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You have misquoted the IPCC paper, leaving out a critical word.
You wrote:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."

What it ACTUALLY says is:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future EXACT climate states is not possible."

This makes perfect sense in the context of the entire paragraph which reads:

"Explore more fully the probabilistic character of future
climate states by developing multiple ensembles of model
calculations. The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future exact climate states is not possible. Rather the focus
must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of
the system’s future possible states by the generation of
ensembles of model solutions."



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nice pick up TheFallibleFiend,
and as far as antartic ice levels, or world ice levels,
there is currently 1 million square kilometers more ice than normal around the globe. Source: http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/2008/03/massive-ice-shelf-collapses-but-ice.html

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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

You have misquoted the IPCC paper, leaving out a critical word.
You wrote:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."

What it ACTUALLY says is:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future EXACT climate states is not possible."

This makes perfect sense in the context of the entire paragraph which reads:

"Explore more fully the probabilistic character of future
climate states by developing multiple ensembles of model
calculations. The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future exact climate states is not possible. Rather the focus
must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of
the system’s future possible states by the generation of
ensembles of model solutions."




TheFallibleFiend
I'm sorry, it is you that are misquoting the IPCC report. Are you reading Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, or are you reading the "Summary for Policy Makers"?

In the Scientific Basis - this is the exact quote from the Chapter 14 Executive Summary (page 771, first full paragraph on the second column of the page)
Quote:

The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.


This exact sentence (grammatical errors and all) is then included within 14.2.2.2 "Balancing the need for finer scales and the need for ensembles"(page 774, first full paragraph on the second column)
Quote:

In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

Here's the link to the chapter http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-14.PDF
Both quotes are direct cut and pastes.

Now, since I've rebutted your accusation that I deliberately misquoted the IPCC report (in effect called me a liar), I'll be waiting for your apology.

And why don't you share the source of your quote as well? That might make for interesting discussion.

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While we're quoting the IPCC Scientific Basis, here's a little tidbit, that some may find interesting.

Quote:

As noted in Chapter 8, Section 8.4.2, at the time of the SAR most coupled models had difficulty in reproducing a stable climate with current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and therefore non-physical “flux adjustment terms” were added. In the past few years significant progress has been achieved, but difficulties posed by the problem of flux adjustment, while reduced, remain problematic and continued investigations are needed to reach the objective of avoiding dependence on flux adjustment.

Section 14.2.2.1 Initialisation and flux adjustments
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-14.PDF


If you can't understand the implications of this statement, let me spell it out for you.

FUDGE FACTOR!!!

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G'day all,

Ice Coverage and its Possible Effects on Climate.

I actually went to look at the satellite figures (the raw and adjusted ones that can be found at the Huntsville University site with not much effort at all) as well as some other data sets.

I have been sick for too long. Even I was surprised at the very rapid reduction in world averages. While studies on exactly why the reversal is so great will be probably years away, the reversals seem to be too large for blamed on the Al Nina alone, solid Al Nina that this one is.

There was a theory that has been around for a while about how it would take only two or three years to switch from a full glacial period to an interglacial period or visa versa. I studied it back in the mid 70s although it had not been very refined at that time. I actually did some work on it at the time with a professor that had an interest in this type of thing and even wrote a paper on the rapidity of flips between glacial and interglacial periods. This paper would probably be boring to those on this site because it relates only to how fast a change occurs, not what triggers it. It did, however, try to apply some logic at just why the flip could be so fast, even though most of the paper was on the evidence that supported very rapid change rather than the traditional view of thousands of years of gradual climate shift.

One part of the logic was then called "the snow blitz theory". It might have another name now or might not even be subject to any active study at all at the moment, the study of climate being so focused on current global warming rather than historical issues not necessarily useful in the current global warming argument. The theory goes like this. The albedo levels of snow and ice that is reasonably fresh is around 95%. (Albedo is the amount of solar radiation that is reflected back into space as opposed to being absorbed. The Savannah is the lowest world’s figures at around 30% to 35% reflectivity or 70% odd absorption). Should you have even by random concurrence of many factors a much larger winter snow field in the Northern Hemisphere than is the norm then the amount of total solar radiation available to heat the planet plummets. Thus, the snow and ice remain on the ground much further into the spring and stay at lower latitudes and altitudes for several weeks. This late switch between very high albedo snow and very low albedo exposed tundra and grassland, further reduces the available solar radiation well into the growing season and towards the summer. Thus, the snow and ice in very many areas simply does not retreat to the normal extent. The next year comes around and winter weather starts up much earlier simply because the weather systems are travelling over snow-covered areas rather than is typical. The snow and ice extend much greater distances than is the norm and very much greater than the previous year.

