Above: At left – Myself, James O’Brien from FSU, and Steve McIntyre at podium. Photo by Evan Jones
This morning’s breakfast program featured congressman Tom McClintock of California. He quipped:
“I was the first to discover global warming during a grade school trip to a natural history museum, where I deduced dinosaurs were destroyed by warming temperatures.” Unfortunately, he said, Miss Conroy, his elementary school teacher, failed to nominate him for a Nobel Prize, “so instead of jetting around the world in a fleet of Gulfstream Fives to tell people they need to feel guilty about driving to work, I have to take the subway. And I don’t get paid $100,000 a speech for my original discovery. But then again, I don’t have Al Gore’s electricity bills either, so I guess it all balances out.”
NASA’s only geologist to walk the moon, Harrison “Jack” Schmidt gave the noon presentation today. I hope to have the text of his speech posted here soon.
Also today I made my presentation on the surfacestations.org project at 4PM, and sat on the panel with Steve McIntyre whose presentation immediately followed me. Both were well received, Steve is now off to Thailand.
I spoke with a number of people today, including Richard Lindzen, who had encouraging words and we exchanged some good ideas. I’ll have more on that later. It’s now midnight, I’m exhausted and have another day tomorrow plus a flight back to California.
Professor Bob Carter is doing a better job than I am in blogging, (he apparently has more time) so I’ll post his report again below.
March 8, 2009
Currently, visitors from outside USA who happen to turn their TVs to one of the 24-hours news channels are astonished – or at least, I was – at the vehement hostility of right-wing commentators to the new Obama administration. This hostility has spread even to some Democrats, who were instrumental in helping to defer Mr Obama’s $410 billion financial rescue package when it was approaching the vote in Congress on Thursday.
The reason is that attached to the bill are more than 6,000, mostly small, spending earmarks (US lingo for tailored, pork-barrel voting inducements), summing to about $7 billion, each one of which is in the interest of particular members or Senators. Earmarking has a long history in the US legislature, but its efflorescent continuation against the financial crisis, and the associated announcement today of 8.1% US unemployment, does not look good given that President Obama gave a campaign pledge to close the practice down.
It is accepted that any new head-of-state deserves a honeymoon period, but Barack Obama may already be close to exhausting his. This is partly because of the unfulfillable expectations that his campaign rhetoric aroused, partly because of the sheer size of the urgent problems that confronted him, and partly because of the polarizing nature of some of the key appointments he has made to his administration. This is particularly true in the environmental area and associated portfolios, where he has appointed John Holdren as Science Adviser, Stephen Chu as Secretary of Energy, Carol Browner (former EPA head) in the new position of Energy Co-ordinator and Lisa Jackson as Administrator of the EPA.
However distinguished the careers of these persons, their public record on the key environmental issues of the day is not one of balance – and especially not regarding global warming. One wonders whether a senior representative of the Obama climate team will pitch up at the Heartland conference, for it is very clear that his administration would benefit from an injection of reality on the issue.
Against this background – and the dependence of President Obama on revenue from a carbon dioxide cap and trade bill to meet his aim of halving the US deficit in the four years 2012-2016 – travellers from around the world are today converging on the Mariott Marquis in Times Square, where the Heartland Institute is hosting its second Manhatten conference on climate change.
Accordingly, press and blog comment is starting to stir. Fascinatingly, two of the first cabs off the rank give diametrically opposed views of the conference.
Writing in the Canadian National Post, Peter Foster summarises the IPCC claim that the climate is at a crisis point, with human carbon dioxide emissions the main culprit, then commenting:
The Heartland conference will present papers suggesting that such views are at best simplistic and at worst downright wrong. It will also feature bold voices who stress the political nature of the climate change bandwagon, and its success in closing down debate as it threatens already foundering global prosperity. These include Vaclav Kraus, president of the Czech Republic and of the European Union.
Meanwhile, over at Grist, Coby Beck adopts the long-favoured technique of ad hominem attack in an attempt to discredit the Heartland-2 event. In a vicious example of the polemic art, Mr Beck manages to denigrate Roy Spencer, Dick Lindzen, Bill Gray, Willie Soon, Arthur Robinson, Stephen McIntyre, Jack Schmidt, Christopher Monckton and Lawrence Solomon – fine intellects, one and all – summarily dismissing them, and others, with the sneering comment:
Hardly ‘the world’s elite scientists specializing in climate issues.’ In fact, none of these experts is a trained climate scientist. In the community of actual experts, the consensus is:
- The earth is rapidly warming (over 0.6 deg. C in the last century)
- Human activities are the primary cause
- Warming will continue and accelerate if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
Can this be the same group of people who Peter Harris characterizes as:
I’ll be thinking about that [climate change as the new state religion] every time I look out of my window over the next couple of days, grateful that there are intellectual lights still shining inside the building, and at least some voices speaking up for intellectual freedom and scientific objectivity.
Though it received little press coverage at the time, last year’s Heartland-1 conference resulted in the striking Manhatten Declaration on Climate Change, which commented, inter alia:
That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
The Heartland-2 event obviously has a hard act to follow.
Does this mean that at the end of the day tomorrow, I get to crack open my 6-pack of CO2 chilling in the frig? But on a serious note, there are folks at this convention that could form that review panel. It seems worthwhile to at least give it a first crack at considering it with all you folks sitting together in one room.
Here is the web site again as a model review panel
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/
“But then again, I don’t have Al Gore’s electricity bills either, so I guess it all balances out.”
[1] the dependence of President Obama on revenue from a carbon dioxide cap and trade bill to meet his aim of halving the US deficit in the four years 2012-2016, and
[2] That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
The horse of the US Economy is already on it’s knees, taking a gun to its head (CO2 Cap & Trade) before flogging it for taxes just doesn’t make any sense.
Even if you believe in Catastrophic AGW – given the failed track record of CAP and Trade with Kyoto in reducing CO2 – this has too be the wrong move.
“Meanwhile, over at Grist, Coby Beck adopts the long-favoured technique of ad hominem attack in an attempt to discredit the Heartland-2 event. In a vicious example of the polemic art, Mr Beck manages to denigrate Roy Spencer, Dick Lindzen, Bill Gray, Willie Soon, Arthur Robinson, Stephen McIntyre, Jack Schmidt, Christopher Monckton and Lawrence Solomon – fine intellects, one and all – summarily dismissing them, and others, with the sneering comment:
Hardly ‘the world’s elite scientists specializing in climate issues.’ In fact, none of these experts is a trained climate scientist. In the community of actual experts, the consensus is:”
BIZARRE ILLOGICAL AND SELF-DAMIMG WORDS
REPLY: It is of no consequence now, Grist’s website is broken and now is unable to serve the story anyway. – Anthony
Most people of reasonable discourse ignore the ad hominems and dismiss them and MOVE ON!!
Thank you folks for reporting on this. It is only just now approaching 10 PM where I am and most everything else is old news. Including one of the morning headlines on the BBC: “A meeting of scientists in the Danish capital Copenhagen is expected to reveal further worrying data on global warming.”
Nothing about the NYC-Heartland Conf. What a surprise.
I just went and read that BBC Copenhagen story. It makes me feel as though I’ve been slammed hard into a space/time warp. The claim is they are going to fix the less than desired sea level rise in the last UN report. Say, what?
John F. Hultquist (21:00:15) :
Thank you folks for reporting on this. It is only just now approaching 10 PM where I am and most everything else is old news. Including one of the morning headlines on the BBC: “A meeting of scientists in the Danish capital Copenhagen is expected to reveal further worrying data on global warming.”
Nothing about the NYC-Heartland Conf. What a surprise.
