Guest post by Ed Hoskins
The UK Met Office long term Central England Temperature record[1] has kept a continuous and consistent data set since the 1660s. It appears to be reliable and to have maintained its quality. It has not been adjusted as have so many other official temperature records.Although the CET record covers only a small part of the northern hemisphere, it has shown a consistent rise since the end of the little ice age in 1850 at a rate of about +0.45°C / century or about +0.67°C in the last 150 years. This rise accords well with other temperature records.
However since the year 2000, diminishing solar activity in solar cycle 24, moving back towards little ice age patterns, appears to be having an real effect.
So since 2000 the CET shows an annual temperature diminution at the rate of -0.49°C / decade or -0.59°C in 12 years: this negates almost the entire CET temperature rise since 1850. Although this is a very short period, the extent of the climate change that has been observed since the turn of the millennium is remarkable.Using the March 2013 CET value it is possible to show the winter temperature values up until March 2013 with a combination of the four months December – March for the first 13 years of this century. The diminution of the four winter months temperatures is more remarkable at a rate of -1.11°C / decade or -1.41°C in the last 13 years. This compares with a winter temperature increase rate from 1850 to the year 2000 of +0.45°C / century or +0.68°C for the whole 150 year period.
There are substantial shorter term fluctuations in temperature and since about 1850 world temperatures have been recovering from a Little Ice Age up by about +0.7°C up until the year 2000. These fluctuations have correlated well with solar activity observable by the number of sunspots. There was a particularly active solar period from about 1970 onward coinciding well with sunspot cycles 21 – 22 – 23: it lead to comparatively rapid warming.However the current cycle 24 is very much weaker and sunspots are diminishing to the levels of the earlier Little Ice Age.
According to some[2], “so begins a Little Ice Age”. These colder conditions lead to a southwards diversion of the Jet Stream over Europe, as could be seen on 2/4/2013[3], when the upper atmosphere air flow was passing over Northern Africa, rather than is normal in warmer times to the North of Scotland.Such a jet stream pattern leads to very wet summer conditions and remarkably cold winters as have occurred in the last 5 years throughout Northern Europe and the rest of the Northern hemisphere. This adverse colder climate could well persist for several 10s or even hundreds of years as it certainly did for the pervious Little Ice Age.Humanity has thrived in our current Holocene interglacial world. The comparatively warm last 10,000 years have been responsible for the development of the whole of civilisation. The GRIP[4] Greenland ice core data, supported reinforced by several other similar long term ice core records show this effect very clearly.
Over the past 10,000 years the current Holocene epoch has been progressively cooling since the early “climate optimum”. Overall in the 10,000 years the world has cooled gradually by about 1.0 °C. There were other well documented temperature high points during the period, including the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods.
However the most recent period of 1000 – 2000 AD was the coolest millennium of the whole epoch: see John Kehr the Inconvenient Sceptic[5].However a longer term record shows that only 13,000 years ago the world was in the depths of a real ice age with temperatures about 12°C lower than at present.So interglacial periods of about 12,000 years have been occurring regularly about every 120,000 years. They are interspersed by real 100,000 year long ice ages, when vast ice sheets cover large parts of the world beyond the tropics.The previous Eemian interglacial epoch was some 130,000 years ago. At its peak it was about 3°C warmer than our current Holocene interglacial: hippopotami thrived in the Rhine delta. The Eemian also lasted about 12,000 years.
The pattern repeats itself[6], there have been 5 interglacial events in the last 500,000 years.At ~10,500 years our current cooler but benign Holocene interglacial is coming towards its end and the reversion of our planet to a real ice age is foreseeable.
REFERENCES
[1] http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
[2] see: http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=525&c=5
[3] see: http://www.woeurope.eu/cgi-bin/expertcharts?LANG=eu&MENU=0000000000&CONT=euro&MODELL=gfs&MODELLTYP=1&BASE=-&VAR=jeps&HH=3&ARCHIV=0&ZOOM=0&PERIOD=&WMO=
[4] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/greenland.html
[5] see: http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/chapters-8-10/
Click to access Petit_et_al_1999_copy.pdf
Mankind will then have some motivation to see if can really have an impact on climate.
