Guest post by James Padgett
Many of you are aware that the concept of continental drift, proposed by Alfred Wegener, was widely ridiculed by his contemporaries. This reaction was in spite of the very clear visual evidence that the continents could be fit together like a giant puzzle.
I think this is where we are in climate science today. There is an obvious answer that many experts cannot see even though a young child would understand when presented with the evidence.
Our current crop of experts cannot see simple solutions. Their science is esoteric and alchemical. It is so complex, so easy to misunderstand, that, like the ancient Greek mystery religions, there is a public dogma and then there are the internal mysteries only the initiated are given access to.
And then there are the heretics who challenge their declared truths.
That isn’t to say that many climatologists aren’t smart. On the contrary, they can be very smart, but that doesn’t preclude them from being very wrong on both collective and individual levels.
One of the most brilliant men alive in the last century, John von Neumann, believed that by the 1960’s our knowledge of atmospheric fluid dynamics would be so great, and our computer simulations so precise, that we’d be able to control the weather by making small changes to the system.
It is true that the climate models used today do a very good job with fluid dynamics, but despite that understanding we can neither predict nor control the weather (and the climate) to the degree he imagined.
An incredible genius, he made a mistake. He didn’t understand the fundamental chaos that made his vision impossible.
In regard to the climate, I hope my simple vision is closer to reality than the excuse-filled spaghetti hypothesis that currently brandishes the self-given title of “settled science.”
My proposal, that climate is primarily driven by solar and oceanic influences, is probably believed by more than a few skeptics, but hopefully I can make a compelling case for it that both small children and climate scientists can understand. To that end I’ll take a quick look at the temperature record from 1900 until the present. I will explain the case for the oceanic/solar model and articulate the excuses given by the anthropogenic camp for the decades that inconveniently do not line up with the hypothesis of carbon dioxide being the primary driver of climate change.
1900-1944:
This period is largely warming. What could possibly be the cause of that?
The sun seems to be the obvious answer. It is so obvious in fact that even most mainstream climatologists admit its influence in these years. Some also say there is an anthropogenic effect in there, somewhere, and they could be right, but it certainly isn’t obvious.
And while the Atlantic is in its cool phase over the earlier part of this period, the largest ocean, the Pacific, is warm,especially in the last couple decades, but when it turns into its cool phase….
1945-1976:
We get 30 years of cooling in the surface station record.
According to proponents of the anthropogenic model, the unprecedented increase in carbon dioxide following World War II was not only masked, but overpowered by sulfate emissions. That is an interesting excuse, but this cooling period exactly matches the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
So much so that when it goes into its warm phase in…
1977-1998:
We get 20 more years of warming:
which is kicked up a notch towards the end as the Atlantic goes into its warm phase:
That leaves us with the final period from…
1999-Present:
After the super El Nino of 1998 temperatures have largely flat-lined and perhaps even dropped slightly. Both the Atlantic and Pacific are in their warm phases and the sun remains at the “high” levels following the recovery from the Little Ice Age, but the Pacific seems to be wobbling cooler and cooler as it shifts back into its cool phase.
True we are the “warmest decade on record,” but we are also the only decade on record with both oceans in their warm phases in a time of relatively high solar activity. The only comparable time would be during and around the 1930’s and early 1940’s, around the time of the Dust Bowl, and the sun wasn’t as active back then – and that’s assuming the records are an accurate reflection of global temperatures back then.
So how do climate scientists explain this lack of warming for over a decade? Ah, well they blame the sulfates again – a classic excuse, while others say that the heat has teleported deep into the oceans. I say teleported because there is no record of the journey of that missing heat into those unmeasured depths from the well-measured depths it would normally have had to travel through in order to get to that abyss.
Of course, others say this time period is simply not statistically significant, but the only period of heating we can’t directly trace to the sun, the time from 1977-1998, a mere twenty year period, is certainly statistically significant in some minds.
To that I only have one question for them:
Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Cheers,
James Padgett
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Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
From time to time.
Very, very interesting and important.
My only quibble is about the Sun. For several years the Sun has been quiet. As the PDO shifts the level of solar activity is minimal.
Or, perhaps I am wrong.
Since a twenty year period is also a 240 month period, are those 240 data points enough to be significant? And in reality we are measuring daily. Are 7300 data points enough to be significant? Never could figure out the logic right there but would love for a statistician explain it to me (and others).
Who is setting these rules here? Pure mathematics or the climate scientist community (aka IPCC)?
1900-1944:
This period is largely warming. What could possibly be the cause of that?
———
From the graph it’s seems that James associates warming with increased sunspot activity. And this seems to be consistent with theories about the origin of the little ice age.
So why dont we see a little ice age every 11 years? And the answer has to be backed by evidence, not hand waving or speculation.
And the same climatologists include the sun’s influence in their analyses.
Or are you claiming that they do not?
Lots here not to include in the next IPCC fantasy report.
