It's a long slow process convincing fanatics, Don, and we all need patience, but I think we've turned the corner. Certainly the people whose decisions actually matter are starting to see the folly of pursuing Green medievalism. When the AGW movement finally collapses it will be a triumph for genuine science and common sense over popular hysteria, and a tribute to the growing power of the Internet to disseminate inconvenient truths.

Hopefully the next Grand Folly that comes along will take less than thirty years to deflate.

Jon J,

Looks like no more convincing is needed? I've just looked around that corner you mentioned and I like the view.

“EU Leaders Back Shale Gas Revolution, Roll Back Climate Policy

Europe’s plan to decarbonise its economy by 2050 could be turned on its head at a summit today if EU heads of state and government sign off on measures prioritising industrial competitiveness over climate change in draft conclusions seen by EurActiv.

The draft text says that EU policy must ensure “competitive” energy prices, and declares it “crucial” that Europe diversify its energy supply and develop “indigenous energy resources” – a reference to renewable energies, but also coal, nuclear power and shale gas.

One high-profile German MEP Holger Krahmer (ALDE), hailed the end of “climate hysteria” in a jubilant press statement.”

EUobserver 22 May 2013

And yet News Ltd has a story in today's online edition that tells of the urgent evacuation of a 16-strong crew of a drifting Arctic research station after the ice floe that hosts the floating laboratory began to disintegrate.
The floating research laboratory will be relocated to Bolshevik Island in the Russian Arctic.
And this before the northern summer has even kicked in.
I for one am very grateful that global warming is apparently proceeding much more slowly than was generally anticipated. It will give us that much more time to adapt

AGW is a scientific fact. If Europe wants to ignore this it is at a global cost. Wanton European ignorance/arrogance does not obliterate scientific fact.

I continue to be amused by the claim there has been no warming trend for 15 years. The was a very large spike in 1998 that a continuing warming trend has not yet subsumed, but inexorably will. This is akin to the share-market index gradually surpassing its last pre-bust peak.

Of course, in 2002 the hiatus claim was 5 years and in 2008 it was a 10. Compared to 14 years, or 16 to 30 there's a large
increase. The fact is, global temperatures are not in hiatus which many observations such as shifting land and sea climate and bio-zones attest.

Were there any climate scientists who categorically stated that the Oklahoma tornado was caused by AGW?

What a great experiment...let's raise the atmospheric C02 beyond 400ppm and see what happens.

We should all put our feet up for fifty years and see how high we can get it (apparently by then we'll "know much more about climate and its causes and effects...")

Yeah, knowledge is a great thing - like CO2 being a heat trapping gas in the atmosphere. I wonder what else we can learn and ignore because of economic imperatives.

Poirot,

<< I wonder what else we can learn and ignore because of economic imperatives? >>

“Instead of the blooming green economy promised by political leaders and activists, Europe is facing a competitiveness crisis and an economic nightmare, with almost 27 million people out of work and many countries facing bankruptcy. According to Austria’s energy regulator, European consumers have subsidized renewable energy investors by a staggering 600 billion euros since 2004. In most EU members states, energy prices have skyrocketed while millions of families have been forced into energy poverty. Public protest against the growing cost of going green are forcing lawmakers to renounce support for costly policies that are hurting ordinary families”. --Benny Peiser, Calgary Herald, 16 May 2013

Ah yes, those pesky economic imperatives. The odd Trillion dollars just to support your selfish ideological mantra and that our children and grandchildren will spend much of their working lives to repay, you mean THOSE economic imperatives?

I guess if you continue to support comments like;

<<AGW is a scientific fact. If Europe wants to ignore this it is at a global cost. Wanton European ignorance/arrogance does not obliterate scientific fact>>

Then I guess you wouldn’t care much about someone else’s Trillion dollars being sucked out of their economic future?

The last bastion of CAGW, the EU, is imploding. Perhaps we could all have a whip round on OLO to get you a one way ticket to Europe so you can put them straight

Oh ye of little faith Don.

I have it on good authority from my great Aunty (and she is not to be crossed) that at present rates AGM is raising sea levels by 1mm a decade.

I repeat: 1mm a decade.

I repeat: 1mm a decade.

Meaning that in 3,000 years canal real-estate will be slightly effected.

Then you'll be sorry.

And me and my (great) Aunty.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We're all going to die! We're going to be roasted, fried, and fricaseed! The planet won't be here any more! Here's a link to the Guardian for scientific proof. What about our grandchildren!? We need government grants for all the technocrats, sack-cloth and ashes for the hoi polloi, and starvation for the third world. Only then do we have any chance of a truly moral, sustainable society! Anyone who doesn't agree with the new state religion is a heretic oops denier and should be burnt at the stake. I am God's representative on earth.

aren't we on to the newest scare yet? Billions poured down the drain to fill the pockets of those supporting the gw religion. If you want to be rich get in early on the next scare from the EU.

