Reposted in its entirety from Climate Science
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. University of Colorado
There was an interesting news article in the Guardian on December 6 2008 by James Randerson titled Explainer: Coolest year since 2000
The article reads
“This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.
The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists at the Met Office. “Absolutely not,” said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre. “If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends.”
Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University, who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure: “You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, it’s not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long. We are used to warm years.”
The Met Office had predicted 2008 would be cooler than recent years due to a La Niña event, characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean – the mirror image of the El Niño climate cycle.
Allen was presenting the data on this year’s global average temperature at the Appleton Space Conference at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot, yesterday. The 14.3C figure is based on data from January to October. When the Met Office makes its formal announcement next week they will incorporate data from November. “[The figure] will differ from it, but it won’t differ massively,” said Stott.
Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the 10th hottest year on record. Hottest was 1998, followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002.
In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade.”
Lets do a reality check.
The statement that “The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing” mixes up regional and global temperatures changes. Also, there has been no global warming in the last 4 years (at least; e.g. see). Global warming has stopped for the last few years.
The statement that “In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade” is scientifically incorrect. Heating cannot be ”masked”.
As given in the examples below, the news releases provided by the UK Met Office make for interesting reading and show the complexity and difficulty of skillful season climate prediction.
Thus why should there be any confidence in the forecasts regarding climate change in the longer term?
Examples of UK Met Office News releases
1. For example, on April 11 2007, they wrote in a news release “Met Office forecast for Summer 2007″ [to their credit, they do have a readily accessible archive]
“The Met Office forecast of global mean temperature for 2007, issued on 4 January 2007 in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, stated that 2007 is likely to be the warmest ever year on record going back to 1850, beating the current record set in 1998.”
This did not occur.
2. On April 3 2008 they wrote in a news release “A typical British summer”
“The coming summer is expected to be a ‘typical British summer’, according to long-range forecasts issued today. Summer temperatures across the UK are more likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average for the three months of summer.”
On August 29 2008 they published a news release titled “Wet summer could end with a bang” where they write
“The return to unsettled weather will mark the end of the meteorological summer which has been one of the wettest on record across the UK.”
I suppose that rainfall “near or above average” fits what actually occurred but this is hardly a particularly precise or useful forecast.
3. On September 25 2008 they wrote in a news release “Trend of mild winters continues”
“The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.”
They qualified this news release with the article on November 25 2008 titled “A cold start to winter” where they wrote
“The latest update to the Met Office winter forecast suggests that although the coming winter will have temperatures near or above average, it is very likely that December will be colder than normal.”
Now, in addition to a news release on December 9 2008 they published an article ”El Niño gives colder European winters”, which states
Sarah Ineson, climate research scientist at the Met Office says: “We have shown evidence of an active stratospheric role in the transition to cold conditions in northern Europe and mild conditions in southern Europe in late winter during El Niño years”.
The message in th UK Met Office press releases is that, since their is such poor skill with seasonal weather prediction, multi-decadal climate prediction must be a much less precise and accurate science than we have heard promoted by the IPCC and in the climate change press releases given out by the UK Met Office and others.
Well after doing a quick google search, according to this site:
http://www.inspect-ny.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm
We’d start getting drowsy at a CO2 concentration of 1% (10,000 ppm) if we were trapped in an unventilated room. The gas is toxic at levels greater than 5% (50,000 ppm). That’s about 130 times greater than the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere – and (using one of those nifty linear extrapolations like the pro-AGW crowd adores so much) it would take something like 30,000 years for the current level to reach toxicity.
Now if we pull out that handy graph again of global temperature and atmospheric CO2 over geologic time, the greatest concentration recorded was only 7000 ppm back in the Cambrian – in other words, not toxic at all.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Hmm. I’m not spotting the impending apocalypse. It seems to me that humans could survive quite nicely on this planet at anytime during the past 600 million years and we’ll continue to adapt in the future. And right now my future is snow shovelling…
PeteM (13:58:57) :
Do you know the increase in temperature that makes crops like wheat reduce yield ?
