A challenge from Dr. Roy Spencer

A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.

I am understanding this challenge would not falsify AGW, only the assertion of “Settled Science” which is in itself an oxymoron.

{scratch head smile}
This is just silly. Prove that the recent warming wasn’t caused by God hugging the Earth extra tight …

Brilliant. I look forward to the references. But I’m not holding my breath.

Um, “scientific” paper, not “peer-reviewed” paper.
Presumably, one of the many “Hockey Stick” graphs would meet the criteria. If the climate were truly stable for the last 2000 years, and only in the last 30 has there been an abrupt rise, then I’d agree the warmists have something. The problem is that none of these papers are “scientific” in the classic sense. Most aren’t reproducible, a key requirement to be “scientific”. The rest aren’t robust, where a statistician can point out obvious flaws.
Presumably, any of the computer “Global Circulation Models” would meet the criteria. But computer models aren’t empirical evidence. They are a good way of coming up with theories, not proving theories.
Ultimately, would want is an “Old Science” proof of AGW, not “New Science” of irreproducibility, statistical hand waving, and computer models.

“”””” Laurie Bowen says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times . . . . and that ought to be enough . . .
22/7 = ? anyone . . . “””””
3+/-50%

3.1’4’2’8’5’7′

I was having a discussion by email with a professor of astronomy, I had read his review of “Heaven and Earth” by Ian Plimer. This appeared in the Australian some years ago, but I didn’t get round to reading it until recently. The review was so totally biased and so utterly unfair that I could not resist sending an email to the author.
One thing I said was – science in never settled, I quoted the issue of peptic ulceration. Two doctors in Western Australia produced the idea that peptic ulceration was due to infection rather than gastric acidity. The overwhelming consensus at the time was that acid, or acid plus certain enzymes, caused ulcers. The West Australian doctors were laughed to scorn. They now hold a Nobel Prize.
The astronomy professor replied thus. This is not verbatim, but the sense has been retained.
Science is science. And good science will always triumph over bad science. There was no evidence whatsoever to support the acid hypothesis. The West Australian doctors did an experiment which proved that the rubbish their peers believed was wrong. They were quite rightly awarded a Nobel Prize.
The level of consensus within the climate science community is much stronger than that within the medical community. Because of this, climate science is more soundly based than medical science.
This is good thinking from a professor of astronomy. I don’t think that even a professor of theology could have done any better.
Let’s us look at the man- made global warming hypothesis from the point of view of medical science…
The system which almost all doctors accept today is the Cochrane system. Briefly, the Cochrane system works as follows.
The strongest level of evidence is level one.
Level one evidence consists of randomised controlled trials under extremely stringent conditions.
The next level of evidence is level two.
Level two evidence again consists of randomised controlled trials, but under less stringent conditions.
Next comes level three.
Level three evidence consists of observational studies.
Even if the series studied is large and the correlation is tight, an observational study can never prove a hypothesis. Correlation does not prove causation. An observational study might suggest that a hypothesis is “reasonably likely” But the proof lies in the randomised controlled trial. Preferably this trial will have reasonably large numbers of patients and have the tight parameters of level one.
Consensus gets low marks under Cochrane. Cochrane is about evidence rather than opinion. A single opinion has an evidential value of zero. Consensus might represent the opinion of 3,000 people. Multiply zero by 3,000 and the answer is still zero.
Now let’s look at man made global warming.
We can’t have a randomised controlled trial. We have one patient (planet earth). We don’t have even one single other planet to put in the control group.
So let’s do an observational study.
An observational study with one patient is not an observational study. It is an anecdote, or at best a case report.
OK, let’s be practical. We only have one planet earth, so our single patient is very, very important to us.
Since planet earth is so precious to us, we are prepared to accept an observational study with a tight observed correlation as being evidence enough to act on.
We have to look at the degree of correlation over four time periods.
There is the period 1900 to 1945. During this period the planet warmed.
Compared to today, there was not much in the way of heavy industry. There were very few cars on the road. Not a lot of CO2 was produced… But the planet warmed. 1938 may not be the hottest year ever recorded, but it fits comfortably into the top 10. I think that it is very reasonable to say that the warming seen from 1900 to 1945 was not due to carbon dioxide. We were coming out of an ice age.
Now let’s look at the period from 1945 to 1975. We are in the era of post war recovery. More cars are being built. More electricity is being generated. More heavy industry is starting up. More CO2 is being produced. But the temperature is in fact going down. How do we explain this? The IPCC says pollution with substances such as sulphur dioxide were the cause of the fall in temperature over this period.
Now this is an assertion. There are no quantitative measurements of all the aerosols and other pollutants and computer models of how each pollutant would affect the climate. But lets be generous. Lets say that there is a seventy five per cent chance that this explanation is correct.
Now we move on to the period from around 1975 to 1998. Her we have a period when a further rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is associated with a further rise in temperature. There arte alternative explanations. It could be the sun. It could be something that we haven’t thought of yet. But let us be generous and say we are 90% certain that global warming from 1975 to 1998 was caused by man made carbon dioxide.
Then we reach the period 1999 to 2010. We continue to produce lots of carbon dioxide. There is no statistically significant rise in temperature during this period.
But the warmists say that this 11 year period contains three, or five or six of the warmest years on record.
Well the temperature has been rising by fits and starts for about 150 years. We are on a high plateau, so it is not surprising that some of the temperatures we see are record ones. But are we going to stay on that plateau? Are we going to start moving gradually downwards in terms of temperature? Or are we about to take off with the climate getting warmer still?
Well, of course, there is no way in which this question can be answered with any certainty. But lets be generous again. Let us say that the fact that several of the years of the last decade are in the top 10 ever recorded means that there is a 70 per cent chance that this period of time supports man made global warming.
OK the global warming hypothesis rests on three lines of evidence.
The first line of evidence has a 75% chance of being correct.
The second line of evidence has a 90% chance of being correct.
The third line of evidence has a 70% chance of being correct..
If you roll a dice once, the odds against guessing the right answer are six to one.
If you roll the dice three times the odds against you getting the right answer three times running are six to one multiplied by six to one multiplied by six to one.
The odds against you are 216 to one.
The odds in your favour are the reciprocal of this. They are 0.00463.
Now we have three lines of evidence for the man-made global warming hypothesis.
The odds in favour of each piece of evidence are, respectively 75%, 90%, and 70%
Multiply 0.75 by 0.9 then by 0.7 and you get 0.475.
There is a 47.5% chance that the hypothesis is correct.
Does this show that the science is settled? Don’t make me laugh.
I have no idea what the temperature will be like in 100 years time. Neither has the IPCC.

It is extraordinary that, with the economic and energy consequences of cAGW theory, the governments of the developed nations have not demanded a conference in which both sides of the debate present and evaluate the evidence for their positions.
Attendance should be mandatory so that no-one could avoid the cross examination and conducted in the spirit, not of Lisbon, but perhaps of Solway 1927.
Let the facts and the evidence decide.