The BBC expects further worrying data on global warming – could it ever be otherwise?
Purveyors of fear.
Further to the above – on the BBC site@ 0218GMT Tue 10 March – is the following,
“For the scientists gathering in the Danish capital, this meeting is about removing as much wriggle room as possible from the political negotiations on a new global climate treaty taking place in December.
While the IPCC reports of 2007 were praised for their recognition of the causes of global warming, the slow, consensus-based nature of the process, meant more recent data was not included.
But with this meeting taking place outside the IPCC, it means it will have the very latest estimates, and the scientists will have no need to agree every word with the political masters.
This unfettered atmosphere is likely to produce greater clarity about the scale of some very worrying trends, especially sea level rise. The IPCC was widely criticised for stating that sea level rise this century would only amount to 59cm (23in). The most recent data, to be presented here, will suggest a far higher figure with dramatic implications for many island nations and coastal regions.
The meeting is being organised by the University of Copenhagen. Its prorector Lykke Friis said the scientists would be presenting the latest and the clearest information, meaning political leaders would not have the excuse that they needed more research before agreeing on a deal. As well as hearing from scientists, the meeting will also look at the social and economic impacts of the global rise in temperatures. ”
While I can see that this was written by a reporter, it implies that the extremist ( the 3 sigma end of the Normal Probability Curve) climate believers opinions grabbed the reporters imagination. I was very lucky that my inital bachelors in Geology in the 60’s was overseen by Prof Harold Wellman, a scientist who refused to let opinion override facts. I live in NZ, where this worrying rise in average temperatures can be duplicated by moving North a 100km or so or simply selecting a suitable microclimate. I await the end of conference press release with interest.
the ipcc projected a sea level rise between 0.18-0.59m and not just the maximum of this range.
the bbc now appears to falsify facts, that every reader could google in a few seconds.
they don’t allow public user comments, and people will be taxed whatever they produce, so why care about something outdated like facts or truth ?
Consider of the case of well established scientific laws and facts of nature such as Newton’s Laws of motion. It has been repeated, verified and applied a million times. However, there are some phenomena that could not be aptly described by Newton’s law such as the behavior of light and gravity. Rather than spending millions to research and model Newton’s law one more time, money is spent on the alternative theories and expand man’s knowledge.
Climate science stands on a ground less solid than Newton’s laws of motion. There are a number of “ifs” “buts” “unreplicated analysis” “questionable analysis”, etc. However, if consensus is on climate change, then additional reseach funding should go into the alternative theories such that if there is a mistake it will not be a costly mistake. It would be worthwhile if the Obama administration will refocus its scientific budget to carry out researches on the questions raised at the IPCC to either silence the global warming critique once and for all that they theory is wrong or to fill the gap of the existing knowledge. After there is more or less a common appreciation of the human impacts on this planet. The biggest question is whether the decarbonization of civilization is the right path and there are lots of gaps in the scientific knowledge that what we have is a “consensus” a political rather than a scientific term–much weaker than the scientific verification of Newton;s law.
There is only one problem of swifting the research budget and priorities to filling the gaps in scientific knowledge. A large number of “scientists” may just shift to the “skeptics” side to avail of the research grants .
Bob, can you stop putting down Obama (give him a break, at least he reversed Bush’s anti-science policies and other stupidities) and report on the scientific content of the lectures/speeches, please?
Don’t worry about volume of blog material while you are on the road. I’m still trying to make it through the last batch! (Plus comments, it takes more time than there are hours in the day to get through it all…)
FWIW, I’m still waiting for some indication that there has been a real rise of sea level anywhere. Some of the Pacific islands that are on a flexing bucking plate are suffering some water rise (or should I say land drop) but take a look at pictures of New York harbor (or dozens of others) and you don’t exactly see the sea flooding into the underground rail system… The tide gauges are not exactly reporting doom and a new Atlantis! (How about a Global Tide Guage metric of total world ocean level?)
Obama, Gore, et. al. have the same problem / disease. They have no moral compass. Everything is about finding a ridable cause and riding it to glory. The problem with this is that the ride can be straight down… and they will take their followers with them when they go.
I suspect we need to define a new disease: Messiah by Proxy Syndrome. The followers of these folks want to feel like they matter. They want to have merit by proxy. If I support the messiah, then I am in some small way a messiah myself, by proxy. But what happens when the Messiah “has issues”? The MPS sufferer “has issues” too… though I would assert that the issues are out of proportion. So we end up with a minor disappointment in what the Messiah delivers (v.s. the self image of the MPS sufferer) and it leads to a collapse of the personal MPS image. And a backlash…
So Obama doesn’t pull 100% of U.S. troops out of Iraq on day one; the fanatical pacifist has a tarnish on their MPS self image. He doesn’t stop 6000 earmarks ( hmmm 600 ish congress critters… 10 earmarks per head? More for Democrats?) $7,000 M / 6000 ~= $1 Million/earmark or $10 MILLION PER CONGRESS CRITTER with more for Democrats?! Not bad for a weak of “work”…) and the “new way, change, fresh start” folks take a body blow to their MPS virtue…
It’s very hard when you hand your self worth over to someone else and they don’t care for it very well… What’s a ‘Messiah Wanna Be’ to do!
“…There are many reasons for being confident of this. However, we have just gone over one of the most important scientific reasons. The satellite records of outgoing heat radiation show that the climate is dominated by negative feedbacks and that the response to doubled and even quadrupled CO2 would be minimal. IN A FIELD AS PRIMITIVE AS CLMATE SCIENCE, most of the alleged climate scientists are not even aware of this basic relation. And these days, one can be confident that once they are, many will, in fact, try to alter the data. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the public is not likely to understand this as well… ”
http://www.heartland.org/full/24841/Climate_Alarm_What_We_Are_Up_Against_and_What_to_Do.html
where else could theinventors of horror-predictions make a scientific career, except in such a primitive disciplin like climate science ?
[I don’t give a damn whom that was aimed at. It has no place here. ~ Evan]
Golly, the world surprises you sometimes. I was doing my USGS check before bedtime and found a tiny-tim quake near Chico (almost on top of Colusa). I’d have not thought it possible (well, maybe possible. You can have a quake anywhere; but highly unlikely!) It’s a 2.1 so I would not have felt it if I was standing on top of it when it went (I’ve sometimes not noticed 4+ events … I’m getting jaded about anything less than a 5…) But still, this is a part of the state that just doesn’t DO quakes!
Maybe Chico will ‘get some action’?!
A look at the USGS map gives you an idea how little action there is around this spot:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/38.40.-123.-121.php
From: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc40232964.php
Magnitude 2.1
Date-Time
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 07:05:21 UTC
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 12:05:21 AM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location
39.483°N, 122.026°W
Depth
25.1 km (15.6 miles)
Region
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Distances
15 km (10 miles) ESE (106°) from Willows, CA
26 km (16 miles) SW (228°) from Durham, CA
28 km (18 miles) WNW (286°) from Biggs, CA
33 km (20 miles) SSW (210°) from Chico, CA
114 km (71 miles) NNW (335°) from Sacramento, CA
Location Uncertainty
horizontal +/- 1.4 km (0.9 miles); depth +/- 2.3 km (1.4 miles)
Parameters
NST= 18, Nph= 18, Dmin=28 km, Rmss=0.1 sec, Gp=176°,
M-type=duration magnitude (Md), Version=1
Source
California Integrated Seismic Net: USGS Caltech CGS UCB UCSD UNR
Event ID nc40232964
This is a computer-generated message — this event has not yet been reviewed by a seismologist.
