NSIDC' s Dr. Walt Meier Answers 10 Questions

Well, excellent, but he ignores the present global cooling, as manifest in lower tropospheric temperatures via RSS and UAH, lower oceanic temperatures via Argos buoys, and dropping sea level via TOPEX/Jason. He also ignores the effect of a PDO in a cooling phase, and a hibernating sun.
The data is consistent with a new trend of increasing freezing in the Arctic Ocean as the globe cools. The tipping point from the melting trend to the freezing trend was last year, before the last winter’s tremendous ice maximum.
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Fair enough ; until AGW was stuck in I was following willingly the analysis of a scientist of the data infront of him.
It is becoming a belief mantra in the climate science community, me thinks. Like the standard “InshAllah” of Muslims ( God willing). Or “knock on wood”

Well. Increased snow cover last year, cooler temperatures, higher temperatures in the 1920’s and 1930’s, etc. are all discounted as regional or temporary, because of the fundamental belief that the earth is warming due to man-made causes.
Strip away the belief in universal global warming and the whole thing would fall like a house of cards.
The next few years will be interesting.
By the way, how does the ozone hole strengthen ocean currents around Antarctica as stated in the answer to question 7?

I’m not certain if Dr. Meier is going to be directly answering questions in the forum – but I would be happy to package up clear and concise questions/comments, and ask him if he wishes to respond.

It’s sophistry. It’s clever, plausible, answers to all the questions. It’s not open-minded about the possibility that there are other explanations besides AGW. I hate to think it, but it looks crooked, to me. Why cannot these climate scientists re-examine some assumptions.
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We need more like Dr Meier. Kudos to him for responding to Goddard, especially after Goddard misrepresented the NSIDC data in a piece described by Meier as :-
” the article consists almost entirely of misleading, irrelevant, or erroneous information about Arctic sea ice that add nothing to the understanding of the significant long-term decline that is being observed.”
One of a series of ‘sceptical’ pieces (of similar quality) published in that major academic journal ‘The Register’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/

I was pleased to read Dr. Meier’s mini-discussion of Antarctica: ” Antarctic is a continent surrounded on all sides by an ocean. Strong ocean currents and winds swirl around the continent. These act as a barrier to heat coming down from lower latitudes.”
This is, in mini-essence, the keystone of the Ice Age theory elucidated by John Imbrie in his fine book, Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery, 1986, Harvard University Press. The Ice Ages began roughly 2.5 million years ago when Antarctica drifted (tectonically) over the South Pole and broke away from South America. Since then the Earth has been subject to a deep cold interspersed with interglacial periods that coincide with Milankovich Cycles.
It is thought that continents over a pole induce ice ages. A previous ice age possibly occurred in the Permian Period around 250 mya. At that time southern Gondwana was the culprit continent. Between the Permian and the Late Miocene, there were no ice ages and global temperatures were much higher. For instance, fossil dogwoods, pines, larches, ginkos, beeches, and elms are found above the Arctic Circle, evidence of paleo boreal tropical forests during the Cretaceous Period about 75 mya.
Or so goes Imbrie’s theory. The implication is that Life On Earth, including gymnosperms, angiosperms, and all terrestrial animals, evolved in much warmer global climates than today. We live in an unusually cold epoch compared to the rest of the last 250 million years.
The paleo-botanical evidence seems to support Imbrie’s theory, at least in regard to paleo-climates. That evidence is summarized in one the greatest works (IMBO) of western science, Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic History of North American Vegetation, 1999, Oxford Univ. Press, by Alan Graham.
All of which is my way of pointing out that warmer is better. It’s the normative condition. If anthropoids have altered the climate and made the Earth warmer, good for us. We need to learn how to do that, because another 100,000-year-long glaciation is coming, and it would be best if we could mitigate that somehow.

@Steven Goddard
My question to Dr Meier would be :
The arctic ice cover in 2008 is higher than last year. If for the NSIDC, that “underscores accelerating decline” (its Sep 16, 2008 press release’s headline), what should the 2008 ice cover have been for a hypothetical title such as “underscores a possible recovery”).

The most disappointing thing is that scientists who acknowledge the A in AGW still ignore the point that Dr Pielke Snr keeps making. There are many things that the A’s are doing, particularly, changes in land use, that could be causing GW.

To Steven Goddard:
Please ask about hard permafrost area data.

Got to agree with Dr Meier’s penultimate paragraph; a good scientist is always sceptical.
However adding further to this a scientist (full stop) will always share his or her data and findings with other people. Until this happens climate science is actually climate pseudo-science and I will not trust anything that comes out of its practitioners.

Does anyone really expect anything other than the official green propoganda lines from the NSIDC?
Dr Meier has his job and career to worry about.
His answers are a MACK-truckload load of BS.
Ask him these 10 Qs when he’s retired.

I especially like the way Dr. Meier acknowledges that hyperbole exists (question 10), then indulges in a whack of it himself. In my also-biased opinion, that throws a grain of salt into virtually every other answer.
1. Evidence does not show a cyclic explanation because you don’t want it to. Nobody can, with any level of seriousness, compare records from the 20s and 30s to today’s observations.
2. As with 1., um, nope. I’m not buying what you’re selling.
3. “the effect of soot, while it may contribute in some way, cannot explain the dramatic rate of warming and melt seen in the Arctic seen over the past 30 years” — apparently Dr. Meier is unaware of a country called “China”, which has quite the reputation of not being exactly, how do I say it, “environmentally conscious”. I live in a winter climate, and am WELL aware of how little material it takes on snow to cause one area to melt faster than another. Hint: it’s not visible.
4. “Most importantly, the 2008 minimum reinforces the long-term declining trend that is not due to natural climate fluctuations” — by being higher than last year. I’m sorry, but you’ll never convince me that something higher than last year indicates a downward trend. Well, except my income, which is higher than last year but still buys me less.
5. Unfortunately, this simplistic explanation fails to account for ocean temperature variation, which could be affected by long or short term current changes, or volcanic vents, or any number of non-anthropogenic things. I’d be interested in seeing the documentation of this.
6. “This will eventually, over the coming centuries, lead to significant melting of the Greenland ice sheet and sea level rise with accompanying impacts on coastal regions” — if this was a court of law, which it isn’t, someone would be jumping up and yelling, “objection”. The correct phrase, as I believe Dr. Meier intended, is “If this continues for several more centuries, it would lead to…”
7. Hmmm… parsing that reply, it appears to say “we’d rather not look at an area that is cooling… but I’m sure others are, and I’m certain they must be very competent.”
8. Sorry, if I want this kind of non-answer, I know which other sites can provide them.
9. I’m not sure why we are supposed to buy this. Let me rephrase it: OUR theory is supported by this short-term variability, therefore YOUR observation must be invalid. As others have pointed out, a short term (yes, 30 years or 100 years is short term) warming trend is a reason to panic, but a 10 year cooling trend is short-term variability.
10… Nah, I don’t even want to get into this… if I need pontificating of this sort there are THOUSANDS of sites I can find it at.

I’m impressed by the level of ignorance in the replies to this post. Very few of the replies seems to appreciate that somebody from the other camp took the time to answer these 10 question. Kudos to Watts for posting this. The rest of you: behave.

Pure, unadulterated, company propaganda. The answers come of as stiff and very rehearsed. No mention of the effects caused by ocean currents, especially from the NE Atlantic?
When are they going to remove that ridiculous quote of Al Gore’s from their home page?

Behaviour mode/computer predictions – on
And the answers that were given were………….
Just firing up the Ignorance Meter…………tap, tap………hmmmmmm.
Anyway as you say, Dr Meier did answer.

To Steve Godard: The whole case of Dr. Meier is based on “the warming during the 1920s and 1930s was more regional in nature and focused on the Atlantic side of the Arctic (though there was warming in some other regions as well) and was most pronounced during winter. In contrast, the current warming is observed over almost the entire Arctic and is seen in all seasons. Another thing that is clear is that, the warming during the 1920s and 1930s was limited to the Arctic and lower latitude temperatures were not unusually warm.” At least the temperatures in continental USA (lower latitudes) during this period doesn’t support the view of Dr. Meier. Also, in Russia there where also documented exceptional high latitude seas free form ice exactly in the same period – 20′ and 30′. So, where are the data and the studies that support Dr.Meier’s claim?