McShane & Wyner are not quite what you are seeking, Roy, but they did shake things up quite a bit!
http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/14/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
It will likely take years for the type of scientific evaluation you seek to see the light-of-day, although there might be something in the Russian literature. Would that count?

AGW/Climate Change is not science but alchemy. An endeavour to turn CO2 into Au.

This is just silly. Even the IPCC report doesn’t “rule[] out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.” It is simply extremely unlikely.
Might as well ask for a biology paper that rules out the possibility of God.

Here is the question to put to the warmists: why are you guys still using global temperature curves of questionable and secretive origin if accurate satellite temperature measures have been available for thirty one years? They cover the globe and both hemispheres uniformly, are not affected by the urban heat island effect, and have been calibrated against radiosonde values. You will get a variety of answers but the real answer is this: they use their own secretive sources because their temperatures are cooked. As in falsified. I will be specific: what these secretive curves from NOAA, NASA, and the Met Office show is a period of warming in the eighties and nineties that is not present in the satellite record. Why is this so important? you may ask. The answer is that in 1988, right smack in the middle of this period, Hansen stood up in front of the Senate and testified that global warming had started. That was simply a lie as satellite temperature records show but his testimony became the founding event of the global warming movement we have today. If they admit the truth they will have cut the legs out from under this founding event of their religion. To find out how these temperatures were faked, get my “What Warming?” (second edition) and check out figures 15, 24, 27 and 29.

Why invoke natural variability when natural regularity will do, namely a smooth linear warming trend going back 350 years as directly measured by real thermometers in the world’s classic old cities? I plotted them in postcard format: http://oi49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
Finding these old records was the end of my interest in active debate. Neither side seemed very interested when I started posting this basic data in the days leading up to Climategate. How can history be a Hockey Stick if single site thermometer records failed to show even a hint of noticing?

Mainstream will say
(1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas – all agree
(2) human emissions clearly track CO2 rise – this seems self-evident
(3) isotope content proves the CO2 rise is manmade
(4) it cannot be the Sun (directly) because there’s too little variance – all agree
They can produce peer-reviewed papers “proving” (3). They will fail to mention papers that dispute (3) with equal or better science. They will fail to mention Bob Carter’s classic dismissal which shows that the recent rise, and rate of rise, of temperature, are both well within natural limits – if we look properly at the past.

OT: Steig has a some new comment on O’Donnell at RC.

cochrane says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Dice rolling is an independent probability at each throw. The odds remain the same no matter haw many times you throw the dice. Each throw cannot influence the next unless you eliminate the previous number and then the odds get better on you being right. Did I miss soemthing ?

Robert David Graham says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:03 pm
“Um, “scientific” paper, not “peer-reviewed” paper.
Presumably, one of the many “Hockey Stick” graphs would meet the criteria. If the climate were truly stable for the last 2000 years, and only in the last 30 has there been an abrupt rise, then I’d agree the warmists have something.”
But it doesn’t meet my criteria, which I will restate as follows:
Identify one physical hypothesis that is reasonably well-confirmed and that can be used to explain and predict some positive forcing. There is none. Therefore, there is no empirical science of forcings.

JohnWho says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Robert Wykoff says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
Far more intellectual than I. I like you example very much.

I would pose to Dr. Spencer a counter-challenge, that he publish one peer-reviewed paper that convincingly establishes natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record. But Dr. Spencer has said he doesn’t want to publish in the peer-reviewed literature anymore and prefers more laxly refereed venues like Geophysical Research Letters. It seems a bit hypocritical to demand peer-reviewed rebuttals to his non-reviewed assertions. That’s not how the burden of proof works.

Or we could just stick to the scientific method and ask for the paper describing the experiment or observation that promoted the AGW hypothesis to theory. If the issue were about science that should be really easy.
If we assume the issue is not about science then that should be made clear too.

Laurie Bowen says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times . . . . and that ought to be enough . . .
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
3.142857142857142857142857142857142857142857…

Interesting challenge. I have one for Dr. Spencer:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
You can’t prove a negative, particularly one that isn’t even defined (which natural cycles, for example?). You can prove (or disprove) a positive statement.
Here’s one more challenge for him:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out actions of the lawn gnome Illuminati (they’re everywhere, and only move when you aren’t looking) as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Undefined natural cycles, lawn gnomes, invisible pink unicorns – pretty much one and the same. It’s a dishonest challenge.

Considering most climate researchers are forced to work with temp data that has been fudged, the past keeps getting colder, their error bars are so large that any temp increase is within their “honest” error bars….
Trying to use trees, insects, sea sludge, and ice cores to reconstruct past temps, and claiming 1/10th and even 1/100th degree accuracy –
-who in their right mind would believe any of that
Making them prove their wild claims about how much the temps have increased…
…would be right up there with the nul

Yes, you missed something. You don’t need a statistician – you need a bookie. Ask him to explain how a trifecta works,

Lucy Skywalker says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:36 pm
What they won’t say is what 350 ppm really represents. Not only that, but they don’t say anything either about how many of those 350 ppm we are responsible for. And of course, they don’t say anything about the carbon cycle and how important CO2 is for life on this planet.
In other words, they only say what they want to say in order to scare the ignorant people that don’t know better (including most politicians).

Theo Goodwin @ 41
“Challenge them to present one physical hypothesis that is reasonably well-confirmed and that can be used to explain and predict some so-called positive forcing. There is not one.
Really? Take a look at this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ – in particular figure 2a. Those numbers are apparently from Hansen 2007, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00210r
There are plenty of forcings, both positive (carbon, ozone, GHG’s, snow albedo) and negative (aerosols, land use, volcanoes, etc). The dominant current forcing change is the positive one from well-mixed greenhouse gases.

steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“But failing that, we have some examples of things never seen before. The problem with the “null” as Spencer states it, is that he doesnt specify what that null is exactly.
Further and more importantly there are events that do not trangress the bounds of “natural variability” that can be explained by mechanisms. Volcanoes do not cool the atmosphere outside the bounds of natural variability, BUT we dont attribute the cooling to natural variability.”
Isn’t that merely conventional? If so, then why not change it? If not, what are the reasons?

Dr Spencer’s challenge is dishonest/unfair, at least for IPCC members that follow IPCC principles.
Excerpt form the Principles Governing the IPCC’s work……
“…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
So, the IPCC is not interested in natural cycles and variability, according to its own principles.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf

steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:56 pm

first you have to state the null in a quantitative manner.
But failing that, we have some examples of things never seen before.

Would you please make a list of these “things never seen before”. Also, please prove that what we humans have witnessed is the sum total of all climate and weather events. Lacking that, your post is unfounded.

Please, Dr Spencer,…
The IPCC provides the exact answer to your question. It is ‘peer-reviewed’, right
===================================================
No

Mike Haseler, “So, it is very easy to measure the amplitude of this 1/f noise prior to extensive CO2 and compare it that afterwards, and the result is that the change we have seen is entirely compatible with natural noise.” This is totally to the point.

