JohnB

Essay, I think you misunderstand my POV. There is no black and white rejection of climate science. There is a demand for "proof of concept" for want of a better term. Especially in a new discipline there are new underlying assumptions. What I'm trying to do is point out where the underlying assumptions could be incorrect. Taking climate sensitivity as an example, there are those trying to "narrow the range" of this figure. They assume that such a figure exists. The logical upshot of arriving at a single definitive figure, or a constant if you will would be that climate becomes forcing X sensitivity = change, by definition a linear system. Since the climate is dynamic and non linear then climate sensitivity can only possibly exist as an abstract concept defining a range dependent on initial conditions and internal dynamics. (From personal communications I know that some in the climate community share this view.) So this is not a rejection of climate science, nor a rejection of the general concept of climate sensitivity, but it is a rejection of the concept that climate sensitivity exists as a single unchanging value. See the difference? Similarly climate science can put any meaning it wants to the term "robust" so long as it's roughly in line with the general meaning, however it cannot co-opt terms from other sciences and redefine them. "Statistically robust" has a meaning in statistics and if climate science wants to use the term then they have to conform to the statistical meaning and not substitute their own. To take an example from another science, Ecology was virtually started by Malthus and therefore had many Malthusian ideas as underlying concepts, concepts so innate that they weren't even thought of as "assumptions". Top of the list here was the idea of a "balance of nature" and everything was viewed from that perspective. Note how long it took that science to get rid of such a stupid and illogical assumption and how strongly the idea was defended in the face of ever mounting and overwhelming evidence. There are still ecologists today who believe in the "balance of nature", something totally imaginary. Note also how this gave rise to the Green movement and its logical process. Nature is in balance, therefore it doesn't change. Something is changing, therefore it is out of balance. Since nature is in balance the change cannot be from nature. Therefore man is changing it.

