Obama to reduce CO2 emissions by 17%. But will it have any effect?

reply to post by talklikeapirat

An accurate picture of what? The "anthropogenic signal"?

No just an accurate picture of a continued rise in temperatures.

All it shows is, that according to GIStemp, global mean temperature has increased by 0.88°C in the last 100 years.

Is that an insignificant temperature increase for that span of years? How many years according to ice cores etc did it take pre-industrial age for a .88C temperature increase? Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands?

The IPCC's own assessment is, that human influence became the dominant climate factor in the mid 20th century, when greenhouse gas emissions started to increase exponentially.

Yes, temperature increase lags Co2 increase, there's just no quantitative answer to how much Co2 causes how much temperature increase and how long it takes to show up... it's likely not linear. Though we don't know quantity and times definitively and only have best estimates, it doesn't change what we know as fact that GHG's 'trap heat' and that the more of them there are in the atmosphere the more 'heat' we keep. Which leads to my point that there's no set value. Temperature increase projections are a range not a set value. The observed temperature increase falls within the range of projections. Some years or decades were more dramatic, others lulled us.

Naturally, the logical questions would be, how much has it warmed and how much warmer does it get in the future. Contrary to your claim, the IPCC has given very specific answers.

The right-hand panel shows ranges of global average temperature change above pre-industrial, using (i) ‘best estimate’ climate sensitivity of 3°C (black line in middle of shaded area), (ii) upper bound of likely range of climate sensitivity of 4.5°C (red line at top of shaded area) (iii) lower bound of likely range of climate sensitivity of 2°C (blue line at bottom of shaded area).

IPCC

These graphs are "CO2 emissions and equilibrium temperature increases for a range of stabilisation levels" not temperature projections.

As for Storch, I did not take cheap shots. I said maybe I missed something and obviously I did, thank-you for providing the info. I also said he had clout. My opinion of the Der Spiegel article remains.

Your second post is not even worth replying to, just hyperbole nonsense.

reply to post by Kali74

Which leads to my point that there's no set value. Temperature increase projections are a range not a set value. The observed temperature increase falls within the range of projections. Some years or decades were more dramatic, others lulled us.

IPCC Projections of Future Changes in Climate

For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected.

Model experiments show that even if all radiative forcing agents were held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would occur in the next two decades at a rate of about 0.1°C per decade, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans. About twice as much warming (0.2°C per decade) would be expected if emissions are within the range of the SRES scenarios.

Observed temperature increase in the last 12 years: 0.007 °C (GISTEMP) vs. the model projected 0.2 °C (IPCC).
Before you now start to claim, the values would be still within the uncertainty range (not the projected range), consider if you really wanna go there.

GISTEMP is already the "warmest" data set, the HadCRUT4 time series can hardly be accused of having "a warming bias", temperature data has been repeatedly adjusted upwards to account for measurement errors (compared to HadCRUT3).


Observed: -0.02 °C (2001 - 2013)



It's a bit bizarre to call someone who's simply stating a truth "duplicitous", while at the
same time you seem to believe it is justified to make incorrect claims and to twist the facts in your favor. Let's try to keep things honest.

Let me see if I got this right
This Obama administration has just announced (www.fuelfix.com) that they have delegated 10 million dollars in federal loans to the Oil and Gas Industry after NASA whose budget has been cut announces global warming is a fraud www.naturalnews.com...

If you ask me its more of a pollution problem in Congress than anywhere else.

reply to post by talklikeapirat


What part of 'set value' vs 'about' or 'range' do you not understand?

It's a bit bizarre to call someone who's simply stating a truth "duplicitous", while at the same time you seem to believe it is justified to make incorrect claims and to twist the facts in your favor. Let's try to keep things honest.

What incorrect claims have I made or facts have I twisted in my favor?

reply to post by Kali74

What part of 'set value' vs 'about' or 'range' do you not understand?

The part where you try to claim the IPCC never projected a set value. Do you really believe 'about 0.2' means even remotely what you think it does.

What do you think is the uncertainty range for the projected temperature increase?

IPCC

Similarly, scientific uncertainty is hardly mentioned; when ranges are given, as in the projected temperature increases of 0.2°C to 0.5°C per decade, no probability or likelihood is assigned to explain the range (see Chapter 10).

