Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
Recent discussion about record weather events, such as the warmest year on record, is a totally misleading and scientifically useless exercise. This is especially true when restricted to the instrumental record that covers about 25% of the globe for at most 120 years. The age of the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years, so the sample size is 0.000002643172%. Discussing the significance of anything in a 120-year record plays directly into the hands of those trying to say that the last 120-years climate is abnormal and all due to human activity. It is done purely for political propaganda, to narrow people’s attention and to generate fear.
The misdirection is based on the false assumption that only a few variables and mechanisms are important in climate change, and they remain constant over the 4.54 billion years. It began with the assumption of the solar constant from the Sun that astronomers define as a medium-sized variable star. The AGW proponents successfully got the world focused on CO2, which is just 0.04% of the total atmospheric gases and varies considerably spatially and temporally. I used to argue that it is like determining the character, structure, and behavior of a human by measuring one wart on the left arm. In fact, they are only looking at one cell of that wart for their determination.
The degree that promoters of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis will go to distract and deceive was emphasized again in the article by Quang M. Nguyen. Almost the entire activities of the promoters involve proving that everything in the period of instrumental record is record breaking. This includes changing the paleo record, as they did with the ‘hockey stick’ and adjusting the slope of the gradient in the instrumental record. Considering the 120-year period of instrumental record as representative of anything is ludicrous. In the infamous 2001 IPCC Report, we learned from Phil Jones that the temperature increase for the instrumental record, that became the blade of the ‘hockey stick’ was 0.6°C with an error factor of ±0.2°C or ±33%. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Two major themes of the AGW claims are that temperature change is greater and more rapid than at any time in the past. This is false, as a cursory look at any longer record demonstrates. If it wasn’t, the actions taken to change the record are unnecessary. The Antarctic and Greenland ice core records both illustrate the extent of temperature change in short time periods. Figure 1 shows a modified Antarctic ice core record.
Figure 1 (Original Source SPPI.org no longer available)
The total temperature range is approximately 12°C (-9°C to +3°C). The variability is dramatic even though a 70–year smoothing average was applied. The diagram compares the peak temperatures in the current interglacial with those of the four previous interglacials. The horizontal scale on the x-axis is too small to identify even the length of the instrumental record.
Steve Goreham shows how small a portion it is in this diagram of the last 10,000 years (Figure 2).
Figure 2
Another graph shows the same period, the Holocene Optimum, in a different form (Figure 3).
Figure 3
The temperature range in this period is approximately 3.75°C (28.75 to 32.5°C) but is above the current annual average global temperature for most of the 10,000 years. Just put the approximately 120-years of instrumental record in any segment of the graph and you see how it is cooler than most of the period and well within natural variability.
The IPCC claim Radiative Forcing (RF) remained relatively stable before 1750. Since then they claim a steady rise due to primarily to the human addition of CO2 (Figure 4). As NOAA explains
Since 1750, human-caused climate drivers have been increasing, and their effect dominates all natural climate drivers.
So the claim is that a 2.29 W m-2 increase in RF explains almost all temperature change since 1750. Compare this increase with the variation in RF from a few natural climate drivers not included in the IPCC models. How reliable is this data? What are the error ranges? We know that climate sensitivity, that is the RF impact on temperature has decreased significantly (Figure 5). Notice that the IPCC is an outlier in this range of climate sensitivity estimates. These estimates are within or very close to the error of the estimate. One definition of RF says,
Radiative forcing by a climate variable is a change in Earth’s energy balance between incoming solar radiation energy and outgoing thermal IR emission energy when the variable is changed while all other factors are held constant.
Figure 5
The phrase “all other factors are held constant” is traditionally covered by the Latin term ceteris paribus. Unfortunately, that is never the case in reality and to apply it in the dynamic system that is climate change renders meaningless results. It is like the phrase that something is ‘purely academic,’ which means it has no relevance to the real world. The slope in Figure 5 shows a trend that supports those who argue that CO2 has no climate sensitivity. Regardless, the amount of sensitivity is too small to be significant.
The trouble is the estimates of just one side of that balance, the “incoming solar radiation” (insolation) varies considerably. Figure 6 shows the variation in values of insolation estimates from several computer models. In a 2005 paper titled How well do we compute the insolation at TOA in radiation climatologies and in GCMs?
Ehrhard Raschke wrote,
“The solar forcing used in 20 models participating in the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-2) was compared with the same quantity computed for ISCCP. Models and climatology should agree at least in this quantity, however, the figure at the bottom of page 1 (Figure 6 in this article) shows a large disagreement.
It can be speculated that such different meridional profiles of the solar radiative forcing at TOA should also have impact on the computed atmospheric circulation pattern, in particular when simulations over periods of several decades to several centuries are performed. Therefore, related projects within the World Climate Research Program should take appropriate steps to avoid systematic discrepancies as shown above and to estimate their possible impact on the resulting climate and circulation changes.”
Figure 6
The average variation is low near the equator but considerable in higher latitudes. It is reasonable to assume an error overall of at least 5 Wm-2 which more than covers the IPCC claimed CO2 sensitivity.
A larger question is what climate forcing variables are ignored, especially in the IPCC models. The answer is a great many. With most the variability and the error of the estimates totally swamp the claimed human RF.
The Milankovitch Effect is not included in the IPCC computer models because it is argued the changes are too slow and too small for the 120-year instrumental record.
Figure 7 shows the variation in RF at 40°N over a one-million-year period.
Willis Eschenbach examined the relationship between the insolation curve and the 100,000-year Milankovitch cycle and found no connection with the EPICA Antarctic ice core temperature anomaly. That is not my concern here, rather it is the swing of insolation of 100 W m-2 compared to the IPCC claim of 2.29 W m-2.
Eschenbach compared Milankovitch against glacial/interglacial swings during the Pleistocene. Many people don’t know that there are at least four glaciations before the Pleistocene with speculations about the cause but with no agreement. The most common speculation involves orbit of the Sun around the Milky Way and interactions with galactic dust in that voyage. How does that affect RF?
The list of variables and mechanisms that cause variation in the RF over short and long periods well beyond the 2.29 W m-2 claimed for human produced CO2 is extensive. Lamb included a diagram in Volume 2 of Climate Present, Past and Future (Figure 8).