The folks at the BBC should read, “Climate Change and Global Warming” by A. Marterman vailable at:
http://www.usefulinfo.co.uk/climate_change_global_warming.php
Mr Materman analyzed the CET on a month-by-month basis at 30 years intervals and found that for most months there has been no significant change in Tmean for 300 years except for the fall months which showed a slight warming trend.
I can’ t imagine that the boys in the Met Office are completely unaware of his work.. What would be the results and conclusions if all weather station records were analyzed by his method?
But I thought the NYC—Heartland conference was cancelled – see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ (I’d like to know why).
Was Bob C actually there? I can’t see any reference to the day’s proceedings.
The press releases have been few and far apart – unfortunately. I’m hoping to hear more in the media soon like FOX, WSJ, NY Post, News Busters, IBD, Drudge, and the other organisations soon.
So lads, let’s get them press releases out there!
ATTN: Everyone
An English translation of “Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity” by
L.B. Klyasthorin and A.A. Lyubushin is now available at:
http://alexylyubushin.narod.ru/climate_changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf?
I surprised to learn that the fish guys have discovered and have been investigating these long-term ocean oscillations for quite some time.
Meanwhile we get Prince Charles wittering on about how we only have 100 months to save the world…
I’ve also noticed, in my layman’s capacity, that the warmists appear to be escalating their second front – ocean acidity. Given Joe Public’s confusion over AGW just think how confused they’ll be about ocean acidity and how it’s just going to kill off all the plankton, scallops and fish if we don’t prevent it right now.
Perhaps someone should point out, before this gets out of hand, that during the first half of the Tertiary CO2 was far higher than it is today and the seas teemed with life.
Since Obama and all his advisors believe in AGW, his energy/tax plan includes measures that will singnificantly increas our dependence on foreign oil . Wish his people would have attended the Conference and got some facts instead of the phoney AGW science.
Because of mis-information and obsession with CO2, Obama’s proposed budget would repeal incentives for US oil and gas production and drive new exploration and drilling to foreign countries.
And this despite the fact that:
“Royalties collected from the US oil and gas industry already account for the federal treasury’s second-largest income stream… Less domestic oil and gas production would also immediately reduce federal and state governments’ income… Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden egg!!
For details go to:
http://www.ogj.com/display_article/354653/120/ARTCL/none/GenIn/1/Obama's-proposed-budget-would-repeal-oil,-gas-tax-breaks/
All this because CO2 is deemed a pollutant!!
I understand the US has something called mid term elections. If Obama continues along his chosen path and people find they are paying through their noses for his eco-policies – it’s beginning to cost us Brits the earth (sic) – then maybe he’ll get an honest to goodness shock in a couple of years time. Let’s hope that the damage he’s inflicting on the US can be overturned. Let’s hope the damage being inflicted on the UK and Europe can be halted too. I’m hoping the recession will reign some of it in.
Sigh…
Harold Pierce Jr (01:05:08) :
Your link gives me a 404 error
http://lyubushin.hotbox.ru/Index.htm
Has all his papers plus the one you state in your link
Ah, now I see –
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
You need capitals for the original link
That is some article by Matt McGrath BBC environment reporter.
If you have not read it yet then:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7934046.stm
“For the scientists gathering in the Danish capital, this meeting is about removing as much wriggle room as possible from the political negotiations on a new global climate treaty taking place in December.”
So this meeting is not about science it is about removing as much wriggle room as possible!!
“Its prorector Lykke Friis said the scientists would be presenting the latest and the clearest information, meaning political leaders would not have the excuse that they needed more research before agreeing on a deal. ”
Why do they need to meet?
Their conclusions are clear.
Please allow me to add:
– American Thinker,
– The Weekly Standard
– National Review
– Washington Times
– NewsMax
– UK Telegraph
– and of course talk radio.
to the list of media outlets.
I hope that the German sceptic websites (I’m sure they will) will post info about the ICCC.
“Mr Materman analyzed the CET on a month-by-month basis at 30 years intervals and found that for most months there has been no significant change in Tmean for 300 years except for the fall months which showed a slight warming trend.”
300 years ago would be about 1709. So am I right in thinking that Harold Pierce Jr is claiming our average temperature in the UK has not changed significantly since then? This is news.
Error in the above link for the Klyasthorin and Lyubushin book about oceanic and fish stock oscillations, here’s the correct one:
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
UK Sceptic,
I’m 99% sure President Obama will overreach in a huge way, and with a big backlash to follow. He’s made it clear he intends to radically alter America.
I think he got the mandate completely confused. Somehow he got the notion Americans want him to radically change the country, when in fact Americans only want him to improve their lives and wallets.
Now he’s raising taxes, ignoring the borders, intends to nationalise healthcare, and burden business with cap and trade, etc. Few businesses are willing to invest in such a hostile environment. Kiss job creation good bye. Say hello to unemployment.
To me it’s a DECLARATION OF WAR ON PRIVATE BUSINESS.
And that’s the way the markets see it too. All the major international stock markets have plummeted in the wake of his policy announcements.
The big bad backlash is coming. Be patient.
The real fun for the current administration has not even begun.
Just wait until Joe Sixpack finds out CO2 taxes are going to add to his gasoline bill.
Or Miss Granny down the street is going to pay more on her electrical bill.
You simply cannot raise $650 billion without someone noticing.
Even if congress is stupid enough to impose a cap and trade tax on the economy, there will be a big price paid in 2010. This will get very interesting if the current temperature trends stay in place for a couple more years. Also, if La Nina continues and the arctic continues its current trend of increasing ice cover.
People are being recommended for high level positions in this government who cannot even pay their own taxes. That has always been a weakness of people who advocate higher taxes; they don’t pay their share.
People love to see polar bears on Animal Planet, but they don’t want to pay for them.
[I don’t give a damn whom that was aimed at. It has no place here. ~ Evan]
Not aimed at anyone – just noticed a pattern slighly different to the “older men men with bald patches” comment that was written in an earlier posting on the conference. Here I was thinking that it was the AGW crowd alone that lacked a sense of humor. Sorry if you took offence Evan. No insult at all intended, just an off beat observation from someone who has an off beat sense of humour, following on from the earlier observation.
Dorlomin
This is a subject I have posted on many times and here is my own analysis over the entire period since 1660. This prompted me to write aditional pieces over the last couple of years. I will post separately after this a satirical piece I wrote on the static tempereatures experienced diring this period which has some serious analysis based on the life expectancy of a 70 year old. I posted this here a few weeks ago. First is the serious analysis.
CET from 1660 to 2008
January
Generally past years are cooler than the 1990’s which was just 0.10C warmer than 1730’s and 1920’s
Overall the monthly figures are dragged right down by the very cold little ice age which covers most of the period from the 1660’s to around 1880
February
As above with 1730 cooler by .10 1860 by .2 1870 by .3 and 1920 by .2
March
As above but 1730 cooler by .6 1920 by .8 and 1930 by .9 i.e. one of the greatest changes in any month (other than winter Dec-February inc)
April
1990s cooler than 1940 by 0.7 1860 by .3 and 1730 by .2 otherwise broadly similar
May. 1990s cooler than 1660 by 0.3 same as 1720 and 1730 cooler than 1800 by 0.3 same as 1820 and 1830 cooler than 1830 by .10 and 1910 by .3 otherwise broadly the same
June
1990 same as 1980 1970 and 1960
Cooler than 1960 by .4 1950 by .2 1940 by .3 1930 by .4 1890 by .4 1870 by .1 1860 by .1 1850 by .3 1840 by .3 1830 by .6 1820 by.4 1800 by .2 1790 by .2 1780 by .8 1770 by .7 1760 by .1 1750 by .4 same as 1740 cooler than 1730 by .7 1720 by .9 1710 by .3 same as 1700 and 1680 cooler than 1670 by .3 and 1660 by .3
Overall June has become a much cooler month
July 1990 cooler than 1730 by .4 1750 by .5 1760 by .4 1770 by .4 1780 by .4 1790 by .4 1800 by .4 1870 by .5 1930 by .4
Overall July has become a rather cooler month
August
1990 was cooler than 1930 by .3 1770 by .5 and 1700 by .3
Overall August has become a little warmer.
