Climate Change - The Scientific Debate

[plunker]

clyffepypard said:

plunker said:

So basically there's too much uncertainty in the obs to say for sure one way or the other, and we're very surprised the MSM hasn't trumpeted this highly interesting scientific non-result.

Edited by plunker on Tuesday 23 December 12:19

Ah, so the uncertainly ate the warming. Pull the other one, its got bells on it.
We all know that if the climate alarmists had found a warming trend in the Troposphere, they would have been shouting loud about it in press releases, conveniently ignoring any uncertainty in the measurements. But what we actually see are lame excusses for why they cannot find what was supposed to be the strongest "signal" predicted by AGW theory.

Ah the bad-faith game. I can do that too.

So-called sceptics become firm data-believers when it comes to the hotspot - of course.

[chris watton]

plunker said:

chris watton said:

I always thought it was due to how the earth's axis tilts every ten thousand years or so - continental drift takes a hell of a lot longer, geologically speaking.

If that is true, then way do you lie?

Edited by chris watton on Wednesday 24th December 09:48

The ice age we're in began 2-3 million years ago. You're thinking of Milankovitch cycles which lead to warmer periods within the ice age (so called inter-glacial periods) but those warmer spells are still 'ice age' because the polar ice caps remain.

That's it, the Milankovitch cycles. AIUI, we're more likely to be plunged into another cold period during the thousand years or so (but places like the Sahara will become lush grasslands again)

The continental drift you mentioned sent the whole planet into an ice age for a long time as the closing/opening of the continents stopped the warm water travelling around the oceans, or something like that, 'Snowball Earth'?

[plunker]

chris watton said:

That's it, the Milankovitch cycles. AIUI, we're more likely to be plunged into another cold period during the thousand years or so (but places like the Sahara will become lush grasslands again)

The continental drift you mentioned sent the whole planet into an ice age for a long time as the closing/opening of the continents stopped the warm water travelling around the oceans, or something like that, 'Snowball Earth'?

Yes polar heat transport via the oceans curtailed - something like that. 'Snowball Earth' is something different though and refers to a time early in the earth's history before life got going.

[Variomatic]

plunker said:

Yes your post was a tangent and nothing whatsoever to do with the tropespherical hotspot paper.

No more so than Hairy's little dig-post post that I was replying to. The tangent was simply giving an exampple of why his post was inaccurate.

Or is one of the rules of the game that you have to let AGW supporters slip in OT digs without challenge, while remaining entirely on topic yourself?

[Variomatic]

hairykrishna said:

Why don't you check? You found it and seem to think it's important. My first thought is that, given that pH was only defined in 1909, the measurements at the start of his graph probably aren't very reliable. In fact it may be that we only have a reliable instrumental record for the past 30 years or so.

Maybe I'm wrong and he should get his submission to Nature in asap.

Maybe, except your first thoughts create some problems:

(1) Even assuming measurement errors of +/- 0.1 pH units at the start of that record, which is generous, the "worst" trend over the period is still not as negative as the feel2899 curve, so (again) the model doesn't match the observations.

(2) If you wish to discount everytying except "reliable instrumental records" then you have to do the same for temperature - which completely screws 100% of the evidence for recent warming being historically unusual. Your call on that one....

(3) Regardless of any protestations you might make, it's very well established that the chance of getting seriously conflicting papers published in the main journals is virtually zero unless it's easily rebuttable. Any impartial observer would conclude that by now.

In fact, even I was mildy warmist until it started becoming clear just how unreliable reliance on "the scientific record" is in this field because of one-sided publication policies. Thta's what prompted me to start looking at the stuff that didn't get "published and rebutted" - sometimes with the rebuttal appearing so fast that it must have been written before release of the original paper!

[plunker]

Variomatic said:

plunker said:

Yes your post was a tangent and nothing whatsoever to do with the tropespherical hotspot paper.

No more so than Hairy's little dig-post post that I was replying to. The tangent was simply giving an exampple of why his post was inaccurate.

