I found today’s Dilbert comically relevant to some of the discussions you have here about temperature data. I can’t seem to link to the specific strip, but for today, http://www.dilbert.com has it on the front page.

Description (basic). Duration (of cycle). Variance (how hot? how cold? local or worldwide?). Currency (where are we in the cycle?). History (“the record”).

You’d be surprised how hard it is to nail down some of this most basic data from the various articles. One would almost think they don’t actually know and are trying to sound as if they had answered the basic questions while not doing anything of the sort.

HOW warm? HOW cool? Ids it a local or worldwide scale on the left side of the ^%$& graph? Put a LABEL on it. already! I don’t care about the ^%$&* pressure, how does it affect TEMPERATURES? Sheesh!

I am boiling it down to filecard form. Short, sweet, concise. (One of several papers I am working on.)

The Old Man remains New Hampshire’s state symbol and will for the indefinite future. California’s symbol includes an extinct bear, so I expect he’ll be around for decades to come.

Pierre, did you check out the link to http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/oldman.php ? It has the best description of what happened and a combination before/after image. Basically the entire weight was borne by a small contact region at the base of his chin. That slipped or broke and all five blocks fell. Falling in spring after another season of freeze/thaw cycles is what I expected. No one has suggested that climate change did him in, though my wife wrote a letter to the newspaper suggesting that recent election wins by the Democrats led the Old Man to jump.

The fall happened during the night, and may have been heard by a couple campers. The morning started with Cannon Mountain in the clouds so it was mid morning before people realized what happened. As the news spread, a lot of people drove up to pay their respects, I was tempted to. No one knows when the profile first became visible, most people think he was around since the Ice Age, I would be surprised if it were more than a few hundred years, there’s a lot of rock in the talus pile at the base of the cliff and that’s all since the glaciers retreated.

Driving through Franconia Notch just isn’t the same any more.

REPLY: Yes they still use the data extrapolation for tehse areas…part fot eh reason GISS runs warmer than the other data sets.

You did a good reply to the question of “How does the information you are finding and generating square with a story such as this, noting continued thinning of arctic ice etc.?”

In addition, Joseph D’Aleo over at Icecap.us announces that on May 11th he will release a paper/analysis of how the PDO and AMO correlates to both Greenland and Arctic temperatures and helps to explain the decadal changes in ice cover.

I am looking forward to D’Aleo post because rapid ice melt in April has put current 2008 levels almost on par with 2007 levels. (As we probably all know, some waters are warmer than usual in negative phases of the PDO, and I wonder whether that could have an impact on Arctic ice.)

“How many careers were permanently damaged over the Global Cooling scare?”

None that I know of, however, the scale, scope, politics, and discussion of what to do about it were all much, much smaller than the current discussion. Sort of like the SC24 sunspots to date. A few books, a few articles in mainstream press, and that was in reaction to little problems like Ohio shutting down schools and industry because the Ohio River was frozen and coal barges were stuck.

There are a few political careers I think will get destroyed, some scientists may have to find other fields of science to try to rebuild their careers. I fear the biggest impact will be in the perception of science and scientists. David letterman will get a chuckle just for starting a joke with “Scientists announced today….” Other jokes will start with “A politician, a scientist, and a terrorist go into a bar…” It will be harder to get American students interested in science careers. So yeah, it will be a disaster, but not quite like the one the AGW community is warning about.

On the other hand, new opportunities will open up and those are much harder to forecast. Necessity is the mother of invention, and she may be busy.

http://www.trevoole.co.uk/Questioning_Climate/_sgg/m2m4_1.htm

A further implication is that most of the sea’s response to a change in air temperature (or infrared re-radiation from CO2) would be in the top layer of the sea water with slower mixing to greater depths. Since the top three meters of sea water have nearly the same heat capacity as the entire atmosphere, there should be a direct and rapid response in the near surface water to air temperature/infrared radiation.

First off, great article; I commented in support.

Steve McIntyre made a guest post here on the significance of the Y2K flap:

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/08/11/does-hansens-error-matter-guest-post-by-steve-mcintyre/

And in case you didn’t know, the Y2K error was discovered as a result of station survey made on this very site. Here is the story of how it happened.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/08/08/1998-no-longer-the-hottest-year-on-record-in-usa/

These links should fix you up with all the info you need.

