Guest essay by Danley Wolfe
WUWT posted a piece I submitted last September titled ‘A look at carbon dioxide vs. global temperature’.
The main point I was trying to convey then is the “striking picture” of the actual data showing a complete lack of correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global mean temperature during the ongoing hiatus. The data set is NASA GISS global mean temperature and Mauna Loa/Keeling CO2, from 1959 through March, 2015.
The updated chart below (FIGURE 1) includes seven months of additional data from my last look. The recent months do not change the basic conclusion regarding the hiatus. But I feel there is more to learn by considering more deeply the implications of these data.
FIGURE 1
The crossplot of temperature versus CO2 [for the period 1999 to March 2015, commonly known as the “pause” or “hiatus”] reveals a shotgun scatter plot(Ref1) (FIGURE 2). Actually this figure says nothing at all about a relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global mean temperature, except that there is lack of any significant correlation (Ref2) That is a very important fact-data-based conclusion. This is the definition of the “hiatus”!
FIGURE 2
A first order fit of this data yields “an equation” relating temperature to (only) CO2, viz. T = .0024 * CO2 + 13.648; with an R-squared value = 0.033. You “could” use this equation to estimate the temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 (400 to 800 ppm), in this case 0.96oC. You also might be tempted to call this a “climate sensitivity” (in the sense commonly used), but it’s not. Actually it is just nonsense. So, what might be learned from this exercise?
The R squared(Ref3) of 0.033 prima facie tells you this correlation is, well … just meaningless. Therefore, using a 1st order regression is meaningless, as is any calculated climate sensitivity. The spread of data indicated by the standard deviation vs. min-max spread of the data shows the data are simply a scatter, no more.
To further illustrate the point, you might expand the temperature scale (vertical axis) (FIGURE 3). The 1st order regression fit equation of temperature to CO2 remains the same. I know this visual effect is “cheating”, but it helps in making the point.
FIGURE 3
The IPCC make a robust claim that climate change is “caused” by anthropomorphic / greenhouse gas causes – with a certainty at the “97% confidence level” (… never mind this is a social science Delphi polling of consensus hands, and not a fact-based probability. Having said that, they go on to say we are now “on track” (talking point phrase) for a temperature rise of 2oC, with range of 1.5-4.5oC (AR5) (Ref4), the self designated tipping point. So the obvious inference, therefore, is that AGW is what will be doing the “causing” of temperature to rise above the critical point leading to catastrophic damage to mother earth and all its inhabitants.
The actual data in the plot of temperature vs. CO2 during the hiatus is also shotgun scatter plot, except flatter. The accepted (by the consensus) hypothesis that global mean temperature (the dependent variable) can be explained by or is due to “mainly” a single variable, CO2 is patently false during the 18+ year hiatus. Did CO2 sensitivity go to sleep? Are other variables exactly canceling out the CO2 effect? It is also important to recognize that the Mauna Loa data includes manmade and non-manmade CO2. The policy prescriptions (and most of the agitation) are mainly directed towards reducing manmade CO2, although there is consideration on land use and burning of forests to plant palm plantations (as in Indonesia and elsewhere).
As I understand it, in a proper multiple regression analysis all the important “known” variables (say 6-7 in number) would be included in the regression model and their F stats would tell you the relative significance of each. Then you would adjust the model … eliminating variables to get the “best fit” with suspected variables … of course this doesn’t speak to “unknown variables” which is a different problem. Other variables would include solar incidence, water vapor, other GHGs, ocean temperature oscillation, etc. (A colleague pointed out it’s a little more complicated than this since “significance” in an econometric modeling sense also depends on degrees of freedom.)
We also know that the integrated assessment climate models (IAMs) are deterministic physical models of the climate with built in predetermined physical cause and effect structures. We can say they are wrong based on their ability to explain the data (facts) during this hiatus.
Nevertheless, the lousy R squared³ and apparent zero “fit” does allow us to conclude that during the hiatus, the assumption that CO2 is the major thing driving global mean temperature is not just a lousy hypothesis, it’s wrong and unsupported by the data (fact). We can also say that all of the variability (scatter) in the data is due to “not CO2.”
On April 15, 2015 the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a hearing on the President’s UN Climate Pledge. I would like for someone to have made the points above with accompanying figures to Congressional types in explaining what the hiatus really means, and then watch to see any shock effect.
REFERENCES:
1. Engineering Statistics Handbook 1.3.3.26., Scatter Plot http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/scatterp.htm
2. Engineering Statistics Handbook 1.3.3.26.1., Scatter Plot: No Relationship http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/scatter1.htm
3. Duke University, What’s a good value for R-squared? http://people.duke.edu/~rnau/rsquared.htm
4. IPCC, Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/Ch12_long-term_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch12_All_Final.pdf
DATA:
NASA GISS global mean temperature http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Mauna Loa/Keeling CO2, from 1959 through March, 2015 ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
I own a chemistry book from 1939, “Smith’s College Chemistry”. In this book, a common college textbook for the era, atmospheric CO2 is clearly stated to have been measured at an average of 0.035%. For what it’s worth, the graph of co2 over the years seems to start a bit low considering this fact.
By the way, you can download a version of that book on Google books for free. I highly recommend it.
Around .04 Co2 was the accepted level around 1938 derived from 100 years of observations and analysis.
it is mentioned here in this original refutation of Callendars theory By Giles Slocum in 1956
http://www.pensee-unique.fr/001_mwr-083-10-0225.pdf
In contrasting modern day levels with theoretical levels from the past we are entering Ernst Beck territory which will deflect this article. However, the question does need to be asked as to why Keeling was able to measure co2 accurately as soon as he set his mind to it, but thousands of observations from respectable scientists over a 100 years could not.
Cue for Ferdinand…
tonyb
Tony, the charts provided in that paper are better than the ones used by Prof. Jaworowski. Thanks for the link.
In any case, Figure 2 looks like the points one would see on a blind man’s dartboard.
visually-challenged person’s dartboard – perhaps?
Auto
Or my dartboard…
What, is that a slur now?
If so I am sorry.
But I think it is not.
80,000 direct chemical CO2 bottle data, collected over 200 years and gathered together by Ernst Beck, shows clearly that CO2 goes up and down over time and has been significantly higher than now during three periods of the last 200 years, the most recent being the 1940s, with some readings as high as 550 ppm.
Calendar wanted to establish a low historical CO2 concentration and then claim a constant rise starting at 1950, a la Mauna Loa data, due to human emissions. He cherry-picked several low values for CO2 from the available data, discounting and ignoring higher readings because they were “too variable” and he KNEW CO2 was historically low—indeed he insisted that they be low because he needed it that way. Thus, the claim that CO2 had been low until we started increasing our CO2 emissions is a LIE and constitutes propaganda to further a political agenda.
He rejected high measurements in the 19th century and rejected low measurements in the 20th. The linked paper just above has the details. There are many credible measurements at >430 ppm after the heat wave in the 30’s.
It looks as if we are headed there again.
We need a post on this – I have been following WUWT for years and thought I was aware of most of teh cheating but I never even imagined that the CO2 data had been altered or fixed.
So we have tampering with the temperature data and tampering with the CO2 data and bullying of the scientists who would not fall into line. That should be the message from sceptics to the public
So what is the point in the six month moving average. It clearly hides the fact that the Temperature varies much more wildly than the silly numbers people claim for it.
Those peaky wiggles that get removed by the six month running average are NOT NOISE.
That IS THE DATA, that is being thrown away.
If you do a 30 or maybe 60 year running average, then you can likely represent the earth’s Temperature by just a single number and no graph.
Then everyone will be happy.
Planet earth doesn’t do averaging; it can’t wait that long to do something, so it acts immediately even if that takes a whole attosecond.
G
Danley,
Talk all the irrefutable facts you want but admit it, you are in the pay of BIG oil aren’t you? I know you are Danley, I don’t need facts to prove me wrong Danley, you are in the pay of big oil and that’s all there is to it
sarcasm Danley sarcasm, well written
Craig
Somebody always pays someone for work. Question is not who pays who or who knows it, but rather, how good is the Science!! The Science is all that matters. It is either correct or not regardless of who is paying whom. Ad Hominem attacks just make you smaller and less credible.
Apparently the sarc tag is required for some folks, but I got a chuckle out of it.
Craig
?? Bluntly, this site does not care who is paying who how much. We do prefer the writers establish WHY they think it matters who is paying what people how much, because it may “influence friends and win people” but the effect depends on the morals of the payer and payee. Or, as is the usual case with Big Government and Big Finance and the anti-moral Big Acadenial … buy “science”. By the way, you have challenged a writer. Why? What is your credibility?
“Bluntly, this site does not care who is paying who how much”
..
Really?
..
Explain this.
.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/17/aussie-government-gives-4-million-to-bjorn-lomborg-to-set-up-a-consensus-centre/
[Yes. The money is paid, the payer is known, the payment is publicized, the receiver is honest and does not conceal his preferences and prejudices. .mod]
Relax RCook, what I’m finding out is that if you say something often enough i.e. You are in the pay of big (name of whoever), this line gets to roll of the tongue quite easily, hence now I understand why people believe this ‘big whoever’ line. It really does become meaningless after a while.
Yes RCook, I’m not doubting this analysis, [comprehensive] and to the point, ok? Be cool 😀
Bloody typo, comprehensive…..
Big oil invests relatively little into skeptic research, as oil knows that it wins either way, duh. But, none the less, big oil MIGHT have invested a few tens of millions, but government has invested over a quarter trillion dollars into junk climate science and all the stupid but expensive green energy projects.
I think its hilarious that spending 10 000–12 000 times as much money to support the junk science of global warming has trouble with the meagre, almost non-existent, spending by private sources, the feared Big Oil. It just goes to show that real science, real facts, and the truth are almost infinitely more powerful that an exorbitantly funded government agenda spouting propaganda at the people.
Higley7, I have read more than once that big energy and conservative organizations spend about a billion $/year worldwide (funding such studies), whereas governments, NGOs, the UN, environmental groups, and other political left groups spend about a billion $ per DAY funding “their” researchers. Now that’s REAL big business.
That’s +/- 365 times as much “warmer” research funding than “skeptic” research funding. Anyone have other comparisons, and if possible their source?
I thought I was in the pay of BIG Oil, but those deadbeats haven’t sent me a check yet! I might have to pick up one of those plug-in cars that everybody is trading in for SUVs if they don’t grease the palm PQD.
There is a typo in the headers on figures 2 and 3 – surely they should read 1959 not 1999 ?
I love figure 3 – a picture says a thousnd words !!
Martin, I think the chart headers must be ok. The lowest CO2 point on the correlation plot is 365 ppm, and that is consistent with the concentration during the period of the hiatus.
Sorry – I mis-read the article – I would still like to see the graph back to 1959 though !!
To many, read the article. Figure 1 uses entire MLO data going back to 1959; Fig 2 and 3, as their titles state, focus on the the hiatus period only, which was the purpose of my article.
A very good post…but as far as I can tell is very wrong. $orry.
As far as I can tell GCMs are correct with one thing, regardles of the projections.
Whatever variable that does not count or stands not as of having any kind of effect in CLIMATE terms than whatever that variable represents it is not of any significance in long term atmospheric variation.
GCMs are good enough at telling us by method of cancelling out, what drives or not the climate.
The only variable that seems to have an effect is the RF (CO2 emissions).
Not understanding this and not seriously considering it……..this leaves a huge room for error.
The GCMs confirm the CO2 emissions variation (the RF) as a climate driver regardless that the simultions do not correctly simulate the actual role of RF.
My self, in this one I will Put the GCMs above any expert opinion.
GCMs do replicate well enough the CO2 trend…. That is not a joke. It could not be run- replicated well if RF not a driver of climate…
Mosher please help..:-)
Cheers
Why do you plead for an english teacher in your attempt to rationalise your rather rambling thoughts. Stick to the post and explain clearly, with science, why you disagree.
