Global Warming & Climate Change: The Phenomenon

[AngelAlice]

...

McIntyre didn't invent the MWP! It was an accepted fact of climate science until Mann's Hockey Stick tried to prove it didn't exists. Evidence of it is to be found in anecdotal accounts and in most of the proxy data, which is why Mann had to weight the few negatives so heavily in order to get rid of it.

I didn't mean that McIntyre was the only one making claims for a MWP. I meant, what else are you relying on for corroboration that it either existed, or was a global phenomenon?

I already answered that question above - ("evidence for it is to be found in anecdotal accounts and in most of the proxy data, which is why Mann had to weight the few negatives so heavily in order to get rid of it").

If that's not clear - what I mean is that a large amount of the proxy data from around the world (tree rings, ice cores, corals etc) all suggest some degree of MWP, and this is why Mann had to perform such a heavy adjustment in favour of those proxies that don't (mainly the infamous bristlecone pine trees).

As to it having ever been an, 'accepted fact of climate science', that's where the contention begins...

Errr...No it doesn't. The MWP was a standard aspect of climate science until Mann's hockey stick claimed to have eliminated it. That's just a matter of historical fact. Check the textbooks.

 

[Ghostisfort]

"On the coast of Greenland are found the long-abandoned ruins of many buildings erected by the ancient Norsemen, of rock, and very substantial. According to tradition, a Norse navigator named Gunnibiorn landed in the country in the year 872 A. D. The Norsemen certainly went as far as 75 degrees north latitude, which cannot be reached by the stoutest modern ship without serious risk. These voyages were accomplished, too, in half-decked, open boats. A stone found near Upernavik,
in latitude 72 degrees and 30 minutes, bears an inscription in Runic dated 1135. In the old sagas
and chronicles there is little mention of ice as an obstruction to navigation, and it is evident that
the climate in those days was much warmer than it is now. ..."
http://ku-prism.org/polarscientist/lost ... Boston.htm

Can this be the reason why multidisciplinary science is dead?

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

McIntyre didn't invent the MWP! It was an accepted fact of climate science until Mann's Hockey Stick tried to prove it didn't exists. Evidence of it is to be found in anecdotal accounts and in most of the proxy data, which is why Mann had to weight the few negatives so heavily in order to get rid of it.

I didn't mean that McIntyre was the only one making claims for a MWP. I meant, what else are you relying on for corroboration that it either existed, or was a global phenomenon?

I already answered that question above - ("evidence for it is to be found in anecdotal accounts and in most of the proxy data, which is why Mann had to weight the few negatives so heavily in order to get rid of it").

If that's not clear - what I mean is that a large amount of the proxy data from around the world (tree rings, ice cores, corals etc) all suggest some degree of MWP, and this is why Mann had to perform such a heavy adjustment in favour of those proxies that don't (mainly the infamous bristlecone pine trees).

...

From what I've been reading, there's no evidence that there was a global warm period in the Middle Ages. The proxy data doesn't show that, at all.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16892-natural-mechanism-for-medieval-warming-discovered.html

Natural mechanism for medieval warming discovered

New Scientist.com. 02 April 2009 by Nora Schultz

Europe basked in unusually warm weather in medieval times, but why has been open to debate. Now the natural climate mechanism that caused the mild spell seems to have been pinpointed.

The finding is significant today because, according to Valerie Trouet at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research in Birmensdorf, the mechanism that caused the warm spell in Europe – and meant wine could be produced in England as it is now – cannot explain current warming. It means the medieval warm period was mainly a regional phenomenon caused by altered heat distribution rather than a global phenomenon.

The finding scuppers one of the favourite arguments of climate-change deniers. If Europe had temperature increases before we started emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases, their argument goes, then maybe the current global warming isn't caused by humans, either.

To work out what the global climate was doing 1000 years ago during the so-called "Medieval Warm Period", Trouet and colleagues started by looking at the annual growth rings of Moroccan Atlas cedar trees and of a stalagmite that grew in a Scottish cave beneath a peat bog. This revealed how dry or wet it has been in those regions over the last 1000 years.

The weather in Scotland is highly influenced by a semi-permanent pressure system called the Icelandic Low, and that in Morocco by another called the Azores High. "So by combining our data, which showed a very wet medieval Scotland and very dry Morocco, we could work out how big the pressure difference between those areas was during that time," says Trouet.