I had the chance to move from Newcastle to Tasmania..
Maybe I will be very glad I didn’t !!
With the sun having a good old snooze, and CO2 having ZERO heating effect, I’m reckoning the next several years could be quite a bit cooler than many expect.
Get those coal fired power stations pumping out that electricity , guys.. Its going to be needed..
I pity the Poms, they have essentially destroyed their electricity producing capability. Its going to be really hard on them. Maybe attach some pipes to ‘houses of parliament’ to collect all the climate change hot air.?
“It (CET) has not been adjusted as have so many other official temperature records.”
This is an outrage.
For a large fee I herewith volunteer to adjust this record forthwith I whatever manner anyone wishes, or indeed in several ways if sufficient financial inducement is offered.
Historically the planet has spent a much longer period of time being cooler than it is currently, and by a lot more than the few degrees the AWG lobby are wetting their pants about. So even if man is having or will have such a warming effect, it looks as though nature will eventually cool us down by more than enough to compensate and enough to really worry about.
I’m a complete non-scientist, so would I be wrong to say, re this article, that we should be doing all we can to stoke up global temperatures, rather than making pitiful and expensive attempts to reduce them?
Why does it look like this interglacial never really got going, are we sure it’s going to end soon (how soon is soon anyway)?
I recall also seeing on this website a blurb on a German temperature location that went back many years and had similar results. Might be a good idea to bring this up again. Someone needs to put together a simple-to-understand case for what we expect the real post ice age warming is using these credible non-UHI, non-airport locations and maybe satellites.
AGW is an ego-centric philosophy, that places mankind at the very heart of nature, rather than the merest part of it. King Cnut and Galileo knew better.
Small point: the CET has been adjusted as it says on the Met Office’s CET page. It has been adjusted for UHI.
So it’s what Game of Thrones says: “Winter is coming.”
Just to back up what JIT says, adjustments are made for UHI.
I was told by the Met they allow 0.2C. If this is used in comparison with 18thC temps, it hardly seems enough.
Let’s be clear, the climatist establishment is going to claim this cooling is caused by evil man’s release of CO2, SO2 or from soot or whatever. It is always claimed that it is human sins from consumerism which cause this climate change whether up or down.
While the real world follow what many here have predicted the enemies against rationality and truth are still powerful and in charge of MSM, the greens and the political establishment.
Adam…
The Holocene began ~11,500 years ago, not 10,500 years (AGI). And where do you get the statement that the Earth has been cooler than now for much of the time of its history? Unless something has changed that I missed, that statement is just not correct.
Am I the only one here to see a flaw in comparing a 13 year record with a 100+ year record? there are several 13 year sections within the 100+ year record which show very rapid warming, and other 13 year sections which show equally as rapid cooling. It is all about cherry picking your start and end dates and adds nothing to the sum knowledge of what is taking place in the climate.
The interesting thing about the last 17 years is that all the GCMs failed to project that warming would pause or decline, for such a long time. However if we extend the 13 year section on the above graphs out to 100 years, the fact is we do not know if a straight line through it all would show warming or cooling or neither, because we do not know what that data is going to look like.
Just as we could have a 4 degrees difference in average temperature between one warm year and the very next cold year, it would be foolish to extrapolate that one year difference out to 100 years. Likewise comparing the 13 year trend since 2000 with the previous 100+ year trend tells us nothing about what will happen over the rest of the century.
If it would do any good………………..I’d say, Mankind – get your industry pumping CO2 into the atmosphere!
Yep, here in the UK we are heading for big trouble – up s&^7 creek without a paddle and with no means of heat cos we’re going for the agenda: of a cold green hell.
Who is Ed Hoskins?
Ken Hall:
I agree much of what you say in your post at April 25, 2013 at 4:59 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/25/temperature-change-in-perspective/#comment-1287068
I write to draw attention to two of your points which I agree and to dispute another of your points because I think those issues are extremely important.
