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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Leif Svalgaard (19:56:45) :
“My source? Me.
Or rather Stefan’s law: W = a T^4, where W is irradiance. From this we get:
dW/W=4dT/T,”
I’m confused. I’m not familiar with some of your notation. What I am familiar with is something like:
W = a T^4
dW/dT = 4 a T^3
dT = dW / ( 4 a T^3)
a is Stefan’s Constant, per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan-Boltzmann_Law it’s 5.67 x 10^-8 in units watts/m^2/K^4. For T = 300K,
dT = dW / [4 (5.67 x 10^-8) (2.7 x 10^7)]
dT = dW / 6.12
for dW = 0.2W/m^2
dT = 0.033 K
Leif,
I haven’t done calculus for a while but I believe if you take the derivative of T^4 you get 4T^3.
I think no one is giving enough consideration to the thermostatic effect of water vapor. As the air gets warmer, the water vapor has to travel higher before it condenses to give back off the heat of evaporation it collected on the surface. The convection of that change of state energy goes up unimpeded through any and all GHGs. With the radiation occuring at higher altitudes in a warmer atmosphere, there is less atmosphere above it to block it. As for the chart, it is clear that Hansen and the IPCC are disproven. Their models predicted a rise that never happened … perioid. It is frightening to see continued political carping to limit CO2 on the basis of faulty computer models. Compared to geologic records, CO2 concentration today is very low. It’s been this low only once before ~280 MYA but jumped back to 5X what it is now. Does it actually matter whether the reason CO2 jumped was some huge volcano or some yet unbeknownst hominid species who industrialized on fossil fuel? The answer is .. No it does not. CO2 is CO2 and is good for life on the planet at 5X and even 10X concentrations of today’s. Life is all that should matter and it does better with more CO2. The affect CO2 has on climate on the other hand remains nebulous..
I advise AGW skeptics that more carefully take into account all implications of Leif’s position. According to him it turns out that large temperature swings not only in last 30 years, but even in pre 20th century periods cannot be explained away by variation of sun energy output. So, we must think harder about natural modes of climate fluctuations to discover the way in which climate behaves, and consequently, changes.
This position is much less attractive for AGW alarmists then conventional “it’s the Sun, stupid” paradigm. Their favorite storyline is “Sun was culprit of global warming from Big Bang until 1977, and then CO2 suddenly takes over, and we know that, because TSI has declined since that time, and we don’t have any other candidate”. If Leif is right, they are pretty much in cold water – whatever caused global warming and cooling in previous centuries, probably could be the culprit now as well. Only way to make Leif’s position consistent with AGW alarmism is to accept some very extreme Hockey Stick vision of pre-industrial climate stability, which is now widely discredited.
Leif. Perhaps to save those of us who left school a long time ago some pain, you could have revealed the steps in your calculations that show the ‘a’ cancelled. Anyhow, here they are:
W = a T^4
dW/dT=4aT^3 or dW= dT.4a T^3
Then dividing by W = a T^4 gives (dW= dT.a T^4)/(W = a T^4)
The a cancels, and (4 T^3 dT)/T^4 =4dT/T
Therefore, dW/W=4dT/T
Sorry, that should be (dW= dT.a T^3)/(W = a T^4)
Sorry again. I am popping backwards and forwards between this site, and typing a thesis (Biotechnology, not climate!) with one hand, as the hand possessed of ‘cunning’ has severe RSI.
That formula should be (dW= dT.4a T^3)/(W = a T^4)
not, (dW= dT.a T^4)/(W = a T^4) or (dW= dT.a T^3)/(W = a T^4)
I don’t know if this is relevant and I might be way off the mark, however I have never seen this (below) observation ‘published’ anywhere).. I feel it might well be important ….
I look at the sky every day,( because I am interested, and just to see what the ‘conditions’ are). I live on the south west coast of
England (and where I live is renowned for its ‘warmer’ climate, and ‘clean air’ (away from big cities)
I have observed in the past, the sky looking ‘so blue’ and subtly going to ‘indigo’ towards the zenith, I would call this a truly ‘clear blue sky’.