Warm blast

This pressure difference in turn revealed that the medieval period must have experienced a strongly positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) – the ocean current that drives winds from the Atlantic over Europe. The more positive the NAO is, the more warm air is blown towards the continent.

The idea to use growth rings to work out past climate change is not new, but Trouet's team is the first to look back beyond 1400 in the European record. They found that the strongly positive NAO lasted for about 350 years from 1050 to 1400.

By combining their data with information from other regions of the world during medieval times and plugging it into different models, the researchers have also come up with a hypothesis of what made the warm winds so persistent.

"It turns out that in the tropical Pacific, the El Niño system was in a negative La Niña mode, meaning it was colder than normal," says Trouet.

Climate loop

El Niño and the NAO are connected by a process called thermohaline circulation, which drives the "ocean conveyor belt" that shuttles sea water of different density around the world's oceans.

According to Trouet, a Pacific La Niña mode and a positive NAO mode could have reinforced each other in a positive feedback loop – and this could explain the stability of the medieval climate anomaly.

Trouet thinks external forces like abrupt changes in solar output or volcanism must have started and stopped the cycle, and hopes to pinpoint the most likely candidates in a workshop with other climatologists in May.

'Profound implications'

Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University says that based on the analyses and modelling that he has done, increased solar output and a reduction in volcanoes spouting cooling ash into the atmosphere could have not only kicked off the medieval warming, but might also have maintained it directly.

Mann is also concerned that the dominance of medieval La Niña conditions now indicated by Trouet's work might make it more likely that the current man-made warming could also put the El Niño system back into a La Niña mode, although most climate models so far had predicted the opposite.

"If this happens, then the implications are profound, because regions that are already suffering from increased droughts as a result of climate warming, like western North America, will become even drier if La Niña prevails in the future", he says.

Journal Reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1166349)

So, in fact the evidence seems to show that the 'medieval warm period' was a regional event.

As to it having ever been an, 'accepted fact of climate science', that's where the contention begins...

Errr...No it doesn't. The MWP was a standard aspect of climate science until Mann's hockey stick claimed to have eliminated it. That's just a matter of historical fact. Check the textbooks.

The IPCC report from 1990 was by no means sure that it was a fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period#cite_note-far199-13

...

The warm period became known as the MWP, and the cold period was called the Little Ice Age (LIA). However, this view was questioned by other researchers; the IPCC First Assessment Report of 1990 discussed the "Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD (which may not have been global) and the Little Ice Age which ended only in the middle to late nineteenth century."(14) The IPCC Third Assessment Report from 2001 summarised research at that time, saying "... current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries".[15] Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early and mid-20th century.[16] Crowley and Lowery (2000)[17] note that "there is insufficient documentation as to its existence in the Southern hemisphere."

Palaeoclimatologists developing region-specific climate reconstructions of past centuries conventionally label their coldest interval as "LIA" and their warmest interval as the "MWP".[16][18] Others follow the convention and when a significant climate event is found in the "LIA" or "MWP" time frames, associate their events to the period. Some "MWP" events are thus wet events or cold events rather than strictly warm events, particularly in central Antarctica where climate patterns opposite to the North Atlantic area have been noticed.

...

The so called 'Medieval Warm Period' may yet turn out to be an artefact created by making sweeping generalisations based on too limited and regionally biased, sampling techniques. The truth being much more complicated.Whatever the case the modern consensus is that, during the so called medieval warm period, globally it was still colder than today.

see also:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm

 

[eburacum]

In fact this is a false dilemma. The Medieval Warm Period can be real, and can be warmer than today; this does not disprove anthropogenic global warming. It just had different causes, that is all.

I find it annoying when proponents of AGW try to massage the figures to make current temperatures hotter than any experienced in the past; this is not necessary. There is no need to prove that we are currently experiencing record temperatures in order to prove that AGW is real.

Carbon dioxide causes warming, full stop. Other effects occur as well, which are often temporarily stronger. But anthropogenic carbon dioxide is gradually increasing over time, and this incremental effect will eventually come to dominate all the others.

On the other hand I would point out (once again) that AGW is itself a temporary effect, and will fade away slowly once we stop using fossil fuels. When that will happen is another matter, one that most AGW proponents fail to consider fully.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

On the other hand I would point out (once again) that AGW is itself a temporary effect, and will fade away slowly once we stop using fossil fuels. When that will happen is another matter, one that most AGW proponents fail to consider fully.

What kind of timespan were you thinking of, E.?