This question/challenge was cross-posted on Skeptical Science ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=7&p=5#38769 ) – they are currently up to >20 peer-reviewed papers from multiple discussion threads, primarily the “It’s not us” thread ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm ), that rule out natural cycles as the major cause. The highest percentage was that ~15% of recent changes could be attributed to natural variation (Schwartz et al. 2010, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI3461.1).
I would consider the challenge busted.

They can’t,they won’t,they don’t need to…
What they will do is say that thousand of scientists agree with the findings
and then use MSM to do the dirty work, UNTIL some thing like ClimateGate part 2 comes out.We fight the good fight and WUWT,Cimate Adit etc.,stay’s gatekeeper

@Laurie Bowen:
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
pi.
Well . . . . near as dammit . . . .

KR says: Here’s one more challenge for him:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out actions of the lawn gnome Illuminati (they’re everywhere, and only move when you aren’t looking) as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Undefined natural cycles, lawn gnomes, invisible pink unicorns – pretty much one and the same. It’s a dishonest challenge.
That’s OK . . . . . KR, next time you come to my neck of the woods, we can sit and watch a flower blossom, . . . . I promise you won’t get bored . . .

KR above nailed it, but I’ll add a little here. First evidence GW is caused mainly by human GHG emissions can be found here and you can follow links to peer reviewed papers.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us.htm
If the current warming were caused by the pink unicorn cycle then we’d be in real trouble because that would mean the GHG warming will come on top of that. There is a small chance scientists have missed something fundamental. But we have to make decisions based on imperfect knowledge. We need to weigh different risks and decide which to take. It is possible that the sun will cool down and save us. It is possible that clouds will save us. But neither event is likely. If the sun cools now, it may well warm up later and there is no evidence the cloud feedback will be negative and strong enough to let us burn up all the coal and oil we can find. Indeed there is some work suggesting cloud feedback may be positive. So, if you’re a betting man, which bet would you take? Roy’s mystery cycle will save us, or the scientific community is likely correct?
You know the weirdest branch of science out there is quantum mechanics. Yet, politicians and ideologies seem OK with QM. But if a science bugs some people’s ingrained religious or political beliefs there’s a whole lot of opposition. Do you ever wonder about that?

I am confident that Dr Spencer will win the challenge for one very good reason. To prove the null hypothesis one would have to show that the sun could not be the cause. The problem with this is that we do not know all the ways in which the sun affects the climate. All climate scientists agree that the Milankovitch cycles are real and that they are the main drivers of ice ages and interglacials but when they calculate the resulting changes in insolation the forcing is too small to bring about the dramatic changes we see. Some try to suggest that CO2 released from the oceans accentuates the warming but unfortunately the greatest warming occurs when CO2 is at its minimum and the cooling cycle begins when CO2 is at its maximum – this is a a rather inconvenient truth that makes a nonsense of the amplification by CO2 theory. The cycles do involve changes in the season lengths between the hemispheres and this may be the trigger but at the moment the exact mechanism is unknown. So when the most dominant climate driver is not fully understood how can anyone argue that it is not causing today’s changes. I am not arguing that the sun is the cause I am just saying it is impossible to rule it out.

Robert Wykoff says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
The last ice age and perhaps more to come. Show me where the earth has been warming over the last 500 million years.

Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.

THANK YOU, ROY.
(please excuse the caps…)
The single reason I am a skeptic is because back in the mid-1990s I went looking for that one peer-reviewed paper you talk about. I mean, that is basic science, isn’t it? You have multiple candidates and you create a study to eliminate them, one by one.
Then, to be thorough, you think again and ask yourself if there is anything at all you didn’t think of.
When one possible cause is left standing, after you’ve proven the others weren’t the cause, then, “Voila!” you’ve got a peer-reviewable paper and consensus will form a circle around you and hoist you up on its shoulders. You’ve found it. Eureka!
I went looking, and I am still looking 15 years later.
The thing is, I thought they probably had one. I just went looking to see what it was they’d found. But they freaking never looked. I assume that if Roy hasn’t found it, then it doesn’t exist.
Wankers! Science by declaration… Yoiks!

There is no null hypothesis to AGW — it has always been a moving, expanding target, which now encompasses “everything”.
Hot temperatures and cold temperatures, droughts or floods, hurricanes or no hurricanes, everything falls under the their banner. If at some point the Sun itself is determined to be the major driver of our climate, then rest assured, the Sun will be deemed part of the theory.
What is the null theory on a theory that includes everything?

Cochrane: Just to add a little to your contention with regard the “rebel Doctors” and ulcers:
“The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2005 was awarded jointly to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.”
Suggest: http://www.helico.com/
For the full story. YES, the most DAMNING case I know of in human history where bright, educated, smart people were DEAD WRONG based on “consensus” in a “scientific” matter for 100+ years.
My Father’s upper aorta dissected in 1983. Fine work at the local county hospital saved him and he lived another full 20 years. Between the heart lung machines, the skill of the surgeons and the artificial heart valve and the aortic patch, there is NO DOUBT there was good science, and practice here. I also have NO DOUBT that most of the MD’s who worked on my Father, in 1983, if he had a ulcer, would have told him to reduce his stress…take Tagamet (TM) and to be “operated on” if they began to bleed.
Strangely, in 2000 my Father developed “stomach problems”. After a couple months struggle, I called and told him he and my Mother (various reasons for that) should be tested for H. Pylori. They were. Father positive, Mother negative…Father on antibiotics and successful alleviation of the “stomach problems”. Should we THROW OUT the work of the 1983 MD’s because they held an ERRONEOUS BELIEF? No, but this is a good example of why we need to be KIND to our “climate brethren” and mostly try to get them to see DOGMA for DOGMA and real “science” (based on test, hypothesis, data, analysis, cross checks, and challenge!) for what it SHOULD BE and try to chide them back to intellectual honesty.

The elephant in the room is the assumption that natural climate variation is internal, that the earth is a closed system. If it can be shown that climate is dominated by externalities, then the increased CO2 would have to be considered a response to an external change, whatever that be.
I should add that geology suffers in a similar fashion – that all geological phenomena are due to earth centric forces, with an occasional extra-terrestrial impact to complicate matters from time to time.
It’s simply the geocentric view, the one Galileo had the misfortune of contradicting.

Maybe instead of asking for the paper Dr Roy should have asked “What was (is) the Null Hypothesis?”

@Robert David Graham February 2, 2011 at 12:03 pm:

…computer models aren’t empirical evidence. They are a good way of coming up with theories, not proving theories.

