Virtual Water

Export and import flows of water are inherent in the trade of food, since ag requires on average 85% of the freshwater supplies in a country.  An article by J. Carr, P. D'Odorico, F. Laio, L. Ridolfi, and D. Seekell in EOS has a stunning illustration of this

The green and yellow dots show the growth (green) and decrease (yellow) of exports/imports.  The analysis is more difficult because trade in food is itself ephemeral depending on local harvest conditions, which as Judy Dearest, would say, is naturally variable (except, of course when it is not).  Having said that some interesting points from the article are that only a few countries dominate the export market, The US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia, but the last has shown little change in the past twenty years.

Surprising to Eli was that the US exports virtual water (ie. food) to Mexico on net, and that the FSU is such a strong importer.  Less surprising is to see how China has become dependent on imports from Brazil, and not surprising at all is that money talks if you are going to need to import virtual water.

Why move icebergs around when you can transport ice cream?

Descent Into the Sambaworld

Many bunnies have Monday off

Raymond on Ryan and Romney

Raymond Pierrehumbert scores the top slot on Slate over Paul Ryan's climate denialism and general simplistic view on climate and the environment.  A great read in general but I'll focus on this:

One of the little fantasies that many of us progressives use to fend off the nightmare of a Romney win in November is the idea that he has flip-flopped so much on his way to a presidential candidacy that maybe once in office he'd flop back to the old Romney and give us a Nixon-in-China moment on climate change. There may have been fat chance of that, but with the choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate, even that illusory comfort is denied to us.

Yep.  I didn't really have that fantasy for a President Romney, but we have seen a small number of Republicans who started acknowledging climate reality once they're away from office.  A defeated candidate Romney, I thought, might make the switch.  I still wouldn't rule it out sometime for him, but it will take years.

The one I've wondered about is whether a President McCain would've done what candidate McCain promised.  While it wasn't as good as Obama's cap-and-trade, it would be better than what we've got.  OTOH we've already run a movie version of that with candidate Bush in 2000 promising to regulate CO2 as a pollutant if elected.

We'll never find out what McCain really would've done, but the contrast in this election could hardly be clearer.  One party has done something, if not enough, and the other is disastrous.

Still, we will have to have either a change to weaken the Senate filibuster, a climate disaster, or some sitting Republican senators willing to do the right thing before we can get a real national climate policy.  It won't be easy.

Monckton Will Help

Good while it lasts. Tip o the ears to the Rib Smoking Bunny

Someone Noticed

Eli got this Email from Bill Foster, who is a former Democratic Representative from Illinois, running again and looking for support

One of the most difficult challenges for a scientist serving in the U.S. Congress is responding gracefully to the torrent of illogical and counterfactual arguments from the right wing message machine.

During my three years as a scientist in Congress, I had the pleasure of dealing with “Death Panel” attacks on health care reform, debates over the origin of herbicide-resistant weeds with Congressmen who did not accept evolution, and pronouncements by a right-wing colleague in Congress who believes the GPS system to be a shining example of the triumph of private enterprise.

Still, a new standard for ignorance seems to have been set by my former colleague Todd Akin, U.S. Representative from the Missouri 8th Congressional District and Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, when he said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

As a husband, a father, a scientist, an American and a human being, I was disturbed on many levels by Akin’s comments.  They are both offensive and factually wrong.  (How wrong? Estimates by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) are that rape results in tens of thousands of pregnancies each year, even after many pregnancies are prevented by emergency contraception that Akin want to ban). It is discouraging to see how a person with those ideas could win elected office in our democracy, but it happens.

And then I remembered:  Todd Akin sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology

And bunnies thought the Arctic melt was scary?

Administrivia

The capchas are getting many bunnies cross and the others cross eyed.  RR gets some spam, but not much.  What say you to lifting the capchas for a while and seeing how it goes?  For everyone's amusement, a couple of the better spams Eli has gotten below

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Anthony Watts Is Sad

Some, not Eli to be sure, have often suspected that without Papa Pielke to protect him, Tony Watts can dig some very deep holes for himself, and as one of the recent contretemps has shown, even Papa can fall into the bunny hole.   