Or is one of the rules of the game that you have to let AGW supporters slip in OT digs without challenge, while remaining entirely on topic yourself?

HK's post was quite accurate - scientific results aren't normally announced by trumpet. That you know of papers that did receive a fanfare in the MSM (as some do of course - stating the bleedin' obvious) doesn't invalidate that.

[plunker]

Some selected new climate-related research papers released in November 2014:


Surface warming hiatus caused by increased heat uptake across multiple ocean basins [ABSTRACT]

Summertime land–sea thermal contrast and atmospheric circulation over East Asia in a warming climate—Part II: Importance of CO2-induced continental warming (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Measuring persistence in time series of temperature anomalies [ABSTRACT]

HadISDH land surface multi-variable humidity and temperature record for climate monitoring (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Abrupt termination of the 2012 Pacific warming and its implication on ENSO prediction (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Antarctic bottom water temperature changes in the western South Atlantic from 1989-2014 [ABSTRACT]

Recalibration and Merging of SSU Observations for Stratospheric Temperature Trend Studies [ABSTRACT]

Observed groundwater temperature response to recent climate change (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Trends in hemispheric warm and cold anomalies [ABSTRACT]

Arctic temperature trends from the early nineteenth century to the present [ABSTRACT]

Tropical Temperature Trends in AMIP Simulations and the Impact of SST Uncertainties [ABSTRACT]

Climate variations in northern Xinjiang of China over the past 50 years under global warming [ABSTRACT]

Interannual variations and trends in surface air temperature in Finland in relation to atmospheric circulation patterns, 1961–2011 [ABSTRACT]

Temperature changes in the North-Western Italian Alps from 1961 to 2010 [ABSTRACT]

Spatiotemporal characterization of land surface temperature in Mount Kilimanjaro using satellite data [ABSTRACT]

Early-nineteenth-century southern African precipitation reconstructions from ships’ logbooks [ABSTRACT]

Climate change in Argentina: trends, projections, impacts and adaptation [ABSTRACT]

Variability of surface air temperature in Tampico, northeastern Mexico [ABSTRACT]

Trends in Daily Temperature and Precipitation Extremes for the Southeastern United States: 1948-2012 [ABSTRACT]

Rising air and stream-water temperatures in Chesapeake Bay region, USA [ABSTRACT]

Why Logarithmic? A Note on the Dependence of Radiative Forcing on Gas Concentration [ABSTRACT]

Earth’s Climate Sensitivity: Apparent Inconsistencies in Recent Assessments (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Has Coarse Ocean Resolution Biased Simulations of Transient Climate Sensitivity? [ABSTRACT]

The Community Earth System Model (CESM) Large Ensemble Project: A Community Resource for Studying Climate Change in the Presence of Internal Climate Variability [ABSTRACT]

Global climate models’ bias in surface temperature trends and variability [ABSTRACT]

The dependence of radiative forcing and feedback on evolving patterns of surface temperature change in climate models [ABSTRACT]

The spectral dimension of longwave feedbacks in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 experiments [ABSTRACT]

Where and when will we observe cloud changes due to climate warming? [ABSTRACT]

A satellite view of the radiative impact of clouds on surface downward fluxes in the Tibetan Plateau [ABSTRACT]

Aerosol indirect effects on continental low-level clouds over Sweden and Finland (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Effect of ions on the measurement of sulfuric acid in the CLOUD experiment at CERN (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Climate coupling between temperature, humidity, precipitation and cloud cover over the Canadian Prairies [ABSTRACT]

Uncertainty in the magnitude of aerosol-cloud radiative forcing over recent decades [ABSTRACT]

Role of snow-albedo feedback in higher elevation warming over the Himalayas, Tibetan Plateau and Central Asia (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Solar heating of the Arctic Ocean in the context of ice-albedo feedback [ABSTRACT]

Assessment of sea-ice albedo radiative forcing and feedback over the Northern Hemisphere from 1982 to 2009 using satellite and reanalysis data [ABSTRACT]

Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Variability of tornado climatology across the continental United States [ABSTRACT]

Eastern Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency from 1851–1898 is comparable to satellite era frequency (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Extratropical cyclones in a warmer, moister climate: A recent Atlantic analogue [ABSTRACT]

The Effect of Urbanisation on The Climatology of Thunderstorm Initiation [ABSTRACT]

Warmer and wetter winters: characteristics and implications of an extreme weather event in the High Arctic (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Heavy precipitation events over the Euro-Mediterranean region in a warmer climate: results from CMIP5 models [ABSTRACT]

Models agree on forced response pattern of precipitation and temperature extremes [ABSTRACT]

A multi-model comparison of Atlantic multidecadal variability [ABSTRACT]

Southward displacement of the upper atmosphere zonal Jet in the eastern north Pacific due to global warming [ABSTRACT]

Variations of stratospheric water vapor over the past three decades [ABSTRACT]

Modeling the climate impact of Southern Hemisphere ozone depletion: The importance of the ozone dataset [ABSTRACT]

Aerosol effects on global land surface energy fluxes during 2003-2010 [ABSTRACT]

Total volcanic stratospheric aerosol optical depths and implications for global climate change [ABSTRACT]

On the role of plant volatiles in anthropogenic global climate change [ABSTRACT]

CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS

The impacts of climate change across the globe: A multi-sectoral assessment (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Sustained high basal motion of the Greenland ice sheet revealed by borehole deformation [ABSTRACT]

Detailed ice loss pattern in the northern Antarctic Peninsula: widespread decline driven by ice front retreats (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Climate variability and Alpine glaciers evolution in Northwestern Italy from the Little Ice Age to the 2010s [ABSTRACT]

Satellite-derived volume loss rates and glacier speeds for the Juneau Icefield, Alaska [ABSTRACT]

Global Sea Ice Coverage from Satellite Data: Annual Cycle and 35-Year Trends [ABSTRACT]

Trend and Inter-Annual Variability in Southeast Greenland Sea Ice: Impacts on Coastal Greenland Climate Variability [ABSTRACT]

Snowmelt onset over Arctic sea ice from passive microwave satellite data: 1979–2012 (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Assessment of radar-derived snow depth over Arctic sea ice [ABSTRACT]

New perspectives on observed and simulated late Antarctic sea ice extent trends using optimal fingerprinting techniques [ABSTRACT]

Antarctic ocean and sea ice response to ozone depletion: a two timescale problem [ABSTRACT]

Thick and deformed Antarctic sea ice mapped with autonomous underwater vehicles [ABSTRACT]

Anthropogenic influence on recent circulation-driven Antarctic sea-ice changes [ABSTRACT]

A mechanism for lack of sea ice reversibility in the Southern Ocean [ABSTRACT]

Plant growth enhancement by elevated CO2 eliminated by joint water and nitrogen limitation [ABSTRACT]

Detection and attribution of vegetation greening trend in China over the last 30 years [ABSTRACT]

Ground and satellite based evidence of the biophysical mechanisms behind the greening Sahel [ABSTRACT]

Phenological responses to climate change do not exhibit phylogenetic signal in a subalpine plant community [ABSTRACT]

Alteration of the phenology of leaf senescence and fall in winter deciduous species by climate change: effects on nutrient proficiency [ABSTRACT]

Climate warming increases biological control agent impact on a non-target species (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Not just about sunburn – the ozone hole’s profound effect on climate has significant implications for Southern Hemisphere ecosystems [ABSTRACT]

Extreme weather event in spring 2013 delayed breeding time of Great Tit and Blue Tit (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Fungi in a changing world: growth rates will be elevated, but spore production may decrease in future climates [ABSTRACT]

Rapid assessment of fisheries species sensitivity to climate change [ABSTRACT]

Consistent global responses of marine ecosystems to future climate change across the IPCC AR5 earth system models [ABSTRACT]

Evaluating the economic damage of climate change on global coral reefs [ABSTRACT]

