[Zelandakh]

 Al_U_Card, on 2015-November-04, 18:03, said:

Just read the assessment reports. As the model estimates diverge from reality, the SPMs INCREASE their declarations of certainty about the anthropogenic influence on climate catastrophy. They simply rely on "expert opinion" rather than actual analysis of data.... perhaps because they know that the converted don't really listen to the sermon in a faith-based environment.

No further comment about the Arctic ice levels between May and August 2015, or of ice extents after the 2015 melting season then? I was waiting to see the expected record ice levels!

On the above point, just so you can understand the process it goes: analysis of data => "expert opinion" => assessment reports. There are certainly issues with this process but to suggest that what you refer to as "expert opinion" has no relation to the analysis of the data is pretty ridiculous even by your standards.

And just so you know, I am probably the closest thing you have to an ally on BBF aside from Daniel. But I believe that being skeptical has to be done in combination with some basis in reality and not by throwing out rubbish that is easily shown to be misleading. You actually hurt the skeptical side of the argument far more than you help it with your contributions here; perhaps something for you to consider.

[Daniel1960]

 Zelandakh, on 2015-November-05, 06:00, said:

No further comment about the Arctic ice levels between May and August 2015, or of ice extents after the 2015 melting season then? I was waiting to see the expected record ice levels!

On the above point, just so you can understand the process it goes: analysis of data => "expert opinion" => assessment reports. There are certainly issues with this process but to suggest that what you refer to as "expert opinion" has no relation to the analysis of the data is pretty ridiculous even by your standards.

And just so you know, I am probably the closest thing you have to an ally on BBF aside from Daniel. But I believe that being skeptical has to be done in combination with some basis in reality and not by throwing out rubbish that is easily shown to be misleading. You actually hurt the skeptical side of the argument far more than you help it with your contributions here; perhaps something for you to consider.

Sea ice levels typically do not receive much fanfare at this time of year. Growth is rapid as the seasons change, and can be quite erratic, depending on temperatures, currents, and winds. the average Arctic sea ice extent for October was the 6th lowest, an increase from 4th lowest September minimum. Ice has reformed more rapidly this fall, owing to the unusually cold North Atlantic. How this plays into the winter is yet to be seen.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
http://www.reporting...ast-decade.html

[Al_U_Card]

Whether it is increasing Antarctic ice mass or any other measurable parameter associated with the climate, the point is to see just how unsettled the science is and how this affects the degree to which we must pay attention to the wailing of alarmists about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

That being said, Steve Koonin has an interesting op-ed about implications of the IPCC recommendations to be discussed at the CoP in Paris. It is annotated and discussed at Judith Curry's blog.

Back to the halcyon days...

Even being only moderately well-informed about things climatic leads one to question the wisdom of everything that the IPCC says, let alone stands for. Are they down-playing temperature rise to concentrate on precipitation (drought)? Their models do precipitation even more poorly than temps. This UN boondoggle makes the worst US pork-barreling look like chump-change. A sad commentary on how well-meaning, concerned people are being led down a garden path.

[Al_U_Card]

And here is the money quote from the above appreciation of CoP Paris:

"He underscores the futility of changing the climate by CO2 emissions reductions:

Unconditional national commitments made by countries for the Paris meeting are projected to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions through 2030 by an average of only 3 percent below the business-as-usual average rise of 8 percent.

Even if you believe the climate model projections, and that the countries can actually implement the emissions reductions that they have committed to, climate models (running with an ECS=3 C) produce a reduction of warming of only a few tenths of a degree C by 2100. A sluggish lever indeed; and if the ECS is 2.5C or even below 2C, then even less warming will be mitigated.

I make no predictions as to whether the Paris confab will be successful politically, by I am pretty confident that whatever they accomplish will end up having little impact on the climate of the 21st century. Exercise in futility, anyone?

[Zelandakh]

 Daniel1960, on 2015-November-05, 06:23, said:

the average Arctic sea ice extent for October was the 6th lowest, an increase from 4th lowest September minimum.

