We still need to study nature’s contribution to trend
Published Saturday, September 27, 2008, Fairbanks AK News-Miner
Recent studies by the Hadley Climate Research Center (UK), the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Alabama Huntsville show clearly that the rising trend of global average temperature stopped in 2000-2001. Further, NASA data shows that warming in the southern hemisphere has stopped, and that ocean temperatures also have stopped rising.
The global average temperature had been rising until about 2000-2001. The International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and many scientists hypothesize rising temperatures were mostly caused by the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide (CO2), and they predicted further temperature increases after 2000. It was natural to assume that CO2 was responsible for the rise, because CO2 molecules in the atmosphere tend to reflect back the infrared radiation to the ground, preventing cooling (the greenhouse effect) and also because CO2 concentrations have been rapidly increasing since 1946. But, this hypothesis on the cause of global warming is just one of several.
Unfortunately, many scientists appear to forget that weather and climate also are controlled by nature, as we witness weather changes every day and climate changes in longer terms. During the last several years, I have suggested that it is important to identify the natural effects and subtract them from the temperature changes. Only then can we be sure of the man-made contributions. This suggestion brought me the dubious honor of being designated “Alaska’s most famous climate change skeptic.”
The stopping of the rise in global average temperature after 2000-2001 indicates that the hypothesis and prediction made by the IPCC need serious revision. I have been suggesting during the last several years that there are at least two natural components that cause long-term climate changes.
The first is the recovery (namely, warming) from the Little Ice Age, which occurred approximately 1800-1850. The other is what we call the multi-decadal oscillation. In the recent past, this component had a positive gradient (warming) from 1910 to 1940, a negative gradient (cooling — many Fairbanksans remember the very cold winters in the 1960s) from 1940 to 1975, and then again a positive gradient (warming — many Fairbanksans have enjoyed the comfortable winters of the last few decades or so) from 1975 to about 2000. The multi-decadal oscillation peaked around 2000, and a negative trend began at that time.
The second component has a large amplitude and can overwhelm the first, and I believe that this is the reason for the stopping of the temperature rise. Since CO2 has only a positive effect, the new trend indicates that natural changes are greater than the CO2 effect, as I have stated during the last several years.
Future changes in global temperature depend on the combination of both the recovery from the Little Ice Age (positive) and the multi-decadal oscillation (both positive and negative). We have an urgent need to learn more about these natural changes to aid us in predicting future changes.
Syun-Ichi Akasofu is a former director of the Geophysical Institute and the International Arctic Research Center, both on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
There is an instructive folk tale in Greece about how people stick to their opinions through hell and high water and contradicting and even endangering data.
“A new couple start arguing about how to clean a fish for cooking. The man says, ‘you clean it with a knife’ . The woman says ‘no, you clean it with scissors’. One heated argument follows another, and the man, a typical MCP puts the wife in a pail and starts lowering her in the well, trying to impose his opinion. He asks her from the top? ‘What do you use?’ she replies ‘scissors’. He starts dipping the pail in the water up to her mouth. The reply is still ‘scissors’. He lowers her completely in the water. She lifts her hand and makes a scissors gesture with her fingers.”
That is where the story ends.
More to the point “I have made up my mind, don’t bother me with the facts” even if the facts are the Thames freezing over.
Unfortunately there is more at stake to global warming sticktoitivness. Already there are food riots because of the misguided, by global warming scares, ethanol policy, third world people are starving. If the policies that are proposed are imposed, millions will die in the third world if not billions.
More to the point “I have made up my mind, don’t bother me with the facts” even if the facts are the Thames freezing over.
John Philip (02:58:50) :
Two questions – why are you using the 3rd IPCC Assessment Report? Wouldn’t the 4th (2007) be six years better? Can I expect the 5th to rely on solar forcings to explain the cooling that may continue until the next PDO flip?
M White (02:09:20) :
“…I’ve got candles.”
And I can curse the darkness.
@John Phillip:
I have to request that you retract the claims you made using a poll in this comment:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/26/the-day-the-earth-cooled/#comment-43682
You have not taken the time to provide full answers to the questions about the poll’s methodology. Some of which were asked of you here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/26/the-day-the-earth-cooled/#comment-43730
Without this information, it is impossible to ascertain the veracity of the poll’s results and therefore is an invalid citation supporting your argument support your claim of a scientific consensus in favor of AGW.
Have a good day.
dennis ward:
What I want to know is why people STILL believe that because global temperatures do not rise in a straight line that long term global warming has stopped? It has paused many times since the industrial revolution only for it to continue afterwards, as it will undoubtedly do again.
