After GISS’s embarrasing error with replicating September temperatures in the October analysis, the NASA GISTEMP website was down for awhile today (at least for me).
This evening, the new gridded data was posted, and I generated a world temperature anomaly map with the new data. It clearly has some changes in it from the previous erroneous version.
See below:
GISTEMP 11-12-08 – Click for larger image
You can plot your own here at this link to GISTEMP’s map maker
Now compare the above corrected version with the erroneous one below:
GISTEMP 11-11-08
I’m sorry for the small map, as I was traveling during much of this debacle, and was not able to be online much at all. This one above comes courtesy of Kate at SDA who saved one (thanks Kate).
Note the bottom scale, the top end on the erroneous one was 13.7°C, while the corrected one tops out at 8°C. That alone should have set off alarm bells at GISS. Personally, I don’t believe the 8°C anomaly either, since much of the Russian weather data is suspect to start with, and the data distribution is sparse.
So far, no mention of the new data beyond this yesterday at the NASA GISS news page:
2008-11-11: Most data posted yesterday were replaced by the data posted last month since it looks like some mishap might have occurred when NOAA updated their GHCN data. We will postpone updating this web site until we get confirmation from NOAA that their updating programs worked properly. Because today is a Federal Holiday, some pages are still showing yesterday’s data.
We live in interesting times.
A Poem
by Joseph Love
In your world, my world, it’s turning cold.
The summer that died months ago, seems so distant now, just a wishful memory. The warmth of the sun comforted us for only a small time, but never really was. Grey and gloomy it was gone before it ever arrived; a couple of pinwheels to remember it by. The garden never bloomed, never provided a single meal. The summer garden that was to provide for us, left us starving.
The weather’s changed to a deathly cold. I stay up, preparing for the coldest that is to come, trying to gather what we need. Maybe it’ll be warmer in my bed. But the natural warmth of sleep never comes. The sleep that does come is cold, and long; rotting away the last of the winter stores. It was hopeless to try to prepare for a winter like this. We have nothing to do but hope we can last until spring.
The longing for spring gives us hope; hope for another summer; A long, happy, summer with a bright sun, flowers, and the fruits of our garden.
A thought hits me. We must till our land, cut out the weeds, prepare the garden for the seed. With the weird seasons, who can know when to plant?. Do we plant when it’s cold, or after it starts warming up? My mind tells me not to plant too soon our next winter could be worse than this one. Maybe tending to our garden will take our minds off this long cold winter. God will tell us when to plant the seed.
If only I could get us up; out to face the cold. But for now, we lie in our cold bed; consuming the fruits of the summer garden that never was.
The consensus is based upon solid data. The GISS charts show by and large show global warming. I am not against seeing charts that show cooling, but when 95% of the charts are discarded, based upon faulty logic and without data to support such an assertion, well, that is just silly. It was not as hominem, it is based upon the blatant disregard for most of science and ignorance of the math involved and discussion of low and median predictions. At any rate have good time.
Robert,
I have made no suggestion, allusion, request, or demand that people live without energy. I am not proposing that we go back into the dark ages or that we immediately stop burning all fossil fuels or that we hinder the impoverished by taking all of their freedoms only recently granted many of them. Having said this, I must remind you that the technology and the practical applicability within the realms of: solar panels, electric and hybrid vehicles, cleaner burning fuels, and more additional efficient technologies, which would lower each person’s (especially in developed countries) carbon footprint, have existed for more than 30 years, some 40, and the blueprints and basic science for several, are even older, and you can find evidence of this in old encyclopedia Britannica articles, as well as specials on Starz, and various encyclopedias of science from today, the nineties, the eighties, the seventies, the sixties etc… (even wikipedia) PBS also has excellent specials and online articles regarding the money saved and economic benefit for today had more cleaner burning technologies and alternative energy sources been implemented earlier on and to a larger degree sooner.
I would also like to note that the Kyapo of Brazil, have no real interest in domestication through technological advancements that would displace thousands of tribe members through the building of a dam which would flood homeland; slash and burn forest life and build factories which would both destroy a whole culture and add to air, water and atmospheric pollution.
