Guest post by Steven Goddard
“April comes in like a lion, and stays that way.”
The University Of Colorado in Boulder and nearby Colorado State University are hotbeds of climate science activity. Famous climate names from both sides of the AGW aisle like NCAR, NSIDC, the Pielkes, Bill Gray and Chris Landsea are associated with these universities. Earlier this extended winter WUWT reported on one forecast by a CU geography professor :
University of Colorado-Boulder geography professor Mark Williams said Monday that the resorts should be in fairly good shape the next 25 years, but after that there will be less snowpack – or no snow at all – at the base areas
No doubt that a geography professor would have the correct skill set to be making ski forecasts 25 years in the future, and that 25 years from now the climate will make a radical switch. It appears that Dr. Williams forecast is correct so far, as Colorado is getting lots of snow.
Wolf Creek Ski Area has received more than 11 metres of snow this winter, and has 118 inches of snow on the ground. (That would be 2.9972 metres deep, using the Catlin tape measure.) Unfortunately, people may be unable to get to most of the ski areas because Interstate 70 is shut down – due to too much snow.
Ahead of the current storm, all of the snowtel sites in Colorado were reporting normal snowpack.
| RIVER BASIN | PERCENT OF AVERAGE | ||
| Snow Water | Accum | ||
| GUNNISON RIVER BASIN | 109 | 108 | |
| UPPER COLORADO RIVER BASIN | 112 | 109 | |
| SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN | 98 | 97 | |
| LARAMIE AND NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASINS | 103 | 105 | |
| YAMPA AND WHITE RIVER BASINS | 113 | 109 | |
| ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN | 107 | 99 | |
| UPPER RIO GRANDE BASIN | 104 | 107 | |
| SAN MIGUEL, DOLORES, ANIMAS & SAN JUAN | 95 | 10 | |
One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/hprcc/MonthTDeptHPRCC.png
Of course, weather is not climate and the earth has a 50/50 chance of “tipping” in the future – due to reaching some mythical CO2 threshold.
On a more urgent note, a US Navy researcher from told the Beeb that projections of an ice free Arctic by 2013 may be “too conservative.”
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
(This California based researcher did not accompany the Catlin expedition on their -40C Arctic camping trip this spring.)
Polar Bear pondering how cap-and-trade may brighten it’s future?
If you want to save the ski industry and the polar bears, you might want to consider sending Al Gore some money – and please quit producing so much of that dangerous pollutant CO2. However, absolutely do not try to apologize to the bears in person. Skiing is much more fun and generally safer than swimming with polar bears, as this woman visiting the Berlin Zoo found out.
PHOTO: WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
I just don’t know how to get to any ski areas without making lots of CO2.
Very witty Wilde! Looks like the dreaded weather will be the undoing of the AGW myth. I am saddened that all the real environmental work that we should be doing has been supplanted by this global warming malarkey.
From there came “professor” Brian Brady, well known phony scientist who predicted back in 1976, that Lima City, Peru, SA, was going to disappear due to cataclismic earthquakes. It did not happend of course (otherwise I would not be typing these words).
I can confidently predict that twenty-five years hence, AGW will be remembered only as the greatest hoax in history, I will be 82 and not one single person will remember or care about twenty-five year old predictions.
Mike Bryant
“No doubt that a geography professor would have the correct skill set to be making ski forecasts 25 years in the future,”
Oh, come on, Anthony, didn’t you know that a PhD. in any area of science magically confers knowledge of all science on the holder?
Ah – carbon sequestration using polar bear technology, though it might be more humane to feed them bovines raised on grass and Gas-X. I’m too lazy to calculate the carbon costs of delivering bovines to polar bears.
On a more serious note, any additional word on the snowpack that feeds us water starved taxpayers here in Southern California: my grass is almost dead.
If it gets any warmer, we’ll all freeze to death….
Some places in the foothills have got over 50″ of snow since the storm started.
See link:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/product.php?site=BOU&product=LSR&issuedby=BOU
I am a spotter for the NWS. My station is at the base of the foothills at 6100 ft & we got 12.8″ of snow – but 3.2″ of liquid equivalent – basically a “Slurpee” storm – heavy snow & 33 deg for most of the storm. I have friend just a few miles away up at 7700 ft & he has over 40″ of snow so far (still some light ppt around).
Many of the ski areas have already closed or tomorrow will be their last day. Not for lack of snow, but for lack of skiers – people moving on to their summer sports. As is typical, the ski areas will close with their largest base depths of the season:
http://www.coloradoski.com/
Historically, the Colorado mtn snowpack doesn’t peak until the 3rd week in April – after most ski areas are closed – the worry shouldn’t be about global warming but local drying (ie a strongly anchored ridge over the Rockies keeping them dry – which would be related a strongly anchored trof over the East …. which was prominent in the late 70’s…. when everyone was worried about the coming ice age. Sooo …. global warming would be good for Colorado skiing ???? Just saying …. ; 0)
Snow pack link:
http://www.cpachecojr.com/cgi-bin/work/get_basin.cgi
Choose “state-wide” for basin, then “average” for year one & then hit the “generate product” button – you will see the late April peak.
I-70 is back open – I’m heading to the slopes tomorrow!
But Steve, don’t you know that all the GCM’s had already predicted that!
A warmer world is a wetter and snowier world is a sound theoretical prediction. So I went to check the global precipitation trend and data.
Surprise, surprise they (NASA) are adjusting the precipitation data to fit the models.
Unfortunately, inferring precipitation over large areas from such point measurements is notoriously difficult. Most precipitation occurs in short bursts over small areas. This is typical of thunderstorms, which can produce torrential rains for a few minutes in one location while no rain at all falls just a few miles away. Since rain gauges are not placed in every spot, it is difficult to objectively estimate how much rain has fallen over a large area. To make matters worse, rain gauges and the way rainfall is recorded have changed over the years, and some station locations have been moved. These changes are not always well documented, making it difficult to separate real climate changes from spurious ones in the historical record.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/delgenio_02/
Perhaps someone would like to graph the adjusted data here.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/precip_dai/
“One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.”
No! No! You’re several iterations behind! “Man-made Global Warming CAUSES global cooling!” But that cooling just coils the warming spring that much tighter. It’s sort of like squatting down for leverage just before you leap off into the abyss. We covered all this during the “debate over” meeting. As the Enron boys often repeated to those who insisted on understanding the deal before signing up for the deal, “You just don’t get it!”
My Sister-in-law in Estes Park, CO said they had 30″ at her place. The 2nd heaviest event for them since that huge storm on the front range back in March 2003 (when she had 4 feet). Here is a picture from earlier today at her house:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2rf9010&s=5
Of course weather is not climate unless happens to be a hot spell in which case it is climate change and global warming. A decade of cooling is a “pause” in which global warming is catching its hot, CO2-laden breath.
Can you spell “cherry picking?”
For a change of pace a little poetry:
I wanna feed the hungry, I wanna heal the sick
I wanna stifle the causes of suffering and hate
I wanna know my enemy by the look in its eyes
I wanna stop on this madness before it’s too late
I don’t care if you think I’ve gone crazy
Messianic delusion is a back breaking crime
-Rodney Crowell
Sex & Gasoline
Unless this is a very unusual size for the storm this wouldn’t be unprecedented or anything as I’ve heard of May snowstorms in Denver at least once in the last few years. Now it’ll be something if some mountain areas get snow in July like what happened when we were on a trip there when I was little during the Pinatubo cooling.
We’re supposed to get to 80 degrees here at least once the next week which seems odd at first because its been taking a bit longer to get to 80 this month than in March if I remember right, plus an 80 degree day in April is far from unheard of in Wichita.
The beauty of April snowstorms in Colorado…it’ll all be gone tomorrow.
Daryl Ritchison (19:17:41) :
Is that an igloo on the front lawn?
Eric Cheiflion:
I just returned from SoCal. During my stay read in the LA times that the central valley was cut off (from water) by environmentalist lawsuit because a certain species of fish might be disturbed by the flow of water to that area… perhaps this affected you also. Oh well, humans don’t matter anyway… try to endure.
The AGW Polar Melting Oceans Rising Phony Arctic Surveys reminds me of an historical hoax: The Piltdown Man.
Do they even remember who claimed Ice Age 30 years ago?
The IPCC has given up to report on the current climate trends.
Why? Because there is no significant change in temperatures from 1995 until 2001 and cooling from 2001 up to now. And all this despite increased levels of CO2.
If you don’t believe me, read the entire post here:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/15/ipcc-2014-fifth-assessment-irrelevant/#comment-39812
And — 25 years hence when Prof Williams is an old gentleman, he will no longer care whether this prediction is right or wrong, because it will have no effect on his career at that point.
i.e. I too would be comfortable making making virtually any prediction that has almost 3 decades to come to fruition.
Adam,
Just wanted you to know I appreciate your comments… very thoughtful.
Mike
2013 too conservative???
Does this mean that the Arctic will be the new Riviera in 2-3 years?
Putin will be building his pipelines to Canada real soon.
The Russian-Canadian trade will boom. Japan will soon export straight across to Europe. The Suez and Panama canals will languish and fall into disrepair.
Drat and double drat. No AR5. I still can’t get to the beach and measure the phenomenal rise of the ocean with my Stanley Tape Measure. I’ll just have to settle for spacing out on the waves.
Ron de Haan (20:03:26),
I’m glad you and other folks are keeping an eye on whackjob sites like climateprogress, because I don’t bother.
But I checked out your link. In fact, I read all the comments, and the central message I got was “What if…”.
They’re saying ‘you just wait until next year when the climate catastrophe hits,’ and similar ravings.
No wonder climateprogress didn’t even make the final cut. They sound like a UFO contingent.
“But that cooling just coils the warming spring that much tighter. It’s sort of like squatting down for leverage just before you leap off into the abyss.”
That is one great thought. It’s like the calm before the storm, that terrible waiting before the snip hits the fan, like the eye of the hurricane, like 4 pm in the emergency room on a Saturday night, like that sweet sweet interlude the Catlin Gang of Three had before WUWT chewed up the failed script…
Don’t catlin me dude…
To add a little perspective to the post:
Surfacestations.org evaluation:
USHCN 050848
BOULDER, CO
MAX-MIN THERMOMETERS
CRS within 10m of concrete walk, 30m ashpalt
parking lot
CRN3 rating
Urban/1,970t
bright/lights=37
mountainous valley
COOL CONIFER
TRENDS:
NOAA Raw: +0.004°C/year
Raw+TOBS: +0.003°C/year
FILNET: +0.001°C/year
(According to the NOAA/USHCN1 web page, FILNET program includes Raw, TOBS, MMTS, SHAP, missing data, and outlier adjustments, inter alia)
One of the relatively few stations where NOAA adjusted data is actually cooler than the raw data.
Recent trend is anomalous: Very little trend at all during the 1980-2000 warming event, followed by a significant upward spike after the year 2000, directly opposite of the observed national and world trend.
Station has been popping around like a jack-in-the-box. MMS indicates five station moves since 1948 (not reflected in Updates or Location section but indicated on their map). I wonder how that might have affected the more recent readings. If the change was < 0.5°C, no outlier adjustment would have been applied, but any spurious effects from the move(s) would just go straight into the record, possibly swamping the actual measurements.
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=1699
Ron de Haan (20:03:26) :
That site is full of hand wringing worry warts. I could smell the fear. Liked how the moderator personally called out Anthony. Way to go Mr. Watts, stay under their skin.
Smokey (20:21:26) :
Ron de Haan (20:03:26),
I’m glad you and other folks are keeping an eye on whackjob sites like climateprogress, because I don’t bother.
But I checked out your link. In fact, I read all the comments, and the central message I got was “What if…”.
They’re saying ‘you just wait until next year when the climate catastrophe hits,’ or similar ravings.
No wonder climateprogress didn’t even make the final cut. They sound like a UFO contingent.”
Smokey,
As clear as ever.
I did not visit the site you mention.
The link was taken from Moreno’s “climate depot”.
I really think he is doing a good job especially because he publishes all the links from WUWT postings and other good sites.
If he will generate as much hits as WUWT? I doubt it.
By the way, how does a UFO contingent sound?
I once scouted a blond UFO when I was very drunk but she had already left when I woke up.
I’ve been watching the weather for two predictions:
On March 27, Piers Corbyn of Weather Action, claimed
~~~~~~~
=> Around 11-15 April North USA / South Canada – Massive disruptive snow deluges and major storms of extreme wind snow and rain / sleet / hail eg South Central Canada (Lake Superior included) and North Central USA ( eg Minnesota) More snow and extreme hail/rain .
=> Around 23-28 April. Central west America Major Thunder & hail eg Colorado Mountains and south to Navada [sic].
~~~~~~~
I think if I detrend, invert, and do a multi-week running average and a geographical stretching there should be a major snow storm over Boulder on or about April 18. Bulls eye!
“…That would be 2.9972 metres deep, using the Catlin tape measure. …”
Ouch!
Ron de Haan,
Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to check out climate depot. I liked Moreno’s feistiness when he out-debated Romm.
“I just don’t know how to get to any ski areas without making lots of CO2.”
Walk and have your supplies flown in by an aircraft at least a twin engine every few days.
That will show those that drive there with there SUV how committed you are to reduce CO2 never mind all the fuel those aircraft burn.
Don’t forget those awesome batteries you need to heat first on your camp stove before you can use them in your LED flashlight.
You could always get Prince Charles to sponsor the trip… of course you might have to drill a few holes…
“By the way, how does a UFO contingent sound?
I once scouted a blond UFO when I was very drunk but she had already left when I woke up.”
I like girls with tatoos. That way I know that they are very capable of making bad decisions…
Yes, weather isn’t climate. Weather actually matters.
Robert Bateman (20:02:35) :
The AGW Polar Melting Oceans Rising Phony Arctic Surveys reminds me of an historical hoax: The Piltdown Man.
Do they even remember who claimed Ice Age 30 years ago?
**********************
Wasn’t “Piltdown” Michael Mann’s middle name?
I’m sure I read recently about a certain dendrochronologist named Michael “Piltdown” Mann.
Regards, Allan :^)
Reply: You’re looking for this post on CA. ~charles the moderator
“One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.”
Warming might explain how the water vapor got there in the first place, but it sure as hell doesn’t explain how the H²O got cold enough to actually condense and freeze. Just another crock of “robust” AGW theory.
It’s a good thing the forecasting for this snow wasn’t based on the Catlin’s geographically and mathematically challenged methods, else the snow forecast would have called for all that snow to fall in Wyoming — and with only a couples inches of it at that.
More from NASA on precipitation. Lots of graphs at the link.
World precipitation peaked just after 1970. The fall from there was especially pronounced in the SH. Although the dataset only goes up to 1988.
A warmer world is a wetter world, and a drier world is almost certainly a cooler world.
The precipitation data indicates the late 20th C warming may well be spurious (UHI etc)
Despite what NASA says precipitation data has nothing like the site specific issues temperature data has. No equivalent of airconditioners.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1997/1997_Dai_etal_2.pdf
[snip – no 9/11 truther links allowed on this forum – Anthony]
National Meteorological Services (SNM) in Mexico has predicted scorching temperatures of 50 C (122 F) the next summer for states on the Anahuac Plateau, for example, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Guanajuato, Mexico and Federal District. They attribute those cooking temperatures to AGW. They made predictions on the same tenor last year, predicting 45 C for the same states. They failed and will fail again.
Here in my Monterey, the opening and the first two weeks of spring season has been fairly nice, compared with usual temperatures in the past, with temperatures no higher than 36 C (97 F). In March, we had only two days when temperatures went up to 40 C (104 F) due to west winds. We expect a drop of temperature down to 15 C (59 F) the next Monday.
I had to jump over to ClimateProgress.org and check it out. I must confess that this is my first time over there. ClimateProgress.org is a comic relief blog right? It must be with quotes like:
Of course, they didn’t mention how we have been down this road before, and well, it hasn’t really worked out so well. But, I’m sure just because it wasn’t “big enough”.
I had a good chuckle reading the posts over there. Heck of a way to live, in such fear and all. If you don’t do it already, I do recommend venturing around to some of these other blogs (of the warming kind) and try to gain a little perspective in how others view things. I find it interesting how little scientific material and empirical data is ever presented at these sites. That is just one of many areas where WUWT has the upper hand.
Keep it real people! 🙂
40 to 60 percent of Oklahoma’s wheat crop destroyed by April freeze.
Ron,
“…there is no significant change in temperatures from 1995 until 2001 and cooling from 2001 up to now.”
I’m having some problems fitting these trends to the data:
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1866/trends.png
Do you have a plot which better illustrates this?
Christopher Booker, the voice of reason, has another good article this morning:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5177468/Save-the-planet-rhetoric-soars-to-crazy-new-heights.html
I have to add that it isn’t only GCSE Physics papers that are incredibly biased towards warmist theory. The Biology and Chemistry papers are too.
New Labour educational policy: Give us your children until 16 and we’ll give you brainwashed adults pliable to do our bidding.
They wish!
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2009/03/26/st-andrews-university-global-warming-loses-in-formal-debate/
NuLab might try and stamp out free will and common sense by social engineering or legislation but they’ll never kill them. Not while sites like WUWT exist. I and many of my friends and collegues thank you for bringing sanity into our lives.
I’m just thinking of that other area of human endeavour which is (was) dominated by computer models made by the “best brains” on the planet (and a few other scams as well): investment finance.
What would happen if I pontificated to the Beep that the current problems are just a lull in a long-term trend and that in 25 years time we still all be millionaires?
I know what would happen to me: I’d be taken away by men in white coates.
UK Sceptic,
From Booker’s article:
“..the latest available data show the downward trend in global temperatures continuing.”
rather seems to be contradicted by the plots of the positive trend just presented on this site a couple of days ago:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/1979trends.jpg
Do you think Booker, like Philip_B, has difficulty reading these graphs?
“in 25 years time we still all be millionaires”
Possible, but a cup of coffee will be $1000.00
it’s all relative.
There’s well above average temperatures here in the Western United States, and more in the forecast for the next few days. But it’s not record heat. I am fairly certain this warmth will be blamed on global warming though it isn’t even record heat.
On the other hand, the record cold that happened over and over this past winter in the United States has been called “weather”.
I think most folks can see what’s really going on.
Ron de Haan (20:03:26) :
The IPCC has given up to report on the current climate trends.
Why? Because there is no significant change in temperatures from 1995 until 2001 and cooling from 2001 up to now. And all this despite increased levels of CO2.
If you don’t believe me, read the entire post here:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/15/ipcc-2014-fifth-assessment-irrelevant/#comment-39812
I had a look at this site, a great deal of hot air, not much evidence.
Ohioholic (20:31:24) :
Ron de Haan (20:03:26) :
That site is full of hand wringing worry warts. I could smell the fear. Liked how the moderator personally called out Anthony
I wouldn’t call it fear so much as holier and smarter than thou condescencion twoards those who deny. From on eof the posts there:
Sadly, prayer can’t save us from the willful ignorance of those who deny science.
I’m an archaeologist with a little quarternary knowledge. Enough to understand some of the graphical data presented on this site but not enough to understand some of the more technical aspects of climate science data. I understand the basic sunspot thing (certainly enough to understand the sun’s effect on Earth’s climate) but not some of the technical jargon that comes with it.
I also know that a lot of people who read this blog are seeking understanding but do not have the technical knowledge to follow some of the more science based discussions. There is an article that any reasonably educated layperson can read and understand. It is essential reading for anyone seeking the truth about AGW or who is concerned about how AGW is being used to promote a highly damaging, world-wide political agenda. Forgive me if someone has linked to this site previously.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
The ruling of the judge mentioned in the article has yet to be upheld. Unfortunately, inconvenient truths are not welcome by the UK government. The French, on the other hand, seem poised to turn the tide of lunacy. If they finally see sense I’ll take back everything I ever said about their national stereotype. ;o)
Tom P said:
“UK Sceptic,
From Booker’s article:
“..the latest available data show the downward trend in global temperatures continuing.”
rather seems to be contradicted by the plots of the positive trend just presented on this site a couple of days ago:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/1979trends.jpg
Do you think Booker, like Philip_B, has difficulty reading these graphs?”
I have no idea, Tom. Why don’t you ask them?
Another expedition to save the world by Carbon neutral expeditions
http://carbonneutralexpeditions.com/the-expedition/
“To make the first carbon neutral, double crossing of Greenland by sailing across the North Atlantic and then completing a return ski traverse of the ice cap. (over 550 miles)”
It’s not carbon dioxide melting the ice caps?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/09/arctic_aerosols_goddard_institute/
I wish these guys would make up their faming minds…
Idea of “CO2 induced warming to burst after natural cold period” is a myth, because most of the warming due to CO2 is supposed to be created by positive feedback. If the Earth is getting colder the temperature induced feedback effects will work towards cooling. For example, ice is getting thicker and wider and it will reflect more sunlight back to space.