September
1990s cooler than 1720 and 1730 by .2 and 1740 by .1 It was the same as 1930 and cooler than 1940 by .2
Overall there was little difference
October
1990 cooler than 1960 by .4 and .4 warmer than 1900 1850 1830 1820 1730 1660
Overall October has become a little warmer
November
1990s cooler than 1970 by .2
Overall this month has become distinctly milder
December
1990 cooler than 1980 by .5 1970 by .6 1950 by .2 1940 by .1 1860 by .1 1820 by .3 1730 by .3
The month has become a little milder
Temperatures have fluctuated considerably throughout the period with months often changing their ‘traditional’ characteristics.
Generally modern winter months have become milder than the winters of the little ice age period (not surprising!) which brought the overall averages for the year sharply down. November has also become distinctly milder and March much milder. July has become rather cooler whilst June is distinctly cooler, other months show limited difference either way.
The early 1700’s were remarkably similar to the current period but the warmth was over a more extended period and came from a lower base. In this respect average temperatures have barely changed in nearly 300 years from pre industrial times. Many other periods have been fairly close in warmth to the modern era but again the little ice age winters knocked the annual averages down somewhat. The 1820’s 1900’s 1920’s and 1930’s were also notably warm.
TonyB
Obama justifies proposed US cap-and-trade policy in the face of economic problems by touting it as deficit reduction move (less than half the revenue targeted at solving the “serious and dangerous problem” of AGW). Take away with one hand, re-distribute with the other.
If a cap-and-trade policy is passed and global warming continues to “pause” there will be a segment of the population who will immediately believe cap-and-trade did it. Belief in AGW and effectiveness of cap-and-trade seem to go hand in hand.
Ok guys, we can stop being skeptics, not!
Obama has introduced measures that “guarantee scientific integrity in Federal Policy,
Promising scientific Integrity instead of ideology!
But it will not divorce science from politics, or strip ideology from presidential decisions.
Read here all about the latest smoke curtain produced by the biggest scam artist ever to set foot in the White House!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/politics/10obama.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Dorlomin
Here is the satirical piece I wrote that is referenced above (3 42 03) but it is intended to make a serious point about our misuse of statistics and our tendancy to look at the short term. It should be looked at in the ligt of the data contained in my previous post 3 42 03
Article follows
Being at a loose end I set my dedicated team of climate researchers here in the UK on the task of graphing Hadley CET temperatures to 1660 so we could demonstrate to the misinformed the realities of indisputable catastrophic climate change, and get our large budgets increased. Unfortunately the ‘adjustments and smoothing interpolator’ was away on holiday and the ‘trend line coordinator’ was away at a wedding, so I must apologise that the data shown below is unadjusted and looks nowhere near as pretty and nicely ordered as we have been used to.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck_mencken_hadley.jpg
One of our staff is a former actuary and thought she would amuse herself by working systematically through the records back to 1660, to see for herself the alarming warming trend over the centuries-obviously she had seen the Gore film and was wearing the T Shirt emblazoned with the catchy slogan;
“Catastrophic climate change-STOP it NOW! Ask me HOW!”
Living near the coast she thought about the cycle of the tides, and whilst realising that the climate cycle was different- in as much it is however long we want it to be and starts from whatever point necessary to maximise our funding- thought it would be fun to use this idea of a regular cycle.
Consequently she based her calculations on a three score year and ten life span as she worked out the average annual mean temperature enjoyed by ‘British Everyman’ through each year of each decade. This assumed he was born at the start of a decade and died the last year of the decade seventy years later. Of course we urged her to call this mythical person ‘everywoman’ but as a woman was likely to live longer, as an actuary she thought this would only complicate matters, so 70 years it is.
These are her calculations;
Someone born in Britain in 1660 and living to 70- Average annual temp 8.87c
Someone born in 1670 and living to 70 Average annual temp 8.98
1680 9.01
1690 9.05
1700 9.19
1710 9.21
1720 9.17
1730 9.14
1740 9.04
1750 9.03
1760 9.08
1770 9.10
1780 9.07
1790 9.12
1800 9.15
1810 9.13
1820 9.14
1830 9.12
1840 9.10
1850 9.14 (Start of the famously reliable Hadley global temperatures)
1860 9.17
1870 9.21
1880 9.30 Official end of the Little Ice Age
1890 9.39
1900 9.40
1910 9.46
1920 9.497
1930 9.60
1940 9.70 (projected to 2009)
1950 9.76 Extrapolating current trends (our favourite phrase)
1960 9.79 Using advanced modelling techniques to create a robust scenario.
The actuary has a poetic turn of mind and decided to call the people born in the period from 1660 to 1880 as ‘LIA Everyman’ in as much the person lived part or all of their lives during the little ice age. She called those born from 1890 to the present day as ‘UHI Everyman’ She assures me that no adjustments have been made to correct UHI Everyman’s unfair reputation to exaggerate his (or her) temperatures.
It was at this point that the Accountants -who were in auditing our accounts to ensure we were spending our grants wisely- became really interested. They’re at a bit of a loose end as they’re the group who audit the annual EU accounts-they’ve refused to endorse them for 12 years in a row now, and say it’s so easy to spot the fraud that it’s not a full time job anymore! Consequently they hope to get some work with the IPCC as they see them as a rapidly growing enterprise as fond of throwing meaningless and unsubstantiated-some might unkindly say fraudulent –numbers around, as the EU are.
After examination of the data the accountants reluctantly agreed that the temperatures were remarkably consistent, and the increase of a fraction of a degree in mean average temperatures during Everyman’s lifetime over a period of 350 years was so well within natural variability it was difficult to make any useful analogy (other than it was the sort of increase in average warmth that would pass by completely unnoticed if we weren’t looking hard for it). The fractional temperature difference was unlikely to have any effect on Everyman’s choice of clothes, or the day they might attempt to have their first swim of the year in the sea. Wearing approved buoyancy aids of course
The Accountants were particularly intrigued by the fact that the very slight rise in overall temperatures was almost entirely due to the absence of cold winters depressing overall temperatures, rather than hotter summers. At this point the actuary mentioned that warmer winters were good, as statistically, fewer people died.
Someone else mused that the modern temperatures seemed rather too close for comfort to those experienced during the Little Ice Age, and another murmured as to what the temperature variance would show if we did this exercise for the MWP, or the Roman warm period.
I quickly pointed out that it was just a Little Ice age and not the real thing, and that Dr Mann had told us all that the MWP was an outdated concept, and as I had never heard of the Romans they couldn’t exist, and neither could their allegedly warm period. Another Accountant mentioned that if UHI was stripped out, the already tiny increase in temperature since the Little Ice Age would disappear. I reminded them who was paying their bills and to stop that sort of Contrarian talk immediately.
Of course I fired the actuary when she confessed that the almost indistinguishable blue line along the bottom of her original graph represented total man made co2 since 1750. Obviously she was some sort of closet right wing tool of Big Oil out to cause trouble.
I’m undecided whether to turn this report over to our adjustments and smoothing interpolator for remedial work or merely to lose it. Or burn it.
