The Response
This is a very interesting time for the climate science community. They are being called on to respond to the extreme weather we are seeing around the globe. Today’s NYT article, titled, “In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming,” is a must-read, if you want to see the representative views of leading climate scientists.
Here’s one notable perspective:
“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no “” at least not yet.”
The two best discussions of this issue I’ve seen are Brian Hoskins in the Economist and John Nielson Gammon at ClimateAbyss. RP Jr also pipes in here.
I suppose it’s too much of an opportunity to ignore, but linking this type of weather event to global warming seems, well, too opportunistic to me.
I don’t really care what Gavin believes–his behaviour on his weblog long ago killed any interest I had in him as a human being.
And we already know he believes in the Hockey Stick, an icon without provenance or future.
I very much care what he can prove. He couldn’t ‘prove’ the Hockey Stick. He can’t ‘prove’ weather equals climate.
I lived in Turin Italy for seven years. This all reminds me of discussions of their famous Shroud, and the various carbon dating tests, written and oral histories, statements of theoretical possibility by learned professors–some of chemistry, biology and other hard sciences.
By jumping the gun on attribution they will only make it more difficult some years down the line–when it actually happens, in all probability.
Economist link fixed: here.
I have no idea how one “proves” such things in earth science. The useful intellectual framework is Bayesian, not Euclidean. I wish Gavin hadn’t thrown in that “yet”.
Well, MT, I suppose it’s a useful distraction from other issues, but this will end up as a ‘summer story’ and will be used as one instance of the boy crying wolf on this particular point.
You’re just storing up trouble for the future.
The blocking pattern has broken. Good news for Russia as temperatures will cool. Bad news for the U.S., Caribbean and Central America, since conditions will be more favorable for hurricanes.
weather?
climate change? (natural)
man made climate change?
Last winter when the worstsnow in Washington for 80 years..
some were saying weather, some were saying an example of ‘climate change’ making extreme weather events more likely (presumably blaming man made)
Some were asking, it was as bad or worse 80 years ago, naturally, presumably?
Whatever caused that then, could it not be doing it again?
I have some peculiar image in my mind of an aged Tom Fuller in the distant future cowering in a tiny massively insulated air-conditioned room while the exterior temperature climbs toward 160 F, saying “just weather, just weather, can’t tell you anything about climate”.
At some point you get enough weather that it is climate. The question is only one of degree, if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s agreed that a large number of events is fair game; not one flood, but massively too many floods. Which of course, we expected and which we are starting to see.
The question being raised now is about magnitude. If an event is persistent enough and large enough that you would NEVER HAVE EXPECTED TO LIVE TO SEE IT, can it be considered evidence alone? This is a new question, because nobody ever expected to live to see events like the one that apparently is winding down in Asia, or the one in Australia the southern summer before last. But now we have two such events in two years, and as far as I know, nothing comparable before that. So how do we go about actually thinking about events like that? When do we say, hmm, that is too weird to be disconnected from anthropogenic climate change?
Gavin’s quote jumped out at me because for the average person, who is just a bystander to these debates, there is no separating Gavin the “person” from Gavin the “scientist.” He makes the distinction but for practical purposes, it’s his respected authority as a climate scientist that lends his personal opinion heft.
Here is RPJ on Gavin’s statement (emphasis added):
“This neatly sums up the first of two reasons why I think that the current debate over whether greenhouse gas emissions caused/exacerbated/influenced recent disasters around the world is a fruitless debate. It is not a debate that can be resolved empirically, but rather depends upon hunches, speculation and beliefs. Debates that cannot be resolved empirically necessarily involve extra-scientific factors. There is nothing unusual such “post-normal” situations, as they are common, but like Gavin Schmidt we should be clear about when we are in such a context.”
In this context, though–meaning the summer of extreme weather–Gavin’s personal opinion, in addition to flowing from his authority as a climate scientist, also probably jibes with the average person’s view on the street, who is looking to put the extreme weather in some kind of context.