Could be, fossil fuels are far from drying up.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...lity-policy-fossil-fuels?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The peak oil brigade is leading us into bad policymaking on energy

One can't assume energy prices are going ever upwards. The real problem is there may be too much fossil fuel, not too little

guardian.co.uk, Dieter Helm. 18 October 2011

It is almost always a mistake to assume you know where energy bills are going. This is especially true for secretaries of state, and energy policy should never be based upon assuming you know what the future will bring. Unfortunately, it is the new conventional wisdom and an assumption prevalent across much of Europe.

Yet Chris Huhne, the British secretary of state for energy and climate change, is pretty sure that oil and gas prices are going ever upwards, that they will be volatile and that a core function of energy policy is to protect British industry and consumers from the consequences. It is a convenient assumption for renewables and nuclear: if the price of fossil fuel is going to get more expensive, then renewables and nuclear will be relatively cheap. Add in energy efficiency, and then it can be predicted that energy bills will fall if these technologies are supported.

The last time policymakers were this sure was the last time oil prices peaked – back in 1979. Oil peaked at $39 a barrel (around $150 in today's prices). It was assumed then that oil prices would go ever up, and the incoming Conservative government launched a plan to build one nuclear reactor per annum for 10 years. Instead, prices collapsed in the mid 1980s, and didn't return to the 1979 prices for more than a quarter of a century (even with two Gulf wars).

As then, we are led to believe that the world's fossil fuel resources are finite and known, and that the peak of production has either been already met or will come soon. Gas, it is assumed, will follow oil. Put simply, we are going to run out of fossil fuels, and they will therefore get (much) more expensive. For the peak oil advocates, the convenient truth is that de-carbonisation via renewables and nuclear is not only good for the climate, but sound economics too. Almost all of this is nonsense – and some of it is dangerous nonsense. There is enough oil and gas (and coal too) to fry the planet several times over. The problem is there may be too much fossil fuel, not too little, and that fossil fuel prices might be too low, not too high.

The Earth's crust is riddled with fossil fuels. The issue is not whether there is a shortage of the stuff, but the costs of getting it out. Until recently, the sheer abundance of low-cost conventional oil in places like the Middle East has limited the incentives to find more, and in particular to go after unconventional sources. But technical change has been driven by necessity – and the revolution in shale gas (and now shale oil, too) has already been transformational in the US, one of the world's biggest energy markets.

New technological developments take time to penetrate markets, and customers may not feel the benefits for quite a while. But it would be a mistake to assume they won't eventually. Even worse, it would be wrong to design energy policy to protect them from price volatility so that if gas prices fall, they will be prohibited from gaining the benefits.

It is also wrong to assume the renewables and nuclear will pay for themselves – and that therefore they are going to be cheap alternatives (though we would then at least be able to get rid of any subsidies). This was ultimately the real weakness of the Stern review, and why politicians fell over themselves to quote its 1% GDP per annum costs for tackling climate change. Customers were led to believe it would not hurt them, and hence were happy to support green policies. But now they are finding out that it isn't true, and the backlash has started. The very real risk is that having been misled by politicians, they start to doubt the veracity of climate change.

Is there another way forward, which enables possibly cheaper gas to feed through to customers without undermining attempts to reduce emissions? The answer is – at least for the next couple of decades – yes. At the global level, the reason emissions keep going up – and why Kyoto has made so little difference – is that coal is the rising fuel; its share has risen from around 25% to nearly 30% during the Kyoto period, and it is a percentage of a growing total. Switching from coal to gas is cheap – and it cuts emissions by roughly half. It doesn't solve the climate change problem in the long run, but it gets emissions down much faster and much cheaper than all those offshore windfarms in the short to medium term.

More expensive, riskier, more difficult to extract and dirtier to process, but the future looks bright for fossil fuels.

 

[Ghostisfort]

Adhikari and Kumon (2001), whilst investigating sediments in Lake Nakatsuna in central Japan, finding a warm period from AD 900 to 1200 that corresponded to the Medieval Warm Period and three cool phases, of which two could be related to the Little Ice Age.[36] Another research in northeastern Japan shows that there is one warm/humid interval from AD 750 to 1200, and two cold/dry intervals from AD 1 to 750 and 1200 to present.[37] Ge et al. studied temperatures in China during the past 2000 years; they found high uncertainty prior to the 16th century but good consistency over the last 500 years, highlighted by the two cold periods 1620s–1710s and 1800s–1860s, and the warming during the 20th century. They also found that the warming during the 10–14th centuries in some regions might be comparable in magnitude to the warming of the last few decades of the 20th century which was unprecedented within the past 500 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

MWP in Europe matches Japan?
Submitted by davidmhoffer on Wed, 01/06/2010 - 15:59.