The second year seems to be the "tipping point" to borrow a global warming phrase. It would seem that this type of imbalance happens more than traditional climatologists are ever willing to admit, but generally factors intervene to reduce the effects so that a switch does not occur. It might be that a peak of the sun flare short cycle occurs that year, or that ocean currents clear a lot of the sea covering ice, or there is volcanic activity in the right places or a lack of it in other places.

However, if there are no limiting factors, watch out. The extent of the snow, which only needs to be very thin, stretches so far south and into lower altitudes during the winter that summer just doesn't really turn up. The snow and ice retreat only marginally the next year and the flip becomes complete within the year, with snow coverage extending down most of Europe, most of the US etc, permanently, or at least until the reverse process kicks in and another interglacial period turns up. This theory does not rely on glaciations by the way and thus is very difficult to either prove or disprove, especially by geological analysis.

We are not talking about glacial expansion or creation as this takes many hundreds and even thousands of years to occur, only about as little as a few inches of persistent snow. Since the world currently has the majority of the land mass over the Northern Hemisphere, the albedo readings for the majority of the land mass goes through the roof and the whole world (except the equatorial regions which is never greatly affected in THIS ice age by whether it is a glacial period or an interglacial one) gets a great deal colder.

With absolutely no data or studies to back this up, perhaps those that read these posts would still like to contemplate the following:

According to now a solid group of solar scientists, we are now in a period of particularly low sunspot activity (except 2012, which may actually knock out the world's power grids).

The satellite data for global average temperature actually indicates a cooling especially from 2005 and more so from near the end of 2007.

The total ice coverage of the world is dramatically more than it has been and heading for a record.

Sea surface temperatures seem to be decreasing.

The only thing that seems to be missing is increased volcanic activity. In seven of the last ten switches back to glaciations, the volcanic activity in the low to mid latitudes increased significantly either just before or just at the start of the glaciations. Nevertheless, three times out of ten, the switch has been managed without volcanic assistance.


This post is mainly just something to think about rather than something that is backed by a great deal of data, studies or the like. All that needs to happen to prove the arguments made here is to wait for a switch to the next glaciation, something we are several thousand years overdue from happening, by the way.


Regards


Richard


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When I searched the only thing that came up was: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/climate-changes-2001/synthesis-syr/english/wg1-technical-summary.pdf

And that link definitely has the word EXACTLY in it. While I was wrong to infer that the statement had been misquoted, the surrounding text makes it clear that they're talking about increasing the understanding of probabilistic outcomes vs exact deterministic outcomes.

Furthermore, the entire paper leaves little doubt about the conclusion that humans have influenced the global carbon cycle. Read section 14.2.4.


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FallibleFiend - Don't you think it's interesting that the Scientific Basis (which was written by the actual researchers and scientists) did not have the term "exact" in that sentence, but yet the synthesis report (which was a summary of the full technical report, and was pulled together by bureaucrats) did include the word "exact".
It is a very significant word, and one may ask the question why was it included in the synthesis report, but not the original technical report. Perhaps the bureaucrats knew something the researchers didn't. wink

What the text surrounding that quote makes clear, is that the climate system is too complex, too non-linear, too bloody chaotic to accurately model it, and predict into the future. The non-linear nature of most(all?) of the climate processes, mean that relationships, which have been parameterized based on current climate conditions, will likely not hold true in the future. Without knowing how these relationships will interact in a changed climate, you can't predict forward.

A perfect example is convection. Convection is the primary method of heat transport from the lower troposphere to the stratosphere. In a troposphere with more energy (as is the case in a warmer climate), there will be increased convection (this shouldn't be a debatable point). How much more though? Is it a linear increase? logarithmic? exponential? Anybody who says they know the answer is lying. So if you don't know how the main heat transport engine will react to a warmer surface, how can you actually predict how much warmer it will be?

