; it’s been dismissive but calm, cool, collected, as when Obama replied to McCain’s charge that he is a radical socialist by surmising that McCain’s next move would be to attack him for being a “secret communist” on the grounds that he shared his toys in kindergarten.

further (after a drive by on Darth Cheney)

So no, Obama doesn’t curse like a blogger. But he has brought some serious snark to the campaign trail, for maybe the first time ever in the history of everything ever........ Obama’s fighting back, all right, but in ways no Democratic candidate has even attempted before. He’s not post-partisan, and he’s not Olbermanian either. He merely treats McCain’s attacks with the contempt they deserve, but lightly; and while he performs stability, he also manages to perform seriousness and snarkiness all at once. It’s not easy. But he’s really, really good at it.

ethereal lightness in this business is everything. Sometimes Rabett Run achieves it, it is our goal, but meat axes are sometimes the only tool available. Besides which the Rabett Rest Farm does not have $700,000,000 to support our editing staff, which is your fault for not donating.

There is nothing more to say, let loose in the comments

We are honored

Cohenite has published his list of the ten worst blog posts of all times. It was a tough competition folks and Hanson's Bulldog, aka Tamino won first place for calling out Joe D'Aleo's graphology. However, your humble hare followed closely in second and took a fourth for his work (OK T took third also but that was really for a post by McIntyre) Tim Lambert was reduced to a pitiful sixth and eighth. It's a tough business climate blogging and Real Climate didn't even make the top ten

On behalf of the Rabett Run team, Eli is honored to accept this second place award which shall be proudly displayed.

More praise in the comments.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - R. Feynman

Some time ago, Eli put up a comment about Number 6 of the Cohenite 10 in which Ferenc Miskolczi visits the haunted house of bad assumptions and math manglement to reach the promised land of never mind about climate change. It's enough to drive a bunny to drink (picture from kansaspraire.net). You could, if you were a masochist, follow the tracks at Niche Modeling or at Climate Audit, and a very long trail it is, but the current state of play was pretty well put by Alex Harvey

Alright, you’ve been absent from this debate because, as you stated publicly months ago, you lost interest in it. That’s fine, welcome back. But since then, it has been made quite clear that Miskolczi’s theory was, in the first instance, an empirical discovery. The mathematical theory of M2007 that you are objecting to here was adduced “after the fact” to explain a series of well-documented empirical observations, as Ferenc has made quite clear earlier in this thread.

All praise to Nick Stokes and Pat Classen who put considerable work into tearing the Miskolczi hocus mathepocus apart (look into their comments on the various threads). So now this waste of electrons is reduced to the claim that the optical depth of the atmosphere is held constant at 1.87 by compensating variations in the water vapor column density in the atmosphere. Well, at least for the Earth's atmosphere right now that is the value, but is it fixed and if it is what is the mechanism?

We know that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is rising which would increase the optical depth. The only way that the optical depth could then decrease is for the water vapor column density to decrease. Measurements show that the surface is warming. Since warmer temperatures will result in higher water vapor pressure, the only way that total water vapor would decrease would be for the excess water to rain out quickly. Although there is some data on water vapor column density from way back when, it is not of the highest quality, and the further back you go, the worse it gets. Is there another way to get at this?

Why yes young fella, if you had the right satellite instruments you could look at the water vapor concentration as a function of temperature on the surface over a relatively small area. And guess what we have the right satellite instrument, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Andrew Dessler and friends have used data from this instrument in a paper currently appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research, and as you would expect if you were not Ferenc Miskolczi, the column density of water vapor increases as the surface temperature below increases.
The numbers refer to the water vapor content of the air at different levels in g water/kg air. Ts is the sea surface temperature below the satellite. As a sweetner, Dessler, et al., show that the compositional observations of AIRS can be used to calculate the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) from the earth and that those results match observations of OLR from another satellite instrument (CERES). Another study is described below


A complimentary paper published by Soden, Jackson, Ramaswamy, Schwarzkopf, and Huang in 2005 (sorry, it's behind a paywall) covers the same ground, showing that the column water vapor has been increasing and, as importantly showing that a GCM can match the observations. That alone is enough to cocked hat Miskolczi but as importantly Soden, et al., provide a concise and clear explanation of what the actual issues involved in studying water vapor concentrations are. In particular, while the increase of vapor pressure with temperature drives the water vapor pressure low in the atmosphere, and this dominates, the middle and upper troposphere are different cases

When forced with observed SSTs, this model successfully reproduces the observed column-integrated moistening changes over this period (Fig. 1). However, because the mass of water vapor decreases rapidly with height, the column integral is primarily weighted by the lower troposphere, and its largely thermodynamic behavior is unsurprising (21). Consequently, there is not much debate about the projected increase of column-integrated water vapor in response to global warming, and its agreement with models provides only limited reassurance in their simulation of water vapor feedback (9).

