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In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.
Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up.
On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to “a negative PDO” or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs — El Ninos — produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones — La Ninas — produce below average ones.
Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as “solar minimums” magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded — none — and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. “This is no coincidence,” he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.
Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.
Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather — even harvest totals and censuses –confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.
But in order to prove the climate scaremongers’ claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented — a result of human, not natural factors — the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann’s “hockey stick,” in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.
Dr. Loehle’s work helps end this deception.
Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, “It’s practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling,” as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an “almost exact correlation” between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost “no correlation at all with CO2.”
An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, “Man-made global warming is junk science,” explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year “equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration … This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun’s radiation. This is an insignificantly small number.”
Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a “hoax,” a “fraud” and simply “not credible.”
While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.
For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA’s eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, “variations in global temperatures since 1978 … cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide.”
Moreover, while the chart below was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years — the period corresponding to reduced solar activity — all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.
It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn’t any global warming.
(posted on a tip from TCO aka ASDF)
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McCain and Obama are still true believers. Facts will not change the agenda. A dismal view.
The trend line plot is a ‘fraud’. It is is not clear what the averaging interval is, but it looks to be several years [look at 1984-1988]. If so, the heavy curve should stop half of the averaging interval short of the right-hand edge. The various ‘tricks’ used to invent smoothed values near the edge overestimate the trend based on the most recent variation. Imagine the curve had stopped in 1985 and see what ‘trend line’ you would have had then, based on 1980-1985 [similar to the recent years].
Looks like a bentwood hockey stick.
Slightly OT
This report made a big spread in the Daily Telegraph in England this morning.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/3226747/Climate-change-is-faster-and-more-extreme-than-feared.html
There have been many comments on the online site about the pictures and the ice areas and the choice of years.
Please if you can inundate the paper with similar comments to show that people do take notice of these distortions, even if the politicians do not.
A comment on the online version and an email letter to the letters page: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk would help!
A minor nitpick. What smoothing method was used in the chart? To my eyes there appears to be an endpoint issue. The recent cooling is quite marked, but set against the previous 15 years will should show a smaller downtrend towards the end.
Lets not get ahead of ourselves here, this is only a chink in armor.
Robert
“since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.”
Love that term – ‘the Great Sanhedrin’. I had to look it up.
The 70s in the UK were pretty chilly.
Black Ice, frozen cars were the winter norm.
For the pro AGW crowd no one seems to be able to answer, simply , why the current temps have not fitted the Hockey Stick exactly. Forgive me if I am wrong , and tell me otherwise, but todate the temp rise is below the IPCC and Hockey Stick estimates.
Please tell me if I am wrong.
A very well-written article. I think that it could be strengthened by the addition of a couple of sentences to address the charge by the hockey team that the MWP was “regional.” It could be noted that many studies of the MWP show warming all around the globe, not just in the NH, such as the well-known stories of Greenland farming and vineyards in England.
Also, the charge that the MWP is NH only naturally begs the question, is the recent warming global? The satellite record does not show any net warming for the Southern hemisphere.
Leif has a point. The 2007-2008 dip is similar to dips in 83-84, 88, 91-92, and 98-99, and they did not affect the trend line in any significant way. So why does the last dip? Did someone draw this by hand? To disprove AGW, one needs to do better stats than the AGW believers.
Leif –
“Fraud” might be too harsh. That usually applies when there is an intent to deceive. I agree that in this case, the endpoint smoothing is overestimated in the trend line. I’ve seen examples of this before. This may be an artifact of the graphing program used.
Perhaps an inquiry there will help us figure out what program was used.
I want to take issue with the following comment:
“It’s practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling,” as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase.”
This is complete crap. Its fine to hypothesize that solar activity is:
A: a much more dominant driver of climate change than the current consensus and
B: We are entering a long period of time during which solar activity will be substantially lower.
But neither of these propositions can possibly be considered a “slam dunk” based on the current state of science. Saying so just damages the speaker’s credibility.
As far as the trend line: numerous pro-warming publications that do the same thing. I’m inclined to give them a pass on this.
Leif,
No matter how you look at the trend line, temperatures are no higher now than they were 30 years ago. The important point is that the IPCC predictions were wrong, and that attempts to defend those predictions “are a fraud.”