Yes. It is good that he took the time to reply.
It is important that Goverenment organisations explain their work and the basis for their conclusions as they are to be used to influence public policy.
What we really need is for active journalists to pose tough questions and for the answers to be reported prominently, along with some comments along the lines of those in this blog.
Once more thank you Anthony for an always interesting and stimulating discussion page.
I hope that more Govt funded organisations take note of your influence.

Philip Bratby:”Please ask why we cannot have a graph that shows the extent of the ice for the whole year and why the average cannot be for 1979 to 2008 (or to the last complete year) instead of 1979 to (an arbitrary?) 2000.”
Thank you for asking the question that always bugs me.
Dr Meier: “The North Pole, being the location that last sees the sun rise and first sees the sun set, has the longest “polar night” and shortest “polar day.” Thus, it receives the least amount of solar radiation in the Arctic. So there is less energy and less time to melt ice at the pole. ”
Well, duuuuugh! Since he doesn’t mention the South Pole, is there a different cause there? Isn’t that “natural” or has the Earth been titled due to having so many more man made buildings in the northern hemisphere?
Dr Meier: ” For the first time in our records…”
That’s a great cop out line, kind of like saying “if 2 + 2 = 5, then …”
Dr Meier: ” There are increasing trends in Antarctic sea ice extent, but they are fairly small and there is so much variability in the Antarctic sea ice from year to year that is difficult to ascribe any significance to the trends – they could simply be an artifact of natural variability”
So, Arctic sea ice decline is caused by AGW which is global but Antarctic sea ice increase is caused by nature which is not global. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
Dr Meier: ” The significant changes in the Arctic are key pieces of evidence for global warming, but the observations from Arctic are complemented by evidence from around the world.”
Except the Antarctic.
This man could be a political speech writer, in fact, all his answers remind me of a political speech.

As Roger Carr did, I also began reading with hope which was dashed. Disappointing. Dr Meier is refreshing in his politeness, but all too formulaic in ascribing long-term climate change to AGW.
AGW goes unmentioned until his answer to question ten. After reviewing evidence with apparent objectivity in response to Anthony’s questions, he (suddenly) says this:

There is a clear human fingerprint, through greenhouse gas emissions, on the changing climate of the Arctic.

This conclusion is advanced without evidence of any kind, before or after, which makes it stand out rather from the surrounding material, like bright orange smoke against a blue sky. He does state that “more and more evidence has accumulated” yet still refrains from citing any for us.
His conclusion that global warming stems from Man’s greenhouse gas emissions is the only part of his otherwise credible contribution that I cannot accept. If only he gave us some reasons for doing so…
Cheers,
Richard Treadgold,
Convenor,
Climate Conversation Group.

“The remarkable thing was not whether the North Pole would be ice-free or not; it was that this year, for the first time in a long time it was possible. This does not bode well for the long-term health of the sea ice.”
As others have said, the emotional connection to the melting ice of one’s own lifetime is not exactly science. The Arctic ice has, for the most part, been melting and refreezing for a very long time — or else it would be a hundred meters thick! I’m willing to buy the idea that the recent melting is being exacerbated by fine particulates, in conjunction with warm ocean currents. It was notable a few weeks ago, when Arctic temperatures were already below freezing for days on end, that the ice continued to melt at a good clip.
That said, I would like scientists sure of the unique and terrifying warming of today to spend a calendar year in Greenland, living in the same type of dwellings used by the Vikings, managing sheep, and practicing agriculture as they did. That would be a reality show that I would buy TiVo for!
The sense one gets listening to the Meiers and Hansens and Hathaways of this world is that the fortress is on the verge of being over-run. They’re pushing back the ladders from the top of the walls, but you can see the fear in their eyes as the truth gets nearer.

We should thank Dr. Meier for his responses to the questions and realize that what he has written is a professional opinion and not a treatise on the subject of AWG. He could very well be wrong in his acceptance of the work of others (eg, Hanson’s models), but his own work forms the basis of his opinions. Subject what he says to the same scrutiny you would give to any other claim, but unless there is evidence, to impugn his motives is uncalled for.
Mike Dubrasich – the tectonic rise of the Central American isthmus 5-6MYA had a lot to do with the onset of glaciation as well. It caused major changes to the global ocean circulation patterns. Coupled with the opening of the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica, the way the Earth handled the energy balance was fundamentally altered. The uplift of the Himalayas and the Indian monsoon are other contributors, too. The Milankovich cycles (variations in orbital parameters of the Earth) regulate the ice ages (“pacemakers” Imbrie called them) by controlling insolation above 65 degrees N latitude. Imbrie was one of the leaders of the CLIMAP and SPECMAP projects that nailed this down in the 70s and 80s.

“AGW goes unmentioned until his answer to question ten. After reviewing evidence with apparent objectivity in response to Anthony’s questions, he (suddenly) says ….”
That last paragraph does have the air of standard cut-and-paste, press release boilerplate.

Re: John Philips
Are you still working for the UK Met Office?

I am puzzled why Dr Meier did not include any references to peer reviewed published papers to support his opinions. E.g. in answer to Q1. “The recent warming in the Arctic, though amplified there, is part of a global trend where temperatures are rising in most regions of the earth.”
I am not persuaded by that statement, especially in view of the articles available on WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=Are+global+temperatures+down
Nevertheless, our thanks are due to Dr Meier for his courtesy and it is devoutly to be wished that this important line of communication can be continued. The next months will reveal many more opportunities to revisit the subject of “AGW, true or false?”

Most of the explainations the good doctor offered have been out in some form at Real Climate for years. I have to give him an A+ for consistency. The explaination for the the divergence of surface temps between the NH and SH (the Ozone factor) is pure conjecture – it is model based. And none of the old newspaper articles from the 20s and 30s that I read explicitly mention Spitzbergen as the only source region of warming. The old Wash Post article from 1921 was fairly explicit mentioning the Artic Circle. But then again, Doctor Meier assumption of a regional temp variations of the 20s and 30s isn’t far off. It’s just that he is making an assumption. His certainty is at best 50/50. In that case, his explainations hold no more wieght than do ours. The only difference is we make our uncertainty evident.

Bill,
I simply don’t understand how data can lead to a conclusion when the size of the adjustment is larger than the amount needed to reach that conclusion. That’s me as a layman saying that. If the data is already in the right ball park, before and after adjustment, then fine. If the adjustment is what sways it one way or the other, then not fine.
Yes I get that there are times when data needs adjusting, but the point is, how can we really check and confirm that the adjustment is correct? Before we base something else on it?
On a related note, there seems to be this thing where scientists simply go forward with the evidence that they have. But why don’t scientists sit back and say, sure, all the evidence we have, on its own, points to warming… but, we have only surveyed 1% of the system, and no matter what we have so far, there must be 99% out there that is unknown and relevant.
Instead, scientists just seem to say, well, the bit of evidence we have says this, and that’s the end of the story, and we can just assume the rest will continue to confirm our theory, and we know enough already.
We seem to spend a lot of time talking about what we know, and yet it’s what we don’t know that really matters.
Is it simply that scientists are people paid to “know” stuff?

“That said, I would like scientists sure of the unique and terrifying warming of today to spend a calendar year in Greenland, living in the same type of dwellings used by the Vikings, managing sheep, and practicing agriculture as they did. That would be a reality show that I would buy TiVo for!”
I always thought that that would be a good lesson, at least from an anthropological point of view. The problem as I understand it is that the Norse in the Northwest Settlement had quite a bit more grazing land available to them back in the 11th and 12th centuries. Thier cattle and sheep grazed in pastures at least 10km inland. They also had schools of Cod not too far offshore to supplement thier diet (which is a good indication of how warm the SSTs were between Canada and Greenland). When the end came, it came quick (according Fagan). The Northwest settlement could have died out in under 5 years. The problem today is that those grazing pastures are now just beginning to re-emerge from 500 years of ice. I don’t think anyone today can replicate the harsh life-style the Norse were subjected to in the 12th century.

