Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog

Thanks, Dr. Rood.

I enjoyed the response to your letter from the author of the Scientific American article: "The statement in the article, which was attributed to an economist and not a climate scientist, was a vague oversimplification that suggested climate models frequently fail to account for clouds. "

You mean to tell me that an economist probably knows less about climate science than a climate scientist? No kidding... ;-)

I've heard far too often "skeptics" make the claim that since there's uncertainty in the future, climatologists obviously have no idea what's going to happen, so therefore it may just as well cool as warm up. I suppose it's understandable for some to be ignorant of the scientific meaning of the term "uncertainty", although it's unconscionable that others leverage that ignorance to make the claim that warming isn't going to continue.

The planet is definitely warming; that's been well established, and no one with even a modicum of intelligence claims otherwise. And it's going to warm well into the future, a fact that is also well established. It's pretty clear that the longer we dither now, the worse things will be.

The surface of the earth will warm in any scenario with increased CO2? Then explain why surface temps have been statistically flat for the last 15 years while CO2 levels have increased dramatically. No correlation can be demonstrated between temperature and CO2 levels. I'm waiting for the day when the warmists finally admit what everyone already knows -- that CO2-based models have never and will never be accurate.

Dow Pierces 13000
Wall Street Journal - 4 minutes ago

By CHRISTIAN BERTHELSEN And TOMI KILGORE The Dow Jones Industrial Average pierced the 13000 level for the first time since before the financial crisis.

OUCH!
Conditions in context
The growth rate for Arctic sea ice in January was the slowest in the satellite record. After growing relatively quickly early in January, ice extent declined briefly in the middle of the month, and then grew more slowly than normal for the rest of the month. The slow growth likely stemmed from winds from the south and west that compressed the sea ice in the Barents Sea, and above-average temperatures and winds that limited ice growth in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Overall, the Arctic gained 765,000 square kilometers (295,000 square miles) of ice during the month. This was 545,000 square kilometers (210,000 square miles) less than the average ice growth rate for January 1979 to 2000.





The graph above shows daily Arctic sea ice extent as of February 5, 2012, along with the ice extents for the previous four years. 2011 is shown in light blue, 2010 is in pink, 2009 in dark blue, 2008 is in purple, and 2007, the year with the record low minimum, is dashed green. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data.
Sea Ice Index data.

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center
High Resolution Image

Link




.

The warmists are now, as Neapolitan incessantly writes, grasping at straws (and fabricating information):

Link

Quoting NeapolitanFan:
The warmists are now, as Neapolitan incessantly writes, grasping at straws (and fabricating information):

Link

Yes, Peter Gleick has shamefully admitted to and apologized for his deceitful actions in obtaining the Heartland documents (which were released to the media in their entirety sans editing). It took, what, a week? Meanwhile, the thieving lying miscreants who stole the "climategate" emails several years ago and released cherry-picked snippets of them still haven't mustered the courage or conviction to admit to their own activities--which were, as opposed to Gleick's, criminal on top of everything else.

P.S. -- No information was fabricated; even Heartland has been forced to admit to their scheming, anti-science ways.

Quoting RevElvis:
Garth Lenz: The True Cost of Oil
TEDx talk about the Canadian tar sands

YouTube Link

I don't brake for trolls !

It seems this Photographer has a lot in common with John Boehner. They both cry a lot.

Sheldon can you please post the links to this article where Mr. Weaver takes back everything he said about his latest study. Do you know where I got the quotes from. Are you gonna make up another lie about the actual scientists posting a video.

I welcome the challenge because I have more quotes. You now claiming what he said, he did not say. Please provide proof, I already know you won't because you can't. Mr. Weaver basically called Hanson and Mckibben and the like liars when it comes to oil.

You just don't like what Mr. Weaver says about his own report. If anyone knows what the conclusions of the report are it is Mr. Weaver not you and not me.