Because I do not ignore the GCMs, besides it was only an opinion, you free to consider it any way you pleased.
Cheers
whiten
You say
I don’t ignore them, either.
The GCMs are functions of the understandings and opinions about climate of their creators written in the form of computer code.
The GCMs fail to indicate observed reality.
Therefore,
(a) the understandings and opinions about climate of the GCM’s creators are wrong
OR
(b) the computer coding is not a true representation of those understandings and opinions
OR
(c) both a and b.
Hence, the indication of the GCMs is that any assertions based on outputs of the GCMs should be ignored.
Richard
It’s pretty clear to me why he needs an English teacher.
No offense meant, but really now.
Whiten,
you cry for help from Mosher? His only claim to fame was first “sleeper” at WUWT to snap and lose it. 2010, I remember it well.
CO2 can both absorb and emit LWIR. So what? You can’t answer the question of net effects of radiative gases in our atmosphere by fumbling around with radiative only calculations. Sir George Simpson warned Callendar of this way back in the 1930’s –
To solve the question of the net effect of adding radiative gases to the atmosphere, you need CFD (computational fluid dynamics) or empirical experiment. Empirical experiment shows that the oceans would heat to 335K or beyond were it not for cooling by our radiatively cooled atmosphere. (The inane climastrologists and lukewarmers claimed 255K for surface without radiative atmosphere!) Our current surface temps are around 288K, which means the net effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere is surface cooling.
How did the foaming warmulonians and the foolish lukewarmers make this fundamental 80K error for 71% of the planet’s surface? They all treated the oceans as a “near blackbody” not an extreme SW selective surface. For goodness sake, you can’t use Stefan-Boltzmann equations to determine surface temps of a intermittently SW illuminated material that is SW translucent/IR opaque and free to convect! Forget industrial strength stupidity, that would be pseudo scientific drivel!
Whiten, the only good news for you is that while AGW is a physical impossibility, embarrassed lukewarmers are fighting hard to keep your sorry hoax alive.
Good comment Konrad. It’s a convective atmosphere, not a radiative one.
No, Mosher is an honest man who does have mathematical expertise.
I don’t agree with him on much.
But I respect him. He may be right and I may be wrong.
Doubt it. But I don’t doubt his integrity.
Konrad,
One of the most respected textbooks on optical design, which includes an extensive chapter on thermal radiation in general, and Black Body Radiation in particular, was written by the late Warren J Smith, who worked for years at Infra-Red Industries in Santa Barbara California. Their business was generally in the military interest end of the infra red radiation business, given the obvious need to know the radiative properties of the environment in which defense systems operate.
So Warren Smith was an acknowledged industry expert on the infrared properties of the earth and its various media.
So in his Text book; “Modern Optical Engineering” he prints by far the most useful plot of the Planck radiation function ever published.
His graph is a normalized plot of W(lambda) / W(lambdamax) plotted against (lambda)/(lambdamax) (sorry no Greek letters).
So the Y axis has two scales ; linear from 0.0 to 1.0, and logarithmic from 1.0 down to 10^-5. The X axis has a range from 0.15 up to 50 for the lambda/lambdamax ratio.
The value of this double scale graph is that it is a universal function of a SINGLE variable, namely … lambda x T
So it can be used for any wavelength range and any Temperature.
It demonstrates for example, that exactly 25% of all BB radiation energy lies at wavelengths shorter than the peak, with 75% above that peak.
Only 1% lies at shorter than half the peak wavelength, and only 1% remains beyond 8 times the peak wavelength, so 0.5 to 8.0 times the peak wavelength contains 98% of all of a Black Body radiators energy.
The short wavelength end crashes at an astonishing rate, so it is down to 10^-5 of the peak W ratio at 0.2 times the peak wavelength and also at just 40 times the peak wavelength.
So for a sun like BB, the spectrum would be down to 10 ppmp at 100nm and 20.0 microns.
At the short wave end, the W ratio goes as 1/(lambda x T)^5
Now Smith also gives the emissivities of various common substances, since that determines the actual emittance of a real thermal body.
Polished silver and aluminum, and brass, all have 300K total emissivities of 0.03 so that is 3% total emittance over ALL wavelengths.
A laboratory Black Body Cavity such as a Platinum freeze, or a copper freeze BB standard, has a total emissivity of 0.98-0.99 so they are quite close to an ideal black body for all wavelengths.
Ordinary materials have lesser total emissivities than cavities, but range from 0.8 for oxidized iron to 0.95 for Lampblack , and even glass has an emissivity of around 0.94.
The ordinary material that would be of some interest to you being as it is a selective absorber as you have explained to us, would be water (H2O)
Warren Smith of InfraRed Industries gives the total emissivity of water as 0.94.
So at 94% total emissivity over ALL wavelengths at 300 K water is an almost perfect Black body absorber / radiator, bested only by laboratory cavity black bodies.
G
George e. smith April 22, 2015 at 9:15 pm
Thank you for your response. Sadly Warren Smith’s claim that the total emissivity of water as 0.94 is incorrect. Better science is to be found at Tallblokes’s Talkshop. (At the mention of TS the moderators instinctively lunge for their WUWT truth smite button…)Will Janoschka occasionally comments there on the finer points of radiative physics. He was involved in the first variant of what was later to become modtran. He knows how the final variants have been missused by climastrologists. (And he’s a little pissed off).
The issue here is hemispherical emissivity. LWIR emissivity for water does appear over 0.9 when measured within the hohlraum of the radiative atmosphere but only for measurements near zenith. Try off axis. I did –
http://i61.tinypic.com/24ozslk.jpg
Will Janoschka’s research from the 70’s is right, pass 55 degrees from vertical, and LWIR emissivity for water falls of a cliff. Remember, for accurate (effective not apparent) emissivity figures for a material you need to consider true hemispherical emissivity, not just measurements at zenith within the atmospheric Hohlraum.
Over the hemisphere water has a SW absorptivity near 0.9 but a LWIR emissivity near 0.7. That’s a selective surface, not a near blackbody.
But when I claim that the oceans are an extreme SW selective surface, not a “near blackbody” as the inane climastrologists claimed, this has little to do with the asymmetry of water’s SW absorptivity vs. LWIR emissivity. It’s about the fact that solar SWIR, SW and UV are absorbed below the surface. This is what makes the oceans such an extreme SW/UV selective surface.
You can run the experiments yourself –
http://oi61.tinypic.com/or5rv9.jpg
http://oi62.tinypic.com/zn7a4y.jpg
I have –
http://i57.tinypic.com/esrb86.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/259byj6.jpg
When you understand that the depth of solar absorption matters on our ocean planet, then you understand the fundamentals of climate. Climastrologists are nowhere close, nor are lukewarmers.
The bottom line is this – warmulonians and lukewarmers alike tried to use S-B equations on our deep convecting SW translucent / IR opaque oceans. Both are hideously wrong.
Do it right. Use CFD or empirical experiment and you will find that the oceans would hit 335K or beyond were it not for our radiatively cooled atmosphere.
George, if you want help building and running the basic experiments I’m happy to help. But if you want to run fearfully back into the WUWT lukewarmer fold there is little I can do.
An ancient Chinese proverb –
Tell me. I’ll forget. Show me I’ll understand. Let me do it I will know.
Wanna know George….. 😉
whiten – Your argument has a recognisable logical construct, it is an “argument from ignorance”. (We don’t know what other variable it could be, so it must be CO2). It is therefore invalid. Another serious flaw in your argument is the claim that although the model predictions have failed so far they will prove correct in future. That is a remarkably unscientific argument. Just try looking at the model reality : the models have consistently overestimated temperature increase right from the start. In the last 15-18 years the prediction gap has grown even larger. There is therefore NO reason to suppose that the models can predict temperature. To claim that they will be right in future is stunningly unscientific and simply an act of blind faith. In science, any theory has first to be successfully tested, usually by testing forecasts made using the theory (and a model is simply a way of using theory to make forecasts).
I don’t think you will find many here who disagree that CO2 affects climate. But that isn’t the main issue for most people here. The issue is whether CO2 is the only or the main climate driver.
Wind speed and direction affects how long it takes a plane to fly from LAX to JFK, but it isn’t the main driver.
“I don’t think you will find many here who disagree that CO2 affects climate. ”
This article _demonstrates_ that CO2 _does not_ (appreciably) affect climate!
Thank you Sleepalot………..:-)
Cheers
ddpalmer.
According to the GCMs the CO2 is the main driver of the climate up to this point, the rest that has been tried has no any considerable effect in the climate according to the simulations, regardless that the real impact seems being exaggerated under the AGW paradigm approach that happens to be the main point these GCMs had to prove or disprove.
Trust me the GCMs have already proved that AGW is imposible according to the simulations.
Many are blind to this and will continue tone for as long as GCMs ignored.
In this context AGW means both the C one and the B one.
Cheers
Sleepalot – “This article _demonstrates_ that CO2 _does not_ (appreciably) affect climate!”
You cannot make that claim from this information. What you can say with some certainty is, over the observed period there appears to be no correlation between atmospheric CO2 and Earth’s surface temperature.
whiten,
If that is you reasoning regarding the GCM’s, I think you need more than Mosher’s help.
If you go to the beach in the morning and it is low tide, as the day progresses the day gets warmer and the tide gets higher. I am sure that by noon, when you go home for lunch, you would have enough data for a model.
It won’t work. The two are not related. Guarantee it. Its sad but I am sorry, not even Mosher can fix it.
Mosher was asked for help only in the point of his short given verdicts of either “wrong” or “right”.
To me any feedback is helpful.
I have already got a good one today from most who have already commented and replied
Thank you to all , even to those I have not replied yet.
Thanks again.
I can make a model that correlates YouTube views of Lady Gaga with temperature variation. Over select periods, I could find periods where there is strong correlation. Even though there is lack of evidence that YouTube views affect climate, the point is I could create a model that demonstrates correlation. GCMs do not have this level of ignorance, we do know how certain things work in the climate, we do not know how the entire system works over decades, centuries or millenniums.
GCMs are not proof of anything, they need to be proved, they themselves are not proof. What a back-ass-wards view. Evolution was never proof of Evolution, independent experiments and observation proved evolution. Apparently GCMs are not held to this standard.
Accordingly as of this writing GCMs primarily confirms or proves only a meager understanding of Global climate system(s).
As far as all other factors canceling out and leaving CO2 as the only variable, it seems to assume all other factors are static and CO2 the only factor with variability which of course is ridiculous. Otherwise I have not seen any evidence (assertions do not count) that proves all other climate factors are negligible compared to CO2. As this article demonstrates there is not even correlation never mind causation proved.
“I can make a model that correlates YouTube views of Lady Gaga with temperature variation”
Correlation? Causation?
Much as I may appreciate Anthony’s efforts, I also appreciate [trimmed].
Lady Gaga called it –
I did not say or mean causation…
Cheers
Lady Gaga was born just two years before IPCC was hatched.
Coincidence? Correlation? Causation?
Could be.
GCMs are good enough at telling us by method of cancelling out, what drives or not the climate.
================
this only holds true for random noise. climate is 1/f noise, which does not cancel out.
ferdberple
GCMs were not set for climate forecasting or prediction, only for projecting the impact of any possible driver in to climate.
Only one thus far is the CO2.
Any thing else tried ends up to project an impact even below the noise.
Generating a CO2 emission trend from 300ppm to 400ppm only due to the anthropogenic emissions is not a joke. No one has “told” in any way to these GCMs to perform that “trick”.
Cheers
whiten
April 22, 2015 at 5:48 am
Because that is what their programmers programmed them to be.
A computer simulation only tells you what it was programmed to say. Some far more complicated than others, but still bound by that truth.
The GCMs find CO2 the driver as that is what they are programmed to do.
I say this as a professional programmer who managed a supercomputer center running models… (Moldflow for plastic injection and custom CPU simulations.)