Chapter 10

There is close agreement of globally averaged SAT multi-model mean warming for the early 21st century for concentrations derived from the three non-mitigated IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES: B1, A1B and A2) scenarios (including only anthropogenic forcing) run by the AOGCMs (warming averaged for 2011 to 2030 compared to 1980 to 1999 is between +0.64°C and +0.69°C, with a range of only 0.05°C).

Thus, this warming rate is affected little by different scenario assumptions or different model sensitivities, and is consistent with that observed for the past few decades (see Chapter 3).

Possible future variations in natural forcings (e.g., a large volcanic eruption) could change those values somewhat, but about half of the early 21st-century warming is committed in the sense that it would occur even if atmospheric concentrations were held fixed at year 2000 values.

From 2000 through 2011, the Rahmstorf et al. unadjusted and adjusted trends in the observational data are 0.06 and 0.16°C per decade, respectively. While the unadjusted trend is rather low as noted above, the adjusted, underlying human-caused global warming trend is consistent with the IPCC AR4 Scenario A2 projected rate of warming of approximately 0.18°C per decade.

source

I've had a quick look a woodfortrees and there is one thing I am certain of: There isn't enough data in 30 years to usefully determine a trend. 30 years is basically 30 data points because a year is a complete cycle.

Statistics is notoriously tricky to apply correctly and a good example of this is the sites use of least squares to provide a linear fit on 30 data points of noisy data. The site creator is aware of this and demonstrates how easily the outcome can be affected by choosing different subsets of the data.

The best trend is usually obtained by analysing the entire dataset. Even with the entire dataset, forward predicting by more than 3 data points would be dangerous.

I'm confident the IPCC aren't just looking at temperature data and making predictions as this would be, at best, naive. Even so, their output is still likely to be 'best guesses' with large error margins. The Earths climate is a massively complex system and we cannot hope to model it accurately with the data we have. There could be any number of unknowns providing phase offsets and bias as well as negative and positive feedback.

Anyone, especially the layman, who thinks they can prove the IPCC wrong is having a laugh. I think we have to trust the IPCC and err on the side of caution. They still might be wrong but the effects of them being right are too disastrous for us to ignore. It appears the World's governments tend to agree...

reply to post by talklikeapirat


My only contention was a one line response to a one line quote you made. You stated that the IPCC prediction was .25C increase. I stated that was wrong because there's a range. We can argue semantics until the next 15 year analysis if you like but it won't change the fact that the IPCC projection is very close to what we've actually observed. Here's one paper explaining better than I ever could, why the projections were correct.

IOP Science

The perceived surface temperature plateau isn't really much to get excited about, sadly... considering 93% of the warming that has occurred is in the oceans. Abstract.

Well, if we quit causing the destruction of the bugs and birds than the extra nitrogen in the forests would make them more fireproof, which means they don't burn so easily releasing CO2 into the air. Natural organic nitrogen compounds are necessary for this, it would be better if people occasionally went pee in the woods near the trees instead of the toilets also. When a guy takes a leak in the woods, how come he goes to pee by a tree, it is because of instinct and a communication between the trees and mankind not the reason that we may think. When you go pick blueberries or rasberries, you eat some and shortly are peeing. The berries make you do that so you give the bushes nitrogen compounds and minerals. Nature has a way it does things.

Nature has a way it formed, mankind thinks he can change that for the better but has rarely done so. Nitrogen fixation is very important to forests. Yet mankind seems to neglect that. It seems that we are not part of this world anymore, we need to walk barefoot in the grass.

CO2 is not nearly as important to fix as reducing unnatural chemistry in the environment. We need to quit concentrating everything also. We need to quit ignoring the bad chemistry in our wastewater saying it is natural when in fact any highly concentrated natural chemicals are not natural at all. I think this is better than worrying about CO2 emissions. You have to remember that factories also spew out other bad chemicals, not just CO2. Consumerism has to be checked and things need to be built to last a long time without breaking or going obsolite. Planned obsolescence is the biggest contributor to climate change that there is. This needs to be stopped, screw the economy, most economies aren't real anyway. The consumtion and unnatural practices of the USA's people makes it the biggest polluter in this world. We buy a high percentage of the products made in China, I know how the laws are skirted to make imported products not have to say they are. Just add a part in America. even an instruction booklet, and it does not have to say made in China.

reply to post by EasyPleaseMe

I've had a quick look a woodfortrees and there is one thing I am certain of: There isn't enough data in 30 years to usefully determine a trend. 30 years is basically 30 data points because a year is a complete cycle.

