Another definition of irony (Page 2)

There's no need to predict the polar icecaps are deteriorating.  We know that from direct measurements, it's happening right now.  But predicting ice thickness from year to year IS highly dependent on weather and natural variation. In the antarctic all of the sea ice melts and re-forms every year and so it's highly dependent on the short-term temperature and winds - in other words, weather. 

I swear, if ONE more baby seal dies........I'll lose it!!

Hey Drew, I know Al is a whacko and doesn't represent the science in any way.  Sometimes I like to poke fun at him, but obviously he's not a scientist and I think we can agree that many (if not most) of his claims are not based in science.

You mention that "Marc Marano who's a political scientist who heads a climate change denial website getting funding from Exxon and Chevron.  His testimony is complete bunk - sentence after sentence of misinterpretation, cherry picking and selective omission".  I don't know where his funding comes from, or what all he does but if you're claiming that his source of funding results in his scientific conclusions being "bunk", then I think you would be in agreement with my major issue of the Government being the monopolistic source of funding for the AGW scientific community.  The US Government has a monopoly on both the technology and research that goes into climate science and they have a vested interest (more tax revenue) in the outcome so therefore all of their science must be "bunk". (kidding of course, but that's a two way street)

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climate_money.html

Tony, I can't bear to look......please tell me that the dark blue is not dead baby seals!!

btw, on the premise of this thread I agree with Drew that the boat being stuck has nothing to do with AGW or not.  It's simply a weather event that they got caught in.  I do agree there's always some "irony" with things like this or things like global warming conferences getting snowed in, but it's mostly for humor value as far as I'm concerned.

I'm glad the crew had some fun with it and everyone looks to be able to safely get out.

Unfortunately I think it falls under the light blue technology field.  I read on the internet that most of the funding is towards machines to kill baby seals.  

On the note of cherry picking and selective omissions I have an issue with how you present what's going on in Antarctica.  Your statements are very matter of fact as to the cause of the ice growth and that it's caused by AGW.  However, I present the following:

In an interview just a few months ago Zhang (whose chart you cite) doesn't sound near as certain as you do to the cause.

What Zhang doesn’t know is why the vortex has gotten stronger. It could simply be a result of natural climate variations, with no connection to human activity. It could also be related to the ozone hole that still persists over the southern continent. That manmade gap in the planet’s protective ozone layer isn’t a result of global warming; its cause is manmade ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons, whose use has been phased out, but which still linger in the polar stratosphere.

But the loss of ozone above Antarctica has altered the local energy balance in the atmosphere, and could, in principle, make the polar vortex stronger.

It’s plausible, Zhang said, but the dynamics of the polar atmosphere are “very, very complicated. I haven’t seen a clear explanation yet of why the winds have gotten stronger.”

Then if you read another study just published in June by Lorenzo Polvani and Karen Smith of Columbia University they conclude that the model-defying sea ice increase may just reflect natural variability.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50578/abstract

Finally, in this study released just a few months back on the effects of the ozone layer on the Antarctic ice layer suggest that the effects of the ozone layer are causing the ice layer to shrink, not get bigger.  "This modeled Antarctic sea ice decrease in the last three decades is at odds with observations, which show a small yet statistically significant increase in sea ice extent,”"
http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/barnes+barnes+polvani-JCLIM-2013-revised.pdf

Nobody predicted the sea ice growth in Antarctica, the models were obviously wrong because what has been observed is ad odds with what the models predicted.  There is certainly a viable theory as to why the ice is increasing such as the wind patterns being a contributing factor, but as Zhang suggested, there's no clear explanation as to why they've increased and it could simply be natural variability.

I'm not saying Morano's funding makes his claims bunk.  His claims being bunk makes them bunk.  The question of where he gets his money just should make you question his claims really really carefully because he obviously has a huge financial stake in being biased towards one side.  And when you do examine his data and analysis, sure enough, there are gaping inaccuracies and misrepresentations.  I have a really hard time taking that graph seriously because the rest of the report it came from is full of myths that have been proven false over and over for years, misrepresented data and just general misinformation.  But even if we take it at face value and say the federal government funded $79 billion of climate research over the 12 years since 1989 that's actually pretty pitiful.  It's 0.005% of the federal budget and it's about the same as two companies, Exxon and Shell made in profits (not revenue) in just last year alone. If the government really was out to 'prove' climate change just so they could increase tax revenue I'm sure the fossil fuel industry has more than enough politicians on their payroll that they could steer the research in some other direction if the science wasn't so strong.

