Hold That Bandwagon
I think Tom Yulsman has been covering climate change as long as Andy Revkin (which means several decades). So I’m digging this new radio gig he’s added to his portfolio. (Tom, in addition to being a co-director at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism, is a long-time friend and colleague.) Check out the show he did this week with Peter Stott, who is head of climate monitoring and attribution at the United Kingdom’s Met Office, which Tom discusses today in a blog post, provocatively headlined
Global warming did not “cause” Russian heat or Pakistani Floods
This follows on the heels of another terrific radio piece Tom did on Jim White, the director of CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, discussed in this post.
Here’s an excerpt of today’s interview with Stott:
I think . . . some people are too easily jumping from the very clear evidence that climate is changing, and that we’ve seen systematic changes in our climate system over the last few decades, to saying that particular individual extreme weather events are therefore due to climate change and therefore will become more frequent in the future . . .
The example with the current terrible situation in Pakistan is a very good case in point. Although our understanding of the climate system does tell us, and the observations do tell us, that there have been increases in extreme rainfall events, we don’t know about the particular circumstances in Pakistan, and the particular weather situation there, whether that is the sort of thing that will become more frequent or not. And, therefore, [we don’t know how to] respond to such a situation in terms of the longer-term adaptation response, for example.
Meanwhile, in a related thread at my place, it’s interesting to see the contortions of some who are talking up the greenhouse gas link to the aforementioned disasters. For example, Michael Tobis, a climate blogger who I equally applaud and admonish from time to time, seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth. Here, he says:
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.
Then, further down in the thread, he writes:
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.
The wider discussion in the media that this summer’s extreme weather has prompted must be confusing to the average person who doesn’t ordinarily pay attention to the particulars of this debate. On the one hand, we have scientists and climate bloggers like Tobis essentially saying, the events in Russia and Pakistan are not your normal, naturally occuring weather disasters.
On the other hand, we have climate scientists and Tobis essentially saying, we can’t definitively attribute AGW to these single weather events in Russia and Pakistan, but we should expect these kinds of disasters to occur much more often in the future.
I don’t know. Do those hoping to spur public engagement and political action on climate change really want to swing on that pendulum?
Keith, it seems like you’re making “misunderstanding MT” a theme of your posts of late. Of course, he can (and almost certainly will) speak for himself, but I don’t see the two quoted passages in conflict. Unsurprisingly, context may help.
In the first, MT goes on to say that “until we understand it (or until it repeats) we have to pretty strongly suspect” that it’s not just a normal, natural occurring weather disaster. He’s saying pretty clearly that we don’t understand it well enough to say that definitively, but that we may not be able to make that definitive determination until such events become the new normal.
If you read the second quote in the full context of the first, it’s hard to see how you can call it “talking out of both sides of his mouth.” Does the first quote say anything about “definitive attribut[ion]?” No, it doesn’t, and in fact it says the exact opposite.
I have no reason to assume any ill intent, but I think your “Tobis is essentially saying” tropes are spectacularly unhelpful. Were you to write “it seems to me that Tobis is saying X” that might be somewhat better (and I suspect that’s exactly what you mean), but it just feels like a straw man.
Isn’t there a way of making your points without putting words into MT’s mouth?
The general public cannot independently evaluate the science (or lack thereof) but they will listen to the learned discussion and come to the inevitable conclusion. People are not that stupid.
For some reason the climate advocates don’t understand that by overstating their case they are shooting themselves in the feet. It only works to undermine the public trust.
Actually, I’d like to thank Keith for re-raising this question in a less accusatory way.
The quotes show the perennial struggle of communicating this stuff. Stopping at “attribution of causality of individual events is impossible” is not strong enough for the recent astonishing situation in Asia. “We are absolutely certain this couldn’t have happened in an undisrupted atmosphere” is too strong, and will attract justifiable criticism from scientists as well as journalists and the naysayers.
Many weather and climate specialists strongly suspect this couldn’t have happened in an undisrupted atmosphere. That’s important. We must be willing to say so, despite the personal costs.