Do that for a few years you become very aware of model limitation. The most useful thing I learned was that the best use of models is “to inform our ignorance”…
micro6500
April 22, 2015 at 9:59 am
“Because that is what their programmers programmed them to be.”
——————
Thanks for the reply….a very good one..
But as far as I can tell what you saying is not the truth………GCMs are mainly programed to simulate the atmospheric functioning to the best of the knowledge through replication.
GCMs are not programed, in principle, to generate a positive CO2 feedback either towards the warming or either towards the CO2 emissions itself,,,,,,, that seems to be an inherited property of what GCMs do try to simulate…..
cheers
whiten commented
Well first at the surface air interface, they allow for super saturation of water vapor (over 100% rel humidity), if I remember the model history, until they did this GCM’s did not warm (as their temp records said it should be warming) with increases in Co2.
The second point is cloud modeling, and grid scale, these two factors requires the parametrization of cloud cover. You can easily use an IR thermometer and see that the ratio of cloud to clear sky and humidity control the cooling rate of the surface, and they’re both left to the programmer to define how the model will respond.
Like E.M.Smith, I spent over 14 years supporting about a dozen different electronics simulators, there are all sorts of places a programmer leaves their fingerprints in code. If the results are right, no one notices, but when they don’t it smells, and CGM’s smell.
E.M.Smith
April 22, 2015 at 10:03 am
” The most useful thing I learned was that the best use of models is “to inform our ignorance”…”
——–
Exactly my point. 🙂
That is what GCMs are doing but we keep ignoring.
cheers
“GCMs are mainly programed to simulate the atmospheric functioning to the best of the knowledge through replication”
Yes, Whiten, but…
A) There is no guarantee that they have included everything of significance
B) There are fudge factors introduced to account for the gaps in knowledge, and those fudge factors do not reflect anything fundamentally established in theory.
Thus, the GCMs really are nothing more than an elaborate curve fitting exercise, and we all know the perils of trying to extrapolate a curve fit beyond the confines of the observation interval.
Bart
April 22, 2015 at 10:51 am
“Thus, the GCMs really are nothing more than an elaborate curve fitting exercise, and we all know the perils of trying to extrapolate a curve fit beyond the confines of the observation interval.”
—————
Bart in essential I do agree with most of what you said in you reply to me,,,,, but according to my understanding, GCMs do not have to make up with any curve, GCMs are not set and run to forecast or predict climate and climate change, GCMs do not have to prove their accuracy by fitting the real climate.
That is the trick.
The AGWers treat the projections also as forecasts or predictions only because they wrongly interpret the projections…… by trying to enforce the believe that these projections prove the CS is ~3C as required for AGW to be true…….but actually if looking carefully such projections of warming mean that if interpreted in the AGW way the CS must be much higher at ~10C CS……which is ridiculous…..and unsupported in PROBABLE way…
Plainly the projections under an AGW interpretation mean not a 3C CS BUT ACTUALLY A 10C CS……
hope this helps..:-)
cheers
Clearly stating something does not make it so. So what does not clearly stating something make it?
“what does not clearly stating something make it?”
A confused waste of time.
Whiten,
Perhaps you could provide a link to the most recent control or double blind study that shows CO2 is the main driver of climate.
Tom I really fail to see what actually is the point you making….please do try to explain it to me.
I believe you know exactly what the point is. Your trust in climate models being an accurate depiction of Earth’s climate processes is a result of your own confirmation bias and nothing else.
His point is quite simple. If CO2 is a primary driver of climate, controlled studies, with masked variables should reveal this. Once unmasked, one can then say, “oh look! CO2 really IS important!” As it is, all sides in this brawl cherry pick their data and then tell you something they chose the data for, in order to tell you what they intended to tell you. Affirmation of the consequent in short.
Both AGW and simple (luke-warmist) GW assumptions that rely on CO2 as a major explanatory principle, ignore the majority of all available data, both historical and geological, and then assert the verity of their assertions. It is often like watching the Life of Brian. The longest term geological data available falsify any assumption of an equilibrium in the climate or in the atmosphere. Equilibrium in nature is a delusion of individual human experience which tends to blind us to real time.
Speaking of the Life of Brian, the defending of the GCM’s reminds me of the Dead Parrot Syndrome.
The models are programmed to use CO2 as a driver.
They did not find out that CO2 is a driver, or prove anything.
In the GCMs the CO2 drives the temps and the ppms. In one of these the projections do not much the reality, wi the other are so close.
Anthropogenic emissions can not fill the gap in between the 300 ppm to 400ppm and higher, but can drive the simulation to generate such emissions required through the actual relation wich actually exist in what these GCMs simulate.
Cheers
Wait, what?
maybe whiten is a computer program that is responding. The responses almost make sense…if you’ve been drinking.
Russ in Houston
April 22, 2015 at 7:27 am
“maybe whiten is a computer program that is responding.”
——————
Russ in Huston
You are not the first one to consider that maybe I am a computer program.
Already called that at Guardian…….
cheers
menicholas
April 22, 2015 at 6:25 am
Wait, what?
—————–
I know it is too condensed for you………please do try to have a good enough breath before inhaling it..
cheers
whiten, I understand your confusion and hope I can be of some help. To start with, let us assume the GCMs are correct as you stated.
Then let us assume that the statistics used here are invalid. That they do not establish a lack of correlation in fact. But the GCMs use these same statistical methods. But as we have stated the GCMs are correct, that would be absurd.
Instead let us assume that the correlation does not establish that CO2 is not the primary driver. That a lack of rise is proof of CO2 forcing. But then the GCMs must show a flat temperature profile under increasing CO2. As this is not the case, and as we have stated the GCMs are correct, that too would be absurd.
Lastly, let us assume the data being used is in error. That while it is, perhaps, data as such — it is derived from suspect sources. Such that while the statistical and correlative notions are fine, the data itself is at fault. But the data here is used as input to the GCMs to derive that CO2 is the primary driver. Such that if this data was invalid then the GCM conclusions about CO2 are also. But as we have stated the GCMs are correct, that would be absurd.
At this point you are free to impeach both the analysis here and the GCMs, or simply the GCMs alone. But to impeach the analysis here, while salvaging your belief in GCMs, will require an argument that is not based on math or science. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but no one can help you find such a distinctly personal answer.
Jquip
April 22, 2015 at 11:26 am
” But then the GCMs must show a flat temperature profile under increasing CO2. As this is not the case, and as we have stated the GCMs are correct, that too would be absurd.”
———————-
Hello jquip.
the above is a very good point…. appreciated..
But you see the GCMs actually do show a kinda of flat temperature profile under increasing CO2 .
Under any scenario at the 3C warming reached the projections get at 90% probability (Certainty) and beyond 3C that drops very much.
The 95% happens to be anywhere in between 2.3C to 3C WARMING depending on the scenario.
A 3.5C warming is at just 50% or below……..if that DOES not mean a flatness then I am not sure what else it means….
That is how AND WHY the projections are proclaimed and interpreted as proving the 3C CS…….
cheers
Whiten, I’m not entirely certain I follow you. You say:
“A 3.5C warming is at just 50% or below……..if that DOES not mean a flatness then I am not sure what else it means….
That is how AND WHY the projections are proclaimed and interpreted as proving the 3C CS…….”
And I get the idea you’re switching between climate sensitivity and temperature, but I cannot be certain. Surely, a 3.5 degree increase is not flat. Regardless of which, the ‘hiatus’ is a properly flat temperature profile and is outside the, if I remember correctly, 90 or 95% confidence bounds already. (Hopefully someone can jump in with the correct number here.) Where the GCMs have projected continued warming during the period.
Which is the crux of the point, without regard to picking other solutions previously mentioned, to put the point you’re responding to in a different manner: If the GCMs are correct with respect to CO2 being the primary driver, as you suggest, then reality must be wrong. (Data and methods covered by the other points) Or CO2, being the primary driver, causes a flat temperature profile in reality. But this flat profile is not shown in the GCMs from pre 1950 through post 1950. The year 1950 being the point at which anthropogenic CO2 is supposed to have become determinant to climate.
But this is perhaps the easiest of the points offered to you. For if your statement is that ‘we know that CO2 is the primary driver due to the GCMs’ then you hardly need to give up the core of this idea. Minimally, you have to give up GCMs as valid explanatory models — that is, they lack predictive power — and so you only need base your notion of CO2 being primary on some other notion. Or, rather, due to the ‘hiatus’ the strongest statement that can be made is that it is ‘coprimary’ to some other factor or factors that we lack a working theory for. But that’s the personal side of things for you; no one can fill in the blanks for you, but you. At least until a new working theory is produced by someone else.
Of course, you can still always impeach the data. The data permits you to maintain the GCMs as ‘correct’ and as having predictive power. But you’re still required to give up using them as the basis for the claim that CO2 is the primary driver as they’re running on the same data you’ve impeached.
It’s a ‘choose your own adventure book’ and I encourage you to choose your own adventure. These sorts of structured contradictions have long been fruitful in advancing human knowledge; from Zeno’s notions of motion, to now.
Hello Jquip.
As I have being saying over and over in these comments here, in principle GCMs do not and are not set and ran to forecast or predict climate and climate change.
My understanding is that GCMs do not actually warm beyond ~3C….of course I could be wrong.
In the GCMs the anthropogenic emissions do drive the increment of the total amount of CO2 emission to a point that it is a very close representation of reality.
I see the GCMs more like identifying models….identifying what effects the climate or the atmosphere in a long enough period and how much.
Against any AGW expectations GCMs do not go in a runaway warming or a runaway CO2 emission scenarios or projections.
There is a limit to the warming even in these GCM projections.
After all this, let me tell you that I have no doubt at thepropabilty that I could be inteily wrong and in fault, only trying a find out by the feedbacks I get…….in a way I am just trying to further my knowledge in this issue.
Thank you for your interest and your time:-)
You are welcomed to further argue this…
Cheers
Jq.
Sorry, forgot to mention something.
The driver in my understanding does not decide the direction only follows it and facilitates the most efficient and sufficient proceeding in following that direction.
As far as I can tell there is no input to GCMs of any known forcing that causes and decides the climate direction, but that does not mean that the driver can not be identified.
Cheers
Whiten – actually GCMs do not “confirm” causation of global temperature variation by GHGs/CO2, here I am talking about scientific proof of causality. A model that provides a good description of the response within the data set may provide explanation of physical behavior within the data set. But you ought to be real careful extrapolating / making predictions far outside the data set, as the results will surely be wrong.
Jquip
April 22, 2015 at 11:26 am
“– actually GCMs do not “confirm” causation of global temperature variation by GHGs/CO2, here I am talking about scientific proof of causality.”
——————–
Of course I totally agree with you there, I actually trying a say that GCMs do in a way prove that CO2 and RF do not cause the warming but do drive the Climate through warming and cooling also. Depends on how the projections coming out of these GCMs are interpreted.
you also say:
“making predictions far outside the data set, as the results will surely be wrong.”
———————
I do disagree there with you because as far as I can tell GCMs do not predict or forecast climate or climate change or even GW in real climatic term…..let alone an AGW..
There is no way for such as to be more than an assumption, GCMs are not set and ran as for as such.
Of course I could be wrong, but that is how it is for me up to this point……
cheers
Sorry the above reply was meant for Danley…
whiten
You say
You are wrong and I here explained your error when I responded to your first post in this thread.
You ignored my post and have subsequently provided many often incoherent and mutually contradictory posts. This convinces me that you are merely a troll attempting to disrupt the thread.
Please read and stop writing.
Richard
Hello Richard.
I am sorry you think I have ignored you.
I did read your reply to me…and for your information, I actually do totally agree with your reasoning.
I hold almost the same opinion apart of the conclusion of ignoring or not the GCMs .
That is the only point we do not agree on………..and that is due to the view point.