Don’t count on it. Sylvia Browne is an example of one who hasn’t lost a step despite being constantly wrong. Those who believe and follow never let the facts get in the way.

How many careers were permanently damaged over the Global Cooling scare?

Al G. has made his own career of going whichever way the wind blows. During one of the preceding fuel crunches, it was Al who said in one of his books: “Everyone has a right to sufficient and inexpensive fuel.” Al hasn’t suffered the slightest for his about-faces.

“Off by orders of magnitude? Let’s see…

The mass of the atmosphere is 5.137 x 10 to the 18th kg.
The mass of the seas is 1.37 x 10 to the 21st kg.
Ratio of mass of sea to air is 267 to one.

The heat capacity of air is 1.005 kJ/kgK
The heat capacity of water is 4.184 kj/kgK
Ratio of heat capacity of water to air is 4.16 to one.

Hence the heat capacity of the seas is 1110 (4.16 x 267) times the heat capacity of the air. Or off by about 10% or one tenth order of magnitude.”

Let’s assume that these calculations are correct, for the sake of argument (although I couldn’t refute them under any conditions…). Conclusion: the sea tmperature would neither increase nor decrease quickly in response to changes in air temperature. But, given the increasing and constant energy input implied by the NASA/GISS reworked 2007 temperature chart above, we should still be able see some change in the sea temperature that could be interpreted as an increase.

This does not seem to be the case, if I correctly recall recently published findings from the Argo project launched in 2000. Didn’t these data show not only a lack of warming in the oceans over the past eight years, but a possible actual slight cooling? Thus, Argo data would be consistent with the flat trend shown by HadCRUT over that time, possibly accentuated by the striking drop in temperature recorded from January 2007 to January 2008.

I’m only a biologist, but data are data. Taking these as objectively as possible, I don’t see how NASA/GISS data could be treated in any other way but as an outlier, because 1) they don’t reflect possible ocean cooling, and 2) they appear seriously at varience with HadCRUT, RSS, and UAH.

Far worse–far, far worse is the almost unavoidable conclusion that they have been massaged, if the article in the Register presents the situation objectively – and it certainly makes an impressive case for doing so. If true, this is scientific malfeasance, a disgrace, and a scandal of the highest order.

Thanks, Anthony, for your great blog and for keeping us informed about what’s going on…

Thanks for the link to the article and all the valuable data I have gathered from your site.

I’m thinking about doing a follow up piece focused on the 2000 USHCN adjustments, which seems to be the primary basis of the shift in GISS data. I haven’t been able to find much information about this, and from searching Steve McIntyre’s site it doesn’t appear that he has been able to find much detailed information either.

If anyone has any information from USHCN about what they did and why in 2000, I would be very appreciative if they could pass it on.
stevesgoddard at gmail

I honestly don’t think that any of these agenda driven politicians will be a loss. After all their screaming it will be obvious for the voters, what they really are. If you have a “brilliant mind” with no common sense, you don’t get very far…

The mass of the atmosphere is 5.137 x 10 to the 18th kg.
The mass of the seas is 1.37 x 10 to the 21st kg.
Ratio of mass of sea to air is 267 to one.

The heat capacity of air is 1.005 kJ/kgK
The heat capacity of water is 4.184 kj/kgK
Ratio of heat capacity of water to air is 4.16 to one.

Hence the heat capacity of the seas is 1110 (4.16 x 267) times the heat capacity of the air. Or off by about 10% or one tenth order of magnitude.

Am I wrong?

It is a great shame.

old construction worker,
Yep I remember those predictions they said that the current la Nina would end in 2008 and serious warming would resume in 2009. I agree with the warmist in that they say that science is self correcting. I believe that it is currently correcting itself. I just hope that the science of the past 20 years hasn’t discredited itself so badly in the public eye that recovery of the science will be greatly diminished. We need good skeptical scientific study. We need to know what is happening, We need to know how it is happening, And most importantly we need to know how to adapt to what is happening. We might slightly change the rate of change but we will not be able to stop the change. For this reason we must learn to do what man has been doing for thousands of years. Adapt to the climate nature hands us to live in.

Bill Derryberry

PS. I do believe that there will be some prominent scientists and politicians that will be so discredited that their reputations may not recover. It would be a shame that brilliant minds would be wasted because of agenda driven bias. I really believe that this will happen. I just hope the sword doesn’t cut to deep.