[billw55]

Daniel1960, on 2013-August-14, 05:01, said:

Climate change appears to be an afterthought in the article, as the main concern is pollution.

That is the feeling I got also. Still it is good news IMO. It may be a long road to bring a whole society and its government to commit to environmental goals, but as a Chinese proverb says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. At least, I think it's a Chinese proverb.

[PassedOut]

billw55, on 2013-August-14, 06:36, said:

That is the feeling I got also. Still it is good news IMO. It may be a long road to bring a whole society and its government to commit to environmental goals, but as a Chinese proverb says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. At least, I think it's a Chinese proverb.

Yes. It is a good sign that the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the US, have started to work together on this. From the Business Spectator: Are China and the US closing on a climate deal?

Quote

Kerry's April visit to Beijing led to the formation of a new "U.S.-China Working Group on Climate Change", under an existing "Strategic and Economic Dialogue" established in 2009.

In July, under that new dialogue, the two countries agreed to develop initiatives to cut carbon emissions from heavy duty vehicles, buildings, manufacturing and coal-fired power, for example by advancing carbon capture and storage.

China and the United States forced a climate agreement on the rest of the world in 2009 in Copenhagen, separately brokering a deal to which other countries then had to agree.

Their accord limited action to voluntary, national carbon emissions targets, rather than a binding treaty as preferred by the European Union and least developed countries.

"The decision has been very difficult for me. We have made one step, we have hoped for several more," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said afterwards.

The more closely the United States and China cooperate now the more likely the next deal will be in the same mould.

That approach may succeed in attracting wide support, and perhaps not therefore sacrifice ambition, given that other major emitting countries including Japan, Russia, Canada and India will be cautious about agreeing internationally binding carbon caps rather than voluntary national measures.

And it would shift the role for the United Nations towards ensuring that global action is scientifically robust, and monitoring implementation, rather than brokering treaties.

And from National Geographic: One Way China is Getting Serious About Climate Change

Quote

China is working on establishing a small-scale cap and trade program that will let the open market scale back greenhouse gas emissions. This will, in the process, allow some savvy innovators to make lots of money. The idea behind cap and trade was originated in the U.S. back in the 90s and worked swimmingly to deal with acid rain. But as Dirk Forrister and Paul Bledsoe pointed out this weekend in the New York Times, the U.S. took a “policy detour” away from the strategy when it was redefined to suggest it would make people’s energy bills rise.

China’s cap and trade program launched earlier this summer in the southern city of Shenzhen. The government will set a limit for emissions and any polluters who don’t reach their limits can sell remaining credits for a market price. The pollution limits will go down over time and the going rate for a credit (for anyone who exceeds the legal polluting limit) will go up, encouraging all polluters to reduce their emissions or pay through the nose to keep polluting.

If it works in Shenzhen, there’s reason to believe China could create a national system in the next few years. China is the world’s biggest emitter, each year putting 7,711 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s a big number. But unlike in the U.S. (the world’s second-biggest emitter), where climate change is often viewed as an economic drag, Chinese officials are beginning to understand its potential to make their economy grow in new ways.

The "economic drag" meme is, of course, laughable to anyone in business. But you'd think that the US might wake up to this before seeing a Chinese demonstration.

(On the other hand, maybe not even then. Lessons about healthcare from many nations seem to be lost on quite a few folks in the US.)

[Al_U_Card]

Models, models everywhere, but nary an answer to be believed...

From the soon to appear in a peer-reviewed journal near you...

This just in from M.I.T. where they evaluated the IAMs (Integrated Assessment Models) that they use to figure out just how much it will cost to do the stuff that they want us to pay for...

ABSTRACT
Very little. A plethora of integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon (SCC) and evaluate alternative abatement policies. These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g. the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models' descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading.

But, what the heck, it's only money.....our money.