Interactive effects of ocean acidification and rising sea temperatures alter predation rate and predator selectivity in reef fish communities [ABSTRACT]

Ocean acidification in eastern equatorial Indian Ocean (1962-2012) (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Multimodel analysis on the response of the AMOC under an increase of radiative forcing and its symmetrical reversal [ABSTRACT]

Changes in extreme regional sea surface height due to an abrupt weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Uncertainty in 21st century CMIP5 sea level projections [ABSTRACT]

Earliest local emergence of forced dynamic and steric sea-level trends in climate models (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Changes in the North Pacific wave climate since the mid-1990s [ABSTRACT]

Detection and attribution of climate change signal in ocean wind waves [ABSTRACT]

Contemporary Ocean Warming Dissociates Cascadia Margin Gas Hydrates [ABSTRACT]

Climate change and dead zones [ABSTRACT]

Inherited hypoxia: A new challenge for reoligotrophicated lakes under global warming [ABSTRACT]

The use of changes in small coastal Atlantic brooks in southwestern Europe as indicators of anthropogenic and climatic impacts over the last 400 years [ABSTRACT]

Climate change and the impact of extreme temperatures on aviation [ABSTRACT]

Investigating high mortality during the cold season: mapping mean weather patterns of temperature and pressure [ABSTRACT]

CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION

Dominance of the Southern Ocean in anthropogenic carbon and heat uptake in CMIP5 models [ABSTRACT]

Carbon stock loss from deforestation through 2013 in Brazilian Amazonia [ABSTRACT]

A downward CO2 flux seems to have nowhere to go (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Nitrogen feedbacks increase future terrestrial ecosystem carbon uptake in an individual-based dynamic vegetation model (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Forecasting global atmospheric CO2 (open access) [ABSTRACT]

CH4 and N2O emissions embodied in international trade of meat (open access) [ABSTRACT]

A sustainable “building block”?: The paradoxical effects of thermal efficiency on U.S. power plants’ CO2 emissions [ABSTRACT]

Key factors for assessing climate benefits of natural gas versus coal electricity generation [ABSTRACT]

Assessing climate change impacts on European wind energy from ENSEMBLES high-resolution climate projections [ABSTRACT]

Emerging policy perspectives on geoengineering: An international comparison (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Counteracting the climate effects of volcanic eruptions using short-lived greenhouse gases [ABSTRACT]

Confronting the Food–Energy–Environment Trilemma: Global Land Use in the Long Run [ABSTRACT]

A critical examination of the consumption-based accounting approach: has the blaming of consumers gone too far? [ABSTRACT]

Representations of the future in English language blogs on climate change [ABSTRACT]

Conspiratory fascination versus public interest: the case of ‘climategate’ (open access) [ABSTRACT]

International trends in public perceptions of climate change over the past quarter century (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Politics eclipses climate extremes for climate change perceptions [ABSTRACT]

Citizen acceptance of new fossil fuel infrastructure: Value theory and Canada׳s Northern Gateway Pipeline [ABSTRACT]

Agricultural Advisors as Climate Information Intermediaries: Exploring Differences in Capacity to Communicate Climate [ABSTRACT]

Potential effects of climate change on global security [ABSTRACT]

Tools and strategies for climate change decision making [ABSTRACT]

When decision-making processes fail: an argument for robust climate adaptation planning in the face of uncertainty [ABSTRACT]

Adaptation strategies to climate change in the Arctic: a global patchwork of reactive community-scale initiatives [ABSTRACT]

PALAEOCLIMATE

On the bipolar origin of Heinrich events [ABSTRACT]

Correlation between solar activity and the local temperature of Antarctica during the past 11,000 years [ABSTRACT]

Pliocene switch in orbital-scale carbon cycle/climate dynamics [ABSTRACT]

OTHERS

Glacier-like forms on Mars (open access) [ABSTRACT]

Episodic warming of early Mars by punctuated volcanism [ABSTRACT]

https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/

[Terminator X]

chris watton said:

I thought that, geologically speaking, we are still in, or coming out of the last Ice Age, that's why we still have glaciers on mountains and ice at the North and South Poles, to name but a couple of places? There have been many periods in Earth's history when there's been no ice at all!

