We got big trouble in ocean heat content measurement. . . .

Ocean heat content measurements are proving to be especially troublesome. While the new ARGO float system holds the promise of improved data and is almost in place


problems have emerged with a large number of the floats, particularly in the North Atlantic that impose a cold bias on the measurements. This now appears to be understood and can be corrected for. That is the good news.

ARGO is a relatively young system with great promise. Deployment started in 2000 and has almost reached the 3000 float target. Each little bugger bobs up and down between the surface and 2000 m every 10 days measuring temperature, salinity and the flow of currents then phones home with the data

Expendable bathythermographs (XBT) are toss it over the side with a couple of wires that bring the data to the surface torpedo like gizmos that have been used since the 1950s. In Geophysical Research Letters, Gouretski and Kolterman argue that they have a warm bias of 0.2 - 0.4 K, and it may not be possible to correct the data which is a large part of the older measurements of oceanic temperature profiles.

This knocks a number of things into cocked hats. G&K estimate that

Using bias-corrected XBT data we argue reduces the ocean heat content change since the 1950s by a factor of 0.62. Our estimate of the ocean heat content increase (0–3000 m) between 1957–66 and 1987–96 is 12.8·10²² J. Because of imperfect sampling this estimate has an uncertainty of at least 8·10²² J

This leaves studies which relied on the XBT and ARGO data up an interesting river without a propulsion system. In particular, the Lyman, Willis and Johnson 2006 study which described a RecentCooling of the Upper Ocean, has a 2007 submitted correction that describes the effect of both problems. In short, the cooling described in the 2006 study is now seen to be an artifact.

Now, among the Friends of Rabett Run, ClimateScience has been the one most heavily invested in Lyman, Willis and Johnson, using it to argue strongly against the IPCC WG1 Summary for Policy Makers. To his credit Roger Sr., owner operator of Climate Science, noted the coming correction week or so ago. Eli commented

I would recommend caution with something like this. It is going to take a while for the calibration and other kinks in the ARGO float data to be worked out, and in the meantime there is great potential for egg on the face as was the case with the MSU fiasco’s. ARGO has the huge advantage that it was designed for the type of measurements that are being done. Moreover extrapolation with such a short data set is particularly risky given variability.

The response was to attack the surface temperature record, via a 95 pager that apparently has been accepted by J. Geophys. Res. One wearies.

Rabett Reads....

Eli has been to the library. He has been reading Tellus 28 (1976) 552, in which Keeling Adams, Ekdahl and Guenther do it right. They describe their measurements of CO2 at the South Pole. Comparing how Fonselius, Koroleff and Buch grabbed their samples


to that of Keeling and Co. is the difference between Moe Howard and Einstein.

FKB used a small 250 cc cylinder filled with air one end of which is connected to a rubber bulb. They opened both stopcocks and held the bulb outstretched in Mr. Roland Ploennige's arm and pumped the thing a 150-200 times. There are huge problems, not the least of which is the presence of Mr. Roland playing the air bassoon which Eli commented on.

It is instructive to compare this with the care and thought that went into the South Pole sampling:

Five liter spherical glass flasks, previously evacuated to a pressure below 1 micrometer of mercury, were exposed by opening a greased stopcock so that air expanded into the flask. In the earlier years of the program, two flasks were routinely exposed on the same day; after 1964 this number was increased to three.

Although this procedure is simple to execute, special precautions must be consistently observed to avoid contaminating a high proportion of the samples. The sample taker, to minimize contamination from his own breath, was instructed to sample only when the wind was at least 5 knots. After first breathing normally near the site for some moments, he exhales, then inhales slightly, and finally, without exhaling again, walks 10 steps into the wind, where he takes the sample. He should have a clear idea of the wind direction and be certain that no local source of CO2, even another human being is upwind.

According to our current instructions, in force since 1962, the flask, after exposure to air, is brought indoors and the stopcock is slowly warmed and turned back and forth to work out any streaks in the grease. The flask is then repacked immediately to avoid prolonged exposure to light. . . .

Only one member of the South Pole field party was designated each year to take samples. Prior to arrival in Antarctica, he received two days of instruction from Scripps personnel. The results of his practice sampling were determined by gas analysis while he was still undergoing training.

Now you ask why Keeling took care to repack the sampling flasks...well from 1960 to 62

the flasks, after exposure to air, were hung on a wall and repacked only when a dozen had accumulated. Photo-oxidation of the hydrocarbon stopcock grease occurred in the hanging flasks and rendered useless all but the last pair of each dozen

Fortunately, a continuous, IR monitor was operated between 1960 and 1963.

Found in the margins

Recently, Eli has been improving his German over at Oekolismus, drawn there at first by the reappearance of the good Diplom Beck and his Jaworowski-like “180 years of CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods” which Princess Denial, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen published in Energy and Environment in an attempt to lock up this year's S. Fred. Eli dealt with the subject matter in a friendly matter earlier. He will not repeat that mistake. As for Jaworowski, well Jim Easter in Some are Boojums has torn that fakery apart. You can get the flavor from

In Dashiell Hammett’s story The Golden Horseshoe, much of the action takes place in a bar of that name in Tijuana. At one point the narrator, an operative for the Continental Detective Agency, kills a few strategic seconds by studying the decorations:

I was reading a sign high on the wall behind the bar:

ONLY GENUINE PRE-WAR AMERICAN AND BRITISH WHISKEYS SERVED HERE

I was trying to count how many lies could be found in those nine words, and had reached four, with promise of more …

Sometimes I come across an article, web posting, advertisement or other statement that makes me feel when I read it just as I imagine the Continental Op did in that Tijuana bar.
How can they possibly pack so much misinformation into such a small space?
To honor exceptional achievement in mendacity, I would like to present the Golden Horseshoe Award to that writer who has out-performed his or her peers in density of false statements per column-inch.
To receive the first Golden Horseshoe Award, I can think of no more worthy recipient than Zbigniew Jaworowski.

If you have not had the opportunity, go read the lot. If you don't have time read this. But let us reluctantly return to the good Diplom Beck and the to and fro in Oekolismus.

To summarize, there were several sets of atmospheric CO2 measurements made by wet chemical methods between ~1870 and 1970. Many of them have been critically reviewed, most recently by Eric From and Charles Keeling. Suffice it to say that there were both methodological and meteorological problems with many of the earlier methods, although some are better than others. At best the accuracy of the wet methods was more than 1%, more often like 3%, which is somewhere between 3 and 10 ppm. The infrared absorption method introduced by Keeling had an accuracy of a part in four thousand with proper calibration and is the gold standard.

John A. is the hero in this story. A few weeks ago, he looked at Rabett Run's posting on the matter and commented:

Re: the two links to Keeling. The first one requires a login and password, and the second link goes to a "404" message.

I'm impressed.