Do you not find that quite a surprising result given the particularly cool start to the year in the region? I have to admit I sneaked a peek at some data and knew that June had been a month with particularly high melt, hence my question to see if AIU would come clean on the subject with some balance and perspective. No chance of course but I am happy to see that you can still be straight about things despite the stick you often get here for your skeptical position.

[Al_U_Card]

VARIABILITY is the key, not individual, monthly or yearly results. The models can't hack natural (variable) processes, one of the many reasons the GCMS have no skill with the actual climate system.
Deride any comment for any reason you prefer but coming from the "other" side has a different perspective until debate is shut down, the science is settled and freedom no longer reigns...

[baraka]

Climate change is preordained and has nothing to do with human activity. It's the orbiting planets, mainly Jupiter, that cause tides in the sun,s plasma, just like the moon causes tides in the earth's oceans. These tides increase or decrease the sun's actibity therebye temperatures on earth. See Vukcevic, R.J. Salvador and Nicola Scafetta on Google.

[Zelandakh]

 baraka, on 2015-November-05, 15:29, said:

Climate change is preordained and has nothing to do with human activity. It's the orbiting planets, mainly Jupiter, that cause tides in the sun,s plasma, just like the moon causes tides in the earth's oceans. These tides increase or decrease the sun's actibity therebye temperatures on earth. See Vukcevic, R.J. Salvador and Nicola Scafetta on Google.

Would that be the model describer here? Perhaps you would care to post a rebuttal to the linked critique.

[baraka]

 Zelandakh, on 2015-November-05, 16:13, said:

Would that be the model describer here? Perhaps you would care to post a rebuttal to the linked critique.

Nop.

Here... http://www.vukcevic....olarcurrent.pdf

Here... http://www.pattern-r...-1-117-2013.pdf

Here... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.4143.pdf

Here... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.0193.pdf

Here... http://www.vukcevic....alk.net/NFC.htm (look at the very last graphic at the bottom)

And here... http://ruby.fgcu.edu...andIceSheet.pdf (graph shows growth above 1500m)

And there is a lot lot more if only you care to look properly. So PLEASE !

[Zelandakh]

 baraka, on 2015-November-05, 20:37, said:

Here... http://www.vukcevic....olarcurrent.pdf

This link reads more like a science fiction novel than scientific paper. Not only are the objections not addressed but there also appears to be not a single piece of evidence used to back up the ideas involved. It is simply a matter of fitting 2 cyclical curves to solar activity data to produce a basic model.

 baraka, on 2015-November-05, 20:37, said:

Here... http://www.pattern-r...-1-117-2013.pdf

This one is similar but uses 4 cycles matched to sunspot activity.

 baraka, on 2015-November-05, 20:37, said:

Here... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.4143.pdf

This is probably the paper critiqued in the link I provided and I can see nothing wrong with that criticism.

 baraka, on 2015-November-05, 20:37, said:

Here... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.0193.pdf

And this is the same with yet more curves being added to the model. None of the previous criticisms appear to have been addressed.

 baraka, on 2015-November-05, 20:37, said:

Here... http://www.vukcevic....alk.net/NFC.htm (look at the very last graphic at the bottom)

And here... http://ruby.fgcu.edu...andIceSheet.pdf (graph shows growth above 1500m)

These last 2 papers are of a different nature and refer to the AMO. My understanding is that studying these long-term oscillations is very much an active research topic at the moment, so while I have criticisms of both of these papers I will wait for additional feedback from the scientific community as to where that research might lead.

So, having looked at your evidence, would you now care to address some of the issues around them?

[Daniel1960]

 Zelandakh, on 2015-November-06, 04:14, said:

This link reads more like a science fiction novel than scientific paper. Not only are the objections not addressed but there also appears to be not a single piece of evidence used to back up the ideas involved. It is simply a matter of fitting 2 cyclical curves to solar activity data to produce a basic model.


This one is similar but uses 4 cycles matched to sunspot activity.