Phil. (05:40:07) The PDO also leads to cooler global temperatures, so you’d expect it to enhance freezing.
Your errors are of omission, not commission. You fool yourself to think you fool others.
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Walt (04:46:34) On the basis of van Loon’s prediction of a mild winter and a cold summer I’ll predict now that this winter’s Arctic ice maximum will not exceed last winter’s and that next summer’s melt will be even less than this year. I also believe the value of the Arctic ice as a proxy for global temperature will overwhelm the strong local effects on ice. I believe that because the temperature drop over the last year has been so dramatic.
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The arguement that previous warming was regional and the current warming is not is false.
Were we seeing similar ice melt across both polar regions then a case could be made we are seeing a global phenomena. However, the melt is restricted to the Arctic and there is nothing comparable in the Antarctic. The current Arctic melt is a regional phenomena, which may be occuring over a larger region than earlier melting.
As a general rule, I distrust anyone whose argument shifts from anthropogenic climate change to GHG warming, to global warming. Shifting of the basis of the argument (as Dr Meier does above) in this way is a sure sign you are reading propaganda rather than science.

In “The Chilling Stars,” (2nd edition published last month), Swensmark has an explanation for the historical contrariness of Antarctic temps vs. the rest of the globe. Anarctica is isolated, and a cloudy blanket keeps that ice-covered area warm, while cooling (by solar reflection) the rest of us. Thin clouds let the sun in for most of us, while increasing heat loss down south.
OT–It looks like we have a SC 24 sunspot.

“The winds and currents have strengthened in recent years, partly in response to the ozone hole.”!?!?!?
totally new for me… could someone explain it????

Ric Werme (06:45:43) :
Bill Illis (06:22:11) :
Meanwhile, the Sun will set for the winter and six month of darkness will set in at the North Pole in just a few hours.
Only in a simple model! Sunset is defined as the time the upper limb of the Sun goes beneath the horizion (assuming the event can be viewed). (The UK and other places may say the center of the Sun, but the US has always referred to the upper limb.)
The solar radius is 16 arc-minutes, the atmosphere refracts sunlight by some 34 arcminutes, possibly more in cold conditions, so the sun won’t set at the North Pole until the center is 50 arcminutes below the horizon. That will be around the 24th.

But it is usually cloudy all the time anyway….
I don’t think direct sunlight is the most important thing to govern amount of ice at the north pole. Wind and currents is more important as far as I understand.

It was very gracious of Dr. Meier to take the time to answer the questions posed above. However, he appears to be ensnared, like many other scientists, in the AGW meme. To dismiss reports of previous melt as being purely regional seems to ignore the fact that the previous records, such as they are, are limited in scope and uniformity {almost rather anecdotal in nature}, unlike today’s program of a broad systemic effort. It will take at least another quarter century of such a systemic program to determine whether this is a more or less continuing trend of greater melt or if such melts are of a regular cyclic pattern. Once again, only time will tell.
And a bit O/T – looks like there’s a clear SC24 event happening on the sun. There was a clear magnetogram signal yesterday that has now become very clearly visible. I expect that this is one that everyone will be able to agree on.

Basil: Graphs of the cyclic nature of polar amplification are here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/polar-amplification-and-arctic-warming.html
Most alarmist representations only include the graph of the last 30+ years. Refer to figure 3. And they always forget the impact of the 97/98 El Nino, Figure 7.
Also, Basil, do you have a link to the source for your maps?
Regards

The so-called “ozone hole” is a seasonal anomaly that hasn’t changed appreciably since we “discovered” it in the mid 1950s.
http://www.junkscience.com/Ozone/plot9552.gif
And at Mauna Loa the graph is pretty much flat:
http://www.junkscience.com/Ozone/plot35910.gif

If Arrhenius, at the beginning of the 20th century, hadn’t published his work on the IR scattering effect of the CO2 molecule,
if Bert Bolin of IPCC fame hadn’t followed suit many years later and argued, in front of politicians and all and sundry kinds of NGO people, that the world was heading towards catastrophic positive temperature anomalies due to a revised version of Arrhenius and, finally,
if Al Gore hadn’t released his charmingly cherrypicked end-of-glaciers and software-based apocalyptic saga,
would then today’s serious climatologists and glaciologists be wringing their hands and getting grayhaired because they wouldn’t be able to come up with a natural Milankovic type or other explanation for the present post-LIA interglacial warming of the world and imminent disappearance of Tuvalu?
Being an expatriated Swede I note with some surprise (if that’s the correct word) that two Swedes (Arrhenius and Bolin) happen to loom large in this end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it story; obviously, both were very instrumental in creating the present hype around the +0.7C drama. OK, even Al Gore is supposed to have some Swedish ancestry remotely tucked away in his CV. Or maybe I’ve mixed him up with some other global celeb.
My apologies to all of you, nevertheless. 😉 It won’t happen again.

I, too, am humored by the answer that the 1920’s warming was regional – as if they had concurrent measurements across the entire Arctic in 1920. Or am I guessing the satellite data back then demonstrated this regionalism … 🙂
It is truly disappointing that the good ‘scientist’ continues to claim that warming is man-made, but cooling is ‘natural variance’ – without any scientific explanation demonstrating what makes this difference. Reference to computer models as proof is a horrible (but continual) misapplication of hypothesis.
Cudo’s to Mr. Watt for bring these response to our attention – however, the answers are disturbing for a scientist – a real scientist – to read. We are truly moving into the Age of Endarkenment.

His whole attitude is know-it-all, the-debate’s-over. Note how he always has an obvious explanation for every logic conflict in the AGW hypothesis and how he expects the rest of us to be stupid enough to accept them – as weak as they are.
Many readers here have presented strong counter arguments that demand to be explained.
I urge Anthony to select a few and see if Dr Meier can answer them.

Carsten Arholm – I don’t think direct sunlight is the most important thing to govern amount of ice at the north pole. Wind and currents is more important as far as I understand
It sure does since temperatures reach 1C or 2C at the height of the summer and -40C to -60C in the winter. The average annual temperature at the North Pole is -24.5C so there would no melting at all if not for the 24 hour sunshine in the summer.

Joel,
Your presentation of the ‘peer review’ process of IPCC is flawed.
If you would review Dr. Wegman (chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Senior Member of the IEEE) report on this subject.
He essentially demonstrates this ‘peer review’ is merely an exaggerated boy’s club – where the reviewers are also co-authors on other, interrelated, papers creating quite an ‘incestuous’ mix of peer reviewing. The extent that any peer review can be effective in this environment is very limited.
Further, one must remember that only 52 scientists signed the IPPC Summary to Policymakers – and it is a myth that 2500 “scientists” of the IPCC agree with such conclusions. One only needs to read, with great irony to Kyoto, that Dr. Kiminori Itohas, a top UN IPCC Japanese scientist, calls warming fears the “worst scientific scandal in the history.”
It has come to a point that referencing the IPCC as an authority only generates laughter.

Dr. Meier has again graciously offered to answer a select set of questions from the group. I will make a list from the responses here – and of course concise, polite questions will be favoured.
Anthony, If you have any favourites please send me an E-Mail.

Steven, please ask him why the recent divergence between satellite and surface temps? UAH shows a cold August for example.
REPLY: Bob, that’s not his area of expertise. – Anthony

Parroting the words of the esteemed climatologist, Al Gore.
NSIDC’s Dr. Walt Meier along with Dr. Ted Scambos (his surname a play on words? Scam-bos?) seem to be in Al Gore’s back-pocket, according to an article,
Does Al Gore get the science right in the movie An Inconvenient Truth? 07 July 2006,
on the NSIDC’s website: http://nsidc.org/news/press/20060706_goremoviefaq.html.
Dr. Scambos: I think An Inconvenient Truth does an excellent job of outlining the science behind global warming and the challenges society faces in the coming century because of it.
Dr. Meier: I agree. I think Gore has the basic message right. But we thought we could clarify a few things about the information concerning snow, ice, and the poles.
Dr. Meier: It’s also important to note that even though the full impact of that gradual melting won’t be for 500 years or so, we are reaching a point where we can’t turn back. The system is slow to change, but the change is somewhat unstoppable once it gets going. Unless we quickly reduce the present rate of carbon dioxide increase and subsequent temperature rise, we will be committing ourselves and our planet to that melting, and to the rise in sea level that will follow.
Dr. Scambos: Records taken from ice cores do show the close relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature over the past 650,000 years. Gore basically says that the full relationship is very complicated, but that the main point is carbon dioxide and temperature have always moved together. This implies that, in the past, when carbon dioxide has increased it has led directly to a warmer Earth.