The tripe about developing model ensembles to develop probability distributions is laughable at best. This is analogous to taking 20 people, giving them a gun and tell them to shoot at an invisible target - that's over there.....somewhere. Do you expect any of them to hit this invisible target? Of course not.......taking the IPCC approach, you'd take the "average" of all 20 shots, and say "here's our probability distribution of where that blinkered target is - and look, it's in that general area that we thought it was! I told you!!!!!".

As long as models are developed based on incomplete knowledge of our current (and future) climate processes, all our model simulations are nothing more than shots in the dark. But hey, we can always add some "flux adjustments" to make the models give us the answers we want - right?


I'll be eagerly awaiting your response as to why the Synthesis Report included the word "exact" whereas the technical report did not. I'm sure there must be a good reason. smirk



btw - yes, I do agree that humans have impacted the global carbon cycle. The 500,000,000,000,000 dollar question is "does it matter?".

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Not everything we know is based on 'models'. The section I mentioned on carbon cycle is based on observed data. It's not clear to me that the people who wrote the synthesis report were bureaucrats. Perhaps you could elucidate this.

Regardless, the surrounding text makes clear. I don't see any doubt expressed in that paper that human actions affect climate.

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Fallible - of course the IPCC doesn't say that, it's in their bloody mandate to say that humans are the cause. Fortunately, it seems some scientists have managed to hide little cautionary nuggets in the text. Too bad more people can't understand what they're saying.

Proof that bureaucrats wrote the Synthesis report? Have a look at the one of the two lead authors: Dr. Daniel L. Albritton. Here's his bio
Quote:

Dr. Daniel L. Albritton, director of the Aeronomy Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Albritton is one the world’s foremost experts on atmospheric science and in particular, global climate change. He is one of the Coordinating Lead Authors on the recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the science of the climate system. The IPCC provides scientific and technical assessments of the state of understanding for governments, industry, and the public. Dr. Albritton joined the Aeronomy Laboratory in 1967 and became Director in 1986. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Doctor’s degree in Physics, both from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

So an electrical engineer that got his doctorate in physics. And a Director in NOAA to boot. Yup, that kind of background just exudes recent climate research. Do you know what his hobby was before climate change became the cash cow for NOAA? It was that devastating ozone hole that was going to give us all skin cancer.

By the way - why don't you include this little disclaimer at the start of the synthesis report you quoted "A report accepted by Working Group I of the IPCC but not approved in detail". The devil is in the details eh?

So any idea why that "exact" word got put into the Synthesis report? Wasn't included in the original report. Did the boogey man put it in there?



Not everything we know is based on models - you're right. But everything we know about what a future climate would be like IS based on models. Which, of course, is the issue we're concerned with.

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Originally Posted By: RicS
G'day all,
Ice Coverage and its Possible Effects on Climate.
One part of the logic was then called "the snow blitz theory".
...The second year seems to be the "tipping point" to borrow a global warming phrase.
...The only thing that seems to be missing is increased volcanic activity.



Richard! Good to see you around! Best wishes; and hope you're getting a good 10 minutes of sunshine every day.

I enjoyed reading your description of a feedback enhanced snow event. I had come to similar conclusions after spending a lot of time observing snow melt last winter, '06/07. It was just perfect conditions (cold and sunny) and I was already pondering the mystery of "Snow Water Content." It's amazing how undisturbed snow resists melting, while disturbed snow melts so easily. With food coloring I observed a lot of lateral movement of water within the sponge-like snow structure (surprising , eh?). I also enjoyed the rainbow of vivid colors that two parallel snowflakes will produce (I'm guessing) (like scales on a butterfly wing). ...but I'm wandering.

Yes, the way snow can accumulate is scary. While we usually think of glaciers advancing (or retreating), we don't realize that glaciers can also arise de novo, growing up, around us. Just a couple of feet accumulating per year will push a house of it's foundation within a decade, I'd think. We still had little mini-glaciers on the north side of the house in early May, '07 (even though it was as hot as normal).

Quote:
According to now a solid group of solar scientists, we are now in a period of particularly low sunspot activity (except 2012, which may actually knock out the world's power grids).