In contrast, water vapor in the free troposphere is not so directly constrained by thermodynamic arguments (21), and its response to global warming has been the subject of long-standing controversy (9, 15–17). Given the radiative importance of moisture changes in the upper troposphere (9, 10), it is important that humidity changes there are demonstrably consistent between models and observations. Although an international network of weather balloons has carried water vapor sensors for more than half a century, changes in instrumentation and poor calibration make such sensors unsuitable for detecting trends in upper tropospheric water vapor (27). Similarly, global reanalysis products also suffer from spurious variability and trends related to changes in data quality and data coverage (24).

which tells you to be wary of the global reanalysis product and if you follow the reference it will tell you why to be wary. The study shows that not only is relative humidity in the upper troposphere remaining roughly constant and the actual humidity increasing as the air warms, but the change is captured by GCMs

Climate models predict that the concentration of water vapor in the upper troposphere could double by the end of the century as a result of increases in greenhouse gases. Such moistening plays a key role in amplifying the rate at which the climate warms in response to anthropogenic activities, but has been difficult to detect because of deficiencies in conventional observing systems. We use satellite measurements to highlight a distinct radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening over the period 1982 to 2004. The observed moistening is accurately captured by climate model simulations and lends further credence to model projections of future global warming.

Nature bites man

In a unique editorial, Nature has endorsed Barack Obama. They have some complimentary things to say about John McCain but when the rubber hits the road

"Some will find strengths in McCain that they value more highly than the commitment to reasoned assessment that appeals in Obama. But all the signs are that the former seeks a narrower range of advice. Equally worrying is that he fails to educate himself on crucial matters; the attitude he has taken to economic policy over many years is at issue here. Either as a result of poor advice, or of advice inadequately considered, he frequently makes decisions that seem capricious or erratic. The most notable of these is his ill-considered choice of Sarah Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, as running mate. Palin lacks the experience, and any outward sign of the capacity, to face the rigours of the presidency.

The Oval Office is not a debating chamber, nor is it a faculty club. As anyone in academia will know, a thoughtful and professorial air is not in itself a recommendation for executive power. But a commitment to seeking good advice and taking seriously the findings of disinterested enquiry seems an attractive attribute for a chief executive. It certainly matters more than any specific pledge to fund some particular agency or initiative at a certain level — pledges of a sort now largely rendered moot by the unpredictable flux of the economy.

This journal does not have a vote, and does not claim any particular standing from which to instruct those who do. But if it did, it would cast its vote for Barack Obama.

Usually the bunny keeps politics out of the blog, but this is where policy meets the road. You can read Obama's and McCain's answers (well actually their advisors answers) to science policy questions. Popular Mechanics has a nice matrix of the policy positions of the candidates including those who dropped out of the primaries. You can find some of Biden's positions there and compare the primary season answers of the candidates to the election positions. Palin asked for a make-up.

UPDATE: Science reports on a debate between Daniel Kammen and representing Barack Obama and Kurt Yeager representing John McCain. Among the topics,

Cap and Trade Programs for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Both candidates reject a federal tax on carbon emissions of the sort that was advocated by former Vice President Al Gore. Both Yeager and Kammen said that the candidates see a cap and trade regime as being stronger and more sensitive in its ability to control carbon emissions.

Generally, a cap-and-trade program sets limits for greenhouse gas emissions. The government would sell the permits or give them away; utilities and industries that emit the gasses could buy them and sell them. Over time, fewer permits would be available, and the cost presumably would be higher. That would help reduce overall emissions.

Both campaigns have staked out their objectives: Obama would auction the permits to reduce carbon emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. McCain's goal is a 60% reduction by 2050.

At the Stanford debate, Kammen said auctioning the permits would essentially set a price for polluting, and that proceeds could be used for a variety of purposes, including efforts to promote green development and green jobs in low-income urban and rural areas. He was critical of McCain's program, joining other analysts who have found that it would initially give some of the permits away. That approach that has been questioned by some critics who say that creates insufficient incentive for polluters to stop polluting.

Yeager insisted that McCain's plan would not give away permits. It would set firm objectives in five-year increments and hold polluters accountable for meeting them. That would be effective without bankrupting private industry, he said. A cap-and-trade regime has to be a "sustainable strategy that gets beyond the enthusiasm of the moment" so that it can endure long-term, he added.