It’s like the house is on fire, and a young child in the household has just learned about matches, and there’s no sign of a gas leak, a short circuit, or a lightning strike, and nobody’s been in the kitchen for days. The kid is crying up a storm but not talking. Does that prove the kid did it? No, it doesn’t. Maybe you’d better keep an eye on him just the same.
So there was a 1000-year flood in Nashville. Did “global warming” “cause” it? I don’t think you can say that. There are more than a thousand places the size of the area that got the 1000-year rainfall. So you expect an event like that every year. Nashville’s number was up, so what? Now we have had a number of striking floods, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, so that makes it a little more suspicious, but these things tend to clump up in particular regions in particular years, so it still only adds to the evidence.
We hear a lot about floods overseas these days, but is it because they are increasing or because the media are more interested? That’s also hard to tell. (I think the evidence is in, but a few whose interests are more closely aligned than mine with that question are unconvinced, so who am I to say?)
Then we come to the anomaly in Russia. This is a different sort of beast. It’s called a blocking event, when the jet stream not only develops a kink, but the kink stays in one place, creating a pattern of warm and cold regions in parallel roughly longitudinal stripes. So in this case, an extraordinarily warm region in Russia, flanked by cold regions in Europe and central Asia, in turn with less spectacularly warm regions beyond.
So, if we have a name (“blocking”) for the event, a whole theory for why this occurs, why make such a fuss? Why claim it is so unusual? Three reasons 1) this is an uncommonly stable and long-lived pattern (those are not good) 2) this is an uncommonly intense pattern, dipping all the way to the monsoon zone and fraternizing with the monsoon, to Pakistan’s great detriment and 3) the really big events tend not be in summer and not to be centered on hot spots but on cold spots. In other words, this blocking event has features dramatically different form other ones we have seen.
And the consequences are also extreme. This is a meteorological oddity of a different sort than localized flooding because it involves the entire northern hemisphere flow.
We only have two jet streams, and we only have so many months. A 10000-year flood can happen in any of ten thousand places, but a 10000-year planetary scale circulation anomaly can only happen in two. We roll the dice ten thousand times in the one case looking to roll a Yahtzee, and in the other case only twice.
To this add the evidence of a very intense, persistent and large scale heat/drought event last year in Australia. At some point we will reach the level where severe events on very large scales become commonplace; one expects this if the climate is disequilibrated. The only question is when. So you’d think we’d notice if it started happening to us. At some point we will need to make the call.
If it is now, it is far earlier than most of us expected. It may have a silver lining if we take it as a wake-up call, but if we really are now seeing large-scale atmospheric consequences of climate change, it’s bad news indeed.
Michael, I’m glad to hear you don’t take offense. I wrote this post because I’m interested in having a discussion in how we talk about these disasters, since it’s going to keep coming up. The two comments by Michael that I highlighted illustrate what I think is very legitimate tension between two perspectives.
Additionally, and in a related vein, over at Tom Yulsman’s site, I was struck by this comment, which I found compelling–at least as one way in how to communicate the potential dangers of climate change without making the definitive single weather event attribution.
If someone were to phrase the issue to me in words like, “We think the components making up the circulatory system that we perceive as weather in the short term and climate over the long haul is going to be increasingly pre-disposed to creating heat waves and intense rainfall, sometimes in places we weren’t expecting them” and that what happened in Russia (not so sure about the flooding–it’s not new or unusual in either Pakistan or China) might be a sneak preview of coming attractions, it would accord with almost everything I’ve read about climate change and I wouldn’t be at all offended.
But what Schmidt, Romm, Deltoid and Rabett (and to a marginally lesser extent Michael Tobis) have done is really quite bad. It doesn’t accord with the literature or current claims as put forward by established scientists in the field. It is playing to some people’s fears and others’ prejudices.
It’s a return to the discredited tactics of iconograpy–polar bears, rainforests, melting glaciers and starving African farmers.
The net result is modest satisfaction for regular readers of CP and RC, Deltoid and OIIFTG, and a revving up of the motors over at WUWT.
Not one word about Pakistan growing from 33 million souls in 1950 to 173 million today–most settling in river valleys. Ya think internal migration might be involved there, as in China and even the increasing urbanisation of Russia?
