Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog

№ 449

Quote: You mean there is another leak out there that we don't know about?

Maybe from here?

Florida Tar Balls Not Linked to Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Associated Press

A report released Wednesday says tests show the tar balls don't match the type of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Link

Tarballs can come from many sources of oil. There is a considerable amount of natural oil seepage dispersed across the ocean floor. I suspect some come from ship bilge and port activity.

I wonder if the pumpage is leading to sink holes and subsidence that is detectable on the ocean floor. Over tapping groundwater sources in karst Florida aquifers sure does.
I suspect the oil withdrawal would lead to lower pressure and less seepage, more akin to how big cities and high volume industrial water withdrawals lower ground water levels and dry up small springs.

Thanks for the interesting article link.
Skeptics keep saying scrap it all and start again for the IPCC report. The next phase of the IPCC report is under way, why don't they submit their good science to it. If they have good sources or find bad ones, they can point them out in comments now.

Quoting biff4ugo:
I wonder if the pumpage is leading to sink holes and subsidence that is detectable on the ocean floor. Over tapping groundwater sources in karst Florida aquifers sure does.
I suspect the oil withdrawal would lead to lower pressure and less seepage, more akin to how big cities and high volume industrial water withdrawals lower ground water levels and dry up small springs.

Thanks for the interesting article link.
Skeptics keep saying scrap it all and start again for the IPCC report. The next phase of the IPCC report is under way, why don't they submit their good science to it. If they have good sources or find bad ones, they can point them out in comments now.

Landslides and EQs?

Quoting MichaelSTL:
You know that I am not a fan of ice extent because it doesn't tell you everything, but the following is interesting:

MichaelSTL,

Shhhhhhhh! The naysayers will hear you! They don't think volume or mass exists!

№ 459

Quote: You know that I am not a fan of ice extent

LOL. Don't you mean to say that you're only a fan of it when it's low?

459

That is the problem with thin ice, the quick gains can just as quickly "evaporate". It was nice to have the near normal extent reflecting solar radiation for two months. But dropping back to near record low extent levels in time for NH summer is not a good combination.

Global SSTs and Temperatures Prediction
Cyclone should be especially interested in this post. We'll have to bookmark it and see if comes true by late August.

@Martinitony
I was just reading that and was thinking about posting it and you beat me to it.

Anyway, I missed this a week ago—real life tasks are increasingly infringing upon my internet time—but here is an interesting article from Dr. Spencer discussing clouds and climate model feedbacks.
Link

Quoting martinitony:
Global SSTs and Temperatures Prediction
Cyclone should be especially interested in this post. We'll have to bookmark it and see if comes true by late August.

Martinitony should be interested in this.

Ocean Stored Significant Warming Over Last 16 Years
May 19, 2010
The upper layer of the world%u2019s ocean has warmed since 1993, indicating a strong climate change signal, according to a new study. The energy stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.

%u201CWe are seeing the global ocean store more heat than it gives off,%u201D said John Lyman, an oceanographer at NOAA%u2019s Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, who led an international team of scientists that analyzed nine different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008.

The team combined the estimates to assess the size and certainty of growing heat storage in the ocean. Their findings will be published in the May 20 edition of the journal Nature. The scientists are from NOAA, NASA, the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom, the University of Hamburg in Germany and the Meteorological Research Institute in Japan.

%u201CThe ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system,%u201D said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA%u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the scientists who contributed to the study. %u201CSo as the planet warms, we%u2019re finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the ocean.%u201D

A warming ocean is a direct cause of global sea level rise, since seawater expands and takes up more space as it heats up. The scientists say that this expansion accounts for about one-third to one-half of global sea level rise.

Link

And we wonder why the North Arctic ice cap is melting away??

Ricky a longer/wider version of this auger or Archimedes Screw will do the job for the tunnels. I thought of this many years ago. Place this inside my tunnels and you can extract enormous amounts of energy.



