Guest Post by Ira Glickstein.
Once upon a time, long ago and far away, three brave warriors decided to do something about the tiger that was terrorizing their village.
The first approached the tiger’s head and whacked it with a stick. The tiger ate him! The second struck the tiger’s middle with a knife. It clawed him to death. The last brave young man decided to sneak up from behind. He managed to snip a piece out of the tiger’s tail.
Of course, nipping the tiger’s tail did not do much to solve the problem. Nevertheless, the villagers celebrated his pluck and luck and everybody felt quite satisfied – until the next tiger attack.
Like the fictional warriors of my Tiger’s Tale, Global Warming Alarmists and Warmists attack the “Tail” which, in this instance, is a metaphor for human-caused warming (AGW – Anthropogenic Global Warming). It makes them feel good to talk about reducing the causes of warming over which we humans may have some control: CO2 from fossil fuels and land use that reduces the Earth’s albedo. But, since AGW, like the Tiger’s Tail, is a minor part of the threat, their solutions, the cap and trade scam for carbon indulgences and painting our roofs white and wearing reflective tinfoil hats for albedo, are all out of proportion. Yes, we should do what we can to improve energy efficiency and use nuclear and clean coal and renewable sources and recycling and much of the rest, but we should not wreck our economies taking actions that can have little effect to solve a problem that is not any kind of crisis.
There seems to be general agreement here at WUWT that the official climate Team has exaggerated the extent and danger of Global Warming by adjusting past temperature data in a manner biased (perhaps by about 0.3ºC) towards supporting their dire projections for the future. We believe the actual net temperature increase (perhaps about 0.5ºC) since 1880 is nearly all due to natural processes, including cycles of the Sun, ocean oscillations, and other causes not under human control. But, we are reasonable skeptics who do not deny that human actions are responsible for some, relatively small amount (perhaps about 0.1ºC) of the rise in temperatures.
When a system engineer is faced with a complex problem, he or she does a divide and conquer to break it down into more manageable subsystems. These are analyzed to determine which are the heavy hitters that deserve the most attention, and which are of limited consequence.
The base chart for the above graphic is from NASA GISS and indicates a rise of a bit over 0.8ºC from 1880 to the present. NASA plots this as an “anomaly” from the average for 1951-1980. NASA’s red line is a five-year running average that indicates a negative (cooler) anomaly from 1880 through the mid-1930’s and a positive (warmer) anomaly from the mid-1970’s through the present. The annotations in green and violet are my initial attempt to sub-divide the anomaly into: 1) Data Bias, 2) Natural Cycles, and 3) AGW (human-caused warming).
The green line represents my estimate of the actual temperature anomaly. Therefore, the distance from the green line down to the lowest part of the red line, near 1880, represents data bias and measurement error, where NASA has adjusted data they previously published to make that part of their curve cooler. That part of their data bias amounts to about 0.1ºC. The distance from the green line up to the highest part of the red line, near 2007, is where NASA has adjusted data they previously published to make that part of their curve warmer. That part of their data bias amounts to about 0.2ºC.
The violet line represents my estimate of the actual anomaly minus the human contribution. Thus the vertical space between the violet and green lines represents AGW, which I estimate to be about 0.1ºC at the present time. The vertical space between the violet line and the lower data bias line represents the remainder, which must be due to natural processes not under human control, which I estimate to be about 0.4ºC.
I do not claim a high level of accuracy for these estimates and freely admit they may be off by 50% or more, which is why I have specified them with only one significant digit of precision. I find it humorous when government-funded climate and sunspot researchers state their estimates to two or even three or more significant digits, and then go back and change their estimates by far more than that precision indicates. (The humor fades when I realize I am paying for their efforts.)
In subsequent postings, I plan to detail how I came up with these estimates. Meanwhile, I will appreciate it if WUWT readers provide their own estimates which I will record and average for everyone’s amazement. Please state the temperature anomaly, in degrees Centigrade, you think is due to: 1) data bias, 2) natural processes, and 3) AGW. You may simply provide the numbers or you may also explain how you arrived at them.