I don’t think so. Models are something you use after you’ve got settled science, like in modeling buildings (or windmills) so they don’t fall down or get blown over. Models are something engineers use to make sure they recognize all the stresses and deflections.
Models built on assumptions and formulas untested in the real world can only give GIGO results – who knows if they are right or not? You can code anything you want to – but is it reality? As Dr Spencer says, they all assume the meme is correct.
Science is reality, reality, reality – empirical, empirical, empirical. It ain’t science till it works in the real world, over and over and over, when prediction isn’t guesswork, but KNOWING what the result will be. Because it has been repeated, over and over and over.
Models not based on all that repetition is just guesswork. You can say that theories are “just” guesswork, but that ain’t true. Hypotheses are guesswork supported by some evidence. Before hypotheses you have suggestive concepts that are untested. After hypotheses you have theories, when comprehensive evidence makes the principle all but certain. After theories you have scientific laws, and boy, there aren’t many of those!
But theories don’t come from models. Models as applied in recent years come from theories. Not the other way around. Actually, models come from hypotheses much more often as applied in recent years. But running models doesn’t give anything useful, just some guys stroking themselves into thinking it is reality. If that is useful, okay, but I don’t think so. Gawd, especially when there is so much evidence that refutes the models – stuff they won’t put in because it would mean starting the model all over again.
Every formula used in the code of a model should be 100% solid and repeatable empirical fact. If it isn’t what in the world is it doing in there?
And if they don’t have enough repeatable empirical fact, they should stop writing code and go do some real science.
But they have to justify the expenditures on Crays, so they write on and on… they can’t admit that the code they are writing is based on nothing proven in the real world.
As I get it, all this started when someone decided that everything could be reduced to math. At some point that idea got taken over, and they began to think of the math as the real thing. That was, I think, pretty much in 1905 with Einstein’s work. He became the shining beacon, and thought experiments became more real than reality. Models are modern day analogs to Albert’s thought experiments. It was the beginning of the end, in a way. But it was the beginning of imaginary science taking over real science. As much as I admire Albert, I just think we’ve gone down some primrose path. Okay, off the soapbox now…

Mike says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm

. But if a science bugs some people’s ingrained religious or political beliefs there’s a whole lot of opposition. Do you ever wonder about that?

Not at all, because it is the AGW’ers that are the “ingrained religious or politial beliefs” crowd.
If you don’t believe me, you apparently haven’t read Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, have you?
Have you?
And you haven’t determined the origin of the Global Warming/Global Warming/Climate Change/Global Climate Disruption faction of humanity, have you? It really is a veritable cesspool of cult and Fabian Socialist acolytes.

Louis Hissink says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:34 pm

I should add that geology suffers in a similar fashion – that all geological phenomena are due to earth centric forces, with an occasional extra-terrestrial impact to complicate matters from time to time.

I’m a geologist and have never been under such a constraining viewpoint.

cochrane says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:11 pm

OK the global warming hypothesis rests on three lines of evidence.
The first line of evidence has a 75% chance of being correct.
The second line of evidence has a 90% chance of being correct.
The third line of evidence has a 70% chance of being correct..

Sorry, but you’ve missed one of your time periods. The first two that you show (a 75% and 90% chance of there being global warming due to man) are ok, but the VERY first you mention (from 1900 to 1945) is what I’ll call Period 0 and apply a 10% chance of it supporting global warming (I believe that’s even generous; it could be 0, negating the other three). I’ll allow your assumptions of the other three time periods, so the cumulative probability of man being the cause of global warming since 1900 is:
Multiply 0.1 by 0.75 by 0.90 by 0.7 and you get 0.04725.
There is a 4.7% chance that the hypothesis is correct.
(You can’t cherry pick data to support a bias.)

Mike says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm
“KR above nailed it, but I’ll add a little here. First evidence GW is caused mainly by human GHG emissions can be found here and you can follow links to peer reviewed papers.”
“http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us.htm”
Goodness, people, this is a discussion forum. Don’t assign homework. If you cannot state the matter clearly, concisely, and in your own words, then you do not understand it.

Colin in Mission BC says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:09 pm
The “Hockey Stick Illusion” is a wonderful book and I recommend it highly. It is here on my desk. Spencer’s book is a little masterpiece that provides exactly the big picture that everyone needs now, describes and embodies scientific method, and places the focus exactly where it should be: on the non-existence of physical hypotheses that explain how manmade CO2 causes cloud behavior that creates a positive forcing.

I’d just settle for someone at GISS to state, with scientific certainty, that those anomalies will never, ever go below “zero” again.
That’s their biggest fear – that somehow, that 1 degree rise we’ve seen in the past 150 years will be lost. All of their papers feeding into the self-fulfilling prophecy of AGW depends on ever increasing temperatures.
I mean, they’ve worked so hard to get those numbers up, and constant monitoring of the data to keep them high.

KR: “Absolute humidity is ~4% higher than it was in 1970, roughly the volume of Lake Eirie (484 km^3), increasing the greenhouse trapping of water vapor.”
First, the last part of the sentence doesn’t seem to flow logically from the first part of the sentence. Maybe, there is an issue with the English language.
Second, could you provide a reference for that?
Third, this statistic may be meaningless in itself. It would not be surprising that there was an increase in absolute humidity from the La Nina dominated years to the El Nino dominated years. To get a good handle, the statistic should be compared to the 1930s humidity level.
Fourth, I would be somewhat dubious about the 1970 value. Where would we get a reliable measure of global humidity in 1970, consistently measured to today’s measurement?

Mike Haseler says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:25 pm
KR says: February 2, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Interesting challenge. I have one for Dr. Spencer:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the the thermometer record.

KR, go read a book about basic statistics in science!
There you will learn that all systems have noise and the climate is no exception. Climate variation is all the changes in the climate that cannnot be readily attributed to other factors. This is totally different from climate cycles, climate cycles are predictable, climate variation isn’t (that’s why its dealt with statistically).

KR, the current warming in the thermometer record is being peer reviewed here on WUWT, and similar sites, I’m surprised that you haven’t picked up that the flow of opinion around here is that these records are so badly tampered with, and on an on-going basis, they are indicative only of major duplicity from the AGW camp promoting them. However, there are many other studies confirming the natural, internal climate cycles as depicted in the Vostok graph, which Gore produced in his film.
If you look at this carefully, you’ll see that the current rise we’re in since the end of the Little Ice Age is but a mere blip in the overall falling temperature sequence of blips from the dramatic global warming high at the beginning of our Holocene; which has taken us, all too briefly, out of the full grip of our current Ice Age, and into which we’re returning. Unless we can change the pattern..
So there you have your demonstration.
Re Mike Hasleler’s point about statistical noise, this paper might help: http://www.mnm.ifrf.net/2001/viewpoint.pdf
which gives an explanation of “o that the CO2 contribution to atmosphere from combusion is inside the statistical noise of the major sea and vegetation exchanges so a priori it can not be expected to be statistically significant.”
……..
Mike says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm
KR above nailed it, but I’ll add a little here. First evidence GW is caused mainly by human GHG emissions can be found here and you can follow links to peer reviewed papers.
Which says: “A natural cycle requires a forcing, and no known forcing exists that fits the fingerprints of observed warming – except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.”
What fingerprints? The Vostok graph like others of its ilk shows clearly that something is forcing, but that CO2, Methane and so on, let alone ‘anthropogenic’ such, follow temperature rises and, importantly, lag behind by a considerable number of years, around 800 years, so they can hardly be thought of as forcing anything.
Unless Carbon Dioxide has some supernatural powers to influence the rise of global temperature 800 years before it itself begins rising, then it’s fairly safe to assume its own rise is an effect and not a cause. It is not doing the forcing.
To anyone not trying to force Carbon Dioxide into this supernatural power role, the obvious analysis is that CO2 is irrelevant to global warming now as it was irrelevant in the past.
Whatever is doing the forcing is actually powerful enough to effect huge, very real, changes in our global climate, taking us spectacularly out of our Ice Age for a few thousand years before plunging us back into it. That natural cycle has been repeating itself around every 100,000 years for the last million.
If you want to understand just how dramatic these moves into interglacials, there’s a lot of information available about our current one. Rapid sea level rises of hundreds of feet from the melting of the vast, deep ice cover of the Ice Age can be rapid when containing walls finally break, in a decade or less in some cases.
The fingerprints of our present warming are in the patterns of the past. We know roughly where we are on that graph, while the when of the actual seemingly inevitable drop back into our Ice Age can still be speculated about – how imminent is imminent?
We don’t need to bother considering CO2 at all because it’s irrelevant in this, we have data to show it is irrelevant in these natural cycles. My advice, though you haven’t asked for it, is, don’t be taken in by those still promoting this really weird idea of a trace molecule with supernatural powers. They say it’s capable of doing everything, from driving runaway global warming and melting the arctic and antarctic and all the glaciers, to taking us into the ice age again.. The only constant in the spiel is that regardless of all the evidence that CO2 has nothing to do with these dramatic natural cycles, it is blamed for it.
Because they can’t think of anything else..

steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:33 pm
You’ll note that nothing in AGW demands that temperatures move outside their historical extremes. AGW merely requires that temperatures with More GHG in the amosphere be warmer than it would be without that GHG.
============================================================
So AGW theory is, in effect, completely unfalsifiable, since whatever the global temperatures happen to be, proponents of AGW can always claim that they would be “x” degrees lower if CO2 levels had remained at their pre-industrial revolution levels.
Catch 22.

steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:25 pm
“Models are tools. just like theories. Third, there are sciences where you cannot do controlled experiments so you are forced to use models.”
If you reflect on this a minute, you will note that there can be two or more models that have all the same output yet have internal conflicts with one another. That is, one modeler will say the “The system does X” and the other modeler will say “No, the system does not-X.” Because the two models have all the same output, there is no basis for choosing between the two claims. You have just given up the concept of scientific truth. When I hire a scientist, I insist on one who recognizes the concept of truth as it applies to hypotheses and those honored hypotheses that we call theories and laws.
William James agreed with you. But he recognized that he had given up the concept of truth as it applies to science. He put scientific truths on the same level as religious truths; either were to be judged on the basis of the good that they produce for society. Fortunately, James died before discovering that he was giving cover to Lenin, Stalin, and all the rest.

Laurie Bowen says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times . . . . and that ought to be enough . . .
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
—
Laurie, I never quite followed your logic. Is it that 22/7 – 1/2/5/79 + 2/2/2/2/2/2/3/5/5/5/5/5/5 + 3/2/2/2/2/89/353/32413 would be a bit closer? That they are missing some terms?

This is what AGW must fight against: Within each short term weather forecast event, weather pattern variation parameters (SST, water vapor, pressure systems, jet stream, etc) come into the field of view that then leads forecasters to predict cooling or warming temperatures, wind speed and direction, and precip, 2 or 3 days in advance. The predictions are getting quite close to the actual observations. AGW does not appear to be a part of these calculations. As far as I can tell, at least here in NE Oregon, the predictions don’t add a layer of AGW to the forecast. It is what it is based on the presenting weather pattern variation parameters coming into view.
Therefore, AGW cannot be extrapolated from the data because it didn’t exist as an input. End of discussion.

KR: “Absolute humidity is ~4% higher than it was in 1970, roughly the volume of Lake Eirie (484 km^3), increasing the greenhouse trapping of water vapor.”
1. The 2nd part of the sentence does not follow logically from the 1st part – and probably is not logical in itself – perhaps there is a problem with the use of the English language?
2. Can you provide a reference for that?
3. Such a statistic may not be meaningful without examination of context. To increase absolute humidity from the La Nina-dominated years of the 1970s to El-Nino years may not at all be impressive. We need to compare it to humidity levels in the 1930s.
4. I am dubious about the reliability of a measure of global humidity in 1970 – and that we can reliability compared it to our current estimates of humidity.

KR says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Interesting challenge. I have one for Dr. Spencer:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
You can’t prove a negative, particularly one that isn’t even defined (which natural cycles, for example?). You can prove (or disprove) a positive statement.
Here’s one more challenge for him:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out actions of the lawn gnome Illuminati (they’re everywhere, and only move when you aren’t looking) as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Undefined natural cycles, lawn gnomes, invisible pink unicorns – pretty much one and the same. It’s a dishonest challenge.
————————————————————-
Hold up a second.
“This is a critical point. We cannot explain the temperature observations without CO2”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
That sound is a scientist leaning on his crutch, the GCM. Now the idea is that since natural cycles cannot explain the warming, it must be explained by CO2. So asking how you got there from here is not a dishonest challenge, it’s a fair question that cannot be answered.
If temperature anomalies vary so widely on a month to month timescale, I would say that any trend you think you see may not even be a trend at all, just smoothed noise.

Roy, what bothers me is the world at this very moment is reverting back to the state of the late 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s and I sincerely hope there are at least some real scientists that are watch this event very, very closely. To hell with co2. The jet streams are moving south not from co2 but from a cooling Earth. In that same period the jet stream was almost always over Oklahoma or north Texas and that is how it got the title “Tornado Alley”. During the previous two decades it was tightened northward.
So, don’t apply too much time trying to fight the “AGW Church”, they are the truly lost scientists. I hope you, Dr. Christy, and your division staff need to use this time to record exactly HOW the Earth does cool. That seems to be the key. Ignore TSI for the moment, when the sun goes dormant, what physical events occur to allow the cooling even though our TSI instruments show little change.
It is cooling and right now we can watch (satellites, radiosondes) and record events that haven’t occurred for some decades in the past. Please don’t miss this opportunity.

Leif Svalgaard says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:59 pm
I don’t think so. My point was [and is], that you cannot prove a negative. If you want to rule out natural cycles [as defined by the climate itself] as the cause of recent climate change, then you have to assume the existence of what you want to rule out. Some people will dispute that natural cycles exists [hockey stick belief] as well as dispute that liitle green men exists. Perhaps if I replaced the aliens by ‘angels’ then millions of people would accept that the latter exists.
—————————————————–
Well, climate modelers have stated time and again that they cannot explain global temperatures without CO2. They should have proof somewhere they couldn’t do it, and why they couldn’t do it, right? Is producing this proof really comparable to proving angels exist? Because sorting through paperwork is probably not the most convincing way to get that done.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-4.html
That would seem like a good place to start. Now, I certainly wish I had the time and resources to pore through journal after journal, but I don’t. But if you start to dig through their report, they don’t sound certain at all.
Thus, an accurate simulation of stratosphere-troposphere and ocean-atmosphere coupling may still be necessary to accurately simulate the SAM.
All they need is an accurate simulation to accurately simulate the SAM. Got it?