Still, Tony (Eli can call you Tony. can't he Willard Anthony?), has outdone himself with his Antarctic Surface Station project.  This now features in the comments on Open Mind, but Big City Lib has a good precis.  Tony was trying to claim that weather stations in the Antarctic, and specifically on the Antarctic Peninsula which has had a huge amount of warming, were influenced by the presence conglomorations, even cities of people, and he posted the picture to the left.  In this case the crowing and attaboys of the usual suspects crowed, awakened the wrong beast, who wrote

August 26, 2012 at 2:49 am

Dear WUWT
I guess I owe the world a humble apology for personally contributing so much to the urban heat island in Antarctica, and hence to misinterpreted climate records.

The badly sited meteorological screen in your photo is at an Australian summer camp in the Northern Prince Charles Mountains, near Mt Jacklyn – in the background. Temperatures measured here were for local information of pilots and field parties only – it is useful to have an idea of how many layers of clothes to put on before exiting your Antarctic shelter. Temperatures here were only measured for less than 2 months over a couple of seasons and have NEVER been used for any climate record.

This photo was taken in the 1988/89 austral summer when I, and a colleague Andy, lived in the UNHEATED shelter nearest to the meteorological station. I didn’t realise that I was so hot that my body heat could influence temperatures measured on the Antarctic Peninsula, thousands of kilometres away. It must have been Andy!!!

Ian

The first rule of successful blogging is to know when to hold em and when to fold em, but you can always double down, and thus the bunnies have observed an new world record in the Gish Gallop.  As this faux pas was pointed to by several, Tony began to unravel

REPLY: It illustrates that weather stations in Antarctica and heat generating/using humanity are in proximity, the same thing happens in the Arctic, such as at the DEW line stations, where they’d “make up temperatures” rather than brave going outside at times.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/17/fabricating-temperatures-on-the-dew-line/
Not hard to understand really, people don’t place the weather stations so far away from the huts that they have to risk death to get a reading in subzero temperatures and white out blizzards. – Anthony

and

REPLY: First you have to prove that temperature rise measured inland at the Peninsula is manifested in the sea water temperature or above the ice, and show that it in fact made them collapse. Air temperature > water temperature isn’t a strong transfer – Anthony

and

REPLY: No dumkopf, there is no UHI since there’s no “urban” in Antarctica. That’s your made up farce. I’m saying that weather stations, like the one shown, are almost always next to human habitation where it is warmer. Really how hard can it be to understand this, especially with a photo?- Anthony

at which point Nick Kermode appeared

Anthony says:

“How hard can it be to understand this, especially with a photo?”

That photo has been well and truly been proven inadmissible. Can you admit your mistake then provide us some information that proves your point? Cheers

REPLY: It illustrates that weather stations in Antarctica and heat generating/using humanity are in proximity, the same thing happens in the Arctic, such as at the DEW line stations, where they’d “make up temperatures” rather than brave going outside at times.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/17/fabricating-temperatures-on-the-dew-line/
Not hard to understand really, people don’t place the weather stations so far away from the huts that they have to risk death to get a reading in subzero temperatures and white out blizzards. – Anthony

Eli knows you bunnies could go over there and read the stuff, but this is too good to leave to the Watts Up and it continued to death spiral

Nick Kermode says: August 27, 2012 at 10:41 pm

Anthony, Ian reported earlier in the thread that the thermometers housed near camps were used for local weather only, as information for pilots and how many layers of thermal underwear to don. The temperatures measurements used for climate information are automated and “use the ARGOS data relay system, carried by the NOAA series of near-polar orbiting satellites.” negating the need for what you suggest. Im sure Ian from above would have some excellent info for you given his position within the Australian Antarctic Division. Your photo does not support in any way what you are suggesting. Have attached a link to a good site that includes a link to a page that discusses the known possible problems with the types of thermometers and sensors used in Antactica. It hasn’t been updated for some time so you may have something to contribute/ some issues may have been resolved in further study. In any case creating a dialogue with Ian may be helpful as I don’t understand why you keep referencing that photo and hypothesising about poorly sited stations when an on the ground first hand scientist tells us that they are not even used for climate related data.