So, MT, you are now on record as predicting 160 degree F temperatures during my lifetime.
See where being silly takes you?
And why would I be cowering instead of luxuriating?
The point is, in case you’ve forgotten, that the ‘enough weather’ you refer to is a time series, not an accumulation of ‘spectaculars.’
The fundamental principles don’t seem to change for a few. When it’s hot, it’s climate. When it’s cold, it’s weather.
As Tom Fuller says, cry wolf too long, keep losing credibility.
Tom, no I’m not predicting it, I’m imagining it. It’s a reductio ad absurdum argument, not a prediction.
I am asking how weird a single event has to get before you are somehow allowed to say it is unnatural. The claim of “never” is an oversimplification. We didn’t expect that simplification to be tested as early as 2010, but here we are. So we need to re-examine the rule of thumb, see where it came from, and be more nuanced about it.
Compare and contrast: US Dust Bowl, Moscow Heat Wave.
Severity
Longevity
Contrast with previous periods
Ability to affix label of ‘global warming’
Michael
How about imagining, that it is all just natural climate variability, which can occur on a long term, short term and medium term scale, with many weather extremes along the way. Nothing unusual, nothing to see, nothing to get scared about? Just human delusion (beyond maybe a 1.0c change depending on feedbacks, negative, positive? maybe, due to a small extra % of CO2 in the atmosphere due to humans)
Humans throughout their existance have endured varied, and natural and dramatic natural climate change…
Yet, I imagine some will go to their graves, saying in another 50 years time, disaster, catastrophy.. History, is of course littered with similar examples, of delusion, and end or world and various other cults.. I imagine a hundred or 2 years ago, many in this debate would be those, selling their ‘worldy goods’ due to the end of the world having been calculated, forseen, or predicted..
Unfortuanetly, for all Gavin’s recent words, I do tend to agree with Tom.
Speaking of Gavin and the Hockey Stick, I am curious as what he and the hockey team’s reaction to the McShane & Wyner paper will be.
One has to wonder if it’s time, again, to look at all the different hockey sticks we’ve seen over the years.. but this time to concentrate on the error bars. There is such a margin of possible year-on-year variability that cannot be discounted or eliminated in the historical record that it just seems irrational to a bystander like me to try to definitively pin the Pakistan flood tail on the AGW donkey. It is important to recognise that our understanding of severe weather events is front-loaded because of our new-found ability to learn of them, and the effect of being able to witness (by TV proxy etc) the events. Severe weather events are a part of natural history. How many times has the Mississippi changed its route because of a perfectly natural, local severe weather event? (lots!) and where I live, in the Yorkshire Dales, there are many similar, very gentle visual reminders of great geological changes as a result of severe weather, long before the region was settled by mankind.
Regarding Gavin’s promise to try to pin Pakistan floods “scientifically” on AGW, I’ve little doubt that he will indeed make that attempt. But, like Mann, Gavin is an advocacy scientist with an agenda, and his results must be treated with proportionately greater scepticism, his supplementary information scoured for caveats and similar small-print etc. It is a sad fact that, as well as closely examining uncertainties in results, it is sometimes necessary to reduce confidence levels on sources. That infamous PNAS paper has taught us that, both in conclusion and from source.
Barry, imagination is a fine thing. If you wanted to check if your imaginings had any merit, you could start by defining “natural climate variability” (due to what? orbital changes, variations in solar intensity? volcanoes) and see if any of those forcings can account for observed warming. If so, you win! If not, well, maybe time to look elsewhere.
Thought experiments are all well and good. You can imagine the moon is made of green cheese if you like, but if you want people to agree with you, you might try and back it up with some specifics.
The problem here is extreme weather events are (and maybe will always be) the most persuasive public evidence for the reality of climate change. History shows this with the examples of the 88 heat wave, Katrina. These visible consequences easily generate more public discussion than any journal article.