TonyB
Harold Pierce Jr
I had no luck with your link, could you repeat it please. I am particularly interested as I ran a thread once on using fish as a termperature proxy. How sad is that…Having said that the relationship was startling. In our neck of the woods- the southern coast of England -the warm weather proxy were pilchards and intermediate the herring. This is reflected in the records of the fish markets and place names -there is a Pilchard Inn dating to 1386.
If anyone is interested to read this information I will find the plaice I have put it (sorry!)
TonyB
John Wright (00:40:43) :
They have the original logo for the conference which was meant to say that the crisis is canceled, not the conference.
The newer and improved logo (but still “cancelled” instead of “canceled”) is less fancy, you can see it at http://icecap.us/
If a rise of 0.6C over the past century counts as “rapidly warming”, how did people who predict a similar rise over the coming century ever get to be called “denialists”?
Ron de Haan (03:45:09) :
Nice link. AGW is a part of Obama’s value system of market control, green power, re-distribution of wealth, etc. and a clear breakthrough disproving AGW is unlikely because of the chaotic nature of climate science. So AGW will be “in the pipeline” as long as the current political climate continues or until temps continue to trend down over the next four years (but that would be caused by cap-and-trade).
Chris Schoneveld writes (23:59:37) :
“Bob, can you stop putting down Obama (give him a break, at least he reversed Bush’s anti-science policies and other stupidities) …”
Interesting, aren’t they? They do exactly what they say they don’t want others to do, and forget that Bush was for moving away from fossile fuels from the beginning of his presidency. Though there appears to have been a purge of the events from the mainstream news outlets, there are still traces available if you search dilligently.
http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/696.html
So, Bush was pushing the alternative fuels and such all along, but he was just not for curtailing commerce and harming the economy.
Then again, to know that, one would have to listen to the man. That’s not possible where the preconception (in this case, that he is “stupid” and “anti-science”) is allowed to direct one’s actions.
Graduating from a major university and flying a fighter jet don’t seem to me to be indicators of a “stupid” man, or one who is “anti-science”. But the claim that he is indicates to me one who ignores facts that militate against his agenda.
Anthony,
What I deduce from the photo is that climate investigators must have facial hair. Just anecdotal, but does this foreshadow a trend?
REPLY: Yes, but the math behind it is rather hairy. – Anthony
When I look at the CET temperatures from 1659 until the present day I always feel a bit unhappy.
1659 to 1670 are displayed correct to 1C and average correct to 0.01C
1671 to 1698 are displayed correct to 0.5 C and average correct to 0.01C
1699 onwards are displayed to 0.1 C and average correct to 0.01C
I just cannot understand this early accuracy.
Gordon Manley did a fantastic job getting all this data together and his endeavour to produce such a table is remarkable and I take my hat off to him.
The earlier readings were recorded using different “scales”.
One thermometer was 3 feet long with freezing point at 82.2F and a linear scale marked off in inches. The Royal Society thermometer measured freezing equivalent to 88F while others had freezing point at 77.5F
Manley use Fahrenheit approximations for these measurements.
Measurements prior to September 1752 would have been dated using Julian Calender. September 1752 had eleven fewer days which were needed to fall in line with the Julian Calender.
England Central Temperatures used readings and measurements from Edinburgh; yes Edinburgh Scotland. Like most of Europe, Scotland changed to Julian Calendar in 1600, that is 152 years before England. (Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day the fourth of January which was twenty fifth December in England. Confused?)
Now if a reading was made in Edinburgh on say 26th August then that we recorded as a 5th September date. What does that do to the average for August? The temperature for August, or any month for that matter, would have been recorded on different days.
Manley was aware of these problems, he also indicated that the change of calendar gave cooler temperatures.
The link below outlines Gordon Manley’s work.
http://www.rmets.org/pdf/QJ53manley.pdf
The end of the document displays his Fahrenheit CET conversions.
All averages are given to one decimal place.
TonyB,
I reposted the tested and corrected link about climatic cycles and fishing close to the original posting, but here it is:
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
Queen1, I would look into the major university thing and that jet fighter. There are extenuating circumstances around both events that mark these two things about Bush in a rather unremarkable manner. I would not choose those two items as highlights of his early adult life. They be murky waters.
Overcoming drug and alcohol abuse is, in my mind, no small feat for an overconfident “decider” with anger issues. Regardless of the murky items (re the above), it is his recovery while in the shadow of a truly great father that impresses me. I don’t think he was, is, or will historically be known has having been good presidential material. However, he would have made a damned good Senator. He missed his true calling. Why did he miss it? Because there was a group of people who decided he should run for President and convinced this rather gullible man of lofty abilities he did not have. He should have listened to his own voice. If he had done that, instead of the invasive voices that have surrounded him, the Republican party could very well have had the voice of a leader among them as they tussle with the growing Democratic party.
From 20,000 years ago until the Industrial Revolution there was an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 100ppm yet, ignoring the Ice Age, temperatures were lower at 280ppm than at the 200ppm that the Romans and Greeks saw.
At 270ppm we experienced the Little Ice Age. Even with that much CO2 in the air, along with other greenhouse gases, there still wasn’t enough GHGs to act as a radiative buffer to protect the planet from cooling.
Today we’re at 380ppm (a globally averaged out number as we all know here, it is higher in urban areas) yet we just suffered a very cold and long winter. If GHGs were indeed capable of warming the planet as much as Alarmists say, then their solution of lowering CO2 to less than 280ppm would have been disastrous for us. The winter we just had would have been far colder, would have caused pensioners to suffer, raised energy costs for everyone, killed wildlife, froze plant life, destroyed farm produce, and caused deserts to grow.
When Alarmists are told that it annoys them greatly.
B Kerr
I always take the view they are reasonably correct to a large fraction (and were largely measured properly) and as they are unadjusted for UHI the deficiencies at the start are outweighed by deficiencies at the end. This is hardly scientific, but as good as the ‘global temperatures since 1850’ debate ever gets, or the use of weather stations in obviously suspect locations which compromises temperatures since the start. It is probably worse these days as so much weight is given to their findings.
I have the paper somewhere where Manley gave his reasons for the adjustments he did to allow for the Julian calendar. I often think the problem is not with having enough information to marshall arguments but knowing where it has been put 🙂
The thing that worries me more is that Callendar selected his very small data base that 1850 temperratures are based on (and the AGW hypotheses) and Manley appeared to have a hand in rejecting some and including others-and we don’t know why. Callendars extensive archives are very instructive -have you read them?
I don’t know if Manley has anything similar, as there appears to be much of interest hidden away that could influence what is currently being promoted as factual these days.
Tonyb
CO2 = tax (which will increase tax for all income brackets)
tax = funding for social programs
more programs = larger government
larger government = left wing global warming movment payouts
nothing less, nothing more.
The Canadian mouth piece for alarmism The Globe and Mail, national newspaper part of the media empire Thomson Reuters CTV Globemedia doesn’t report about the Heartland Conference in New York but offers yet another alarmist headline from Copenhagen about models projecting bigger than IPCC predicted sea level rise! Meanwhile waterfront property taxes are not going down…
Pamela,
isn’t that interesting, that there is another man with some sort of father issues chosen for POTUS? I didn’t have good feelings about Bush Jr. because of this and I’m not very happy with what I’ve read about Obama’s issues.
Meanwhile in a parallel universe another conference takes place where everything is the same but opposite and nothing is quite what it seems.