Figure 8
Then there is the question of water vapor. Everyone agrees it is the most important greenhouse gas by far, they just don’t agree on how much. Water vapor is 95% and CO2 4% by volume, so AGW proponents claimed CO2 was “more effective” in its ability to block outgoing thermal radiation. The wide range of estimates of the effect is proof that nobody knows. Worse, there is a contradiction between NASA’s claim in a study trying to prove the positive feedback of water vapor is real and consequential, and the IPCC.
“This study confirms that what was predicted by the models is really happening in the atmosphere,” said Eric Fetzer, an atmospheric scientist who works with AIRS data at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Water vapor is the big player in the atmosphere as far as climate is concerned.”
So, the increase in atmospheric CO2 from humans determines the amount of atmospheric water vapor. In the 2007 IPCC Report, we learned,
“Water vapour is the most abundant and important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water vapour.”
There is little doubt that the variation in atmospheric water vapor and the error in the estimates alone exceeds the 2.29 W m-2 attributed to human CO2. It is also true for most variables, especially those omitted by the IPCC.
It is the misuse of science to create the deception that is the AGW claim that makes distraction, exaggeration and selective truths necessary. However, as Aldous Huxley said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
When you pit Science against Politics, Politics wins in the short term. However, eventually Reality comes to the rescue of Science and Politics fails to survive. Reality is underway.
Exactly. The history books mock those that ignore facts and logic.
And real reality is scary stuff. Especially if it is another Ice Age looming.
“eventually Reality comes to the rescue”
Often as quickly as several hundred years later.
Just need a little cold spell to severely threaten the food supply. It’s already started. Check global food production.
“You can ignore reality but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality” Ayn Rand
Thanks, Tim, for a very clear article. Figures 1, 2 and 3 are devastating – to any open mind.
What is a reasonable sample size? 500 years. Warmists are very generous to us when they only predict – pardon me, project – for 100 years. Try to counter a projection of climate (all over the Earth) in 2516.
There really is no “reasonable sample size.” When you look at climate at any time scale beyond a few days to a few weeks it shows no strong tendency toward any steady state. The farther you move from a given base period forward or backward, the farther the prediction is likely to “hunt”. Geologically, the overall trend for CO2 is downward. Carbon-fixing processes out perform geological carbon sources, but even that generalization is subject to temporary exceptions. In the early Phanerozoic, CO2 was about 25 times present levels, declining through the Paleozoic to current levels. This is ended with the Permian extinction and a recovery of available CO2 during the first half of the Mesozoic to very roughly half the early Phanerozoic starting value. Since then the trend has been downward with no real interuptions. We are once more at Permian levels. Less CO2 is ultimately a very bad thing. Less CO2 leads to decreased biological productivity. Lower productivity leads to famines and ultimately mass migration and warfare.
a slight increase in CO2…would cause an increase in water vapor….wash rinse repeat
It was run away global humidity…
At least that’s what they originally said
That seems to be perfectly possible. The cloud feedback is of the same size as the net effect from anthropogenic forcing, see my comment below at:
Science or Fiction February 8, 2016 at 11:03 am
Sorry I should have read your comment more thoroughly. I thought you meant that a slight increase in water vapor could cause a slight increase in temperature, which again could cause a slight increase in water vapor ….
Another great essay Dr. Ball.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
This is true, but we deal with the weird world of politics where the myth becomes the people’s reality regardless of the facts. The IPCC has been successful in ignoring many, many facts and fooling the people of the world. For how long they can continue to fool them I do not know. Mother Nature can be a formidable opponent and she does not seem to like the alarmists. (especially the Gore)
Well, what is a reasonable sample size?
…Approximately 4.5 billion years should do !!
We should look back 541 million years to cover the current geologic eon (Phanerozoic) in the geologic time scale. The following has always told me more than all the hot air coming from the likes of Stokes and other alarmists.
You are usually not short of an opinion, so how about put up an offer first…. Before trashing anyone else’s.
It’s the question posed in the headline. I didn’t see an answer. I thought maybe someone else did.
I don’t think anyone has really clarified what’s being sampled.
Sample sizing is a standard proceedure in statistical analysis. Nick, you are a statistical wizard. Allz-y
You have evidence above that 1000 years is needed to debunk the claim of worst eva. A 13 000 y record is need to take the claim seriously and 1 000 000 to be 97% certain that it is exceptionally warmer than pre-anthropocene (very happy to see it still underlined with a squiggly red line).
Nick, I think Merriam-Webster can help you out:
Word by Word Definitions
rhetorical
: of, relating to, or concerned with rhetoric
: employed for rhetorical effect
: asked merely for effect with no answer expected
Try the third one
Scottish Skeptic answers your question pretty well, down-thread. He says 10x the period being examined for trend. What no-one seems to discuss here is the terribly sloppy nature of the thermometer record, where any close look cannot justify error bars smaller than 0.5 degrees C, and even that is subject to debate.
“Scottish Skeptic answers your question pretty well”
It’s not my question. It’s the heading of this article. SS is asking a somewhat different question – how much history do you need. If deviations were random, there is a statistical answer (much less than he says). He’s really answering – how long to you need to exclude the possibility of other non-random patterns, and that is limited only by your imagination.
But it’s also directed at a different situation – how long would you need to establish that a rise proved something irregular (hard to pin down without a stat model). But in fact, we know that we are pumping CO2 into the air, and that CO2 is a GHG and likely to cause warming. So the first question is, do we see warming? Then, can it be related to the GHGs? We aren’t looking at warming that came out of the blue.
“We aren’t looking at warming that came out of the blue.” No one has established that. CO2 at the TOA retains OGLWIR, but no one has established just how much. The physics of that process are, shall we say, non-trivial.
It took me a while to realize that the lapse rate is actually from the top down, not the bottom up, but still, just exactly what would the temperature be with zero CO2? Nobody knows…
Subject to completely wrong. Climate ‘scientists’ see nothing wrong with n=1, non-random, non-replicated. The actual variance is infinity or undefined or can not be calculated given the long accepted statistical assumptions and methods.
Since each day’s population of temperatures is not the same as any other day’s population of temperatures, grouping days as replicates breaks the requirement that samples be drawn from the same population. And so on.
So, all current surface station and satellite data is anecdotal and may not be employed in much of the BS stats currently used. Further, the variance on all of it is larger than the signal by orders of magnitude.