The link was to a history of the Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 measurements written by Keeling in 1993. In searching for another version, Eli came across a 1998 Keeling autobiography which appeared in Annual Reviews of Energy and Environment, "The Rewards and Penalties of Monitoring the Earth". It answers several questions.

One of the issues about the wet chemical measurements is how well they were carried out. There is an interesting comment in the Keeling autobiography:

This Scandinavian program, started by Rossby in 1954, had been a major factor in triggering interest in measuring CO2 during the IGY. Nevertheless it was quietly abandoned after the meeting, when the reported range in concentrations, 150–450 ppm, was seen to reflect large errors. 3

3. At two stations in Finland, samples collected by station personnel had been sent to Scripps. These samples yielded nearly the same concentrations as those measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, proving that the errors in the Scandinavian program were mainly analytical rather than due to variable CO2 in the air being sampled.

Another is about how well the MLO and other observatory measurements match those high in the atmosphere

You may have to click on the image to see it clearly

The solid line is from a series of aircraft measurements. It clearly follows the Mauna Loa measurements, showing that the CO2 mixing ratios measured there are equivalent to those measured at altitude.

Yet another issue is the daily variation of CO2 concentrations, something that Keeling had sussed out quite early (long but interesting excerpt)

. . .these data showed an intriguing diurnal pattern. The air contained more CO2 at night than during the day. Also, the heavier carbon-13 isotope of the CO2 at night was depleted with respect to the lighter carbon- 12 isotope, as though the CO2 that caused the nighttime rise had been released by the plants and soil. The degree of depletion of carbon-13 for a given rise in CO2 concentration varied from site to site in a manner suggesting that the plants during daytime at some sites reabsorbed CO2 previously released into the air locally the night before....

The diurnal patterns were similar everywhere I went, from the rain forests of the Olympic peninsula near Canada to the high mountain forests of Arizona near Mexico. (US National Forests at that time had large tracts of land not yet disturbed by logging.) Moreover, the air in the afternoon seemed always to have nearly the same amount of CO2, about 310 parts per million (ppm) of air, after correcting for water vapor. The concentrations were highly variable at night and always higher than in the afternoon. Also, the carbon isotopic ratios in the afternoon were all about the same, though systematically variable with concentration at night.

The scientific literature didn’t suggest that daytime concentrations should be so similar from place to place. A recently published book on geochemistry (53) indicated that arctic air could contain as little as 150 ppm, tropical air as much as 350 ppm. Moreover, photosynthesis by plants in the area of my sampling should have drawn CO2 down during the day, making the concentration lower than in air over bare ground. I broadened my study by sampling on a high mountain during strong winds over barren ground. . . . .

Even at these places, sampled in the free atmosphere, the concentrations and carbon isotopic ratios were nearly the same as in the afternoon near vegetation (30, 32). Why didn’t photosynthesis, which takes CO2 out of the air during the day, cause low and variable concentrations when respiration by plants and soil, which puts CO2 into the air at night, causes high and variable concentrations? I found an explanation in a book that attracted my attention because of its apt title: The Climate Near the Ground (21). All of my forest measurements had been made during fair weather. On such days heating by the Sun typically induces enough turbulence in air near plants to cause thorough mixing of this air with the free atmosphere by early afternoon. Where I had sampled, the free air evidently had been of nearly constant composition with respect to CO2. In contrast, during the nighttime the air near the ground cooled, forming a stable layer that allowed CO2 from respiration to build up within the forest canopy.

The highly variable literature values for CO2 in the free atmosphere were evidently not correct.1 Rather, a concentration of 310 ppm of CO2 appeared to prevail over large regions of the northern hemisphere. I had detected this near constancy under the implausible circumstances of studying air in old-growth forests where variability was to be expected.

The 1986 From and Keeling paper deals with the many problems of the data sets taken before 1905 and there are other indications of problems with the subsequent wet chemical measurements. For example, a paper by Lockhart and Court describes 1940 and 41 measurements of air composition in Antarctica. They find abnormally high CO2 mixing ratios, 600 ppm, but they also find abnormally LOW oxygen ratios, and there is no indication of measurements on calibration mixes. A big no-no.

The 1955 Fonselius, Koroleff and Buch paper would have won the S. Fred with Golden Horseshoes. One of the things you have to do to measure CO2 content is sample the air. These guys could not have thought of a worse way to do it.

You may have to click on the image to see it clearly

The right way to sample is to use large evacuated bulbs which you open rapidly to sample. You always use carefully calibrated mixes to calibrate your measurements. You really want to understand and eliminate wall effects by making the volume large compared to the surface, optimizing pumping, etc. Keeling, for example, used 5 L bulbs when he started his California measurements.

The Buch method is an invitation to error. They have a small 250 cc cylinder filled with air one end of which is connected to a rubber bulb. They opened both stopcocks and held the bulb outstretched in Mr. Roland Ploennige's arm and pumped the thing a 150-200 times. The flow of air through the cylinder is not constant. This (a) is pretty close to Mr. Roland Ploennige, (b) does not guarantee a complete exchange of air in the bulb, (c) encourages backflow from the opposite end which is pretty close to Mr. Roland Ploennige's armpit if not his mouth (d) is not much volume to work (e) it is not clear if the measurements were calibrated against standard samples. That is for starters.

This is not the gold standard.

The Ill-Stars take the field

Roger Pielke Sr. heralds a new bunch hawking their wares as climate consultants, and an ill star group they are. The demeriti among them, and there are many, certainly have a bunch of time on their hands. However mice shouldn't take the list too seriously. This is the braindead child of Joseph D’Aleo, a meteorologist who we last met as author of the Fraser Institute Summary for Making Bad Policy, one of the last doors in the Exxon AR4 Advent Calendar

He set up a booth at the American Meteorological Society meeting and asked anyone who had an interest in what they planned to leave their names and addresses.

Like from a melting ice cap, the rodents of denial who left their names are already jumping ship. Chip Knappenberger, from New Hope Environmental Services (Pat Michaels' chop shop) said:

To my direct knowledge, some of the “experts” listed were not contacted by ICECAP, and in fact, have no idea as to who or what ICECAP is. So clearly, they should not be referred to as “our experts” which carries an air of association when done exists. This is not good form and this misunderstanding should be cleared up by the ICECAP management

Which is a nice was of saying Pat and I and our friends have our own things, include us out. Chip says he talks to others besides Pat. Joe D'Aleo has an interesting reply:

Icecap is funded by private individuals and think tanks not associated with the oil or major corporations.

Eli understands such formulations, CEI is not associated with Exxon, except for getting some funding from them, so Exxon can pass the money to us through them, or something like that. It is called implausible deniability. The effort does have the stink of Regenry Press, Pajama Media, etc. typical US right wing money washing . But you can see that Chip was right, and there will be others leaving the list soon by reading D'Aleo's description of how the experts "joined" Icecap:

The experts listed were all informed that the effort was underway and agreed to help provide their expertise or allow us to use their material or link to the material on their sites. We told them for that material, we would list them as contact experts and link to their sites or books.....