As I have tried to explain in most of my replies here, I do not consider the projections as climate forecasting and predictions…………and you seem to consider the projections as forecastings.
I think that is why we reach different standing points.
While the GCMs do not accurately represent climate change these same GCMs still show clearly that the only forcing that gives some measurable effect in climate is the RF……….and again as I have said it earlier, regardless of an inflated or wrong representation of the impact of such a forcing.
Thanks for your replies:-) appreciated….. and really sorry that I did not reply to you earlier, I should have.
Cheers
whiten
Oh dear!
I wrote here saying to you
Your response says
That response is a non sequitur which convinces me you are trying to troll this thread from its subject.
The GCMs only show the understandings and opinions about climate of the GCM’s creators. The GCMs do NOT “show clearly that the only forcing that gives some measurable effect in climate is the RF”: the GCMs show clearly that they are programmed using the assumption that RF drives climate change.
For interest of others, I point out that the assumption of radiative forcing (RF) driving climate is evidence-free.
The basic assumption used in the models is that change to climate is driven by change to radiative forcing. And it is very important to recognise that this assumption has not been demonstrated to be correct. Indeed, it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary. I explain this as follows.
The climate system is seeking an equilibrium that it never achieves. The Earth obtains radiant energy from the Sun and radiates that energy back to space. The energy input to the system (from the Sun) may be constant (although some doubt that), but the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun ensure that the energy input/output is never in perfect equilbrium.
The climate system is an intermediary in the process of returning (most of) the energy to space (some energy is radiated from the Earth’s surface back to space). And the Northern and Southern hemispheres have different coverage by oceans. Therefore, as the year progresses the modulation of the energy input/output of the system varies. Hence, the system is always seeking equilibrium but never achieves it.
Such a varying system could be expected to exhibit oscillatory behaviour. And, importantly, the length of the oscillations could be harmonic effects which, therefore, have periodicity of several years. Of course, such harmonic oscillation would be a process that – at least in principle – is capable of evaluation.
However, there may be no process because the climate is a chaotic system. Therefore, the observed oscillations (ENSO, NAO, etc.) could be observation of the system seeking its chaotic attractor(s) in response to its seeking equilibrium in a changing situation.
Very importantly, there is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). All the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP. And the ~900 year oscillation could be the chaotic climate system seeking its attractor(s). If so, then all global climate models and ‘attribution studies’ utilized by IPCC and CCSP are based on the false premise that there is a force or process causing climate to change when no such force or process exists.
But the assumption that climate change is driven by radiative forcing may be correct. If so, then it is still extremely improbable that – within the foreseeable future – the climate models could be developed to a state whereby they could provide reliable predictions. This is because the climate system is extremely complex. Indeed, the climate system is more complex than the human brain (the climate system has more interacting components – e.g. biological organisms – than the human brain has interacting components – e.g. neurones), and nobody claims to be able to construct a reliable predictive model of the human brain.
It is pure hubris to assume that the climate models are sufficient emulations for them to be used as reliable forecasters of future climate when they have no demonstrated forecasting skill. And, whiten, you cannot rationally pretend that the climate models don’t forecast when they make “projections”.
Richard
@ Richard:
Thank you. You make the point I was trying to do.
Whiten writes in an incoherent manner, and if one reads each word, it is contradictory and nonsensical.
I am baffled that anyone who has responded to him can understand his point at all.
If a person can not speak clearly and plainly and make a coherent point…well, I do not know what, but it is very annoying.
whiten
I would presume GCMs require some sort of solar input to get an output.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_mass_%28solar_energy%29
The Solar Intensity section with the Table makes for interesting reading.
Intensity levels that range from +/-15% to +/- 70%.
I wonder what figure is input by the modellers?
Hello Alex.
I am not a GCM modeler, but if I have got your point right than my answer will be that the whole range will be tested for a check out result in the simulations……or somewhere close enough to the best estimate of the Solar Intensity.
But do not take my word for it, only a guess.
Cheers
In the words of Harry Who – ‘Amazing’
Excellent post.
Would it be possible to show a graph with man made CO2 added?
Fig 3 is great. It makes a mockery of the climate sensitivity mob.
Man made CO2. When has man ever made CO2 except by breathing?
As in this Hockey Stick:
http://blog.dssresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/world_population_1050_to_2050.jpg
You claim to have population data to 2050: you lie.
You claim to have population data to 2050: you lie.
=============
The IPCC claims to have climate data for 2050.
Breathing at 40,000 ppm, at that!
“I would like for someone to have made the points above with accompanying figures to Congressional types in explaining what the hiatus really means, and then watch to see any shock effect.”
Oh, come on! You know perfectly well that the only figures politicians understand are those about (a) money in the form of campaign contributions, (b) votes, and (c) money they can stash away in their offshore accounts.
Sadly, the CAGW Democrats walked out during Dr. Curry’s testimony. Their ears and eyes must burn when seeing and hearing the truth.
If the above points were presented during testimony, the CAGW Democrats would’ve run in fear of their own insanity.
Democrats are not the only politicians in the world.
“Sadly, the CAGW Democrats walked out during Dr. Curry’s testimony.”
Seriously?
“Anthropomorphic”?
Good choice of words.
This term describes something that only appears to be anthropogenic.
You’ve lost me there, jonesetc: According to the dictionary:
So, AGW is not so much created by human beings as like human beings? I’m not getting it.
I agree. To address Harry’s comment below, CO2 has been termed, “The Miracle Gas,” for good reason. As opposed to regular, old carbon dioxide from nature, anthropogenic CO2 can dominate the world’s climate by cleverly utilizing a hydrological transistor effect in the atmosphere. At will, it can spontaneously deoxygenate to cause “carbon pollution,” and, despite its meager concentration, has been alleged to promote plant growth, but only with greenhouse glass containment. According to the EPA, based on careful modelling, it can heat a highly selective portion of the troposphere, potentially causing world calamity. This malicious behavior is clearly human-like, and the characterization is appropriate.
Then again, perhaps it was a typo on the author’s part, and it is other individuals who have chosen to anthropomorphize our contributions to plant cuisine.
I said anthropomorphic intentionally, implication being that climate change has morphed into a Frankenstein-like beastie.
and the gooses said it will never rain in Sydney . http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-weather-three-people-dead-in-flash-flooding-in-nsw-town-of-dungog-20150421-1mpq8a.html , so they built a desalination plant which is not being used. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/desalination-plant-at-kurnell-costing-taxpayers-534246-a-day-as-it-sits-idle-while-water-levels-remain-high/story-fni0cx12-1227033578428
So sorry for the benefactors of Barry Harrop’s $1.8B “white elephant,” according to Adelaide Now.
See SA Water to investigate cost of keeping desal plant running as it considers cancelling mothball plan at http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/sa-water-to-investigate-cost-of-keeping-desal-plant-running-as-it-considers-cancelling-mothball-plan/story-fni6uo1m-1227168790769
Barrie Harrop still haunts the comments under articles in the WSJ. He is quick to dispense nonsense and when his errors are pointed out, Barrie immediately responds with ad-hominems.
I hope those investors he divested of their earnings and savings sue for willful misrepresentation and recovery of their funds.
The “gooses” were Mr Flim Flam Flannery and his flock of faithful followers. We’ve just had the heaviest rain in 13 years and the heaviest April rain since 1998.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/tim-flannery-is-the-guru-who-gets-it-wrong/story-fni0ffxg-1226838538089
The heavy rain is due to climate change.
The droughts in Western Queensland and California are due to climate change.
The West Indies slow scoring on the first day of the second cricket test against England is due to climate change.
This is tiring. Is there anything we can not attribute to climate change?
“Is there anything we can not attribute to climate change?”
Maybe the ole’ Death and Taxes answer, but I think they have that covered too…
“Is there anything we can not attribute to climate change?”
The frozen Great Lakes, record cold winter in the Eastern US, icebergs washing ashore in Cape Cod in Spring….those are just weather. Nothing to do with climate.
@toorightmate: Sanity.
Paul
April 22, 2015 at 5:09 am
The whole scam is all about death and taxes. The death of old Europeans from cold and of young and old in developing countries from energy starvation, and of course cap and tax to make possible the tyrant’s dream, taxing breathing and everything else, with total control over the people.
Gloria, exactly.
That’s why I includedbut I think they have that covered too…
Since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, there has only been one 20-yr window (1978~1998) where the CAGW hypothesis actually “worked” (i.e sufficient CO2 levels and global temps rose concurrently).
All other warming/cooling/flat cycles over the past 164 years are inconsistent with the CAGW hypthesis. The 1945~1977 global cooling cycle is especially enlightening, as some scientists actually hypothesized manmade particulate pollution was ushering in a new global Ice Age… Oooops….
Alarmists have been relegated to adjusting the raw data to try and make it fit the hypothesis, rather than adhering to the Scientific Method, and adjusting the hypothesis to match observations.
Alarmists have also been successful in playing the semantics game by switching the name from Global Warming to Climate Change… Unfortunately, it’s impossible to disconfirm “Climate Change” as the climate is ALWAYS changing; how convenient…
Real scientists outside the field of climatology are now seriously questioning the efficacy of the CAGW hypothesis, especially since the CMIP5 model ensemble mean now exceeds satellite observations by 2+ standard deviations, combined with the absence of any global warming trend for 18 years, despite roughly 30% of all manmade CO2 emissions since 1750 being made over just the last 18 years…
The larger the discrepancies become and the longer they persist, the higher the probability that CAGW is a complete bust.
If current trends should continue another 5~7 years, there will be sufficient empirical data available to disconfirm the CAGW hypothesis with high confidence..
“Truth is the daughter of time.”~ Sir Francis Bacon
And the more adjustments the UKMO, NOAA, NCDC oh and GISS will have to make
Nevertheless, the lousy R squared³ and apparent zero “fit” does allow us to conclude that during the hiatus, the assumption that CO2 is the major thing driving global mean temperature is not just a lousy hypothesis, it’s wrong and unsupported by the data (fact). We can also say that all of the variability (scatter) in the data is due to “not CO2.” ~ from post
We can totally agree on this point. I would go much further if site rules permitted and explain why I think that CO2, on net, is a cooling factor rather than a warming factor. But regardless of whether I am correct or not, it is obvious that CO2 does darn little warming as your figures in your post demonstrate.
The alarmists, due to their nature, would only amplify such a theory, and say, “See, I told you so! CO2 is causing a little ice age!”
“I would go much further if site rules permitted”
Ah, and there’s the rub.
You are correct, adding radiative gases to the atmosphere cannot possibly reduce the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability. Additional CO2 would only cause immeasurably slight cooling. Warming from CO2 is a physical impossibility.
But the gatekeepers at WUWT have decided that the lukewarm “warming but less than we thought” Realpolitik solution has a chance. But of course it does not. There is no real difference between utterly wrong and slightly less wrong. Wrong is wrong.
Sceptics who choose the “warming but less than we thought” approach due to their lack of understanding of radiative physics and fluid dynamics are truly more foolish as the warmulonians. They fear looking foolish and refuse to contemplate that there is no radiative atmospheric radiative GHE. In doing so they leave a permanent record of being more foolish than the warmulonians. Hard sceptics never forgive and the Internet never forgets.
Prominent sceptics recently met with warmulonians in the UK to try an negotiate a “lukewarm” Realpolitik settlement. Sadly Anthony was amongst them. Their efforts are without worth. Radiative gases are the primary cooling mechanism for our atmosphere, which is heated primarily by conduction and release of latent heat of evaporation.
The WUWT approach of censoring hard sceptics just leaves a permanent Internet record of the gatekeepers here of supporting the most foul assault on science, reason, freedom and democracy in the history of mankind.
“…that CO2, on net, is a cooling factor rather than a warming factor.”
Curious, is there a layman’s explanation available elsewhere?