This is probably the paper critiqued in the link I provided and I can see nothing wrong with that criticism.


And this is the same with yet more curves being added to the model. None of the previous criticisms appear to have been addressed.


These last 2 papers are of a different nature and refer to the AMO. My understanding is that studying these long-term oscillations is very much an active research topic at the moment, so while I have criticisms of both of these papers I will wait for additional feedback from the scientific community as to where that research might lead.

So, having looked at your evidence, would you now care to address some of the issues around them?

I have actually had a discussion with Milivoje Vukcevic (years ago over at Real Climate), which was over my head mathematically, but I was able to gain some understanding of his hypothesis. Basically, the sun's magnetic field is the most important factor governing the Earth's climate. The field extends out from the sun, but has a reverberating effect based on the aligned of the solar system's largest planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), proportional to their size and distance. Jupiter and Saturn align every 60 years or so, with alternating phases, creating a 120-yr total cycle. Every 120 years, sunspots hit a minimum. The Maunder minimum was the most significant, lasting about 40 years, from 1660-1700. The Dalton minimum was much shorter, centered around 1810. Sunspots were fewer during the early 20th, but no minimum was designated (some have labeled it the 'lesser Dalton'). Temperatures have loosely follow sunspot numbers over the past 400 years.

http://iceagenow.inf...-irradiance.gif

With greater interest shown towards sunspots in recent years, the falloff in sunspots, possible cause of the recent temperature "pause,", and even predictions of a return to the Little Ice Age, etc.

http://jonova.s3.ama...-model-fig3.gif

I find this rather intriguing, as El Sol is ultimately responsible for our acceptable climate and ability to inhabit this rock. I cannot say that I accept his reasoning, however, his prediction of a new minimum in the coming decades, with falling temperatures, will be easily (dis)provable. Incidentally, the pundits over at Real Climate shot down his models as simple "curve fitting," but then again, they do not accept that there are any cycles present in our climate. If carbon dioxide is as big an influence as they claim, then the sun, ocean cycles, volcanic eruptions, etc. should have a minimal effect on the climate, and temperatures should soar.

Now, if you want to seriously be challenged mathematically, check out the stadium wave hypothesis.

https://curryja.file...adium-wave1.pdf

[Zelandakh]

 Daniel1960, on 2015-November-06, 06:44, said:

Now, if you want to seriously be challenged mathematically, check out the stadium wave hypothesis.

Judith Curry is actually on my regular CC reading list so I have come across the stadium wave hypothesis before, albeit without going through the maths in great detail. I tend to think she is one of the high profile scientists on the skeptical side of the debate with the most credibility and integrity.

It would not surprise me at all if the climate models could be improved by incorporating some of the work she is doing on oscillations, particularly in returning to the base data and recalibrating the model parameters. Naturally there is reluctance to do that on the opposite side as it would almost certainly result in a reduction in sensitivity. At some point some scientists in the middle ground will make the effort though and we will see where that leads.

Equally logically given that the hypothesis has been gaining some traction, it has its critics too. Michael Mann, for example, weighed in last year to try to shoot down the idea. Each side is now using a different definition of the AMO that happens to support their general position. Noone seems to have been able to kill it completely though so I am confident we will be hearing a lot more on the subject in the coming years.

[baraka]

The number of sunspots since 1700 is pretty well known. Scafetta and others did a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) on those data to determine the relevent frequencies in the coming and going of sunspots over time. He came up with cycles of 9.98, 10.80 and 11.86 years.

Using only Jupiter's and saturn's orbital periods of 11.862242 and 29.457784 years we can calculate all of the above frquencies...

11.86 years = Jupiters orbital period.

9.98 = half Jupiter-Saturn synodic period

10.80 = Bart's period.

How curious these figures fit so well with sunspots data.


https://tallbloke.wo...link-confirmed/

https://tallbloke.wo...netary-periods/



The sunspot count appears to reflect the energy of these combined processes at around 20 and 23.6 years, which necessarily has apparent periods of 0.5*T1, 0.5*T2, T1*T2/(T2+T1), and T1*T2/(T2-T1) years, or 10 years, 11.8 years, 10.8 years, and 131 years.