Good point runner;

“Wind farm operators in Scotland have been paid nearly £6 million over the past 33 days not to generate electricity, more than was paid out for the whole of last year. Campaigners claim there has never been a longer period of consecutive payments and are continuing to call for the energy regulator to investigate. From April 13 to May 13 this year, some £5.994m was paid out to operators by the National Grid, with all but £2000 going to developments in Scotland. The total for the whole of 2012 was £5.924m. The latest payments bring the total paid since January 1 to £7.8m and this week alone 20 wind farms have shared a total payout of £2.12m. --David Ross, The Glasgow Herald, 16 May 2013”.

Luciferase,

You say << I continue to be amused by the claim there has been no warming trend for 15 years >>.

Yep, so do we!

Don’t worry, you have two conclusions yet to realize. One, it’s getting even more amusing and two; it never was funny in the first place.

Why don’t you do the right thing and send your pseudo-scientific clap trap to those who can do something about it, the IPCC. Everyone else has deserted your cause and left you with precisely what you started with in the first place, rubbish.

spindoc,

"....European union consumers have subsidized renewable energy investors by a staggering 600 billion euros since 2004..."

http://www.ewea.org/blog/2013/02/fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-public-enemy-number-one/

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/08/has-there-ever-been-a-level-energy-playing-field-putting-renewables-subsidies-in-context

I understand that you have no interest in putting the fossil fuel vs renewable subsidies into context.

I also understand why you would quote Benny Peiser.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Benny_Peiser

Now there's non-partisan source (sarc)

"Why don’t you do the right thing and send your pseudo-scientific clap trap to those who can do something about it, the IPCC."

Spindic, the IPCC and the greater scientific community is already well aware of what you call pseudo-science but what is actually cold (pardon that), hard, scientific fact.

If you and others wish to celebrate an apparent European withdrawal from climate action through its emergency economic imperative, fine, but don't claim to have science behind you.

With each post the depth of your ignorance seems fully plumbed then you go and dash that with a subsequent post.

PS: as plantagenet mentions sea-level rising (not that I believe that to be the worst aspect of AGW) please see http://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/

You will note that where glaciers melt there is an uplift of land causing an effective lowering of sea-level. Maybe a canal development will yet find itself high and dry rather than sinking like a Pacific island.

The climate is off the agenda. I read the mainstream media in Europe and for years they were not allow to write anything against the warmistas views, but that has clearly changed since a few months.

Though there are some rearguard battles. The German Spiegel published an article last week saying it will not get as warm as expected (and disappointed the people in Germany desperately waiting for if not global warming but just a little local warming after a very cold winter which stretched into spring an now a freezing early summer). That article was online for two days, then it got censored.
And the German environment authority (Bundesumweltamt) has published a paper stating very clearly which opinions about GW are acceptable and which are not.
Governments telling us what to think leads to dictatorship.

Luciferase,

Not making much sense are you?

<< the IPCC and the greater scientific community is already well aware of what you call pseudo-science but what is actually cold (pardon that), hard, scientific fact >>.

You may be right but I’m not a climate scientist so I can’t help you. I can however base my view of your science on the response it is getting from those who do understand it.

This includes all those nations and all their experts that refused to save Kyoto, the global renewable industry that has now collapsed, the last bastion of CAGW, the EU and the emissions trading markets that have also collapsed.

That’s how good your science is, it has knocked them all over. Whoopee!

Poirot,

<< I understand that you have no interest in putting the fossil fuel vs renewable subsidies into context >>.

What?

I just posted press releases, I didn’t write them Poirot. Why should I have to explain someone else’s press releases?

If your story and your science are so good they would hold up globally wouldn’t they? Don’t blame me because you were sold a yarn. I didn’t dismantle your little CAGW world, the people who sold you your pseudo-science did.

Why is it now everyone else’s fault Poirot?

Look Poirot, you have allowed this passion to consume you for a long time, I also understand that it’s demise has left you with a void, but by trying to deny this reality you are going to make yourself ill. Just find a replacement alarm to promote and move on.

Try peak oil, peak population, peak food production or peak something to frighten yourself with.

spindoc,

"You may be right but I'm not a climate scientist so I can' help you. I can however base my view on your science on the response it is getting from those who do understand it."

Says it all really.

However, the reality is that you base your view on those who choose to ignore it in favour of "short-term" imperatives, which, of course, is a typically human trait.