All the members listed below the expert list signed up at the AMS annual meeting where we had a booth or via email. That list will grow.

D'Aleo pwnd S. Fred and Sally just like Siggie and Sally got everyone else with the Heidelberg Appeal, the Leipzig Declaration, the OISM petition! Irony is good.

• Robert C. Balling Jr., Professor, Climatology, Arizona State University
• Sallie Baliunas, Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
• Thomas A. Birkland, Director of the Center for Policy Research University of Albany, Policy associated with sudden disasters. Not clear he is a real Ice Capper.

• Robert Carter, Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Australia
• William Cotton, Professor, Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University
• David Deming, Associate Professor, University of Oklahoma
• James R. Fleming, Professor, Colby College. Not clear he is a real Ice Capper
UPDATE: Well that was a good guess, see the comments.

• Mel Goldstein, Chief Meteorologist for News Channel 8 in Connecticut.
• Vincent Gray, Expert Reviewer IPCC
• William Gray, Meteorologist
• Douglas V. Hoyt, Solar Physicist and Climatologist
• Warwick Hughes, Earth Scientist
• Craig D. Idso, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and former President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
• Sherwood D. Idso, President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
• Madhav Khandekar, retired Meteorologist, formerly with Environment Canada
• David Legates, Associate Professor in Climatology, University of Delaware, still another victim of the Kaine shuffle
• Joseph E. Luisi, Former Chief Meteorologist for Delta Airlines
• Anthony Lupo, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri-Columbia
• Pat Michaels, Research professor of environmental sciences, University of Virginia, the original Kaine shuffle victim
• Tad Murty, Adjunct Professor of Earth Sciences and Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa
• James O’Brien, Director Emeritus of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University
• Gary Sharp, Scientific Director, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study
• S. Fred Singer, President of the Science & Environment Policy Project
• Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama
• George Taylor, Faculty Member, Oregon State University’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences....Note NOT Oregon State Climatologist, another victim of the Kaine shuffle.
• Hendrik Tennekes, Former Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
• Richard C. Willson, Principal Investigator, ACRIM Experiments Somehow Eli doubts this, take a look at the list of ACRIM C0-Is

Going into business

UPDATE: The Mad hatter by Tenniel

(the mice made Eli do it. He really wishes Keven and Jason, every success on their venture)

The mice bring word that Kevin Vranes has joined a startup, as consultant offering advice to industry on how to deal with climate change issues. They are going great guns, Kevin has joined the talking heads, with an interview on CNN's In the Money:

WESTHOVEN: What about companies that aren't green washing at all, what about companies that are actually out there maybe actively fostering debate about whether or not there is greenhouse gas emissions or whether or not they're having any affect?

VRANES: Well you know, the main culprit there has been Exxon Mobil. They're the poster child for trying to stall not just action on climate change, but also trying to confuse the public on climate changes. I'm actually starting to get a sense that they're starting to pull back away from that a little bit. I think they also see the writing on the wall, and I think they don't want to be the last man standing either and, so I kind of get a sense that they're starting to pull back too.

ROMANS: Kevin, there was a time when we would say global warming on television, and we would be inundated with, like, conservative think tanks and conservative oil industry tied groups whose only job was to try to change the wording global warming to climate change. Or to get it into something that didn't suggest that Americans were doing it or that the consumers weren't doing it or that energy companies had any kind of say in it. We've really come a long way on this debate, haven't we?

VRANES: We have. I mean, and that falls to science. I think what we've come to is maybe a tipping point in the understanding and the awareness of the issue from the public and from the business community. I think that maybe up until now they were just kind of taking a wait and see approach where they were saying, well, maybe next year new science will come out, maybe next year new science will come out, and finally here we are. It doesn't happen.

Every year new science comes out that says, no, it really is happening, and I think finally people have said, OK, we hear you. We've woken up, and we're going to make -- we're going to make progress on this issue.

ROMANS: There are some scientists, though -- I do have on point out that there are some scientists who still adamantly say there is a long period of temperatures in this environment and it maybe has nothing to do with human kind. There are those folks still out there.

VRANES: There are those folks out there. I would say that they're at the fringe, and I would say that they actually get more media attention than they deserve compared to the scientific weight of opinion. You know, there's going to be a new report released actually next week February 2nd. A big intergovernmental panel will come out with its latest consensus statement on climate change, and it will say the consensus of the scientific community is that we are 90 percent certain that global warming is happening, and we are the cause of did.

Jason Denner, the managing partner, worked at the Rocky Mountain Institute on such issues as more efficient autos, oil refineries and such. Welcome to the future.

However, as Ethon points out, Hi-Point 380 is a brand of 9mm target gun.

Comment policy

Rabett Run has adopted Kevin Drum's policy

If I or my bunnies get sufficiently annoyed with you, we will delete your comments. If you don't like it, tough.

If you piss Ms. Rabett off, hide. If you are selling something we won't buy and we will trash your comment. Irrevocably.

OTOH, we intend to maintain our open door even to Czech trash if they behave themselves.

Where that came from

Eli has been reading and commenting over at Oekologismus, a German blog dedicated to the proposition that environmentalism is the new anti-Christ (ok, Eli exaggerates slightly as usual, they only think that environmentalism is the new western religion spread by an evil media. If you have some German you can read their mission statement, but the ten commandments they assign to this new dogma are out of the normal denialist playbook - not a complete translation:

1. You shall fear. The worst scenario is the most likely
2. You shall have a guilty conscious. Who lives harms the world
3. You shall not doubt. The environmental movement never errs.
4. Nature is our god.
5. You should hate mankind
6. Reject the free market
7. Don't consume
8. Don't believe in a better tomorrow
9. Value technology not much
10. Know that guilt is white, male, christian and western.

To which we add, leave no strawman unturned, but the owner operator does turn up interesting stuff like the Lindzen interview, and the comments are rich, which brings Rabett media to tonight's feature. One Planck, who appears to work at a climate research institute of some sort, had heard a Lindzen seminar a couple of weeks ago. Planck was not kind

He, (Lindzen) has done practically no science in the last five years but bloviates about the iris hypothesis, that has been beaten down again and again and again. Supposedly the talk was supposed to be about this and our entire cloud troop was there to ask a few questions. Instead ~80% was a dumb polemic linking climate research to eugenics to racial theories and the nazis. He provided a taste of this in the (Weltwoche) interview. . . .

I asked him who it can be that we have thousands of proxy records that document climate variability and all show that the glacial maximum was at least 3 degrees colder in contradiction to an iris feedback. His short answer was "I don't believe in paleoproxies". Lalala I create reality, just like I like.

Planck dug out the source of Lindzens polemic. This, young bunnies, is the source of all strawmen, with many of our favorite characters doing walk ons. Published in 1996 as Science and Politics: Global Warming and Eugenics in Risks, Costs, and Lives Saved, R.W. Hahn, editor, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996, it was due warning to anyone listening that Richard thought that environmentalism was the new anti-Christ or at least Shabbatei Zvi, and had signed on to the Oekologismus mission statement ten or more years before it was drawn up.