Firstly, our disagreement. You say
Considering what is happening now is NOT cherry picking. We live in the here and now.
It is informative to compare what is now happening with what happened in the past, and with what soothsayers claimed would be happening now.
If there were similar 13 year periods to the most 13 years then there is no reason to suppose anything unusual is happening now. And it is NOT cherry picking to select start and end points which provide 13 year periods similar to the immediate past: that selection is how one searches for similar periods to the immediate past.
Can we find such similar periods? As you rightly say, yes, we can.
And that is direct evidence which indicates there is no reason to suppose there is anything unusual happening now. This evidence DOES add to “the sum knowledge of what is taking place in the climate”: it indicates that we cannot observe anything unusual taking place in the climate.
Which brings us to what the soothsayers predicted and to my points of strong agreement with you.
You say
It is not merely “interesting”. It is devastating to claimed predictions and projections of climate.
The explanation for this is in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
It says there
In other words, it was expected that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system.
This assertion of “committed warming” should have had large uncertainty because the Report was published in 2007 and there was then no indication of any global temperature rise over the previous 7 years. There has still not been any rise and we are now way past the half-way mark of the “first two decades of the 21st century”.
So, if this “committed warming” is to occur such as to provide a rise of 0.2°C per decade by 2020 then global temperature would need to rise over the next 7 years by about 0.4°C. And this assumes the “average” rise over the two decades is the difference between the temperatures at 2000 and 2020. If the average rise of each of the two decades is assumed to be the “average” (i.e. linear trend) over those two decades then global temperature now needs to rise before 2020 by more than it rose over the entire twentieth century. It only rose ~0.8°C over the entire twentieth century.
Simply, the “committed warming” has disappeared (perhaps it has eloped with Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’?).
This disappearance of the “committed warming” is – of itself – sufficient to falsify the AGW hypothesis as emulated by climate models. If we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that all projections of global warming are complete bunkum.
Therefore, I strongly agree with you when you say
Indeed, “we do not know what that data is going to look like” but we do know it is very unlikely to “look like” the predictions and projections generated by GCMs and promoted by the IPCC.
Richard
The CET was a reliable source up to 1971 but post Manley the Met drastically changed some sites and appear to have introduced an irregular but noticeable warming discrepancy since taking over the series.
Philip Eden runs a parallel set from 1971 on which he uses sites that correlate more closely with Manley’s originals.
For the most part the two are reasonably harmonious but examples such as right now in this month have the MET analogy 0.7C warmer than the Philip Eden set.
Philip Eden has soldiered on over the years with his IMHO more trustworthy set with little acclaim for his efforts and almost certainly helps to hold the MET’s enthusiasm in check.
http://www.climate-uk.com/provisional.htm
Ken Hall says:
April 25, 2013 at 4:59 am
No, but you approach an interesting point though.
Can we all agree that, until the post-war years of 1950-1955, mankind added almost nothing measurable to the world’s CO2 levels? Yes, we had been burning coal before then, and had even been cutting down some trees (while planting other CO2-eating crops in their place) but all are miniscule amounts compared to today’s natural emission and absorption rates.
Therefore, ANY and ALL changes in the earth’s temperatures measured by ANY and ALL proxies for temperature prior to 1940-1950 can ONLY have resulted from one or more unknown but entirely NATURAL variations and factors.
Therefore, any measurable periods of increasing, decreasing, or steady temperature periods of significant lengths (say, 15 years or more) prior to 1950 ARE SIGNIFICANT to understanding climate and climate changes.
Further, the entire theory of CAGW’s doctrine relies entirely on the single 25 year period between 1973 and 1998 when both CO2 and temperature were both rising at the same time. At no other period in the earth’s history has this happened -even though both CO2 and temperature have been increasing and decreasing significantly and at substantially equal to today’s rates throughout the earth’s history.
Therefore, if a single 25 year period is deemed sufficiently long enough to PROVE the cultist’s CAGW theory, any substantial shorter part of that period – say 15 to 17 years of data – can legitimately threatens or calls for questioning their CAGW dogma.