Quoting NeapolitanFan:
The surface of the earth will warm in any scenario with increased CO2? Then explain why surface temps have been statistically flat for the last 15 years while CO2 levels have increased dramatically. No correlation can be demonstrated between temperature and CO2 levels. I'm waiting for the day when the warmists finally admit what everyone already knows -- that CO2-based models have never and will never be accurate.

A tip! Google 'Thermal Inertia'... or read this

The warmer the glass of ice water gets the faster the ice melts!!!!

Quoting nymore:
Sheldon can you please post the links to this article where Mr. Weaver takes back everything he said about his latest study. Do you know where I got the quotes from. Are you gonna make up another lie about the actual scientists posting a video.

I welcome the challenge because I have more quotes. You now claiming what he said, he did not say. Please provide proof, I already know you won't because you can't. Mr. Weaver basically called Hanson and Mckibben and the like liars when it comes to oil.

You just don't like what Mr. Weaver says about his own report. If anyone knows what the conclusions of the report are it is Mr. Weaver not you and not me.

Dear Mr. Reading-Impaired Person:

I never said "Weaver takes back everything he said about his latest study". I said that he created a web page to clarify and explain his peer-reviewed paper in the hopes that denialist simpletons (a redundant term if ever there were one) wouldn't come away with the impression that he was saying squeezing all the oil out of the tar sands was a terrific idea. But given the screechy tone of your illogical rant, I must assume that the web page failed.

--Sincerely,
Neapolitan

Quoting Neapolitan:
Dear Mr. Reading-Impaired Person:

I never said "Weaver takes back everything he said about his latest study". I said that he created a web page to clarify and explain his peer-reviewed paper in the hopes that denialist simpletons (a redundant term if ever there were one) wouldn't come away with the impression that he was saying squeezing all the oil out of the tar sands was a terrific idea. But given the screechy tone of your illogical rant, I must assume that the web page failed.

--Sincerely,
Neapolitan

Like the sponge runs out of water when squeezed so will the tar sands run out of oil when squeezed.

I see some on here are still taking all their facts from Climate Progress and can not handle the truth. As Weaver flat out says oil is not the major problem but rather Coal is at more than 15x.

Since some on here do not know how to do research and just take spin and talking points from biased web sites let me help you out. Your old nemesis's ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP are not the great enemies as you have made them out to be, this was proven by Weaver and he says so through his own quotes. Here is your real enemy Arch Coal, Peabody Energy, Rio Tinto Energy (these are for the USA), Coal India Limited, Shenhua Group and China National Coal (Are the 3 largest in the world).

All I ask is I wish some on here would do their research first, instead of being talentless, bias hacks.

Peter Gleick better hope he does not get charged with wire fraud. I see he also resigned from AGU as he knew the train was coming down the tracks. What a ham-n-egger, he should be on that show dumbest criminals.

Definition of wire fraud: Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

Sounds like Mr. Gleick did a textbook job under the definition if it crossed state lines.

Quoting nymore:
Peter Gleick better hope he does not get charged with wire fraud. I see he also resigned from AGU as he knew the train was coming down the tracks. What a ham-n-egger, he should be on that show dumbest criminals.

Definition of wire fraud: Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

Sounds like Mr. Gleick did a textbook job under the definition if it crossed state lines.

Wow, if Gleick can be charged with that, imagine the charges that should be levied against the "climategate" hackers: not just wire fraud, but computer fraud, identity theft, obstruction of justice, breaking and entering, invasion of privacy, cyberstalking, computer forgery, and so on... If only the perpetrators of those crimes would admit to their crimes as Gleick has done.

As I said yesterday, what Gleick did was very, very stupid, especially because supporters of the profoundly solid science behind climate change theory already hold the moral and intellectual high ground, and thus have no need to roll in the mud with institutional denialists. But having said all that, the Heartland documents he acquired are now out in the public, and their dishonesty has been exposed for all the world to see. Folks may go ahead and try to charge Gleick with wire fraud (though the objective legal experts who have already weighed in say such charges almost certainly won't stick). But Heartland and those of similar ilk should be charged with something far, far worse.

