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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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SteveSadlov: “Persistence”? In the absence of _some_ kind of forcing or feedback, you would expect the the climate to bounce up and down, not exhibit persistence. That forcing could be from greenhouse gases (leading to a general upward trend) or decrease of the solar constant (leading to a general downward trend) but without either a) some fundamental underlying reason to believe in a trend, or b) a large number of years of a trend with no apparent underlying reason (suggesting that you’ve missed some climate relevant factor, which might continue) then you would expect reversion to the mean to be much more likely than “persistence”.
But I guess we’ll see in the next few years.
SteveSadlov (18:01:28) :
Leif, you do not consider persistence? That is not to be discounted. Should the current trend continue for a few more years, then the leading indicator will have been somewhat correct, if not in absolute value, in sign of dT/dt.
Persistence can be measured as the amount of lagged autocorrelation and the series has a rather low value of that [compared e.g. with the sunspot number]. Another way of saying the same thing is that every time there has been a drop of 0.5 degrees or larger [1983, 1988, 1991, 1998, 2004, 2007] the temperature has gone up right away thereafter. Without an underlying physical reason, the ‘leading indicator’ is meaningless. Now, I do happen to believe that the cooling will continue, but that is my belief not a scientific truth borne out by the data. It is ‘fraud’ to make up data just because if they ‘should turn out to be correct’, they will support one’s ideas.
If you don’t believe that global temperatures have been on a cooling trend for 10 years, and that the cooling trend will continue, then you must be a Flat Earther.
(I’ve been waiting to say that for quite awhile. It feels GOOD!)
Marcus-
Additionally, we can find problems with his second number. A 2 ppm change in CO2 concentration is about 0.028 W/m2 (=5.35*ln(CO2/CO2o)). Total (natural) GHG forcing is 150 W/m2. 0.028/150 = 0.018%, or about 30 times the % absorption increase he cited.
(=5.35*ln((CO2)a/(CO2)o)) Could you please clarify this formula for this chemist? If I plug in 5.35 * ln (2 / 385), I get (-)28, not 0.028. Also, what is the basis for the 5.35? A constant? Based on measurements?
Thanks.
R John,
You should not plug in 2 and 385 in the formula, but rather 387 and 385:
5.35*ln(387/385)=
The 5.35 figure is based on measurements on the absorption of radiation by CO2. Published by Myhre et al, 1998.
If you don’t believe that global temperatures have been on a cooling trend for 10 years, and that the cooling trend will continue, then you must be a Flat Earther.
Or possibly a statistical illiterate. The least squares fit for the last 120 months of UAH data shows a trend of +0.11C / decade. The data is here. Try it.
The above graph excludes September 2008, as this was an uptick, adding it in spoils the nice downward slope of the curve …..
To the trend line debaters: I tried to duplicate the graph but didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it. Those who said it looked like an EXCEL polynomial trend were probably right, but I think it’s more likely a 6th order poly trend line. Here are graphs of UAH MSU global lower troposphere temperature anomaly with 4th, 5th, and 6th order polynomial trends added. And the data appears to end in July of this year, maybe August. Again, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it.
4th order polynomial trend:
http://i36.tinypic.com/il8xdt.jpg
5th order polynomial trend:
http://i37.tinypic.com/11bj6t3.jpg
6th order polynomial trend:
http://i34.tinypic.com/ivegis.jpg
Regards
RE John Philips
“The above graph excludes September 2008, as this was an uptick, adding it in spoils the nice downward slope of the curve …..”
FALSE John – Assuming the writer used a 6th order Excel Polynomial for best fit, there is no visible change between the curves with or without the September 2008 UAH data – try it for yourself.
Of course future data will change the nature of the curve – but since Earth has entered a cool phase of the ~~30 year PDO, future cooling appears more probable than future warming.
Let’s hope this cooling is not as steep as the current curve indicates – such steep cooling would put global food production as risk.
Annette Huang (15:13:20) :
“That doesn’t sound particularly cold to me.”
The point is that regionally the warm spells were not continuous but interrupted by much colder spells, and vice versa. The abstract aknowledges this:
“Comparisons with selected temperature proxies from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres confirm that the MWP was highly variable in time and space.”
If you read the article you will see two periods of much colder temperatures, they write “Of equal interest in the reconstruction is the sharp and sustained cold period in the A.D. 993-1091 interval. This cold event is easily the most extreme to have occurred over the past 1,100 years.” The data for this paper is taken up to 1,100 years ago so during the so called MWP New Zealand had its coldest temperatures! This period of cold weather is also confirmed in glacial growth on Mount Cook during this time. As regards warm periods there is also another warm period around 1500, in the middle of the so called ‘Little Ice Age’.
When you use identical high resolution temperature proxy methods this patern of regional anomolies shows up well. In recent years we have seen the southern hemisphere cool while the northern hemisphere warms.
Bruce (15:46:41) :
“Regional”. What does the Hockey say about warming in the USA being regional only?”
The Hockey is global, it may come as a shock to you but the USA is not global….by any means.