The issue of global warming has been one of the more confusing and misleading issues to be presented to the public. Despite the absence of a significant scientific basis for most predictions, the public has been led to believe that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that the issue is a matter of immediate urgency requiring massive control of energy usage. The first part of this paper will briefly describe this situation. The thought that scientists would allow such an abuse of science is difficult for most laymen to believe. However, I suggest that what is happening may, in fact, be the normal behavior to be expected from the interaction of science, advocacy groups, and politics. A study of an earlier example of such an interaction, the interaction of genetics, eugenics and immigration law during the early part of this century, reveals almost analogous behavior.

Hmm...where do we see this type of argument today?, But the interesting part is that early on we meet our old friend Princess Denial, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen,

The consensus concerning the behavior of the observed globally averaged temperature is pretty much a natural consensus. The consensus concerning the model response to increasing CO2 is not. The issue is described by Boehmer-Christiansen in both the 1 December issue of Nature and in a book-length analysis. Briefly, a number of groups in the early 80’s wanted to push increasing levels of CO2 as a major environmental issue. However, it was recognized that this would be difficult to do in view of the degree of scientific disarray on the issue of anthropogenic global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in order to forge a consensus on the scenario of significant warming (rather than to objectively assess the issue in terms of supporting and contradictory findings) so as to facilitate the development of international policy.

The beginnings of the hurricane wars

A recent example was the publication by world leading experts in hurricanes that there was no reason to suppose that, even were global warming to occur, it would have any particular affect on hurricanes (6).

6 Lighthill, J., G. Holland, W. Gray, C. Landsea, G. Craig, J. Evans, Y. Kurihara, and C. Guard, 1994. Global climate change and tropical cyclones. Bull. Am. Met. Soc., 75, 2147-2157.

and then Richard jumps the shark

Somewhat by accident, I came to realize that we’ve been through all this before. The interaction of genetics, eugenics, and the politics of immigration in the early 1920's has been studied at great length, primarily as an example of the misuse of science in the interests of racism. It was in this connection, that I was given an article by Jon Beckwith to read9. However, whatever the implications of this case for the responsible application of biology, it is also a remarkable example of the interaction of science, advocacy, and politics. Although it will be obvious that I am neither an historian nor a social scientist, I find the history of this matter helpful in understanding contemporary environmental issues, and I would hope that those more capable than I am would examine it in a more professional manner.

It goes downhill from there. His own paragraph heading applies Simple minded pictures and events. Perhaps we will return.

Richard "wrong way" Lindzen

In an interview with Weltwoche which Eli translated, Richard Lindzen said when asked to explain the current warming

I don’t believe it. The warming occurred from 1976 to 1986, then it plateaued.

Several anonymice sitting in the front row wondered which dog pile he pulled that out from under, but, never fear, Eli has located the source, thanks to friend Lumo. who in response to an inquiry replied with his usual grace and charm uttered:

Dear Alexander, late 20th century global warming did stop in 1986, as well as other moments, see e.g. the graph http://schwinger.harvard.edu/%7E...SU1278- 1204.gif UAH MSU troposphere data...

(you may have to click on the image to get a readable image)

Lubos: You can see that 1986 is as high as 2004; 2006 was cooler than 1986. A naive village student should first try to look at the basic numbers before you try to attack a leader of the field that you pretend to study.

Well, you might see that if the image went out to 2006, but there is a small problem....the image comes from Junk Science in January 2005, so it didn't, and there was a rather large correction that had to be made to the entire MSFC/UAH MSU record later that year. If one looks at the current corrected record

(you may have to click on the image to get a readable image)

you get a different picture. And, as they say, who you gonna believe, Lubos, Lindzen, or your lying eyes. There is no way that 2006 was cooler than 1986, or 2004 was the same in the lower trop. As a mater of fact we can look at the data

Mon	1986	2004	2006
1	-0.022	0.337	0.371
2	-0.164	0.350	0.382
3	-0.146	0.402	0.297
4	-0.028	0.216	0.218
5	-0.050	0.088	0.027
6	-0.159	0.076	0.201
7	-0.193	-0.106	0.236
8	-0.233	0.012	0.281
9	-0.268	0.210	0.335
10	-0.265	0.324	0.376
11	-0.110	0.229	0.284
12	-0.133	0.192	0.303
Avg	-0.148	0.194	0.276

There is no month in 1986 that was warmer than any month in 2004 and 2006. Both Lindzen and Lubos, the Mass Ave twins are relying on uncorrected (that means there are big, known errors folk) versions of the UAH tlt lower troposphere reconstructions....but we do know now where that particular piece of folk art came from.

Hope springs in Boulder. A misunderstanding in the burrow

In the last post Eli laid out a set of principles

• The policy debate between us and our allies is about means.
• The denialists want a debate about ends.
  
• We must ally with those who see the dangers of climate change.
• Denialists must be marginalized, not those who acknowledge the danger and the need for action, though we may differ with them on the level of risk and the needed response.
• The factual, scientific basis allows us to do all this.

Eli's comments on framing pointed out that if those who think climate change is an important issue try to find the "middle" position as an accommodation, the denialists will leave the middle as the extreme. What is needed is to move the window AWAY from the Inhofe position, which means always pointing out how unacceptable it is

Eli had taken some care, well, maybe not enough, to point out that his disagreement with Michael Tobis, Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet was not about science, nor necessarily about their policy recommendations, but how they advocated convincing the broad public

Eli is not comparing Tobis, Nisbet and Mooney to our favored pinati, for one thing, and it is a very important thing, when confronted by climate nuttery, they call it spinach and they don't like it. Still, the tactics they recommend start by condemning what might loosely be called the Hansen-Gore position as way far out, and if not their science, saying that they personally enrage too many people.

Which brings us first to our good news. Ethon came by with an Easter Basket full of Carter's Little Liver Pills and Science Policy Peeps (The lab bunnies decided to experiment. We are still cleaning) and shared with us some news from Boulder. In reply to one Harry Haymuss

This illustrates typical shallowness of thought when it comes to global warming. Supposedly this global warming episode is driven by increased CO2, yet never before in the paleorecord has CO2 (nor apparently any other ghg) led warming, so it has never then caused warming. Obviously then historical attributes of warming periods are irrelevant compared to this phase. Nonetheless, alarmism reigns when massive increases in research (including realistic models) should instead be the result. Changes in the lapse rate are the clue.

Kevin Vranes wrote:

Harry -- just because a long-term independent CO2 change in the past hasn't led temperature (from what can be read in the paleo record, at least) doesn't mean that a change in CO2 now will not force a temperature change. The science is solid enough to surmise a very high certainty that CO2 can lead temperature and I have yet to see any serious, credible dispute to that. The real question is about feedbacks and amplification. Changes in the lapse rate are one small piece of the larger puzzle -- feedbacks and processes abound. You don't need to lecture us about the science around here....that's what RC and CA are for.

calling the spinach, spinach.