...I'm picturing a graph in my head and it doesn't make sense ( a low period with a large one-year spike in the middle?)

The satellite data for global average temperature actually indicates a cooling especially from 2005 and more so from near the end of 2007.

...from 2005 to when? What about 2006 or 2007? You'd think this would be big news

The total ice coverage of the world is dramatically more than it has been and heading for a record.

"heading for a record" since when?
...while the ice thins and breaks up, the extent of "coverage" may increase; but the net mass loss [ice to water] is still about 150 Gigatonnes per year each for the Arctic, Greenland and the Antarctic.


Sea surface temperatures seem to be decreasing.
...all that melting ice? LOL


Did you see my reference to the Beltrami et al., paper on crustal warming? [mentioned near the end of...]
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=25152#Post25152
Quite a "hockey stick," eh?
Maybe we will see more volcanic activity soon enough.

I've been telling my friends since the late 1990's that this instability in the climate will bring on another glaciation eventually.
Lately though, I've been wondering if we might end up with a "bi-polar" world; with a warmer, liquid North Pole and a colder, larger South Pole (at least for a few decades).

So, what do you think about "Fudge Factors?"
We know models don't account for everything. Wouldn't it be surprising if they didn't need some compensation?

...btw:
It seems obvious to me why the included the word "exact" for the lay-summary.

Without understanding that scientists speak in absolutes, policymakers (bureaucrats) would think that "we can't predict the future climate" mistakenly means that 'no predictions can be made of the future climate.'

Adding the word "exact" clarifies the difference, without needing all the extra wording from the rest of the paragraph.

Does that seem like some conspiracy to you, or just writing to your audience?

...but BOT

A new NASA study appears in the January issue of the quarterly Journal of Glaciology.

"The relationship between surface temperature and mass loss lends further credence to earlier work showing rapid response of the ice sheet to surface meltwater," said Dorothy Hall, a senior researcher in Cryospheric Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the study.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Greenl...Beyond_999.html

Have you seen the results on mass loss from that new NASA sensor, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)?
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar/HQ_06085_arctic_ice.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL031468.shtml


Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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"Too bad more people can't understand what they're saying."
I agree, except that I think some people have gone to extraordinary lengths to misconstrue what they have said. The addition of the word "EXACT" in the text is redundant given the surrounding text. One reason they might have included it is to get around people who might quote the sentence out of context the ones immediately surrounding it.

Their point about the carbon cycle is not based only on model, but on actual data showing marked affect during the last century or so.

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G'day TheFallibleFriend,

Might I ask a simple question? What "actual data showing marked affect during the last century or so", to quote you precisely.

The quoted phrase at issue seems to be:

"The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future EXACT climate states is not possible."

So what data from the last century or so supports any supposition that prediction of future climate states is in any way possible, whether exactly possible or even vaguelly possible? Or am I wrong in what you were attempting to convey in your post? If I am, I'd be happy to stand corrected.

The only scientific data that I would accept if you were, say, authoring a paper on the supposition set forth in the statement, either for or against it, would be in relation to long-term predictions of climate and whether any of these has been in remotely successful.

Actually, it would be an interesting study. The trouble is you then veer in the relms of climate "models". And there seems to be a nasty habit of those that create climate models of tweeking them as they start to vary from the actual climate as it winds out from the model start point. If the object of the exercise is to create a model that eventually will produce an accurate or sort of accurate understanding of future models, then I'd be happy to accept that you are perfectly free to tweek the model. I would not accept, however, without proof, that producing a model in that way would get you any nearer to creating a model that had any validity at all for future climate, but that is a separate issue.

If the models are being used to support carbon taxes, some sort of interventionist action or any theory either that global warming is man made or that it exists, then "tweeking" means that the model fails.

Thus far I have not heard of one model that has managed to get anything right even remotely. They are about as useful as a forcast for weather two weeks out in a temperate climate. By the way, in case you are wondering, simply guessing is more accurate than almost any method of predicting weather two weeks out in a temperate climate (with the exception of one method, involving a detailed analysis of solar activity, which can be predicted with reasonable certainty - this isn't actually a bad predictor for weather, but it is not a model per se).