This Link
prevents that.

Quoting Xandra:
Tar Sands Oil Extraction - The Dirty Truth!

CO2-driven warming. Perhaps the greatest "scientific" fraud of modern times:

Link

Quoting NeapolitanFan:
CO2-driven warming. Perhaps the greatest "scientific" fraud of modern times:

Link

So a delusional paranoid, and probably psychotic nutjob (not to mention a racist, misogynistic islamaphobe [and pathetic cartoonist]) who dropped out of college, and who isn't a climate scientist (or any type of scientist at all) and who has an admitted lack of ethics violates an agreement so he can run to uber-denialist and one-time small market TV weather reader Anthony Watts (also not a scientist), knowing full well that Watts will publish his illogical and denialist trope-laden rant. Does that about sum it up?

BTW: the dimwit wrote pretty much the same thing on his whack-a-doodle website seven years ago. If at first you don't succeed, try WUWT.

Yes, sir. If anyone is still looking for proof that the denialist camp is on its last desperate legs, this is it.

Uploaded by maccaustralia on Feb 8, 2012

In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team used NASA data to calculate how much Earth's melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise.

Using satellite measurements from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), the researchers measured ice loss in all of Earth's land ice between 2003 and 2010, with particular emphasis on glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica.

The total global ice mass lost from Greenland, Antarctica and Earth's glaciers and ice caps during the study period was about 4.3 trillion tons (1,000 cubic miles), adding about 0.5 inches (12 millimeters) to global sea level. That's enough ice to cover the United States 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) deep.

"Earth is losing a huge amount of ice to the ocean annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet's cold regions are responding to global change," said University of Colorado Boulder physics professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. "The strength of GRACE is it sees all the mass in the system, even though its resolution is not high enough to allow us to determine separate contributions from each individual glacier."

I suppose this is full of lies...
Link

Quoting Neapolitan:
So a delusional paranoid, and probably psychotic nutjob (not to mention a racist, misogynistic islamaphobe [and pathetic cartoonist]) who dropped out of college, and who isn't a climate scientist (or any type of scientist at all) and who has an admitted lack of ethics violates an agreement so he can run to uber-denialist and one-time small market TV weather reader Anthony Watts (also not a scientist), knowing full well that Watts will publish his illogical and denialist trope-laden rant. Does that about sum it up?

BTW: the dimwit wrote pretty much the same thing on his whack-a-doodle website seven years ago. If at first you don't succeed, try WUWT.

Yes, sir. If anyone is still looking for proof that the denialist camp is on its last desperate legs, this is it.

No ad homs here; just open discussion of science - sigh

Dr Hansen’s June 3, 2011 urgent appeal to the scientific community to get involved. It's worth reading.

Silence is Deadly

03 June 2011

The U.S. Department of State seems likely to approve a huge pipeline, known as Keystone XL to carry tar sands oil (about 830,000 barrels per day) to Texas refineries unless sufficient objections are raised. The scientific community needs to get involved in this fray now. If this project gains approval, it will become exceedingly difficult to control the tar sands monster.

Although there are multiple objections to tar sands development and the pipeline, including destruction of the environment in Canada, and the likelihood of spills along the pipeline’s pathway, such objections, by themselves, are very unlikely to stop the project.

An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts. The tar sands are estimated (e.g., see IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) to contain at least 400 GtC (equivalent to about 200 ppm CO2). Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO2 well above 400 ppm, which is unsafe for life on earth. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels including tar sands are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth’s climate.

Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO2 emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles.

Governments are acting as if they are oblivious to the fact that there is a limit on how much fossil fuel carbon we can put into the air. Fossil fuel carbon injected into the atmosphere will stay in surface reservoirs for millennia. We can extract a fraction of the excess CO2 via improved agricultural and forestry practices, but we cannot get back to a safe CO2 level if all coal is used without carbon capture or if unconventional fossil fuels, like tar sands are exploited.