But I have not seen any ‘clear blue sky’s’ for a very long time (years),
Instead, I see a blue(ish) sky that looks like it has a ‘wash’ of white over it. The blue looks like it has a ‘haze’ over it (milky), and this haze is ‘thicker’ some days and thinner others but is always
there. Every ‘clear’ day for years has not been not truly ‘clear’
Now, what I find interesting is that (my wife being a Coastguard) up until fairly recently she and her colleagues (all over the country) would take daily observations of cloud cover for the UK
Met office. She did this for years, and became quite a cloud ‘expert… Anyway I asked her about her how she would have ‘logged the sky (as I see it ) and she said that it would be logged as a
‘cloud free sky ‘ . I cant disagree with that, but she does see what I mean about the thin ‘haze’ … Now the question Is how much sunlight is that Haze reflecting back to space ??? I’ll
bet that it amounts to a lot! , And given that it is not ‘logged/recorded’… no ‘correlation’ to cooling and cloud cover is going to be possible (as I see It)
Until the beginning of this year I had been completely morphed into a “green hippie” by the constant media stream and Gore’s science fiction flop.
I am now converted 😉
Whilst the debate about solar and CO2 impacts can continue into eternity this needs to be considered:
The entire AGW theory upheld by Gore et al is based MAINLY on two graphs:
A) The M. Mann “Hockeystick”
B) The Vostok Ice core data
A) This graph has been disproved and is now rubbished by many scientists. It must be noted that this graph, due to data errors, ommitted the Medieval Warming Period (which had notably HIGHER temperatures) and the Little Ice Age (which had notably lower temperatures). From this we can conclude that since 1000AD recordings we are at a reasonable temperature level compared with the two periods. This graph is still shown in textbooks and by the media, usually along with the population Hockeystick graph.
B) AGW preachers use this graph to “prove” how increases in CO2 lead to an increase in temperature when in fact the superposition of these two graphs shows a CO2 LAG of up too 800years.( ie temp goes up FIRST and co2 goes up 800 years later), which makes sense with the current steady increase in CO2 (800 years ago…1208AD…Medieval WP…KACHING!).
This means that in reality the EXACT OPPOSITE is occurring to this theory!
The two fundamental arguments of the AGW theory are total lies! We must also note that Computer Models are USELESS as they cannot predict the past or future.
This should be enough to destroy this dangerous movement. Yes, yes allright CO2 has warming potential…the sun is not the only component…Gore “loves polar bears”, etc etc but we cannot only dwell on detail! We must also take note of what is staring us in the face.
Yep and so thats the two cents from a teenager…
Great site Anthony, i sincerely Hope views do continue to increase!
REPLY: Thank you for the kind words, and welcome to pragmatic science. -Anthony
Brendan and Stargazer:
Anthony had a post last year (Nov. ?) on the Big Bear Earthshine project to measure the albedo.
Haven’t seen new data since, but the trend since ca. ’98 was sharply higher.
About factors of 4 and the albedo, etc. All of these factors are subsumed into my constant ‘a’. So: dW = 4a T^3 dT. Now, 4a T^3 = (4a T^4)/T =4W / T, hence dW =4W/T dT, or dT = (T/4/W) dW = (300/4/1361) dW = 0.055 dW.
So, my ‘a’ is a = s*(1-A)/4, where ‘s’ is Stefan-Boltzmann’s constant, ‘A’ is the albedo, and ‘4’ is because the Earth is round. But because ‘a’ cancels out, none of these complications matter.
I left these details out because 1) they are well-known [or should be! at least in this crowd] and 2) to make people think about what is going on.
About climate sensitivity: my dW is dW outside the atmosphere. It is not always clear what dW people are referring to when they talk about sensitivity. In any event, the point was that the changes in direct solar output are too small to account for the climate changes we have seen.
