Fear and Loathing For California

Tim Clark (09:04:01) :
psi (06:13:45) :
I believe that Svensgard’s proposed mechanism for how decreased solar magnetosphere can produce increased cloud cover (which causes warming everywhere but in Antarctica)
Increased cloud cover causing warming everywhere but in Antarctica is not Svensmark’s theory.
Ok, if you say so.
If you mean that someone other than Svensmark originated the idea, I have no comment.
But if you mean that Svensmark does not endorse this theory, you are wrong.
On pages 82-90 of The Chilling Stars you will find extensive discussion of what Svensmark and Calder term the “antartic anomoly.”
The term is explained in the book as the theory that “when cloudiness decreases, the world will warm up and the southern continent will cool down” (88). Svensmark and Calder further assert that “Cloudiness is the only forcing agent that directly predicts the Antarctic climate anomaly, without the need for any further processes” (88).
Now where we?

John Philip (20:35:54) :
I see, So the previous argument was ‘no net GW 1940-April 2008′, now you illustrate that April 2008 was nearly 0.6C cooler than Jan 2007, so you could have written ’substantial net GW 1940-Jan 2007′!.

Or, net cooling since 1000ce-any time since…

Allan M R MacRae (22:06:18) :
GISS typically exhibits more warming than Hadley ST, UAH LT and RSS LT.
What do you mean by ‘typically’? The Hadley trend since the 1880 beginning of the GISS record is greater than GISS –
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/to:2009/trend/offset:-0.125/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2009/trend
GISS is very slightly greater over the past thirty years, but it is UAH that is evidently the divergent record, with GISS, Hadley and RSS being tightly grouped:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/uah/mean:12/plot/rss/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/rss/trend
REPLY:Yes you can fit GISS to match the other three climate metrics, as you have done above, using offsets. But you miss the point: GISS has a presentation issue, they use a different (older) anomaly baseline than the other sets. If they used the same baseline as the others, this issue would disappear because their visual public graph would look like the others. Since you are a defender of GISS, why not ask them to conform? I’m sure that in the interest of fostering a correct graphical presentation to the public, they will use the more recent baseline like the other 3 climate metrics do. – Anthony

Anthony,
I’m sure that in the interest of fostering a correct graphical presentation to the public, they will use the more recent baseline like the other 3 climate metrics do. – Anthony
But the other three don’t use ‘the more recent baseline’ – HADCRUT3 uses Jan 1961 – Dec 1990 (30 years), UAH & RSS both use Jan 1979 – Dec 1998 (20 years). GISTEMP is Jan 1951 – Dec 1980 (30 years).
There is nothing ‘incorrect’ about a different choice of baseline, and nor does it make any difference whatsoever to the analysis of change in temperature. The only difference is in the anomaly figures themselves, these being all consistently higher or lower for the entire period. As for a “correct graphical presentation” I simply don’t know what you mean, unless you’re suggesting that either Hadley or RSS/UAH are somehow baselined to a “correct” zero anomaly?
This is not an issue to anyone with a simple understanding of anomalies relative to baselines, although it certainly does seem to feed the false perception that GISS ‘exhibits more warming’.
I am not a defender of GISS (what an odd idea – why should I be? It doesn’t even show the greatest warming over its record period!). Since it is evident that there is some divergence between the records, especially over short time scales, I favour looking at all of the records in the way that woodfortrees does in presenting its ‘temperature index’. Favouring only the highest or the lowest indicator of warming for any particular period without referencing the others would typically be an indication of cherry picking.
For all that’s written on this blog suggesting GISS adjustments introducing warming to their temperature record, there seems to be precious little evidence of them succeeding in doing so relative to the majority of records. If one wanted to examine what had been done to a record because one was concerned about its divergence one would start with UAH, that is entirely obvious (UAH may be perfect, of course, but it is clearly the least confirmed by others).

“For all that’s written on this blog suggesting GISS adjustments introducing warming to their temperature record, there seems to be precious little evidence of them succeeding in doing so relative to the majority of records.”
You Sir, are willfully ignorant. Those of us who have looked into GISTemp no longer find reporting their results as ingenuous to be candid or honest in any fashion.

@ur momisugly Tom in Florida,
For all I can see the site you quote pulls its numbers out of thin air. The references for the deciding data in table 1 on that site come not from the cited references. See below for details, I repost my entry from the “WaPo Pundits …” thread
———–
Monte Hieb, the author of that page, lists in his table 1 the “natural” and “man-made” additions to CO2 from pre-industrial levels to today, indicating that just 14% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 mixing ratio is man made. He claims that the data is from U.S. Department of Energy in the table description. Tough luck, the DOE page he references (or see an older version at Archive.Org) holds no such “man-made” vs. “natural” information, only the well-known GHG increase data, which constitutes the rest of table 1. At a minimum, the table description is misleading, as it attributes the numbers of “man-made additions” and “natural additions” to the DOE and takes its name to give it credibility. In the footnote 1 Hieb offers an additional source, namely the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme, where the data section is not publicly available. Cool, no source for the two data columns Hieb bases his entire argument on. But hey, if you look at the IEA pages you will find, that they defers readers to the IPCC for details. Now, if you look at sections 2.3.1 and 7.3.1.2 of the IPCC FAR WG1 report, the IPCC attributes the entire change from pre-industrial about 280ppm to todays about 370ppm in atmospheric CO2 to human activities.
So your “source” uses unsourced data, which is in stark contradiction to generally accepted findings, to make the argument that human contribution to climate change is negligible. You do not expect me to trust anything on that page, do you?
P.S.: Before you ask, yes, I have e-mailed the above info to Hieb, too, including a link to this discussion.
————
I have yet to hear of Hieb.

