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Post by steve on Apr 11, 2011 16:11:56 GMT
It has been measured to be an historically very warm year during the present La Nina. In fact, the single warmest 12 month period ever recorded overlaps the present La Nina. The only thing I can tell you is that it has been, on average, a colder than normal winter here in Ohio. Last summer was warmer than average. Previous winter, colder than average. But the summer before that (2009) was the coolest summer on record. Yesterday, it was 85 degrees. A few days earlier it was in the 40's. And next weekend, we're looking at frost again. Simply put, I'll trust the weather report from my Accu-Window before I trust the manipulated "temps" being distorted for political purposes. Even though the NOAA data appears to agree with your perception of Ohio?: Cold last winter: [a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=1&mon1=12&mon2=2&iy[1]=&iy[2]=&iy[3]=&iy[4]=&iy[5]=&iy[6]=&iy[7]=&iy[8]=&iy[9]=&iy[10]=&iy[11]=&iy[12]=&iy[13]=&iy[14]=&iy[15]=&iy[16]=&iy[17]=&iy[18]=&iy[19]=&iy[20]=&irange1=2010&irange2=2010&xlow=-3&xhi=3&xint=1&scale=&iwhite=1&Submit=Create+Plot"]http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=1&mon1=12&mon2=2&iy[1]=&iy[2]=&iy[3]=&iy[4]=&iy[5]=&iy[6]=&iy[7]=&iy[8]=&iy[9]=&iy[10]=&iy[11]=&iy[12]=&iy[13]=&iy[14]=&iy[15]=&iy[16]=&iy[17]=&iy[18]=&iy[19]=&iy[20]=&irange1=2010&irange2=2010&xlow=-3&xhi=3&xint=1&scale=&iwhite=1&Submit=Create+Plot[/a] Warm last summer: [a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=1&mon1=6&mon2=8&iy[1]=&iy[2]=&iy[3]=&iy[4]=&iy[5]=&iy[6]=&iy[7]=&iy[8]=&iy[9]=&iy[10]=&iy[11]=&iy[12]=&iy[13]=&iy[14]=&iy[15]=&iy[16]=&iy[17]=&iy[18]=&iy[19]=&iy[20]=&irange1=2010&irange2=2010&xlow=-3&xhi=3&xint=1&scale=&iwhite=1&Submit=Create+Plot"]http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=1&mon1=6&mon2=8&iy[1]=&iy[2]=&iy[3]=&iy[4]=&iy[5]=&iy[6]=&iy[7]=&iy[8]=&iy[9]=&iy[10]=&iy[11]=&iy[12]=&iy[13]=&iy[14]=&iy[15]=&iy[16]=&iy[17]=&iy[18]=&iy[19]=&iy[20]=&irange1=2010&irange2=2010&xlow=-3&xhi=3&xint=1&scale=&iwhite=1&Submit=Create+Plot[/a] Cold in summer 2009: [a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=1&mon1=6&mon2=8&iy[1]=&iy[2]=&iy[3]=&iy[4]=&iy[5]=&iy[6]=&iy[7]=&iy[8]=&iy[9]=&iy[10]=&iy[11]=&iy[12]=&iy[13]=&iy[14]=&iy[15]=&iy[16]=&iy[17]=&iy[18]=&iy[19]=&iy[20]=&irange1=2009&irange2=2009&xlow=-3&xhi=3&xint=1&scale=&iwhite=1&Submit=Create+Plot"]http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=1&mon1=6&mon2=8&iy[1]=&iy[2]=&iy[3]=&iy[4]=&iy[5]=&iy[6]=&iy[7]=&iy[8]=&iy[9]=&iy[10]=&iy[11]=&iy[12]=&iy[13]=&iy[14]=&iy[15]=&iy[16]=&iy[17]=&iy[18]=&iy[19]=&iy[20]=&irange1=2009&irange2=2009&xlow=-3&xhi=3&xint=1&scale=&iwhite=1&Submit=Create+Plot[/a] Even though Professor Richard Muller, leader of the BEST surface temperature project, and someone who has publicly been *deeply* disdainful of Phil Jones's conduct with regard to "hide the decline" has produced preliminary results that are in line with the current datasets, and has said that the influence of poorly sited temperature stations is apparently almost nil (they show lower trends).
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Post by steve on Mar 28, 2011 10:00:41 GMT
solarnoob
One of the laws of physics is the conservation of angular momentum. Angular momentum is a function of the mass distribution of the earth and the earth's length of day. The earthquake adjusts the mass distribution of the earth in a sudden fashion, so to conserve angular momentum, the rotation speed or axis of the earth *must* adjust accordingly.