Invention Awards: A Fish-Friendly Tidal Turbine An underwater energy extractor that doesn't harm sea lifeToday's featured Invention Award winner is the ECO-Auger, which accesses tidal energy without harming marine life.

W. Scott Anderson spent the past five decades creating complicated machines for manufacturing, including a lipstick labeler and a plastic-straw maker. So when two years ago the 77-year-old industrial engineer invented a fish-friendly underwater turbine that looks like a giant screw, it seemed a cruel twist of fate that every manufacturer he approached said it was too complex to produce economically. But that didn%u2019t stop him.



There are a handful of companies using windmill-like turbines to capture the untapped energy in tidal streams, bays and inlets and convert it to electricity. But these projects tend to be huge and expensive, and require permanent installations that can disrupt marine life.Anderson%u2019s ECO-Auger is based on a much different design, enabling it to access energy that regular water turbines can%u2019t. Rather than using blades, it produces power when the current spins a drill-shaped device called an auger, which has tapered ends that don%u2019t harm fish. Instead of using gears to drive an attached generator, a hydraulic pump in the nosecone pumps high-pressure oil to turn a generator outside the water. The arrangement lets the turbine capture energy in shallow waters, and to tether to bridges and other structures so that the auger is relatively easy to lift out of the water for maintenance. Whereas most bladed turbines need at least 30 feet of water to operate, Anderson%u2019s smallest units need only 10.



Link

Thin ice melts faster. The mass isn't there.



Link

Quoting cyclonebuster:
Thin ice melts faster. The mass isn't there.



Link

Reality

The graph you posted is meaningless. It only shows the relationship to the year of fear. Most of that year ice extent was above many other years. It is the bottom of the year that matters. Will the ice really disappear as you believe or won't it? When you plot this year against many years, it shows your graph is maintained by NOAA for effect and nothing else.

Quoting MichaelSTL:


Yes, and many people will claim that an ice age is coming again, just as they said when La Nina developed in 2007. Which of course was utter nonsense and total misunderstanding as you can see below - otherwise, why are global temperatures at all-time highs?



Never mind that Spencer is clearly NOT a reliable source and is one of the most famous deniers.

Also, check out this site - he says that ENSO affects clouds over the Arctic, which is why there was less melt last year and why so much ice melted in 2007 (La Nina = less clouds = more ice melt in the summer, but the opposite in the winter when it is dark, vice-versa for El Nino). His predictions (looking at how the atmosphere refracts sunlight, when depends on the temperature) have also been very accurate (well, except for 2008, before he realized the effect that ENSO has on temperatures).

Spencer's Graph

I suspect your graph is not really accurate.
Also, your attacks on Spencer are bull and you know it. Back up your graph. I'll take it a step further. You're not being truthful. I suspect most of your posts are deceitful.

Maybe MichaelSt takes graphing lessons from Michael Mann. That might explain things.

Quoting StSimonsIslandGAGuy:
Martinitony, that graph MichaelSTL posted was from NOAA--as official as it gets. MichaelSTL's posts are honest, and so are the sources he cites and links.

And considering that Michael Mann was exonerated of any wrongdoing of all counts, in every official report on his work, I'm not sure what you are trying to say.


And Roy Spencer, as shown in his video, is a crank who uses a very short time period, 6 years from 2002-2007. He refuses to explain why he uses such a short period, and refuses to give an explanation of how a population density of only 10 per square kilometer could result in a warming of 1 degree Celsius.

Of course he can't provide an explanation, it is bogus.

As Roy Spencer is. Anyone who believes in a nutball idea such as ID is not credible as a scientist.

I would love to hear how such a low population density can cause such a great increase in surface temperatures.

You have a very simple mind, Simon. You see, it's not the very few people who cause the urban effect. It is the new roads, driveways and buildings in an area where there were none before that now have a profound effect relative to no effect before. There was a previous posting that explained that concept which also provided graphs and other data supporting that thesis.

Maybe you should take a few moments and think about what you post before you post it.