Paul, you ahould read this comment by George E Smith which sums up why a radiative gas added to warm non-radiative gases cannot heat them.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/15/strong-evidence-for-rapid-climate-change-found-in-past-millenia/#comment-1908187
In the end, whether it causes immeasurable cooling as opposed to immeasurable warming is a moot point, so why argue about it? Neither can be shown to exist, being theoretical only.
Paul
This You Tube lecture is also interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aubZlRnIxI&feature=youtu.be
RE: “The WUWT approach of censoring hard sceptics.”
I’m struggling to reply. (This is a test.)
@ Konrad.
Twas ever thus: there are extremists _because_ there are moderates.
Almost no-one claims the Earth is flat, because almost no-one conceeds the Earth _might be_ flat: there are no “moderates” (or agnostics). Atheism and evangelism are considered extreme positions because of the vast number of moderate believers – despite the glaringly-obvious non-existence of any deity.
The luke-warmers, by their concession to the possibility – despite the glaringly-obvious evidence to the contrary – make the thermogedonist position viable.
While we are on the topic, may I ask if I am the only one that finds it amazing that physicists in the year 2015 are still arguing about the basic radiative properties of ordinary materials?
“…finds it amazing that physicists in the year 2015 are still arguing about the basic radiative properties of ordinary materials?”
Is the question about radiative properties of materials, or the effect on a large complex system from tiny concentrations of ordinary materials?
Bruce Cobb April 22, 2015 at 5:37 am
”In the end, whether it causes immeasurable cooling as opposed to immeasurable warming is a moot point, so why argue about it? Neither can be shown to exist, being theoretical only”
I beg to differ on both points. For the second, the cooling effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere can be shown to be a reality via empirical experiment. As empirical experiment shows 71% of the surface of our planet is an extreme SW selective surface, not a near blackbody as claimed by climastrologists. Without cooling by our radiatively cooled atmosphere, the oceans would heat to 335K or beyond. In terms of global averages, our radiatively cooled atmosphere is lowering surface temperatures by around 24K. The role of water in the atmosphere is measurable, it is only CO2 and other radiative gases that have a immeasurably small role.
As to your first point, I would argue that it is not enough that sceptics be “less wrong”, sceptics need to be right. “Warming, but far less than we thought” is just less wrong. “AGW due to CO2 is a physical impossibility” is right. Sceptics need to be right because so much is at stake. This is the first information war in the Internet age. It is not just a fight about some obscure scientific hypothesis, it has become a battle for science, reason, freedom and democracy.
Sun Tzu advises – “Build your enemy a golden bridge to retreat over”. I argue against this. Think of the activists, journalists, politicians and subsidy farmers who have done the most to promote and profit by this sorry hoax. Do you wish that they retain enough credibility to continue to plague our society with their next “cause”?
However, there is no evidence that any warming or cooling is occurring to due an increase in CO2, so labeling as “foolish” the various academic positions of this matter is “a tempest in a teapot,” to quote a notorious AGW proponent.
Somebody sent me the following:
http://www.wits.ac.za/newsroom/newsitems/201402/22966/news_item_22966.html
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
That’s nice. Somebody sent you something.
Citrus fruit in Iran will be wiped out by frost due to global warming.
Add it to the Warmlist. There is nothing that Global Warming cannot do.
Regardless of the rather uninformative nature of Dr. Reddy’s post, the link is appropriate and would be welcomed by most sceptics – if you read it. The title is “Wits scientists debunk climate change myths.” “Wits” refers to the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. The source is evident in the URL.
Hiatus? what’s that, say this bunch of pompous alarmists, and the MSM dutifully publishes it, without question:
22 April: UK Independent: Steve Connor: Global warming: Scientists say temperatures could rise by 6C by 2100 and call for action ahead of UN meeting in Paris
There is a one-in-ten chance of the world being 6C warmer than it is today by 2100 which would lead to cataclysmic changes in the global climate with unimaginable consequences for human civilisation, leading climate researchers have warned in an “Earth Statement”.
The risk of hitting the highest upper estimate for global warming based on current levels of carbon dioxide emissions is now so high that it is equivalent to tolerating the risk of 10,000 fatal aircraft crashes a day, according to the 17 “Earth League” scientists and economists who have signed the joint statement…
The Earth League researchers, who include economists Jeffrey Sachs and Lord Stern as well as world renown climate scientists from Europe, Brazil and India, warn that time is running out for a climate deal that binds countries to a process of “deep decarbonisation” where fossil fuels are largely replaced with cleaner sources of sustainable energy by 2050…
“2015 is potentially one of the most decisive years in modern human history on earth when it comes to determining our future prospects for wellbeing and prosperity for 9 to 10 billion people over the next century,” said Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden who chaired the Earth League group…
Professor Sir Brian Hoskins of the Grantham Institute for climate change at Imperial College London, one of the 17 signatories, said that climate change has had too little recognition as an election issue in Britain despite its huge significance for future generations.
“It’s like the Titantic sailing into waters with icebergs and yet what we hear is a debate in the bar about who’s going to buy the drinks. Get real. We are all on this boat and there’s some pretty nasty stuff out there and yet the conversation is at a trivial level,” Sir Brian said…
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-experts-say-temperatures-could-rise-by-6c-by-2100-with-cataclysmic-results-10193506.html
apologies for picking on April, but having someone called “Humble” mixed up with this anything-but-humble org is truly the CAGW joke of all time:
Earth League Secretariat
Secretarial Assistant: April Humble, Climate Service Center 2.0, Germany
http://www.the-earth-league.org/secretariat.html
check out the “Members” page.
If I can paraphrase:
There is a one-in-ten chance of …10,000 fatal aircraft crashes a day.
April Humble, indeed.
Well, the hypothesis that human CO2 emissions have significant effect on atmospheric CO2 concentrations has very convincing arguments to be humble. See recent Willis’ article.
The hypothesis that this increased CO2 concentration causes increase in infrared back radiation is even supported by a scientific experiment.
The effect of this increased back radiation might be either increase in temperature, or increase in factors that keep the temperature stable, most likely both.
And the important observation here is, both count as climate change.
No, effect of CO2 on climate cannot be dismissed using such simple tools like this correlation analysis. What we need to pay our attention at is not whether we cause climate change but rather what form does this change have and how severe it is.
During the time of witch trials, the “work” of witches could be “seen” in all manner of things. Fortunately, we have come a long way since then.
Or have we?
we certainly have. we have reversed course a full 360 degrees.
Bruce Cobb
April 22, 2015 at 4:40 am
” Fortunately, we have come a long way since then.
Or have we?”
—————-
You still under the spell… 🙂
As ferdberple clearly says…..a full 360 degrees…… right at the very first spot but without the C there..:-)
Guess that’s why the media seems dizzy now and then.
I thought it was generally agreed that you should use anomalies for things like figure 2 – absolute temps have all sorts of other effects embedded in them.
Using just anomalies, I get this:
Data for NOAA.
Oops – link failed for some reason. Try this: http://oi57.tinypic.com/2eang21.jpg
Steve Goddard demonstrated that the adjustments correlelate almost perfectly with CO2 rise,
so of course adjusted temperatures will seem to correlate with CO2 – its built-in!
I thought it was generally agreed that the whole scam falls apart if you use real numbers.
My first post went to moderation so I’ll try again.
I thought that it was generally agreed that anomolies are used because, if real data is used, the house of cards falls down.
No, anomalies are used to filter out stable periodic changes in position and distance of Sun relative to Earth which certainly have bigger effect than a few ppmv of CO2 but cancel out over time.
Try taking the annual increase (or decrease) in CO2 i.e. dC/dt and the annual increase (or decrease) in temperature i.e. dT/dt, you can then get dC/dT by division, i.e. the rate of change of temperature with CO2 – plot that against time and you’ll get a similar shotgun plot. Offset the two rates by one year, two years whatever to see if there is a lag effect – still a shotgun.
One of the advantages of being considered a sceptic is that one can indulge publicly in “what if” speculations without loss of face , because one has, by definition, no respect from the ultra-orthodox anyway.
So my “what if ” is :
Could the rate of change of global temperature be proportional, to (among other factors) the double differential of the CO2 concentration increase ,
ie
dT/dt proportional to d(dCO2 /dt)/dt
So if the CO2 increase is linear (as it seems to be at present) , the rate of change of increase of temperature is zero , the “hiatus”.
If the rate of increase of CO2 falls temporarily as it appears to do in Fig 1 from Danley Wolfe , the global temperature falls (slightly ) , whereas if CO2 increase was to accelerate we would be in for a period of global temperature increase.
I expect Brandon , should he deign to notice this idea , to step in with contradictory charts from official sources – and I am hoping that he does especially that one which shows short periods of cooling trend , the slope of which is dependent on the contemporary CO2 concentration . ( I meant to copy it but failed to and cannot find it again).
Anyway , just an idea .
By the Keeling curve, CO2 increase is geometric, not linear. It’s one of the first characteristics I noted in Foster’s failed attempt to statistically describe the effect of filtering out natural variation. His conclusion was that his linear result matched the Keeling curve. I spent a lot of time arguing with supposed physicists that linear slope vs geometric slope did not demonstrate a strong correlation and even if his filtering techniques were appropriate, which they weren’t, Foster’s conclusion was not supported by his analysis. This seems to be a general failing among AGW proponents.
If you look at CO2 measurements around the globe, they don’t look anything like the Keeling plot. There up there down there all over the place. Why does Keelings data show a nice slow rise and all the other measurements go up and down by more than 150 ppm?
Arthur,
The CO2 readings are so diverse primarily because of the actions of the biosphere, as well as other factors. Right now, one could read CO2 concentration near ground level and the grass growth would cause a lower reading than you would get at head high standing in the same place. Wind velocity and direction and even the time of day, influence local CO2 measurements.
Brian, I think there is no reason the MLO Keeling CO2 / time series plot should be linear. A polynomial fit gives CO2 = y=8E-05*(time)**2+.0693*(time)+314.81 R squared = 0.9922. Although the second order coefficient is small it precisely explains the “geometric”/upward curvature whereas a linear plot clearly does not. Using MLO data is clean since it is not exposed to all the other stuff going on and more representative of a well mixed atmosphere, my guess.
Danley,
“… Using MLO data is clean since it is not exposed to all the other stuff going on and more representative of a well mixed atmosphere, my guess….”
Ah, but what about island building southeast of the Big Island? Volcanism is always associated with CO2 emmisions, so the “clean” assertion may be more a matter of faith.
Brandon Gates
I acknowledge your evasion, and I repeat my request for clarification of what you are trying to say.
Are you trying to promote the delusion that the ‘pause’ does not exist?
If not, then what – if anything – are you trying to say?
Please note that I do NOT want your usual practice when pressed of you copying&pasting to here some irrelevant screed that you don’t understand.
I am requesting a straightforward statement of what you are trying to say.
Richard
Brandon Gates
I fail to understand why you have provided your long-winded and irrelevant diatribe instead of answering my simple question; viz.
Are you trying to promote the delusion that the ‘pause’ does not exist?
If not, then what – if anything – are you trying to say?
I do notice your several ‘red herrings’ such as this one.
mikewaite began his post saying
and concluded his post saying
I described his post by saying
You object to my description saying
Even by your standards, that is a ridiculous attempt to troll the thread.
The remainder of your post is similar.
Brandon Gates, your snowing threads with irrelevant and misleading nonsense is disruptive.
Please either apologise for your attempt to sidetrack this thread or, alternatively, answer the simple question
Are you trying to promote the delusion that the ‘pause’ does not exist?
If not, then what – if anything – are you trying to say?
Richard
micro6500 ,
Sure, that’s called overfitting, yes? By Webby I presume you mean WebHubTelescope who runs the contextearth blog?
I’ve discussed elsewhere that the solar forcing component I come up with here is something on the order of 4x larger than it realistically can be. I think the reason is that becuase I chose to use a 132-month trailing average for TSI. I did that because using a 12 month trailing MA degraded the overall fit. What makes sense to me is that the 11-year cyclic variations in TSI are already expressed in the “internal variability” components of the regression, namely ENSO and AMO.