Far from being "consumed", spindoc, I'm more fascinated and amused by the hordes of no-science flunkies who flood the blogs with their cackling denial.

It's more like a game of whack-a-mole to me.

renysol,

Regarding your studious reading of an article in Spiegel.

Here's an article that may clear things up a bit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/may/21/matt-ridley-joined-real-climate-debate?CMP=twt_gu

(Yes, I know, JKJ, that it's a Guardian article...but it's written by one of the authors of the paper renysol refers to which was published in the journal Nature Geoscience, from whence erupted a great flow of denialist "told-you-so's")

Of course, reading Myles Allen's article would disabuse deniers of any particular solid footing to their latest nah-nah-nah's, but I thought I'd post it anyway for the edification of the few regular's on OLO who may be interested.

Surely you don't need a science degree to understand that changing the composition of the atmosphere is going to change the climate. Alas it seems that such a simple concept is to much for a number of people on this thread.
Here is short list of what we have done so far:-

1 We have added a number of man made gases to the atmosphere such as fluorocarbons thus damaging the ozone layer and altering the way energy is absorbed high in the atmosphere.

2 We have added vast amounts of aerosols to the atmosphere altering both the optical proprieties of the atmosphere and indirectly the amount of cloud cover and intensity of rainfall.

3 We have increased by about 40% the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere thus reducing the rate at which the surface cools by interfering with the energy flows in the atmosphere.

4 We are responsible for a doubling of the amount of methane in the atmosphere again a gas which interferes with the flow of energy through the atmosphere.

5 We have increased the level of nitrous oxides and other volatile organic compounds leading to photochemical smog and further monkeying around with energy flows in the atmosphere.

Now some of these changes lead to warming and some to cooling, the main players being CO2 for warming and aerosols for cooling. If at some point in the future we decide to stop treating the atmosphere as a garbage dump, the levels of aerosols will fall rapidly, but the levels of Co2 will take hundreds or even thousands of years to come back to something like the levels of last million years or so.

It should be clear from the above that measuring the increase in global temperature, is not going to be in exact proportion to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact it leads to the conclusion that aerosols are shielding us from even higher temperatures. The more we damage the environment the more costly and difficult it will be to fix in the future.

Poirot,

When I refer to judging your science by the response from people who do understand it, I am of course referring to your former supporters, all the nations who once signed up for Kyoto, all their scientists who once agreed with you and all the governments that once legislated for the existence of emissions caps, emissions trading markets and renewable energy industries.

So all these thousands of government scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists, investors, engineers, researchers and academics who once agreed with your science but no longer do, have abandoned you because they “choose to ignore it in favor of “short term’ imperatives, which, of course, is a typically human trait”?

So they have abandoned you because they choose to ignore your science in favor of something they believe is more important? Then you accuse your own former team of having a “typically human trait”?

They differ from you in one key aspect that you failed to mention. They have a typically “thinking” human trait.

That’s why you got left behind Poirot, you can’t think.

From where I sit, it seems clear that there must be some effect in adding large quantities of anything to a system that is in a pseudo-equilibrium. In other words, I can see no reason to doubt that AGW is likely to be real on some scale. I'm not sure that anyone except charlatans is able to sincerely suggest that we have enough data to make really useful predictions about what that scale might be.

The whole discussion around the subject comes down to a fairly small set of key questions that will be resolved as data is collected, overlaid by political and commercial interests and prejudices.

The three biggest empirical questions, it seems to me, are:
"what is the likely range of warming?"
"at what rate will that change occur?"
and, as this is a pseudo-equilibrium, "what is the latency (lag) in the system".

If we don't know those things with some considerable certainty, then it is inevitable that political, commercial and personal prejudices, which have no such uncertainty (right or wrong), will become the dominant factor in any discussion and it will be pointless. No minds will be changed, nothing will be gained.

It is precisely that which has allowed poor policy-making; after all, how can one form a useful policy on the science in the absence of usefully clear data about the topic? On the other hand, if there is some commercial or political advantage to be gleaned, that data can be readily gathered via the routine political/commercial methods and policies designed to suit. The science is simply not in the race, other than as a political tool.

Because of that, I'd like to see less being spent on mitigation or other efforts and more on the science. If it turns out the effect is likely to be either catastrophically large or negligibly small then we need to know that, for a start, before we do anything at all except what's easy and we've already done a great deal of that.

The usual idiots are out baying at the moon; best line so far:

"From where I sit, it seems clear that there must be some effect in adding large quantities of anything to a system that is in a pseudo-equilibrium"

"pseudo-equilibrium"?! Sitting under a toadstool no doubt.