The 11.8 year period is very close to 11.86 years, the orbital period of Jupiter.

The 10 year period is very close to 9.93 years, half the synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn.
(Conjunction and opposition of these two planets are both effective tidally)


That should just about sum it up !

[Al_U_Card]

 Daniel1960, on 2015-November-06, 06:44, said:

http://jonova.s3.ama...-model-fig3.gif

I find this rather intriguing, as El Sol is ultimately responsible for our acceptable climate and ability to inhabit this rock. I cannot say that I accept his reasoning, however, his prediction of a new minimum in the coming decades, with falling temperatures, will be easily (dis)provable. Incidentally, the pundits over at Real Climate shot down his models as simple "curve fitting," but then again, they do not accept that there are any cycles present in our climate. If carbon dioxide is as big an influence as they claim, then the sun, ocean cycles, volcanic eruptions, etc. should have a minimal effect on the climate, and temperatures should soar.

Now, if you want to seriously be challenged mathematically, check out the stadium wave hypothesis.

https://curryja.file...adium-wave1.pdf

Curry's formulation has gone through peer-review and is being evaluated for its predictive ability.
Evans has further developed his "basic climate model" from first principles and it is elaborated in a series of posts at JoNova's website (he is her husband). Initially derided, both the notch-delay solar model and his basic version, he is nonetheless submitting it to peer-review. For the mathematically inclined it is quite well developed. For those of us less so, the basic derivations lead to interesting results. (ECS at the VERY low end of the scale) But there are predictive aspects that he has offered up that will certainly be falsifiable in the not so very long term.

[baraka]

 Al_U_Card, on 2015-November-06, 10:02, said:

Curry's formulation has gone through peer-review and is being evaluated for its predictive ability.
Evans has further developed his "basic climate model" from first principles and it is elaborated in a series of posts at JoNova's website (he is her husband). Initially derided, both the notch-delay solar model and his basic version, he is nonetheless submitting it to peer-review. For the mathematically inclined it is quite well developed. For those of us less so, the basic derivations lead to interesting results. (ECS at the VERY low end of the scale) But there are predictive aspects that he has offered up that will certainly be falsifiable in the not so very long term.

I dont know about Curry's model and I dont really care to know. I've got Vukcevic, Salvador, Scafetta and Bart's. They all say the same thing... Little Ice Age Coming by 2030...

https://tallbloke.fi...1/07/2mode2.jpg

Anyways, That's not really important. What's important is that the CO2 BS has been exposed. They just want your tax dollars !

[y66]

Michael Bloomberg Targets Attorneys General With Ads on Carbon Emissions

The dude abides.

Does anyone know what it would cost to run some of these ads on BBO?

[baraka]

I think some people might get me wrong here. So I'm going to clear it out.

Mars and the moon don’t have an atmosphere and are unbelievably cold. The earth has an atmosphere with less then 0,05% CO2 in it. I’d say that our atmosphere is just about 99,95% oxygen and nitrogen and that the temperatures on earth are more then comfortable. So, I’d say that it’s the oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere, that Mars and the moon don’t have, that are the greenhouse effect gases here on earth. Besides, what’s so special about the CO2 molecular structure that would make it so greenhouse effect maniac ? Now that we have that CO2 fairy tale out of the way, let’s see the bigger picture…

Plants need that CO2 to live. The more the merrier. More CO2 in the atmosphere means that plants grow faster. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more CO2 in the oceans. More CO2 in the oceans means more plankton and therefore more food for fish and sea mammals. But hey ! Don’t tell anyone !

So, please, stop all those nasty chemicals like sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, smoke, dust and other solid materials like plastics, just to name a few, from being released into our environment. They are really damaging. You burn coal, scrub the released gases in your stack of those nasty chemicals. But, water vapor and CO2 coming out of industrial stacks are harmless. Let It Be ! Trying to eliminate or reduce CO2 won’t change a thing for climate change is preordained like the models have proven. Climate change due to CO2 levels in the atmosphere is just a hoax. They are out for your money in the form of a carbon tax. Don't let yourself be fooled.