…and while I am at it… the geological record and the ice core record and the historical record all show more natural varaiability than we are seeing now. For those still staring at the hockey stick graphs like they mean something, look at the scale. Draw that same graph properly, degrees K which starts at zero and earth norm is roughly 288…now the tip of that hockeystick looks exactly what it is. A fraction of a fraction of a blip in the normal range of variability. Take out the tree rings or the thermometer data or what ever else and use satellite data for the last 30 years and POOF! no more hockey stick, just a shaft.
Isn’t playing with a broken off hockey stick a major penalty? 3 minute minor or something? How does that translate into climate science? 3 year suspended incredulity?

…and just as I cease my ranting, let’s get some focus on all this “well you can’t explain xyz or abc etc without GHG’s”. Why oh why do we let ourselves get sucked into debates over 2nd, 3rd or 4th order measures of CO2’s effect on global temperatures?
I’ve never seen a single warmist dispute that CO2’s warming effects are logarithmic, not one. Known science. Accepted science. Skip settled, that term has become meaningless, but the logarithmic effects of CO2, if they can be disputed, then all I can say is that no one is disputing them.
So take ALL the warming from the last 100 years. DOUBLE it. Blame CO2 for THAT number including feedbacks. What are we at? About one degree? OK, now calculate how many barrels of oil we have to burn in the next century to get just ONE more degree. C’mon, how many?
As soon as we start doing the ACTUAL numbers from DIRECT effects even giving ALL the warming and DOUBLING just in case there’s some cooling effects compensating, we STILL have to burn an amount of fossil fuel that isn’t possible even with China and India and everyone else industrializing at full tilt.

> A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate
> scenario that disproves global warming.
Can’t be done. So flexible is the theory, that there is not now
any possible climatic event that is inconsistent with the AGW
hypothesis. Unfortunately this comes with a price tag. Because
the theory is immune from refutation, it is no longer Science.

@ Leif Svelgaard: “Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
Show me one scientific paper peer reviewed or otherwise that suggests little green aliens as the most likely cause of the recent warming in the thermometer record>

Nylo says:
February 2, 2011 at 10:10 pm
So AGWers cannot scientifically reject the posibility that the rise in temperatures is mostly due to natural variation, and Skeptics cannot rule out either that CO2 played an important part. No settled science works both ways.
——————————-
Null hypotheses are never proven. They are just more true than the alternative hypothesis. The scientific method proves things by throwing alternative after alternative at the null, in an attempt to disprove it. If CO2 causing the warming is the null, what is the alternative? CO2 is not causing the warming. This means that there is a natural component, no matter which you choose as the null. There must be, therefore, a defined component that applies to the variations that occur without man-made perturbation.
What we know about this component is commonly referred to as ‘weather’ and dismissed as too noisy to be a part of the climate. Daily variations transact large amounts of energy, which poses problems for the logic in choosing AGW as the null hypothesis. The logical choice of a null hypothesis is that normal variations that happen on the daily scale can explain warming and cooling trends.
If this is the null, and it deserves to be so, then the alternative is that CO2 is causing the warming. This means you have to rule out the daily variations. Good luck using averaged data to rule out daily variations.

@KR Feb 2, 2:00pm –
I followed your link to skeptical Science’s blog and muoncounter’s comment there and his Santer link.
The Santer paper is just awful science. How in the world did Science actually publish such a weak, sloppy, illogical mess such as that?
I tried to post this response to his comment as follows, but it kept rejecting it as having ad hominem attacks in it. No, there are not any in it.
@228 (muoncounter) said:

How about Santer 2003…

Is Santer kidding?

A model-predicted fingerprint [human, I will assume he means] of tropopause height changes is statistically detectable in two different observational (“reanalysis”) datasets.

It is a model. Models are not empirical evidence.
First of all, Santer is using tropopause height as a proxy for, not just warming, but he takes it to an unwarranted next step, bypassing the warming itself and going straight to “humans did it.”
His statement should have been in two parts. First it should have said, “We show that tropopause height is a quantifiable proxy for a warming climate,” and then he should have shown his evidence that it was humans that caused the tropopause height change. His logic is flawed. His CO2 = humans thinking is getting in the way of his logic.

Increases in tropopause height over the last several decades have been identified in radiosonde data (2), in observationally-constrained numerical weather forecasts (reanalyses) (3), and in climate models forced by combined natural and
anthropogenic effects (4).

Wow. The only empirical evidence here is the first, radiosonde data, and it is only evidence that the tropopause has changed. Nothing in that fact points at humans. The 2nd one is weather forecasts, and forecasts are not empirical evidence. They are guesses. The 3rd is climate models, and models are not empirical evidence, either. So all he is left with is “Weather balloons say the tropopause changed height.” That says nothing about humans. To Santer maybe it does, but it isn’t scientific to take that quantum leap. Santer: In logic you can’t leave steps out.

Model experiments suggest that this increase cannot be explained by natural climate variability alone (4).

Again, models are not empirical evidence. They are lines of code and can only give back what is programmed in. GIGO anyone? I am not slurring the modelers intentions, just that they need each physical process to be 100% proven out before they can rely on the output of that portion of the code. And they also need to not include even one code character of supposition or surmise or assumption.

To date, no study has quantified the contributions of different anthropogenic and natural forcing mechanisms to tropopause height changes over the 20th century.

THIS one is beautiful. Santer here is admitting that as of 2003 no one – I repeat, no one – had done what Dr. Spencer is asking in 2011. So, the first question should be, “Has anyone done it since then?” Of course, in this paper Santer is claiming that he and his cohorts have come to rescue climate science from that oversight.
But has he?

We estimate these contributions here, and demonstrate the usefulness of tropopause height as an integrated indicator of human-induced climate change.

Sorry. Demonstrating based on estimates? Not science. Come on Santer! You can do better than that.
Really guys, this is sad. On this site where you claim to be properly skeptical, you don’t let that pass as science, do you?
And ohmygod, this one in the Abstract caught my eye:

Tropopause height changes simulated over 1900-1949 are smaller than in recent decades, and are driven largely by variations in volcanic aerosols and solar irradiance.

I’ll even pass on the “simulated” and get to the real goody:
This is the same solar irradiance that has been shot down as a direct and naturalforcing for warming itself, but it is okay for Santer to drag it out and claim a causal link to tropopause height? For a proxy? Holy crap! Talk about a double standard! But at the same time, let’s see what Santer does with it…
Okay, he only mentions it twice in the body of the text. The first is
“The natural external forcings considered are changes in solar irradiance (S) and volcanic aerosols (V)”
where he assigns a variable name to it. Okay… No real science there. . .
Then the last mention of solar irradiance is:

Solar irradiance changes over the 20th century warm both the troposphere and the stratosphere with offsetting effects on tropopause height.