No, a single 15-17 year period with rising CO2 levels and no volcanoes and no measurable worldwide aerosol changes and only very, very questionable ocean heat changes does not disprove their dogma.
But, it cannot be discounted not ignored as irrelevant either. Today’s 15 year data is very, very relevant! You cannot get 25 years of data disproving 25 years of dogma without first getting 17 years of data.
Been watching this. Very real chance for the coldest year since the 1890’s.
CET Myth Rides Again
‘The UK Met Office long term Central England Temperature record[1] has kept a continuous and consistent data set since the 1660s. It appears to be reliable and to have maintained its quality. It has not been adjusted as have so many other official temperature records.’
We continue to be mislead by the CET myth – that it is the longest continuous record, when it is no such thing. It is an artificial record created from many short records from all over the UK in 1953 by Manley and has been adjusted up to current time for UHI by Meteo. In modern times it is a compilation from some 15 sites that have come and gone over the years, with seven since 1958, the last two changes in 2004 (Stonyhurst for Ringway) and 2007 (Pershore for Malvern). Note also that these stations lie in different UK climate zones from wet coastal Lancashire to the drier Midlands. This is important because Frank Lasner with his Ruti project has shown that coastal and inland stations behave differently. Indeed this can be seen in the current record where in the mid 1990’s there was a divergence of over 1 oC between the anomalies of Ringway and Rothamsted .
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/004438.html
Further, the CET record does not agree with the contiguous Meteo and Eden records, showing the “desired” hockey stick from 1986 onwards that is also absent in some of the constituent records.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.html
Note also that many of the CET sites do not meet WMO standards as they are in distinct heat island areas.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/wmo03318-blackpool-squires-gate/#more-7845
Tony Brown covered some of these points in his article on the history of CET in his article : “The long, slow thaw?”
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
“CET is not a single continuous set of instrumental temperature readings to 1659 but was the result of a project that sorted a mass of thermometer based temperature readings into a single coherent record covering a specific area of England, many years after the event. This notable achievement was carried out by Gordon Manley on behalf of the Met office. His 1953 paper describes in great detail how CET was assembled and the geographic area it covers. (15)
It is a fascinating piece of detective work carried out over a period of thirty years and was followed in 1974 by a further paper from the same author, which noted uncertainties and corrections, whilst commenting on the difficulties of trying to reconcile records due to the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendar- which occurred in 1752 in Britain making 11 days difference- but in different years in other countries. (16)
Manley’s work was expanded by Parker, so a number of variations of CET have been established over the years, as can be seen in this official description by Hadley/Met Office who maintain the figures.
These daily and monthly temperatures are representative of a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Lancashire, London and Bristol.
The geographic triangular area described is a heavily populated area of the country. In a private email to the author the Met office described the amount of UHI as follows;
‘The urbanisation corrections to the CET series have been applied since 1974. Initially they were just 0.1 degree C, in certain months, then gradually for more months of the year; from about 1995 onwards some of the corrections increased to 0.2 deg C, and by about 2002 all the corrections were 0.2 deg C.
The above applies to Mean CET. The urban heat island effect is much more noticeable for minimum temperatures than for maximum, so for the Minimum CET series the corrections are double those for Mean Temperature, whereas for Maximum Temperature it was deemed in fact that no correction was required.’
The best continuous UK record is that of Armagh that has many of the characteristics of CET in relation to AMO/NAO and also shows a strong link with solar activity.
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/751/500/
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
http://www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk/aen/ecn/AirTemp.htm
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/archive/previous_issues/vol4/v4n20/cutting.htm
In reply to
Ken Hall says:
April 25, 2013 at 4:59 am
Am I the only one here to see a flaw in comparing a 13 year record with a 100+ year record? there are several 13 year sections within the 100+ year record which show very rapid warming, and other 13 year sections which show equally as rapid cooling. It is all about cherry picking your start and end dates and adds nothing to the sum knowledge of what is taking place in the climate.