Straw man argument there, dennis. No one says the long term GW has stopped.
The question is, why do you believe the warming will “continue afterwards”?
But I see no evidence of temperatures plummeting today despite the much trumpeted cyclical reduction of solar activity. Why?
Another straw man, dennis? Come on. You people really are desperate, aren’t you?
The BBC believes man made warming is a fact and conducted “the world’s largest climate modelling experiment.” The link shows the predicted results on the UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml
It’ll be interesting to see what notice Mother Nature takes of the models.
Bruce Cobb (06:08:57) :
“…Another straw man, dennis? Come on. You people really are desperate, aren’t you? ”
Cognitive Dissonance is a wholly unpleasant experience.
It always contains an opportunity for growth and maturity, but there is NEVER any guarantee that either growth or maturity will happen, and ALWAYS the danger of the opposite – stagnation or even regression, i.e. a person can become more stunted and more immature after an episode of Cognitive Dissonance than he or she was before it.
And please remember we are only witnessing the first stages of Cognitive Dissonance.
We are going to have a very harsh and cold winter this year.
That by itself is not much of a problem for the warmers. They have in the past already told us that cold weather is caused by warmer climate.
What will be the difficult and painful problem for the warmers this winter is the widespread public mockery.
“Global Warming,” even if it is re-branded as “Climate Change,” will be subjected to public (and political) ridicule this winter as never before.
“We thought we had the public (and the politicians) on our side. How could they turn on us like this?”
By next summer, “Global Warming” will have ceased to be a subject of discussion even for stand-up comics.
“Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.” – unknown
One can visit just about any discussion forum on GW and see the same scripted responses from AGW supporters.
[…] Global warming has paused? Anthony Watts has the […]
M White (06:27:24)
The frightening thing is that they are talking of the “experiment”.
The language itself is being destroyed. Unless it is a psychological experiment: how many people will be fooled by talking about model results as experimental ones.
I have to add that here is where the koutsoyannis et all publication ( see CA threads) applies. The UK certainly is not a continent, as some say that the climate model predictions are for, but a small area of the planet.
Actually if one makes the effort to go through the AR reports on all the other variables except temperature it is all there in spaghetti colors how badly the predictions fit the current data, for cloud cover for anything. It is just the optical illusion of treating the spaghetti width as if it is an error that confuses the eye not to see the bad fits. Follow the individual threads.
I am amazed how on such bad to horrid science a public station is trying to pull the wool over the eyes and other senses of the UK public. A lot of politics must be riding on this to try to stampede the public.
Why do you have Dr. John A. Zoidberg in Goreface?
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I met Dr. Akasofu once before I graduated from UAF. He asked me to stay on as a graduate student, but I had other plans. I still think he is a great scientist, and the descriptions above prove it.
It has long since been time for this subject to be turned back over to good scientists, whatever their opinions are. For too long it has been in the hands of scientists who are more alarmist and politician than they are scientists.
While I think some fellow physicists have messed this thing up, any good physicists should be well trained in subtracting known features from data so that they can explore the unknown. Any discipline of physics would demand that the warming data be shown to have the characteristics of the theory, or be told to go back to the drawing board and reexamine both the data and the theory.
Yet somehow, it has been acceptable to claim that the known past really didn’t happen, and that there were no normal variations, so that they could claim all the warming was man’s fault. Then when the data started going the wrong way, all of a sudden they admitted that there are normal variations and that the variations are masking the horrible truth. Though they still claim that the past didn’t happen. And they have been allowed to turn logic on its head. Except for a teeny fraction of heat due to things like tides and radioactive decays, all of our heat is due to the sun. Yet somehow they hold that the sun can’t be at fault for any warming.
And all the data is horribly flawed. Yet it seems more important to spend money on massive computer calculations of future woe, then it is to give the experts the resources to design and take better data to prove any of the fears. Instead, we rely on horrendously difficult feats of data manipulation and rush to make major harmfull changes now in order to supposedly save us from our fears of future harm.
There are scientists who have the skills to invent new mathematics to explore strings and m-branes and parallel universes. Others have the mathematical skill to use infinities to cancel out each other, leaving behind incredibly accurate predictive theories. Yet nobody has shown that any part of the known warming is actually following the known increase in CO2 based upon an acceptable theory of how CO2 should be warming the planet.
There should be CO2 based warming happening. It should be somewhere between what Dr. Akasofu is saying and what the others are trying to scare us with. If the past 150 years of data are trustable enough to use to change our whole economy, then that is more than enough time to be able to reliably subtract the vulcanos and MDOs and see if the remainder is due to CO2. If the remainder doesn’t have the right signature, is the theory wrong? Or can we tease the right signature out of some portion of the data, especially the more recent data with the rapid increase in CO2? Or maybe the data is not good enough to support the claims, and we need to go back to the drawing board and design a system good enough and wait long enough to get data to prove or disprove the claim.