It is true that the implementation of alternative fuels and other energy sources on a large scale will be extremely expensive, so we should do it piecemeal, gradual stepwise. If a person is a geophysicist or an organic chemist-chemical engineer for an energy company, they have the background, experience and plasticity to take on other roles in research and development for the very same company to produce, find, facilitate, initiate alternative sources of energy or even work in another position in the company or work for a different company developing other aspects of the energy field and so forth. A chemist is a chemist a physicist is a physicist; the bright ones with a bachelors already have a graduate understanding and the bright ones with a masters and training can move laterally or upwards into other aspects of a given field or with company training change fields as well.
GM is in trouble as are: Ford, Chrysler, and even Dodge is down. Yet Exxon Mobile has record profits for last quarter. Oil companies, the coal industry, the electric company and so forth are not starving. This economy has many people starving, and yet we currently have the technology to feed every single person on this planet; of course many dictators would steal a lot of the supplies dropped into third world countries, but we have starving people here in the US, regardless of what stance people take on global climate change, free trade versus tighter regulation, government control versus corporate interests represented in the government. How can this be when genetic engineering can easily solve many of the world’s problems? GM corporate officers are still flying on corporate jets… do you know how expensive it is to fly on a private jet? Instrument rating and further training costs a lot, these pilots are not cheap and that kerosene/jet fuel burns quite quick at those speeds.
I would recommend you read the Economist, and Economist.com for many free articles; they cover of course, economics, but they also have fair and balanced articles on technology and global warming-climate change-dimming.
I assure you that what I propose is a gradual process, and if you read my earlier posts, I find Hansen’s estimates a little high, based upon my own data analysis, calculations and charts. However, he is on the right track and has been on correct most the time in the past.
Now once again, the reduction of fossil fuel emissions will reduce risks to human health and to the prosperity of other life forms. I think that injecting SO2 into the stratosphere is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard, and it is too premature to take a course of action which such serious known consequences and some unknown ones as well. I am not a follower of Hansen, Gavin or anyone for that matter. What I do see from my own calculations are serious problems, especially 50 years or so from now, and I see more droughts and climate trends and forcing issues beyond what can be reasonably explained by natural, internal, variability.
From Leif Svalgaard (07:36:16) :
There is no 1500 year solar cycle. There are Bond events, and Gerard Bond conjectured that these might be caused by the Sun, but we have not found the corresponding solar variations.
end quote
Leif, I clearly stated it was a Bond event. Yes, I put the statement near one that stated a 200 year solar cycle, but I did not state the 1500 year cycle was a solar cycle. Maybe that was unclear. While I think that there probably is a 1500 year solar cycle corresponding with the Bond Event cycle (after the published works of Bond, Avery, Singer) I am not asserting is is proven. To me it looks more like a 2400 year solar cycle, with error bands, but even that looks a bid dodgy.
From me
So, using sun / planet rather than planet /moon, as the large planets get closer to the sun, and the sun to the barycenter of the solar system, the sun has to spin faster to conserve angular momentum. This, since the sun is not a solid, lets the sun flatten and the equator rotate faster than the poles. This modulates solar output and sunspots.
end me
From Leif
This is pseudo-science of the worst kind. The distance between the Sun and e.g. Jupiter does not vary at all, except from the eccentricity of the orbit.
end Leif
The eccentricity of the orbit IS what I’m talking about. The distance varies with the apogee / perigee. The distance varies as the position in the orbit changes. The distance varies. I’m not saying the planets are out there just wandering about!
Leif:
Here http://www.leif.org/research/Distance-Sun-Jupiter-and-SSN.png is a plot of that distance[…] and of the sunspot number [SSN], and as you can see they have no relation to each other, as the phase drifts.
end quote.
It isn’t just Jupiter. That there is a phase drift with Jupiter alone is in conformance with what I’ve seen published. You are oversimplifying by leaving out the other gas giants. See I. Charvatova, Rhodes Fairbridge, Landscheidt, I.R.G. Wilson, and I suspect Singer and Avery though I’ve only read the non-reviewed book not their papers.
(And yes, I know that Landscheidt believed in astrology, but his papers were peer reviewed and published. Newton was an alchemist and we don’t hold that against his scientific work. And don’t forget that Einstein believed in an invisible person in the sky who likes to keep count of hairs on heads…)
BTW, I’m just citing published works from other folks and attempting to understand them. This isn’t my work and I’m open to a demonstration that the other folks are wrong, but to toss one graph at me and state ‘no relation’ seems to me to be weaker than published works from several authors in peer reviewed media.