This is what you may look forward to:
1) The Past Is Not What It Used to Be – About Data Bias: How the official climate Team adjusted past temperature data to exaggerate warming, and how the low quality of measurement stations and their encroachment by urban heat island (UHI) developments have distorted the historical record.
2) Normal Seasons of the Sun – How natural processes beyond human control, including Solar Cycles and Ocean Oscillations, are the actual cause of most climate change.
3) Some People Claim There’s a Human to Blame – Yes, human actions, mainly burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, are responsible for some small amount of Global Warming.
4) Is the Global Warming Tiger a Pussy Cat? – If, as many of us expect, natural processes lead to stabilization of global temperatures over the coming decades, and perhaps a bit of cooling, we will realize the whole Global Warming uproar was like the boy who saw a pussy cat and cried tiger.
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Maybe the Tiger can adjust as quickly as temperatures do. Because the historical temperatures seem to be ‘adjusted’ every week or so. The problem with historical instrumentation (mercury and alcohol thermometers and barometers have been in use since the 1600s) seems to be uniquely a problem with Warmists.
And is the warming enough to make him melt without running around the tree?
There is always one thing that is sure about these Warmists. They are simpletons.
Trying to continue connecting CO2 with global warming, climate change, climate disruption, or whatever, is like searching for a needle in a haystack. It is virtually impossible to to find the needle in that haystack yet, they insist on spending billions of dollars and expending valuable resources looking for it, just so they can pin it on man, and make him pay dearly for it. Even if they found a connection, they probably would not like what they find in that, the connection would probably be of such insignificant consequence as to be considered lunacy, when trying to justify such a large expenditure of time, energy, man power, and cash.
P.S.
Pun intended.
My estimate isn’t of the delta temp so far, but is of the feedback. I reckon that feedback reduces the warming caused by a change to 1/3 of what the change would be without feedback. That compares with the warmists who seem to assume that feedback increases the warming to 3 times what it would be. They then add a few more degrees for effect.
Doubling CO2 would by itself increase temps by 1.2 Centigrade, which would be in my estimate 0.4 after negative feedback.
Dalton Minimum
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/20/a-dalton-minimum-repeat-is-shaping-up/
Hay we got plenty of time, 10-15 years to go on the biggest power plant construction project ever to provide power to keep the indoor areas that humans live in above freezing.
So yea, I’m going negative on the Guesstimate…. -0.5 C
I like this article and the tip of the tail of the tiger analogy which is has a lot of explanatory power in my opinion. I’ll be interested to see the subsequent posts.
My numbers would not be far off yours. I too would put the data bias at 0.3C. The natural cycles would be about 0.25C to 0.30C and the AGW at 0.20C to 0.25C.
Sounds right; about 0.4 or 0.5°C of actual change to be explained. Too bad it’s not more.
Bring Back That Holocene Optimum! Break The CO2 Famine!
As you can perhaps detect, I’m a Contrarian Denialist. Full-bore.
I think the actual warming is more than .1 degree for the time period in the chart. The increasing solar activity/recovery from the LIA seems to steady around 1950-1960 ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/800px-Sunspot_butterfly_with_graph.gif ).
After that I’d say the AMO and PDO explain the later warmth fairly well. That being said, I do think the surface temp. record has been adjusted poorly and affected by UHI to some extent, but that corruption has been limited (a bit) by the existence of the satellite records in the later years.
Yayy, Glick!
Considering temperatures of the past climate optima, there is NO tiger terrorizing the village in the first place.
Heat pump earth has been trying to dump the heat of the last rampant sun cycles and find equilibrium. My best guess is a seven year lag, that has passed and old Sol has been slumbering for some time, unless the sun has a change of heart I would bet my left testicle that the gains for the last century in temperature will be gone by 2013. An anomaly of -0.5 C at that time and – 1C by 2015. Warming is good, what lays ahead may not be so good for those in the Northern hemisphere. The thermophobiaists will go away quietly with their tails between their legs unless old Sol can be awakened.