But taking time to do good science isn’t in the alarmist’s plans. So they intimidate and manipulate to make sure their scare wins the day. Their behaviour almost makes me ashamed to be a scientist.
Thank you Anthony for working to get the known problems recognized and removed from the data. And thanks for the contributors who are trying to do good science as they look at this and other possible man-made and natural causes of the warming we have seen. And thanks for keeping us informed.
It is clear that
1. with air temperatures not rising and
2. with ocean temperatures not rising
combined with the fact that el Nino and la Nina events are mearly a mechanism to transfer heat between the oceans and the atmosphere, CO2 is not the problem.
If CO2 were the cause of 20th century heating, the oceans would continue to heat up when la Nina events are occuring. If there is no increase in the total heat content then we are not heating due to CO2.
John Philip: Yes, it goes positive with a 5 year moving average, and a 2007 end point. Also, as I said, a linear trend also goes positive if 2008 is not put it.
Just like you didn’t put in.
With 2008 data, the slope goes negative, using a 5 year MA. Its a negative linear trend since 1998, with 2008 data.
And I use HADCRUT3 data, from their website. I originally downloaded the data in 2006. I added 2007 and the projected data.
If there is a change, that means they adjusted the data since I downloaded it.
It is entertaining to see John Philip and John Philips arguing over whether the trend is negative or slightly positive.
Either way the IPCC predictions were wrong.
Walter: It’s NOT dead. It’s just asleep. Stop beating it on the counter.
Slightly more seriously, “CO2 molecules in the atmosphere tend to reflect back the infrared radiation”
Say what?? Reflect? That’s a new one. Absorb, perhaps, but reflect?
(maybe he’s talking about those new silver plated CO2 molecules)
They must be smoking some good kool-aid.
Anne: Reply: Nor does James Hansen (astronomy) and Al Gore (politician). Should we exclude them too? –
Where did I request exclusion? Hansen has a distinguished academic publication record in climate science, and Gore’s political advocacy is informed by the position of the vast majority of climate scientists. Here we have a retired professor from another, related discipline stating his opinion, in what seems to be a regional news website. I have absolutley no problem with that. But I note that while the Professor cites a ‘study’ from the Hadley Centre, the Hadley itself, which contains one or two actual climate scientists, has a press release that flatly contradicts that opinion.
Re: Monckton
Before publication he submitted his paper for detailed consideration by an experienced physicist and then replied point by point to the typical nit picking and ad hominem attacks from the likes of Gavin none of whom were capable of responding to his response.
The ‘reviewer’ was unsure of the difference between forcing and feedback, rendering his review meaningless. While Monckton attempted a response to Smith’s first fairly short criticism, he has yet to respond to Smith’s more recent list of 125 separate errors or flaws.
http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
Perhaps you would care to rebut a few? The outgoing chair of the APS Forum on Physics and Society which published the article explains:
“Earlier this year, the editors ran a piece submitted by Gerald Marsh, a frequent contributor to FPS, in which he questioned the accuracy of climate change predictions and estimations of anthropogenic contributions to it. The article gave the editors the idea of devoting an issue to debate about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s statements regarding human-induced global warming.
Being unfamiliar with the field, they asked Marsh to suggest authors on both sides of the argument, and sent out requests. Physicists David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz kindly contributed a tutorial on the physics of global warming. Marsh also suggested “Christopher Monckton of Brenchley”, who the editors assumed was a climate scientist. Monckton submitted what appeared to be a highly technical piece refuting the notion that global warming is occurring, much less induced by human activity.
The editors ran both articles, and encouraged feedback. They also prefaced the issue with an unfortunate editorial stating that there is “considerable” debate within the scientific community about the IPCC statement that global warming is anthropogenic.
Within hours of the issue appearing on the web, an angry physics community responded. The editors then learned that Viscount Monckton – who they had addressed as “Dr Monckton” in their correspondence, a misconception he did not correct – was actually a British journalist and global-warming sceptic. His article presented claims that he has been circulating for years and that climate scientists say they have debunked”
I don’t believe Monckton’s ‘science’ holds water and Dr Stephan Harrison agrees with me: http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=27
Smokey:
Thank you for finally admitting that the effect of CO2-induced global warming [if it exists at all], is so tiny that numerous other climate effects drown it out completely.