JP:
“The explaination for the the divergence of surface temps between the NH and SH (the Ozone factor) is pure conjecture – it is model based.”
This is not correct. The principle reason that the stratosphere exists is because ozone is warmed by the absorption of solar radiation. Some of that heat is radiated downward. The decreased absorption because of the ozone hole reduces the downwelling longwave radiation, which will obviously contribute to cooling in the troposphere.
This cooling increases the temperature gradient between Antarctica and the surrounding oceans, which in turn leads to stronger winds and ocean currents.

I can see how swirling winds and sea currents might isolate Antarctica from warm water and air, aresols, soot etc… but how does it stop AGW caused by CO2?
Shouldn’t the greenhouse effect work there also? If CO2 warms everything else….

Importantly, Dr. Meier laid to rest one of the oft repeated mechanisms of arctic melt – soot.

But he dismissed soot after stating that they don’t have someone studying soot. He starts by appearing to say that they don’t really know because they don’t have someone studying it, and then concludes by saying what soot has been doing. Do they not study it because they already know? Or is he saying stuff that they don’t know?
I also agree that question 7’s statement that Antarctic ocean currents are caused by the ozone hole is interesting. I would like to subscribe to his newsletter.
The believability of his explanations seem to be related to their distance from the North Pole.

I would like to ask Dr. Meier this: Are you aware of any evidence that shows the earth, at a certain point in time, began an unstoppable trend of warming?

Dr Meir deserves congratulation and thanks for his openness and courtesy in responding to questions. He deserves especial gratitude for his agreement to reply to subsequent questions from Steven Goddard.
I write to request that Dr Meir be presented with a follow-up question in response to his answer to a previous question (i.e. Question 2 above).
Dr Meir was asked:
“The US Weather Bureau wrote a 1922 article describing drastic Arctic warming and ice loss. In that article, the author wrote that waters around Spitzbergen warmed 12C over just a few years and that ships were able to sail in open waters north of 81N. This agrees with the GISS record, which would seem to imply that the Arctic can and does experience significant warming unrelated to CO2. Do you believe that what we are seeing now is different from that event, and why?”
and he replied:
“Yes. The current warming is different from the conditions described in the article. The Weather Bureau article is specifically discussing the North Atlantic region around Spitsbergen, not the Arctic as a whole. The Arctic has historically shown regional variations in climate, with one region warmer than normal while another region was cooler, and then after a while flipping to the opposite conditions. As discussed above, the current warming is different in nature; it is pan-Arctic and is part of widespread warming over most of the earth.”
Dr Meir’s answer pertains directly to the fact that the cited article “is specifically discussing the North Atlantic region around Spitsbergen, not the Arctic as a whole”. From that he asserts that the Arctic at that time – and all other previous times – had “one region warmer than normal while another region was cooler”.
However, Dr Meir cites no evidence for his assertion and published papers dispute it. For example, Polyakov et al. (2004) analysed thousands of published measurements taken from around the Arctic circle and they concluded that the current warming is part of a 50-80 years cycle (mean of 65 years).
Ref:
Polyakov, I. V. et al. ‘Variability of the Intermediate Atlantic Water of the Arctic Ocean over the Last 100 Years’, Journal of Climate, vol. 17, no. 23, (2004)
In the context of this question, the historical measurements have to be trusted because if they cannot be trusted then that would demonstrate Dr Meir’s assertion cannot be justified.
But, if the analysis of Polyakov et al. is correct, then
(a) the present Arctic warming is similar to Arctic warming that has repeatedly happened previously, and
(b) the present warming and that of 1921 could both be part of the same cyclical phenomenon.
So, does Dr Meir dispute the measurements analysed by Polyakov et al., or does he dispute the analyses conducted by Polyakov et al. and others? And what evidence does he use to make such a dispute?
Richard S Courtney

John B, you stated:

This is one area that is clearly misrepresented by scientists. A model is only as good its ability to predict the future. Any model created today will fit to data from 1980 to 2008 better than a model created in 1980 because the model has been created to fit that data. That is no proof of being a better model, nor is it proof of the models predictive ability.

I’m sorry, but this simply isn’t correct. Models aren’t created on the premise that if they can “fit to data from 1980 to 2008,” they might have “predictive ability.” A climate model is not some statistical program which generates trends from previous data.
A climate model is a sophisticated array of the physics equations and dynamics which govern our atmosphere and the climate system in general. These equations are typically non-linear, high order differential equations with many variables. A climate model divides the atmosphere, land, oceans, and whatever other features which are coupled to it into a finite grid, and integrates these equations with respect to time and the environment. The result of this process is not a simulation of weather or an estimate at what the temperature will be x days down the road; rather, the result of this process is a simulation of how radiative forcing based on many, many factors changes over time. Once the model finishes producing the data representing how radiative forcing has changed over time, we can then go back and analyze that data to see how the climate system in terms of temperature and other factors will change based on empirical relationships between atmospheric factors and changes in temperature.
The place where “data fitting,” if you can call it that, comes in to play is when one considers the parameterizations used to help the model compensate for its intrinsic lack of precision due to missing or incomplete physics or processes, or more importantly, the lack of precision due to sub-grid-scale processes like localized weather phenomena. The result of parameterizing the functions is not really to train it to produce data from the 1980-2008 period, but to calibrate it the current condition of the climate.
A final note: Climate models are not used to ‘predict the future.’ a Climate model is not numerical weather prediction. A climate model is, as I’ve already stated, merely an ensemble of equations which are computed in order to analyze the properties of the climate system and how they shift over time as the composition of the system changes. One doesn’t run a climate model and a thousand hours of computation time later come back and see a result on their screen that says “On September 22, 2108, the average global temperature will be xx.xx degrees F.”

Steve Goddard
(?) I have absolutely no affiliation with the UK Met Office. Even so I am aware that the UAH and GISS temperature records have different baselines and so cannot be directly compared without adjustments, a blunder made by both Anthony Watts and, er Steve Goddard.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/05/goddard_nasa_thermometer/comments/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/whats-up-with-that/

If I might say so, I think many commenters have been inexcusably rude about Dr Meier. He was under no obligation to take part in this exercise and nothing in any of his answers suggests that he does not believe what he has said.
It would be unfortunate if others involved in agencies commented on here refused to give of their time for fear that they would be insulted and abused.
http://thefatbigot.blogspot.com/2008/07/lets-be-nice-about-global-warming.html

Dill Weed states….
“I’ve found the most balanced and reasonable discussion at Real Climate. There you can see opposing points of view considered openly and civilly.”
Possibly….the most outlandish statement I have read on this site!

David Jay says:

You make a great point!
1. Virtually every paper makes reference to the IPCC.
2. The only work that the IPCC references that points to “unprecedented” current temperatures is Mann.
3. Mann’s algorithim creates hockey sticks from red noise!
Therefore, virtually every paper is based on bad science…

In regards to point 2, the evidence for AGW is based on a lot more than just the work of Michael Mann. In fact, the evidence for the current temperatures being unprecedented in the last ~1200 years is based on much more than just the work of Michael Mann…and this particular piece of evidence is just one of the independent lines of evidence supporting AGW (and, in fact, the most circumstantial at that).
In regards to point 3, the NAS report on temperature reconstructions concluded that “As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions. A description of this effect is given in Chapter 9. In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al. (Crowley and Lowery 2000, Huybers 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Hegerl et al. 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press).” ( http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=113 ). This is not to say that the Mann et al. results are bullet-proof; there are issues about proxy quality and robustness of the results to the inclusion of exclusion of certain proxies. However, this particular claim that you made about the technique that Mann et al. used is essentially a “red herring”. And, Mann et al. have made considerable advances in regards to the more legitimate issues of proxy quality and robustness of results in their most recent paper.