gary gulrud (11:24:48) :
“For all that’s written on this blog suggesting GISS adjustments introducing warming to their temperature record, there seems to be precious little evidence of them succeeding in doing so relative to the majority of records.”
You Sir, are willfully ignorant. Those of us who have looked into GISTemp no longer find reporting their results as ingenuous to be candid or honest in any fashion.
Would you care to give me evidence of my wilful ignorance, Gary, rather than just asserting the prejudice you have built up over time? I have given my evidence as follows:
Simon Evans (08:32:18) :
Allan M R MacRae (22:06:18) :
GISS typically exhibits more warming than Hadley ST, UAH LT and RSS LT.
What do you mean by ‘typically’? The Hadley trend since the 1880 beginning of the GISS record is greater than GISS –
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/to:2009/trend/offset:-0.125/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2009/trend
GISS is very slightly greater over the past thirty years, but it is UAH that is evidently the divergent record, with GISS, Hadley and RSS being tightly grouped:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/uah/mean:12/plot/rss/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/rss/trend
What is your evidence to counter the above?
REPLY: Simon, as I pointed out earlier, you can make the data sets nearly match when you use offsets such as is available in the woodfortrees interface.. What Gary and many others speak of is the PUBLIC PRESENTATION that GISS puts out, using an older, outdated baseline that the other three metrics do not use. Plus, all of the adjustments they do which when examined in detail, seem nothing more than arbitrarily applied on a station by station basis. So, I don’t see you argument using links above as particularly convincing. I view GISS as an outlier on many levels, as do others, which is why it gets little respect here. – Anthony

“” John Philip (15:49:27) :
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Inhofe’s list of ‘over 650 prominent international scientists’ has some elements of pure comedy, and maybe 30-40 actual dissenting scientsts. I leave others to judge their prominence. Read the entry on Alan Titchmarsh for example [note they misspell his surname] and you will see he says this I’m sure we are contributing to global warming, and we must do all we can to reduce that . Read the website of this TV gardening show presenter and popular novelist and marvel at how he manages to find the time also to be a ‘prominent international scientist’ and how he has managed to keep it quiet 😉 “”
So John; you have managed to dispose of precisely one of the “more than 650” on Inhofe’s list, which contains “maybe 30-40 actual dissenting scientsts “, so by my count, you now have only another 609 to disqualify according to your standards. And so far you have not proven the falsehood of even one of the scientific grounds on which ANY of the 650 chose to come out publicly and voice their dissent in some way or another.
I’ve read quite a few of those statements; and yes they range all the way from “maybe I believe in AGW, but I don’t know if it is any cause to worry.” to “no way in hell is any action of humans responsible for any global warming that may or may not be occurring.” and everything in between.
They include statements that “the AGW thesis has not been proven by any available observational data, to “So long as we have the oceans on earth, we can neither change the temperature of this planet either up or down, even if we wanted to.”
Why not try presenting scientific evidence against their arguments, instead a hollow blanket ad hominem assault on the persons; most of whom, you know absolutely nothing about.
I’m somewhat familiar with that last declaration; since I made that statement publicly; and several times.
I also predicted in June 2004, that when the floating sea ice melts, the sea level will go down; not up. That was published (Jan 2005 Physics Today). That was roundly ridiculed by none other than Spencer Weart, whose book “The discovery of Global Warming”, I was commenting on; actually I was commenting on Morrison’s review of that book.
It took till around June 2006 for a British/Dutch team of real live international climatologists, to report on ten years of actual real data measurement using a European polar satellite to prove that the sea level of the arctic ocean was falling at 2 mm per year (therby confirming that the floating arctic sea ice was indeed melting over that decade. They state, that they were “very confident” of their data, but did not know why that should happen; and they would “wait for the theoreticians to catch up with the real measured data.” Well at least one “theoretician” was a good two years ahead of them.
And all the available long term ice core proxy data, shows that the global surface temperature changes occur hundreds of years ahead of the atmospheric CO2 changes; which was the point on which I queried Morrison’s review of the Weart’s book.
So other than the fact that we have NO reliable global surface temperature data that predates about 1979-80, which is about when both the satellite temperature measurements started, and also when the ocean buoy experiments started, which prove that prior to then, all of the ocean surface water temperature data; which after all is only 70 % or so of the global surface; was completely false.
So other than the ground based surface temperature historic data are junk, and also that the surface temperature sampling regimen is in gross violation both spatially, and temporally with the Nyquist sampling Theorem; so that recovery of even an average value is impossible; we have the absurd realization, that even accurate knowledge of an accurate mean global surface Temperature, tells us precisely nothing about whether the earth is radiating more energy than it receives (cooling down) or radiating less energy than it receives from the sun, and hence warming up.
So John; try attacking the science arguments of any of Inhofe’s list of 650 “shysters”, instead of the persons; or alternatively present some actual measured data; rather than computer generated fiction. that passes for most of the IPCC scare mongering predictions. I’d be happy if you can reduce the three to one obligatory fudge factor in their wild predictions, to say a +/-30% error.
But I agree with you that the ad hominem mass attack is second only to the straw man debating technique.
George

RE: The alleged “pre-industrial level” of CO2 at ~280ppm is uncomfortably close to the fatal 200ppm. As CO2 is naturally sequestered in carbonates and fossil fuels over geologic time, it is reasonable to expect that all life on Earth will ultimately cease due to CO2 starvation.
Yes, this is a grave danger. When the Industrial Revolution commenced, we may have literally been nearing the ultimate disaster. So, perhaps a few centuries were bought. And now? Projecting conservatively, CO2 should peak out later this century. Then what?