Granted, there would appear to be an endpoint issue with the smoothed curve. Only time will tell whether the curret curve is an accurate representation or not.
However, I think what is encouraging is the increase in the number and volume of the sceptical voices being raised. It is high time that there was a serious debate about this issue without so called ‘deniers’ being condemned as heretics. The evidential readings (real data) more than counter the modelled representations from the discredited hockey stick, but until more voices are raised and the main stream media begin to open up the conversation then we’re still stuck with the so-called consensus.
Science is not about consensus – it is about proving or disproving a hypothesis. Until such time as both sides of the argument are out in the open we’ll continue to be lectured to by those with more than just a scientific motivation.
Anthony – please keep up the good work. I don’t even pretend to understand all the science but I do try hard and your site helps greatly in two ways: it informs and helps my understanding and verifies my own belief – that there is much hubris in the AGW argument and that while there may be a slight impact froms mans’ activity on temperature most of it is purely natural.
Dominic
Jason has it right. Let’s not counter hysterical, the-science-is-settled warmers with equally dogmatic versions of solar- or natural-driven climate.
Let’s push everyone to form hypotheses, acknowledge their limitations, and use predictive power as the real test. You know, science, as scientists outside of climate practice it.
[…] Anthony Watts […]
I agree with Leif’s conclusions.
And it’s very obvious that long term smoothing was used until the data set used to arrive at the smoothed value sufferered from falling data points available. All such graphs do this. Throw the smoothing line out and the real picture becomes very clear. The noise in the trend is +- .3 degrees C for every 5 years of signal.
Go back to Oct 2003 in the graph, and for all we know, we have .3 C warmer, and not a whole lot more.
Did someone draw this by hand?
I’d lay long odds it’s an Excel polynomial trendline.
Mr. Myers of Hilton Head seems to have some problems with basic math.
Fossil CO2 emissions each year account for about 8 gigatons of C. Current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about 387 ppm. 1 ppm is about 2.12 GtC, so there are about 820 GtC of CO2 in the atmosphere. 8 GtC/820 is about 1%, not 0.01%. (or, if you prefer, there is an increase of about 2 ppm/year because natural systems absorb about half of the excess CO2 which humans emit, so humans contribute to a 0.5% rise in CO2 every year, still 30x than Mr. Myers’ number).
The other citations in this article are not much better in terms of their grasp of the relevant science.
“I’d lay long odds it’s an Excel polynomial trendline.”
I wish we could settle on something like a 3rd order polynomial for these global temps as they are cyclic.
“820 GtC of CO2”
That should be 3000 Gtons of CO2, C is 28% by weight of CO2. Seems switching between measures gives everyone fits.
This also means the daily flux between ocean and atmosphere is roughly 80 Gtons.
The Suess originated 8 Gtons of C is insupportable. Spencer’s post here (back in Feb.?) showed the variance in 13C/12C fraction of the seasonal and long term signals from Mauna Loa are identical, i.e., same source.
And I’ll lay odds it excludes September (0.16) 😉
Regarding the Douglass and Christy paper that deals a ‘devastating blow’ to the concensus. It appeared in Energy and Environment naturally, ( preprint here )and reached the startling conclusion that the feedback effect is close to unity, rather than the more commonly-accepted c2.5. However to reach this conclusion they make some equally eyebrow raising assumptions … They seem to have done their calculations based on just the tropics, having rejected the Global, Northern and Southern extratropic anomalies because the Northern extratropics show more rapid warming than the tropics or the globe
However, it is noted that NoExtropics is 2 times that of the global and 4 times that of the Tropics. Thus one concludes that the climate forcing in the NoExtropics includes more than CO2 forcing. …”
whereas everywhere else its pure CO2 and nothing else?
So they ignore the effect of the oceans and heat uptake. similarly the global temperature delay and differential rates of warming over land and sea magically disappear. The higher warming at higher latitudes is also ignored.
The global values, however, are not suitable to analyze for that signal because they contains effects from the NoExtropic latitude band which were not consistent with the assumption of how Earth’s temperature will respond to CO2 forcing. ”
They then conclude that as the tropical warming trend is approx the same as the theoretical ‘no-feedback’ warming from CO2 in the tropics then the feedback term g must be near unity and that this conclusion is contrary to the IPCC [2007] statement: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
The most glaring error is the assumption that a globally uniform forcing from well-mixed CO2 should produce a uniform temperature change. The more rapid warming in the North is an expected consequence of the greater proportion of land, with its lower heat capacity, than the mainly oceanic South, rather than evidence that other forcings are at work. This is basic stuff.