From Leif:
The differential rotation between equator and pole is not due to ‘angular momentum’ transfer, but is a result of the Coriolis force acting on the convection zone. The Sun does not flatten because of Jupiter, etc, etc. Worst of the worst.
end Leif
Were you having a bad day? I did not say that all the differential rotation was caused by angular momentum changes, I said that the sun, being a fluid, ALLOWED differential rotation and flattening. I posited that this might be modulated by changes in angular momentum, not caused, with the mode of modulation left unspecified and that these changes might further modulate sunspots. As the spin changes, mass moves and I thought it was obvious that Coriolis (and other forces too) would act on that mass. (And was NOT saying that convective forces were absent). I just didn’t want to get into a long drawn out discussion of details about mass flow vs magnetic vs convective vs whatever.
To quote from a paper by Richard Mackey about Rhodes Fairbridge:
Blizard (1987) presented evidence that the precessional effects on the sun of the planets depends on the degree of oblateness of the sun and on the angle of inclination of the plane of a planet’s orbit in relation to the sun. Since the sun is a fluid, the precessional effect may induce a fluid flow toward the equator of the sun from both hemispheres. The flow of plasma on the sun directly effects solar activity.
and
Burroughs (2003) reported that the sun’s barycentric motion affects its oblateness, diameter and spin rate.
and
In several papers, Rhodes Fairbridge (for example, Fairbridge 1984, 1997 and Fairbridge and Sanders 1987) describe how the turning power of the planets is strengthened or weakened by resonant effects between the planets, the sun, and the sun’s rotation about it’s axis. He further described how resonance between the orbits of the planets amplified the planets’ variable torque applied to the sun.
end Mackey quotes.
and from http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/02oct_oblatesun.htm
Oct. 2, 2008: Scientists using NASA’s RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision, and they find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin “cantaloupe skin” that significantly increases its apparent oblateness. Their results appear the Oct. 2nd edition of Science Express.
end NASA quote.
Which they attribute to magnetic effects but they leave open the mechanism behind those effects, at least in this summary.
So we have several papers showing planets influence on solar shape and activity and we have NASA measuring changes in oblateness that correspond with periods of higher activity. On your side, we have a graph.
Leif, I don’t want to go down this rat hole, but when someone says “worst of the worst” I must respond. I am only a layman in this field, but I try to be diligent about having a tidy mind and about having published works in the field pointing in a direction before I go off that way. I know you don’t like the notion of “the planets change solar output”, but does that preclude my SPECULATING about it? I know that what I write is not the science (it’s not peer reviewed, not in a science journal, I’m not a Ph.D, etc.) and is, by definition, speculation; but it is speculation based on other real science work that has been published. Is it possible, just possible, that you are wrong? That all the other authors might have something? Does your not liking their thesis make it the worst of the worst pseudo science?
If all these folks published work is wrong, fine. Cite the papers that show it. I’d love to have a reading list. But please, do it without the invective. And I’ll promise to be more careful in how I write if you promise to read it more carefully and not jump to conclusions unsupported by my words.
From Leif:
As I have said repeatedly: combating bad science with worse science is not the way to go.
end quote
So what shows those authors work to be ‘worse science’? They say the planets are important to solar shape and function and that solar output varies accordingly (yes, I’m dodging the causality word…) What shows them wrong? (If you are going to throw darts, you need to defend them. If you are willing to let folks speculate sans darts, then go in peace…)
From jcbmack (18:00:19) :
The consensus is based upon solid data. The GISS charts show by and large show global warming.
[…]
.It was not as hominem, it is based upon the blatant disregard for most of science and ignorance of the math involved and discussion of low and median predictions.
end quote
Um, the GISS data are based on poorly sited thermometers, where the temps are read in 1/10 degrees then rounded to whole degrees. Then a missing high or low can just be made up by the data collector. After that, these high / low sets are averaged together. Just what does the average of the high and low for a day mean? It isn’t the typical temperature of the day, nor the median…. Then a bunch more of these are averaged together. What is the meaning of the average of Fairbanks Alaska and Phoenix Arizona? Nothing. Then, at the end of all this (and more), we are supposed to be excited about a 1/10 place variation when the original input is only accurate to full degrees? Ignorant of the math? Yes, I’d say GISS is… To quote my high school math / science teacher “Never let your precision exceed your accuracy”.