So what are Eli's differences with Michael Tobis. Twofold.

First Eli, who disagrees with many on the extreme environmentalist side of the climate policy debate (Greenpeace for example) would be happier to see their position taken as the discussable, extreme than he would to extend that honor to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and their buds at Tech Central Station shutting Greenpeace out. Eli thinks that Michael Tobis wants to shut both extremes out and have a reasonable discussion to convince the lurkers.

The second point is who got the middle. Michael defines the middle as his position. Eli thinks the middle is Al Gore and Jim Hansen's position. A lot of that is what Eli believes is needed. That also has to do with where Eli would put the Overton Window. See point one.

Tobis has always had interesting and reasonable things to say. Eli is just your garden variety batsh*t rabett. MT's new blog will quickly become an important voice in the policy debate and a source of basic climate science information

Newt Gingrich, triangulation, the DLC and Framing Climate Change

This is going to be a VERY confusing post, but it answers the question of how human forcing of climate should be framed to create effective policy. Rather than build to a crescendo, Eli will state the obvious at the top:

• The policy debate between us and our allies is about means.
• The denialists want a debate about ends.
• We must ally with those who see the dangers of climate change.
• We must marginalize denialists, not those whose responses to and perceptions of the depth of danger differ.
• The factual, scientific basis allows us to do all this.

There is a ferocious push back against Al Gore, Jim Hansen, Nicholas Stern and others who think that the world is in a dangerous situation because of all the greenhouse gases, principally CO2, that are being dumped into the atmosphere. Most discouraging is the joining in of those who in principle agree with Gore, Hansen, Stern and the Rabett, (using the other three as exemplars) but who differ on the way that these folk are speaking out. The joiners are attempting to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory for the sake of the middle, e.g. to appeal to some ill defined group, which is either the denialist herd (play nice now children) or, more commonly, those not paying attention. This is Niemoeller's fallacy.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Bill Clinton fell for this fallacy with triangulation,

The term was first used by President of the United States Bill Clinton's chief political advisor Dick Morris as a way to describe his strategy for getting Clinton reelected in the 1996 presidential election. . . . to be "more Republican than the Republicans." . . . One of the most widely cited capstones of Clinton's triangulation strategy was when, in his 1996 State of the Union Address, Clinton declared that the "Era of Big Government is over."

The effect was that positions to Clinton's left were deligitimized as Newt Gingrich moved the Republicans even farther to the right. This made Clinton's middle the extreme left for the public, something the Republicans worked very hard to reinforce.

Clinton was in a box of his own making. Having condemned important parts of his own party, he could not say never mind and bring it back into play. The Democratic Party fell into disarray and the Republicans spent the next four years bear baiting. Clinton's 1996 victory was empty. The best he could do was to survive. A promising presidency was neutered. The US election of 2006 was a turning away from triangulation for many Democrats although not the Democratic Leadership Council. They enrage much of the rest of the party, not because of their policies but by their continual criticism of fellow party members and refusal to confront Republicans (see Joe Lieberman)

While many (see also third way and New Labour) say that the danger of triangulation is that it destroys the principles, Eli differs. The problem is that it moves the window in which the public discourse takes place away from your allies and towards your opponent's position. If someone on the center-left triangulates, the net effect is to legitimize the right and deligitimize the left.

The same thing is happening today with respect to climate policy, so the Rabett says to the middlers, be careful of what you write and how you write it.

If you are going to differ on the rate of sea level rise with Al Gore, start by saying, that there is a very serious problem which could have nasty effects within the next century and worse after. Lay out the facts why you think he should have put some time limits on the ultimate rise, discuss why the actual timing is very uncertain, but very dangerous and do not fail to point out that Inhofe is crackers.

Framing

Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney have an article in Science about how scientists must accommodate themselves to the public in order to get their message across but Eli would rather concentrate on the Bell Curve version which underlies much of it,

Everywhere you look, polarized views from the tail ends of the bell curve of opinion on climate change are being picked up by the media. Indeed, only at a few outlets like the NY Times, WPost, or NPR can Americans get that "invisible middle" of views on the issue. Unfortunately, these are not the outlets that reach the wider public.

This picks up strongly on the push back from the Inhofians, and says oh how awful that they are angry, without recognizing the panic stricken nature of that reaction. It is a good and encouraging thing. A part of the tactic being used is claiming those who are concerned about climate change as religious zealots, as Nisbet quotes William Buckley

The whole business is eerily religious in feel. Back in the 15th century, the question was: Do you believe in Christ? It was required in Spain by the Inquisition that the answer should be affirmative, leaving to one side subsidiary specifications. It is required today to believe that carbon-dioxide emissions threaten the basic ecological balance.

Now, on its face this is easy to handle by pointing out that the world was given into the care of men, adults accept responsibility, unruly children do not clean their rooms. Concern with the planet is a responsibility for those of faith as well as those who value the community of man. The snarky would note that Buckley has always had the same demands as the Inquisition.

Still this gets us far from where we started to go. If you want further examples, go look at Michael Tobis's new blog. Eli is not comparing Tobis, Nisbet and Mooney to our favored pinati, for one thing, and it is a very important thing, when confronted by climate nuttery, they call it spinach and they don't like it. Still, the tactics they recommend start by condemning what might loosely be called the Hansen-Gore position as way far out, and if not their science, saying that it enrages too many people.

This is the classic case of slamming the Overton Window shut on your own position. This is the

"window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue. Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable.....

So what should be done. The important point which the Mooney's, Nisbet's and Tobis' are missing, is that they should not define the middle excluding those far to either side of their position. If you try that the Inhofes will define the window for you as including them, you on the other side and Hansen shut out in the cold. If those who think climate change is an important issue try to find the "middle" position as an accommodation, the denialists will leave the middle as the extreme.

What is needed is to move the window AWAY from the Inhofe position, which means always pointing out how unacceptable it is on moral, religious, and scientific grounds, and how thin its real support is. It won't hurt to point to the local Lyndon LaRouche group's complete agreement with Monckton and Inhofe on this, the equivalent of the Hitler Stalin pact as it were. The first job is to move the window toward the reality of man made climate change.

Establish that climate change driven by our actions as a significant problem. Start by pointing to what is the reasonable extreme for meeting this challenge, something beyond what Hansen, for example, recommends.

Richard Lindzen hates Al Gore, really.

Die Weltwoche is Swiss news magazine that published an interview with Richard Lindzen by Peer Teuwsen. It provides some interesting insights. This is for those who tell us to be nice to the denialists, others who think you can debate them on intellectual grounds and for the mice in the woodwork. (UPDATE: a few things cleaned up, spelling etc. One major point, I had to check but Lindzen really did say " what do you think that scientists rush to goosestep behind Al Gore" instead of the milder formulation I had before : "rush to march behind...")