But I don’t know. I chose the best fit, with the added … bonus, I suppose … that it reduced CO2’s influence on the long term trend from 1950 to about 2000, so I’m being conservative on the man-made forcing and liberal on the natural. How’s that for a fun juxtaposition of terms? What nobody’s noticed yet is that the 132-month rolling mean for TSI helps me out in the latter 5 years or so of The Pause.
We can quibble about that stuff until the cows come home. You make a good point about my reasonable-looking residuals. On the other hand, I cannot get as good a fit at all with CO2 NOT in the picture. Logically, some Force X as yet detected could be doing it. My challenge to any and all is to show it to me and get a better fit out of it than I do here.
Until then, I’ve got a correlation backed by sound physical theory — Beer-Lambert law being the biggie — which explains most of the variance from 1880-present, and particularly since 1950-present. My amateur results are broadly consistent with findings in primary literature. I’d say that all adds up to my having a rational basis for belief that CO2 is the biggest component of the long-term secular trend.
You know, I find our conversations quite reasonable, just thought I’d mentioned that.
I don’t, I don’t find your argument unreasonable, but have two things to note.
First, the temp series you’re fitting to (I think), is a model with a lnCo2 field built into the infilling process (at least that’s how BEST does it, and the other products are a close match so somewhere in there there’s likely a lnCo2 term). So, a good match may be due to that.
Second, and this is one of my arguments against GCM’s, they’re seductive. The results are also a mathematical artifact. When I’d visit a customer who was complaining about one of the various simulators, I’d try to figure out what they wanted to know about the design, and what question were they asking of the software, and many many times, they didn’t phrase the question they asked to answer the question they wanted an answer to, and therefore didn’t understand the answer the simulator gave. I rarely found an actual error in the answer, but I frequently found ill formed questions. We’d correct that, when I could explain the answer they got, and how the find the answer they wanted. I even had to do that for circuits they couldn’t show me. Also, let me note lots of these problems were due to the model not being a real thing, and when you power a circuit on, lots happens that doesn’t by default happen in the simulator (initial problem).
And when they give you the answer you expect, it’s hard to be skeptical of their results, regardless of if they are right or not.
mikewaite,
First derivative of CO2 works better:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tZ0gESCsCwU/VTsdwKD8K8I/AAAAAAAAAdE/MmaL39hmTnw/s1600/dHADCRUT4%2BCO2.png
In this case I rolled my own. Why 192 trailing month samples to calculate the rates of change is because the subject of the head post is trends since 1999, but I’ve only loaded data thru Dec. 2014 in my model. Shorter sampling periods will generate better correlations, but in that case a big part of what’s going on there is CO2 responding to temperature, not the other way ’round.
The WFT plot?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MW_NJp28Udc/VNS3EAEqpOI/AAAAAAAAAUs/hjhuLZFkdoM/s1600/hadcrut4%2Bhiatuses.png
I may deprecate that one in favour of this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o4vtAlhwkrI/VTrVEyu5ceI/AAAAAAAAAcs/MuA5KTmbm5I/s1600/HADCRUT4%2B12%2Bmo%2BMA%2BForcings%2Bw%2BTrendlines.png
Oh … ah …. sloppy of me. Units in the derivative plot are decadal rate of change.
Brandon Gates
I write to ask for clarity.
Are you trying to promote the delusion that the ‘pause’ does not exist?
If not, then what – if anything – are you trying to say?
Richard
I was responding to mikewaite’s specific request.
Brandon Gates
OOPS! My iteration of my request for clarification is in the wrong place. It is here.
Sorry that my iteration was in the wrong place by error and I hope the link I here provide corrects this. Of course, my iteration being in the wrong place is important in this case because you used a comment by mikewaite in a different sub-thread – which you did not link – as excuse for your post I am asking you to clarify.
Richard
richardscourtney,
Why would I do such a silly thing? Very clearly surface temperatures have flattened out since the turn of the century.
Nothing. mikewaite asked me a specific question, I provided him with the exact answers he was seeking and left him to his own interpretations from there.
What are you trying to say, Richard? I’m just asking for clarification.
For a more detailed statistical analysis, click on my name.
Brandon Gates
mikewaite made what he admitted was an off-the-wall suggestion saying
This suggestion clearly was that the “double differential of the CO2 concentration increase” was one “(among other factors)” to which the “rate of change of global temperature” may be proportional.
And he added
Clearly, mikewaite did NOT ask you “a specific question” as you have repeatedly asserted. However, he did comment that he suspected you would “step in with contradictory charts from official sources”.
What you actually did was to say, “First derivative of CO2 works better” and to post charts confirming that common knowledge: so far, so good. But that response does not address the suggestion of mikewaite that the “double derivative” may also be contributory.
Then you provided a chart that YOU have somehow generated which includes a trend line that indicates rising global temperature rise since 1998.
In summation, mikewaite did NOT ask you “a specific question” but suggested you would provide “contradictory charts from official sources”. You did not do that. You provided evidence of something else and then added an invention which you claim to be your own and which suggests the ‘pause’ does not exist.
So, I repeat, Are you trying to promote the delusion that the ‘pause’ does not exist?
If not, then what – if anything – are you trying to say?
I hope that is sufficiently clear for even you to be unable to pretend it is not understandable.
Richard
richardscourtney,
I don’t find the words “off-the-wall” anywhere in the quoted text.
The data I used were from “official sources”, but the plots were all mine. I suppose now we could have a great deal of amusement trying to establish whether I intentionally rolled my own plots just to falsify his expectation — which, curiously, you describe as suspicion.
As I said to you previously, I left that to his interpretation.
Let’s make sure we’re discussing the correct plot. Are you referring to:
Exhibit A:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MW_NJp28Udc/VNS3EAEqpOI/AAAAAAAAAUs/hjhuLZFkdoM/s1600/hadcrut4%2Bhiatuses.png
Exhibit B:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o4vtAlhwkrI/VTrVEyu5ceI/AAAAAAAAAcs/MuA5KTmbm5I/s1600/HADCRUT4%2B12%2Bmo%2BMA%2BForcings%2Bw%2BTrendlines.png
I take it you mean B, since A shows a declining temperature since 2001.
Indeed I didn’t. What, if any, significance is this to you?
mikewaite did indeed ask a specific question. To wit: Could the rate of change of global temperature be proportional, to (among other factors) the double differential of the CO2 concentration increase , ie dT/dt proportional to d(dCO2 /dt)/dt
Let the record show that I previously erred by saying he asked that question of me directly, with apologies to the court for my presumption.
I’m afraid I’ll need to further explain your reasoning on that last point about The Pause.
I have already answer that question in my previous reply to you: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/22/a-statistical-definition-of-the-hiatus-in-global-warming-using-nasa-giss-and-mlo-data/#comment-1917098
Why would I do such a silly thing? Very clearly surface temperatures have flattened out since the turn of the century.
Here, again — as if it’s not already there for all to see and review — is the substance of my original reply to mikewaite: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/22/a-statistical-definition-of-the-hiatus-in-global-warming-using-nasa-giss-and-mlo-data/#comment-1916561
He wrote: … and I am hoping that he does especially that one which shows short periods of cooling trend , the slope of which is dependent on the contemporary CO2 concentration .
In reference to Exhibit A, by way of asking him whether that is the plot he had hoped I’d produce, I wrote: The WFT plot?
Then, in reference to Exhibit B, I wrote: I may deprecate that one in favour of this:
Try asking an open-ended question, such as: “Brandon, why would you wish to deprecate Exhibit A in favour of Exhibit B?”
It’s not at all clear to me why you should repeat the same questions to me after they have already been answered.
What are you trying to say, Richard? I’m just asking for clarification. This is the second time I have asked.
Ta.
Brandon, I noticed your graph with some of the parameters broken out (like what Webby use to advocate),
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o4vtAlhwkrI/VTrVEyu5ceI/AAAAAAAAAcs/MuA5KTmbm5I/s1600/HADCRUT4%2B12%2Bmo%2BMA%2BForcings%2Bw%2BTrendlines.png
don’t let that draw you in.
I forget what book it was (chaos, fractal math,??) but they mentioned being able to pull signals out of noisy environments, the example given was being able to filter a piano out of the noise in Time Square, but I also believe that if it’s noisy enough, you could pull a piano out of the noise in time square, when there isn’t even a piano playing. As long as the bits of the right sounds are in the noise, this should be possible, but it’s entirely a math exercise.
I tried to explain this to Webby, Now you can call it a what if, but it doesn’t have to be even close to real, and I think you can prove this to yourself by changing your Co2 forcing by a large amount (out side the range of forcing expected), and you’ll still get reasonable looking residuals.
Brandon Gates
I apologise that I have again posted a reply to you in the wrong sub-thread.
My reply to your most recent long-winded, evasive and irrelevant diatribe is here
Richard
richardscourtney,
Already answered in my original reply to you: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/22/a-statistical-definition-of-the-hiatus-in-global-warming-using-nasa-giss-and-mlo-data/#comment-1917098
Why would I do such a silly thing? Very clearly surface temperatures have flattened out since the turn of the century.
Translation for the reading impaired: NO, I am not attempting to promote any “delusions” that The Pause in observed surface temperatures here in the 21st century is not real.
Again, already answered in my original reply to you: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/22/a-statistical-definition-of-the-hiatus-in-global-warming-using-nasa-giss-and-mlo-data/#comment-1917098
Nothing.
Why are you repeating the same two questions over and over and over again when they were succinctly and clearly answered the first time you asked them? What are you trying to say, Richard? This is the third time I have asked you.
Errata: Again, already answered in my original reply to you:
s/b my second reply to you. My first reply was: I was responding to mikewaite’s specific request.
Which is apparently a point of meaningful contention that I believe I have cleared up.
mikewaite,
Carrying your comment from here …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/26/inquiry-launched-into-global-temperature-data-integrity/#comment-1919422
… back to where it’s in context:
You’re welcome. Thank you for confirming that this plot I provided …
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MW_NJp28Udc/VNS3EAEqpOI/AAAAAAAAAUs/hjhuLZFkdoM/s1600/hadcrut4%2Bhiatuses.png
… was the one you were looking for.
I cannot see how CO2 could plausibly be the cause of the ~80 year cyclic variations which result in the two previous ~40 year “hiatus” downtrends — CO2 itself does not fluctuate enough to be the primary driver. The rule of thumb here is that the longer the period of time, the more CO2 forcing better explains long term trends, the shorter the time period, the more temperature fluctuations from other factors explain fluctuations in CO2.
Exception to the rule: very long time scales — thousands to tens of thousands of years — esp. the ice age cycles where CO2 concentrations clearly lag temperature on the order of several hundreds of years.
In short, yes, there is a time-dependency here, which has to do with how all the other components in the system interact with each other on various time scales.
Take your time. I may not be actively following this thread much longer — if you’ve got further questions just find me wherever I’m active and point me back here.
Depending on the amount of noise in the dependent variable (temperature) compared to the independent variable, you won’t see the correlation on a scatter plot.
Agreed – that’s why it should have used temp anomalies, as here: http://oi57.tinypic.com/2eang21.jpg
Makes no difference. Could you please present your plot for the same (hiatus) period as Danley Wolfe did, namely from 1999 to 2015. Judging from the low CO2 concentrations (320 ppm) your plot goes back to around 1960.
http://oi58.tinypic.com/211wl6o.jpg is the 1999-2015 equivalent. Not so clear cut, but definitely more obvious that using absolute temps.
Previous graph was from 1958, i.e. the whole MK record.
Tom, how do you separate noise from normal variability (weather)? The noise in the measurement could be very low and the variability very high, which only further proves the point of the author that the correlation between CO2 and temperature is low. On the other hand, if the noise in the temperature data was high then climate scientists would have to increase their uncertainty away from “highly likely” or 97% certainty that CO2 is the driving force behind temperature changes on a global scale.