However, these sorts of causal claims are also the hardest (impossible?) to defend scientifically. This puts proponents of the reality of AGW in a quandry – especially when the media comes sniffing around each time asking “is it global warming?”
Thankfully I’ve been seeing some nuanced answers this time, but the headlines will continue to say otherwise. This is the sort of path that leads to charges of alarmism, and I think justifiably so – especially when every single event, be it drought or flood, heat or cold, can be attributed to some sort of “weather weirding”. Maybe we need alarm, but I would love to see it without the expense of scientific credibility.
The tightly coupled events in Russia and Pakistan and the related events in China are of a different order than we have seen before. Treating this as just another example of extreme weather is inadequate; it may look logically coherent but it really isn’t.
Localized flash flooding is just bad luck. This appears to be something else.
It is a special case. Let’s hope it stays that way, but unfortunately, until we understand it (or until it repeats) we have to pretty strongly suspect otherwise.
It all looks like a case of temporary circulatory constipation to me, Michael. The leap to AGW seems too great and I’m afraid it sounds too much like “It is written…” doom-saying.
NB: For temporary circulatory constipation, read: Weather.
Tobis, Science for these claims?
“The tightly coupled events in Russia and Pakistan and the related events in China are of a different order than we have seen before”
Pick your quote carefully. You could’ve quoted this instead (do both come from the same original Associated Press story, anyone know?)
————- excerpt follows——
The Associated Press is moving an interesting dispatch across the wires this morning, vis a vis the climactic calamities ongoing in Russia and Pakistan. Charles Hanley writes:
“… NASA’s Gavin Schmidt at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said it’s better to think in terms of odds: Warming might double the chances for a heat wave, for example. ‘That is exactly what’s happening,’ Schmidt said, ‘a lot more warm extremes and less cold extremes.'”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/aug/12/us-politics-climate-change-ipcc-russia-pakistan
“Odds”. Probabilities neatly parametrising an unfathomable chaos. Sounds about right.
Tobis (3)
A very good point. Of course one cannot prove it. Now, do you think that little “yet” was just a slip or Gavin was trying to hint that he is hard at work on the proof and it could be coming soon.
Tobis (7)
So what if we never expected it (BTW: how do you know who expected what)? How about the possibility that we don’t have a good idea about what can and cannot be expected? What do we really know about the probability distribution of extreme weather events?
Tobis (19)
You describe the weather events in Russia as being of a different order. On what scale, please? As far as I understand, the record temperature in Moscow was exceeded by 1.4 degree. Is that a different order? The previous record stood since 1920. (I wonder what meteorologists said back then. Or what they said in the winter of 1940 when the temp dropped to -42.) What happened there is a well-known phenomenon called blocking. It happens every decade or two, but obviously not as strong usually.
If somebody would be a scientist enough to show at least that warmer climate is conducive to stronger blocking events before talking to the media (or opinionating in the blogosphere) that would be really refreshing.
Well, we already have seen 159 F on a desert in full sun, so yeah, we can envision Tom Fuller in Phoenix at noon in his air conditioned vault some time in this century.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7149
OTOH, think of it this way, and Eli believes this is what MT meant, we are entering a period when weather conditions which were in any meaningful sense impossible before are going to be commonly encountered. That friends is scary anthropic global climate change or SAGCC
“In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html#ixzz0wlyDU3LF
😉
(BTW I think Kukla still believes we’re about to enter another ice age, and the warming we’re actually experiencing merely confirms it. Somehow.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/pr/00/02/iceAge.html
)
OTOH, think of it this way, and Eli believes this is what MT meant, we are entering a period when weather conditions which were in any meaningful sense impossible before are going to be commonly encountered.
Yes, that is a good one-sentence summary of what I am trying to say. (Before ten dollar words got to be so expensive, I would have said a good precis.)
