I’ve plotted the results of the RSS Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) global temperature anomaly data by RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA).
For April 2008 it has moved a tiny bit higher, with a value of .080°C for a change (∆T) of 0.001°C globally from March.
RSS
2008 1 -0.070
2008 2 -0.002
2008 3 0.079
2008 4 0.080
click image for a ZOOMED 1998 -2008 DATA PORTION of the 1979-2008 image
RAW RSS data is available here
Note that there does not appear to be any sustained upwards trend post 1998.
Here is the entire RSS MSU dataset plotted:
click for a larger image
re: resource wars over due to technology
Unfortunately, humans haven’t changed much, just their toys. We quickly fall into wars around resources, faster than the resources dwindle. Do we hate muslims because of their religion, because they hate us, or because they have the lion’s share of high-grade sweet crude oil?
WHEN, not if, we enter into another severe cold minimum, agricultural expansion will shrivel up to nothing in one growing season and then will stay that way long after food stores are gone. What happens when Russia once again is unable to grow wheat? Or mid/far eastern countries are unable to grow enough rice to feed their population explosion? What happens when the world, including our allies have to get their oil from US?
The eastern oil countries will fall back into camels and tents, a life style still evident there. Tribal wars will once again be the normal day to day life within these countries. But Japan, China, Russia, England, France, Spain, etc are highly developed countries (some more than others) where horse and buggy, hitch and plow, and water buckets hauled up from the well are just not a major or even minor part of their lives. The population as a whole has been lulled into a technology-based, food importing culture where the most important thing to do in a day is get to your job in the city, not stay warm for the day and stoke the fire at night, or gather and hunt for the day’s food and then prepare it from scratch.
That kind of oil-less, everything you own you make, daily living is, in reality, only a drop in temperature away for far more people than you think.
cohenite: Re: the critique of Schwartz, you seem to have grabbed on to one sentence, and because of some data that is very new and may well be wrong or represent only a short-term fluctuation, you dismiss the entire critique. In fact, the critique of Schwartz presented there does not really rely on the ocean data at all. Perhaps you should read it in detail and then tell us what parts you disagree with and why.
Unfortunately, humans haven’t changed much, just their toys.
Pamela, I agree with you on most issues, but I disagree strongly with your pessimism.
Humans have changed hugely. We used to be creatures who had a 10% chance of reaching the age of 40. We are no longer that sort of creature. This has changed everything, including morals in general and willingness to go to war in particular.
Cold Max is not impossible (esp. around the edges), but it is unlikely to be the rule. I don’t predict any food wars.
We are still in a huge and rapid socioeconomic conversion process. A fairly bad cool (or warm) will slow it down, but I doubt it will stop it.
Washington universities are doing studies on vineyard susceptibility to cold. They are either hedging their bet re agriculture expansion of warm weather crops into traditionally cold weather areas (that are enjoying momentary global warming), or some folks in the ivory towers up there think that cold is a-comin. I noted too that 2007 American wine will be rather expensive as bottled supplies dwindle fast (you should be seeing 2007 on shelves now), since crops were, in places, less than half what they were at their peak due to cold weather. Some estates did not produce 2007 estate wine because they didn’t have any 2007 grapes from their fields. In stead, they used grapes from warmer areas for their non-estate labels. Think what the 2008 crop will be like. The models not only didn’t work for Antarctica, they sure didn’t work for upper US wine production.
“And please don’t confuse resolution with accuracy. Is my electronics background showing?”
LOL. The realclimate.org folks were wondering “why is it that electrical engineers seem to be AGW skeptics”. I didnt have the heart to explain it to them.
My Answer:
– we know the difference between a model and reality and we know reality trumps model every time
– We know non-linearities and feedbacks.
– The climate models are like capacitors, resistors and inductors. We can intuitively understand what makes sense and what doesnt. massive positive feedback in a system that those same hockey-stick maker claim is resiliently stable prior to man’s showing up sets of our BS detectors. we know what an overdamped system would look like.
The case for huge AGW impact, contrary to data backing it up, doesnt impress an EE, and appeals to authority and ‘this is too complicated for you peons to figure out so trust us’ is laughable.
Pamela Gray (17:26:21) :
“Washington universities are doing studies on vineyard susceptibility to cold. … Think what the 2008 crop will be like.”
Washington State isn’t the only area with grape problems, the San Francisco Chronicle reported “Cold nights in North Coast are hitting vineyards hard” at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/23/state/n063523D87.DTL
“After a long string of unseasonably low nighttime temperatures, officials estimate as much as 10 to 15 percent of Sonoma County’s $400 million crop has been lost to frost damage.
The cold weather is also hurting vineyards in Mendocino and Lake counties, where damage to the crop is expected to be about 20 percent.
In Napa County, a spokesman for Napa Valley Vintners says there has been little damage because most growers have adequate frost protection.”