First here, let’s point out that this is the only meaty (?) use of solar irradiance in the entire paper.
But this is puzzling. Without any sourcing, he states that as fact, leaving everyone to stipulate that it is an uncontested fact, I guess. But, wow. He is giving solar irradiance a power that isn’t referenced and a power that isn’t allowed to anyone who tries to use it as a direct forcing on climate, who want to use it as a “natural forcing.” They can’t use it directly, but he, Santer, can use it as a forcing for a proxy – with no demonstrated evidence that it really is true.
Do I have that right?
I have to ask, where did he pull that out of?
All in all, if you, muoncounter, call any of that solid science, you don’t seem to have have very high standards.
VERY poor logic, sloppy concepting of the paper – what can I say? Terrible…
And in conclusion, nowhere in it does Santer develop an answer to Dr. Spencer’s challenge.
Models and simulations and estimates – none of them are empirical evidence that does what Santer claims it does.
Solar irradiance – if he wants to use that for proxies, he has to “show his work,” and prove why it is valid to use it.
Seriously, if I were a grading it as a paper, I’d flunk the dude.

I was all set to agree with those here who argue that Dr Spencer should be asking for a null hypothesis. But on relfection I don’t think so.
As I understand the null hypothesis, asking to prove others are not genuine forcings is not the same as asking if CO2 has no effect.
As a null hypothesis for each of the natural forcings, maybe that would work, as long as it is the change that is being looked at. They all do have some effect. AGW argues that all the other ones (at least in toto) are a fixed value, thus leaving CO2 to be the change culprit by default. That is really their underlying mantra.
Dr Spencer is asking if that assumption – that the total of all the other forcings never changes – has been proven. That is what got me to change sides, that it was never proven. I am still looking for that paper, after 15 years.
I do think it is significant that Santer admitted in his paper that no one had done this by 2003. Even one of their own admits it. And if it had been done since then, WUWT would have been right on it.
_____
BTW, it is amazing how many comments on this thread have not been responsive to the question asked. That is unusual here.

Humans have such a difficult time with science because it’s so easy for them to be human.

Great challenge. It is equal to the challenge: prove that CO2 is no GHG.

WheelsOC says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:14 pm
“I would pose to Dr. Spencer a counter-challenge, that he publish one peer-reviewed paper that convincingly establishes natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record. But Dr. Spencer has said he doesn’t want to publish in the peer-reviewed literature anymore and prefers more laxly refereed venues like Geophysical Research Letters. It seems a bit hypocritical to demand peer-reviewed rebuttals to his non-reviewed assertions. That’s not how the burden of proof works”.
Peer reviewing only works if those who are invited to review are prepared to see a piece of work which flies contrary to their views but is otherwise sound, get into print. Many years ago the editor of one professional journal sent a well-researched article by a friend of mine to two of his university peers. One liked it and there were only a few minor suggestions. The other hated it and came up with a number of destructive reasons for not publishing. But the editor was determined that the article should be published. So she sent it to me as the third reviewer, knowing full well that because the author was a friend of mine and that we shared the same views, she would secure a majority for publication.
Dr. Spencer is probably fed up with having his papers turned down because journals like Nature send them to be peer reviewed by ardent AGW propagandists.

Steve Mosher
I am currently reading your book for the second time and admire your work immensly.
However your attitude to AGW puzzles me.
Starting with your last point first.
I looked at the Willis’ post that you cited and saw his charts start in 1978.
I presume that they are drawn from satelite data which have many strengths, but one fatal flaw, or rather shortcoming:
You cannot deduce the bounds of any element of the climate from data only a mere 30 years long.
Climate cycles are far longer and being chaotic, have enormous fluctaition, relative to trend, which cannot be bound by any thirty year period. Your example fails.
Any others?
Secondly, or rather, reverting to your first point.
I can see what you’re getting at.
Dr. Spencer’s challange is all in words, concepts, not hard facts and data.
But after all, that is exactly what he is challenging.
The whole AGW is just shock and horror, smoke and whimsy stuff.
“Our models show that ….. bla bla blah”.
“The very heavy snow in the northern hemisphere is due to global warming causing the freezer door in the artic to be left open and ….. bla bla blah”.
I realise that I am just making fun of a serious subject, so I’ll change tack.
The point I am trying to make is that there are such large gaps between the physics of the CO2 molecule and the global climate, as measured by indexes compiled by frail human beings like you and me.
Any very finely honed NUL hypotheses could not possibly encompass the huge range of AGW theorising. I mean, look at AR4 or whatever the IPCC 2007 report was called. An ensemble of models with outputs between 1.5 and 6 degrees increase, and you want Dr spencer to be more precise!
Fair go mate, as my friends would say.
Fair go, please Steve.

Well said JohnWho!
In the simplest terms – if I were to flip a coin, and cover it up so no one can see it, and claim that it is heads and therefore you owe me a great sum of money, would you give me the money or would you want to see the coin first? What I see a large number of AGW by CO2 supporters doing is accepting that the coin is heads without seeing the coin.
Spencer, Watts, McIntyre, McKitrick, etc. are asking (demanding) to see the coin.
They should not be required to prove that there is no coin or that the coin is not heads.

I propose Steve McIntyre as the judge.

I was teasing the twitter agw bot with this, he/she does actually watch the account. I put it out there and told him to PUT UP, OR SHUT UP. Sure enough he hit my tweet with a very uncomplimentary Utube about you:)
Then when pressed he answered “You’re asking to prove a negative, the classic creationist trick” .. well we bantered back and forth for almost an hour, which from a non scientist little me is probably pretty frustrating for the guy until I finally got this out of him: “There a very few things in life that are 100% certain… actually nothing that I can think of” .
That was my ah ha! moment and I told him that was probably the most honest thing I’d ever seen him tweet. But alas, he went right back to business as usual afterward. I did get a few good ones in there especially after he asked me what it was about global warming I didn’t agree with, and I had a really good time doing it.. so thanks Dr Roy for the challenge because right now, somewhere in twitterland there is a frustrated AGW bot/guy.
He left off and another warmer hit, and is still waiting impatiently for an answer why we should believe evil oil company propaganda.. SIGH!!!

Robert Wykoff says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
No, that’s not a better challenge, that’s a stupid challenge – because there is no argument being put forward that global warming (or more generally, climate change) does not exist. We all accept that there has been some warming over the last 150 years or so (and a zillion other warmings and coolings before then). We also fully accept Kevin Trenberth’s assertion that warming ceased about 10 or 11 years ago (a travesty). He hypothesises that this missing warmth is deep in the oceans, but so far has not backed it up with any actual evidence. Now that would be a better challenge.

Nylo:
In this analogy, your wife’s murder is the temperature rise and you are the anthropogenic explanation, and other people who may also have motives to kill your wife are the other posible natural factors. Yes, there may be no solid proof against you, but all of the admittedly weak evidences point to you, and you cannot prove that any other person did it. Even if declared not-guilty, you are still the most likely murderer.
—
Nylo, I had to laugh at your “murder trial”. One possibly suspectable husband and a slew of known wife murders as the other suspects. I see old El Niño is one of them over there. He’s a bad one, convicted hundreds of times of killing other wives. And you are going to convict the husband. You’ve got to be kidding.