“One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow”
Hence the expression, “too cold for snow”! 🙂
UK_Sceptic,
I’ve asked both – no response as yet.
It is somewhat ironic that Philip_B used his misreading of the data to accuse me of “denying reality.” His (and Monkton’s and Booker’s) version of reality – that the climate is cooling – is not supported by any scientist I know of, including Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer.
It’s going on forty years since I moved to Colorado, and loving weather, I find the flux of extremes here wonderful. I spent 20 years in the foothills near Masonville, a spotter for the NWS in the 80s. In the dead of winter there, one can go to bed with temps in the single digits (F) and awaken to 50s and 60s, with winds raging near 100mph. I have photos of summer skys at night, of solid cloud cover the strangest green lit by lightning. I remember about 1978, a tremendous snow storm in April, sending my wife and children to stay with friends in town in the middle if the storm, as we had 3 feet if snow with another foot or two yet due and the power was out. Had to hike a mile to as close as a jeep could get to our house, carrying my two-month old son. That night, once the snow stopped, the cloud cover came to ground level, and glowed with electrical charge for hours. Though I lived in Indiana for over a decade, the three tornados I’ve seen were in Colorado. I love being on the eastern plans and seeing for a 100 miles all around, and hiking to the top of the step in the plains outside Kiowa, where sand of ancient shores are frozen ripples in stone, still with water-smoothed pebbles strewn about, several hundred feet above the prairie to the east. Here in the western slope now are ancient shores at 9000 feet and up. Here, the continental divide saps most of the moisture from the storms from the north and west. The eastern plains get their water when it can be sucked up from the Gulf of Mexico. I am heading over to Boulder today to meet an old friend, that journey takes four hours under the best of conditions, but has been as long as thirteen, eg. in March of ’92. I notice that several of the commenters on WUWT are Coloradians, must be something about the climate, or is it the weather?
Tom P:
Then maybe you should talk to more scientists?
Tom P,
The climate is cooling: click
For the past 6 – 7 years, as CO2 has steadily risen, the planet’s temperature has steadily declined. Whether this trend will continue is something we do not know for certain at this time, but it is a plain fact that as CO2 has gone up, the planet’s temperature has declined.
It is very obvious that CO2 is not the forcing agent that the alarmist gang still pretends. CO2 has only a very small effect. Spending any money at all to “mitigate” that very small effect is extremely foolish, when the money could be used to address actual problems. Or better yet, not be taken from taxpayers in the first place.
The very small contribution to warming that CO2, at its current concentration causes, is overwhelmed by many other factors. Otherwise, as CO2 increased, the planet would have become warmer.
But that isn’t happening. Which means that CO2 [AKA: “carbon”] should be completely disregarded, because its effect is negligible and inconsequential.
And since CO2 can be disregarded, then every argument against CO2 [or “carbon”] should be disregarded, too.
Where does that leave the climate alarmist contingent? Their AGW/CO2 hypothesis has failed. Failed!! They are now arguing about a non-problem. Their position is baseless from a scientific point of view.
Finally, Monckton is correct in his facts, and no one has refuted them. Instead, they attack the messenger [Monckton] because the facts fail to support their alarmist position.
The climate is cooling. The link above shows that fact conclusively. So your claim that the cooling climate is not supported by any scientist you know of can not be a true statement.
Smokey (05:22:01) You’re right of course, but after Tom P’s discourse with Frank Lansner over ‘Making Holocene Spaghetti Sauce’ a few days ago, I think Tom identified the type of kool-aid he is on.
Using a picture of a human being suffering grievous injuries in the way you have done is spectacularly nasty. Do you know what empathy is?
Ski areas and ‘global warming’:
In Europe, this is considerably more of an issue than in Colorado, as many resorts are at much lower altitudes and they have already, in the past 20 years, seen decreasing snow pack, particularly in the valleys. That’s important as a lot of continental winter holidayers are cross-country afficionados, not downhillers……
Reports have been commissioned in Switzerland, Austria and France that I know of which warned of likely loss of viability of many ski resorts over the next 20 years. It’s amusing to me that we’ve seen some pretty good snow this winter, although 2007 was far too warm and worrying in that regard….
The key in fact for ski resort viability in reality is this:
i. Lots of precipitation between mid/late November and the end of January.
ii. A lack of freak warm spells/rain in that period to reduce the snow pack.
iii. Cold nights to allow use of snow cannons to build up the base.
iv. No early onset of the spring-like temperatures in the 12 – 18C range.
2007/8 and 2008/9 fit those criteria very well.
What’s actually happened in Europe since 1980 was a loss of the early season snowiness, which left thin bases exposed to normal spring temperatures. Funnily enough, frequency of late snowfall was markedly higher in that period, which kept the wolf from the door for a while and made most seasons bearable if not vintage…..
I don’t think any of us can possibly predict what will happen in the next 30 years, based on:
i. Not knowing how quiet the sun will be.
ii. Not knowing what volcanoes will erupt.
iii. Not knowing how many El ninos/la Ninas will occur.
iv. Not knowing the future strength of the PDO/AMO.
v. Not knowing the effect of the first four variables in storm track frequency and direction over the world’s mountains….
Now if climatologists could do some simple numbers to work out how many years of data they will need before they can predict THOSE with 80% certainty, then the argument might start showing some perspective….
IMHO
RW,
Those pics of the woman who wanted to cuddle with the polar bear have been all over the newspapers, magazines, TV, and the internet. Why are you singling out this particular article to complain about it?
It seems that you should be much more angry at Al Gore for portraying polar bears as cute, which is probably why the woman thought she could go and pet them.
Smokey,
Your data is not up to date. For some reason it stops in at the lowest temperatures last year. Maybe for a similar reason it starts at the warmest year in the last decade according to the UAH data.
Here is a rather more valid trend that takes in all the UAH data:
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/6856/uah0309.png
This might be why climate scientists of all hues who look at the data as a whole have reached a rather different conclusion. Can you suggest any who think differently?
As for refuting Monckton’s “facts”, did you read the link I posted?
The climate is warming, and cooling. Just pick whatever time frame suits your stance.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Vostok_Plot_png
Meanwhile they have invented a new word that descibes the current scam going on in the arctic now:
The word “Catlin” is going to be a new entry in the Oxford/English Dictionary –
catlin (cat-lin) verb
to deceive, to delibralely fabricate, to de-fraud to public….
M White (02:53:52) :
… the first carbon neutral, double crossing …
Well, if you say so.. 🙂
Heavy snowfall, colder weather patterns, wetter precipitation, all over the center of the disinformation Boulder Colorado. Now if Lake Powell fills up that would be sweet.
http://snowpack.water-data.com/uppercolorado/index.php
3 out the last 4 years have been above average but the lake still doesn’t fill up. Somebody is shoplifting the water.
RW,
I saw a number of news stories describing the Berlin Zoo incident as an “attack” by the bears. I wonder if the bears were angry about global warming, or if they just thought the zoo keepers had thrown them an unusually large lunch?
The woman is a schoolteacher. When I went to school, they taught us that bears were dangerous and what to do if you encountered one in the forest. AGW propaganda media claims another victim.
Tom P,
[Credit to Lucia]: click
As you can see, the UN/IPCC’s AR-4 results have been falsified. Which makes complete sense, since the IPCC is composed 100% of political appointees.
But let’s say your assumption is based on the GISS temp anomaly, which diverges from everyone else: click. Why does it diverge? Because GISS “adjusts” their data, that’s why.
As Steven Goddard points out, the climate is either warming or cooling — but the changes are well within the uncertainty of the surface station network [which is heavily biased toward showing warmer temps than reality].
So let’s cut to the chase again: are you arguing that an increase in a minor trace gas, from under four parts in ten thousand, to five parts in ten thousand, justifies taxing and spending $billions to $trillions to “mitigate”? Because that is the central question in the entire debate.
What is your position on that question? [Please don’t refer to computer models. They are almost always wrong because they reflect the programmers’ biases. Use real world evidence.]
OT, but I have to post it somewhere…
I’ll be holding the first annual WUWT Barbeque the first week of July. (No, you all are not invited to my house, but I encourage you to hold a WUWT Barbeque at your own abodes.)
Inspired by the Catlin survey, I will make it a scientific barbecue and record the temperature on my grill using the super-accurate triple-calibrated factory installed thermometer on my grill (Bonus! My grill thermometer is graduated in both C & F).
I will report the max, min, and average grilling temperatures to the readers here at WUWT. Good scince starts with good data.
P.S. Further inspired by the science of the Catlin Arctic Survey, on WUWT Barbeque Day, I will dig a hole, carefully measure it, then post whatever the heck measurement I feel like reporting here on WUWT, since my digging the hole in my back yard is pointless anyhow.
WUWT Barbeque; the new AGW Tea Party.
page48,
We have a saying around my office (we’re all PhDs), “Get enough PhDs together and we can make a story for anything.” That’s why we’re required to submit our technical reports to peer reviewers outside our department. Group think can cause tons of problems.
Catliners have been swimming: Latest from the ice:
Latest Update
Two big events happened today, both firsts for the Catlin Arctic Survey. The team spotted a seal, the first mammal spotted since leaving Resolute 48 days ago. Where there are seals, there’s always open water! Here in the Ops room in London we’ve been observing ice movements on a grand scale in the area between 85°N and the North Pole. The changes in day-to-day satellite imagery can be staggering, with huge leads suddenly opening up, stretching hundreds of kilometres from east to west.
Today the team came across their first stretch of open water. The sub-zero temperature water ran for such a distance that the team could see no way of bridging the gap between the ice pan they were on, and the one they needed to get to. And so, the team donned their immersion suits, took the plunge, and swam the 50m to the other side, elbowing their way through the thin ice at the fringes of the lead. (To find out more about the immersion suits, take a look at the equipment section of the website.)
Crossing open water is now par for the course with polar travel. As spring progresses, the warmer temperatures cause the ice to melt and break up, meaning the frequency and size of leads increases. The emergence of open water at this stage of the survey is typical for this time of year and will become almost a daily occurrence towards the end of the expedition. So, today was a practice run for the days ahead….
“Using a picture of a human being suffering grievous injuries in the way you have done is spectacularly nasty. Do you know what empathy is?”
Doesn’t it mean understanding and entering into another’s feelings? So because we all feel so bad about hurting your feelings here’s this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24012529/
Just imagine that he’s saying,
“I’m sorry that my mommy bit you… next time read the sign and stay out of our cage.
Love,
Flocke”
Steven,
Of course repeated periods of glaciation have produced some large temperature excursions.
But do you agree with Smokey that we are currently in a cooling trend?
Beware that in many cities with a longer than 50 years temperature record, the time used to see if records have been broken has been sheared off.
If your city has a 100 year run of data, then 1st 50 years are removed.
If you look at the extremes for your city, don’t expect to see anything recorded prior to 1950.
There will be nothing to tell you that it was hotter in the ’30’s.
Unless, of course, you are smart enough to know where to find the earlier data or kept your own archive.
Sneaky little buggers, eh?
Smokey and Stephen Goddard – well, it looks then like you don’t know what empathy is. Your apparent enjoyment of another human being’s suffering disgusts me.
Smokey,
I based my statement on the current warming on satellite data, the UAH time series, as endorsed by lead scientist Roy Spencer.
Let’s at least agree on the data first – do you stick by your assertion that the data suggests the the Earth is cooling?
.
Regards the polar bear incident in Berlin, this is simply another manifestation of the ‘nature is good, man is bad’ philosophy of the Greens. Such is their fervour, that followers really do believe that all animals are nice and fluffy creatures that you can pet like a domestic cat.
Here is another polar bear petter, this time in Alaska.
It is iconic images like this from Watchtower Magazine (Jehova’s Witness) that promote this abscence of reason and logic.
http://www.unc.edu/%7Eelliott/images/Beautiful_Surroundings.jpg
This loss of reason through religion is but one step away from setting out for the Arctic pole and expecting to find open water and a nice sheltered spot to sunbathe. Faith over reason.
.
If I may put on an AGW apologist hat one moment, an explain how AGW can lead to more snow….
“Higher surface temperature means more evaporation. Whenever evaporation increases, so does precipitation, in an equivalent amount. So, since the cyclic temperature patterns of “years” have yet to be annihilated by AGW (but just you wait!) some of that extra precipitation will, of course, fall as more snow.”
Of course, there are plenty of good responses to this. Mine is “huh, so annual cycles are still HUGE compared to ‘climate change’? LAWLZ!”
Oh, and as Steven Goddard points out above, its very much “cooling, warming, pick your time scale, it is easy to “prove” you are “right”.
Jack – the last few days snow in Colorado were due to an upslope condition, that is, low pressure over the Oklahoma panhandle sends moisture up the east side of the Rockies, therefore on the wrong (east) side of the continental divide to really help Lake Powell. Some moisture did leak over the divide, but the really heavy amounts were all in the foothills just west of Denver.
Tom P, the average temperature of the surface of the earth can’t be measured. If it could be, it couldn’t be measured within the accuracy of the scale of the graph that you show. To then take these extremely dodgy scattered measurements and draw in a line to show which way they are going is as big a joke as trying to say where they will go in the next hundred years based on the output of even dodgier models. I’ve become a sceptic because of nonsense like this and have just started to believe what I see which is absolutely normal weather everywhere and none of the dreadful scenarios happening or looking like they ever will. I will change my mind if you can tell me why, when we have seen CO2 levels multiples higher than todays (up to 7000 ppm) that the actual temperatures were not what AGW would have predicted?
Tom in Texas,
You were close, it’s a Subaru, which is almost an igloo. 😉
Weather is not climate, until it is.
Tom P,
And your graph conveniently starts at the beginning of the 1980- warming period, then incorrectly attempts to fit linear regression line when clearly inappropriate. The issue at hand is whether there the current trend is cooling, not what the trend was during 1980-1998.
Once again, warmers have complete confidence in the high priests of climate science (those that drink AGW koolaid at least), but suffer from the most extreme confirmation bias and have completely lost the ability to think for themselves.
Philip_B (19:07:07) :
A warmer world is a wetter
Have you wonder why the sahara desert is desert while in front of the same sea in between SA it isn´t?
This is because the evaporation taking place in the middle goes westward due to the eastward movement of the earth. When the sea in the middle cools down it evaporate less…and so on.
This same phenomena happends in California, in front of a now cool sea. When PDO is in its warm phase it rains a lot over there, however these rains are partly stopped by the mountains at east.
So, in a general sense, global warming cannot bring droughts but a lot of rains where it used to, unless earth rotation changes (LOD).
“It is iconic images like this from Watchtower Magazine (Jehova’s Witness) that promote this abscence of reason and logic.
http://www.unc.edu/%7Eelliott/images/Beautiful_Surroundings.jpg
This loss of reason through religion is but one step away from setting out for the Arctic pole and expecting to find open water and a nice sheltered spot to sunbathe. Faith over reason.”
The picture you reference is not the JWs impression of life here on earth now, but rather an image of an Eden on earth that didn’t happen because of man’s fall. You will never see a JW climb into the cage of a dangerous animal.
Smokey:
“They’re saying ‘you just wait until next year when the climate catastrophe hits,’ and similar ravings.”
Really? “wait until next year”? Must be Cubs fans.
Fidel Castro said when predicting things, make it far enough in the future that you won’t be around to explain why it didn’t happen.
Most of the snow has melted. Wet, heavy. With incursion of water. Typical Colorado spring. As for weather data from the People’s Republic of Boulder (even they call it that) I wouldn’t count on any reliable information. They would repeal the law of gravity if someone said they were overweight.
“Tom P, the average temperature of the surface of the earth can’t be measured.”
Of course it can.
“I will change my mind if you can tell me why, when we have seen CO2 levels multiples higher than todays (up to 7000 ppm) that the actual temperatures were not what AGW would have predicted?
Assuming that by AGW you mean climate models, the temperatures back in the epochs of very high CO2 concentrations were indeed what climate models have hindcast. What makes you think otherwise?
William Rice:
“The issue at hand is whether there the current trend is cooling”
If the errors are larger than the value you derive for a trend, then there is no trend. Over short periods of time – a few years – you cannot measure climate trends. Over appropriately long periods, there is a pronounced warming trend.
ralph ellis – looks like you are another person who takes pleasure from the suffering of other human beings.
Anthony Watts, Steven Goddard, smokey, ralph ellis – shame on you.
REPLY: I prefer to look at this as an “exercise in natural selection”.
The Darwinian lesson to the rest of the homo sapiens is: “polar bears are not cuddly”.
If the normal course of nature laid bare by an individual of questionable intelligence offends you, to that I say: “tough noogies”. – Anthony
timetochooseagain,
Of course annual temperature cycles of many parts of the world are larger than current and proposed climate change. Are you saying that unless the Earth warms up by more than 20 deg F there’s nothing to worry about?
Martin Mason,
So how large a change would there have to be in order to measure a change in the average global temperature? Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer assert you can measure it accurately enough to say that we’ve seen warming over the last one hundred years of less than a degree. Are they all wrong?
William Rice,
UAH only began to collect data in 1979 and I include all data from then to date, not 1998 as you state. I can hardly be accused of selection here.
Contrary to what you claim, a simple linear regression is certainly a justified way of fitting the data as there is no significant increase in the correlation coefficient if a more complex fit is used.
If you think a linear regression is “clearly inappropriate”, please provide the analysis including a mathematical justification.
RW, look at Tsonis et al and the way that paper explains the temperature variations of the last century by the coupling and coupling of natural cycles, including the oceanic oscillations. Those are what determine climate, not CO2 level. We can expect two decades of cooling because of those oscillations while CO2 continues to rise and proves the lack of connection between CO2 and climate.
Observe the thermometers; they are not meaningless no matter what your definition of a trend is.
=================================
“RW (07:17:41) :
Smokey and Stephen Goddard – well, it looks then like you don’t know what empathy is. Your apparent enjoyment of another human being’s suffering disgusts me.”
em·pa·thy n.
1. Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.
RW,
If you were really an empathetic person, you would identify with and understand Smokey and Stephen Goddard’s feelings. Don’t you see that they are really caring people who want only the best for Earth and her people? If you can’t understand and see the simple truth of their noble motives and feelings, perhaps you are not really an empathetic person.
Do you know the difference between “empathetic” and “pathetic”.
Mike Bryant
“Tom P, the average temperature of the surface of the earth can’t be measured.
OF COURSE IT CAN.”
Science By Haughty Assertion. And so’s your old man, BTW. 😉
Andrew
No more snow at Aspen? I knew it! This is really gonna jack up the price of a day pass. Maybe we should ask these geniuses if Santa has outfitted the sleigh with pontoons yet.
Adam from Kansas, I have relatives in Wichita. You’re right about the weather there. It always seemed colder there than my native Arkansas. Here’s an interesting note:
The highest recorded temperature for Wichita, KS is 98F. Can you guess when it was recorded? 1893. Must have been all the steamboats going up and down the Arkansas River. Do steamboats produce CO2?
Take care!
Sorry! Highest recorded temp for APRIL in Wichita! So sorry!
I suspect, RW, that it is those who’ve provoked inappropriate ’empathy’ with the ice bear who’ve created the potential for these disasters. Start placing blame where it belongs, or be marginalized in the blame game.
=====================================
kim,
Have you actually read Tsonis? He is somewhat concerned by how his work has been misunderstood by you and others: “There is going to be a shift upward, and together with the effects of greenhouse gases, it will make it really hot.”
Wonderful idea!!!!
I would like to propose that on an annual basis, we all indulge in our own WUWT Barbecue parties! Let us all make this a yearly celebration and celebrate the honest quest for truth and knowledge that persists on this site and other sites like this. I propose we do this the first weekend of July every year! And if Anthony would present an annual BBQ thread each year, we can all chat, tell stories of our parties and even present accurate (or not so accurate) data analysis of each of our experiences (grill temp, etc…).
I like this idea!
jack m (06:51:43) :
“Catliners have been swimming: Latest from the ice:
Crossing open water is now par for the course with polar travel. As spring progresses, b, meaning the frequency and size of leads increases. The emergence of open water at this stage of the survey is typical for this time of year and will become almost a daily occurrence towards the end of the expedition. So, today was a practice run for the days ahead….”