Melting ice raising water levels…what a crock. Here’s an experiment that anyone can perform. It costs nothing, and there is 0% chance of anyone getting hurt, including Kindergarten students. Fill a bowl with water and mark the water level. Now, drop two ice cubs in the water. The water will represent the oceans, the two ice cubs will represent the polar ice caps. Now, measure the water level with the ice cubes in it.
Now wait.
Wait a little longer.
Okay, you might have to wait a little longer…
Now that the ice has melted, mark where the water level is.
The water level will be somewhere between the original water level, and the level that it was elevated to once the ice cubes were inserted. Anybody who knows anything about thermal properties will understand that frozen water (i.e., ice and snow) takes up a LOT more space than liquid water, because water is one of the few compounds that expands when it freezes and contracts when its heated. If the polar ice (North and/or South) melt, the rise in the worlds oceans will be so extremely minimal that it would hardly be noticed.

It still won’t allow me to spell cubes!!! Dammit!

So much for respectful discourse

I thank “Jeff” for bringing the report of Polyakov’s asserted statement to my attention when he says (above):
“I’m not sure that Dr. Polyakov would agree with Richard S. Courtney’s interpretation of his work. He was quoted in The Age as saying “There have been numerous models run that have looked at (the two forces) and basically they can’t reproduce the ice loss we’ve had with natural variability. You have to add a carbon dioxide warming component to it.””
I was not aware of this report in The Age and I do not know of its accuracy. But my report of the paper by Polyakov et al. is correct.
Richard

Counters:
You assert:
“Falsifying AGW is simple, both empirically and analytically. For the latter, one merely has to demonstrate either of two things: that CO2 does not indeed alter the thermal budget of the climate system such that increasing its concentration results in the trapping of more heat within that system, or that the negative feedbacks associated with CO2-induced warming overwhelm the positive ones and result in a neutral or negative change to the state of the climate’s average temperature. No one has done this. No one has demonstrated that the simple relationship, i.e. increasing CO2/GHG concentrations results in a warmer atmosphere does not hold. Instead, that property is almost axiomatic, and is used to describe extra-terrestrial climates (Sagan’s hypothesis for the Venusian climate comes to mind) as well as a myriad of phenomena in our own atmosphere.”
With respect, as others have pointed out, you are factually incorrect. But, to avoid your need to review the hundreds of relevant published papers (some of which others have cited above), I point you to my less-than-a-page refutation at
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/AGW_hypothesis_disproved.pdf
As you say, “Falsifying AGW is simple”. Indeed, it is very simple to do.
Richard

John Philips:
“I have absolutely no affiliation with the UK Met Office. Even so I am aware that the UAH and GISS temperature records have different baselines and so cannot be directly compared without adjustments, a blunder made by both Anthony Watts and, er Steve Goddard.”
This being the same Steven Goddard who wrote that hilarious article attempting to prove that the arctic sea ice extent was greater relative to 2007 than NSIDC was reporting, by counting pixels on JPEGs of Google Earth images on the Cryosphere Today website. That farce ended when the creator the the Cryosphere Today website posted that his results matched NSIDC’s.

counters
“Falsifying AGW is simple, both empirically and analytically. No one has demonstrated that the simple relationship, i.e. increasing CO2/GHG concentrations results in a warmer atmosphere does not hold.”
Ermm lets see!
So in the past, as shown from the ice core records, when the interglacial cycle reaches its cooling phase and the atmosphere starts to cool in spite of increasing CO2 levels (proven that changes in CO2 lags temperature change by about 800 years) you are saying that didn’t happen? You must hold an opinion that we have not had any glacial periods because you are convinced that it is a proven fact that increasing CO2 always warms the atmosphere.
Alan

Counters: said: No matter how many times skeptics claim that the globe is cooling, or that it’s all water vapor, or that it’s all the sun, or that there are natural cycles, they aren’t falsifying global warming. As a matter of fact, skeptics are engaging in precisely the opposite behavior as to what you’re suggesting. They’re not “falsifying AGW;” rather, they’re providing alternative explanations to explain the observed warming.
Forgive me, but surely these alternative explanations are flasifying AGW? Using your examples:
Cooling Globe – Not anthropogenic
Water Vapor – Not anthropogenic
Sun – Not anthropogenic
I dont refute the world has warmed (excpet for the last few years) I just fail to see the evidence that man is the cause.

Questions for the Jeff/John Philips D&D tag team.
1. Can two lines be parallel and have different Y-intercepts?
2. Have you noticed that Cryosphere Today has updated the site to explain the problem with their maps? The legend shows colors all the way down to zero, but the maps actually truncate at 30%. That is why they show less ice than NSIDC in their 2007 maps.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=28&fy=2007&sm=07&sd=27&sy=2008
3. In the map above, do 2007 and 2008 have the same area?

Patrick Henry:
“2. Have you noticed that Cryosphere Today has updated the site to explain the problem with their maps? The legend shows colors all the way down to zero, but the maps actually truncate at 30%. That is why they show less ice than NSIDC in their 2007 maps.”
Your point is?
“3. In the map above, do 2007 and 2008 have the same area?”
No one said that they did. Your point is?

Joel Shore
“…the evidence for AGW is based on a lot more than just the work of Michael Mann. In fact, the evidence for the current temperatures being unprecedented in the last ~1200 years is based on much more than just the work of Michael Mann…and this particular piece of evidence is just one of the independent lines of evidence supporting AGW (and, in fact, the most circumstantial at that).”
I was hoping to see the presentation of “the evidence for the current temperatures being unprecedented in the last ~1200 years.” When will you present this unprecedented evidence? Since “this particular piece of evidence is just one of the independent lines of evidence supporting AGW…” when will you enumerate the other “independent lines of evidence supporting AGW?” Do you discern a difference between circumstantial and factual? A difference between a computer model (guesstimation) and Nature (scientific fact)?
It would be pertinent to the discussion, if you would present the scientific data that supports anthropogenic global warming/climate change. No Polar Bear, rising sea level, melting poles, etc. anecdotes are permissible.
Dr. Meier I am sure reports the data as he interprets. The problem I have with Dr. Meier is that he seems to be as susceptible to Al Gore science as are school children.

Phil. (13:14:28) Sure, we all know that Arctic Ice is not a great proxy for global temperature in any given year, because it is more dependent upon winds, currents, local temperatures and storms. Nonetheless, the last year’s cooling has been dramatic enough for the Arctic Ice to overcome local factors this last year. Global cooling even became local cooling in the Arctic.
See, characteristically, you only tell enough of the story to support your side. You fool yourself to think you are fooling others.
=======================================

By the way, John Phillips, Naomi Oreskes is making a grand fool of herself. She completely misunderstands and misrepresents the skeptical movement. Sociologists and historians of science will wonder over her in the future, and this ‘Madness of Crowds’ that is CO2=AGW will be the subject of numerous PhD theses as time goes by.
==============================

