Blink comparator of GISS USA temperature anomaly – h/t to Zapruder
The last time I checked, the earth does not retroactively change it’s near surface temperature.
True, all data sets go through some corrections, such as the recent change RSS made to improve the quality of the satellite record which consists of a number of satellite spliced together. However, in the case of the near surface temperature record, we have many long period stations than span the majority of the time period shown above, and they have already been adjusted for TOBS, SHAP, FILNET etc by NOAA prior to being distributed for use by organizations like GISS. These adjustments add mostly a positive bias.
In the recent data replication fiasco, GISS blames NOAA for providing flawed data rather than their failure to catch the repeated data from September to October. In that case they are correct that the issue arose with NOAA, but in business when you are the supplier of a product, most savvy businessmen take a “the buck stops here” approach when it comes to correcting a product flaw, rather than blaming the supplier. GISS provides a product for public consumption worldwide, so it seems to me that they should pony up to taking responsibility for errors that appear in their own product.
In the case above, what could be the explanation for the product changing?
Chris V. (15:39:05) :
There is no empirical evidence that the greenhouse effect is even applicable to the earth’s atmosphere.”
What type of empirical evidence are you looking for?
Atmospheric greenhouse effect would seem to be dependent on the assumption that CO2 re-radiates energy, part of which returns to the surface. Is there any empirical evidence that this is true? Why not conduction to adjacent and cooler gases?
“Where the skeptics and “warmers” disagree is the “how much warming” part.
Not so. Where the skeptics and “warmers” disagree most, is the “anthropogenic” part.”
I dunno- a lot of AGW skeptics (Christy, Schwartz, Monckton) have written papers where they proposed much lower CO2 sensitivities than what many others believe. Lower, but not zero.
Which doesn’t matter, unless one believes that increases in CO2 are manmade and is driving the climate. I’m inclined to think that the current increases in CO2 are the result of the warming period eight hundred years ago.
Note: this a bit offtopic and is a bit cumbersome. My commenting skills are primitive. Would appreciate any advice regarding methods of communication.
Chris V: My prediction:
Measured warming will be less than either the IPCC or Hansen’s predictions.
Predicting surface temperatures beyond a week is a fool’s game.
However, I do have a few predictions.
People will continue to vacation in climates that are warmer than their own.
People will continue to live in places that are much warmer or much colder than their imagined “ideal” temperature.
If the thermostat at your house becomes off by one degree, you will not notice it.
If the Earth warms 2F or 2C in the next 100 years, no one will notice the difference.
It will become more obvious every year that CO2 will NOT cause any catastrophies.
No matter what happens, governments will create huge bureaucracies to protect us.
Governments will sell companies the “right to pollute”.
These companies will eventually become government protected monopolies.
The recent low levels of world stock markets will be remembered as a boom.
The poor of the world will die in large numbers.
America will return to capitalism.
The high levels of CO2 will create a garden Earth.
And then everyone will forget what happened and the whole thing will start over again.
Chris V.:
Why ‘must’ we compare that specific prediction of Hansen’s?
The glaring error in this debate is the fact that Hansen made three very different climate predictions. By saying: “I agree that Hansen’s prediction does not perfectly match the reality. But it’s in the ballpark,” what you are doing is selecting the Hansen prediction that comes closest to matching the current climate.
Give anyone the opportunity to make three entirely different climate predictions, and it’s very likely that they could predict one that is, in your words, ‘in the ballpark.’
But you unequivocally state that “…we must compare [Hansen’s] scenario B temperature prediction to the real temperatures.” Really? We must? And why only scenario B? Why not A, or C?
Had the climate come closer to those grossly erroneous predictions, no doubt you would be singing Hansen’s praises for his astute prediction with either Scenario A, or Scenario C. But since Scenario B comes closer to the current climate, we ‘must’ compare only that prediction with today’s climate?
Let’s see Hansen gamble his rapidly deteriorating reputation on just one specific prediction. Since he’s so smart and all.
I just had a beautiful thought: The higher GISS puts its global anomaly value today, the more dramatic it will be when we descend from that value for decades.
That’s my prediction, Chris V.
You can fool some of the people….
Chris V: “But if you feel that way, I would think that you would think it was even MORE important to prove the skeptical theories right. Providing more accurate predictions than Hansen would certainly help with that.”