As the climate, i.e., the distribution of weather events, changes rapidly, the space occupied by the tails of the distribution sweep out territory that were not meaningfully in the distribution before.
So we will occasionally see things we could not have seen before, and some of them may be things we have not imagined before. We will see not only known but previously unlikely conditions (e.g. extreme heat), but also previously unsuspected vulnerabilities (smoke).
It is impossible to predict what these weird events will be. The simulation models are too coarse and too conservative, and we wouldn’t know what to look for in their output anyway. You can’t really do statistical attribution on single events, and causality is pretty complicated in a tightly coupled system. So it’s hard to say much about this beyond that we should not only expect the unexpected, we should expect a great deal more of it.
Sheesh, what a grammatical trainwreck that middle paragraph is. But you see what I mean. Better:
As the climate, i.e., the distribution of weather events, changes rapidly, the tails of the distribution sweep out territory that was not meaningfully in the distribution before.
Is there a quantifiable prediction that could be subsequently checked against reality?
Sashka, there are plenty of predictions that approach the question, (increased heat records, decreased cool records, more flash floods, expanding arid zones) but I don’t see how to make a testable prediction that captures the point that the last few weeks exemplify.
I can offer an analogy.
In 1990, a few well-informed people were predicting that the internet would have an enormous impact on commerce over the next twenty years. (Please note, by the way, that Al Gore was among them.) One might have predicted the enormous digital traffic. But one could not specifically predict BitTorrent, iTunes, Google, YouTube, blogs, Flickr, EBay, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or any of the myriad remarkable phenomena we take for granted every day. How would you make a statistical statement, beyond that “business models will emerge that we have not seen before”? In retrospect, though, it is obvious that the internet has indeed reorganized much of how we conduct business.
“This is a very interesting time for the climate science community. They are being called on to respond to the extreme weather we are seeing around the globe…”
It would be so much better for the climate science community to not take a bite from this apple and prognosticate about the weather we are seeing around the globe. Weather is not climate, or versa visea. What’s happening in 2010 amounts to data entries, and these do not equate to the trend without scientific proof in black and white. Gut feeling and an itch in your left palm don’t amount to the zip of a coke can lid. Beware of fools asking stupid questions.
There’s good documentation of debris fans from extreme precipitation events in the past, and suggestions we’ve been seeing an increase in these for a few decades recently, e.g.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=+precipitation+rainfall+extreme+debris+fan
Pakistan is now beginning to get its second wave of this monsoon’s rainstorms, and a third wave is predicted shortly.
https://www.cseg.ca/publications/recorder/2009/02feb/Feb2009-Early-Cenozoic-Hyperthermals.pdf
“A fascinating result of climate simulations at elevated atmospheric pCO2 concerns precipitation extremes and droughts. For many locations, rapid and significant global warming should increase annual precipitation but concentrate it within a shorter duration. Effectively, throughout a year, wet seasons become more intense while dry seasons become longer. This should enhance the erosion and discharge of sediment given observa- tions of modern environments (e.g., Schmitz and Pujalte, 2007). Such an effect probably occurred during the PETM. In northern Spain, the event precisely coincides with a widespread and prominent conglomerate interpreted as a “megafan” (Schmitz and Pujalte, 2007). … similar response along continental margins appears to characterize other suspected early Eocene hyperthermals (Nicolo et al., 2007; Sluijs et al., 2008)….”
Actually, Michael, wrt predictions about the internet, many did predict huge explosions in retail commerce, sharing of multimedia and indexing and search of increasing volumes of knowledge. (I was one, although not the first, and far from the only one.) I got about 15 minutes of less than total obscurity by advising a major computer manufacturer to put odd lots of their newest toy on an online auction site that had just changed its name to eBay.
And all of us that were doing this were using data and historical records of past business revolutions to do this. And we had to fight through swarms of people who thought the Internet was a Stairway to Heaven and other swarms who thought it would fizzle into insignificance. So the analogy is apt.