iNow That's fine, just so long as people can quote you next time you ask for verifying evidence. The point of the exercise was actually to get you to look at the "assload" piece by piece and once you separate out the things that show warming from the things that show attribution of cause, there isn't as much of an "assload" as you imagine there is. swansont But that is indeed what the MSU data shows. Note that at the heart of Dr Trenberths "travesty" comment was that "We can't explain the lack of warming......". The fact is that it's not warming and a number of papers have been published in attempts to explain that fact. This is also supplying an increasing problem for the modellers. Theory and therfore models show that there should be an increase in heat. The first prediction was that it would occur in the tropical troposhere, the "Big Red Spot" in AR4, but it's not there. (Unless you want to agree with Sherwood that windspeed as a temp proxy is more accurate than the in situ thermometer.) Then the land temps were supposed to go up, accounting for the "missing heat", but they haven't. Then it was supposed to be going into the oceans, but the ARGO bouys aren't showing it. The latest idea is that the "missing heat" has travelled from the surface to the 3,000m level without causing any warming in the intermediate layers. I don't believe in magic, how about you? Maybe this will get the thread pushed to "Speculations" but how about this as a concept? If the theory says there there should be a heat buildup somewhere and we can't find it anywhere the theory says to look, maybe the theory is wrong. Permit me to tell a story too. Back in 1998 a rather new PhD named Micheal Mann published a paper showing Northern Hemisphere temperature trends for the last 1,000 years. The reconstructed temps had a rather iconic shape and was very popular with some people. In 2004 two people decided to have a look at the mathematics behind the reconstruction and they found it flawed. This led to the hockeystick wars. In 2008 in an attempt to back up Dr Manns use of decentred PCA in his reconstruction a blogger using the pseudonym "Tamino" brought in his trump card, that Ian Jolliffe, who sort of wrote the book on PCA endorsed the use of decentred PCA. Here is Dr Jolliffes response; The question isn't about the results, but the methodology used to get them. Mathematics works the same way for everybody and so do statistics. An r2 of .08 is a fleas dick away from random chance and is not "significant", except in climate science. Would you be confident of the correctness of your idea on an r2 of .16? I've watched climate scientists argue that case. These are the points that those from outside the field are commenting on. If the methodology is wrong then how can there be confidence in the answer? The answer might be right, but it can't be proven by some methodologies. As Dr Wegman said Wrpong Method + Right Answer = Bad Science. Statisticians can comment on the statistical methods used, those experienced in data mining and manipulation can comment on the methods used. Essentially the argument from the engineers and others is that if they used the same methods to extract meaning from raw data as is used in climate science then in all probability bridges and buildings would fall down and aircraft would crash. Just like models, all methods of analysis are useful but only some of them are right. *Aside* iNow, thanks for posting the link to the adjustments page. I meant to but forgot. IM Egdall. The adjustments as stated are reasonable and neccessary, up to a point. TOB is the real killer here and simply came about due to most of the US sensors being read by volunteers who were loathe to go out at midnight in midwinter to read the temps. (Who can blame them?) Ideally the readings would be taken at midnight but in practice were generally done at either 0700 or about 1700. Normally one wouldn't think this a major problem but it effects daily and monthly averages. The minimum temp for a day is usually around the 0500-0600 period, this means that a reading taken at 0700 is giving todays minimum and yesterdays maximum (usually around 1400). So TOBs adjustment is vital to getting a complete picture. Where I and others have a problem is with the "generic" answer to this problem. A station read at 0700 in 1950 has a 7 hour TOB, a station read at 0700 in 2011 has a 7 hout TOB. IOW the offset is the same. Under the NOAA rules it is not. A station that is read at 0700 every morning from 1950-2012 has an increasing TOB adjustment. The argument isn't that TOB adjustments are unjustified, but that the generic increasing adjustment is. 0700 is not getting further from midnight as the years pass. The upshot of this adjustment is that a sensor read at 0700 each morning and which reads exactly the same temperature for the 1st March every year from 1950-2012 is now going to show a .1 degree/decade warming trend. Under normal conditions a TOB adjustment is a single entity, pulling figures from the air let's say the reading at 0700 is 50 degrees and the TOBs is .5 degrees. So we take the 50 degree reading and add the .5 degree adjustment for an answer of 50.5 degrees, and that would be the recorded temp every 1st March from 1950-2012. The raw data has no trend and neither does the TOBs adjusted data. The thing to understand is that TOBs is time zone based and these don't change. (Except for daylight saving and that is figured into TOBs adjustments) If the actual "Time of Observation" changes then the TOBs adjustment must change, but otherwise it shouldn't. Put another way. I live at GMT +10 so to adjust to GMT I deduct 10 hours. I do this now, I did this in 1980 and I will do the same in 2050. 20 years from now I won't be living at GMT +11. I add that I think there is nothing wrong with asking very detailed questions when adjustments introduce an artificial trend into trendless raw data. It is also reasonable to accept that mistakes and flaws creep into raw data and that adjustments are needed, but one would reasonably expect those flaws to be random in nature and the adjustments to be roughly equal in increasing or decreasing the trend lines. This is not the case in climate science where virtually all adjustments in crease the trend only. There is definitely a "warming bias" when it comes to adjustments. Interesting viewpoint. Exactly when in the history of mankind has climate change been "correctable" by human actions? iNow It's a fair question. Have the temps been matching the predictions? I mean, that is the point of science isn't it? To make predictions from theory and then compare those predictions to reality? So has reality confirmed the predictions? Nope. The funny (ha ha type of funny) thing is that I think Dr Scafetta is a bit "out there" with his ideas, but his "Planetary Alignment" model is seriously outperforming the IPCC GCMs.

CP and swansont. Perhaps you both don't understand the difference between rules and regulations that allow a functioning society and a "parental" government ruling the lives of people "for their own good". As soon as you place a subset of your society into "regulation" for the thought crime of not agreeing with the leaders ideology then you are relegating them to "sub human" status. History has shown very well what happens to those given that status. swansont you are using a false analogy. When considering the inclusion or not of various poisons in food, then regulation is reasonable for societies safety. What was being discussed was removing the freedom of choice from some people due to a percieved incapability to make the "right" choice for themselves. In this case, "right" = "agrees with leader". It's the age old question. Who knows what is best for the individual? The individual or the State? I happen to believe in the individual, except in cases of criminal behaviour or proven mental incompetence. The passages quoted were definitely in favour of the State having a controlling say. Oh, and I don't believe in Godwins Law. I find the logic of "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, to call it a duck is wrong." I would think it was a simple statement of fact.

