Comments on: How Warm Was May?

By: Brian Dodge

Brian Dodge — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 17:52:42 +0000

Tom Harris – if you’re having trouble calulating the answers to the question I asked, maybe you could get some help from a more mathematically savvy faculty member at one of those fine Ottowa-area universities.
The conversion from ice mass loss to sea level rise can be derive from Velicogna who showed “The combined contribution of Greenland and Antarctica to global sea level rise is accelerating at a rate of 56 ± 17 Gt/yr2 during April 2002–February 2009, which corresponds to an equivalent acceleration in sea level rise of 0.17 ± 0.05 mm/yr2 during this time” and “The F-test show that the improvement obtained with the quadratic fit is statistical significant at a very high confidence level.” doi:10.1029/2009GL040222
That was in 2009; a more accurate answer should include recent findings from http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/899.full – “We use satellite altimetry and gravity observations to show that a major portion of the region has, since 2009, destabilized. Ice mass loss of the marine-terminating glaciers has rapidly accelerated from close to balance in the 2000s to a sustained rate of –56 ± 8 gigatons per year, constituting a major fraction of Antarctica’s contribution to rising sea level. The widespread, simultaneous nature of the acceleration, in the absence of a persistent atmospheric forcing, points to an oceanic driving mechanism.”

By: Chris O'Neill

Chris O'Neill — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:11:46 +0000

When Skeptical Science gets around to incorporating the April and May figures

Skeptical Science has now updated the figures, and incorporated the new NOAA data as well, but the new adjusted GISTEMP does not show statistically significant global warming from October 1998 to May 2015. Just have to wait another month or 2.

By: Chris O'Neill

Chris O'Neill — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 16:47:59 +0000

May turned out to be, in the NASA GISS data set, less warm than expected.

Even though this is so, May continues the statistically significant global warming trend in GISTEMP since October 1998 that became apparent in April.

When Skeptical Science gets around to incorporating the April and May figures in its calculator: http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php , everyone will easily be able to see the statistically significant global warming in GISTEMP even with just data starting in 1998.

By: dean

dean — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 15:15:34 +0000

To brush off that staggeringly rapid increase with a “good grief” reveals more about Mr. Harris’ position than he might have cared to show.

Harris’ position was arrived at by his realizing that parroting the denialist line would be good for his bank account. It isn’t obvious that he has any real position on the science, or whether he even understands any of it.

By: Andrew Skolnick

Andrew Skolnick — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 15:02:52 +0000

In reply to Magma. Right-oh Magma. While Harris is no authority on climatology (despite his posturing), he certainly knows that this 1.3°C rise in such a short period is unprecedented and extremely worrying. But the majority of the public do not. A lot of these people still think the sun circles the earth and that during summer, the earth is closer to the sun and farther in winter. To them, a 1 degree increase in a century is nothing. These sheep are easy to shear for hucksters like Harris.

By: Magma

Magma — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 13:27:50 +0000

“Good grief. The whole range of the above graphs is about 1 degree C.” – Tom Harris

The increase from 1910 to 2015 is actually 1.3°C (and almost 1.4° in the second graph), a rise that is double the decrease from the mid-Holocene to the 18th century. To brush off that staggeringly rapid increase with a “good grief” reveals more about Mr. Harris’ position than he might have cared to show.

By: Robert Way

Robert Way — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 21:48:13 +0000

Tom Harris,
It is very easy to prove with ‘data’ that you’re incorrect in a number of ways. People even went out of their way to do so when you were exposed as teaching anti-science to undergraduate students.

As a person studying climate-related topics in the Ottawa-area it is appalling to think that someone with as poor an understanding of the climate system as you was given a chance to teach at one of our fine local universities.

I have very little tolerance for those who mislead students. You should be ashamed – not only for misrepresenting the science but for failing to be a role model for those in your classes.

By: Astrostevo

Astrostevo — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:35:08 +0000

~er!

By: Astrostevo

Astrostevo — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:26:55 +0000

@18. J Carter : Thanks. Yup. Uncoincidentally!

By: Obstreperous Applesauce

Obstreperous Applesauce — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:08:10 +0000

Since the burning globe is obviously not intended to be taken literally, it is hyperbole in the literary sense and perfectly apt given the context.

John Carter,
Harris is a known quantity here. Like many deniers, he is willfully ignorant. How self-aware he is (exactly) may be unknowable, but at some level he knows he’s full of it and is thinking that the ends justify the means. You can tell from how terse and slick he is in his use of sophistry. He is a professional propagandist. Read about him here:
http://www.desmogblog.com/tom-harris