[Al_U_Card]

Cui bono.

Natural water vapour far outweighs our contribution, so it can't be used to hold us responsible.
Methane is a minute presence that despite its being more potent is actually insignificant.
CO2 fit the bill as the culprit so it was adopted by the UNFCCC as the means to an end.

Alarmists don't care about the science or even science and the scientific method. Like CFCs and the ozone layer or any other "cause" that needs an effect. If you can use it to your advantage, then do so. The bureaucracy and gravy train associated with this particular one is pretty awe-inspiring. (and nauseating)

Look at the current jihad against Exxon (no worse a bad guy than most corporate entities). The approach reeks of the alarmist method. A closer look at its development is here

[Gerben42]

 baraka, on 2015-November-06, 13:23, said:

I think some people might get me wrong here. So I'm going to clear it out.

Mars and the moon don’t have an atmosphere and are unbelievably cold. The earth has an atmosphere with less then 0,05% CO2 in it. I’d say that our atmosphere is just about 99,95% oxygen and nitrogen and that the temperatures on earth are more then comfortable. So, I’d say that it’s the oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere, that Mars and the moon don’t have, that are the greenhouse effect gases here on earth. Besides, what’s so special about the CO2 molecular structure that would make it so greenhouse effect maniac ? Now that we have that CO2 fairy tale out of the way, let’s see the bigger picture…

Plants need that CO2 to live. The more the merrier. More CO2 in the atmosphere means that plants grow faster. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more CO2 in the oceans. More CO2 in the oceans means more plankton and therefore more food for fish and sea mammals. But hey ! Don’t tell anyone !

Okay, back to physics 101. The greenhouse effect works as follows:

* Sun irradiates Earth with its own black body radiation at approx. 6000 K, which corresponds mostly to visible light, with the maximum in yellow. Nitrogen and Oxygen are transparent at this temperature, as is CO2.
* Earth then radiates back with its own black body radiation at approx. 300 K, which corresponds to a 20 times longer wavelength (deep into the infra-red). Oxygen and Nitrogen are... transparent at this wavelength, but CO2 and H2O are opaque.

Therefore... Water vapor and Carbon dioxide absorb the radiation from the Earth and work like a blanket. Which is good since otherwise the average temperature of the earth would not be the current +15°C but well below zero.

More CO2 means more life, you are right about that, in the Cretaceous (6 degrees warmer than the 1950 baseline) life was doing great! Now if we would be on our way there and take 10,000 years, everything would be great! But at the current CO2 increase rate, we won't need 10,000 years, but much less than 1000. That will lead to mass extinction on top of the direct human-caused mass extinction, but what's more, civilization as we know it can't cope with that.

Don't worry, the planet will survive 6 degrees more. Life will also survive 6 degrees more. Hey, even humanity will survive 6 degrees more. But civilization won't. So? The real question is: Cui bono? As they say in the media: There's no new like bad news! The people who suffer most from climate change isn't us, the WC posters. It's also not the politicians who travel from climate summit to the next. It's people who cannot afford to simply leave their country or region. But in some decades, they will have to or die.

There you have it: The only reason for you to do something against climate change is because you care for humanity as a whole or because you care about people far away who you have never met. Still in? Or want to order another steak before the kitchen closes? After all, there is the next election coming, therefore your goal as politician is to "look good" in climate politics but not actually do something that might slow down your economy. Which is most of the time "pretend to do something but really stick to vague goals".

[Al_U_Card]

Agree with everything up to the "disaster" and it's "cause". As ECS keeps dropping, when it gets to 0- 0.5 C per doubling, all we will see are benefits. (Greening of the biosphere etc.) Any further warming would then be natural and only adaptation would work. Thus, all the money to be wasted on pointless mitigation will then be needed for those in need and not jet-setting bureaucrats.