Tobis (3)
We don’t know how uncommon this blocking event is. And, it occured in the same region where the previous blocking events happened. In that sense it is not dramatically different from others at all.
At some point we will reach the level where severe events on very large scales become commonplace; one expects this if the climate is disequilibrated. The only question is when.
No. The other question is how will we know that we reached that level.
MT shouldn’t be lumped in with Romm and Deltoid. He posits a possibility. They declare a certainty. He does not, as does Romm, have an underlying partisan political agenda. Most important, MT is willing to have his views deconstructed in a neutral forum.
Is there a reference librarian in the audience? (Or would the regular bloggers and commenters be interested in chipping in as a group to hire one to help find source material, so we aren’t just swapping opinions and snark here?
Amateur readers like me are just scratching the surface of what’s available.
E.g.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ijwf International Journal of Wildland Fire 2009, 18, 483″“507
Implications of changing climate for global wildland fire
http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ijwf
http://media.eurekalert.org/aaasnewsroom/MCM/FIL_000000000420/flannigan%20et%20al%202009%20(climate%20change%20global%20wildland%20fire).pdf
“The objective of the present paper is to summarize our under- standing of recent historical global fire activity and then examine existing research in order to outline potential responses of global wildland fire to rapid climate change….
…
Research suggests that blocking frequency is related to the wave number (the number of long waves in the westerlies typically three to five), with blocking ridges being more frequent with higher wave numbers (Weeks et al. 1997). Pereira et al. (2005) have also demonstrated this phenomenon in Portugal, as did Gedalof et al. (2005) in the western United States. Research has suggested that the persistence of blocking ridges in the upper atmosphere will increase in a doubled carbon dioxide situation (2xCO2) (Lupo et al. 1997)”*
*Lupo AR, Oglesby RJ, Mokhov II (1997) Climatological features of blocking anticyclones: a study of northern hemisphere CCM1 model blocking events in present-day and double CO2 concentration atmosphere.Climate Dynamics 13,181″“195. doi:10.1007/S003820050159
Paul Kelly, you’re right. MT, I should not have classed you with those… other wonderful, fine and upstanding people.
Paul Kelly, you are just slightly mistaken. Let me explain why.
MT should certainly be not lumped with Romm and Deltoid – I totally agree with you on that.
In the unusually snowy winter the last time, Tobis had a post where he wrote about Romm who had drawn a connection between all the snow and global warming – that the warming had caused all the snow.
Romm and several commenters then beat down Tobis saying he said not said anything like that at all – and that Romm only said that “it was consistent” with global warming. Tobis even apologized on his blog at the time. This time, Tobis aired his views on the heat wave and, Rob Carver and others are drawing support from Tobis, for their stance.
Tobis is willing to have his views discussed because he, unlike these guys, states his ideas on his own feet and stands by them. The others meanwhile play the “consistent with” game, and hide behind shadows and play it safe. They did not declare certainty – at least for the previous winter.
Tom (5) makes an excellent observation, when he writes:
“Not one word about Pakistan growing from 33 million souls in 1950 to 173 million today”“most settling in river valleys. Ya think internal migration might be involved there, as in China and even the increasing urbanisation of Russia?”
It would be nice if settlement patterns were part of the discussion.
Also, I echo what Paul Kelly says (7).
The Tobis Proposition: There is sufficient human produced CO2 in the atmosphere to cause anomalies in the jet stream. If correct, it is a proof of current dangerous man-made climate change.
It’s an ambitious claim at this point.
I was intrigued by Roger Pielke’s effort to estimate the probability of the recent heat wave in Russia. So I looked at the GISS temperature data for Moscow and stations around Moscow. It looks to me that similar very hot June, July and August also occurred in 1938 and 1972. Surely it makes sense to check the periodicity of these blocking events during the summer before jumping to any other conclusions.
IMHO, MT is no JR. He is much more polite and I have never seen or heard him froth at the mouth.
Two quotes pretty much sum up this issue for me:
In a recent New York Times article, Gavin Schmidt said, “If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes. If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no “” at least not yet.”