I am submitting a comment that the analysis is flawed and insufficient, failing to account for important information regarding human–made climate change that is now available. I note that prior government targets for limiting human–made global warming are now known to be inadequate. Specifically, the target to limit global warming to 2 C, rather than being a safe “guardrail,” is actually a recipe for global climate disasters. I will include drafts of the "Paleoclimate Information", "Earth's Energy Imbalance" and "The Case for Young People and Nature" papers, which are so far only published in arXiv; we will submit revised versions of all of these papers for publication this summer.

I will also comment that the tar sands pipeline project does not serve the national interest, because it will result in large adverse impacts, on the public and wildlife, by contributing substantially to climate change. These impacts must be evaluated before the project is considered further.

It is my impression and understanding that a large number of objections could have an effect and help achieve a more careful evaluation, possibly averting a huge mistake. Brief pointed comments may be just as well as longer statements.

Jim Hansen

Silence Is Deadly

Quoting JupiterKen:


No ad homs here; just open discussion of science - sigh

Okay, "nutjob" was probably not nice. But delusional, paranoid, racist, misogynistic, islamaphobic, unethical, psychotic college dropout, terrible cartoonist, and denialist are all indicative of a person who demonstrably lacks credibility where certain matters are concerned. And so the point still stands: if this is what the denialist side considers a "credible expert", they're even more desperate than I thought.

awful warm in 980 ad, seems to be missing in the graph.

shocking.

Quoting iceagecoming:



awful warm in 980 ad, seems to be missing in the graph.

shocking.

What, ah, what, in um, what in the hell are you talking about?

Quoting iceagecoming:



awful warm in 980 ad, seems to be missing in the graph.

shocking.

Dude, history only goes back

30 minutes...

30 years....

100 years...

6000 years....

whatever... how can you post a graph like that?

Quoting iceagecoming:



awful warm in 980 ad, seems to be missing in the graph.

shocking.

One pixel spans 1,000 years on the graph. You'd need a microscope to see what you're looking for.

Quoting nymore:

Since some on here do not know how to do research and just take spin and talking points from biased web sites let me help you out. Your old nemesis's ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP are not the great enemies as you have made them out to be, this was proven by Weaver and he says so through his own quotes. Here is your real enemy Arch Coal, Peabody Energy, Rio Tinto Energy (these are for the USA), Coal India Limited, Shenhua Group and China National Coal (Are the 3 largest in the world).

All I ask is I wish some on here would do their research first, instead of being talentless, bias hacks.

No it hasn't been proven by Weaver.

Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart have modelled the warming impact of burning 170 billion barrels but the 170 billion barrels isn’t the technically recoverable oil. It’s the economically viable proven reserve, which is a figure calculated by the International Energy Agency in 2006. The total resource is larger.

In 2006, Clive Mather, the former CEO of Shell Canada, said he believes the reserves could be 2 trillion barrels or even higher.

Excerpts from the article "The Oil Sands Of Alberta",

"There are 175 billion barrels of proven oil reserves here. That's second to Saudi Arabia's 260 billion but it's only what companies can get with today's (2006) technology. The estimate of how many more barrels of oil are buried deeper underground is staggering."

"We know there's much, much more there. The total estimates could be two trillion or even higher," says Clive Mather, Shell's Canada chief. "This is a very, very big resource."

Quoting NeapolitanFan:
CO2-driven warming. Perhaps the greatest "scientific" fraud of modern times:

Link

WUWT "science". Probably the greatest frauds of modern times.

I find it amazing the number of people that fail to understand the difference between a tax credit and a subsidy. It seems to be a disease of the whacko greens and alarmists.

Quoting JupiterKen:
I find it amazing the number of people that fail to understand the difference between a tax credit and a subsidy. It seems to be a disease of the whacko greens and alarmists.

