my $25 donation to sea shepherd is well spent, wish i could donate more

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

newolder wrote::???: who read teh global thermometer 130 years ago?

Nobody of course, but models can hind-cast and provide a look at what temperatures were at that time, which can be corroborated by examining physical evidence such as air trapped in ice cores; tree growth rings, and sediments. This is a field of study known as "paleoclimate," which has now reached a rather strong state of development and is capable of telling us much about Earth's past climates.

Hind-castes made by models can also be corroborated against actual temperature records. There's a rather extensive network of temperature gauges in England that have been in place 300+ years and similar networks in areas of the US and Canada that date back more than 100 years.

Interesting. What are the palaeoclimatic error margins on, say, the temperatures for 1898 in the equatorial pacific ocean, and how are those error margins estimated?

newolder wrote:
Interesting. What are the palaeoclimatic error margins on, say, the temperatures for 1898 in the equatorial pacific ocean, and how are those error margins estimated?

Same way IPCC estimated the temperature in Finland a few winters ago. Extrapolation.
The problem was that there was a huge difference between the estimate and the actual figures from the Finnish Meteorological Service. The Finns had actual thermometers, which the IPCC ignored.

newolder wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

newolder wrote::???: who read teh global thermometer 130 years ago?

Nobody of course, but models can hind-cast and provide a look at what temperatures were at that time, which can be corroborated by examining physical evidence such as air trapped in ice cores; tree growth rings, and sediments. This is a field of study known as "paleoclimate," which has now reached a rather strong state of development and is capable of telling us much about Earth's past climates.

Hind-castes made by models can also be corroborated against actual temperature records. There's a rather extensive network of temperature gauges in England that have been in place 300+ years and similar networks in areas of the US and Canada that date back more than 100 years.

Interesting. What are the palaeoclimatic error margins on, say, the temperatures for 1898 in the equatorial pacific ocean, and how are those error margins estimated?

Models are not geared to do regional analyses. They're known as "GCMs" Global Circulation Models, and are global in scope and action. Regional climates and regional temps are difficult to establish, even hemispheric histories are difficult to do. Some efforts have been done on these scales but nobody has claimed a high degree of accuracy except in very local situations where data can be gleaned from such things as tree rings, Bristlecone pines in California do range up to 10,000 years in age for example, and there are other tree species that live up to 5,000 years, as do Sequoia Giantea.

But you won't find a lot of conclusive estimates of historical temps on a regional or hemispheric bases. For many years there was little scientific agreement, for example, about the extent of the Little Ice Age (circa 1300AD through 1800AD, which was known to have occurred in Northern Europe but not known if it was global. Recently, a group of scientists studying vegetation that died at the outset of the Little Ice Age and was then covered by ice and which have now been revealed owing to the ice melting have been able to pin the onset of the Little ice Age as being right round 1300AD but its extant remains a question mark. Most climate scientists do think it was a regional event, however.

Globe wrote:

newolder wrote:
Interesting. What are the palaeoclimatic error margins on, say, the temperatures for 1898 in the equatorial pacific ocean, and how are those error margins estimated?

Same way IPCC estimated the temperature in Finland a few winters ago. Extrapolation.
The problem was that there was a huge difference between the estimate and the actual figures from the Finnish Meteorological Service. The Finns had actual thermometers, which the IPCC ignored.

This is kind of odd, the IPCC doesn't do regional temp forecasts or estimates of future temps and in fact isn't a "science doing" organization at all.

The IPCC is an entity that collects peer-reviewed scientific papers and studies that pertain to the climate and evaluates them, integrates their results, and publishes an Assessment Report (AR) once every five years, the last having been published in spring 2007 and the next currently slated for publication in spring, 2013.

They will on occasion publish updates to an AR and in fact recently did this on AR4, the 2007 report.

But the IPCC does not do climate science per se itself. Every 5 years it collects some 10,000 peer reviewed scientific papers and studies that pertain to climate and spends five years evaluating, collating, organizing, and deducing results from this mountain of data, with a staff of about 2,500 climate scientists from some 150 countries who do this work voluntarily at no remuneration.

It would be an odd event if the IPCC prepared an estimate for one region or country so I think you may not have this right. Doing such studies is not within the IPCCs mandate or even its capacity.

There are two scientific organizations that rely upon temperature gauges round the world to perform global analyses and studies of global temp trends, the Hadley Center at East Anglia University in the UK and NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in New York. Both produce reports that contain global temp histories and projections from those histories; both use the same meteorological data but treat it in slightly different ways, but the results produced by both are in very close agreement.

You may want to check your sources on this.

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

Globe wrote:

newolder wrote:
Interesting. What are the palaeoclimatic error margins on, say, the temperatures for 1898 in the equatorial pacific ocean, and how are those error margins estimated?