What follows is a translation. Suggestions for changes are welcome.
---------------------------------------------------

Herr Lindzen, you are called a “climate denier” Does that make you feel like an outsider?
I am no outsider. If you want to sit still for propaganda, that’s your problem. I work at the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I am well regarded by my colleagues, pay attention for a moment to what you said. I am a Holocaust survivor. My parents fled Germany in 1938. Whoever calls me a “climate denier” insults me - and he insults his own intelligence

[Note: Eli calls Lindzen a climate denialist, and given the crap Lindzen deals below to those who disagree with him, he has little grounds to object to strong words.]

Why?
Because this topic is so complex, has so many facets. Or do you really believe that all scientists rush to goosestep behind Al Gore? That all agree with him? Anyone that has even one or two neurons between his two ears should know that anyone who used the expression “climate denier” has lost the argument.

Have you gotten death threats like some of your colleagues that express their skepticism publicly
Oh, yeah, there were a few E-mails that told me to go to hell, but that is not a death threat.

In spite of that, what gives?
You have to figure on hate when you ask questions in such a climate. People want to believe that they are better when they believe with their whole hearts that the world will end when they don’t save it immediately. In that case people develop a religious enthusiasm, they become like Islamists. Anyone who stirs people up so much should be ashamed.

You figured on attacks?
Naturally. I wrote in the Wall Street Journal that scientists were suppressed, have lost their work because they expressed skepticism about some “Facts” in the climate controversy. Laurie David, the producer of Al Gore’s film has a blog, in which she wrote, she was happy that those scientists were finally suppressed. She also wrote that without question such scientists that seek to scientifically investigate their doubts should not be funded.

That contradicts the way that science is understood to work, that its hypotheses always have to be tested again and again and can only be falsified.
Naturally, but it is easy to to corrupt science, it has happened many times. I was at the international meeting of geophysicists (AGU meeting) last winter in San Francisco. Al Gore spoke. And his message was “ You should have the courage to join the consensus, speak publicly about it and freely to suppress the disloyal. The audience was inspired

What did you do?
I shrugged my shoulders and went out and read George Orwell.

What would you do. You are stirred up about an Oscar winner, Al Gore, who says things like “The continued existence of our civilization is in play”
More is in play, namely companies like Generation Investment Management, Lehman Brothers, Apple, Google, Gore has major financial interests in all of these. Al Gore combines insanity and corruption

Wait a minute, those are serious accusations.
First, he fosters hysteria. And second he has major financial interest. He is simply not independent

OK, you say that climate change is not so alarming because the models overestimate the influence of CO2 on climate. In saying that you contradict 95% of scientists.
But it is so. The influence of CO2 is much smaller that the models have predicted. You then have to choices. The model is false or the model is right and something unknown makes up the difference. The modelers have unfortunately taken the second way and claim that aerosols make up the difference. But, as the IPCC says, we don’t know anything about aerosols. The current models are tuned. If there is a problem, then call it aerosol. That is a dishonorable way out. The Chief of the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) in Great Britain said something remarkable. Climate change must be man made because he can’t imagine anything else. That is a statement touching on intellectual incompetence, which a scientist should never utter.

Mr. Lindzen, what then are the facts?
Physics does not lie about the greenhouse effect. The CO2 concentration has increased. The 20th century was over all warmer by 0.5 C.

How do you explain the most recent warming.
I don’t believe it. The warming occurred from 1976 to 1986, then it plateaued.

You accept that it in general has become warmer?
Yes, but we are speaking of tenths. If you take into account the uncertainty in the data, there was warming from 1920 to 1940, cooling until 1970, and warming again until the beginning of the 90s. But you can’t say that so exactly, whatever you think. There is no actual difference between the temperatures of today and those in the 20s and 30s. The system is never constant. And to declare the end of the world because of a couple of tenths of degrees is a joke.

It is just this tenth of a degree that can have monstrous consequences.
Yes, it could - always this lack of reality. The problem is that the media make a big show out of these temperature differences, that lie in the error range of the measurement. The ways that we measure are, for example simply too inaccurate. To repeat. It has gotten warmer in the last century, but climate is a system that always varies. And it is a turbulent system. You cannot think about it dogmatically. The main question remains, are these 0.5 degrees a large or a small variation, is it serious or not. We don’t know. No one should be ashamed to say that it remains much too unknown. And a couple of degrees still don’t make an eternal summer.

You took part in the third IPCC report. What is your opinion of the fourth?
First I would have to see the report. Up to now we know only about the Summary for Policy Makers. The report itself was finished last October. Now they need months in order to bring it into agreement with the Summary. If a company did that with its annual report it would be front page news in all the papers. And not to their advantage.

Why did you not participate in the fourth (IPCC) report?
No time. I had participated - by writing a couple of pages. There were hundreds of scientists, in teams, where two or three were responsible for a couple of pages. They flew all over the world for years. You can’t work that way.

Assume you are right, everything will not be so bad, the data is not good enough -even when most strongly dispute that. What is it about?
Many interest groups have discovered climate change. Everyone of the will profit from it except the normal consumer. The latter must be maneuvered by propaganda. The scientists profit, they have increased funding by more that a factor of ten since the early 90s. Then there is the ecological movement, a multi-billion operation, thousands of organization. And the difficulty is we solved the problems of normal air and water pollution, we eliminated those. One needs problems that cannot be eliminated. That makes climate change attractive. And industry, which you assume is against CO2 controls, they also profit. They are perhaps opposed, because it is again something that makes problems for them, that they have to accommodate to. But they can make money from it. The large companies live off of climate change. Last year I spoke with someone from the big coal producer Arch Coal. He said he is for CO2 preventative measures. I asked him, is that for real, a coal company, want CO2 restrictions? He said - Sure, we will manage it, but our smaller competition will not.

The energy giant Exxon Mobil was against it.
Yes, the has a CEO that fought CO2 restrictions on principle. But what industry wants is 1. They want to determine the restrictions themselves. 2. All companies should have the same restriction, 3. They want to know in advance how to prepare themselves. Then they can lay off the huge costs on consumers.

And what are your interests?
I have been working for decades in this area, we are beginning to understand how things work, how it functions. Then we were rolled over by the simplified claim that climate depends only on CO2. And thus every hope of finding out, for example how ice ages work, was destroyed. Suddenly everyone said, all scientists are united, as if we still lived in the Soviet Union

Today Russian scientists are moving away from the consensus
Some yes, others not. It is a question of which generation they belong to. The older ones cut away, the younger get in line. Russia has a long tradition in climate research. The current older scientists were world leaders. And they know that this simplified way of looking at things makes no sense. The younger ones are not distinguished but they want invitations to visit Europe - so they collaborate and do what Europe wants.

Is the world so simple
Sometimes yes. The was a meeting in Moscow, organized by the Russian Academe and David King, who is today the scientific advisor to the British government. When he heard that they had also invited people like me, he wanted to cancel. But he was already at the airport. So he came and spoke first and said that he would invite Russian scientists who shared his point of view to come to England.