The interesting thing about the last 17 years is that all the GCMs failed to project that warming would pause or decline, for such a long time. However if we extend the 13 year section on the above graphs out to 100 years, the fact is we do not know if a straight line through it all would show warming or cooling or neither, because we do not know what that data is going to look like.
William,
The prediction of planetary cooling is based on a forcing change not random chaotic weather.
The paleoclimatic record is a clue to what will happen in the future. There are cycles of warming followed by cooling in the paleoclimatic record. The warming and cooling cycles in the paleo record occurred for a reason, there was a cause. The cause was not changes to atmospheric CO2 levels. The 1450 year warming/cooling cycle is called the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle. It has been known for some time solar magnetic cycle changes correlate with the all the warming and cooling phases.
The solar magnetic cycle was at its highest activity level in 8000 years during the 20th century. There has been an abrupt change unexplained change to the solar magnetic cycle. It appears solar cycle 25 will be a Maunder like minimum.
The extreme AGW paradigm pushers have ignored observational data that disproves their hypothesis: 1) Planet resists rather than amplifies forcing by increasing clouds in the tropics and 2) there is no warming in tropical troposphere at roughly 8km which is a key and necessary prediction of that theory (The greatest CO2 greenhouse gas warming is predicted to occur higher in the atmosphere as the CO2 forcing mechanism is saturated in the lower atmosphere as due to spectral overlap of absorption frequencies of water and CO2. The tropospheric warming at roughly 8km then warms the planet with long wave radiation. )
The pattern of warming that occurred in the 20th century matches the pattern of warming in the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles.
Paper that notes their has been no tropospheric warming at 8km.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data.
Paper that notes top of the atmosphere radiation analysis vs ocean temperature changes supports the assertion that the planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes. The planet resists forcing changes by increasing or decreasing clouds in the tropics thereby reflecting more or less sunlight back into space.
http://www.johnstonanalytics.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/LindzenChoi2011.235213033.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000- 2008) satellite instruments. … ….We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. …. …The heart of the global warming issue is so-called greenhouse warming. This refers to the fact that the earth balances the heat received from the sun (mostly in the visible spectrum) by radiating in the infrared portion of the spectrum back to space. Gases that are relatively transparent to visible light but strongly absorbent in the infrared (greenhouse gases) interfere with the cooling of the planet, forcing it to become warmer in order to emit sufficient infrared radiation to balance the net incoming sunlight (Lindzen, 1999). … ….Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth. Cloud feedbacks are still considered to be highly uncertain (IPCC, 2007), but the fact that these feedbacks are strongly positive in most models is considered to be an indication that the result is basically correct. Methodologically, this is unsatisfactory. Ideally, one would seek an observational test of the issue. Here we suggest that it may be possible to test the issue with existing data from satellites. …
The Dansgaard-Oeschger 1450 year climate warming and cooling cycle can be seen in the ice core data.
Greenland ice sheet temperatures last 11,000 years
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years by S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schussler & J. Beer
Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. 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. Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades. (William: The authors considered total solar irradiation TSI which is not the major mechanism by which the sun modulate planetary temperature. The mechanism is modulation of low level and high level clouds. There are another set of specialists who have almost worked out the details as to how the sun modulates planetary cloud cover.)
Solar Flux -> 10.7cm units:
1) 70 – 100 -> world wide cooling at -0.1C/2.5 years
2) 100 – 120 -> world wide static temperatures
3) 120 – up -> world wide warming at +0.1C/2.5 years
Since England and Europe are warmed by the AO and the Gulf Stream, expect the negative effect to double to -0.2C/2.5 years. England is almost in the Arctic Circle!
I noted that Germany has constructed 10 new coal fired electrical plants while England is shutting theirs down. Could a normal Englishman explain this to us???
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
Some times it is important to stop and take look at the long view to put climate change in perspective. It appears we are entering the little ice age weather patterns of the past.