Strikes me if that graph or this paper were submitted by an undergraduate, an ‘F’ would be a fair mark. ‘Devastating’ it sure ain’t.
JP
(Some material reproduced by kind permission of John Philips)
news here today is they are closing more weatherstations;
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/bureau-forced-to-shrink-weather-stations/2008/10/20/1224351155243.html
soon we wont have any and can just rely on computer models instead!!!
Clark (13:00:48) :
” Jason has it right. Let’s not counter hysterical, the-science-is-settled warmers with equally dogmatic versions of solar- or natural-driven climate.
Jason speaks for Jason, as I assume Clark speaks for Clark.
Neither speaks for me.
Neither opinion is more valid than anyone else’s.
” Let’s push everyone to form hypotheses, acknowledge their limitations, and use predictive power as the real test. You know, science, as scientists outside of climate practice it. ”
The affectation of being the True Friend of Science, of sounding so reasonable and moderate is just that – an affectation, a silly pretense.
You each speak for yourself alone.
If people taking a stand and having a firm opinion is troubling for you, and causes emotional distress, you are well advised to stay out of places where people have and express such opinions, until such time as you are mature enough to cope emotionally.
” You know, science, as scientists outside of climate practice it. ”
Corruption of the peer review process, of funding, of tenure, science by press release, and other abuses are only most pronounced where climate science is used for political purposes.
The ideal of “Real Science,” or “Pure Science,” untainted by politics, greed, lust for power, ignorance, egotism, jealousy, pettiness… there isn’t and never has been such a thing.
There are fads in science, as anywhere else.
For at least ten years we have had the fad of “consensus,” of faith-based science. We are told to believe what the consensus believes. That fad is now dying, all too slowly.
It’s lived long enough to give us Carbon Taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, restrictions, regulations, higher prices and a new “dangerous pollutant.”
If you derive emotional gratification from pretending to be above it all, logical, reasonable and moderate, unlike us unreasonable opinionated rabble, then that is undoubtedly what you will continue to do. Have fun with that.
That global trendline is very nice but its end part is suspect; it should be colored differently to show how it’s been projected pending the inclusion of more data points. Just imagine what that line would have looked like at this point ten years ago, in 1998, with a sharp uptick. On the whole, about what I expect from journalism science. Usually ‘oversells’ a point. Like the next post from the UK Telegraph and its photos of Arctic ice.
JohnH (12:38:10) :
“…..it could be strengthened by the addition of a couple of sentences to address the charge by the hockey team that the MWP was “regional.”
There is much evidence from high resolution temperature proxies that show the MWP and LIA were regional anomolies. the cold or warm events took place at different times in each hemisphere. This is demonstrated here http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/Abstracts/Thompsonetal-climatic-change-2003.pdf
“It could be noted that many studies of the MWP show warming all around the globe, not just in the NH, such as the well-known stories of Greenland farming and vineyards in England.”
What the coolers don’t tell you is that New Zealand tree ring data shows that while the Vikings were colonising a small coastal part of Greenland there was a particularly cold spell at the same time http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001GL014580.shtml
. Not exactly evidence of a world wide hot spell is it?
“Also, the charge that the MWP is NH only naturally begs the question, is the recent warming global? The satellite record does not show any net warming for the Southern hemisphere.”
If you look at the first link the composite of the ice core graphs show that it is only recent temperature rises that show up on both hemispheres. You will also notice how similar it is to the ‘Hockey stick’.
Re Mary Hinge (14:52:21) :
From the abstract of the paper linked: “This record is the longest yet produced for New Zealand and shows clear evidence for persistent above-average temperatures within the interval commonly assigned to the MWP. Comparisons with selected temperature proxies from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres confirm that the MWP was highly variable in time and space. Regardless, the New Zealand temperature reconstruction supports the global occurrence of the MWP.”
That doesn’t sound particularly cold to me. In fact, the country may have been beiing colonised at the time by people who, even with their tropical origins, may not have found it as chilly asit is today. (It’s not that warm at the moment – for a spring day).