Stalin thought exactly the same way. Funny how people who are certain that "they know best" care very little for the rights and liberties of others. Exactly right. And since the problems are so dire it is silly for us to waste valuable food and resources on creatures that no longer serve the purpose they were domesticated for. We should therefore exterminate all the dogs and cats. I presume you will put up your dog first? In general, for the very first time in the entire history of our race, being overweight is a problem for more people than starvation. One would think that feeding an ever larger percentage of an evergrowing population would be cause for celebration, but some people are never happy. As to any form of "compulsory" exercise, people might want to note the rise in knee injuries being traced back to early forms of step aerobics. Those that "did the right thing" in their 20s seem to be putting extra pressure on health services in their 40s. Oops....

Since "sustainability" is a fantasy that has no meaning in the real world, then "sustainability" and any form of real world government are incompatable. But don't let reality get in the way of a good fantasy.

Um, no. To quote your own quote; If you weren't claiming "human caused" climate change, why quote a sentence that contains the phrase? The question is not whether the term was used, but whether it was used with the same meaning. If the meaning has changed, then the fact it was used is moot. And again, the article was about whether it was possible, not whether it was happening.

Jeez, take a short break..... The BS and logical fallacies have been flying thick and fast haven't they? IM Egdall, Third hand hearsay "evidence"? How pathetic, such junk wouldn't get past the first sentence in a court of law, but is blindly accepted as gospel by a scientist? Look up "Guilt by Association", "Poisoning the Well" and "Ad Hominem" logical fallacies. What matters is the evidence presented, not who funds it or who it might be biased by. If your standard of evidence is so low that if a website "says" someone is "involved with" a group who are "reportedly" something or other is good enough for you, then turn in any degree you have because that standard is just bullshit. I don't know what you're doing, but practicing science sure as hell won't be part of it. As to the WSJ thing, I notice the old canard "But they aren't climate scientists" has been trotted out. Of all the insipid and stupid arguments. This joke of an argument follows the most insane logic I've ever seen. By analogy; Swansont is a physicist. If swansont says that 1+1=3 the only people qualified to disagree are other physicists. Give me a break. Burt Rutan is an engineer with years of practical experience in extracting useful information from mountains of data. This experience gives him the knowledge of what methods do give reliable results and which methods don't. I've never understood how intelligent people can sit at a keyboard and claim that mathematics and statistics somehow "work differently" in climate science. FFS we can barely define what is or is not a "Climate Scientist". Nor does someone have to have published in "Climate Science" to comment on said "science". The hockey stick wasn't broken because well funded deniers fought it, it got broken because it didn't match the historical records and was sh*t statistics. Or are people going to argue that statisticians aren't competent to comment on statistical methods used in climate science? Bullsh*t! Now i really hate to break it to the warmers around here, but the temps have been doing bugger all for about 16 years. I really don't care whether you like it or not, that's just the fact. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997/trend There is the tiniest bit of positive trend there, but so close to zero as to not worth talking about. This is of course different from the conclusion swansont came to using NOAA data but this is unsurprising. NOAA data is heavily "adjusted" as the following graph shows; Basically an MMTS that sits in the same place for 50 years and records exactly the same temperature on say March 1 each year from 1950 -2000 will now show a warming trend of .5 degrees for the period. Instant .1 degree/decade warming trend. I prefer the MSU to preadjusted pap. As people might have guessed, I'm tired of being nice and I'm tired of seeing absolute crap from morons being quoted as gospel. And I'm especially tired of being misrepresented as to my thoughts and reasons behind those thoughts. I see swansont linked to a Forbes article by Peter Gleick. Really? This mans opinion is worth exactly what? This is the Peter Gleick who doesn't need to read a book before writing an indepth review of it. And when called on this fact goes complaining all over the net as to how nasty those mean "deniers" are. A contemptable oxygen thief. A liar and a cheat. iNow, as for Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy, he might be an astronomer but is clueless concerning climate. Anybody who claims that "the Little Ice Age a cold period during the 17th and 18th centuries was not a global effect; it only affected Europe" is either a dolt or wilfully blind as the evidence says otherwise. Here's the challenge, instead of letting realclimate and SkS do your thinking for you, how about reading something for a change? This link will take you to the work of 1049 different scientists, from 600 research institutions in 44 nations that shows both the MWP and LIA were in fact global. So I strongly suggest some people start actually looking at the evidence rather than declaring it doesn't exist. Oh, and swansont, would you care to show where there is some evidence in this article you linked to? Considering he opens with; Emphasis mine. It seems very long on rhetoric and very short on facts. (But maybe I just missed them) Also I'm willing to go for the showdown. iNow, let's see some of this "metric assload" of evidence you say you have. Start a new thread using your first 5 points and we'll take it from there. I dare you, put up or shut up. All comments to be fully and correctly referenced. A final point. I know that Kevin "Weather is climate when I want it to be" Trenberth and others have responded to the WSJ article arguing the "who do you get your surgical advice from?" line. My answer is simple, a doctor with a track record of proven success, not one who wins "Surgical Hero" computer games when playing with his mates.