BTW, please show and explain the strange and wondrous data ‘adjustment’ math done by GISS. I’ll wait while you a) get and b) untangle their source code…
From jcbmack (20:42:41) :
I have made no suggestion, allusion, request, or demand that people live without energy. I am not proposing that we go back into the dark ages or
end quote …
What follows this is a long statement about gradual adoption and creation of new energy sources.
What this post misses is the simple fact that we are up to our eyeballs in more proven alternative energy sources than we could ever use. There is no need for ‘research’ to find or fix alternative energy. (There is need to reduce the cost and one can always benefit from more research to find new ways to do things, but we don’t need to wait for research to have things that work.)
The only reason we don’t have tons of alternative energy sources all over the place is the dirt cheap cost of coal and oil. The alternatives are ready and proven; but most of them only make money with oil over $80/bbl or so. Oil recently dropped under $50/bbl (after a spike to nearly $150/bbl).
If oil were known to be above $80/bbl AND GOING TO STAY THERE, we could have all the alt energy we wanted in about a 5 to 10 year construction frenzy.
It’s not about the need for new technology, it’s about the price of imported oil. Just as an example, I’m going to list some stock “ticker” symbols for companies that make alternative energy products. I’m not endorsing them or giving ‘stock picks’, it’s just easier than typing out all their names and you can look up their price charts vs oil if you have the tickers: PSUD OOIL GGRN SYNM SYMN RTK OPTT FSLR SPWR SOLF SSL JASO STP NBF AVR VSE BLDP ENER WFR IMO THPW and many more. There are even exchange traded funds of alternative energy stocks (Yahoo can show you what the fund holds): FAN TAN KWT GEX PBW PWND ICLN QCLN FUE PBD
OK, what’s the point? That there are plenty of alternatives, ready to go with companies trying to sell the stuff. They just can’t when oil is too cheap.
Anyone who spends a long time talking about the need for R&D or Development to find alternative sources is looking the wrong way. BTW, increasing fuel taxes does not help, since it taxes the alternatives too. What would help is a tariff only on oil imported from outside NAFTA that assured no such imported oil could drop below $80/bbl. This would provide economic shelter for folks like SYNM SYMX RTK and even shale oil companies like IMO to make and sell more of the alternative fuels at a profit. Nothing else is needed. Not govt programs nor subsidies. Not expensive and prolonged R&D nor any ‘breakthroughs’. Not even new cars.
As second point: Any alt energy program that runs through fleet change is a decade or two time to impact. All the folks saying we need {hybrids, hydrogen cars, electrics, funny fuel car of your choice} are indirectly saying they want to wait a decade for significant impact. Yes, it takes that long to change a significant part of the car fleet. Longer than drilling for new oil and longer than building a coal to diesel / gasoline factory, and longer than growing oil crops for biodiesel.
To the extent that the GISS data lead folks to believe the “CO2 is bad” thesis and demand non-gasoline non-Diesel cars as the solution, they are saying nothing significant can change for 10 to 20 years.
Oops… Above I had …SYNM SYMN RTK…
it ought to read SYNM SYMX RTK … Syntroleum and Synthesis Energy have very similar tickers and I sometimes them homogenized… sigh.
Offshore drilling would take just as long if not longer to make an impact. Also I already posted that we have the technology; it would become financially beneficial as we phase out coal and oil use. Wind mills are a great long term investment.
In chemistry and physics the laws and theories are done; the engineers have made great headway into applying these laws and theories alongside mathematicians to make great strides; now what is needed is the doing part, the financing, the building and using of wind mills, photo voltaic cells, cleaner burning natural gas on a grander scale, some form of carbon capture, but not into the ground and so forth… the technology is, in many respects old, and recent advances have led to greater utility, efficiency and ergonomic usage. It always takes money, now polciy makers and industry must take their cue, and they are starting to. Pickens is doing this to both make a buck and ensure a better tomorrow for his children and grandchildren; it would have been easier for him to stay in his industry, and make guranteed money for years to come, but he did not.