As to Mann, he cheated on the hockey stick. Everyone knows this except apparently you. He has not been exonerated for being a cheat and being deceitful just as you are not for the ignorance and lack of thought you displayed in your post.

In the video, Dr. Spencer is merely relaying what the data shows. The temperature data, nor the population data are not his own. I agree that the 10ppl/km population density figure leading to a 1°C seems as high at first, but it's certainly possible. He is comparing stations with 5°x5° grids that have varying population densities. A station in a 10ppl/km is more likely to be subject to UHI errors (it could be stationed on concrete, close to a heat source such as an air conditioner) where it may read several degrees hotter due to these errors. The average effect of these stations could be one degree—some being several degrees higher and some having no UHI effect—even if the net average UHI effect over the whole area is very unlikely to be this high simply due to the infrastructure. It potentially only takes a very small amount of infrastructure to influence the station reading if the temperature sensor is sited poorly, which we know from Watt's work that many of them are.

I think SSIGG is misinterpreting that Dr. Spencer is seeking to explain warming by UHI here, where he is actually trying to determine a better way to quantify it. There are concerns that the way it is calculated in the GISS—based on correcting discontinuities in the temperature record—is not the best way. There are several examples from the WUWT site as well as the D'Aleo/Watts paper I have linked to several times that explain this better. I personally don't know that population density is the best way to go here, but I applaud Dr.Spencer for making the effort, as I am skeptical of the UHI method employed by the GISS. I would prefer that the data be left alone, not adjusted, and any increases quanitified after the fact. The homogenization and UHI adjusting leads to errors, intentional or not, that I believe overstate warming.

The last part of Dr.Spencer's video presentation is about coming up with a new more accurate global temperature record. As he said, this is still a "work in progress" and the video presentation is only meant to be a sort of "preview". This is the only place I remember his using the short time period restriction as well as expressing that the Antarctic/Greenland results were not reliable due to "little training data". I'm sure he will have more on this in the future at his website.

Quoting StSimonsIslandGAGuy:
Martinitony, you make personal attacks and contribute nothing else to this blog.

You didn't address any of my points. Roads, driveways and building at 10 people per square km are still very sparse. You have never demonstrated how such low population densities could increase the temperature so much.

"Everyone knows Michael Mann cheated on the hockey stick" Actually, we know the opposite. No official report or review of the scientific data has ever come to such a conclusion. In fact, Michael Mann has been completely exonerated of any misconduct.

As is typical in your posts, you lied.

As is also typical of your posts, you accuse me and MichaelSTL of lying and cannot provide one example.

Please show me were MichaelSTL lied. I know he didn't lie. And you know it too.



And just for the record, "Everyone knows" is not a scientific arguement. It is not evidence.

The headline says it all. everyone knows it's true.
Response

Experts testify on grim ecological fallout from Gulf oil spillWashington (CNN) -- The damaging effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be felt all the way to Europe and the Arctic, a top scientist told a congressional panel Friday.

Other scientists and researchers -- invited to brief members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- warned that the thousands of barrels of oil still gushing into the Gulf are contributing to a potential ecological disaster of unknown proportions.

The briefing was part of an ongoing effort to draw on a broad range of expertise for what has been, in the eyes of many observers, a frustrating and ineffective cleanup effort.

"This is not just a regional issue for the wildlife," said Carl Safina, the president of the Blue Ocean Institute. Noting common migratory patterns, he warned that multiple forms of marine life from across the Atlantic Ocean "come into the Gulf to breed."
Link

OUCH! Below 2007.Sadly it is thinner also.

№ 482

Hmmm...I think Bidgood's comparison of AGW skeptics "propoganda" to the Holocaust as well as Delingpole's response to it are both pretty absurd myself. I think I would call this a tie.

Here's some Senate testimony. It doesn't need peer review, does it? I imagine it will need character assassination by Sliming Simon.