What you are doing is mixing some fact-based analysis and observation with nightmarish end states that nobody serious believes is going to happen. I have seen this before, especially in discussions of technology security issues.
Tom as usual misses my point.
Yes “many did predict huge explosions in retail commerce, sharing of multimedia and indexing and search of increasing volumes of knowledge.” And I am predicting a great increase in unexpected and peculiar events. But nobody predicted Google and nobody predicted the Russian crisis. So I am saying that it is hard to make a testable, objective, quantitative prediction. “A company will emerge into the front ranks of major corporations by providing an indexing service and accompanying it with targeted advertising and a whimsical attitude”? Well, yes that is a huge consequence of the internet, but by its nature it is not possible to turn it into a reliable prediction before the fact.
Interestingly, I just wrote a short item that is pretty much <a href=”http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/08/confusing-words.html”>about being caught between Tom and Sashka</a>. Though I didn’t have specific people in mind, had you asked me I might well have come up with those two as examples. This exchange has exactly the flavor I was talking about.
On the other hand, it may be the case that somebody was fairly clearly predicting events like this one, but climatologists weren’t listening because he is an operational meteorologist. Now there’s a refutation of a sort I didn’t expect.
A cautionary tale for all the main camps in the climate sphere.
Tom, I’m reminded of Steve Martin’s exasperation in Planes, Trains & Automobiles: “Here’s a good idea. When you’re telling these little stories? Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”
Did you specifically predict eBay in 1990? And Facebook? And Google? etc., etc., etc. Or, when things like eBay materialized did you say – “this is an example of the general kind of change to commerce we envisaged the internet might entail.”
mt’s point seems to have sailed over your head entirely.
Mt and Rust Never Sleeps, we’re talking past each other as usual. My point is that there is an intermediate level of detail that is useful for planning purposes, accessible with some effort, and doesn’t seem to be pursued in the field of climate science.
I didn’t pick winners and couldn’t have named Google or YouTube. But I was able to assist my clients greatly by doing more than just say ‘a tidal wave is comin’ in’ or ‘ignore it–it’ll go away.’
You all blow off the IPCC’s measure projections of impacts–you say they’re too conservative, out of date, or ignored certain factors. But you haven’t done any of the work to replace them with your own. So you resort to lamenting like Old Testament prophets.
Roger Pielke Sr. has pretty much described what an effective approach to adaptation would look like. Addressing regional weaknesses in water resources, healthcare, energy and agriculture.
I offered at MT’s site to build a roadmap for mitigation using adoption of clean energy as a proxy–and got my usual round of insults for showing up there.
You have no strategy. You have no tactics. You have no Plan A, let alone Plan B. MT’s favorite slogan about emitting CO2 being like mugging an old lady–‘Acceptable level is zero!’ will reduce neither CO2 emissions nor the mugging of old ladies.
What good are you doing?
Tobis (31)
I don’t see how to make a testable prediction that captures the point that the last few weeks exemplify.
Therefore the issue doesn’t belong to the domain of science. Agree?
39 – What good are you doing? (the broad brush)
My objective is to increase understanding in the hopes that people will get serious about developing a policy.
As for the rest of it, my expectation is about even split (30%/30%) between total disaster and nuclear power, with a smaller slice for solar supplemented by wind, another one for sequestration and coal, and still a shred of hope for space-based solar, or possibly some combination. My preferred policy is to ramp up a carbon tax at the mine or well, starting small and increasing rapidly, including a negative tax for sequestration, until we get to zero, and let the market prevail. But I am not expert enough in those things to advocate for any of them. I just want people to understand the problem.
40- Therefore the issue doesn’t belong to the domain of science. Agree? (the nitpicker)
Hmm. It is not a scientifically fruitful point, in the sense that it elicits further investigation, but is a point arguably based on science and logic, and it is important enough to policy that I intend to do so. Is it testable in a Popperian sense? Yes, but only if we choose terrible policies. Therefore I am against testing it.