Read the comments. . .

Believing ten impossible things before breakfast

Eli, the evil bunny has been busy sowing derision on some denialist sites, in a most polite way of course. Among other revelations is that the white queen had nothing on your average denialist

Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said `one ca'n't believe impossible things.'
`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Denialism is reduced to throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping that something sticks which leads to claiming that every one of a set of mutually contradictory papers are just wonderful. This came out again recently (at least when the Rabett was in attendance) in comments Open Mind. Down towards the bottom of the thread Ray Ladbury started it with

Dave A., Don’t be daft. Of course I form my own opinion of research in my field. I read the paper. I do the math. I look for consistency and how it fits into the context of previous research.

Eli agreed

Now the hooty thing about denialists is that they believe three impossible and mutually contradictory things before breakfast. Look at the nonsense that they simultaneously accept. They don’t care as long as it casts doubt on our understanding of climate.

and Gavin's Pussycat added

Many non-scientists have no clear idea of how highly rated redundancy is in science. You don’t really believe anything seriously before it has come from several independent sources. And those sources themselves are often internally redundant, like surface temperatures, monthly averaged, correlate over long distances.
Same with replication: I can replicate with the best of them someone else’s coding errors by running their code. Independent replication, by different people, using their own code and methods, on different data (if you can get it) proves something.

and Barton gave an example from virtual life

I can testify from personal experience that that’s true. I’m in a long running dialogue over on landshape.org where people are defending Miskolczi’s crackpot paper. One of them insists that the surface temperature of the Earth being higher than the radiative equilibrium temperature is caused by “stored energy,” not by the greenhouse effect. I pointed out that this would mean he’s disagreeing with Miskolczi, who at least believes there’s a greenhouse effect. Nothing doing. He says he didn’t see any conflict, and neither Miskolczi, who is also present on the thread, nor any of his supporters, was willing to correct this guy. “No enemies on the left.”

Eli has been pointing this out for a while now, and the reaction has been, welll......amusing

Eli you ought to hang your head in shame and embarrassment as a result of quoting the deplorable Krugman on economic matters.
And by the way the nonsense you spouted about the superiority of mitigation was a crock of shit proving that if you know so little about economics you shouldn’t be talking about AGW as your judgment on any matter should not be trusted.
The sheer nonsense was deplorable. here:
http://alsblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/rabbets-and-carrots-without-the-stick/
As usual you peddle off at 50 MHP and won’t answer to all that stupidity you wrote.
We need an apology for your stupidity, Eli. Nothing less will do.

Of course we made sure that Krugman would win the Eco Nobel before replying, but what do you expect, the sucker can't spell Rabett either. The source of this exchange was cohenite playing Dave Letterman on Jen's rent a blog

The point here is not to show that cohenite's heart throbs are trash, you can read that elsewhere, but to point out that they contradict each other. You might believe one or two, but all ten at once is very red queen territory. The envelope please:

1. Steve McIntyre’s Ohio State University Address; How do we “know” that 1998 was the warmest year of the millennium? (May 16, 2008). http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohio.pdf. This is a seminal paper which synthesizes all the errors and obfuscations to do with the Hockey Stick. It also demonstrates McIntyre’s methodical, scientific and unadorned approach to the issue.

2. Craig Loehle’s paper; A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies, Energy & Environment 18(7-8): 1049-1058. 2007 http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025 This paper was important because it was a counterpoise to Mann’s tree-ring data and provided good support for the Medieval Warming Period, a major obstacle to AGW.

3. Douglass, Christy et al; this is the first of the GCM critiques; A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology, 2007 http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3058
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions?page=6 .
This paper really touched a nerve and the level of hostility leveled at it was astounding; it mostly boiled down to nit-picking about Raobcore data and whether a falsification was distinct from a bias. The second link is to an addendum to the paper; comments 69-74 are entertaining.

4.Koutsoyiannis et al; http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/850 Assessment of the reliability of climate predictions based on comparisons with historical time series. Geophysical Research Abstracts, 2008. This link is to the first presentation. This was a crucial paper; it covered the 18 year predictive history of the GCM’s on a regional basis; regionalism is the Achilles Heel of AGW.

5.Stockwell; http://landshape.org/stats/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/article.pdf Tests of Regional Climate Model Validity in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report. 2008 This paper did the job on CSIRO and demonstrated the political imput into the AGW science.

