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And with that, I’ll head to bed

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Greenfly, we are spectators in this “crisis” it doesn’t matter what you, me, Dr Smith or Keisha thinks, it is all irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

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Yeah, I suppose they should follow liarbores good example?
pffft!!

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Nah. New Zealanders don’t want radical greenism. Only 7% do.

His job is to steer a sensible course, which he is doing.

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His first job will be to wake his slumbering colleagues (a quick slap around the chops ought to do it) then poke his party’s business, farming and industry genies back into their bottles, peg the lips of the blustering bloggers and we’ll be good to go.

Should have that done by, say…

never!

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http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/5743793/emissions-reduction-t arget-a-huge-task-smith/

Of course, what makes this even harder is that National have taken almost every opportunity to increase our emissions with their actions in the last 8 months, and didn’t do much in the years that they were the government last decade.

Trevor.

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burn!

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Nah! It is the wrong sort of smoke. If it were light coloured smoke, it might increase the earth’s albedo and reflect back some sunlight. Unfortunately Wat’s smoke is the dark-coloured smoke that absorbs all the light and just generates a lot of hot air – a product of incomplete processing of the material available.

Trevor.

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Somehow I lost the plot yesterday and imagined I was addressing Shunda right in the middle of the post to Wat. That warrants an apology to Shunda, who has shown evidence of being a relatively sensible and polite guest even when he disagrees.

Shunda… I apologize.

respectfully
BJ

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I just finished pummeling a tag team over on Farrar’s site and here you are again with more absolute rubbish to be hauled.

Before you can make any claim to have identified evidence of an anthropogenic influence in the indistinguishable behaviour of recent climate trends, you must first fully and completely understand and account for every natural agent.

Which “natural agent” do you have as a candidate for driving CO2 up 50 times faster than any time in any history, with temperature rising up to 7 times faster than it did at the end of the last Ice Age?

CO2 being a gas with a well defined physical absorption spectrum and known capacity as a greenhouse component and a good match in theory for the observed effects.

0.7 degrees/century on current form.
At the end of the ice age… 6 degrees in 6000 years, 0.1 degree per century.

As usual, you are blowing smoke.

The fact is that there is no requirement for theory to EXCLUDE all possible unknowns. Theory only has to explain the world as it is observed. It has to be explicative. It doesn’t have to take the form of a legal proof that would result in conviction in a court of law, and that is exactly what you are demanding here. I don’t have to identify the other suspects… that’s YOUR job since you insist that we’re innocent. You have to come up with a plausible and realistic alternative to allow reasonable doubt.

At present there isn’t a competing theory. There is just a lot of smoke.

Oh dear. Despite what I just said, you are admitting here that your null hypothesis is that any warming must be ascribed to human activity.

There is more than one thing going on here.

The first question is whether there is warming at all. That seems pretty decisively settled over the past 100 years. It has. That’s the end of your “null hypothesis”.

Go ahead and assert your null hypothesis that it hasn’t warmed over the past 100 years and then play with your statistics and examine the data. Come back when you’ve figured out that reality is different from your opinion.

The second theory has to do with causation. That theory says it is our CO2 that is causing the warming. Perhaps someone should have sat down and provided this as a formal theory for simple people and pushed it into the Wikipedia. Since the theory is that it IS us, the null hypothesis is that it is NOT.

If you don’t take this problem as multi-part, you may become confused.

But it isn’t, is it. It’s flat or cooling, and has been for about a decade. And the sea temperature charts are also showing cooling.

Well no Shunda… Since you like your short term datapoints,

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/jun/global.html#curr ent-month

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variat ions_Rev_png

And enough with the ‘CO2 is going up really really fast’, it’s still really really insignificant, and its trivial contribution as a greenhouse gas is largely already saturated.

Saturated? almost true… but not insignificant. The physics tells us that we have to increase the concentrations logarithmically to get linear effects, so there are diminishing returns from our excesses… BUT the full effects of the current level are centuries from being felt.

The point about the speed is that we’ve pushed things so hard so fast that we haven’t yet felt the effects.