REPLY: “The temperatures measurements used for climate information are automated and “use the ARGOS data relay system, carried by the NOAA series of near-polar orbiting satellites.” negating the need for what you suggest. ”

Ummm, no. Argos didn’t come into being till the mid 2000′s, and nearly all climate data before that back to the first camps in Antarctica came from Stevenson Screen type stations. While there may have been some near term improvements the fact the the stations for decades prior were near human habitation because they were required to be manually read. For example: http://www.discoveringantarctica.org.uk/alevel_2_1.html
And one of the oldest ones: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/earth/antarctica/antarctic-conservation/blog-archive/image.php?src=http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources/nature-online/earth/antarctica/blog-archive/images/meteorological-screen-545.jpg&from=/nature-online/earth/antarctica/blog-archive/?cat=14&paged=8

Meteorological screen used by Captain Scott’s expedition nearly a century ago – it stands about 65m behind the expedition base at Cape Evans and would have been used to capture some of the earliest information on weather on the continent.
And here’s a stamp showing a Stevenson Screen station in Antarctica: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/BritishAntarctic.319.jpg
Here’s one from 1935: http://www.freezeframe.ac.uk/collection/british-graham-land-expedition-collection/p51-8-a094
Here’s the longest record in Antarctica, at Mawson: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/living-and-working/stations/mawson/this-week-at-mawson/2011/this-week-at-mawson-21-october-2011

Still a screen there. Still inside the camp.

Many of the newer automated stations have their own problems, such as getting buried by snow, which makes them report warmer temperatures. Sorry, you kids just don’t know what you are talking about. – Anthony

Well, like Nick said, Ian was lurking

Ian says:

August 28, 2012 at 2:01 am

Anthony – I think you are confusing ARGO (robotic ocean buoys that measure temperature and salinity at depth) with ARGOS (satellite based data relay system). ARGOS has been around since at least the early 1980s: large scale ARGO deployments only really started in the early 2000s.

Most Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) in Antarctica use the ARGOS data relay system – since the satellites are near-polar orbiters, you gets lots of passes at high latitude and almost hourly measurements. Yes – snow accumulation does alter the height of the AWS surface above the surface if the stations are not maintained. But because of the persistent and strong surface temperature inversion over the ice sheet, this means that the measured temperatures get COLDER (not warner) as they get closer to the surface. (I question who does and who does not know what they are talking about).

The AWS are almost all in very remote sites (hundreds of kilometres from heated buildings). The record from AWS does only extend back about 30 years, and manned stations or proxies (ice cores, etc) are needed for longer records. But over the last 30 years or so, the trends from the AWS and the manned stations are consistent.

and after Nick twisted the knife, Tony galloped

Nick Kermode says: August 28, 2012 at 5:49 am

Ian is correct Anthony. ARGOS has been used in Antarctica since 1984. Your assertion that any measurements before 2000 were taken using Stevenson Screens is incorrect. A very quick google will tell you that.

REPLY: Then show it. Don’t make me do your work for you. – Anthony

and Nick obliged only to get more chaff

Nick Kermode says: August 28, 2012 at 5:58 am

http://aws.acecrc.org.au/background.html ……..to add to above

REPLY: So? It doesn’t prove your point. See below. – Anthony

Eli will omit the rather long reply, only to provide the denoumont

Nick Kermode says August 28, 2012 at 2:29 pm

“Most Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) in Antarctica use the ARGOS data relay system”

I said “are automated and use the ARGOS data relay system.

Ians comment mentions AWS and both are very specific that it is the data relay system not a plural of the ARGO system. Please read things more carefully to avoid confusion.

Wait for it

dah

dah

dum

dum

Anthony Watts says: August 28, 2012 at 2:51 pm I don’t see every comment that gets posted on this blog we have a team of moderators so I never saw the original I only saw yours

Condolences. 

The Arctic Ice Pack Gives Marc Morano the Finger

Eli has always been partial to the Uni Bremen sea ice maps, but in the last few days something truly scary has appeared.

Now Eli is not your average Neven, or sea ice expert, but that  thing in the circle looks a lot like a huge chunk ready to float away, break up and melt, which after the compaction of this month's cyclone is a huge change and not in a good direction.  BTW, it also looks as if the main channel in the Northwest Passage is finally opening.