In short, garbage in, garbage out, as it has always been.
Is this an attempt to deflect attention away from the obvious fact that there is a (sample size) problem here? As the various graphs show – since they certainly bring into question claims about current climate conditions being unusual.
“Is this an attempt to deflect attention away”
No, it’s an attempt to focus on the headline problem “what is a resonable sample size?” which otherwise wasn’t getting much attention. But the graphs don’t actually tell anything about global climate or modern times. They are from a single location, and have no data more recent than 1855.
Well, it certainly is not n=1 , non-random, non-replicated as has nearly universally been used in temperature data.
Perhaps in about 50-years the attempts by NOAA, NASA, MetOf and IPCC to maintain the “record” of temperature “increase” with the “record” of CO2 “increase” as much the same as the early Catholic Church’s attempts to reconcile the observable seasons with the slippage of their infallible calendar prior to Copernicus, though Copernicus may not have had a great deal to do with it after all.
Ha ha
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/copernicus-and-the-calendar/
any “sample size” is downright moronic. Either you take the whole and figure out what drives it or you’re only dealing with anecdotal information. You can’t do science by saying “this segment predicts the whole” when it clearly doesn’t.
Highly reminiscent of the blind men describing an elephant, one held the trunk, another the tusk, another a leg and the last held the tail…..you know the rest.
“Recent discussion about record weather events, such as the warmest year on record, is a totally misleading and scientifically useless exercise.”
Yes the sample period shows us almost nothing about the overall pattern, BUT ALSO, let us always remember that a cooling trend during that same period would also have also resulted in the creation of anthropogenic climate change alarmism.
In other words – it did not matter what overall trend had been discovered since 1850 – alarmism is not dependent on discovering a slight warming trend. A slight cooling would have generated the same alarmism and accusations of a dominant human role.
Since we have a clear example of the emergence of precisely such alarm during the 1970’s.
There are seemingly no possible real-world conditions that would have prevented the emergence of climate alarmism in the late 20th century.
So all results would have lead us to the same panicked conclusion.
Especially since the majority of victims (i.e. the public) have almost no sense of the context in which today’s trivial climate trends should be framed. Relative to the previous 20,000 years of change, the 20th century was totally unremarkable. And the satellite records suggest that we may live during a period of quite unusual stability. At least such a conclusion can not be ruled out.
But in the mad rush for the exits, all such sensible measured consideration has been trampled underfoot.
Well said.
SPOT ON !
Excellent – but depressing that what is so in your face logical is beyond the ken of many politicians and joe public.
“Since we have a clear example of the emergence of precisely such alarm during the 1970’s.”
“We report here on the first results of a calculation in which separate estimates were made of the effects on global temperature of large increases in the amount of CO2 and dust in the atmosphere. It is found that even an increase by a factor of 8 in the amount of CO2, which is highly unlikely in the next several thousand years, will produce an increase in the surface temperature of less than 2 deg. K.
However, the effect on surface temperature of an increase in the aerosol content of the atmosphere is found to be quite significant. An increase by a factor of 4 in the equilibrium dust concentration in the global atmosphere, which cannot be ruled out as a possibility within the next century, could decrease the mean surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!”
Schneider S. & Rasool S., “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols – Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate”, Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141
I think you forgot an “also”, too, as well. 😉
Also, let me apologize for the surplus “also”, also.
The result of clumsily editing two sentences into one. Or was that three?!!! 🙂
In regards to your no longer available figure 1, you might like to use this graph (Fig. 3) from a 2015 study/paper “Global Temperature Variability Reviewed” by J.W.R Whitfield
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh154/crocko05/Temp%20vs%20CO2%20-%20400000%20years_zpskyy0qvra.jpg
… or Fig 2. from the same study.
https://2020globalsciencereviewuk.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/global-temperature-variability-reviewed.pdf
Fig. 5 from the same study also sends the warmies into a dither.
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh154/crocko05/Past%20400000%20year%20temps_zpsmqmty7yo.jpg
BruceC, thanks for the PDF link. Looks like an excellent study. Most alarmists don’t seem to realize how lucky we are to live in a relatively brief interglacial warm period, within an ice age that began about 3 million years ago (as shown in Fig 5 from the PDF). Based on our best climate reconstructions, odds appear to be high that it will not continue much longer and could end quickly within a few hundreds of years or at most thousands of years. Here’s a simple persistence forecast based on the previous four interglacial periods lined up with our current interglacial period:
I agree with Dr Ball that most conventional climate scientists are way too confident and claim laughably small uncertainties in much of their work. I also agree that ignoring natural variations is an “academic exercise” only and is pretty much meaningless. All the alarmism over supposed human-induced global climate changes that are hardly consequential is wasting huge amounts of money that could be much better spent. If the alarmism continues unabated, it will lead to economic disasters for some countries trying to make expensive and even harmful changes that will have little to no effect on the climate.
That Figure 1 is a great graph.
A good essay Dr. Ball. I would say that in one thing, the warmists have a meagre point and that is, as far as sample size is concerned, the measured record is what it is. Because of definition problems, we can’t compare paleo with the temperature record in any real sense. We have only a few choices: one, to sit quiet for half a millennium until we have an acceptable sample to begin to start an evaluation, two, to go with and refine to our best the paleo record while keeping as good an instrument record of the variables as we can, and three, devising more ingenious experiments to see if we can learn with reasonable confidence if and how the variables do interact with each other.
In the latter, this is not the simple picture as precised in the Guardian or NYT or even delivered by your climate science lecturer. There may well be a solid relationship between CO2 abundance and warming and with the lab experiments that are often bugled about, I’m convinced that the effect at some magnitude is there. But, this is no guarantee there will be sustainable warming from it. The Le Chatelier Principle that is well demonstrated to act across virtually all phenomena (one could have anticipated Newton’s laws of motion, back EMF in motors, and a host of phenomena with the Le Chatelier Principle – even the laws of supply and demand in economics) states (I’ll let Wikipedia state it so our progressive readers will be at ease):
“Any change in status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chatelier's_principle
Even Le Chatelier thought it was narrowly applicable to chemistry, but it turns out to be a powerful eclectic principle that we should integrate into our thinking about all problems and systems. This means that if you want to speculate on how a given agent will change things, your first approximation MUST BE that the change will be resisted and be short of what you may believe will happen from a ceteris paribus (all other factors held constant) situation, or that you may need a bit more agent than you thought – the world isn’t made up of ceteris paribus variables. Willis Eschenbach’s tropical sea surface temperature “governor” is a perfect example of the type of thing that the principle would advise you before you started investigating. You may not recognize the ‘the governor’ but you will be disappointed in the warming that manifests itslef from that tropical sunshine.