S McDonald – I am a (non-climate) scientist and I agree that doing something prevent the next ice age would be good for mankind. I just don’t anyone has the slightest clue how to do it! CO2 levels certainly won’t affect this as CO2 has been both higher and lower in previous ice ages (and inter-glacials). My best bet is not to let anything slow down our development (certainly not artificial limits on energy use based on attempts to control warming) so that we are in a better place when the ice age does hit.
Tom G(ologist) says:April 25, 2013 at 4:56 am
Adam…
The Holocene began ~11,500 years ago, not 10,500 years (AGI). And where do you get the statement that the Earth has been cooler than now for much of the time of its history? Unless something has changed that I missed, that statement is just not correct.
Tom, I assumed Adam meant that in the past 500K years, 90% of the time we are in glaciated periods. Maybe I mistook something.
He meant cooler during the ice ages.
It would be almost unprecedented to have even a global 0.4 degree drop or rise from year to year. (Unless by “very next cold year” you meant within some very long time frame–in which case “very next” was a poor choice of words.)
The warming in the 1900’s is similar in size and shape to the cooling in the 1800’s. the only real difference is that the sign is reversed.
It is hard to see how the warming must be caused by humans but the cooling is not. Is it not more likely that whatever mechanism caused the cooling is also able to cause warming? For example, if you turned down the mechanism that caused the cooling, that should necessarily create less cooling, which would be seen as warming.
Where is the evidence that the cooling in the 1800’s is not connected to the warming in the 1900? It is illogical to suggest they are not simply two sides to the same coin. Especially given the universal failure of the climate models to predict the leveling of temperatures in the 2000’s.
The climate models were all based on the assumption that humans are the cause of increasing temperatures. The failure of the models to accurately predict is strong evidence that their underlying assumption is wrong.
Thorium liquid salt nuclear power. We have loads of easy to refine, cheap, non-nuclear bomb material thorium ore sitting around doing nothing; enough for thousands of years and a technology with the smallest footprint on the environment. Being liquid already, meltdowns are impossible and the entire reactor can be automated. A scram would simply means the liquid becomes so hot that it melts bottom plugs that allow the liquid to flow into several separate containers, bringing the nuclear reaction to a rapid halt. Many small reactors can be dispersed all over the place, only needing maintenance every 10 years or so. The fuel costs 10% of current fuel and we have loads of it. The reaction can be so thorough that the products can be used for other things and does not have to be buried for 1000s of years.
We can burn coal and other carbon fuels, but in the long run, I say we used those for transportation (no battery will ever have the energy density of gasoline or diesel), plastics, pharmaceutical, and other useful organics.
This looks like an important paper. I will reread it at least once again.
The latent editor in me has noted the usage in many publications of the word “lead” where the correct one is “led”. I noted three instances through this article and comments, all of which should be either “led” or “misled”:
“it lead to comparatively rapid warming”
“These colder conditions lead to a southwards diversion of the Jet Stream over Europe”
And from a posting: “We continue to be mislead by the CET myth”
A further minor quibble: in several places there is no space between the period ending a sentence and the first letter of the following sentence. A minor quibble I know, but this is from someone who has been sensitized by the lack of a space in several translations from Japanese and Korean.
IanM
One more post with temperature differences of 0.x degrees…
This is an interesting post, thanks.
William Astley says:
April 25, 2013 at 6:20 am
The pattern of warming that occurred in the 20th century matches the pattern of warming in the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles.
=====
appears wiki agrees. strange that climate scientists are not aware of these events.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_event
In the Northern Hemisphere, they take the form of rapid warming episodes, typically in a matter of decades, each followed by gradual cooling over a longer period.
This CET record omits an interesting/inconvenient period since 1659.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/tcet_mean1.png
Notice the massive warming between 1690-1740, being twice the allegedly anthropogenic one. This is an easy check for any NH proxy, since instrumental NH record agrees with CET quite well.
Juraj V. says: April 25, 2013 at 8:29 am
This CET record omits an interesting/inconvenient period since 1659.