22/7=
in hexadecimal the answer is 4.8571….
So what should we assume to come up with your answer?

Myrrh – “the current warming in the thermometer record is being peer reviewed here on WUWT, and similar sites – I have been following that, and I’ve noted that http://www.surfacestations.org/ hasn’t been updated since July 09. A lot of people, myself included, have been waiting for Watts to produce some data and analysis for a couple of years… and we’re still waiting.
All of the temperature records show the same thing – warming, in particular over the last 30-40 years: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/comparing-temperature-data-sets/
“they are indicative only of major duplicity from the AGW camp promoting them…” Ah, the conspiracy theory. Sorry, but reputations in science are made when you overthrow somebody else’s theory. If there were holes that big in the science I guarantee that graduate students the world over would be pointing those out to make their rep. Have you ever dealt with grad students? Half-starved overworked cut-throat competitors for recognition and the earth-shaking papers? Trying to maintain a consistent conspiracy in that group would be like trying to herd wet cats. Stand between them and a world-shaking paper, and you’re going to end up on the ground covered in footprints!
You can look at the raw data, the adjusted data, data with and without the surface stations Watt has complained about. The adjusted data with the stations Watt’s has complained about shows less warming than either the raw data or data with ‘suspicious’ stations removed! The net effect of making the adjustments and corrections is to show a cooler record. I rather suspect that’s why we haven’t seen surfacestations updated in a while.
—
Just The Facts – Thanks for the references! Looking at them, the Limsakula paper discusses ENSO influences, along with minimums increasing faster than maximums. Increasing minimums are actually expected under greenhouse warming – nights cool less with increased GHG’s. I don’t see anything in that paper regarding long term cycles causing the late 20th century warming trend, though. The Wang et al paper looks much more relevant, although it’s a bit hard to tell from the abstract. I’ll continue to look for a publicly accessible version, as I don’t have AGU access.

Scientific opinion on climate change – Wikipedia, the free …
As reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), …… at Chicago received replies from 3146 of the 10257 polled Earth scientists. …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Global warming controversy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A compendium of poll results on public perceptions about global warming is …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
List of scientists supporting the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
http://www.iterasi.net/openviewer.aspx?sqrlitid=r_1n_yl-b0y4znq7c3tuxg
List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
And then there is:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Special:Search?search=As+reported+by+the+Intergovernmental+Panel+on+Climate+Change+%28IPCC%29%2C+&go=Go
Once again, I have not vetted . . . But, last time I checked . . . according to the rules of rational reasoning an ad populum approach can be a mistake.
Can you FOIA and international organization?

Leif Svalgaard said February 3, 2011 at 8:40 am:
“… The point is [and was] that if natural, internal cycles exist and their existence is derived from observations, then the game …” … is over
Exactly. The “skeptics” should have at it – they have lots of work to do.

An Inquirer – There are a number of references on the increase in atmospheric water vapor, particularly stratospheric vapor which raises the height (and drops the temperature, hence less IR) where that water vapor radiates to space:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2000/2000GL012133.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2001/2000GL012502.shtml
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/mem/oldftp/taperecorder.ps.Z
Since water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, increasing water vapor has an effect – additional heat trapping.

KR says:
February 3, 2011 at 8:09 am
Sorry, but reputations in science are made when you overthrow somebody else’s theory. If there were holes that big in the science I guarantee that graduate students the world over would be pointing those out to make their rep.
KR, yes, you would think that to be the case, but it isn’t: for example, no one at all had seriously reviewed the MBH Hockey Stick graph until McIntyre and McKitrick did it, with some difficulty including obstructive threats from the ipcc to McIntryre, who was in fact an ipcc reviewer!
The fact is that ipcc Climate Science is not real, scientific method and principle, science. As to critical studies, including Jones’ GMT reconstructions, the Climate Scientists and Journals such as “Nature” and “Science” do not make the “materials and methods” of a study, which is its science, available for sceptical review as per real science and the Journals’ own protocol. That also explains the ‘evil’ FOIA requests to Jones and the CRU.
Then they also claim that “peer review” by a few selected reviewers guarantees the ‘given truth’ of the study reviewed, when this is totally false and grossly unscientific.
You are making the reasonable mistake of assuming that ipcc Climate Scientists are following the principles of real science, when it turns out that they aren’t. I made the same assumption until yr. 2000, when I started looking at the way ipcc Climate Science actually operates and found that it is not doing real science. The more you look, the worse it gets. The m.o. ipcc Climate Science really demonstrates is that of a massive Propaganda Operation. Sad but true.

“From what I understand, the GCM’s show that without GHG’s from human sources, the increase in global average temperature can’t be explained.”
I.e. we don’t understand what drives climate change, therefore it must be due to humans.

@James Sexton
Use all of the hyperbole and misapplication of 1984 references that you wish, James, but it doesn’t reflect well on your position. Your comments don’t seriously address what the actual climate scientific work says. I’d suggest you get to work on that alternative theory and start collection observed data in support of it …

Jack Greer says:
February 3, 2011 at 10:27 am
@James Sexton
Use all of the hyperbole and misapplication of 1984 references that you wish, James, but it doesn’t reflect well on your position. Your comments don’t seriously address what the actual climate scientific work says. I’d suggest you get to work on that alternative theory and start collection observed data in support of it …
=======================================================
Again, its a fools errand. Further, that wasn’t hyperbole, at least from the skeptic side, what you saw in quote-marks were quotes of alarmists. I’ve a few more. 😉 Moreover, the data collection is already being done. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes increased global average temperatures. Isn’t that a base tenet of the quasi-theory? When did we close all of the coal plants? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/trend ……… Must have been about 2000. Be sure to click on the “see raw data” link to verify the data.
Of course, if I were to work toward an alternate theory, I’d have to ask alternate to what? To why we warm sometimes? Or why warming scares people? Or how CO2 emissions correlate with lower ACE values? Or why ice can leave an area without melting? Alternate theory to exactly what?
Jack, I’m sorry you can’t see the parallels between Eric Blairs prognostications and the collective totalitarian overtones used in the CAGW/CC/CD/(whatever we call it today) theory. He was spot on. Consider, just for the moment of the current alarmist message of the warming of the Arctic causes winter cooling.(Except for the years that it didn’t.) It is, for the lack of a better descriptive term, warmcold, not to be confused with the drywet our friends down under are going through. The selective memory of alarmists is something that will be written about for centuries to come. The fact that they’ve been wrong on every major issue regarding CAGW is flabbergasting. But they’ve fixed that now to where any climatic event is charged to the dreaded CO2 induced climate change. I expect a study any day now that shows CO2 causes a decrease in hurricane activity.
Here’s one for you, define what normal climate should be. What’s our temp goal? Is it the global average from 1945-1975? Who said? Why? How would it be beneficial to revert towards that climate? For whom? Who gets to pick? Understand the implications of believing such ludicrous tripe. There is only one sort of person that would even consider that we could control, and, thus should, our climate. It is a collective totalitarian.
Alternate theory indeed. If I could prove one, I would not.