This devilish and “mulishly stubborn” factor is what is plaguing shallow linear thinking catastrophists. Le Chat. should be the opening chapter of any science textbook or lecture and anyone calling himself a scientist is under-educated and handicapped somewhat if unaware of this principle. Things like to stay the way they are and do all kinds of things to try to hang on to what they have (very much like Newton’s 3rd law – for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction). When you try to boil water, the water resists through expansion, then convection and radiation and finally evaporation. In the folk idiom, “A watched kettle will never boil” and melting a pail of snow for tea is a thing for patient folks to do. Le Chatelier advises us when we calculate a climate sensitivity for example, we will make it too large if we don’t recognize the master.
Very well said. In reality the only really positive thing of any value to come out of this scrap is an incentive to LEARN MORE. This starts with an honest acknowledgement that we know so little. Forcings and feedback systems are what matter most. Without negative feedback systems we would have frizzled or frozen millennium ago
Le Chetalier’s principle is clearly not one we should apply by default to every system. Often there are negative feedbacks, often not. It is not sensible to assume only negative ones. Pushing a book a small distance along a table, for example. The movement of the book, far from being resisted, will suddenly accelerate as it drops off the edge. Add a small flame to a pile of gunpowder. LCP suggests that having to warm up an extra mass will cause the flame to diminish. In practice the flame will not be resisted or dimished, but rather the opposite.
No, we must actually study the effects before we know whether negative or positive feedbacks will dominate.
It has been demonstrated that positive climate feedbacks do not exist, except in the minds of climate alarmists.
Seaice1, When you push the book, (I won’t reiterate Newton’s third law as it also applies) but it also resists because of friction. LCP is not a final decision maker, it, at least, retards the change in circumstances. If you are pushing against a stone wall, the wall pushes you back exactly to the degree you are pushing it. Now if you continue to push harder and harder, you may overwhelm the resistance eventually but note, you are also compressing the buttressing soil on the far side of the wall and levering against the weight of the soil on the near side . I would recommend you bring more pushing power than you think you may need.
Now, this seems almost silly and I can see you smile because we already know most of the factors we are dealing with and we would bring a bulldozer to be sure. But, what if you didn’t know about, for example, friction in the case of the book. You would discover it! Even feedback is, until you discover it, something you may have overlooked without asking yourself what LCP might have in store for you in dealing with the problem. Climate science is the best example I can think of where we don’t know all the factors.
What we do know is net feedbacks on earth have been net negative for 4.5 Billion years. I can recognize in most cases a volcanic flow that is 3.5B years old because, although it might be folded by tectonic forces and been recrystallized by heat and pressure from deep burial and subsequent folding and erosion to expose it at surface, many of its features have been often remarkably preserved – runaway extremes of anything would have destroyed this. Here is a way out example of even microbe fossils in what was originally volcanic glass dated at 3.35B years before the present:
https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/elsevier/direct-dating-of-archean-microfossils-preserved-in-pillow-basalts-from-KqL6mCAhel
There is a very logical reason why LCP should be the first default position in your thinking about the nature of a physical problem (I would say so even if it were a psychological problem but that might be a bridge too far for you at this stage). Think about it. I’ll answer it for you if you can’t figure it out.
Ever wonder what percent of the general population has no idea how sparse the temperature record really is? Do they understand that paleo temperature estimates are (1) based on methods that cannot possibly measure temperatures to the degree of accuracy being represented and (2) don’t come anywhere near the kind of coverage that one would need to make the kind of worldwide predictions that are being made and (3) cannot be verified through independent means? How many of them understand that our satellite record only goes back 35 or so years and the surface temp only 120-130? How many understand that 120 years is a VERY short time?
I think Dr. Ball is right. It is time to go after the basis for all of this stuff. If you win the argument that we can’t measure the temperature of the Earth to any degree of accuracy for any length of time that is meaningful. Stop arguing on the periphery and go after the jugular.
Proud Skeptic, This is such an important point. And not only is the period of measured temperature record short, but the measuring technology has evolved. How much of the observed increase is due to changes in method of measurement and analyses required to characterize the whole planet with a single yearly value?
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
Dr. Tim Ball provides an excellent essay.
To appropriately measure global temperature you need a constellation of satellites that continuously look at the entire earth. They need to measure surface temperature, temperature vs altitude, albedo, water vapor vs altitude, CO2 vs altitude, the entire radiation spectra coming from the earth and coming at the earth. We have been experiencing climate cycles with periods as long as 60 years, 1,000 years, and 115,000 years. The Nyquist Sampling Theorem tells us that we need at least two samples per period to measure a particular frequency. We also need more than two samples to measure a particular frequency so we can average our noise. So if we are just concerned about the 60 year cooling and warming cycles then 400 years might be adequate. If we care about the effects of the ice ages then we can possible get away with taking measurements for only about 660,000 years. So once the sensor system is in place we only have to take measurements for 660,000 years before we get the desired results in terms of the amount of required data but we still may not isolate the cause of the observed climate change. We have to be very careful about keeping the entire sensor array appropriately calibrated during the entire 660,000 years of operation. So once the sensor system is in place, made operational and we have verified the correctness of the observations then all we have to do sit down and wait for 660,000 years or more to acquire enough data for an appropriate analysis.
2.29 W/m^2 is 0.17% of the mean “solar constant” at 1 AU. I very seriously doubt if we have the means to measure the mean solar constant to that accuracy. We do know that the variation in the solar constant is 6.9% every 182.5 days, that is, the difference between perihelion and aphelion insolation. During that time, the albedo can vary between 30 and an 35% in a matter of hours (that’s 16.67% increase or decrease in the reflectance of incoming energy over the entire globe). The latter is at least unpredictable with the current state of knowledge, though likely not random. We don’t know what controls clouds, though evidence is strong that it is extraterrestrial, or even extrasolar. In any event, there is no model which can describe it within our current scope of knowledge.