Indeed, it is a clue to a natural forcing; from 1890 to 1720 the average of the CET rose by 2C, while from 1970 to 2000, CET average rose by 1C
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET1690-1960.htm
which is almost identical to rise in geological activity in the far North Atlantic.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
“On decadal and century time scale (excluding the long term Milankovic cycles) only oceans can move global temperature above and beyond solar variability. In turn this only can be achieved by the geo-tectonics impacting on the intensity of ocean currents. Question still to be resolved: degree of the solar contribution via- and ex- TSI.”
This article says: “It has not been adjusted as have so many other official temperature records.”
The MET office says (at your first link): “Since 1974 the data have been adjusted to allow for urban warming.”
Can you reconcile these statements?
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Adam, the “planet” i.e. the biosphere is already alot cooler than the warmists would have you believe. The atmosphere is where most of us interact with it but most of the biosphere is salt water and much of that volume is much below 10 C. If it sucks up any more energy or releases a little less or receives a little less (who knows what the thresholds are?) then we probably will be heading for a cooler future. Keep the home fires burning.
This is the sort of post that gives skeptics a bad name. If such a grab bag of evidence were used to support alarmist conclusions then we would tear it to pieces. Central England 3-century record compared to ice core data from the poles….tells us about global temperature trends. Really??? And then the (solar) cause of the recent changes is just proclaimed without defense. This looks like a mirror image of the worse alarmist tripe.
Otherwise, RACookPE1978 brings up an interesting point that has emerged a number of times, but perhaps warrants further attention:
Well, who does agree with this? Much alarmist science does.
There is a lot of alarmist science that points to the AGW effect emerging after the 1950s, even after the 1970s. The climate models give only a miniscule influence before 1900, and, from Hansen 1988 onwards, the influence is not generally given as detectable until the 1980s. The Hockey Stick does not begin its upward trend until the 20cent. However recent paleo studies (Marcott, PAGES2K) are finding a warming trend beginning in the middle of the 19cent. It seems that while they see this aligned with the industrial revolution it is safely in support of the AGW dogma. But is it?
A trend from 1850 precedes the expected CO2 emissions influence of the models, so to a certain extent these paleo results are contradiction the models: another cause is required to at least explain the early part of this warming — and so this brings into question the given cause of the later warming. In other words, any paleo results that support a warming trend beginning in the 19th serve to bring the standard model-based AGW science into question. Can we agree on that?
I’ll bet you anything they’ll still be blaming global warming when the plunge comes.
I imported monthly CET data into a spreadsheet. The data seems to be raw numbers, not anomalies. No problem; I averaged the 30 Januarys (1961-1990), Februarys, etc. This gave me a 1961-1990 normal set to use as my “zero”. Monthly anomalies were then calculated against that. A quickie spreadsheet analysis shows that the trend has been negative from August 1987 to March 2013. That’s over 25 and a half years. And the time for “no statistically significant warming” probably goes back a few years more.
“Although the CET record covers only a small part of the northern hemisphere, it has shown a consistent rise since the end of the little ice age in 1850 at a rate of about +0.45°C / century or about +0.67°C in the last 150 years.”
Here’s 1730 to 1930: http://snag.gy/2q2kT.jpg
temperature change is perspective.
Why cannot they plot actual temperature rather than compare to 1961-1990 average and then proxy data graphs for last 2,000 , 200,000 and 2,000,000 years ?
Why not plot temperature rate of change, carbon dioxide and sunspot activity on same graph?
There appears to be a lack of papers which collate basic data on temperature, rate of change of temperature,carbon dioxide concentration , sunspot activity , etc, etc. It is almost as if scientists are playing a three card trick on everyone. During WW2 , the Battle of the Atlantic was vital to the allies but was being conducted over a vast area and over many years. Scientists reduced the complexity to tonnage of ships being sunk and tonnages being built and the results put on graph. It was obvious to to everyone that unless the situation changed by mid 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic would be lost.
A picture is worth a thousand words.Many people are fed up with being patronised and condescended to by experts, who frequently tell them they are wrong and being stupid when it goes against their own experience and common sense.
Fascinating information, but I can’t find any info on Ed Hoskins. Who is he?