May 21, 2010
Dr. Happer Testifies to Congress: ‘Warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind’
Dr. Will Happer’s Testimony Before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - May 20, 2010

My name is William Happer, and I am the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics at Princeton University. I have spent my professional life studying the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases - one of the main physical phenomena behind the greenhouse effect. I have published over 200 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. I am a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences. I have done extensive consulting work for the US Government and Industry. I also served as the Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1990 to 1993, where I supervised all of DOE’s work on climate change.

Key Excerpts: The CO2 absorption band is nearly “saturated” at current CO2 levels. Adding more CO2 is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but you are only wearing a windbreaker. The extra hat makes you a little bit warmer but to really get warm, you need to add a jacket. The IPCC thinks that this jacket is water vapor and clouds. [...]

The climate-change establishment has tried to eliminate any who dare question the science establishment climate scientists and by like-thinking policy-makers - you are either with us or you are a traitor.

Orwellian: I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.” This brings to mind a comment by George Orwell: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were at least 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels. [...]

That we are (or were) living at the best of all CO2 concentrations seems to be an article of faith for the climate-change establishment. Enormous effort and imagination have gone into showing that increasing concentrations of CO2 will be catastrophic: cities will be flooded by sea-level rises that are ten or more times bigger than even IPCC predicts, there will be mass extinctions of species, billions of people will die, tipping points will render the planet a desert. Any flimsy claim of harm from global warming brings instant fame and many rewards.

Sea Level: The sea level is indeed rising, just as it has for the past 20,000 years since the end of the last ice age. Fairly accurate measurements of sea level have been available since about 1800. These measurements show no sign of any acceleration. The rising sea level can be a serious local problem for heavily-populated, low-lying areas like New Orleans, where land subsidence compounds the problem. But to think that limiting CO2 emissions will stop sea level rise is a dangerous illusion. It is also possible that the warming seas around Antarctica will cause more snowfall over the continent and will counteract the sea-level rise.

Hockey Stick: I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated “hockey stick curve,” in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. Both the little ice age and the medieval warm period were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year 1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as evidence that the end was near. We now know that the hockey stick has nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis. There really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period that was as warm or warmer than today. I bring up the hockey stick as a particularly clear example that the IPCC summaries for policy makers are not dispassionate statements of the facts of climate change.
Conclusion: I regret that the climate-change issue has become confused with serious problems like secure energy supplies, protecting our environment, and figuring out where future generations will get energy supplies after we have burned all the fossil fuel we can find. We should not confuse these laudable goals with hysterics about carbon footprints. For example, when weighing pluses and minuses of the continued or increased use of coal, the negative issue should not be increased atmospheric CO2, which is probably good for mankind. We should focus on real issues like damage to the land and waterways by strip mining, inadequate remediation, hazards to miners, the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, organic carcinogens, etc.

Life is about making decisions and decisions are about trade-offs. The Congress can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently.

Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.

Quoting StSimonsIslandGAGuy:
'Sliming Simon' to quote idontknowforsure. And Martinitony going on and on about simple simon. LOL Wow. It's really true. People who make personal attacks and call names really don't have anything else to add.


Do try arguing with facts, not insults.

William Happer is neither a climatologist nor a meteorologist.


And what he said about CO2 being near saturation in the atmosphere is true for some wavelengths, but he omits to say that it is not true for ALL wavelengths of radiation. And CO2 absorbs at more than one band.

"William Happer is a physicist who has specialised in the study of optics and spectroscopy.[1] He is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University .[1]"

So, let me get this straight. You believe a climatologist or meteorologist is better qualified to give us information on the absorption of heat in the atmosphere than a physicist that specializes in optics and spectroscopy? Is that what you are claiming or is this another one of your attempts to discredit those that disagree with you?
How pathetic you sound.

493

there wasn't one citation in the realclimate link provided. thus it was just an opinion.

all I see here is AGW belivers trashing the sources of skepticals and vice versa.

no scientific discussion ever happen here in this blog

authors of those links are not scientis, a historian and a regular guy