The statement that isn't behind the paywall says; Note the use of the word "if". This article doesn't appear to be about human induced climate change, but about whether humans will be able to effect the climate before the next ice age arrives. (In about 20,000 years.) Your link does not support your assertion, or that of the blogger. But I love watching double standards unwind. An article from 1937 that mentions scientists "wondering if they can discover a means to control the climate" means that human induced climate change was an accepted part of science back then but a series, starting with Newsweek and spreading across the globe in the 70s only shows a media beatup about global "cooling" and says nothing about the prevailing opinion. But by all means keep trying to rewrite history.

I'm a little late too but Happy Birthday for the 23rd. It doesn't matter how many you have so long as you remain "Old enough to know better and yound enough not to care."

I see Winston Smith is alive and well. The term "Climate Change" is indeed older then "Global Warming", the bit that is being left out is that in the early usage of term it referred to natural climate change. This term was replaced by "Anthropogenic Global Warming" and now with the switch back even the "Anthropogenic" gets dropped. This is because all climate change is obviously anthropogenic in nature and therefore the word is no longer needed. However to claim that the generally accepted meaning of the term "Climate change" is the same now as it was then is misleading and dishonest. Unless the further claim is being made that "Climate Change" has always been viewed as anthropogenic in nature? As much as some would like it to, Climate Change != Anthropogenic Climate Change. PS. Loved the 1958 vid. If temperatures rise a couple of degrees the ice caps will melt and flood the planet. A novel concept considering that the average temp in Antarctica is considerably below zero. I'm sure the ice at Vostok is going to melt when the temp rises to a balmy average of -53 degrees C.

JustinW, you aren't thinking far enough ahead. Keeping "marraige" within the purview of the religious is a way of avoiding complications. Note point 4 in the OP, can you come up with a single good reason why "marraige" should not be extended to more than two people? I think that there is reason to be concerned about a "slippery slope" situation. Unfortunately for the gay community, all the arguments in favour of gay marraige can also be used by others. In essence the argument is "Who are you to define marraige as between a man and a woman?" The religious answer of course is that this is how the Bible defines it. The fun starts when we take the religious out of marraige. The questions can now become "Who are you to define marraige as between only two people?", "Who are you to define at exactly what age a person is a consenting adult?", "Who are you to say that I can't give my 10 year old daughter away in marraige?", "Who are you say that marraige can only be between entities of the same species?" If we keep marraige in the perview of the religious then there is "The Book" to fall back on, however if we move it to the civil field then the argument becomes about government and authority interfering in a persons free choice to marry whoever they want. And as I said before, all the arguments along those lines that can be used by the gay community can be used by others as well. You cannot have gay marraige and disallow the others because that would make the "authority" concerned discriminatory, something governments try not to be seen to be. But if you keep the "Church" as the authority, then it's the Church that is being discriminatory and not the government. To get around it down here we are bringing in "Civil Unions" for the gay community. All the rights of marraige but without the word. The benefit in this approach is that Civil Unions are governed by the "Laws of the Land" as representative of the "will of the people" (usual gov doublespeak) and "The People" will not allow laws that let people have unions with minors or animals or cars. And "The People" decide (and express through their government) what will be considered a reasonable age for a "consenting adult". Remember that our systems are very different concerning marraige. We don't have the blood tests, licences or waiting periods. If a couple wish to get married, then they book the church and priest for the day of the wedding. After the ceremony, the paperwork gets done and will be filed by the officiating priest/paster/whatever. Once the "Marraige Certificate" is signed and witnessed the couple are married, game over.

