Hi Guys,

I like to call this the tripping point. Dr. James Hansen has been calling for a tripping point how many times and it never comes true. He is just tripping over himself thats why his boss said there is nothing to worry about ("Agency Administrator Michael D. Griffin questions whether global warming is problem, or if humans should do anything about it"). How dare anyone say this might not be a problem. I have blogged a number of times and back it up with data that CO2 play little or no role in warming. Here is some more links I will post that show Solar output is one main cause as is THC (ocean current oscillations)along with others we are still studing such as cosmic rays. You will see that CO2 just slow moves up in concentration while temp. moves around then in the other you see solar output and temp. almost go in sync. Thanks all.

Here are the links and some data sets. The Junkscience.com links/Graphs provide the data source for these charts in case you want to look them up.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/aerosol.gif
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/CRUglobalan.png
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt

The only tipping point that is likely to occur in the next 10 years is that of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).

The PDO combined with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) correlates very strongly with Annual Mean US temperatures over the past century:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Ocean_Multidecadal_Cycles.pdf

The most interesting graph in this paper is the rapid 2F jump in Alaskan temperatures in the mid 70s. It would seem that they could jump back down by 2F at any time!

It appears that the PDO drives the AMO. The AMO peaks or troughs when the PDO changes phase. So if the PDO has started the process of changing phase, the AMO has peaked. There are signs that this is occurring, but it will be a few years before we know for sure.

Climate change is a natural occurring event much like season change. Instead of it happening in one year, like season changes, it can take centuries and millenium.
Currently, the climate change of the globe is warming, but this should NOT be called "global warming" but "solar warming".
Is it not true, that there is heightened solar activity at the Sun?
How do you explain the warming of other planets like Mars, Jupiter etc? Man is obviously not changing the atmosphere of these planets. So before you commit to making changes on Earth, more research needs to be done.
Also, there are strong arguments now that carbon dioxide follows temperature change, it does not precede it.
Why do scientists believe the past/current global conditions are the optimum to maintain?

I am unconvinced that we are moving toward a "tipping point." If, as we saw proposed recently, the amount of precipitation is much greater than the recent models suggest, then a significant amount of that will fall as snow. Using the rule that it just needs to be "cold enough," then it would seem likely that we are underestimating this negative feedback loop.

And that points to a serious flaw in the peer review process: positive feedback loops appear in print and receive funding, negative feedback loops (such as the "Iris effect") do not.

I have lived in Washington State since the 1970's and we have gone from regular winter freezes and snowfall's to almost no snow in the lowlands and much warmer summers.

Regardless of what you think, I believe it is irresponsible for people to believe that we can burn up all of the fossil fuels we have in two hundred years without any affect on our planet. Is it worth killing ourselves for fossil fuels? Why experiment on ourselves? Do you think you can move to Mars tomorrow if we destroy every ecosystem on our planet for paper money? If you believe in a creator why would you ruin his creation? Lets be real.

Tipping point? Oh well, I'll leave the good doktor alone, but this does tie into something I've been asking the AGWers to provide: a review of the models that make the AGW case vs. reality. It seems there is a climatologist who has done a check on them, plus a few other goodies. You can find his cover page here:

http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/climate-change.htm

And you can find the scoring of the various models here:

http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/scorecard.htm

So, please tell us, with the variance between models firmly based on AGW "reality" and the actual real world data, what relevance does it have for policy?

Because "what if we are right so we MUST act NOW!!!!"?

Of course, if that is the "logic", I hope you are typing the reply from your bed and haven't bathed in a long, long, long time.

Whether or not you choose to agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists who agree that weather is getting out of hand to a dangerous extent and that it is human made, I wonder where your other senses are. Do you look the other way when you see a picture? Australia is running out of water. The arctic is melting, and glaciers all over the world are disappearing. Bangladesh is flooding. Large populations are fighting largely over scarce resources (Darfur). Disease is on the rise (malaria, TB). Poison ivy, insects, and other pests thrive on the changing atmosphere and are becoming more virulent. Tornadoes, fires, floods, droughts are statistically more extreme since records have been kept. So if you think this is not man-made and there's nothing to be done, good luck to your children and grandchildren, and yourself if you are going to live more than 20 years. Doesn't it matter until it's in your own backyard? I admit I've tended to take an unnecessarily apocalyptic view in the past, but recently anything I've thought might happen has been exceeded by facts on the ground. It's time to stop being so selfish that you will find any argument you can to avoid facing the facts and trying to do something about them.

I'm still trying to sort out the strengths and weaknesses of all sides of the GW issue. Dr. Hansen may be right in the end, but I find his presentation weak in some areas.

Why does he characterize ice loss as an environmental negative? The Roman and Medieval warmings were warmer than now, from which it is not implausible to assume they experienced greater ice melt. The human impact is a different issue driven by population sizes and locations, and these are most easily addressed by the empowerment of development.