Same way IPCC estimated the temperature in Finland a few winters ago. Extrapolation.
The problem was that there was a huge difference between the estimate and the actual figures from the Finnish Meteorological Service. The Finns had actual thermometers, which the IPCC ignored.

This is kind of odd, the IPCC doesn't do regional temp forecasts or estimates of future temps and in fact isn't a "science doing" organization at all.

The IPCC is an entity that collects peer-reviewed scientific papers and studies that pertain to the climate and evaluates them, integrates their results, and publishes an Assessment Report (AR) once every five years, the last having been published in spring 2007 and the next currently slated for publication in spring, 2013.

They will on occasion publish updates to an AR and in fact recently did this on AR4, the 2007 report.

But the IPCC does not do climate science per se itself. Every 5 years it collects some 10,000 peer reviewed scientific papers and studies that pertain to climate and spends five years evaluating, collating, organizing, and deducing results from this mountain of data, with a staff of about 2,500 climate scientists from some 150 countries who do this work voluntarily at no remuneration.

It would be an odd event if the IPCC prepared an estimate for one region or country so I think you may not have this right. Doing such studies is not within the IPCCs mandate or even its capacity.

There are two scientific organizations that rely upon temperature gauges round the world to perform global analyses and studies of global temp trends, the Hadley Center at East Anglia University in the UK and NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in New York. Both produce reports that contain global temp histories and projections from those histories; both use the same meteorological data but treat it in slightly different ways, but the results produced by both are in very close agreement.

You may want to check your sources on this.

That is correct FM, it should ring alarm bells for anyone when some one accuses the IPCC of "getting it wrong" for the reasons you point out. Those who have issues with the science need to do the leg work and find the paper (or most likely papers) from which the IPCC extracted their report.

Brunitski wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

Globe wrote:

newolder wrote:
Interesting. What are the palaeoclimatic error margins on, say, the temperatures for 1898 in the equatorial pacific ocean, and how are those error margins estimated?

Same way IPCC estimated the temperature in Finland a few winters ago. Extrapolation.
The problem was that there was a huge difference between the estimate and the actual figures from the Finnish Meteorological Service. The Finns had actual thermometers, which the IPCC ignored.

This is kind of odd, the IPCC doesn't do regional temp forecasts or estimates of future temps and in fact isn't a "science doing" organization at all.

The IPCC is an entity that collects peer-reviewed scientific papers and studies that pertain to the climate and evaluates them, integrates their results, and publishes an Assessment Report (AR) once every five years, the last having been published in spring 2007 and the next currently slated for publication in spring, 2013.

They will on occasion publish updates to an AR and in fact recently did this on AR4, the 2007 report.

But the IPCC does not do climate science per se itself. Every 5 years it collects some 10,000 peer reviewed scientific papers and studies that pertain to climate and spends five years evaluating, collating, organizing, and deducing results from this mountain of data, with a staff of about 2,500 climate scientists from some 150 countries who do this work voluntarily at no remuneration.

It would be an odd event if the IPCC prepared an estimate for one region or country so I think you may not have this right. Doing such studies is not within the IPCCs mandate or even its capacity.

There are two scientific organizations that rely upon temperature gauges round the world to perform global analyses and studies of global temp trends, the Hadley Center at East Anglia University in the UK and NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in New York. Both produce reports that contain global temp histories and projections from those histories; both use the same meteorological data but treat it in slightly different ways, but the results produced by both are in very close agreement.

You may want to check your sources on this.

That is correct FM, it should ring alarm bells for anyone when some one accuses the IPCC of "getting it wrong" for the reasons you point out. Those who have issues with the science need to do the leg work and find the paper (or most likely papers) from which the IPCC extracted their report.

Indeed, but the IPCC does not do one-off reports, especially not regarding a regional temp prediction, as in the manner that was alleged to have been done for Finland.

One would do well to go to the IPCCs website and download AR4, free for the download and in convenient PDF form. AR4 is a rather voluminous multi-volume report, but one can glean a great deal from just one volume, titled "Summary for Policymakers," definitely worth the read.

Steve wrote:More bad news. It would seem that photosynthesis stops at around 40 C (104 F). In the heat waves that hit Europe in 2003 which lasted 2 weeks there were roughly 20% crop losses but there was another kicker - the plants started producing CO2 instead of absorb it, and did not give off oxygen.

I read it about this here: GOP gospel continues to fly in the face and teeth of reality.

Here is a simulated heat map for 2100. The red and orange areas will basically not support photosynthesis.


edit to fix the link

This is tough news to be sure, wow!

The story should be spread far and wide and to that end I just emailed it to everyone in my email address book (about 800 names) plus a few select members of Congress and to the WH. It seems we could not stir this pot enough because their predictions for 40C will be caused by GHGs already in the atmosphere.

Spread the word, I say!