In the 1970’S science told us of impending doom for the ice age commeth, oddly the same weather patterns manifest themselves at this time, with one major change. Rather than an ambivalent sun we have one that has gone on holidays. Sorry Anthony but we should get accustomed to a few less watts and make decisions for our future well-being
unencumbered by PC AGW nonsense.
The IPCC AR4 summary limits anthropogenic forcing to the period after ~1950, although in other parts it refers to the complete instrumental record.
Human fossil fuel use, if it is a factor, was insignificant before WWII:
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section7group6/files/co2_emissions.jpg
But I agree with the thrust of the article, the CAGW hysterics’ ‘solutions’ to a manufactured problem are completely unrealistic at this stage.
The ‘greens’ are the latest in a long line of revolutionaries whose aim is not to stop ‘global warming’, but to remake society; a long line which goes back to the French Revolution and beyond (e.g. medieval religious fanatics, flagellants, Savonarola).
For instance around 1900, French socialist Clemenceau complained that the British labour movement was not interested in “class war” or social revolution, but only in improving the workers’ conditions.
As is now happening to The Greens, political party in Australia, the ‘mensheviks’ (like Patrick Moore exiled from Greenpeace) soon get sent to ‘Siberia’.
The test for the genuineness of those who express passionate concerned about CAGW, is their attitude to the only viable option at this stage, nuclear power.
The alarmists need to realise that that’s not a tiger, it’s a cow.
It’s good to have around the village. It provided more food for us.
Both graphs are very useful and easy to understand, thanks Ira.
I change the base line to 1981-2010. Two reasons really, first things ought to always be in the now so as to reflect our own time and secondly I do not consider the “ice age climate” of 1951-1980 to reflect any kind of normal.
So essentially we’re pretty much just back to normal temperatures. Wow, but I’d say this though, it was a close one, but I wont. :p
This is an exchange correspondence with a leading UK Government advisor and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He certainly believes a problem is induced by Man-made CO2, but when asked to show the flaw in the logic set out below to get to about 0.1 degC he responded as follows:
—————————————————————————————-
“Where is the flaw in this logic ?
Greenhouse Effect = +33.00⁰C Water Vapour causes 95% of the effect = 31.35⁰C Other Greenhouse gasses cause 5% of the Effect = 1.65⁰C CO2 is about 75% of the Effect of all GHGs = 1.24⁰C. Total worldwide Man-made CO2 is about 7% of atmospheric CO2 = 0.086⁰C So closure of the world carbon economy could only result reducing the Greenhouse Effect by 86 thousandths ⁰C.
The UK contribution to Man-made CO2 is ~2% = 0.00174⁰C.
So closure of the total UK carbon economy could only result reducing the Greenhouse effect by 1740 millionths ⁰C.
——————————————————————————————-
The following response has been made:
flaws are marked (*)
Greenhouse Effect = +33.00⁰C Water Vapour causes 95% of the effect = 31.35⁰C Other Greenhouse gases cause 5% of the Effect = 1.65⁰C CO2 is about 75% of the Effect of all GHGs = 1.24⁰C. Total worldwide Man-made CO2 is about 7% of atmospheric CO2 = 0.086⁰C
(*) Nope, steady emissions lead to CO2 concentration rising.
So closure of the world carbon economy could only result reducing the Greenhouse Effect by 86 thousandths ⁰C The UK contribution to Man-made CO2 is ~2% = 0.00174⁰C So closure of the total UK carbon economy could only result reducing the Greenhouse effect by 1740 millionths ⁰C
(*) Well, that’s “the tragedy of the commons”. You can always argue that it is fine for you to be antisocial because you are just one person. But there are other views of ethics, leadership, pollution. London doesn’t have smog any more, and that’s thanks to all 7 million people all following the lead of whoever went first.”
—————————————————————————————————–
The author responded in part as follows but has received no further reply:
“Thank you very much for responding to my question.
I had expected you to find some flaw in my apparently trivial sums. However I sense that you view the figures to be in the right ballpark.