I find it amazing the number of people who fail to understand the difference between common sense and corporate welfare for a high-polluting, extremely profitable industry that is, by all scientific accounts, urging humanity toward its own destruction. It seems to be a disease of the wacko grays and denialists.

Saw what "tax credits" did to America from 2000-2008.

And it was NOT pretty.


Phunny how those who never served America in any form save for a Suit,"think" they have all the answers.


But they can diss Americans who gallantly strive for a better future for all.

We get this narrow kind of thinking.


a disease of the whacko greens and alarmists.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this,

"you Sir, are no American, but Im sure your a Fla Gov. fan."

addendum,

I was thinking about writing a bill for Men over 40 to have a State Mandated Colonoscopy by their 41st B-day to save on Health Care Cost.

Anyone want to co-sponsor it?

Im for smaller Govt and less intrusive Govt.

Link
A bit of clarity. Will you read it?

Link

This is science. Be sure to read the comments.

Phoenix AZ, SunWize Technologies, Inc., has completed the first phase of the nation's largest solar carport for VA at its Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ.

Quoting JupiterKen:
Link
A bit of clarity. Will you read it?

Did Peter commit fraud? Yes, as he already stated that he has and resigned his position because of this. Is there anything else you need some clarity on?

Quoting JupiterKen:
Link
A bit of clarity. Will you read it?

Not much clarity, if you ask me. Heartland invited Gleick to speak at an event. Gleick responded by saying he'd consider it if Heartland would release its secret list of donors, as he thought it important. Heartland responded by saying that its donors are nobody's business, including Gleick's. Gleick told them he couldn't accept, then. And if yo ask me, he was perfectly in his right to do so.

Clarity? The only thing clear is that Heartland is a vile, manipulative, lying, and hypocritical organization funded by Big Polluter interests. But it didn't take WUWT to prove that; everyone pretty much already knows.

What I see in Tallbloke's blog is we are about to resolve many questions particularly what influences our climate (hint, CO2 is a bit player). What do y'all think of the discussion? Like I said above, this is science.

Quoting JupiterKen:
Link

This is science. Be sure to read the comments.

Oh, I love the part where he begins by saying, "The following is the correct science, agreed to be so by essentially all of the scientists actively working in the field including 'skeptics' like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer." Two uber denialists, guys who have been debunked and discredited over and over and over and over and over, are "essentially all of the scientists actively working in the field"?

Really?

I suppose if you discount the 97%-98% of climatologists who most definitely have not "agreed to be so", he may have a point. Otherwise? Well, not so much. Anyway, I'd say this (to borrow heavily from Stephen Markley):

"Ok, so the physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide warms the earth is so basic, so fundamental, that you would have to come up with an entirely new theory of why adding more carbon to the atmosphere wouldn't warm the planet. Like the reason we have life on Earth is because these gasses trap the sun's heat. Get it? And if you came up with that theory, just starting out, you would win a Nobel Prize the next day because it would fly in the face of basically everything we've learned about the planet for two centuries. Secondly, every bit of physical evidence shows the correlation between human activity, global warming and chaotic weather. Go back to the Seventies and read what NASA scientist Jim Hansen was writing at the time. From melting sea ice to rising sea levels to storm surges to flooding to wildfires to desertification to food price spikes%u2013this is all in the news now every single week. Yes, the planet has gone through periodic warming and cooling periods before but never this quickly and violently. So if it's just natural or if the warming is unrelated to what humans are doing, then go ahead and come up with a second theory about why we are having this abrupt spike in global temperature accompanied by an unprecedented number of extreme weather events that has never happened in Earth's history and how this activity is totally unrelated to burning fossil fuels. When you've formulated these two theories that will make you the most famous scientific mind on the planet, come back and talk to me. Until then, shut...up."

ADDITION: Just went through his 'Predictions' page. Bonus points for being bold, but, well, just wowser...