I can get this “trend line” from the UAH monthly data by using Excel and choosing a Polynomial trend line of order 6. That’s a pretty stupid way of producing a trend line in my view.
I agree with Leif. It’s fraud. Spelled F R A U D. “Whatsupwiththat” replied that fraud is only when there’s intent, but people have warned over and over again about these issues, and we still see here these kinds of posts.
It’s pandering to skeptics, I am sure, but in fraudulent way, which turns me completely off. Risk this post outright, or just stop making yourself look dumb. Else, this post is going down in flames.
REPLY: Thats fine, I’m good with calling out bad science no matter what side it is on. The graphed data is accurate, the trend has an endpoint issue. But I see now you’re adding to, with “dumb” and “going down in flames”. Will the mandatory “you are in the employ of big oil” come next? 😉
-Anthony
I do agree with you, John. What I can read in the “skeptic” blogs more and more looks like the Coué method. Say temps are cooling, say it and say it again, maybe it will become true one day. In the meantime, as you mention, the trends are positive and all the global indicators are up again after 2 la ninas.
R John
For fun try plugging in a concentration of 0ppm as the start point.
oops! you get an infinite amount of energy! 🙂 my guess is they have confused absorbance with absorption (of energy) The IPCC say the absorbance is equal to the amount of forcing. .
Has anyone stopped to think if the arctic melting caused the cooling by pumping more water into the air and creating more clouds?
happened in 1940, coincidence?
“Great Sanhedrin”
Why give the UN more authority than they deserve? There is no real Sanhedrin right now, but Rabbis in Israel are trying to form one. Climate change has little real relationship to Judaism anyway.
Anthony
Thanks for printing this article . It is through efforts like yours that the truth will finally prevail when it comes to climate change .
“Using a polynomial fit on time series data is just plain wrong. Unless you happen to like things that go to plus or minus infinity. A third order polynomial is not cyclic.”
Sorry, Mr. Rock, I missed your instruction as to the best choice for representing global temps. A linear regression has been beaten to death here as fodder for misrepresentation. The end points are better handled by the third order than a higher order.
That the third order is not cyclic does not pertain. Are you a professional statistician?
Bob Tisdale (02:30:07) :
6th order polynomial trend:
http://i34.tinypic.com/ivegis.jpg
Try to extend the axis by another 15 years
“Without an underlying physical reason, the ‘leading indicator’ is meaningless.”
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Here we go with logical positivism again.
Anyone who thinks that CO2 is a major driver of temperature is ignoring the facts or has an agenda. Our temps had been rising since approx. 1979 which just “happens to be during a warm phase of the PDO while the temps during the 50’s-70’s just “happen” to be lower during a cool phase PDO. We are now entering another cool PDO phase so anyone want to bet that temps will be lower for the next 20 years or so? Some of you make this much more complicated than it needs to be but I guess you have to justify those research grants some way or another huh? There are many other factors involved in earths temps of course but I daresay 4% of the atmosphere would not be the driving force some of you think it is.
Leif: I’d be happy to extend the axis of the graph, but their data begins in Dec 1978. What’re you up to? Do you want me to use another data set?
Again (and again) there have been some studies about the coupling of PDO and temperatures, and these show that the PDO reproduces quite well the oscillations of temp AROUND the ilnear trend, but not the trend itself.
Mary Hinge,
So … in your eyes regional cooling in half of the USA (the most weather stations anywhere) proves global warming? Ha ha ha. Very droll.
Especially when we know most ground based stations are contaminated by UHI.
In reality, the earth isn’t warming at all.
Gary Gulrud (06:54:14) :
“Without an underlying physical reason, the ‘leading indicator’ is meaningless.”
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Here we go with logical positivism again.
It is called honest science, Gary. You just don’t make data up, no matter how much you want to further your cause.
Tamino claims temps are not going down because the statistical variation of the data means that our measurements aren’t accurate enough.
I did a post last night which proves otherwise.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/taminos-folly-temperatures-did-drop/
Mary Hinge:
You are referencing a study that seems to indicate that New Zealand had a cold spell while Europe was going through its MWP. However, I am familiar with other studies in New Zealand that support the concept that the MWP was warm in New Zealand as well. Here are three studies:
McGlone, M.S. and Wilmshurst, J.M. 1999. Dating initial Maori environmental impact in New Zealand. Quaternary International 59: 5-16.
Williams, P.W., Marshall, A., Ford, D.C. and Jenkinson, A.N. 1999. Palaeoclimatic interpretation of stable isotope data from Holocene speleothems of the Waitomo district, North Island, New Zealand. The Holocene 9: 649-657.
Reference
Wilson, A.T., Hendy, C.H. and Reynolds, C.P. 1979. Short-term climate change and New Zealand temperatures during the last millennium. Nature 279: 315-317.
These studies find continually mounting evidence that the MWP was not just in Europe; the temperatures in New Zealand 1000 years ago were warmer than 20th century temperatures. Also, temperatures seem to hit a trough about 300 to 325 years ago.
Also, as glaciers retreat around the world, the retreat exposes organic materials consistent with warmer temperatures during MWP. Proxies and reconstructions can have value, but we should pay particular attention to physical evidence.