You should have taken a longer look to confirm for yourself if this the case. 30 years is exactly a period used to determine statistically significant, multidecadal temperature trends.

Woodfortrees only provides a simple to use tool to display time series data. You can, again, check for yourself if the source data sets are a reliable proxy to measure global mean temperature changes. The three most commonly used time series, GISTEMP, HadCRUT & NOAA are also the same data sets the IPCC uses to compare model-based projections against observations.

You're right, unless you are willing to invest the time and energy to develope at least a basic understanding of climate science, you will have to trust institutions and governments.

Okie dokie...

Sequester=you spite
Solyndra=you fail
Snowden=you lie

But of course, now he is going to save the planet.

I can tell you what will happen, billions maybe trillions of dollars will be spent on failed attempts and nothing will change. Well, that is not true. His friends will get our money, more 1000 page pork bills will be created that have nothing to do with the environment, more ridiculous laws will be create and America will dig itself deeper into a hole named stupid.

Originally posted by talklikeapirat
You should have taken a longer look to confirm for yourself if this the case. 30 years is exactly a period used to determine statistically significant, multidecadal temperature trends

Do you have a link for this, ideally one showing their reasoning? I would also be interested in how accurate they think their temperature transducers are.

reply to post by Kali74

My only contention was a one line response to a one line quote you made. You stated that the IPCC prediction was .25C increase. I stated that was wrong because there's a range.

Kali, would you please cite the reference in IPCC reports where the range for the projected rate of change for global mean temperature is clearly stated.

The ars technica article you've linked to, discusses a paper published in Nature's climate change letters. Have you read the paper? If you have, do you understand how the past predictons were evaluated and how the researchers arrived at the conclusion that is summarized in the article?

Have you read Rahmstorf et al? If not, how would you know if all methods and calculations used are correctly applied to the data? How do you know if their conlusions are correct?

reply to post by EasyPleaseMe

IPCC

The climate system is a complex, interactive system consisting of the atmosphere, land surface, snow and ice, oceans and other bodies of water, and living things. The atmospheric component of the climate system most obviously characterises climate; climate is often defined as ‘average weather’. Climate is usually described in terms of the mean and variability of temperature, precipitation and wind over a period of time, ranging from months to millions of years (the classical period is 30 years).

How accurate temperature records are in general is discussed here, and the accuracy of satellite radiometers here.

IPCC 30 year means

reply to post by talklikeapirat

Kali, would you please cite the reference in IPCC reports where the range for the projected rate of change for global mean temperature is clearly stated.

Pg. 19 (PDF) FAR or for your convenience...



I know you know this, but for others who might be interested this was from IPCC's First Assessment Report (FAR), released in 1990.

The ars technica article you've linked to, discusses a paper published in Nature's climate change letters. Have you read the paper? If you have, do you understand how the past predictons were evaluated and how the researchers arrived at the conclusion that is summarized in the article?

I did read it and do understand it (they removed from the record any noise that occurred that wasn't applied by IPCC's predictions models), I take it you have issue with that?

Have you read Rahmstorf et al?

I haven't and am too tired at the moment.

reply to post by talklikeapirat

Have you read Rahmstorf et al? If not, how would you know if all methods and calculations used are correctly applied to the data? How do you know if their conlusions are correct?

Scanning through some of his papers, I haven't yet seen anything pop out at me. What are you wanting me to see? Can you link or name precisely the article or paper?

You asked me if I hadn't how could I know if all methods and calculations are correctly applied and conclusions correct... I ask you the reverse. How can you know they aren't?

Also, I'm a bit miffed, I took time to pour through FAR for you, to provide what you requested... in the spirit of a good debate and no response?

One thing you people are missing, is that the 17% reduction of pollutants will have a big impact on the people forced to leave around those power plants / industrial polluters.

Pollution also has a direct effect on asthma. Which has a direct effect on medical costs, and in turn the economy.