When 95% or more of the charts show warming and not just from the IPCC, NASA, NOAA, Princeton AOS, Harvard, Biological-ecological studies, but other independent meteorologists, and non peer reveiwed climatologists as well as peer reviewed, well, that “consensus,” is well in trenched in the science. Look at the recent research on the B-15 glacier in the Artic and the effects on penguins. No, this alone does not prove warming (the huge artic ice glacier breaking off and floating when it is winter) but it lends evidence to the enormous data which exists. Peer review in science has saved countless lives and raised the quality of scientific writing, but I am prepareed to look at more data from non peer reviwed professional scientists as well.
Global cooling would be just as disaterous as warming if on a consistent trend and by a degree or more; the ways to deal with cooling is the same as warming: reduce CO2 CH4, SO2, SO3 emissions. Reduce dependence on oil as a whole, not just foriegn and use utilize those voltaic cells and wind mills.
jcbmack,
Pickens has cancelled all his plans. So much for ensuring a better tomorrow for his children and grandchildren.
Pickens is stalling, not quitting just yet.
His commodity fund lost 84% of its value in October.
It currently is not the environment for “guranteed money” at the moment. He is shorter now on funds to ram through this water rights grab masquerading as an energy initiative. He is also facing a lot of opposition to his attempt at water profiteering.
Re: B-15 I believe you are speaking of an Antarctic Iceberg, not Arctic Glaciers.
Icebergs…happen…so what? Bigger icebergs are a sign of more ice, not less.
” Also I already posted that we have the technology; it would become financially beneficial as we phase out coal and oil use. Wind mills are a great long term investment.”
Why not convert your 401K to wind investments? You better talk to a few engineers first, though. Tell us how much you decided to invest and in which companies. This should be fun!!
Mike
” I am not a follower of Hansen, Gavin or anyone for that matter. What I do see from my own calculations are serious problems, especially 50 years or so from now, and I see more droughts and climate trends and forcing issues beyond what can be reasonably explained by natural, internal, variability.”
jcbmack
I’m sure that everyone here would like to see your calculations. This sounds like groundbreaking work! I’ll bet that Anthony would let you do a guest post with those calculations.
Waiting patiently for the calculations,
Mike Bryant
From jcbmack (13:31:32) :
Offshore drilling would take just as long if not longer to make an impact. Also I already posted that we have the technology; it would become financially beneficial as we phase out coal and oil use. Wind mills are a great long term investment.
end quote
Um, not quite. Depends on the oil field. Off shore California can begin putting new oil on line in about 1 year. All the on shore infrastructure is there, the oil is shallow, and in some cases (Santa Barbara) there are platforms already off shore that could carry more volume. Parts of the Alaskan North Slope are also fast. Near an existing pipeline, relatively short run of pipe to build, etc. About 2 to 3 years. ANWR? about 5 years. Coal to oil / fuels is about 5 years to build a facility if lawsuits don’t block it.
If one “phases out” coal and oil use via fiat, the price of them drops (lower demand) and it becomes harder for the alternatives to compete. It is this tendency to ignore the basic laws of Economics that the ‘no oil’ folks have most wrong. Look at what just happened in an economic slowdown. $150 to $50 in a couple of months on a few percent drop in demand. What do you think a 10% drop would do? 20%? Can we compete with $100/bbl equivalent wind against China with $40/bbl real oil? No.
And just how does one put a windmill into the tank of the existing car fleet?
If you don’t pay attention to the issue of fleet change and the 10 to 20 year time lag in it, you get broken ideas like building windmills to replace gasoline. I’m all for the Pickens Plan, but even he expects a slow conversion of the vehicle fleet mostly concentrating on commercial fleets. Windmills are an OK replacement for about 20% of coal and natural gas electricity generation, but not for most (80%+) vehicle fuel needs in anything less than 10+ years. Yes, I’m all for plug in hybrids. All we can make. In 15 years it will have an impact…
Also from jcbmack
Global cooling would be just as disaterous as warming if on a consistent trend and by a degree or more; the ways to deal with cooling is the same as warming: reduce CO2 CH4, SO2, SO3 emissions. Reduce dependence on oil as a whole, not just foriegn and use utilize those voltaic cells and wind mills.