Citing a 0.6 deg C warming in the last decade lacks context. It conveniently starts the measurement at the end of a multi-decade cooling cycle, and ignores the nearly identical warming rate from 1915-1945. The cooling which ended in the mid '70's remains anomalous, despite the sulfate aerosol hypothesis, since the least cooling occured in the NH where there was the most sulfate. Dr. Hansen also doesn't mention that global warming has markedly slowed as CO2 emissions continue to accelerate.

The comment about increasingly rapid sea level rise also lacks context. Global sea level rise is fairly linear in the 20th century despite increasing CO2.

The biggest gap is the lack of qualifiers. Dr. Hansen doesn't explain why he thinks there will be less cloud cover or less precipitation despite greater evaporation. This novice may be wrong, but it seems these effects are essential in order to get the high level of feedback needed to achieve Dr. Hansen's predictions.

I don't mean to single out this particular AGW advocate. All sides of this issues need to work harder at presenting their cases in a more balanced way. Nevertheless, Dr. Hansen's modelling is useful in providing us one possible scenario. What is needed is more experimental verification of the model's assumptions.

Dear Susan, you choose an interesting set of examples.

Using the links I gave above and poking around the home site, you will find that Australia is having bumper crops being grown and engineers consider that improvements in the "old fashioned" water control systems will do the trick. Parts of the polar regions are melting and others are building up ice cover, with plenty of evidence that this has happened before in the past. Ummm, sorry, at my modest age, I've seen "Bangladesh flooding" a few times (and it was "E. Pakistan flooding" very early in my lifetime). Darfur....Arab vs. African conflict, right? Oh well, after all Hitler just wanted Lebensraum, so that was just a fight over scarce resources also then...

TB is a problem, but exacerbated by lack of funding for proper medical care (mainly childhood vaccination), which AGW fearmongers will make even worse by diverting finite resources into pie in the sky antiAGW programs. Malaria? Heh, hehe. chuckle, LOL, ROFL. No malaria isn't funny, but the fact that among the "accomplishments" of mainstream AGWers was not only the Ice Age of the 70s, but the banning of DDT by a bureaucrat over the objections of scientists whose work he never read. Nice body count you guys have there, over 75 million or so. How much is AGW fever going to cost in human lives as treasure is wasted to fund lardbottomed bureaucrats instead of trying to mitigate the effects of a warming trend that matches others in the past? Wow, we as humans even thrived during those warmer periods, imagine that!

About poison ivy, etc., do you have some kind of source? Other than some fairly common knowledge that weeds do tend to be more adaptable than useful plants?

Ahhh, the key for you I think is "since records have been kept", which would depend on what you consider "records". I notice that you leave hurricanes off, but then that has been fairly thoroughly debunked. How do you account for the fact that more recent records are able to more accurately detect, track and document all the rest of those weather issues, which would simulate a spike?

As for the "facing facts" section, what kind of expectations did you have that the "facts" you see exceeded? Were you a total denier of GW, because the changes recorded fit the nonanthro version? BTW, what do you think of the fact that the "truth" of the models that "prove" AGW all fail in the face of real world data? FYI, real world data trumps model outputs from massaged data sets.

Tornadoes, fires, floods, droughts are statistically more extreme since records have been kept.

Posted by Susan Anderson | June 3, 2007 12:21 PM

Susan,

Unfortunately you have fallen prey to the MSM hysterics. A little weather research about tornados would recall the Super Outbreak of April 3, 1974 that killed 315, and injured 5000 people. Here is the tornado count by severity: F5-6, F4-23, F3-35, F2-30, F1-31, F0-23. All in one day.

By the way, that was during the media's global COOLING frenzy.

Do yourself a favor and do a little weather research anytime you hear someone in the media blurt out ANY extreme statement. You will be surprise how cavalier and reckless they are with the facts.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN !!!

Dr. James Hansen IS NOT a climatologist ! He is an ASTRONOMER !!!

"Bill" has apparently not yet understood the role of credentials and peer-review in scientific endeavor.

I invite any, including Bill, who wonder about Dr. Hansen's standing to explore his NASA home page, his CV, and his publications.

Jim, some evidence for your claim that "Dr. James Hansen has been calling for a tripping point how many times and it never comes true"? Also, as I suspect you are well aware all of that solar/cosmic ray stuff has been carefully examined and rejected. See the IPCC AR4 scientific report for details and references.

Kamatu, FYI Doug Hoyt is not a climatologist. He can't even get the basic physics straight (somehow having convinced himself that water cannot gain meaningful amounts of heat from the IR radiation emitted by CO2).

Also, your question about the models seems odd for someone who claims to have done his homework. You might want to try reading the IPCC AR4 scientific report chapter on models.

(Re Bill) Oh the denialists, they do so love to make things up: Hansen's CV is here, showing his PhD in physics. He did get a master's in astronomy, but that makes sense given that his initial focus was on studying the climates of other planets.