And in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Kevin Trenberth said this:
“I believe the correct interpretation is that nowadays everything has a component of natural variability and also global warming.”
As I wrote in the comment Keith linked to, I think Trenberth, Schmidt, Stott and Schneider got it right: We don’t need to treat global warming like cigarettes “” we don’t have to label it with, “CAUTION: THE IPCC HAS DETERMINED THAT GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES EXTREME EVENTS LIKE HEAT WAVES AND FLOODS.” Most people are smart enough to understand that environmental science usually paints more in shades of gray than in black and white. And also that when you put together enough dark gray pixels, the appearance is pretty darn close to black.
> Tobis Proposition
C’mon, guys, this isn’t personal. You can look this stuff up, the published papers go back more than a decade talking about increasing frequency of blocking events with climate change. Anyone got library access to the full text of this one?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/rreh3q3kkf79f65x/
Tom Fuller, Paul Kelly, Shub and Keith Kloor are misrepresenting my blog. I have not declared a “certainty” about the Pakistani floods or the Russian heat. I haven’t written anything at all about them.
Tom Yulsman, the cases of cigarettes and global warming are actually similar — if a smoker gets lung cancer we cannot say to a certainty that smoking was the cause, any more than we can attribute a particular case of extreme weather to global warming.
Keith Kloor.
<blockquoteLGlobal warming did not “cause” Russian heat or Pakistani Floods</blockquote>
I’m curious… is there anything that you would attribute to global warming? Phenological shiftings? Melting glaciers? Altered sea ice coverage?
Anything?
Bernard J (19):
I find your comment odd. You’re quoting a headline to another post that I quoted. Why would you infer my supposed position from that?
Tim (18):
I never said anything about you or your blog on this thread.
I can’t control how others perceive your blog.
Tim
Neither did I write above or imply that you wrote about the Pakistani floods or the Russian heat wave.
Your blog was not even represented, let alone ‘misrepresented’ when I posted.
Regards
Tim Lambert,
“if a smoker gets lung cancer we cannot say to a certainty that smoking was the cause”
… in the case of smoking, we cannot observe, model, and use modelling to do factorial tests on the genesis of the cancer.
… we cannot know anything with certainty
I’d like to second Tom Yulsman,
I too think gavin, trenbreth and all did an excellent job of discussing the extreme weather this summer when quoted in the media. It would be inappropriate not to talk about climate change in relation to these events, but at the same time I think its tricky to accurately represent the science; the public tends to want a yes/no answer and I applaud them for their candor.
Here is an examble, IMHO, of what not to say, from professor Richard Alley on the calving of the gleenland ice sheet as qouted in the guardian:
“Sometime in the next decade we may pass that tipping point which would put us warmer than temperatures that Greenland can survive,… What is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that nature has ever done,”
Tim,
Correction noted.
The more often we say (or write) something in our areas of wit and wisdom the more often we feel obligated to mumble a word or two when there is little or nothing to say. Tis better to argue about nothing at all than to remain silent for no good reason. Soapboxes tend to grow smaller from lack of use.
It’s the hyperbole… oh, the hyperbole of it all…
Lung cancer is a fatal and emotionally weighted disease. Global warming is far more similar to something like obesity or diabetes, something that is serious and needs constant management rather than a malignant cancer.
isaacshuman, it’s the same with the professor you quote. The Greenland ice cap is not threatened. The bulk of the ice sits in a basin and will be there thousands of years from now, even with warming at high levels. We got the ice cores from there from other periods warmer than today and at temperatures a bit above IPCC forecasts.
If people would choose the right metaphors, it would help set the tone for this discussion.
Tom,
During the past interglacial (125,000 years ago), global avg temp were maybe 1 or 2 degrees higher than now, but sea level was about 6 metres higher.
We don’t know how fast such massive melt can happen, but to take that as a comfort or as a clue that the Greenland ice sheet is not threatened, even at timescales of milennia and with high rates of warming… I wouldn’t.
“The Greenland ice cap is not threatened. The bulk of the ice sits in a basin and will be there thousands of years from now, even with warming at high levels.”