end quote
Yes, it WILL be as disastrous (and maybe worse). No, one does not deal with it by reducing gasses that cause warming (or are you agreeing that they do not cause warming?)… I expect it to be a great opportunity for research into what actually will cause warming…
Most of this is OT, but I’ll press on… Hubbert and his peak say that we must produce all the oil we can, just to have an accelerating decline of oil as we slide down the bell curve. We are not prepared. We MUST drill all we have and turn coal into liquids too or our economy will collapse so horridly it will make our present problems look like good times. An economic collapse in the western world at the same time it gets cold would have such dire consequences as to be unthinkable; yet the AGW crowd is rushing to embrace the things that will cause it.
We must use everything available to us, starting 5 years ago. Yes to windmills, yes to solar cells and hybrid cars and yes to biodiesel and yes to bikes and trains and yes to drilling and coal to liquids… And that still will not be enough fast enough. Cut out oil and coal too and we die. No that isn’t hyperbole. Do you have any idea how much time and money it would take to convert just 25% of our vehicle fleet to windmill driven electricity? Even just the trains? How many millions of tons of copper will have to be mined to put in the electric support systems? How much of Peru or Indonesia will THEY let us dig up for our needs?
You can’t do any of it if you kill the economy. Our economy is oil dependent and will be for at least 10 more years even if we were started on an all out conversion plan, and we’re not. This isn’t an either/or problem, its a yes to all with the proper price incentives to get moving now.
Since I’ve given you a bit of grief, I’ll answer Mike’s question of you 😉
From Mike Bryant (15:07:15) :
Why not convert your 401K to wind investments? You better talk to a few engineers first, though. Tell us how much you decided to invest and in which companies. This should be fun!!
End quote.
Disclaimer: None of these are ‘stock picks’ or recommendations. They are for your amusement only. Sometimes I lose money… Some stocks I own a few shares of because I want to, not because they are good investments. I trade via timing indicators, these are not investments. For illustration only. Don’t Do It!
I do a fair amount of trading in my 401k IRA rollover. I’m partial to the alternative energy field for personal reasons. It’s very volatile and strongly driven by the price of oil. Short term it has absolutely been slaughtered by the plunge in oil. I ‘stepped out’ for a while as the plunge happened, but oil will, long term, go up. A lot. Tomorrow? 50/50 odds up or down $5 / bbl.
I’ve started buying back in a tiny. To what? FAN (a wind fund, it’s hard to find ‘pure play’ wind stocks – GE makes a lot more than wind turbines – and a small fund can get positions you can’t …), GEX (another fund with solar, wind, and Brazilian sugar/alcohol), OPTT (they make a nifty wave driven generator) and small positions in PSUD, RTK, and SYNM (all of whom make motor fuels from non-petroleum and are losing money). I have about 2% in now, and it will rise to 10% as / when oil starts its rebound (I expect about June 2009, but it’s going to be news and event driven). If oil starts a new plunge, I’m out in a day. When copper turns up (JJC) I’ll add FCX and PCU (copper miners). They will not go up until the future economy looks positive.
If you choose to trade alt energy stocks, hold on to your hat. Every news blip, weather event, and oil bump can make / lose you 50% or more. Small thinly traded event driven stocks with no earnings and crummy fundamentals are a very bumpy ride, even for traders. Better are the related companies: GE, FCX and the like for the average person.
Part of why I’m so interested in the GISS bogus numbers (getting back on topic) is that if I can get a better ‘bead’ on what is coming than everyone else (who believes GISS) I can make more money. That’s why AccuWeather is on the financial news channels and TWC is not – they are correct and NASA / GISS et. al. are wrong. Traders only care about what makes money, not what’s PC. Knowing that the heaters will burn more fuel is all that matters.
Right now I’ve started adding natural gas positions due to my expectation that it’s going to be cold. Real cold this winter. (That also implies that ag commodities ought to go up – DBA, JJA, JJG, and grain eaters down COW, HOGS – yes, those are real tickers- traders have a sense of humor 😉
So yes, I’m betting real money and my retirement on ‘getting it right’ on weather. That is why this site is so important to me. The key players here ‘have clue’ and are willing to share. I’m learning (sometimes against my will – Leif?) how to get it right on what really drives the weather. Knowing that other folks are getting bogus numbers is just icing on the cake 8-‘}
Oops, forgot to close the blockquote. The second paragraph is mine.
