FCH, I can’t follow the logic. If a ‘grand minimum’ lowers warming only slightly compared to increase from greenhouse gas, why would you ‘have to believe’ that the much smaller variation in solar forcing would explain so much of what’s happened?

I’m not sure I understand what it is that you’re not following.

The 90’s warmed significantly faster than the 00’s. I don’t think anyone can, or would — including the denialists — deny that. I also don’t think that anyone would deny — including the folks who run this blog — that we’re in the midst of the deepest solar minimum in over 100 years.

This has happened before in the recorded history of the solar cycle, and whenever there has been a grand minimum, the result has been cooling, of some sort. That’s a bit more controversial of a statement. But what can’t be denied, except perhaps “Correlation isn’t causation”, is that SC22 was a major cycle, and SC23 wasn’t all that weak.

My argument is that SC22 and SC23 =are= responsible for some amount of amplication of global temperature change, just as the wind down from SC23, and the anemic start of SC24 is responsible for no new HadCRUT record in over a decade. If my argument is correct, we’ll see a new HadCRUT record as SC24 gets up to whatever level is needed for that to happen.

The reason why a an accelerating translation of a dipole would not involve emission (even though it could be modelled as a series of pulsed dipoles) must be something else. Of course, molecular collisions involve particles rebounding off each other’s fields, so their is transfer of momentum and energy via the fields there, but a single particle’s translational energy depends on frame of reference and so would the sign of energy gain for the same acceleration … … and a bunch of other stuff I probably don’t know.

is not the sort of scientist where new revelations in science come from.

Excelent article GavinEric and Simon. Comprehensive and very readable. Perfect for a couple of my friends who are interested in the science and who are beginning to relize that the denialist position is mostly bluster and noise.

Thanks John for the heads up about the purchasable pdf being an edited version. I would have purchased and printed several copies and then been very peeved. I’ll set to work copying and pasting the online version into a word doc.

“The 2005 drought sharply reversed decades of carbon absorption, in which Amazonia helped slow climate change.

In normal years the forest absorbs nearly 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. The drought caused a loss of more than 3 billion tonnes. The total impact of the drought – 5 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – exceeds the annual emissions of Europe and Japan combined.”

And relevant here:

“Visually, most of the forest appeared little affected, but our records prove tree death rates accelerated. Because the region is so vast, even small ecological effects can scale-up to a large impact on the planet’s carbon cycle,” explained Professor Phillips.”

And

“But in 2005 this process was reversed. Tree death accelerated most where drought was strongest, and locations subject even to mild drying were affected. Because of the study, we now know the precise sensitivity of the Amazon to warming and drought.

If repeated, Amazon droughts will accelerate climate warming and make future droughts even more damaging.”

I agree with Hank that this study focuses on the response of the canopy during the drought. Phillips et al. have clearly noted that while visually all may seem well with the Canopy during the drought, that is in fact not the case.

Quoted text from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090305141625.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJwayalLpYY

Do you think that Rowell and Moore’s “slight reduction” was intended to include a reduction during one calendar quarter of one year? Wouldn’t that be considered natural variation in precipitation?

I know this is complicated and there is a lot of field work going on, and that one question is whether the vegetation is getting most of its moisture from groundwater or from rainfall on leaves directly absorbed.

With a temperate-zone experience, I’ve tended to equate a change in precipitation with a change in groundwater availability–which might not change much with due to a change in rainfall in one calendar quarter.

Serious question, I don’t know most of the details about rainfall and plants in the area. I’d actually thought the article was more about the satellite sensors, data, and analysis at this point and was expecting some ‘ground truth’ information later on to tie the color change in the pictures to the actual changes on the ground.

Congratulations for actually doing the work, unlike many. You might even have spotted something important (the correlation distance; do you know some geostatistics?). But you’ll need to watch those sweeping statements (and confirmation bias?) if you want to be taken seriously.

The bottom line is that there simply is no avoiding the conclusion that the IPCC’s claimed 1.7 or 1.8 mm/year rate of MSL increase exaggerates the true global average rate of sea level increase by at least 50%.

No. What you actually found is that IPCC’s rate is inconsistent with your average of the NOAA tide gauge data. You found nothing about its consistency or otherwise with a “true global average”, which tide gauges cannot measure. (That is without model-based interpretation, which you disdain … rather foolishly, I think.)

And on your website:

The IPCC’s claim that “coastal tide gauge measurements confirm” an accelerating rate of MSL rise is nonsense.

Yes, you did find that; possibly correctly. But “nonsense” seems unnecessarily loaded.

The obvious conclusion is that anthropogenic CO2 does not appear to cause a significant increase in sea level.

Sweeping, unsupported and absurd. This greatly weakens your whole effort.

> … presumably based on estimated information
> … suspect … alleged …

You’ve been making up strawmen, pinning Tamino’s name to them, and attacking those, asking questions as though they hadn’t been answered in the thread:

were the forcings estimated/suspect/alleged? (No; links were provided)
“why start … at 1920″ (explained right above the chart; to get 20 years);
warming continues past 30 years (due to other forcings; links provided).

If you managed to ask an interesting question, you’d get some response from the scientists. So far you don’t seem to be getting it.