I agree that continuing emissions are progressively adding to atmospheric CO2. Nonetheless current CO2 concentrations are still at and will remain close to historical record lows even with the addition of Man-made emissions.
However I do not think that your argument about the Clean Air Act and London Pea Soupers, (I remember them well as a schoolboy), can in any way be analogous to the supposed “pollution” of CO2 and Water Vapour as greenhouse gasses. The SO2 and particulate matter that coal-burning in London produced then were qualitatively different: they were not natural and essential constituents of the biosphere. They truly were pollutants.
When you argue the greater good of the “commons” I sincerely believe that there are many more pressing Green priorities for the common good of mankind than reduction of CO2 emissions. Bjorn Lomborg has made this point very clearly.
This is especially so when one accepts that any actions, however damaging to the economies of individual countries and/or the world and to the well-being of the world population, are unable to influence global temperature to any degree at all. This is because the total elimination of all Man-made carbon dioxide production worldwide could only ever reduce the Greenhouse effect by less than 0.1°C. That is why I do not understand the idea that by drastic action worldwide many politicians think it is possible to limit any temperature rise, if it is occurring, to +2.0°C.
However in the light of the state of the current solar cycle it seems that there is a real prospect of hugely damaging cooling occurring in the near future for several decades.”
—————————————————————————————
This correspondence seems to confirm the AGW effect of CO2 to be in the region of 0.1 degC.
I can’t really put a number to how much warming to aportion out to various sources, but I am awfully glad the mile or so thick glacier is no longer sitting on my property.
The latest research shows that the recent warming was caused by natural previously unknown inputs, like solar magnetism, cosmic rays, solar wind, to name but three, which caused the degree of warming supposedly caused by CO2. The CO2 theory of GHG’s is not true, has never been true and is due to die a deservedly tortuous death.
Excellent post, Ira, and thanks.
So-called primitive societies seem to be as advanced as 21st century Man in the urge to invent mythologies that can frighten us as soon as the sun goes down. Sadly, the rampant Green mythologies in the Western world have our current crop of politicians in thrall, who are spending inordinant chunks of the Revenue on even less effective strategies than snipping the tuft from the end of the tiger’s tail.
I think it is about time to stop using anything Hansenized or Jonesied as a basis for further analyzing. If it is Manngled or Crudified it should also not come under consideration as a basis for scientific exploration. Any numbers coming out of these processes are meaningless. Might as well use Mistress Mathilda’s Cristal Ball Prognostications and Tarot Deliberations for the gullible. Astrology has a firmer grounding in reality. Better entertainment value too.
Ira, repeat after me, over and over, until it gets permanently lodged in your brain: warmer is better, warmer is better, warmer is better, warmer is better…
Write a post about that! Poll the dear readers, have them score the betterment of warming on a ten-point scale, and average those. It will be a useful exercise and will involve math, so it will resemble engineering quite nicely.
Thanks Bill Illis for being the first to take me up on the challenge to come up with your own estimates. Your’s have been entered into my Excel spreadsheet.
“Threat”? What threat? You have fallen for the baseless fear-mongering of the Climatists and Eco-whackos. As others have pointed out:
We are probably on the cusp of a plunge into another glaciation. Whatever warming we can eke out of this planet in the next few years (centuries? millennia?) will be all to the good for humanity—and my cold feet!
/Mr Lynn
In Feng Shui, its not a good year for tigers, just look at what happened to the tiger with a wood who loves women then crashed his car. That can be compared to global warming.
Mankind’s ability to control natural climate change is equivalent to his meager attempt to stop tectonic plates from floating around on the asthenosphere–NADA!
Only 1 question: why a baseline period of 1950 – 1980? Why not 1920 – 1950 before AGW was supposed to be an issue. Also 1950 – 1980 encompassed most of the hysteria over the global cooling leading to an ICE AGE. If you choose a cool period for the base line then you would expect the rebound anomalies to be positive. Unless someone can give a very, very good explanation for the baseline period other than that is what we chose to use then all the hype is meaningless.