[mike777]

I have copied part of the email conversation:

Letters to a heretic: An email conversation with climate change sceptic Professor Freeman Dyson

World-renowned physicist Professor Freeman Dyson has been described as a 'force-of-nature intellect'. He's also one of the world's foremost climate change sceptics. In this email exchange, our science editor, Steve Connor, asks the Princeton scholar why he's one of the few true intellectuals to be so dismissive of the global-warming consensus
From: Steve Connor

To: Freeman Dyson

You are one of the most famous living scientists, credited as a visionary who has reshaped scientific thinking. Some have called you the "heir to Einstein", yet you are also a "climate sceptic" who questions the consensus on global warming and its link with carbon dioxide emissions. Could we start by finding where we agree? I take it you accept for instance that carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas that warms the planet (1); that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen since direct measurements began several decades ago (2); and that CO2 is almost certainly higher now than for at least the past 800,000 years (3), if you take longer records into account, such as ice-core data.

Would you also accept that CO2 levels have been increasing as a result of burning fossil fuels and that global temperatures have been rising for the past 50 years at least, and possibly for longer (4)? Computer models have shown that the increase in global temperatures can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (5). Climate scientists say there is no other reasonable explanation for the warming they insist is happening (6), which is why we need to consider doing something about it (7). What part of this do you accept and what do you reject?

From: Freeman Dyson

To: Steve Connor

First of all, please cut out the mention of Einstein. To compare me to Einstein is silly and annoying.

Answers to your questions are: yes (1), yes (2), yes (3), maybe (4), no (5), no (6), no (7).

There are six good reasons for saying no to the last three assertions. First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly. Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer. Third, there are many other causes of climate change besides human activities, as we know from studying the past. Fourth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and top-soil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs. Fifth, the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects. Sixth, summing up the other five reasons, the climate of the earth is an immensely complicated system and nobody is close to understanding it.

http://www.independe...on-2224912.html

[mike777]

I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”

A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming.

“The models are extremely oversimplified,” he said. “They don’t represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds.”

Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 — even though we humans poured record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere during that decade.

That was vindication for a man who was termed “a civil heretic” in a New York Times Magazine article on his contrarian views. Dyson embraces that label, with its implication that what he opposes is a religious movement. So does his fellow Princeton physicist and fellow skeptic, William Happer.

“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”

To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant.


http://wattsupwithth...ence-and-fudge/

[Daniel1960]

[quote name='mike777' timestamp='1376696984' post='746552']
I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”

A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming.

“The models are extremely oversimplified,” he said. “They don’t represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds.”

Not only are the models oversimplified, but they conclude that warming will increase atmospheric water content and reduce cloudiness simultaneously. This not only contradicts physics, but all our real world data. The few models that incorporate a cloud increase, do so in a way that only high, cirrus clouds are increased, while lower lying clouds are reduced. No mechanism is given for this occurrance.

[Al_U_Card]

While just a response to a skeptical blog post (concerning measurement errors and their treatment, specifically by the BEST group)
How about this?
Rud Istvan says:
August 17, 2013 at 9:34 pm
Willis,(Willis Eschenbach) speaking to you as a Ph.D level econometrician, BEST’ mission was hopeless and their elegant methods a waste of time. Therefore your mission to deconstruct any error therein is very difficult in the Japanese sense. Don’t fall for faux sceptic Muller’s hype.

Recall AW (Anthony Watts) has shown many land records are contaminated by paint, siting, and worse- by an amount greater than two century’s worth of anomalies. Recall that sea records were less than sketchy prior to the satellite era (buckets, engine inlets, trade routes,…), yet oceans comprise 79% of Earths surface and a heat sink much greater than land. All the homogenizations in the world of bad data can only result in bad pseudodata. As shown many times by folks like Goddard,(Steven Goddard) who documenting upward GISS homogenization biases over time.
Any BEST re-interpretation of bad/ biased data can only produce bad/ biased results, no matter how valid the fancy methods used. GIGO applies to Berkeley, to Muller, and to data dreck.

Good Global temp data came only with the sat era since 1979, UAH or RSS interpreted.
Trying to interpret others interpretations of bad data is rather like interpreting the interpreter of a Delphic oracle. The true meaning of a steaming pile of entrails is… (self snip).

[Al_U_Card]

Not only did Mr. Watts do that, but his take on the essay by Matt Ridley is a top ten list of why CAGW is something to look at a lot more closely...

[Al_U_Card]

And now the IPCC, in its soon to be published AR5, is claiming that they are now 95% certain that man is responsible for the warming from 1950 onwards...