Did you happen to notice the posted temperature at -25C. So Catlin is advancing science… finding ice that melts at -25C. The world will be forever grateful.
Interesting that INGSOC seems to have confused me with Steven Goddard.
Steven, you get the credit for this one.
Mind you, it’s nice to have made an impression on someone !
RW 08:29:38
Sure there has been a warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age. The variations in that trend correlate with the alternating cooling and warming phases of the oceanic oscillations, and we are cooling now and probably for another two decades.
If you look at the last hundreds of thousands of years, there appears to be a correlation between temperature and CO2 level, with the temperature rise appearing before the CO2 rise. I’m curious what you would have to say about causation in that scenario.
If you look at the last hundreds of millions of years, there appears to be no correlation between temperature and CO2 level. I’m curious what you would have to say about causation in that scenario.
=======================================
RW (05:31:33) :”Using a picture of a human being suffering grievous injuries in the way you have done is spectacularly nasty. Do you know what empathy is?”
I know what empathy is. Empathy is laying awake at night worrying about children in third world countries dying of malnutrition while we burn food for fuel. I worry about marginal land put into growing corn for alcohol and the resulting fertilizer runoff. I worry about all the people who got sick or died because an earlier generation of alarmists banned DDT. Mostly I am concerned about great harm being done by incompetent and lazy “environmentalists” who impoverish others based on fraudulent science.
I have no empathy for someone who throws themselves into a bear cage. Few people do. Why do you thing that the “Darwin Awards” are so popular?
RW, said, “Assuming that by AGW you mean climate models, the temperatures back in the epochs of very high CO2 concentrations were indeed what climate models have hindcast. What makes you think otherwise?”
Climate models are perfect! Everyone knows that. In fact, all further federal monies should now be withdrawn from traditional climate science. The Climate models, now optimized to faithfully reproduce the climate of any era past or future, will now become commonplace. Google, within the next few weeks, will have a “skin” that will enable viewing the climate, positions of continents and the TSI, of the sun at any time or place on the Earth, from the “Big Bang” til our sun blinks out.
Now all, except one or two, of the climate scientists have been made redundant by software. The federal and worldwide budget for climate studies will effectively disappear! The science is settled.
Why was the lady there? Something tells me that she was not where she should have been. Therefore, I cannot feel much empathy towards her. Stupid people doing stupid things get what they deserve. “Stupid is as stupid does”.
“If the normal course of nature laid bare by an individual of questionable intelligence offends you, to that I say: “tough noogies”. – Anthony”
So, just to be clear, you are confirming that you do indeed enjoy the suffering of other human beings?
REPLY: No that’s YOUR interpretation. And I advise that you do not slander me or the others by conflating your interpretation with theirs or mine.
Mine is that this is an instructive event illustrating natural selection, and that it is valuable to show because of the overhyping of the polar bears in the Arctic with things like Gores AIT, which has not come with the requisite reminders that:
1) Polar bears are carnivoires.
2) Polar bears are not cuddly nor in need of personal human interaction.
3) Captive polar bears are just as dangerous as ones encountered in the wild.
4) Anyone who ignores 1-3 because they are “concerned” about them, will get a lesson in natural selection. i.e. “survival of the fittest”. In this case the woman was not intellectually fit.
Her injury, while tragic, is also a useful lesson to those whom may be contemplating such interactions.
Again if this offends you, it is not my concern. Nature is cruel and cares not for our emotions. – Anthony
Sorry to disagree with you here RW, but GCM’s cannot “hindcast” anything. They are unidirectional and do not run backwards. GCM’s only fit past climate because they have been “pre-fit” to do so. That is their starting point. They are plugged and adjusted to fit past climate in an attempt to “predict” future climate, and therefore cannot “hindcast”. Further, GCM’s have been tweaked and plugged to fit as closely to past climate as possible, and because of the extreme divergence from model to observation, it can be said that their “predictive” skills are very much lacking.
If people don’t know science, one thing they do know is snow and cold. If you are going to use fraud the perpetrate the warm myth, your timing was really bad this time around. The same thing happened to the ‘ice age is coming, for sure’ of the 1970s. The sun and nature outfoxed you again.
CAP-N-TAX will have to wait for warmer weather.
Does anyone ever bring up the fallacy of paying more in taxes to the government, how exactly does that fix the climate?
Who in the world could believe the earth is not cooling now????
I always liked the story of Niels Bohr, who after criticizing Einstein for years for a certain thing Einstein said was true, and was obvious to Bohr that it was not, that after it was confirmed and Bohr finished reading about the confirming said, “What fools we all have been!” Really, he should have said “What a fool I have been!”
The earth is cooling. Believe the temperature data and the solar activity now or feel like a fool later.
H.R. (06:35:21) : I’ll be holding the first annual WUWT Barbeque the first week of July.[…]
Inspired by the Catlin survey, I will make it a scientific barbecue and record the temperature on my grill
Perhaps you could mount a couple of thermometers at different distances (up and down wind) from the BBQ and near the most masonry with solar exposure and make a representative “anomaly map” of what a BBQ party does to an area! Heck, you could even watch the temperatures change as folks lean on the thermometers, spill beer on them, all the usual BBQ activities… (Wonder how they react to Uncle Phils Phire Sauce …. 😉
Inspired, I’m going to dig out my 100% charCOAL briquette BBQ. (Yes, charcoal has real coal in it! Along with some char…) and I’m even going to burn some 10:1 feed ratio BEEF on it…
Tom P-it would depend on the exact nature of the warming how much would be bad, however, you seem to miss the point of what I was say which was that, at present, the changes we are “measuring” are petty small compared with normal weather behavior. It is amusing, therefore, to hear people say that this or that weather event was “caused” by climate change. That is nonsensical. It is moreover extremely nonsensical to claim that we are seeing catastrophic affects when the changes are still so small. Does this rule out future catastrophes, as you inferred was my meaning (but I didn’t actually mean)? No, it does not. It is just laughable however that you think a 20 degree rise is even possible.
RW-Hansen would disagree with your notion that the surface temperature of the Earth can be measured:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
“RW (09:21:14) :
“If the normal course of nature laid bare by an individual of questionable intelligence offends you, to that I say: “tough noogies”. – Anthony”
So, just to be clear, you are confirming that you do indeed enjoy the suffering of other human beings?”
RW,
No one here enjoys human suffering. So please stop being so insufferable. Your paen to empathy has become only pathetic. Give it up. You have lost this one. Crawl back in your hole and come back when you can make some sense.
Mike
PS I am offended that you did not include me in your list of offenders. What gives?
Anthony, well said! I just cannot understand the stupidity, arrogance and selfishness of people. Hello, that bear is a wild animal! It probably does not like being held captive as a sightseeing spectacle (akin to public humiliation) and would much rather be out on the Arctic ice sheets hunting seals. If there is any empathy here, I would have to place my empathy with the Polar Bear. He had lunch firmly in his grasp, and someone has taken it away from him, and all in front of spectators and camera’s. Talk about humiliation. I just don’t understand why people can be so naive about our natural world. We live in a violent universe that doesn’t care two cents about any of us. Get a clue…
Tom P (5:54)
I find it useful to look at data and ask myself what is the most honest interpretation. Regarding the data you attached. To me it looks like three overlapping segments. The first from the start to about 1996 looks pretty level. The second segment from about 1993 to 2003 shows a rise, from about 2003 to the end again looks level. Mathematically I can’t explain it, but I am not sure that the average global temperature over 30 years will fit into a mathematical equation.
The slope of the line on the figure would correspond to about 1.3 C/century. Is this what we are worried about? What do we expect global average temperature to do over 100 years, with or without man’s help? Do you think actual warming will be more than this, or is the line about accurate? Should we wait a few years? The line keeps going up, but if actual temperatures continue level or trend downward, wouldn’t that be significant?
Tom P 09:05:15
He predicts cooling then warming then cooling. And since he doesn’t know the effect of CO2 on climate, his predictions about its effect can only be conjectural. For sure, its effect is not as high as the IPCC, or Hansen or Gore would have you believe. And, if the feedback of water vapor to the initial forcing by CO2 is negative, then the effect of CO2 will be cooling.
So how about we make the effort to figure out what the real effect of CO2 is on climate? That would need skepticism about the present science. All good, I’d say.
===============================
Anthony, however, I must disagree with
I don’t think any of this is tragic at all, injuries or otherwise. In fact, she should just be thankful she is still alive. In point of fact, “she got away with one”. Even a blind squirrel gets an acorn once in a while.
Patrick (07:43:53) Just down the road from Aspen, and 1200 ft lower we had several hours of great rain Thursday night into Saturday, so the Front range didn’t get all the precipitation.
RW,
I can assure you that whatever gave her the motivation for diving in a Polar Bear tank did not come from AGW skeptics. However, one could probably make a case for blaming alarmists who have created the symbol of cuddly Polar Bears to push their agenda among children.
40 years ago, everyone understood that bears are extremely dangerous. Too bad the public sensibility has been so perverted. Please give your pointless distraction a rest. I suggest that you watch the amazing BBC series “Planet Earth” if you want to see what cruelty in nature is all about. Just the scenes of violence in the lives of corals and starfish alone are absolutely astonishing.
Slander? Interesting accusation. You are gratuitously using an image of a human being in the process of suffering grievous injuries during an apparent suicide attempt. It doesn’t illustrate any point that you are trying to make. It is simply spectacularly nasty. You might as well show a still of someone jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, and encourage people to laugh at them, or link to the images of R. Budd Dwyer shooting himself.
REPLY: You are out of line sir, and spectacularly wrong. The reasons have been explained. Since you are obviously closed minded and judgmental, this will be your last missive on the subject. – Anthony
Steven Goddard:
I can assure you that whatever gave her the motivation for diving in a Polar Bear tank did not come from anything remotely related to global warming. The use of the image is thus purely gratuitous.
REPLY: Be sure to tell that to all the thousands of other websites and blogs that have used that image:
Google Results 1 – 10 of about 140,000 for “woman polar bear Berlin suicide”
As I said, we aren’t going to waste any more time on this. You have your opinion, we disagree, move on. – Anthony
But they do have a carbon tax!
This plan coming soon to a town near you!
The carbon tax bill for an industrial customer is about 1/2 the pay of a minimum wage worker.
Larry
Wolf Creek Ski Area is in Southwestern Colorado and received 21 inches of snow from the latest storm.
Any snow that falls east of the Continental Divide means less water being pumped to Denver from west of the Continental Divide, thus it does benefit Colorado River flow.
In 1976 the UK appointed a ‘Minister for Drought.’
Within weeks the drought was over and has not recurred.
In 2009 the USA declared CO2 to be a pollutant.
?
The lesson is that by the time a political establishment responds to a situation the real world has moved on.
“If the normal course of nature laid bare by an individual of questionable intelligence offends you, to that I say: “tough noogies””. – Anthony
Personally I want to thank you for that picture. The “Bambi” view of nature is at fault not you. Personally I am getting very sick of rescuing children from “Darwin Awards”parents and then having their parents scream at me for not allowing the kids to get themselves killed.
The idiot photographing a bear cub from six feet away with his back to Mama bear is my favorite. No the kid who ran under the belly of a carriage horse and sat down leaned against the horses legs to tie his shoes just before a cannon was fired…
Anyway thank you for a very good website. I come here when I need to see “there is some intelligent life down here.”
Squidly (09:34:38) : They are plugged and adjusted to fit past climate in an attempt to “predict” future climate, and therefore cannot “hindcast”. Further, GCM’s have been tweaked and plugged to fit as closely to past climate as possible, and because of the extreme divergence from model to observation, it can be said that their “predictive” skills are very much lacking.
This same behaviour is rampant in stock market computer prediction attempts, with disastrous results. I’ve heard it called “data modeling” and it is roundly given the Big Raspberry whenever someone proposes Yet Another Data Modeling Stock Predictor. If fails so regularly, and so spectacularly, and for the same reasons… Prices (and, I would assert, temperatures) are FRACTAL. Data modeling works for a short time, leading to false confidence, then you hit a turn in the fractal on a different size (time) scale and you are toast.
ALL the AGW computer models are going to be toast because they can not predict the MWP or the LIA or Bond Events. Those are the turns of the larger fractal that are going to happen again at some point. All the endless least squares fits of lines over periods of time are just a waste of bits. Temperatures don’t move in straight line trends. They don’t move in sin waves. They move in a much more complicated way. And like all fractals, it doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/bond-event-zero/
“The picture you reference is not the JWs impression of life here on earth now, but rather an image of an Eden on earth that didn’t happen because of man’s fall”
IIRC, the JW literature bangs on about the world after the second coming/end of days/whatever that will occur Real Soon Now (despite having failed to make several previous appointments), and the bucolic scenes depict the world afterwards, when it will only be peopled by true believers and the animal kingdom will live in harmony and, presumably, subsist on a diet of hay. I foresee difficulties, however, with crocodiles, whose jaws are constructed in such a way that they can’t chew, and all the parasites whose life-cycles rely on the expendability of others – in fact, I’m not sure I want a Creator warped enough to design all that stuff in the first place…
timetochooseagain
“…however, you seem to miss the point of what I was say which was that, at present, the changes we are “measuring” are petty small compared with normal weather behavior.”
No point missed – why didn’t you say it in the first place, rather than “huh, so annual cycles are still HUGE compared to ‘climate change’”?
So, again, how large a temperature change do we need to measure before you feel any concern? Is it now 10 rather than 20F? I’m clearly not implying that either will occur, but just trying to understand your position.
By the way, you missed the point of the GISS article. Read the last question:
“Q. What do I do if I need absolute SATs, not anomalies?
A. In 99.9% of the cases you’ll find that anomalies are exactly what you need, not absolute temperatures.”
It’s the anomalies that tell us the warming or cooling trends.
Just Want Truth…
“The earth is cooling. Believe the temperature data…”
I’d rather see the data basis for your trend rather than an uncorroborated assertion.
Retired Engineer (08:21:46) :
“Typical Colorado spring. As for weather data from the People’s Republic of Boulder (even they call it that) I wouldn’t count on any reliable information. They would repeal the law of gravity if someone said they were overweight.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7286507/
RW 09:59:33
Where do you get ‘attempted suicide attempt’? Have you watched video of her trying to scramble back out? Look, you had a weak point. Do you think making stuff up supports it?
Empathize with this. The wider the distribution of this photo, and video of the event, the less likely anyone else will try such a stupid stunt. Have a little empathy for those diverted from dangerous behaviour.
==================================
I once tried out an equities regression program which backfitted existing data incredibly well. Unfortunately it was worse than a random number generator at forecasting future behaviour.
Tom P 10:15:03
Three of four atmospheric temperature series show cooling for the last few years, UAH, RSS, and HadCru. Even more importantly, because of the huge heat content of the oceans, Josh Willis’s Argos buoy oceanic temperature series shows slight cooling since 2005. And indirect though it is, the increase of sea ice extent, at both poles, is not meaningless.
============================================
JamesP,
You’re right, AGW is a better belief system… hands down.
You win,
Mike
RW (08:29:38) :
“Tom P, the average temperature of the surface of the earth can’t be measured.”
Of course it can.
Yup. It can be measured, just as accurately as the length of a coastline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
I can measure anything, it’s the accuracy that’s a bitch … especially with fractals.
The earths temperature is 42. I’ve measured it with my thermometer.
The standard attack technique of the left is to take a quote out of context and gradually expand it into the big lie. Nothing new about this idea, despots have been doing it throughout human history. If you have to lie to yourself and others to keep your core belief system alive, then your essence as a human being is already deceased.
Every school child in the world should see that picture after being forcibly subjected to Al Gore’s animated Polar Bears.
Regarding the use of polar bears for purposes of promoting climate change misinformation, I give you (courtesy of my electric company) – Floe:
http://www.nationalgridfloe.com/
Please note the “Befriend a Bear” link next to the cute baby polar bear. I wonder (given recent events) if the AGW crowd is OK with this…
We must invite some volcanoes to the CO2 july´s barbacue party!
“Steven Goddard (09:57:33) : I suggest that you watch the amazing BBC series “Planet Earth” if you want to see what cruelty in nature is all about. Just the scenes of violence in the lives of corals and starfish alone are absolutely astonishing.”
When I see shows like this, and others that show how the earth has had huge variations of cold and heat throughout it’s history, I don’t get the impression that the earth and nature are fragile. I get a clear impression that both are brutally resilient.
“RW (05:31:33) :”Using a picture of a human being suffering grievous injuries in the way you have done is spectacularly nasty. Do you know what empathy is?”
I have empathy for the bears.
Seriously, showing that photo is a public service.
REPLY: OK let’s give this discussion on the photo a rest everybody. – Anthony
Mark_0454,
Tempting though it might be to eyeball the data, there is no physical basis for fitting the the last thirty years of the temperature record to a series of straight-line segments. As the improvement in the fit over a simple linear trend is marginal, it has no mathematical basis either.
kim,
First you say that Tsonis’ work “proves” there is no connection between climate and CO2, but now “his predictions about its effect can only be conjectural.” It is always wise to read a paper before assuming it supports your case.
Tom P (10:15:03) : uncorroborated assertion?
Wow, it’s obvious you don’t know what you’re doing.
You absolutely need anomalies because Absolute Global Mean temperatures are absolutely NOT scary enough.
http://junkscience.com/GMT/NCDC_absolute.gif
See what I mean?
“Steven Goddard (10:30:56) : “Polar Bears have suffered grievous and irreparable mental anguish because of the way Mr. Gore has portrayed them…” ”
This is funny!
Here is one from RW’s top 10 search –
So, what about the record or equal-to-record maximum temperatures in California just rightnow? Los Angeles, San francisco, San Diego, … ?
Weather or climate?
REPLY: The answer to that is simple. if the media stories cite the record high’s with words like “global warming”, “carbon dioxide” or “climate change”, then it’s climate.
If they simply cite the record high temperatures on their own, without making such connections, then it is weather. Let’s watch and see what is said. – Anthony
Further, GCM’s create a false confidence as they are “plugged”, “fit”, “parametrized” and “tweaked” to mimic the modelers’ ideas of past climate. That is, since there is no absolute climate record trend (all proxy methods vary to a degree), GCM’s are flawed right out of the starting gate. They are manipulated to try to “fit” a past climate “assumption”, then continued to trend into the future based upon that base “assumption”. To further exacerbate the problems, they use many more “assumptions” as to the drivers of those trends. And as you put it, climate is not a linear model but an extremely complex and chaotic fractal model. I believe it is currently completely outside of the capacity for humans to logically describe, explain or model such a system. I have been designing and building computer software (and models) for almost 30 years, and I do not have any level of confidence that humans can use computers to accurately model most any complex natural process such as climate. Any tiny variable (ie: CO2 concentration) even off by a minute fraction, cascades into hugely variable results. An accurate GCM would have to account for literally millions of these variables, each one of which would have to be “balls on” accurate to have any predictive relevance. Further, the interrelationships and forcings of each of these variables would in turn have to be “ball on” accurate. This becomes an exponentially complex problem, with any flaw in the system cascading throughout. This kind of modeling is just not possible, at least presently (and I suspect well into the future). I am astonished by the level of confidence some people have expressed towards these models. Just shows to me the naivety of most people concerning today’s technologies. Heck, we can’t even manufacture a profitable automobile, what makes one think we can accurately model climate?
Mike Bryant
I like girls with tatoos. That way I know that they are very capable of making bad decisions…
Mike, that’s going on my Facebook page, with accreditation, of course.
“Tom P (10:42:53) : mathematical basis”
Tom, if you want to have a better data set to work with mathematically let’s go back 1000’s of years to the Holocene Optimum. Let’s see what temperatures have done since then. Let’s see how quickly temps have risen and fallen through those 1000’s of years. Let’s see if recent warming, which ended some years ago, is “unprecedented”. Let’s see if the earth is in a cooling or warming trend since then. Let’s not look at just the last 30 years, or 100 years.
Good idea, isn’t it?
Hmmm I wonder if her last name was Doolittle…
We would converse in polar bear and python,
And we could curse in fluent kangaroo.
If people asked us, can you speak in rhinoceros,
We’d say, “Of courserous, can’t you?”
If we could talk to the animals, learn their languages
Think of all the things we could discuss
If we could walk with the animals, talk with the animals,
Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals,
And they could squeak and squawk and speak and talk to us.
E.M.Smith,
I’m afraid your knowledge of fractals needs a little work.
Although indeed the length of a coastline around an island depends very strongly on the length of the yardstick used, both its area and average height do not. The simple thought experiment of bringing in bulldozers to level the whole island to a constant height should show why this is the case.