Edited by chris watton on Tuesday 23 December 22:47

Before the intervention of mankind?! Heretic

TX.

[hairykrishna]

Variomatic said:

(1) Even assuming measurement errors of +/- 0.1 pH units at the start of that record, which is generous, the "worst" trend over the period is still not as negative as the feel2899 curve, so (again) the model doesn't match the observations.

I don't know what the measurement error on pre 1930's pH measurements is, but even if the measured pH vales themselves were perfect the potential for error is much larger than that. He is producing his trend by using a handful of measurements from few (one?) locations at some time points and an average of many widely dispersed measurements at others. This is likely to produce nonsensical results. pH near a large fresh water outflow, for example, can be a full point or more lower than is typical for ocean water. To do a meaningful trend for pH you need measurements taken in exactly the same location, in the same conditions, over time. As far as I'm aware these types of measurements have only been done for a few decades. Proxies have to be used before then.

[plunker]

Terminator X said:

chris watton said:

I thought that, geologically speaking, we are still in, or coming out of the last Ice Age, that's why we still have glaciers on mountains and ice at the North and South Poles, to name but a couple of places? There have been many periods in Earth's history when there's been no ice at all!

Edited by chris watton on Tuesday 23 December 22:47

Before the intervention of mankind?! Heretic

TX.

Before man, but not without greenhouse gases:

Continental weathering on a global scale influences ocean chemistry and imposes a net drawdown of atmospheric CO2 that modulates global climate (Walker et al., 1981; Berner et al., 1983). This observation, in addition to seawater Sr records that suggest an increase in continental weathering after ca. 40 Ma, led researchers to suggest that the uplift and erosion of the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen over the past 40 m.y. has drawn down atmospheric CO2 and cooled the globe, leading to the glacial climate that persists today (e.g., Raymo and Ruddiman, 1992; Edmond, 1992). Modeling of tectonic-climate feedbacks associated with increased weathering of the Himalaya and Tibet suggests that two primary biogeochemical processes, silicate weathering and organic carbon burial, can account for the lowering of atmospheric CO2 necessary to force global cooling (Raymo et al., 1988; Zachos and Kump, 2005). At the time of these inferences, accurate records of both atmospheric pCO2 and the surface uplift history of the Himalaya and Tibet were lacking. Now, in light of a growing body of atmospheric pCO2 reconstructions and paleoelevation records, we can test the theory that increased weathering associated with growing mountain belts leads to the drawdown of atmospheric CO2 and global cooling.

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/36/12/1003.full

[Variomatic]

hairykrishna said:

To do a meaningful trend for pH you need measurements taken in exactly the same location, in the same conditions, over time.

Well done, you've just invalidated the entire global temperature record by insisting on that because there are only a handful of station records that will meet those criteria for anything more than 30 or 40 years.

Or is objective scientific measurement of temperature somehow magically different from objective scientific measurement of pH as long as the narrative is maintained?

[CR6ZZ]

Variomatic said:

hairykrishna said:

To do a meaningful trend for pH you need measurements taken in exactly the same location, in the same conditions, over time.

Well done, you've just invalidated the entire global temperature record by insisting on that because there are only a handful of station records that will meet those criteria for anything more than 30 or 40 years.

Or is objective scientific measurement of temperature somehow magically different from objective scientific measurement of pH as long as the narrative is maintained?

No he hasn't. You are comparing apples to oranges. Temperature measurement is completely different. It has been done quite accurately from a large number of fixed points for many, many decades. Hairy is quite correct. Wallace fails to say where, how, what depth etc. his pH measurements were collected. His three outliers pre 1950 will have a huge bearing on his trend. Accurate CTD data has only been available since 1961. Drifting buoy data since 1985. If Wallace is so confident of his trend I'd like to see error bars on the data.