In reviewing Aono/Amoto 1994 temperature reconstruction for Kyoto going back to 1000 AD I noticed a major one time temperature change in the graph at the latter part of the 16th century. Upon reviewing their methodology I concluded that they were basing their temperature estimates on blooming dates of cherry blossoms, but had failed to correct for Gregorian calendar implementation in 1582. This drove their pre 1582 temperature estimates downward by 2.6 degrees and diminishing to a downward off set of 1.6 degrees by 1000 AD. I reconstructed their graph to reflect proper calendar correction. The result is that their graph shows a variable but steady climate with a recent sharp uptick, but the corrected graph oscillates almost in tandem with the Scotland Morroco reconstruction above. You can access my paper directly http://knowledgedrift.files.wordpress.c ... lossom-r... or from my blog http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/cat ... -the-cli...

This would imply that the MWP was in synch between Europe and Japan.

"Temperatures derived from an 18O/16O profile through a stalagmite found in a New Zealand cave (40.67°S, 172.43°E) suggested the Medieval Warm Period to have occurred between AD 1050 and 1400 and to have been 0.75°C warmer than the Current Warm Period."[39] The MWP has also been evidenced in New Zealand by an 1100-year tree-ring record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

It seems to me that because the MWP is poorly researched in other than the North Atlantic and there are no written records in the southern hemisphere it has been labelled as local. This is convenient for the fans of warming but it's not science, it's religion.

We all want to see an end to fossil fuel burning, but as long as science insists upon faith in dogma it's not going to be taken seriously. AGW is sciences' equivalent of sin and we're all becoming a little tired of sin.

 

[rynner2]

This used to be an interesting thread, with reports on what experts were doing and thinking about in this field. Mostly pro-AGW, but a few against. These experts are professionals who have degrees and doctorates, and spend most of their working life immersed in the finer details of their speciality, as well as understanding the bigger picture.

But recently, it seems, every Tom, Dick and Harriet who can open a web page have become self-appointed experts, and insist on spreading their views all over the internet with an evangelical fervour. But on the whole they seem to work differently from the real experts: they start with the bigger picture, and then cherry-pick supporting details from the internet.

I'm no expert, although I do have a good scientific background, so I try to restrain myself in commenting on the issues (not always successfully!) because shouting matches are tedious and unproductive. On the whole I trust the trained experts in their labs, or out in the field, or monitoring satellite information, who understand the physics and can do the maths, over an army of self-appointed armchair experts.

(Ducks behind parapet!)

 

[Cochise]

(Trying hard not to post...)

Do you think there would be any point in having a seperate discussion thread? (Not a thread purely for 'unbelievers' - we can't learn if we only listen to those with the same views as ourselves.)

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

(Trying hard not to post...)

Do you think there would be any point in having a seperate discussion thread? (Not a thread purely for 'unbelievers' - we can't learn if we only listen to those with the same views as ourselves.)

We already have one. Although this discussion is now well over 20 pages, I may move the lot.

But, not today.

 

[AngelAlice]

From what I've been reading, there's no evidence that there was a global warm period in the Middle Ages. The proxy data doesn't show that, at all.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16892-natural-mechanism-for-medieval-warming-discovered.html

Well, at least you've wisely stopped claiming the Hockey Stick was vindicated.

The argument "ah but the Medieval Warm Period was just a local effect" became the fallback position of Mann et al after the failure of the Hockey Stick. They had to climb down and accept the MWP was real, so they set about claiming it didn't count because it wasn't global. Their rationale for doing this is the survival of their theory. However there are two big stumbling blocks with this idea:

• 1. There's evidence for a MWP in at lest three continents - North America, Europe, Asia and several other scattered places, which makes a bit of nonsense out of calling it 'local' even if it wasn't literally global.
  
  2. The present warming isn't literally global either. There have been local areas of cooling or zero warming, just as in the MWP, and 30% of the weather stations sampled recently by BEST have shown no warming over the whole period when the global average was increasing.

Mann et al want the MWP to be 'local' and less meaningful than the recent warming which is 'global' because if it isn't their theory of AGW is in a lot of trouble. But if they try and make their case by saying 'local' means 'covering three continents and some other bits' and 'global' means 'a lot of the earth but not literally all of it' then aren't they in danger of creating a distinction without a difference? And that's semantics not science.