This is the best place on Al’s Internet right now. Bar none.
Insight:
AnonyMoose (10:43:25) :
“The believability of his explanations seem to be related to their distance from the North Pole.”
Nothing funnier all day for me. (So far)
Incisive:
Smokey (12:35:32) :
“To date, the proponents of AGW/CO2/planetary catastrophe have failed miserably in proving their hypothesis, which has been repeatedly falsified.”
Ouch. Where’s the sticking plasters?
Interogative:
Scott Covert (10:38:42) :
“I can see how swirling winds and sea currents might isolate Antarctica from warm water and air, aresols, soot etc… but how does it stop AGW caused by CO2?
Shouldn’t the greenhouse effect work there also? If CO2 warms everything else….”
It’s worse down below Scott. Antarctica, being the most dessicated (and the largest) desert on the planet, should be fiery if there is zero moisture in the air and CO2 has such a giant stage to perform her powerful and convincing tricks.
Maybe Steven could ask something along those lines of Dr. Meier…..
Imbroglio:
Ed Scott (09:47:10) :
“Dr. Scambos: I think An Inconvenient Truth does an excellent job of outlining the science behind global warming and the challenges society faces in the coming century because of it.
Dr. Meier: I agree. I think Gore has the basic message right. But we thought we could clarify a few things about the information concerning snow, ice, and the poles.”
Albert Gore: “Thank you gentlemen. Let us all have another beer, why not.”
Ironside:
kim (22:04:11) :
“Well, excellent, but he ignores the present global cooling, as manifest in lower tropospheric temperatures via RSS and UAH, lower oceanic temperatures via Argos buoys, and dropping sea level via TOPEX/Jason. He also ignores the effect of a PDO in a cooling phase, and a hibernating sun.”
Bliss.
Irritation:
John Philips (23:33:15) :
“We need more like Dr Meier. Kudos to him for responding to Goddard, especially after Goddard misrepresented the NSIDC data in a piece described by Meier as :-
… the article consists almost entirely of misleading, irrelevant, or erroneous information about Arctic sea ice that add nothing to the understanding of the significant long-term decline that is being observed.”
We wouldn’t be privy to this conversation if it were not for Steven, and Dr Meier both. Let us see where this goes.
Investigation:
Arthur Glass (05:45:53) :
“Dr Meier is insistent on the distinction between a short-term ‘fluctuation’ and a long-term ‘trend’. But given that the Earth’s current atmosphere has been sloshing around chaotically for a billion years or so, how significant, for any such distinction, is the difference between its behavior over, say, a ten-year period and that over a century? Or over a complete interstitial, for that matter?”
Or CO2 concentrations over similar spans?
Irreverence:
stan (05:10:27) :
“Several references to computer models. (not good) Reference to the IPCC as THE scientific standard. (really not good)
I expect a non-scientist who is unaware of the facts to accept the IPCC as some kind of real authoritative science. But a scientist should be aware of the BS that has been packed into the IPCC. Reference to it, in a discussion with another scientist, should be a huge red flag.”
Reference to it by anyone, TO anyone, at any time should be a huge red flag. rc, tamino and desmogblog do the same for me.
Invigorating:
paminator (09:07:41) :
“Averaged over the year, an ice-free Arctic will lose much more energy to space than an ice-covered Arctic. Heat transported to the Arctic through ocean currents will be lost at a higher rate to space if the Arctic could be ice-free all year round. The average annual solar insolation in the Arctic region is less than 100 W/m^2. Radiative losses alone from open ocean at 32 F is more than twice this value, and evaporative losses would remove additional heat from the ocean surface to the tropopause where it can radiate to space. In my opinion, the whole notion of the Arctic acting like a giant refrigerator for the globe is ok, but the role of sea ice has been greatly exaggerated, and perhaps reversed.”
and…
Jeff B. (09:11:38) :
“Dr. Meier repeatedly argues that localities of cooling in the Arctic have no bearing on the overall Arctic. So by the same reasoning, how could warming in the Arctic have any bearing on the overall cooling of the earth as shown in many other data sets and regions?
I don’t believe for a second that the Arctic is more important with respect to the Earth’s climate than the Antarctic or say, the Pacific Ocean or the Sun.”
Great sleuthing guys. Veeeeery eeeenteresting.

Also, John Phillips, you ought to go peruse the story of McIntyre’s and McKittrick’s submission to Nature about the bogus statistics in Mann’s MBH 98. It initially got two favorable reviews, so Nature sent it out to a hostile reviewer. It ended up being published in E&E and also ended up being dead right. There is a reason Wegman castigated the echo chamber of academic reviewing in climate science. There is a coterie of scientists so enamored of the CO2=AGW hypothesis and so entranced by their models, that they’ve lost the ability to re-examine assumptions, and to do objective science.
It is a scandal, my good man. Check it out thoroughly.
================================

Descriptive Physical Oceanography
William J. Emery, Lynne D. Talley and George L. Pickard.
Précis of the relevant section- Northern Polar Oceans.
In the tropics waters are separated by temperature and these divisions are named thermoclines. In polar seas the waters are stratified by salinity and are regarded as haloclines. Haloclines are formed by summer melt water which is lower in salinity than the ocean and spreads over the surface as it cannot penetrate the less dense, low salinity Arctic sea water. The fresh water melt freezes more swiftly as the temperature drops to 0C. Salinity controls the freezing point of the sea water once the temperature drops to 0C. The higher the salinity the lower the freezing point below 0C.
The surface haloclines have gone from some areas of the Arctic and more uniformly saline seawater is present. Unlike freshwater the density of seawater is greatest at freezing point. The result is that the seawater sinks before freezing. When seawater freezes it forms weak sea ice due to the presence of salt and will need about half the energy to melt when compared to regular halocline formed sea ice. As the sea ice forms it starts expressing the salt out of its crystalline structure. If the air temperature is abnormally cold it will form weak sea ice as the surface water has not had sufficient time to remove the salt. Liquids of different densities will remain stratified until perturbed at the boundary layer. This begins an oscillation in the layers that cannot easily dampen as there are entropy differences between them.
I would submit:
The wake from an icebreakers’ massive propellers, especially when the ship is near stationary as a result of resistance from the ice-pack, is far reaching in width and depth. More than sufficient to disturb the surface haloclines. There are a lot of these vessels now, making many crossings per year. They accompany every ship attempting passage through the Soviet polar regions. It is mandatory. The Soviets have the largest, and the largest fleet of, icebreakers. Some are converted for tourism and visit the pole often every season. Satellites show that, recently at least, the Soviet side of the Arctic suffers the greatest reduction of sea ice. Broken ice is more susceptible to melting.

Great paper, EXCEPT ONE THING, he forgot the recent world, the world of global cooling! All of the AGW scientists talk about the past years because that was when the earth was warming.

Jeff
You imply that because something is published in a journal which is not one in which climate “scientists” routinely publish in the papers in question become irrelevant.
Surely they would be all the more relevant given that these editors of these journals have not swallowed the AGW myth hook, line and sinker and therefore follow proper scientific method of ensuring that the writers publish their data in full?
James

Michael Ingram said: The water level will be somewhere between the original water level, and the level that it was elevated to once the ice cubes were inserted. Anybody who knows anything about thermal properties will understand that frozen water (i.e., ice and snow) takes up a LOT more space than liquid water, because water is one of the few compounds that expands when it freezes and contracts when its heated. If the polar ice (North and/or South) melt, the rise in the worlds oceans will be so extremely minimal that it would hardly be noticed.
Actually, the ice cube will displace exactly the same mass as it contains; therefore, the water level after the ice melts will be exactly the same as before the ice melted-if the temperature of the water is allowed to return to its starting point. The arctic ice will not affect sea level. Antarctic and Greenland ice is above sea level (i.e., not floating in the bowl) and would affect sea level if it would just have the courtesy to melt like it is supposed to. :-}

Counters: “Once the model finishes producing the data representing how radiative forcing has changed over time, we can then go back and analyze that data to see how the climate system in terms of temperature and other factors will change based on empirical relationships between atmospheric factors and changes in temperature.”
Thanks for this explanation. I take this to mean that climate models are not predictive mechanisms but seek to further our understanding of the climate system using real historical data. And that this understanding is then applied to various scenarios involving future changes in climate factors.
Two points of clarification.
1. Models are a representation of reality, but are not intended to mimic reality, rather to explain it and provide possible future climate scenarios.
2. AGW does not depend on the models for its validity. AGW is supported by the empirical evidence in its favour.
Does my summary accurately represent the scientific understanding of climate models?

Basil: Thanks for the link.

Phillip Stott on global warming politics: http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Global_Warming_Politics/A_Hot_Topic_Blog/Entries/2008/9/21_Global_Warming%E2%80%99s_Boom_Bust.html
An Englishman’s view.
“‘Global warming’ is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage.” {Journalists please feel free to quote.]
Coffee, and the crossword, in garden.
“… the global warming myth harks back to a lost Golden Age of climate stability, or, to employ a more modern term, climate ‘sustainability’. Sadly, the idea of a sustainable climate is an oxymoron. The fact that we have rediscovered climate change at the turn of the Millennium tells us more about ourselves, and about our devices and desires, than about climate. Opponents of global warming are often snidely referred to as ‘climate change deniers’; precisely the opposite is true. Those who question the myth of global warming are passionate believers in climate change – it is the global warmers who deny that climate change is the norm.”
In any discussion of climate change, it is essential to distinguish between the complex science of climate and the myth, in the sense of Roland Barthes, or the ‘hybrid’, following Bruno Latour, of ‘global warming’.
The latter is a politico-(pseudo)scientific construct, developed since the late-1980s, in which the human emission of ‘greenhouse gases’, such as carbon dioxide and methane, is unquestioningly taken as the prime-driver of a new and dramatic type of climate change that will inexorably result in a significant warming during the next 100 years and which will inevitably lead to catastrophe for both humanity and the Earth. This, in turn, has morphed, since 1992 and the Rio Conference, into a legitimising myth for a gamut of interconnected political agendas, above all for a range of European sensibilities with regards to America, oil, the car, transport, economic growth, trade, and international corporations. The language employed tends to be authoritarian and religious in character, involving the use of what the physicist, P. H. Borcherds, has termed the ‘hysterical subjunctive’. Indeed, for many, the myth has become an article of a secular faith that exhibits all the characteristics of a pre-modern religion, above all demanding sacrifice to the Earth.