Sorry to be blunt, but if someone proposes a theory that Santa Claus exists then THEY have to prove it – nobody else has to propose an alternative theory to explain his nonexistence.
But, just to keep you happy, I predict that temperatures will continue to rise and fall in a cyclical fashion – much as they have always done.
Harold – nice thought.
But, unfortunately, insofar as GISS (and HadCRUT) may have exaggerated the true surface trend between the mid 20th century and the present, any future downward trend would seem proportionally less dramatic.
I predict that we’re all going to die. In precisely one lifetime each.
I predict that global temperature trends for each coming decade will be similar to the trend of a decade in the past 100 years.
Everyone knows about Hansen’s Scenario A, B and C. However he also had Scenario A2, which, strangely enough, looks exactly like the GISS graph, except that it heads North from here. Unfortunately, he forgot to release it in ’88. But, trust me, that is the one we should be comparing to.
Why all the need for debate and speculation? Why don’t GISS simply tell everyone what they have done and why?
Chris V. wrote:
Your response is unclear to me- do you agree that Hansen’s “B” scenario is closest to the actual GHG concentrations?
No, I don’t agree that the Hansen B scenario is what applies, because from my understanding, Hansen was talking about CO2 levels specifically, not GHG (including water vapor) concentrations, and there was no CO2 limitation or reduction in the period covered.
Chris wrote:
In other words, have we had A scenario emissions but resulting in B scenario measured CO2? I’m just passing through in a rush on this occasion so I’m asking the question genuinely, not rhetorically – normally I would research properly before questioning another poster.
This is the best i can find in a 5-sec google search:
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/research/30073
That should be “we had A scenario CO2 emissions but resulting (close to) B scenario measured temperatures.”
Oldjim wrote:
Hansen’s B scenario assumed a constant increase of CO2 in the atmosphere per annum (based on the values at the time the paper was written) which is fairly close to what occurred.
Check out the link Chris provided.
“According to a recent study, between 1990 and 1999 emissions rose by 1.1% a year, while from 2000 to 2004 they increased by more than 3% a year. The post-2000 growth rate exceeds the most fossil-fuel-dependent A1F1 emissions scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the late 1990s. . . . At present, CSIRO and other measurements show that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are rising progressively faster each year”
You guys would score a lot more points if before posting you’d simply read your posts over to correct for really, really stupid and obvious grammatical errors. I think I’m reading a comment by someone intelligent and who I can maybe trust, but I can’t be confident of that because he can’t spell or write a coherent sentence. Take a minute, take a deep breath, and read what you are about to post.
Or have someone proofread it for you. If your opinion is worth expressing, it is worth expressing well.
I know you guys are scientists, but geesh. This is actually important.
I doubt many people question the greenhouse effect, or even whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas. One of the ways that “alarmists” attempt to discredit “skeptics” is by characterizing us all as not even “believing” the basic science.
However, to me the main points are these:
1. CO2 does not drive climate to anything approaching the amount required to cause catastrophe, or a tipping point, or any of the fantastic scenarios we’re constantly bombarded with daily. Atmospheric CO2 content has been significantly higher in the past than it is now, with no apparent ill effects.
2. CO2 is not some rare non-biodegradable chemical that never existed naturally on the planet until the advent of humans. CO2 is created and absorbed (sourced and sinked, if you prefer) on a massive scale every day. Increases in CO2 are AUTOMATICALLY countered by increases in CO2 uptake, whether that is via land plants or oceanic life, or the oceans themselves. CO2 is an automatically regulated trace gas. Volcanic CO2 creation alone dwarfs anything we create, and that is randomly variable.
3. There is no one factor driving climate. Cosmic rays, greenhouse gases, Solar input, planetary and galactic orbits all probably have some input. The concept of a stable climate in the past that we have upset is beyond ludicrous. The sheer hubris is, I don’t know, stunning? We humans simply have not even remotely approached the point where we are making significant changes to climate, only microclimate.
4. I predict that ALL long term climate predictions are absolute trash. The planet is a self-regulating machine. Increase temperature here, and something over there changes to counter it. Decrease this gas and some other mechanism increases it. Just because we don’t understand all of the mechanisms involved does not in any remote way suggest that they don’t exist. This planet has been uncontrolled and unmonitored for billions of years, and the worst that has happened is a few ice ages.