But not the previous warming???

[PassedOut]

Scientists nearly certain that humans have caused global warming

Quote

It is all but certain that human activity has caused a steady increase in global temperatures over the past 60 years, leading to warmer oceans and an acceleration in sea-level rise, according to findings in the most recent climate change report by an international panel of scientists.

In a draft summary of the fifth climate assessment since its creation in 1988, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that continued greenhouse gas emissions “would cause further warming” and induce changes that could “occur in all regions of the globe . . . and include changes in land and ocean, in the water cycle, in the cryosphere, in sea level . . . and in ocean acidification.”

Six years ago, in its last report, the IPCC concluded that there was a 90 percent certainty that human activity was responsible for most of Earth’s warming. The 2013 draft summary increased that certainty to 95 percent.

Of course this is a draft that will be tweaked in a number of ways before publication. Its prediction of a possible three-foot rise in ocean levels, for example, might be too low.

[Daniel1960]

PassedOut, on 2013-August-21, 07:39, said:

Scientists nearly certain that humans have caused global warming


Of course this is a draft that will be tweaked in a number of ways before publication. Its prediction of a possible three-foot rise in ocean levels, for example, might be too low.

Then again it may be too high. The sea level rise has average 2.5 mm/year for over a century now. During the highest period of warming (1990s), the rate increased to slightly above 3 mm/yr. Since the launch of the Jason satellite at the beginning of 2002, the rate has fallen back to 2.5 mm/yr. Why would it suddenly increase fourfold? Based on the observed data, I suspect another eight inches by 2100 is more likely.

[Al_U_Card]

Indeed it is. Unlike the AR4 declaration that Mann's hockey-stick graph showed with 90% certainty that:

in IPCC’s AR4 in 2007:

Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years.

So that means that they are now MORE certain about being in LESS of a catastrophe?

Climatism, the belief-system that just keeps on giving.

[hrothgar]

Al_U_Card, on 2013-August-21, 13:33, said:

So that means that they are now MORE certain about being in LESS of a catastrophe?

Passed Out's original quote directly states:

Quote

Six years ago, in its last report, the IPCC concluded that there was a 90 percent certainty that human activity was responsible for most of Earth’s warming. The 2013 draft summary increased that certainty to 95 percent.

The narrowing of the confidence interval clearly shows that the IPCC is more certain.
I have no idea where your claim about "LESS of a catastrophe" comes from.

If anything, the more recent analysis suggests that early predictions are overly conservative.

[Al_U_Card]

They’ve gone from saying warmest in the last 1300 years to the last 800 years.

So basically what they are saying is that at the year 1200 (2000AD minus 800 years), temperatures were warmer (or at least equal to) temperatures today. (Not quite so catastrophic...seeing as we survived those temperatures.)

It looks like we are back to what the IPCC said in the first report in 1990. The only "bump" in the road was Mann's hockey-stick graph that removed the higher temperatures from 1300 to 800 years ago but now is no longer applicable?

The IPCC was founded to "prove" that man was responsible for global warming. They are bureaucrats, no matter what the facts, they carry on as long as they have funding.

[Al_U_Card]

Al_U_Card, on 2013-August-21, 06:08, said:

And now the IPCC, in its soon to be published AR5, is claiming that they are now 95% certain that man is responsible for the warming from 1950 onwards...



But not the previous warming???

So, which is which? (There is an indication which one is modern but it has nothing to do with man, CO2 or any other non-climate related issue.)

[PassedOut]

Interesting Ezra Klein piece in yesterday's Washington Post: Al Gore explains why he’s optimistic about stopping global warming

Quote

EK: Do the policy failures of the last decade put more pressure on technological advances to be the source of the solution?

AG: No, I seem them as intertwined. To some extent, the failure of policy at Copenhagen and before that in Washington has put more emphasis on the hopeful developments in technology, but as the conversation is won on global warming — and it’s not won yet but it’s very nearly won — the possibilities for policy changes once again open up.