A global average temperature is a physically well-defined property. Determining it certainly requires a lot of work, but if you’re worried about the accuracy why don’t you take it up with Roy Spencer, the leader of the science team which produces the UAH satellite dataset.
Steven Goddard – if you believe anything you read in the Mirror, I pity you. If you think it’s fun to show gratuitous pictures of suicide attempts, I pity you more.
REPLY: RW give it a rest, we care not for your judgments, your labels, nor your accusations. – Anthony
Tom P. (10:42)
I thought about it, but I have to disagree. Without a reason why temperatures over the last 30 years should increase linearly, there is no reason to fit them to a straight line. If the reason is that C02 has increased linearly over that time, I’d have to say it is not a good reason or that the correlation is pretty weak. Historically there have been periods when CO2 has increased but not temp (1940 to 1970).
But, if the straight line is the best we can do, why not wait a bit and see what the temps do compared to the line over the next 2 to 5 years?
Let’s show some real empathy and put out ourselves in the bear’s place! There you are in your bear-jammies, taking a little mid-day nap. Some German woman scales the security wall designed to keep out the riff-raff and swims the moat designed to idiot-proof the whole affair. You get grumpy. You’re SUPPOSED to get grumpy! You’re a bear! Then you read that some schmuck feels sorry for the German woman who caused this whole mess in the first place! How’re you gonna’ feel?
Just Want Truth…
“…if you want to have a better data set to work with mathematically let’s go back 1000’s of years to the Holocene Optimum. Let’s see what temperatures have done since then. Let’s see how quickly temps have risen and fallen through those 1000’s of years.”
The Holocene Optimum, 8000 years ago, was about 0.5 degC warmer than the more recent climate, giving a trend of 0.006 degC per century to date.
“Good idea isn’t it?”
Yes, but probably not in the way you intended.
Tom P: I didn’t miss the point about the GISS article at all. I wasn’t saying you can’t say there seems to be cooling or warming. Just that you can’t pin down the actual temperature. That is a fact, which GISS elucidates surprisingly honestly. What’s your beef?
And again with asking me “what would cause concern for you?” Uh, once again, do we or do we not agree that the ~observed~ changes are, in and of themselves, alarming? Why do you keep trying to make me sound absurd? I said quite clearly that ~still~ (which most people would interpret as “even up to now” not, “now and forever” small compared to seasonal variations. This is not to say that a change which you might call “small” compared to seasonal variation (say, 10 degrees F) is not potentially harmful. However, somewhere between 10 degrees and 1 degree is were I draw the “huge” threshold. Where exactly? I don’t know, it depends. 1 degree compared to twenty is small, 10 compared to twenty is not, nor is nine or eight or seven-but just how far down to go? Maybe five? No, that probably isn’t good enough for you, so I’ll go lower. So fine, its stupid but: 3 is my arbitrary threshold at which 20 is no longer “huge” by comparison. Happy now?
Tom P 10:42:53
Naw, I didn’t say his work ‘proves’ there is no connection between CO2 and climate. I’m the one who says the disconnect between the CO2 curve and the temperature curve proves that CO2’s role in climate has been exaggerated. You cannot use degenerate rhetoric, by that I mean misrepresenting what I say, to show anything. Try again.
=============================================
His speed rail as antidote to AGW?
Here comes hi-speed Amtrak with concomitant costs and losses.
Tom P 11:13:10
The bottom line is that the correlation between temperatures and the coupling and decoupling of natural cycles is a lot better than the correlation between temperatures and CO2 concentrations. All your sophistry won’t change that simple fact, nor will it change the meaning of today’s falling temperatures.
But keep trying; it’s just exposing your foolishness and pitiful rhetoric.
=================================================
RW
Assuming that by AGW you mean climate models, the temperatures back in the epochs of very high CO2 concentrations were indeed what climate models have hindcast. What makes you think otherwise?
What utter tosh! The GCMs have hindcast precisely nothing. They have been retrofitted so that their outputs coincide with periods of the past (though not, interestingly, with the MWP, LIA, Younger Dryas, Holocene Optimum etc. etc), but they most definitely do not explain any of the climatic epochs. After all, how could they, when they take little to no account of oceanic and atmospheric cycles? The GCMs are designed to assume CO2/positive water vapour feedback exists and then project into the future based on various CO2 concentrations.
Tom P (11:13:10) :
Your data is not correct.
Speaking of intentions–what are yours?
Heh, Tom P, let’s say we’ve both read Tsonis’s work. Would you agree that he shows a close correlation between the coupling and the uncoupling of natural cycles and the temperature curve for the last century? Now, who’s represented his work that way, and who’s dodged all around the topic.
[snip]
==================================
“Tom P (11:13:10) : giving a trend of 0.006 degC per century to date”
Bizarre! We entered the Twilight Zone?!
Are you really saying there has been a warming trend since the Holocene Optimum? I wasn’t aware that the Holocene Optimum had been added to the Principia Mannomatica.
Tom P (08:44:02) :
Here we go again, Tom :).
We are coming out of the little ice age, and, yes, there has been warming definitely since then.
The question is not whether there has been warming, but whether the tiny anthropogenic contribution of CO2 is responsible for the warming.
The stasis and cooling trend after 2000 is a bonus, because it allows us to decouple any possibility that the merrily rising CO2 anthropogenic contribution can affect the temperatures drastically. The PDO is cooling and will do so for another 20 years, and the rising CO2 cannot offset it. That is the conclusion. If it could have it would have.
If CO2 does not drastically affect the temperature, there is no need for drastic economic decisions. That is the crux of the problem, the witch hunt of CO2 and the demand by enviromentalists that the west commits hara kiri over bogus claims.
Now to go back to the question, look at the ice core record. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Vostok_Plot_png . Look at the Holocene peak, there are +/- 1C variations over the 10.000 years. Are we still going up? Who knows, we still have a few degrees to go to reach the height of the roman times or the middle ages. Though I am afraid that the Holocene peak seems to be declining towards the only true prophecy : an ice age is coming. Maybe in 100 years , maybe in 1000, but coming it is, and that is what humanity should be worrying about and studying, how to face or even geoengineer against an ice age threat.
RW,
This concept appears to be tricky for you, but the point of using the picture (obviously) was to highlight that Polar bears are extremely dangerous creatures – not the cute cuddly cartoons of the Global Warming movement.
Like I said, every school child should see that picture after being brainwashed by Al Gore’s animated bears.
The Mirror is no less reliable than many AGW press releases. At least they don’t pretend to be scientists.
Tom P (10:15:03) :
“Q. What do I do if I need absolute SATs, not anomalies?
A. In 99.9% of the cases you’ll find that anomalies are exactly what you need, not absolute temperatures.”
It’s the anomalies that tell us the warming or cooling trends.
The anomalies are a complete and utter fabrication based on a fiction repeatedly applied. I’ve read the code and it fabricates numbers based on other fantasy numbers that it then mangles into other fabrications that it then homogenizes into “anomalies”. The reason he wants you to look at anomalies, IMHO, is because they are the most cooked output. The raw data might actually still contain some truth… Wether this is done from malice or a devout belief in his errors I can not say. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/
for the exposition of the many ways the data are cooked in GIStemp.
BTW, the coastline of the USA can be anywhere from about 12,000 miles to about 90,000 miles, depending on your ruler… but we’ve measured it, accurately, as both…
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001801.html
NOAA thinks it’s about 95,000 miles:
http://shoreline.noaa.gov/faqs.html
There is a subtile shift from ‘coastline’ for rulers with big tick marks to ‘shoreline’ for rulers with small tick marks; but the bottom line is that the length of the place where the dirt meets the water has at least an order of magnitude dependence on your ruler graduation… and a theoretically near infinite length if we could measure finely enough.
What does this have to do with temperatures? Well, you want the average temperature of the day. Is that measured at one point in the day? Two? Continuous series? They all give a different answer.
You want the average for the month? Same problem only worse. Now we choose to average the daily averages from 2 semi-random data points unweighted for daily, weekly, or even monthly profiles. This we call the average for the month for that place.
Then we average those averages over a large geographic area, but we don’t have thermometers smoothly distributed. We have more in New York than in all the Antarctic. So what do we do? We might just average them, but GIStemp uses “nearby” thermometers 1500 km away to just create “temperatures” out of nothing. Take a line 1500 km north from NY. How close are you? How about 1500 miles East? South? Do the same using Phoenix and what happens?
By now we’ve entered into a complete fiction. The notion that the number means anything anymore. Want to cure “global warming”? Easy. Put a new temperature sensor on the top of every mountain in America. That’s all it takes given the GIStemp methodology.
Those cold mountain tops will now, via the “reference station method” change the temperatures for up to 1500 km around. Not only that, they will change the temperatures in the past as well. And then they will change the anomalies, which will be used to ‘adjust’ “nearby” anomalies up to 1200 km away. From:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/gistemp-step5-the-process/
SBBXotoBX.f
C*********************************************************************
C *** PROGRAM READS NCAR FILES
C *** Input argument: Rland (0-1200km) radius of influence of station
C *** Input file: 10,11 subbox.data (land, ocean based)
Just so you can see that it really is in the code.
Oh, and many of those anomaly blocks used for adjustment come from the polar regions which are based on OTHER anomalies (in 1 degree ( latitude / longitude ) calculated from interpolations of simulations based on estimates of ice extent. Now you know why they are so fixated on getting the ice estimates to drop.
See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/illudium/
I’d rather see the data basis for your trend rather than an uncorroborated assertion.
I’d love to see the ‘data basis’ for any AGW trend. There isn’t one. There are only anomaly fictions. Anomalies are not data and have precious little connection to data once GIStemp is done creating them.
Timbrom,
No accreditation needed… I stole it from somebody. I think he was a standup comic. Just adding a little levity…
Mike
RW,
Let me get this straight. You bring up the idea that it was a suicide attempt, in spite of the fact that she left no suicide note and obviously did not want to die.
Then you accuse me of showing “gratuitous pictures of suicide attempts.” Suicide was your theory, not mine. Do you realize how completely irrational your non sequitur argument is? Why should I take anything else you say seriously?
E.M.Smith (09:39:45) :
Inspired, I’m going to dig out my 100% charCOAL briquette BBQ. (Yes, charcoal has real coal in it! Along with some char…) and I’m even going to burn some 10:1 feed ratio BEEF on it…
I used to work for the norwegian DNV until last year, but got fed up partly because they started with “emissions trading”
http://www.dnv.com/services/certification/climate_change/emissions_trading/index.asp
I have a charcoal BBQ, and the BBQ charcoal we buy here has DNVs logo all over it as DNV issues certificates that certain product/process norms are fulfilled, but the message received is one of hypocrisy. In one way it is amusing, thay are into carbon trade in more ways than they care to consider:
http://arnholm.org/tmp/dnv_carbon_trade.jpg
I will continue using my charcoal BBQ 🙂
Btw., November last year DNV was suspended by the UN
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5375493.ece
“Norway’s DNV, which claims to have approved half of the world’s carbon-credit ventures, had its accreditation suspended last month after it was unable to prove that its agents had properly vetted projects that it then approved for the carbon-trading scheme. “
Kim,
“Would you agree that he shows a close correlation between the coupling and the uncoupling of natural cycles and the temperature curve for the last century?”
No. Look at figure 1 of Tsonis and Swanson: “A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts.” GRL 34, 2007. Their predictions are at the top, the actual temperatures underneath covering the last century:
http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/7557/tsonis.png
Although their approach can explain decadal cycles in the climate, it can’t produce a long-term warming trend as is seen in the data. Their network can store and distribute energy, not produce it.
“Flanagan (10:48:24) :
So, what about the record or equal-to-record maximum temperatures in California just rightnow? Los Angeles, San francisco, San Diego, … ?
Weather or climate?
it is weather and climate!!LOL. With PDO negative, cold pacific sea, I told you before, does not evaporate enough, so it´s cloudless sunny.
“the cute cuddly cartoons of the Global Warming movement”
That is what is known as a straw man.
You yourself gave the google link showing that it was widely reported that the woman was suicidally depressed. I don’t find it amusing in the slightest to see photos of failed suicide attempts, but perhaps you do. Well OK, let’s just agree to differ on that.
timbrom: “The GCMs are designed to assume CO2/positive water vapour feedback exists and then project into the future based on various CO2 concentrations.”
Incorrect. Where do you get such ideas from? It’s certainly not from reading the literature.
I don’t know if this has already been posted. I have just got back from 10 days in France and although the temperature in Strasbourg was 25C most of the time, caused by a Foehn wind I think. There was snow in the Pyrenees and Alps (above 1000/1500 metres) and even in the Massif Central I think. The TV news had nightly reports of excellent skiing conditions in virtually all resorts for the Easter Holiday.
This avalanche (sorry can’t find it in anything other than French) made all the news programs as it crossed two pistes and no one was hurt!
RW,
I don’t find it amusing to see great industrial civilizations committing suicide over nonsensical blather, but let us just agree to differ on that.
Saying that the Holocene Optimum was cooler than now could be called history revision.
Tom P 12:11:47
That long term rising temperature trend does not have a known cause. It does not correlate with the CO2 curve, and has been going on since the end of the little ice age. The variations on that curve do match the upper curve of Tsonis’s work.
So, where is CO2 in that mix?
=========================================
anna v,
“The stasis and cooling trend after 2000 is a bonus, because it allows us to decouple any possibility that the merrily rising CO2 anthropogenic contribution can affect the temperatures drastically.”
Let’s agree on the data first, especially as you’re drawing such strong conclusions. I’ve tried to fit just such a trend before – earlier it was suggested that 2001, not 2000 should be the starting point – and I had problems:
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1866/trends.png
Maybe you have a plot which better illustrates this? Ron hasn’t got back to me while Steven Goddard has remained conspicuously silent on whether he agrees we see a current cooling trend.
E.M. Smith,
I’m afraid you still don’t understand fractals. That island had a well-defined volume above sea level even though it might have a coastline whose length depended on the ruler used. An average temperature is the area under a time series curve for the period of interest and similarly has a well-defined mathematical value.
As for global temperatures, do you have a problem with Roy Spencer’s satellite UAH temperature series? It’s his temperature anomalies that I’m using for my plots.
Or is your position that as there is no way anyone can determine a global average temperature, we can’t even say whether we’re warming or cooling?
Just Want Truth…
The cooling trend from the Holocene maximum has been about 0.006 degC per century (0.5 degC over 8000 years). What exactly are you disputing here? – although I can understand why you’re disappointed it’s not larger.
timetochooseagain
My plots are based on satellite anomalies, not absolute surface air temperatures so your link to the GISS page concerning the latter is irrelevant.
But I agree, 3 to 5 degF or 2 to 3 degC is a reasonable ballpark figure for concern. I think it’s reasonable to try to measure at sufficient accuracy to see if that’s where we heading, as for instance the UAH satellite team are doing, whatever the cause might be.
Mark_0454
We have a physical system with a number of inputs, none of which I assume. A linear response is therefore the simplest reasonable fit as it reproduces a number of possible power laws over a time-limited dataset.
A scientist will only resort to a more complex fit if the data warrants it, specifically if the correlation is sufficiently improved (it will always be slightly improved as more fitting parameters allow for a better match).
In the case of the UAH dataset, the correlation coefficient for a linear fit is 0.51, rising only marginally to 0.58 even for a fourth-order fit. There needs to be at least a 50% improvement in the correlation to justify adding in another fitting parameter, so the linear fit is the only long-term trend the data warrants.
Tom P (13:08:38) :
If I ignore the data before 2000, no way could I make a claim of rising, it is at best a stasis and at worst a cooling as Lucia has shown time and again. CO2 is rising at its standard pace.
What is there to discuss about the data?
Tom P (11:03:21) : Although indeed the length of a coastline around an island depends very strongly on the length of the yardstick used
So first you say I don’t get it then you say that my statement was spot on.
Reminds me of trying to hold warm jello in your hand …
both its area and average height do not.
Well, first off, I was talking about the USA, not an island, but going on:
Just what in tarnation does wandering off into a different dimension or two have to do with the fact that coastlines are fractal(!)? But running with it…
Since the mountains themselves are fractal, figuring out their surface area is going to be fun. That is why you must specify when buying hilly terrain if the property acreage will be measured by perimeter or otherwise, since the two areas are different precisely because of this fractals issue. So no, the area of an island with vertical terrain is quite strongly dependent on the ruler used as I learned from my Dad (a realtor) when watching him sell farm and mountain land. The “price per acre” had to be accompanied by a definition of how the acreage was determined for large parcels with hills or you did not know the total price. (One of the standard ways to make money was to buy a section of mountains by perimeter, then break out 5 acre plots, and sell many more acres than you bought… “Yes sir, that vertical cliff face is your 5 acres!” )
We’ll leave as an exercise for the student figuring out how to calculate an accurate and precise average height when you don’t know the area nor what is the ‘right’ spacing for your grid points due to no definite perimeter …
The simple thought experiment of bringing in bulldozers to level the whole island to a constant height should show why this is the case.
Oh great, take out the fractal and you don’t have a fractal so there is no fractal issue…. Yes, I see now, clearly I forgot that the answer to the problem is to change the definitions and the data …
Yes, and a cube is just like a sphere once you push the sides in…
A global average temperature is a physically well-defined property.
What is the physical definition for a mathematical creation? Be sure to address Nyquist and both the spatial and temporal domains of your grid.
Go ahead, I’ll wait…
BTW, I can define a Wookie and a Tribble too, doesn’t make them any more real… Kind of like the Aether…
Tom P (23:11:47) :
Ron,
“…there is no significant change in temperatures from 1995 until 2001 and cooling from 2001 up to now.”
I’m having some problems fitting these trends to the data:
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1866/trends.png
Do you have a plot which better illustrates this?
This example and other exchanges with TP point out the speciousness of an argument which involves cherry picking. In the time frame of 1998-2009, so-called global temperatures have been cooling. From about 1977 to 1998 they have been warming; from about 1945 to 1975 they were cooling; from about 1910 to 1940 they were rising….do you get the picture? For the 20th Century there was a net rise of about 1°C. This corresponds nicely with a net fall of similar magnitude for the 19th Century. A good depiction of the 20th Century temps clearly illustrating the temperature trends and the cyclical nature of such trends can be found here.
The linked graph shows that we are currently in a 60-year cycle of temperature rise and fall. The 20th Century contained a little over one and a half cycles which contained two warming phases and one complete falling phase. Little wonder that the net change for the 20th Century was a temperature increase.
In the longer range, these 60-year cycles are impressed on a longer wavelength cycle that has a period of more than 1000 years. This includes the MWP and the LIA. For the past 300 years or so we have been recovering from the lows of the LIA.
All of this concern about short-range climate fluctuations is, to use a popular phrase of the times, a distraction.
The fundamental argument between AGWers and climate realists is the contribution, if any, that CO2 makes to any changes in global temperatures.
In the linked graph there is an excellent correspondence between cycles of Total Solar Irradiance and the major ocean/atmosphere cycles of the PDO+AMO. However, for the century as a whole, there is no correlation, nil, nada, between the global temperature cycles and CO2. Since careful, continuous measurements of CO2 really began in 1958 at Mauna Loa, there has been a monotonic rise every year which has ranged between 0.29ppm in 1964 to 2.93ppm in 1998. Continuous and consistent global measurements of CO2 began about 1980 and the annual rises range from 0.64ppm in 1992 to 2.91ppm in 1998. It’s interesting to note that the maximum annual rise in both data bases occurred in the Great El Niño year of 1998.
Another interesting characteristic of atmospheric CO2 is the very regular annual cycle which is clearly depicted in this Global Chart.
This annual oscillation relates to the NH growing season in which CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere in the summer months, and returned to the atmosphere as leaves from deciduous trees and annual crops die off and decay. This rapid atmospheric response gives the lie to those who claim long retention periods for atmospheric CO2. It seems CO2 tends to equilibrate very rapidly. It’s the equilibrium constants of the major sources and sinks that apply, and clearly it is the oceans that are the major player in this regard.
So, if other possible causes of global temperature variations correlate well with the temperature changes, and CO2 does not, why in the world are we spending so much time in trying to tie the two together? The answer is obvious. I believe that man-made CO2 is a measurable component of the atmospheric concentration. As such, it is the only human caused contribution to the atmosphere (recognizing that there are other man-made effluents that have a lesser presence) and as such can be regulated.
I’ll leave it right there to avoid a political discussion.
Tom P-
“My plots are based on satellite anomalies, not absolute surface air temperatures so your link to the GISS page concerning the latter is irrelevant.”