With an annual variation 40.6 times the “forcing” of 2.29 W/m^2, and an hourly forcing of 98 times 2.29 W/m^2, how can anyone claim to be picking out the influence of any type of human influence? The KNOWN natural variable swamp anything attributable to humans.
As far as I understand the net anthropogenic radiative forcing 2.29 W m-2 isn´t the net value. One has to take into account an increase in outgoing radiation inferred from changes in the global mean surface temperature. (See: UN IPCC; WGI; AR5; TFE.4, Figure 1; Page 67.) I believe that the net effect is around 0.5 to 1 W m-2.
See my comment here for more details: Science or Fiction February 8, 2016 at 11:03 am . That should strengthen your argument significantly.
To the statisticians here: If all recorded temperatures where rounded to the nearest degree C would the result over time be any less accurate then what we have now? Fighting with split straws grown over a few years looks ludicrous to me. The very basics on which these elaborate calculations and predictions are made do not appear to be robust
There is a post on that here. Actually, it’s more extreme – adds noise amplitude 1°C to local monthly averages. makes essentially no difference to the global average.
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/GHCN/AddRandom/ts.png
What data set is that graph based on?
Chris Hanley,
It’s referred to in the linked post. It is TempLS, using GHCN V3, and ERSST v3b; it dates from Feb 2015, so stops at 2014. But the details of the data or methods don’t matter much here – it is just showing how averaging damps the noise.
Ta, it didn’t look familiar that’s all, as the main global data sets have become over time.
“… adds noise amplitude 1°C to local monthly averages. makes essentially no difference to the global average.”
Of course it makes no difference to the annual global average temperature signal at frequencies significantly lower than the lower cutoff frequency of the noise signal.
“Of course it makes no difference to the annual global average temperature signal… “
Well, it is the annual average that people follow. But the main damping of the noise happens in the spatial averaging. The monthly values are virtually unchanged; the further effect of annual smoothing is small.
“… the main damping of the noise happens in the spatial averaging”.
Suggests that the random variables at those spatial strata may have widely differing variances.
The linked post is preoccupied with a particular noise source related to instrument reading error. There are many other sources of noise in the measurement of global temperature anomalies. In particular there are notional noise sources with very different spectral density distributions and amplitudes.
Nick – thanks. I just had the gut feeling that with the range of temp being measured, and the number of sources and locations, that rounding out to 1C on all raw data would end up with a similar result to what is published. I can’t prove it mathematically but such a study could emphasise just how blind many people have become… Its a classic case of not seeing wood for trees. Scientists are particularly susceptible. See my later post
Wouldn’t such an exercise using marine data be very interesting 🙂
After all, what is important? Changes in calculated mean global temp (that we cannot measure accurately) of less than, say, 2C?
Bravo, Dr. Ball. You’ve expressed my sentiments perfectly. Thank you.
The climate models on which the entire Catastrophic Global Warming delusion rests are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year cycles so obvious in the temperature record. The modelers approach is simply a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is exactly like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. They back tune their models for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial. This is scientific malfeasance on a grand scale.
The temperature projections of the IPCC – UK Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them have no solid foundation in empirical science being derived from inherently useless and specifically structurally flawed models. They provide no basis for the discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a foundation for Governmental climate and energy policy their forecasts are already seen to be grossly in error and are therefore worse than useless.
For a simple explanation see http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-epistemology-of-climate-forecasting.html
Forecasts of future temperatures which fail to include the natural millennial temperature cycle are simply irrelevant.
Dr Ball,
You provide a very complete portfolio of long term climate change data and you make a compelling argument about the futility of short term models and impact studies.
Unfortunately nobody is listening. They are wrapped up in their own fantasy warmist science world.
oops I meant Dr Page. Apologies.
Ed, I am really amazed at the ability of the science community at large, including even most of the skeptics who post here, to ignore the obvious millennial cycle which peaked about 2003.Far from being a “wicked ” problem, if you use simple common sense forecasting the timing and likely amplitude of the longer wave trends is reasonably simple.
Thanks, Dr. Ball. You proved your contentions.
If we used normal graphs rather than anomaly graphs we would highlight that world temperature has risen just 0.8 degrees C since 1880.
Most land based measurements have been tampered with or relocated to warmer climes and the only reliable temperature measure has been the satellite records since 1979 which agree with balloon measurements. The past 18 years 8 months show no rise despite humans emitting 25% of all CO2 emissions.
Where is the problem?
But the word anomaly is scary to the ignorant commoners we are trying to scare, so it works much better than ordinary concepts like temperature.
“Where is the problem?”
The problem is that the consequences of warming happen to us down here. The fact that plane travellers may be unaffected is small consolation.
What an argument from somebody as intelligent and informed as Nick Stokes. He must live in or around Australia with the fantastic record of predicting endless drought (caused by CO2), filling up the reservoirs in anticipation of that drought and then suffering flooding because the reservoirs were too full. They now have billions of $ worth of salt water distilling plants standing idle. I am sure that Carl 2015 will shortly bring back the drought to Australia or not? Best chance of CAGW continuing will be for Sanders or Clinton winning in November otherwise we might find cooling setting in with the next La Nina caused by a Republican President. Karl might then even be looking for new job opportunities.
Nick, how many winters can this planet go without having?
How many summers can this planet go without having?
Just a simple answer………no hand waiving. No BS. Just a single word for each sentence.
Nick S.:
You say
Absolute nonsense!
You are pretending to not know the difference between temperature and temperature anomaly.
Temperature anomaly is a statistical construct with no physical reality of any kind. Nobody would notice anything anywhere if global temperature anomaly alone were to change by the ‘feared’ 2°C rise.
Global temperature rises by 3.8°C (i.e. nearly double 2°C rise) from January to June each year and nobody notices.
Also,
Global temperature falls by 3.8°C (i.e. nearly double 2°C) from June to January each year and nobody notices.
If you want to know how and why read this.
Simply, water is a better heat-sink than land and there is a greater proportion lof water in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) than the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Therefore, SH winters are warmer than NH winters and SH summers are cooler than NH summers. But it is summer in the SH when it is winter in the NH and vice versa. Global temperature is the average of SH and NH temperatures.
