Recently, Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS gave his 20 year anniversary speech before congress, in which he was restating the urgency of the global warming crisis we now face. Warnings of tipping points, and a call for putting “energy executives on trial for crimes against humanity and nature” were parts of that speech.
Here are the just published global temperature data sets for UAH (University of Alabama) and RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) and the 20 year time-line. Dr. Hansen if you are reading can you kindly point out where in the time-line the crimes occurred and tipping points are?
Click for larger images
I would have thought the CO2 enhanced warming would have been further along by now. Maybe the graphs are inverted?
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Shouldn’t that first graph have the June 2008 anomoly at -0.114 degrees, instead of +0.114?
REPLY: yes thanks, missed the – sign, fixed
On the UAH graph, shouldn’t the June value be shown as -0.114°C?
REPLY: yes thanks, missed the – sign, fixed
Yabut, things were going swell at the 10yr point. Extrapolation CAN be fun, but is not for the amateur. 😉
I see the next 12 months as being critically important with respect to my personal skepticism of AGW. Should we begin to see -0.4 anomalies or greater, then in my opinion the likely correlation with sunspot activity has been reaffirmed. On the other hand, if the anomaly begins to elevate, then the AGW position gains validity. These are interesting times!
With respect to CO2’s role as a greenhouse gas vs. H2O, have studies looked at the extent to which human activities are directly increasing humidity levels? e.g. dams, agricultural & residential irrigation in formerly arid climes, etc. as opposed to the CO2 induced humidity theory?
As this blog cruises along, I’d like to follow up on my idea posted at:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/thanks-again-to-all-my-readers-another-record-month/
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Alarmists”
Another idea: How about a table called the:
“Celebrity Carbon Crater Table”
There’s nothing that gets more under my skin than hypocrites telling me how to live.
Anthony,
if you add the a.m. feature to your website, I’ll boost my monetary contributions whenever you undertake another trip, like the last one. You got it in writing!
Even the 12-month running means make Hansen’s forecast look bad. The 12-month running means to June were…
Year UAH RSS
1988 0.135 0.148
2008 0.090 0.122
The current RSS 12-month running mean of 0.122 is below the RSS 12-month running mean of 0.129 for the 12 months ended December 1987.
The current (unofficial) UAH 12-month running mean of 0.090 is below the UAH 12-month running mean of 0.098 for the 12 months ended September 1980. No, that’s not a typo.
At the rate things are going, Hadley’s 2008 annual mean temperature should easily be below the 1995 value, and possibly the 1990 value. Even the GISS annual mean has a shot a being below its 1995 and/or 1990 values. The reason I’m thinking about annual values is that they should be coming out around the time the next US president takes office in mid-January.
May I be the first to express my appreciation to all the movie stars and politicians for flying their private jets between their various mansions. Thanks for doing your part in preventing HGC (Heliogenic Global Cooling)!
Off Topic: I love finding data from reconstructions that apparently never got any press, or maybe I missed it.
http://i25.tinypic.com/2hgv0nb.jpg
REFERENCE: Linsley, B.K., G.M. Wellington, and
D.P. Schrag, 2000, Decadal Sea Surface Temperature Variability
in the Sub-Tropical South Pacific from 1726 to 1997 A.D.,
Science v.290, pp1145-1148, 10 Nov 2000.
Overview
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/linsley2000/linsley2000.html
Data
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/coral/east_pacific/rarotonga_sr-ca.txt
I feel sure the humidity factor will be studied and found more alarming even than CO2 was, just as soon as we’ve switched to a hydrogen-based economy.
Anthony:
I would love to see somebody correlate the number of AGW news stories with these graphs. I’m willing to bet the most will be seen (perhaps with some lead) in 1998 and 2006.
Where are all the alarmists now?
bsneath,
Given the now negative correlation between temperature and CO2 over the last 10 (maybe 20 years), it doesn’t say much for the ‘CO2 is the overwhelming AGW factor ‘ crowd. There is AGW, if you define AGW as human induced warming from all sources (land use changes, CO2, UHI), not just human produced CO2, its just the effect is not particularly worrisome and all the currently proposed policies to control the climate will not have an effect and will be a huge waste of resources.
Oh, I forgot a really large human contribution to ‘warming’, particulate matter (soot) from burning fossil fuels, wood, dung (both still a major source of ‘power’ in India, China, and Africa). 94% of Arctic melt may be caused by this source. It is most likely a larger influence than human produced CO2 and a major reason I am in favor of shifting to nuclear (which has its own problems) and other sources of power generation.
bsneath: Should we begin to see -0.4 anomalies or greater, then in my opinion the likely correlation with sunspot activity has been reaffirmed.
I think that leap is much too great. There is no evidence that such a cooling is caused by the lack of solar activity.
“There’s nothing that gets more under my skin than hypocrites telling me how to live.”
I’ll believe there may be an emergency when Hansen abandons his daily, ~85 mi one-way commute. Until then, it’s all alarmist nonsense.
