I belive (sic) that you are all wrong and global warming is real.

But did we cause it?

Did we cause the warming that allowed the Romans to grow grapes in Scotland during the Roman Empire? If not, what did? If you can’t answer that, what can you say about AGW?

DaveE.

“Every point you made in your post is in error. In reverse order:

You stated: “Now warming around the Antarctic is just about a degree or so…” Wrong. Antarctica is cooling, not warming: click1, click2, click3, click4.”

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Let’s do this one by one. It’s so hard.

I stated: ‘warming AROUND the Antarctic is just about a degree or so’.

So you post stuff pertaining to the Antarctic INTERIOR.

Do you know there is no sea-ice in the Antarctic interior?

Can you explain this error, please?

Every point you made in your post is in error. In reverse order:

You stated: “Now warming around the Antarctic is just about a degree or so…” Wrong. Antarctica is cooling, not warming: click1, click2, click3, click4.

Next, RACookPE1978 (05:31:09) is exactly right when he says that Antarctic ice extents are increasing, not decreasing: click1, click2, click3. I will ignore your “vast global warming” comment, as the planet has been cooling for most of the past decade, despite increases in CO2.

However, in the same comment that you criticize my link because it is specific to Mauna Loa, which is true, you comment that you can’t skate specifically in Holland any more. I suggest that you not trade in your ice skates for roller skates just yet: click. You say that “You have to show that global temperature isn’t changing.” Wrong. Global temperature is always changing. But despite constant fluctuations, notice that the planet’s global temperature is about where it was 30 years ago: click.

The planet’s temperature is always fluctuating around a gradually rising trend line going back to the Little Ice Age. This is normal and entirely natural. What is happening does not need the superfluous entities of AGW or CO2 to explain the climate.

Finally, glaciers are one of the very easiest things to cherry pick in the entire world. There are more than 160,000 glaciers world wide. Retreating glaciers can always be found — and advancing glaciers can always be found. It is true that since the LIA many glaciers are retreating. But that is due entirely to natural climate fluctuations, not to CO2. The most important factor in glacier advance and retreat is precipitation [snow] at higher altitudes.

As climatologist Dr Roy Spencer says, “No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperatures changes are a consequence of natural variability.” Do you understand what that means?

That hypothesis must be falsified in order for the CO2=AGW conjecture to succeed. Alarmists always get the Scientific Method backward. I could invent a hypothesis that there is a CO2 monster living under my bed that causes global warming. Do scientists have to refute my hypothesis? No. I have to show, through solid evidence and replicatable experiments that the monster is in fact there. Until/unless I do so, the CO2 monster hypothesis is just one of many hypotheses that come and go.

To be valid, the CO2=AGW hypothesis must withstand scrutiny, which requires that all data and methodologies must be made available and transparent. It must be testable, falsifiable, and capable of making valid predictions. As we see, it is a failed hypothesis. Data and methodologies claiming to verify the hypothesis are kept secret, therefore the AGW hypothesis can not be independently tested, verified or falsified.

The shenanigans in the Yamal caper are typical of the alarmist method. And no one has been able to falsify the long accepted theory that temperature fluctuations are due to natural climate variability. You can see what’s happening here: click.

The real world disagrees with your conjecture: click.”

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So you give a link showing temp and [CO2] on top of the Mauna Loa and call that ‘the real world’ or the globe? You have to show that global temperature isn’t changing and then (only then) you have to explain why the vast majority of glaciers are dissappearing – or why I can’t skate in winters in Holland anymore. Esoterical explanations like ‘mother Nature’ will not do.

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Re: RACookPE1978 (05:31:09) :

“Antarctic ice extents are increasing, no decreasing.”

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There a two connected hypotheses on GW: higher temperature, more precipitation.
If the temperature rises by ten degrees Celsius, that is vast global warming.
If it rises from -5° C to +5° C, ice will just melt.
If it rises from -15° C to -5° C, snow will accumulate and ice will increase.

Now warming around the Antarctic is just about a degree or so, but apparently increased snow cover on the sea-ice there is preventing it from melting a bit.
Extent there, by the way, is now close to normal and might drop below in a couple of days – but that’s just ‘weather’.

General rule: [CO2] up, global temperature up. Most of the problem has been solved.

The real world disagrees with your conjecture: click.

RR Kampen said: “The cause of this has been identified too, and has proved to be actually very simple.”

It is a simple message, to appeal to the simple minded. But the overall physics of radiative forcings and feedbacks is anything but simple. If it were, there would be no debate. That you believe this topic is “simple” tells me you do not understand it.

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O, but I do. The physics of radiative forcings and (general) feedbacks is fantastically complex. These are also measurable. All by all it’s clear the radiative forcings and feedbacks have, until now, a net result of not very much. So temperature rise and [CO2]-rise do end up showing a simple relation, although modified a bit by ‘weather’ en stuff like the solar cycle, volcanoes, EN/SO. General rule: [CO2] up, global temperature up. Most of the problem has been solved.

The (estimated) increase in global temperature between 1890 and 2009 is (at most!) 3/4 of one degree. And the actual increase – if “uncorrupted” data freed of GISS and HADCRU corruption (er, corrections) are removed, apparently nature has seen less than 1/2 of ONE degree increase in 120 years …

For any of the “assumed” secondary proofs of AGW that are so often claimed, you MUST show that the “frequently claimed” observed behaivor (melting glaciers, increase in droughts, increase in floods, increase in hurricanes, increase in sea level, increase in seal level rise rate, loss of Arctic ice extents, increase in malaria, decrease in polar bear populations, increase in specie extinction, etc, etc, etc, etc ….