I think questioning the motivations of researchers is a good thing, but this thing that the entire climate change research community is just doing what they do so the government can get more tax revenues is off the deep end.  For one thing, politicians aren't the ones deciding which research to fund, boards of scientists are the ones weighing the merit of each proposal.  If the whole goal was to justify increased tax revenues it seems like your chart should have huge decreases in the years that republicans were in control since as far as I can tell, that's something they oppose.  For another thing, I don't buy this notion that the 'government' has a vested interest in 'proving' climate change.  I have no idea where this tax revenue they would be getting would come from since almost all of the mitigation proposals I've seen don't do much for the national treasury.  Proposals for a carbon tax that I've seen are revenue neutral (the revenue would be used to offset lower income tax rates for example) and cap and trade schemes are private markets, the govm't doesn't get any revenue out of them.  But maybe there's some other ways that I'm just not thinking of that repubs and dems are joining together to work towards?

I'm not saying there aren't problems with the system of federal funding, I think you do have a point that there is a tendency to of funding agencies to mainly fund research in established areas and you can get a kind of bandwagoning in proposals.  This isn't just in climate change, but I think it's a problem in funding of all federal research.  But I don't think this conservatism (or I guess skeptics would say stifling of contrary theories) is driven by politicians driving research directions, I think it's mostly due to the fact that since these are federal funds there is enormous pressure not to waste them.  In my experience anyway, when I've seen review boards evaluating projects, the overwhelming factor in whether or not something gets funded is whether it's a scientifically valid idea.  When public money is being spent, there is enormous pressure and care taken not to spend it on research that has no scientific basis or things that could be perceived as wasteful.  If all the research is showing that we're warming the planet and you have a theory that it's some other cause like baby seal spitup, you need to have an especially strong scientific justification for why your theory is right and all the other scientific research is wrong.  I do think there is value in funding those types of risky studies but I can also see how funding agencies don't want to be seen as wasteful, funding projects that are unlikely to be successful.  It goes a long way to preventing waste, but I think it can also stifle innovative ideas so it's a balancing act

 Federal funding for this research is critical though since the effects of climate change have such profound national safety, economic and security implications.  And no matter what the motivations behind the funding, whether it's funded by a government agency or Exxon, in the end, the data and conclusions from these studies still have to be made available for scrutiny by everyone - denier and proponent alike.  Federal funding isn't a monopoly but it is a large source and I'm all for saying we should scrutinize the research findings because of it's dominance.  But what happens when you do actually scrutinize the research is that you find most if it is good and valid data and it overwhelmingly points to the fact that we have a problem on our hands.  FWIW - since you seem interested in this stuff, a paper just came out in Nature finding that the lower bound for sensitivity to doubling CO2 is likely at 3* or above which would go against the lower estimates.  And it was done by non-US researchers who received no federal funding to justify increased taxes, so we know it's believable .

One thing I often read is that there is virtually zero funding for the natural variation type studies and I think you give a compelling argument as to why that is.  I'm not sure if it's right or not, but it does make sense.

My official stance (if I can call it that) on the whole AGW stuff is that there's no question the planet has been warming in past decades and there's also no question that the earth has warmed and cooled throughout history.  CO2 being a primary cause of the recent global warming was a valid theory, but IMHO the models tied to CO2 have been consistently lagging, so I'm not convinced that it is the primary driver and surpassed natural variation (through the sun and other non man-made type stuff).  I do agree that CO2 is a contributing factor, but I'm just not sold on it being the primary factor or even a significant factor yet.  
I'm still a big proponent of alternative energy and a clean environment, so I do support financially viable products that achieve these goals.  However, I do not support the government subsidizing non viable industries in the name of alternative power.

I'll read through that Nature article tonight, I'll admit that I may already be a little skeptical because observed temperatures have consistently lagged the lower estimates, but I promise I'll read it with an open mind.  

"Global temperature has in recent years increased more slowly than before, but this is within the normal natural variability that always exists, and also within the range of predictions by climate models – even despite some cool forcing factors such as the deep solar minimum not included in the models. There is therefore no reason to find the models faulty. There is also no reason to expect less warming in the future – in fact, perhaps rather the opposite as the climate system will catch up again due its natural oscillations, e.g. when the Pacific decadal oscillation swings back to its warm phase. Even now global temperatures are very high again – in the GISS data, with an anomaly of + 0.77 °C November was warmer than the previous record year of 2010 (+ 0.67 °, and it was the warmest November on record since 1880."

The Nature paper except for the abstract is probably protected behind a firewall, but there's a good summary of it here.

global warming doesn't always mean it will feel warmer in the exact spot you are standing in right now.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-polar-vortex-thats-hitting-180509394.html

Agree, what's interesting (to me anyways) is even the disparity in how various entities calculate "global temperatures".  I read this post last month and thought it laid out some of the disparities pretty well.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/19/claim-november-2013-is-the-warmest-ever-but-will-the-real-november-2013-temperature-please-stand-up/

(it's a skeptic site, but I don't think there's anything too objectionable about what they're saying in this post)

So much win. 