Link

Asthma can be a life-threatening disease if not properly managed. In 2009, 3,388 deaths were attributed to asthma. However, deaths due to asthma are rare among children. The number of deaths increases with age. In 2009, 157 children under 15 died from asthma compared to 617 adults over 85.3 Asthma is the third leading cause of hospitalization among children under the age of 15. Approximately 29 percent of all asthma hospital discharges in 2009 were in those under 15, however only 21% of the U.S. population was less than 15 years old.4 In 2009, there were approximately 774,000 emergency room visits were due to asthma in those under 15.5 Current asthma prevalence in children under 18 ranges from 5.5% in Tennessee to 18.0% in the District of Columbia.6 The annual direct health care cost of asthma is approximately $50.1 billion; indirect costs (e.g. lost productivity) add another $5.9 billion, for a total of $56.0 billion dollars.7 Asthma is one of the leading causes of school absenteeism;8 in 2008, asthma accounted for an estimated 14.4 million lost school days in children with an asthma attack in the previous year.9

So it's not just about the world, or how little impact it'd have globally, but about the results here in America.
M.

reply to post by Kali74

Also, I'm a bit miffed, I took time to pour through FAR for you, to provide what you requested... in the spirit of a good debate and no response?

I'm sorry Kali, i really am. To be honest, i was under the (wrong) impression you weren't too keen to have a further debate with me. Thats why i haven't checked and just noticed your last reply this morning. Now that i know your still interested to discuss the topic, i will do my best to keep the ball rolling.

What follows is a rather long post, but i tried to be as precise as possible. Hoping that this was successful, here it goes.



Frame et al. estimated a semi-arbitrary value (a range of +/ 0.19°C) to represent the noise from year-to-year variability in the realized weather and chose to add this estimate to the 1990's first consensus prediction (as opposed to the temperature record). While they do mention that it would be debatable how this estimate should be incorporated into the model prediction or if it all, they do not specify their reasons to do so, other than to demonstrate the consistency between the models and the real world data. But their natural variabilty estimates are not real world data, not even close. If their aim was to show that climate models can reliably predict future climate, they've failed to do so.

By taking the opposite approach, the Rahmstorf study renders the inital assumptions and conclusions of Frame et al. practically obsolete. Frame et al. both assumed and concluded that -
a: "greenhouse-gas-induced warming is largely overwhelming the other forcings, which are only of secondary importance on the 20-year timescale" (in contrast, Rahmstorf et al. assume that the 'noise' created by natural variability can lead to zero, or even negative temperature trends longer than a decade); -
and b. "that the timescales associated with climate system predictability are considerably longer than those associated with socioeconomic predictability" (the Rahmstorf analysis shows that climate can vary strongly over decadal or multidecadal timescales, whereas greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at a steady pace).

For the (AGW)theory to be correct, the human emission-induced global warming signal has to be linear (not the real world response to the forcing and regardless wether or not CO2 heat-trapping and re-emission follows a logarithmic function). This is also the main premise of Rahmstorf et al. and they used this as a depature point for their regression analysis.

They were basically assuming that natural variability can 'mask' the anthroprogenic signal, so it wouldn't show up in the temperature record, but once this is accounted for the signal would become clearly visible.

They 'knew' that there has to be extra heat in the system, the thermometers are just not picking it up.

The first thing to note are two implicit concessions:

Temperature observations are not a reliable proxy to measure increases of the total heat content in the climate system. This would be true for Land-and Sea surface temperatures, and for ocean heat content data (natural variability i.e. ENSO events strongly affect the thermocline).

Animation of ENSO

And second, ENSO, namely El Nino/La Nina Southern Oscillation is classfied as a part of natural variabilty and has no connection to global warming caused by humans whatsoever, (that does not mean that there hasn't been extensive discussion as to wether or not this is true, but Rahmstorf et al. rule this out by the choice of their method).


Rahmstorf et al. have made two major errors, one conceptual and one methodological, which is making the study useless for the purpose of our discussion (how much has the earth warmed due to greenhouse gas emission and how much will it warm in the future).

The first error is the assumption, ENSO related processes have an equal impact on global temperatures and would therefore cancel each other out.
But this is not what happens in reality. El Nino and La Nina events have similiar, but opposite spatial patterns, but the warming and cooling effects (on global temperatures) are nowhere near the same. (In order to have a further debate, this would be a point where we both would need to make sure, we have a solid understanding of the subject.)