So there is a clear physical cause-effect relationship between the earthquake happening and the adjustment of the axis occurring.
I don't see that that says anything about the cause-effect relationship in the other direction.
I would suggest that the strength of the relationship *could* be detected by looking at whether big earthquakes in one place cause an increase in earthquake rates (of all sizes) across the world.
I am not aware that there is strong evidence for this, so I would have thought that the steadier perturbations caused by, for example, the ongoing movements within the earth's core, the effect of wind and ocean currents and the lunar tides would be hard to link to earthquakes too.
For example, nobody has ever been able to predict the timing of *any* earthquake to within a timescale of a planetary transition. For example, one could say that some of the recent earthquakes in Turkey have been predicted based on the idea that a fault is experiencing a series of quakes along its length. But noone has been able to say that the next quake would be more or less likely to happen during a particular phase of the moon for example.
It should be possible to estimate the physical force applied by magnetic fields to the rotational access. I would have thought it was extremely small compared with other perturbations to the earth's axis such as the moon (which is causing the earth to gently slow its rotation) and the wind (whose random perturbations can be detected in day to day changes in the length of day).
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Post by steve on Mar 28, 2011 9:39:09 GMT
3. Warmer winters.
This seems partially a strawman argument used because it just so happens that major population centres have been hit by cold weather the last 2-3 years. Clearly winter in the arctic has been warmer and the breakout of colder air from there is apparently related to AMO etc.
4. ditto 3. But the section starts out with some lies and distortions of the truth.
5. 6. Poorly documented claims about frequency of AMO and El NiƱo don't constitute any part of the "scientific consensus" I'm familiar with. Even if a lot of the models showed increasing frequency of AMO I think you'll find a lot of the scientists pointing out that the climate model resolutions really are not good enough to go on for this sort of thing.
7. This argument is almost as deep and convoluted as the HS so I won't touch this one except to say that if you think surface stations are crap then don't trust the satellites.
8. US-centric.
9. He's just wrong.
10. I agree that there is some alarmism about likelihood of more extreme weather. So no comment.
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Post by steve on Mar 28, 2011 9:12:17 GMT
Number 2 seems to be countered by these three graphs: To my eyes, the two satellite plots look similar except for the first few years. We know the RSS plot shows similar trend to land data. The longer term land data shows SH warming. So the apparent lesser warming in the SH is potentially an artifact of a small segment of the early UAH analysis.
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Post by steve on Mar 22, 2011 10:27:11 GMT
The main worry is not that I think he is likely to win. The main worry is that essentially he can spend tax money running a political campaign under the guise of a legal process. In a large society politicians can decide policies and priorities without getting involved in the nitty gritty of individual cases. They don't have the time. If they think they do then it is because they aren't doing a proper job elsewhere.
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Post by steve on Mar 22, 2011 0:03:02 GMT
Unfortunately, where it falls apart is that the AG is an elected official who thereby benefits from running politically inspired "show trials" of which this is a case in point. Election of law enforcement officers should have been left in the 19th century. Unfortunately, the UK government is mulling the idea of introducing them here.
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Post by steve on Mar 21, 2011 23:58:34 GMT
Why are the believers still pretending that climategate did not show a corrupt process? Why has hunter sent out one of his sock puppets to make an irrelevant comment.
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Post by steve on Mar 21, 2011 12:11:45 GMT
northsphinx,
The glacial cycles have a big influence from albedo changes (due to growth and shrinkage of ice sheets). These are not sufficient to explain the temperature change. If you add in the CO2 forcing, then that is still not sufficient. As these two effects are not sufficient, it suggests an additional positive feedback.
You need to give up on the nonsense that CO2 radiative forcing is zero. You're in with a tiny minority of pseudoscientists on that one.
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Post by steve on Mar 21, 2011 11:58:10 GMT
Icefisher,
I agree with you 100% when you say that:
What I don't agree with is the scale of the "offence". I don't think anybody has a perfect recipe for science and policy, and sometimes people working on one side of the divide make mistakes relating to the other. The fact that, largely, the science holds up demonstrates that the mistakes are, largely, in the science policy interface and not in the science.
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Post by steve on Mar 21, 2011 11:48:37 GMT
magellan, I imagine rhetorics covered the best way of pointing out your bringing McIntyre into this discussion is rather underminded by the fact that McIntyre describes this case as: climateaudit.org/2010/05/02/cuccinelli-v-mann/The best rhetorical flourish I can manage is - up yours!