You laugh. Do you find it funny?
No, but that’s the way the world is.

When did you get mad for the first time?
In 1987 I received a letter from a man by the name of Lester Lave, a well known economics professor at Carnegie-Mellon-University in Pittsburgh. He wrote, he had testified in a Senate hearing, Al Gore was also there by the way. Lave said then that the science was still very uncertain about what the causes of climate change were. Al Gore threw him out of the hearing with the words that anyone who said that didn’t know what he was talking about

But Al Gore is really not a scientist.
Well, he was on TV after his Film opened in the movie theatres. The moderator asked him, why he believes that sea level could go up by about six meters, when science talks about 40 cm. He answered that science knows no such thing. He knows it. I think Al Gore is crazy.

You are enraged, when a politician says something about science?
Yes, I ensured Lester Lave, that science really can never be sure. But it became serious shortly after Newsweeek 1988 came out with its front page article about global warming. I began to publicly say that I thought the data too weak to reach a final conclusion. Many colleagues said that they were happy that someone finally said it. But as the older Bush raised the funding for climate research from 170 million dollars to 2 billion the institutions figured out that their future was connected with climate change. Even at MIT there exists a difference of opinion about this, not about the basic idea that temperature increases, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But we differ on whether climate change is an important topic. And there I differ from most of my colleagues. I believe that it is not a serious topic. I think it is important to think about the causes of the Ice Ages.

What do you know about Ice Ages?
Very little. Ice Ages correlate somehow with orbital parameters, but we don’t know how this has influenced climate change. Those are serious topics in atmospheric dynamics. I can tell you - We know very little

How to we approach the solution
No one wants to solve the problem, because then the money will stop flowing.

Listen, Mr. Lindzen, what really is your opinion about the nature of people
I see it this way, the way it is, not as I would like it. After the signing of the Montreal Protocols in 1987 for protecting the ozone layer research support disappeared. Ozone was not a problem anymore - even though it still is. The stratospheric chemist work today in the area of stratosphere and climate. Politics pays science, we are very dependent on it.

Who pays for that?
NASA. Sometimes no one. I tell you, they don’t want to solve the problem. Uncertainty is essential for alarmism. The argument is always the same. It may perhaps be uncertain, but that makes it also possible.

Are you saying that we cannot do anything about climate change? Are we doomed?
I say: We should not do anything. We really have other problems. If I, as an American look at Europe, then I see a continent that does not care about terrorism, that Iran could become a nuclear power, expanding Islam, but worries about climate change. That is a form of societal stupidity. Europe wants to feel that it is good and important. That is dumb. And, at the same time no European country will meet the Kyoto goals. No, I don’t understand any of this. We need to buy new electric lights? What does that help? Is everyone going to screw them in? I hope that this stops soon.

Why should it? That is people’s nature
That someone declares the end of the world every couple of years and then forgets that it has not happened? That can’t be. Sooner or later people get tired of the story and turn to something else. Surveys in the US already show such a trend. Reality is that Honda has built a small, very good hybrid car. It does not sell. People want a fat Toyota Prius so the neighbors will know that they have bought a hybrid.

What kind of car do you drive?
An old Honda Accord 1998

What do you really believe?
I am somewhat religious, more of a believer in any case than an observer. Something besides mankind exists.

And in spite of that you also cannot be sure that mankind has no influence on climate?
No one says that. But anyone who says that people are the cause of this or that is wrong. No one doubts that CO₂ absorbs infrared, and thus has an influence. But if you double the CO₂ concentration, the temperature would rise an entire degree (^oC). We could not observe that. I cannot believe that the world was so poorly constructed that it could not withstand such a change - it has already mastered many (such) changes.

Do humans believe that the world must die because we are mortal?
We live in a time of pessimism. It was the same in the 19th century. Then the Royal Society wrote in a report to the government that the electrification of England was too dangerous for normal people, one would do better by choosing gas. People profit today more than ever from scientific progress but don’t have the slightest clue how their equipment operates. That is a loss of control. This is why Al Gore puts forth a highly simplified picture of global warming, that ever five year old can understand. It gives people the feeling that they understand what is going on. And that they can do something about it. Unfortunately it is not the case

Consensus science attitude

Well, Ethon knows that we have tried to curb our Boulder chip habit as per New Years Resolution, but Eli saw a comment from the Dean himself down at the bottom of a thread, the best expression of high Broderism that one could imagine in climate science

2. I am not a sea level rise expert. The most recent consensus perspective is the IPCC report. If the science has advanced since that report was done then we need to "interpolate" the IPCC. This sort of "interpolation" made good sense in the case of hurricanes and I have no objections to sea level experts doing the same thing.

We will not point out that the guy he is attacking, Jim Hansen, is a sea level rise expert (but not a glaciologist), however what is important is the assumption that any advance in the science will be an interpolation of the IPCC report, when all the evidence and even the IPCC report itself says that the outcome will be an EXTRAPOLATION from the current SPM.

• Contraction of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100. Current models suggest ice mass losses increase with temperature more rapidly than gains due to precipitation and that the surface mass balance becomes negative at a global average warming (relative to pre-industrial values) in excess of 1.9 to 4.6°C. If a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m. The corresponding future temperatures in Greenland are comparable to those inferred for the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when paleoclimatic information suggests reductions of polar land ice extent and 4 to 6 m of sea level rise. {6.4, 10.7}
• Dynamical processes related to ice flow not included in current models but suggested by recent observations could increase the vulnerability of the ice sheets to warming, increasing future sea level rise. Understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude. {4.6, 10.7}
• Current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall. However, net loss of ice mass could occur if dynamical ice discharge dominates the ice sheet mass balance. {10.7}

There has been a great deal of discussion about why the Republicans in the US reject climate science (ear tip to Chris Mooney's Republican War on Science) and a lot of other science. If one thinks of their tactics as a struggle for the Overton Window it makes sense

It describes a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue. Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable.....

The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it, and adding new ideas that can push the old ideas towards acceptance merely by making the limits more extreme.

Eli sees those like Roger Peilke and Richard Tol, pushing the other side, trying to make reasonable things said by those like Al Gore, Nicholas Stern, Jim Hansen, the Real Climate gang, etc. appear unreasonable and beyond the pale.

Some silly bunnies and anonymice will say that the two efforts are independent, that maybe Gore, Stern and Hansen are saying unreasonable things. Eli might be willing to pull his fine furry ears over his eyes if he saw the Rs rejecting the pull of Inhofe, Barton and their passel of denialist emeriti, but he has searched in vain for such. Indeed, when asked to say something about the loony Republican view of climate change, Roger and others practice a convenient truthiness claiming that they really are not expert in that area and don't know what those folk are saying.

