Eco Logic Lee

RealClimate: Misrepresentation from Lindzen.

Why I love Real Climate .

Richard Lindzen is a very special character in the climate debate – very smart, high profile, and with a solid background in atmospheric dynamics. He has, in times past, raised interesting critiques of the mainstream science. None of them, however, have stood the test of time – but exploring the issues was useful. More recently though, and especially in his more public outings, he spends most of his time misrepresenting the science and is a master at leading people to believe things that are not true without him ever saying them explicitly.

If you are willing to wade through some data, it is worth a read.  Bottom line, a denier manipulates data to falsely accuse climate scientists of manipulating data,

Exploding iceberg.

 

The people who shot this video claim the iceberg exploded but it looks more like the collapsing ice caused the air and water to shoot out of that hole suddenly. Still cool though.

Honeybees May Have Personality | Wired Science | Wired.com.

And today, another  study comes out on bees

It now seems as though individual honeybees differ in their desire to perform particular tasks and these differences could be down to variability in bees’ personalities. This supports a 2011 study at Newcastle University that suggested that honeybees exhibit pessimism, suggesting that insects might have feelings

According to a study published recently in the Journal Science,  researchers from Columbia University analyzed 300 million years of ocean fossil records to try to understand the likely outcomes of the increasing acidification of our oceans.  What they found isn’t pretty.

 The scientists found surging levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere forced down the pH of the ocean by 0.1 unit in the last century, 10 times faster than the closest historical comparison from 56 million years ago, New York’s Columbia University, which led the research, said yesterday in a statement. The seas absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, forming carbonic acid. The lower the pH level in the seas, the more acidic they are.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a nice explanation of what Ocean acidification means.  The bottom line is that as more Carbon Dioxide (Co2) gets absorbed into the ocean, the more carbonic acid is formed, and the less calcium carbonate is avalable.

Now you might ask why you should care about the levels of calcium carbonate.  - Shellfish and Coral Reefs.  - In order for coral or shells to form, the ocean needs to be supersaturated with calcium carbonate.  As the acidity of the ocean increases, and the saturation levels of calcium carbonate decreases, we corals and shells are unable to form, and an entire strand of the ocean food chain can become undone.

To a large extent, CO2 absorbed into the ocean us used by phytoplankton to support photosynthesis.  In fact,  some people believe that the excess CO2 will simply mean more photosynthesis and more food.  The only problem with this is that phytoplankton has been in precipitous decline for several decades due to overfishing and the removal of fixed nitrogen from the oceans.

So,  how bad is the situation?  In the past 100 years, the pH level of the oceans has dropped 0.1, that is a rate 10 times faster than the nearest  equivalent (almost 56Million years ago) when a dramatic increase in CO2 resulted in a .45 unit lowering of pH (increase in acidity) and a huge extinction wave hit the ocean.

What is scary today is not the absolute level of acidity, but the rate of change.

In the last hundred years, atmospheric CO2 has risen about 30 percent, to 393 parts per million, and ocean pH has fallen by 0.1 unit, to 8.1–an acidification rate at least 10 times faster than 56 million years ago, says Hönisch. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that pH may fall another 0.3 units by the end of the century,to 7.8, raising the possibility that we may soon see ocean changes similar to those observed during the PETM. (56 Million years ago)

We need healthy, food producing oceans to survive.  Our rapid production of CO2 emmissions has the potential of doing irreparable harm to the food chains in our ocean.   We need to act.

One of the things that always leaves me shaking my head is the selective use of statistics by the so-called climate skeptics.   Today’s episode was inspired by a Facebook post from  a friend of mine.   He posted a link to an article in the Daily Mail.    Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again).  So I figured, what the heck,  and I went over to check it out.    The first thing I saw was

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years

Well, that tells us where we are going, doesn’t it.  We can expect an objective, fact base article.  Riiight.      Coming up next

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Hmm.  I wonder who these supposed “scientists” are.    They certainly aren’t the ones that produced the report.   The report does certainly indicate that there is likely to be lower solar activity over the next several decades.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a  92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

So let’s take that second statement first.  Notice there is no quantification of the possibility.   It is possible… that just about anything could happen.  So let’s ignore that second statement.   But give them the first.  92% chance that solar activity will be unusually low.   Notice the mention of what happened to “parts” of Europe.   So let’s look at the release from the Met office themselves.

Sarah Ineson, who performed the experiments, said: “What we’re seeing is UV levels affecting the distribution of air masses around the Atlantic basin. This causes a redistribution of heat – so while Europe and the US may be cooler, Canada and the Mediterranean will be warmer, and there is little direct impact on global temperatures.

But what about the 15 year pause?  The article states flatly that the recent data released by the met office “confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”  But they don’t say who reached that conclusion.   They do show the following chart:

Two things to notice about this chart.  First, it doesn’t look like much of a trend to me either way.  In fact, without 2011, it looks like mostly a warming trend.  But if you step back and look at the data from a longer period

And you can see that 1998 was a record year, and that temperatures have not moved significantly lower.  The trend (though apparently slower) has certainly not halted.

But, what about the sun cycles?  Further along in the article

World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute.

Svensmark has made the claim that Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) are largely responsible for climate change.  The problem?  his data has matched the hype.  Others have tried to replicate his work and haven’t been able to,  and he refuses to release details.

“While the experiments were potentially of interest, they are a long way from actually demonstrating an influence of cosmic rays on the real world climate, and in no way justify the hyperbole that Svensmark and colleagues put into their press releases and more ‘popular’ pieces. Even if the evidence for solar forcing were legitimate, any bizarre calculus that takes evidence for solar forcing of climate as evidence against greenhouse gases for current climate change is simply wrong. Whether cosmic rays are correlated with climate or not, they have been regularly measured by the neutron monitor at Climax Station (Colorado) since 1953 and show no long term trend. No trend = no explanation for current changes.” Dr. Rasmus Benestad, Norwegian Meteorological Institute