(Generalized Response)
The consequences of not utilizing alternative energy sources are disasterous… furthermore, we need to lower CH4,CO2 etc…. even if there were net global cooling (which there is not, it is localized) because of their detrimental effects to the atmosphere and human health. SO2 and SO3 lead to acid rain and cooling so they must also be reduced. It amazes me that people can still deny the toxic levels of such gases. Regarding my calculations, they will be available to be posted sometime next year, as I am working on my paper for review and have several other side projects, classes, and so forth, but I will get them up as soon as is feasible.
Cooling is both a consequence of sulfates and warming itself will change weather patterns leading to cold fronts, cloud insulation, etc… no one is denying this, or that the models are ongoing and improvements are the same. Back to B-15 ‘iceberg,’ (my mistake, not glacier, but it is so large it approaches such a designation) yes a larger iceberg may indicate cooling, but precipitation will still freeze and the bobbing up and down by a foot or so does not explain fully how such a thick iceberg could just break off, it looks as if warming helped facilitate the forming of a deep crack and ultimately break off. Conclusive? of course not… The planet system is an open one or if you will, a selectively open (or permeable) one, otherwise it would be too cold.
My problem with Watts is that he irresponsibly exaggerates thermometer misplacement issues and urban heat island effect. His accounts are incomplete and this leads other people to make faulty posts and explanations of siting issues that often do not exist at all. We all know that there are cooling trends as well as warming; weather, climate, heat exchange does not remain linear… I have yet to see conclusive or compelling data that the globe is in a net cooling period, but there has been net cooling over the years, this is undeniable, but this was very short term (in modern history, not paleoclimate) and did not reverse to zero net, the warming, and no credible data exists stating that it did, no matter how much we discuss ENSO and so forth. If someone had several sources of detailed data indicating net cooling I would be happy to look at it, but no one has shown me; one or two graphs or a blog do not constitute validated or repeatable data sets.
You can talk of corruption in peer review, but you need evidence, data, charts, images, empirical observations. We certainly cannot blame global warming for everything; it was originally believed that it was global warming that reduced honey bee populations, now we know it is more from other factors. Still, global climate change is serious, it is real and anthropogenic causes are evidenced or correlated quite well. Climatologists do not make more money by saying it is warming as opposed to cooling, they make a living tracking, modeling, trending and predicting climate patterns; if the globe quickly cools this is just as catastrophic, if there is a net balance, there are other aspects of climate that they can receive enormous funding to research. To say the majority of the data is skewed to the right, inaccurate, made up as part of a conspiracy etc… is far fetched indeed; of course this sometimes happen on a small to moderately sized scale, like in Korea and the false claim regarding stem cell treatment applicability or cloning in France. Still quality controls usually, and peer review, always, teases out blatant lies, gross inaccuracies and sets the science back on the path.
Oh and seeing as it is almost summer time in the Artic, we know that there has to be some natural warming occurring around this time as well.
Oh and I meant to say anartica, southern hemisphere.
Read: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9527485/
And think they teach this stuff in elementary school, aha!
From jbcmack
The trends are clear, however, as are the potential ramifications in addition to the current trends of plasmodium parasites due to the facilitation of vectors, like Anopheles mosquito which is a carrier of the parasite which causes malaria,
… [and] …
even if there were net global cooling (which there is not, it is localized)
end quotes
Boy, hook line and sinker. Golly.
Since I live in a historic malaria area (every year their are still a few cases) I can assure you that the present lack of malaria here (and in Europe for that matter) has NOTHING to do with temperature and everything to do with pesticides and antibiotics; and a wee bit with draining swamps. Period.