I have held the view for some time that due to surface tension the sun controls the ocean. The agw theory holds that the “excess heat” created by green house gas being heated is stored in the ocean, I say no. Surface tension acts rather like double glazing, it will allow the sun’s rays to penetrate but will block physical heat therefore you cannot “store” heat on this planet. If you want to check this out try heating a bucket of water with a heat gun. The results are very surprising. There is no immediate transfer of heat. It takes about 10 minutes for the heat of the gun to break down the surface tension and only then does heat transfer take place. My view is that the atmosphere never has anything like the temperature needed to break down the oceans surface tension. This would explain Trenberth’s missing heat, the argo buoys under reading and the fact that despite co2 climbing we are having very cold winters. Put graphs of ocean temperatures and sun activity together and I’ll bet they match exactly. R.i.p. agw.
Bernard J
So are you claiming that all the causation effects of the sun on our atmosphere (all the known knowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns) are included in climate models?
If so maybe you could expand a little and let us all in on the secret!
LazyTeenager says:
November 5, 2011 at 12:55 am
“So why dont we see a little ice age every 11 years? And the answer has to be backed by evidence, not hand waving or speculation.”
HYSTERESIS !!!
R.M.B. says:
November 5, 2011 at 1:44 am
I have two reasons to dispute what you say. Firstly the sun is not a heat-ray, and the radiation is of much shorter wavelength, ie light. That will get through the barrier you believe exists. Secondly long and rigorous experimentation sitting by my pool in the summer tells me that when it has been sunny, the water is much warmer.
If anyone has the spare budget, I’d love to test the theory out all around the world. Only good quality hotels have the right kind of pools, however, so research could be expensive. It would be hard work, but I am prepared to put up with it…
I think you might have something there. However, solar activity is currently languishing in an extended minimum. I wouldn’t describe it as a time of relatively high solar activity.
James Padgett writes in the post, “That is an interesting excuse, but this cooling period exactly matches the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).”
That’s a coincidence related to ENSO, since the PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO and North Pacific Sea Level Pressure. The PDO does not represent the Sea Surface Temperatures of the North Pacific north of 20N. It has no impact on Global Temperatures. The PDO is actually inversely related to the Sea Surface Temperatures of that part of the North Pacific.
You continued, “…which is kicked up a notch towards the end as the Atlantic goes into its warm phase.”
The phase of the AMO is not what dictates whether or not the North Atlantic is contributing to the rise in Global Surface temperatures. Its contribution is dependent on whether the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature anomalies are rising faster than the rest of the global oceans. We can determine this by subtracting the SST anomalies of the Rest of the World from the North Atlantic SST anomalies. The curve is similar to the AMO:
http://i53.tinypic.com/2v1ukg5.jpg
In looking at the graph, the North Atlantic is contributing to the rise in Global Surface Temperatures from the minimum in the mid-1970s, when it started to rise faster than the SST anomalies of the rest of the world.
The graph is from this post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/comments-on-tamino%e2%80%99s-amo-post/
I think the short answer to the title is that, of course, neither of them is of much significance. Given that we know that the climatic system has cyclical components with periods on the scale of decades and centuries, nothing less will be even relevant unless read in the light of reasonably detailed knowledge of those cyclical variations.
We don’t have that knowledge. Therefore, to quote a favourite phrase of my Maths teacher some four and a half decades ago, “In general, nothing can be said”.
In reply to Jay Currie.
November 5, 2011 at 12:48 am
“My only quibble is about the Sun. For several years the Sun has been quiet. As the PDO shifts the level of solar activity is minimal.”
When the Maunder minimum occurred there was a lag time of 12 years before there was observed planetary cooling. If the past is a guide to the future, the planet will significantly cool.
The twentieth century warming was caused by solar wind bursts that removed cloud forming ions via a mechanism called electroscavenging. (The solar wind bursts create a space charge differential in the ionosphere that removes cloud forming ions. See Tinsley’s review paper for details concerning the different solar mechanisms that modulate planetary cloud cover.) 20th century planetary temperature increases and decreases closely correlated to solar changes of the geomagnetic field which are caused by solar wind bursts.
There are multiple climate modulating mechanisms that are controlled by solar magnetic cycle changes.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2011/anomnight.11.3.2011.gif
http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/solanki2004.html
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
See section 5a) Modulation of the global circuit in this review paper, by solar wind burst and the process electroscavenging where by increases in the global electric circuit remove cloud forming ions. The same review paper summarizes the data that does show correlation between low level clouds and GCR.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
Once again about global warming and solar activity K. Georgieva, C. Bianchi, and B. Kirov
We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied. It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JA014342.shtml
If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing? A comparison of two solar minimum intervals.
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years
Nature, Vol. 431, No. 7012, pp. 1084 – 1087, 28 October 2004.
According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/fig3a.jpg
James Padgett: Oops. My mistake. My eyes were drawn to the red curve in the graph. Let me rewrite the one sentence:
In looking at the graph, the North Atlantic is contributing to the rise in Global Surface Temperatures from the minimum about 1990, when it started to rise faster than the SST anomalies of the rest of the world.