Tom, you should get that information to Richard Alley asap!
Keith, you wrote, “I echo what Paul Kelly says (7)” when in that comment he claimed (utterly without foundation) that I “declare certainty”. You attempt to influence how others perceive my blog by writing untrue things about me.
Oh, lordy. Tim, I’m sorry. I echo what Paul Kelly says here (24).
Dude, you are way too senstive. You have a devoted choir that certainly will not be influenced by me–ever.
Keith #20. Odd post or not Bernard asked a question at #19 that you seem to have failed to answer:
“is there anything that you would attribute to global warming?”
Hank (17)
Have you read the abstract?
The total number of Northern Hemisphere storms decreases but there is a tendency towards deeper low centres. There are fewer storms in the North Pacific and North Atlantic source regions where the local baroclinicity is reduced.
Decreases. Is that what the get to hear from the alarmist side?
The greatest changes in blocking anticyclones occur in the North Pacific.
Even if you take these results for granted (which I wouldn’t what’s the connection to this summer in Eastern Europe?
Bart–and others,
Regarding Greenland ice, there are those who are saying it will go away due to global warming. I think that’s baloney. (new scientific term I’ve just coined)
Global warming will probably increase melting at the periphery, which may contribute additional millimeters to sea level rise.
But we’re not going to see Kevin Costner battling the Smokers any time soon.
(31) “is there anything that you would attribute to global warming?”
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Chris S chides Keith for not answering Bernard at #20
Chris, have you considered that perhaps in a scientific context the question is a bit silly ? If you can clearly attribute an event to global warming then the converse must apply i.e. if I fail to see certain events we don’t have global warming. Yes, you can argue both sides of the fence by saying your anecdotal evidence constitutes proof but we must apply statistical methods to your opponents anecdotal evidence, but lets generously call that methodology something less than scientific.
It is worth noting that the birth of statistics came about precisely to resolve this point. How can I look objectively at what I know about the data ? How can I try best to avoid my own biases and fooling myself ? The point is that we don’t have to wave our hands in the air and spout rhetoric about shades of grey. We have objective and formal methods to deal with such things.
I get the distinct impression that the formal modes of doing this sort of work just don’t appeal to some. The thought pattern seems to be “I KNOW I’m right. Damn objectivity. The formal methods don’t show what I believe but my intuition says it’s true …. so wheeee Voodoo !”
Bart (27)
You are right – we don’t know. But the policy decisions must be heavily dependent on this time-scale. If we knew it’d take the Greenland Ice Sheet 100 years to disintegrate it’s one thing. If 10,000 years it’s quite another.
Tom (33)
I don’t think you have any basis to completely reject the possibility that Greenland Ice Sheet would go away. BTW, it doesn’t need to melt away to disappear. The melting along the perimeter could facilitate mechanical destruction via slippage and breakdowns. In addition, there is summer melting in the middle. There is no generally accepted theory but the possible physics is reasonably clear. Unlike Tobis’ hypothesis above.
Hi Sashka,
I thought those who had originally made those claims about greasing the rails for quick movement of large volumes of ice had walked away from them. Was I being overly hopeful?
Chris S. Says:
August 18th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Keith #20. Odd post or not Bernard asked a question at #19 that you seem to have failed to answer:
“is there anything that you would attribute to global warming?”
——————
Chris S. ,
[NOTE #1: Keith Kloor, I have become a fan of your blog over the last month. Keep it up. You are developing an excellent open and fair venue. ]
[NOTE #2: I am not responding for or speaking for Keith Kloor, just myself here. Saying that may be obvious and unnecessary, but things can get twisted around. : ) ]
[NOTE #3: I will not use the T word (temperature) or the W word (warming) ]
Chris, if you would have asked me the question, my answer would be as follows:
JW Answer: “Global climate change is attributable only to total earth system net energy change.”
That statement is based on the below discussion:
The total earth system net energy change is the most comprehensive way to view global climate change.
There are regional climate regimes that can have long changes/ trends. Some of the regions are NH, SH, tropical, polar, large continental land mass (eurasia, north A, south A, Africa, Aus, Antarctica), large water bodies (Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, etc), and so on.