We are seeing dramatic progress towards new policies in China, Korea, Ireland. We’ve seen a coal tax in India. We’ve seen changes in Australia, the largest coal producing nation. We’ve seen Mexico take a leadership position. We’ve seen action in California and other states. And some 17 other countries are in various stages of adopting either a cap and trade or carbon tax or both. If China follows through in its stated intention to move its cap-and-trade pilot program into a nationwide program in two years, then we’ll see a new center of gravity in the global energy marketplace that will accelerate the shift towards a market-based set of policies that will speed up the phase-out of coal-based electricity.

With other countries taking the lead, the US will eventually follow.

Quote

EK: Give me the optimistic scenario on what happens next. If all goes well, what do the next few years look like on this issue?

AG: Well, I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, hey man, we don’t go for that anymore. The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation.

The conversation on global warming has been stalled because a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it’s mentioned. It’s like a family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned and so everybody avoids the elephant in the room to keep the peace. But the political climate is changing.

Something like Chris Hayes’s excellent documentary on climate change wouldn’t have made it on TV a few years ago. And as I said, many Republicans who’re still timid on the issue are now openly embarrassed about the extreme deniers. The deniers are being hit politically. They’re being subjected to ridicule, which stings. The polling is going back up in favor of doing something on this issue. The ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day.

I remember playing bridge games where the air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Over the long haul progress cannot be stopped.

[Daniel1960]

PassedOut, on 2013-August-22, 09:02, said:

Interesting Ezra Klein piece in yesterday's Washington Post: Al Gore explains why he’s optimistic about stopping global warming


With other countries taking the lead, the US will eventually follow.


I remember playing bridge games where the air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Over the long haul progress cannot be stopped.

AG blamed progress on global warming on extreme deniers. What about extreme alarmists? Listener to the media, one would think there are two sides, miles apart. One believes that temperatures will rise greater than 1.2C this centurty, resulting in catastrophic effects, while th other believes that temperatures will not rise, and possible cool. What about the majority of scientists who feel that a temperature increase of between 0 and 1.2C this century is most likely? The trend since 1880 is still ~0.6C / century, the exact midpoint between the two extreme groups. Perhaps the reason that the conversation has not been won, is that the two diverse conversations are not talking about reality. Maybe if AG has used a little introspection, he would understand how the conversation could more forward.

[Al_U_Card]

Well, the "conversation" as it relates to the consensus about CAGW is that the facts support the skeptical position. Rhetoric and bombast from self-serving interests are not an issue.

Mother Nature has provided the demonstration that everything that the catastrophists say and predict is pretty much not in play.

Only the vested interests continue to push the meme and even they are pushing less and vacillating more, as the reality of the situation becomes evident.

[PassedOut]

Daniel1960, on 2013-August-23, 05:15, said:

AG blamed progress on global warming on extreme deniers.

Actually Al Gore sees progress in many areas of the world because the extreme deniers are losing the argument. The likelihood that the effects of climate change won't reach the catastrophic levels of the direst predictions does not mean that no action should be taken, and more folks are seeing that. Al Gore has certainly worked hard to keep the issue before the public.

I remember considerable opposition to the scientific conclusions about cigarette smoking too, but the deniers eventually lost. In court they later argued, "We aren't liable because everyone knew that we were wrong."

At some point, those who profit from spewing CO2 into the air (and who finance the denials of global warming) will make similar arguments.

[Daniel1960]

PassedOut, on 2013-August-23, 08:09, said:

Actually Al Gore sees progress in many areas of the world because the extreme deniers are losing the argument. The likelihood that the effects of climate change won't reach the catastrophic levels of the direst predictions does not mean that no action should be taken, and more folks are seeing that. Al Gore has certainly worked hard to keep the issue before the public.

I remember considerable opposition to the scientific conclusions about cigarette smoking too, but the deniers eventually lost. In court they later argued, "We aren't liable because everyone knew that we were wrong."

At some point, those who profit from spewing CO2 into the air (and who finance the denials of global warming) will make similar arguments.

Those who espouse extreme alarmism may do the same. Once we eliminate both extremes, and both extremes get most of the press, we have some valid talking points. Yes, something needs to be done, but it does not need to be done today. There are no "tipping points," the climate is reversible, the ice age have already proved that. Let us implement the best solution for the long haul, not some willy-nilly programs that only enrich those with the best political ties.