I could produce a computer model of the world's climate based on the current Al Nina and extrapolating from the influence past Al Ninas had on climate say five or ten years out. I could further improve the model by adding in solar prediction data. The Al Nina information, unfortunately peters out at about eight years, so is a terrible indicator of longer term climate. Those that support global warming as definitely man made and definitely the end of the world, we are all doomed, scary stuff, DO NOT include solar activity prediction data.

As to the statement you are quoting and the carbon cycle, you've lost me completely at that point. The sentence is in reference to climate change, full stop. Who cares if you can accurately predict the carbon level increases over the next 10, 20 or 50 years if you actually have no indication as to what, if anything, this will do to climate. The only data sets I know of relating to carbon and climate or when some puts two unconnected graphs together, one on atmospheric CO2 and one on SAT (of course never using satellite data) and tries to fit them together. They don't fit by the way. CO2 rises more often when there is a decreasing world's temperature average and rises most significantly at the wrong times.


Regards


Richard


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G'day Samwik,

Phew. Do you actually expect me to respond to each and every point?

Solar Activity

Actually you didn't seem to picture it badly at all. There is an 11 sunspot cycle and a bunch of other cycles of longer lengths and varying intensities during portions of their cycle. In October 2005 we apparently (I say this because I'm not a solar radiation expert and have to rely fully on those experts that I did read) entered a period of low sunspot activity and hence also much lower solar magnetic fields which should last 55 years. That does not stop the 11 year cycle from have a jump in solar activity, the next being 2012. But 2012 is a little bit special because the 11 cycle coincides with another cycle. When that happened last time, it knocked out power grids, telephone systems and damaged satellites. Going from memory and the date could be completely wrong 1989 pops into my head.

So you you can imagine the graph in your head, you have a very low activity period of 55 years that does indeed have a spike in 2012, and a smaller spike again in 2023 etc. That should now be as clear as mud!

A Cooling From ...

Please refer to my previous post referencing FallibleFriend's post. How would I know until when? In reading the many posts I have made on this site, have I ever suggested once that I could create a model to predict future climate or indeed that anyone can? So all I can say to your question is "at least in the short term". If solar activity and the sun's magnetic field strength was the only determinate of world climate, then I would suggest for the next 55 years but while there has been some very interesting studies very closely correlating sunspot activity over the past 600 years or so with the presumed climate during that time, there are too many assumptions in those studies for my liking and they apparently fall down at least occasionaly, especially if you go back further than 600 years.

My Top Ten

To my mind there are some factors that will definetly significantly affect climate and some of these will affect it for at least a few years.

Meteor Impact - This is the biggie. This one has caused ice ages. And I mean real ice ages, not glaciations. The ones that last millions of years.

Solar Burst Directly At Earth. Might even have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Definetely causes massive increase in volcanic activity as well as disrupting the world's magnetic fields, its ability to defract solar radition, ocean currents etc.

Volcano - VEI7 or 8 (A "Supervolcano"). This one is going to tip us back into a full blown glaciation. It probably would wipe out 98%, maybe even 99% of the world's population.

Volcanos - Large increase in activity. These don't even have to be large, just ones that produce high level fine ash in reasonable quantities. A little over 70,000 years ago a single eruption or group of smaller eruptions turned the world so cold that humans died EVERYWHERE on earth except for a tiny spot in East Africa. DNA evidence suggests between 2,000 and 10,000 people were left at the trough in population down from around 5 million perhaps as little as a year before.

Nuclear War. Effect is roughly the same as for volcanos but with the added bonus of radioactive clouds killing those off that might actually have survived volcanos.

Any Large Scale Attempt to Reduce Global Warming. This one actually sounds funny but isn't at all. There have now been several suggestions, including large scale seeding of clouds with sulpher derivatives and spraying of massive snow areas with black dye. OK, some of these belong in Cookoo land but some of them unfortunately with a few billion could atually be put into place.

El Nino / Al Ninas. These affect the world's climates for from a year to more than a decade. If you like the "tipping point" arguments relating to flips between glaciations and interglacial periods. An Al Nina at the wrong time could make it all rather cold very very quickly.

OK, so there is not actually ten. Sue me.