Essay, I can quote from books written by respected scientists too. Predictions by "experts" in books don't have a terrific track record, do they? Some political basics. If you are going to have "Global Co-ordination and monitoring" then you must have a supranational body to do so. A body with the power to co-ordinate and monitor. And if it's going to be more than a paper tiger then it has to have teeth and enforce the instructions it gives while "co-ordinating". This is, to all intents and purposes a government. Just because you don't want to call it that doesn't make it less of a government. The simple fact of ruling bodies is that if there is no mechanism to keep it under control it will become a despotism. You might be happy to grant some desk pusher power over your nations economy and not want to have any say at all in the choosing of that person or the policies involved, but many others don't. Isn't it funny that in finding the answers to all our problems, the words "Democracy" and "Responsibility" don't get used much. Oh there is plenty of talk about how the proles need to take "responsibility" for their pollution/carbon fottprint, whatever but very little about how the all knowing, well meaning ecological intelligensia will be responsible or who to. Maybe the reason that so many people are suspicious that there is a political push to use climate panic to destroy democracy is because all the "solutions" seem to require democratic nations giving up their sovreignity to undemocratic, unelected and responsible to no-one "authorities". Call me a cynic if you want, but I do have to wonder whether Drs Drinkwater and Snapp (who wrote the p 148 quote) thought that there should be "fundamental changes in cultural values and human societies" before they started their research as well. Essay as a general note it's getting very difficult to keep track of your answers, you're cross answering across too many threads. BTW, how would you define "sustainable"? The word gets used a lot, but I have a sneaking feeling that the meaning varies.

Sorry, you don't get to write your own dictionary. Words have very specific meanings, for climate science to say that these meanings differ in "their" branch is crap. The meanings have to stay the same as in other disciplines, otherwise you will cause confusion. A non linear system is defined as "a system whose performance cannot be described by equations of the first degree" in every other science. Making up your own definitions in variance to the accepted use is what a pseudoscience does. Then you can provide a value and proof that it is in fact a constant? (There's a Nobel in the offing if you can.) I thought not. Climate science has not "progressed far beyond that level" at all. CS has an assumption that Climate Sensitivity has a specific value and that the value is constant over time. They have yet to provide that value or prove that it is constant over time. On the basis of provability my hypothesis is as valid and as well proven as theirs. I add that the existence of a single value for Climate Sensitivity perforce means that for a change in forcing the climate will respond in a linear fashion, now then and always. I would like to see some sort of explanation as to exactly how a non linear system can be ruled by a linear response regime, because under the generally accepted meanings of the words, this would make the climate a linear system. (Is that why CS needs to rewrite the dictionary?) This new definition might do: Non Linear system; A non linear system is one in which the output is not linearly related to the input unless you want it to be.

Sorry, not my problem. The paper is from your side of the fence. If they are doing cr*p science and ignoring major factors you must ignore this and believe. If you think accounting for major factors and uncertainties is important, then you will join the ranks of the evil deniers. For climate it is probably better to drop the "chaotic", but it is a complex system with non linear responses. As to climate being no different now than in the past, (I'm assuming this is about climate in general) then it doesn't come from my beliefs, it comes from the historical record. If you think that climate is behaving or changing in some way differently from how it did in the past, then please show some proof. Otherwise, the "Null Hypothesis" that there is nothing unusual happening must apply. At this point we can compare reconstructions. Validating your argument are a series of reconstructions that are members of the species "Hockeystick". Now if that was all there was, then I would be on your side. It would be very obvious that the current change in climate was large, serious and very different to what had gone before. But that isn't all there is. There are also a large number of reconstructions and proxies that are not of the species "Hockeystick", these reconstructions show that the current changes in our climate (WRT temperature) are nothing unusual at all. There are also written records and observations from which we can infer which way the temps were going and how fast. According to the observed facts, the recent warming period that is "mainly" attributed to human activities by the IPCC is indistinguishable from previous periods of totally natural warming. The last word that I would expect anyone to use to describe climate is "simple". I don't have a problem with using linear "segments" either as I think they can show a much more nuanced picture. for example, for GAT I would show 1850-1880 as warming, 1880-1910 as cooling, 1910-1940 as warming, 1940-1970 as cooling, 1970-2000 as warming and 2000-2012 as pretty level. That's using segments. I would not draw a line from 1850-2012 and pronounce a warming trend of "X degrees/decade" as this obscures the truth of the data. Technically the statement is true, but lacks very necessary detail. Similarly we could say that according to the figures, the American stockmarket grew from 50 points in 1904 to 60 points in 1932, a growth rate of about 3 points/decade. Kinda misses the big crash of 1929 doesn't it? Climate is a complex system that responds to a variety of forcings and feedbacks. I believe on of the great fallacies to be the idea that climate responds in a linear fashion to forcings. And that is the assumption. All forcings and feedbacks can be reduced to a W/m-2 value and temperature will change in a linear fashion according to the change in these values. The very definition of a "non linear" system is that it won't behave in such a fashion. The second fallacy is "Climate sensitivity", usually expressed as a temperature change for a doubling of CO2. Note that again a linear response is expected from a non linear system. Climate Sensitivity is also treated as and assumed to be, a constant. I have yet to see this assumption demonstrated as correct in the literature. I know that they are really smart people who have letters after their names and I don't, but they've also been looking for that elusive value for 30 odd years and really aren't any closer now than they were then. The logical answer is that it doesn't exist. My personal view is that it both does and does not exist. It does not exist as a constant, but does exist as a value dependent upon GAT and atmospheric composition at the time. Upper and lower limits to the value would be set by these and other factors.

