Oh no, not again

RP Sr’s one-man kamikaze attack against the IPCC continues. RPs point appears to be that the IPCCs forcing-since-1750 of +1.6 W/m2 is not compatible with a current imbalance of about 0.85 W/m2. Sadly RPs link to the Hansen paper concerned is currently broken so I’m somewhat guessing what this figure is; I think its probably the earths current radiative imbalance. RP calls it the “the total observed radiative forcing and feedback” but I think he’s got this wrong. If it was, it would need to have a start date on it; and since its based on deep ocean temps it would be tricky to start from 1750.

As far as I can tell, RPs calcs are all wrong: you need to add WV etc feedbacks to the +1.6; then subtract the increase in OLR from the ~0.8 oC temperature rise, to end up with a small (+ve) imbalance.

I’m pretty sure RP has said this before, and Gavin corrected him before , but can’t find a ref to that. Can anyone point it out?

Oh, and one of RPs refs is his earlier post, which features the rather unfortunate “Assuming the Lyman et al data is accurate…” which of course it wasn’t. RP really ought to correct the earlier post.

[Update: Hank found a and b(!) -W]

[Update: RP Sr replies here. At some point I’ll reply to the reply… -W]

Makes us look sane

UK teacher jailed over teddy row: “A British teacher has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.”

Tortoise joke

Found amongst some old papers.

You could have knocked me down with a feather

RP Sr sez: “We have shown in several studies that the downscaling of multi-year global model predictions by regional climate models is very strongly dependent on the lateral boundary conditions of the parent model”. Good grief, really? Well you’d hope so, wouldn’t you, since thats exactly what is supposed to happen.

It looks like rumours of RPs blog retirement have been greatly exaggerrated, though alas he is following in Pat Michaels footsteps by not allowing comments. And if you’re going to talk tosh like my quote from him above, thats a very good idea indeed.

And we all love pre-publication by “press release” don’t we?

I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis

From Instapundit via Quark soup.

Polar amplification, again

When I was a wee mustelid, I wrote about this; and there is an RC piece, and as far as I know, its all still valid.

But this post is aimed at those who put an “s” into poles in “What exactly is the mechanism that causes the poles to warm faster than the tropics as a result of climate change?” when they mean the real world, as opposed to a simplified or equilibrium one. Mind you, since the ar4 sez Models of the 21st century project that future warming is amplified at high latitudes resulting from positive feedbacks involving snow and sea ice, and other processes (10.3.3.1) you can hardly blame anyone else for being confused. Traditionally, the IPCC doesn’t pay much attention to Antarctica, and we help them by not publishing 🙂

Because, you see, there is only amplified warming at the North Pole; and this is what is predicted. I’m speaking now about the bulk of Antarctica, rather than just the excitingly overheating Peninsula. And by “predicted” I mean, comes out of climate models.

Physics Phun from CIP

Physics Phun from CIP

Hansen, again

Thaas outrageous, big Mammy refers. We had it as our journal club today, and the outcome was, no-one thought Hansen had done a convincing job.

The paper itself is confusing (“like being inside Hansens head”, as someone put it) and its not clear what its really supposed to be about. My pdf attempts to understand it. The only slide that won’t make sense is the last one; the 3-models-pic is number of AR4 models in the sresa1b scenario with sfc temperature in January above -5 oC. The conclusion of that (and other opinions in the room) is that substantial sfc albedo change is unlikely.

[Update: the original paper is here – thanks C -W]

[Update: there is some weirdness here about someone daring to reject Hansen for being 30 years out of date. But Phil Trans are not so bold -W]

[Update: He’s at it again]

Going down

Cruise ship sinking off Argentina says the BBC. And “Passengers and crew have been rescued off Argentina from a cruise liner, which began sinking after it hit ice. The M/S Explorer ran into trouble near King George Island in the Antarctic Ocean, near the South Shetland Islands. Andy Cattrell, of the UK’s Falmouth Coastguard, told the BBC about 100 passengers and 54 crew members have been evacuated and are in lifeboats.”

I hope “rescued” isn’t too optimistic… they are still a long way from civilisation in small lifeboats.

[Update: everyone is now xferred to another ship, it seems. And the ship is variously reported as “going to sink”, “listing 25 degrees” and “tilting 8 degrees” (a tilt is so much better than a list). But a pic from hampshire.net looks more like a list that a tilt :-). Meanwhile the hole in the hull varies from “fist sized” up to “10cm by 25cm”]

Sock it to ’em

A letter from the naughty coal people, and Hansens uncompromising reply, is at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/NMAletters_20071121.pdf. I’ve been a bit critical of Hansen for over-egging the science sometimes, but exchanges like this are good to remind you of where you stand.

[Update: A partial apology here but suitably mixed into another attack on the coal CEO -W]