"Lately though, I've been wondering if we might end up with a "bi-polar" world; with a warmer, liquid North Pole and a colder, larger South Pole (at least for a few decades)."

Sorry. Not possible. The world's climate distribution is determined pretty much exclusively on where the continents are at the time of the particular climate. The mechanisms for heat distribution from the tropics to the poles, just wouldn't allow for one of the poles that melted and the other enlarging. While the hemisphere climates do not normally mingle, they do at the intertropical convergence zones, and any world increase in temperature in the Northern Hemisphere would translate to a similar increase down south. It is possible there might be a few months delay if your are talking a huge sudden movement in temperatures.

IPCC

My opinion of both fudging climate prediction models and the IPCC is the same and that is extremely low. The IPCC is not a body of scientists that actually know something about climate or at least have spent many years researching climate either present or historic. It is a political body made up very much by those that have no expertise at all in climate. The vast majorty of the participants are political appointees. The IPCC was roundly criticised by several leading scientists for refusing to remove their names from papers they did not agree with or that had been massively altered. These aren't a couple of crackpots by the way. The list is actually quite impressive.

I'm surprised that either statement relating to climate prediction was allowed in an IPCC report. Both of them damn models. One just does it more verihmently.

Gee. Now this post is very long and I've run out of time to even look at any of the points that I might have missed. But this is something to get your teeth into for a little while Samwik.


Regards


Richard


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"So what data from the last century or so supports any supposition that prediction of future climate states is in any way possible, whether exactly possible or even vaguelly possible? "
That isn't the point of my post. I have no position on climate change.

1. I didn't say data supported predictions. That was a separate point I brought up. In another section of the report they talked about carbon cycle and data they had collected from Vostok. This data makes it clear that humans have affected climate.

2. The climate models are already making predictions. The question is how accurate are they. Currently, they don't know how accurate they are (for the reasons cited). But it's not fair to say that they know nothing.


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G'day TheFallibleFriend,

If your comment was not related to data from the last century supporting modelling or predictions then I'm now at a complete loss to understand the post at all.

Please do not mention the Vostok core samples and anything that suggests they tell any story relevant to the current century. The data from the Vostok core samples has been grossly missinterpreted by a great many people including Al Gore. With respect to CO2 variations over the last 600,000 years, all the Vostok core samples shows, if you agree with the methods used in the extraction and analysis techniques for the samples, then CO2 increases with guessed increases in temperature, although the CO2 increase lags the temperature increases by between 60 and 600 years. Or very plainly increased temperature seems to increase atmpospheric CO2. There is no evidence from the ice cores that CO2 increases has any effect on temperature and certainly not that an increase in CO2 increases the world's temperature. Many times the CO2 levels have been quite high and that has not stopped the temperature reducing rapidly. I'm sorry but in no scientific universe that I know of does that constitute a "clear" indication that humans have effected climate, well not through the release of CO2.

Actually you have to step back a bit from the question of making predictions with climate models. The question first is not how accurate the models are but whether they have any validity at all for any purpose. The next question is whether they have any place in a global warming discussion. Have they produced anything that actually is of any value. Any scientific endeavour produces something. So the models certainly mean that those that have been involved in them know something. Edison was asked about the 10,000 failed experiments in attempting to make incandescent lights and when asked how he could stand all these failures he say that with each experiment he knew another way how not to make a light.

So if you ask those questions you finally get to your question and I think that's about where we are with climate modelling to support the argument there is man made global warming or even that there is any type of global warming. I could guess better than any model that I have seen thus far.

All of this is based on analysis of studies, data etc. If you have any specific data or a study that seems to contradict my comments please feel free to quote them or provide appropriate references. I have a particular dislike for any link to a news article however and do not believe they have any place in a discussion about the science of climatology or global warming.


Regards


Richard

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Thanks Richard, very much for your thoughtful reply (#25245).
There's lot's to chew on, and I'm still gnawing away.

Meanwhile, if I may interject:
Originally Posted By: RicS
G'day TheFallibleFriend,

....or even that there is any type of global warming.

All of this is based on analysis of studies, data etc. If you have any specific data or a study that seems to contradict my comments please feel free to quote them or provide appropriate references.

Beltrami, H., J. E. Smerdon, H. N. Pollack, and S. Huang (2002), Continental heat gain in the global climate system, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(8), 1167, doi:10.1029/2001GL014310.