It occurred to me that I forgot to take emissivity into account. An alternate derivation becomes:
Given W = a T^4,
then a = W / T^4, where a is now emissivity times Stefan’s Constant.
The derivative: dW/dT = 4 a T^3
Substituting a: dW/dT = 4 (W / T^4) T^3 = 4 W / T
Solving for dT: dT = dW T / 4 / W [Which is what Lief said]
Using T=300 and W=1361: T / 4 / W is 300 / 4 / 1361 = 0.055
So dT = 0.055 dW
and for a dW of 0.2, dT would be 0.11 K.
Which is just what Leif said. Ah well, most posts disagree with Leif, I suppose a few that agree with him can’t hurt. [No smiley here, not with what WordPress did to my eight-followed-by-close-paren in my last post. Grr.]
bsneath says this above about atmospheric temperature dependancy on water in the atmosphere:
————————–
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.
——————————————-
With logic like this we can conclude that drunken driving has no affect on the number of deaths on the highway. It is transient. Drunk drivers are mostly only around in the evening.
What’s up with that??
Ric: you surely mean 0.011 K …
This post (and many others here) got me to wondering…
A while back I came across a book called The Counter-Creationism Handbook by Mark Isaak, in which the author deals with hundreds of claims made by creationists and gives scientific rebuttals to all of them, complete with references to the scientific literature. The book is similar in style to an encyclopaedia, in that each point from the creationists is given its own heading (and a code for good measure), and is followed by its rebuttal and references.
Given the increasingly large body of evidence against AGW, does anyone know of a book or web site that treats climate change in a similar fashion? There are of course many web sites and books that state the case for those of us who don’t believe in AGW, but I’ve never seen a book that deals systematically with the claims of the warmists and provides rebuttals, complete with scientific references, to all of them. It would be extremely useful in conversations I have with zealots from time to time. (Probably the closest I’ve come to this is Michael Crichton’s novel State of Fear in which one character who doesn’t believe in AGW has conversations with believers and does provide rebuttals, complete with scientific references – yes, in a novel – to these points. But Crichton’s book isn’t a complete treatment of the subject, and besides, it’s a novel…)
Thanks for any suggestions. (If there isn’t such a book, I’m retiring in a few months so maybe this would make a good project…)
Leif Svalgaard (06:54:23) :
“Ric: you surely mean 0.011 K …”
Oops. Of course. Double oops – I also meant to say Leif throughout.
The earth is part of a closed system – it has its own energy output (nuclear fission based) and a constant energy input from the sun. (I am going to ignore the long term cycle that may be responsible for true ice ages). Now, we see volcanos blowing their lids every so often, and they have an impact on climate that is measurable. We know where all the land based volcanos are, and have in fact been able to correlate climate patterns with them. We cannont easily assess historic undersea volcanic eruptions, and are only begining to assess these hidden energy/particle sources. (Like, maybe the underice volcanos in Antartica?)
Leif is correct when he sums the energy from the sun and says it only varies by x, and x can’t account for the changes in temperature. We know (because its stated ad infinituum) that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping more heat inside the eath’s atmospheric blanket. In other words, CO2 restricts energy cooling through radiation heat transfer during the night time. Now, I think this is one of the better explanations for that process (http://brneurosci.org/co2.html) that I’ve seen. But it can be agreed that increases in atmosoheric CO2 can lead to an increase in temperature, no matter what physics you ascribe to (I do not buy a linear correlation). The arguement then becomes, “how much?” Despite all this, CO2 does not explain the swings associated with the little ice age. We have good sunspot correlations for that – I assume the Leif would say (see the assume!) solar energy output even then would not be significant to have an effect on world temperature.