That said, while I find your question interesting, I do not find your question helpful. I am discussing a train wreck, not the philosophy of transportation.
You are not achieving your objective, MT. You are not increasing understanding–you are making understanding more difficult.
If someone asks you “Agree?” and you avoid a straight yes/no answer you are certainly not increasing understanding.
According to IPCC and mainstream climate community (yourself included), the GW is already undeniably here. Why can’t you design your (Popperian or any other) test to establish the veracity of your claims. Isn’t it what a scientist is supposed to do?
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. ” Mencken.
RNS, I don’t know anybody who believes that a solution to environmental/climate problems will be simple, neat and wrong.
But that doesn’t mean you just throw up your hands and walk away from it. And it doesn’t mean that you get a free ride when others are searching for a solution.
Sashka, you have stopped beating your spouse: Agree?
“My preferred policy is to ramp up a carbon tax at the mine or well, starting small and increasing rapidly, including a negative tax for sequestration, until we get to zero, and let the market prevail.”
That kind of statement just makes me want to pound my head on the desk. When the government taxes a central segment of the economy into oblivion, that is not a market, free or otherwise. Let me paraphrase MT’s comment: Let’s destroy the energy economy as we know it and hope for the best. Screw the billions mired in poverty who will never get out of it, let alone the billions more who will almost certainly join them. Nobody on the face of this Earth has a clue as to what the consequences of such a policy would be.
I know this is what many of the climate activists believe. James Hansen, and to a lesser degree Gavin Schmidt, have advocated similar policies (though not as forthrightly as to the zero target). It is still just amazing to see the idea actually put into “print.” I suspect this is why the others who share that goal don’t usually come out and say so.
There is a really good reason the people don’t generally give too much power to academics.
It’s a so-called “wicked problem”, Tom. http://bit.ly/bzqBmF
You appear to want to lay responsibility/success/lack of success for conveying the the problem definition entirely at the feet of mt, RC, etc. Based on your idiosyncratic paradigms of how the problem would be defined/articulated if it fit your idealized frame of “this is what a problem looks like. this is what a solution looks like.”
Guess what. It’s not that neat or simple. Is that unsatisfying, uncomfortable? Guess what. That’s in the very nature of what wicked problems ARE.
And frankly, it’s patently absurd to suggest that anyone you are debating with here is “throwing up their hands and walking away from” solutions. More likely that they are stressing the scale and urgency required in getting those solutions started in earnest. But if others’ solutions are rockets that clearly can only get halfway to the moon, then maybe there is still some effort needed on the problem definition, n’est ce-pas?
Don’t think it’s neat. Don’t think it’s simple. Don’t think you have asked how I would articulate or define the problem–although you’re happy to call it idiosyncratic sight unseen.
I don’t think you’re throwing up your hands and walking away from solutions. I think you’re throwing up your hands and walking away when someone asks you what your solution is.
Or just uttering pious platitudes with no math behind them, like MT.
Want some answers to the mitigation and adaptation issues that won’t destroy the economy? Here’s an idiot’s guide to conservative climate solutions:
1) Get the government out of the way of nuclear power;
2) Stop government subsidies of ethanol;
3) Stop government subsidies of all energy products (including oil), leaving only the same tax relief available for other industries;
4) Stop the government from blocking drilling with proper environmental protections (we just aren’t going to get rid of oil in the next 20 years, so the less money poured down the toilet on expensive, dangerous drilling, the more available to search for alternatives);
5) Stop the government moratorium on building new refineries;
6) Stop government subsidies of pseudo-government boondoggles like the new $48,500 Government Motors Volt;
7) Get the government’s boot off the neck of the economy, in the form of the massive new transfer payments and unfunded liabilities, so that industry can invest in the technologies we will need in the future.
(See a pattern here?)
