Waiting for HadCRUT

One Thousand Quatloos that it’s over +0.17C.

Does it matter? The alarmist will tell us how bad it is this month regardless of the number (+/-).

Considering that GISS data for April when it first came out was .51 (later reduced to .41), and HadCRU was .25…I would think the author’s SWAG is a good one. No way CRU will be over .17.

hadcru will come in .092C lower than Giss.

The Hathaway comments came from this article:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080611-sunspot-activity.html

Dear Tom,
What has been buffering the effects of the greenhouse gasses for the past eight years?

Tom,
What I took him to be saying, and it is always possible that I interpreted it different from how it was intended, was that solar activity plays a smaller role in setting global temperature than PDO, volcanos, and greenhouse gasses.
I disagree with that without any supporting evidence but only at an instinctive level. As the sun is the ultimate source of all energy to the planet, I find it difficult to believe that solar output could drop and yet these greenhouse gasses would keep the planet as warm. The gasses don’t GENERATE heat, they simply prevent infrared generated by solar energy warming the surface from being radiated into space. Basically, the greenhouse would have its greatest impact at night. But without the sun you don’t get the energy to generate the infrared that the greenhouse gasses would then trap.
So, I find it difficult to understand at a very fundamental level how greenhouse gases would maintain a warm earth in the face of a reduction in solar output when the greenhouse gases are simply trapping radiated solar heat to begin with. And since water vapor is the primary GHG, and since decreased solar radiation would (I would think) reduce evaporation and heating of the ocean, his comments seem to be odd on many different levels.
It seems to me that he has worded his comments in such a way as to appeal to a certain set of people. Or maybe better, worded them in such a way as to be careful not to raise the ire of a certain set of people. It was almost as if he was very careful not to dispel the notion that greenhouse gases are the primary source of global warming. It is as if he went out of his way to “play the game” by mentioning the requisite buzzwords.

Tom,
I don’t think the way crosspatch stated it changes much at all about Hathaway’s comments. Since the Maunder Minimum had a huge effect on earth’s climate and would be about the most extreme lack of sun activity recorded, Hathaway is basically saying he doesn’t think the sun’s effect on earth compares to CO2’s. These people honestly believe that CO2 is a way bigger forcing on climate than anything else, including the sun.

Tom,
The central point has always been the extent to which geenhouse gasses affect the climate. Non-feedback calculations give a value of roughly 1 C rise for doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentrations. Unproven positive feedbacks multiply this value by as much as five. The former value does not warrant draconian public policy measures, while the latter does. “Flattish spots” as we are experiencing currently strongly suggest that the human signal, i.e. temperature rise caused the CO2 increase, is not that robust and that the former value is the more reliable one.

Crosspatch:
In your most recent comment again there is a big consequence of your phrasing versus Hathaway’s. You wrote that you took Hathaway’s remark to mean that “solar activity” plays a smaller role…than PDO,…. But Hathaway did not mean that, nor say that, regarding solar activity in generalHe meant and said it only in regard to the particular quantitative degree of change in solar activity that would result from a Maunder minimum.
Your instinct is absolutely correct that there exists some degree of the Sun’s lower radiance that would overwhelm the effects of greenhouse gases. The only mismatch between your instinct and Hathaway’s calculation is the degree of the change needed for that overwhelming. Hathaway (and the vast majority of climate scientists) base their estimates of the quantitative degrees of effects on decades of empirical work that goes far beyond simply looking at trends. Nothing personal, but I trust their carefully considered and empirically based calculation more than I do your instinct, with regard to how much effect a Maunder minimum would have. (I don’t trust myinstinct either. I’m only a research methodologist, statistician, and decision theorist, but those qualifications count zero regarding this particular, narrow, topic in climate science.)
Climatologists have calculated that the Sun’s output would change by such a small amount as a result of a Maunder minimum, that the cooling effect would not outweigh the continued warming from the remaining (large) solar output being re-emitted as longwave radiation by the ground and water, and then being blocked/absorbed/re-emitted by greenhouse gases. They are not at all disagreeing that someday the Sun’s output could drop enough to result in net cooling.
Regarding water vapor: The water vapor content of the air is not much affected by solar radiation. It is affected overwhelmingly (at a global scale) by the temperature of the air. The warmer the air, the more water vapor it holds. (Clouds are not water vapor.) That’s why water vapor in the air is an amplifying feedback: If the air warms for any reason, more water vapor accumulates there, which traps more heat, and so on. The reason air temperature is the main determinant of water vapor content, is that there are vast pools of liquid water available to go into the atmosphere as vapor if there’s room, and there are vast quantities of particles in the air available to be seeds for precipitation to take water out of the air if there’s not room. So the limiting factor is only how much room is available in the air, which is determined primarily by the air temperature.

TSI does indeed rise and fall to a lesser extent than other measures. One of those ways is to measure the magnetic field (as in it can slip to the 50’s and rise to triple digits). Even better, just measure cosmic rays. They go up and down just like sunspot numbers. Only in reverse. And trends in cosmic rays can be seen in the shape of the rise and fall, not in overall increase from time one to time two, like the AGW’s keep harping on. Size doesn’t matter. Thickness is where its at. Time spent at cosmic maxima leads to satisfying conclusions.
Anthony, if you print this tongue in cheek expose’ of cosmic rays, you are one cool dude.

What drives the PDO? ENSO.
Based on this study, “The PDO is dependent upon ENSO on all timescales. To first order, the PDO can be considered the reddened response to both atmospheric noise and ENSO, resulting in more decadal variability than either.”
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/Newmanetal2003.pdf
I will never understand the “flipping” of the PDO. I do understand that El Ninos are more frequent when the PDO is positive (The reverse when it’s negative), but it’s still an SST anomaly. It acts like all others, with respect to global temperature.