The methodological error Rahmstorf et al. have made, was to base their linear time trend regression on the ENSO index. The index does not capture effects on the temperature records after El Nino/La Nina events have phased out and it is a poor proxy for temperature measurements during the events themselves. In summary, due to flaws in concept and method, we are still nowhere closer to conclusively answer the most fundamental questions.
This is true for both studies.

reply to post by talklikeapirat

If their aim was to show that climate models can reliably predict future climate, they've failed to do so.

First, I'm sure you're aware but for clarity sake... the climate models aren't meant to reliably predict future climate but future temperature rise and by comparing the predictions with the observations we see that it is in fact within predicted ranges even if at the lower end of estimates.

By taking the opposite approach, the Rahmstorf study renders the inital assumptions and conclusions of Frame et al. practically obsolete

Again I haven't read the paper nor it's reviews (can you link it?). I'm not sure why someone would take an opposite approach to begin with. If I design a predictive system and have a specific formula by which to make predictions when the time has lapsed and I can judge it by actuality, why would I not use the same formula in retrograde? If someone else comes along and says your formulas are wrong and uses my system with their formula and use their different results to say my methodology was flawed because they didn't get the same results... how does that even make sense? My predictions would still correlate with observations.

Frame et al. both assumed and concluded that - a: "greenhouse-gas-induced warming is largely overwhelming the other forcings, which are only of secondary importance on the 20-year timescale" (in contrast, Rahmstorf et al. assume that the 'noise' created by natural variability can lead to zero, or even negative temperature trends longer than a decade); -

Natural Variability only masks the warming it can't negate it. The energy is there and won't go away, at least not in the decadal time frame So while we may have for example a La Nina year we simply may not be feeling any warming that doesn't it's not happening. That isn't to say that extended pauses in rise or even dips or very slow rises aren't worth questioning, it's a very complex science where literally everything factors.

So we can say well it's been 12 years or 16 since we've seen any major temp rise and we can in retrospect look at the weather patterns and see why but I think it's also more than reasonable to say it's still there, building up somewhere (somewhere in this case happens to be the oceans) driving the weather that's masking the warming, that can't continue forever, eventually that loop will be overwhelmed.

For the (AGW)theory to be correct, the human emission-induced global warming signal has to be linear (not the real world response to the forcing and regardless wether or not CO2 heat-trapping and re-emission follows a logarithmic function). This is also the main premise of Rahmstorf et al. and they used this as a depature point for their regression analysis.

I really don't see how anyone can say that. The Greenhouse Gas Effect is either real or it isn't, adding more GHG's to the atmosphere is either happening or it's not. How it plays out is what modelling is all about. Comparing modelling to observation is how we judge how accurate that modelling is and so far it's pretty accurate. We don't get to dictate the rules of how. Saying there's a rule to how much effect in how certain of a linear time for this theory to be correct is, I'm sorry... just silly.

The first thing to note are two implicit concessions:

Temperature observations are not a reliable proxy to measure increases of the total heat content in the climate system. This would be true for Land-and Sea surface temperatures, and for ocean heat content data (natural variability i.e. ENSO events strongly affect the thermocline).

I don't find those to be concessions but notes.

I agree with you mostly about ENSO events. Both have strength variations therefore there can't be a set degree of removal but I think that's why there's such a large range with predictions and various confidence levels at different areas of modelling, not just with ENSO but other oscillation systems as well as other natural variabilities.

reply to post by Kali74



I promise, i will write up an in depth response tomorrow. Someone here has just indicated to me, that while she may not look like a model, she can also predict a thing or two, and if i don't respond with the appropriate feedback, it's not going to be pretty.

In the meantime. Kali, i would appreciate it if you would check a claim before you make it. I think you would agree, that we need to make sure we're talking about the same things.

First, I'm sure you're aware but for clarity sake... the climate models aren't meant to reliably predict future climate but future temperature rise

This is exactly what the models have been designed for, and also how they've been designed.

GCM

Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the climate system to projections of future climate.

Climate Models are used to simulate and project:

Temperature changes

Sea level rise

Sea Ice changes

Precipitation

Future Drought and Flood conditions

Changes in Climate Oscillations

Snow rates

Tropical Cyclone activity

....

IPCC Projections of Future Climate

reply to post by talklikeapirat


Yeah, you're right there. I guess I was generalizing a specific (we were talking about temperature predictions).
But you better get moving before that whip cracks! And I say that jokingly (or not) as a woman