"Beltrami et al. [2002] used temperature profile data from boreholes to make this estimate. They estimate that Earth's continents warmed by 0.9 × 10^22 J during the past 50 years. This value is of the same order as the warming of the Earth's atmosphere during this period...."

"These fluxes indicate that 30% of the heat gained by the ground in the last five centuries was deposited during the last fifty years, and over half of the five-century heat gain occurred during the 20th century."

This is a definite "Hockey Stick" isn't it?
confused


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Originally Posted By: samwik

"These fluxes indicate that 30% of the heat gained by the ground in the last five centuries was deposited during the last fifty years, and over half of the five-century heat gain occurred during the 20th century."

This is a definite "Hockey Stick" isn't it?
confused


I think you have to be very careful with this kind of misleading statement. When you consider the possibility of natural variation over the last 500 years (eg. LIA) .... the statement is complete nonsense ... whats the point of making a view on the "percentage gain from the last century" out of the last 500 years if you don't look at the whole story ...

http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025




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G'day ImranCan,

Which statement is misleading. I am a little confused with Samwik's comments. The comment "a hockey stick" normally refers to the very much fudged data used by Al Gore in an incomplete truth that was derived by a group of scientists that simply discarded any studies that gave a different result to their ideal of a hockey stick. That type of scientific methodology should be unacceptable to anyone and should be roundly condemned. That it wasn't by a great many shows just how bad this debate can get.

Both your posts, to me anyway, are ambigious. You indicate that there is a misleading statement but don't say what statement that is that is misleading. The research or the comment by Samwik? Samwik uses a reference to "Hockey Stick" that could mean that the study would produce a very neat hockey stick and thus would reinforce other studies or it could be in a derogatory way saying that this study too seems to be too good to be true.

This isn't a critiscm of any stance by either of you, only a request to make the comments less ambigious so we actually know what we are meant to be discussing. It might have seemed really plain to both of you when you wrote these comments but I'm confused. Maybe its just me.

Oh, and I really don't like references to studies that are available only to members of the organisation that controls the website. The abstract is of little assistance. What where the 18 studies? Where were they found? If they didn't use tree rings, what did they use? How where the 18 selected? Actually, the full study may not deem it important enough to answer these questions but these types of questions can never be answered by reference to an abstract only.

A 30 year running mean was selected for some reason. These types of manipulations of data, very much concern me. Would a 50 running mean paint a different picture? Or a 10 year one for that matter. What does the data look like without the running mean? Why the need to deal in anomolies? If what you want to show is the variation of temperature over time then surely data that represents a variation of temperature over time rather than the anomolies would be a far better way to display the results?

I can rattle off literally dozens of reasons why tree ring date does not capture long term climate changes, short term climate changes, or anything to do with temperature at all. But so too can I do this for pretty much any other data that attempts to reflect the climate over the last several centuries. About the only one that is difficult to criticise is an analysis of anecodal evidence whether in the written or painted form. But here again this does not represent actual temperatures, only whether it was colder or warmer during certain periods for certain places on earth.


Regards


Richard


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LOL, Richard. I hadn't thought of that interpretation; guess I'm not as cynical about Al's data (I thought it was just poorly "scaled").
Capitalizing the term probably made it sound like "the famous hockey stick," eh?

Thanks for asking for clarity on the comment; I too was wondering which was misleading or nonsense.
I think it's me that is misleading (and you were wondering!); and Beltrami, et al. that is "complete...."

But this is soo off-topic, eh? More later (see new topic); but until then....

I'll go and try to find the data about Net Mass Loss in Antarctica as well as in the Arctic and Greenland.
I know E. Antarctica is gaining in the highlands, but overall there is a net loss of 100-150 Billion Tonnes/year (last I heard).
wink


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Richard
I agree with your comments about the paper. But this paper just gives an example of a scenario where the global temperature has not been flat over the last centuries. We could equally well just call on anecdotal evidence from Europe regarding the LIA. My point was that in a scenario where global temperatures vary up and down (or down and up), a statement quoting 50 % of warming in the last 100 years from an overall period of 500 years might sound alarming but it doesn't mean much.

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