And? Never, the paper is 4 years old. For myself, I would put the increase in crop yields as a mixture of improved technology (Green revolution), increased warmth (longer growing season) and a bit of extra CO2 fertilisation. The last being the smallest. Essay, I should add that I do know a bit about chaotic systems. I use the word as shorthand for the full description of climate which is "A complex, chaotic, non linear system". WRT trend lines I find it odd that this science is obsessed with drawing straight lines and finding linear trends in a non linear system. Is that better?

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The point is that paper doesn't show that at all. What it purports to show is that the increased growth it assumes from CO2 fertilisation (and you have to go through 3 referenced papers to find where they got that figure) is offset by the decrease in growth caused by warming according to their model. It's arguing about a .6% theoretical decrease in rice output compared to an actual 100% increase. Seriously. You're on $30k salary and get a pay rise to $58.2k and you are hard done by? Much of the pay rise has been "negated"? Seriously? This paper shows that our food crops have in fact and in reality been doing very well indeed due to the recent warming (and technological improvements). On what factual basis is the idea that our food crops will suffer founded? The fact is that yields are going up and up. This must level off at some point obviously, but there is no factual reason to expect them to decline drastically. As for the drought bit. Our GCMs aren't so hot on a regional scale so we cannot predict drought in our food growing areas any more than we can predict flood. The weather will do as it has always done, sometimes the rain will come and sometimes it won't. Anyway, aren't we supposed to get more rain in a warmer climate? You might want to read this. I warn that it is a 12 meg pdf and is 802 pages long. Grab a cup of coffee and have a skim through it, it lists documented weather events from 1 AD to 1900 AD. Aside from giving a historical perspective as to just how common droughts and floods really were there are some fascinating tidbits. Wouldn't that have been cool to see? I wonder what the hell that was?

One idea that I did hear on this quite some time ago was different. Our ancestors weren't the big strong cavemen until relatively recently, for most of our history we were more prey than predator. Did we start to have a semi aquatic existence to avoid predators? This would also explain the rudimentary webbing between our fingers and toes. It's just a thought.