 

[MrRING]

I see what Rynner is saying, but at the same time in most other parts of the FTMB astute posters are coming up with alternatives to the expert opinion in various fields that runs counter to scientific orthodoxy, and most of those fields in question are much more stable/established than global warming theories.

(runs to hide in the stairwell)

 

[Ghostisfort]

This used to be an interesting thread, with reports on what experts were doing and thinking about in this field. Mostly pro-AGW, but a few against. These experts are professionals who have degrees and doctorates, and spend most of their working life immersed in the finer details of their speciality, as well as understanding the bigger picture.

But recently, it seems, every Tom, Dick and Harriet who can open a web page have become self-appointed experts, and insist on spreading their views all over the internet with an evangelical fervour. But on the whole they seem to work differently from the real experts: they start with the bigger picture, and then cherry-pick supporting details from the internet.

I'm no expert, although I do have a good scientific background, so I try to restrain myself in commenting on the issues (not always successfully!) because shouting matches are tedious and unproductive. On the whole I trust the trained experts in their labs, or out in the field, or monitoring satellite information, who understand the physics and can do the maths, over an army of self-appointed armchair experts.

(Ducks behind parapet!)

The tired old cliche's come out: qualifications, you don't understand, the experts know best. But what's behind all of this is the fear that the Vox populi will be heard.
Someone may ask awkward questions like, 'If the experts know so much about the atmosphere, why can't we get a decent weather forecast?'
Why don't geologists predict earthquakes?
What is science doing about the energy crisis and why are the old still cold in the winter?
But they don't do stuff like that, do they?
All I personally want is for academic science to justify it's existence.

“But some of us have been educated by surprises out of much that we were 'absolutely sure' of...”
-- Charles Fort, Lo!

 

[Ghostisfort]

I see what Rynner is saying, but at the same time in most other parts of the FTMB astute posters are coming up with alternatives to the expert opinion in various fields that runs counter to scientific orthodoxy, and most of those fields in question are much more stable/established than global warming theories.

(runs to hide in the stairwell)

Forteana is counter to scientific orthodoxy, that's what it's all about.
Making the forum into a copy of New Scientist is driving the Fortean away, which, I suspect is the purpose of the process.

( Come out of the stairwell, it's all OK)

Peasants have believed in dowsing, and scientists used to believe that dowsing was only a belief of peasants. Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing that the suspicion comes to me that it may only be a myth after all.
— Charles Fort

 

[rynner2]

The tired old cliche's come out, qualifications, you don't understand, the experts know best.

If my health needs attention, I like to know that my doctor or dentist has done his time learning his trade, both theoretically and practically.

Similarly, when it comes to weather and climate, I like to get my information from those who have done the time and who know their subjects intimately, including how to measure the various parameters of atmosphere and ocean and how to make use of the figures.

But some anonymous maverick who's collected what opinions he has from websites, and has never done anything practical relating to the subject, gets little respect from me. We're not all created equal, and work and study on top does mean that some opinions are more valuable than others (IMHO, obviously! ).

 

[rynner2]

The tired old cliche's come out, qualifications, you don't understand, the experts know best.

If my health needs attention, I like to know that my doctor or dentist has done his time learning his trade, both theoretically and practically.

Similarly, when it comes to weather and climate, I like to get my information from those who have done the time and who know their subjects intimately, including how to measure the various parameters of atmosphere and ocean and how to make use of the figures.

But some anonymous maverick who's collected what opinions he has from websites, and has never done anything practical relating to the subject, gets little respect from me. We're not all created equal, and work and study on top does mean that some opinions are more valuable than others (IMHO, obviously! ).

 

[Ghostisfort]

There have always been healers historically and some very good. Your GP probably treats you and other patients as trousered apes, thanks to the evolution guys.
You seem not to see a difference between those who actually do something and those who do nothing but theorise.
Remind me to start a thread on this?
I think we need some non-experts like William Crookes at this time? http://www.n-atlantis.com/televisionhistory.htm

As for the Internet: I write to all the scientists who's names I use on my site. Some don't answer, but many do.
They appear not to mind my criticisms, being more concerned with next months pay check. I find them not superhuman, they rarely defend their position. Most professional scientists are naive about subjects other than their own.
Only the sceptics defend science, most of whom are not scientists themselves.

Dawkins was quite indignant, but I've had lengthy conversations with others.