“Sea level rises could bust official estimates – that’s the first big message to come from the climate change congress that kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, today.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16732-sea-levels-rising-faster-than-predicted.html
Pierre;
Second Dispatch from the ICCC Climate Sanity Front
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/second_dispatch_from_the_iccc.html
sorry
How many people have noticed that the cap’n trade proposal is supposed to fund government services while discouraging carbon emissions? Where will the funding come from if cap’n trade does reduce emissions?
BTW: I’m sure it will reduce emissions in this country, but not worldwide. Hello, Cap’n Trade, goodbye jobs!
all scientific aspect of the story apart, taking control of energy use you gain control of the world. using CO2 as lever, and forbidding nuclear on the other side, you have basically gained control over the world very easily and very cheaply. then of course CO2 is a good excuse to tax people to death, at the same time taking control of them and letally damaging capitalism.
Anthony
The problem of lack of media interest has been highlighted yet again. I hope a punchy press statement will be released at the end of the conference – make life easy for the media.
1. According to AGW theory increased CO2 results in increased temperatures.
2. CO2 levels continue to rise but global temperaures have not risen over the last x years.
3. The predictions of the IPCC models, which are driving the key political decisions, have not been validated.
4. Therefore there must something wrong with the hypothesis.
Paul Zrimsek (05:13:22) :
If a rise of 0.6C over the past century counts as “rapidly warming”, how did people who predict a similar rise over the coming century ever get to be called “denialists”?
Because they refuse to believe (they deny) that such an increase would be a problem that we could stop if we weren’t so selfish.
Paul Zrimsek (05:13:22) :
If a rise of 0.6C over the past century counts as “rapidly warming”, how did people who predict a similar rise over the coming century ever get to be called “denialists”?
Because they refuse to believe (they deny) that such an increase would be a problem and that we could stop if we weren’t so selfish.
Richard Heg (07:39:12) :
Meanwhile in a parallel universe another conference takes place where everything is the same but opposite and nothing is quite what it seems.
“Sea level rises could bust official estimates – that’s the first big message to come from the climate change congress that kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, today.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16732-sea-levels-rising-faster-than-predicted.html
Am i reading this right? Is this just another prediction by a “very sophisticated”
climate model? I thought they had some observations. I wonder if they did a look back on the last decade.
Paul Zrimsek (05:13:22) :
If a rise of 0.6C over the past century counts as “rapidly warming”, how did people who predict a similar rise over the coming century ever get to be called “denialists”?
Because they refuse to believe (they deny) that such an increase would be a problem and that we could stop it if we weren’t so selfish.
Richard Heg
I now have a stock list of around 10 artickles I post as there is no doubt that there are a number of arguments that keep coming round time and again.
The article you linked to was interesting. It was at variance to the findings of a large conference held at Exeter last autumn sponsored by the UK Met office/Hadley centre which revised their predictions down.
A metre rise is 10mm a year which is more than 3 times some official figures state, and infinity greaer than observations in many places which show little change and what there is appears to be cyclical. Here is an item I posted earlier which related specifically to a query that came up about San Francisco in respect of some scheme being proposed.
The link below leads to information on projected future sea level rises in San Francisco bay of 20-80 cm. This estimate goes directly back to what I said in an earlier post that govt agencies are being instructed to use IPCC projections whether or not they are rooted in reality –this estimate goes from the bottom to top end at from 8 inches per century-(reasonable) to getting on for three feet-(fantasy figures).
http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/events/2006_conference/presentations/2006-09-14/2006-09-14_KNOWLES.PDF
The next link gives information on the bay-you appear to have the longest tide gauge measurements in the western world. Over the last century the mean sea level rise has been eight inches. Intriguingly the first report above seems to have taken a projection that doesn’t match the actual figures-sea levels appear to have dropped over the last 2 years but the projection is taken from the high point.
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/topics/navops/ports/san_francisco_tide_gauge.pdf
There is a famous sea level mark in Australia made about the same time as your tidal gauge was established, held up by the Australian authorities as ‘proof’ of considerable rise-nicely debunked by John Daly in this link
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/appendix.htm
Sea levels go in cycles as does the climate-I would hazard a guess that the warm periods prior to 1850 would have had a higher mean sea level than when the tide gauge was established in the 1850’s, and todays levels are merely approaching it again
This is my own graph of Hadley CET figures (I am British) which shows temperature spikes back to the 1660’s. If your part of the world resembles this dataset the thermal expansion mentioned below would only kick in during the warm years
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/menken_hobgoblin.jpg
San Francisco bay sea levels are complicated by regular cyclical thermal expansion (the PDO?) Building, and seismic activity-it is difficult to believe your famous earthquakes haven’t had some effect on sea levels locally.
All things being equal however, I would say nothing extraordinary is happening and there is no evidence whatsoever to support a 80cm rise and the next few years might see a continuation of the current apparent fall (eyeballed only)
TonyB
The spelling mistakes in my last post only go to show you shouldn’t compose a message whilst listening to the cricket….
Tonyb
“EPA for the first time looks to mandate reporting of the gases linked to global warming”
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090310/epa_greenhouse_gases.html
@Jack Simmons (02:46:18) :
“The real fun for the current administration has not even begun.
Just wait until Joe Sixpack finds out CO2 taxes are going to add to his gasoline bill.
Or Miss Granny down the street is going to pay more on her electrical bill.”
Joe Sixpack will be fuming over more than just CO2 taxes, if that is the direction we follow. Simply increasing bio-fuels in gasoline and diesel, and increasing renewable energy as power generation will greatly increase costs to everyone. The poor and those on fixed incomes will be hurt the most. (see link below)
Elected officials should be acutely aware that the baby boomers are about to retire in droves, and they are plenty unhappy that their 401(k)s are now 201(k)s after the stellar stock market performance with Obama at the helm. [sarc off] And, baby boomers vote.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/ab-32-hits-poor-hardest.html
TonyB
The calendar issues are something else.
I would assume that Manley converted all Julian dates to Gregorian.
It would be awful if the January 1700 record consisted of December 1699 readings. As an aside The Battle of Culloden, date 16th April 1746; which 16th of April?
The CET record from 1707 to1723 has been “bridged” – Manley’s phrase – as he could not find any data. His original Fahrenheit table shows these values in brackets with the phrase “Regarded with Reserve”.
But when you look at Hadley CET there is no indication that these values are suspect. The Hadley table displays authoritative measurements correct to one decimal place and average correct to two decimal places. Now what really annoys me is that these values are taken as fact and appear to be beyond reproach.
The web site
http://www.usefulinfo.co.uk/climate_change_global_warming.php
which is quoted above says:
“This valuable and highly respected temperature record is shown in Figure 3 and several features are evident:”
Valuable and highly respected, yes, but with a health warning!
As you rightly said “It is probably worse these days as so much weight is given to their findings.” May I also add that it is probably worse these days as numbers a chucked into a computer and different numbers are produced and these new numbers are shown to an ever increasing number of decimal places.
I keep asking, what would Edward Lorenz make of it?
There is a need to point out that President Bush put out a comprehensive energy plan in 2001. This was comprehensive and included conservation, electricity generation and transmission, alternative fuels, ethanol, biofuels, hydrogen, solar, Nuclear, as well as conventional fossil fuels, including drilling in Alaska. Also it stressed development of technologies that would improve efficiency and more advanced drilling technologies. It predicted energy needs and how different sources might provide the required energy The Obama White house has killed any white house link to this program so I cannot find it anymore. I think they want to re write history to their advantage.
Had we instituted even portions of this policy, we would be considerably better off in terms of having indetendence from foreign oil. This was declared DOA on arrival by Congress.