Dave, notice that Susan said "statistically"; this refers to an average over time rather than a short-term record such as the one you mention. Nobody claims that the degree of climate disruption seen so far should have resulted in the obliteration of all, or even a large proportion of, past weather records. Also, I don't recall anything like a cooling "frenzy." Source on that? And what's your standard for a "frenzy"? (Compare, e.g., to the wingnut frenzy leading up to the invasion of Iraq.)

Susan, the conclusion I've come to is that the delusionists above will continue in their beliefs until climate disruption impacts them personally. We're not quite there yet. It is very irritating that the premise of this blog allows them to get away with just making stuff up without correction by the moderator.

That premise, BTW, is that all sides of the climate change "debate" (including the occasional out-and-out crank) should be given equal play here. Since the scientific debate is over, the reference can only be to the political debate. That the scientific debate is over can be seen not just in the IPCC reports but in official statements from every major scientific organization -- heck, even the previously denialist American Assocation of Petroleum Geologists is now mending its ways; old statement here, proposed new statement here.

I should hasten to add that when I say the scientific debate is over, I refer to the basic questions of whether a) the planet is detectably heating, b) the heating can be attributed primarily to anthropogenic causes, most importantly greenhouse gases, c) continued heating is inevitable under "business as usual," and d) the amount of heating that is plausible under "business as usual" has potentally dangerous consequences. (Obviously this consensus that the debate is over leaves many, many details still to be worked out, and of course there will be much "debate" about such details -- that's the scientific process.) If one chooses to define the scientific debate as still continuing so long there is still a detectable pulse in even one person with a hard science PhD who continues to question the consensus, which is essentially what's happened here, I suppose one is free to do so. It's just not very credible.

But anyway, see here for the latest consensus statement, this one from the academies of science (I believe all of them, but all of the major ones in any case). As this is a weather site, the recently revised statement by the American Meteorological Society is also relevant.

"I have lived in Washington State since the 1970's and we have gone from regular winter freezes and snowfall's to almost no snow in the lowlands and much warmer summers."

Jason - apparently the weather is warmer now where you live then it was in the 1970s - when scientists were worried about an ice age. 700 years ago it was much warmer than it is now, and 20,000 years ago it was much colder.

Apparently the climate is variable. Should we panic?

As arrogant as Jim Hansen is, he still ought to be held responsible. But how?

Steve,

Sanctimony and name-calling appear to be your weapons of choice in discussion. Quite frankly, am finding it hard to get beyond the contempt in which you hold anyone who dares to disagree with your philosophy. Reminds one of the Spanish Inquisition, for goodness sakes. Am certain that you have viable arguments to make, just try to make them without the sophomoric insults thrown in. Using ad hominem attacks undermines rather than aids your credibility in discussion.

The Arctic is actually warming up much faster than the models were predicting ten years ago. Glaciers are also melting much faster than anyone predicted. If the models are wrong, as the deniers claim, then it's more likely that they will be wrong by underestimating the warmth.

Oops, I forgot...this is all a cycle...nothing to see here, move on.

Dave, notice that Susan said "statistically"; this refers to an average over time rather than a short-term record such as the one you mention. Nobody claims that the degree of climate disruption seen so far should have resulted in the obliteration of all, or even a large proportion of, past weather records. Also, I don't recall anything like a cooling "frenzy." Source on that? And what's your standard for a "frenzy"? (Compare, e.g., to the wingnut frenzy leading up to the invasion of Iraq.)

Posted by Steve Bloom | June 4, 2007 6:13 PM

Jeez Steve, I didn't think that Susan needed a spokesperson to do her bidding for her. Your double speak isn't saying anything...statistically.

And if you don't recall the media's cooling frenzy during the 70's, then maybe you were too young to pay attention. Do a little research.

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

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15391426/site/newsweek/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

It will assist you with your screeds of inconclusive tripe.

Dave

For an interesting critique of Hansen's model-driven conclusions visit:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.jsp

Hi Guys

For all the Hansen supports and for those who just want to know.

A critique of the 26 April 2007 testimony of James E. Hansen made to the Select Committee of Energy Independence and Global Warming of the United States House of Representatives.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.jsp

Perhaps Kamatu or Patrick can answer the question of why the models have under-predicted the warmth in the Arctic?

It's funny how you guys are so quick to assume that climate models are overestimating warmth; and yet, refuse to discuss or even acknowledge the aspects of our current climate that the models have underestimated.

Most glaciers are melting much, much faster than anyone predicted ten or fifteen years ago.

Out of all the scientists, Dr. Hansen is the person who has come closest to predicting today's climate. There are some, namely Dr. Gray and others, who have been predicting for years that the world will be cooling "in a few years." And yet, it hasn't happened, and these same people change their story to: "Well, I meant a few more years after today."

Jim, "CO2 Science" appears to an Exxon-funded front organization -- see CO2 Science Funding for specifics.

I'm more interested in peer-reviewed "critiques" of Dr. Hansen's testimoney. I'm also interested in any citations for peer-reviewed publications of either Sherwood or Craig Idso -- I was unable to find any.