It's going to be an interesting fall with all that ice gone it may take longer to refreeze the Arctic basin, leaving even thinner ice for next year's warm spell, which is what happened in 2011 and to a stronger extent in 2007. 

I'd seriously like to make a Wall Street Journal Daily LaughAlong App

This information on environmental stupidity in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages since 1976 should be expanded into a smartphone app.  Each day you could find out what obvious reality was denied on that day of the month in the WSJ in the past, as a balance to whatever new nonsense will be showing up.

LaughAlong at the Journal, though, not with the Journal.  Beats crying, anyway.

Non-climate related open thread

Open thread for anything not related to climate change.  An adjacent post is an open thread for anything about climate.

Climate change open thread

Open thread for anything climate-related.

None Cooler

Saturday Nights at Eli's

Rommin Rommin Rommin

Three things I learned listening to Chris Mooney's interview of Joe Romm about rhetoric:

1.  It's pronounced "Rome" and not the way I've been mentally pronouncing it for years.

2.  Are you a scientist or (in my case) a pseudo-wannabee who tries to think like one?  Joe's not writing for you.

3.  Bloggers should spend as much time formulating blog titles as they do on anything else the post (the one I did here took hours to craft).

I'm a carbon neutral delayist - until 2020

At Monday's Water District meeting, we revised our greenhouse gas/climate change policies.  The prior policy was to reduce emissions "when feasible".  Staff's new proposal was to "strive for carbon neutrality".  The Board Chair (and the other enviro on our board) wanted more.  She said she wanted to achieve carbon neutrality and to give a date, even though it was one she didn't expect to meet.  The date she gave was 2015.

I didn't know she was going to do any of that, so it was a pleasant surprise.  I thought having a date, or figuring out a date soon, was good but we need it to be defensible.  We're already pretty good on emissions, getting most of our power from carbon neutral hydro, but we still use a lot of other power, have a lot of vehicles, and a lot of construction.  I argued for either 2020 or for setting up the process now for establishing a date.  By 2020 I said we should be well along in San Francisco Bay wetlands restoration, which should absorb a huge amount of carbon emissions and make carbon neutrality possible.  The Board settled on that date.

Video below, or go here, click on August 20, and start watching at about 3 hours in.



The reference to "purpa" is actually the Power and Water Resources Pooling Authority, a joint government agency that buys power directly from providers instead of going through utility companies, giving us a lot more control over our carbon emissions.  This is why we have a chance of achieving neutrality.


The truth is I'd be thrilled if we achieved carbon neutrality by 2020, but let's see how close we can get.  I need to start working on the planning for it.

Eli's Three Laws or Hansen Simply Explained

There is an interesting to and fro over at Real Climate about the recent Hansen, Ruedy and Sato paper on an increase in climate extremes.  Eli had a go at the preprint.  Tamino has entered a demurral, which Eli suspects has an answer in what is below.  Now some, not Eli to be sure, think the Rabett is on occasion cryptic.  So be it, but in this case he has not quite worked through all the implications and it is better to be thought mysterious than foolish.  Still the Bunny is somewhat skilled in boiling things down, and at RC pointed out that there are three simple points in the Hansen paper

First if there is an increasing/decreasing linear trend on a noisy series, the probability of reaching new maxima or minima increases with time

Second, if you put more energy into a system variability increases.

Third, if you put more energy into a system variability increases asymmetrically towards the direction favored by higher energy

 Hank added a codicil

Fourth, if you keep going in the direction you’re headed, you’ll get there.

 The first point has been a standard here at RR and also in various comments about the web in the recent discussions about why there are more temperature maxima than minima.  The second is related to the idea that if the parametric landscape affecting anything is not smooth, excursions from a stable state require additional energy to overcome "attractions".

For example, if you are in a low energy valley, as you add energy, the system moves higher up the sides and the range of motion becomes larger.  As examples consider potential energy surfaces for any process such as chemical reactions, protein unfolding, etc.  The third comes from the same general area, that if there are barriers to some excursions, you enhance the probability of exceeding them only with additional energy, e.g. you have to climb the mountain to get to the next valley, Hank's Law.