[Variomatic]

CR6ZZ said:

No he hasn't. You are comparing apples to oranges. Temperature measurement is completely different. It has been done quite accurately from a large number of fixed points for many, many decades.

There are very few long-term temperature records from "the same place uder the same conditions", which is what he was requiring.

Every station move (however it may be "adjusted" for), every change of instrumentation, every year's worth of weathering on instrument housings, every new airconditioning unit installed to blow exhaust onto the sensors, every increase (or decrease) in flights at an airport, all of those and more invalidate his conditions.

So no, by the rules he set, I'm comparing apples with apples and saying that, by those rules, if one batch is rotten then so is the other.

[hairykrishna]

Variomatic said:

Well done, you've just invalidated the entire global temperature record by insisting on that because there are only a handful of station records that will meet those criteria for anything more than 30 or 40 years.

Or is objective scientific measurement of temperature somehow magically different from objective scientific measurement of pH as long as the narrative is maintained?

You seem to miss my point entirely. To construct the instrumental record they trend regions and combine. Luckily thanks to the fact that reasonably consistent temperature measurements have been made all over the place since 1850 we have plenty of trends from different places to work with.

What he's done is analogous to taking the central England temperature series from the 1600's, comparing it to the modern day global average and declaring a trend. Only it's worse than that because he doesn't even have a regularly measured early series, he just has one off measurements. That's why nobody tries to use it to make trends until the era of reliable fixed measurement stations.

[Variomatic]

hairykrishna said:

You seem to miss my point entirely. To construct the instrumental record they trend regions and combine. Luckily thanks to the fact that reasonably consistent temperature measurements have been made all over the place since 1850 we have plenty of trends from different places to work with.

What he's done is analogous to taking the central England temperature series from the 1600's, comparing it to the modern day global average and declaring a trend. Only it's worse than that because he doesn't even have a regularly measured early series, he just has one off measurements. That's why nobody tries to use it to make trends until the era of reliable fixed measurement stations.

No, I hadn't missed your point at all. But I notice you've now gone from "exactly the same place and conditions" to "reasonably consistent". Given that those two are entirely different scenarios, it's no wonder you AGW lot have such problems with the concept of error bars!

Happy Christmas

[rovermorris999]

The Team seem to be busy at the moment. Must be getting worried that the data aren't playing ball.

[Variomatic]

hairykrishna said:

My first thought is that, given that pH was only defined in 1909, the measurements at the start of his graph probably aren't very reliable. In fact it may be that we only have a reliable instrumental record for the past 30 years or so.

An interesting point has been raised elsewhere about this.

There's an article on the NOAA website regarding ocean pH which includes a graph back to 1850:

www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/PDF/feel2899/feel2899.pdf

It bears the title "Historical and projected pH and dissolved CO2" and depicts pH as following a more-or-less reciprocal curve to the increase of CO2.

Tis is essentially the information that was presented by onr of the authors, Dr Richard Feely, to the US Congress on 17 Nov 2010:

http://www.legislative.noaa.gov/Testimony/111testi...


Now, apparently because the historic data is of insufficient quality (which I believe is your contention), they use modelled pH for periods before 1989. But that raises a problem. I'm not sure how well you understand computer modelling but, if you can't immediately see the problem, then I guess nt very well. So let me summarise - a significant part of my degree was computer modelling btw but I'll try to keep it simple:

A computer model of the sort used for climate essentially consists of a set of equations with input values, parameters that can be "tuned" and output results. the results are often fed back as input for the next iteration to provide a time series of results.

To build such a model you first need to work out a "believable" set of equations - ones that seem to make sense according to known physics / chemistry / whatever. You can the alter various parameters to "train" the model to match known observational data.

So, for example, you could adjust your ocean pH model so that it accurately follows the measurements from 1989 to the present. But that is NOT enough.

Having tuned it, you absolutely, catagorically, and without any exceptions MUST test (or "validate") it against "out of sample" data before allowing its results any credibility whatsoever. That means that you have to run the model and compare it to observational data from outside the sample period - in this case from either before 1989 or after the present.

