“According to Lubos, global warming should see a great reduction in the number of record cold events, by a factor of a MILLION.”

It seems to me that this point, if it were pressed home, would be extremely effective in raising the first real doubts about global warming in the minds of many scientists, and would even move a meaningful percentage of them into the skeptics camp. I envisage an article that did the drudgework of looking at the average temperature reported by a collection of weather stations and then comparing the statistically expected number of record lows (given their rising average) to the actual number of such lows. If the actual reported lows “failed to compute,” this would indicate that the reported numbers had some flaw in them, such as failure to account for the urban heat island effect, data-Hansenizing, etc.

Of course, it would be a massive task to perform this data analysis on all the world’s weather stations, or even on all the US’s stations. But it could be performed on a regional subset of the US’s stations, or on the stations in a smaller country. If the AGW thesis is correct, there should be no great misalignment between the average temperature over a period of time and temperature extremes accompanying it in any subset of its data. The could claim to be only a pilot study; or it could claim to present an accurate sample of the world’s weather-station data, challenging the Warmers to disprove it with any other regional data set of their choosing.

If such an article appeared in a major scientific journal–and I can’t imagine what justification such a major journal could find to reject it (realizing as it would how bad it would look in the aftermath if the article turned out to be persuasive to the scientific community)–it could have a tremendous impact. It is elegantly Holmes-worthy in putting its finger on the fatal flaw in the Warmers case.

Incidentally, there is an analogously elegant method of detecting fudged numbers known as Benford’s Law. Here is a description of it, from “A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market,” by John Allen Paulos (pp. 72-74):

“Benford’s Law states that in a wide variety of circumstances, numbers … have “1″ as their first non-zero digit disproportionately often. Specifically, they begin with “1″ about 30 percent of the time, with “2″ about 18 percent of the time, with “3″ about 12.5 percent, and with larger digits progressively less often.
…………….
“A mathematically inclined accountant named Mark Nigrini generated considerable buzz when he noted that Benford’s Law could be used to catch fraud in income tax returns and other accounting documents.
………….
“When people fake plausible-seeming numbers, they generally use more “5s” and “6s” than Benford’s Law would predict.”

18th coolest since 1979, 9th coolest since and including 1998, 8th coolest last decade. !999 is part of the last decade.

18th warmest since 1979, 3rd coolest this decade and since 1998.

I think there are some pretty big differences with what happened with La Nina/-PDO in 1998-01 and what is happening now. There is no doubt in my mind that we have entered a true, longer-lasting -PDO phase now, evident by atmospheric and weather trends over the past year or so which are much closer to what occurred during the last -PDO phase than what occurred in the late 1990s.

Also, as you say, the peak of solar activity is behind us…and sure enough, temps started flattening out in the late 1990s, and then perhaps started cooling in the mid-2000s.

Obviously the extent of the ice in any area will be dependent on current and wind so compaction can lead to higher percent ice (concentration “colors”) with less area covered. Any growth at this point is first year ice, and is in areas that is only ever covered with first year ice. The Sea of Okhotsk being a prime example.

Most of the public has been given a very bad image of Arctic ice behavior – not just the soon hyped for demise. For example the constant movement of sea ice vs. land fast ice (the sea ice is pretty static at the moment)…
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/barrow_radar.html
or bouy tracking data: http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/newdata.htm
They mostly get Gore’s polar bear on iceberg (from Greenland glaciers).

One of the most effective ways to get started is asking someone how thick Arctic ice is. Most of the replies I get is about 100 m. They are quite surprised to learn that multi-year ice is normally only 3 m thick – the depth of a regulation Olympic pool (yes, the Chinese went with 4 m). The massive yearly melt and refreezing is less surprising then.

Regards,
Bob

It surely depends on which drivers (or cookers) you are referring to. If the PDO has gone into a negative phase then that should become evident pretty quickly -particularly in those areas which are sensitive to ocean changes. When the PDO warming began in the mid-1970s, temperatures at many alaskan stations shot up year-on-year for about 4 or 5 years. This could be starting to happen in reverse but we need a bit more time just to make sure that the current La Nina phase is actually part of a longer term shift rather than a short term blip similar to what happened in 1998-2001.

As far as the sun is concerned the temperature lag due to inertia will be longer. But that, if sunspot count is anything to go by, should be well under way by now. Peak activity was in 1990. Temperatures shoud have flattened by the end of the 1990s. The recent cycle (i.e. SC23) was not particularly strong, it was the previous cycles, i.e. SC21 and SC22, which were the most active(apart from SC19).

Thermal inertia – as Anthony has already pointed out- perhaps? 5 – 8 years by some reckoning, so the last 15 months is still part of the cooker just having been turned off phase! And what’s the cooker? Who knows? That’s where many of us believe the debate is wide open – maybe AGW, maybe natural processes -maybe a bit of both?

One thing is for sure though, exciting times in the next few years. If things don’t cool down, your point will be a very good one. If it does continue to cool however, there will be a bit of explaining to do!

For climate science though, I think there’s never been a better time. What is science about if it’s not about testing theory against observation? But to have the science so centre stage is just brilliant. The next few years will I believe provide data that will put AGW theory to its most serious test yet.

Actually, the exchange is working about as well as it ever does. With a Pangea configuration global temp rises to 72 degrees F. Perhaps you could illustrate with a car’s cooling system, I do not follow.

“Anyway, the context of the discussion is the effect of increased GHG/CO2.”

To quote the late Reid Bryson: “You can go outside and spit to greater effect”.
Acknowledging the actuality of strange attractors in chaotic systems, increased CO2 could be the butterfly tipping us to global warming or cooling in one or another of a myriad of scenarios, which none of us can conceive but a few. Life is too short.

Per RSS, I have 2008 in 14th place since 1979. Coolest this decade, slightly ahead of Y2K.

18th coolest since 1979, 9th coolest since and including 1998, 8th coolest last decade. !999 is part of the last decade.

You will have to ask a statistician about what you think you see in the various graphs. I don’t have thoughts on intrigue, graphing errors, or adding/subtracting numbers. That doesn’t tell me anything about the cause because it tells me nothing about where the ice is and isn’t around the edges from day to day. In fact, I spend more time looking at ocean current data, weather systems, and jet stream data in the area than I do studying graphed anomalies.

Which reminds me of a proposal I have floated of an index of record high temperatures minus record low temperatures for each day in the year and for all sites for which there is current data. It’s the same priciple as the indexes of new daily highs minus new daily lows in the stock markets. This would be a much more sensitive measure of short to medium term climate trends than averages.

And it would be practically impossible to get an average of every day of a month that is less than the average of the same month 21 years in the past. But here we are. That right there is all the proof anyone should need. Any warming since December 1987 is gone. You don’t need any fancy models or math equations. If the average temperature of December 2008 is less than the average temperature of December 1987, then there has not been any warming since December 1987. Goodbye, Al.

Last January you were just about calling the next ice age. Now we have to sit around and wait for all that thermal inertia to get out the way – despite the sun being cool for a year and La Nina dominating for the last ~15 months.

You can’t have it both ways. +0.17C is a big anomaly given that natural forces are pushing so hard in the cooling direction. What’s pushing the other way?

REPLY: David,

You know that I said absolutely nothing about an ice age then I’ve said nothing about an ice age now. I don’t like it when people put words in my mouth so don’t attribute claims I did not make. You intent is clear. – Anthony