Continuing to emit keeps the CO2 high… which raises temperature which risks feedbacks from some other gases that are NOT fully saturated, like methane, and I am not talking about cows.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/3647

Myhre has an interesting result which is within the error band set by the IPCC. Analyzing it requires that I have a subscription to the paper, and I don’t. However, if you reckon that it is going to save the planet from what we have already done you probably need to re-examine the history of the planet at these levels of CO2.

Hansen – Now I do not know what the clown at Watts site thinks he is proving by taking the worst case projection that Hansen made on the data he had access to in 1988 and saying “hey look, it isn’t perfect”. It wasn’t even Hansen’s first choice of model parameters.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-pro jections/

Whatever he thinks (or you think), it isn’t particularly meaningful. We’ve moved on. Hansen did a good job then, he is doing a good job now.

Tsonis is the other half of Swanson and Tsonis. Who had their work aired in RealClimate recently and that was already discussed. It isn’t compelling. Their last data point happened to coincide with the lowest recent year of data.

You ARE only interested in the trends that match your particular prejudice Wat. It is obvious to everyone. It is so blatant that it screams.

The problem you have is that different periods are significant to different effects. THAT is natural. Comparing effects on different time scales is like trying to measure the effects of tides by looking at the amplitudes of waves…. or vice-versa.

You have your mind made up, closed and locked.

I can’t help you with that, and I don’t particularly care if you ever understand anything at all. I simply wish that you’d quit pushing cr@p in here that I have to shovel out.

Go read Gareth Morgan’s book. Leave me alone until you do.

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/oh_no_its_making_well_reasoned  ?utm_source=b-section

I should have been asleep 2 hours ago.

BJ

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Trevor.

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- “What do I care and what does ANYONE care, about whether changes due to other forcings caused climate change at other times in pre-history OR in medieval times?”

Before you can make any claim to have identified evidence of an anthropogenic influence in the indistinguishable behaviour of recent climate trends, you must first fully and completely understand and account for every natural agent. And believe me, despite what you imagine, we are decades from even approaching that situation.

- “It is unfortunate that there is no “new evidence” dramatically disproving this theory, because if there were we could go on about our business secure in the knowledge that all is well.”

Oh dear. Despite what I just said, you are admitting here that your null hypothesis is that any warming must be ascribed to human activity, until it is proven to be still more natural climate variation.
What an extraordinary admission. And what an extraordinary mindset. I mean, really, we’re through the looking glass, people: in your mind, our ignorance of how the climate works actually becomes support for your theory!

- “CO2 is going up 50 times faster than it ever did then and temperature is rising to match ”

But it isn’t, is it. It’s flat or cooling, and has been for about a decade. And the sea temperature charts are also showing cooling. And enough with the ‘CO2 is going up really really fast’, it’s still really really insignificant, and its trivial contribution as a greenhouse gas is largely already saturated.

- “Every model includes solar forcings because they actually help the model’s accuracy. Every climate scientist includes them because they know damned well that they are important… ”

Ah, the famous models, which apparently can be used to “prove” just about anything. Got an alarming hockeystick-shaped chart? The models concur. Suddenly abandoning the chart and forced to concede an entirely different climate pattern? The models concur with that also. Not seeing the essential fingerprint of AGW in the form of Antarctic warming? The models concur.

Unfortunately, what these models don’t concur with is reality; such as the last decade of flat/cooling temperatures.

It’s now been found, incidentally, that one of the gaping flaws in these supposed models is that they have been vastly over-estimating the cooling effect of aerosols; or, to put it another way, ascribing hugely more warming powers to CO2 than it could ever warrant: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/15/9373/#more-9373

Of course, if your fanciful belief that all natural agents have been identified and fully accounted for were true, such discoveries would be impossible, because there’d be nothing more to learn. Maybe that was the last one?