As you may remember this program was severly criticized primarily because it’s preparation included consulting with knowledgeable experts in the energy business including electricity generation, oil and natural gas producers. The proposal was never seriously considered except to demagouge those who provided input. Congress even went to court to find out who said what in the meetings, but they lost. There was never any serious discussion about the content of the energy plan.
While Obama has shut down the link, the following ling gives some insight:
http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue38/bush.html
Don Shaw,
You should be able to find old Whitehouse info archived here:
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov
For instance:
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/energy/2001/Forward.pdf
McClintock is a natural as a strap hanger. Maybe he’ll thrive on the East Coast, who knows where it will lead. McClintock ’16?
Jack Schmidt doesn’t understand the difference between dilutive mixing (5 years) and equilibrium spike diffusion (50 years).
The molecules are not anthropogenic, but the amount is.
Example if I bring a given amount of paper money to the bank, my bills won’t be there after a while, but my money is, wellhopefully that is in these days of crisis 😉
The coins and bills flow is altogether different from the money amount flow, likewise tracing a molecule of CO2 doesn’t tell you anything about the decay time of an excess amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
“”” The earth is rapidly warming (over 0.6 deg. C in the last century)
Human activities are the primary cause
Warming will continue and accelerate if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. “””
From “”Coby Beck” above; is it permissable to state here, that I have never heard of Coby Beck.
Well I would challenge Coby Beck to PROVE #1, given that in 2001 it was demonstrated that prior to about 1980, when some buoys were laid out in some oceans, to simultaneously measure near surface (-1 metre) water temperatures and lower troposphere (+3 metres); and it was shown that (a) the water temperatures OVERESTIMATED the lower tropospheric warming for that 20 year period; and (b), the water and air temperatures are not correlated; which means it is impossible to recover the historic lower troposphereic temperatures for what amounts to about 73% of the total planet’s surface. So bunkum on that 100 year’s temperature increase.
It seems that observational climate monitoring doesn’t really begin in any kind of scientific way till around 1980, which oddly is also when the the first polar satellites were launched; enabling arctic ice data to be gathered, and also roughly the time that solar irradiance satellite measurements first began (maybe a little earlier).
But personally, I wouldn’t trust ANY climate “data” from prior to IGY in 1957/58, and very little of that before 1979/80.
Also I don’t trust GISS or any other kind of “anomalies” to in any way reflect the true surface or lower troposphere mean global temperature; because fo gross violations of the Nyquist sampling Theorem and Criterion. Might as well be averaging the phone numbers in your local telephone directory.
And finally, even if measuring the mean global surface or lower troposphere temperature were possible (with any existing technology). it doesn’t have anything to do with whether the earth is gaining or losing energy through net electromagnetic radiation fluxes. And for good measure, the surface total thermal radiation tends to go as the 4th power of temperature, and the thermal spectral radiance peak tends to go as the 5th power of temperature, which relates to the influence of the CO2 15 micron absorption band; so what on earth is the purpose of calculating an average of the temperature; rather than say an average of the 4th or 5th power of the temperature, which might have more relevence to the warming or cooling question.
And of course local thermal fluxes by all known physical mechanisms (eg conduction, convection, radiation, evaporation etc) collectively don’t have any simple relationship to the local temperature, so why measure the temperature; or the anomaly for that matter.
The second is academic; humans influence climate just by trying to measure it; see Heisenberg; so what ?
And his third point is simply proven false by the available data, where CO2 continues to rise and accelerate (maybe) while warming has stopped and has reversed; so claim three is just a bald faced lie; in addition to being scientifically unsupportable.
George
And no I still haven’t heard of the guy; what’s his name !
“”” Hans Erren (13:44:28) :
The coins and bills flow is altogether different from the money amount flow, likewise tracing a molecule of CO2 doesn’t tell you anything about the decay time of an excess amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. “””
And the decay time of CO2 or water vapor or anything else in the atmosphere, doesn’t have any relationship whatsoever to the possible atmospheric or surface warming caused by that GHG species; which depends on the amount present in the atmosphere; not how long it stays there.
George
Just saw Carter’s interview on Glenn Beck. Made a general defense of geologists’ competence in climate studies.
I was at the entire conference. Anthony and Steve both did well with their presentations. While sitting in the back of the room during Anthony’s presentation, I heard frequent gasps as images of choice ‘high quality, reliable’ USHCN surface station sites appeared on the screen. There was a fun excitement about this conference that surprised me. I have been to many professional society conferences (I am an IEEE member) and the quality of the technical presentations was excellent.
The conference ended with a flourish this afternoon with Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, addressing those who stayed for lunch. It was well worth the wait. I recommend that the entirety of his presentation be posted here at WUWT when a print version becomes available. Shortly after starting, Monckton revealed that he had an older version of his powerpoint presentation after two or three slides . He then seamlessly transitioned into a soliloquy on climate change science and politics that rivaled any Shakespearean play. He brought down the house with brilliant alliteration, mocking lists of coming calamities that echoed scenes from Monty Python, and a heartfelt ending prayer wishing all of the attendees health and success that touched everyone in the crowd.
@george Smith, of course, but first you need to use correct diffusion physics, that’s what I was criticizing. Even with a spike decay time of fifty years the atmospheric co2 increase will be far less than the IPCC wants us to believe.
I know that climate sensitivity is 1.1 degrees increase for co2 doubling, and I also know that there have been claims for both strong negative and strong positive feedbacks, I’m still sitting on the fence on that item.
B Kerr
Nice post.
For those unfamilar with the great and much missed Lorenz (now known for his butterfly theory but actually a statistician and meteorologist) here is a snippet
“In 1820 Pierre Laplace had suggested a deterministic universe in which prediction would be possible if one knew exact details of all the laws of Nature and had both the ability to plot the position of all physical elements, and an intellect which could submit this data to analysis. “Laplace’s demon”, as this theory became known, came to be used to explain why “noise” (or unknown background factors) made it difficult to establish “true” scientific values in complex systems.
Lorenz discovered quite how dramatic this effect could be when, in 1961, he re-entered data from a weather simulation he had previously run into his computer (a Royal McBee LGP-30). But having retyped the numbers from the printout of the first experiment, he found that it produced wildly different results.”
He realised that the reason was that the original computer had entered numbers to six decimal points, but the printout provided only the first three. Entering 0.506, rather than 0.506127 – though a margin of error of less than 0.1 per cent over the experiment, regarded then as utterly trivial – resulted in huge changes and made prediction all but impossible.”
As for what Lorenz would have made of all this, I guess he will be smiling to himself and muttering that we dont know nearly as much as we think we do.
I think he would also have been interested in Steve MCintyres work.
TonyB
Sorry, as regards Lorenz I meant mathematician and meteorologist-not statistician
Tonyb
Sorry if you took offence Evan.
Not me, personally. I am lucky. I have a full head of hair (and do not wear a beard). But I don’t think we should be poking fun at appearances. It’s the ideas that are supposed to count.
Don’t worry, though; not shooting at you in particular. Just trying to establish parameters.
Hans Erren
‘I know that climate sensitivity is 1.1 degrees increase for co2 doubling, and I also know that there have been claims for both strong negative and strong positive feedbacks, I’m still sitting on the fence on that item.’
May I suggest you re-read the “CO2 drives the climate theory” again and ask yourself how did they come up with the correlation of CO2 to temperature. It seemed to me, after doing some research, they looked at “past temperature” or “heat” but that, by it self, did not correlate well enough. The 1.1 forcing did not produce enough “heat” to match “past temperature”. So the CO2 1.1 forcing must be multiplied by 2.5 in order to “Balance the Books”(think ENRON). But what would it force, they asked themselves. Why of course, Water Vapor and Heat Trapping Clouds. (We do not know why, where, when, or how clouds are formed.) When I look to nature, water vapor is a negative feedback to “heat” (that’s why swamp coolers and misting systems work).