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/05/ten-of-the-worst-climate-research-papers-5-years-on/comment-page-1/#comment-526142

If these people were company directors they'd be rich; oh wait, they are.

Au contraire, spindoc.

Your "thinkers" are merely protecting the status quo.

Here's Canada's version of scientific freedom...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/04/canada-investigates-silenced-muzzled-scientists

And the US Republicans are trying to cobble together their own version....

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/04/us-lawmaker-proposes-new-criteri-1.html

And if things start melting faster than anticipated - well that's all right as well....

http://m.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/10/national-strategy-arctic-region-announced

Big business, oil and partisan politicians - that's all it takes for the science to be muzzled and/or ignored.

You Know it - we all Know it.

cohenite, why didn't you just point out you had nothing to say. It would have saved everyone so much time.

[Deleted for abuse.]

Cohenite, thanks for so clearly making my point above. How could mere empiricism and rationality hope to compete with such certainty?

For those who are interested (obviously you needn't bother, cohenite), a good paper on the underlying concepts of metastability in dynamic systems, including pseudo-equilibria is

http://wt.iam.uni-bonn.de/fileadmin/WT/Inhalt/people/Anton_Bovier/lecture-notes/prague.pdf

"a phenomenon called metastability. Basically this refers to
the existence of two or more time-scales over which the system shows
very different behaviour: on the short time scale, the systems reaches
quickly a “pseudo-equilibrium” and remains effectively in a restricted
subset of the available phase space; the particular pseudo-equilibrium
that is reached will depend on the initial conditions. However, when
observed on the longer time scale, one will occasionally observe
transitions from one such pseudo-equilibrium to another one."

It is obvious from the historical record that this describes the behaviour of our climate quite well. Long periods in which the climatic conditions are limited to a small range, followed by a relatively sudden transition to a different set of conditions, which are also maintained within a small range, but which will also transition in time.

What it doesn't do is tell us anything about what those ranges will be. It may be that AGW is incapable of changing the dynamics sufficiently to do more than extend the range of the current pseudo-equilibrium state, which would be inconvenient, but should be able to be dealt with. On the other hand, it may be enough to provoke a transition to a new range entirely, which could be catastrophic.

We need better information. At least, some of us do...

"pseudo-equilibrium" in AGW is descibed in the difference between Equilibrium climate sensitivity [T2x] and Transient climate sensitivity [TCR]; see:

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/345.htm

For the sensitive souls this is what it says:

“Global mean temperature change for 1%/yr CO2 increase with subsequent stabilisation at 2xCO2 and 4cCO2. The red curves are from a coupled AOGCM simulation (GFDL_R15_a) while the green curves are from a simple illustrative model with no exchange of energy with the deep ocean. The transient climate response, TCR, is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling and the equilibrium climate sensitivity, T2x, is the temperature change after the system has reached a new equilibrium for doubled CO2, i.e., after the additional warming commitment has been realised.
The temperature change at any time during a climate change integration depends on the competing effects of all of the processes that affect energy input, output, and storage in the ocean”

Where is the heat to explain the difference, or "metastability" between T2x and TCR being secreted? According to AGW, at the bottom of the ocean; Trenberth's latest paper attempts to explain that; it is number 1 of the dud [sic] papers listed here:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/05/ten-of-the-worst-climate-research-papers-5-years-on/?cp=all

Lags, delays, or the pretentious term 'metastability' exist in the climate system, just not the way AGW 'science' would have us believe; all that is left is the pretension

hahahaha

2 x pffft

It's always good to come to a meeting of minds.

The point about metastable systems is that very small systemic inputs can produce large changes in the pseudo-equilibrium ("the butterfly effect"), or in some cases that the system can oscillate within the range that maintains that pseudo-equilibrium for some time before some combination of internal factors causes it to exceed that range, at which point it tends to oscillate chaotically for a time before again settling into a pseudo-equilibrium state. In other words, the question "where's the heat?" is of little import - the climate is an emergent property of the interactions of many factors, some of them also metastable or subject to oscillations. It may be that if some of those cyclic factors reach a coincident peak or trough in their cycle that they will have a combined effect that is sufficient to exceed the pseudo-equilibrium range and start a transition. We are directly influencing some of those factors by our existence as an industrial society, so the historic data is not especially useful as a predictor.

The problem for us is that we know very little about the parameters that define the current state and we know nothing at all about what parameters might obtain in the transition, how long that might last and what the new pseudo-equilibrium might be, nor do we know the buffering capacity of the system.