Good, it wasn’t intended for you, it was intended to amusingly slap RW in the face.
“But I agree, 3 to 5 degF or 2 to 3 degC is a reasonable ballpark figure for concern. I think it’s reasonable to try to measure at sufficient accuracy to see if that’s where we heading, as for instance the UAH satellite team are doing, whatever the cause might be.”
You apparently completely missed my comment amount that being an arbitrary figure I pulled out of my ass. It is impossible for you to agree with me on something I don’t have a real opinion on. But, since we are going down that road, extrapolate UAH out and you get about 1.3 C by 2100, which is below your alarm warranting range (which is arbitrary, AFAIK) and the surface trends so far observed aren’t to alarming either. Will that change. Damned if I know. But I doubt it.
On the point of a linear fit, outside the area near ends of series smooths like Hadley does can work OK, and the only reason that isn’t preferred with the satellites is because the data sets are too short to allow for it. Of course, with a Correlation coefficient of round .5, why fit a line (or anything) at all? Let the data speak for itself. My rule of thumb with trends is “If you can’t see it, it ain’t there”. So I see a slight trend in UAH-seems to be there, and noone should need a trend line to tell them that, unless poor chartsmanship is being used to deceive them.
kim,
“That long term rising temperature trend does not have a known cause. It does not correlate with the CO2 curve, and has been going on since the end of the little ice age.”
I’m glad we agree that there is a long term rising temperature curve to explain. But why do you think that trend does not correlate with the CO2 curve, which is also rising over the same period?
Tom P 13:08:38
I gave you four temperature series with a declining temperature since around 2005. See my comment at 10:22:31. Granted, that’s a short trend, but given that the PDO has flipped to its cooling phase and that the last century’s temperature is a pretty nice fit with the phases of the PDO, we can expect another 20 or so years of cooling. Even the warmistas admit that would be a significant trend.
============================================
C’mon, Tom P, don’t be so obtuse. Look at the temperature curves. We warmed from the early 1900’s to around 1940, cooled to around 1970, warmed until just the first part of this century and are now cooling. Why quibble about just when the temperature peaked? The top of the curve was around 2002-2006.
Be not the first to take up the new, nor yet the last to set aside the old. CO2 is a minor determinant of global temperature, so minor, in fact, that we haven’t been able to determine what it is.
======================================
“Tom P (13:08:38) : although I can understand why you’re disappointed ”
Don’t worry Tom, I’m not disappointed. You are wrong.
Tom
It was far warmer during the Holocene than it is now.
You have a funny way of propagandizing.
Does your funny math reassure you?
Tom P-when to things move in the same direction at the same time, you can expect some correlation-I could show a correlation between the price of tea in China and CO2 and if I don’t adjust for inflation, I probably end up with a similarly good correlation to that with temperature. But you are a smart guy, you know why that’s meaningless. Right?
timetochooseagain,
First, we probably really do agree (for the first time?) that even if linear trends continue, we can probably handle the resulting climate change of a little less than 2 degC by 2100. The issue would be if they either continue beyond 2100 or if the trend is above linear before then.
A correlation coefficient of 0.5 is statistically medium to high so it is most certainly not wrong to draw a linear trend. What is mathematically wrong is to then put a more complex curve on it.
Kim,
I think we agree that its the last one hundred years’ trend that needs explaining, not what’s happened since 2005. The PDO has not injected energy over the whole century:
http://www.weatherquestions.com/PDO-and-20th-Century-warming-Fig02.jpg
Again, over that period why do you say there was no correlation with CO2?
kim:
Using the kind of analysis you’re doing, global warming clearly also stopped in 1985:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/to:1985/from:1978
and late 1992:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/to:1992.7/from:1978
and mid 1999:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/to:1999.4/from:1978
and in mid 2004:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/to:2004.5/from:1978
But right now, without any doubt at all, the most recent data show an unambigous warming trend of no less that 1.5°C/decade – far faster than any model prediction:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2008/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2008
Very clear to see, isn’t it? Completely undeniable.
The Blessed Hansen is on record as saying that it is impossible to determine precisely what the global temperature is. Which is an interesting starting point.
Next question: can anyone (RW, Tom P?) tell us what the global temperature is supposed to be? Where is the evidence that the temperature today is the optimum? Would we be better or worse off if it was 1C warmer? Or cooler?
Since higher CO2 concentrations are better for crops and more people die of cold than heat, explain why another 100ppmv and another 1C are problematic.
And since it appears from the 20th century that temperature cycles are about 30 years long and the last upswing began about 1975 why is it unacceptable to look at the figures from about 2003-2005 to see if that cycle has finished or not?
I’m only curious you understand!
Well, kind of. Again, when speaking of just the mean temperature change around the globe, stating an exact figure is not really such a smart way to look at it. Warming concentrated in high temperatures would be worse than concentrated in low, for instance. I don’t know what the expectations are, but I think I have some idea. And I take the optimistic view that if AGW really does take us to 1.4 ish more mean warmth by 2100, and that isn’t hurting us at that point, then by 2100 we should be sufficiently advanced as a society to either cope with another century of the same or to eliminate the problem altogether. As society develops, problems tend to evaporate…
Tom P (14:05:51) :
I see you didn’t reply to me about (13:47:26)
It was far warmer on earth during the Holocene Optimum than now — you agree? It’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.
Why play this game of how much warmer it was divided by how long ago it was? Why play that silly numbers game? It is irrelevant. Is this the best use of your time? And even if we were all forced to play your game we still would come to the conclusion that earth is cooling.
You would quickly agree that it was far warmer during the Holocene than now and that the warming that happened recently is by no means unprecedented?
You do love the truth, don’t you?
RW (14:09:50) :
You guys get tedious.
Steven Goddard, Re:
I don’t mean to quibble with the wording “normal”, but as this storm moves out, I consider the Colorado river basins, somewhat exceeding Lake Wobegone children, all well-above average for the time of year, with the exception of the San Miguel, in SW corner of the state, but a few of their snow-samplers have yet to report. As it now stands, we’re in good shape for the summer:
COLORADO
GUNNISON RIVER BASIN ………………………… 112 109
UPPER COLORADO RIVER BASIN ………………. 117 112
SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN …………………… 112 107
LARAMIE AND NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASINS 106 106
YAMPA AND WHITE RIVER BASINS ……………. 114 108
ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN …………………………. 115 105
UPPER RIO GRANDE BASIN ………………………. 111 110
SAN MIGUEL, DOLORES, ANIMAS
AND SAN JUAN RIVER BASINS ……………….. 96 102
kim,
Tsonis has a plausible explanation for the wiggles, which I’m most certainly not quibbling about, but not for the long-term trend. We can’t reject CO2 as contributing to the trend through a lack of correlation – both the long term temperature and CO2 concentrations moved up last century.
But this of course does not prove causality (I agree with timetochooseagain again!).
However, we now reach the nub of the issue. What might have contributed to this long-term warming, and do the possible causes have the necessary power to produce the warming we have seen over the last century?
“RW (14:09:50) : Very clear to see, isn’t it? Completely undeniable.”
Who cares what was predicted. You act as this ‘prediction’ meant something in the first place.
It was warmer on earth during the Medieval Warming Period than now.
It was warmer during the Roman Warming Period than the Medieval Warming Period.
It was warmer during the Holocene Optimum than during the Roman Warming Period.
There, I just denied you.
That’s all now Tom P and RW. I have much more interesting things to do.
Tom-I can see you are much more reasonable than my first impression of you suggested to me. However, I think it is important that we remember that while we do expect CO2 (and Methane, and other hydrocarbons which also generally rose in concentration) to cause some warming) that one can say this, while still believe that there are a myriad of other factors involved. Many are anthropogenic (land use/land cover changes, aerosols (both the cooling and warming kind) and some are natural (solar effects are very poorly quantified at present and we don’t even have consistent measurements recently, yet this is pretty much it for what “natural” effects models include. What if the left something important out? You may think it unlikely, but it is a question worth asking.
Sam the Skeptic,
Above 2 degC we’ll really have problems. The world might indeed be a bit better if it we at a slightly different temperature. Coping with the change from current conditions is the issue.
Looking at 30 year cycles is fine but there’s no evidence in the satellite data of such a cycle in the 30 years so far. And 2009 has been warmer than 2008 by quite a distance, so judging turning points from short-term data is a mug’s game.
Tom P (14:29:20) :
However, we now reach the nub of the issue. What might have contributed to this long-term warming, and do the possible causes have the necessary power to produce the warming we have seen over the last century?
So, in other words, if not C02, what could have caused the warming? Good question, Tom! Now you’re putting the ol’ thinking cap on, and thinking like a scientist instead of an ideologue.
Now, if only you were truly interested in an answer. Ay, there’s the rub – because, as an ideologue, you obviously aren’t interested – it was simply a rhetorical question, after all.
And so it goes.
Tom P, it would be pretty hard to determine the presence or absence of a cycle with a period so close to the length of your data set (but I think when they say 30 years, they mean a cycle whose period is actually 60 years-and that would be super impossible to see in the satellite “window”). But 2009 ain’t over yet-it has barely begun. And when the effect of the 2009 La Nina finally kicks in, the recovery from the 2007 one will abruptly end. The next decade, or even five years, should prove very interesting indeed…
Tom P 14:05:51 and 14:29:20
Well, the trend of the temperature rise since the end of the Little Ice Age has been fairly constant, and the curve of CO2 rise only takes off in the last half of the last century. I don’t think the underlying trend is explained. Whatever is the cause is the same sort of thing that varied the temperature from the Roman Optimum to the MWP, through the Little Ice Age and to the present. There is no evidence that CO2 caused those temperature swings. And yes, whatever caused those temperature swings has the power to show the warming we had in the last century.
RW at 14:09:50 Now you are just being silly. I don’t think that I’m using that kind of analysis, and I don’t think you are being very serious in the pursuit of truth.
============================
“RW (14:09:50) : Very clear to see, isn’t it? Completely undeniable.”
There you go again. Another cherry orchard. Any plot of data that varies in a range significantly larger then the trend can be cited as showing a rising trend or a falling trend depending on where you set the endpoints.
In regard to the 4 charts linked in your last post, both a rising or a falling trend can be drawn in each one based on where you start. How about a Century plot which although rising slightly during that period shows a series of rising and falling trends in a neat cyclical pattern. This can be seen in a chart I posted earlier and repeatedhere.
But to get a climatic perspective, how about a look at the whole Holocene period? This Holocene chart spans about 10,000 years in a period in which CO2 was persistently lower than today ranging around 280ppm if you believe Callendar’s data and others who support him. It’s clear from this chart that the current warm period and the other most recent warm spells were progressively cooler than the Roman Warm Period or the Holocene Climatic Optimum (a strange appellation were this period unfavorable for human and vegetative development).
BTW, here in the Northeast, every summer has been warmer than the previous winter. Do you detect a trend here? Every Dec-Jul monthly chart shows an uptrend. It must be global warming. Oh, did I forget to show your the Jul-Dec charts? Sorry about that. (/s)
After we got married almost 30 years ago my wife’s parents moved to Evergreen CO. I was a skier, my wife wasn’t. I figured we would go to Evergreen in the spring and she and her folks could play with the kids and I could go skiing. When out oldest was 1 we went out in March. We got snowed into the house. I learned why my wife never went to visit her mother. It was my last ski trip.
OT (sorry, but no relevant recent threads and I thought this would be of interest): this week’s Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1166352)
“Atlantic Forcing of Persistent Drought in West Africa.” Quote from abstract:
We find that intervals of severe drought lasting for periods ranging from decades to centuries are characteristic of the monsoon and are linked to natural variations in Atlantic temperatures. Thus the severe drought of recent decades is not anomalous in the context of the past three millennia….
2009 has been almost as warm as 1987, and only half a degree cooler than 1998. That troubles me. Clearly the earth is heating out of control.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1987/plot/rss/from:1987
Tom P
As a concept, you are correct, but just how do you measure that temperature when you are talking about a planet?
Due to measurement errors of many possible kinds, for a scientific concept to be useful you need to have a specific definition to bind it too.
Whether you are talking about the the unit of length called a Meter:
(It was redefined in 1983 as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.)
The meter was originally intended to equal 10-7 or one ten-millionth of the length of the meridian through Paris from pole to the equator. However, the first prototype was short by 0.2 millimeters because researchers miscalculated the flattening of the earth due to its rotation. It was then re-defined according to the standards of the time, and will possibly be redefined as we gain precision in measuring length.
In measuring time in seconds, we are specifying it as an interval compared to the atomic vibrations of a specific atom:
(The time needed for a cesium-133 atom to perform 9,192,631,770 complete oscillations. )
At one time it was defined by a specific pendulum design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Riefler_clock_NIST.jpg
All though there might be agreement in the sciences that the “concept” of an average temperature of the earth, may have merit, and in an approximate sense, can be discussed, it has no definition and recognized way for it to be measured.
Since there is no “standard measurement” it is not repeatable, and thus is not a scientific value. At the very best, when referring to the “earths average temperature” they are simply making educated guesses at what this value should be. My guess is no better than Hansen’s unless we can document why and how we chose that measurement process and state with some level of confidence what the inherent measurement errors are for that process and methodology. Then we need to get a widely accepted agreement and from that time on (until it is again redefined as our understanding improves) all calculations regarding the earths temperature should use the widely accepted standard.
I can tell you my property line is x feet long, but with out knowing how I measured it you have no clue at all what precision that measurement is, even though I attach multiple digits past the decimal point, they are meaningless.
I might have paced it off. My average pace length is about 27 inches but it varies according to the steepness of the terrain. Assuming I make no counting errors, and the ground is flat, my estimate of the length of my property line by pacing is probably no more accurate than 13.5 inches +/-. If I measure it with a high quality surveyors fiberglass 100′ tape and do not exert too much tension on it so as to stretch the tape, my precision might drop to +/- a few inches. If I use survey quality GPS with a short residency time at each bench mark my precision drops to plus or minus a centimeter or so. If I measure that distance with laser interferometry my accuracy drops into the wave length of light range.
When it comes to measuring temperatures, a good analog to the earth would be human body temperature. Did you measure the persons temperature with an oral thermometer, a rectal thermometer, or one of the IR thermometer that read the temperature via the ear canal?
If you measured it with an oral thermometer, did you follow good practice and keep the thermometer under the tongue long enough for it to stabilize, did you “shake it down” first so it had not preexisting bias, did the patient eat hot or cold food recently or just finished running a marathon?
What is the analog “good practice” and “repeatable method” for measuring the earths average temperature. Please cite the international agreement when this process is published.
Until then, the “average temperature of the earth” is a “conversational convention” not a defined standard and in scientific terms has no meaning.
Larry
Ellie in Belfast-one would think that, by logical extension, that would mean Atlantic temperatures are also not unprecedented. Of course Keigwin showed that in 1996, so we’ve kinda known that for a while now. Still, for the drought connection it is interesting in its own right. Similar connections of PDO and AMO have been shown with precipitation in the US.
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Sargasso.html
Noted the comment about the French Alps above. This article talks of how the Alps and Pyrenees have also been revived with fresh snowfalls as well. Also talks of snowfalls in over high ground in Algeria and Tunisia plus other extremes of weather in other locations about the world. Actually presented in a neutral manner which is refreshing. 🙂
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6115931.ece
Canada geese finally flew over my house on Aprl 17th, a month and a half late
Larry,
“What is the analog “good practice” and “repeatable method” for measuring the earths average temperature.” Please cite the international agreement when this process is published.”
I’d look at the UAH satellite methodology to start with to see how they determine a global temperature. Here’s a starting point:
Christy, J.R., R.W. Spencer, and W.D. Braswell, “MSU Tropospheric temperatures: Data set construction and radiosonde comparisons.” Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. 17,1153-1170, 2000
Steven,
“2009 has been almost as warm as 1987, and only half a degree cooler than 1998. That troubles me. Clearly the earth is heating out of control.”
…very drole. But taking you seriously for a second, do I detect an unspoken shift in position? You seem remarkably reluctant to come out and support the many posters who claim we’re now in a cooling trend.
Tom P,
The only near-term cooling trend I have ever noted is the past six or seven years and perhaps the past ten. I have no idea if that is climatologically significant.
However, I do know that it is not what the IPCC predicted.
Tom P 16:48:45
Please follow aurbo’s first link in his 15:37:00 comment. It is likely that we’ll be cooling for another 20 years. Sure, we are early in the trend.
==============================================
Kim,
“Well, the trend of the temperature rise since the end of the Little Ice Age has been fairly constant…”
There’s general agreement (both Lohle and Mann for instance), that the LIA reached a minimum of about half a degree colder around 1600. It took three centuries to warm up by half a degree by 1900, with more than a further half a degree of increase in the last century. I therefore disagree the trend has been constant.
“…and the curve of CO2 rise only takes off in the last half of the last century.”
which is when most of the last hundred years’ heating took place.
“There is no evidence that CO2 caused those temperature swings.”
There is a strong correlation, though.
Squidly, E.M., Adolfo, Carsten:
That’s a good enough response for a start.
I’ll post a reminder or two starting a couple of weeks before the first weekend in July for those that wish to participate in the first WUWT Barbeque.
Given the inspiration of the Catlin Arctic Survey, the objective of the day will be to do what we enjoy doing (food and fun with family and friends) and gather some useless data.
I really think the key data will be for all of the participants to dig random depth holes, all at random locations around the world, and measure them with random degrees of accuracy. That data can then perhaps be sent to Mann to aid him in proving there was no LIA and that Antarctica is warming.
The grill temperatures are just a bonus. All those weather stations with Stevenson screens near the barbeque grills were absolutely WORTHLESS for telling us the correct temperature for the ideal hamburger, hot dog, or steak. Now we’ll have some good solid data to go on.
kim, honestly, I have a hard time believing your crystal ball is any better than anyone else’s, so while your prediction may turn out right, you are frankly way too certain about it (as are those who make very different claims).
Steven,
A quite reasonable position on short term trends – it would be good to have less discussion of weather and more of climates.
However, it’s not so obvious the IPCC projections are so awry:
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/liite5_paivitetty_rahmstorf.jpg
kim,
The plot you refer to seems to be demonstrating a correlation with US, not global climate.
More record cold and snow last week in the USA :
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/7day/us.html?c=maxtemp,mintemp,snow
Tom P-have you been following Lucia’s posts on whether Model predicted trends are being fulfilled? She is pretty pro-AGW but says that at the moment they aren’t doing so hot (excuse the joke):
http://rankexploits.com/musings
She has discussed it in a ~lot~ of posts, so I would probably just post asking for a quick summary of her findings so far re: recent trends.
Tom P,
I’ll see your alarming chart and raise you a more valid comparison: click1
In fact, the IPCC is no more accurate than the inaccurate computer models that its alarmism depends on: click2 [chart by Bill Illis]
You see, the IPCC is composed 100% of political appointees who have their marching orders. That’s why they make alarming predictions that don’t pan out: click3
But you can believe in them if you want to.
Claude Harvey (19:16:25) :
“One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.”
No! No! You’re several iterations behind! “Man-made Global Warming CAUSES global cooling!”
Ayup. Socialist SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson talked about this while terraforming Mars for his trilogy. Chaotic thrashing is what its called. Now, the fact that none of the agw climate models make even the remotest attempt to touch chaotic systems math, the gridding is a sleazy way to avoid it, don’t let it stop them from trying though.
Guys, images 1 and 3 are absent in this thread; both are docs.google.com addresses:
http://docs.google.com/File?id=ddw82wws_1883j37dnf9_b
http://docs.google.com/File?id=ddw82wws_191t4qwpwgn_b
Google is not being your friend.
Also, when clicking on the images Google informs me of a situation thusly:
Gents, we’ve been ‘found out’. 😉
.
.
Tom P (17:16:21)…
Regarding the putative effect of CO2 on temperatures, Tom said: “There is a strong correlation, though.”
We know there is also a strong correlation between global cooling and the decreasing number of pirates: click.
With all the recent pirate activity around the horn of Africa, global temps have been declining as the number of pirates increases. To quote Tom, “There is a strong correlation.”
As soon as 0bama gets rid of the pirate problem, we can expect global temperatures to begin rising again. In fact, with the recent deaths of four pirates, temps took a little jump, indicating that this robust model has strong predictive powers.
The pirate problem was just a hiccup in the rapid ascent of global warming caused by a minor but very evil trace gas. As we know, global warming causes global cooling.
Unfortunately, the pirate problem just skewed the inexorable global warming rise temporarily. I mean, what GCM could have foreseen the pirate problem? It was an unexpected variable.
I hope I’m making sense.