Restore the wet lands, ban pesticides for mosquito control, and we’ll be up to our eyeballs in malaria in no time flat, even if the temperature drops or rises 10 degrees. (100 F vs 110 F doesn’t mean much to mosquitos… the spray trucks from the local mosquito control district mean a great deal…)
And that ‘localized’ cooling is, so far, ‘localized’ to: Alaska, Canada, Central U.S., the U.S. South East including Florida, Cuba, Southern Brazil, Argentina et.al., Antarctica, South Africa, Europe, Greenland, the steppes of Mongolia, China, Tibet, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Iran, Iraq, & Saudi … and is slowly spreading out towards the U.S. Northeast and Southwest. Oh, and arctic sea ice reformed at record rates…
So we have a maybe warm area near Moscow and N. Siberia (where warm is a relative term and the winter is young, not being here yet and all). I’d call that the abnormal weather event. Check back in January…
No matter how much you say “na na na na na I can’t hear you” facts will out. (Computer models are not facts, they are automated fantasies.) It is cold. It is getting colder. It is happening world wide. It started at the poles and is spreading out. It is happening in direct proportion to the reduction in solar activity (mechanism poorly understood, but correlation is clear) and in spite of dramatic increases of CO2 emissions. All the ‘sky is falling’ predictions of dire impacts on the world from warming have failed to appear. They are all still just predictions of doom with a paranoid feel about them. And every time Al Gore speaks up, he gets a cold wave… Almost enough to make me believe that there is a God – and with a sense of humor too 😉
Please take just a minute to look at the ski condition reports from around the world. It isn’t hard and doesn’t take long. How about the first snow in ages in Iran and south Brazil. The late snow in Australia. None of this has to do with the speed of the Gulf Stream (the imputed way a dilution of the N. Atlantic due to warming would cause localized cooling in N. Europe only). It has everything to do with real cooling all over the planet without regard to the gulf stream; and cooling is not warming.
Oh, and since the U.S. & Europe have been adding desulphurizers and scrubbers like crazy I don’t think you can pin this on aerosols and sulphates. The air over much of the planet is cleaner than it’s been in ages. China is a problem, but they didn’t just switch on in the last 2 years… so your causality model has a timing problem.
Remember Occam and his razor? The simple answer that covers all the known facts is “the sun did it” (or maybe “random variations”). The complex answer with gaping problems and missed correlation with effects is “We did it via CO2”.
jbcmack
Just to support what E.M. Smith says i.e.
Malaria has nothing whatsoever to do with temperature.
One of the worst oubreaks (per head of popn at least) occurred In 1922-23. There were 30,000 cases in Archangel – a city just 125 miles south of the Arctic Circle. During the 16th and 17th century malaria was widespread particular around the Fens area of Britain. According to CET record the 17th century was the coldest period in the past 400 years.
I don’t necessary agree with EM about the current cooling. I think that unless another strongish La Nina develops there will be (there already is) a rebound in the coming year, but I don’t think anyone knows why, for example, temps in 1990s were warmer than those in the 1960s.
If you think that you (jbcmack) do could you also answer the folllowing
1. What caused the increase in temps between 1915-44. This was a warming trend very similar to the recent one.
2. What caused the cooling between 1945-75. If your reply is “aerosols” could you explain why the Arctic cooled by around 4 times as much as the mid-latitude regions (i.e. the industrialised regions). Note that Mann & Jones amongst others have made the point that the effect of aerosols is “regionally specific”.
3. If we establish that you don’t know and cannot quantify the factors which contribute to the above warming/cooling events. Can you tell me what makes you (or anyone else) think that you know what caused the current one.
Thanks
False application of parsimony (Occam’s Razor) and we already understand the Milankovitch changes and alterations in the earth’s orbit.
From jcbmack (14:50:19) :
False application of parsimony (Occam’s Razor) and we already understand the Milankovitch changes and alterations in the earth’s orbit.
-end quote
OK, I’ll bite: What makes it a false application? Please explain how all the non-fit of temperature changes to CO2 vs the almost exact match of temperature changes to solar activity does not argue for ‘the sun did it’ as a simpler and more direct answer. Address the various optimum and pessimum intervals of the holocene in your answer. Explain Bond Events.
And, BTW, the Milankovitch cycles are related to ice ages, not short term (i.e. decades to centuries) changes. I see nothing to relate the 10,000 year scales of Milankovitch cycles to anything in this thread. You are grasping…
So, also address how you account for orbital mechanics issues (Milankovitch) and solar output issues (sun spots minimum / maximum, Hale, Gleissberg, de Vries / Suess cycles and the 2400 year cycle) in the proposed model for CO2 as the driver. Just ignore them? I’ll wait while you read the wiki pages…