I have been flying all over the country telling people not to fly around telling people not to fly around telling people not to fly around telling people not to fly around telling people not to fly around….
Such is the hypocrisy of the left wing, warmist climate cult.
Solid analysis of lack of correlation between CO2 and reported temperatures.
In the real world, radiative heat loss is determined by the temperature differential, fixed at the top of the atmosphere by the vacuum of space, and maintained at the bottom of the atmosphere by the oceans. The surface temperatures are noisy because the water is always in motion, made chaotic by flowing over and around irregular land masses. But the oceans’ bulk keeps the temperature within a remarkably tight range over the millennia.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/the-climate-water-wheel/
The rate of accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is strongly related to temperature as well as anthropogenic emissions, but global atmospheric temperature changes from some global average is not a good measure to get a correlation. Temperatures at sources and sinks are different. I find a strong correlation between ENSO temperature changes and long-term changes in atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Click on my name to critique a detailed statistical analysis.
“The rate of accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is strongly related to temperature…”
This is yet to be proven with any veracity.
The F-statistic of this regression model is 228.6 which passes all confidence tests. And this is monthly data back to 1856, not the course resolution of annual values starting in 1998.
http://s17.postimg.org/3ksv7ztwf/Hadcrut4_Model_Dec14.png
That provides for a warming trend from CO2 or the ln(CO2) which is just one-third to one-half of the theory.
http://s23.postimg.org/t6xdylr9n/Hadcrut4_Warming_2100_Dec14.png
Thanks Bill for those impressive graphs. I cited a number of your past comments in my water wheel post above. Do you have a website or archives where I can more fully grasp your take on these things?
Solomon Green, I am just using publicly available datasets for the ENSO (3 month lag), AMO, Solar and Volcanoes and CO2 as well. Tjhe coefficients in the model come straight from an ANOVA regression model.
I haven’t found any other climate variable that is statistically significant for this model (technically Solar isn’t either but I just leave it in anyway). I have been running this methodology for 6 years now and believe me, I have looked at many, many other factors.
Why is the left-over residual after removing the ENSO, AMO, Solar and Volcanoes ascribed to CO2. Well, it is either the result of CO2, or an even longer natural climate cycle that has not been identified yet. I note the MWP and the LIA and the Roman Warm Period etc, could also be part of that cycle, whatever it is. But until it is identified and turned into a publicly available dataset, the residual has to be assigned to CO2/GHGs.
Thanks. Interesting graphs. But what assumptions have been made as to ENSO, AMO, Solar and Volcanoes before removing them? And why are these five considered to be the only forces affecting global temperatures? Why is it assumed that if one removes the effect of four of the forces one is only left with CO2?
Last year, when much of Europe and the USA suffered unusual weather patterns, we were told that it was because the jet stream was much further South than usual. Does wind play no part in temperature? What allowance has been made in the models for such as soot or albedo?
Bill,
Thanks for the answer.
Re: Fig 3
Don’t apologize . Actually , non zero based scales are cited as one way to lie with statistics . On zero based scales where you can compare actual ratio changes , the curves look like this :
http://cosy.com/Science/CO2vTkelvin.jpg
The correlation between CO2 increase and global average temperature increase looks pretty good to me.
You say “complete lack of correlation” – where is it?
harrytwinotter
You say
It “looks pretty good to” you? Really? Strewth!
And I thought my eyesight was bad!
Both were rising for two decades prior to this century. Other than that… phhttt.
Richard
Over time the CO2 concentration goes up. Over time the average global temperature goes up. That sounds like a positive correlation to me.
harrytwinotter
Having said that your eyesight is so bad that it causes you to see a non-existent correlation between atmospheric CFO2 and temperature, you now say your hearing is also very flawed when you write
A correlation is a mathematical relationship between the magnitudes of two parameters and its validity is demonstrated by the r^2 statistic after correction for autocorrelation.
I suggest you get a hearing aid.
Richard
richardscourtney.
You sound a lot like that other attack-poodle dbstealey. Insults are a great way to avoid responding intelligently to my comments I guess.
“The crossplot of temperature versus CO2 [for the period 1999 to March 2015, commonly known as the “pause” or “hiatus”] reveals a shotgun scatter plot(Ref1) (FIGURE 2). Actually this figure says nothing at all about a relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global mean temperature, except that there is lack of any significant correlation (Ref2) That is a very important fact-data-based conclusion. This is the definition of the “hiatus”!”
Did you read and think about this Harry?
Doing a scatterplot of 1999 to March 2015 is a cherry pick. Why not do a scatterplot of the entire period where good CO2 concentration data is available?
He he,
you still didn’t think about it.
Here straight from the Greenland Ice Core Data,showing large swings in temperature,with negligible change to CO2 for over10,000 years:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01287656565a970c-pi
Are Modern Temperatures “Unprecedented”? Greenland Ice Core Research Finds They’re Not Even Close, U.S. Climate Agency
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/12/are-modern-temperatures-unprecedented-us-govt-greenland-ice-core-research-finds-theyre-not-even-clos.html
Was 11,000 years long enough?
sunsettommy.
Interesting subject change without answering my question.
I wonder how the weather is doing at Greenland. -29C that is pretty cold.
It is amazing how many “versions” of the Richard Alley et al GISP2 there are – this is what happens when you make the data available online.
I hope you are not saying you believe in a CO2 concentration line where they have squashed the vertical axis that much. I would send that one back to the editor.
You are indeed deaf AND blind. It is at the far right end of the chart.
The data source is in the link,but I am sure you are like Dr. Jones on this one.
AGW believers for years have argued that CO2 was essentially unchanged for thousands of years until oil was discovered and combustion engines were invented. That would be in the 1890’s, meaning around the 280 mark.
sunsettommy.
you still have not responded to my comment about the scatter chart and the cherry picking.
And if you want to use the GISP2, keep in mind it ends at around 1850. Drawing a bit at the end in crayon is not very convincing. And also make it clear it is not global temperature, otherwise someone might claim you are being dishonest.
I believe you want to state ‘anthropogenic’ and not ‘anthropomorphic’ global warming for AGW.
Even though it’s supposed to be heating the oceans, atmospheric CO2 level is rising, but not warming Earth’s surface.
How is that possible?
Because IR radiation cannot heat the oceans, it can only add to evaporation already taking place. As for surface temperatures, see my post linked above.
a lack of correlation….and then say there is correlation by calling it a hiatus
I give up………..
In the sense that CO2 induced warming is not evident.
…then there can be no hiatus
You can’t have a pause in something that is not happening,,,,, you can’t claim something is not happening, and then call it a hiatus
Why are people so afraid to just say it stopped?
I’m with you. It should be called a “plateau”, which could end with either cooling or warming.
without correlation there can be no causation … period …
Over what time period?
lets us not forget that from around 1945 to 1970 there was no warming, in fact there was cooling and CO2 spiked up during that period as well … that gives us over 40 years of negative correlation of CO2 and temps …
Figure 1 uses GISS “data”, so is comparing measured CO2 with a phony temperature record. Nevertheless, even in NASA’s cooked books, it’s clear that from 1959 to c. 1976, temperature was flat to cooling while CO2 rose steadily (the cooling started in the late ’40s). Then from c. 1977 to 1996, temperature rose while CO2 continued increasing monotonically. This accidental coincidence is all that corrupt, consensus climate anti-science has.
From c. 1997 (including the super El Niño year of 1998) until now, temperature has again gone flat, despite further steady rise in CO2. The more reliable, less “adjusted” RSS data show cooling.
Hence the hypothesis of man-made global warming is easily shown false.
and
T = .0024 * CO2 + 13.648; with an R-squared value = 0.033
There is nothing here: (0.0024 might as well be 0) so T = 13.648 with 0 explained variance suggesting that there is no relationship between T and CO2, that CO2 can contribute nothing to explaining temperature variation. There is only a small mathematical artifact from setting up an equation attempting to relate them to begin with.
Man made and global warming? There is nothing here.
I’ve never seen or read a convincing rationale for showing that these two variables could be related. Run a correlation and sure you’ll get some numbers, but was there any justification for running the correlation? That CO2 is an IR gas that exists in the atmosphere, that results, in some part, from oxidizing carbon and also has massive natural sinks and sources. Only Roy Spencer has shown me anything real in this with his IR gun.
Plus T precedes CO2 – by possibly as much as 800 years.
There is a strong positive relationship between height and weight for people. What could that mean?
Taller are heavier – nope
Shorter are lighter – nope
If I lose weight, will I get shorter?
but that is the causation implication
Oh, I almost forgot – it is sinful mankind that oxidizes carbon. Let’s control that.
My doctor says I’m not overweight, just not tall enough.
Same as last fall’s post, my comments still apply.
You cannot use monthly M-L CO2 averages as a proxy for time. Reason: in any given year, September’s average is lower than August, which is lower than July, which is lower than June, which is lower than May.
You should use annual M-L CO2 averages though, but your number of data points goes down. Or if you want to use monthly data, use the globally averaged data:
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_gl.txt
Also, the left CO2 scale of Figure 1, should be set 310 to 410. The use of such a large scale (250-500) for a small range of data (311- 400) suggests you are trying to mask the M-L CO2 summer decline.
Nice work, Danley. You, like most users of official temperature data, are unaware of the forged temperature information thrown at us by the likes of GISS, NCDC, and HadCRUT. Their latest collaboration is to hide the existence of an earlier hiatus in the eighties and nineties by substituting a fake temperature rise for it.My work, documented in my book [1], shows that there was no global warming from 1979 to 1997, an 18 year stretch. Its graph is shown as figure 15. If you include the period from the 40s to the 60s from your previous article as another hiatus we now have not one but three hiatuses since IPCC came into existence. Collectively they take up more than 80 percent of the time since IPCC was established in 1988. With the exception of the 1915 to 1940 period, global temperature rise is then restricted to short periods taking us from one hiatus to another. This is what global temperature has been doing and this is what I suggest we should consider to be a new paradigm for global warming. There is no place for carbon dioxide in it. To prove that carbon dioxide is irrelevant is easy: just he existence of the current hiatus is enough to prove it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is constantly increasing but the expected greenhouse warming predicted by Arrhenius is absent. This is an unequivocally false prediction and it invalidates the Arrhenius theory of greenhouse warming. The correct greenhouse theory to use is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory, MGT. It came out in 2007 and was immediately blacklisted by the global warming establishment. It tells it like it is: addition of carbon dioxide to air does not warm the air. This is why the hiatus/pause exists. According to MGT, water vapor and carbon dioxide form an optimal absorption window in the infrared whose optical thickness is 1.87, determined by Miskolczi from first principles. If you now add carbon dioxide to atmosphere it will start to absorb in the IR, just as Arrhenius says. But this will increase the optical thickness. And as soon as this happens, water vapor will begin to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. The added carbon dioxide will of course keep absorbing but the reduction of water vapor keeps total absorption constant and no warming is possible. This is the end of IPCC-promoted :greenhouse” warming.This also means that AGW, imputed to be caused by that non-existent greenhouse warming, likewise does not exist.
Arno Arrak, “What Warming? Satellite view of global temperature change.” (CreateSpace, 2010)
Arno Arrak, your explanation sounds right … maybe I’ll buy your book after all. “To prove that carbon dioxide is irrelevant is easy: just he existence of the current hiatus is enough to prove it.” It may be a hiatus or a transition to a different balance including all the forcing variables … purpose of the post was to cause people to think about it more deeply, “people” meaning especially those who drank the lemonade. Cheers.
Arno, this isn’t a criticism, but could you use paragraph breaks when you write here? I often read blogs on my iPad and a block of text with no breaks is impossible to follow if I accidentally send the scrolling flying with an errant finger. I can’t relocate where I was easily, and abandon the effort.