The total of all regional parts of the globe equals what the meaning of global.
Can regions have long term regional subsystem energy increases? Yes.
Can regions have longish term regional subsystem energy increases, yet the globe does not? Yes.
Is the total earth system energy changing? Yes. Ahhhh, it always does. Equilibrium is what it strives for yet it is not at equilibrium at any given time.
What is the current perspective on the current change of the earth system energy? Answer, it depends on the timescale one considers. On the million yr times scale there is one answer. On the glacial/interglacial scale is a way to get an answer. On the last 1000 yrs is another answer. On the past 150 is another answer. On the last 30 yrs is another. On last 10 is another. The answers can be opposite for some timescales.
I think the Russian heat wave this summer is not evidence of net earth energy increase, no matter how “extreme”. Although, I used the E word, I have seen not context where it is shown to be applicable.
Epilog: Shall we proceed to a discussion of what are the physical processes that are driving existing total earth energy system changes?
Keith Kloor, thanks again for your well developing open and fair venue.
John
Tom,
I could be wrong but I doubt that this idea is abandoned. Perhaps I missed some study concluding that any such thing is utterly impossible.
[…] also summarized his position nicely in a comment at Kloor’s: Stopping at “attribution of causality of individual events is impossible” is not strong […]
Has anyone proposed a method by which warming causes blocking? Bearing in mind this is an el niño year it’s not implausible but I also remember the la very cold niña year of 2007 (as cold as 1979 even) where there were also many very bad weather events that were conveniently also blamed by Trenberth (ref. Nat Geographic) on global warming. And anyway, nobody has linked enso to global warming either.
So it seems to be just another case of “we said bad things might happen and you see…they’re happening!!”, without a shred of science involved anywhere. I warmly await the next massive snow event that’ll be somehow linked to global warming. My it’s amazing what a 4% increase in water vapour will do!
So is it too late to paint my roof white and buy a pious Prius? Should we abandon the Cancun conference and spend the money on adaptation? Did the money the EU promised for the 3rd world ever get there or was it just more empty rhetoric?
And btw, shouldn’t some scientist somewhere mention that this “record” hot half-year is due to an “el niño” event so the global temperature will now start to plummet? During the plummet thoug of course all bad weather will also be blamed on the warming, not the “record” this time, but the trend, because the record will have gone.
Sashka,
Is the fact that we don’t really know the timescale of destabilizing the Greenland icesheet a comfort to you?
In the last interglacial it didn’t disappear btw. It just got smaller (as did the Western Antarctic ice sheet).
Bart,
This is not about (dis)comfort. This about about making rational decisions given the uncertain science. If anything I am uncomfortable about signing off on large sacrifices today for the sake of prevention of calamities that may or may not happen 1000 years from now when the humanity will likely have a lot of other things to worry about (and dealing with those problems, too).
Curtis Brainard at CJR has a thorough roundup of media coverage of the extreme weather/climate change story.
I see three responses to my repeat of Bernard’s question to Keith, though interestingly none from our esteemed host himself. I’ll respond in a seperate post but I’m going to provide several links in the post and it may trip over the spam filter ““ hopefully Keith will fish it out sooner rather than later.
Firstly @ meatplow: I looked at the first line of your link and found only newspaper articles ““ and we all know what sort of uninformed hooey journalists are prone to publishing (sorry Keith) just look at the Daily Mail’s efforts to divide the world into things that cure cancer and those that cause it ( http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/ ). Do you have anything more substantial?
Artifex says “have you considered that perhaps in a scientific context the question is a bit silly ? If you can clearly attribute an event to global warming then the converse must apply i.e. if I fail to see certain events we don’t have global warming.”