Hi, Judy, I HAVE NO IDEA either, but… via Bing.com, I found this on SOMEONE named Edward Hoskins…
“Edward Hoskins: Ed has long been qualified as both a dentist and architect. In 1969 he founded one of the earliest break away companies from Cambridge UK specializing in Computer Aided Design and Geographic Information Systems. Ed’s company grew from the research group of the School of Architecture and founded on the basis of examining the quantifiable aspects of building and planning. Ed is noted for his skills in creating graphs and spreadsheets enabling wider understanding of the facts concerning the man-made global warming question.” [from Principia website’s biographic sketches page]
Whatever his creds, he is obviously well qualified to speak to the subject he wrote on above.
Despite the minor typos or spelling errors pointed out above, I like Mr. Hoskins’ lucid writing style. A relief to read! WELL DONE ARTICLE, Mr. Hoskins WHOEVER YOU ARE. [#:)]
Good for you to persist in asking your question, Judy! I ask questions all the time that no one answers. That kind of discourages me from asking any more. Now, I’ll try again!
Why is the analysis always done on a linear basis when even a casual look shows a clearly sinusoidal underlying function? If you accept that as a starting point the positive spikes and the negative ones long term are pretty well equal and the deviation no greater than any other period in the record. climate scientists are not the people to talk to about pattern analysis. The experts in that field are in data recovery and image analysis and the few I have talked to who are interested in climate are horrified that people still take climate scientists seriously at all given their record of failure in prediction. No competent engineer in any field can take the idea of an unstable system which forcing implies seriously since the system had to be fundamentally stable for life to have evolved at all.
One wonders if they are trying to keep the global warming idea alive till the next predicted rises in fifteen years or so.
pervious?
It woulda bin useful if CO2 really was a control knob. No such luck.
Their figures are usually presented as charts of “anomalies” compared to the thirty-year period 1961-1990, following a convention laid down by the WMO. It is supposed to be updated every ten years but so far there is limited presentation against 1971-2000 data. However, if a period like 1961-90 is used, with a lot of cold winters and indifferent summers, then it is logical that as the weather returned to a more acceptable pattern it would be “above average” compared to the earlier period. In a 2005 e-mail, Dr David Parker of Hadley explained the preference for the period.
“There is a preference in the atmospheric observations chapter of IPCC AR4 to stay with the 1961-1990 normals. This is partly because a change of normals confuses users, e.g. anomalies will seem less positive than before if we change to newer normals, so the impression of global warming will be muted.” Even their own headline chart is now showing temperatures falling in comparison to 61-90.
In 2005, this was on the Hadley website:
Stabilising climate to avoid dangerous climate change — a summary of relevant research at the Hadley Centre January 2005
“What constitutes ‘dangerous’ climate change, in the context of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, remains open to debate.
Once we decide what degree of (for example) temperature rise the world can tolerate, (how would they know?) we then have to estimate what greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere should be limited to, and how quickly they should be allowed to change.
These are very uncertain because we do not know exactly how the climate system responds to greenhouse gases. (remember how the science was settled years earlier?)
The next stage is to calculate what emissions of greenhouse gases would be allowable, in order to keep below the limit of greenhouse gas concentrations. This is even more uncertain, thanks to our imperfect understanding of the carbon cycle (and chemical cycles) and how this feeds back into the climate system.”
In 2004 the Tyndall Centre had this working paper: The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change, Working Paper 58 2004. You can see more about Tyndall here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/social_construction.html
Original Paper at http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/v84152h64m5r36t5/
“To endorse policy change people must ‘believe’ that global warming will become a reality some time in the future. (their emphasis)
“Only the experience of positive temperature anomalies will be registered as indication of change if the issue is framed as global warming.”
Both positive and negative temperature anomalies will be registered in experience as indication of change if the issue is framed as climate change.
We propose that in those countries where climate change has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon, unseasonably cold temperatures, for example, are also interpreted to reflect climate change/global warming.”
We know what happened to that idea….
Uh, Judy?