We're trying to balance an inverted pendulum on our finger while running blindfolded across rocky ground. The only sensible course of action is to stop running headlong, take the blindfold off and hope that the pendulum hasn't already gone past its tipping point.

antiseptic,

".....or in some cases that the system can oscillate within the range that maintains that pseudo-equilibrium for some time before some combination of internal factors causes it to exceed its range, at which point it tends to oscillate chaotically for a time before again settling into a pseudo-equilibrium state...."

A bit like this then?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47

Quote Antiseptic
The three biggest empirical questions, it seems to me, are:
"what is the likely range of warming?"
"at what rate will that change occur?"
and, as this is a pseudo-equilibrium, "what is the latency (lag) in the system".
End Quote

Very true except that following is well have established.

The best estimate for the warming is 3 Deg C for a doubling of the the CO2 level with an error range of +or- 1.5 deg C. That is as after the lag has caught up and the climate has stabilised.

The rate at which this will occur depends on how fast we increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The lag in the system is primarily due to the fact that it takes some 350 times more energy to heat up the oceans than it does to heat up the atmosphere.

I would argue the science was clear enough 30 years ago and since that time the evidence has become even more convincing, increasing levels of co2 will raise global temperatures provided everything else remains constant. Obviously everything else is not going to remain constant therefore we are gambling that something will come along to negate the effects of global warming, unfortunately it is just as likely that some change might occur which further increases temperatures. The prudent thing to do of course is to make a planed transition to a low CO2 emitting economy.

Politically the the biggest problem is the current value of fossil fuels in the ground is so enormous that the temptation to dig it up and sell it is overwhelming. The people who own these assets will obviously downplay the effect of rising CO2 levels. This is further complicated by the fears that tackling the problem will seriously reduce peoples standard of living. The current state of play in Australia is the left wing fears that any action will cost jobs and the right wing fears it will reduce profits. No wonder there is a lack of enthusiasm to actually tackle the problem.

Antiseptic is talking about 'Tipping Points' and the possibility that humans are going to trigger a climatic catastrophe.

There is resonance in nature; things like rogue waves exist because there can be a synchronicity with otherwise divergent energy transfers, in that case waves.

The Butterfly effect is an expression of chaos and is different from climatic 'Tipping Points'; the BE is not a product of resonance but extreme sensitivity.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the climate system is not particulalrly sensitive at all; even 'official' papers like the recent Otto et al paper are reducing the climate sensitivity to CO2;

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1836.html

Geologically this is apparent when looking at past disasters like the KT event which basically set the atmosphere on fire, but which effect was over within 5 years.

Resonance works with various energy wavelengths, in themselves occasionally irregular, which can enhance and dampen other bigger and smaller wavelengths; what this means is that the climate sensitivity is frequency dependent not attributable to an isolated factor like CO2 which has predictable and montonic properties; Scafetta has looked at this:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1005/1005.4639v1.pd

'bout time you updated your 'library'.

pffft x 3

Something like that, Poirot. The problem with a graph like that is that we can't tell if it represents a trend that will continue, leading to a transition, or if it's just recording an oscillation within the metastable range that will trend down over time without having more information.

warmair, an estimate with error bars extending 50% either side is a best guess. It is informed by data that are too fuzzy and by an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to the dynamics, not to mention they assume a somewhat linear response, which may be unjustified.

I don't deny the science is clear, but it's not sufficiently detailed to be able to make useful predictions with it, even on short time-scales, and we don't even know if that will ever be possible because of the chaotic nature of the system.

The latency I referred to is basically how long it will be before some combination of variables triggers a transition into a different pseudo-equilibrium range. We already know that the planet does this all by itself without us, so we have to proceed on the assumption that our input could lead to emergent behaviour we can't yet predict and gather the data to make it possible to do so.

I don't have any disagreement with your conclusions. I just wanted to clarify what I said earlier.

cohenite, the issue is not so much that reinforcement and damping occur, it is that we don't yet know enough to predict the effects. We are only studying a few variables that show correlations with observable effects, or have known properties we feel are relevant to climate. Each of those variables has behaviour that emerges from the interactions of other variables and shows some degree of periodicity or metastability or both.

The problem is understanding the concatenations of interactions that make it all happen and working out how we fit into it all.

Antiseptic, thank you for making me feel so much better. There's clearly nothing to worry about at all. I can just relax and get on with life in the safe knowledge you are there to salve my insecurity over the future of my DNA whenever real climate scientists raise concerning info.

Whether AGW carries on to become CAGW is just something we should wait and see, right, like perhaps when monsoons cease in the Ganges basin or the gacier feeding it melts (but how would that affect us anyway, eh?). The effect of climate change on world food security is the biggest issue, IMO, and will determine the future behaviour of nations.