UPDATE:  Perhaps a hint of where the second and third law come from in answer to some questions

taken from protein folding paper.  The same arguments cover many situations including climate.  If we start at the bottom of the U(nfolded) well with only a small amount of energy available, the motion is roughly harmonic.  This is a logical consequence of the stability, because the point at the bottom of the well is where the system would come to rest if energy were zero and the first term in the Taylor series expansion of the potential would be quadratic  Small additional amounts of energy result in harmonic (symmetric) motion in first approximation (brown and red  line. 

As more energy is added you get pushed to the level of the green line, where there is more variation in the reaction coordinate as in the second law.  Finally if you reach the level of the red line, further areas of the parameter space become available and you can access the folded form.  The ability to access new  areas of the potential is what drives the asymmetry.

Catbird Seats

Cats as hunters  have raised considerable interest about breeding hunting out of house tabbies at Rabett Run, but the real problems are feral cats, and the real serious problem is feral cats on remote islands.  Birds, of course can fly, often considerable distances and over the eons have populated remote islands which mammals can't swim to.  OTOH, they can hitch rides with people in boats and they have done so with a vengeance, none more successfully than Brother Rat and Sister Cat, and to an extent Cousin Rabett. 

Birds on these islands have, again over the eons, have lost their native caution of hunting animals and protecting their nests and eggs from other beasts.  It is only relatively recently that eradication programs have started to rid some of these islands of the feline predators, but it is not a trivial thing.  Kill the cats, and you have the rats which are harder to get rid of and breed like crazy.  This is, also true of rabbits who leave the birds alone but eat the leaves down to the soil.

Feral cats do not seem to become well established in areas with “mesopredators” which
either compete with or prey upon cats. In New Zealand, Taylor (1984) suggests that stoats (Mustela erminea) outcompete feral cats, restricting their presence to larger islands and to areas either with rabbits or close to human habitation. Coyotes (Canis latrans) control cats in coastal southern California (Crooks and Soule 1999).

Coyotes, as Kevin Drum discovered to his dismay, like cat treats.  Since humans bond with cats this is often hard on the humans, but when too many cats disappear it does not go well for the coyotes.  There is a considerable literature on all this.

Cognitive Dissonance and Good Advice

Well the folks from west uberstanistan are attacking a bunch of blogs.  Planet 3.0 is being greeted, and Jo Nova and Benny's bunch got taken down, so Tony Watts

(Eli can call you Tony, can't he Tony, well at least on Rabett Run.  OTOH, were Eli so minded, he could call you Willard, Willard Tony being your full moniker, but Willard is already taken so Eli will call you Tony, or perhaps he should use Willard Tony, to distinguish Willard from Tony.  Where is Willard when the bunny needs him?)

has put up some reasonable advice for blogs who blog, the first, and most important being let someone else do the heavy lifting, e.g. wordpress or blogger.  Anyhow, it is probably the best post ever on Tony's blog, with some actually useful comments, but as usual, cognitive dissonance appears. 

Yep, people who hack right wing blogs are scum,

striptubes says:

August 17, 2012 at 12:26 pm

The attacks on right-wing political sites and blogs in the US has also been trending substantially up lately. It’s a disturbing trend, to say the least.

pat says:

August 17, 2012 at 12:42 pm

Liberals are the same everywhere,every occupation. Angry children.

but those folks who hacked the UEA server are employees if not heros, and, of course, Planet 3.0 thoroughly deserves what it gets

RC says:

August 17, 2012 at 2:24 pm

” … Planet3.0 has had repeated hack attempts this week … ”
Your pal Frank Swifthack is vacationing in Drogobych and ran out of things to do?

and, of course, the usual claims of victory in several places quoting Ghandi, who has ascended, Eli imagines from left wing socialist to champion of outsourcing, bunnies know the line, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. 

Eli guesses that Rabett Run has ascended to stage two, with Tony suggesting use of a strong password such as Evil$narkBunny111709!  however, allow a correction from Eli, as in the image above, a better one would refer to Eli's evil cousin Happy$narkBunny 111708.  Now some, not Eli, to be sure, might wonder why Willard Tony has it in for Eli.

The Girl from Nanaimo

The Girl from Rio