There are far better statisticians around here than me, but a brief explanation of statistical significance.
Tests of statistical significance measure the probability that a result could have occurred by chance.
Generally 95% is considered the threshold for statical significance. Which means there are 5 chances or less out of 100 that a result could have occurred by chance.
The number of years is irrelevant, except to the extent that more years means more data points and more data points means a greater chance of finding statistical significance, assuming there is a real effect.
The argument that you need 30 years to detect the AGW climate signal is because the data is noisy.
But then climate scientists seem to misunderstand noise even more than they misunderstand statistics.
James Padgett: One last thing. I can’t find in your post where you answer the question asked in the title. So I’ll ask you, Why is 20 years statistically significant when 10 years is not?
Why is 20 years statistically significant when 10 years is not?
More importantly: Is (Tmax + Tmin) / 2 meaningful or statistically valid?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/4/australian-temperatures.html
“Secondly long and rigorous experimentation sitting by my pool in the summer tells me that when it has been sunny, the water is much warmer”.
But overnight it cools, yes?
See Chiefio’s discussion of the phenomenon in “Lessons of the Pool”
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/lessons-of-the-pool/
In effect the statistically significant year length is a function of how useful any period is to support AGW while the inverse is the case for anything that does not , which is why it flexible in practice. For example 10 years is enough for data that supports AGW but no where there nothing for that which does not . Further if the data from 12 years fails to support that is because you need to collect data from any higher number years to fully prove the case , there of course being no amount of data that can disprove it .
It works a similar situation with predictions of climate doom , the doom will always happen at some time in the future so if the forecast of 10 years turns out to be nonsense that is becasue it will be a number of years higher than 10 in the future , there is of course no possibility of the forecast being wrong in the first place.
Essentially like so much in climate science it not an actual argument around facts but an argument around politics which drive what is ‘needed’ and how you use it .
the issue is not being smart or not, as long you can’t quantify things, you re just making assumptions , and you ll know if your assumptions are right if things will be what you can predict from oceanic oscillations and sun activity..
You have to build a model …something like dT= A( atlantic)+B( pacific)+C( sun activity)
find out ABC from actual available data….and from that make predictions…and wait and see…
well from my point of view dT= A( atlantic)+B( pacific)+C( sun activity)+D( CO2)+F(other antropogenic) and unfortunately +G(Temperature) i would add H( atmospheric /earth relative velocity)…
But as you can see even in the simpliest case, we don’t have enough data to be sure of anything.
We just have global reliable data since….30/40 years….so…
Too much parameters from my point of view….
You must understand that if you want to convince scientists ( 5 grade) you must give a physical explanation such as heat transfert, forcing from coulds coverage modifications…so that you can quantify and be falsified…
ability to predict….
that s why we have to assess models predictions and results carefuly…
Interesting post but the title seems a misnomer, or at any rate, I could not see any attempt to explain why 10 years or 20 years or some other period may be statistically significant.
As regards the length of required periods, I recall that about 18 months ago Phil Jones (in an interview for the BBC) conceded that the temperature change (on his case a slight warming) was not these past 15 years statistically significant. Then with 2010 being the warmest or 2nd warmest year on record, last year Phil Jones argued that the warming these past 16 years (with 2010 data it was now 16 years) was stastically significant. When 2011 temperature figures come in, one can anticipate that if Phil Jones is asked whether the temperature change these past 17 years (it will then be 17 years) is statistically relevant, he will reply no.
So how come can it be the case that 16 years of data can yield a statistically relevant result whereas 15 and 17 years of the same data set cannot?
Short and sweet and to the point. Seriously getting close to a time to invest in coal and oil.
Bernard J. says:
November 5, 2011 at 1:08 am
The sun seems to be the obvious answer. It is so obvious in fact that even most mainstream climatologists admit its influence in these years.
And the same climatologists include the sun’s influence in their analyses.
Or are you claiming that they do not?
Err, well yes! Well at least not much. If the UN IPCC & its oh so cleverer than anybody else scientists (allegedly) keep making SPM statements that basically say, & here is the boring bit yet again, “we don’t really know exactly how element “A”, (Sun) affects element “B”, (Earth’s Climate), but we know for a fact that element “C”, (manmade CO2), overpowers element “A”!!!!! It’s obvious really in that case. Try reading a Summary for Policymakers & see for yourself, it’s all in the tables of forcings! Can they not realise how stupid that makes them look, or is it just arrogance too?:-)
Analogies.. be scared when you hear them 🙂 It is only a few decades that the hypothesis of continental drift had been confirmed. Until then, there were a few theories around, with good reason. I have a good friend (who is otherwise not stupid), but who unfortunately caught on to the “growing earth theory”.
It is not only that the continents fit nicely together; on the face of it, the growing earth theory seems even more plausible (because you can form a mini globe out of the continents… errr). Most kids actually interpret the evidence quite differently from you, so no, kids cannot see the ‘obvious’.