Arctic Amplification.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=81214&src

Antiseptic,

On the "range of uncertainties":

http://theconversation.com/uncertainty-no-excuse-for-procrastinating-on-climate-change-14634

Thanks for that, Poirot, but I found it unconvincing for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn't tell us anything about what the response of the climate to the increase in free energy (heat) will be. It assumes that the long-term response is predictable from data accumulated on an extremely short baseline, which is not a reasonable assumption in a metastable system that has oscillating variables at every time scale. Therefore, to claim that a 2 degree temperature rise is "virtually certain" is not a reasonable conclusion based on that data.

Second, even with a simplified model, including just some of the parameters, the range of uncertainty is enormous, meaning the model is effectively useless as a predictive tool over even short timeframes, as the disjoint between modelling and observation over the last decade or so has demonstrated. If we can't predict what's going to happen next year, how can we hope to predict what will happen in 100 or 100 years?

I'm not suggesting we do nothing, just take it carefully, rather than committing to actions that will have negative impacts in other ways, including economically and socially, which may limit our ability to muster a proper response in future.

We should also be aware that there are larger cyclic variations operating on longer timeframes which we understand even less.

It seems a pretty obvious thing to do to reduce anthropogenic atmospheric contributions to as small as possible, but intuitive responses aren't always the best, especially when dealing with complexity. Make haste slowly is my advice.

Luciferase, with population pressure growing rapidly, food and water security are going to be major issues whatever the climate does. The penultimate generation in a petri dish culture is well fed and has room to expand - the last ones drowns in its own excrement or starves. The question that we have to answer on that is how close we are to filling the petri dish that houses our species. I guess we'll find out in time, because it's very unlikely we'll stop expanding our numbers until we do.

Antiseptic,

You may also be interested in this, which relies on empirical real world data and not global climate models.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120803_DicePopSci.pdf

And we already know what's happening in the Arctic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgiMBxaL19M

Antiseptic, have you ever wondered why some projections (not predictions) in some metrics start to stabilise (say mid-century) then decline thereafter?

There are some pretty smart cookies out there working on it - political ideologues tend to stuff it.

Poirot, what's happening in the Arctic is not unique to our times, it's just that we haven't directly observed it before, so it is impressive.

It's a big leap from "wow, I haven't seen that before", to "wow, that looks bad, I must have done something to cause it".

The whole of large-scale human interaction with climate has occurred over a hundred or 2 years. The growth of human population is itself an example of how interactions of systems can produce emergent outcomes not predictable from looking at earlier trends.

If an alien scientist had done a study of human population for the entire time from the evolution of the species to just before the time of the pharaohs he'd have seen that it was pretty static and had started a small exponential growth trend due to technological advances increasing food availability.
If he'd then taken that data and extrapolated it for the next 5500 years, he might have concluded the population today would be at most 500 million but probably much lower.

He simply had no way of knowing how the variables were going to interact to produce the conditions for the population to be heading for 9 or 10 billion based on his observations, especially variables which were themselves emergent,like technological innovation. He may have had a rate term for that in his model, but it would have been a simple one of small effect and would have been a pretty good fit right up until the last few hundred years when it would have failed completely.

That's a pretty simple system, readily modelled by a smooth curve for the most part, which cannot reliably extrapolate the curve about 2% further in time because there are emergent factors which are unpredictable.

The climate data shows no smooth curves on any time scale.

We need more data.

Poirot, you may be interested in "Negotiating our future: Living scenarios for Australia to 2050."

Media release:

http://www.science.org.au/news/media/21february13.html

Volumes 1 & 2:

http://www.science.org.au/policy/australia-2050/volume1.html

http://www.science.org.au/policy/australia-2050/volume2.html

Select a drink of your choice, cosy up and click the embedded chapters at your leisure.

Sadly, the contents would go over the top of most OLO'ers.

My last post, good-bye.

Thank you, qanda.

Adieu

: )

Well the denialists are out in full force, again. I have a theory ( that has just occurred to me, I do not spend any time thinking about a bunch idiots) that one writes an anti AGW piece and the rest all chime in because they feel that they are being supported by the others.
OK, here is the scoop. It is a forgone conclusion that AGW is real and so the average temp will keep on rising. It is basically caused by the demands of too many people trying to live on one small planet.
There will be no change to the rate of population growth ( well not soon enough to matter) and so we will see catastrophic climate change.
Yes I know it will take a bit more time to get to cataclysmic proportions but it will happen because the sheeple will not change their ways.
Eventually it could possible reduce the human ( and unfortunately other life) down to a very small group hanging on in a few spots that are still habitable.
So the more there are of you denialists and greedy BAU types there are, the quicker this will happen.
Then maybe if there are enough left to recolonise the world in perhaps a billion years, it could happen all over again. Maybe the next lot will have more sense.