Nope. What is it? (It’s at least in the 105F+ range in my experience… summer wheat in California central valley.)
http://www.usask.ca/agriculture/plantsci/winter_cereals/Winter_wheat/CHAPT10/cvchpt10.php
Gives no upper bound for heat or temperature. It does give a hard bottom at 0C. If we drop below freezing, wheat does not grow. Think about it… (Bold added by me.)
Heat Units
The thermal time required for crop production is determined by adding the daily heat units together for the period between planting and harvest. When the centigrade temperature scale is used, the heat units generated each day is determined by adding the minimum and maximum daily temperatures together and dividing by two. For example, a day with minimum and maximum temperatures of 10 and 20°C respectively, would generate 15 heat units [(20 + 10) / 2 = 15]. Days with average daily temperatures below 0°C do not contribute to the heat unit total.
Thermal Time Requirements For Wheat Production
The heat unit requirements to produce a mature crop are approximately 1550 for spring and 2200 for winter wheat. Translated into calendar days, this means that it would take 103 (103 x 15 = 1545) days to produce a spring and 147 (147 x 15 = 2205) days to produce a winter wheat crop if the average daily temperature was a constant 15°
And my favorite:
The 1988 growing season was much warmer with the result that the thermal time requirements to produce a mature Norstar crop were met five weeks earlier in 1988 than in 1993.
So, please tell me how you get warming as a problem out of this? Warmer weather means more crop sooner. More CO2 along with warmer means lots more crop sooner. Less CO2 and colder means you starve.
That’s why greenhouses are kept hot and often CO2 enriched.
My background? Grew up in farm country with a Dad who insisted that we have a garden all the time (he grew up on a farm in Iowa) and we had about 5 head of cattle and rabbits most of the time. Attended an Ag school… Took Viticulture and Enology among other courses at university. Picked more peaches and walnuts than anyone ever ought to…
The only place that my Sunset Garden Book shows with an upper heat limit for most plants is the desert southwest, like around Phoenix. My read on it is that we’ve got about 15F before anybody else has to worry about a “summer pause”. BTW, that “summer pause” would come along with expanded early spring and late fall growing seasons. That’s why so much production comes from Arizona…
You are barking up the wrong tree with this notion that more heat means less crop.
PeteM (14:13:16) :
Regarding scrubber technology – a lot of coutries don’t deploy them and vehicles still emit a lot of particles . Also , I’m pleased to hear LA may have improved … what does this have to do with a planet that extends much further than California.
Modern smog limits are so tight that you can’t find the particulates. Even Diesels must have particulate traps / catalytic reactors.
L.A. matters because it is an example of what happens when people advance to modernity and prosperity. They demand clean air and a good quality of life. It is in those places with poverty that scrubbers et. al. are not in place. As they advance to prosperity, they too will clean up. And golly, guess who gets a pass in the whole AGW rant? Why, just those places who don’t use scrubbers et. al.
All that the AGW agenda will do is move the economic production from the good stewards of the air to the places with no limits. Hardly and improvement…
BTW, that you say “LA may have improved” flags an astounding naivete. In the late 1950s when you topped the grapevine segment and looked down on LA it was a giant brown soup bowl. Now you can see the city. In Anaheim one summer I remember that the end of the block was fuzzy like summer fog and 2 blocks away was almost not visible. The air now is so much cleaner. It’s called PROGRESS and it comes from using more, not less, energy. All that smog gear that cleans up the air takes more fuel, not less.
Petem, if you have the time, could you do a little experiment for me? Go over to RealClimate and post a skeptical point of view under a different name (so you can still visit the site afterwards, if you choose). Let us know what happens to your post. I think the result will be very telling.
To see Dr. Stephen Chu fearmongering with the best of them, take a peek at this video:
http://www.webtvhub.com/national-clean-energy-summit-video-dr-steven-chu-barack-obamas-chosen-energy-secretary/
He appears to have drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid.
🙁
Richard Sharpe (15:00:23) :
Steven Hill said:
POZNAN, Poland (AFP) — China’s top negotiator at the UN climate talks welcomed the climate pact adopted by EU leaders on Friday as a “positive step,” but criticised carbon reduction goals set by US president-elect Barack Obama as too weak.