If you squint just a little, you see an inverted hockey stick…
bsneath, yeah, he’s touched on the humidity levels before – the humidity at most elevations is dropping or is flat. If I remember correctly, there was only one elevation range that had a slight rise in humidity.
From all indicators, people aren’t significantly impacting humidity on a global scale. If we are making any increases in humidity, those increases are being massively overwhelmed by other forces which affect global humidity levels.
You might be onto something though. If the AGW crowd ever relinquishes their bizarre claims that CO2 is a greenhouse gas ‘pollutant’ by which humans are going to destroy the earth, I would not be surprised to see them move over to try claiming that people are causing GW by cranking out too much H2O into the atmosphere. The money/power movements behind the CO2 crazies can latch onto anything.
bsneath:
With respect to CO2’s role as a greenhouse gas vs. H2O, have studies looked at the extent to which human activities are directly increasing humidity levels? e.g. dams, agricultural & residential irrigation in formerly arid climes, etc. as opposed to the CO2 induced humidity theory?
It wouldn’t matter. Waters has a very transient presence in the atmosphere, and the concentration of water vapor can vary dramatically over short periods of time and over short distances, both vertically and horizontally. Furthermore, “humidity” is a bit of a misleading term; in the colloquial sense, humidity refers to “relative humidity,” which is analogous to “how much more water can the air hold before it is saturated.” What’s important in absolute humidity, which is a function of air pressure, and the factor which determines the total amount of water which can be held as a vapor in the air. If the total amount water held increases, then the H2O feedback loop can initiate and amplify temperatures.
But, again, the key thing is that water vapor has a very short residency time in the atmosphere. It goes up then comes out a very short while later, on the order of minutes to hours (as opposed to CO2, which has a residency time of around a decade). Having a large man-made reservoir could enhance the relative humidity on the windward side of the body of water, but this really just means that it’ll be more likely to rain on that side of the reservoir. Remember that, for the most part, it rains when the air becomes saturated with water vapor (yeah yeah, you need CN’s and the BF process to initiate, but this is still a general rule). It is unlikely that these things could have an effect which translates to the global scale.
Bill Marsh, don’t be an ignorant. Even from the blog post’s graphs, it is evident that the temperatures have generally increased in the last 20 years. The first half of those years are generally under the blue line, whereas the last few years are generally above it. This is more about making marketing statements which signify nothing, as in “today is colder than the same day 20 years ago, GW disproven, FACE!!1!
It’s quite childish. But it does provoke some brief chuckles. Science = 0, Entertainment = 0.2
David C. Smith said :
Where are all the alarmists now?
They are in denial. I heard one (on FNC) admit to a cold January 2008, but claim temperatures were warmer through the rest of this year.
Who is the denier, now?
As fine an example of 1/f noise as ever I’ve seen.
In regards to increased water vapor in the atmosphere due to dams, agriculture, etc….
As water evaporates, water vapor concentrations increase in the atmosphere and then when a certain saturation level is reached it drops out. That is all well and good but we are talking about temperature and temperature recordings. In general I would think that the time it takes for water vapor to reach a saturation level in the atmosphere is a lot longer then the time it takes for it to drop out so to speak.
Temperature recordings are taken daily, hourly and even every minute and those temperature recording are manipulated by tricky Jimmy H and his tricky secret temperature upward adjusting software algorithms so my question is would this relationship of more water usage and slowing increasing water vapor and temperature recording gymnastics lead to higher temperature recordings in general by tricky Jimmy H and his lap dog buddy Gavin.
Just wondering!
Love and Kisses
😉 .
It is unlikely that these things could have an effect which translates to the global scale.
You are correct, but assume there is a global scale effect that needs to be explained. The evidence says all we have to explain is local and regional effects and water vapour is a good candidate for much of these effects.
Show me persuasive evidence that we are dealing with a global effect and I will change my mind.
I think bsneath asks a pertinent question and I’m not sure all of you answered the implications of what he asked. Consider the recent WUWT post re Tucumcari; it seems clear that local land use differences (irrigation) messed with the local RH at the station at some point in time and affected the temp calculations. Multiply this effect of land use etc with a number of stations worldwide and you could conclude that the *global* temp is rising despite no real change in *global* RH. This to me is what the surfacestations project seems to be proving.
Overall what the AGW stand appears to me as is overly simplistic — take a lot of local temp readings that appear to be rising (for various local reasons) and run the data through a computer program that’s designed to figure the effect of rising CO2 and –surprise! — CO2 looks like the reason. (I’m surprised nobody really twigs on this: a program designed to model and otherwise concentrate on CO2 is going to think in terms of CO2. It can’t think in terms of local temps being artificially buggered via changes in land use or irrigation or…) The reason I say this is that it seems to me that the major GCM milestones predicted (e.g. oceanic warming) are proving to be incorrect, which says that the premise (CO2 is responsible) is incorrect.
i’m very interested as to why the Satellite and land-based surface temps have been diverging lately. It’s not something mentioned in this post but I’ve noticed it playing with graphs at woodfortrees and so have many others.