[/sarc]
“Mike Lorrey (18:08:44) : none of the agw climate models make even the remotest attempt to touch chaotic systems math…”
Speaking of climate models…
“…models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view”
~Antonio Zichichi
http://www.ccsem.infn.it/em/zichichi/short_bio.html
Meanwhile it was 93 degrees today in where I live. Make of that what you will.
Tom P 17:16:21
Well, I’m more impressed with the way the temperature curve follows the oceanic oscillations than it does the CO2 curve. And the temperature swings that I’m talking about that you mention in the last part of your comment are the ones between the Roman Optimum, the MWP, and the LIA. There is no correlation there with CO2 levels, that we know of.
and at 17:32:10 The US temperature levels correlate well with worldwide ones.
timetochooseagain at 17:20:01 Of course I’m not certain. But the evidence of the PDO is pretty good, the oceans, with all their heat content, are cooling, sea level rise is stumbling and ice is accumulating at both poles. I’m also counting on, with even less certainty, the sun not warming the globe like it has in the last century.
=====================================
Tom 17:16:21
Oh, c’mon, look at the underlying trend as shown on the third link at Smokey’s comment at 18:05:59. See those oceanic oscillations around the gradually rising trend? I repeat, where is the CO2 curve in this?
============================================
timetochooseagain at 17:20:01 I also suspect, with very little certainty, that the underlying rising trend from the end of the Little Ice Age, whatever its cause, may be at an end. The sun is acting as if it is contemplating another Grand Minimum. But, as I say, I’ve no proof that a Grand Solar Minimum leads to global cooling. However, the last two times the spots went away, the globe cooled. Chances are it will this time, too.
And the bottom line, as anna v has so eloquently stated, without any response from the true believers here, is that there is not enough certainty that the globe is warming from CO2 to make expensive and lethal policy.
=======================================
Kelson (18:47:00) :
I’ll make of it that it’s 93 today.
Tom P 17:29:32
Can you explain why the graph linked in that comment has TAR projections starting in 1990 and TAR didn’t come out until years afterward?
=====================================
This is a correction to my prior comment at 15:37. I had repeated the previous link instead of furnishing the correct one for the 10,000 year holocene.
Here is the corrected holocene chart.
my bad
This is a correction to my prior comment at 15:37. I had repeated the previous link instead of furnishing the correct one for the 10,000 year holocene.
Here is the corrected Holocene chart.
my bad
Those links of Aurbo show the temperature swings I’m talking about Tom P. They are not correlated with CO2 that we know of, and they have the power to demonstrate the kind of warming we’ve seen in the 20th Century and since the end of the Little Ice Age.
Face it, CO2 is a minor determinant of climate. So small that we’ve not been able to tease out its effect. So stop with the crippling policy changes already.
==========================================
http://www.uah.edu/News/climatebackground.php
So far they have identified 4 different errors in the satellite data, orbital drift, instrument body warming and inter-instrument calibration, orbital decay and made corrections for them.
They are measuring the atmospheres temperature by a specific method (which is still evolving)
At this point all they have established is that they get reasonable agreement between radiosonde temperature measurements and satellite data. They have not established if that data is an appropriate way to measure “the earths temperature”, it is just a method they are using which seems reasonable. Even if it turns out to be a relevant measurement, it only goes back til Nov 1978. So it is in the context of long term climate, a single point of data (one 30 year period).
There are many that think the earths air temperature in not the best way to measure the earths temperature. The oceans heat content is yet another method that is suggested. It also has sensor issues and is a new science, that they are working the bugs out of, and also a relatively young data set.
There is still a great deal of debate on if, or how to compare this snap shot of atmospheric temperature to other proxy data where temperature is “inferred” through indirect means. With out reliable old data, it is impossible to in a statistically significant way measure trends that are very small compared to the noise in the signal.
In short we are perhaps 100-500 years away from having meaningful temperature data that actually means anything as far as climate is concerned. At this point we are simply gathering data. We do not know yet if that data is trustworthy (there may be more issues that show up over time with satellite data for example). It may turn out that the proper measurement is not even being made. It may turn out for example that the most useful temperature is the temperature of the ocean in the center of the major gyres where the water is relatively stagnant. There are 5 of them, and a high resolution measurement of the top 300 meters of ocean in them might be just the number we need to give meaningful modeling of the earths “average temperature” we simply do not know yet where to put the thermometer.
It might turn out that the ideal measurement is the temperature of ground water 30 meters below the surface or some other data that is not even under consideration right now.
When the Wright brothers built their first plane, they had to build a wind tunnel and figure out how to measure aerodynamic lift and then determine through experimentation, what construction features of the air foil were important and then work out methods to apply that information to a real machine. Things like chord length aspect ratio camber of the wing, lift to drag ratio had to be sorted out.
In terms of analyzing the earths climate, we are still building our first wind tunnel, and trying out various measurement methods, and learning their limitations.
Sea level (for the purposes of measuring ocean heat content) is a good example. It is not at all trivial to measure or for that matter define. Is the sea level the level above the center of the earth or the level above a gravitational potential surface?
Do then need to invent a new highly damped tide gauge that averages water level over a time constant of days, weeks or months and who’s geopotential height is monitored by GPS?
The climate models were built around using data from discrete altitudes from radiosondes. Should they be re-written around using satellite data?
The models themselves do lots of manipulation and some would say out right abuse of temperature data, are they even valid? Even if the temperature data is reliable and appropriate if you put it into a flawed model that destroys the data integrity you still get garbage out.
The satellites measure the average air temperature of a parcel of air containing some 50,000 cubic kilometers of atmosphere. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does it average out noise and help the determination of the state of the climate, or does it lose so much spacial resolution that it makes it impossible to use the data to satisfy highly complex non-linear relationships and produce any useful projections into the future?
If the measurements are too course, then even a perfect model might still be incapable of giving projections of any value, because the calculations would diverge from reality too fast to be useful. What if the proper temperature grid resolution is an order of magnitude less than it needs to be? What if in order to get the calculations to provide useful output you need the satellite data to measure parcels of air that are only 500 cubic kilometers in volume?
Larry
TomP, believe me average global temperature is immeasurable and to try to say that not only can it be measured but to accurate decimal points is nonsense. To then say which way it’s going is fantasy. That is very much in keeping with the whole theory of AGW which is patentley being dismantled day by day.
The temperature graphs of previous eras show clearly CO2 Following temperature and no runaway heating effect. Model your way out of that buddy.
“Tom P (14:29:20) :
However, we now reach the nub of the issue. What might have contributed to this long-term warming, and do the possible causes have the necessary power to produce the warming we have seen over the last century?”
No, the nub of the issue is whether CO2 emissions by humans are about to have catastrophic consequences for the planet. The proposed controls on CO2 emissions assume that yes i) AGW and II) that it’s catastrophic. The available data do not appear to support either i) or II), regardless of any rival theory on the causes of climate cycles.
Since we are on the CO2 topic, I have to state here that unequivocally there exists a temperature/CO2 correlation , except the causality goes : temperature rises, CO2 rises, not vice versa. From the physics of gases in liquids this is inevitable. Add to this the biological cycle, so evident in the Mauna Loa records, and very little lee way is left for reverse causation by eyeballing curves.
CO2 rises mainly because the temperature rises and the biologic sphere rises because of better growing conditions with higher temperatures : superimposed on this is the tiny fraction of human induced increase.
It is good to remind that there is proof in the ice core records, that there exists an over 800 year delay of CO2 rise after temperature starts rising, which shows that an even larger cycle correlation exists, possibly because of large movements of ocean currents as the oceans heat .
Kim, Smokey,
So your explanation for the long-term trend is a linear recovery from the Little Ice Age:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
But this just does not match with the past climate:
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1598/liarebound.png
Compare the dotted lines.
If there really was a linear recovery from the period of the LIA we would all be a lot warmer than we are today – look at the red lines. The LIA can’t be the underlying cause of the long-term temperature trend.
Larry,
“Even if it turns out to be a relevant measurement, it only goes back til Nov 1978.”
And agrees well with ground data and other satellites over that period. If global average temperature data is worthless, why is there such a high level of agreement?
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6710/tempcomp.png
Tom P (23:58:40) :
Kim, Smokey,
So your explanation for the long-term trend is a linear recovery from the Little Ice Age:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
But this just does not match with the past climate:
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1598/liarebound.png
Compare the dotted lines.
If there really was a linear recovery from the period of the LIA we would all be a lot warmer than we are today – look at the red lines. The LIA can’t be the underlying cause of the long-term temperature trend.
The same argument would hold for all the ins and outs of cold/ hot in the holocene optimum
You are stuck on linear approximations. Just like the IPCC where they substitute averages over most turbulent functions, like clouds etc. Linear approximations of a function have a meaning if the function is well behaved. Climate being the end result of several coupled non linear differential equations can in no way be described by perturbative expansions with the first term and linear approximations.
So maybe it is logarithmic, or power 0.00x, or whatever. The trend is the only thing we can really see and we can fit a function for shorthand, not for theory. It is not meaningful to say that ” I assume it is linear and so we should be much warmer than we are” when the equations have not been solved, or the chaotic system addressed with the tools of chaos and complexity. ” It was not CO2 in the holocene variations,and so it is not CO2 out of the LIA” is a more reasonable guesstimate than “it is anthropogenic CO2”.
And again I insist, to require the west to do economic hara kiri because of guesstimates is criminal.
Tom P (13:08:38) :
E.M. Smith,
I’m afraid you still don’t understand fractals.
Tom P, I let the personal comment go the first time. I understand fractals just fine, having studied them a fair bit for what I do for a living. It is you, sirah, who have not a clue. I’m done attempting to teach you. Please enjoy your present status for as long as you wish. From here on out, my comments are aimed at others.
That island had a well-defined volume above sea level
Yes, it does. You just can’t get from that to an average height. Lets say you divide the island into 100 cells. For each cell you know the peak height. One cell has 1/10th of it’s area a km high, the rest is at zero. Your selected cell size says you can not know that it’s only 10% at a km high. Do you average it in as 1 km high? As zero? As 1/2 km? To know that it’s only 10% at a mile high, you need a smaller ruler… Thus the fractional nature of the heights within the space means that you can not know the actual average height without a near infinitely small ruler. Mountains, BTW, erode in a fractal pattern, thus every cell has fractions at different heights.
This is an analog of the sampling of temperatures over a space and over a time. Without knowing the percentage of a cell at that temperature and the percentage of time at that temperature, you can not know the actual average temperature in that cell. The temperature reported is ignorant of reality. Averaging more of these errors together to get a monthly average of your ignorance does not improve the result.
You are assuming that the sample is representative when that is demonstrably false. Pick a cell with a stream full of snow melt, a hot rock in the sun, a pine tree that self regulates leaf temperature, and two people one of them lighting a camp fire and a Stevenson screen near the rocks. What is the average temperature? What will it be in 10 minutes when the fire is going … How do you know? The best you can say is that the air near the Stevenson Screen is a good enough approximation for weather reporting, but it is NOT the average temperature of the cell.
BTW, that scenario is a real one. I dove into the stream and discovered via an immediate headache that the snow was melting just around the bend, unseen, even as we were hot in the sun… 50 F drop in less than a second. My skin flushes just remembering it.
An average temperature is the area under a time series curve for the period of interest and similarly has a well-defined mathematical value.
If only you had an infinite number of samplings in both time and space to know that actual curve. Since you don’t, you have no clue. At best you can get an approximation with significant error bands, especially with all of 2 data points to work with for the whole day for a several hundred square mile area cell …
Say you are in San Francisco. It was 50 degrees at 2am. It rose to 80 degrees for less than an hour as an offshore wind took a bit of inland air over the city, then the inland heat rising started sucking the fog in. You spend the next 24 hours at near 50 degrees. Just what exactly was the shape of that curve? How do you get (80+50)/2 to represent the 1/24 of the day that was actually warm; in a correct manner? You can’t. The temps did not change linearly, nor in a nice sin wave. They changed with the wind… Your average is a broken representation of reality. Yes, the temperature averaged under that curve was bounded at 50 and 80, but you have little clue as to the actual area. To get that integral would take very many more data points, and it would still be an approximation.
As for global temperatures, do you have a problem with Roy Spencer’s satellite UAH temperature series? It’s his temperature anomalies that I’m using for my plots.
ANY temperature series that fails the Nyquist test is defective. I don’t know the sample interval nor the spacial distribution of samples for UAH, but I doubt that it would resolve a stream in the woods nor have planet wide hourly or less data points. Is it usable? Well, a 12,000 mile coastline estimate is usable for the Coast Guard planning an off shore run; but 50,000 to 80,000 mile shore line estimate is more useful for figuring out where to build condo’s or how many folks can stand on the shore and fish… To the best of my knowledge, no one has bothered to figure out what are the best sample sizes for climate models vs weather reports. Our present system was designed for weather reporting…
Or is your position that as there is no way anyone can determine a global average temperature, we can’t even say whether we’re warming or cooling?
These are two different questions. I think it may well be possible to know if we are warming or cooling. Better done, IMHO, by looking at MIN or MAX temperatures separately, not some average of them. Best done with a sampling of about once per hour or more with a spatial distribution of about every 10 miles (as a first estimate) and with no averaging, interpolating, fabricating, or massaging of the data. Then continue that series for about 200 years and you have a good baseline (one Jose cycle plus a bit) but 2000 years would be better ( one Bond Event cycle). But averaging MIN and MAX for sparse data that violates Nyquist in both space and time domains, over a period of 20 to 50 years for most of the data, then averaging THAT over months gives a useless number. A fantasy. (In an ideal world, we would measure heat gain / loss rather than the proxy of temperature; then we would know if we are warming or cooling; but I think that is likely not possible to do at present.)
Basically, I think we can know if a single place is warming or cooling based on MIN and MAX, then we could do a population count of those places to reach some aggregate conclusion; but even that is like asking if the average girl at school is pregnant… There is no average girl and there is not a 51% pregnant. The question is better phrased as: Are the majority of places on the planet showing higher MAX temperatures over time for a very long time period with similarly higher MIN temperatures? (Are the majority of girls in school pregnant?) And the very long time period must allow for all the known long cycle times. That includes the Jose cycle AND the Bond Event cycle. Anything else and all you are doing is being foolish in your conclusions because you do not know your context (you say you are walking up hill, but miss that your hill is just a bump up on a larger down slope of the mountain side you are headed down …)
As a separate issue: Is there a global average temperature, even if we can not know it? I think there is not. There is a global average HEAT but there are so many processes moving that heat about and changing temperatures on such a fine scale that you can not have meaning in the average of temperatures. As a chinook runs down a mountain or water evaporates from a pond: No net heat changed, yet temperatures changed… telling you nothing about warming or cooling in the sense of adding or removing net heat. The global average of temperatures is about as useful as the global average food flavor…
anna v,
“It is good to remind that there is proof in the ice core records, that there exists an over 800 year delay of CO2 rise after temperature starts rising…”
So why have we not seen such a delay this time?
TomP
Instead of coming on to this site to Troll why don’t you use your time better by reading some of the data? Education is enlightening.
Mike Bryant (10:24:53) :
JamesP,
You’re right, AGW is a better belief system… hands down.
You win
I hope that was TIC, Mike..
I’m not sure they aren’t equally implausible, really – certainly both just as dangerous!
Do you think we will get a refund for this when the truth finally emerges..?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7997817.stm
anna v
The linear trend for the LIA recovery came from Smokey, endorsed by kim, not me! I agree there is little physical basis for using such a trend over several centuries, and the trend is not even in the right place based on climate history – please address your comments to them.
“Climate being the end result of several coupled non linear differential equations can in no way be described by perturbative expansions with the first term and linear approximations.”
Just because climate is non-linear as a whole does not mean that it is not perfectly correct to use linear relationships for elements of it. I hope you would agree that using 4.2J/K for the specific heat capacity of the water is a perfectly valid linear term for describing the relationship between the temperature and heat capacity of water.
Climate is nonlinear not because of the nonlinearity of the individual components, but because of the feedback between them.
E.M.Smith,
As you measure the height of a mountain with higher resolution, you get closer and closer to the actual height. The result will converge – it is not fractal.
As you measure a fractal coastline with higher resolution its length increases as you measure it more accurately. It does not converge on an answer.
An average global temperature behaves as the former, not the latter. Its accuracy will improve as more and better sensors are used. You can discuss the accuracy, but not the convergence.
Finally, as I asked Larry earlier, why is there such a level of agreement between the UAH and RSS satellite data together with the HadCRUT and GISS surface data if their measurements are worthless?
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6710/tempcomp.png
Tom P (01:26:53) :
anna v,
“It is good to remind that there is proof in the ice core records, that there exists an over 800 year delay of CO2 rise after temperature starts rising…”
So why have we not seen such a delay this time?
Ha.
Someody on this board speculated that since the MWP was 800 years ago the rise in CO2 we are observing is partially due to the mechanism seen in the icecores !
So there, we have the delay, by coincidence it started after we started burning a bit of fuel.
kim,
“Can you explain why the graph linked in that comment has TAR projections starting in 1990 and TAR didn’t come out until years afterward?”
Rahmstorf et al. 2007, Science, 316, 709:
“Although published in 2001, these model projections are essentially independent from the observed climate data since 1990.”
Tom P 01:26:53
It’s moments like this I think you’re just being deliberately trollish. First, have we seen the sort of warming event that has the 800 year delay? Secondly, there is little doubt that some of this CO2 rise is anthropogenic, and the previous delayed rises were not.
As I said on another thread, the ice core data for the last hundreds of thousands of years shows a rough correlation between temperature and CO2 with an approximately 800 year lag. The data for the last hundreds of millions of years shows no correlation. I don’t know whether or not the most recent data shows any correlation, but the recent data is on time scales too short, perhaps, to show the correlation.
And 23:58:40 This comment doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but if anna v has understood it I’ll take her response. Of course, the Little Ice Age isn’t the underlying cause of the long term temperature trend. We don’t know the cause of the long term temperature trend, but it does not follow the curve of the CO2 concentration.
======================================
hotrod 20:56:30
That is an excellent review and critique. Don’t forget Octave Chanute and Augustus Herring.
==========================================
“Although published in 2001, these model projections are essentially independent from the observed climate data since 1990.”
Actually, Tom P, the computer model projections are essentially independent from reality.
Notice that even the very best GCMs are right about one in six times: click.
That’s being right about 18% of the time — and wrong about 78% of the time. And of course the worst computer models are never right.
They would do a lot better just flipping a coin.
When the IPCC’s always-inaccurate computer models are left out of the discussion, climate alarmists really have nothing left to hang their hat on. All we see is natural climate variability within normal historical parameters. No “tipping point.” No melting of the Greenland ice cap. No declining sea ice outside of natural short term fluctuations. No “runaway global warming.” And certainly no “climate catastrophe” — much as the alarmist contingent wishes it would happen.
Finally, I would once again remind Tom P that the burden is on the climate alarmists to show that the CO2=AGW hypothesis explains reality better than the theory of natural climate variability. So far they have failed.
anna v,
“Someody on this board speculated that since the MWP was 800 years ago the rise in CO2 we are observing is partially due to the mechanism seen in the icecores !”
Well we went through the entire Holocene maximum without seeing CO2 concentrations kick up by more than 10 ppm according to the ice cores. In the last 200 years concentrations have by increased by 100 ppm. I can’t see the basis for their speculation.
Any other suggestions?
Hey, people here should read Peter Huber’s ‘Bound to Burn’ in the City Journal. It turns out that it is an awfully good thing that CO2 does not have a huge climate impact, because we are not going to stop using hydrocarbons for energy soon.
================================
Tom P 05:32:03
C’mon, pay attention. Much of the recent rise of CO2 is anthropogenic, and we don’t see its signature in the temperature record. That’s probably because it is too small. And hey, read Peter Huber, and get over your carbon use guilt.
=============================================
kim,
“Of course, the Little Ice Age isn’t the underlying cause of the long term temperature trend.”
I’m not sure why you therefore referred to Smokey’s plot that tries to claim that it is:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
“We don’t know the cause of the long term temperature trend, but it does not follow the curve of the CO2 concentration.”
Here’s the overlay of Mauna Loa CO2 and HadCRUT temperatures. I’d say they follow reasonably closely.
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9734/co2temp.png
Kim,
“Much of the recent rise of CO2 is anthropogenic, and we don’t see its signature in the temperature record.”
Here’s the rise in CO2 concentration (Mauna Loa) plotted against the rise in temperature (HadCRUT):
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9734/co2temp.png
Isn’t it interesting that every climate alarmist falls back on that scary 45° rise in CO2 emissions to support their propaganda?