Hmmm, I suspect that you are thinking what I am thinking.
I’m thinking I need to check the chart on FXI and see if it’s time to buy into China again. You?
Hang on a sec… price cross over 25, 50, & 75 day moving averages… failure to advance to the downside (higher lows) … MACD positive and pointed up, DMI+ on top, ADX low (not much trend, i.e. prior downtrend broken, new uptrend not established yet)… big jump at the start of the week (about when Poznan started?) momentum positive, volume good… Yup, China is a buy again…
I’ll watch for a better entry next week, and maybe look at the individual china stocks, but the FXI is saying China is a winner in all of this. Hmm and the $ has rolled over relative to the Yen FXY, Yuan CYB, and Euro FXE.. and the Aussy FXA and Brazilian Real BZF too! But not against the British pound FXB. Guess we know who are the pigeons at this poker game…
Time to invest in Brazil EWZ and China FXI and run away from the U.S. $$ now that the hedge fund dollar repatriation / liquidation is over…
And who ever said that the AGW con game wasn’t good for anything 😉
I like this… “In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade.” So a colder temperature ‘masks’ a warmer temperature, does it? Perhaps it really is the other way about. Maybe some of the warmer temperatures of past years were actually masking colder temperatures after all. And there never was any problem in the first place. There are certainly some great twists to this life!
It’s not because the case was not strong, it’s because of emotion. How can you compete with “saving the planet”? The message has become “If you don’t believe in global warming, you’re a planet hater.” When in reality, many of those who use AGW to promote their message are actually human haters. And no that’s not just rhetoric, the verified quotes are out there by most of the green leadership. They don’t want to “fix global warming” or “solve the climate crisis”, they want the de-industrialization of the world, and they want to prevent third world countries from developing and becoming prosperous.
Stevo (16:04:42) :
“I’m also fed up of hearing the point about life existing on this planet in a variety of previous conditions . Humans couldn’t have survived in most of those scenarios .”
On the contrary. Humans can survive over one of the widest ranges of climates of any animal on Earth. We survive from desert to pole. If a range of over 50C can’t stop us, why do you think 3C will?
Um, given that we have Eskimo’s and Saharans ought that not to be more like “over 100C”?
BTW, given that Homo Sapiens along with their precursors have lived through prior (warmer!) interglacials and prior colder ice ages I think there is ample reason to bring up previous conditions.
Also given that AGW advocates regularly say (long list of species) will die from the warming, when we know that they evolved long enough ago to have come through warmer and higher CO2 periods in the past makes those prior times very pertinent. It’s called an existence proof that falsifies the catastrophe theory.
Stevo (16:26:10) :
H,
A guy called Beck has been saying that for years, I think Tim Ball mentioned it recently. It’s extremely dubious.
Here’s a write up, FWIW:
http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2008/12/have-we-been-misled-about-past-carbon.html
Not endorsing, just pointing…
PeteM (16:54:37) :
We know CO2 influences the climate of this planet . Exactly what temperature do you think Earth would be at without some greenhouse effect ? Just do the maths about the incident energy from the sun ….
Love to ‘do the maths’. Just give me the formula. Fully account for all interactions of air, water, clouds, ice, land, biosphere, cosmic ray cloud interactions, solar magnetosphere / earth interactions, and anything else of importance when you put the formula together. I’ll wait….
Now there’s the rub… if you can’t show all those things then you can’t say what will happen. You are just guessing in a very precise way with a mathematical language… I don’t feel like betting my future on such guesses.
RW (12:33:13) :
anna v: and indeed, whether it is cold in the UK this year or not has a different cause (internal unforced variation) to the ongoing rise in global temperatures (external forcing). The analogy is perfectly applicable .
Wrong again. There is nothing external to CO2 production , whether naturally or by humans. It is continuously happening, even as we sit and breath at the keyboards. The “climate forcing” assumption is just an integration of the momentary breathing in and out of the earth, by all means, including humans burning stuff outside their body than inside their body. Weather is an integration over a few hours and days. Climate over a period of N years, where N depends on the brains of the speakers.