Tell me Robert LePage, what cult did you belong to, before you found the global warming cult to which you obviously now belong?

Quote Antiseptic
an estimate with error bars extending 50% either side is a best guess. It is informed by data that are too fuzzy and by an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to the dynamics, not to mention they assume a somewhat linear response, which may be unjustified.
End Quote

The estimate for global temperatures to increase by 3 deg C +or- 1.5 for a doubling of CO2 levels does not imply a that the outcome of + 4.5 deg C is just as likely as 3 deg C. The result is based on statistics and the binomial distribution curve which is bell shaped, and therefore indicates that 3 Deg C is at the top of the curve and far more likely a result than those at the extreme ends. in fact the probability of the result being at either end of the extremes is less than 6%. That implies less than 3% chance that that the outcome will be at the cool end.

It is well understood that any factor which raises global temperatures will have knock on effects, most notably increasing the level of water vapour in the atmosphere which in turn amplifies the warming, This leads to the question as to what is the direct heating effect of increased levels of CO2. There is strong agreement that the effect of doubling CO2 in the atmosphere will directly cause a global temperature increase of 1 deg C + or- 0.2. This estimate further constrains the the possibilities as the margin of error is less. In other words if we have any faith at all in science we simply have to accept that global temperatures are going to rise unless we can curb our emission's of CO2.

On the subject of pseudo-equilibrium this is almost certainly true on the local and regional scale, but on the global scale is not likely to have much impact. On the most basic level we are dealing with an energy budget and if we reduce our energy loses and energy in remains the same temperatures will increase.

Hasbeen, if ever a nickname was appropriate it is yours.
A cult for me?
Impossible as I am a complete loner.
I just have brain and use it to think.

qanda, I haven't made a great effort to study the projections in detail, because there doesn't seem much point. The system is so complex that a truly comprehensive model would require a great deal of my time to understand (if I even could), but it's obvious the models that exist at present are extrapolating a long way from a short baseline with very incomplete data. That doesn't mean they're wrong, but it does mean they can't be relied on to be right.

I do trust that there are smart people working on it and that they will improve their understanding very rapidly so I am happy for us to do the things that are easy to flatten the curve on the factors we do understand and can influence on human time-scales.

Bad situations are rarely improved by kneejerk responses.

I think you all need to do a rethink.
I have just read this article by Gail Tvberg.

http://theenergycollective.com/gail-tverberg/229121/oil-limits-and-climate-change

It puts quite a different slant on CO2 production.
She maintains that the IPCC is not forecasting co2 properly.

Like many others I had thought peak oil would appear with queues of
cars at service stations, but instead it is appearing because we can
not afford to buy it. Hence the fall in sales of the product in the
US, Europe etc.

Anyway, read Gail's article, it cannot but force you to rethink.

So, Bazz, are you saying that knucklehead humans are likely to experience "collapse" due to financial limits - because of unfettered industrialisation before they experience "collapse" due to climate change - because of unfettered industrialisation?

That's sounds much more reassuring.......

Poirot,
What I am saying is that co2 might not be our biggest problem.
That collapse is a real risk, but not because of co2 emissions.

The US has met the co2 reduction targets, not because of taxes etc but
because they are burning less oil. They are burning less oil, down from
21 Mbpd to 18 Mbpd by lower economic activity and buying smaller cars.
They are also using less coal (I think, not sure) because significant
number of power stations are changing to natural gas.

Costs have risen about four times since early 2000s and that must have
some effect and it can no longer fall.

You sound skeptical, or are you a denier ?

Bazz,

Don't forget Keystone.....

They're burning less oil - buying smaller cars?

Good!

They are also exporting more coal because they are using more shale gas instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas_in_the_United_States

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=8490

warmair, I'm not questioning how the error bars were arrived at. For any given set of data that's trivial, but it doesn't mean the data has any validity as a predictive model. As I discussed earlier, a projection of human population from around 4000BCE to now would have had a high degree of confidence of an upper bound of well less than 1 billion and a lower bound of perhaps a few tens of millions or even less. Yet here we are, about an order of magnitude more of us than could have been predicted back then with the best data.

It is because human population has experienced that sudden rapid increase in growth that we are discussing the issue of AGW. There are many factors emerging that may cause a sudden collapse of the human population by negating the effect of some of the most obvious technologies that have allowed it to expand so rapidly. They include the imminent failure of antibiotics, depletion of cheaply and simply accessible sources of phosphates, inadequate fresh water resources and more. If the current population is a spike, not an approach to a new pseudo-equilibrium, the issue of AGW becomes moot.