Dodgy Geezer: “In support of this aim, and in recognition of Dr. Meier’s attitude, I think that Anthony should make a particular effort to weed insulting, off-topic, or plain ‘denial’ posts from this thread.”
Well said. The peanut gallery should be closed on threads like this. It’s not as if they’re saying anything new or original, and there are plenty of other threads for mindless politicking.

Dodgy Geezer:
“I had a marathon discussion on another board where the rule seemed to be that 30 years was the shortest period which would be accepted – this seems rather long,”
30 years has the standard used by climatologists since long before anyone thought of global warming, though I don’t know the justification for it.
“If the current warming is NOT unusual, the theory fails. ”
To claim that if the change attributed to CO2 is less than that caused by natural forcings is proof that the change could not have actually been caused by CO2 seems to me to require randomness in climate change. Otherwise, the change attributed to CO2 must have been caused by one or more natural forcing mechanisms and it should in principle be possible to identify those mechanisms.

Dodgy Geezer says:

I have also noted the general use of the ‘weather’ explanation to reject data which does not fit the AGW hypothesis. For this to be acceptable (and, indeed, it IS an explanation), we really need to reach some kind of agreement on WHEN weather becomes climate. I had a marathon discussion on another board where the rule seemed to be that 30 years was the shortest period which would be accepted – this seems rather long, as well as being designed to ensure that any hype (warming or cooling) would be accepted for the length of a typical human career! I see Tamino has addressed this issue with a statistical bet, but I don’t know enough about the maths to determine whether this is a good way to go?

Certainly, a good way to go is to determine not only the trendlines but also the errorbars on the trendlines. To do that correctly though, you have to take into account the correlation in the data…which an excellent data analyst like Tamino can do but can get dicey for the rest of us mortals.
Barring that, however, there are still some things one can do to determine if the trend is “real”. For example, one can check how robust the trend is to such things as changing the start or end years by one or two years, changing which data set you use (GISS or HADCRUT, for example), or eliminating one year of data. (For example, if your entire conclusion changes if you eliminate the year 1998, then the conclusion is probably not very robust!) I have done these sort of checks for the GISS and HADCRUT data and what you find is that for the yearly data ending in 2007, there is strong sensitivity to the data set used and how many years are included out to be about 10 years or so. After that, it starts to settle down and once you get out to 15 years or so, the trends seem to be quite robust.
Another thing to look at is what the climate models project. As I have noted already above in this thread, this post at RealClimate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/what-the-ipcc-models-really-say/langswitch_lang/in shows how different runs of climate models show strong variations in the trends over a period of, say, 8 years…with many even showing negative trends…despite the fact that greenhouse gas forcings in the models are steadily increasing. So, in fact, having occasional periods of this length showing cooling is not only possible but expected!

A-CO2-GW is dead. Can we move on now?
All may not be lost though, if the great hoax can act to tweak the curiosity of the next generation to study physics, biology, geology, statistics, etc. And don’t forget sociology and psychology.

Richard S Courtney claims:

Firstly, no prediction – n.b. not one – of the AGW hypothesis is observed in the data.

Yes…They have been. For example, one prediction is that the troposphere will warm while the stratosphere cools, which is very different than what would occur if the warming were due to an increase in solar irradiance, and matches what has been observed. Another is that the arctic will warm faster than it warms closer to the equator. A third is that the day – night temperature differences will tend to decrease.

Secondly, the warm hot spot in the troposphere is absent: in fact, cooling is present in that region of the troposphere. But that pattern has to be present if AGW induced by enhanced GH is present.
It matters not whether other effects “control climate” because the absence of the ‘hot spot’ demonstrates the absence of AGW.

No. As I have said a million times on this website and will probably have to say a million times more, the amplification of temperature trends or fluctuations as you go up in the tropical troposphere is NOT a prediction specific to AGW as the mechanism causing the warming. It is a prediction that follows from the basic physics of moist adiabatic lapse rate theory and is expected independent of the mechanism causing the warming.
And, in fact, when one looks at temperature fluctuations that occur on the timescales of months to a few years, you do in fact see this amplification. Where you don’t see it is in SOME of the data sets for the overall trend on multidecadal timescales. However, what you see varies strongly from data set to data set and these data sets have problems that make their overall multidecadal trends extremely problematic. For example, the radiosonde data sets are very sparse in the tropics and there are known issues with instrumentation that likely are causing a significant cooling bias over time (namely, better shielding from the sun). As one understands the problems in the data sets and starts to try to correct them, they seem to come into better agreement with what the modeling predicts (which, I repeat, is not a prediction specific to AGW but is a prediction of how temperature trends or fluctuations of any sort should tend to be amplified as one goes up in the tropical atmosphere on the basis of some pretty simple physics). See here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/tropical-tropopshere-ii/langswitch_lang/in
So, to make a long story short, the data and model agree on the timescales over which the data is expected to be reliable. The data and model disagree (with the data deviating from what is seen on the shorter timescales) for the longterm trends, which is exactly where the data has known problems. And, even if this deviation is real, it does not speak directly to what is causing the warming trend since the amplification is not a prediction specific to AGW as the warming mechanism.

Several of the above comments query the difference between weather and climate with some comments pertaining to the classical ’30-year’ period. The confusion is exemplified by the IPCC that provides the following definition of “climate” in its Glossary.
“Climate
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the “average weather” or more rigorously as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These relevant quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system. ‘Climate’ is defined as an average condition over 30 years of ‘weather’ components such as temperature, pressure, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, major wind direction, etc.”
There is a clear ambiguity in this definition. Its first sentence says “climate” is “average weather” that may be assessed “over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years”. But the final sentence of the above definition asserts that “climate” is “defined as an average condition over 30 years of ‘weather’ components”.
So, which is true, any period of time “ranging from months to thousands or millions of years” or “30 years”?
The ambiguity arises from confusion of “climate” and the “classical period of climate”. (And there are several examples of times when the confusion of “climate” and the “classical period of climate” has enabled inconvenient data to be ignored; i.e. a form of ‘cherry picking’).
“Climate” is “the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years”, and the IPCC uses this definition. For example, the IPCC used this definition in its 1994 WGI report when it considered two adjacent 5-year periods to observe change in climate.
Also, for example, there is a typical climate for January in England obtained by averaging the weather parameters (i.e. temperature, preciptation, etc.) of Januarys in England over several years. A ‘January climate’ has a length of one month.
Any number of years can be averaged for a climate value. HadCRUT3, GISS, etc. data sets report annual global temperature (i.e. climate data obtained over each of a series of years: one year climate data) but often add 5 or 10 year running means to graphical presentations of their data.
But 30 years was adopted as an arbitrary standard (i.e. the “classical period of climate”) in the year of the International Geophysical Year (the IGY was in 1958 and it was thought that 30 years of climate data had then been amassed). This “classical period” permits a base-line for comparison of climate data.
For example, the HadCRUT3, GISS, etc. data sets of annual mean global temperature each report global temperature changes as differences from a 30-year average. These differences are called ‘temperature anomalies’ and they permit direct comparisons between the data sets. However, if 30 years were used as the minimum time period for assessing global climate then we would only have 4 data points for global climate – as indicated by these data sets – because they estimate mean global temperature since about ~1860.
Indeed, 30 years is a problematic climate length because it is not a multiple of the solar 11 year sunspot cycle or the 22 year Hale cycle.
The important point is that any number of years can be averaged provided that the end dates of the averaging and the averaged data points are specified.
Richard

Richard S. Courtney:
“Jeff and John Phillips:
You wrongly assert that E&E does not subject papers for publication to peer review. .
Being a member of the large Editorial Board of E&E, I can confirm that papers published in E&E are submitted for peer review. ”
And the Journal of 9/11 Studies is also “peer-reviewed”.
Energy and Environment is not listed in the Journal Citation Reports (which checks 7,500 journals) and is carried by only a couple dozen libraries.