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Post by steve on Mar 21, 2011 11:28:00 GMT
Sorry, didn't really want to start of a discussion on the iron sun theory - each to his or her own on that. I was trying to explain why I think our knowledge of the internals of the sun are so limited (ie. it is not an inert ball-bearing (I'm not saying that that is the iron sun theory)), yet the internal variations of the sun so large, that it is effectively pointless to look for the effects of small external perturbations.
Two lovely moon rises over Devon this weekend. Very big and very orange. On Sunday I think the moon sucked all the clouds out of the sky - it was a beeaautiful day.
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Post by steve on Mar 18, 2011 15:43:22 GMT
AstroPoser
Again, it depends what you mean by "pronounced". If we were to study the sun and find that below its surface it were (according to the theory of one loony regular who frequents Judith Curry's blog) the sun were a solid ball of iron then we might conclude that the planets were now the biggest influences on the sun as the internals of the sun were solid and immovable. This is analogous to our moving Big Ben and our space suit-encapsulated pigeon into an isolated orbit. But the sun is not made of solid iron and its internals are virtually unknown to us.
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Post by steve on Mar 18, 2011 15:36:47 GMT
icefisher, No it isn't. Like it or not, Mann still has a good reputation as a scientist among enough of his peers. His grant requests are supported by this positive reputation with evidence from citations of his papers and so forth. He does not need to deliberately mislead to get grant money. Academic freedom allows other scientists to put forward competing ideas. A scientist whose ideas are swamped by better accepted competing ideas loses reputation. That has not happened to Mann. Yes in an ideal world it would be nice to present the evidence and hope that people do not try to spin the uncertainties into more than they are. Yes one can end up spinning too far in the opposite direction in anticipation of such efforts. If he doesn't have to mislead doesn't mean he doesn't Steve. Did Bernie Madoff have to take billions? So guilty till proven innocence then. Very Kafkaesque. I don't *feel* they've been spun, I know it. How many people think that "hide the decline" referred to a decline in global temperatures? How come Richard Muller, in the link from Sigurdur, thinks that "hide the decline" is related to FOI requests when we know that it isn't and that anyone who bothered to look at the WMO graph in detail would immediately have identified the problem with the WMO hide the decline graph without needing to make FOI requests? Since we now have numerous analyses largely validating the HadCRUT3 dataset (despite the loss of data etc), there *is* accountability. If these other analyses had come up with different answers then I would have been more shocked than you.
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Post by steve on Mar 17, 2011 21:06:31 GMT
Astroposer, To my mind there are two steps to astrology relating to the theory of planetary impacts on the sun. One is to show that the movements of the planets have a noticeable effect on the Sun. It seems to me (after having calculated the tidal effects of Jupiter on the Sun) that as the planets are so small and so far away, all the things that go on *within* the sun which we have no idea about will dwarf the effects of the planets. How recently was it that we detected the sun ringing like a bell - we don't really know the causes of the ringing so how could we know about the effects of tiny perturbations from planets on them. It's a bit like trying to detect the pitch change in Big Ben when a pigeon lands on the roof of the Palace of Westminster. Two, you have to show that such influences of the sun have a predictable effect on the sun and earth. If you could identify a specific causal effect that leads to a large CME or a rise in TSI then fair enough. But impacts that affect details of weather seem a little too unlikely to me. Even though any measurable perturbation of the sun from it's satellites may be minuscule, does it not seem likely that there could be amplified effects which impact the internal processes of the sun. If the pigeon and the clock tower were isolated in the vacuum of space, the mass of the bird would probably have a much larger impact on the mechanisms driving the clock, and also the hammer sounding the bell than it does on earth. The effect of the pigeon would be the same though it may be easier to detect because impacts from other things (london buses, MPs rushing to submit their vast expenses claims) would be removed. (lets ignore the fact that in space noone can hear you ring a bell). But the point is that you *cannot* isolate Big Ben. The sun is a hugely violent body with vast internal ructions continuously happening without our knowledge. The delicate touch of Saturn aligning with Jupiter is as nothing compared with these.
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Post by steve on Mar 17, 2011 14:58:47 GMT
icefisher,
No it isn't. Like it or not, Mann still has a good reputation as a scientist among enough of his peers. His grant requests are supported by this positive reputation with evidence from citations of his papers and so forth. He does not need to deliberately mislead to get grant money. Academic freedom allows other scientists to put forward competing ideas. A scientist whose ideas are swamped by better accepted competing ideas loses reputation. That has not happened to Mann.
Yes in an ideal world it would be nice to present the evidence and hope that people do not try to spin the uncertainties into more than they are. Yes one can end up spinning too far in the opposite direction in anticipation of such efforts.
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