PJ (20:38:01) :
“The realclimate.org folks were wondering “why is it that electrical engineers seem to be AGW skeptics”. I didn’t have the heart to explain it to them.”
I made the double mistake of reading “The Limits to Growth” right after my EE Systems course and was duly impressed with the block diagram in the middle of the book. Then I read Brian Aldiss’ Greybeard, about a society dealing with an economic collapse. Left me depressed for weeks.
Of course, the Club of Rome missed their forecasts, and there are interesting things afoot in biotech and nanotech that may get us past the next obstacle. Whatever that winds up being.
Just as long as we get off the planet before we reach the real limits.
The realclimate.org folks were wondering “why is it that electrical engineers seem to be AGW skeptics”. I didnt have the heart to explain it to them.
Har! Har!
– we know the difference between a model and reality and we know reality trumps model every time
– We know non-linearities and feedbacks.
Anyone who has stringently storyboarded a wargame (i.e., can “demonstrate the war via the game” well enough to satisfy a historian. Is well aware of those problems in a logical, if not mathematical, sense.
Unfortunately very, very few wargames are up to this standard. And even if they are, it is very obvious that while they–might–be adequate models of the past, they are near-useless for predicting the future.
Of course, the Club of Rome missed their forecasts
British understatement?
The Club of Rome made the incredibly basic mistake to equate “proven reserves” with that which was actually left. Those Bozos had us running out of aluminum (6% of earth’s crust).
Nor did they account for substitutability, technology, and methods to do far more and better with far less, etc.
It takes a very hi-IQ type to make a mistake that idiotic. Peak Oil is the same basic (stupid) error, taken a level wider. Note that only very intelligent people are capable of a.) coming up with, or b.) subscribing to, such a mammoth fallacy.
(Fortunately, as I do not have a high IQ, I am not thus encumbered.)
We may never reach those limits. Not for thousands of years. If ever, should we eventually come up with a decent mass-conversion process. In a way that would almost be a pity, because it will remove much of the incentive from extraplanetary expansion.
Many estimates of reserves are questionable because the owners of those reserves are naturally wanting to paint a rosier picture than is the case. It is also difficult to estimate reserves because extraction cost are a running average. Easy reserves are mined first, which provides cheap finished products. Harder to extract reserves are mined last, leading to much more expensive products. Because of the media’s reluctance to explain the technicalities of oil production, the general public thinks reserves are reserves are reserves. Most folks don’t know that oil prices in the news are quoted only for the sweet, suck it up with a straw, crude oil that takes just a relatively small amount of refining to turn it into gasoline. They also think that all we need to do is pump more oil out of the ground or find unknown pockets of the sweet stuff that blows out of the top of a well and haul it to a refinery in order to reduce the price. They may not understand that refineries were built to refine sweet oil into gasoline, not oil sands or shale. In some cases, oil shale looks like rocks and is mined in an open pit. Refining this stuff is a whole ‘nother ballgame. That kind of refinery is another kind of refinery all together. We don’t have very many of those kind. Its like when we stopped chopping down the big trees. Suddenly we needed to build saw mills that could handle smaller trees.
The bottom line is that I think sweet oil is at peak. The other stuff isn’t. But the other stuff isn’t very attractive as a business because it is very expensive and complicated to turn it into a finished high grade product for general consumption at the gas pump. When I hear comments like, “All we have to do is drill in Alaska if we can just tie up the greenies”, I wonder whether or not people will always be so gullible.
I agree with Pamela’s comments on sweet oil reaching its peak. Recent articles on the Bakken Formation in North Dakota show that, while it may be substantial, it will be incredibly difficult to get the oil out.
Here’s a little fun fact to serve as a reality check on just how much oil we (the world) are using:
Current world-wide consumption rate in 2006 was 86 million barrels of oil every day, or about 1000 barrels per second. If Lake Champlain (NY – VT border) were filled with oil rather than water, the world would consume it in 5 years and 2 months. For those on the west coast, the much deeper Lake Tahoe would be drained in 30 years and 3 months. That is assuming, of course, the rate of oil consumption does not increase.
While HadCrut is still outstanding, the GISS data is now available. April was 0.41. Now we can check Paul Clarke’s updated graph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:12/offset:-0.146/plot/uah/last:12/plot/rss/last:12/plot/gistemp/last:12/offset:-0.238
Looking at that graph, I don’t see the new GISS data. I found the data at this link:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
John M Reynolds
HadCRUT is in too:
2008/04 0.250 0.266 0.233 0.391 0.109 0.250 0.244 0.392 0.108 0.392 0.108
Paul Clarke’s graph now shows the GISS data, but not the HadCRUT yet.
John M Reynolds
HadCRUT brought January down from 0.056 to 0.053 while GISS changed both January and March. As of 2008/05/02 GISS had 2008 12 26 67 but is now 2008 13 26 60. — John M Reynolds