I was in Brisbane during the 2011 floods. They occurred on a fine day with no rainfall to speak of and high tide happened not to coincide with the peak river flow. If it had kept raining locally or the peak flow had been a couple of hours different the flood might have been a meter or so higher (5.5m instead of 4.5m, nearly 25%), which was the prediction just a day earlier.

Just 3 variables in a pretty simple system which is highly constrained and very well understood yet such a large error.

It seems to me that there is a real failure on the part of the populace, including politicians and especially journalists, to grasp just how complex the problem of climate is and how little we genuinely understand about it. Because of that much of what is written is more akin to theology than science.

I disagree with the proposition that metastability and pseudo-equilibria are not a feature of global climate. The semi-periodic glaciations are an excellent example of just that on a fairly short time scale, while long-term shifts from one type of climatic regime to another are also readily inferred from geological evidence.

In fact, it's such a feature of climate that it occurs at every time and geographical scale you can think of, which is a feature of chaotic systems with fractal geometry.

It seems to me that we are living on borrowed time with respect to the global climate remaining within the current short-period pseudo-equilibrium, whatever we do and whether we make it happen or not. We're really only even around as a global species because the global climate has been so consistently suitable for us and our ancestral species for an unusually long time, although it has varied considerably around a mean and was starting to head down slightly.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Vostok_Petit_data.svg

An interesting discussion of the way climate may have stimulated human technological advance is at

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=prehistoric-climate-change-may-have-encouraged-human-innovation

It also points out that there are still large semi-periodic changes in global behaviour that we don't understand.

Antiseptic,

....Because of that, much of what is written is more akin to theology than science."

Well, I'm sorry to say that that particular sentence sounds like entrenched denier talk.

You won't find any oceanographer, glaciologist, atmospheric physicist, etc claiming that earth's climate is not complicated and there's much we don't know.

However, there is much we do know. People with expertise and real knowledge of how things work are telling us we're indulging in an extremely dangerous experiment.

Don't impugn the work of those scientists who with real dedication and expertise work hard to measure and compare and provide us with "empirical" data, by likening their scientific integrity to that of a theologian.

What a lot of rot, Poirot. The scientists in the field would be the first to tell you they know very little, but my comment had nothing to do with them anyway. Go back and re-read it, it was directed at the non-scientists who spruik an agenda based on bugger all except faith.

My position is clear - do what's easy and research hard, because at the moment we know next to nothing about all the mechanisms involved. I have confidence that science will yield lots of answers - and thus continue to be an strongly influential emergent variable in the interaction of humans with their planet and vice versa.

Fair enough, Anti....you were directing your theological reference in the main to pollies and journalists. Of course, there is a lot of partisan "opinion" involved in that - depending on who your allegiances are with and the ownership of the media outlet.

Anyway, it's pointless arguing this stuff here. The people who could give you more info on what climate scientists know and do not know don't come to places like OLO....anymore.

I find that it helps me to organise my own thinking on a topic like this to try to construct an argument that can be scrutinised and critiqued by others.

I'm not sufficiently pretentious (not this 5 seconds, anyway) to think that my opinion is in any way likely to be worth the attention of anybody working in the field. However, I'm pretty certain that if what I say is either obvious nonsense on the face of it, or assumes things that are known to be wrong, or is simply gobbledegook then someone will point that out. There are obviously lots of people who have made a hobby/obsession/life's work out of keeping up with developments in the research and I am confident they are more than willing to point out my flaws - empirical, rational and sundry other if so moved.

I look forward to learning something.

Ah well, Anti....sorry to be the one to tell you.

But you won't find any scientists around here - especially of the climate variety.

qanda was the last one, and now he's gone.

The reason they don't come is that this isn't a place where scientific discussion can take place. I've watched over the years as a few scientists have tried. They get abused for their trouble by politically partisan "skeptics" with no scientific training.

If you want to learn, you'll have to go further afield than this garden variety forum.

But I wish you luck. You're an intelligent guy and there's lots of stuff our there - even for us laymen.

"But you won't find any scientists around here - especially of the climate variety.

qanda was the last one, and now he's gone."

From q&a's 'scientific' link:

"Any attempt to communicate about possible futures must take account of the
diverse ways in which people share information and opinions. Vivid stories,
movies and the like have the potential to help people experience the future’s
issues now and bring together emotions and beliefs with various forms of
information."

Utter garbage. Just up your alley Poirot; why don't you "Select a drink of your choice, cosy up and click the embedded chapters at your leisure."

q&a a scientist; oxymoron of the thread.