 

[eburacum]

...

... AGW is itself a temporary effect, and will fade away slowly once we stop using fossil fuels. When that will happen is another matter, one that most AGW proponents fail to consider fully.

What kind of timespan were you thinking of, E.?

Could be, fossil fuels are far from drying up.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...lity-policy-fossil-fuels?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The peak oil brigade is leading us into bad policymaking on energy

One can't assume energy prices are going ever upwards. The real problem is there may be too much fossil fuel, not too little

More expensive, riskier, more difficult to extract and dirtier to process, but the future looks bright for fossil fuels.

It is true that there is a vast reserve of reduced carbon in the crust of our planet. For every two atoms of oxygen in our atmosphere, one atom of carbon has been buried. Note as well that atmospheric oxygen has been also abosrbed by the crust; there is at least ten times as much biogenic oxygen in the crust as there is in the atmosphere; that all adds up to a lot of buried carbon.

If we could extract all that carbon and burn it we'd have an oxygen-free atmosphere as dense as that of Venus.

Luckily that isn't going to happen. Most of the buried, reduced carbon is very thinly spread, in the form of kerogen in shales and other rocks. Some of this kerogen is worth mining, but the vast bulk of it would require much more energy input to extract than it would produce as fuel. The Energy Returned over Energy Invested (EROEI) of most shale-oil is quite low, and it is only worth extracting if the energy returned is greater than the energy invested. Shale-oil deposits with a positive EROEI are a limited resource, and can't last forever, especially in a world economy that is continually growing.

Extraction techniques can be made more energy efficient, increasing the EROEI, but this can cause problems, such as the fracking associated with hydraulic extraction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking#E ... l_Concerns

Most of the carbon dioxide that will be produced in the next half-century will probably come from Chinese coal consumption rather than shale-oil. That is what we really need to worry about at the moment. If the Chinese economy grows exponentially, the CO2 in the air will go up quickly, and will only slow when the coal runs out.

 

[rynner2]

Amazon fire season 'linked to ocean temperature'
By Mark Kinver, environment reporter, BBC News

Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies can help predict the severity of Amazon fire seasons, a study has suggested.
A team of US scientists found there was a correlation between El Nino patterns in the Pacific and fire activity in the eastern Amazon.
Writing in the journal Science, they say they also found a link between Atlantic SST changes and fires in southern areas of South America.

They said the data could help produce forecasts of forthcoming fire seasons.
"We found that the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) was correlated with interannual fire activity in the eastern Amazon, whereas the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index was more closely linked with fires in the southern and south-western Amazon," they wrote.

The ONI is a system used to identify El Nino (warm) and La Nina (cool) events in the Pacific Ocean, while the AMO index performs a similiar function in the Atlantic.
"Combining these two indices, we developed an empirical model to forecast regional fire severity with lead times of three to five months," they explained.
"Our approach may contribute to the development of an early warning system for anticipating the vulnerability of Amazon forests to fires."

Previous studies have shown "high-fire" years in South America are generally associated with an extended dry season and low levels of rainfall. [Who'd a thunk it! ]

It has also been shown that variations in precipitation levels in the Amazon is regulated by SSTs in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
"The most severe droughts observed in the Amazon over the past three decades have occurred when the tropical eastern Pacific and North Atlantic were anomalously warm," they said.

A reliable early warning system would be a key tool for relevant bodies and agencies to focus policies and resources effectively, observed the researchers, drawn from a number of US institutes.
"Managing fires to conserve biodiversity and carbon stocks in forest and savannah ecosystems requires advance planning on multiple timescales," they said.

These include "design of policy mechanisms that modify long-term development, as well as improved use of short-term meterorological forecasts of fire behaviour during years with high fire season severity."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15691060

 

[Ghostisfort]

There are more opinions than drops of water in a rain cloud.

The history of the Earth tells us that the climate is always changing; from warm periods when the dinosaurs flourished, to the many ice ages when glaciers covered much of the land. Climate has always changed due to natural cycles without any help from people.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a political organization promoting a theory that recent minor temperature increases may be caused largely by man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. CO2 is an infrared gas, and increasing concentrations can potentially increase the average global temperature as the gas absorbs long-wave radiation from the Earth and emits the absorbed energy. However, the warming ability of CO2 is limited because much of the absorption spectrum is near or fully saturated. When CO2 concentrations were ten times greater than today the Earth was in the grips of one of the coldest ice ages. The climate system is dominated by strong negative feedbacks from clouds and water vapour which offsets the warming effects of CO2 emissions.
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/Climat ... ience.html

 

[AngelAlice]

If my health needs attention, I like to know that my doctor or dentist has done his time learning his trade, both theoretically and practically.