One of my friends posted this on facebook and I thought it was funny.  Don't know if if the picture is accurate or not, but I do know that Douglas Mawson reached an ice free Commonwealth Bay in January of 1912. 

because we aren't really controlling the water vapor levels in the atmosphere?

Water vapor is far from ignored - lots of scientists are looking at changes in precip, how cloud formation and RH affect climate, and on and on.  Water vapor as a GHG is ignored because it isn't causing any warming, it's a symptom.  It's like asking why heart attack scientists are ignoring research on why tingling arms cause heart attacks.  It's because it's not the reason for the heart attack, it's a symptom.

I see the bolded quoted a lot, but my understanding is that the observable data isn't showing the same.  I watched the Congressional climate hearings and scientists on both sides of the issue were pretty much agreeing that there is no connection between temperature increases and intense storms.  If anything it's showed to have a calming effect on the storms with less frequency.

Here's a quote from NOAA in the context of Atlantic Hurricane activity.  (http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes)

• It is premature to conclude that human activities--and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming--have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet properly modeled (e.g., aerosol effects).

I'm not saying it doesn't have an effect, I just don't think you can say that it "is why we're seeing more intense rain & snow storms".
2013 had the lowest hurricane activity in 30 years.  I need to find the source, but I believe the last 5 years were the lowest hurricane activity in the Atlantic in history as well.
We're currently in the longest stretch in history without a Cat 3 or higher hurricane striking the US. 
The global number of tropical storms and hurricanes has been in a steady decline since 1970 (http://policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png)
Frequency of severe tornado's EF2+ as well as EF3+ have been on a downward trend for the last 40 years.

Now there are papers which link warming to the calming effect on storms such as wind sheer in the Atlantic by higher upper atmosphere temperatures and less temperature disparity between upper and lower latitudes leading to less tornadic activity so I'm not saying the earths temperature has no effect on storms.  I just feel the "alarmists" seem to try and use every severe weather activity as "proof" of man made global warming.  I know you're not doing that, but I wanted to throw out my thoughts on it.

FWIW, that's my understanding too on hurricanes - that's it's still pretty uncertain what to expect.   Last I heard the expectation is for fewer number but more intense storms.  Don't know if that's the most up-to-date though. 

Why does the Polar Vortex hate us?

I thought it had to do with automatic weapons and large magazines.  Or maybe Obamacare is just raining on our parade.

Hasn't there been some recent controversy with the CEI and how they're "cooking" the numbers of late?  I remember reading an article on it, but I don't have time to dig it up now.

Here's some snippets from the IPCC AR4 that was recently released regarding weather intensity.  I tried to grab things in context so I wasn't "cherry picking".

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_All.pdf

There is low confidence of large-scale trends in storminess over the last century and there is still
insufficient evidence to determine whether robust trends exist in small-scale severe weather events such as
hail or thunder storms.

In land regions where observational coverage is sufficient for assessment, there is medium confidence that anthropogenic
forcing has contributed to a global-scale intensification of heavy precipitation over the second half of the
20th century.

Globally, there is low confidence in attribution of changes in tropical cyclone activity to human influence.
This is due to insufficient observational evidence, lack of physical understanding of the links between
anthropogenic drivers of climate and tropical cyclone activity, and the low level of agreement between
studies as to the relative importance of internal variability, and anthropogenic and natural forcings.

While the AR4 concluded that it is more likely than not that anthropogenic influence has contributed to an
increased risk of drought in the second half of the 20th century, an updated assessment of the observational
evidence indicates that the AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in hydrological droughts
since the 1970s are no longer supported. Owing to the low confidence in observed large-scale trends in
dryness combined with difficulties in distinguishing decadal-scale variability in drought from long-term
climate change, there is now low confidence in the attribution of changes in drought over global land since
the mid-20th century to human influence.

While projections indicate that it is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease
or remain essentially unchanged, concurrent with a likely increase in both global mean tropical cyclone
maximum wind speed and rainfall rates, there is lower confidence in region-specific projections of frequency
and intensity. However, due to improvements in model resolution and downscaling techniques, it is more likely
than not that the frequency of the most intense storms will increase substantially in some basins under
projected 21st century warming.

In the same report they list under TFE9 Table 1 that:
Heavy precipitation events. Increase in the frequency, intensity, and/or amount of heavy precipitation.
- Assessment that changes occurred (typically since 1950 unless otherwise indicated)
- Likely more land areas with increases than decreases, Very likely in central North America
- Assessment of a human contribution to observed changes
- Medium Confidence
- Likelyhood of further Changes
- Early 21st Century - Likely over many land areas
- Late 21st Century - Very likely in some areas.

The one think I find interesting about the last piece is the IPCC has "medium confidence" that humans contributed to an increase in these events, but it is very likely that intensity will increase in the future?