These act as a barrier to heat coming down from lower latitudes.

You mean this kind of heat?
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=14&art_id=vn20080921084615870C810928
It seems that all warming is global and all cooling is local. So S. Africa must have been moved south when we weren’t looking?

Wow.
What intense posts – both sides – on this issue.
This demonstrates a fact:
Anthropogenic causation of climate change is NOT a fact – but still, merely, a hypothesis.
Qudo’s to you, Mr. Watts.
Your fantastic site has succeeded in becoming the magnet of honest discussion from all those who have an investment in climate science. It will be here (and/or climateaudit.org) that the truth – whatever it will be – will be found.
More power to the “Watts”! 🙂
-Alan

Being a member of the large Editorial Board of E&E, I can confirm that papers published in E&E are submitted for peer review.
We are honoured to have an editorial board member of E&E contributing here, and I apologise for incorrectly characterising E&E as not peer-reviewed. For the purposes of identification, are you the same Richard Courtney who also serves as Technical Editor of the coal industry journal CoalTrans International ? Presumably you disqualify yourself from any editorial decisions involving, er, Energy or Environment, on the grounds of conflict of interest?
And are you the Dr Richard Courtney who signed this open letter? http://www.john-daly.com/guests/openletter.htm
If so would you share with us the title of your PhD thesis and the awarding body? Before I spend time reading your refutation of AGW, what exactly are your academic credentials, publications please?
Perhaps you could confirm that the title IPCC Expert Reviewer can be used by anyone asked to view the draft report or who submitted a comment, even unsolicited, to the review process?
regards and thanks

And still it cools
Yah, it cools a bit, then it warms a bit, then it cools… as Dr Courtney reminds us, the classic averaging period to discern the long term climate signal is thirty years and over this period all the global temperature series show a warming trend in line with that predicted by AGW.
Any shorter period, e.g. ‘we’ve had a decade of cooling’ is too prone to short – term noise, eg from El Nino. For example, according to UAH the global temperatures were
Jan 1997 -0.065C
Jan 2007 0.594C
So the ‘decade of cooling’ seems to have been preceded by a ‘decade of warming’. Cherry-picking? Of course,- it warms a bit, it cools a bit, it warms a bit …

Get 2,500 professional engineers to sign off on the IPCC.
No, that’s not good enough.
Get a consensus of registered ‘engineers’ and ‘geologists’ who agree this science is settled.
Also, lets do some blind studies, eh? Throw the data and theories out there. Throw back some verifiable hypotheses.
I contend you all are on the cutting edge of a young, fun and complex science. If you admit the vastness of what is climate, the scales which we try to measure, and how much there is to learn, then drop the politics and try and control bias, then serious science can flourish.
I am also convinced that serious science can eventually be practiced on the web, and that the talent and knowledge out there is substantial and growing.
REMEMBER: All your talents are put forth are all voluntarily, are they not?
All this knowledge, available with a few clicks. It is truly amazing.
Like Kevin Bacon as Jack said, “I represent the government of the United States without passion or prejudice.” Let us all try to let our science discourse be without passion or prejudice.
But we can still have fun, right Tom?
a,b,c,d or e?
Cheers to all! and good science.

Joel Shaw:
In response to my correct statement saying:
“Firstly, no prediction – n.b. not one – of the AGW hypothesis is observed in the data.”
You assert:
“Yes…They have been. For example, one prediction is that the troposphere will warm while the stratosphere cools, which is very different than what would occur if the warming were due to an increase in solar irradiance, and matches what has been observed. Another is that the arctic will warm faster than it warms closer to the equator. A third is that the day – night temperature differences will tend to decrease.”
Taking your above claims in turn:
1.
“one prediction is that the troposphere will warm while the stratosphere cools, which is very different than what would occur if the warming were due to an increase in solar irradiance, and matches what has been observed”
Wrong. Your dispute is an extreme form of cherry picking. The AGW prediction is a pattern of temperature change in the atmosphere that includes troposphere warming especially at altitude in the tropics and stratosphere cooling. The stratosphere has cooled, but so what? The pattern of temperature change in the atmosphere that AGW predicts has not happened.
And whether or not stratospheric cooling is consistent with something other than AGW is not relevant to the fact that the pattern of temperature change in the atmosphere that AGW predicts has not happened.
2.
“Another is that the arctic will warm faster than it warms closer to the equator.”
Wrong. Your dispute is another example of extreme cherry picking. The AGW prediction is that polar regions will warm faster than it warms closer to the equator. There are two polar regions and the Antarctic is cooling. That the Arctic is warming does not refute the fact that the prediction of cooling polar regions (n.b. both of them) is not happening.
3.
“A third is that the day – night temperature differences will tend to decrease.”
Wrong. Cherry picking again. And this time it is combined with a misunderstanding. Any global warming from any cause induces a reduction to day-night temperatures. The reduction to day-night temperatures is a predicted effect of increased surface heating: it is NOT a prediction of AGW. There is a limit to maximum surface temperatures in the tropical warm pool (first determined by Ramanathan & Collins, Nature, v351, 27-32 (1991) and subsequently confirmed by several others). This limit to surface temperature results from increased surface heating inducing increased evapouration (which cools the surface) with resulting increase to cloud cover (that reflects more solar energy as every sunbather has noticed). Similar increase to surface cooling by evapouration can be expected – but to a lesser degree – wherever there is surface moisture except in polar regions. So, increased heating raises temperatures but the temperatures rise is inhibited to greater degree for warmer temperatures. It follows from this that coolest regions will warm most and night-time temperatures will rise more than day-time temperatures (because on average nights are cooler than days)
Having made those errors, you quote me saying:
“Secondly, the warm hot spot in the troposphere is absent: in fact, cooling is present in that region of the troposphere. But that pattern has to be present if AGW induced by enhanced GH is present.
It matters not whether other effects “control climate” because the absence of the ‘hot spot’ demonstrates the absence of AGW.”
And you dispute that saying:
“No. As I have said a million times on this website and will probably have to say a million times more, the amplification of temperature trends or fluctuations as you go up in the tropical troposphere is NOT a prediction specific to AGW as the mechanism causing the warming. It is a prediction that follows from the basic physics of moist adiabatic lapse rate theory and is expected independent of the mechanism causing the warming.”
Iteration of an assertion does not prove the correctness of the assertion. But it is important to note that all the GCM predictions of AGW show the ‘warm spot’; see the CCSP report available at
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap5-1/final-report/sap5-1-final-all.pdf
And the ‘warm spot’ is absent.
Importantly, if you were right to say that the warm spot “is a prediction that follows from the basic physics of moist adiabatic lapse rate theory and is expected independent of the mechanism causing the warming” then its absence would be evidence for absence of warming. But warming is a prediction of AGW so absence of the ‘warm spot’ is a refutation of AGW whether or not you re right.
I repeat what I said at
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/AGW_hypothesis_disproved.pdf
“The above list provides a complete refutation of the AGW-hypothesis according to the normal rules of science: i.e.
Nothing the hypothesis predicts is observed in the empirical data and the opposite of the hypothesis’ predictions is observed in the empirical data.”
Richard

Smokey: “…your evidence supporting the catastrophic AGW hypothesis.”
The IPCC offers a number of climate change scenarios for this century, not all of them “catastrophic”. The evidence for AGW covers a number of areas: increases in CO2 levels, overall warming, a rise in sea levels, falls in snow cover, receding glaciers, a decrease in Arctic ice, earlier springs, treelines moving towards the poles. These are covered in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm,
Of course, these indicators will undergo the normal fluctuations attributable to weather. What is important is the long-term trend, and to date the long term favours AGW.
“Catastrophic AGW has been repeatedly falsified. It keeps coming back like Mann’s discredited Hockey Stick for one reason: $Billions in annual grant money.”
You are claiming here that AGW – “catastrophic” or otherwise – cannot be happening because scientists gain grant money. And of course this is a nonsensical proposition, both a non-sequitur and an ad hominen. Grant money may exercise a powerful grip on your imagination, but its power does not extend to influencing the climate.