Similarly, when it comes to weather and climate, I like to get my information from those who have done the time and who know their subjects intimately, including how to measure the various parameters of atmosphere and ocean and how to make use of the figures.

But some anonymous maverick who's collected what opinions he has from websites, and has never done anything practical relating to the subject, gets little respect from me. We're not all created equal, and work and study on top does mean that some opinions are more valuable than others (IMHO, obviously! ).

I'm sorry being exposed to the skeptical or neutral viewpoint has upset you so much Ryn, but I haven't invented the facts I've been citing, they're all right there to be found on the web and in books, and they all come from non-anonymous, non-maverick scientists. If the only way to safely believe in AGW is to ignore these facts or deride the people who express them, then maybe it's time to take a different, more Fortean perspective?

 

[AngelAlice]

In view of Rynner's comment I thought it would be interesting to post this perspective from Richard Betts. He's Head of Climate Impacts at the UK Met Officeand is therefore not anonymous and entirely qualified. He's also a Lukewarmer, or qualified believer in AGW. Here's what he says about the curent state of things (it's also interesting to read the follow-up comments)

Dangerous climate change?

• Most climate scientists* do not subscribe to the 2 degrees "Dangerous Climate Change" meme (I know I don't). "Dangerous" is a value judgement, and the relationship between any particular level of global mean temperature rise and impacts on society are fraught with uncertainties, including the nature of regional climate responses and the vulnerability/resilience of society. The most solid evidence for something with serious global implications that might happen at 2 degrees is the possible passing of a key threshold for the Greenland ice sheet, but even then that's the lower limit and also would probably take centuries to take full effect. Other impacts like drought and crop failures are massively uncertain, and while severe negative impacts may occur in some regions, positive impacts may occur in others. While the major negative impacts can't be ruled out, their certainty is wildly over-stated.
  
  While really bad things may happen at 2 degrees, they may very well not happen either - especially in the short term (there may be a committment to longer-term consequences such as ongoing sea level rise that future generations have to deal with, but imminent catastrophe affecting the current generation is far less certain than people make out. We just don't know.
  
  The thing that worries me about the talking-up of doom at 2 degrees is that this could lead to some very bad and expensive decisions in terms of adaptation. It probably is correct that we have about 5 years to achieve a peak and decline of global emissions that give a reasonable probability of staying below 2 degrees, but what happens in 10 years' time when emissions are still rising and we are probably on course for 2 degrees? If the doom scenario is right then it would make sense to prepare to adapt to the massive impacts expected within a few decades, and hence we'd have to start spending billions on new flood defences, water infrastructure and storm shelters, and it would probably also make sense for conservationists to give up on areas of biodiversity that are apparently "committed to extinction" - however all these things do not make sense if the probability of the major impacts is actually quite small.
  
  So while I do agree that climate change is a serious issue and it makes sense to try to avoid committing the planet to long-term changes, creating a sense of urgency by over-stating imminent catastrophe at 2 degrees could paint us into a corner when 2 degrees does become inevitable.
  
  
  *I prefer to distinguish between "climate scientists" (who are mainly atmospheric physicists) and "climate change scientists" who seem to be just about anyone in science or social science that has decided to see what climate change means for their own particular field of expertise. While many of these folks do have a good grasp of climate science (atmospheric physics) and the uncertainties in attribution of past events and future projections, many sadly do not. "Climate change science" is unfortunately a rather disconnected set of disciplines with some not understanding the others - see the inconsistencies between WG1 and WG2 in IPCC AR4 for example. We are working hard to overcome these barriers but there is a long way to go.

 

[Ghostisfort]

Yes, I agree with the above sensible assessment.
The real problem however, is a million miles away from the subject.
The quest on FT and other forums is that many of the posters are dyed-in-the-wool sceptics and as such will support all and any science and scientist good or bad. The more authority they seem to wield the more they support them. This is the unfortunate nature of the sceptic and the main reason why academic science is stuck in a rut.

 

[Pete Younger]

So is there a difference between academic science and practical science?

 

[rynner2]

So is there a difference between academic science and practical science?

Don't start talking Ghostisfort's language, or we'll be stuck here for evermore!