No, not really, surely you can hypothesise that you can expect to see x, y and z with climate change: For example the following:
Phenological changes such as those documented in the work of Tim Sparks (e.g. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v39/n3/p179-190/ or http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/8390/ )
Changes in distribution of populations (e.g. http://www.springerlink.com/content/l8634852u613877t/ or http://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wurpubs/lang/392616 )
Increased potential for arbovirus transmission (e.g. http://www.iah.ac.uk/events/docs/Climate_Change_BTV.pdf or http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19999382 )
We could also touch on the direct effect of increased CO2 (e.g. http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/60/10/2859 )
Bernard also mentioned glaciers & sea ice but we’ve all seen enough links for them.
I don’t know if you consider these examples (just a few among many) to be “anecdotal evidence” or whether the research linked to above and elsewhere lacks statistical rigour?
@John Whitman. You have not really answered the question ““ we can argue over the attribution of single events but the question was is there anything you would attribute to global warming, thus is not constrained to your earth system energy example. Plenty of researchers including some of those linked to above have attributed their findings to climate change is there anything you will attribute or is there alternative hypotheses you find credible?
This post by Roger Pielke, Jr., analyzing an interview Joachim Schellnhuber gave to Der Spiegel, is germane to this thread
For Tom Y., I’m very curious what your students are taught about research; what search tools and databases they use, whether they go to science/reference librarians, how they go about checking quotations they’re given against original sources, proper use of the ellipsis and signaling alterations of quotes, what style guide they’re using, and the general mechanical work of producing reliable information (pointer welcome if these are discussed somewhere).
<blockquote>
Chris S. Says:
August 19th, 2010 at 6:22 am
@John Whitman. You have not really answered the question ““ we can argue over the attribution of single events but the question was is there anything you would attribute to global warming, thus is not constrained to your earth system energy example. Plenty of researchers including some of those linked to above have attributed their findings to climate change is there anything you will attribute or is there alternative hypotheses you find credible?</blockquote>
——————-
Chris S.,
Yes, I would attribute all physical processes that change the total earth system energy to any global climate change.
Now, shall we discuss what physical processes are viable/significant candidates for changing the total earth system energy and therefore global climate change? I think that is really the question that you are asking, n’est pas? Let me know.
John
John
“Yes, I would attribute all physical processes that change the total earth system energy to any global climate change.
Now, shall we discuss what physical processes are viable/significant candidates for changing the total earth system energy and therefore global climate change? I think that is really the question that you are asking, n’est pas?”
Mais non. That’s not the question I’m asking at all and, frankly, it doesn’t interest me one jot. I’m an agricultural ecologist and entomologist not a physicist, thus I have different interesting questions to think about rather than the one you are posing.
The reason I repeated Bernard’s question was that I was intrigued by Keith’s dodging of it and am genuinely interested in what his answer will be. Still no dice though… Thus I have a follow up question – why does Keith not give an answer?
Chris S. (50) August 20th, 2010 at 4:27 am
————————–
Chris S.,
Thanks for this dialog. Enjoyable.
I assessed that your original question was an attempt get a response that could be used to categorize someone (Keith K.) into currently fashionable stereotypes . . . . such as ones that begin with G, A, S, D, etc. Why?
We have had enough of that, n’est pas?
My attempt is to honestly answer your question in a way that just looks at physical processes and total earth system energy. It is a way out of the stereotyping.
Note: since you kindly gave your background I will reciprocate. My university education and professional life have been entirely devoted to nuclear engineering and commercial nuclear power production businesses.
John
John:
I won’t speak for Bernard but I only repeated the question because I was intrigued by Keith’s sidestep. I am also genuinely interested to know how someone who has set their blog up as a climate science discussion site would answer the question. To be honest I wasn’t, and don’t generally, look to categorise anyone – to such an extent I am unsure what two of your four initials mean.
I engaged with the other respondents and yourself out of politeness, but I would really like to see Keith’s answer…
JamesG asked for references on climate and blocking events; try
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jet+stream+blocking+events+co2+climate
Cheers Hank. At least someone has studied it before. From the 1st paper:
“A comparison of the double CO2 concentration run to the control showed that, in general, blocking events were more persistent and weaker, but of similar size in the increased CO2 atmosphere.”
The others weren’t relevant. I don’t see much support here for the causal claims being made in the press about the effect of CO2. Probably that’s why the solar effects theory is now favoured. Of course it may all be just randomness.