So, its not the heat. But as seen above, in discussing CO2, we are not a hot plate – our atmosphere also has an impact, large or small as you take it. Therefore, exluding sources of volcanos that we are unaware of, the LIA must result from some atmospheric interaction. The best theories I have seen have been cosmic ray theory and the UV upper atmosphere theory. Both may have an impact – the direction of that impact can in fact be correlated to sunspot activity. So, there may be a solar connection, even if it is unrelated to solar heat flux to the planet.
If you can think of other input variables that could cause temps to drop, I would like to hear it.
Oops – I started writing this post in response to the change in albedo. I haven’t looked closely at that, but that works in well with atmospheric interactions with solar energy. I had meant to mention Roy Spencer’s work on cloud formation as an ameliorating factor to massive temperature swings in the atmosphere. His work fits in well with how I understand heat and mass transfer to work (I did my master’s in that area). The increase in albedo could be directly related to his theory.
Leif- Agreed. I confused changes in solar output with forcing changes due to greenhouse gases.
I echo Pierre Gosselin’s comments. And, by the way, when you graph where the supposed green house gases are eminating from, isn’t it true that the man-made quantity is significantly LESS than the naturally occurring quantity, i.e. produced by nature and/or natural events? So, then, how do we harness the harmful natural emissions or, if one thinks this forward, could harnessing naturally occurring green house gases have unintended consequences that we might not yet understand? Just trying to think proactively.
“Mac”
OK, if sun fluctuations are not causing yearly temperature variations, and CO2 doesn’t seem to work either, what is causing yearly “climate”?
Perhaps we aren’t measuring in enough places and temperature is “stable.”
We don’t really have complete temperature data on the atmosphere do we? Do we understand how much the land and oceans absorb and release heat, and when? Do we know whether the migration of heat from inside the earth is constant?
I suppose albedo could vary year to year as others here imply. But why?
In terms of effects on life, should we talk about surface temperature as the temperature of a patch of ground or sea, or is the surface atmosphere the better gauge?
My guess is we don’t know the answer to any of these things. Ergo, don’t try to solve a “problem” we don’t understand.
[…] Years of Global Warming? Posted on July 4, 2008 by Spag This just released chart shows the temperatures since 1988. Interesting that we are cooler now than we were then, and that […]
antioxexpress (11:01:43) :
unintended consequences
Lets say CO2 climate models that predict we will have hotter dryer climate in the next 20 years. Commercial seed providers develop seeds for that type of climate. The goverment demands that 30% of our fuel come from plants. Water lines only have to be buried 24″ instead of 48″ deep. Low and behold we enter into another little Ice age. We would end up with the wrong type of seeds and the wrong mandate and a whole lot of frozen water lines all based on flawed climate models.
Personal, I would want a couple of people tared, feather and thrown to the polar bears.
This whole global warming hypothsis has gotten out of controle. I’m no expert but it has feed the green machine to a frenzy. and now the whole world must buy a new car as if it is a pair of shoes. Has anyone ever written anything on the reprecusion of what would happen? Trucks cars and ships run on oil and feed the world they keep people working and paying for you to make this hypothisises. If we all move back to the caves and club eachother over the head for food will people like al gore who has made 100 million dollars off thhis hypothasis be happy as he flys above in his gas guzzleing jet? I have come to realize that it is oil the practical and now fuel that we do have against an unproven hypothasis that threatens our way of life getting food to the stores and medicine to the hospitals and people aquiering wealth to go to those places.
It has elevated into crazies on the left and practical people on the right. while i don’t mind buying a new car when i need it right now the world runs on oil. People shouldnt have to afford a whole new way of life to make the far left loons rich on their global warming fanatisisums and investments.
Everyone wants a cleaner world when they can afford it. People shouldnt have to struggle over this b.s. To the rich its like buying a new pair of shoes to the poor its a decieding factor of should i eat macaronie for 20 years or be forced to buy a new car heating system and on and on. This whole thing is inane.
[…] the time I was eye-balling some summary charts. Recently, though, some real scientific data has been compiled, and it demonstrates how wrong Dr James Hansen has been for two decades (to put that in perspective […]