Quoting Neapolitan:
Not much clarity, if you ask me. Heartland invited Gleick to speak at an event. Gleick responded by saying he'd consider it if Heartland would release its secret list of donors, as he thought it important. Heartland responded by saying that its donors are nobody's business, including Gleick's. Gleick told them he couldn't accept, then. And if yo ask me, he was perfectly in his right to do so.

Clarity? The only thing clear is that Heartland is a vile, manipulative, lying, and hypocritical organization funded by Big Polluter interests. But it didn't take WUWT to prove that; everyone pretty much already knows.

So clarity is denigrating all you disagree with? No facts or truth in your post as usual.

Quoting JupiterKen:


So clarity is denigrating all you disagree with? No facts or truth in your post as usual.

Lots of facts, lots of truth. You may disagree--and I thought you might--but the facts are: 1) Heartland is an organization--one of many--that exists for the sole purpose of obfuscating the truth about CO2-induced warming. 2) Heartland is funded in large part by fossil fuel interests, interests that will rake in continued hundreds of billions of dollars in profit for every year the scientific truth about warming is kept obfuscated.

Aside from that, my analysis/synopsis of the WUWT post was dead on. So how about you tell me where I lied?

Quoting Neapolitan:
Oh, I love the part where he begins by saying, "The following is the correct science, agreed to be so by essentially all of the scientists actively working in the field including 'skeptics' like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer." Two uber denialists, guys who have been debunked and discredited over and over and over and over and over, are "essentially all of the scientists actively working in the field"?

Really?

I suppose if you discount the 97%-98% of climatologists who most definitely have not "agreed to be so", he may have a point. Otherwise? Well, not so much. Anyway, I'd say this (to borrow heavily from Stephen Markley):

"Ok, so the physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide warms the earth is so basic, so fundamental, that you would have to come up with an entirely new theory of why adding more carbon to the atmosphere wouldn't warm the planet. Like the reason we have life on Earth is because these gasses trap the sun's heat. Get it? And if you came up with that theory, just starting out, you would win a Nobel Prize the next day because it would fly in the face of basically everything we've learned about the planet for two centuries. Secondly, every bit of physical evidence shows the correlation between human activity, global warming and chaotic weather. Go back to the Seventies and read what NASA scientist Jim Hansen was writing at the time. From melting sea ice to rising sea levels to storm surges to flooding to wildfires to desertification to food price spikes%u2013this is all in the news now every single week. Yes, the planet has gone through periodic warming and cooling periods before but never this quickly and violently. So if it's just natural or if the warming is unrelated to what humans are doing, then go ahead and come up with a second theory about why we are having this abrupt spike in global temperature accompanied by an unprecedented number of extreme weather events that has never happened in Earth's history and how this activity is totally unrelated to burning fossil fuels. When you've formulated these two theories that will make you the most famous scientific mind on the planet, come back and talk to me. Until then, shut...up."

You obviously did not read any of the comments. The OP is one of you...he is a CO2 warmist. You need to read and understand what he said and then what the commenters are saying. They are discussing THE SCIENCE (of course you misunderstand).

Staying on-topic is hard for is it not? I expressed no view and offered no opinion on the matter so what exactly is it I am supposed to "shut...up" about? Alas, I had hopes you might learn something about the subject and instead get nerd rage.

Quoting JupiterKen:
Link

This is science. Be sure to read the comments.

Sadly, I did. This is pathetic. A bunch of mostly-elderly guys with little in the way of science education arguing against working PhD physicists.

"Tallbloke," his commenters, and you, Jupiter Ken, are quite insane.

But you can take solace in having lots of company.

Quoting spbloom:


Sadly, I did. This is pathetic. A bunch of mostly-elderly guys with little in the way of science education arguing against working PhD physicists.

"Tallbloke," his commenters, and you, Jupiter Ken, are quite insane.

But you can take solace in having lots of company.

Specifics please.