Do you know what’s worse than being cold and hungry? Being WET, COLD AND HUNGY! Thing about it.
“The central value of the climate sensitivity to this change is a global average temperature increase of 3 °C (5.4 °F), but with a range from 1.5 °C to 4.5 °C (2.7 to 8.1 °F) (based on climate system models: see section 4). The central value of 3 °C is an amplification by a factor of 2.5 over the direct effect of 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Committee on the Science of Climate Change”
National Research Council
“”” Hans Erren (14:37:17) :
@george Smith, of course, but first you need to use correct diffusion physics, that’s what I was criticizing. Even with a spike decay time of fifty years the atmospheric co2 increase will be far less than the IPCC wants us to believe.
I know that climate sensitivity is 1.1 degrees increase for co2 doubling, and I also know that there have been claims for both strong negative and strong positive feedbacks, I’m still sitting on the fence on that item. “””
Well there’s your problem; you see that doubling the amount of CO2 from 385 ppm to 770 ppm still makes CO2 completely negligible because of the huge amount of water vapor, that is competing for the same energy with CO2. Now if you were to double the total GHG, since the atmosphere could care less which molecular species captured an IR photon to convert to atmospheric warming in subsequent molecular collisions, and water vapor certainly captures more of the total spectrum than CO2 ever could; then you might start to see an effect; but unfortunately, the water will not allow you to arbitrarily double its amount, because if there is increased atmospheric warming due to more GHG, then the atmosphere will expaqnd, and that water vapor will be conveyed to higher altitudes, wqhere sooner or later a phase change to liquid or solid is going to occur; and all the latent heat of evaporation, and maybe freezing, will be dumped out to be radiated to space; meanwhile forming clouds that (a) raise the albedo and reduce incoming solar spectrum radiation, and (b) absorb evben more solar energy in the precipitable clouds, thereby lowering the ground level insolation, and then precipitation will take place to remove all that excess ghg (water vapor) from the atmosphere; and not incidently washing out some CO2 along with it, since CO2 is soluble in water, and moreso in colder water or ice.
And as to using correct diffusion physics, (of what); are you talking ordinary concentration gradient driven diffusion of molecular species, or are you talking vertical convection; which I would hardly describe as diffusion; it’s more like mass transport; or perhaps you are referring to lateral diffusion/convection as in air current circulation.
As we have seen from the annual cyclic variation in atmospheric CO2 from less than 1 ppm at the south pole to more than 18 ppm at the north pole,a dn about 6 ppm at Mauna Loa; there clearly isn’t much of an atmospheric mixing to speak of at least in year long time frames.
But the instantaneous absorption of an IR photon by a GHG molecule (the total atmospheric transit time is only about 1 msec (for 300 km) depends only on how many molecules are present during that millisecond, and not how long they are going to hang around after that photon has exited the atmosphere.
Time to forget about “climate sensitivity”, and the carbon cycle, and think more about the water cycle.
Water is plenty capable of taking care of the earth’s temperature regulation all by itself and it doesn’t need any triggering stimulus from CO2 or other ghg; more water vapor leads to more warming leads to more evaporation leads to more water vapor etc. Anmd then the water phase change to clouds comes to the resue to stop the warming right at the requirede place.
No other ghg exists in all three phases in the atmosphere, and that is why none of them matter a hill of beans. And certainly how long they stay in the atmosphere is irrelevent; like water vapor, they all stay there permanently (as species) though not as numbered marked molecules.
George
Gary A,
Thanks, none of the search engines that I used directed me to this site. Here is the complete report:
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/energy/2001/index.html
Mr. Watts,
Somewhat off topic, but I recall you having a PowerPoint presentation in regards the surface stations project. Where has it gone?
I love poking fun at appearances. I once was asked by a 5 year old why I had a mustache. I told her, with a straight face, that my razor needed batteries. She simply said, “Oh”, and went skipping out to recess. I shaved that night. Close. With my cheater glasses on.
Pamela: Well, you have refrained so far around these parts.
For everything there is a season and a time — and a venue.
When I look to nature, water vapor is a negative feedback
My understanding is that ambient vapor (higher up than the lower troposphere) and high level clouds would, indeed, increase temperature. A positive feedback. But this is not happening.
What does seem to be happening (according to the AquaSat) is that the increase has instead been low level clouds, which increases albedo and creates a negative feedback.
The middle troposphere and up seem to be desiccating.
Somewhat off topic, but I recall you having a PowerPoint presentation in regards the surface stations project. Where has it gone?
Patience, patience. The data is being analyzed. Regionalization. Filtering out the ASOS.
Remember, a CRN4 station in a cooling region is likely to show less warming than a CRN2 in a warming region. Also urban vs. rural considerations.
And there’s also what historians call “the collective fallacy”, whereby a group can vary from the enumerated individual cases. (I.e., it still doesn’t mean the individual cases are not biased.)
I haven’t seen any comments from Mary Hinge since the lone comment yesterday about record heat earlier this month. She isn’t here today talking about the record cold in the US Northwest, and the record shattering cold in Canada.
Mary, where are you? There was some noteworthy record cold Mary…. Mary? ….funny …all quiet now.
ATTN: TonyB
The link is
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf?
I didn’t use caps for “Climate _and_ Changes”_
Your fish data sounds intersetting? Got any good stories to tell?
Generally speaking I’m pro-Obama but I am getting concerned at the similarities to a Mr. Tony Blair that are already becoming apparent.
Specifically, the UK government have rolled out massive tax cuts in the form of “stealth taxes”. This is so they can announce, for example, “(income) taxes will not rise under Labour”, which is true. But they raise a whole range of “charges” and “value added measures” which have a terrible (and regressive) effect on the workers who they are supposed to represent.
In our present context climate change is an enabler of a whole new revenue stream and believe me it is factored in already to the governments budgets.
Remember (in the UK) income tax was a temporary measure to fund the Napoleanic wars of the 18th century…..
TonyB
Statistician!!
A timely second posting.
How could you even think that, you must still be watching cricket.
You can tell where my loyalties lie.
Nice mention of Edward Lorenz’s work.
Lorenz’s work on the Royal McBee was amazing, quite outstanding and full of foresight. His colleagues said that he, Lorenz, would have weather prediction all wrapped up inside 6 months. An innocent faith in computers and their power. That was in 1968/69.
I still see his work as a corner stone; computer programmers and those who have such total faith in computers should be aware of his work and the underlying pit falls. These pitfalls are still relevant today. Especially now, when accuracy is displayed as an output to a totally unreasonable number of significant figures.
Have you noticed that computer models are described as “sophisticated” or “very sophisticated”, never accurate.
The BBC continue to churn out more alarmist reports about that nasty poisonous carbon dioxide. I still haven’t seen any references to your conference, but there is of course more from Copenhagen:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7936137.stm
B Kerr said
“I still see his work as a corner stone; computer programmers and those who have such total faith in computers should be aware of his work and the underlying pit falls. These pitfalls are still relevant today. Especially now, when accuracy is displayed as an output to a totally unreasonable number of significant figures. Have you noticed that computer models are described as “sophisticated” or “very sophisticated”, never accurate.”
Your words should be placed over the desk of every IPCC modeller who is convinced their work is 100% robust 🙂
TonyB
An excellent coverage of the Conference by Canada’s Toronto National Post and Peter Foster. Where is Ameriac’s media ?
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/10/peter-foster-the-crumbling-case-for-global-warming.aspx
TonyB
Thanks for your kind words.
BK