Hmmm, it really shows that someone can find a dark cloud behind a silver lining if they try hard enough. The quote you used is quite the doom and gloom isn't it? But let's look at the whole picture. Figure 1 from the paper. Even though the graph goes back to 1960 most of the paper is concerned with the period 1981-2002. So what did happen to crop yields in that period? (In tons per hectare) Wheat: From 1.7 to 2.6. Up 53% Rice: From 2.7 to 3.7. Up 37% Maize: From 3 to 4.5. Up 50% Soy: From 1.6 to 2.1. Up 31% Barley: From 1.9 to 2.4. Up 26% Sorghum: From 1.4 to 1.2. Down 14% So except for Sorghum the yield per hectare is way up on 1980 figures. So how do we get from "Yields for all crops increased substantially since 1961" (First paragraph) to "For wheat, maize and barley, there is a clearly negative response of global yields to increased temperatures." (The abstract) Given that according to the papers own figures the three mentioned crops increased yields by 53%, 50% and 26% repectively while the temperature rose by .4 degrees, it's kind of hard to see that "negative response". To find it we need a model. Some people might think that I'm against models per se, but that is incorrect. I'm against using lousy models to make predictions with a supposed accuracy orders of magnitude smaller than the model itself is capable of. Just going back to Figure 1 for a minute. The paper says "while temperature and precipitation, spatially weighted for each crop, also exhibited several significant trends." I'll be frank, there is a trend in the temps but if anyone can see a trend in the precipitation they have a far superior Mk 1 eyeball than I have. Except for Sorghum which is pretty wild, all the others look to be virtually trendless over 40 years. What has been done here is estimate how much lower the yield is compared to what it might have been without climatic factors. To do this the authors use a phenomenally accurate model, it can in fact describe the reasons for 29% of the rice increase. That's not 29% out of the 37% but 29% of the 37%, or 8.7% of the actual increase. So this model with its explanatory power of two thirds of three fifths of stuff all is also good enough to tell us that for each 1 degree increase in temps there is a .6 % decrease in yield. Since the increase in temps is .4 degrees according to the paper then this translates into a .24% decrease in crop yield for rice between 1961 and 2002. But for the period involved, rice yields increased by roughly 100%. To be very clear on this. A model that cannot explain 71% of the observed variance in rice yield is supposedly (accurately) telling us about a theoretical climate induced variance of .24% in rice yield. Putting it another way and using the figures from Table 2 in the paper. The increase in yield in kilos per hectare for rice in the period 1981-2002 was 1,109 kilos. The model, which can only explain 29% of that increase (or 321.61 kg) says that the yield should have been an extra 10.5 kilos more. The yield should have been 1,119.5 kilos per hectare according to the model. So it can't explain 787.39 kilos per hectare increase but it can accurately show the 10.5 kilo decrease due to climate change. At what point am I allowed to express my incredulity at this? To me this is like a political analyst saying to a politician "I can't tell you why 71% of the people vote the way they do, but if you make speech "X" then .24% of the people will turn against you." The paper itself describes the process of choosing the model as being based on "the highest model R2." Unfortunately so many of the R2 are so low that this is akin to using the brightest person out of a class for the mentally incompetent, or picking a zoo chimp at random and giving it a fistfull of darts. Except for the of .65 the results are pretty shocking. (Sorry, I couldn't resist. ) Like I said at the beginning, for some people there is no rest until they find the dark cloud behind the silver lining. Most people would think that wheat yields increasing by 53% over 20 years would be cause for celebration, 53% more food from the same area of land. But the doom and gloomers have to come along and say "Only 53%? Our models show that if it wasn't for climate change it would have been 61%!" Just to confuse everybody, papers referenced by this paper say that WRT crop yeilds over the last few decades "Using a combination of mechanistic and statistical models, we show that much of this increase can be attributed to climatic trends". So most of the increase is due to warming but warming means that it isn't increasing as fast as it should due to warming....... So we take reality, inflate it by using a dodgy model and then claim that the "difference" between this unproven and unprovable figure and reality is a "cost" of climate change. Right, and the guy who is 6 foot 10 would have been 8 foot 4 if he didn't smoke. (Because we all know smoking stunts your growth.)

I have to agree with Santalum. There is probably a genetic linkage that prevents sweat glands and large amounts of body hair. As one turns "on" the other turns "off". @ Dekan. Even today, few and far between are the women who will say "No" to a mink coat.