To deal with this pull-push tactic if you have the facts on your side and want to get something done is not trivial. Pulling back by saying loony things about the end of the earth turns the whole policy debate into a food fight made for TV gottcha ads (Michael Tobis points this out constantly). On the other hand one does have to pull the debate back to reality on the one hand by ridiculing the Inhofians and by calling the Pielke's to account

The Pig Teaches

Turning the old saw on its head about not trying to teach a pig how to dance (it frustrates you and annoys the pig), the Capitalist Imperial Pig has a very nice post on the origin of the Greenhouse Effect. The teacher in me hates to give an A+, so Prof. Rabett will point out that it might have been a bit clearer if he had killed the stratospheric ozone (that's the peak at ~1100 cm^-1) by setting the scale factor to zero, and zeroed out the trop ozone and the methane. But Eli niggles. RTFP.

There are a couple of extensions to the argument Eli wants to try.....

Ethon brings word of April Fool's Jokes Boulder style

It's pretty hard to keep the irony meter on scale these days. The National Anonymice Academy had no sooner taken up the issue of ice cap rot, when Steve Bloom scurried in from Austin Texas, with news from the parallel meeting of the Western Antarctic Links to Sea Level Estimation (WALSE) Workshop. This proves the power of convening a meeting of the Anonymice Academy for focusing attention on important matters. Word had also run to our friends in Boulder who, if they were the long eared types would be complimented on the wonderful knots they are tying in their ears.

Eli thought it would be a good thing to contrast and compare some of the text from the Hansen Arxiv paper the Academy has been studying, with the consensus statement that emerged from the WALSE group, who presumably had a number of expert glaciologists sitting in.

• Satellite observations show that both the grounded ice sheet and the floating ice shelves of the Amundsen Sea Embayment have thinned over the last decades.

Hansen: The most compelling data for the net change of ice sheets is provided by the gravity satellite mission GRACE, which shows that both Greenland (Chen et al 2006) and Antarctica (Velicogna et al 2006) are losing mass at substantial rates. The most recent analyses of the satellite data (S. Klosco et al priv. comm.) confirm that Greenland and Antarctica are each losing mass at a rate of about 150 cubic kilometers per year, with the Antarctic mass loss primarily in West Antarctica. These rates of mass loss are at least a doubling of rates of several years earlier, and only a decade earlier these ice sheets were much closer to mass balance (Casenave 2006)....

Warming ocean waters are now thinning some West Antarctic ice shelves by several meters per year (Payne et al 2004; Shepherd et al 2004).

• Ongoing thinning in the grounded ice sheet is already contributing to sea-level rise.

Hansen: Under BAU forcing in the 21st century, sea level rise undoubtedly will be dominated by a third term (3) ice sheet disintegration. This third term was small until the past few years, but it is has at least doubled in the past decade and is now close to 1 mm/year, based on gravity satellite measurements discussed above.

• The thinning of the ice has occurred because melting beneath the ice shelves has increased, reducing the friction holding back the grounded ice sheet and causing faster flow.

Hansen: Acceleration of ice sheet disintegration requires tapping into ocean heat, which occurs primarily in two ways (Hansen 2005): (1) increased velocity of outlet glaciers (flowing in rock-walled channels) ice streams (bordered mainly by slower moving ice), and thus increased flux and subsequent melting of icebergs discharged to the open ocean, and (2) direct contact of ocean and ice sheet (underneath and against fringing ice shelves). Ice loss from the second process has a positive feedback on the first process: as buttressing ice shelves melt, ice stream velocity increases.

• Oceanic changes have caused the increased ice-shelf melting. The observed average warming of the global ocean has not yet notably affected the waters reaching the base of the ice shelves. However, recent changes in winds around Antarctica caused by human influence and/or natural variability may be changing ocean currents, moving warmer waters under the ice shelves.

Hansen: Modeling studies yield increased ocean heat uptake around West Antarctica and Greenland due to increasing human-made greenhouse gases (Hansen et al 2006b). Observations show a warming ocean around West Antarctica (Shepherd et al 2004), ice shelves thinning several meters per year (Rignot and Jacobs 2002; Payne et al 2004), and increased iceberg discharge (Thomas et al 2004).

• Our understanding of ice-sheet flow suggests the possibility that too much melting beneath ice shelves will lead to “runaway” thinning of the grounded ice sheet. Current understanding is too limited to know whether, when, or how rapidly this might happen, but discussions at the meeting included the possibility of several feet of sea-level rise over a few centuries from changes in this region.

Hansen: Positive feedback from loss of buttressing ice shelves is relevant to some Greenland ice streams, but the West Antarctic ice sheet, which rests on bedrock well below sea level (Thomas et al 2004), will be affected much more. Loss of ice shelves provides exit routes with reduced resistance for ice from further inland, as suggested by Mercer (1978) and earlier by Hughes (1972). ...

An important point is that the non-linear response could easily run out of control, because of
positive feedbacks and system inertias.......The nonlinearity of the ice sheet problem makes it impossible to accurately predict sea level change on a specific date.

We leave it as a challenge to find Hansen's opinion on the remaining issues. A good place to start is his slippery slope argument in Climate Change, which, among other things points to problems with ice sheet models.

• The experts agreed that to reduce the very large uncertainties concerning the behavior of the Antarctic ice in the Amundsen Sea Embayment will require new satellite, ground, and ship-based observations coupled to improved models of the ice-ocean-atmosphere system. Issues include:

1. The recent changes were discovered by satellite observations; however, continued monitoring of some of these changes is not possible because of a loss of capability in current and funded satellite missions.
2. The remoteness of this part of Antarctica from existing stations continues to limit the availability of ground observations essential to predicting the future of the ice sheet.
3. No oceanographic observations exist beneath the ice shelves, and other oceanographic sampling is too infrequent and sparse to constrain critical processes.
4. Current continental-scale ice sheet models are inadequate for predicting future sea level rise because they omit important physical processes.
5. Current global climate models do not provide information essential for predicting ice sheet and oceanic changes in the Amundsen Sea Embayment; for example, ice shelves are not included.

However, Eli would appreciate some furry rodent to explain the contradiction that lunch claims in his April Fools joke:

2. There is the "possibility of several feet of sea-level rise over a few centuries from changes in this region." This contrasts strongly with Jim Hansen's assertion that

"Spatial and temporal fluctuations are normal, short-term expectations for Greenland glaciers are different from long-term expectations for West Antarctica. Integration via the gravity satellite measurements puts individual glacier fluctuations in proper perspective. The broader picture gives strong indication that ice sheets will, and are already beginning to, respond in a nonlinear fashion to global warming.There is enough information now, in my opinion, to make it a near certainty that IPCC BAU climate forcing scenarios would lead to disastrous multi-meter sea level rise on the century time scale"

unless someone out there thinks that several feet is substantially different from multi-meter or that a large sea level rise over 1-3 centuries would be a walk in the park. Living a mile or so up may give one a sense of security we at sea level lack. OTOH, there is less O2 up high.