6. Misckolczi; Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary Atmospheres. Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, Vol. 111, No. 1, January–March 2007, pp. 1–40.http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf This is my favourite. It has everything; the dead hand of AGW censorship, and the demolition of the AGW’s semi-infinite opaque layered atmosphere. People have quibbled about the Kirchhoff equations but Miskolczian –ve feedbacks have been established.

7. Essex, McKitrick, Andresen; Does a Global Temperature Exist? Journal of Non-EquilibriumThermodynamics, 32 (1) 1-27.http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/JNETDY.2007.001?cookieSet=1 The fallacy of a global average temperature was taken to task in this paper, and, again, the reaction was hostile. This paper wittily compared averaging temperature to averaging the phone book; an important addition to the regionalism lexicon.

8. Spencer and Braswell; Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A simple Model Demonstration, Journal of Climate. http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008JCLI2253.1 No list would be complete without Mr Cloud and –ve feedback. As well, Spencer has been a bastion of reliable temperature data. This was still a close call. Minschwaner and Dessler’s paper on RH decline as a response to increasing CO2 is a crucial paper, conforming to Miskolczi’s feedbacks.

9. Chilingar; Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO₂ Emission, Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects. Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2008 , pages 1 - 9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567030701568727 An important paper about convective heat transfer which relegates CO2 radiative heating to its proper subordinate position; and incorporates atmospheric pressure as a heating factor. Thanks to Louis for alerting me to the paper. An honourable mention to the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper on the fallacy of the greenhouse concept and a host of other errors AGW science makes.

10. Pielke Sr et al; Unresolved issues with the assessment of multidecadal global land surface temperature trends. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 112. 2007. http://climatesci.colorado.edu/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf
An elegant paper which uses Stefan-Boltzman to support regionalism and show that the notion of a radiative imbalance is defeated by regional temperature based energy differentials. Somewhat superfluous since AR4, FIG 1 shows no global radiative imbalance.

Eli torched this off by pointing out that Miskolczi and Chillingar are not even on the same planet. The former does some theoretical hocus pocus on radiative equilibrium in the atmosphere, the later claims that radiation plays only a small role and that almost all heat transport in the atmosphere takes place by convection.

Essex et al. claim that there is no meaningful global (or by the same arguments regional) temperature while almost all of the others calculate such metrics. Some of the papers claim there is no greenhouse effect, others claim there is a little bit, still others claim there is a greenhouse effect but it cannot increase (Miskolczi), and so on.

NT summed it up

You have missed the point. On this post(by Cohenite) he has used contradictory science to demonstrate that AGW is not real. You cannot use one paper to falsify one aspect, and then another paper to falsify another, when the two papers are mutually exclusive.

He attempted to show that the Greenhouse effect is negligable. He posted a paper he said showed why (Minschwaner), it contradicts earlier an earlier paper he posted (Miskolczi). one claims there is a greenhouse effect due to greenhouse gases, tthe other claims it is due to optical depth. You can’t have it both ways.

Skeptics use a scatter shot approach, using one kind of physics to ‘disprove’ one aspect and an opposing kind of physics to ‘disprove’ another. You need to have an internally consistent argument.

and SJT disagreed

“Skeptics use a scatter shot approach, using one kind of physics to ‘disprove’ one aspect and an opposing kind of physics to ‘disprove’ another. You need to have an internally consistent argument.”
As Jen's site demonstrates so well, you don’t need anything of the sort.

UPDATE: Michael Tobis has found the right words, the incoherence of denialism

No No Nierenberg or the wabid wabbit attacks

Here begins a new chapter for the William Nierenberg Book Club. If you have not been paying attention, places to catch up include Stoat, Stoat, Stoat, Atmoz, Nierenberg Central, and yr. humble hare here, here and especially here for the background to this post.

To make a long and a short of it, William Nierenberg was a founder of the George Marshall Institution with Robert Jastrow and Fred Seitz, president of the Scripps Institute, a member of the National Academy, etc. He is not especially a favorite of Naomi Oreskes, who has assigned him considerable responsibility for blocking early action on climate change (read the links damn it!!).

While those other characters have been looking at Jason and NAS reports (read the links damn it), Eli has acquired at considerable cost ($0.41 + postage) a copy of Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem, by Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg and Fredrick Seitz (nice to see that they followed the mathematicians practice for author lists) published by the Marshall Institute in 1990.

The first 61 pages are by the JNS team, and Eli assumes for convenience that perhaps with some small changes, they are the same as the manuscript circulating in 1991 which was described by Jerry Mahlman as "noisy junk".