Richard
“Global temperature rises by 3.8°C (i.e. nearly double 2°C rise) from January to June each year and nobody notices.”
I actually didn’t say anything about anomaly. But this just says why you need it. Yes, global average absolute temperature does that. That is one reason why it is a poor measure. Of course we all experience seasonal variation, and part of it seeps through into that number. It is the same, year to year. Nothing new.
Average anomaly tells you about the likelihood of experiencing a change in climate. And a change of 3.8°C would be very significant. A drop of 5-6°C in global anomaly average means an ice age. People would notice that.
Nick S.:
YOU claimed
I pointed out – and explained – that your claim of a potential “problem” is absolutely untrue saying
And I know you “didn’t say anything about anomaly”: I said that!
No amount of your usual wriggling and sophistry can distract from the facts that your claim is nonsense, you know it is nonsense, and I explained it is nonsense..
Richard
The problem is that the warmers have no interest in ever discussing any science
Because they know they have NO. Scientific case….and they know that one is not required!!
They know that the Main stream press will continue pushing catastrophe because that SELLS!
And the politicians will keep pumping the tax payers money into the CAGW industry because
That will get them reelected for wanting to save the world….and all the tens of thousands of
Climate researchers paid for by the politicians will never come up with any result which will
Do away with their jobs which are to keep telling them what they want to hear.
If your trend can be overturned – in either direction – then your sample size is too small.
I.E. if the inclusion on an El Nino type event materially alters your resultant trend then the number of years in your sample is too low.
we all know earth IS warming (natural cause)
a little detail in the sampling of temperature: we actually are still coming out of the little ice age, which recorded in 1875 it’s coldest peak in the last 10000 years. (LIA is considdered as a “Bond event” and the properties of it are still in synch with what we observe.
only the 8.2 kyear event did got a bit colder then the LIA.
so the last 120 years of temperature record recorded the natural outcome of a very cold minima towards a new optimum. Science says that the LIa ended in 1850 but the real worldwide rise only started in 1900
this means that now we are “half way” towards the values of the medieval warm period (a bit over half way if we take the adjusted versions but yet still half way and less then half if we compare it to the holocene maximum, roman warm period and Minoan warm period)
it’s what i say in all these debates with the question: “would we panic the same way if we had 400.000 years of reliable temperature records?” I don’t think so…
According to Greenland and other Ice Core data our Holocene Interglacial is now in decline.
The current, warm Holocene interglacial has been the enabler of mankind’s civilisation for the last 10,000+ years. It’s congenial climate spans from mankind’s earliest farming to the scientific and technological advances of the last 100 years.
When considering the scale of temperature changes that climate alarmists anticipate because of Man-made Global Warming and their view of the disastrous effects of additional Man-made Carbon Dioxide emissions, it is useful to look at climate change from a longer term, century by century or on a millennial timescale.
But to support Dr Ball’s scientific presentation here is a layman’s interpretation of that data:
• the last millennium 1000AD – 2000AD encompassing the Medieval warm Period has been the coldest millennium of the Holocene interglacial.
• each of the notable high points in the Holocene temperature record, (the early Holocene Climate Optimum – Minoan – Roman – Medieval – Modern), have been progressively colder than the previous high point.
• for its first 7-8000 years the early Holocene, including its high point “Climate Optimum”, had virtually flat temperatures.
• but the more recent Holocene, since a “tipping point” at ~1000BC, has seen a temperature diminution at more than 20 times that earlier rate.
• the Holocene interglacial is already 10 – 11,000 years old and judging from the length of previous interglacials the Holocene epoch should be drawing to its close: in this century, the next century or this millennium.
• the beneficial warming at the end of the 20th century to the Modern high point has been falsely transmuted into being “the Great Man-made Global Warming Scare”.
• eventually this late 20th century temperature blip will come to be seen as just noise in the system in the longer term progress of comparatively rapid cooling over the last 3000+ years.
The much vaunted and much feared “fatal” tipping point of +2°C would only bring Global temperatures close to the level of the very congenial climate of “the Roman warm period”.
Were possible to reach the “horrendous” level of +4°C postulated by Warmists, that extreme level of warming would still only bring temperatures to about the level of the previous Eemian maximum, a warm and abundant epoch, when hippopotami thrived in the Rhine delta.
Global warming protagonists should accept that our interglacial has been in long-term decline for the last 3000 years or so and that any action taken by man-kind will make no difference whatsoever. And it’s implausible that any action by Man-kind could reverse the inexorable in the short period of the coming century.
Were the actions by Man-kind able to avert warming they would eventually reinforce the catastrophic cooling that is bound to return relatively soon.
for illustrated details see
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/the-holocene-context-for-anthropogenic-global-warming-2/
Pretty distorted, Dr. Ball. Apply a little skepticism to your posts before criticizing the consensus.
1) “The AGW proponents successfully got the world focused on CO2, which is just 0.04% of the total atmospheric gases and varies considerably spatially and temporally.”
CO2 is a well-mixed GHG that only varies trivially (in forcing) in the atmosphere. Water vapor, which averages 1%, does varies a lot spatially and temporally. These two of these gas emit essentially all of the photons that escape to space, except for the 10% that originate at the surface. Since water vapor does vary spetially, that leaves CO2 as the major source of photons leaving many regions of the atmosphere for space and the major absorber of photons that otherwise would reach space. Everyone in their right mind knows that CO2 plays an important role in the energy balance of our planet. That role is summarized by term “climate sensitivity”, a subject that is quantitatively – but not qualitatively – controversial.
2) “Two major themes of the AGW claims are that temperature change is greater and more rapid than at any time in the past…. (Figure 1)”
The latest 400,000 years (Figure 1) or 4 million years or 40 million years of climate change is fairly irrelevant to human civilization. The factors that drove climate change over these long periods (such as orbital mechanics, plate tectonics, etc) are not expected to influence climate change over the next few decades to centuries – the only period relevant to today’s policymakers. The climate change – natural variability (forced or unforced) – relevant to our civilization can be see in Figure 2: The last 3,000 years when climate remained within less than a 2 degC range. (The earlier Holocene Climate Optimum is irrelevant because it can be attributed to orbital mechanics.) Today we are near the top of this 2 degC range, though no graphs in this post illustrate this. Even the lowest estimates of climate sensitivity suggest that rising CO2 will take us outside this 2 degC range. Even another LIA won’t keep us within this range if climate sensitivity is greater than about 2 degC.