Yeah, that’s why I’m a skeptic, and why I have descended to outright mocking alarmists. The entire concept is so ridiculous that the only logical conclusion is that alarmists are in it for something. I have little question that the prominent names in the alarmist camp are rubbing their hands with glee, profiting like mad, and laughing at all the idiots out there who believe what they must surely KNOW to be a lie.
Bruce (22:44:14) :
I agree – up to a point. A sizable percentage of posters here are not
native English (or American) speakers and I give them a fair amount of
slack.
Firefox has a decent spell checker, that helps but doesn’t prevent the
egregious errors of there/their/they’re or affect/effect or just plain
typos that correctly spell the wrong word. Nothing replaces a final
proofreading but submitting.
Chris V:
“I dunno- a lot of AGW skeptics (Christy, Schwartz, Monckton) have written papers where they proposed much lower CO2 sensitivities than what many others believe. Lower, but not zero.”
“A lot of” isn’t all, or virtually all. And as was posted previously, it’s the “A” part of AGW that bothers most of us.
And btw?…I’m not a “skeptic”…I’m a realist, as I believe most people here are.
Jim
Bruce,
Have you considered that English is not everyone’s first language?
Dr Watts, you may be pleased to know that my column today in the London Sunday Telegraph, covering the GISTemp story and your admirable part in it, has attracted a record number of comments, almost all supportive.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml#comments
Well done with your outstanding work as a beacon of truth in this darkling world!
REPLY: Dear Mr. Booker. Thank you for your comment, and also very much for the article, but some clarifications are in order.
1- I am not a Dr. or PhD. I have no doctoral degree as such nor should anyone refer to me that way, lest I be accused of misuse of the term as the director of the National Climatic Data Center has been See here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/10/more-flubs-at-the-top-of-the-climate-food-chain-this-time-ncdcs-karl/
2- As I mentioned previously in comments and in this post, my role was small. At the time this happened, I was driving on US Highway 50 in the lonliest place in the USA, central Nevada, on my way to a station survey. Commenter “Chris” and regular contributor John Goetz were the ones who discovered the issue first. At the same time Steve McIntyre, on his Climate Audit blog was coming to the same conclusion. The most that could be said is that this blog was a facilitator to discovery and that my role as proprietor was by association only.
Thank you for bringing the issue onto the world stage. – Anthony Watts
Is that “are”, or “aren’t”????
“I know you guys are scientists, but geesh. This is actually important.”
There are a few scientists here, which comment/comments were you referring to? Oh, by the way, is it “someone who I can trust” or should it be “someone WHOM I can trust”? I really don’t know, but perhaps, since you are the grammatical guru here, you can help me out. It is important that I get the answer to this question.
Thanks in advance,
Mike Bryant
Katherine and Smokey:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/Hansen88_forc.jpg
This graph shows the forcings (CO2, and other stuff) used by Hansen in the model runs for each of his three future scenarios, plotted alongside the actual climate forcings that were observed. You tell me which scenario (A,B, or C) was closest to what actually happened.
@Katherine
i used this link for the data on CO2 annual increase http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ which give these values for annualised mean growth rate from Mauna Loa – I don’t see a progressively faster rise in CO2 levels
1986 1.51
1987 2.33
1988 2.09
1989 1.27
1990 1.31
1991 1.02
1992 0.43
1993 1.35
1994 1.90
1995 1.98
1996 1.19
1997 1.96
1998 2.93
1999 0.94
2000 1.74
2001 1.59
2002 2.56
2003 2.27
2004 1.57
2005 2.53
2006 1.72
2007 2.14
CodeTech (04:15:22) said:
“I doubt many people question the greenhouse effect, or even whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas.”
Looking at the posts in this thread, It looks to me like Gilbert (and maybe JimB?) don’t accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but nobody’s ganging up on them. 😉
But now I’m curious. Maybe we can do an informal poll here-
Do you agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (i.e., absorbs and re-emits long wave radiation)?
Chris V. (09:09:52) :
Can you provide a link to the actual analysis at RC?
I’m interested to know if they included the CFC replacements in their forcing calculations.
Thanks.
Hey, CodeTech, that is pretty much the way I feel.
Once you gain considerable experience with complex computer systems you start to get a feel for how robust a system must be that has operated for hundreds of millions of years if not billions of years.
We humans are no where near the level required to have the effect that the AGW supporters claim and the people pushing this shit are very clearly exploiting the standard human concern that any highly social species has that others are doing something to create problems for them.