The book is being read by the bunny book club but Eli thought he would give you a taste of the thing starting with Figure 1.

Fig. 1 Comparison between observed global average temperature and calculations by Hansen, et al. (2) based on a computer simulations of the greenhouse effect. the dashed line indicates the calculated temperature increase caused by carbon dioxide increases since 1880. The solid line indicates the observed temperatures for the same period. The zero point in the calculated curve has been adjusted to agree with observations for the 1880s, since nearly all the anthropogenic greenhouse warming occurred subsequent to that time. both curves show a 0.5 C rise over the 100 year interval, However, the observed temperatures, unlike the calculations, show a rapid rise in the first 50 years followed by a decrease from 1940-1970.

Young and innocent readers, let us see why this is a fitting entry into the 1990 Golden Horseshoe Award.

Of course, Eli will not be able to find all the goodies and welcomes participation. Now the first thing you ask, (and it is but a small thing as pointed out in the comments but indicative-added) this book was published in 1990, why does the x-axis end about 1983 (a relatively cool year. Why glad you asked, the temperature went up from there as you can see in the figure from global warming art opposite. Further

The zero point in the calculated curve has been adjusted to agree with observations for the 1880s, since nearly all the anthropogenic greenhouse warming occurred subsequent

So JNS increased the calculated effect of CO2, assigning all of the change in global temperature since 1880 to increases in CO2 concentration. Eli wonders, is that what Hansen, et al (2) did? Well no, but glad you asked so let us look at Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by J. Hansen, D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind and G. Russell. 28 August 1981, Volume 213, Number 4511

Summary. The global temperature rose by 0.2 °C between the middle 1960's and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4°C in the past century. This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980's. Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.

The NW Passage has indeed opened in the last two years, but didn't you get the idea from Bob, Bill and Fred that Jim and his buddies assigned all the the change since 1880 to CO2? Guess again, what Hansen et al. actually tried to do was to constrain the climate sensitivity and changes in the solar constant to obtain the best fit to observations This WAS published in 1981 and the models were considerably less sophisticated, almost as unsophisticated as the denialists claim now.

Radiative forcing by CO2 plus volcanoes and forcing by CO2 plus volcanoes plus the sun both yield a temperature trend with a strong similarity to the observed trend of the past century (Fig. 5), which we quantify below. If only the heat capacity of the mixed layer is included, the amplitude of the computed temperature variations is larger than observed. However, mixing of heat into the deeper ocean with k = 1 cm2 sec-1 brings both calculated trends into rough agreement with observations.

The main uncertainties in the climate model-that is, its "tuning knobs"-are (i) the equilibrium sensitivity and (ii) the rate of heat exchange with the ocean beneath the mixed layer. The general correlation of radiative forcings with global temperatures suggests that model uncertainties be constrained by requiring agreement with the observed temperature trend. Therefore, we examined a range of model sensitivities, choosing a diffusion coefficient for each to minimize the residual variance between computed and observed temperature trends. Equilibrium sensitivities of 1.4°, 2.80, and 5.6°C required k = 0, 1.2, and 2.2 cm2 sec-1, respectively. All models with sensitivities of 1.4° to 5.6°C provide a good fit to the observations. The smallest acceptable sensitivity is - 1.4°C, because it requires zero heat exchange with the deeper ocean. Sensitivities much higher than 5.60C would require greater heat exchange with the deep ocean than is believed to be realistic (21, 22). Radiative forcing by CO2 plus volcanoes accounts for 75 percent of the variance in the 5-year smoothed global temperature, with correlation coefficient 0.9.

and they get a pretty fair agreement. They go on to discuss

The predicted CO2 warming rises out of the lσ noise level in the 1980's and the 2σ level in the 1990's (Fig. 7). . . Nominal confidence in the CO2 theory will reach - 85 percent when the temperature rises through the lσ level and - 98 percent when it exceeds 2σ. However, a portion of a may be accounted for in the future from accurate knowledge of some radiative forcings and more precise knowledge of global temperature. We conclude that CO2 warming should rise above the noise level of natural climate variability in this century.

Is that a slinky little beast raising his hand in the audience? Well what say you: "Look Hansen, et al. only went out to 1980, just like Jastrow, Nierenberg and Seitz. Well sadly no. JNS went to 1982-3, just when the cooling trend from the El Chichon eruption kicked in and they published in 1990. Hansen, et al. published in 1981. Somehow the Marshall gang managed to avoid almost a decades worth of improvements in the models since 1981.

Will someone please reassert Eli's faith in the innocent as melting snow Bill Nierenberg.