If they were being honest, they would show the zero axis, which would result in this graph: click.
Not nearly so alarming, is it? But it’s got the advantage of being an honest graph. And keep in mind the fact that most of the rise in CO2 is natural; human emissions of this beneficial trace gas are only a small part of the total.
People sure do like to talk about the weather.
Retired Engineer (08:21:46) :
“Typical Colorado spring. As for weather data from the People’s Republic of Boulder (even they call it that) I wouldn’t count on any reliable information. They would repeal the law of gravity if someone said they were overweight.”
I can’t believe we let one of our kids go to college there. The kids at CSU still have their brains. It’s the ag school, ranchers’ kids. Boulder is filled with east coast kids of CEOS.
I think I’ll go up the Grand Mesa today and measure the snow. We didn’t get anything here in the river valley surrounded by the mountains, except a little more mud rain. Plenty fell on the Western Slope mountains though. Lake Powell is probably still low because Lake Mead is at almost emergency levels.
We were planning to drive over I70 Friday, but were not willing to spend the night in our car. Planted corn instead for the WUWT barbeque in July.
We know better than to take the studded tires off our vehicles before the end of April, having lived here for 25 years.
Tom P 06:12:31
Do you note, in your link, the same rate of rise of temperature from 1910 to 1940 when CO2 wasn’t rising that fast? The association of rising CO2 and rising temperature in the last quarter of the last century is coincidence. That the temperature rise is ascribed to the CO2 rise is the greatest example ever of the Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. And what has happened to temperature since the end of your plot, and what has happened to CO2 concentration? Are you willfully not seeing the point, or are you unable to see it?
and 06:07:33
We are quibbling over the meaning of ’cause’. I’ve merely stated that a period of low temperature is not the ’cause’ of a subsequent period of higher temperature. The point I’ve made over and over again is that we do not know the cause of the rise of temperature since the end of the Little Ice Age. We can with pretty good assurance rule out the cause being CO2, though, because the curve of temperature rise does not correlate well with the curve of CO2. The only, and I emphasize only, time that the two curves correlated well was in the last quarter of the 20th Century, and that has been the source of your confusion, and that of many others, too.
You need not be confused. Go read Plimer’s book, ‘Heaven and Earth; Global Warming, the Missing Science’ or a recent review of it in the Australian News, found through icecap.us
=================================
Take another look, Tom, at the CO2 vs temperature plot in your last two comments. Do you see the temperature drop as the CO2 continues to rise? There is a disconnect, which strongly suggests that CO2 is not a powerful determinant of temperature.
I go back and forth between thinking you are truly seeking truth or not. Some of your questions are excellent, and some seem obviously disingenuous. I’m a little disturbed by your unresponsiveness to some of the points being made, and by your reaching for thin bits of data to attempt to make your point.
For instance, overlay the CO2 levels in those last two links you’ve made for the whole time period they cover, not just for the last quarter of last century. The plots would tell a different tale, then. Now, did you make that cherry-picked plot, or did you harvest it from an orchard?
Ignorant or disingenuous. Keep talking and I’ll figure out.
=================================
[snip – pointless to the discussion, condescending, and insulting to the host’s profession- Anthony]
Tom
Feedbacks are part of what is meant that the climate is described by the solution of coupled non linear differential equations.
Now on the 800 year delay, if it comes from changes in the ocean currents the changes will be large for large temperature variations, and small for small ones, as are the temperature variations on the holocene optimum.
I can easily create a model where that 100ppm between 280 ppm and 380ppm is partially bubbling oceans, partially long term ocean movements bringing up CO2 rich waters from the depth, in two components , previous ice age and LIA, partially the extra biological growth due to the temperature increase and a bit from burning forests and fuels. With so many parameters I could fit an elephant.
And I have not entered into errors of CO2 measurements and cherry picking locations where there are no CO2 sources. Might as well measure temperatures at night in the deserts, or on top of high mountains in the shadow.
All I am saying is that despite the efforts and the money spent the science is not settled and will not be for the near future. It is ok to have research projects, it is absolutely not OK to try and stamped the world in suicidal economic policies that will bring a lot of harm and death in the third world
Kim,
“Do you note, in your link, the same rate of rise of temperature from 1910 to 1940 when CO2 wasn’t rising that fast…”
Of course there is variability about the rising trend, as I thought we had already agreed when discussing Tsonis. With the increase in CO2 concentrations lower in the first half of the century it was more difficult to see any effect from them at that time. Natural variability hasn’t gone away, it’s just a smaller proportion of the change we’re seeing.
“And what has happened to temperature since the end of your plot, and what has happened to CO2 concentration?”
I’m afraid that plot brings us bang up to date, and shows good agreement over fifty, not twenty five years.
So you are not able to offer an explanation for this trend over the last fifty years, but reject CO2 as a cause, despite the good correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature. What are your scientific reasons for such a rejection?
REPLY: Correlation is not always equal to causation. And if you try to dispute that premise there is no hope for you except to live in troll world – Anthony
Tom P 07:36:02
Oh, c’mon, your own plot shows the disconnect between CO2 rise and temperatures very recently. And what about the identical rates of temperature rise from 1910 to 1940 and 1970 to 2000? Since the CO2 rise differed in those two time periods, that is evidence that the rise was natural and not anthropogenic.
I’m beginning to think that rather than ignorant or disingenuous I should have proposed dense or disingenuous. And I’m more and more thinking disingenuous. But if that were the case, why are you promoting such unpersuasive arguments? Back to dense.
Anthony, there isn’t even any correlation except in the last quarter of the last century. So causation is out, despite Tom’s persistent inability to confront the data.
=====================================
REPLY: It is becoming more apparent that Tom’s mission here is to waste time. After seeing another comment where he characterizes weather forecasters with dishonesty in a snarky sort of way, I have decided that he fits the description of troll. He’s not winning any points here and is generally so tedious that I’m considering tossing him in the troll bin permanently. – Anthony
Tom P 07:13:37
Dang, looks like I missed a good one. Too busy rereading Peter Huber, ‘Bound to Burn’. Linked through Powerline by its title and through RealClearPolitics as ‘The Economics of Carbon Capping’. Don’t miss it. Huber pulls no punches on the foolishness of carbon use guilt, the precious conceit of a Western elite.
=========================================
Tom,
So you are not able to offer an explanation for this trend over the last fifty years, but reject CO2 as a cause, despite the good correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature. What are your scientific reasons for such a rejection?
But Tom, you have been offered several times an alternative explanation. CO2 bubbles out of the oceans and lands driven by higher temperatures. That is the problem. There exist alternative explanations, including bad measurements as Beck has been arguing for some time: CO2 was higher from chemical measurements than the orthodoxy 280ppm. Ice cores are from regions where there are few CO2 sources and the methodology is also criticized in the litereture.
Actually saying that Mauna Loa CO2 values are representative of the world values is like saying that Mauna Loa Temperatures are representative of the world temperatures. The same problems that plague world temperature concepts plague world CO2 concepts. But all this is another story.
OT. KIM:Too busy rereading Peter Huber
Really extraordinary. An excerpt Kyoto has hurt the anti-carbon mission far more than carbon zealots seem to grasp. It has proved only that with carbon, governments will say and sign anything—and then do less than nothing. The United States should steer well clear of such treaties because they are unenforceable, routinely ignored, and therefore worthless.
Old cultures, as old people, just watch and laugh at their grand kids naivetes
About Colorado: Wouldn’t it be possible that what we are watching it is another example of the “Goric effect”, nature punishing, hitting, the “source” of all evil against it? If this is the case then Boulder will be under enemy “ice”(contrary to “fire”) for long. 🙂
Kim,
I’ve not cherry picking at all, That is the complete CO2 instrumental data record for Mauna Loa. If you want a comparison with the CO2 ice-core data, here it is:
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/5601/co2tempext.png
The match to the long-term trend continues to be good, though of course there are excursions around the line as we discussed before.
Anna,
There are many potential models, but they have to be consistent with the historical record and our current knowledge – there are some severe constraints. What has caused the CO2 to start to bubble out? Has such a behaviour been seen before under similar circumstances? Is there any work in the literature on this?
Changes in CO2 concentrations are considerably easier to measure than temperature as it only varies by about 3% with the growing season, as the cycles in the data show and gas diffusion gives a much more uniform distribution.
Tom P.:“What has caused the CO2 to start to bubble out? Has such a behaviour been seen before under similar circumstances? Is there any work in the literature on this?”
Just open a coke up and find the reason for yourself 🙂
CO2 does not preced temperature. It bubbles up when water warms up, or, as in the coke case, when pressure is released (PV=nRT, remember?).
What has caused the CO2 to start to bubble out?
That would be heat…
Water holds more gas at low temperatures, which is why champagne stays fizzy longer when it’s well chilled, and goes flat when you leave it somewhere warm (which serves you right for not drinking it sooner).
Tom P 09:08:44
I guess it’s dense. Why else would you keep posting stuff that disproves your point? Do you see in that link what I’ve been saying all along, that the only time the CO2 curve coincided with the temperature curve is during the last quarter of the 20th Century?
=================================
You are confusing repeatability with usefulness. You are entirely missing the point several people are making here.
Lets go back to my analogy of a machinist measuring a machine part.
He takes the shaft out of his machine tool, and measures a journal on the shaft, using his micrometer. He takes the measurement several times and declares the shaft size is 3.0103 inches.
He hands the shaft to a co-worker who also measures the same journal on the shaft with his own micrometer. After several measurements his co-worker says I get 3.0102 inches. They look at the blue print and the blue print says the shaft must measure 3.0100 inches +/- 0.0005. They smile and slap themselves on the back for a job well done and take the shaft the the quality control inspector.
A half hour later the QC inspector comes back and tells him to re-do the job the shaft is too small. The two machinists are puzzled and asked how that was possible.
The QC inspector tells them the temperature in the machine shop is 96 deg F and the shaft was over 110 deg F when they measured it. Once it acclimated to the 72 deg F temperature in the Inspection shop which is the temperature specified for this jobs measurements, it has shrunk enough that it was out of spec.
They were making highly repeatable flawed measurements. They were not measuring the proper dimension which was the size of the shaft at 72 deg F.
Is a set of measurements that are relatively consistent with each other, what is unknown (and will not be known for years or decades) is:
Are these the correct measurements to make to understand climate?
Are these the correct type of measurements but taken at the wrong resolution?
Are these the correct type of measurements at the proper resolution but need to be corrected for some bias we currently do not know about.
Once we have answers to those questions we still have the question:
Is this data being used properly in the GCM models or are they totally botching up the data processing so that even if you feed them perfect data they puke out garbage. Are they like the Mann hockey stick pre-destined to churn out rubbish?
I am not concerned about the consistency or repeatability of the data, I am concerned that it is the wrong data, being used in the wrong way to make conclusions which have false precision. This false precision gives the uninformed public the perception that they have much greater understanding of very complex processes than actually exist.
The folks that monitor the nations population growth do not give population numbers to exact counts for the simple reason that the population changes on a second by second basis. They give numbers to a precision of a million or a few hundred thousands so the numbers still have meaning by the time they get printed out on someones computer screen. They know what they don’t know. They understand that the uncertainty of their numbers make any higher precision not only useless but misleading.
The AGW folks actively foster a culture of going well beyond what the “know” and making assertions with physically meaningless precision.
You may be able to measure the temperature of a bucket of water to a precision of .1 deg C but you cannot measure the temperature of a million buckets of water to a precision of .1deg c , because by the time you measure bucket #1,000,000 — bucket #1 will be at a different temperature. Likewise by averaging those 1,000,000 bucket temperatures, you cannot assert that you know the “average temperature” of the buckets to a precision of .001 deg, it would be a meaningless number in any physical sense, even though as a mathematical concept it might be useful to discuss the average temperature of those buckets, you can never actually know it.
Larry
“it would be good to have less discussion of weather and more of climates”, true, but we barely have enough data for weather, and struggle with that. Climate is hypothetical, hardly a science. Someday, if we get enough data, and figure out the significant forces at work we can do climate science. Until then, the current climate projections, predictions, prognostications, prestidigitations, etc. are only based on weather, not climate. It goes without saying that it was warmer in the 1990s than the 1970s, and it was warmer than now when the stuff that was growing under the melting glaciers was alive without the presence of the glacier. If one wants to quantify that, and extrapolate it, the sigma from the original WAG expands exponentially and the results are meaningless, with the exception of instilling fear and taxes. It doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it, but to convey a sense of certitude seems delusional.
Fat Man (15:40:07) Sorry for your misfortune, but envisioning that was hilarious.
Western snowpack has been amazing the last few years. Something else of interest:
http://lakepowell.water-data.com/
they had a contest last year to guess when castle point cut-off would be reached by the water last year. it happened around the beginning of summer – after the wettest winter in 6 years. I just looked to see if i could eneter the contest again this year, and there’s already water up to that point, so no contest. reservoirs above powell at >75% capacity, and % of snow/water/precip is well above 100 %.
this of course, wasn’t effected by the latest front range storm, but very good news nonetheless.
Here in Denver, we’re not out of the woods yet (even though the whole state is now > 100% snowpack at this very late date in the season) – I foresee the spin-machines working the angle later this week about front-range floods and how “crazy and unnatural” the weather has been leading up to this.
Tom P (09:08:44) :
“What has caused the CO2 to start to bubble out? Has such a behaviour been seen before under similar circumstances? Is there any work in the literature on this?”
You might consider this as one reason:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm
I tend to agree with Anthony on your MO. You appear to be schooled in circuitous argument which is never an answer to evidence.
Heh, right on schedule the estimable Matt Vooroo has a guest post on icecap.us asking if the PDO and the AMO are the real climate makers for the US. Worth a read.
======================================
That much snow must be the start of another ice age!
Fifty years ago Athens university was of the old european style where there were chairs and the professor ruled unique. He came in ( there were no shes) and gave his lectures twice or three times a week, underlings took care of students in labs, and there was an exam twice a year that the student had to pass and could take it ad infinitum. ( the system started changing after the junta in 1967 towards a more democratice one !! but that is another story). Exams were oral and sometimes arbitrary. A cousin of mine never finished her dentistry course because in the last year in one course she was asked ” how many sewers does Athens have” and was failed being wrong. ( she used to say that the professor was after her for refusing his advances, but that also is another story).
Tom remindeds me of a student of the time, who had studied very well the five favorite lectures of the professor. When the professor asked him ” and what was the law structure in Byzantium” he said ; ” but I would really like to tell you about the law in the Roman empire” and started spewing the perfectly learned speel. He passed.
Yo I am very appalled at those U C professors for spitting the malarkey of the aspen and other ski resorts being good only for the next 25 years and after that,less snow and snowpack. I hope in 25 + years you will be dead wrong when that prediction never comes to fruition!!! You people don’t know what the
PDO ,AMO and other factors will be having a affect .Don’t worry snow lovers and ski enthusiasts, 25 years and beyond will not come true in that manner and these professors have a lot of nuts to talk about and scare people especially skiers and resort owners about something decades away that have nothing to do with what may really be happening, just like in the late 80’s some scientists were saying that in 10 years and beyond (late90’s-2000’s) aspen may be forced to close. now look the world has cooled thanx to the neg PDO and except for a few warm years recently (especially 2002 and 2006) it has cooled since especially the last 2 years. While this has no baring on the future It proves that such predictions shall be taken with a grain of salt.The only certainty for 25 years,50,75 100 and beyond is for decadal variability such as with the PDO and its effects on El nino and the like .Yeah the next 20-25 may be good for snow assuming the neg PDO holds and yeah the PDO may see it’s scheduled shift to positive around then, but only for 20-25 years and then back to Neg PDO after that so there may be Periods with less snow after 25 years but im very sure that more snow 25 or so years after that. and Jagger in a earlier post hits it on the head over this between the PDO, AMO, ENSO’s strength and frequency as well as volcanic eruptions and the solar cycle,
especially if the current min lasts for several decades and does have a cooling and we may very well be overdue for a series of stronger eruptions and increased volcanic activity. who knows another Dalton minimum as well as more volcanic activity might suppress the next Positive PDO and any warming and even more enhance the future Negitive PDO more than the current one.who knows another Ice age or even little one may bring less snow due to the colder weather/climate being much drier as well.
anna v,
As Byzantium law is just an extension of Roman Law, I can see how the student squeaked in 😉
But anyway, the question actually lies with you. What caused these higher temperatures that have produced by far the largest concentrations of CO2 for 400,000 years:
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/6900/co2prehistoric.png
It’s been quite a few degrees warmer over that period without any comparable spike in CO2.
Tom P
Here are alternate plots.
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm
The one you show, cobbles the icecore record to current Mauna Loa measurements. I Mauna Loa sits on top of an active volcano, in an active volcano region, and god only knows how many correction enter before we see the plots. I am putting my money on the JAXA satellite to see what surface CO2 looks like.
Yes, I am doubting the measurements of CO2 to start with.
In addition, in the consistent icecore records in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png CO2 follows in spikes the rise in temperature.
Ice cores are by construction from places where CO2 is minimal. Little biological sources survive in and under the ice to be in the atmosphere. From the AIRS animations we can see that CO2 is not so well mixed as people claim. It circles around following the air currents in parallels to the tropics.
The oceans are heating because we are coming out of the LIA. I attribute the rise measured, which I think has large systematic errors not shown, to this gradual heating of the oceans, and the amplification from the plankton etc biological activity and the biological activity on land. There is a 30% increase in productivity during this warming, and plants exude CO2 at night in addition to using some for their growth during the day.
It is a complicated chaotic system and a single explanation is not only naive but also stupid.
I expect with the continuation of the cool cycle that the measurements will fall. We shall see.
I think this is the last post on this from me. I do not think that your are willing to do any thinking on the matter.
Tom P 01:25:09
Hmmm, maybe disingenuous and dense, a deadly combination. As I’ve said, at least once and perhaps repeatedly, recent CO2 rise is likely anthropogenic. What you are failing to show is a causal link between that CO2 rise and present high temperatures. You are also failing to show a causal link between rising CO2 levels and falling temperatures, but you might try that for your next stupid pet trick.
=======================================
anna v,
The paper you cite doesn’t question Charles Keeling’s methodology. In fact Beck writes, “the pioneering efforts of C. Keeling will stand for he has developed a high precision analytical method…” so you’re rather out on a limb there.
But could he be measuring volcanic eruptions? Only if they’ve been steadily increasing over the last sixty years, which I think might have been noticed. As for the biological component, that’s why the measurements are made on top of a barren mountain, though they’re still seen as the oscillation on the trend.
If you wish to doubt the measurements for you own unspecified reasons, go ahead. It’s rather difficult to then argue a scientific basis for your own beliefs.
Tom P 00:08:20
Was that last sentence ironic? Perhaps you’d like to tell us the scientific basis for your own belief that CO2 causes a lot of global warming. Disconfirmed climate models aren’t going to get it. Arrhenius himself has a rather small effect from CO2 itself and we don’t know the feedback effect of water vapor, neither magnitude nor sign. CO2 rises lagging the temperature rises for the last few hundreds of thousands of years isn’t going to get it either. So what is the scientific basis for your faithful beliefs?
==========================================
kim,
No faith necessary.
Let’s see first were we agree. There has been a long-term warming trend, about 0.7 degC in the last hundred years. There have been as large and larger temperature excursions in the past associated with the ice age cycles.
We know that Milankovitch cycles have driven temperature changes over the last few hundred thousand years by changing the intensity of the solar energy falling on the Earth through orbital dynamics. This drove up temperatures followed about 800 years later by an increase in CO2 from the warmer oceans that amplified the heating from the initial solar warming. Eventually temperatures stabilised several degrees above present though as the orbits continued to change solar input dropped and temperatures fell. All this is obviously completely natural.
However the current warming spell is different from these previous episodes as it is coincident with the increase in CO2, which itself is higher than at any time seen in the past 400,000 years. It is not unreasonable therefore to investigate if there is a possibility that CO2, caused this time by fossil fuel combustion, might be the cause. No 800-year lag would be expected in this case.
But I freely admit this is all circumstantial evidence. The only way CO2 can hope to raise the temperature is to increase the solar power input through the greenhouse effect. Hence first it is necessary to show that CO2 could produce a sufficient greenhouse effect to cause the observed warming.
Can we agree up to this point?
Tom P (13:47:34) :
The only way CO2 can hope to raise the temperature is to increase the solar power input through the greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect does not in any way increase the solar power input.
Mark
What is the mechanism?
How is it different from H2O in the atmosphere?