The temperature change in Greenland (from ice cores, Figure 3) is totally misleading because warming in polar regions is amplified compared with change where most humans live. If I understand correctly (I may be wrong), the graph also begins about 1900, when GMST was about 1 degC cooler than today. With Arctic amplification, today’s temperature is similar to the MWP or perhaps the RWP. That is certainly not off the top of chart, but another 0.5-1.0 degC of global warming – after amplification in Greenland – will put us off the chart.
3) “We know that climate sensitivity, that is the RF impact on temperature has decreased significantly (Figure 5).”
That is a joke. Published estimates of climate sensitivity have dropped recently, partly because estimates of cooling from aerosols have dropped. If estimates of sensitivity to aerosols continue to drop, so with estimates of climate sensitivity, but such a change can’t be predicted ahead of time. Climate sensitivity itself doesn’t change with time. Recent estimates of climate sensitivity (for example Otto (2013) and Lewis and Curry (2014) have best estimates for ECS of 1.5-2.0 degC, with confidence intervals 1 degC or more on the high side. The former looked at the last 40 years (when measured aerosol forcing showed little change except transiently for two volcanos) and the latter covered the last 65 and 130 years (one and two cycles of the AMO).
Furthermore, your graph isn’t meaningful because it does not show confidence intervals – which are quite wide – only the central estimates. Within experimental error, most of these estimates are mutually consistent with each other!
4) “The slope in Figure 5 shows a trend that supports those who argue that CO2 has no climate sensitivity.”
Laughably wrong. There has been warming and an increase in forcing over the past half century. Climate sensitivity is merely the ratio of these quantities. This ratio won’t go to zero unless temperature falls to earlier levels. If GMST falls 0.6 degC to 1970 level by 2035, then Lewis and Curry’s methodology will produce a climate sensitivity of zero. I’ll bet against that happening.
5) “Raschke shows that climate models disagree substantially with each other and with observations.”
A great subject to write about.
6) “Figure 7 shows the variation in RF at 40°N over a one-million-year period … the swing of insolation of 100 W m-2 compared to the IPCC claim of 2.29 W m-2.”
The variation in SUMMER forcing at 40 degN (65 degN?) during Milankovitch cycles won’t change appreciably over the next few decades to centuries, the only period relevant to policymakers. (Even if it did, annual GLOBAL forcing shows almost no change with time during a Milankovitch cycle. The theory is that reduced summer radiation prevents seasonal snow from melting in Arctic regions, increasing the albedo of the planet as a whole.)
7) “The list of variables and mechanisms that cause variation in the RF over short and long periods well beyond the 2.29 W m-2 claimed for human produced CO2 is extensive.”
Today’s 2.3 W/m2 forcing for CO2 (and 3.2 W/m2 for all aGHGs) is larger than any natural or anthropogenic forcing operating in recent centuries. Pinatubo was -3 W/m2 at peak and averaged about half this for about 3 years. The largest published change in solar forcing for the Maunder minimum is about -1 W/m2 (globally, not TSI). FWIW, the IPCC’s worst case scenario envisions 8.5 W/m2 of anthropogenic forcing. (Even Milankovitch cycles involve almost no global forcing.)
Your response to the article is interesting and no doubt has many good points. The weakness of it, however lies in your insistence that a big picture look at how our current temperature trends and patterns is irrelevant to the debate. The idea that what we are currently going through is just another cycle in what we have gone through before is very important in this discussion. What might have happened 10,000 ago might be irrelevant to what might be appropriate to do in terms of policy during the cycle of warming (natural or manmade) we might currently be experiencing but it is not irrelevant to whether or not the belief that what we are experiencing today is unprecedented.
These are two separate things which may or may not be related.
Oh…and “consensus” be damned. That is not an argument and it never was. It is an insult to the debate and irrelevant as a scientific point.
Proud Skeptic: I’m a proud skeptic too, so I don’t want to let this misleading information be passed off as responsible skepticism. Science is about competing hypotheses, not an artificially imposed consensus. I’d love to learn about a natural forcing that competes with aCO2 or unforced variability that could negate aGHG-mediated warming. The best hope I can find is modestly low climate sensitivity (ECS around 1.5-2.0 K) and the failure of AOGCMs.
Your are correct about misuse of the word “unprecedented”. Being pragmatic, “unprecedented” means to me “unprecedented in the period of the past relevant to policymaking today” – which I called 3000 years above.
Frank says:
Cloud fraction. Clouds are poorly understood and very poorly modeled. Cloud fraction is usually ignored in temperature reconstructions and projections. There is very little historical data on cloud fraction. I am not aware of any proxies for cloud fraction. The relation between humidity or water vapor content and cloud fraction is not well defined or understood. I am not aware of any consistent theoretical claim of what relationship, if any, there is between CO2 and cloud fraction.
CO2 is a trace gas. The world’s climate is NOT a univariate system (i.e. dependent on one small variable).
More on cloud fraction. Diurnal clouds tend to reflect sunlight and reduce heat gain. Nocturnal clouds tend to reduce heat loss. Therefore, an increase in cloud fraction would be expected to cause cooling during the day but warming at night. Consequently, it is necessary to distinguish between a change in diurnal cloud fraction and a change in nocturnal cloud fraction to estimate whether a net cooling or warming, respectfully, would be expected. This is not trivial and is poorly understood and modeled. There is also limited historical data and no proxies that I am aware of and certainly no proxies that could distinguish between changes in diurnal cloud fraction vs. nocturnal cloud fraction.
I also am not aware of any cloud fraction “anomaly” data to correspond to “temperature” anomaly data.
Phil: You are completely correct about the importance of cloud fraction. However, cloud fraction is traditionally – and I think correctly – treated as a feedback rather than a forcing. Some AOGCMs produce a very high climate sensitivity because the cloud fraction (albedo) drops with rising temperature in these models. When CO2 is instantly quadrupled model runs, warming in the first few years quickly restores outgoing LWR. By then, however, there is a large increase in incoming SWR that causes the radiative imbalance to increase that feedbacks upon itself, driving warming for many more decades. From this point of view, changing cloud fraction is part of climate sensitivity – the response to forcing – and not a forcing by itself.