Hmmm. My company website is hosted on US servers. Under the definitions this means that the web part of my Australian company is domestic US. Screw that. The American Gov does not get to decide that I'm "domestic" under their pathetic rules. If your gov passes this garbage then I and probably millions of others will change hosts to other nations, that way we only lose the US customers. The obvious next step after defining foreign website busnesses as domestic would be to tax them as domestic. Bugger that for a joke. The thing here is lack of due process. I can get payment mechanisms cut off simply by accusation and not proof of misconduct. This is of concern because we are a silver jewellery importing and wholesaling company. Normally such laws would not apply to us because we don't host or link to content. However there are no measures to prevent malicious use of accusation so we can be deprived of monetary providers by false accusation and we have no recourse. This makes America better than China how? I think that part of the problem is that the Entertainment industry hasn't come to grips with technology. Movies for example are based on the concept of a "captive audience". When you pay to see a movie you are stuck there in a dark room and have to watch any and all cr*p that is thrown at you until the movie starts. Everybody knows that if a movie is supposed to start at 8 PM it doesn't matter if you walk in at 8.20 PM ad the ads will still be going. They follow this practice on home DVDs as well. Sit down to watch a bought DVD with some warm popcorn and a cold drink. By the time you've seen the FBI warning (why is it even on Aussie copies?), a couple of ads, a nice loud Dolby digital or THX sound ad (we all buy movies because they're recorded in DD sound, don't we?), two more anti-piracy warnings, the disclaimer about the views of people interviewed aren't the views of the company blah, blah, blah and the previews you've drunk half the drink, your popcorn is cold and the damn movie hasn't even started. And just on ad insanity, there are ads for the Stargate SG-1 Series DVDs on the Stargate SG-1 DVDs. So now I've bought the series I get to see ads telling me to buy the series. The stupid, it burns. With a pirate, you d/load the file, burn it to disc and watch the movie. The other part of the problem is that the industry is asking people to pay $30 for something that everybody knows costs less than $1 to manufacture. Movie makers do have to make their money back, it is a business after all. But one has to question the logic in paying someone $50 million to pretend they are some else for 6 months or so. (Not to mention the WB or MGM executive salaries.) I don't know the last time I went to a movie because some particular person was in it. I pick movies by ideas and storyline and so does everyone I know.

Too busy drinkin' the bundy to learn how.

Isn't that principle known as "Somebodys Barrel"? "Plant growth is always limited by the least available resource"? And keeping on a climate note, this is one of the problems I have with dendrothermometry. Given that plant growth is limited by the least available resource then a direct causal relationship between tree ring width and temperature is unlikely. Regardless of what the temperature is, if the rain don't come the tree don't grow.

Santalum, even the megafauna didn't reach the sizes that were around only 30 million years ago. Also on the timespans I'm talking about humans don't matter as until recently we were more prey than predator. I can't see the size/drought thing as too valid either since extremely large critters survived for tens of millions of years which means they survived droughts. I don't know that I've been expressing myself well on what I've observed so I'll try a rephrase. Life on this planet evolved in a series of phases separated by extinction events. After each of the extinctions life came back and very large animals were common. In each stage the tendency was for the animals to get bigger. After the dino-killer event life did this again. Even thought he mammals were ruling, they were getting very big and the same trend was apparent as was in earlier periods. Around (as a guesstimate) 25 million years ago the trend reversed and smaller became more evolutionarily successful. Multiple extremely large species of Rhino became the 4 much smaller species we have today. "Lucy"s people were only 4 foot tall yet they survived. To me the megafauna were the last, dying gasp of the evolutionary concept of "huge land animals" and even they didn't make it to the size of their predecessors. So the question is, I suppose "What changed?". Why has small become more successful than big when you consider just how successful big was and for how long. (Successful in this case being defined as "Continuing to live") We've had O2 levels halve, SuperContinents and separate ones, shallow seas and deep ones, a phenomenal range of differing climatic conditions for life to survive under and "big" was always successful, but not for the last 30 million years and very certainly not for the last 2 or 3. This is why I thought the pressure idea interesting. Insects are limited in their size due to the method they use to breathe so I have to wonder if there is a similar limit for animal lung capacity. Perhaps there is a threshold limit somewhere. Similarly it seems odd that increasing the O2 levels by 50%, from 21% now to the 35% of the Carboniferous Era is enough to allow the insects to grow as large as they did. A 50% increase in O2 for a 1,000% increase in size seems a bit much. But if we add in higher pressure then it becomes quite reasonable. (I may not know much evolutionary biology, but from Scuba diving I do know the effects of gasses under pressure on organisms.) Another way of phrasing the question would be to say that for all of Earths history, evolution has allowed animals to grow as big as they could possibly be. Assuming the basic rules of evolution don't change then why is "As big as it can possibly be" smaller now than it was then?

Yes, it's far easier to believe the hype and think that I'm some sort of paid pawn of Exxon or a Glenn Beck follower isn't it? The stereotype is hard to see when people are asking valid questions.