No. The pattern we see is one of shorter term (a few years or less) but powerful events superimposed upon a slow-acting but gradual and basically linear forced warming. Over these shorter periods, events e.g. cooling from volcanoes and warming from ocean current oscillations such as El Nino add ‘noise’ to the trend, allowing the less scrupulous to take short periods of low or little warming and claim GW has ‘stalled’. To see the trend you have to use statistical smoothing techniques, such as looking at the mean of several years or doing a linear fit of the data. Either of these reveals a decadal trend in line with the predictions and the theory.
Les – Thanks for the response. There are various Hadley datasets – some variance adjusted others not. I was just curious which one you had as I was not aware of one that has figures to 6dp (spurious accuracy in my view). Do you have a link? I use this page http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow
The differences don’t affect the analyses AFAIK. BTW if 8 year periods are significant, what do you get if you plot the trend a year earlier, that is the eight years to 2007? GW ‘paused’ or on ‘play’? 😉
Patrick H – The distribution of the IPCC model projections over such a short peiod as eight years easily encompasses flat and even negative trends … http://tinyurl.com/3zzwjf
JP
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dennis ward SAYS (03:38:52) :
What I want to know is why people STILL believe that because global temperatures do not rise in a straight line that long term global warming has stopped?
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I am sure this has been discussed by now but some times when you read something you just want to jump to the end and comment on it.
At the heart of the AGW’s lament is that CO2 is a horribly, planet scaring, all life threatening greenhouse gas which is unstoppable in its heat magnifying and trapping capabilities.
The AGW’s lament includes the philosophy that by just adding 100/1,000,000 more CO2 to the atmosphere it will kill almost everything on this planet.
IT SURE LOOKS LIKE THE UNSTOPPABLE, MAGNIFYING, KILLING POWER OF 100/1,000,000 HAS BEEN CRIMINALLY OVERSTATED.
SERENITY NOW……….
Love and kisses
Mr Philip says “BTW, which data set are you using?” …. with not the least sense of irony.
isn’t this just the point?
I bet Mr Philip never asked the IPCC which data set THEY were using as long as the rsult suited his own prejudice.
John Philips (09:54:09)
“No. The pattern we see is one of shorter term (a few years or less) but powerful events superimposed upon a slow-acting but gradual and basically linear forced warming.”
There is absolutely no proof that this gradual warming since last century, long before anthropogenic CO2 started its climb, is due to the CO2 rise. All measures of CO2 show that the bulk of the increase lags temperature . All fingerprints of great postive feedbacks are missing in the data, let alone of anthropogenic additional CO2.
It is cargo cult science at its worst.
“Patrick H – The distribution of the IPCC model projections over such a short peiod as eight years easily encompasses flat and even negative trends …”
Except they did not tell us this when they published the AR4. It is called moving the goalposts. The figure I gave you in the other thread http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg shows that catastrophic predictions are out of the picture. The models have to move the goal posts to fit the present data. So, in a century we go up one degree. We adjust to twenty degrees between night and day.
What is the hurry, except for Gore and his ilk to milk society for this CO2 nonsense? In fifty years fusion will be online with unlimited clean energy for all, and the CO2 scare even if true would become moot. Instead of wasting the world resources in lining the pockets of CO2 hot air businesses, a fraction of the money should be given to ITER which is preparing the first fusion commercial prototype for the world, on a shoestring budget, to accelerate and bring the completion dates earlier.
So which IPCC scenario are we running close to?
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg
“So which IPCC scenario are we running close to?”
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg
Looks like the answer is “none of the above”.
Perhaps Hansen should apply some of his attempted common sense
logic to the present, as he attempted in 1998:
http://www.pnas.org/content/95/8/4113.full.pdf
There is absolutely no proof that this gradual warming since last century, long before anthropogenic CO2 started its climb, is due to the CO2 rise. All measures of CO2 show that the bulk of the increase lags temperature ..
I guess you mean the century before last? Our best estimate is that GHGs started making a contribution to the rise from the start of the 20th century, along with natural forcings, and became dominant around the century mid point.
All fingerprints of great postive feedbacks are missing in the data, let alone of anthropogenic additional CO2
Simply not the case. Water Vapour is increasing as predicted …e.g.
Anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and strong water vapor feedback increase temperature in Europe http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005…/2005GL023624.shtml
and as examples of a greenhouse ‘fingerprints’ the height of the troposphere has increased
Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/301/5632/479
and the Stratosphere has cooled http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/aboutus/milestones/ozone.html
Among other flaws, the graph uploaded to icecap shows only the central mean trend for each scenario, without the variation about that mean (error bars). Bad science and hardly conclusive. See here for a more informed discussion … http://tinyurl.com/4mjjvp