GisF seems to think that all science is 'academic' (by which I assume he means 'book-based') precisely because he doesn't understand that in fact most research is practical. For example, the LHC is looking for info that isn't in the textbooks yet, because they don't yet know what they will find.

(GisF also thinks Time doesn't exist, which makes it really hard to discuss anything...)

 

[Pete Younger]

Oh well, I guess time will tell.

 

[rynner2]

Oh well, I guess time will tell.

Not if it doesn't exist! :shock:

 

[Cochise]

Part of the letter of Professor Harold Jones resigning from the American Physical Society.

The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me.

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety

 

[Ghostisfort]

So is there a difference between academic science and practical science?

The difference is between those who do something useful and those who don't.
The LHC is a cathedral to the worship of theory and its theory that fails to deliver on a regular basis.
Follow the yellow brick road to the emperors new clothes.

 

[Analis]

Yes...or wildly overestimated. Or almost anything else. I agree it's not reassuring, but for slightly different reasons. The models form the entire basis for the prediction of catastrophic manmade global warming. Everything we read in the news about how the icecaps will melt and sea levels rise etc...is based on the predictions these models make. But they have been proved unreliable in so many ways. Never mind current climate, they have shown themselves incredibly bad at predicting the past - in that when people feed data about past climate systems into them they often fail to predict what we know actually happened as a result. This is immensely worrying. I mean we are still building all this policy and planning on the assumption these models are telling us the truth to a high degree of accuracy, and there is no basis for such an assumption. They could be out by large percentages - in either direction!

There is at least something we do know from the past, notably interglacial periods : climate change can be very fast, and of a great amplitude. Climatologists have difficulty to explain that, but it implies a kind of runaway effect. The most likely is that it involves greenhouse gases.
The final result was always the same : a brutal cooling, due to massive release of cold glacial water in the oceans. This is the same fate we are facing if global warming really goes out of control.

 

[rynner2]

Another pointer, albeit only based on ten years data:

UK trees' fruit ripening '18 days earlier'
By Mark Kinver, Environment reporter, BBC News

Britain's native trees are producing ripe fruit, on average, 18 days earlier than a decade ago, probably as a result of climatic shifts, a study reveals.
It shows that acorns are ripening 13 days earlier, while rowan berries are ready to eat nearly a month earlier.
Experts warn that one consequence could be that animals' food reserves would become depleted earlier in the winter.

The findings were published by Nature's Calendar, a data collection network co-ordinated by the Woodland Trust.
"Some of the changes are really quite big and quite surprising," explained Tim Sparks, the trust's nature adviser.
"This caused me to go back and look at the data again to make sure it was valid because even I did not believe it initially."

Prof Sparks said Nature's Calendar, formerly known as the UK Phenology Network, was established in 1998 to collect spring-time information.
"But the gap in data was in the autumn So, since about 2000, the scheme has also been collecting data on things such as fruit ripening dates, leaf colour change and fall dates, and the last birds seen," he told BBC News.
"We now have 10 years worth of data that can look at and identify changes.
"In terms of looking at the fruit-ripening dates and the thing that came out was that they all seem to have steadily advanced over the past decade."

Prof Sparks, from Coventry University, observed: "Rowan was the big one as it seemed to have advanced by nearly a month over the course of a decade."
He added that it was still uncertain what the ecological consequences of the advances would mean.
"Anything that changes out of synchronicity is likely to cause disruption," he said.

"What the actual consequences will be is slightly harder to work out. In this particular case, if all of this fruit is ripe earlier, and if all the mammals and birds are eating it earlier, what are they going to be feeding on during the rest of the winter?

"In terms of feeding birds, you have big flocks of thrushes coming down from Scandinavia and feeding on berry crops in Britain, and they tend to do that after they have exhausted the supply of berries in Scandinavia.
"You get these periods when hedges are being stripped bare, but the birds are going to have to do that earlier because that is when the fruit is ripe."

Although phenological records have shown that the arrival of spring is also advancing, Prof Sparks said it was "still a bit of a mystery" why the ripe-fruit dates had advanced over the past decade.
He suggested: "There is a very strong correlation between these ripening dates and April temperatures, and that might be a result of flowering dates - it might just be that warmer springs result in earlier flowering dates, and subsequently result in earlier ripening.

"But it might be a result of more sunshine; longer, warmer summers and therefore earlier ripening.
"So the exact mechanisms really are still a bit of a mystery. We know it is happening, but we are uncertain why."

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15721263