The last point may be the most important. Solutions to the energy and climate issues of the future will not come from the government directing research dollars to favored recipients/technologies. They will come from the same place as the vast majority of innovation in other industries. Private investment, by multitudes of researchers each following their own instincts, funded by investors who lose if their products do not prove successful. It works in technology, pharmaceuticals, almost any industry where it is allowed. It will work with energy. The only question is when the government will get out of the way.
Do we really want a GM Volt style solution at the climate level? Something only the self described elite want, or can afford?
Well, I’m not a conservative and that’s not the way I’d go about it. But what gets me is that Rust Never Sleeps and Michael Tobis don’t offer plans of their own. And no, what MT wrote above is not a plan.
Fuller:
(to me, #42) “You are not increasing understanding”“you are making understanding more difficult.”
…
(about me, #49)”Or just uttering pious platitudes with no math behind them, like MT.”
In other words, “I don’t understand you, please make it more complicated!” Fuller is talented. He doesn;t even need Sashka to set up the bind.
MT, my frustration with you is based in no small part on knowing that you are well-qualified, intelligent and able to communicate. That you choose to phrase your solution in throw-away lines with no mechanisms behind them is a travesty.
Every time you use the phrase ‘in other words’ you make something up. I understand what you said. I’m not sure you do–or at least the implications.
My job is very often to create a plan that goes from A to Z, and then to execute parts of it. The same people come back to me for more. You’ve probably got 30 IQ points on me but you’re wasting them describing the shape and size of the letter A.
> predicted
Where credit is due:
“… arguably the most prescient SF story ever- Murray Leinster’s astonishing “A Logic Named Joe,” which predicted home personal computers, the internet, search engines, and internet telephones. Not bad for a story published in 1946.”
http://www.scifibookspot.com/markley/?p=463
Worth reading; included here:
http://www.webscription.net/p-253-a-logic-named-joe.aspx
Ready. Fire. Aim?
And why am I getting the feeling that rather than letting the market help solve the problem in response to price signals that reflect the social cost of carbon, we are about to be presented with a detailed plan – with math! – of what the solutions “should” be? From A to Z!
I’d much rather the math and details be presented and framed similar to what Nate Lewis or Saul Griffith or Socolow/Pacala or Mark Jacobsen do. Make it explicit what the trade-offs are with respect to energy (capacity, baseload, etc.), transmission, carbon, logistics, materials, everything are. Detailed at that level, sure. So that we can make choices, and so that we aren’t off in la-la land. But it’s going to be messy over the next several decades, so it’s probably more important to get the “problem definition” and the general architecture of the “price signal” right than being overly specific. Not “platitudes” either, but not “here is the path! From A to Z!”
And Tom? Elsewhere in the comments here you suggest that CO2 emissions continuing to rise until ~ 2085 is part of your planning assumptions? (And, I may have misread it, but you seemed to suggest that this was also “what the IPCC says”???). See, no matter how detailed your plan, for me it’s disqualified because that is in la-la land…
“What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.” — Dmitri Medvedev
… no mentions of; climategate, ‘post normal’ science, ‘stealth advocacy’, WUWT, the ‘hockey stick‘, or a thousand other irrelevancies
… losses of grain exports and half a billion $ of military equipment
“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.”
— Rudyard Kipling, “Tommy”
Actually, Rust Never Sleeps, I wrote that population would peak in 2085 and that emissions would begin to decline shortly afterwards (I think the IPCC says 2105, IIRC). I make plenty of mistakes of my own–don’t need help there.
And I believe it’s your ‘team’ that keeps telling us what the solutions ‘should be.’ Such as net emissions must be zero! (Exclamation point inferred…)
This last winter the whole Siberia was about 20C below “norm” for about 3 month in a row. Yes, it was a real “anomaly”, people were really tired of cold, -30, -40C. What Gavin would say about this? I guess the record must be homogenized…
Also, similar weather in Moscow was 38 years ago, in 1972, heat wave, fires, see
http://news.gismeteo.ru/video.n2?item=63417203529
So, when hot, it must be global warming. When cold, it is just weather. Yes.