1) Actually is occuring – and is not merely an exaggerated propaganda piece by those desperate to get more of the 79 billion in AGW funding. For example, polar bear populations are increasing, and they are NOT threatened by a change in temperatures. Antarctic ice extents are increasing, no decreasing. There is NO observed albedo effect in the Arctic, where sea ice extent in one year is NOT realted to subsequent heating, cooling, or sea ice extent the following year. It simply has NOT happened, and so cannot be a part of theories REQUIRING a positive albedo effect to exaggerate global warming.

2) actually DID cause the assumed effect. (For example, an increase in temperature did NOT change the sea ice extent in 2007 – because temperatures did NOT change between 2006 – 2007 – 2008 – 2009, but a change in winds in 2007 DID occur. Loss of Kilamanjaro’s glaciers DID occur, but because of long-term moisture changes from the prairie below since 1850, NOT from an increase in temeprature since 1950. )

“Don’t have a coronory! All people or saying is that there is now room for doubt about the supposed unprecendent warmth of the twentieth century. Why is that threatening to you?”

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I really wonder what makes you think I’m working my heart here, or feel threatened. Please, please explain!!

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” Steve S. (10:17:48) :

Kampen, Anything you have “witnessed” was not a result of AGW, period.
If the AGW theory ends up coming to fruition the several degrees necessary for the effects to be observed will be happening when they increase actually happens.

The insignificant and meaningless 1 degree climate variation over the last half or full century are neither enough to cause what you have observed or a result of AGW.

Stop being such a willing fool.”

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Steve, what then melts the ice? Freezing point of water has dropped? Elves of ‘Mother Nature’?
Please refrain from remarks like that ‘willing fool’. Please show some integrity, wisdom, respect for those who really know something about climate and please, please keep to the subject. ‘Willing fools’ are no subject of AGW-discussions, unless they are hypothesized to bring down the freezing point of water or things like that.

[quote]
1. The instrumented record shows a warming ( from 1850 to present)
2. The addition of GHGs to the atmosphere is the best explanation of this.
…
WRT #2. This is fundamental science: radiative physics.
[/quote]
That last statement is far too strong. It is only true that it is fundamental science that adding GHGs to the atmosphere will have some non-zero effect on temperature. That is saying a great deal less than your #2 above. There are far too many unknowns involved in the climate, both in measurement and mechanisms, for us to limit ourselves to GHGs as the only possible explanation. Accordingly, I reject your #2.

[quote]
Steve’s work shows this: The attempts to show that the MWP was cooler than today are statistically unsound. I agree with him. I also Agree with him when he says that his work allows us to conclude nothing about the actual level of warming in the MWP, the rate of warming, and it’s localization.
[/quote]
Steve, as ever, is properly precise, and I agree with you both.

[quote]
Now, If you did a reconstruction using proper methods … [ several very sensible conditions ] … THEN, you would have a good argument that the climate sensitivities estimated by the GCM might be off.
[/quote]
While I agree with all of this, I disagree with the implicit assumption that this is the only route to a good argument against the climate sensitivities assumed by the GCMs.
The point of my original post was that these proxy games are _not_ the only evidence for the existence of the MWP. Steve’s work has shown that their contribution is somewhere from highly dubious to outright useless.
It is possible that something useful based on these proxies might come along in the future, but, until then, it seems rational to ignore them and rely on the evidence available before the hockey stick started muddying the waters.
That evidence is as shown in the chart in IPCC AR1 – I think, based on Lamb’s work in the 1960s ? – which shows global temperatures following a cycle with a period of 5 or 600 years, in which we happen to be in an upswing over the last century or so. In particular, it shows absolutely nothing unusual about the warming of the last few decades, either in amount or in rate of warming.
So, in the absence of any credible new evidence, I will continue to believe in the long slow cycles, and that there is nothing unusual about recent warming. Accordingly, for now, I continue to reject the hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 has had any significant effect. If you want to persuade me otherwise, please try harder.

One point on the GCMs : I note that you say ” the climate sensitivities estimated by the GCM”, implying that the sensitivities are an OUTput of the GCMs.
You will note that I say ” the climate sensitivities assumed by the GCMs”, reflecting my understanding that climate sensitivity is an INput to the GCMs.
Am I wrong ?

Steve McIntyre’s chronology above shows the data before the inclusion of the Schweingruber cores, but not after. I have shown the entire combined chronology.

If your point is only to show the period when cores from both series are contributing, namely 1780 to 1990, here it is:

http://yfrog.com/03schweingrubercru1780199p

I’ve reduced the truncated Gaussian smooth to three years to prevent the post-1991 CRU archive contributing to this series, hence the increased scatter in the points.

Here’s the entire series up to 1990 plotted on this basis:

http://yfrog.com/9gschweingrubercru0019903p

It still doesn’t look like the blade has been broken.

That is one of the most specious arguments I’ve encountered in a long time.

Yes, it’s true, during the period when Briffa’s archived data is the only data available between the two sets, the addition of the two will look like Briffa’s archived data.

If I add two cats and one dog and ask how many cats I now have, it is true that I will have two cats.

Or even closer, If I add two cats with zero cats, I will still only have two cats.

I think there is a theorem about adding zero to numbers.

So what have you demonstrated?