Mark T,
The amount of solar power that ends up being put into the atmosphere, as opposed to reflected or emitted into space. This is what is modified by the greenhouse effect. The increased input will cause the temperature to rise until the resulting emission losses match the increased input.
Richard,
No different. The greenhouse effect for H20 is the same mechanism. Of course the magnitude or any warming will depend on the relative strength of the green house effect for this gas and how much the content is changing.
REPLY:
“The amount of solar power that ends up being put into the atmosphere, as opposed to reflected or emitted into space. This is what is modified by the greenhouse effect. The increased input will cause the temperature to rise until the resulting emission losses match the increased input.”
Tom P. “Increased input” ? That is STUNNINGLY WRONG. The “greenhouse effect” related to GHG’s has absolutely nothing to do with solar input, or what wavelenghts of the TSI is allowed to pass through the atmosphere and reach the surface. It has everything to do with retention/reflectance of re-emitted longwave IR from the earth’s surface. GHG’s affect the outbound window, not the inbound.
Perhaps you would care to rephrase so that what you’ve said is a factual statement? – Anthony
Tom P 13:47:34
First of all, there is no proof that CO2 contributed to the warming that continued after the 800 year lag. That is conjecture and based on no evidence. So where do you get ‘obviously completely natural’ except from your faith?
Next, this current warming spell is not ‘coincident’ with the rise of CO2. I’ve shown you repeatedly that neither the steady warming from the end of the Little Ice Age, nor the variations around that rebound, due to the oceanic oscillations, correlate with the CO2 curve. The only exception to that is during the last quarter of the last century, our great Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.
I grant you a little liberality with the meaning of the term ‘solar input’, but you still haven’t demonstrated what is the CO2 effect on that. I suspect there is some, perhaps a degree Fahrenheit per doubling of CO2, but the fact of the matter is that we do not know that effect. It is your ‘faith’ that makes you believe the IPCC’s figure, perhaps an order of magnitude greater than the real effect. The IPCC does not support its calculations. Sorry. This is one of Steve McIntyre’s great hobby horses, that the effect of CO2 on temperature is not established.
=======================================
A really great example of the fact that you are depending upon faith for your beliefs is your complete resistance to accepting that the temperature curve since the Little Ice Age does not correlate well with the curve of CO2 concentration. You keep asserting that as fact, when you’ve been shown repeatedly that it is not so. This is faith, brother, simple faith, which, like kind hearts, is greater than coronets. But, it ain’t science. And it is only science than can determine wise policy. At any rate, any policies purporting to be based on science, and needing to be based on science.
If we are cooling long term, and the simple, but well-intentioned, faith of environmentalists has wrong-footed us into mitigating a warming that isn’t happening instead of adapting to the perilous cooling, then there will be Hell to pay, and the environment will only be one of the things that suffers.
So please, re-evaluate your assumptions and your beliefs. The climate is changing, for sure, but warming it isn’t, and CO2 isn’t causing the changes.
=============================================
Tom P 14:55:24
Here you get into the water vapor feedback to initial CO2 forcing and it is an important point. The IPCC and the climate models depend for a lot of the supposed effect of rising CO2 on the water vapor feedback being positive and large, in other words, much of the supposed effect of CO2 is based on rising temperature pulling a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere. However, this is not happening. As best as we can tell from the direct measurements of radiosondes, the extra water vapor is not there. As best as we can tell, the signature of that effect, tropospheric tropical warming, is not being shown. And now, as best as Roy Spencer can tell from indirect methods, water vapor is not being shown to have a large positive feedback. This is why the climate models have failed, and why the IPCC is just dead wrong. Now, please reconsider before there are a lot of dead people to go along with this BIG mistake.
==================================
Anthony,
Only a proportion of the solar power hitting the top of the atmosphere ends up heating the atmosphere. That is the overall thermal input into the atmosphere due to the sun and is affected by the strength of the greenhouse effect. Of course there is reflection and reabsorption as part of that process, and this affects the radiative losses.
Input here indicates the overall power balance, not which direction of flow of radiation through the atmosphere is affected. I agree that in both an atmosphere and a greenhouse it is the upwards reradiation that is changed by either gas composition or glass.
REPLY: Your new explanation makes sense in a different context, such as a solar power discussion, but not in a discussion on GHG’s. I think that is your biggest problem here. Plus your discussion is OT, which seems to happen with you a lot. Like the thread you derailed with your boiling milk analogy. The idea is to keep things on topic. – Anthony
Tom P 16:21:46
You are betraying some profound ignorance on one point. The heating in a glass greenhouse is not from the effect of the glass on re-radiation, it is from the physical interruption of convection. ‘Greenhouse effect’ with respect to the gasses in the atmosphere is a huge misnomer and perhaps is contributing to your confusion.
You’ll not find many skeptics who claim that CO2 has no ‘greenhouse’ or warming effect on the atmosphere. The question is how much it has, and that is not settled, despite your faith that it has been settled. Those of us who claim that the paradigm CO2=AGW is wrong mainly claim that CO2’s effect has been exaggerated. We can know that it has been exaggerated, without knowing what it is, because we can’t find its signal in the temperature record. That makes us suspect that it is quite small, probably trivial.
==============================================
kim 15:48:28
OK, I’ll withdraw my objection to your term ‘obviously completely natural’. I still object to your certainty that the temperature rise beyond the 800 year lag is from CO2. It might just as easily, and more likely, be from the same forces that caused the temperature rise in the first place.
Again, we do not know the effect that CO2 has on temperature. The correlation of temperature and CO2 for the last few hundreds of thousands of years is more likely from outgassing of CO2 from a warming ocean and/or from other places in the carbon cycle.
The science? Not settled.
===============================================
Tom P (03:28:44) : As you measure the height of a mountain with higher resolution, you get closer and closer to the actual height. The result will converge – it is not fractal.
The AREA is fractal. Since AVERAGE height is a product of AREA at a height the AVERAGE height is also fractal.
Your statement would be true for the PEAK height. As ever finer rulers are used, the peak height converges. Re-read my prior posting.
And yes, temperatures are just like this… And Hansen know it, which is why he has said you can’t measure it. You are wrong. Get over it.
anna v (08:16:20) : But Tom, you have been offered several times an alternative explanation. CO2 bubbles out of the oceans and lands driven by higher temperatures. That is the problem. There exist alternative explanations, including bad measurements as Beck has been arguing for some time:
We can’t know where the CO2 comes from at present. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-trouble-with-c12-c13-ratios/
But we can know that the quantity nature tosses about is much larger than what we do. 90 / 92 Gigatons / year for the ocean, 121 GT/yr for plants. 5.5 GT/year for fuels and cement… (see the top graphic in the link).
Given a 40:1 ratio of just the big lumps of nature vs. us – I’d look to nature first… Oh, and just a sidebar note: That oil and coal is NOT permanently sequestered. Coal gets eroded out and oxidized or subducted, similarly oil does the same plus natural seeps. Ditto natural gas. It’s coming back, the only question is when…
Frankly, given that there is more C in Clathrate and we have no clue how much it out gasses each year, that alone means we have no clue. (BTW, lots of bacteria eat natural gas and oil to make CO2, so it isn’t just a methane thing…) Heck, we don’t even know how much comes out of black smokers on the ocean floor or if / when it varies.
hotrod (11:05:55) : You may be able to measure the temperature of a bucket of water to a precision of .1 deg C but you cannot measure the temperature of a million buckets of water to a precision of .1deg c ,
Nice analogy. I’d only add that some of the buckets have heaters on one side and ice cubes on the other and each bucket is a different size with the amount of water changing while you measure with some leaking out and new water of a different temperature raining in… Oh, and some of the thermometers are near BBQs 😉
Then, once you take the temperature in whole degrees F, you magically gain precision to tenths of a degree C despite that being a mathematical impossibility…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/mr-mcguire-would-not-approve/
While we might be able to calculate some global average temperature, it’s precision can at most be whole degrees F and it’s accuracy less than that.
If that number has any more meaning than the global average phone number, well, who knows…
E.M.Smith 19:24:24
The ‘permanent’ in carbon sequestration is an awfully big word, but still, the mere presence of hydrocarbon deposits suggests virtually ‘permanent’ sequestration. And we haven’t even gotten into carbonates, granted none guaranteed to be ‘permanently’ sequestered. The history of the world, though, is carbon entrance into the carbon cycle via vulcanism, and virtually permanent sequestration of it through the action of the sun on the biosphere.
=======================================
E. M. Smith,
“The AREA is fractal. Since AVERAGE height is a product of AREA at a height the AVERAGE height is also fractal.”
No. The length of a perimeter can be fractal and non-convergent while an area remains convergent. Hence a fractal island will have an infinitely long coastline and a finite area. Please look up Koch snowflake to correct your misunderstanding here.
kim,
Look at this again:
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/5601/co2tempext.png
You say the agreement (in the long-term trend, not every squiggle) between temperature and CO2 is coincident. Your argument is that the warming effect, in temperature per CO2 concentration doubling, is too low. Therefore do you agree that IF the CO2 warming effect were large enough (and much larger than you think is possible) CO2 would be a major contributor to the long-term warming?
If you accept this we can discuss the strength of this warming effect. If you don’t think any value is sufficient, you’re really out on a limb.
Tom P (05:54:05) :
Tom,
We’ve reached a peak in temperatures, as your graph points out, but since then trend is down. An analogy: you’ve climbed to the top of a pass. Every step going up has been higher than the last. At the the top, you have reached a maximum. Going down the other side, each step is lower than the previous step. The trend going up, was up. The trend going down, is down. To argue while you are going down that the first step down is the ‘second highest’ step on record, to be followed by the ‘fourth highest” step on record, and so forth; does hide the simple fact the trend has changed. You are in fact, going downhill. Yes, you were going up, but now are going down.
How far will you go down? Depends on the topography.
How far will the current temperature trend continue to go down? Depends on the real climate drivers. I don’t pretend to know what all the drivers are or what their individual contributions amount to, but carbon seems to be out of the running as even a major contributor to our planet’s climate.
Take a look at this series of charts:
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateReflections.htm#20080927:%20Reflections%20on%20the%20correlation%20between%20global%20temperature%20and%20atmospheric%20CO2
The gentleman running that site keeps all the charts up to date. This one was last updated March of this year. He also has the charts of all the major data sets, HADCRUT, GISS, RSS, etc. He also shows how all these data sets are in general agreement on the trends.
He also shows the entire record of the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements and places this on a graph with the HADCRUT data, hardly a hotbed of denier sentiment.
What is interesting about this graph, the one starting in 1939 and ending in April of 2009, is the detailed look at temperature trends since the start of the Mauna Loa measurements. The current downward trend in temperatures is not the first time temperature trends have gone down while carbon dioxide was going up. Notice the downward trend from 1958, the start of the Mauna Loa measurements, to the early seventies.
If the CO2 hypothesis is correct, at no time should the temperature trends be anything but up. These trends fluctuate. Based on the actual measurements, it would seem safe to conclude trends will continue to fluctuate, but with very little regard for the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The little series of extremely well documented graphs found at Climate4You allows a person to exam the actual and full record of temperatures with a reasoned discussion of what these might mean. There is no possibility of cherry picking as the author shows the whole record, in the case of HADCRUT, back to 1850.
I like the site because it is consistent and well maintained.
I can look at the data and draw my own conclusions. We don’t have to engage in the “my scientific daddy is bigger than your scientific daddy”. Just look at the data and draw your own conclusions.
Many on this board don’t care for the Mauna Loa data and for a lot of good reasons. To keep life simple, I just assume it is accurate or at least reasonably so. Doing so allows me to test the hypothesis tying CO2 levels to the planet’s temperature. The hypothesis has failed.
People who believe in the AGW hypothesis are having a really difficult time right now. Last year, when I pointed out the fact the globe was cooling (this was at Earth.dot) it triggered a lot of denials about the cooling. I was accused of being on the hire of Exxon (wish I was. I could use the cash), misleading the ignorant. Now there seems to be a reluctant acceptance of the general trend of cooling. Some are avoiding the cooling by stretching back the starting point of temperature measures, as you have done, and maintaining the trend is still up.
But my friend, the trend is down for now. For how long? I’ve no idea. But whatever it does, it will do so independently of CO2.
From beautiful Colorado, I wish you the very best.
Tom P 23:35:02
I say again, even though it is tiresome, the only time those curves match is during the last quarter of the last century. And that is what the models are based upon. The curves don’t match before, nor after. On your scale, present temps, and temps earlier than you show are both lower than the CO2 curve. So what you think you are seeing there is a chimera. The models saw it, too, and that’s why they are failing now.
Note the squiggles, due presumably to natural variations. The squiggle during the last quarter of the last century is also due to a natural variation. Your curve fails for the last few years, and it fails extended into the past earlier than your graph, too. So please, enough of it already.
As for your first sentence, I’ve said it over and over again, the curve for CO2 level and for temperature are NOT coincident. Your graph shows it, too. So why do you claim that I do say it, or that your graph shows it? And I’ve said repeatedly that we do not know the temperature effect of doubling CO2. So why do you say that my argument is that that warming effect is too low?
Why is it that you misquote me repeatedly, fail to acknowledge the points that I do make, and then insist that I accept your points before having further discussion? “If you accept this then we can discuss.” Well, I do not accept this. You are not being disingenuous or even dense. You are being obstreperous, and not the least bit persuasive. I suggest you observe the thermometer, in a corner. You can take off the cap, and come out of your corner when the temperature comes back up to your CO2 curve. Meanwhile, read Anthony’s latest about what this horribly mistaken policy based on CO2=AGW will do to the world’s poor. You’ve got a problem coming down the track at you unless you can adjust a little better than you have so far.
===============================================
Oh, and I do think that CO2 has a temperature effect. As I’ve said, I think it is so small we can’t find it in the temperature record. And surely too small to be basing expensive and deadly policy upon.
===========================================
kim,
“Oh, and I do think that CO2 has a temperature effect. As I’ve said, I think it is so small we can’t find it in the temperature record.”
Yours is a circular argument. If you “think” the effect is small enough, then you will see no effect in the temperature record, even if there were perfect correlation between CO2 and temperature. That does not offer any scientific proof it is small, or how small exactly is “small.”
But this can be investigated. Here is the full HadCRUT temperature record together with the temperature derived just from the CO2 concentration at three different levels of effect as expressed by the concentration-doubling temperatures, 1.2K, 2K and 3K (http://arxiv.org/pdf/0811.4600v1):
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/1844/hadcrutco2.png
I’d say anything at 1 K or below and CO2 is certainly not the most important cause of global warming – it’s effect is small, though certainly not zero. At a concentration-doubling temperature of 2K CO2 very well explains the background trends. Of course there needs to be an explanation as to why a figure of 2K is a scientifically justified choice.
But before that if you have evidence that the effect is 1 K or less, please present it. It’s not a scientific justification just to “think” that it is small.
Jack,
“If the CO2 hypothesis is correct, at no time should the temperature trends be anything but up.”
Not at all. That an increase in the concentration of CO2 produces a background of warming does not preclude other natural and unnatural effects from causing cooling that can temporarily (a decade or more) be even greater. Climate models include both anthropogenic and natural effects, and show temperature drops in the time series.
Tom P 06:26:36
You are hopeless. Your misunderstanding of my point does not make it a circular argument. If there were a perfect correlation of CO2 and temperature then that would be evidence that there is an important CO2 effect on climate. I am making exactly the opposite point, that since we can’t see a correlation, then it is likely that CO2 has a negligible effect on climate.
And Arrhenius’s own calculations show a small effect from CO2. It is the mistaken addition of a large positive feedback of water vapor that has misled you and the models.
And I’ll counter with this challenge. Show that the effect on temperature that the models and the IPCC have promoted has been scientifically demonstrated. You can’t; it hasn’t been done.
=========================================
You willfully misunderstand me in order to attempt to make your point. I’m back to you being just dense. Then again, why the willfullness; that seems disingenuous. Why do still insist that there is a correlation between CO2 levels and temperature? And who do you think you are convincing besides yourself?
===================================
REPLY: Tom P is exceptionally stubborn, and this thread has gone so far OT now that it is mostly all about this argument. I’m getting a bit weary of Tom P. hijacking threads. Perhaps it is just best to ignore him. – Anthony
Omigod, the Arthur Smith graph you link is essentially the same cherry-picked one you’ve tried to fob off on us before. If you look at the very recent past, and for times before those shown on the graph, then the 1.2C line is a better fit than the 2.0C line. And it still errs, suggesting that the effect is even less than 1.2C. Do you not understand that cherry-picking is an error that can lead to misunderstanding?
===========================================
I’ll say it again, though repetition does not seem to have any effect on you. The most recent temperatures do not fit your graph, nor do temperatures before your graph. Before, CO2 remained flat, presumably, and temperatures were lower. You’ve cherry picked and curve fitted. So do the models. They, you, and Arthur Smith are wrong, some of you deceitfully so.
If the deceit leads to expensive and dangerous policy, those being deceitful will be exposed and held responsible. Carbon encumbering is likely to become deadly. Think about it.
=======================================
OK, Anthony. My arm is getting tired from wielding the 2X4 anyway.
==========================================
Anthony,
Climate sensitivity is obviously a key aspect of the science of global warming. Kim doesn’t want to further discuss it in any quantitative way, and as there’s apparently no appetite from anyone else I agree it’s time to move on.
Tom P 07:56:02
Naw, the quantification is only there during the last quarter of the last century. Not before, and not since. Once again, you misconstrue my point.
You are right, climate sensitivity to CO2 is the key point. You’ve not supported your belief in its high sensitivity with either quantitative arguments or with underlying scientific theory. And every day the earth cools further diminishes your hypothetical high sensitivity. When empiric facts dispute predictions from hypotheses the scientific method requires re-evaluation of the assumptions underlying your hypotheses. Get busy.
===========================================
kim,
Just two quick responses:
“Arrhenius’s own calculations show a small effect from CO2”
You’re wrong: he calculated an alarming 5 to 6K doubling temperature.
Arrhenius, Svante (1896). “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground.” Philosophical Magazine 41: 237-76.
Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 K, with a likely range of about 2 – 4.5 K:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
Tom P 10:04:23
You’re out of date, about a century. Check out what his calculations were after he used Navier-Stokes equations after the turn of the century. You’ve been propagandized, honey.
=======================================
REPLY: Kim and Tom please give it a rest. – Anthony
Tom P (10:04:23),
No, Tom, you are wrong.
You are either ignorant, or you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts.
For your sake, I will assume it’s the former, and enlighten you:
Despite your link [which was clearly written to obtain grant money — just read the summary, and look at the alarming graphs based on rank speculation], there are no “observations” for climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity has not been observed, because it is so small. Climate sensitivity is simply a model output, and the warmist contingent is still desperately, and impotently, hoping for temperatures to rise in order to prove its existence.
The estimates and models of climate sensitivity vary all over the map. And there is no consensus for any particular climate sensitivity number. As your summary link states, there is wide uncertainty, ranging from 1.5° C to 6° C and more. But empirical, real world climate sensitivity appears to be not much above zero.
Now that your “alarming” argument has been corrected, this is a good opportunity for an ad-hoc ethics test:
By admitting your post was factually wrong, and that you are left only with facts that support natural climate variability, will you now become a skeptic of the CO2=AGW hypothesis, which depends entirely on a large climate sensitivity number?
Or will you just move the goal posts, as usual?
I predict the latter. Prove me wrong. Please.
Sorry Anthony, I didn’t see your REPLY when I posted.
[snip – what part of “give it a rest” do you not understand? All further posts deleted, unless the subject is about Boulder, snow, etc on the topic of original article.]
Woof, don’t you want us repeatedly rolling that ‘Boulder’ up the hill to have Tom P shove it back down again? Heh!
=======================================
Tom P (06:54:24) :
Listen to yourself:
does not preclude other natural and unnatural effects from causing cooling that can temporarily (a decade or more) be even greater.
Yes, natural and unnatural effects can override CO2 for decades. Which is why there is no point in controlling CO2 emissions. There are other forces at work, rendering mankind’s effort trivial.
I’ve lived in Breckenridge, CO since Autumn 2005. For each of the last four seasons in a row, we’ve started skiing in October and ended in May. Eight months of skiing per year. We could keep skiing on the permanent snow fields in the high country but we also like to mountain bike, raft, hike and camp.. It’s a nice warm day, but snow is in the forecast from this Friday through next week. Last May (2008) we got several large snowstorms and I skied waist-deep powder in the backcountry a month after the lifts had closed. Nothing alarming going on up here.