Oh, and there’s a bit about CO2 saturation on that page. Oh, and a chart showing how well (or otherwise) Hansen’s model-based predictions have worked out…

The problem, of course, is that you can’t create a computer model of something which you don’t understand; all you are in fact doing is modelling your own prejudices. That’s why they have proved to be such failures.
However, there is another approach, which doesn’t try to model climate agents but which applies complex maths to detect patterns in what appears to be a chaotic system. The results are intriguing: http://www.wisn.com/weather/18935841/detail.html

One last thing. Stop banging the table and claiming I’m only interested in short-term trends. It is the warmers who cherry-pick and switch periods. First it was a millenium but then, when they eventually conceded the large natural climate variability, that period became strong evidence against their theory, so they suddenly dropped it and cherry-picked the recent recovery from the Little Ice Age as their period of choice. When you make up your minds, let us know.

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I’m dismayed to see that the Greens are still allowing the neoliberals to frame the debate

I entirely agree with he (or she) that would languidly hug a tree.

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You allow them to define the vocabulary. Accepting without question, their definition of value, the ascendancy of monetary calculations of value over any other metric, and the failure to challenge the fundamental assumptions of neoclassical economics aside from the naive belief that somehow public servants are free of the decision making failures of market participants and will thus be able to alleviate any problem that crops up whatever their remotest possibility, whilst also neglecting to recognise the role that they play in stimulating the wonton exploitation of the environment.

“If development has scarred American landscapes and shredded ecosystems — and it has, Mr. Babbitt and Mr. Kennedy argue — much of the damage has been done with the connivance of the federal government.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/science/earth/30book.html

Governors across the country, notes LeRoy, have begun to talk “smart growth,” urging that land-use policies undergird existing communities. But their development programs keep promoting sprawl. “It’s nuts. The two-state policy silos need to be broken down and corrected.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003675084_peirce23.html

Despite increasing concerns over climate change and other environmental consequences of our heavy reliance on oil, the U.S. government continues to subsidize the fuel. Subsidies to oil are provided to producers, transporters, and consumers in varied and often subtle ways. These subsidies not only cost taxpayers billions of dollars per year, but they often exacerbate environmental damage. They can also reduce oil prices, suppressing market signals to governments, oil consumers, and oil producers to begin shifting to alternatives.
http://archive.greenpeace.org/pressreleases/climate/1998jun9.html

Seeing the above it is a wonder that the “social-democratic” Left still insists on accepting the neoliberals non sequitur of the “free-market”. Perhaps its a convenient straw-man stalking horse to rail about and use as a rationale for their continued existence?

Even ecological economists don’t question the neoclassical definition of wealth. They go even further than even they do, through seeking to apply a monetary valuation on what few elements of existence that have yet to be colonized by the monetary economy. I do recognise they do so with the laudable intent of attempting to rationalize its protection from exploitation. An example is so-called ecosystem services, such as flood prevention and natural pollutant filtration (wetlands), carbon dioxide absorbsion and flood prevention (trees), and natural fertilisation (bees, microorganisms). Tragically capitulating to the expectations of politicians driven by solely monetary concerns actually DEVALUES nature, as the economic value of nature is often temporary and ephemeral, there is a danger that once the economic rationale for protecting a certain area of nature from exploitation fades so the will the will to defend it.

http://www.biology.duke.edu/wilson/EcoSysServices/papers/Mccauley2006. pdf

The attitude of the Greens appears to be epitomized by this statement by Russel Norman in a past blog post right here on Frogblog.

“It’s a funny position we find ourselves in. Just as the social democrats (Europe), labourists (UK, Oz, NZ) and new dealers (US) of the 1930s and 1940s had to save capitalism from its own destructive tendencies by introducing a range of modifications and interventions on the market system, so now the Green Parties of the world find ourselves in possibly a similar position.”

In a following post I will attempt to address the gaps that the Greens (and the environmental movement as a whole) have left in the economic debate.

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The planned emissions trading system is the wrong approach and should be replaced by a carbon tax, offset by lowering other taxes such as income or fuel tax, according to a new report.

Right-wing think tank the Centre for Independent Studies says an emissions tax linked with other tax cuts would be a big improvement over the planned ETS.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/2598118/Carbon-tax-better-than-ETS-pla n

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