Interesting comments above, but I find some context missing.
Context regarding “extreme weather” is needed.
What evidence is provided by those making the claim that recent weather is extreme? The extreme weather claims seem to flow from those who openly advocate some anthropogenic premise. Please provide evidence it is extreme.
John
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MT (#12) states: ” The claim of “never” is an oversimplification. ”
It’s also a term used by those seeking to portray any and all aspects of climate science as perpetually too uncertain to take any action. It’s mostly of a portrayal of what the individual wants reality to be (present and future). RPJ uses the word regularly, and also applies it to national and international cooperation on mitigation. In this case (#8), he’s using Gavin’s statement on attribution of individual weather events and attempting to apply it broadly to all extreme weather events on a global scale. This is silly. Let’s say we wanted to determine if a casino had an advantage over a gambler. Any statistician would tell you it’s impossible to attribute a player’s loss on an evening of play to the casino’s statistical edge. Over many more sessions, the casino’s edge becomes more obvious, and with increasing certainty. The Pielke logic would indicate that because we can’t attribute a single session’s loss to the casino’s edge, we therefore NEVER will be able to determine if the casino really has an edge at all, and therefore affects the player’s bankroll negatively, certainly not be analyzing the thousands of sessions that have taken place. If one session doesn’t tell us much, than neither can the rest. Ironically, problem gamblers tell themselves the same thing.
Someone links to something outside the forum common language…
“Also, similar weather in Moscow was 38 years ago, in 1972, heat wave, fires, see
http://news.gismeteo.ru/video.n2?item=63417203529“
… and claims ‘similar’ without any figures… do some digging…
“One of the most remarkable weather events of my lifetime is unfolding this summer in Russia, where an unprecedented heat wave has brought another day of 102°F heat to the nation’s capital. At 3:30 pm local time today, the mercury hit 39°C (102.2°F) at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Moscow had never recorded a temperature exceeding 100°F prior to this year, and today marks the second time the city has beaten the 100°F mark. The first time was on July 29, when the Moscow observatory recorded 100.8°C and Baltschug, another official downtown Moscow weather site, hit an astonishing 102.2°F (39.0°C). Prior to this year, the hottest temperature in Moscow’s history was 37.2°C (99°F), set in August 1920. The Moscow Observatory has now matched or exceeded this 1920 all-time record five times in the past eleven days, including today. The 2010 average July temperature in Moscow was 7.8°C (14°F) above normal, smashing the previous record for hottest July, set in 1938 (5.3°C above normal.) July 2010 also set the record for most July days in excess of 30°C–twenty-two. The previous record was 13 such days, set in July 1972. The past 24 days in a row have exceeded 30°C in Moscow”
here’s a graph of Moscow July temperatures, and here’s a description…
“Here’s the monthly average of daily high temperature, for each July in the record which has reports for at least 20 days of the month (most of them have reports for all 31 days, and from 1960 onward no month is missing more than one day’s data)”
Someone above did digging, but only in one direction (what else can be expected?). As I said, go find a report for major areas of Siberia being below -30C (!!!) below 1961-90 average over three months:
http://meteoinfo.ru/media/tclm1154509838.gif
(check months 11/2009, 12/2009, 01/2010, and 02/2010). You can trust these data because they are derived from CRU East Anglia (:=)
BTW, my rooftop temperature right now is 155F, and the asphalt road 152F. Must be another record, right?
Also, if you bother to check this:
http://www.weatherexplained.com/Vol-1/Record-Setting-Weather.html
could you find any record which would occur in years starting with 2xxx? No? You catastrophists are pathetic. But keep digging.
Yes, Al Tekhasski, cold ‘anomalies’ are weather indeed.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/08/gavin-schmidts-idea-of-climate-science-global-warming-stupidity-buffoonery-deception-or-flatout-lies.html