I am sure you agree that you can very easily predict that it will be hotter in summer than winter, and hotter in the middle of the day than the middle of the night. Temperature variations are highly predictable on some time scales and highly unpredictable on others.
So?
Robert Wood (17:05:55) :
Listen up! You are Keanu Reeves from Real Climate, aren’t you?
I found the use of “do the maths” diagnostic of this but not definitive, so said nothing… since I don’t know what culture results in that usage.
casuistry .
Had to look that one up. Good word!
In the UK, today’s Telegraph (the one serious paper in Britain that isn’t afraid to publish the odd anti-warmist article) points out that the beginning of winter here has been the coldest for more than 30 years. However, there isn’t a mention of anything AGW-related in the short article. You can bet that if the past 30 days had been the warmest in 30 years, though, that…well you know what would have been said.
Christian Bultmann (17:47:13) :
Here is a CO2 article from Tim Ball based on Jaworowski’s and Beck’s papers.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6855
I got half way through this then was going to bail… scrolled down and ran into a very nice little graph with historic temps & CO2 levels for geologic time. The caption makes the point that the only time both CO2 and temp have been as low as today is a short period at the end of the carboniferous.
What struck me was the steady downward trend from 7000 ppm to today punctuated by that one dip and with most of all history above 1000 ppm .
I knew CO2 was a plant nutrient, but what this chart said, indirectly, is that almost all plants on this planet are starving for the stuff and never evolved to deal with this kind of CO2 vacuum. That the plants are under CO2 deficiency stress and THAT is why they grow so much better with such a small addition. Evolutionary biology would argue for 1000 ppm as much more ideal for life on this planet. I’d seen people post that but just figured it was hyperbole. It isn’t.
This also puts the lie to the notion that a few ppm more will lead to all sorts of acidification ills for the ocean. They have been there and done that for most of all geologic time. No problem.
Thanks for the link!
Ric Werme (18:41:44) :
2) A couple (you wanted one, so I lose?)
Opossums (America’s only marsupial) have spread their range northward, so we now have some around Concord NH. I’m not aware of specific counts.
I’m not sure ‘possums count. They are a recent entrant to N. America from S. America and have had a very long slow waddle from S to N since Panama formed. Maybe they do count, but it could just as easily be their slow pace of radiation or their slow adaptation to new places, foods, temps, etc.
We have some living under the shed (a new litter every year for several years now! They like cat food & chili beans…). They were imported to California in 1895 by folks fond of ‘possum hunt’n.
http://www.natureali.org/opossum.htm
Ch. 5 Eye Witless News is reporting snow expected down to 1500 ft. in San Francisco… and significant cold front headed our way. Snow? In San Francisco? Rare, but sometimes… Must be Global War( SLAP ), er normal.
Also news program about CARB hitting trucks with a $15,000 mandatory smog retrofit per truck. Scene of truckers picketing and planing to leave the state.
Yup, everything is normal on the Loony Left Coast…
More Anecdotal evidence
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3724518/Weather-Coldest-start-to-winter-since-1976.html
Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the 10th hottest year on record. Hottest was 1998, followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3724518/Weather-Coldest-start-to-winter-since-1976.html
If the winter in the UK ends up being as cold as it looks like being, how can 2008 still end up being the 10th hottest after such a dismal summer? I remember the summer of 76 in the UK and it was really hot with a drought and water rationing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/southtoday/content/articles/2008/10/06/telltom_76weather_feature.shtml
I live in Australia now and this December has been really cold continuing from November, with below average temperatures in Melbourne so far. We’ve got the heating on again today watching the rain tip down, when we should be outside in our shorts. I wouldn’t be surprised if it snows on Christmas day this year.
What’s going on with the ice storm in the US?
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/us-ice-storm-knocks-out-power/10545
Richard Sharpe (08:24:35) :
Get your 2009 calender and write…. TimL ..on it for June 14th,
we shall see
Stevie B (10:24:35) :
Blizzard of ’78 comes to mind and ’81? here it snowed every day a little bit. EVERYDAY! dec,jan,feb, LOL
George E. Smith (10:27:03) sarc on Your wrong! the moon is the highest alt. in the earth system!!!! sarc of f Leif is this done correctly?