Usability experts recommend two to three sentences per paragraph for readability on digital devices. Thanks for considering it.
Arno, do you explain optical thickness and the scientific basis for it in your book?
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.
Ernest Rutherford
Alx Have been looking for the experimental proof that, “independent experimentalion” proves evolution. Could you provide references?
This is the most important graph in the above commentary, to wit:
The reason being is, the per se, plotting of the monthly randomly erratic global average near-surface air temperatures …. verses …. the plotting of the monthly steady and consistent bi-yearly “cycling” yearly “increasing” of global average atmospheric CO2 ppm …. for the continuous period from 1959 through March, 2015 …… explicitly and affirmatively negates any association or correlation whatsoever between the aforesaid “temperature & CO2”.
The only entity in the “natural world” that exhibits multi-sequential years of steady and consistent bi-yearly cycling, ….. just like clockwork, ….. is the :changing” of the equinoxes (seasons) between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Given the above, the only possibility is to associate or correlate the aforesaid … steady and consistent bi-yearly “cycling” of atmospheric CO2 ppm …. with the aforesaid …. steady and consistent bi-yearly cycling of the changing of the equinoxes.
And given the above fact, the only possible CO2 source/sink (emitter/absorber) that is capable of reacting in accordance with the temperature change resulting from the aforesaid steady and consistent bi-yearly cycling of the changing of the equinoxes ….. is the surface waters of the oceans.
And given the 2nd fact that the surface area of the Southern Hemisphere oceans is greater than the surface area of the Northern Hemisphere oceans, …. then the primary “driver” of the aforesaid bi-yearly CO2 cycling is the “change in temperature” of the SH ocean waters. There is far more of it to be “ingassing n’ outgassing” CO2 as its temperature changes.
Iffen the surface area of the ocean water were the same for both hemispheres …. then there would not be any bi-yearly cycling of atmospheric CO2.
I don’t think you got that quite right Sam.
Try this. CO2 levels fall in the Northern Hemisphere(NH) summer. They do this because growing plants remove it from the atmosphere at that time.
As you said, in the Southern Hemisphere, there is not as much land, therefore less plant-life. The CO2 fluctuation is due to photosynthetic activity in the NH.
Sorry, MikeB, ….. but you are miseducatedly “DEAD” wrong.
The microbial decomposition of dead biomass in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer(s) begins outgassing of CO2 earlier in the Spring than does the ingassing of CO2 by the growing plant biomass. (Ya gotta remember that the initial Spring growth of green biomass is a function of the stored sugars in the roots and/or seed of plants, bushes and trees. No ingassing of CO2 required or possible.)
And that same microbial decomposition of dead biomass continues with “gusto”, …. day and night, ….. throughout the Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer(s) and into the early Fall, ….. long after most of the ingassing of CO2 to support photosynthesis activity has slowed up and/or stopped.
Said outgassing of CO2 by microbial decomposition, plus other CO2 sources, … will be nigh onto equal to the ingassing of CO2 by the growing green biomass.
Just ask any Biologist whose forte is the “natural world”.
Look it up Sam….
as the aforesaid etc.
You look it up MikeB, ….. only use Biology, Botany & Bacteriology textbooks to do your lookin.
I already did my “lookin up”, … like 50 years ago when I was earning my Degrees in the Biological and Physical Sciences.
Besides, MikeB, … you can not have your cake and eat it too.
If you believe the “greening” of the NH is responsible for the Summer time depletion in atmospheric CO2 ppm ….. then it is obvious that you also have to believe that it is the microbial decomposition of dead biomass in the NH that is responsible for the Winter time increase in atmospheric CO2 ppm.
And that “Winter time increase”, … MikeB, …. is directly contrary to my newly stated …. Refrigerator/Freezer Law of Dead Biomass Decomposition …… that has been tested, confirmed and approved to be true and factual by every US housewife, all Health Department and the USDA, to wit:
MikeB, … all biomass decomposing microbes are loyal Union members, …. they refuse to “work” iffen it gets too cool, too cold or too dry.
All you need to do is to LOOK at Figure 2 – no statistics required, though it is claimed that if people stopped accepting funding from Big Oil, the scatter would disappear and fall back on a straight line.
The situation is even more dire – how man-made CO2 affects total CO2 has not been established – the relationship is not simple.
Statistical regressions of CO2 vs. temperature over short periods (< 20 years) don't mean that much, since there are many drivers of climate on decadal scales. Some are mentioned above, but I don't see discussion of this multi-decadal cycle called the PDO.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/pdo/
Barry, 18 years is a long time. How long does the hiatus need to be to make you comfortable that the climate sensitivities, e.g., claimed by the IPCC, are too high, and wrong. There are two problems in the consensus argument today, attribution and climate model sensitivities (which are used to push policy). Read the conclusion again, “the apparent zero “fit” does allow us to conclude that during the hiatus, the assumption that CO2 is the major thing driving global mean temperature is not just a lousy hypothesis, it’s wrong and unsupported by the data (fact). We can also say that all of the variability (scatter) in the data is (entirely due to “not CO2.” “
Question from the sidelines. I’m looking for an explanation for the steady rhythmic rise in CO2. I would have thought that (as with most natural systems) there would be a lot more ‘noise’ in the data?
There is really not much to none ….. “noise” in the long-term gradual warming of the ocean waters.
AKA: the long term (150+- years) recovery from the “cold” of the Little Ice Age.
Take a look at this site if you are interested in CO2 atmospheric data vs. Atmospheric temperature.
https://feww.wordpress.com/tag/co2-at-mauna-loa/
Indeed quite consistent increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1958, just a little slower from 1958 to about 1970 or so.
However, scroll down at this site to observed monthly at Mauna Loa and Global CO2 atmospheric data.
Yes, it is rhythmic and consistent.
Always going up when temperature consistently starts to cool: September.
Always going down when temperature consistently starts to warm: May.
The Global data is a little more interesting.
You see the CO2 concentration starting to go up when temperature is starting to cool in the northern hemisphere, September.
Then look at the top of the wave. CO2 simply does not go up and down with atmospheric temperature and this is not a sine wave. The up period is always longer than the down period, less obvious at Mauna Loa but still there.
Right you are, rd50.
And yes, the CO2 always starts going up when temperature starts to cool at the very end of the NH’s September … and always starts going down when temperature starts to warm up in the NH’s mid-May. But it is directly opposite of that in the Southern Hemisphere ….. which is the “driver” of the CO2 ppm.
Right again, rd50.
And a simple explanation suffices for said. And that is, …. “it always takes longer to ‘cool down’ a large pot of water …. than it does to ‘warm up’ a large pot of water” ….. (the ‘large pot’ being the SH ocean waters).
Anyone living near a lake in the mid to upper NH latitudes knows that to be a FACT. Ya don’t go swimming in that lake just because the May 1st air temperature is 85 F.
Here is excerpted Mauna Loa data for the past 20 years, to wit:
CO2 “Max” ppm per Fiscal Year – mid-May to mid-May
year mth “Max” __ yearly increase ___ mth “Min” ppm
1993 5 360.19 +0.64 __________ 9 354.10
1994 5 361.68 +1.49 __________ 9 355.63
1995 5 363.77 +2.09 _________ 10 357.97
1996 5 365.16 +1.39 _________ 10 359.54
1997 5 366.69 +1.53 __________ 9 360.31
1998 5 369.49 +2.80 El Niño ____ 9 364.01
1999 4 370.96 +1.47 __________ 9 364.94
2000 4 371.82 +0.86 __________ 9 366.91
2001 5 373.82 +2.00 __________ 9 368.16
2002 5 375.65 +1.83 _________ 10 370.51
2003 5 378.50 +2.85 _________ 10 373.10
2004 5 380.63 +2.13 _________ 9 374.11
2005 5 382.47 +1.84 __________ 9 376.66
2006 5 384.98 +2.51 __________ 9 378.92
2007 5 386.58 +1.60 __________ 9 380.90
2008 5 388.50 +1.92 _________ 10 382.99
2009 5 390.19 +1.65 _________ 10 384.39
2010 5 393.04 +2.85 _________ 9 386.83
2011 5 394.21 +1.17 _________ 10 388.96
2012 5 396.78 +2.58 _________ 10 391.01
2013 5 399.76 +2.98 __________ 9 393.51
note the only 2 “outliers” for the month of April …. following the 98′ El Nino
Thank you for your time providing these numbers. More interesting than just my looking at the CO2 waves.
You’re welcome, …… and those “numbers” are the same/similar for the entire Mauna Loa Record, from 1958 to 2015.
And I firmly believe that if one had similar data back to 1880, ….. those “numbers” would still be the same/similar ….. but the Average Yearly Increase in CO2 ppm might be a smidge “slower” between 1880 and say 1920.
Today is April 24th, 2015, …. and if you look at the past 3 years of data (2012, 13 & 14) …. you can make a highly accurate prediction as to what the “Max” CO2 ppm # will be for 2015 …. as well as the exact day in late-May that said event will occur, …. that is, within a 4 or 5 day “window”.
Or you can right now predict the 2015 September “Min” and/or the 2016 May “Max” …. and be pretty damn close with your predicted “numbers”. Of course, a strong El Nino, La Nina or volcanic eruption could possibly negate your “prediction”.
And that is something all the other per se “experts” can’t do with their favorite “means” of calculating/predicting climatic conditions, etc.
But they will still tell you that your method is “wrong” ….. and that their method is “right”.
What I don’t understand is why we have four major datasets for temperature, with thousands of readings taken all over the globe, but we take one (1!) measurement of CO2 — from the top of an active volcano — and use that for the entire planet.
The Mauna Loa Observatory is just one of many places where CO2 measurements are taken regularly, spanning from the South Pole to the Arctic.
Why is Mauna Loa such a good location for measuring CO2? ….see……
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/under-the-volcano-over-the-volcano/
Personally, I find that article a terribly poor excuse for using a single site. His argument presumes many things not in evidence: it measures “descending” air from “thousands of feet aloft,” that “has traveled halfway across the Pacific Ocean.” His evidence for that is…? Nothing presented in the article, that’s for sure.
An active, outgassing volcano is a good location because the nasty volcanic CO2 is “trapped in a thin layer near the ground by a temperature inversion”? And none of it EVER escapes to pollute the pristine, non-trapped by a temperature inversion air?
“Background CO2 levels will be around 380 ppmv (these days), will be steady, and will be identical at the top and bottom of the towers.” And if they aren’t? How would we know, since we presume that background levels “will be steady.” So if they’re NOT steady, they presume that the measurement is incorrect? Seriously?
“The measurements from Mauna Loa are not representative of the rest of the world.” And here’s our mathematical model to prove that’s not true. Models again? No thanks. Take the measurements, you might get a surprise.
Points four and five, I just don’t know. He’s already made the presumption that the volcanic measurements are untouched by atmospheric mixing, yet worries about other sites and uses the possibility as a reason to exclude them. Well, prove the first presumption and then we can worry about other sites.
How do I paste a plot into a reply?
If you paste a link, WordPress might automagically show it. I put graphs on flikr, and then paste a link, so:-
https://www.flickr.com/photos/7360644@N07/16583472766/
Hence the need to explain that the heat is in the water, the ice, the permafrost — anywhere but in the atmosphere.
Here’s another scatter plot that DOES show something:
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/mlo_dco2_sst_scatterplot.png
Using this linear relationship we see that a lot of the variability of CO2 is due to SST:
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/mlo_dco2_sst.png
Just to be clearer, that is d/dt(CO2) being driven by SST: out-gassing.
Here’s the same thing with the residual:
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/mlo_dco2_sst-resid.png
does not look like it has much to do with ever-rising human emissions either.
If one can not provide a reasonable, sensible, logical explanation for the “bi-yearly” cycling “signature” associated with the Mauna Loa Data Record (Keeling Curve graph) ….. then one is just “spinning their wheels” and “clouding up” the issue concerning the truth or falsity of CAGW.