Until a model has been successfully validated in tis way it is of absolutely no scientific use. That requirement to validate models is not negotiable in any scientific or engineering discipline, never has been, and never will be.

Data from after the present (obviously) isn't available yet, which means that any validation of the model used for that article (and for the testimony before Congress) can only have been done against the historical data before 1989.

But the authors say that the historical data is too unreliable to use, wich is why the discarded it and used the model instead. Which means that data can't possibly be used to validate the model because it's bad data. On the other hand, if it is reliable enough to use, then it contradicts the model and invalidates it.

Which means that the model is either not validated (and so can't be used in any meaningful way) or just plain wrong if your contention is correct.

[plunker]

Variomatic, that would be a valid argument so long as this

Variomatic said:

So, for example, you could adjust your ocean pH model so that it accurately follows the measurements from 1989 to the present.

is what happened.

Maybe they built a model based on known physics/chemistry whatever and used the obs from 1989-present to validate it?

I've read the posts on WUWT and as usual whenever the carbon cycle is the subject Ferdinand Engelbeen shows up and provides some level-headed input. It looks like a puffed up non-story to me.

[Variomatic]

The problem is that ocean pH isn't just a matter for well established theoretical chemistry. The buffering (chemical AND biological) is immensely complex and, given how little of the world's oceans we've explored to any extend, almost certainly will involve processes that we're not aware of. Even the exact proportions of various rock types across the ocean floors will affect it, and we simply don't know those proportions exactly.

Which means that any theoretical model must have been tuned to observations, even if it's only by allowing a little more limestone here, a little more basalt there, and a few extra giant squid somewhere else.

Bear in mind that tuning need not have been done by the authors in question - if they've used or modified an existing model which has any parameter set by empirical comparison to r/l ocean data then the final model has still relied on tuning to that data and cannot then be verified against the same data.

If the pre-1989 data is considered unreliable then the only way around that would be to take the data since then, split it into two periods, tune to one and validate against the other. But that raises another problem.

From 1989 to present is only 25 years, in a field where the AGW camp repeatedly insist that conclusions can't be drawn from time series shorter than 30 years. By the tmie you split the available data into training and validation samples, you have maybe 12 years for each.

By their own repeated (and often vociferous) protestations, no climate scientist would ever consider relying on 12 years of data in any other aspect of climate, so why would this be any different except in order to maintain the narrative?

Edited by Variomatic on Saturday 27th December 14:48

[plunker]

Variomatic said:

The problem is that ocean pH isn't just a matter for well established theoretical chemistry. The buffering (chemical AND biological) is immensely complex and, given how little of the world's oceans we've explored to any extend, almost certainly will involve processes that we're not aware of. Which means that any theoretical model must have been tuned to observations.

Bear in mind that tuning need not have been done by the authors in question - if they've used or modified an existing model which has any parameter set by empirical comparison to r/l ocean data then the final model has still relied on tuning to that data and cannot then be verified against te same data.

If the pre-1989 data is considered unreliable then the only way around that would be to take the data since then, split it into two periods, tune to one and validate against the other. But that raises another problem.

From 1989 to present is only 25 years, in a field where the AGW camp repeatedly insist that conclusions can't be drawn from time series shorter than 30 years. By the tmie you split the available data into training and validation samples, you have maybe 12 years for each.

By their own repeated (and often vociferous) protestations, no climate scientist would ever consider relying on 12 years of data in any other aspect of climate, so why would this be any different except in order to maintain the narrative?

This isn't really 'climate' science at all is it.

Is that what they did then - split it into two periods?

Btw you expressed concern about the public being misled by science reporting in the MSM and suggested this 'pHraud' story is the kind of thing they should be reporting on - how's that working for you now in light of the main fraud allegation being based on a graph that uses data that is in all likelihood unfit for purpose and the story is now being echoed around the internets?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=What+if+Obama%E2...