( Robert Coté (11:54:48) :
Conforming events == proof of AGW
Disproving events == outliers, weather not climate, anecdote, etc.
Sorry to be so terse but we are bracing here “locally” for an “outlying event” That may freeze all your winter strawberries (Ventura County). )
How will they explain food shortages?
Robinson (12:57:44) : do what i do .. breath deeply .. good air in.. bad air out.. please do not fear for your CO2 pollution, a pine tree near by will help you.
PeteM (13:18:13 what data? every data set I have reviewed shows a downward trend. ( cooling)
such a good read! pete YOU PROVE WWGW -AGW IS A HOAX, thank you tim
“Do the maths” is certainly a British expression, as opposed to “Do the math” – shortened form of mathematics. This probably pegs RW as a Brit (the science is not settled and no concensus has been reached as yet).
Anecdotal evidence of diesel exhaust emissions: I remember cycling to school in the seventies following diesel vehicles that pumped visible clouds of soot from their exhausts. You could see the particulates, and certainly did not want to breathe them. I have been asthmatic from birth and the cloud of smuts inhaled would often bring me to a halt, unable to breathe. This would often completely wreck the school day for me as the asthma was not really controlled by the drugs available at the time.
Today it seems every other vehicle on the road in the UK is diesel powered, but emission control means no particulates in sight, and I can wander about the countryside close to busy roads without worrying about breathing problems.
I’m thinking of moving north to Scotland and setting up a vinyard and producing some fine wines as the world is so much warmer than in the MWP. Just looking for financial backers for the first Scottish wine producing company. Anyone?
The Ministry of Defence “own” Hadley Met, CRU et al. Do you expect the truth from that quarter? Climate crisis/green energy is being pushed as the saviour of western economics. The next bubble. Do not expect it to go away any time soon. Sorry.
Only slightly OT From Wunderground –
“A rare early December heavy snowstorm hit Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi yesterday, setting several records. It was the earliest measurable snowfall in recorded history at Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Lake Charles. Also, this snow event set the all time record snowfall amounts for the month of December at Beaumont, Port Arthur, Lake Charles, Lafayette, and New Iberia, and was the first measurable snowfall in recorded history for the month of December at Lafayette.”
PeteM.
CO2 is rising, but global temperatures are not rising. Indeed, they are falling because our sun is failing us. It’s not sending us as much heat as it used to do. Is there anything you can suggest that will turn up the sun’s wick a little so we can be warm again? I don’t like being cold, because cold will kill me quicker than a warm summer will.
Please help me by advising how to get the climate warmer. Should I burn more wood and coal to keep warm this winter in England or should I not. I want to be warm and cosy and live to see the spring and summer months next year. Producing more CO2 is supposed the make our planet warmer, but it doesn’t seem to be working. The planet is getting colder and that is in spite of India and China doing all they can to make me warmer by burning lots and lots of coal. I think you are lying to me about CO2 making the planet warmer . If CO2 makes the planet warmer, why is it so cold here in England. Please confirm that CO2 is going to make me much warmer than the sun can, because at the present moment I’m like a little brass monkey, looking for a blacksmith.
Your advice will be gratefully accepted and thankfully applied.
Thanks to all who corrected me on 1934. No thanks to those who moaned that they thought “everyone understood that”. My point was that we in the sceptics’ corner need a transparent data set to quote from easily. So perhaps this website could refocus, and publish only (mainly?) considered resumes. Very few of us have time to put all the published stuff in perspective.
For instance this morning I just gave up 20% through the comments on this one item: just no time. They were, inevitably, repetitive and many were just jibes or counter-jibes.
Quote PeterM (My emphasis):
I don’t want to get into a debate about human adaption … but we’re talking about a planet that currently has 6+ billiom people versus scenarios where the human population was maybe a few hundred thousand. The transition from the former to latter is not something I would want to accept when we could have done something about it . We probably need a certain number of people before civilisation (as opposed to survival) is possible .
Erm… I would dearly love to know where you get the idea that a couple of degrees rise in temperature is going to cull the human race by 99.9%
I mean, we’ve all seen The Day After Tomorrow, but it wasn’t a documentary.