Frank, re Figure 3, the data actually ends in 1855, 95 years before 1950- which is the standard year for ‘present’ in ice-core studies. It’s been deliberately mislabeled by someone as Present (2000).
This is a well known fake graph.
Ceist8: Thanks. GMST didn’t change much between 1905 and 1855. The graph itself isn’t fake, it is just mislabeled in a way that isn’t fundamentally wrong. However, it is grossly misleading. It took be quite awhile to figure out what was wrong. The reader needs a datapoint or an annotation on the right hand axis showing the current temperature at this site, perhaps the mean temperature for the last 30 years. I made an estimate. Do you know where to find such information? I don’t understand how the authors converted proxy data to a local absolute temperature on a particular date.
Other’s here have said it “Keep your eye on the pea” You sir have tried to completely change the focus of this post and have us look away from the pea under the shell thereby ignoring the elephant in the room.
The most important point that I take away from Dr. Ball has essentially been “Even if everything the IPCC has said in terms of warming were to take place and even if CO2 were the cause there is NO catastrophic component to be seen as the past 1 million years has seen temperatures easily exceed the scariest ranges of the current warming scare and we are still here alive and well.” No catastrophic component means no need to hand the till over to a bunch of self appointed do-gooders.
The entire CAGW is a straw man argument.
Better we follow the current recipe that has brought us the ability to address the current real environmental issues including population control.
From my point of view, affluence appears to be the best population control there is. Affluence affords discretionary money for addressing real issues facing man kind. We don’t need to follow those whom construct straw men to get in our pockets. We have the tools to ferret them out.
Pierre DM – you think the message is “Even if everything the IPCC has said in terms of warming were to take place and even if CO2 were the cause there is NO catastrophic component to be seen as the past 1 million years has seen temperatures easily exceed the scariest ranges of the current warming scare and we are still here alive and well.”
Well, we aren’t -still here- from a million years ago. Civilization is a new thing. The hundreds of thousands of hominids back in the day didn’t have big cities built right up to the waters edge. Everyone was a hunter-gatherer until the Holocene – no expensive sewer systems, energy production, manufacturing, transportation networks, ports, etc.
That’s why recent changes and recent trends matter. “Catastrophe” wasn’t possible when the affected people just picked up their stone tools and moved uphill. It becomes possible as we try to feed billions of humans – most of them heavily dependent on regular crops and efficient transportation networks.
Ball’s message seems to be a version of telling someone buying beachfront property “Don’t worry about storm trends over the last 50 years, it’s been much worse over the past hundreds of thousands of years.”
Better yet, try telling a property insurer that recent trends don’t matter.
Pierre DM wrote: “You sir have tried to completely change the focus of this post and have us look away from the pea under the shell thereby ignoring the elephant in the room. The most important point that I take away from Dr. Ball has essentially been “Even if everything the IPCC has said in terms of warming were to take place and even if CO2 were the cause there is NO catastrophic component to be seen as the past 1 million years has seen temperatures easily exceed the scariest ranges of the current warming scare and we are still here alive and well.”
Frank replies: Your attention may have been misdirected by Dr. Ball. Let’s explore your summary of the key message from this post: There have been no examples of catastrophic climate change in the past 1 million years.
An ice age represent a decrease in GMST of about 5 degC. (Dr. Ball’s Figure 1 is a graph of polar temperature from an ice core – where climate change is roughly twice the change in GMST.) Do you believe that a re-occurrence of the Ice Ages of the past 1,000,000 years would represent a catastrophe? I do. The ice cap was roughly 1 km thick over present-day Chicago and Boston. The colder planet received much less precipitation. I would be difficult for today’s population to simply feed itself during an ice age.
The IPCC is warning of the possibility of roughly a 5 degC warming caused by aGHG’s – the same magnitude of change in the opposite direction. Dr. Ball never discusses the IPCC’s projections for future warming in this post. Dr. Ball presented NO information about 5 degC of WARMING, because that requires going more than ten million years into the past. There were no polar ice caps at this time and alligators lived in the warm high Arctic (Ellesmere Island and Northern Alaska). Would you consider that much warming (half taking place within one century) a “catastrophe”? Dr. Ball doesn’t say.
We both note that the lowest “best estimates” for climate sensitivity are about 1.5 degC per doubling of CO2 (with a upper confidence interval of at least 2.5 degC) – about half that projected by the IPCC’s models. Dr. Ball doesn’t discuss whether a change this large would be catastrophic or if a change half this large would be catastrophic. Instead he absurdly suggests there is evidence suggesting that climate sensitivity is trending to zero.
Humans hadn’t evolved when the temperature was 5 degC warmer. Modern agricultural society evolved during the stable climate of the Holocene – the last 10,000 years. About halfway through this period, changes in the monsoon in response to orbital changes caused the grasslands and large lakes in the present-day Sahara to disappear. Would you call desertification on this scale catastrophic climate change? (Incidentally, the IPCCs models can’t reproduce this change.) The period relevant to modern human agricultural is roughly the last 3,000 years, when temperature remained within roughly a 2 degC range. Today, we are currently in the upper half of that range.
Finally, Dr. Ball suggests our recent climate has survived forcing far greater from aCO2 or aGHGs. That simply isn’t true. He is confusing the transient SUMMER forcing at a single latitude (which is offset by negative forcing during the winter) with continuous global forcing.
“The factors that drove climate change over these long periods (such as orbital mechanics, plate tectonics, etc) are not expected to influence climate change over the next few decades to centuries – the only period relevant to today’s policymakers”
The only period that is relevant to today’s policymakers is the election cycle – a cycle that begins when they are elected and is aimed at getting them re-elected.
Good point, CaligulaJones. However, we do spend money on the schools, roads, and military we expect to need over the one to three decades. Essentially all governments have large unfunded liabilities for longer-range programs like Social Security and Medicare. Can you picture what the result would be if our government had [taxed] us in 1900 or 1950 with the intent of making the world a better place a half-century or a century later? How would they have “invested” that money? (The word “hubris” was created to describe this situation.)
“Can you picture what the result would be if our government had [taxed] us in 1900 or 1950 with the intent of making the world a better place a half-century or a century later?”
Well, here in Canada the federal government brought in income tax to pay for WW I…but I see your point.